...that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
(Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet)
How does this statement correlate, firstly, with a certain existing, dominant understanding of self-made, individual-driven realisations of the modern, separate, rational self, and, secondly, with ideas of self as carried by forces, impinged upon by all kinds of wonders and disasters? Two disclaimers/premises. A. Allow me to caricature. B. Presuming one has a certain amount of choice to start with, dependent from location, economic and social status, sex, age, etc.
The question: is it more desirable, easy, comfortable, ‘good’, morally convincing to see one’s self as a closed container with thoughts, emotions and a past, striding on a path he (I am choosing this pronoun here as the archetype of male modernity, if I may…) has chosen, rationally, with premeditation, with amassed former knowledge?
Ensuing questions which still mesmerise me: What makes this so? Who decides this? In whose interest is it? What are the problems with this conception?
How does he include other people in his choices? How does he include irrationality in his choices? How can he deal with unconscious desire, fear and complex proclivities? How does he get involved with people if he does not let them into his being? If we take this further, how does he subsist if he does not get involved, a social being raised by others, educated by others, influenced by others, helped by others all the way to the present and into the future?
Note that I am very unknowledgeable about psychoanalysis (see below the result of a test I took a while ago with ZEIT online), but willing to be educated about it…
24.03.07
(Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet)
How does this statement correlate, firstly, with a certain existing, dominant understanding of self-made, individual-driven realisations of the modern, separate, rational self, and, secondly, with ideas of self as carried by forces, impinged upon by all kinds of wonders and disasters? Two disclaimers/premises. A. Allow me to caricature. B. Presuming one has a certain amount of choice to start with, dependent from location, economic and social status, sex, age, etc.
The question: is it more desirable, easy, comfortable, ‘good’, morally convincing to see one’s self as a closed container with thoughts, emotions and a past, striding on a path he (I am choosing this pronoun here as the archetype of male modernity, if I may…) has chosen, rationally, with premeditation, with amassed former knowledge?
Ensuing questions which still mesmerise me: What makes this so? Who decides this? In whose interest is it? What are the problems with this conception?
How does he include other people in his choices? How does he include irrationality in his choices? How can he deal with unconscious desire, fear and complex proclivities? How does he get involved with people if he does not let them into his being? If we take this further, how does he subsist if he does not get involved, a social being raised by others, educated by others, influenced by others, helped by others all the way to the present and into the future?
Note that I am very unknowledgeable about psychoanalysis (see below the result of a test I took a while ago with ZEIT online), but willing to be educated about it…
24.03.07
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