Ontological Disease
So much the of fear of success comes from what we deem as a True Self and being able to gain success with a clear conscience. If you look closely, the True Self appears to be built up of many Selves, and there’s confusion on which one to follow at any one time. Psychology Today, recently did a brief summary with some sense of familiarity. “Find a purpose. Purpose is a symbol of what you’re doing, what you want to accomplish while you’re alive. A purpose, a reason for being, is a good way to remind yourself of who you are—because who you are is essential for accomplishing that bigger goal.” There’s also a biological factor related to our physical existence which allows us to continue, including pursuing goals. “Your core self…the struggle to regenerate our degenerating bodies…is what you have in common with plants, fungi, bacteria. All living things have what’s termed ‘vegetative sentience,’ not sentience as feeling but as responsiveness, the way a plant heals itself in response to being cut…The silent self can surface as loud, felt symptoms when we’re sick. But when we’re well, we can’t feel it and hardly give it a thought.” Though I would add that there is a sense of feeling. There’s feeling sick but there’s also a pleasure in well-being.
While we pursue our goals there is also a self that feels a fraud, that doesn’t live up to personal values, that makes mistakes, and hopefully learns. “Others have achieved true mastery, while we only pretend to.” There is also a candid self that is “acting the same way on the outside that you feel on the inside, regardless of the social consequences.” There is a comparison self that competes with these other types of self, that makes one feel like an impostor, and follows what society thinks of us, and is inextricably connected with everyone else. “From the time we’re born, we’re conditioned to be a certain way. First, there’s the influence of our parents, siblings, and the extended family. Then, the peer group. Then, our intimate relationships. We become different things to different people when we relate to others. We take on many roles and identities in the course of our lives. Some of these encourage and expand our core sense of self, while others diminish and stifle who we are…What people think of as their true self is the version of themselves that holds a solid reputation. The idealized self that makes a positive impression on peers they respect. When they inch closer to that ideal, they will feel good—and authentic.”
As we try to balance personal goals, trade with others, relate with others, and regenerate the wear and tear of our bodies, there are many wrong paths. We can find ourselves lost, or mining for fool’s gold. Freud’s Id-Ego-Superego was one of the early methods of trying to understand these different sides to our personality. After Freud’s passing, he left behind many questions and problems about that feeling where we can’t accept our own being as it is. People fear success also because people fear moral compromises they have to make in order to get success. “Will I still like myself when I achieve success? Do I have to get success in order to like myself? If we are going to die sooner or later, how does that knowledge affect what we think success is?”
One of the best Freud interpreters on this particular subject was René Girard, who called this problem an Ontological Sickness, a hatred of one’s own being. In a way, it’s hard to tease out a true self from cultural influence. We are limited by the options available to us, the limited technology, or the engulfing of technology, and if one does a simple contemplation practice, to trace everything we think is us, we immediately find we are under heavy social control, advertisement, propaganda, and require endless social comparisons to weigh decisions. Like any parent, or someone who has lived long enough to be deemed a “legend,” younger generations look up to you and rely on you to be a role model, whether you like it or not. There’s a major trust that the younger generation places on others and the responsibility is enormous. Accidentally, or purposefully giving unreliable information to them leads to their remorse, rebellion, and can destroy their lives, like giving a tourist the wrong directions so they end up on the side of town with a higher crime rate.
Idol worship can be dangerous, partially because of what others do to us, but we can be our own worst enemy. To be a skilled teacher, it’s not enough to tell people what is right or wrong, one has to be an example as well. As any parent can tell, for example, smoking a cigarette in front of kids and saying “don’t do this,” sends the opposite message, because of the enjoyment that parent is having with the nicotine is a counter message to the admonishment. Admonishments are dull, boring, and hypocritical in many instances. Real teachers understand that to motivate others towards the right thing one has to balance pleasure with consequence, and then display authentic pleasure when the choice is made. Some people know this and fake it to manipulate people. “You should eat your vegetables! Mmmmmmmm, argh, yuck!” It’s only real pleasure genuinely felt that convinces, and deep down children are wired to tune into that. If you eat vegetables and you feel good after eating, that feeling good in your countenance is the only thing that really motivates. This is why our influence on others is often when we’re not looking and totally absorbed in our hobbies and interests, not when we are directing other people’s attention. A musical performer can be slavish to what audiences expect, and there’s a certain reward for that, but if one can please oneself with one’s performance, and drift into a healthy Flow state, that’s what will peak the attention of others the most, and transform a robotic performance into an authentic one. The reality is that responsibility HAS TO FEEL GOOD because the outcomes are worth it. Grinding along with responsibility sends the signal to others that one should avoid it.
Tiny Desk Concert – Igor Levit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSyJNWyRZ8Y
We often don’t know what we want because we never research, consult reality, and think about real consequences. We habitually consult others just like when we relied on parents, and then when parents became boring, we were tempted to follow the powerful examples we saw in society, who savored objects of more or less scarcity. When something is mass produced, external mediation, there’s very little conflict, and celebrity worship is considered harmless, but when a relationship, a job, or an object of value and rarity are at stake, the sense of urgency picks up with internal mediation. Your whole sense of ideal self is at stake, and it predicts your mood-scape. Is it a heaven or hell? Girard pointed out what becomes of a modern world devoid of religious feeling when the more philosophical and true aspects of religion are ignored. Girardian Paul Dumouchel said that, “far from dissipating the ignorance that surrounds these concepts, modern thinking only reinforces the confusion. By denying religion any basis in reality, by viewing it as a sort of bedtime story for children, we collaborate with violence in its game of deception.” That feeling of panic that motivates actions to maintain power, control, through aggression are effaced, denied, ignored, misunderstood, or as Girard called it, there is a méconnaissance. But unconsciously I think many people are aware in a wordless way that with success in life there’s danger. It lurks in our workplace more secretly, but is flaunted to the point of exhibitionism in the arena of national and world politics. For Girard, our institutions we trust, including very important ones like health care, that trust is always misplaced to a certain degree. Work mistakes, scandals, incompetence, sabotage and evil, are always around our institutions more or less. We can be afraid of ourselves because we can be involved in corruption and incompetence, or both. “Am I an impostor?” Our desires are also heavily mediated through idols, and we can get into strange situations where we feel the need to consult powerful people and celebrities on whether we should appreciate our current goods, property, and relationships. As Freud pointed out in Mourning and Melancholia, our brains can attack themselves with low moods when we associate with objects, people, and places, that possibly open us up to criticism from authoritative others. We can cover up appreciation very quickly and move into contempt, even if it’s not warranted.
Briefly, how scapegoating works in these institutions that we trust, is that the staff working there are regularly swimming in a dreamy psychosis of mimetics, imitation, and are conditioned since childhood to obey orders, defer and concur with authority figures, and each institution has to ideally divvy out resources to people by merit. This goes astray regularly and institutions can gestate low levels of corruption all the way up to cynical cult arrangements of pure exploitation and fraud. This goes up and down as economic and labor forces move and adjust to information and necessity. The difficulty for those who have a lot of power is that many of them have experiences of manipulating false narratives to get away without punishment, partially because it’s often unknown if a punishment will allow one to learn, or if it is pitiless and unforgiving. In the latter case, people prefer to lie. This usually depends on the severity of the crime, but it’s hard to make the punishment fit the crime in an even way because of complexity. You don’t want punishment so harsh that people are rejected from society and can’t access basic services, and you don’t want too much leniency so that corruption flourishes. Because powerful people have leverage over people’s employment remuneration, collusion in institutions can easily arise and those not in the loop, and especially whistleblowers, truthtellers, need to be scapegoated and blamed. The relief in society happens when the scapegoat is expelled or killed so that the gravy train can continue without a threat of responsibility. This ambivalence about success is about not knowing how much good and evil is contained in others, and weighing the mixtures of good and evil in institutions. Institutions and people can manifest good and evil aspects at different times and hypocrisy is normalized. What is misrecognized, or the méconnaissance is that we don’t notice that the spice in the objects we like is because of the social reward they confer, and there’s always a forgetting of a scapegoating incident to remove a foe, and especially if we benefitted, and there’s a desire to start the process all over again at a different social organization or institution if we are the one rejected. Today we get rejected and tomorrow we reject someone else. “However, given the self-regulating nature of this mechanism, in every case it ultimately always is violence that protects us against violence, or to put it another way, culture protects us violently against violence, though this violence that culture contains, Girard argues, diminishes as distance from the origin grows and as the traces of the founding scapegoating are slowly erased.” Politics is all about organizational myths which are used to justify abuse and to maintain power.
No matter what we think of an object, position, or relationship, those things are colored by the desire for attention, romance, sex, and social trophies. Humans are social animals, and even a hermit needs the friction of society so they can snobbishly thumb their noses at the “rat race” and people’s base or vain desires, yet the hermit understands that these political conflicts soil any pleasure that social rewards confer, and if there’s a strong conscience, those rewards are treated with the very real fear of success. “What morally reprehensible things do I have to do in order to get success?” For those without a conscience, like a psychopath, or for those who have pathological excuses for corrupt behavior, like a narcissist in a grandiose-entitlement-psychosis, it’s a means to an end. Then you have the addictiveness of desire and how it clings to objects, people, and positions of desire, and the withdrawal symptoms if one is to be separated from what one loves. To lose an intimate partner, an important job, and all the objects the money can buy, is like a psychological death even if there’s no immediate physical death. Repeated failures, victimization through politics, and unfair judicial systems lead to revolutions and counter-revolutions in perpetuity. Economic systems where a middle class is little or non-existent yield people lacking a sense of purpose, family and endeavors to guide their personal goals. Role models feel taller and bigger because of the Freudian Prestige they engender in others. The healthy sense of self towards objects of necessity gets fractured and redirected towards intensity. Girard described this an Ontological disorder, a dis-EASE, a self-hatred, or sickness. Even when people realize this and pursue a semi-hermetic existence, which is normally called a private life, they find that people with this disease chase after them and try to trap them. “I’m the only boss you can work for. I’m the only intimate partner who will accept you. This is the true religion. Only this political movement will change things.” Basically, “I need you to bring back the sadistic spice of conflict that soothes me.” In a society without a large mix of occupations, cultural variety and exchanges, it can literally be a bottleneck. “…Internal mediation triumphs in a universe where the differences between men are gradually erased.”
Why these people chase others instead of developing hobbies and interests is because they are addicted to competitive intensity, and sometimes the competition is too hot so there’s a constant exchange of people to find the right Flow and intensity to ensure a victory and become consumed again. They are addicted to transcending opponents, or as Girard describes it, they are “mediated by the look,” and feed on the emotions of victims that are made to feel like a loser. It’s signals of superiority and inferiority that are spices for bland food. This is how the psychosis splits people off from other more healthy aspects of themselves. “A vaniteux will desire any object so long as he is convinced that it is already desired by another person whom he admires…The snob does not dare trust his own judgment, he desires only objects desired by Others…the triumph of suggestion over impression…Not only does the Other and only the Other set desire in motion, but…testimony easily overcomes actual experience when the latter contradicts it.” To enjoy impressions over suggestions is to enjoy a more peaceful life because impressions carry a personal experience and knowledge about rewards and consequences and finds that intensity of suggestion gross, manipulated, abstract, and misleading. Whether one learns through religions, science, or philosophy a way to meditate and let go of clinging, meaning to be able to tolerate withdrawal symptoms, criticism, and rejection, a desire for peace overtakes the need for intensity. Those stuck looking for intensity have to manufacture opponents, meddle in their lives, and project their sickness into others. “The sickest persons are always the most worried by the sickness of Others.”
There’s also a need to be able to accept death, which only a sense of peace can do. Why Girard went from atheist to Christian is because of how the problem of Ontological Disease is deep-down a problem of worshiping mortal idols. Even if you are an atheist you can still worship beautiful, wealthy, savoring, “cool people.” “Men of triangular desire, [metaphysical desire], no longer believe [in God], but are unable to get along without transcendency…[and are] haunted by a fear of ridicule…The snob is not essentially despicable; he tries to escape his own subjective feeling of contemptibility by assuming the new being which he supposedly procures through snobbism…The professions are particularly susceptible to the development of what Proust calls snobbism.” You essentially hate yourself with masochism and try to overcome it with sadism. There’s a lack of healthy assertiveness. It’s either slavish timidity on one hand or aggression on the other to escape the current mode of being. Normal contracts are viewed not as exchanges, but as signals of inferiority and superiority. The goal is always to remain in the superiority seat to regulate emotions.
Girard quotes Proust who essentially explains this desire of all desires, the promise of immortal beatitude in a mortal world, and the inverse fear of being left out, like being thrown in jail. The person with power appears as a “relentless guardian of a closed garden where only the elect may enjoy eternal beatitude.” It’s a panic that one cannot wait and expect to happen on an opportunity for the future, and that one will be locked out permanently from the ambrosia of celebrity, locked out from both the goods to be savored and the looks of inspiration and envy from Others that make the goods more alluring. This is essentially Narcissistic Wounding at its physical core. One has to tolerate pangs of envy felt in the body and not act on them, but like a politician who’s inspired by a greater politician, at some point the disciple feels like the person who inspired them is now in the scarce position he wants to be in. He’s now the obstacle, and this fear of success builds ironically as one gets closer to the role model. “This desire is a corrosive disease which first attacks the periphery and then spreads toward the center; it is an alienation which grows more complete as the distance between model and disciple diminishes.” This is a socio-biological response in the mind that really has to be taken serious because it can strip pleasure from success. “Everyone thinks that he alone is condemned to hell, and that is what makes it hell.”
Political backstabbings are a regular example you can find when you follow politics. The candidate is originally inspired, feels that one can actually do similar things (internal mediation), or feel one can do much better, and then resents the space taken up by the model because the time they are taking in that position is stealing the window of opportunity for the understudy to take over. Backstabbers study the weaknesses of others, without looking into their own weaknesses and when they finally scheme and depose the idol, they are usually in a bubble of self-importance, like they can do better, when in fact they are hungry for the position, are impatient, and often approach the position without the required skills because of their blind hatred that distorts their self-perception of their own value. They are interested in the position, not the work. Most truly successful people have some affinity and interest in their work. It’s very different from someone who needs a position so they can like themselves.
You have to go into the feelings because they are what animate and condition actions. Even if one doesn’t believe in an afterlife, many people protect their legacy in the same desperate way to avoid their potential legacy from being locked out of manifestation. One can’t accept or enjoy ones own well-being because it denies pride, yet without the model, the disciple wouldn’t even have an example to imitate. Part of the reason why people have to hide their success is because many people who don’t have a great idea of what to do with their lives may get this inspiration and bump into them. Like the understudy in All About Eve, it’s unconscious, but once the tethering of social comparison is identified, then hostile acts become predictable. It’s the conflict and overcoming that makes the object alluring and when boredom returns after a success there is another search for a new possession and partner to bring back that intensity.
The word possession can also be used in another context in that the disciple can be possessed by the role model as a priority over the object. The nice car, the nice watch, the trophy wife, etc., are just symbols of the “divine.” “Even [mimetic desire’s] intensity is variable. It depends on the degree of ‘metaphysical virtue’ possessed by the object. And this virtue, in turn, depends on the distance between object and [role model.] The object is to the [role model] what the relic is to a saint. The rosary used by a saint or his vestments are more sought after than a medal which has simply been touched or blessed by him. The value of a relic depends on its closeness to the saint. It is the same with the object in metaphysical desire.” People want the social proof more than the object that confers it. The object is just a key to the doorway. “He does not desire in his [role model] but rather against him…The hero only desires the object which will frustrate his [role model.] Ultimately all that interests him is a decisive victory over his insolent [role model.]” The insolence also happens naturally as the disciple reaches the role model, and the role model finally criticizes her. The ridicule begins a desire for revenge. This is why any human groups can eat their own at one time or another because of a need to vent their self-hatred and transcend it.
Why Michael Jackson & Prince Had Beef – Here’s Why: https://youtu.be/mpL5J39I7nQ
The Arcade Fire – Reflektor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E0fVfectDo
Like Freud, Immanuel Kant studied the motivations behind malice, schadenfreude, jealousy, and envy. Again it’s a definition of narcissistic wounding and an inability to like oneself as one is. You take your own existence for granted. It may sound simple, but it’s easy to get caught into. All you need is to need a job, daydream an ambition, and then hate the people who are in the way, and as often the case was, they were the ones who inspired you in the first place. “Yet envy is only an indirectly malevolent disposition, namely a reluctance to see our own well-being overshadowed by another’s because the standard we use to see how well off we are is not the intrinsic worth of our own well-being but how it compares with that of others…Movements of envy are therefore present in human nature, and only when they break out do they constitute the abominable vice of a sullen passion that tortures oneself and aims, at least in terms of one’s wishes at destroying others’ good fortune.” This is also how one sees strange situations where the better your work is, the more criticism you will face because your good work threatens others.
When there are scandals, we precariously rely on social institutions that can be made up of more or less people with ontological sickness, and assume that justice will be met out correctly most of the time. “We owe our good fortune to one of our social institutions above all: our judicial system, which serves to deflect the menace of vengeance. The system does not suppress vengeance; rather, it effectively limits it to a single act of reprisal, enacted by a sovereign authority specializing in this particular function. The decisions of the judiciary are invariably presented as the final word on vengeance.” Compared to the ancient systems where tribes commit scandals and there are reprisals, and religious taboos are erected in response, “our judicial system rationalizes revenge and succeeds in limiting and isolating its effects in accordance with social demands. The system treats the disease without fear of contagion and provides a highly effective technique for the cure and, as a secondary effect, the prevention of violence.” But with corruption and decay, what we take for granted can start to annoy and demand our attention. If there are double standards of justice that return in an unmistakable way, an ancient desire will return to motivate vigilantism. “If the function of the system has now become apparent, that is because it no longer enjoys the obscurity it needs to operate effectively. A clear view of the inner workings indicates a crisis in the system; it is a sign of disintegration. No matter how sturdy it may seem, the apparatus that serves to hide the true nature of legal and illegal violence from view eventually wears thin. The underlying truth breaks through, and we find ourselves face to face with the specter of reciprocal reprisal. This is not a purely theoretical concept belonging to the intellectual and scholarly realm, but a sinister reality; a vicious circle we thought we had escaped, but one we find has tightened itself, all unsuspected, around us.”
Even if one “wins” in a manner of speak, the prize of being the role model, it’s a hollow victory because one really isn’t God and one knows one’s own imperfections. They may find that they were once fawning on leaders, but now others are fawning on them. She finds that new understudies like her are mimetically bumping into her and trying to replace her in just the same way she did her earlier rival, and because people have trouble seeing this outcome, it often takes personal experience of being a slave and then a master. To keep from being deposed the master resorts to power and control tactics. “In the world of internal mediation every desire can produce other rival desires…The secret of success, in business as well as in love, is dissimulation. One must hide the desire one feels and pretend a desire one does not feel. One must lie.”
With no mediator, there is a boredom from the lack of intensity by not having someone above to chase after, but that lack of desire may appear like confidence in disciples. “The indifferent person always seems to possess that radiant self-mastery which we all seek. He seems to live in a
closed circuit, enjoying his own being, in a state of happiness which nothing can disturb. He is God…It is not clear whether [Stavrogin] no longer desires because Others desire him or whether Others desire him because he no longer desires. Thus is fanned a vicious circle from which Stavrogin cannot escape. No longer having a mediator himself, he becomes the magnetic pole of desire and hatred. All the characters in The Possessed become his slaves; they gravitate around him tirelessly; they exist only for him, they think only through him. He has to unite in his own person all the conditions for metaphysical success in order that the ‘struggle of master and slave’ should always turn to his advantage. Stavrogin has no need to put out his hand that everybody, men and women alike, fall at his feet and surrender to him. Stavrogin is the victim of ennui; he is rapidly reduced to the most horrible caprices and ends by committing suicide…The desiring subject, when he takes possession of the object, finds that he is grasping a void; thus, in the final reckoning, the master ends up as far from his aim as the slave. By pretending and dissimulating desire, he succeeds in exerting control over the Other’s desire. He possesses the object but that object loses its value in the very act of being possessed…” No object, position, or relationship, can satisfy permanently, like being God in heaven with endless savoring of Supreme Love. Everything goes into entropy, age, illness and death within an average human lifespan.
The transformation of the object is how it points towards us. We are the miracle and the object takes on a sense of pity mixed with appreciation. Pity because our highlight reel of moments with the object cannot be duplicated because enough time has passed beyond the window of opportunity, and appreciation because we are able to celebrate our uncanny existence with this object. These are the objects that were accessible to us and we were able to make hay with them. Objects that others own and the rivalry we encountered at best were lessons for us, but they don’t hold a candle to those things we successfully appreciated. This includes family members we loved, pets, and favorite toys, hobbies and mementos. Even if we imitated and were influenced by others, the fact that those objects, people, animals, and experiences were accessible to us, they become our psychological property, and feel authentically like a True Self.
These realizations help alleviate some of the ontological disorder because you realize the danger of imitation and borrowing someone else’s life with hostility and a sense of encroachment. A meditation to ask “what did I imitate? What am I imitating now? What will I imitate in the future?” helps to release clinging towards forbidden objects, and they can fall away from the sense of self and ownership. This happens by recognizing the object, vocation, relationship, etc., and the heaven you are imagining and attempting to realize on planet Earth in impractical ways. Like in meditation, the contemplation relaxes the striving, and grinding survival pressure. This isn’t a nihilism, but you now realize that what you want to enjoy in this life are the objects, vocations, relationships, etc. that are of objective value and free of mimetic rivalry. Sometimes it takes a remembrance of something you took for granted in the past that had value and it’s unadorned appreciation can now be enjoyed without the pollution of chasing a rival, and realizing that chasing a rival was always about chasing God. This can sometimes come back in seeing an old photo, or falling into a bout of nostalgia, to appreciate what is only now in the past. “It is the transcendent quality of a former desire which is relived on contact with a relic of the past. The memory is no longer poisoned, as was the desire, by the rival desire.” Proust’s Madeleine cake, and how it triggered past memories, is interpreted in so many ways, but here it can be a reminder of a true self. The trap is devaluing what you have and chasing after something else. Girard saw that looking to love yourself through others cannot satisfy in any lasting way. He quoted Proust who noticed that “‘every person who makes us suffer we can associate with a divinity, of which that person is only a fragmentary reflexion…and the contemplation of this divinity as a pure idea gives us instant joy in place of the sorrow we were suffering.'” Memories of learning and past savoring that we underrated.
For Proust, suffering was a form of learning and he could create stories around his life experiences and become a writer. Even if you aren’t a writer, what you learn from suffering can inform different life projects. Maybe you can trade your advantages with the advantages of others, instead of seething in envy. “Indeed the whole art of living is to make use of the individuals through whom we suffer as a step enabling us to draw nearer to the divine form which they reflect and thus joyously to people our life with divinities). And then a new light, less dazzling, no doubt, than that other illumination which had made me perceive that the work of art was the sole means of rediscovering Lost Time, shone suddenly within me. And I understood that all these materials for a work of literature were simply my past life; I understood that they had come to me, in frivolous pleasures, in idleness, in affection, in unhappiness, and that I had laid them up in store without divining the purpose for which they were destined or even their continued existence any more than a seed does when it forms within itself a reserve of all the nutritious substances from which it will feed a plant. Like the seed, I should be able to die once the plant had developed and I began to perceive that I had lived for the sake of the plant without knowing it, without ever realizing that my life needed to come into contact with those books which I had wanted to write…” On top of suffering and learning, Proust tried to trap the good moments connected with the past in his writing, and there were good moments connected with the bad because we were chasing after idols who pointed at what we thought was good, and we learned something. Most people who are contemplative have experienced Proust’s form of nostalgia meditation at one time or another. It’s usually a good memory that needed time to be forgotten and it comes back unbidden from an association in the present. It’s a subjective flashback. It can’t be forced or searched after, other than the pattern of having a good experience, forgetting about it for some time, and then encountering something in the present that triggers a flashback.
Proust’s books are long, but John Arthur Hogan did a pretty good summation of his method for us in his review of his books. “Proust asks us to open the way for the past to come through us in its true state by clearing from our minds every object, every extraneous idea, and all the barriers to our inner self that habit, passion, pride, prejudice, intellectualism, and false ideals have built up. When we have shaken off this corrosive armor we are ready, as free and living beings, for that journey through time which is so difficult to make…The aroma of the cigar we smoke may carry us back to vague but pleasant fragments of a mellow world in which we once lived. In the fragrance of the wind on a blustery night are traces, perhaps, of past nights spent on ships at sea…Once recaptured the past yields us a happiness which the present cannot approximate since present experience cannot be completely enjoyed, because in the present we are constantly turned outward from ourselves and it is within ourselves that the happiness and value of experience lies. In the present, the claims of a multitude of external things press down upon us. Consequently, our energies are turned outward toward the satisfaction of those immediate claims, and we live in action without being aware of ourselves. In the present we store up, without tasting their sweetness, the fruits of experience which later on by descending into ourselves and into the past we may enjoy through contemplation.”
Proust found his version of a True Self in that “the only true paradise is always the paradise that we have lost…If I recapitulated the disappointments of my life, as far as it had been lived, these led me to believe that its real essence must lie somewhere else than in action and I came to realize clearly that disappointment in a love affair and disappointment in a journey were not different in themselves….but different aspects of our inability to find our real selves in physical enjoyment or material activity.” This subjective life is the only one we are aware of that we live and a lot of what we talk about in the worldly sense is out of our reach or irrelevant. “Traveling this road which leads us from the outer phenomena along the winding trail of the subjective impression which it creates in the inner man, we probe our way down through the years of past in us until we come to rest at last at ultimate truth. We can now understand how it was that, to an artist convinced of the truth of this method, the savor of a Madeleine dipped in herb tea, the unevenness of two flagstones beneath his feet, or the sound of a spoon against a plate, could be ‘of more priceless value for my spiritual renewal than any number of conversations on humanitarianism, patriotism, or internationalism'”…”Without moving in space we may travel thousands of leagues in time, and that journey, to Proust, is the only one worth taking, for in it alone we may find our true natures.”
Time incases these moments of highlights and low lights in memory palaces, and when we go back into them, much of the perfume of those moments are felt again. “The things which endure in time are never objects, but only their essence; the impressions left by objects in us.” In the present moment that feeling can’t be forced and comes from natural association. Proust tried to force the location of Balbec to do this for him to no avail, but “…the longing he felt was not for Balbec but for certain pleasant moments in his life there.” Much like how we like certain photographs we took, because it was a pleasant experience for us, a stranger only has a two dimensional flat experience to peer into. Your memory has more flavor. Maybe if you’re professional enough to display your photography in a gallery and an onlooker takes their personal experience with them, they may remember your work in their way with their personal story, if life was enjoyable and interesting at the time and the gallery was a highlight for some reason, otherwise neutral experiences become forgotten. Like photography, our sense of self takes subjective snapshots and imbues them with a perfume of wonder with a kind of “I did that!” or “I was there!” feeling. If the mind misses a particular moment, and wants to relive it, then that memory is colored with a glow.
In reality, these memories are a treasure because time changes things in subtle and not so subtle ways so that those memories can never be replicated exactly the same way by simply going to the same location. Similar excursions may not be the highlight that one experienced before. Those high moments are so gone that the treasure is the memory itself. There’s also a need for moments to become old and partially forgotten so that when they come back from a trigger in the present moment, there’s a feeling of “oh yeah, I remember I was there. I remember that happened. I almost forgot.” That’s when the mind starts filling out details it almost lost and one is joyfully absentminded in the present when this is happening. Like a mental journal, that is written only in the mind, “externally moving in space, we may in reality be moving only in time.” It is really going within because all the present moment is, is a pale shadow to that golden memory. “The patches of snow white beards which had formerly been black gave a melancholy air to the human landscape of this reception like the first yellow leaves on the trees when one was thinking one could still count on a long summer and before having made the most of it one sees that autumn is already here.” The brain can’t re-find those moments in the present so it has no choice but to go treasure hunting through memory. “What we remember of happiness in the old love we demand of the new. We feel the same need for a ride at the end of day or for a stroll along the beach in the summer, and we demand the same fidelity and truth in the new love as that which gave us joy in the old.”
As much as the past is important and carries moods into our present moment, there was still a need for Proust to pay attention to details in his senses much like a meditation. One has to drop the daily life concerns where possible and go into the senses. Some meditators give this attentiveness different names, noting, acknowledgement, listening, ‘The Witness’, including witnessing thoughts arise and pass away without manipulation. The acknowledgement of what’s registering in the senses and thoughts is enough to create relief because stories that pop up are just recognized instead of entertained. Mental discursive talking modes have a reactivity to them, a dislike of the present moment, so there’s an energy saving in continuous acknowledgement. Noting also helps you to assess if a thought is worth following into a story. A mentally silent recognition of the type of thought that’s there neutralizes how a thought threads into other thoughts. Thoughts, because of their tension, have a feeling tone in the body, and getting to a silent recognition of “this is this thought, and it feels this way,” means the brain will have to discard that subject and move on to other unconscious kernels of thought, and often deeper layers are discovered. It’s a relaxed way of changing subjects, turning the page, except with traditional meditation you keep turning the page until the pages are empty. The benefit is that one can make choices with this empty palette and choose to direct attention to what is enjoyable in the present moment so that it lays down foundations for future pleasant recall. With Proust, these experiences he’s had are already a given and at some point in his meditation, one actually finds a memory worth following, and goes down the rabbit hole.
Adyashanti – A Deep State of Listening: https://youtu.be/vBwpcE4RK-c
As enjoyable as sweet nostalgia can be, the reviewer found a limitation with this type of meditation. “What kind of past is it that we are to recapture? In this connection it is well to remember that Proust was well-to-do, lived sensuously, and had the leisure to exploit sensation. He could afford good food, good wine, good music, and long vacations. To this extent his aesthetic problem was solved. But for most of us the problem is to achieve the means without which little aesthetic enjoyment is possible.” Can the general public have similar experiences? In a way the divine is the lesson of appreciating the good qualities of others, and objects, even if they are mundane. They still hold an inherent value. Alain De Botton talks about a time when Proust was faced with this problem that not everyone is rich. “Proust once wrote an essay in which he set out to restore a smile to the face of a gloomy, envious, and dissatisfied young man.” He wanted to see epic and lavish things at the museum, but instead Proust suggested seeing works from Jean-Baptiste Chardin, which were still life paintings and portraits of ordinary life. Certainly one could see the value difference between courtly and common life, but there is still a certain amount of beauty that is taken for granted. This suggests that “instead of urging us to place the same value on all things, Proust might more interestingly have been encouraging us to ascribe to them their correct value, and hence to revise certain notions of the good life which risked inspiring an unfair neglect of some settings and a misguided enthusiasm for others.”
One could also be more creative and infuse imagination into the artworks, and similar to those memories, one could look at a painting and imagine oneself in the painting. Part of the reason for photography giving way some popularity to short-form video, that is taken like a photograph, but allows a small bit of movement, it has the potential to be more engaging by making art appear more and more like an experience. I would also add that, what is hyped by others may have a value, but until you have the actual object, you will realize that all you have is the correct value. You will most certainly see general flaws with the item, because nothing in the universe is completely and utterly without flaws, nor can we conceive what that would look like, so the anticipation of any purchase will at best leave us with the the activities we enjoy and those memories. The objects either enhance our life in a limited way, or they are toys that become mastered and boring after a while, or we develop a skill in order to use them proficiently to make the enjoyment last longer. Objects are more interchangeable than we think. Dropping that panic over needing a particular object, position, or relationship, because it’s a promised key to let us through the gates of heaven, can be the relief we are looking for. Appreciating regular objects for their actual value is still appreciation.
How to appreciate art (Psychology of Things 2/2): https://rumble.com/v1gvlhb-how-to-appreciate-art-psychology-of-things-22.html
There is also concern for wanting objects that only cause conflict and realizing that creating future moments requires us to learn to let go of those overvalued objects and the conflict along with them. A flexibility to enjoy things as they are and how they present themselves to us in an unplanned and unique way. New peaceful experiences equals new peaceful memories laid down. Girard uses the biblical example of Solomon about this Pyrrhic victory, to win at all costs, where the objects are destroyed as a consequence of victory. “To settle a dispute between two prostitutes over which one is the mother of a baby, Solomon orders it to be cut in two with the stroke of a sword and half of it to be given to each of them. In giving up the child to the other woman, the good prostitute puts an end to their mimetic rivalry, not through the method commanded by Solomon, bloody sacrifice, which the other woman has already accepted, but through love. She relinquishes her claim to the object of the rivalry. She does therefore what Christ would have urged her to do: she takes renunciation to its furthest possible extreme, for she renounces that which is dearest to a mother, her own child. Just as Christ died so that humanity might abandon the habit of violent sacrifice, the good prostitute sacrifices her own motherhood so that the child may live…” The old “sacrificial logic: It is better for neither mother to receive the child, that it be killed and divided into two equal halves, than for her rival to emerge victorious,” gives way to the new Christian logic. “Ultimately, King Solomon decides in favor of the good harlot and awards her the child.”
Much like many accounts of near death experiences (NDEs), heaven is experienced as an indescribable love. Like in meditation, the higher Jhanas fade the sense of the body and there’s a counterintuitive freedom that comes from that. It’s easier to love when there’s no body to protect. Objects lose their value. On the human plane, Proust’s recapturing of memories are a lot like the life review many go through in an NDE before their choice to continue into heaven and die or to return to Earth. What is more heavenly, and touches on the soul, are those memories of guiltless pleasure and appreciation. You also realize that others have their own spiritual aura and there’s less desire to step on their toes. Hell instead is following a distorted compass into mimetic rivalry. Whether there’s any truth to a soul consciousness that’s outside of the body, and the body is just an antennae, or if this is all in the brain and once the brain finally dies, there’s a power cut, or the big assumption that one is dying slow enough so that a life review can happen, the life we actually manifest builds a foundation for mini-life reviews before we die, in the form of Proustian recall, and potentially the big life review at the end of our lives. For the spiritual especially, this is the real success to aim for, and will factor into future episodes on the unconscious.
The Jhanas: https://youtu.be/8HmTQ-IbQnE
The Life Review – Mark Pitstick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oukVd8_TEM
4 Magic Words Got Him Out of Hell (Literally) – Howard Storm’s Very Intense NDE: https://youtu.be/diPhrDPH8U8
Are near-death experiences real? Here’s what science has to say. | Dr. Bruce Greyson for Big Think: https://youtu.be/J5n2dzN1joU
Incredible Near Death Experience with 13 Helpful Teachings! | NDE- Ingrid Honkala: https://youtu.be/jtd4JEjFDiA
Deceit, Desire, & the Novel – René Girard: Paperback: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780801818301/
Violence and the sacred – René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780801822186/
Things hidden since the foundation of the world – René Girard: Paperback: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780804722155/
The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays – Dumouchel, Paul: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781611861327/
René Girard’s Mimetic Theory – Palaver, Wolfgang: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781611860771/
The One by Whom Scandal Comes – René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781611861099/
The Past Recaptured: Marcel Proust’s Aesthetic Theory Author(s): John Arthur Hogan Source: Ethics, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jan., 1939), pp. 187-203
Time Regained – Marcel Proust: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300691h.html
How Proust Can Change Your Life – Alain De Botton: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780679779155/
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/