Politics is a Disease!

POSTED BY: HKCavalier
UPDATED: Sunday, June 26, 2005 03:39
VIEWED: 3546
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RUE

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 2:10 AM

Hi SignyM -

No message, just HI.

HKCAVALIER

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 2:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Rue, HK- ...Tried to "grok" what this person meant and couldn't get past the "orgiastic" pulsation that apparently drives all living things. Sounds a little too much like the "id needs to be liberated" to make sense to me, for a whole variety of reasons...

Hey, Signy!

Reich is tough material. In some respects, we may interpret his project as nothing less than the overthrow of modern society. He challenges our common sense and threatens our sacred cows. Oh boy, did he ever get in trouble for that whole "orgasm" issue (he was ultimately imprisoned here in the U.S. for his beliefs and there is compelling evidence that he was simply allowed to die of an easily treated illness which we decided not to treat, essencially murdering the man for his ideas).

Here's the thing about the "pulsation" you mention. All couples (I think I can say this), every last one, have periodic arguments. Eventually, we all come to understand that the ostensible subject is in some way arbitrary, our rational grasp of "why" we were arguing falters until we forget what was so almighty important about the conflict in the first place. And yet the arguments persist as if following some mysterious time-table of their own. After the argument, things revert to normal until the next argument. Then, of course, there's the popular institution of "make-up sex," a very real phenomenon experienced by couple all over the world. After a fight, people feel cleared of the negative charge and ready to embrace life and each other fully. Even if you are not the type to have "make-up sex," you do sometimes recognize that a negative charge has been released and even when the "issues" are not resolved, you can nonetheless feel unburdened by the simple act of arguing. Why? I wouldn't say that "the id needs to be liberated," but I can see how a "charge" builds up in the individual which reaches a critical mass and the psyche finds a pretext for release.

The trouble with Reich and Freud is that these guys were obsessed with the unconscious drives that tend to rule our lives. It's unsettling to any thinking person to imagine that they are not, after all, in control of their actions; that there is a secret part of us that gets its needs met, while we go around thinking we're in charge. But both men proved that with the proper attention, these forces in the psyche could be observed and in many cases brought into harmony with our conscious selves.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

CORNCOBB

Thursday, June 16, 2005 12:23 AM

Great thread / post. At the end of the day, all political ideologies are just repeated memes. They only exist as ideas passed on from one person to another like a virus.

"Gorramit Mal... I've forgotten my line."

SIGNYM

Thursday, June 16, 2005 1:14 AM

Wow. OK, this sparked a lot of thoughts... none of them very coherent, and some contradictory. Let me toss them out and see what y'all think.

OH crap. ran out of time! Later!

SIGNYM

Thursday, June 16, 2005 4:49 AM

OK, just enuf time for a couple of quick thoughts...

I agree that ppl are not really conscious or necessarily rational about what they do. While we like to talk about our big cortexes (cortices?), underneath all that gray matter we still have the rabbit brain, and in our abdomens we still have the slug brain, and they are all still working, busy forming their own memories, making their calculations and decisions while our gray matter is busy with "more important" stuff. Ppl who have had a corpus callosotomy- where the connection between two halves of the brain are cut- can see and react to something with one half of the brain, and be entirely unable to explain their reaction with the other half of the brain. Or, more interestingly, they confabulate some pretty wild explanations.

Another example of unconsciousness. When looking at the activity in a person's brain, they find that the motor cortex that controls the arm "lights up" BEFORE someone has made a conscious decision to move their arm. So clearly, we are often motivated by urges that we aren't even aware of, that we only rationalize after the fact.

However. I think there is more to "evil" than what occurs in the individual. "Evil" is a social construct, and whatver behavior we define as "evil" can be either promoted or inhibited by society- the whole meme idea previously mentioned. So I'm having a hard time resolving the individual/ societal aspects of evil.

And, still having a hard time digesting Reich unless I put it into "scientific" terms which may actually not be a good translation of his concepts.

That's where I'm at right now.

RUE

Thursday, June 16, 2005 6:37 AM

Quote:
underneath all that gray matter we still have the rabbit brain, and in our abdomens we still have the slug brain, and they are all still working, busy forming their own memories, making their calculations and decisions while our gray matter is busy with "more important" stuff

I think even our muscles, kidneys and lungs make chemicals that seep through our bodies, creating their own unconscious currents.

I agree with you both in thinking that humans live on a largely unconscious level.

I do think there are different levels of evil though. There are those doomed to it b/c literally nothing else matters; and those who could develop emotional connections, but due to upbringing, environment, nutrition etc pass through that stage of development into a stunted adulthood. (I do think like langauge, emotional and social development happens during certain stages, and once passed, the opportunity is gone.)

Anyway, with gears grinding, smoke pouring out of my ears, this is as far as I got today.

RUE

Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:32 AM

Just to report - I'm not too much further along, but I've started to think about politics in general. But it occurred to me, when a decision must be made regarding a group of people, there's often discussion of the particulars, and sometimes a discussion of group values. Yes, we need to move our village to try to follow the game which seems to be scare nowadays, our people don't hide the game we hunt, we always share! Of course the cityfolk have their ways, but we do things our own way here. Going back to my historical lore (Europe) it seems 'politics' has been a recognized topic for at least a few centuries. So I am trying to figure out if that kind of politics is also a disease and maybe the problem just goes far back, or if there is a particular variant which is abnormal while the rest is OK.

HKCAVALIER

Sunday, June 19, 2005 9:35 PM

Rue, Signy,

Thanks for taking the time to wander out here beyond the edge with me

I keep coming back to the old "rats in a cage" theory of social dynamics; the human infestation of this planet has been at critical levels for so many centuries that it can be very difficult to even imagine what a healthy population would look like. What we are left with is racial nostalgia; the mythologizing of Native American culture, the mythologizing of "Small Town America," even the Nazis' nostalgia for their Tribal Aryan prehistory. Everyone seems to imagine a simpler time of small communities living in peace.

As you know, some will say that it all started with agrarianism, when humans began to settle in one place, opening the door to overpopulation and creating the need for sanitation; a need that has always far outstripped our technological and medical means to control (although we have been at least successful enough to make urbanization survivable, managing many plagues and epidemics that would otherwise have devastated our populations, but at tremendous cost).

At some point, illness, both physical and mental, became an important factor in defining culture.

As new pathologies settled into human population centers, and more and more individuals became subject to disease, the idea that the general population of a community was fundamentally ill-suited to make decisions came into being. Christianity as the first truly urban religion (feel free to disagree with that one) postulated "original sin," inaugurating disease as the defining characteristic of human nature. The system of gerontocracy vanished from the earth as more and more would-be elders succumbed to the onslaught of disease and senility.

Overpopulation, distrust of "the masses," the need to control the unknown, all these are preconditions for an outbreak of politics.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

SERGEANTX

Sunday, June 19, 2005 10:32 PM

HK, have you read any Daniel Quinn? Your comments on agriculture and it's affects on human culture align very closely with his.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

OPPYH

Sunday, June 19, 2005 11:48 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Corncobb:
Great thread / post. At the end of the day, all political ideologies are just repeated memes. They only exist as ideas passed on from one person to another like a virus.

"Gorramit Mal... I've forgotten my line."

well said

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