The Shadow of the Valley of Psyche
Greetings. I bring you a ramble. And a track–Lomea - Sunwake.
In the haze of post-probably-COVID-19 (update: I’m feeling much better now, thanks, just the occasional abnormal surge of fatigue if I don’t sleep enough and the mom’s doing well, too), I find myself trying and failing to reintegrate with The Discourse.
Deep fault lines in American culture are visible in every facet of the blood diamond known as The Argument, whether it’s race, mask-wearing (seriously?), the economy, identity, money, or even the foundations of reality itself. I wish I had a cooler, prevailing head, but I haven’t. Since the beginning, I’ve been fixed to screens and furious, as if that would help anything. On social media, I’ve been watching battles break out over fact in a war of emotion and personality.
Unfortunately, scientific, consensus-reality-coherent minds seem to frequently misapprehend the nature of people who don’t “believe” in vaccines, masks, news, statistics, evidence, or comprehensibly objective perceptions. There are many ways to become disenfranchised from reality, from trauma and mistreatment to mental illness to a cocoon of privilege. But above all, these positions seem to me to be rooted in a reflexive narcissism that strives to protect itself in a country that tells its people, both explicitly and subliminally, that you must conquer others or accept being conquered. If you are not winning, you are losing. And most people are losing–and some have only just realized that they’re losing. (You’ll notice that the winners are far above the fray; they don’t hear, or care about dichotomies because being a winner requires no adjustment, no learning.)
The Demilitarised Zone Between Your Soul and Mine 84, No No No No No
These people are trapped in a power dialogue with themselves and the thin but robust layer that transmediates reality–a personal reality distortion field designed to protect the psyche from realizing the individual’s insignificance in a culture that is, by design, deeply uncaring. It’s far better to be the one who can see how deeply antagonistic the world is to you in a personal way, infringing upon your ideology, your body, your party, your “freedoms”, with deep state subterfuge, libtard smear campaigns, mind-control vaccines, face-fabric that murders you, than to acknowledge that the world is antagonistic to you because of reasons that are unforgivingly apathetic, highly complex, and almost impossible to change. Indeed, many ardent COVID-19 deniers’ regrets come on their deathbeds, when there is no more illusion of individuality and personal power to protect against the ultimate oppressor, death.
Of course, I paint a bleak picture. There are resplendently beautiful fractal dimensions of possibilities and realities present as well. But a psyche embroiled in paranoid narcissism must cross through the shadow of the valley of death before emerging into a reality that has possibility for compassion, community, and kindness regardless of the power of statecraft, imperial capitalism, infuriatingly incomplete statistics, and the throes of a culture devouring itself.
Honest Discussion, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
So, what is a good citizen of The Discourse to do? How do you reach across–not an aisle, but an ocean–to someone to whom outside voices sound like demons, to whom truth is psychologically damaging? Is it your responsibility? (And by this, of course I mean, is it my responsibility?) What do I owe to a stranger on the internet? To an acquaintance who’s about to walk off the edge? A friend of a friend?
And when it comes to those who are merely using truth to justify emotional psychological complexes, where is the line of ethics and reasonableness? When it comes to discourse with the deeply entrenched (read: a military trench, a foxhole for the mind) I find it looks more like a counseling session than a debate of facts. Dredging a psychic swamp is occasionally interesting, rarely rewarding, and always exhausting. How much is too much emotional labor and when do you draw the line? Or, on the other side, if someone has been infected by a mind-virus, is it ethical to reach fight mind-viruses with more virulent strains? Do the ethics of discourse matter when others aren’t playing by the rule? Are we in a war that needs to be played for keeps, for the sanctity of human life?
I don’t know. These are the high-drama questions that have been rolling around my overly-fatigued-overly-caffeinated mind as I watch yet another friend-of-a-friend post “but what about the looting” on a friend’s Facebook post, or merely look outside and see people engaging every day life without wearing masks as we set new record-breaking numbers of cases every day. The situation seems dire, and I’m very tired.
Maybe next week.
