Alienation - what is it, and can there be too much of it?
I – INTRODUCTION
This essay will be a collection of
my latest thoughts on the concept of alienation. It must be made clear from the
start that I do not have a very rigorous definition of the term “alienation”,
yet. I will use it, here, as a more general term encompassing a wider range of
phenomena such as isolation, separation, segregation or disconnection. In
future books and articles, the term may be either redefined or abandoned
completely, such that I can have various different words for different types of
(what I now will call) “alienation”. Roughly speaking, I will refer by
“alienation” to pretty much any mechanism/action in which two or more objects,
entities, persons or groups of people have their distance increased. This
distance can be physical/spatial, temporal, or psychological.
I have observed that whenever I want
to write anything about alienation, the concepts of identity and identification
happen to pop up often, especially the concept of identification with a group.
This is why I have in mind, but it is just an idea, that this essay could be
later extended into a book named something like “Identity, identification and
alienation”.
II – JOUISSANCE, SAFETY AND DANGER
Jacques Lacan had a term he called
“jouissance”, which is usually left untranslated from French. It refers to a
feeling of pain mixed with pleasure, or to when something brings so much
pleasure that it starts to get painful. Later in life, he split this term up
into multiple types: phallic jouissance, Other jouissance, ‘jouis-sense’
(jouissance of knowledge/meaning), etc. I will introduce two other, opposite
scenarios or contexts that one could find themselves in that I believe produce
a form of jouissance, since they both have advantages and disadvantages, and therefore,
both bring a form of pleasure and pain simultaneously. These are safety
and danger. After we elaborate the jouissance of safety and of danger,
respectively, we can return to the concept of alienation.
Safety is both a bless and a curse.
So is danger. They complete each other in a way, where one fails, the other one
succeeds. One’s pleasure is the other’s pain and vice-versa.
What is the jouissance of safety? It
is the experience produced by staying in your “protective shell”, in your comfort-zone,
in other words. An alternative term for it would be the ‘jouissance of
comfort’. It is both a bless and a curse. Its bless is the avoidance of danger
and of the feared, anxiety-provoking object or situation. In your “safe zone”,
you are protected from harm to yourself, be it physical, emotional or
financial harm. But any such “bless” or advantage has a trade-off, a price to
pay. The price to pay for this excessive safety, when taken to the extreme, is
monotony, boredom, lack of excitement, less new experiences, and higher
sensitivity to future potential threats. In other words, you firstly have to
sacrifice potentially good experiences in order to protect yourself from
potentially threatening experiences (“no risk, no gain”). Protecting yourself
from danger will make you miss out on some things in life. And secondly, you
stop developing a “thicker skin” or tolerance for the inevitable cases in which
you will face some form of danger.
What we said about the jouissance of
safety, we could reverse for the jouissance of danger. The advantages of safety
are the disadvantages of danger and vice-versa. When you expose yourself to
risk or danger, you also potentially gain more “good” reinforcements. For
example, not investing is “safe” and investing is often “risky”, each coming
with their respective jouissances. Also, gradually exposing yourself to bigger
and bigger dangers makes you prepared for future, inevitable dangers, making
you grow a tolerance.
We often see cases of
over-protective parents, constantly wanting their children to be safe from all
potential harm. It’s common-sense that both extremes are bad and should be
avoided. Exposing your child to too much danger and risk, non-gradually, can
make them develop various psychological or physical traumas, or even losing
their life. We do not want our very young kids unsupervised 24/7. But
over-protecting them from any danger or risk runs into the opposite problem
where they will not learn how to deal with the inevitable harshness of life
later on as adults (no ‘tolerance’), and will also limit them from potentially
reinforcing experiences, where the risk is small enough that it is worth it.
In 2019, the YouTube channel “Vox”
released a short clip: “Why safe playgrounds aren't great for kids”. It
supports the idea of “adventure playgrounds”, in which controlled risk
is accounted for: kids are encouraged to play with more dangerous items like
hammers and nails, which instills in them a greater sense of personal
responsibility from harm. They make a great point in the risk of danger being
mostly in the control of the kids. For example, when climbing a tree, a
tree-branch rupturing and falling is a hazard, as it is more affected by
random chance than by the children’s own decisions. The height of the tree is a
risk, because it is in the child’s control. Moreover, children who have
been exposed to controlled risk develop a greater creativity and capability of
detecting risks later in life as adults.
In conclusion, children need to be
exposed to a moderate, controlled degree of risky activities in terms of
physical danger. However, why don’t we extend this concept to adults, as well
as to other forms of danger that are not physical, such as emotional danger? Is
technology, the internet, our politics and our society in general protecting
adults too much from necessary emotional suffering?
III – ALIENATION AS A DEFENSE MECHANISM AGAINST DANGER
A harmful situation is a
situation which threatens an aspect of our being (the objects we identify with
– our body, our persona, etc.) or of our propriety (the objects we possess –
our home, our finances, etc.). The aftermath of a harmful situation is loss.
A risky situation is a situation with a degree of uncertainty as to its
potentially harmful effects – it might or might not end up being harmful.
Let’s define “danger” as the reunion
between harm and risk: a dangerous situation is a situation that is either
harmful or risky.
We can turn to Aaron Beck’s
cognitive therapy to see the main types of correlations he identified
between emotions and the thoughts that precede it. He observed certain
patterns: that before certain emotions, certain types of thoughts are likely to
precede it. And vice-versa: after certain types of thoughts, certain emotions
are likely to succeed it. A causal link cannot be determined just from this1,
but it is a start.
Under my own definitions of
“harmful” and “risky”: A harmful situation that is accepted without protest
induces sadness. A harmful situation that is accepted with protest
induces anger. A risky situation induces anxiety.2 In
other words, when we’re certain that something bad is going to happen, and we
accept that we can’t do anything about it, we get sad. When we know that
something bad is going to happen, but we do not accept it (ex: “It’s not
fair!”), we get angry. When we know that something bad might happen but we’re
not sure, we get anxious.
It turns out that alienation, as loosely as
I’ve defined it, can protect us from any of these three emotions. It is the
process of distancing ourselves from the harmful or risky
object/situation/person. It simply means that if something makes you sad,
anxious or angry, then you avoid it. You alienate yourself from all danger,
staying in your “comfort zone”, or creating one. The pursuit of alienation is a
strictly hedonistic one, pursuing short-term gratification, and it roughly
corresponds to Freud’s pleasure principle (short-term pleasure without a care
about long-term consequences). The endless pursuit of alienation from all
danger will in no time turn you into a fragile thin-skinned snowflake running away
from that which you fear the most, protecting yourself from any small pain or
discomfort.
IV – ALIENATION OF ACTIVITIES
Two activities are alienated from
each other if they are separated: the less they ‘mix’, the more alienated they
are. They can be separated across space or across time. If two activities are
done in a different place, they are alienated in space. If two activities are
done at a different time, they are alienated in time. If they are done at the
same time in the same place, they are not alienated.
A certain degree of space-time
activity alienation can be helpful in increasing focus and concentration. Alienation
in space is known to reduce the generalization of classically conditioned
stimuli from one activity to another. This means, for example, that you sleep
in the bed, you eat in the kitchen and you study at the desk. A lack of
space-alienation, for instance, studying and sleeping in the same bed, could
run the risk of you either getting tired while studying (conditioned stimuli
generalizes from sleeping to studying) and/or not being able to fall asleep
(generalizes in the opposite direction).
V – ALIENATION BETWEEN GROUPS OF PEOPLE
Groups of people who share a common
identity can alienate themselves. I can think of three main examples. In my
opinion, in each of these three cases, alienation has gone way too far, or runs
the risk of going way too far. The examples are:
1. ALIENATION
BASED ON PERSONAL OR POLITICAL BELIEFS
2.
ALIENTION
BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
3.
ALIENATION
BETWEEN NATIONS
V.1. THE ALIENATION BASED ON PERSONAL OR POLITICAL
BELIEFS are also known as
“echo chambers”. They protect you from potential emotional damage. Many
people identify with their beliefs just like everyone identifies with their own
body. The more one identifies with their beliefs, the more an attack on their
beliefs is taken as an attack upon their own person: as if you’d physically
stab them. Someone disagreeing with you can absolutely be a painful experience:
people may experience a wide range of emotions like anxiety, sadness, anger or
a mix of them.
Ideally, a balance shall be reached: a group of people
who agree with you enough such that you have a common foundation, but who
disagree with you enough to challenge your beliefs so that each of you can
progress. The internet took us in the extreme of too much alienation. Social
media algorithms only promote content that you previously watched for longer
and liked. This turns into a positive feedback loop: the more you are presented
with political content that you agree with, the more likely you are to watch it
for longer, so the more likely you are to be presented with such content in the
future, ad infinitum. If this wasn’t alienating enough, we humans have chosen
to supplement this with censorship of dissenting opinions as well on many
internet forums. People no longer argue in order to debate and potentially
change other’s views, they preach to the choir.
Our society right now suffers from a
collective form of social anxiety. This does not necessarily mean that all
specific individuals are suffering from actual social anxiety, but the way in
which it is wired is incentivizing people to behave as if they are even
when they’re not: you’re encouraged to hide from anything that is ‘offensive’
or provocative. You must make an active effort in order to have your views
challenged. In the neutral state of doing nothing, you are more likely to end
up in an echo chamber than not, a protective shell in which you avoid any
emotional danger, any potential conflict, any disagreement. Social interaction
with potentially “dangerous” people that could shake up your belief system
enough to disintegrate your sense of self (since you identify with your
beliefs) is avoided just like socially anxious people avoid social interaction
with many people – only “safe” people from your community are interacted with.
It is here that we must bring up the
most classic moment from the most well-known debate of Jordan Peterson (with
Cathy Newman):
Cathy Newman: Why should your right to freedom of
speech triumph a trans person’s right not to be offended?
Jordan Peterson: Because, in order to be able to
think, you have to risk being offensive. Look at the conversation we’re
having right now: you’re willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth.
Why should you have the right to do that? It’s rather uncomfortable. (…) You’re
doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to find out what is going on.
You’re exercising your freedom of speech to risk offending me, and that’s fine.
More power to you!
Without gradually getting outside
your alienating comfort zone and exposing yourself to more and more content
that is “dangerous” to your belief system, it is harder to find out what is
wrong with your belief system in the first place and change it. Hence, freedom
of speech means freedom of thought – in the ‘safe zone’, your thoughts are
locked in the same space with no freedom of morphing and changing themselves.
Echo chambers lead to a “Nash equilibrium” of your thoughts, so to speak, their
most comfortable place to be. Overall, the internet has become a parental
figure for all, over-protective of individuals from emotional harm the same way
that over-protective parents alienate their kids from any and all physical risk
on a playground.
V.2. THE ALIENATION BETWEEN MEN
AND WOMEN is mainly done in order to protect against potential harm (risk)
from men towards women. It is a protection against anxiety usually, not sadness
or anger. The general formula of many of today’s interactions between the sexes
are as follows: the woman fears that the man who she is talking to is one of
“those” men (violent, creepy, etc.), and the man fears that the woman thinks
that of him. It is indeed justified of women to feel fearful in many
contexts in many societies, but the solution of defending against that fear
that is given is not always ideal. There is a growing trend among many
“feminists” right now to think that if a few men are dangerous, then we should
limit the interactions between the sexes as much as possible. This is
equivalent to running away from your phobia instead of confronting or reducing
it.
One common form of proposed
alienation between the sexes are gyms segregated based on sex, or woman’s-only
gyms. The logic behind them is that many women are tired of men “disturbing”
their workouts so much while trying to converse with them, to the point where
they feel unsafe from too many disrespectful men who don’t understand what “no”
or boundaries are. Or some may simply feel uncomfortable because of the gazes
and feeling of being under constant attention. So instead of proposing to teach
men how to act more respectfully, to understand hints that you’re making the
other person uncomfortable and to call out the behavior only of the creepy
ones, some people decide that all men should be alienated from the women in
those public spaces.
The hypocrisy is real with such
things, because if white people wanted to make a “safe space” against black
people because of the fear of being robbed or something, like a white-only gym,
everyone would freak out (and rightfully so!): why are you lumping them all in
one category? Why is one black man responsible for what another one did?
Just like with many racists, the people
promoting this excessive alienation between the sexes lump all people from one
group as “dangerous”, and seek their separation from society, all interactions
with that group being allowed only in specific contexts in order to make the
other contexts “safe”.
There are other proposed ways of
alienating the sexes that, although are unpopular, have a worryingly growing support,
and it’s part of the “mass social anxiety” that society is suffering from
lately. Another one is the suggestion that any sort of “picking up” of women by
men in public is unethical or immoral – that at the gym, at the groceries,
randomly on the street, etc. women should be left alone, and any man
‘disturbing’ them by trying to get their number or anything like that (even
when he is respectful and understands when to back off when the woman is not
interested and wants to be left alone!) is unethical and shall be discouraged. So,
while the proponents of a solution without alienation (rightfully so) propose
that we should modify the social interactions between the sexes in order
to make women more comfortable (be more respectful, be polite, understand a
hint, know when to leave, don’t insist, etc.); the proponents of alienation
propose that we should reduce/limit the social interactions between the
sexes in order to make women more comfortable (stop talking to women in any of
those contexts entirely).
As much as I avoid endorsing
CBT-psychology, one of its fundamental concepts strikes surprisingly useful
now: the core belief. Guess what is the core belief underlying the support of
the alienation between the sexes? “Social interaction is unsafe.” You
cannot live your life like this, accepting this and adjusting your lifestyle
accordingly. Even in the cases where there is a spot of truth in such a
statement, you must change the surrounding reality instead of changing
yourself. A certain degree of risk must be accepted in order to be human and
live life. This is what I mean when I say that society is suffering from social
anxiety. Now, before you jump again into buying into all the DSM propaganda,
labeling specific individuals as “mentally ill” or “healthy”, ask yourself: is
a person who is well-adjusted to a sick society a ‘healthy’ individual?
It is here that I must come back to
the previous concept that I introduced: space-time alienation. What is
interesting to observe is how one type of alienation leads to another,
as if in a sort of chain-reaction. An alienation between groups of people (ex:
men and women) leads, here, to an alienation of activities (in space and time).
Take the examples given from above: it is immoral for men to ‘hit on’ women at
the gym, at groceries, at the mall, pretty much anywhere. What is the natural
conclusion? That the activity of dating itself should be alienated from
other activities (groceries, working out, etc.) in space and time, i.e.
that we should have a designated space and time for dating. In other words, the
alienation between the sexes encourages people to flirt and (be) hit on (by)
others only when they expect it. What is of the biggest terror to these
proponents is to engage in such activities in a context where you would not expect
to. This eliminates the possibility of taking someone by surprise, which is a
form of jouissance in of itself: it causes excitement and anxiety.
The only group of people who has
anything to earn out of these suggestions is not the men, nor the women, it is
the mega-corporations owning dating apps and websites such as Tinder, Facebook
dating, etc. – the worst thing capitalism could come up with. They are wired in
the same way as other apps like TikTok are wired – short-term stimulation and
variable schedule reinforcement in order to become addictive. They use the
exact same mechanism to make you addicted that gambling addiction works by. The
apps do not gain anything by getting you in long-term relationships, they profit
by having you continue using the app – making you unsatisfied but constantly
wanting more. Hence, their business model can only rely on incentivizing
short-term superficial relationships, else they wouldn’t profit. To do
this, they make you decide on whether to match with someone based on very short
descriptions of yourself and a few pictures.
But more importantly, you only go on these apps when
you want, it is impossible to be taken by surprise or to take people by
surprise, and hence you expect what is going to happen. This causes a
reduction in the power of the other in changing your desire, the desire of the other
is ‘neutralized’ and you are incentivized to form your own desires and
intensions. “Natural-ness” gradually decreases while artificiality is
encouraged, the social interaction on the app requires a declaration of
desire/intent before one could be possible, and what ends up being incentivized
(reinforced) as the most efficient model of interaction is the “premature
communication” one – tell me what you want (“I am looking for a serious
relationship” / “I am looking for a casual hook-up” / etc.). These desires
arise in you partially because you have decided to use the dating app,
while masking themselves, giving the retroactive illusion that they were
already there before you have made your decision. Hence, the dating app
becomes the cause of desire.
This is less so the case when activities are not
alienated. In a different social scenario, where you are
dating/flirting/hitting on people/etc. in a context where you are there
primarily for something else, your desire is open to be way more easily
influenced by the other person in the social interaction, and hence the
attention is unconsciously placed on them as the object-cause of desire. Say,
for instance, you are at a party, are you are there to have fun, and you happen
to converse with someone of the opposite sex (assuming you are both single and
heterosexual to make the example simple). You do not need feel pressured by any
specific person or “inner voice inside your head” to declare any sort of desire
prematurely, since the question of “Why am I even talking to this person?” or
“Why am I even here?” is not relevant, you are here to party, that person of
the opposite-sex you are talking to is just a side quest. This allows things to
develop more naturally, without you (being given the illusion of) controlling
the situation: I “happened” to talk to this person, “fate” brought us together,
etc. This is not as important in of itself to many people, but the advantage is
that the other is placed as the cause of desire – you wanted something in the
beginning of the conversation, at the end you now want something else. The
other person you’re talking to is allowed to seduce you.
What does the alternative scenario on a dating
website/app present? The other is given way less power. You are there for
something specific, but it is an illusion of control created by the fact
that the actual cause of desire is Tinder itself (or whatever app you’re
using). So, while when activities are not space-time alienated, the
opposite-sex person is the one who has indirect control over what you want and
how much you like them, now it is the app itself who has this control. In
Lacanian language, the control over your wishes has been taken over from the
”small other” (your conversation partner) to the “big Other” (dating app,
mega-corporations, etc.). Then, while you get the illusion that you want a
serious relationship, and you went on Tinder to obtain one, in reality you went
on Tinder out of some need that you didn’t even know you had, and only after
that you started wanting a serious relationship in order to create a conscious
retroactive justification. In a context where activities are not alienated
(flirting at parties, in the mall, at the gym, during groceries, etc.), you do
not have the pressure of finding out what you want in the first place, and it
will reveal itself in consciousness (out of the unconscious) when the time is
due – the small other is allowed to influence your desire. When someone’s
hitting on you at the gym, you don’t have to even wonder whether you want a
serious relationship, a hook-up, etc., what you want is to work out, and
whatever will happen will happen, so you are not incentivized to limit your own
opportunities. This increases entropy (potential, possibilities, uncertainty) –
which also adds a certain level of excitement and anxiety. We see how the
alienation of dating from other activities (through dating apps, etc. or any
idea that says that it has “it’s time and place”) results in the most recurrent
post-modernist/post-structuralist cliché: we think we’re free because we can’t
see the cage, we are brainwashed into caging ourselves without realizing and so
on.
V.3. THE ALIENATION BETWEEN NATIONS is, partially, the very existence of the imaginary
borders we call “states” or “countries” in the first place. The more nationalistic
a country is (economic protectionism, closed economy, strict immigration
control, etc.), the more alienated it is from other countries.
When we think of a country, we think of multiple parts
it is composed of, however.
a.
An
arbitrarily chosen piece of land, separated by (usually, imaginary) borders
b.
A
shared identity and culture
c.
A
collection of social institutions or conventions giving its legal status as
country per se: a state, some laws, etc.
There is, however, a piece of technology that is
completely turning upside down most of what we know about alienation in all
planes: the internet. The internet allowed people to be partially
alienated, to remain connected while disconnected, to remain in touch while
at a huge physical distance, to be paradoxically “so close, yet so far” from
each other. Other long-distance communication technologies have existed in the
past (radio, television), but none of them have produced such a radical change
in society as the internet.
We’ve already seen how much it has changed the way the
alienation based on political beliefs in society. It has also changed the alienation
between the sexes, since now the supporters of alienation have found a new ‘safe
space’ to protect women under: the protective screen of your device in of
itself, with the justification that if we now have this, we do not need
real-life interaction anymore. How has it changed the alienation between the
nations? In my opinion, the internet has spread the alienation: there is
less alienation between nations and more alienation within
nations. Before the internet, information was globalized way less. Citizens of
a specific nations were less alienated from each other. But citizens of different
nations were way more alienated. Now this is “levelling” out. For example, Germans
are more and more alienated from each other and less and less alienated from Italians,
Romanians, etc.
The alienation inside of a country (between its
citizens) is increasing because technology allows it to: it is not necessary to
live together, or in the same city, in order to keep in touch. More and more teenagers
and young adults are leaving their hometowns for college. Kids are hanging
outside less and less. We spend more and more time digitally, and less and less
time in real social interaction. On the other hand, the alienated between
citizens of different countries decreases, as before the internet, it was almost
impossible to communicate with them without travelling.
The globalization of information through technology
(mainly the internet) has produced another interesting phenomenon: the
globalization of language. Because of the internet and other forms of media
(video games, movies, etc.), more and more young people are learning English fluently.
We are getting closer and closer to having a language that everyone in the
world can speak. In my opinion, this is an argument against the idea that the
abolition of countries is a utopic dream. Indeed, it is only a utopic dream in a
world where people speak different languages, but the globalization of language
can lead to a more general globalization way more easily.
It is here that Lacanian psychoanalysis becomes
paramount again. Lacan introduced a very important recurring theme in his work:
language speaks the subject, in other words, we think that it’s us, humans,
who speak words, when in reality it’s more accurate that the words speak
through our bodies. Language is not only a means of describing reality but also
a means of shaping reality. More importantly, Lacan introduced the important idea
that identity is shaped by language. Without language, there is no means
of communication, and without a means of communication, there is no way of efficiently
assessing similarities and differences between you and others, and without that,
there is no identity, no sense of self. Our sense of self is guided by the
language that we speak.
Good case studies illustrating this phenomenon are in
nationalistic sentiments about uniting countries. Ask yourselves: why is there some
support in uniting Romania with the Republic of Moldova, but no support in uniting
Romania with another one of its neighbors, say, Bulgaria, considering that the
latter have way more in common economically and politically than the former
combo? It is because Moldavians and Romanians speak the same language. Similarly
enough, isolationist/separatist movements operate by the same logic: in the
middle of Romania (Transylvania), there is a big community that predominantly
speaks Hungarian and not Romanian, so there is some support in making it
an autonomous region (separating it from the country of Romania), or somehow
administratively uniting it with Hungary. From a territorial, political,
economic, logistical and administrative point of view, it makes no sense, in
fact, other separatist sentiments would make more (but still little, but at
least more) sense from such points of view, but it is the language that we
speak that shapes our identity and gives us a sense of “belonging”, not the
economic/material conditions, even if in practice, the latter have a bigger ‘real’
effect on our lives compared to the former.
This is why, as another example, EU
is still not a single nation, like the USA, because not everyone in the EU
speaks the same language. From a logistic and territorial point of view, you’d
expect the reverse: EU is way smaller than the USA in area so you’d rather
expect the EU to be a single country than the giant US. Yet it turns out it’s
the language that we speak that dictates our arbitrary imaginary borders.
The abolition of countries can thus
be accelerated by supporting unifications of countries as much as possible (ex:
Romania + Moldova), as well as organizations such as the EU and NATO3
which solidarize countries together. This will turn out planet from a planet
with many small countries, to a planet with fewer and “larger” countries (in territorial
area), to a world with 4-5 large empires, to finally a nation-less Earth. It is
not an utopia but a very long-term plan, most likely beyond our lifespan.
VI – ALIENATION OF YOURSELF FROM YOURSELF
Can a person alienate themselves
from themselves? Can I alienate myself from myself? Such a concept seems
paradoxical. And yet it was Freud’s major discovery that revolutionized the
humanities forever (psychology, philosophy, sociology, literary analysis, film
theory, etc.) – the ego is not the
master in its own house. There is something else that is “pulling the strings”,
as if you have (metaphorically speaking) another person living inside of your
body, “possessing it” and taking some of the decisions. Psychoanalysis calls
this the unconscious. In other words, you have less free will than you
usually think. The bare existence of an unconscious is supported by
overwhelming empirical evidence4, 5, 6 – the idea that there is a
different ‘agent’ partially directing your behavior and your life, one that is
outside of your direct awareness. We could say, then, that any human subject is
inherently alienated from themselves: the conscious mind is alienated from the
unconscious mind.
Without a surprise, the alienation between
the conscious and the unconscious mind follows the same formula as the ones
described previously: it increases the jouissance of safety. We alienate
ourselves from whatever is perceived as dangerous – dangerous to our belief
system, dangerous to women, dangerous to our identity as a nation, etc. Here, psychoanalysis
postulates that it is exactly one’s harm towards oneself that is repressed
outside of consciousness, that side of oneself that is dangerous to oneself
(personally repulsive, unacceptable, etc.). It is here that auxiliary concepts
from psychoanalysis come into play as useful: ambivalence, secondary benefit,
jouissance, etc. The classic example of repression, that is the basis for my
theory of behavioral psychoanalysis7, is the one in which a person
is ambivalent towards a jouissance-inducing situation, and “forgets” or does
not become aware in the first place of one “side” of the situation. In other
words, the person has mixed feelings towards a situation, it is both “good” and
“bad” at the same time, but let’s say, for the sake of example, that in this
case the bad outweighs the good. The situation ends up happening, so the subject
both enjoys and suffers from the situation, but they suffer more than they
enjoy. We can say, metaphorically, that there is a “side” of themselves that
enjoys and a “side” that suffers. The side that enjoys is ‘smaller’ and in
contradiction with the one that suffers, so it is split outside of
consciousness.
For example: your family dies in a car accident, and
you get to inherit their wealth. The death part is the “bad news”, the
inheritance is the “good news”, but the bad news outweighs the good news. The
feeling of partially enjoying the wealth makes you feel so guilty that you stop
being aware of it, and a neurotic symptom may take its place. Your sense of
self becomes metaphorically “split” in two: one side of you that enjoys this
situation because of the money and one side of you that hates this situation
because it loved its parents. The latter side ‘empowers’ the first and pushes
it outside conscious awareness. This is a process of alienation, these
two “inner personalities” become alienated from each other, because the latter
one (that is sad about the death) metaphorically “views” the former side as dangerous
– how can you enjoy your parents’ death? It is personally repulsive, unacceptable,
unethical! All these repulsive and unethical desires and impulses constitute
the “dark side of the psyche” (Freud’s id, Jung’s shadow, etc.) – the side that
is alienated from the “light side”, so to speak.
Lacan ingeniously points out that we
are confronted with this inherent alienation in human being whenever we look at
our reflection in a mirror (or some other reflective surface). He defined “the
mirror stage” as the moment when a child first recognizes themselves in a
mirror. I will now quote my previous article:
“It should now make “common sense” why recognizing
yourself in a mirror should be a prerequisite for being capable of full
identification: it is the time where we first notice something external
(“Other”) as “I” (self) simultaneously: I am my reflection in the mirror and I
am not my reflection in the mirror at the same time. The reflection in the
mirror represents the illusion of bodily integrity par excellence, it mimics
our reactions so well that it is as if it were us. Our image in the mirror is
„perfect” and „whole”: our reflection in the mirror is not made up of multiple
organs, it is made up of a single piece of glass and its interactions with its
light source, so we can notice how our entire sense of self can be represented
by „a single object”; which stands in clear contrast with our lived experience
as „not-whole”, our sense of self made up of multiple, separate objects
interacting together (organs, bones, etc.).
It should
also make „common sense” why a failure of the mirror stage is one of the
possible preconditions for psychosis/schizophrenia. Psychotics perceive their
thoughts as external observers instead of as the source/initiator of their
thoughts. In the cases of a psychotic break, a person may hallucinate voices:
they will not imagine a voice, but will literally hear voices in the same way
as we’d hear a recording if we were wearing earplugs. However, these voices are
not part of reality, they’re part of the psychotic person’s mind.
Non-psychotics, on the other hand, are capable of experiencing the
concept of „having voices in your head” metaphorically, where we actually
imagine a voice narrating our thoughts while not literally hearing them, and
still partially identifying with our thoughts. Your „inner voice” that you
imagine is paradoxically you and not you: you are the source of your inner
voice, and yet you can also detach from it and observe it as if from an
external perspective. This is analogous to the process of viewing yourself
in a mirror, since we see our reflection as „me”, and we are also the source of
it, and yet we can also observe it as if from the perspective of another
person, as if it wasn’t us. And when we imagine an inner voice, say, a critical
one („you’re not good enough, nobody loves you”), we observe it as we would
observe ourselves in a mirror: it’s mine, but I can also view it as if it
wasn’t mine. Schizophrenics do not get this experience, they get the experience
of actually hearing their voices as fully external, without having the
capability of paradoxically experiencing their thoughts as both „mine” and „not
mine”.
Without a
surprise, psychotics experience a lack of a sense of bodily integrity as
supported by empirical evidence.8”
(Source: lastreviotheory.blogspot.com - “ARE TRAPS
GAY?” AND THE ORGANS WITHOUT A BODY – UNDERSTANDING SUBJECTIVITY AND
IDENTIFICATION)
Isn’t the process of viewing
yourself in a mirror somehow analogous to the concept of communicating with a
person on the internet, what I previously temporarily described by the term “partial
alienation”, being so close, yet so far (but now, from your own self)?
VII – ALIENATING DISCOURSE
Alienating discourse is discourse (verbal
+ non-verbal/contextual communication) that seeks to make the object of the
discourse feel alienated. The general formula of any alienating discourse is: “you
do not belong here”. Through my observations, I have classified alienating
discourse into two types:
1. TRIBALISM, or POLICITIZED ALIENATION
2.
IDEOLOGICAL
ALIENATION
This first type of alienating discourse, “tribalism”,
occurs whenever people are split into two or more group identities, creating a
tribalistic “us vs. them” mentality. I call it “politicized” because it usually
occurs inside politics, but it can occur in any situation in which “camps” form
and you can “take sides”: when two rappers diss each other and people take
sides, when two football teams compete and fans of each start fighting about
who is better, etc.
The discourse itself of tribalism has the general
formula: “you are not one of us, you are one of them”. This
type of alienating discourse is more “honest”, so to speak, as it does not hide
its subjective/biased position: its biased politicized nature is revealed, the
fact that the enunciating subject of the discourse is taking a “side” in the
debate is not hidden. An example of a tribalistic discourse is “If you misgender
trans people, then you are a Nazi Trump supporter, go away, you do not belong
here”. The object of the alienating discourse (“you”) is placed by the subject
of the alienating discourse in a specific “other” camp (“Nazi Trump supporter”).
That “other category” (often a “Nazi”, “communist”, “supporter of politician I
don’t like”, “fascist”, etc.) is a category that is perceived and phrased as alien
by the enunciating subject of the discourse.
The second one, “ideological alienation” has a
somewhat ironical name: it always presents itself as apolitical, universal, “normal”,
outside of ideology. It is because it exactly follows Slavoj Zizek’s
concept of “ideology”: an external standard for what is the "proper"
way to do things, the "normal" way to do things, the
"correct" or "perfect" way to do things, "the way
things are supposed to be", the "universal, objective or
inevitable" way to do things or to be, "standard procedures", and
so on. It manifests itself whenever some biased and subjective take is
presented as objective and apolitical, like when leftists say “The science says…”
and when conservatives say “Facts don’t care about your feelings”.
The discourse itself of ideological alienation has the
general formula: “you are not one of us, you are nobody’s, you do not
belong here, you do not belong anywhere”. If you start from the assumption
that humans want to feel a sense of belonging as well, then this is a much
stronger alienating discourse than the politicized one. To modify the previous
example of tribalism, an ideologically alienating discourse is: “It is not
about left and right, if you misgender a trans person, you are an asshole,
period”. Now that “alien” place that the object of the discourse is being
sent away to is not a united group as well (Nazis, communists, Trump
supporters, etc.), it is barely a group identity in the first place (assholes,
jerks, impolite people, evil people, idiots, etc.).
The politicized/tribalistic alienating discourse is less powerful because, like I said, the person is being told that they don’t belong here, but they still belong somewhere (you are one of them, go to them), in other words, it seeks to move people from one group to another. Ideological alienation, on the other hand, seeks to make the person feel as if it is they against the universe, as if what they are doing is so wrong that they will never find a group they will belong to in the first place.
FOOTNOTES AND
REFERENCES:
1: A causal link
that CBT psychologists love determining from insufficient evidence,
unfortunately.
2: As per “Cognitive
Therapy and the Emotional Disorders” by Aaron Beck (1975).
3: Of course,
globalist organizations like EU or NATO shouldn’t be supported just because
they are globalist organizations, that doesn’t exempt them from criticism. But some
such organizations are necessary.
4: Smith, K. Brain
makes decisions before you even know it. Nature (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2008.751
5: Westen D. The
Scientific Status of Unconscious Processes: Is Freud Really Dead? Journal of
the American Psychoanalytic Association. 1999;47(4):1061-1106.
doi:10.1177/000306519904700404
6: Westen, D.
(1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically
informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 333–371. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.333
7: https://lastreviotheory.blogspot.com/2022/07/blog-post.html
8: Klaver M,
Dijkerman HC. Bodily Experience in Schizophrenia: Factors Underlying a
Disturbed Sense of Body Ownership. Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 Jun 17;10:305. doi:
10.3389/fnhum.2016.00305. PMID: 27378895; PMCID: PMC4911393
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