A Brief Reminder

Let me respectfully remind you
Life and death are of supreme importance,
Time swiftly passes,
Opportunity is lost:
Awaken!
Awaken!
Take heed. Do not squander your life.

—Buddhist prayer

Sartre and Existential Psychoanalysis

Check out the badass pipe

Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher whose name became synonymous with existentialism in the years following WWII, was obsessed with human responsibility and freedom.  He thus resisted any attempt to "explain" humans in terms of, or reduce them to, the purely mechanical operations of physical parts, or as puppets of "unconscious" drives which causally determined a person's action.  For Sartre, we are completely, radically free in our choice of projects, and this freedom is central to Sartre's entire philosophical project.  As a matter of fact, the title of his magnum opus, Being and Nothingness, was a reference to the essential "nothingness" of man, who is always freeing himself from the constraints of his past and his environment by "secreting nothingness" (gotta love the imagery.)

Preferred the stogies, apparently

Accordingly, Being and Nothingness includes a section devoted to undermining Freud's theory of the unconscious, which Sartre believed reduced man to a subhuman organism, a creature unknowingly at the mercy of its instinctual drives.  In other words, Freud's model of human psychology failed to appreciate what Sartre saw as its most fundamental feature, its freedom to determine itself.

Freud's theory of psychoanalysis attempted to understand the patient in terms of his unconscious libido, or sexual drive.  Dreams, slips of the tongue, and all other sorts of behavior were interpreted in terms of repressed sexual desires.  In his work, Sartre tries to construct an alternate approach, which he calls existential psychoanalysis:  "The goal of existential psychoanalysis is to rediscover through these empirical, concrete projects the original mode in which each man has chosen his being."  There is a fundamental choice underlying all of a person's individual choices and behaviors, and these choices (what Sartre calls "empirical, concrete projects") are not to be understood in terms of sexual desires, or the discharge of other instinctual drives—rather,  sexual desires and most everything else must be understood in terms of the fundamental choice of being, unique to that individual in their particular social and historical context.

I bring up Sartre's critique of Freud mainly because I am currently in the middle of Existential Psychoanalysis, a book excerpted from the massive Being and Nothingness, and also just because I'm a huge Sartre fan.  But it touches on an issue near and dear to my heart, and one which I've written about a few times already—whether people can really be understood in purely biological or mechanistic terms.  As noted above, Sartre's real problem with the unconscious is that it seemed to strip man of his freedom (Freud himself called his discovery of the unconscious a "narcissistic humiliation" for man). 

Freud's theories have fallen into discredit among most clinical therapists, but the idea of people as "products" of factors lying outside their conscious control has not.  The current craze is of course the biological model, in which all neuroses are thought to result from "chemical imbalances" inside the brain.  To view ourselves in this way is to then adopt a certain way of acting towards ourselves:  to "condition" ourselves to certain thinking and behavior "patterns," to dose up on pharmaceuticals to alter the "machinery" of our brains.

Rollo May summarizes Sartre's thoughts on the matter nicely:

...man is not an object to be used by God or a higher intelligence, or manipulated by the juggernaut of modern industrialism, or fashioned into a mechanical passive consumer by mass communication.  Nor is man to be used by means of his own manipulation of himself as a psychological machine to be "adjusted," or moulded by Norman Vincent Peale's "positive thinking" into an organization machine to win success on Madison Avenue.

The concerns about psychological theory raised by Sartre may initially seem to be of little practical importance, but I believe that, if we fail to recognize our own dignity as beings capable of freedom and responsibility, we will fall victim to the very dangers May mentions above.  Or, more accurately, we will continue to fall victim.

You Only Live...How Many Times? Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence

Crazy dude

"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!'
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"  —Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
 
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the chief forerunner of existentialist thought (along with Soren Kierkegaard), proposed this heuristic or thought-experiment:  Imagine that, when you die, you do not go to heaven or hell.  You are not reincarnated in the body of another animal or person or anything else.  You do not cease to exist.  Rather, you live the same exact life you just lived, down to every detail, forever and ever for eternity.

Nietzsche believes that your response to this question indicates what kind of person you are, and what kind of life you lead.  If you respond to the thought of eternal recurrence with dread, by "throwing yourself down and gnashing your teeth," then, simply put, your current life is not one worth living.  If, on the other hand, you welcome the eternal return with relish, you are truly living your life to the fullest.

I find the notion of eternal recurrence interesting because it seems to go against a couple of popular strands of thought concerning life and death.  The first is that which says "you only live once," and encourages meditation on this fact to inspire a carpe diem attitude.  Ironically, I feel that this message is not far from the one that Nietzsche was trying to convey.  If anything, the function of the eternal recurrence is to make ourselves feel the urgency of our lives more than the mere thought of its "singleness":  not only is our life the only one we will live, but it is the only one we will live over and over again.

The key point seems to be a rejection of life lived in expectation of a better future life, or a life lived in expectation of its end—say, the geriatric wasting away in a nursing home, or the (figurative) martyr who lives his or her life as a sacrifice for others.  Nietzsche claimed his thought was all about "life-affirmation," as opposed to what he saw as the self-denying philosophy of Christianity, which claims self-negation, charity, and obedience to God as virtues. (Note that these objections are applicable to most major religions; Nietzsche was also a harsh critic of the Buddhist-inspired philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer).  Thus Nietzsche's thought-experiment is meant to strip us of all consolations of an afterlife, whether in a divine realm of Heaven or in a better earthly existence, and in this way put all of our energy into our current life.

How do you respond to the thought of eternal return?  I personally find it hard to contemplate.  My immediate reaction is that, if I am fated to lead the exact same life over and over again, I will never remember that I've already lived this life, because I don't seem to remember it now.  But maybe I'm reading it too literally or something.  Still, it's something I think about from time to time...and though I can't say I "fervently crave" the eternal return, neither do I shrink from it in dread....

Thoughts?

Dreams, Experience, Reality

A friend of mine recently directed me to this article about Inception (SPOILER ALERT), which claims that the entire film is just one long dream.  I can’t help but feel a little dissatisfied with this interpretation—if the whole thing is just a dream, what’s the point?  That thought, in turn, made me consider what constitutes the difference between dream and reality, and why dreams, no matter how real they appear, just don’t feel as important as reality.

I was reminded of an essay I had read recently, Robert Nozick’s The Experience Machine.  Nozick’s thought experiment asks readers to imagine a hypothetical machine that can simulate any experience we choose, and do it so realistically that we do not realize the experience is merely simulated.  Furthermore, while we are in the experience machine, we will not know we are, and will think we are still living in reality.  Would you plug in?  If there is nothing to differentiate the experience machine from the real deal, why not?

This guy would...

But Nozick claims we will not plug in, for a few reasons.  First, we want to do certain things rather than just have the experience of doing them—the value lies in the action themselves, not just the experience that the action provides.  Furthermore, he claims, we want to be certain kinds of people, for similar reasons—which the experience machine obviously rules out.  Finally, we would lose out on contact with ultimate reality, as we would be restricted only to what humans could create.  Granted, the simulation would be a damn good re-creation of reality, but there is something disturbing about knowing we would only be interacting with simulations of people, and any experience we could have of God or the Universal Self or anything transcendent would be a mere imitation of the real thing.  I think this reason resonates most deeply with me.

But what do you think?  Would you plug in?  After all, once you’re actually inside the machine, all these objections are null and void.  Elliot Sober claimed that we only prefer reality over the experience machine because we find the idea of living an ignorant life repulsive to our egoistic self-image.  So even though we would be happier living in the experience machine, we simply think we would rather live in the real world.  But in my view, it’s not about which situation would make us happier, but simply what we think is the better life, in a more objective sense.

So?  Would you or wouldn’t you?  Does it matter if we’re just living in an illusion, if it’s a damn awesome illusion?

Ways of Being, Technology, and Self-Alienation, Pt. 2

Sorry for the lack of postage lately, I was busy with summer school finals and traveling.  I hope to be more consistent this week.  Continuing from my last post now, I want to talk more about the effect technology has had on our relation to the world and ultimately to ourselves.

It is undeniable that technology has fundamentally altered our relationship to our environment and to each other, and I believe the ultimate effect has been one of alienation. No longer do we make our own food (we might still prepare it, but we do not grow it ourselves, and most of us have no idea where our food even comes from), or our own clothes, or our own furniture—in fact, most of us no longer produce anything of our own. 

Heidegger argues that the result has been a deterioration in our relationship with things (in the most general sense of the term, including natural and man-made objects):  Because we merely see things as resources to be 'set upon' to maximize use, we no longer see objects as having intrinsic meaning, but just as entities to be manipulated to our needs and desires of the moment.  And because we no longer have to accomodate ourselves to things, but force them to accomodate themselves to us, we drain the meaning from our lives.  As Heidegger scholar Mark Wrathall interprets: 

Dealing with objects and people that have fixed properties requires us to develop bodily and social skills, for example.  Technological devices, by contrast, replace the need for bodily skills with a mechanism that does everything for us. . .  If one wanted to enjoy music at home in a pre-technological age, one had to develop the skills to perform music.  In the technological age, one needs only to be able to click a mouse or push a button to consume music. . . therefore, we ourselves lose the skills and capacities that give us our own identity and, as importantly, we lose a kind of receptivity to the things around us.

In my last post on Heidegger, I touched on a different problem, the way we seem to sometimes treat ourselves merely as machines to be manipulated.  Indeed, dietary supplements that claim to "maximize performance" sometimes seem like they are trying to sell themselves for automobiles rather than human beings; likewise, I can't help but be creeped out by the way antidepressants purport to alter your "brain chemistry."  There's no doubt about it:  man is mechanizing and automating himself, both literally and metaphorically.

Cyborgs, dude

I believe the point made by Heidegger, about losing our relationship to things, and my point about our own perception of ourselves as machines, are related.  The technological attitude strips objects of their inherent characteristics, and turns them into meaningless entities to be manipulated to our ends, whatever they may be, but it also seems to be stripping us, as humans, of our own inherent characteristics and dignity as beings.  We no longer relate to ourselves as whole, integrated individuals, but as egos manipulating the machinery of our minds and bodies—this is what I have in mind by the phrase "self-alienation."

I know this is all very vague and not specific, so I'll try to clarify with an example of what I mean.  Being in college, many of my friends are still trying to figure out "what they want to do with their lives," and some seem to have a pretty good idea.  Of those who do have a good idea, I would further divide them into two groups:  Those that follow their passions, and those that, more or less, seem to adopt the goals that their parents, or maybe even their peers, expect them to.  Let's say, for instance, that one decides to become a doctor because that's what one's parents expect.  I'm not trying to pass judgment here at all, but simply trying to note something that seems to occur in the latter case.

The person that is passionate about his chosen goals and projects naturally "throws himself" into his endeavors, while the reluctant pre-med student compels herself to study each night.  That is, she feels that she works against her will, even though she is at the same time the one willing herself to work—this is the meaning of self-alienation:  the feeling of coercing oneself.

What I take to distinguish self-alienation from mere self-discipline (i.e., forcing yourself to do homework even when you'd rather just relax and have a beer) is lack of self-knowledge.  In the technological attitude, one does not question the "nature" of the things one harvests for resources—indeed, such a question does not even make sense, because things just are resources.  Similarly, self-alienation occurs when one forces oneself to take up a certain project or goal without questioning the nature of oneself—what deters or attracts one to the goal in question, and why one may or may not be suited to pursue that goal.

I'm not sure how much of this is intelligible, but it's a good example of what happens when I let myself ramble for a while...So I'm eager to hear any thoughts you guys have!

Ways of Being, Technology, and Self-Alienation, Pt. 1

Almost as badass as Nietzsche

German philosopher Martin Heidegger, one of the leading figures of the existentialist movement and of 20th-century philosophy in general, claimed in his masterwork Being and Time that there were three distinct 'modes of Being.'  There is the Being of physical objects, or 'substantiality,' which roughly corresponds to the way things appear when viewed from a detached or scientific perspective; that is, when we view a thing merely as an object with certain physical properties.  For example, when I take apart a computer and study its inner circuitry, I am viewing the computer as it is in the mode of substantiality.

There is also the mode of Being of equipment, what Heidegger calls 'ready-to-hand.'  Things appear to me in this mode when I immediately apprehend them as tools to be used in my everyday life.  For example, I immediately understand, without any thought or reflection, that doorknobs are to be used for opening doors.  Likewise, I understand intuitively that chairs are meant to be sit in, books are meant to be read, and food is meant to be eaten.  All of these things present themselves to us as meaningful objects, related to other objects and to us in meaningful ways.

Finally, there is the mode of Being peculiar to us as conscious creatures, which Heidegger calls Dasein in German—'Being-There' in English.  We differ in our Being from that of mere substances or physical objects and equipment in that we take a stand on our being.  In other words, we have an awareness of our own being, which distinguishes us from things like rocks (substances) or hammers (equipment); furthermore, this awareness allows us to 'comport' ourselves in certain ways, to adopt certain attitudes toward our own existence.

My knowledge of Heidegger does not extend much beyond what I've written above, as he's an extremely complex and difficult thinker and I've just begun to explore his work.  So, my thoughts at this point are more my own musings that take his thoughts as a launching point.

It seems to me that, in our daily lives, most of us do not recognize this distinction between 'ways of Being.'  The prevalence of the scientific attitude, in fact, tends to reduce everything, including human life, to the status of physical phenomena to be studied under the microscope.  Cognitive neuroscience attempts to explain human behavior in terms of chemical processes in the brain; meanwhile, the dominant trend in psychiatry is to treat mental illness as a biological disorder to be treated with drugs.  We do not see ourselves as beings who can take a stand on our being, but merely as physical objects with certain powers to manipulate ourselves—via drugs or other "techniques," as promoted in many self-improvement guides—and other physical objects.  Our  models of the human brain are based on what we know about computers, because we do not see any difference between opening up a computer and examining its wiring and examining the wiring of the human mind.

Heidegger was also concerned with the attitude towards life which was brought about technology, an attitude towards being in which we feel  called upon to manipulate nature to our ends.  I know very little about this area of his thought, but I'm excited to explore it.  I get the sense that he was on to something very deep and very pressing here.

To be continued...


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