Discontents & Its Varieties

On January 26, 2013 at the New School, Dr. David Bell delivered a talk entitled “Civilization and Its Discontents: A Contemporary Perspective.” His invocation of freudian themes turned out to be an inspirational gateway to a reading of contemporary cultural realities highlighted from a marxian perspective. The most striking question that set my thoughts in motion was “Why are we unhappy?”. Further, Bell invited an exploration of the psychoanalytic legacy as a context for negotiating the troublesome dialogue between the public and the private. He evokes ruminations about why we act against others’ and our own best interests. But, do we, indeed? Or, rather, do we necessarily?

Freud’s scientification of his theory might have been a way to make it commensurate with the prevalent positivist thinking. However, he seems to have infused a contingent streak into the deterministic framework. The combination might not be weird by default. And yet, in his particular idiolect, to some readers, it feels so. Perhaps that’s the uneasiness he focuses on in portraying individuals living in a civilized community. But then, one wonders where the contingent aspect is.

Bell reminds us of how Freud used to see human tendency to choose security at the expense of happiness and knowledge. This, in turn, is taken to reflect the repressive mechanism of giving up destruction in exchange for communal wellbeing. A very basic inquiry is inspired by such a presumption: Does Freud imply that destruction is what constitutes human nature? If so, again, one wonders where the much needed contingency can be found.

My reading of freudian postulates seems to be a series of failed attempts to sample his ideas in the ways which would outplay his possibly implying that the death drive is the only indicator of being alive. But then, one wonders whether there can be the life drive which is just what it is.

The main reason for believing that there is may be the inclination contrary to the dominant  vulgarized utilitarian thinking, the predilection for the attitude opposing the dictum of material wealth—resistance against coercive, superimposed, fatalist ideas about human aspirations to live out personal autonomy being merely disguised alienation. Irvine Welsh (Skagboys 2012): “The rat race n that. Stressed if yuv goat a joab, stressed if ye huvnae. Everybody oot fir themselves, at each other’s throat n daein each other doon. Nae solidarity nae mair, ken? The work is ower, it’s aw gaun, n thaire’s nae particular place to go” (340-41).

 The crux of the polemic could be refusing to adopt the idea of the world as an irrecoverably hostile place. Put differently, it may be a wish to (a) understand the constructed aspect of the human being as a potential for the remix and an implicit acknowledgement of the limits of human power that, paradoxically, reconfirms human capacities; (b) believe that destructiveness, including self-destructiveness, is not all what human nature is about and that controlling conduct harmful to others and oneself does not necessarily make one miserable; (c) invest in the process, rather than in the goal solely. Terry Eagleton (The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction 2007): "Perhaps the meaning of life is not some goal to be pursued, or some chunk of truth to be dredged up,  but something which is articulated in the act of living itself, or perhaps in a certain way of living. The meaning of the narrative, after all, is not just the ‘end’ of it, in either sense of the word, but the process of narration itself" (50).

This, again, might be a matter of intellectual affinities. Personally, I prefer to live in a community of individuals who, as citizens, cannot be defined as consumers of political objects. Again, Bell’s are helpful rhetorical tools for configuring such a socioscape. In order to indicate the possibility to meditate and act in the world whose multitudinous hinges tend to dilute ethical centers, Bell devises a remarkably imaginative and suggestive syntagm. More precisely, depicting social ills caused by commoditization of education and health care, he deploys the expression primitive morality. In the context of his lecture, the phrase means a simple, a commonsensical ethic that takes the right to free education and health care to be social givens. Rightly so.

In the vein of such an atavistic ethics, I like to think about human society in the key of humility. Endless are the fruits of such rebirth of individuality out of the blurry haze of the cultural amalgam. Humility teaches how to be oneself through self-giving and what kind of cohesive power refacement has for the fellowship. Rejuvenation on both cultural and personal planes occurs through the ceaseless deselfing and reindividualization through enduring resistance against destruction and ossification.

When Eagleton in The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction meditates on dying to self as a source of life  of abundance, he grounds his thought in the idea of exchange. Transposed into the context of liquid culture and the flux fueling fruitful communication, his observation can serve to resituate the idea of refacement: rebirth through silence and solidarity of reindvividualized deselfed fellow-humans, engaged in enduring creation of a free culture based on trust and love.

Today’s simplistically self-centered, competitive, utilitarian, nihilo-cannibalist cultural climate might perceive such mentality as naïve and/or, perhaps, inefficient. In response to the general doubtful reception of the lifestyle celebrating sparseness as abundance, fellowship as individuality-enabling, and individuality as a token of speaking the language of the species, Eagleton notes: “If this sounds unpleasantly slavish and self-denying, it is because we forget that if others do this as well, the result is a form of reciprocal service which provides the context for each self to flourish. The traditional name for this reciprocity is love” (91).

Q: We are not robozombies!

A: We are not robozombies!

Indeed. On the contrary, we like to learn how to read-write critically, yet in the spirit of reverence. If to follow the radical guiding light of refacement is perceived as contradictory to critical remapping of the creative realms, one should be modest enough to be reborn through subtonic hi-fi and solidarity of reindvividualized selfless fellow-humans engaged in enduring creation of a free culture based on trust and love.