by sMartins » Mon Oct 10, 2022 4:41 pm
THE DOUBLE LIFE
Each of us is firmly convinced that we are the sole creator of our existence.
Our identity, defined in the ego, we believe is the only face of the life that inhabits us and that we inhabit.
When we believe we live the life of our ego, what other life do we forget about?
It was about two hundred years ago, when in 1818, a German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote a book entitled "The World as Will and Representation".
In this book we immediately find in the opening the most powerful sentence that tells, "The great dream of life is only one, the will to live".
This will to live has no purpose, it does not tend toward a goal, there is no rationality in determining this will to live, so this will to live is also an irrational will, because it has no purpose, no plan, no frame of reference. It is a bit like the grass that grows on the side of the road, for what purpose? Nothing, because there are conditions for it to grow. It's a bit like bacteria in a jam left warm and out of the refrigerator, why do they form? Nothing, because the conditions are there.
Kind of like our life, why are we in the world? Is there a purpose? No, we are in the world by chance, a certain day we came into the world, the wishes of parents should never be investigated.
The happening of our life was a completely random happening, without reason and without why.
"The subject of the great dream of life is only one, the will to live", period.
However, the book is titled "The World as Will and Representation", because we represent life to ourselves as if life had a purpose, had meaning, was the repository of our plans, had a purpose, a destiny, a meaning, so much so that today people are suffering, even, because they cannot find meaning in their lives, but who ever told you that your life should have meaning?
This representation that we make of life, and probably without this representation we would not be able to live, is a representation, it is not the truth.
Schopenhauer is indebted to Goethe, who in 1798, had spoken of nature as a great dancer who carries on her arms and hands so many individuals, but, in her unrestrained dance, so many she loses, without fidelity or memory. So this will to life is also a will to death; indeed, perhaps, nature can continue its life on the sole condition that it sacrifices the individuals it generates. It uses the individuals it generates to produce other individuals, it gives birth to them, it grows them, it provides them with sexuality, for procreation, and aggression, for the defense of offspring, then it takes away both sexuality and aggression from them, and then they eventually die because they are no longer interesting in terms of life for life.
They are no longer interesting in terms of the life of nature.
Capturing these concepts and arranging them in a para-scientific way was Sigmund Freud, who said that psychoanalysis was not invented by him but invented by a philosopher named, Arthur Schopenhauer.
Schopenhauer taught us that in addition to our conscious dimension, which we are used to call I(ego), I think, I desire, I want, I plan, I aspire, there is an unconscious dimension, which Freud calls "id", which we could translate as "self," which represents the needs of the species, which conflict with the needs of the ego, and these needs of the species are only, Freud says, sexuality, because the species can only continue its survival through sexual reproduction, and aggression, for the defense of offspring.
Even later, in 1922, when Freud reduces all the figures of psychoanalysis to only two categories, eros and thanatos, he establishes that eros is the condition of life and thanatos is that destructive and self-destructive dimension that leads us to death, for the welfare of the species.
The species is only able to continue with the sacrifice of individuals.
Nature experiences a kind of innocent cruelty; its life involves the sacrifice of our life.
At this point, both Schopenhauer's reading and psychoanalysis provide us with a dramatic interpretation of our existence, we are individuals who say "I," but we are primarily functionaries of the species, and this second dimension, because we never consider it, Freud says, belongs to our unconscious. What is the unconscious? The unconscious is the species that uses us for its needs, procreative and defensive; it is not enough to procreate but we must also guard our creatures, and defend them.
Inside us, therefore, there are two subjectivities, we are I(ego) and we are functionaries of the species, the species keeps us alive exclusively for its economy, and the economy of the species is definitely not the economy of the I.
These things are understood more by women than by men, in the sense that a woman, as early as puberty, sees that, the moment she begins to fantasize about her loves and her future, her menstrual cycle also begins, and her body, it is not only a body of beauty but it is also a body that goes for a different economy than her dreams.
So the woman already during puberty feels this conflictuality, feels the dual subjectivity. When conflicts arise, when problems arise, intelligence is triggered, it is no accident that in the adolesciency age, girls are much more intelligent and quicker than boys are. Mainly because conflict makes people think.
These thoughts that become explosive in the 1800s, which determine the birth of psychoanalysis and radiate all Romantic philosophy, appear pessimistic, because Romanticism comes after the Enlightenment and what unites these two scenarios is basically Antichristianity. The Enlightenment in that it believes that the religious world is a world of superstitions and not a world of reason. Romanticism opposes Christian optimism, which sees everything regulated by providence, everything finalized, everything under a gaze of a witness called God, while saying no, we are in a context of absolute indifference, nature is indifferent.
Of course all this was more than known to the Greek world, you know that the Greek world, the Greeks, were the most intelligent people that ever appeared on earth, and they understood these scenarios immediately, in fact they perceived nature as that unchanging background that no man and no God made. But because we come from a Christian culture, because we are all Christians, we think that nature is a creature of God and therefore good, we call it mother nature, and indeed we can dispose of it as we wish. For the Greeks no, nature is what it is, it is indifferent, there is no evaluation regarding nature.
To regulate the laws of nature, for the Greeks, is necessity, which is above men and Gods, so even the Gods are not omnipotent.
Nature is what it is, nature is what it is, and we live within this horizon.
Radically different perspective than the Christian perspective, where nature instead is offered by God to man for his dominion, where nature is handed over into the hands of man for his dominion, and here begins that category of subjectivity, of man at the apex of creation, of man who can say I, the dominating man. Have you never wondered why science and technology originated in the West? That is, only in a Christian culture? And not in the East, where these things are not thought of? And where man is not thought to be at the pinnacle of creation?
Plato says: think not thou, O petty man, that this universe was created for thee, thou rather shalt be just if thou adjust thyself to the universal harmony.
In Greece there is not the primacy of the individual, there is the primacy of the polis, the city, the relationship. The individual is born out of the relationship, so it is the relationship that generates the individual, it is recognition that generates identity, and you will be recognized the moment you belong to a community, you observe the laws of that community, and as a result of recognition you will know what a man you are. It is the community that comes before the individual, whereas instead individuality was invented by the Christians.
Above all, the Greek world knows one fundamental thing, that man is mortal, the one who is destined to die. The mortal.
You never say man or even the gods, you say mortals and immortals.
Man follows exactly the laws regulated by the necessity of nature, exactly like plants, exactly like animals, and then eventually he dies. Because his death is necessary for the birth of other individuals.
However, thanks to this interpretation, albeit tragic, man is able to anticipate death. What does it mean to anticipate death? What does It mean to be persuaded that one must die? What is the advantage of the tragic dimension, that it consists in the fact that you have to die and there is nothing waiting for you in the afterlife?
That you can operate a relativization of the issues of the hereafter, you don't run around like a desperate man, you don't fight like a madman, you don't commit suicide because of the worries of the world, because you are mortal, you are mortal, and when you have to end your career you don't despair and die two years after you retire, because death is still there waiting for you, it's not that loosing your job ends your life, you who have made it coincide with your working life and outside of that you no longer know who you are.
Our identities, by now, are assigned by our social roles, we know who we are only because others recognize us in a role, outside of that we no longer know who we are.
Let us think well about this anticipation of death, because by relativizing things, we cease that drama typical instead of those who believe in the immortality of the soul, and believe that this life therefore has its own importance, their self becomes hegemonic, what depends on the self decides life and death, a love ends and you kill women because it's all over, no, no, stop, know that if you internalize death in advance then you relativize your life, and all things don't have that depth, which is not from tragedy but from despair, but the despairers are who? Those who have had hope, because those who have not had hope never despair.
Last edited by
sMartins on Sun Oct 16, 2022 3:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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I only logged in to say this sentence. by neeco » 30 Oct 2018, 02:57
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