metonymy4u

Riding the subway this morning I observed a young man sitting in a seat with his backpack on the seat next to him. Something about the stare of cold command, and frown, and studiously worn and wrinkled pants informed us that no neighbor would he countenance. Even when an elderly woman got on the train, there was no movement, from him to offer, nor anyone else to request, the unused seat. We were all frozen–myself included–by some unspoken fear of approach. Someone else got up for her and she sat down.

I thought to myself, “We are all certainly dead inside.”

In this context, it seems to me that the metaphor of the Zombie is very apt. Many of us who people the streets are indeed the walking dead. By that I mean we lack the capacity to understand the experience of one, an-other. And how does the media handle this situation? What stories do we tell? On the (so-called) news, in movies, advertisements, books, in the music and videos of our entertainment addicted world? Mostly just ways to dispose of the bodies. Or recycle them into food-stuffs. Go green. Go soylent green! Why is it that we so rarely tell another story?

The story of people waking up?

Later, walking through the park, I saw a dog trying to teach a human how to throw a ball properly. Two things stood out: 1) how incredibly focused the dog was on his teaching and 2) how patient and kind he was. He did not bark, or growl, or bite, or snarl. He focused on nothing else but his student, his task. How much more effective could our lessons be if we acted more like our canine friends? It seems to me they are trying to teach us something. If only we could sit down for a moment and listen.

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What is the understanding? I could say understanding is reading. But then I have to explain it to someone else. So there is a transformative “function” applied. Which is my brain burning fuel. Moving to a different position vis-à-vis a set of events. The new arrangement, is also a new event. Especially if I wish to confirm someone else’s understanding, I have to have a sense of the event I’m aiming for. In myself or the other person. At that point when anxiety decreases and I stop following the line, is that what we call understanding? And what exactly am I standing under? Is it a shelter for my fear? Or your displeasure? Why would that bother us, “under” any circumstance?

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People often mention existentialist nihilism as if it were something relished by those authors. But the existentialists were horrified by the astounding discovery that all meaning could go out of the world. Their earliest project was to try and understand how this could have come about. To undo it.

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The Lacanian post-modern, post-structuralist project strikes me as very Nietzschian in the end, to the extent that they wish to re-cover the mysteries of life as an antidote to modern day nihilism and exploitation. However, i’m not so sure that Nietzsche’s solutions are either 1) viable (can we truly re-invent god after his death?) or 2) all that useful (does it not perpetuate nihilism to try to draw the covers back over the world – to re-submerge it in a medieval obscurity?).

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Part of the problem is that we still separate the mind from the body.

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Emotional pain is often stigmatized in our culture. It is seen as something that is just “in your head,” and conveniently dismissed. So tell me, if you can, is there any pain that isn’t “in your head?” If you cut your finger, does your finger feel the pain or does your brain? If you block all the connections between your brain and your finger (with local anesthetic, for example) does your finger still feel the pain? Of course not. So why is it so surprising to us that pain of any kind should be felt “in your head?” And yet when the pain is in the finger in your head, we don’t assume that it isn’t real do we? Why then assume that the pain that is in your broken heart in your head is any less real?

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They say that the pain of a heart attack is so intense that people would rather die than have the pain continue. Many people have the same daily experience with emotional pain. The thing is, if we felt as much physical pain as we do emotional pain, we’d go to the emergency room or the doctor’s office to get help. Why don’t we do the same with emotional pain? Probably because we would not receive any kind of effective help from the vast majority of health care providers. Because the health care industry is chronically incompetent in the recognition and relief of emotional pain. Instead we show up for “other reasons,” and so don’t get the help we need. If we can’t accurately describe the problem, how can we hope to solve it?

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Call me crazy and I’ll say you’re too kind. Call me maladjusted and I’ll say thank you. What we accept loses its power. Slowly. Slowly.

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The mind body problem is a relic of a dead age. It is the product of ignorance. Ignorance of the relationship between events. Prior to the scientific revolution, people saw a difference between what they took to be animate and inanimate matter. For example, your coffee doesn’t usually talk to you each morning, and your children do (if they’re not adolescents). So we develop a sense of distinct events: living and non-living. But now we understand that as the molecules of your coffee become incorporated into your body, they become part of a living system. Are the so called inanimate molecules that make up your body themselves alive? From this perspective, of course they are. Because they are part of a living system. If you take them out and put them into a non-living system then they are otherwise. The context is all.

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If you choose to make money off of people’s stupidity, then the smarter they get, the less you make. Whereas if you make money off their smarts, then it’s the opposite. Why do so many business people and politicians not get this most basic concept?

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