fragments

I've been sitting on a small pile of writings but have recently come to accept that my other various hobbies will never permit me to finish them. So, for your entertainment, here are three half-baked ideas.

mediocrity

Of the ‘three giants’ of psychology it is likely that Alfred Adler is the least known. His contemporaries, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, espoused variations on a similar theme: a yearning to overcome what the individual perceives to be a lifelong incapacity. Where Adler departed from the other two was the platonic nature of these incapacities in his theory. In Individual Psychology, the patient is traumatized in childhood by helplessness and will spend the rest of their lives crawling up from this well. A healthy desire to grow manifests from this in the average person. Those with pathologies will shrink away from core life tasks, like the hikikomori.

I am reminded as well of The Worm At The Core, a related theory in which death is the ultimate driver of human interaction. Ultimately, it argues, fear of death is what urges us forward to create an ego, make our mark, and achieve great works to grant a death defying legacy as a coping mechanism in Terror Management Theory.

However you justify it, it’s obvious that everyone seeks affirmation. It’s visible through the tiny cracks in our daily thought loops every time we realize we’ve fallen short — an awkward social interaction, another failed exercise routine, excesses and caving to vices.

Yet most of us do not reach our goals. What slim percentage of humankind has left the death defying indelible mark? How can we face each day knowing we’re one in six billion, nameless and irrelevant outside a minuscule social circle?

libertarian cowboys

I just finished Westworld’s third season and it was mind-boggling dumb. I could rant about the myopic characters and confused storyline, or perhaps the general lack of clarity around the drives of the protagonists and villains, but I think there’s a more interesting lens to see it through. Spoilers ahead — not that this season is worth your time anyway.

The season hinges on a spherical supercomputer built by an eccentric philosopher god king to manage global chaos and keep humanity from straying into disaster. Our intrepid protagonist Caleb, played by Aaron Paul, takes one look behind the curtain and declares it a gross injustice. Humans were meant to have free will and this horrible machine is suppressing the people! Ignore that fact that it is actively preventing war, disease, and famine. To save Alderaan 2060s Los Angeles, Jesse Pinkman Caleb must blow up this giant sphere immediately. Before triumphantly dooming humanity to extinction, he asks the sphere what the cost will be. After crunching the numbers, the sphere determines that the majority of human life on Earth will perish as a result. Our brave libertarian realizes that some other people may die, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take. You know, for the human spirit.

The central theme of this narrative is obvious to me; any kind of centralized action is ontologically impermissible. Mandatory vaccinations might save millions of lives but doing so is philosophically unjustifiable. In the name of ill-defined freedoms any spillage of blood or loss of life can be rationalized! In reality, I suspect that if anyone harboring these views were to actually witness death first-hand they would experience a sudden and radical shift in ideology. The masses are cavalier about the spilling of blood only when it is not their own.

optimistic resignation: an answer to Capitalist Realism

Mark Fischer lays out his perceived brutal truth in the book Capitalist Realism: we live under an economic system so pervasive and malleable that it cannot be escaped, neither in academia nor in self described socialist nations. The idea of equivalent exchange is here to stay.

However, humanity progresses. The true mark of progress, scientific achievement, will march forward irrespective of our current economic mode. The proof lies in history: the telescope was pioneered under cottage industry, basic space-faring under the novel economic system of the Soviet Union. Today’s leading edge semiconductor tech is blazing forward despite capitalist contradictions spiraling out elsewhere.

Whatever is to come will come. Looking backwards, the reign of capitalism over humanity is still but a flash in the pan. ▣