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Author Archives: iambobbyy
On Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Death Drive, Reality, and Beyond
January 8, 2023 iambobbyydeath drive, Jacques Lacan, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Repetition
Last Edited, Jan 24, 2023: I added a new paragraph that talks about the mirror stage and desire near the end of the section "Reality and Real". Sometimes, Dr. Booby wakes up in the morning and goes, "Oh shit, how come I didn't think of that earlier?" where he ends up adding more stuff. 🤓
"We are what we are because we have been what we have been." —Sigmund Freud
Today, I will introduce one of the most famous and influential Freudian concept known as the "Death Drive", or what many people refer as the "repetition compulsion". I will talk about reality, memories, dreams, and give you a glimpse at what the Lacanian "Real" entails. I will revisit major themes from my previous posts on desire, love, along with insights on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, art, poetry, jokes, and why some people are attracted to the "bad boy" or "bad girl" persona. I will offer insights on the unconscious mind and the laws of society with how it drives human conflicts in world history. I will also show you how Lacanian / Freudian psychoanalysis crosses paths with a few other major field of studies such as Immanuel Kant's transcendental metaphysics, Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, Jean Baudrillard's ideas on simulation, and Freudo-Marxism.
This post was written with the assumption that you read my other psychoanalytic writings (Part I, Part II, and Part III hyperlinked). While I don't think it is as stylish as Part III which talks about love, a decent chunk of this post are outtakes from it. So don't be surprised if you see themes in here that are reminiscent to Part III.
Please fasten your seatbelts, as Bobby is about to take you from love and desire, all the way to the darkest side of humanity.💀
Reality and Real
"Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned parts of their narcissism".
In Part I, I introduced the relationship between the split subject who perceives everything in the world like a mirror as they get mediated through the symbolic Other. Subjects and objects functions as mirror reflection to parts of who they are as human beings. For Freud, everyone is a narcissist where we are self-obsessed as we try to satisfy our pleasures (sometimes known as the ego-libido). To love is to become humble and pawn parts of our narcssisism for our beloved. In Lacanian terms, to love someone is to become the split subject where we establish a relationship with our beloved through the mediation of the Other. The act of loving someone is to unconsciously locate our wound or lack (castration; split subjectivity) in the other person where love is not about sameness (our narcssisism and wishful projections), but difference.
Freud once famously asserted that there were three instances in human history which highlights the humility of humanity, where humans dealt a significant blow to their narcissisms which defeated humanity's significance in the universe. The first instance was Nicholai Copernicus who, during a time where everyone believed the Earth was at the center of the universe, discovered that it was just a planet orbiting around the Sun which happens to be one star among trillions more. The existence of Earth is insignificant in our cosmos. The second instance was Charles Darwin, who showed us how we are not even that special on Earth, but are simply evolved animals. The third instance was Freud himself (talk about narcissism). Not only are we not special on a planet that is not at the center of the universe, we are not the masters of our conscious mind. As sentient beings, we are controlled by the unconscious mind where we are driven by the pleasure principle and death drive which gives us the urge to compulsively repeat certain behaviors over the course of our lives. Civilization, as Freud said, began when "an angry person cast a word instead of a rock", where the unconscious mind was born.
In my previous posts, I mentioned how the split subject is always trying to capture something from the Real that always escape their conscious grasp (object a). Such as the man who repeatedly treated his girlfriends in the same way was trying to recapture the way his father treated his mother when he was a child. The effects of being unconscious to what one tries to recapture through transference is due to the influence of the symbolic Other and how it imposes laws onto the split subject. The way speaking subjects are mediated through the discourse of the Other conceals the Real through misrecognitions, censorships, errors, and wishful projections that consciously reveals as our desires which warps our perceptions of reality.
To psychoanalyze is to besiege a fortified castle where one attempts to discover what lies behind the walls that are erected by the Other and our mind's defensive mechanisms which conceals the Real. The goal is to figure out what the subject unconsciously desires versus what the Other desires from them. It is to figure out the Real of their desires; or the truth of their desires. Ultimately, one can say that psychoanalysis attempts to resolve the analysand's problems that are found in their unconscious transference(s) that gets mediated through the Other because one must always experience the world through the language of the Other (we must conform to laws of society, etc.). As split subjects, one is always mediated through language where the Real is the point where no symbolic or imagination can represent. While we can use symbolic language to describe the Real or imagine what the Real consists of, the absoluteness of the Real resists both symbolic and imaginary. Lacan once described the Real as "the absence of absence": the absence of the symbolic and imagination of the word "absence".
Thus, the first rule of the Real is that you cannot talk about or imagine the Real. The Real is also not the same as our everyday experience of reality. Many people tend to think that reality always appear as they see it. Just as our interpretation of reality and other people can be influenced by our bias, history, and other contextual and temporal frameworks, in psychoanalysis, reality is constructed through the symbolic and imaginary which gets influenced by the Real (i.e. our unconscious desires). No matter how "real" someone thinks they can be ("Get real!"), or how real they think they perceive reality, it is always filtered through the split subject's symbolic and imaginary relations. And what produces the shapes of the symbolic and imaginary—such as the different narratives which shapes our reality and who we are—is the Real, where object a causes our desires to produce various censored meanings and interpretations of reality. This is why touching the Real can affect how we perceive reality. It is by re-establishing our relationship with the Real which changes the shapes of the symbolic and imaginary (the fantasies, narratives and stories that we use to narrate reality and ourselves). Since the split subject is always mediated through symbolic language and the laws of the Other, reality is never quite Real.
One can perhaps, think of those who believes that the news are fabricated and prefers a reality that they think is more real. While no news are accurate in representing reality, it is often much more comforting for people to stay in their symbolic representation of reality than having it shattered by knowledge that might not always fit their narratives and perspectives. Perhaps those who sees all news as inaccurate news are not much different to those who believes that all news are real. In both cases, the Real is concealed by the symbolic narratives of the individual or the information of the news which produces and influences their perceptions of reality as such. Not only is this where we see interdisciplinary relationships with Jean Baudrillard's famous ideas on simulation, where reality becomes more real than real, it is also where we see how contemporary media, internet, and other forms of digital mediums becomes a simulation of reality where such mediums functions as the Other that usurps and controls the fantasies of the subject and their perceptions (I wrote about Baudrillard here).
I would like to digress for a moment to offer some contextual background on this Lacanian point of view of the Real (I spoke about this in some of my other posts). The idea that reality is never Real was influenced by the history of philosophy, particularly 18th century German idealist philosopher Immanuel Kant, who was renown for the idea that humans can never know anything in itself. Kant argues that humans can only experience the phenomenon of objects via intuitions of space and time, but never the object in it-self (noumenon). We can only experience the world from our first person perspective where we can never experience from the perspective of water, or the perspective of the other person that we are talking to. While one cannot know anything in-itself, it is through this limit which allow humans to manipulate objects. If I know water is made up of H2O, I can manipulate its properties and produce something else from it. To claim that water consists of H2O is to, in some sense, idealize the properties of water. This procedure is famously known as "transcendental idealism". In such case, the transcendental subject sets the limits to all human knowledge within various branches of metaphysics and phenomenology for the last two centuries. What I presented here, is one of the most powerful and influential argument found in German idealism where such experience of human subjectivity became one of the greatest mysteries of the mind that even neuroscientists struggle to explain. Human experience is fundamentally finite in that two people may subjectively experience the color of the blue sky differently, even if they both objectively agree that the sky is blue. We can't know for sure because we can never know anything in itself.
In many ways, the Real and object a resembles the Kantian thing-in-itself where one's conscious mind can never fully grasp. Such impossibility of knowing anything in-itself is reminiscent to how I introduced the Lacanian mirror stage where everything in the world is a reflection of who we are. The other (person that we talk and relate to) is a reflection of our ego and desires where we often transfer and project past emotions, experiences and meanings onto them (a form of misrecognition). Reality is never quite real in the sense that humans are sometimes caught in their Imaginary (narcissism) where they might, for example, mistake someone's friendliness as romantic interest as they project their desires onto them.
Finally, Lacan famously points out that, "There is no sexual relationship" partly because we can never know anything in-itself. We are never the other person. This is a more philosophical way where we can talk about why love is about difference which involves our attempts at traversing our own finitude of always getting caught in our own perspective. Another way we can interpret this Lacanian passage is to recognize how sexual difference represents the impossibility of representing the Real. As a result, this produces what our cultures refer as "masculine" and "feminine" identities as symptoms; or as whatever gender people identify as. In psychoanalysis, sexuality is the wound on how the subject gets split. Whereas to love, is to unconsciously locate this split/wound (castration) in the other person.
Metaphor and Metonymy
"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished."
"The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra."
Since the split subject always unconsciously conceals the Real through their symbolic, its effects can be witnessed through the subject's relationship with language which takes position as their perceptive experiences of everything in the world (i.e. we think, interpret, and perceive the world through language where we use words to describe our perceptions and emotions). As a result, it produces the movements of metaphor and metonymy which relates to the ways reality and dreams are experienced by the split subject. Let us together, slowly move through a few small passages by Lacan:
"What is at issue is to refind—in the laws that govern this other scene, which Freud, on the subject of dreams, designates as the scene of the unconscious—the effects that are discovered at the level of the chain of materially unstable elements that constitutes language: effects that are determined by the double play of combination and substitution in the signifier, according to the two axes for generating the signified, metonymy and metaphor; effects that are determinant in instituting the subject."
To paraphrase, the goal for Lacan, is to find the "other scene" which Freud discovers in the split subject who dreams. Lacan assigns the effects of the unconscious mind within the instabilities of language which mediates the split subject. This instability is witnessed by what Lacan refers as metaphor and metonymy which institutes the split subject (the two terms respectively translates to Freud's concepts of condensation and displacement). In regards to desire, Lacan writes:
"And the enigmas that desire—with its frenzy mimicking the gulf of infinite and the secret collusion whereby it envelops the pleasure of knowing and of dominating in jouissance—poses for any sort of "natural philosophy" are based on no other derangement of instinct than the fact that it is caught in the rails of metonymy, eternally extending toward the desire for something else. Hence its "perverse" fixation at the very point of suspension of the signifying chain at which the screen-memory is immobilized and the fascinating image of the fetish becomes frozen".
Here, Lacan points out how desire is constantly deferred through the extension for something else where words and meanings gets displaced (this is similar to my first post where I spoke about the +1 and -1 where lack is always concealed by next words in sentences). These displaced meanings are unconscious to the speaking subject, but is something that the Lacanian analyst tries to identify in the analysand. Our desire for certain things or people in our lives is actually a desire for something/someone else that is unconscious to us who are displaced, warped, and censored by the Other.
Meanwhile, Lacan points out how perversion arises when the split subject fixates on certain objects or signifiers through their screened memories (will get to this later). The idea of perversion relates back to Freud who thinks sexuality is perverse in that parts of it is fetishistic in nature. This is most prominently seen in masculine desire, where men tend to fixate on certain signifiers and objects—such as specific parts of a woman's body. One part of masculine desire is characterized by fetishism in that they get sexually aroused through symbolic language and signifiers (body parts, pieces of clothing, tattoos, etc.). In order for a man or anyone to declare their love for someone, they must in a certain sense, give up parts of their desires and become feminine. They must pawn parts of their narcissistic object relations (ego-libido) for the person they love. Before we move on, let us take a look at what Lacan writes about metaphor:
Metaphor's two-stage mechanism is the very mechanism by which symptoms in the analytic sense, are determined. Between the enigmatic signifier of sexual trauma and the term it comes to replace in a current signifying chain, a spark flies that fixes in a symptom—a metaphor in which flesh or function is taken as a signifying element—the signification, that is inaccessible to the conscious subject, by which the symptom may be dissolved".
Where metonymy and desire displaces meanings and words or objects, metaphor replaces various signifiers for other signifiers; or the replacement of objects for other objects in real life (i.e. the mother for the wife, ex-boyfriend for new boyfriend, etc.). The metaphorical signifier conceals the trauma (Real) which functions as the truth of the split subject's symptoms (desires) and has the ability to dissolve it. This may sound familiar to Part III on how I pointed out that love has the ability to dissolve our symptoms and halt our repetitive symptoms. This occurance often takes place without the subject realizing it where love gradually changes people.
All of this comes down to the idea that love is metaphor and desire is metonymy. But while love and desire are two sides of the same coin, it is very common for people to mistake desire as love (lust). We can see this when men sometimes seek for women who appears to have the "bad girl" persona. This happens when the woman is unconsciously displaced from the man's mother, siblings, past lovers, or someone who took care of them during their early life. In such case, the woman will often signify to the man as pure desire who is ready to "break the rules", even if it may not be the case on the other end. Such woman may unintentionally arouse and provoke the man's drives where they might actively mistake their desires as love. In fact, it is also common to have both people who mistakes their desires as love. If Lacan is correct that love is always mutual and that love has nothing to do with sex, perhaps when someone declares their love to the other where they happen to not love them back (or "love" them in the same way), then they have mistaken their desires as love. This is another way we can interpret Lacan that is different from my approach in Part III.
Meanwhile, feminine desire can also function similarly which can be recognized through displacing the image of the woman's father. This is why some women are attracted to the bad boy—a man who treats the woman opposite to their father (with love and care—hopefully). Just like the bad girl, the bad boy often signifies excitement, fun, and lust, who are adventurous and ready to break the rules. In order for anyone to desire, they must always be with the wrong person where they unconsciously displace their family figures or someone from the past who loved them. If they encounter a person who unconsciously resembles to these figures, it would cause them to not simply desire, but produce the effects of love. Desire must always consist of a certain structure of impossibility that the Other prohibits where the subject can only be partially satisfied which produces its effects—just like people who listens to their favourite songs on repeat (from Part II). Yet, there are many instances where people will have a tendency to satisfy their desires by transgressing the law (i.e. neurotics, which we all are in some ways). Hence the appeal of bad girl or bad boy who appears to be ready to break laws.
This brings up interesting thoughts on how we live in a culture that is obsessed with pornography which often consists of scenes and fantasies that breaks the rules of everyday life. Similar things can be seen in films, video games, literature, all the way to your favourite "reality" TV shows (as Baudrillard might say, the characteristics of pornography is everywhere in our digital world). Reality TV is never real because they perpetuate an ideological fantasy that may usurp and control the viewers where they impose such fantasies onto their own lives (in this sense, reality TV is more real than real; it is a simulation of reality). All of these can be seen as examples of different forms of sublimations where the split subject attempts to turn an inappropriate fantasy, idea, or impulse into something that is socially acceptable so to conform to the laws of the Other. Furthermore, one can also think of dark jokes, sex jokes, racist jokes (any jokes) as common examples of sublimation. When done correctly, sublimations are considered as a healthy way to deal with repressed desires, impulses and trauma. We can think of doctors and nurses who sometimes likes to make dark jokes as a way to relieve their stress from their jobs, where they regularly witness people die.
Nevertheless, we begin to understand what Freud meant when he famously thought how excessive love kills desire, and excessive desire kills love. In the former case, the other person unconsciously resembles to the lover as someone they cannot desire due to love transference and the effects of the Other who prohibits them via laws. In other words, their partner unconsciously resembles too closely to their family figures, or someone who they used to love (where they can no longer be together). This is also one of the reasons why Lacan refers to love as a form of suicide because it diminishes our desires. In some cases, it may even be the case where one person declares their love for the other, where the other person stops desiring them altogether. It is also why love is not about our desires (the ego-libido; Imaginary), but the other person (which relates to the Symbolic Other). Love often arrives when we least expect it; whereas our desires will lead us to look for love in the wrong places.
In the latter case where excessive desire kills love, the split subject's desire displaces the family figures or whoever loved them in the past onto their partner who may come to represent the movement of pure desire which produces the effects of lust. In such case, love is not suicidal, but gets caught in the subject's own narcssisism (the Imaginary relationship with their ego-libido). This is where we see things in dating cultures where people "hook-up", have "flings", or where they have relationships where they keep things at the level of light fun where they serve their own desires and pleasures. In summary, one either loves the other that unconsciously resembles someone from their past, or one loves someone as they love themselves (narcissism).
The way the split subject relates to the other person is always unconsciously influenced by past relationships due to transference. Yet, since the subject must always pass through the symbolic Other, real love must overcome the individual's narcissistic tendencies and their desire to satisfy their ego-libido. The conscious recognition of love appears to the split subject as difference (a surprise) due to the effects of their desires and wishful projection that warps, censors, and distance their views of the other person when they first meet them—just like the relationship between reality and Real. Love is not a relationship between two narcissists serving their own pleasures. Love is a form of care and support for the other person. It is about who cleans the toilet and does the dishes. Regardless, in all cases, most relationships is about finding the right balance between the two—which is to love and desire in a healthy way.
Unless the person went through a successful analysis, unconscious transferences that the split subject projects onto their partner are often traumatic and unresolved. Most people will encounter obstacles in their relationships due to transferences from their past relationships with their parents and old partners. The problems between two lovers is the problem of transference on how each individual repeatedly transfers unresolved past experiences and traumas onto the other. It is similar to a person who is in an abusive relationship where their partner repeatedly treats them in the same way over and over again. To be sure, the psychoanalyst's job does not involve solving the analysand's relationship issues because they are not a couples therapist. Instead, their job is to dissolve the symptoms of the analysand and resolve their unconscious transferences that they repeatedly and unconsciously project onto their partner. At the end of a successful analysis, the analysand does not need to be told how they should treat their partner correctly (whereas your average therapist will help you set up a plan and tells you to do this or that). Once their unconscious transferences are resolved, the split subject will automatically treat their partner correctly.
Above all else, the metaphorical movement of love is the source of poetic effect (art, poetry, music, etc.). Love is creativity in the making where new metaphors and meanings are produced through the experience of lack or nonmeaning that we locate in the other. Love gives rise to foreignness (otherness) and new possibilities—just like the event of an apple that fell on Newton's head, or the random encounter of someone who shakes your world. Love is a construction of something new that is original and innovative. It is not a simple reproduction or simulation of the past. We can also conceive of this creativity as how people resolve their differences in a relationship, or how they compromise for each other which produces new ways to live (hence, love is what makes relationships work). Over time, love between two people becomes a work of art where they produce a new life and truth together.
In my last post, you may notice how I intentionally used metaphorical examples through replacement of different examples. I also metaphorically replaced love for infinity which happens to be the theme of the entire piece. Such movement of love is also recognized when Lacan famously proclaimed his "return to Freud" who ended up producing a new school of psychoanalytic thought. Love marks the excess or impossibility of symbolic language which is represented through the experience of lack. As Lacan would say, love is a pebble laughing in the sun!
Dreams, Memories, and Reality
"We never wake up; desire sustain dreams"
What I've been trying to show you is how transference consists of movements between metaphors (love) and metonymy (desire). This weave between metaphor and metonymy is produced by the mediation of the split subject through the Other who imposes laws, prohibition, and censorship. As a result, metaphor and metonymy are symptom formations that is found through the split subject's articulation of the Other's language. Such symptoms does not simply affect how we desire, love, and perceive reality, it also affects our dreams. Just as the one who loves experiences the Real of their desires without the tragic dimension, dreamers also at certain points of their dreams, closes in on the Real.
When one dreams, the split subject attempts to satisfy their unconscious desires where its contents are presented as metaphors and metonymy. A good example that some people might relate to is when they have strange dream scenarios that has to do with washrooms, toilets, and water, only for them to wake up realizing that they have to use the washroom. Dreams will often present and conceal our unconscious desires through metaphors and metonymy because our mind is always censored by the symbolic Other. Our mind naturally protects and resists the symbolization and imagination of the Real by concealing it through language. Hence, it is important for Freud that one must interpret dreams during the subject's waking state and besiege the fortified castle. The Lacanian Real is concealed behind all the nonsensical symbolic metaphors and metonymic movements found within the dream and in our everyday lives because once again, the Other prohibits, filters and censors the split subject who dreams. This is why the things we dream about are not what they appear to be.
Perhaps many of us can recall a time where we woke up from our dreams due to something weird or horror that happened in it—something that you cannot comprehend, interpret, and produce meaning out of in a waking state. It is almost as if your mind runs into a brick wall that resists symbolization and imagination. Well! It is the moment when we jolt awake where we briefly experience the effects of the Real. It represents the traumatic point where your consciousness can no longer comprehend what is happening through the imaginary and symbolic. Your mind's defensive mechanism kicks in and wakes you up before you experience the Real at full force. As a result, you may sometimes wake up with anxiety due to some horror that happened in the dream (you experience anxiety when you get too close to the Real or object a). The Real resists symbolization and imagination which snaps you awake. And it is because we can longer process the Real in our dreams where we wake up to face "reality"—a reality that is always mediated by the Other via metaphor and metonymy. Simply put, humans face reality because we always fail to confront the Real(ity) of our dreams. We wake up from our dreams just so we can continue dreaming in reality.
Something similar occurs through the way humans recall their childhood memories. In a famous essay called "Screened Memories", Freud talks about how our childhood memories are often distorted due to defensive mechanisms and the condition of denial. Freud believes that no one really forgets anything in their lives. Our unconscious mind records and stores every living moment as one is always thinking where they do not think they are thinking. Through the discourse of the Other, certain memories and thoughts are permitted to surface into the subject's consciousness which allows them to recall such memories and articulate it in various ways (the subject gets filtered through the Other). It turns out that memories are also always concealed and distorted through metaphor and metonymy.
Freud uses the mystic writing pad as an example on how memories between our consciousness and unconscious mind works. The mystic writing pad is a children's toy where a piece of plastic covers a large piece of wax underneath. The child can inscribe markings on the top layer, and once it gets replaced, the writing pad becomes cleared, yet its previous writings are indented in the wax underneath. Over time, more inscriptions (memories) are written and overwritten on this piece of wax (unconscious), yet cannot be accessed by the top layer (consciousness).
The mystic writing pad is important if you are interested in deconstruction because this is where Jacques Derrida talks about the relationship between writing and the unconscious mind in a famous book called Writing and Difference (found in the essay, "Freud and the Scene of Writing"). In it, Derrida argues that writing takes position as our perception before perception can take position as itself where we perceive reality through writing (or language; symbolic). In other words, writing supplements our natural perceptions (like culture supplementing nature which I spoke about in a post found here). There is always a system of knowledge that is written over our perceptions which determines how we interpret reality through—in Lacanian terms—the symbolic and imaginary. This is where we arrive at one of the major intersections between deconstruction and psychoanalysis where the two disciplines are often considered as opposition to each other while also having many striking similarities. One can for example, think of the relationship between how signifiers are constantly displaced and replaced versus how meaning is always produced through the movement of spacetime and differance within the discourse of deconstruction (I introduced Derrida's major ideas here).
Death Drive and Repetition Compulsion
"The goal of all life is death."
In a famous and controversial essay called, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud discovers the death drive through one of his patient who repeatedly dreams about their traumatic experiences from the past (PTSD). As mentioned earlier, it is thought that dreams are a way for the subject to unconsciously satisfy their unattainable and repressed desires so to achieve pleasure (precisely, "the pleasure principle"). Due to our mind's defensive mechanisms and the discourse of the Other, the contents of the dreams are never what they appear to be. We don't exactly know what desires we are satisfying because the repressed material is concealed underneath the contents of the dream through metaphor and metonymy—just like how lack is concealed underneath our everyday spoken language (I spoke about this in Part I). But if dreams are a way for the subject to satisfy their repressed desires, why would people dream of their traumatic experiences if it caused them so much pain and suffering? If the contents of our dream is never what they appear to be, could there be an even deeper point of trauma that the split subject cannot perceive (i.e. the Real)? Or could their dreams happen to be much closer to the Real than others? This is where Freud discovers that pain and suffering, in some ways, satisfies our desire for pleasure. It is where we get into sadism and masochism.
Most people associate S&M with kinky things where people enjoy giving and receiving pain in some sexual way. In reality, the themes of S&M is much more broad that can be found at the fundamental level of both sex and death drive. Not only do humans live according to the pleasure principle (i.e. happiness, etc.), Freud thinks humans also unconsciously desire to self-destruct and inflict pain on themselves through their unconscious urge to repeat certain behaviors. Think of our example of the man who unknowingly treats all his girlfriends in the exact same way from my last post (Part III). Did it occur to him that, while he may not consciously enjoy breaking up and treating his girlfriends in whatever way he did, does he unconsciously achieve satisfaction by inflicting pain onto himself by breaking up with them? Is this why he repeats such behaviors? We can also see this in people who are prone to uncontrollable negative thought patterns, where they continuously inflict pain on themselves (often found in people with depression where they don't have control over them). While modern treatments of such experience involves things like Cognitive Behavior Therapy that attempts to halt these thought patterns, in psychoanalysis, these thoughts are sometimes related to sadism and masochism and the unconscious attempts to satisfy the split subject's pleasure drives through pain and suffering.
There was a real patient of a woman who enjoyed sleeping with many men only when she got really drunk (if I remember correctly, this patient was from Bruce Fink, a Lacanian analyst). Through psychoanalysis, she discovered that her symptoms was an attempt at recapturing her childhood experience where her father sexually abused her every time he was drunk. Why would anyone want to unconsciously recapture such traumatic experience in their adult life? While most people do not wish to repeat such harmful symptoms during their conscious state and would seek for help, perhaps the reason why they cannot control these repetitive symptoms is because they are not the masters of their conscious mind—just like the person with uncontrollable negative thoughts. In other words, and as disturbing as this may sound, they unconsciously enjoy repeating these symptoms because it causes them suffering which partially satisfies the pleasure principle.
While we may unconsciously repeat many things in our lives, we often enjoy our symptoms even if it causes us pain and may lead to our deaths. Moreover, these examples also shows us how love transference can involve unpleasant traumatic experiences from the past which causes people to experience pain and suffering over and over again. The analyst's job is to interrupt these repetitive symptoms and create healthier patterns and transferences between their conscious and unconscious mind. We can also put this in context with my last post: why do we take risks to be in love when it may lead to suffering either through overcoming differences or separation? As Freud once famously said, "we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love". Yet, many of us will often choose to love, even if it may end up hurting us badly.
Think of people who smokes knowing that it might give them cancer and kill them, or people who excessively drinks knowing how bad it is for their body. Or someone who knowingly increases his sugar intake despite their diabetes. Think of the players in Squid Game who willingly joins the game while knowing that they will likely die. Or the person who commits infidelity knowing that they will lose the person they love most. In order to desire, there must always be a form of impossibility that is produced by the symbolic law. What difference is there between the Squid Game players, the person who buys lottery tickets, and the social climber who wishes to achieve the American dream? All of their desires carries a certain form of impossibility of breaking the laws of normalcy and becoming obscenely rich, achieving infinite pleasures and having high social status (it consists of the same fundamental principles to people who desires the "bad boy" or "bad girl" who wants to transgress the Other's laws). There is always a certain form of impossibility which produces their desires that they want to transgress. The desire for overcoming the Other is one of the symptoms of an obsessional neurotic where they produce healthy or unhealthy unconscious sublimations and transferences.
An interesting way to understand the symptoms of an obsessional neurotic is to think of a man who cheats on their wife. While the neurotic man may think they are consciously in love with the woman who they are having an affair with, they may actually be unconsciously obsessed with overcoming the structure of symbolic law and censorship so to have infinite pleasures or desires with many women (this example is also applicable in reverse).
Essentially, neuroticism involves human attempts to stay in control and keep themselves above the law and the Other at bay—even if the latter is always already here at full force. As a result, the subject produces a fantasy that sustains their desires and conscious beliefs that they are above the law who are in conscious control. It can sometimes be seen in people who tries to hide parts of themselves from the Other due to their insecurities or low-self esteem. One can even think of people who can never stop making inappropriate jokes as part of their unconscious attempts at remaining above the Other's impositions. While everyone is a neurotic, the point is to not necessarily force the subject to conform with the Other as they get split, which produces the movement of desire. As mentioned in my other writings, the more the subject gets isolated from their unconscious desires (due to the Other's laws), the stronger these neurotic symptoms become. Rather, the goal is to find healthier ways to sublimate these symptoms and desires of the split subject and turn them into something that is socially acceptable, so to speak.
Kant once famously spoke of a scenario where if a man was given a chance to satisfy his desires with the woman of his dreams at the expense of his life, the man would turn it down. After all, if one dies, their desires would end forever. It would make no logical sense that the man would choose to satisfy his desires which leads to his death over following the law which seeks to regulate it—the law which castrates and splits him, producing repression, denials, sublimations and deferral of his desires. Following this scenario, Lacan famously propose the opposite: if a man was given an opportunity to sleep with the woman of his dreams, he will take up on the offer despite his death. Is this what happens with the players who takes part in the squid games? Or the person who has diabetes but continues to have excessive sugar intake?
These are some pedagogical examples of the dialectics of desire and how humans always, in some ways, attempts to override the law due to their repetition compulsions, even if it leads to unhealthy habits, suffering, and their death. Ultimately, it is through these repetitions where we see the death drive in action.
The Libidinal Economy, Desire, and its Radical Overcoming
"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." —Sigmund Freud
The term "Libidinal economy" was most famously used by a French philosopher named Francois Lyotard who published a book with the same name. Such term however, is often thought to be derived from Freud. In general, the term refers to the incorporations of psychoanalytic thought with contemporary economics. The libidinal economy suggests how every economic exchange of consumer goods is an exchange and satisfaction of our pleasures, fetishes, and desires (this is where we get into ideas such as "micro-politics of desire" that Giles Deleuze is famous for). Yet, humans satisfy their desires without reaching its goal because the laws of society (Other) prohibits us from fully being satisfied. As a result, it leads to endless consumerism and content consumption (think of events like Christmas where people go on a consumer frenzy). Our society's establishment of laws is to regulate our desires while human frustrations might make them transgress these regulations so to satisfy themselves.
Freud believed that deep down, humans don't really want freedom. The moment humans establish laws so to produce equality and liberty in society (whatever this implies), human unconscious arises which creates all sorts of necrotic tendencies, compulsions, violence, and mental illnesses where they are forced to repress some of their personal desires that the law may prohibit. Freud takes on the position where humans are constantly at war between the laws that they produce in society, versus their animal instincts and desires that they unknowingly repress into their unconscious mind.
Despite all the idealizations of freedom that people fight for in the political arena, our society is perhaps, not as free as what most people think—even if we consciously perceive that we are free to do what we want. The question of freedom isn't so much about people who can desire what they want in society. Rather, it is about why we desire for the things that we do in society and what makes us desire for such things (this is where we get into things like social control). For one must not forget that, our desire is the Other's desire. The imposition of the Other is always already unconsciously at work in our minds through language, laws, and censorship which are reinforced by society and other people around us. In this sense, freedom becomes an impossible task and oppression had already existed since the beginning of human civilization, when an angry person casted a word instead of a rock.
This leads to ideas that we can see within the discourse of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the (in)famous inventors of communism and socialism who were well known for their critique on capitalism (a four volume book called, Capital; or Das Kapital in German). Marx saw how, while capitalism appears to be a free market economy, it is actually authoritarianism in disguise where the world is controlled by rich corporations, oligarchs and governments that has the power to influence other countries (known as globalization), manipulate and control people through media, politics, and exploitation of workers. And that ultimately, these corporations has the ability to avoid and take advantage of labour laws from their country by outsourcing production in poorer and less restricted countries. After all, contemporary capitalism is about making as much profit as possible in the most efficient and cost effective way—even if it may involve marketing manipulation, dishonesty, replacing workers with machines, slipping between the laws and exploiting / killing others so to maintain their power and control over them.
Recall when I spoke of how masculine desire often consists of a fetishistic dimension where people would fetishize various body parts. This idea is also used similarly under the context of "Fetish commodity", a well known Marxist idea where people buy and consume products while fetishizing various social dimensions of it—such as its relationships with certain ideologies; like how a Louis Vuitton purse signifies wealth and social status (in sociology, this is called conspicuous consumption). In other instances, one buys an iPhone or MacBook while forgetting how many of these products are produced by exploiting poor labour wages from other countries. I won't talk too much about fetish commodity today, but what I wish to point out is how society forces us into a structure (Other) where it teaches us how and what to desire, where everything is about self-interest—even in relationships. Everything is about myself and my happiness and pleasure. One can even say that society teaches us how to be narcissists, selfish, and ego-centric, which leads people into all sorts of mental illnesses.
Adam Smith who pioneered modern economics once famously wrote about the "invisible hand" and how a free market economy prevails when every individual within its system are serving themselves. By doing so, they would "invisibly" benefit society via generating and stimulating the economy. But is this always the case? Does serving ourselves result in serving others and benefit them? It wasn't until centuries later where Lacanians and Freudo-Marxists took to humorously recoin the term as the "invisible hand job"—a way to criticize our hedonistic and self-serving, self-obsessed world where people think they are serving others, even when they are serving their self interests, political gains, and pleasures. Perhaps serving ourselves in society might not always benefit others around us after all. Yet, we are always caught in a society where we are forced to serve ourselves where we may exploit its structures and transgress the law and harm other people—just like the person who cheats on their partner; or the person who desires someone who is ready to break the laws.
Due to human desire who may inevitably transgress the laws in all sorts of ways, is it possible to establish a utopian society where everyone is equal? Was Freud right that humans always have a tendency to break laws and self destruct through their repetition compulsions? Is there such thing as perpetual peace? Perhaps the reason why communism had always failed was because Marx never considered the problem of human desire (or human nature). And it is for this reason which led Freud to allude to how communism will never work, as he recites the famous Latin phrase, "Homo homini lupus": a man is a wolf to another man (from his famous book called, Civilization and its Discontents). Freud believed that humans always had a tendency to exploit laws and do all sorts of evil things to their neighbors for the sake of their desires and pleasures when they are given the opportunity. This can particularly be seen during the darkest times in human history, where the madness of humanity and their neuroticisms are revealed in some of the most violent and grotesque ways (i.e. genocide, colonialism, slavery, war crimes, murder, mass rape, etc.).
Perhaps one of the things that Freud also tried to suggest is how there can never be a communist society where people would "live according to their needs" as Marx would say. There is always something left to desire, something left to transgress where our desires may one day get the best of us. Yet, while in this post, we have explored many negative ways humans transgresses the law, Lacan also saw how certain forms of transgressions are necessary in society and within the individual in order for real changes to occur (the ethical question is how these transgressions are achieved). One can perhaps, think of such transgressions as some of humanity's greatest revolutions and protests where they tried to produce real changes in society. It is reminiscent to the function of love, where one discovers new possibilities and produces a truth as they attempt to assign new symbolic meanings that takes the place of what was previously there (precisely, the function of metaphor).
Last time, I spoke of how love can turn selfish into selfless. If love can dissolve our symptoms where we pawn or give up parts of our narcissisms for the other person which makes us humble, could love be the antidote to the problems we have in our world today? At its height, love shows us that it has the ability to traverse across some of the greatest differences between people and halt their repetitive symptoms. For where there is love, there is less desire; and where there is pure desire, there is less love. If society teaches us how to desire, love will not only interrupt our repetition compulsions, it may allow us to produce something new in our lives, where we discover new ways to desire and love like never before. Thus perhaps, what we need most is a revolution of love that surprises the world.
At the fundamental level, we can begin to see the significance on how repetition and desire takes over our lives without us realizing. We can perhaps, start to see how someone who enjoys listening to their favourite songs repeatedly can resemble so closely to major events in human history. Just as Freud and Lacan saw how humans have a tendency to repeat certain behaviors who transfers past experiences onto the present, Marx, while referencing G.W.F. Hegel, once famously pointed out how "world historical facts and personages always happen twice". This famous passage originates from a book called Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where Marx compares Napoleon III who failed to imitate his uncle, the Napoleon that everyone knows from the French Revolution. One way we can interpret this passage is Marx's suggestion that those who are involved in revolutionary changes and transgressions of society are often trapped and haunted by ideologies and events from their past (i.e. Napoleon III haunted by his uncle). In this sense, history always had a tendency to repeat in various ways, as people gets haunted by their past memories and transferences. It is just like the man who treated his girlfriends in the same ways due his transference from how his father treated his mother during his early life. It also resembles to all the failures of communism in different countries that took place in the last century.
In the same way that love has the ability to interrupt our repetition compulsions, perhaps the idea of communism was Marx's attempt at halting the repetition of history and people's tendency to get haunted by their past. Perhaps Marx invented communism out of love in hopes for a better world, even if it failed miserably every time humans tried it (i.e. Soviet Union and China). To be sure, communism failed not because its system is flawed (unlike what most people think, government does not exist in textbook communism, hence the absence of totalitarianism). Communism repeatedly failed because it is too perfect. Whereas humans are imperfect who are always subject to their neuroticisms, desires, anxieties, and frustrations, where they may break the law in all sorts of unhealthy and harmful ways. This is where we get into renown dialogues that took place between Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy on what it means to be part of a community, or to truly be "communal"—as in communism.
Above all, historical repetition can be found through the countless rise and fall of empires and the endless cycles of peace and war. This can be witnessed at grand scales through the events of World War I and World War II, where the latter was haunted by the former. Agreeing with Hegel's thoughts that history would reoccur in different ways, Marx famously adds onto his words:
"…History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
And the possibility of its overcoming?
Precisely, through love itself.
An Accumulation of Random Thoughts Upon Random Thoughts #5
November 27, 2022 iambobbyyrandom thoughts
This post talks about politics, equality, MBTI (socionics theory), among other random things. You might also like this post if you were one of the lucky few who read the story called "The Lightning Bolt" from the first version of #4; and got bummed out that I ended up removing it for the final version.
See you all in 2023 (for real this time),
P.S. When I wrote #4, I really thought it would be my last post of the year. But I decided to publish another one because I ended up writing too much random stuff on my days off work LOL. And besides, I can't end this year's posts without sharing the most important story in my world. The best is always for last—even if it is a bittersweet story. 🙂
"I would like to write you so simply, so simply, so simply. Without having anything ever catch the eye excepting yours alone… So that above all the language remains self-evidently secret, as if it were invented at every step, as if it was burning immediately".
—Jacques Derrida, The Post Card.
Thoughts on Freedom Convoy in Canada
I remembered at the beginning, the movement was about trucker mandates and the travel restrictions that are imposed on the drivers who crosses borders. There are things that I can genuinely sympathize and share concerns for in these initial stages of the protest, such as vaccine mandates, government restrictions, and their concerns for "freedom". I agree that people should have the right to express their views and opinions which means that I am fine with the convoy protest as long as it is not harming anyone.
However, the protest eventually transformed into something else entirely—something much worse. When you start seeing Nazi flags waving around and white supremacists joining and funding the movement where it is no longer about vaccine mandates, but about taking down governments or certain groups of people; harassing (terrorizing) other people who wears masks, disrupting other people's lives, stealing food from homeless shelters, and some guy throwing poo at people (lmao), then it might be a good time to ask if the protest is still fighting for the cause that you initially had in mind. Don't get me wrong, I understand there are people who are fighting for what the freedom convoy was supposed to be about where I, once again, share a lot of their concerns for—even if I think their views on freedom are naïve and short sighted.
That is all I have to say about it.
Why is philosophy so difficult?
It trains and teaches you to think in ways that most people never considered and thought was possible. Philosophy is basically the pinnacle of critical thinking that pushes the limits and conditions of what allows for the very act of thinking. To philosophize isn't just about thinking—it is to think about thinking, or to think outside of the box of thinking. It can even consist of thinking about our feelings and emotions, all the way to our existence in relationship with our world. In my opinion, philosophy is one of the most profound and influential discipline in human history. A lot of disciplines in universities used to be part of philosophy, such as math, science, economics, etc. "Thought" is a gift given to humanity. It is part of what makes us human—and sometimes, all too human.
Another reason why philosophy is difficult is due to how they are often a response to other philosophers in history. So in order to understand a philosophy, you have to understand a very long strand of philosophies where you might basically end up studying the entire history of philosophy which takes years and decades. Thus, those who have little experience in philosophy will often have trouble getting past the first few pages of certain major texts due to their lack of historical knowledge in the discipline.
Philosophy will teach you why just because someone is logically correct does not always mean it is the truth. This is because philosophy and critical thinking isn't just about thinking objectively or being logical. A lot of people can be logical while fail to think outside of it (tbh, critical thinking is a skill that I think 80% of the general population lacks). To critically think is to, in some sense, argue against your own thoughts and logic so to be skeptical about it (skepticism is a form of philosophy). Only in this way will we start to think about why we think the way we do and what led us to think in such ways. When you spend all your life in a system that teaches you how to be logical or to only do this or that, philosophy may offer you a breath of fresh air by challenging you to think outside of everything that you have learned in your life.
Philosophy is a Greek word that literally translates as "love of wisdom".
Regarding my last post where I spoke about equality…
Let us consider another one my sister's boyfriend's examples on people who supports equality.
Consider his other proposition where he used to question and challenge those who supports equality. Mr. Boyfriend presents a video where the interviewer questioned people on whether women basketball players should get paid the same as men. While many of them supported equal pay, none of them watched women basketball. While he didn't say it out loud, perhaps the problem for him is that: how can there be equal pay when people who supports equality in women basketball also didn't watch any of it to support it? And if no one watches it, how can the the sport earn enough money to pay a salary that is equal to men when no money is going into it? In this sense, perhaps the solution for equality is simple: get more people to support and watch women basketball (or whatever other solutions there are). In this sense, he is absolutely correct. However, this further brings up a question: why don't people watch women basketball more than men to begin with? On the surface, it is easy for us to say something like, "Men basketball is better because they are more athletic, etc.". While there are obvious differences between men and women biologically, I think part of the answer to this question goes back to what I said last time on gender essentialism (it can be found hyperlinked here) among other things. But let us not go there this time because I already covered it. What I wish to point out here is that, even if economic equality is established in basketball, the problem of equality remains unsolved.
This question on basketball salary differs from his previous question where equality is about women laying bricks equal to men. The main difference lies in that it considers the problem of economic equality which therefore emphasizes on the structure of capitalism. Since economically, no one in capitalism is ever paid the same due the fundamental design of its system, no one is ever economically equal. Even if women got paid the same as men in basketball, both of these leagues will get out paid by other people outside of it from not just other sports, but from people with other occupations. Therefore, women and men basketball players were never economically equal in contrast to other people outside of it—even if they get paid equally within it.
The problem of equality seems simple when you strictly look at basketball by itself, but once you put this problem into the big picture, it becomes a problem that cannot be solved because the system does not allow for it to be solved. Thus, when you see feminists who seeks for equal pay to their male counterparts in our capitalist world, some of them also falls into this same trap. For it is indeed, very difficult to achieve economic equality when the structure of capitalism is designed to segregate people into different social classes with different levels of income. In this sense, we can say that much of contemporary left / liberalism is incompetent in seeing this problem through. Therefore, one can say that liberalism is actually right wing conservatism in disguise when it comes to economic equality. In order for equality to take place, significant changes in our economic structure needs to occur. This is why people like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are so influential because it is here where we get into things like socialism where everyone in the system gets paid the same regardless if they are a neurosurgeon, basketball player, a service worker, or a janitor (this is real economic equality that comes with its own set of problems). We may even get into things like communism where money (capital) does not even exist. But it is also here, where we are introduced to the debates on whether these are a good ideas or not.
Many people are only good at looking at things within the system (which has its uses), but they have no idea how to think outside of it and consider the larger and deeper scopes of the problem that is fundamentally at work. Even if Mr. Boyfriend agrees that it is important for both men and women to have equal pay in basketball and that we can make it happen in capitalism, it still does not solve anything about equality since it is only a band-aid solution. In the same way that a doctor doesn't cure cancer by removing the tumor, economic equality cannot be achieved by making men and women with equal pay only within a certain category. You solve these problems by finding its root causes and removing them once and for all, so that the things that comes after it will forever be liberated from such problems. In cancer, this is DNA mutation. In equality, it is the structure of society.
To be sure, what I presented here is just one small dimension of the problem on economic equality. In many ways, I think Mr. Boyfriend actually asked a very good question. But just like the people in the video, he failed to properly inquire about it. Perhaps what we can learn from this is that, learning how to ask questions is just as important as learning how to answer it. This is also a good example of what I meant when I said that just because you are right does not always mean it is the truth.
Socionics and thoughts on ENFP and ESFP
As an INTJ (4w5), I had always been fascinated by ENFP and ESFPs. Both of these types are very similar on the outside where they are charming, spontaneous, bubbly social butterflies who are really friendly. In fact, they can be so friendly that people will often mistake their friendliness as romantic interest. ExFPs are sometimes the type of people who will give out their numbers just because they are friendly and enjoy connecting with others. They often assume the best in people (whereas I assume the worst). Both ESFP and ENFPs are really good at making people like them due to how friendly and fun (or flirty) they are. They can be friends with those who nobody wants to be friends with. Both of these types are also really good people promoters when they like you because they may talk to others about you.
On the surface, both ESFP and ENFP appears like they are outgoing with a large social circle, even when they are both loners at heart. They are social in a lone wolf type of way where they won't always fall into group mentality (due to Fi). This is something that I respect and admire from both of these types. While they may seem like they have a lot of friends and are open to sharing stories about themselves, they are usually only emotionally open to a very small group of people. Just like INTJs, if you try to force your way into their inner world, you will run into a brick wall due to their Fi. ENFPs are usually slightly more random than ESFPs due to their Ne who enjoys talking about abstract theories a little more than ESFP. Whereas ESFPs are more about light hearted fun, who are unapologetically themselves. While both ENFP and ESFPs are really outgoing and social, they are actually secretly judging you with their Fi. And if you violate some of their core values and beliefs, they will keep you at bay or flip out at you. I also think ENFPs have higher introverted tendencies than ESFP. But this might also have to do with their enneagram.
In the past, I've had great conversations with both of these types. My presence seem to balance their energy out where I tame their extravagant behaviors. A few of them liked to talk about psychoanalysis with me and analyze other people. I've had one or two ESFPs in the past who told me that they wish they were like me and think like me. This is not surprising since ESFP and INTJs are inverted types of each other. Meanwhile, a lot of ENFPs are actually quite smart, but can be too all over the place with their Ne. They are just about the only type who can walk right through all my armors and see who I really am as a person with relative ease.
Several ESFPs in the past had admitted that they really liked me. In socionics theory, INTJ and ESFP are considered as the perfect romantic match because they use the same cognitive functions in reverse order where they cover each other's weaknesses. In reality, INTJ/ESFP match up is very rare due to the scarcity of INTJs. And when they encounter each other, it's either they are obsessed or hate each other to death. Due to the unpredictability of inverted types, it appears that INTJ/ESFP relationships has a semi-high potential to fail. Such failure however, also significantly decreases as both types establish mutual understanding, communication and as they mature and develop their weaker functions. I noticed I get along really well with developed (usually older) ESFPs where I am often surprised by how similar they are to me in terms of intellectual orientations and world views despite being so "different" (the same goes for ENFPs). They have potential to be quite deep, despite their reputation for being high energy outgoing extroverts who are often perceived as shallow.
On the other hand, undeveloped (or immature—often young) ESFPs can sometimes strike others as text book narcissists who are attention seekers, impulsive, obsessed with vanity, lack boundaries, dramatic, and likes superficial things such as fame and social status. Until ESFPs are able to tame their Se by developing their Te and Ni (which gives them depth), I think a lot of INTJs will have trouble with ESFPs in a relationship due to the things above (but it really depends on the person). Some ESFPs are also really flirty without much boundaries, even when they are actually just being friendly and playful. They may also do things without thinking about its future consequences. At the end, I think ESFPs are good people with good hearts who just needs to slow down. And to be fair, every undeveloped / immature type can be really hard to deal with. For example, an immature INTJ will strike most people as an insensitive, controlling, blunt, arrogant asshole who needs to get humbled (INTJs are intelligent and they know it).
I think the INTJ/ESFP combo is either a natural disaster, or they work really well together once they can see past and accept each other's differences and become mindful of them (it takes maturity and love). And when they work, they have a lot of potential to grow and learn from each other which turns them into a power couple (the most famous INTJ/ESFP couple is probably Jay Z and Beyoncé Knowles). The INTJ will become better at the things they suck at, such as learning how to express their emotions and feelings, be considerate, social, live in the moment like ESFPs (not everything in life needs a plan). While the ESFP will learn how to make plans and slow down. They will also learn how to think strategically, intuitively, deeply, and profoundly like an INTJ.
In socionics, the INTJ/ESFP pairing is known as "duality" which is an example of what many people refer as "opposites attract" (even when they are not true opposites; the opposite of INTJ is ESFJ where they have no functions in common). Duality consists of all inverted pairings such as the ENFP/ISTJ and ESTP/INFJ, etc. Whereas INTJ/ENFP is often known as "the golden pair" in MBTI theory by David Keirsey. This is due to how well they compliment each other with their intuitions while simultaneously having enough difference to attract and learn from each other (similar to ENTP/INFJ or INTP/INFJ). Usually, one does not find ENFP and ESFPs to date. When these two types like you, they will find you. Both of them are proactive people who will go after what they want (and when they like you, you will know it). At the end, I think relationship pairings has less to do with typology, but more to do with each individual person and their maturity levels; along many other factors that MBTI consistently fails to account for—such as the power of love that can triumph over differences between two people. In short, I think any pairings can work as long as both types love each other and are willing to put in the work.
On universities
I think it is unfortunate how people goes to school these days not for self-enlightenment, but for the sake of making money which would lead to all the false paths that our world has now become. I understand this is the reality of life and I don't blame anyone for wanting to do something that is practical. I once met someone who told me that if he had the courage to be homeless, he wouldn't be doing what he did for work. He was a pretty funny dude LOL.
I listen to all genres of music. But right now, I am listening to the Italian piano composer, Ludovico Einaudi. I think this man writes incredibly beautiful music. The track called "The Earth Prelude", "Oltremare", and "Tu Sei" are probably some of my all time favourites from him. I am also a pretty big fan of piano music from the classical and romantic eras as well. So people like Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. I think piano is the greatest instrument ever invented (I also like violins and cellos). Piano music is soul touching, intelligent, elegant, and serene, with many layers of complexities tied to its musical compositions which allows our minds and hearts to transcend beyond space and time. It's brilliant.
Climate protestors throwing soups at art works…
I share your concerns, but you won't convince people to join your cause when they don't like you for doing things like this. Ironically, I think there is a bit of cleverness in throwing soups at paintings because it's kind of like an art on it's own—even if I think it is very disrespectful. I understand that their goal is to make people ask if art is more important than life that has been increasingly put at risk due to climate change. But little do they understand that life is actually an art in itself. Not to mention that Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are some of my favourite art movements (so people like Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet; Impression, soleil levant is a beautiful piece of painting), so throwing stuff at them is obviously a bad idea.
I found it hilarious how the protestors glue themselves onto the wall at the museum after. It's comedy because of how dumb it looks LOL. I think they should take it a step further and glue themselves with cement like they are an art piece that is part of the museum. That would be performance art at its finest.
The One Who Waits
"Sometimes, I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits."
—Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
When you love someone…
Personally, I am not someone who goes around telling people that I love them. And if you are one of the few ladies who I said this to, then they should know that these words never come out of my mouth casually. Right now, I can only think of two people who I've said it to in my life (outside of family; I'm 32 btw).
I think that if you truly love someone, you should always let them know. Often times, I think people make things a lot harder and complicated than it really needs to be (myself included). Yes, it makes us vulnerable. It might even hurt. And it might be awkward. But having the strength to be emotionally vulnerable is also what makes us strong and allow others to connect with us (and this is coming from someone who is very private about their feelings). Of course, there is always the right and wrong time to say something. But I think there are times where it is always better to produce the right time and take the risk to say it instead of living with regrets without them ever knowing. After all, love is one of the signature traits of human intelligence. I think Wolfgang Mozart said it best:
"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."
Wealth and Intelligence
Just because you know how to make money doesn't always make you intelligent. At best, you are someone who is smart at making money. There are a lot of intelligent people in this world who dies in the gutter because the things that they are good at aren't valued by society. Most importantly, you can be wealthy in your heart and mind without actually being rich.
"I learn a lot from you!"
I actually hear this line quite a bit. I also get random emails from people contacting me on this blog thanking me for my work (you're welcome, I learn just as much!). But I also sometimes hear really funny things from people. One time, a distant acquaintance told me, "Bobby, you are one of the weirdest, but also one of the sweetest person I know". Honestly, I don't know if it was a compliment or not. 😂
The Lightning Bolt
Initially, I had a lot of doubts on whether I should share this story, but I realized there is no reason for me to keep it with me because it is really beautiful. At the rate that I am spilling out random thoughts, it's only a matter of time that this person would eventually show up on here.
Some time ago, my dad asked if I will ever meet a nice girl and date them. He thought I never found anyone due to how private I am. So for the first time, I told him about this special lady who occupied my heart for the last couple years. I nearly broke down and cried when I told him how many times I messed up trying to talk to her. Due to how well my dad knows me, he actually gave me some pretty good advice. But I don't know if I will ever get to put them to use.
For the longest time, all my years of studying deconstruction and philosophy had taught me how this world is constituted through differences in truths and perspectives. But it always felt like something essential was absent from this view. And it wasn't until I encountered her where I realized what was missing. It was love. She not only taught me that love has the ability to overcome differences in the world, she made me realize that love was something which had been missing in my life. She may never know, but she actually gave me the solution to our world. Not only is she beautiful, she is incredibly profound and inspiring to me. And to tell you the truth, a good chunk of my post on psychoanalysis and love was inspired by her—especially the themes on love and infinity. In fact, the entire post would not exist without her. At one point, I even wanted to put her name at the very beginning of the post.
I will tell you a story that I've kept close to me for a really long time. It happened during this one evening a few years ago (2018?) at a coffeeshop that I regularly go to. It began when I got up and started walking towards the bar preparing to return my mug where she was cleaning one of the coffee machines. We caught each other's eyes as I slowly walked towards the bar, where she eventually realized and quickly dashed her head away (we looked at each other for probably over 10 seconds). Her beautiful green eyes put me at peace; but it also brewed a storm in my heart. And when she turned away, I couldn't get enough of them, so I had to look at her again. We turned to look at each other, as I smiled and quietly said hi. She slowly smiled and said hi back to me, as I looked at her lips, where they were quivering in nervousness. Then I turned around and left the store. It was funny because at the time, another barista thanked me for returning the mug who I completely ignored by accident. She was probably wondering what was going on, but she was actually the witness.
Ever since, this beautiful piece of memory was seared into my soul. I have no photographs of it. I only have words on this page and powerful visual impressions of it in my heart and mind. It wasn't until a year later, where I realized something really special took place that day. An event happened and I didn't do anything about it because I was scared of all the feelings that she gave me (I ignored and denied these feelings). Walking out the store that day and not talking to her became the biggest regret and failure of my life. Subsequently, I messed up really bad trying to talk to her and scared her away several times (she gave me chances to talk to her). We misunderstood each other in the worst ways possible. I don't blame her because much of it was my fault. Although I wish things were different, I still cherish this piece of memory that I shared with her. At times, I would question and get really skeptical on whether my encounter of her was love. I even wanted to continue denying this powerful feeling that consistently overwhelmed me. But no matter how hard I tried to forget these feelings, and no matter how hard I tried to forget her, I knew that my heart had already said yes. She is unforgettable. Maybe sometimes, all the time that we will get with someone are little moments like this.
Whenever I sit down at this coffeeshop, part of me really wish I could see her again where she would give me a chance to talk to her, or at least let me ask her how she is doing. And I do see her every once a while. But I think she hates me. Honestly, I really don't know. Sometimes, I would look out the window, smile, and tell myself that it's okay if she actually hates me because I just want her to be happy—even if she ends up with someone else. Yet deep down, I know I am lying to myself because I really want to talk to her and get to know her. But there is nothing left that I can do because getting to know her is not a choice for me to make. It's hers.
While I don't know what will happen in the future, one thing remains certain: I've never met anyone who made me feel the way she did that day. It was magnificent, powerful, unforgettable, and outright inspiring. For what felt like ten seconds of my life, everything in this world came to a halt and nothing else mattered except for her and I. What did I see when I got lost in her eyes that day? Was it her soul? The feelings of peace? Was it love that struck me? Or was it everything all at once?
But the worst of all confusions had yet to come: was I looking at her, or at infinity? Perhaps this is where the problem lies. For I am only a finite being. And she—she was my infinity.
Time stopped,
no words needed.
Space collapsed,
distance abolished.
I've been so busy with work that I don't have much time to read and write. Luckily, I took a few weeks off in the hopes that I get to plan some future projects where I might revive a few old posts on German philosophy from 2019. But unfortunately, I will be spending a chunk of my time laying low because I haven't been feeling very well lately. I got sick and my dog recently passed away. Watching them go to sleep forever is really depressing.
This will likely be my last post of 2022. I am aware that some of you read the first version of this post that I deleted a couple days after I published it (near the end of October; I remember I got a like or two). The reason I deleted it was because I wanted to think over some of the sections again. As a result, I took some out and added new ones in. To make up for the changes, I added new thoughts on French feminism, essentialism, post-humanism, along with more insights on psychoanalytic topics such as depression, anxiety, and jealousy. I will also show you some of the influences of deconstruction in fields like feminism.
You might notice how some of these sections builds off of my previous posts. This is because my writings can sometimes get too long where I take paragraphs out and throw them into a future post. For example, the section on German philosophy from my last post (#3) was actually written before I wrote about the Korean-German philosopher Byun-Chul Han from #2.
As usual, these can be read in any order at your own pace. 🙂
See you in 2023,
A friendly reminder
"To be harmful with what is best in us. —At times, our strengths propel us so far forward that we can no longer endure our weaknesses and perish from them. We may even foresee this outcome without wishing to have it otherwise. Thus, we become hard against everything in us that desires consideration, and our greatness is also our lack of compassion.
Such an experience, for which we must pay in the end with our lives, is a parable for the whole effect of great human beings on others and on their age: precisely with what is best in them, with what only they can do, they destroy many who are weak, unsure, still in the process of becoming, of striving; and thus they are harmful. It can even happen that, everything considered they are only harmful because what is best in them is accepted and absorbed by those alone whom it affects like a drink that is too strong: they lose their understanding and their selfishness and become so intoxicated that they are bound to break their limbs on all the false paths on which their intoxication leads them astray.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Aph. 28
When you don't try…
A long time ago, a friend of mine told me that I was way more attractive when I don't try. Thinking about it now, I think she was right. When I try, I tend to try too hard because I think too hard. But when I don't try, my natural confidence kicks in which often attracts other people to me.
I remember I once gave a presentation in front of a class of 30 or more people. When I was giving the lecture, I looked at her every once awhile where I saw her looking at me with these really big shiny eyes as she kept smiling to herself. I asked her what that was about afterwards and she was like, "Your confidence is really hot". We were just friends, but it was pretty funny LOL. I think she eventually ended up liking me—or maybe she liked me all along. I wouldn't know back then. I wasn't very good at these things. I'm still not very good at it now.
I have quite a few of these stories from back in my early 20s where I was friends with some girl only for me to discover that they liked me years down the road when it was way too late. It's really stupid. There was one girl who got really mad at me for not asking her out because I literally thought we were just friends. I remember I got her contact info from helping her at an art show. I wasn't actually trying to hit on her or anything. I was trying to be nice because she was having trouble setting up her art where I just thought we could be friends. After a few months of talking, she ended up indirectly ranting about me on her Facebook statuses and eventually removed me as friends. I even wondered who she was ranting about and why she removed me. And it wasn't until two years later where I found out she was ranting about me LOL whoops. It was totally not funny for her. She definitely thought I was an asshole, which I was honestly. But here is the thing: if she opened up, I would've dated her.
Back then, I was too focused on my intellectual endeavors to think about girls which ironically attracted a lot of them to me. It was funny because some people thought I was gay because they could tell girls liked me where I seem to take no interest in them and only treated them as friends. While I got much better at picking up these signals with age, I still suffer from these problems in a different way. If people don't tell me, I will almost always figure it out way too late.
While it is nice when someone is honest and up front with their feelings, I also understand that I often don't give them the proper space, assurances, and build enough trust and comfort for them to open up (I'm working on it as a person). I have laser beam focus where I often miss these signals from people because I am too focused on other things (I live in my head who can be really forgetful). At times, I can be so focused on my work that people would be talking to me and I won't hear a thing from them.
So what we can conclude is this: when I don't try, I literally don't care whether or not someone likes me because I am too focused on other things (and it doesn't matter how attractive they are; or who they are). But when I put my mind to it, I become an overthinker where I would endlessly ruminate about them and try too hard. So it's a matter of balance to try, but not try too hard; and learn to give people space and focus on your own things so to let things happen naturally. Yes, yes—that is what I learned over the years. 🙂
The most common logical fallacies
The most common logical fallacies are probably confirmation bias or strawman. Basically, confirmation bias is sort of like when you meet someone new where you don't like them without any real reason. So everything they do will confirm your bias that you don't like them. Simply put, you are confirming your own bias through false evidence where you are selectively seeing what you only want to see. Whereas strawman argument is when you twist someone's argument and make it seem like it is the argument that the other person is making, even when it isn't. Then you go on to make a counter-argument against this new distorted argument that you just made up. These two fallacies are so common that not many people pick up on it when they make it.
Psychoanalysis, Depression, and Anxiety
There are three basic psychoanalytic structures: neurosis, psychosis and perversion. Neurosis consists of obsessional and hysteria (and fetishism?). Psychosis consists of paranoia, schizophrenia and melancholia (or manic-depressive psychosis). In psychoanalysis, depression can be associated with any of these clinical structures and is often related to anxiety—something that everyone experiences in all sorts of ways.
This is particularly true for Jacques Lacan, who was well known as the master of anxiety, and for his clinical ability in reducing anxiety in his patients. Unlike Freud who saw that external circumstances in the world would induce anxiety into individuals. Lacan saw how, anxiety is actually embedded into the heart of human consciousness and split subjectivity through the way they experience language and meaning (Symbolic). While your everyday individual's desire is caused by lack through a object (a) that is unconsciously missing, a depressed individual is when this lack is sometimes lacking. Anxiety is produced when the subject is caught within this lack of the lack who encounters the horrors of the Real where no symbolic language can represent.
As mentioned in my other posts, another way anxiety is produced is when the subject gets too close to object a. It's kind of like running into someone you really like where they make your heart race as your face turns red and your mind goes blank (or what people refer as "butterflies"). Sometimes, this happens to the point where one may go into denial so to avoid such anxiety. They may counter this anxiety by denying these feelings and using unhealthy methods such as aggression, ignoring them, etc. (note: denial is not always conscious by the person who is doing it). So the bottom line is that, anxiety occurs when we get too close to object a (object cause of desire); or when the Real is laid bare where there is a lack of object a.
Often times, the symptoms of a depressed person consists of persistent sadness, loss of appetite, loss of interests in the things that they used to enjoy (desire), and suicidal thoughts. In short, a depressed person is someone who no longer properly desires (the subject's relationship with object a has been lost). In other instances, it could be where certain individuals are caught into a downward spiral of the desire for negative thought patterns. This is why in some modern treatments of depression, one of the ways to stop this is learning to identify these negative patterns. These techniques are often found in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. In psychoanalysis, this idea is often associated with masochism and sadism where the depressed individual unconsciously enjoys repeatedly inflicting pain on themselves, leading them to self destruction (Freud believed that this tendency for self-destruction is caused by the death drive). There are many ways the split subject can experience depression through anxiety via different clinical structures. No one is the same.
I sometimes like to use the analogy of a river to introduce people to psychoanalysis, where the water in the river represents our desires and drive for enjoyment. When the big Other imposes too many laws onto this river, such as building too many walls (dams) and blocking off the flow of water, the river will flood and overflow, causing all sorts of mental illnesses. Psychoanalysis is about clearing up these obstacles that blocks the flow of water (your unconscious desires). This is another reason why the analyst sits behind you during a session because no one is watching, imposing laws and judging you! The analyst attempts to give the analysand the needed space to produce their own desires through sublimation, either by removing some of these obstacles or give them an opportunity to find a new way to desire around these obstacles. Their job is to help them desire in a healthy way again.
INTJ or INFJ?
I sometimes think I am an INFJ and not INTJ. But when I think more about it, I fall closer to an INTJ. Regardless, I am definitely an Ni-dom. I have an intense type of focus that people can observe through the way I look at them or at other things. Friends in the past had told me that they see my intensity as a form of passion which I find much more comforting. Being mindful of it is still something that I am working on. My nephew used to be scared of me as well. But we're pretty chill now where we sometimes play video games together because I am secretly 10 years old.
This reminds me of my post on the INTJ (here). Keep in mind that it was written in third person perspective which tried to include other INTJs. People vary and no one is the same (AKA don't put everyone in a box). Some of the stuff I wrote on there is not always true for others—even for myself (unless I pointed out that it was true for me). I am probably one of the more stereotype defying INTJs out there. While I dislike MBTI stereotypes, there are some that are true for a lot of INTJs, such as minimal facial expressions, hard to read, experts at dispensing abstract knowledge, sarcastic, insightful, smart, honest, and efficient. They are independent thinkers who won't easily fall into herd mentalities. Also, they are usually one of the types who are least active on social media. INTJs are basically a human cat who likes to be left alone, but really appreciates attention from their loved ones every once awhile.
I think both INTJ and INFJs are some of the most misunderstood types in MBTI. Many of them also tends to struggle in a sensor dominated world because they value all the things that most people don't care about. Both types often feel like they don't belong which may induce the feeling of loneliness. They have what some people refer as an "onion personality" with many layers to them that may endlessly fascinate others (they are usually really deep). I always found it weird how some people wants to be an INTJ or INFJ. Trust me, you don't want to. Being misunderstood by people you care about is one of the worst feelings on the planet.
Personally, I am used to people misunderstanding me since I was born. On the surface, I tell others that I don't really care and even make jokes about it. Yet deep down, I want people who I value to understand me. As I got older, I realized that all I really ever wanted in my life was for someone to get me. Making assumptions about me is the biggest mistake most people make when they are trying to know me because 90% of them are usually wrong.
INxJs are hard people to find. They require a lot of patience to understand. This is why it is better to go slow with these types and not jump to any conclusions, since they tend to be unpredictable walking paradoxes. Romantically, meeting the "right" INxJ is more rare than what most people think because it is difficult for any type to run into an INxJ that fits their books. For example, while the odds of running into a male INTJ is around 1 in 60 (give or take). Once you factor in other qualities like mutual attractions, language barrier, age difference, and other things, the odds of running into the right INTJ will quickly jump to something stupid like 1 in 20 000. Double this if you are looking for female INTJs which makes up 0.5% of the world. INFJ men are also somewhere along this percentage.
One thing I learned growing up
Most people are not as smart as they think they are. Myself included. This is why it is best to always assume that you are wrong and give benefit of doubt. If you think about it, there is so much we don't know about everything that there is always something we can learn from everyone. Thus, never settle for a conclusion until you are absolutely certain that it is correct and have sufficient reason and knowledge to believe so. As I said before, jumping to conclusions is the culprit of humanity—just like those who jumps to conclusions about me from reading this blog.
What happens when you ask a stupid person for advice?
Everyone is good at certain things and stupid at others. The problem happens when people give advice on things that they are incompetent in answering—precisely because they think they know best, even when they know nothing. Other times, people genuinely give good advice where the other person doesn't listen. So you just have to watch them learn things the hard way.
Personally, I don't give advice. But I can tell you what I think is true—if you ask nicely. 🙂
The Best BBQ Experience
My friends and I did an outdoor BBQ for the first time at a local park in the city. We don't have much experience on how to heat up charcoal grill (my friends planned it). Eventually, we ran out of wood to start a fire and started looking for leaves and small twigs on the ground to burn. We failed to start a fire to heat the charcoal and ended up eating pre-cooked sausages that we bought from the grocery store. We laughed so hard going like, "Okay, nobody needs to know about this" LOLLL.
Human as Machine; Human as Human
One way we can look at the differences between modern psychology and psychoanalysis is how the former often involves studying people as if they are like a biological machine. This includes how scientists and doctors studies the underlying causalities on how human behavior reacts to their environments which triggers various hormonal responses in their bodies. The idea that humans are becoming increasingly like machines and should be seen as a machine is subject for debate.
This idea takes us to disciplines like post-humanism where people argue how human animal and machines should become as one. Donna Haraway is your woman in this department—particularly her famous essay called "A Cyborg Manifesto". Although I don't completely agree with her positions on how Western dualisms are placed against each other (i.e. self vs. other; man vs. woman, etc.), I think it's a really interesting essay. Honestly, the last time I read this piece was almost 10 years ago, so I don't remember that much from it.
Meanwhile, Jacques Lacan mostly rejected scientific approaches to modern psychiatry where scientists studies humans as a biological machine. Unlike your post-humanist thinkers where they attempt to conceive of humans as cyborgs and machines, Lacan thought that psychoanalysis could become a discipline that represents humanism. He sought to develop a psychoanalytic framework that acknowledges the importance of the dialectical relationships between conscious and unconscious mind where things like madness and insanity are part of human intelligence. This theme of madness is not far off from Lacan himself, who was quite a weirdo in real life. Lacan was a man who never liked naming any of his works. I think there was a TV series on him back then where it was simply called "Television". His one and only book published with all his essays on psychoanalysis is called "Ecrits" which means "Writings" in English (Lacan speaks croissant).
Last year, a detective called me about some homicide that happened in my neighbour community. I missed the call, but he texted me and told me to call him back. So I called him and apparently, some dude got shot on their own driveway, but it wasn't anyone I knew (I don't know any shady people lol). So I said to him, "You got the wrong number, but I think I found your suspect". I wonder what happened after LOL. I think it was a mistake.
One of my uncle was a detective in Hong Kong who used to tell me all these creepy stories of crimes that they couldn't solve. There was one case I remember vaguely about a man who hung himself in a skyscraper that was still under construction. The police received a call from a man of unknown identity who reported the discovery the dead person in the building. After initial autopsy, the police discovered that the man died something like 13 years ago. They contacted the victim's family who said he went missing a long time ago. At the time, there was still one piece of puzzle missing where the police could not find the man who reported the discovery of the body. The popo let the family members listen to the phone recording where they got spooked out saying that the man who reported the dead body sounds like the man who hung himself. Apparently, my uncle said a lot of people who were involved in that case had to go see psychologists, thinking that maybe they heard wrong (it might be someone else who sounded like the man who hung himself). At the end, the mysteries of the case were never solved and the man who called the police was never found. Spoooooooky.
Critical Inquiry from the University of Chicago is probably one of the most well known and prestigious journals on contemporary theory. They basically only publish ground breaking ideas. Many well known scholars had their works published on there before. There is an interdisciplinary journal from Johns Hopkins University that is also really good, but I forget the name. In general, I think journals that are dedicated to certain influential thinkers are usually pretty good. For example, there is the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, and the International Journal of Zizek Studies. There is also Derrida Today from University of Edinburgh which is peer reviewed by a lot of renown Derridean scholars like Catherine Malabou, Michael Naas, Leonard Lawlor, John D. Caputo, and Christopher Norris (most journals are reviewed by experts in their field). Unfortunately, most of the works from them are also locked behind paywalls, which sucks.
The Other's Desire
An interesting example on how our desire is the Other's desire is when you notice how some people rely too much on the opinions of their friends and family when they like someone. The question becomes: is it your friends and family dating them, or you? In a psychoanalytic context, this makes a lot of sense because our desires is the Other's desire. So for example, if all of your friends hates your crush due their erroneous judgements (or they are being manipulative), then there is a good chance that you might end up hating your crush as well. This sounds stupid, but it happens quite often where the person will end up repressing or deny these desires for the other person. Unexpressed emotions and desires will always return to haunt us in our lives, causing all sorts of new symptoms. While I am oversimplifying here, what we can learn from this is simple: it is important we learn how to think for ourselves.
You see something similar with advertisements where companies make you desire to buy something because your desire is the Other's desire (the advertisement). And this is why big companies spends so much money on marketing because it works. Apple is a good example of this.
On Jealousy
Sometimes, you see people play games by trying to make the person they like jealous. And if they get jealous, said person will think they love them. This is false—it's really just their ego speaking. Jealousy is not love. Not to mention that this is a risky tactic because the last thing you want to do when you like someone is to make them think you don't like them (pretty much the definition of self-sabotage Lol; but it is also situational).
In psychoanalysis, jealousy is often considered pathological and is sometimes confused with envy (the former is derived from the latter). While it is normal to feel jealous at times, certain forms of jealousy is actually a protruding symptom of paranoia which is occasionally associated with schizophrenia (both of these are often diagnosed as a structure of psychosis). For example, consider a couple who divorced because of the husband's jealousy who keeps making him think that his wife is cheating on him. Regardless of whether or not this is true, after their divorce, the man's symptom of jealousy remains intact where he continues to be suspicious of others and their intentions (other times, paranoia will manifest as the consistent feeling that someone is watching, stalking, or following you). In some cases, the underlying cause of this is not due to their symptom of being jealous—even if he may consciously perceive it as such during his psychotherapy sessions. His jealousy is unconsciously structured by something else—namely, the structure of psychotic paranoia. This is why a person's symptoms may not be what they consciously perceive. Hence, it is best to not diagnose yourself. Psychoanalytic diagnosis can be really tricky and difficult, even for skilled clinical analysts.
Future Emergencies
On my way home one evening, I drove by a construction road sign with the word "emergency" written on it. Out of boredom, I asked myself: what is an emergency? What does it mean to emerge? The word "emergency" is derived from the Latin term "emergo", which means "to come out" or "rise". To emerge is to come out or rise from an unexpected event in the future; it is to merge or collide with a certain form of danger or injury. An emergency is thus, a wound; it is an open invitation to a risk unforeseeable and incalculable by the human eye. It can even be said that, to emerge is to be surprised by a future that demands for our utmost attention, love, care, and hospitality. What does it mean to care for the emergencies that erupts from the future? What does it mean for humans to emerge with the future as they traverse from life to death? Is the possibility of our future death an invitation for us to reflect about our lives and the natures of humanity—and of love and knowledge?
I often think that the future is predictable because human nature is predictable. But I would rather have a future that is radically anterior, unknown, and unpredictable. I would rather have a future that is always to come—always to emerge, that invites us to collide with the greatest passions known to the human soul. I would prefer a future that constantly surprises me—just like that of love. Just like forgiveness.
On Debates, Feminism and Essentialism
The other day when I was having dinner with the family and my sister's boyfriend brought up Jordan Peterson on how awesome he is at speaking up against feminism. He spoke about how a lot of men does all the hard labour types of jobs and yet feminists want equality. So does this mean that all the women wants to equally lay bricks like men do as well? I mean yeah, if they want to lay bricks, they could and I won't judge them at all. But this is an oversimplification of the problem and it is not what equality is really about—at least not from an economical, lawful, and critical-sociological standpoint (i.e. woman should have the right to vote, have control over their bodies, fair wages, etc.; which are things that I support). It is also probably one of the most short sighted and strawman argument I've heard anyone make against equality.
I think this makes for a good case to talk a little about essentialism. Such idea has a long history that stems from Platonic metaphysics on how every object consists of an essential and immutable form or idea about it that are necessary to making up that object. While this might strike us as true in various contexts such as science, where every object has essential aspects to them that constitutes them (molecules, etc.), it is not always true in other discourses and contexts. The best everyday example in our case is gender essentialism. Consider the statement that, all men likes to lay bricks and play sports while all women likes to cook and watch TV (in everyday language, we refer these things as discrimination, sexism, stereotypes and gender roles, etc.). On the surface, these statements may reveal an essential aspect of the identity for all men and women that are unchangeable—even when they are hardly essential to both of them (because this argument is naïve, weak, and lacks critical depth). While this is an over simplification, many of us can already see the problems of this statement because it is simply not true. Yet, Mr. boyfriend makes an assumption that these essentialisms are true and measures it against "equality". While in some cases, essentialism can be seen as a valid position, there are many instances where people will argue against it in all sorts of ways, where essentialism becomes a paradox for a non-essentialist position. Let me quickly show you some of them.
In a way, one can say that Jacques Derrida was an anti-essentialist or non-essentialist thinker. Within the structure of language and interpretation, there are no essential meanings that constitutes a word's specific meaning as such (there is no fundamental "essence" in the meaning of a word other than alternative meanings that constitutes its perceived meaning). This is due to the influences in our experiences of spacetime, difference, play on words, contexts, and mental states; where meaning and intentionality can change due to these constant shifting conditions. Yet paradoxically, Derrida's deconstruction sets up a sort of non-essentialist-essentialist position where he shows us how it is precisely these essential conditions which produces the fundamental building blocks for essentialisms that are always inherently unstable and non-essential. In other words, the essential essences and definitions that determines a man and woman are unstable. Therefore, not every man likes to play hockey and lay bricks; and not every woman likes to cook and watch television. While I am oversimplifying here, this is what makes deconstruction incredibly influential in gender theory and feminism. In many ways, deconstruction allowed feminists to see how society is actually built upon privileging these essentialisms of man and woman, where it would define them and unconsciously control them so that every man who grows up within said society would only like to play hockey and lay bricks; and every woman would only like to cook and watch television. By doing so, society would endlessly reinforce and perpetuate these essentialisms as a form of social control (this goes back to my last post where I spoke about Foucault, who was also really influential among feminists; hyperlinked here). As we can see, this is one way feminist scholars will utilize deconstruction so to deconstruct gender essentialisms. Yet little do some of these feminists understand that deconstruction is not a method or a political tool. Deconstruction cannot be essentialized as a stable method because deconstruction deconstructs itself 💀.
Something similar can be found in Alain Badiou's ontology, where he uses Georg Cantor's set theory to talk about how the multiplicity of truths are born into existence through events that are produced through pure chance (set theory is a mathematical theory that tries to explain the concept of infinity and how each set of integer/number or objects have an infinite amount of sets within it). Chance becomes this non-essential, yet essential condition in producing truths in our world. It is just like the chance that an apple fell on Isaac Newton's head which allowed him to discover gravity; or the encounter of the love of your life where two people produces a new truth together (this opposes to say, the simulations of chance found in dating apps; even when there is nothing left to chance in date matching algorithms). You can also see this type of position in Slavoj Zizek's interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis on how gender differences lies at the heart of the Real where gender identities are produced to cover up the traumatic experiences of the Real. In this context, psychoanalysis becomes the essential building block for gender theories in a non-essential type of way. For it is either there is sexual difference, or there is no sex at all.
Finally, we see this non-essentialist stance in Lacan when he infamously pointed out that "Woman does not exist". Contrary to people thinking that Lacan was a misogynist trying to erase woman from history, he was provocatively pointing out how woman cannot be essentialized by the symbolic dimensions that are defined by patriarchy (and that above all, women can take position as the symbolic and redefine woman in ways never imagined). In other words, the essential definition of woman does not exist and cannot be defined in a masculine dominated society. According to Elisabeth Roudinesco, a leading French historian of Lacan and a practicing psychoanalyst, this infamous and controversial saying was Lacan's belated response to the renown feminist existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, who once asked Lacan for advice on her book called, The Second Sex before it got published in 1949. While Lacan never responded on time, this ground breaking book would later become the driving force behind third wave feminism in the 90s. In it, de Beauvoir famously said, "one is not born a woman, but becomes one". And if you think about it, such phrase really echoes to Lacan's infamous "woman does not exist", since no one is born a woman.
Anyways, after Mr. boyfriend told me about Peterson, I smiled and told him how I think Peterson is a bad reader of Derrida and Nietzsche. Then he was like, "I don't know who they are, *continues talking*"; and I was thinking to myself, "Well you really should Lol". The funniest part was that the other day, he sent me a video of the famous speech by Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globe where Gervais spoke up against actors who likes to give their acceptance speeches about politics while they have less education than Greta Thunberg. Honestly, I'm beginning to think he was using the video to talk about himself. But I don't blame him for not knowing because he never studied these things the way I did (and I think he has a good heart; it's just that he is a bit misguided and lack critical judgement and insight).
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind people disagreeing with any ideas. What I sometimes have a problem with are people who disagrees with something by nitpicking arguments, make erroneous assumptions and think they are right. This shows me that they can't even properly understand the fundamentals of other people's arguments before making a counter-argument (at least try). You can't disagree with something that you never studied or don't understand.
If I spoke up during dinner about his arguments, it might've escalated very quickly into a debate. The older I get, the more I don't like to debate people because it can put me at a disadvantage in interpersonal relationships (it depends on who, but it is usually not good for me in the long run). I'm also too lazy because it sometimes ends up with me talking too much about ideas that they never considered or thought about. And by that point, people will start to think I am patronizing them which is never my intention. If people are interested and I genuinely like you, I am willing to explain and talk for hours about topics that I've spent years studying in an open minded and nice way—even if you disagree with me. It really depends on the person. But more often than not, I'd rather save my energy. I just learn to choose my battles and when I should keep one eye closed. It is much better to have discussions rather than pointless debates that goes no where. Other times, it is nice to turn your brain off and have fun.
Nowadays, I just live and let live.
October 10, 2022 iambobbyyrandom thoughts
Here are some more brain dump where I offer my thoughts on German philosophy, law, justice, forgiveness, passion, love, photography, along with other stories. I kind of like writing these due to how casual they are. They can be read in any order at your own pace.
The Influences of 19th-20th Century German Philosophy
German philosophy had always been dominant and influential throughout 19th and 20th century continental European philosophy. Much of German phil continues to influence many scholars today in unimaginable ways. Let me quickly show you why and how they all came into being.
In 18th century, Immanuel Kant was really influential in founding what most scholars refer as "German Idealism" and Kant's own school of thought known as "Transcendental idealism". Following Kant (also known as "Post-Kantian philosophy"), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote one of the world's most influential book called the Phenomenology of Spirit. Despite that this text is consistently ranked as one of the most difficult books to read in the world, Hegel is a key thinker that anyone interested in European philosophy must understand (I've only read three chapters of this book—it is extremely hard to read). Hegel was famous for inventing a type of dialectical-idealist thinking that occurs between the conscious subject and the world around them and how knowledge is produced through their dialectical relationships.
It wasn't until later where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels would invert Hegel's ideas into a socio-political framework towards a materialist philosophy (the opposite of idealism is materialism). As a result, this led to the (in)famous political ideas known as "communism" and "socialism" (unlike what most people think, contemporary China is not communist; economically, they fall closer to state capitalism; though one can argue that China has communist values). Marx and Engels were really influenced by Hegel's famous writings called "Master-Slave dialectics". In today's world, we can roughly translate its title as proletariat and bourgeoise AKA the poor (slave) and the rich (master); the latter who controls and exploits labour ("Let me pay you minimum wage while I make bank!"). Marx and Engels founded a new type of thinking known as "dialectical materialism". They were also famous for their super influential critique on capitalist economy from a four volume book called, Capital, where they provided the foundations for labour theory (edit: I misremembered and realized it is actually a four volume book).
Existentialism also began to take form in 19th century by German (and Danish) thinkers—largely as complete or partial rejection to Kantian and Post-Kantian philosophies. There was Arthur Schopenhauer who was incredibly influential and renown for his nihilism and pessimism (a great writer, who wasn't exactly an existentialist, but was sometimes at the brink of being seen as one). Then there is the legendary Friedrich Nietzsche who was famously influential for his aphoristic writings and his philosophy on perspectivism (he was influenced by Schopenhauer among others; and Chinese philosophy). If I remember correctly, Nietzsche was one of the first to conceive of the idea that humans are thinking when they do not think they are thinking. In late 19th – early 20th century, this idea influenced the renown Austrian neurologist and inventor of psychoanalysis named Sigmund Freud, who discovered the unconscious mind.
Phenomenology (the study of phenomena, intuition, temporality, intentionality, and experience) also came into existence in mid-late 19th century by a bunch of mathematicians turned philosophers (mostly from Germany and Italy if I remember correctly). Two famous figures came into play: Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl; the latter who formed a school of phenomenology that laid out the intellectual landscape of 20th century German, French, and a good chunk of other European philosophies. I believe Husserl did not write his most influential work until he was in his 70s—a book called Logical Investigations (it is hard to read; I recommend Cartesian Meditations where Husserl introduces phenomenology through his inspirations of the French-Dutch philosopher, Rene Descartes). Husserl was Jewish and lived under the Nazi regime that banned him from publishing. They also tried to burn his books. During World War II, his works were saved by a philosopher named Herman van Breda who smuggled his manuscripts into a Catholic library in Belgium which later became a university. One of Husserl's students at the time was Martin Heidegger, who ended up dominating 20th century thought. Heidegger—influenced by Husserl and Nietzsche—combined phenomenology and existentialism together which in turn, influenced a ton of French philosophers in 20th century such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Giles Deleuze and many more (tragic fact: Deleuze jumped out the window of his apartment and killed himself due to his respiratory health problems).
In early 20th century, Freud's work on the unconscious mind and human nature also took center stage (there was also Carl Jung who was Freud's student that Freud disagreed with; unfortunately, Jung wasn't as influential in the philosophy circle as Freud). Freud was also well known for his encounter of Albert Einstein where they exchanged letters and spoke about war and human conflicts.
In France, a Russian-Hegelian philosopher named Alexandre Kojeve taught a very small class of students on Hegel where most of them became renown intellectuals: Jacques Lacan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Georges Bataille, Maurice-Merleau Ponty, and a few others. Like Marx and Engels, Lacanian psychoanalysis was influenced by Hegel's "Master-Slave dialectics" (and Freud). One can perhaps, think of the relationship between the unconscious mind (master) that controls our conscious thoughts (slave) as a dialectical relationship. This is why Lacan's writings—especially his lectures—are full of Hegelian allusions which makes him really hard to understand. Then there is German philosopher Hannah Arendt (a student of Heidegger and also his lover) who was renown for her political philosophy on totalitarianism. There was also the novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka who was influential among the philosophy circle (I think he was Czech or Bohemian). Kafka was also famous for his love letters that he wrote to a woman named Jesenka Milena that he only met once or twice (now published as epistolary literature called Letters to Milena).
Influenced by Hegel, Marx, along with other thinkers like Freud, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and Georg Lukacs, 20th century Germany developed a famous school of thought known as the "Frankfurt school" (part of the Goethe University Frankfurt). It remains incredibly influential in its social theories on linguistic subjectivity, social communication, modernity, advanced/late capitalism, and other branches of critical theory. In it, there was Theodor Adorno who was famous for his philosophy on aesthetics. Walter Benjamin known for literary and art criticism (another tragic fact: Benjamin killed himself to avoid getting captured by Nazis; there is a really cool memorial art made for him where he took his life at the border of Spain and France). There is Hans-Georg Gadamer (a student of Heidegger) who is well known for his works on hermeneutics (the study of interpretation). There is Erich Fromm who is known for psychoanalysis and social theory; Max Horkheimer known for his works in authoritarianism; and Herbert Marcuse known for his criticism of technology. Marcuse was one of the first few thinkers to conceive of technology as a form of social control. Then there is Juergen Habermas (who is still alive?) renown for his works on communication and rationalism. Habermas and Derrida had really famous heated debates in the past where they eventually became friends later on.
Ultimately, Frankfurt school formed what some people today refer as "Cultural Marxism". The term "Freudo Marxism" also came into existence via Frankfurt school, where scholars use Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to analyze modern society. The most famous contemporary thinkers to do this are the Slovenian scholars Slavoj Zizek, Alenka Zupancic, and Mladen Dolar. Together, they formed a new school of psychoanalysis that is now known as the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis.
I missed some stuff here and there, but this covers a good chunk of the influences of German philosophy.
Those who reads this blog…
Probably learns a lot about me. Truth is, I am stuck in my head 80% of the time when I am alone. It's nice to have a random stranger or friend to come up and say hi when I am in public because it shakes my mind up a bit. But I think some people are intimidated when they talk to me where I have to be extra nice so they know I mean no harm Lol. My brain is always buzzing through a billion thoughts at once. It moves so fast that I can't even tell you what I am thinking about if you ask me in person. It is only after a certain amount of time where these ideas and thoughts slowly gather where they start to appear on here in fragmented form. This usually happens at night when my brain explodes where I go on a writing spree.
"There is something really different about you"
When I first officially met my MA supervisor back in 2019 at his office, the first thing he said to me was, "There is something really different about you from all the other students I taught". I looked at him in shock going, "Huh? Really? Lol" (that's a lot of students). I honestly didn't know whether it was a good thing or not, but it was something that I always remembered him saying. I also remember how he used to read my blog and told me how he likes the way I explain things in my posts on deconstruction and psychoanalysis. And if he reads this, Hi. 🙂
On reading philosophy and mental health
Reading these big difficult texts that continuously throw hard truths at you about how messed up our world is can take on a mental toll. Sometimes, it is better to stay away or take a break from certain books because ignorance truly is bliss LOL. I think the truth about our world can be really scary the deeper we dive into it. Knowing and thinking too much can be a curse.
When I was in my mid-twenties, philosophy destroyed me. I realized our world runs on taking advantage of others and making a profit off of them. The most depressing thing is that there is not much I can do other than sharing with you the things I've learned (I don't advertise this blog—only those who knows where to find it will know). I still remember when I was 25 where I cried to my dad telling him that I really wanted to change this world and make it a better place, but there is nothing I can do. In order to make this world better, we actually have to reinvent the entire structure of society and the ways we think. And it wasn't until I got older where I made peace with it and tried to focus on smaller things.
On bad days, this still gets to me because my current job is not very meaningful to me. Work can be grindy, but I think that's just life in general Lol. It's true that I often find myself disappointed in humanity and society (my dad sometimes tells me that I was born in the wrong time Lol). When my social energy is topped off, I can be happy and chill with most people. Yet deep down, I have this otherworldly, hyper gravitational core inside me where I have a tendency to ruminate very deeply about life, humanity, love, knowledge, space, and time. As I got older, I learned how to think less about these things because ignorance is bliss Lol. Nowadays, I am reluctant to tell people about the things I know because they would likely get intimidated or think I am crazy.
Just like love, where it is much better to have failed and lost than to never have loved. I think it is better to know the truths about our world than to not know—even if it hurts. It is much better for us have passion for something (or someone) than to feel nothing at all. In a way, it can be liberating to understand and see the world for what it really is. Being human is not always fun. It often involves suffering, struggling, and fighting (and of course there are good things as well, such as joy, etc.). Whether this battle is something personal, a social cause or for someone you love, it is these battles that makes us who we are, giving us our unique character.
Disc golf is peaceful…but it is also ghetto
I was solo disc golfing some weekend ago and joined some random girl who was also playing solo. She was new to the sport and told me how peaceful disc golf makes her feel. I totally agreed with her. So we played a few holes together peacefully where I taught her how to putt and parted ways.
But disc golf can also be pretty ghetto. There is this course located in this high crime rate community that my friend and I abbreviate as "FL". The course is quite popular due to how beginner friendly it is. Every time my friend and I go there, we would always hear police sirens every 10 minutes. The course obstacles are different every time because homeless people always sets up their camps in different places. The most FL energy thing I've seen was a woman snorting what I assumed to be cocaine on a picnic table. She even cheered for our drives as we tried not to dome her with our discs while we teed off. Getting hit by a moving disc at full speed can send you to the emergency.
I got a brand new Facebook after permanently deleting my old one 2 years ago. I got it so I can go on local disc golf groups and keep myself updated with the news that goes on in my area. The platform changed quite a bit since the last time I used it. I don't even scroll through my Facebook feed. But it's not like I scroll through my other social media feeds either LOL. I will look at the first few posts at most and get off.
Facebook is kind of like feudalism. The king gives you some land (your FB profile) and tells you that it is yours and you are free to do whatever you want (communicate with others, post stupid stuff, etc.). But at the end, they have the authority to take all of it from you, collect all your data, spy on you, and make money off you. The same can be said for most social platforms these days. Luckily my Facebook is just a wasteland of nothingness. It's blank. I don't post and use it for anything outside of disc golf and maybe talk to a few old friends every now and then.
Why does capitalism strive for perpetual growth and endless consumerism?
I am no expert, but I would explain it like this:
Imagine a society with only 10 people in it and no money has been injected into its system. If each person wanted to buy a house and apply for a loan, the bank or government would have to conjure money out of thin air and lend it to them (or they print them). So lets say that it costs 10 dollars to buy a house. Each person borrows 10 dollars from the lender which pays for the house (the 10 dollars pays for the cost of building the house, workers, etc. which are money that gets injected into the economy). In return, the bank or government asks you to pay them back 11 dollars total which includes a 1 dollar interest rate. How would anyone be able to pay back that extra dollar when the system only has 100 dollars injected into it? The system would need an extra 10 dollars in order for the ten people to pay back their interest rate. So the -10 becomes debt and people would end up trying to earn it from each other with never ending debt (this is why almost every country is in debt). Essentially, everyone ends up trying to pay back 1 dollar that does not exist in the system.
To "solve" this problem, the system would need to rely on producing "future money" or loans (credit) from people who joins the society in order to inject more money into the system which would produce more debt. In this sense, we can say that interest rate is money that does not (yet) exist in the system until more money is injected into the economy. And this is not accounting for things like greed, labour exploitation, third-world wage, and people lending their borrowed money to others and asking for even more interest in return. Then there are also people who defaults on their debt which forces interest rates to rise. All of this is one of the reasons why when inflation rises, countries will increase interest rates and lend out less (future money) so to level out exchange rates, control inflation, and try to not turn your 100 dollars into 1 dollar.
Meanwhile people pay their taxes or invest in some government retirement plan where they take all your money and spend it all on infrastructure or something much worse like killing people in other countries. As a result, the money generates even more debt (the government owes the person who gave them money to spend). This mounting debt that countries have will continue to grow until no one can pay anything back where the system resets through some miracle or by going to war (just kidding, governments can pay you back by producing more debt of course! Duhhhh). Meanwhile, politicians accuses each other going like "This monkey is spending too much money, vote for me instead!". The bottom line is that in order for capitalism to thrive, people must constantly work (or volunteer to be slaves; whichever you prefer), consume, borrow money, and produce so to generate capital and pay back interests that never really existed in the first place.
Damn, this sounds dumber than I thought LOL.
Law, Justice, and Forgiveness
Saying this kind of makes me sound like a criminal, but it is true that I am often critical of authority and laws. Obviously, I am not saying that we should walk around harming, murdering or kidnapping people. What I am trying to get at is how many of our written and unwritten laws today functions as a form of social control. This idea was famously presented in Michel Foucault's book called Discipline and Punish where he traces how modern prisons came into existence. He argues that prisons are essentially everywhere, from schools, factories, hospitals, military, and even psychological institutions that seeks to liberate other people (it's true that I like to make dirty jokes with the title of this book LOL). These prisons seek to discipline us and create controlled bodies and minds. For those who studied psychoanalysis, this sounds really similar to the function of the Other who imposes laws on the conscious subject that makes them obey.
When one speaks of laws, we also imply some form of justice. Does the law bring justice to our world? Is justice what we need—especially after generations of conflict, colonialism, war, and other forms of violence? Can justice be served by punishing someone or a group of people? Could there really be peace by serving justice?
What if justice is just another word for revenge? If so, history is a never ending cycle of generational revenge and violence. Such theme can even be witnessed as a norm in films where some protagonist wants revenge for their loss of something or someone (or the loss of their dog). Is it possible to talk about justice without revenge and punishment? What if the origins of justice is not founded on such terms but by something that radically exist beyond all laws? What if justice is founded on forgiveness?
I think forgiveness is a very important theme that must be addressed and considered in our world today. It is something that isn't talked much about because people are too indoctrinated to think outside of their ideologies. This reminds me of Jacques Derrida's famous public lectures on forgiveness (called, On Forgiveness). In it, he points out how real forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetfulness, juridical law, amnesty (government pardon), and any forms of authorities. Forgiveness is a "madness of the impossible" because it exceeds all the conditions established by law and justice. It is madness of the impossible because true forgiveness is nearly impossible to achieve. Can we for example, forgive someone who killed one of our loved ones? To truly forgive is to forgive the unforgivable.
Near the end of his lectures, Derrida points out how—quite the contrary to the juridical which punish others either out of revenge or discipline—forgiveness is what lies at the origins of laws and justice. Similar to the ways I spoke about love in the past, Derrida asserts how forgiveness is like an event that arrives before us like a surprise or an unexpected revolution that challenges all institutions, laws, and authorities. He writes some really beautiful and humane passages on forgiveness:
"Must one not maintain that an act of forgiveness is worthy of its name, if there ever is such a thing, must forgive the unforgivable and without condition? And that such unconditionality is also inscribed, like its contrary, namely the condition of repentance, in 'our' heritage? Even if this radical purity can seem excessive, hyperbolic, mad? Because if I say, as I think, that forgiveness is mad, and that it must remain a madness of the impossible, this is certainly not to exclude or disqualify it. It is even perhaps the only thing that arrives, that surprises, like a revolution, the ordinary course of history, politics, and law. Because that means that it remains heterogeneous to the order of politics or of the juridical as they are ordinarily understood. […]
Yet, despite all the confusions which reduce forgiveness to amnesty or to amnesia, to acquittal or prescription of the work of mourning or some political therapy of reconciliation, in short to some historical ecology, it must never be forgotten, nevertheless, that all of that refers to a certain idea of pure and unconditional forgiveness, without which this discourse would not have the least meaning. What complicates the question of 'meaning' is again what I suggested a moment ago: pure and unconditional forgiveness, in order to have its own meaning, must have no 'meaning', no finality, even no intelligibility. It is a madness of the impossible. […]
Must we not accept that, in the heart or in reason, above all when it is a question of 'forgiveness', something arrives which exceeds all institution, all power, all juridical-political authority? We can imagine that someone, a victim of the worst, himself, a member of his family, in his generation of the preceding, demands that justice to be done, that the criminals appear before a court, be judged and condemned by a court—and yet in his heart, forgives."
When people talk about you
A friend brought up this topic awhile ago. Honestly, I'm probably the last person people come to for people stuff unless they want some deep philosophical and psychoanalytic insights LOL. I am quite good at analyzing people, but most everyday person don't really concern me. If you hang out with me, you may notice that I don't talk about other people very much. I almost never gossip. But I understand this is how some people bond and have conversations, so I usually don't mind when it is brought up. In general, I think people likes to talk about others without any underlying reason—so it doesn't always mean anything. There is also not much you can do when others talk about you.
It's weird because I am someone who often tries to avoid attention from others. Despite the fact that I am pretty good at being invisible, I sometimes draw unwanted attention. I was kind of famous back in my undergraduate days where people who met me would openly tell me how they talk about me with others. Thinking about it, I also got a sense that people talked about me in grad school. I remember I once met with a prof for the first time because I couldn't take her course (but really wanted to). I told her I came from a design background where she gasped and gave me this surprised look as if she discovered who I really was (I assume someone told her about me). My supervisor told me how profs who were on the grad school admission committee kept asking him who I was (he wrote one of my reference letters). I am Bobby…I guess. Hah!
Fashion photography and art
When I was in my early to mid 20s, I was very much a fashion photography guru. Not only that, I also understood the economical, sociological, historical, and art theories that surrounded the discipline. Back then, I was really into photographers like Guy Bourdin, Helmet Newton, Corrine Day, Juergen Teller, Tim Walker, Nick Knight, Steven Meisel, and a few others that I can't immediately recall. My main fascination lies in its intersection between fashion as a capitalist product and anti-consumerist art.
There are photographers and artists in fashion industry who took up to the challenge of critiquing consumerist and elitist aspect of fashion. Many of their works weren't simply pictures of some pretty lady in some beautiful dress, they were photographs that made you think. Through their works, they became challengers of the system that reflected varies states and aspects of society—something that I really liked. In many ways, they were pretty rebellious, just like me Lol.
At the time, I realized that being a photographer was about learning how to see the world. This way of seeing lead to studying big difficult disciplines like philosophy which eventually took me to graduate school (i.e. my studies of deconstruction and psychoanalysis). During my undergrad, I had a reputation where people knew me as a guru in all sorts of art theories. It is true that my interest in philosophy and cultural theory outgrew my interest in fashion and photography—even if I maintain the thought that it was photography and art which taught me how to see the world differently. Even when in reality, it was my passion and love for these things that took me beyond them in all sorts of ways (to have infinite thoughts about them, precisely).
That was when I met a teacher (and later became a mentor) who showed me the intersections between philosophy, art, and fashion. She recommended me a book called All for Nothing by Rachel K. Ward, who was a student of the renown thinker Jean Baudrillard from the European Graduate School. The book was Ward's PhD dissertation that talks about the ethics of desire and how it leads to decadence. It was the very first book that introduced me to other French and German thinkers. I spent the entire summer close reading Ward's book where she changed my life. I should write about her one day. I think she is brilliant.
With all this said, I still have a ton of fashion magazines and books sitting around. I have a huge collection of the French fashion magazine called Numero that I got shipped directly to me in Canada from France. I also have various small collections of different Vogue magazines (Italia, Germany, and others).
What is passion?
Just like love, passion is difficult to describe with words because it involves really intense emotions and feelings. It is important we understand that passion is not a description of feelings. Passion is a form of tension that is produced beneath the surface of our words, thoughts, and actions. You can for example, experience passion being produced through the narrations of a great novel, poem, art, film, or the melody/lyrics of a great song (passion is a manifestation of love). You can experience it being produced by someone who knows how to make use of the flow of their words, tone, and punctuation. Passion is always produced underneath the surface of everyday experiences that requires a certain form of concealment. Passion is an intense and powerful movement of the human heart. And for some people, it can be a frightening experience that they actively avoid.
As a result, and as paradoxical it may seem, it is much easier to turn passion into something simple and consumable like happiness and light hearted fun. I sometimes think people intentionally dilute their most intense passions that they have for someone (or something). As such, people will try to hide passion which ironically makes it naturally play itself out like an unescapable destiny. People hide their passion without realizing that passion is always made to be seen. To hide our passion from someone is to say, "I want you to know that I am hiding something from you". Passion can be seen because the act of hiding can be seen. For here lies the secret to the greatest passions of humanity: the more someone tries to hide their passion, the more you can see its tensions tucked beneath its surface. For passion is always there where you are not where it triumphs over all our attempts at neutralizing it. —This is seduction at its highest order.
On love, commitment, and infinity
It is very hard to talk about love while also be original without reciting clichés. This was one of the things that made my writings on psychoanalysis and love really difficult (you can find it hyperlinked here). I think the underlying reason why some people are commitment phobes is because society offers too many distractions and choices for them (there is this handsome guy, that pretty gal etc.). Perhaps this might be a protruding symptom of our consumer society that unconsciously made us this way. For is it not society that teaches us to maximize our options in life like we are running our own business? Are we not made to choose and pick the person who can best satisfy our desires? In turn, love becomes some commercial exchange of satisfying our own desires which is—in my view—very degrading in the name of love. And if there is a desire that love makes us want to satisfy, it would be the other's desire; i.e. to want them to be safe and happy (I will get to this).
You can sometimes see this in the dating world where some people likes to casually date 10 people at once or those who likes to bounce around for casual sex (but it is as Lacan would say: when one loves, it has nothing to do with sex). On the surface, they will often say they just want to figure out what they like or don't like, even when this is their desires talking (a wishful projection). But doesn't this also sound similar to your average consumer who wants to purchase the right product that best suits their own desires and needs?
Regardless of whether love has anything to do with the nurtures of consumer society, love often arrives when we least expect it. This is to say that, love has nothing to do with our desires and needs. And love is certainly not a product or commodity to be consumed. Just ask parents who I hope loves their children, and they will all say the same thing: it is about their children's needs. They want their children to grow up to be happy and healthy. Love that is catered to our needs (or desires) is narcissism (I simplified it here). And the funny thing is that I often see "self-help" posts like this all the time on social media where people tell others that everything should be about themselves. Don't get me wrong, it is important that we take care of ourselves and love ourselves to a certain extent. But I think there are boundaries that must be understood.
Perhaps some of you are familiar with the famous Greek mythology of Narcissus who looked into the fount of water and fell in love with himself—sort of like people's obsessions with looking at themselves in the mirror or their own photographs (many mythologies and religions are symptoms of the human psyche). Quite the contrary, love is not about the reflection of ourselves. It is about the reflection of the other person. Real love is not a contract between two narcissists who loves themselves more than they love the other person. Love is not simply feelings of euphoria or sadness that we consume. Love is not a mutual exchange of selfish desires (money, objects, sex, fun, etc.). When love is produced through the declaration of our words ("I love you"), it is no longer about these words alone. Love transforms into selfless acts for the other where we love them more than we love ourselves; where we care for them, protect them, fight for them, and die for them. To love someone is to put their needs above our own—to love them more than we love ourselves in the reflection. Therefore, love often involves struggling, compromise, and sacrifice. Or to put it light heartedly, love is about who cleans the toilet and does the dishes. Thus, we can say that, love is determination, commitment and faith, where it has the ability to overcome some of the greatest differences and obstacles between two people. And it is only through this faithful commitment to the other where love can become eternal and infinite.
"To love is to struggle, beyond solitude, with everything in the world that can animate existence. This world where I see for myself the fount of happiness my being with someone else brings. 'I love you' becomes: in this world there is the fount you are for my life. In the water from this fount, I see our bliss, yours first. As in Mallarme's poem, I see:
In the wave you become
Your naked ecstasy."
—Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love.
September 4, 2022 iambobbyyrandom thoughts
Another brain dump post where I write a few paragraphs and stop. Once again, there are zero consistencies to the things I write in between asterisks. It includes insights on the prolific Korean-German philosopher Byun-Chul Han. I also touch on the problem of consciousness and share some other random stories. I reorganized them to flow better, but they can be read in any order. Some of these are pretty long.
"I heard a lot about you!"
Every time someone says this to me, I laugh and think to myself: "Oh wow, you heard a lot about me? It's probably not all good" LOL. I am a pretty big weirdo who can be hard to understand sometimes. But once you understand me, everything else will fall into place. I am not as serious as what most people think. Since my early 20s, my friends coined the term "Bobbyism" to imply things that only a Bobby would say and do. I can be pretty goofy once you know me well. I am the person who throws pinecones at my friends during a disc golf round (in the winter, I start snowball fights on the fairway). I am the person with toilet humor while you are eating dinner. I like to sit around the house reading and writing in my underwear. I am also the ultra dry and sarcastic dude where you can't tell if I am joking or being serious half the time. I also banter quite a bit and may roast someone just because they annoy me (and because it's funny). Some people probably find me annoying because I can turn almost anything into the butt of my jokes. They probably wish they never knew me so I can go back to the serious stone cold silent killer Bobby LOL.
The problem of consciousness
The problem of consciousness is really old and has been studied for a really long time. Basically, it revolves around the idea that neuroscientists can study the neural causalities and the maps of our brain when someone is happy or sad, etc., but they cannot explain the actual experience of happiness and sadness. There is something about consciousness that has long believed to be non-tangible. As such, the problem of consciousness (and unconscious) is more often talked about by philosophers than scientists simply because you can't always empirically prove it.
[Did you know that scientists used to be called "natural philosophers"? Did you know that 95% of all Wikipedia articles eventually leads to the philosophy page? (see here). Philosophy is probably one of the oldest intellectual discipline in human history. A lot of disciplines in universities used to be considered as part of philosophy: art, mathematics, science, law, physics, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, etc.]
If two different person had the same identical patterns of neurons firing in their brains when they are happy, does this mean they experience happiness in the exact same way? How can you know for sure? If our biology is identical—or at least very similar (that is, we all have a brain, heart, lungs, etc.), why are we so different from each other with different personalities and preferences? Shouldn't we all be the same? Can I ever experience the world outside of my first person perspective so I can truly understand the other person?
The more questions you ask, the more you will realize that there are a lot more things that goes on in our brains than neurons firing in specific ways. Although it is not my intention to downplay the importance of neuroscience, consciousness is very complex which often stretches beyond scientific empiricism and into the metaphysical world (i.e. the idea of an "idea" in our head begins from non-tangibility—something that we may one day make tangible). Things like gender for example. If you ask a scientist, they will often give you a naïve answer like "gender is a choice" which is certainly not wrong, albeit an oversimplified one. Whereas disciplines like psychoanalysis and gender theories can provide much deeper insights on gender and sexuality—even if there are many debates between the two fields. In another sense, one can find the causes and changes of our hormones and nervous systems when someone is depressed and thus, find ways to fix it via medicine, but perhaps depression isn't simply about the causalities of our bodies, but the way human consciousness functions in relationship with reality.
You know what I just discovered?
I was at a family BBQ and my cousin told me that one of our cousins is a famous YouTuber with over 700k subscribers.
Why some leftist scholars are critical of liberalism
It is common for people to think that by favoring liberalism, one is in support of socialism—and even communist values. However in the intellectual world, the term "neoliberal" (contemporary liberalism) is often criticized by various leftist scholars. There are leftist thinkers who believes that contemporary liberalism is not much different to right wing ideologies (this is not to say that liberalism don't have any leftist values). As such, many of them don't vote because they see it as right wing conservatism in disguise.
This type of skepticism has a long history which stemmed from Karl Marx (who invented socialism, communism, along with publishing a lengthy critical analysis of capitalism) and people like Sigmund Freud. In general, there are many reasons why these leftist thinkers hold such views and some are more complex than others. Basically, the problem with our capitalist world is that it has snowballed out of control where every aspect of our lives has become commoditized—including the ideology of liberalism, socialism and communism. The explosion of technology made it even easier. Everything in our lives is up for exploitation and consumption where even our identities has become capital. Everything is up for sale so to serve our desires. You see this in the way people become an entrepreneur (self-exploit), turn themselves into a "brand", or how people "market" themselves in the dating world. Meanwhile, love is reduced to sex, and the intensities of our passions is reduced to comfort and safety. We exploit ourselves and others in the digital world (social media, dating apps, etc.) in exchange for narcissistic pleasures. The effects of capitalism can be felt everywhere in our lives without us realizing it. This is why real change has become really difficult to achieve because some of these people argue that capitalist ideologies has been imprinted into our (unconscious) minds which took over our lives (this idea originates from Slavoj Zizek's famous book called, The Sublime Object of Ideology).
Other leftist thinkers will talk about dictatorship through digitization of our world where technology (re)organizes everything in our lives. Google predicts and suggests what you will like and what your next holiday destination will be at. It tells you what your favorite restaurant should be, and what websites to visit by putting them on the first page of your searches (an indirect way of censorship). Dating apps will predict what type of person you like and who you should talk to and date. Everything is determined through sameness and similarities. There is not much room left for contingent encounters of love. There is nothing left to risk, possibility, or chance; and for authentic events to occur which may produce real changes, differences and novelties in the world (instead, we have the same shit over and over again, just like your latest iPhones). Everything is revolved around control, safety, comfort; everything is about ourselves, our narcissisms, and desires. Many of them thinks that we are living in an age of digital totalitarianism and mass surveillance while people think they are free as they are enslaved to their desires and the frenzies of capitalism. Such frenzy is discovered from our never-ending productive labour all the way to how we are encouraged to always find constant connection with others and avoid getting stuck in our thoughts. Society wants you to be productive and take action. It doesn't want you to think. It wants you to be distracted and be afraid of your thoughts. It wants you to endlessly consume and desire.
If you think of it like this, perhaps the cause and proliferation of mental illnesses in 21st century are not unfound. The paradox is that our society has become less about humans producing society as the symptom of their neuroticism. Rather, it is society which produces human neuroticism and narcissisms which feeds into a vicious never ending circle. Modern society has become a breeding ground for all sorts of mental illnesses. We are the products of our society.
Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology
One major idea that psychoanalysis consistently fails to account for is human intuition of space and time. For those who are familiar with philosophy, intuition and time consciousness is something that big disciplines like phenomenology studies extensively. Jacques Lacan tried to incorporate temporality into psychoanalysis early in his career but ended up disbanding it.
Freud once spoke of how our unconscious mind is timeless, yet nearly all of his patients have a tendency to regress back into their childhood traumas/past, producing all sorts of neurotic tendencies in their adult lives (due to transference). If the unconscious mind is timeless, why would people regress back into their childhood? All of this seem to suggest that psychoanalysis as a discipline appears to resist time. While Jacques Derrida was influenced by psychoanalysis (his wife was a clinical psychoanalyst who passed away from COVID-19), he thinks the discipline is incomplete. The criticism of psychoanalysis is most prominently seen in Derrida's book called Resistances of Psychoanalysis (I wrote about it hyperlinked here). It is also explored by contemporary philosophers such as Adrian Johnston.
Essay writing and trolling your professors.
The requirements for research papers in grad school can sometimes be a hinderance due to how they require you to cite 8+ mixture of primary and secondary sources. Profs make you do this because they want you to learn how to write publishable papers and join contemporary intellectual conversations (in grad school, you are learning how to become a "professional scholar"). Back then, I sometimes just want to write essays where I cite 1-4 books but get really deep and create something cool out of them. I am more interested in theory crafting from scratch than joining contemporary conversations that I don't always care about.
During my undergraduate years, I clashed with one or two of the teachers where I ended up trolling them with my assignments. I admit, it was very funny watching them get annoyed (what can I say? I'm just your everyday sadist). I'm pretty sure they still hate me till this day LOL. The best part was that I technically didn't break the assignment outline. I went outside the parameters and did what I wanted to do by slipping between the rules (I did it because they had dumb rules that made no sense lol). I think I got a D in one of them. But that's okay because D stands for Done. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On Professionalism
I never liked using this word since my early 20s. Terms like "professional scholar", "professional philosopher", or "professional artist" are words that I refrain from using. But it also depends on how you define it. Most people probably associates professionalism with someone who does something for a living. I think there are instances where I am okay with using it—such as a doctor or a nurse. But in the context of art, philosophy, and thinking, I see professionalism as an obstacle to overcome.
In many cases, professionalism can function as a form of authority to make others obey (like some political ideology). You are a professional now. You can't do this. You can't say that. You can't think like this or that. Professionalism can sometimes make us blindly follow rules that makes no sense. Due to this, it may limit our ability to think critically and make us forget who we are. In many cases, I think learning how to be human is much more important. I sometimes hear people talk about wanting to become a "professional philosopher". Like, wtf does that even mean? It sounds so stupid LOL.
Let me put it this way, there is nothing professional about philosophers like Socrates who walked around Ancient Greece debating with everyday citizens. There is also nothing professional in the way some public intellectuals give their presentations. In many cases, the more professional one tries to be, the further away they are from truth. It's too proper. Too formal. Too normal. —It's too boring. Great thoughts and ideas comes from not being afraid to think beyond boundaries, offend others (unintentionally), and challenge dominant modes of thinking. When there is too much structure and filter for the sake of "properness", there is no room left for truth and the risk for producing anything new. There is no room left for thought and imagination. We need a spark to start a fire. This kind of reminds me of Michel Foucault's lectures called, The Courage of Truth….Anyways.
On Byun-Chul Han
Han is a very well known Korean-German philosopher who specializes in deconstruction and Hegelianism. I've heard of him several years ago, but only recently got a chance to read some of his works. I was surprised by how well read he is. His work is really accessible by your average readers. Though I think Han's writing makes intuitive leaps that can make it difficult to follow if you don't have any background in continental (European) philosophy. I can certainly see why he is so popular. Han is a very creative thinker whose provocative thoughts resembles a lot of counter-intuitive ideas that is found in Jean Baudrillard.
In the first essay/chapter of Capitalism and Death Drive, Han, following Baudrillard's thoughts, turns the Freudian / psychoanalytic death drive against itself and argues that our system of capitalism deprives our lives from death where people are left to imagine a deathless life which leads to all sorts of mental illnesses. Han points out how our society is oriented towards the death drive where people unconsciously propel themselves towards self-destruction as they become narcissists. For Han, humans are negating their own deaths by producing capital (money) and leaving them behind during their lives. As a result, society produces fitness zombies, Botox zombies, and performance zombies. Everything is about performance, efficiency, and optimization—you must perform and be efficient in every aspect of your life, even when you are sleeping (think of smart watches that tells you how well you slept). People are too alive to die, and too dead to live. By paradoxically negating and avoiding death, capitalism leads itself to self-destruction by making people exploit themselves.
Han suggests that what is causing mental illnesses is through our society that produces endless ideologies of happiness, performance, and efficiency. The idea that one must always strive to be positive and negate any negative feelings and their death leads to people not knowing how to deal with negative emotions. Instead of arguing that negative thoughts leads to depression, Han thinks it is the constant societal pressure that people put in their lives—of always wanting to be happy, positive, efficient, perform, and to achieve something which leads to their self-destruction.
Han points out how our enthusiasm for work is already a symptom of burnouts and depression. Why else would one need things like Monday mantras that seeks to get you motivated? It is as Slavoj Zizek would say: "You don't hate Mondays, you hate capitalism" (this line became a pretty popular meme lol). You must be enthusiastic about your job! No matter how rough life gets, you must stay positive! Overtime, this positivity becomes overbearing and "toxic", which induces the feeling of emptiness and guilt (i.e. when you are sad, you feel guilty that you aren't happy while other people are). Certainly, the experience of guilt is quite famous within psychoanalytic thought since it is produced by the effects of the Other (super-ego) that imposes laws on the subject who must obey them. You must be happy! You must be a productive member of society! Sell yourself! Sell your body! Sell your soul! For Han, work and self-exploitation dominates our life to the point where even on our time off, relaxation becomes part of the job as we focus on mental health management activities (we learn how to be more efficient). We do all of this just so we can continue to produce and perform better at work. All of our time becomes labour time. There is no longer time for the other—or time that is devoted to "otherness". For Han, capitalism exploits freedom and makes you believe you are free, even when you are shackled by your labour where you are forced to constantly produce.
Han seems to take on similar positions to Baudrillard among other thinkers that the only way to halt capitalism and its frenzies of production is for people to confront symbolic death and encounter "otherness" (foreignness; or death). Han follows Baudrillard's interpretations of how capitalism challenges and avoids death, which can only end by confronting death itself. He uses an interesting example from the film Melancholia where Justine's (Kristen Dunst) depression appears to have cured itself near the end of the film when she confronts death as she discovers people around her and cared for them. Melancholia (the celestial body that collides and kills everyone on Earth in the film) arrives in the most untimely fashion. It is a catastrophic event that interrupted her existence.
By avoiding and challenging death, Baudrillard saw how capitalism paradoxically becomes a system that commits suicide—to the point where people take their own lives (again, this is due to the Freudian death drive and Capitalism's endless desire for infinite production and efficiency) [recall in my Baudrillard post where I spoke about the story of "Death in Samarkand"]. The extreme form of this is terrorism where a terrorist makes death a reality. Following Baudrillard, Han points out how terrorists are taking selfies with their deaths as their acts are captured in photographs that gets disseminated in the media (they are narcissists with a bomb). For Baudrillard, terrorism is the product of (the globalization of) capitalism. The collapse of the World Trade Center was the symbolic death of capitalism where its event challenged capitalist structure as it challenged death (this was from Baudrillard's famous book called, The Spirit of Terrorism). Borrowing from this, Han draws relationships between the terrorist who takes their own life with the person who self harms due to their depression and anxiety. Aside from obvious moral differences, perhaps the two individuals are not so different from each other who follows similar pathologies; for they both have tendencies to self-destruct. A very provocative thought, indeed.
Since people must confront their symbolic deaths, Han also associates love with death—an idea that has a lot of merit. Love is a fatal event. To love someone is to narcissistically die—it is to give up parts of ourselves for the other person we love and care for them (to stop being narcissists where we discover the other person—just like Justine in Melancholia). From that point on, our world is no longer about ourselves (our narcissism), but the other. This position is consistent with Freud who thinks that everyone is a narcissist who must forfeit parts of it (in Han's term, it is to die; in Lacan's term, it is to become the split subject). I too, am quite consistent with such view. This is why you may notice that I sometimes talk about how the cure to our contemporary world is love itself. To love is to, in some sense, confront our death. Our world can only be cured through the metaphors of love, which is something that is radically other and foreign. Love is a catastrophic event that shakes our world. It arrives when we least expect it—just like Melancholia that collides with Earth. Love is untimely; and it is our job to keep it as alive as it were on the first day.
Moreover, Han's interpretation that death is the solution to living a meaningful life is also reminiscent to Jacques Derrida's famous book called The Gift of Death. I wrote about this shortly after my dog passed away (it can be found here). Although I took a different approach, I think we both arrive at similar conclusions that the gift of death is the gift of life. It is because we will die one day which makes our lives meaningful. Yet, humans live like they will never die and prefers to "not think about it".
Overall, I think Han offers interesting insights on what is happening in our world today. He is a lively philosopher of doom whose ideas can strike some as optimistically depressing Lol. I'm not surprised that he teaches at an art school rather than a university. He seems too radical and provocative to be a university professor (I sometimes feel like some uni profs are afraid of saying the "wrong things" because they don't want to get cancelled and lose their jobs). Not to mention that a lot of Han's ideas are against dominant modes of political ideologies and the facades of contemporary society (i.e. his sustained attacks and criticism of neoliberalism). The works that I read on him are beginner friendly and quite interesting if you approach it with an open mind. Han's most famous book is called The Burnout Society and is worth checking out.
I landed my first ace in disc golf
First throw off the tee and into the basket. That's the story. The end.
"You don't look Chinese"
I am Chinese. I was born in Hong Kong and moved to Canada when I was 5 years old. But ever since I grew facial hair, some people started to mistake me as Japanese and sometimes as mixed race. Some people are surprised that I can speak fluent Cantonese. I also used to be able to read a little bit of French and German. I forgot most of it as time went by Lol. I actually want to travel to France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, and Spain one day.
In my mid twenties, I went through a transformation where I managed to grow a decent goatee beard that I've kept ever since (though I will occasionally do a clean shave just because). Many people really liked my new look compared to my younger boyish Bobby in my early twenties. Others not so much. It definitely makes me look older and more mature. But it makes people take me more (too) seriously. And because they take me more seriously, they can't detect my quick and dry sarcastic jokes.
Maintaining nice facial hair can take work. You have to know which areas must be longer, shorter and what looks best on you when you trim it (your face shape and hairstyle plays a role). Consistent maintenance and beard oil is essential to having it look nice. Facial hair is genetics. Many of my Chinese friends tried to grow facial hair and most of them ended up with a patchy scraggly pedo stache (LOL sorry). I guess if you really want facial hair, you can always cut some of your armpit hair and tape it on your face. Very sexy.
I was at the hospital with my mom earlier in the year where I had to remove my mask for a COVID-19 screening (had to get a new mask). The nurse asked me how old I was and thought I was handsome. I was like "Uhhhhhhh…thanks?" and she just smiled. My mom didn't say anything and just started laughing. It was funny because I can be pretty socially awkward and not know how to respond LOL.
Thinking about it, one of the greatest compliments I received was not about my appearance. It was from my professor in grad school who gave me an A+ for my final grade. He was a prof who specialized in deconstruction and doesn't give out A+ very easily. In fact, I was so flattered by his comment that I saved it in my email. Reading it still makes me smile till this day:
"Reading this essay is not only an extraordinary pleasure, but an intellectually invigorating process of reliving my own moments of thinking through the issues you engage with in the piece. This essay not only exhibits a wide-ranging familiarity on our part with contemporary critical theory and philosophy, but offers an ingenious, original, insightful account about Derrida's theory of hauntology, his concept of the time to come as the matrix of the absolute infinite Otherness of the Other, the past-future dialectic, the violence and finitude internal to interpretation or any human effort to touch the thing in itself. You not only prove to have the intellectual capacity to explicate difficult concepts with ease, confidence, and clarity, but reveal yourself to be an insightfully innovative reader of imaginative literature as well. What is said about Barton and her relationship with Friday enriches our encounter with her, though you do not provide much space for discussion on the novel. To do full justice to the paper despite its minor insufficiencies, I must say, it deserves an A+; course grade: A+".
…Coming to think even more about it, I received a few glowing compliments from one or two other profs. But I can't find them anymore. One was from my MA supervisor, a Feminist Lacanian British Romanticist, who I learned a lot of psychoanalysis from. I remember I met him while auditing one of his courses where he had been very supportive of me ever since. Back then, it was funny sitting in his lectures on literary theory because I blended in pretty well. Nobody knew there was a random super nerd Derrida guy sitting beside them. I still remember the PhD student who gave the lecture on deconstruction and postcolonialism wasn't very good—no offense. I still can't get over it because honestly man, deconstruction does not lead to decolonization LOLLL. Fight me.
It's raining right now
Rain is so romantic. Damn, why is rain so romantic? It makes me want to share another tragic story where Bobby was clueless with women, but I have to pee really bad right now (unfortunately, I have quite a few of these stories Lol).
When will Bobby publish his retracted post on psychoanalysis and death drive?
Those who regularly visits this site got a glimpse of this piece awhile ago. I actually haven't worked on it since I took it down (too busy being lazy Lol). The death drive (or repetition compulsion) is incredibly influential among various strands of contemporary thoughts and ideas. I don't know if I will republish it anytime soon, but I will one day. In the future, I kind of want to write more about Jean Baudrillard and maybe a bigger post on Byun-Chul Han. We shall see.
An Accumulation of Random Thoughts Upon Random Thoughts
July 24, 2022 iambobbyyrandom thoughts
A casual post with zero consistencies to the stuff that I write in between asterisks. This was the post where I write a few paragraphs and stop. It has been sitting around as a draft for the last six months, so I'm just going to throw it out there. Some of these writings includes things that inspires me, random stories, disc golf, philosophy, decolonization, psychoanalysis, my views on academia, and other random things. I reorganized some of the sections so they flow better. I also didn't spend much time editing because I am too tired from work these days. 🙂
The Simulations of Bobby's Identity
The other day, I was thinking about how some people reads this blog as if it completely represents who I am as a person. While much of my writings on here reflects a lot of my internal thoughts and who I am intellectually, I often find it alienated from who I am in reality. It reminds me of Jean Baudrillard's thoughts on simulacra and simulation, where he spoke about Borges fable and how cartographers mapped out their empire with precision. Yet over time, the empire falls into ruins and new empires are formed. Reality changes, but the map remains the same. Where reality initially functioned as the foundation for the map, it is now the map (simulation) which establishes the foundations for reality (I wrote about this here).
Does this blog function as the foundations for who I am over when you meet me in reality? Does it function as the basis of assumptions about me over what you perceive of me in real life when you talk to me? I often—or sometimes—find this to be the case. I've also known people who snoops on this blog and pretend they never read anything, but "knows everything about me" (why are y'all so crEeeeeePy? It's a joke, I don't care Lol). In the past, there were people who came to many erroneous assumptions about me through this blog. Other times, they think I am writing about them which is not always an accurate assessment (unless I specifically mention it). It is true that I sometimes write about things that are inspired by people and events that goes on in my life (who isn't?). But I only do so in a way that is detached from said person or life event in an objective way. I do this because I believe that these events and people are those who taught me certain things in life that are worth thinking about.
Am I everything that I've written on here? Partially, yes. But never entirely. I think many people likes to jump to conclusions about me which is a big mistake (jumping to conclusions is the culprit of humanity in general). If people were to read this blog 5 or 10 years from now, will they continue to see all my old posts as the basis for who I am? Not to mention that I don't 100% embrace everything that I write on here (for example, I don't embrace myself as an INTJ, MBTI typology; or enneagrams—even if I published a post about the INTJ). To conceive of Bobby's identity through this blog would be a fatal mistake. Yet, it is also one of the few places where people can understand some of my passions and who I am as a person.
With all this said, I almost never talk about the things I write on this blog with any of my friends and family unless they take interest in them. This is because I know philosophy is not a very good table conversation for most people. It is difficult, complex, which often reveals the darker sides of humanity and truths that no one wants to hear. Instead, I usually try to talk about everyday people topics where my speech is riddled with fluent sarcasm along with a bit of irony, hyperbole, and exaggerations.
20th Century French Philosophy
20th century France was an intellectual powerhouse where many renown philosophers took over academia. The most well known from the bunch is Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Helene Cixous, Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard, Georges Bataille, and Alain Badiou (I missed a few). Together, these people formed an intellectual arena populated by numerous debates while influencing each other at the same time.
Many people take interest in these figures not only because nearly all of them were incredibly influential, but because they had all these dramas that went on between them. Deleuze and Guattari published a book called Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia that Lacan banned from his institution and told his students to not read it (in reality, D&G actually agrees with Lacan on quite a few points; D&G are not as harsh of a critic on Lacan as people say—imo). Lacan was like a cult leader of sorts. At the beginning, his public lectures only had few students which eventually got jam packed with people. He was always like a performer in his lectures which I found hilarious (there are videos of his lectures on YouTube). Lacanian psychoanalysis was really influential which set up the landscape of intellectual thought in 20th century (this is also true for people like Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, and Sigmund Freud). Slavoj Zizek, a contemporary Hegelian-Lacanian is well known for popularizing Lacan's works. Meanwhile we have our boy Jean Baudrillard who is still existing through hyperrealities.
The debates that went on between these figures—which continues to exist among their followers—are nuanced and requires specialized skill and knowledge to understand. Not to mention that these people are incredibly hard to read in their own ways which means that learning their ideas are not easy. In order to understand them, it is important that readers have a fluid understanding in the history of modern philosophy which began in 17th century Netherlands (you also need to understand some ancient Greek philosophies).
Students of Jacques Derrida
Some of the most well known students of Derrida are incredible thinkers in their own right. There is Martin Hagglund, whose reading of Derrida is surprisingly similar to my own. Though I think his attempts at fusing time consciousness and psychoanalysis requires reworking. Geoffrey Bennington is another well known Derridean whose work I enjoy reading—especially his interpretations on Immanuel Kant. Then there is Catherine Malabou, who I think is one of the brightest French intellectuals today. Much of Malabou's ideas tries to fuse philosophy and science together—particularly neuroscience and various aspects of psychoanalysis while going beyond it (i.e. death drive and unconscious mind). I often find a lot of Derridean inspired themes and allusions in her works, which I enjoy. She is also a great writer who is really clear. One of my mentor who got me into French philosophy, her PhD advisor was Catherine Malabou (they are good friends in real life). Her other two advisors were Geoffrey Bennington and Alain Badiou which was quite an all star line up.
There are a few more well known students of Derrida, such as Barbara Cassin who is really good. I remember reading one of her book where she criticized Google search engine and page rank. Anne Dufourmantelle is also really good and is particularly well known for her book published with Derrida called Of Hospitality. This essay became really famous which talks about the function of hospitality when we confront the other (person). Dufourmantelle's philosophy privileges taking risks in life. Unfortunately, she died a few years ago from (taking a risk) trying to save two children who got caught in a storm. Finally, there is Jean-Luc Nancy who also recently passed away, but is a really well known student of Derrida. He is super hard to read, but incredibly good. I have only touched on his works here and there during grad school days and may revisit him in the near future.
Thoughts on Academia
I was someone who went from nearly bombing high school to becoming a straight A student decorated with fancy awards that I don't care about. In the past, I expressed my distaste for contemporary academia and the way university and institutions do things along with all their politics. Getting a PhD is a huge time investment. I think anyone can do what a PhD does. I've met people without degrees who are just as smart and intelligent as any PhD (smarter). While degrees and fancy awards can highlight someone's achievements (things which they should be proud of), it doesn't mean much at the end. Back then, I was some random guy who had no academic background and audited random courses (I came from a design degree which was hands on and not research based). When I started my MA degree, some professors thought I was a PhD student who was writing my dissertation due to how much I know (they were surprised that I was only a Masters student). I'm not flexing or saying that I am smart. What I am trying to say is that anyone can get into grad school if they have enough determination, passion, commitment, and will power. Just because someone doesn't go to school or once failed in school doesn't mean they are a failure or not smart.
It was grad school which taught me that I can help more people understand really difficult and influential ideas by writing on my blog than a jargony essay that gets published in journals kept behind paywalls. And even if there were no paywalls, people wouldn't understand any of the jargons most scholars write anyway. People might not know, but I learn just as much writing on here as those who reads it. I see the world very differently from most people. Maybe I will start a really big book project and get it published one day. Though I don't think I have sufficient knowledge and life experience to start something this big yet.
Being Ahead of Time
When I was in grad school, I was always 3-4 weeks ahead of all my classes' reading schedule and workload. I have most of my final research papers done 2-3 weeks in advance (they are long 10000+ word papers). This allows me to "finish school" earlier than the semester actually is. Anyone who gone through grad school knows that the workload is insane. But I often blasted through most of them early in the semester so I won't have to worry about it later. I was a pretty efficient student. I wasted no time in the beginning of the semester because I want to maximize my free time. This is actually my way of being "lazy" which is to get all the stuff done fast so I can maximize my time doing nothing. Thinking back, I pretty much cruised through my MA degree with relative ease. It was getting into the program that was the most difficult. Everything else was straight forward.
On Decolonization
In case you want a quick answer as to why I think decolonization is not possible. None of the things we do in our cultures are natural. From the first humans who colonized Nature by producing tribes, cultures, cities, languages, art, technology, or whatever that you can think of. Colonial violence lives at the heart of all human civilizations due to human interpretation of Nature and producing things that are unnatural which usurps the latter (it would be as Rousseau might say where nature denatures itself which makes culture simultaneously natural and unnatural). Colonialism is a subtle, paradoxical, and originary violence that happens every day—even as you read this text. It is embedded deep within the act of interpretation and how external knowledge takes position of the internal subject. People who followed this blog might already understand my position (I hope) because I said this a billion times in different ways.
I think all of this comes down to the definition of decolonization. For example, if the term means teaching young generations the violence of colonial history and bringing back lost traditions, then I think it's a good thing—even if I argue that such teachings fundamentally operates as a form of colonial violence—just like any modes of interpretation, or how culture (or science) usurps nature. Furthermore, due to how colonial violence lives at the heart of interpretation, "decolonization" means that there was never anything decolonial about it except by its name. Thus, it makes little sense to call it decolonization despite its intentions to do good. With all this said, I think colonialism is problematic, even if it is impossible to avoid in our world today. Perpetual peace is not possible and violence will always exist. All we can do is minimize it by treating others with respect and understanding. As much as I would like to see colonialism as it is, the world is not as black and white as what most people think.
I still remember back when I was auditing an intro to literary theory course. Some PhD student was giving a lecture on deconstruction and postcolonialism. They pointed out how "deconstruction leads to decolonization". While this is not a wrong interpretation, it's a rather inconsiderate one. Personally, I think they were wrong. But that's just what I think.
…Tragic?
Back when I was in my final year of undergraduate studies, I had a clueless platonic relationship with a female friend. I've known her since I started post-secondary school and I used to have a big crush on her near the beginning when I met her. But she had a boyfriend at the time and I didn't mind being friends—so I treated her as a friend because we were in the same classes everyday for 3 years. Overtime, she went through a few relationships and we continued to be good friends as we got to know each other. Coming to think about it, she is probably one of the few female friends I know who could finish some of my sentences (there are only a handful of people who can do this). She is one of the few people I know who understands my humor. When I crack my dumb jokes in a group, she would be the only who gets it and laughs. I recall one time when one of our friends was wondering if they should invite me to some party and X was like "Bobby would never show up, so don't bother inviting him". She told me afterwards which made me laugh because of how well she understands me. I would never show up because I am not a big party person. I like peace and quiet.
Near graduation, X was single and started showing signs of interest without me realizing. What kind of signs? Accepting my casual invites to take her out and do random things together, and her telling me how she defended me when she spoke to her friends about me, etc. Telling me how well she understands me—which is true. I thought of her as a friend because that is what I thought she just wanted to be.
At the time, there was another guy who was really interested in her. One day, he came up to me and asked: "Why don't you go for X?", I shrugged and I was like "What?". I was confused as to what he meant. One year down the road, I finally understood what he meant and how he was a true gentleman for confronting me about it (I liked him more after that; X probably said something which made him ask me). They started dating shortly after and had been together ever since. I sometimes wish she would be upfront about her feelings. But none of this matters now. I am really happy for them. Even if I sometimes wonder what would happen if she told me how she felt. We are still friends, even if we never talk these days. She is really pretty and smart. She always had people chasing her and sending her flowers at work. But I'm over it. I just think back and have a good laugh at how stupid I was.
I think people should be more direct and say what they want. But nah, people like to use code words like "Netflix and chill", or "lets hang out" only so they can end up calling you a "buddy". X was the perfect example where we hung out only for me to realize that she intended them to be dates. I literally thought we were hanging out as friends. It only took me a little over a year to figure it out. Now it only takes me 10 months. Excellent progress!
"Psychoanalysis is out of date"
I hear people say this a lot sometimes and it is not true. Psychoanalysis is not out of date. There are many organizations around the world that are devoted to psychoanalysis and continues to practice it. The discipline is sometimes considered as "pseudoscience" even when most analysts don't necessarily consider their discipline as a science. Like philosophers, psychoanalysts are not trying to do science where everything needs to be evidence-based. Instead, psychoanalysis is based on practical experience and observations of people. This is actually what makes psychoanalysis psychoanalysis as such. It's just about the only discipline that studies the influence and effects of the unconscious mind (there are however, emerging disciplines which seeks to converge science and psychoanalysis together which I find really cool).
Despite its controversial status, psychoanalysis has been influential among modern psychology. It offers a lot of insights that many psychologists would likely agree and build off of. For example, psychologists cannot deny that some of the most important things that occurs in our conscious mind happens outside of it (i.e. within the unconscious; or "subconscious"). This is probably one of the greatest contribution of psychoanalysis: we are thinking when we are not thinking about thinking. Psychoanalytic ideas like repetition compulsion and how people have urges to repeat certain behaviors is also crucial and related to many mainstream psychology disciplines. Then there is attachment theory which is heavily influenced by psychoanalysis (think, Melanie Klein). Furthermore, many psychologists can also agree that much of our current experiences and personalities are shaped by our childhood experiences.
I am Human. I Have Emotions.
Often times, my feelings are not as important as the truth. I would rather hear a truth that hurts me than to not hear it at all. I feel very deeply—probably much deeper than what most people think or what my face suggests. Sometimes, my emotions are so powerful that they overwhelm me and take control (at that point, I just break down and cry lol). When I feel, it is very intense. And it is either I don't feel anything, or I feel all of it at once.
I also often have trouble being emotional and logical at the same time, and it's usually either one or the other. As I got older, I manage to wield both of them and learned to be more emotionally open to people who I would otherwise not be open to. It's crazy because it sometimes turns me into a contradiction that freaks people out. Everything I say or write about, every single thought becomes reason and passion all at once.
I understand myself much better than most people understand me. Sometimes, I really want to change many core aspects of myself. But I realized that these are things which makes me who I am and I should cherish it—even if most people misunderstand or dislikes me for it. And most importantly, even if people hate or misunderstand me for who I am, I will treat them with infinite respect and forgiveness; because I think this is what we need most in our world today.
My Disc Golf Endeavors
Last year, my friends took me to the Rocky mountains and introduced me to disc golf. They got me really hooked into the sport because it is really fun. Disc golf is basically ball golf that is played with flying discs. People often overlook how hard throwing these discs can be—especially if you want them to fly far and accurate. Unlike frisbee discs, disc golf discs are not designed to be caught. They are designed to fly (in the right hands and conditions, they can fly incredibly far and fast at over 80km/h). Each disc has its own flight ratings which tells you how it flies when you throw it up to its intended speed. Your form plays a big part on your accuracy and how far you can throw your disc. The distance of the throw is not really determined by strength—it is about speed and good timing. Throwing a disc well is about performing a series of well timed kinetic movements which transfers the energy generated from your legs, hips, shoulders and arms to your disc. You are basically turning your arm into a really fast whip. Having good form takes many years of practice for most people.
Ever since, I bought my own set of discs. I also go golfing in the mornings with a friend whenever I have time off work. I also enjoy golfing solo. I noticed that I play better when I am alone because I am more focused and not chatting with anyone. I still suck, but it's okay. I'm a little better when not many people are watching me (too much pressure man Lol). I also started following professional disc golf tours and watched how all the pros play. I always try to beat myself every game and improve.
Disc golf can be therapeutic in the sense that it helps me clear my mind or whatever it is that I was thinking of. It helps me focus on the game and stop my mind from wandering too far off into the clouds or the depths of an idea; or forming connections between past, present, and future. It wasn't until I started playing disc golf where I realized how much concentration and focus is required to make a good throw.
Buying discs became somewhat of an addiction of mine. This is probably because of me constantly wanting to try out new discs and have them fill certain roles throughout the course rounds. But I've been trying to limit myself to only getting the discs that I really need and am able to throw. I ended up upgrading my disc golf bag within a month of playing and have a full bag of discs to play with. Eventually, I upgraded again to a very expensive bag. It doesn't cost much to start disc golfing…until you get addicted.
Some time ago, Google news recommended my own blog on Derrida's deconstruction on my phone. I laughed and said to myself, "I wonder who wrote that shit post?". Thanks to all the random people who clicked on it and probably didn't read it (and all the bots). My introductory posts on deconstruction and psychoanalysis are by far the most popular on this site. In fact, my writings on psychoanalysis are overtaking my writings on deconstruction. I'm not surprised, because psychoanalysis is a really cool discipline that will constantly make you go, "Oh shit, that is totally me".
I also receive emails about these posts every once awhile. Sometimes, they are random questions. Other times, they are about how wrong I am or how they want to cite my work (I am flattered). When it comes to communication, I play by a simple rule: I always (eventually) respond to strangers who emails or messages me (except for scammers). For, how could there be meaning when there is no dialogue? How could there be truth when it is only me speaking? With this said, I disabled my comments on my blog to avoid moderating it (I'm lazy).
When I first started this blog a few years ago, I wanted it to be a place where I share my knowledge for free because I am not a big fan of turning knowledge (or anything) into commodities. I make no money from writing anything on here because I think money is dumb (yet I need it lol). I'm just here to provide my batshit crazy interpretations on what I think these philosophers that I am interested in are trying to say. In addition, I also didn't want this blog to be professional with too much formality. I always wanted it to be casual and write whenever and whatever I want. I don't like writing formally (yet, I am usually quite formal Lol). I prefer to be myself; even if I sometimes spew out some pretty "Wow, did he just say that?" kind of things because I tend to think without much social filter, rules, and limitations. Keep in mind that just because I write about these philosophical works does not always mean that I embrace their thinking. I adopt parts of their ideas and fit it into my own perspective. —Interpretation is reinvention.
Philosophy has taught me many things, from metaphysics, linguistic turn, the brilliance of art, all the way to the question of love, hospitality, forgiveness and how one should live. I admire those who takes on the challenge to read these difficult philosophical works. I have gone through the same path; and often find myself continuing on such path. It's not easy and very frustrating at times. I knew several people who gave up reading Derrida and Lacan after the first few pages and I understand why. To be sure, philosophy doesn't make you smart. It makes you wise and allows you to understand the bigger picture in ways that you have never imagined before. After all, "philosophy" literally translates as "Love of wisdom". I honestly think that everything great in humanity comes from love. It is as Nietzsche would say, that which that is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
If this blog helped you understand 20th century continental philosophy and difficult French writers, then I am happy to help. Once you start to unravel their ideas, thinking styles and familiarize yourself with 17th-19th century philosophies, you may recognize how intelligent they are. And once you understand them, you may realize that many of them are producing a "theory of everything"—such as the first principles of how people conceive reality, cultivate perspectives and different forms of truths. It is not just about "facts", nor the causalities which produces facts as such (i.e. science), but how facts (knowledge), and truths are perceived by our conscious and unconscious mind through the infinite movements of space and time.
Lots to think about.
The INTJ: A Guide to Understanding a Bobby
July 10, 2022 iambobbyyINTJ, MBTI, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
"I am no man, I am dynamite!" —Friedrich Nietzsche
I write a lot about philosophy on here, but I never write about MBTI typological theories because I often think it can't represent the complexities of human consciousness. While I recognize the theoretical limits of MBTI, when typed correctly, it can sketch out various dimensions of a person's personality with relative accuracy (unfortunately, many people are not typed accurately). I mostly see MBTI as a tool to understand other people and self improvement. This post was written a long time ago (I write a lot but never publish anything lol). As such, I may edit this over time.
In the past, I've met MBTI enthusiasts who wanted to get to know INTJs but have no clue how to talk to them in real life. Today, I will offer you a guide on the INTJ personality. I will give you a general idea on how an INTJ's mind work, their infamous death stare, and reveal some of the secrets of an INTJ's prophet like abilities for predicting the future and reading people. I will show you the subtle things people miss when an INTJ loves you and offer insights on what to pay attention to when talking to them. Hopefully, this post will give justice to my fellow INTJ comrades on all the misunderstandings people have on them.
The INTJ is one of the most mystical personality types that people encounter because it is rare to have Introverted Intuition (Ni) as dominant function. They are authentic, intense, and single minded individuals with a quiet and cool confidence to them. Similar to INTPs, many INTJs are well known for their intellectual prowess and deep perceptions. Externally, they often appear as formidable big picture thinkers who are emotionally distant and serious. Yet internally, they have a rich emotional world with strong moral values. Treating an INTJ based on their external behaviors will only lead to misunderstandings. INTJs have a playful and soft side to them that only people who they are close to gets to see. There is a 10 year old child and an old wise man who lives in all INTJs. In order to understand them, you have to get a general grasp at how their intuitive world works.
Many INTJs exhibits an aura of mystery that surrounds them. For most people, they will forever remain a mystery. They are known to be incredibly private. It is not uncommon for people to know very little about them even after knowing them for years. When it comes to friends and relationships, they value quality over quantity. They are the type of people who you can only get close to if they let you, or if you are persistent enough to break through their walls and know how to understand them. While not all INTJs are equal, they are insightful individuals who may stun you with their knowledge and intelligence which sets them apart from others (a good chunk of those who tops the IQ charts are INTJs). They are hard people to find because they are one of the rarest personality types in the world. I will tell you where to find them at the end, but the odds of getting to know them are against you if you don't know how to understand them. From personal experience, it is usually the really outgoing person who unbashfully introduce themselves to me and asks me a ton of questions that befriends me (Lol).
I am an INTJ with enneagram type 4w5. Since I am a type 4, this makes me one of the more self-aware, self-expressive, emotional, and moody INTJs out there. The tricky thing about me is that I also commonly test as an INFJ where my enneagram also tests as 5w4 (type 5 is commonly found in INTJs; type 4 in INFJ and INFP). My T/F in most tests sits close to 50/50. After much consideration, I think I am an INTJ with a developed Fi, and not an INFJ; even if I can sometimes appear like an INFJ, INFP, and ENTJ. Developed INTJ and INFJs can be difficult to tell apart. Both types have a very deep emotional core where they can be very spiritual.
Famous INTJs: Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, Ayn Rand, Jane Austen, Edward Snowden, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, Jay Z, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leopold Mozart.
Famous Fictional INTJs: Bruce Wayne (Batman), Sherlock Holmes, Beth Harmon (Queen's Gambit), Severus Snape (Harry Potter), Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter), V (V for Vendetta), Magneto (X-Men), Thanos (MCU), Emperor Palpatine (Star Wars), Maleficent, Andy Dufresne (The Shawshank Redemption).
INTJ's cognitive function stack from most to least preferred:
1. Introverted Intuition (Ni) – Ni is a subconscious cognition that happens to be INTJ's (and INFJ's) most conscious function. Ni users passively collects information observed from the world and categorizes them into their mind which produces patterned insights over time. This groundless function is what gives INTJs the ability to build very large and complex world models in their heads and how everything relates and work with each other under the surface of reality. Ni is the reason why INxJs are powered by the theoretical, intangible, and ambiguous abstract meanings to the things they see. They will often use Ni to enrich their understandings and experiences of the world. While INTJs uses the letter J (Judging) in their typology, their primary function of Ni is actually a perceiving function. This is why INTJs are not as judgmental as what most people think (will get to this later).
2. Extroverted Thinking (Te) – This is the judging function of an INTJ. Te is used to figure out the validity of the information gathered by Ni, Fi, and Se. Te is the main reason why people often sees INTJ as emotionally distant and serious. Just go on YouTube and watch an interview of Mark Zuckerberg and you will see his highly developed Te when he talks. In general, Te users strives for logic, efficiency, and refinement which explains why many INTJs are precise and direct with their thoughts, words, and actions. This function also seeks out skepticism, application and simplification of an INTJ's Ni insights and ideas. When Te is combined with Ni (known as the "flow state"), INTJs become really driven, intense, and focused.
3. Introverted Feeling (Fi) – Types who uses Fi as their dominant or auxiliary (second) function are known for being emotional types who often have strong personal identity, morals and values (ENFP, INFP, ESFP, ISFP). But because INTJs have it in their third function, people sometimes refer INTJs as one of the most sensitive and emotional thinking types despite appearing calculating and cold on the outside. One of the reasons why INTJs are hard to know is because Fi is directed internally where their emotions and feelings are kept to themselves. Due to this, it takes time to figure out what they are actually feeling. There are many occasions where INTJs realizes that they were unintentionally too blunt and rude with their Te, where Fi makes them feel bad (welcome to my life lol).
4. Extroverted Sensing (Se) – Se is INTJ's weakest function which focuses on physical senses and attunement to their surroundings. This is why they can sometimes appear absent minded and lack attention to what goes on around them. It is also why many INTJs aren't always action oriented like Se-dominants (ESTP and ESFP) who are people that lives in the moment. Since Se is INTJ's weakest function, it explains why a lot of them prefers to not leave the house until they develop Se where they want to explore the world.
General Introduction to the INTJ
While INTJs may appear mysterious, they are pretty easy to read if you know what to look for. From the outside, many well developed INTJ's are exceptionally concise and consistent with their world views, thoughts, morals, and words (INTJs can also be emotionally expressive and empathetic). Many INTJs I know will try their best to not be hypocrites—even if we all are at some point. They always live and act in ways that makes most logical sense to them and true to themselves in the most consistent manner (especially those with a developed Fi). INTJs often won't make promises they cannot keep. Unlike what most people think, an INTJ's pragmatic action via Te-Se only comes after processing their Ni.
Since Ni is INTJ's dominant function, their first and foremost job is to observe, analyze, and understand. They are walking encyclopedias who are often revered experts in their respective fields. Most INTJs are exceptionally good at what they put their mind to which earns respect from their peers. Many INTJs are also actively aware of what they do not know and will admit to it when you ask them something outside of their field of knowledge. They are self-aware and excellent students. It is not uncommon that they will seek those who they think are more knowledgeable in certain areas for advice or to acquire new knowledge.
Many INTJs are self-improvers who don't compare themselves with others. They like to be around people who can grow with them. INTJs tend to not have much respect for rules and authority of any sorts—especially rules that makes no sense. They won't blindly follow rules and traditions just because everyone follows them. Most INTJ's aren't impressed by identity, social status or credentials. They are hard to impress which is why they rarely give compliments (and when they do, they mean it). What gives an INTJ their quiet confidence is how they simply don't care what others think of them unless it is someone they value. INTJs are the type of people who are unapologetically themselves. They are steadfast and self-assured who don't need external validation from others.
INTJs often won't twist and turn their sentences. When they are required to be less direct due to social expectations, they may use humor to get their point across or straight up ignore them (which may ironically make them humorous due to how honest they can be). INTJ humor is often self-depreciative, sarcastic, dark, and dry (think, The Office). INTJs can train themselves to become really good socializers, teachers, entertainers, and public speakers which makes them appear like an extrovert.
A lot of INTJs are also careless with their appearance and may dress in physically unattractive ways. But if they have a developed Se, they can be really stylish with classy and refined tastes in clothing, music, food, and other Se interests (think of Beth Harmon from Queens Gambit who is really intelligent and stylish). Finally, INTJs behave according to what they think is most true over what a group or society believes to be true. Hence, they may act in ways others do not expect. If the situation calls for it, INTJs may sometimes come off as insensitive to group morality and people's feelings because they have no problem telling people that they are wrong. Older INTJs tend to be more strategic, mindful, and diplomatic when a situation like this occurs.
As a result of these contradicting qualities, INTJs tend to only attract specific types of people. They are usually one of the smartest and dumbest people in the room with a talent for disruption. Ironically, what attracts people to them also comes from these contradicting personality traits. Their enigmatic, mysterious, and esoteric character will naturally draw curiosity from others. Not to mention that many INTJs are agents for change who may dazzle you with their wealth of knowledge about the world. Some people can immediately pick up on what type of person an INTJ is and find their preference for truth and honesty a breath of fresh air; whereas others finds it annoying, rude, and intimidating. While INTJs may deter people, those who likes them tends to like them a lot.
The INTJ Mind
"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." —Immanuel Kant
An INTJ uses Introverted Intuition (Ni) to collect a dense web of information from the world (via Se) where everything gets categorized and stored in the INTJ's mind. This is what allows an INTJ to connect various pieces of information together which grants them to see the underlying connections and patterns embedded in the world. They are interested in the deeper meanings of everything they perceive with their senses (Se)—particularly the things that they see with their eyes (hence they are often coined as "visionaries"). They tend to be interested in abstract ideas, meanings, symbols, and systems and how things work underneath the surface of the world that they perceive through Ni. INTJs are very good at understanding the fundamental truth, causes, and meanings that exists behind reality and gain insights on how they work together; whether it be society, a building, a computer software, music, video game, the human mind, or people in general. From understanding these complex web of information that Ni gathers from the world, they are able to not only build a complex internal system of the world around them, they can predict what might happen in the future which makes them appear like prophets and mystics.
This is where the INTJ's "death stare" comes from (it is a real phenomenon; sometimes known as the "Ni-gaze") which occurs when they are trying to absorb information about someone or something through their Ni. INTJs are well known for their tempered steel gaze that pierces through people's soul (it is also found in INFJ and sometimes in ESFPs). Many people freak out when an Ni-dom stares at them because it looks like they can see right through you. When you notice an INTJ stare at you, they are analyzing you to your last atom. Through the use of Ni-Se, INTJs are really good observers which allows them to make discoveries about the things they see.
Through the INTJ's web of information that they subconsciously collect and categorize, they gain "Ni insights" which awaits to be verified by Extroverted Thinking (Te). Te is a pragmatic function which helps INTJs verify their Ni insights and if they are true in the real world. This Ni-Te process is what makes INTJs formidable theorists and analysts. Not only do their Ni have an ability to pick up information and patterns that most people miss, these patterns and insights are often correct—hence giving them a mystical vibe of knowing things before they even happen. Many INTJs with a developed Te may ignore their Ni and rely more on rational systems (in this case, they might be an ENTJ), while other INTJs will trust their Ni more than their Te. INTJs sometimes have a highly developed Te because society privileges the benefits that Te offers (efficiency, pragmatism, etc.).
The reductionism of an INTJ's thinking style can be recognized when they take two or more events that appear to have nothing to do with each other and somehow sees similarities in them. If you pay attention to some of my writings, you may notice that I tend to draw from a vast range of examples that appear to have nothing to do with each other on the surface, yet find underlying patterns and reconcile them under an originary idea (my last post on psychoanalysis and love is a good example; it can be found hyperlinked here). Reductionism is often related to Ni and is sometimes explained through the metaphor of a magnify glass which focuses many different rays of light (or Ni insights) into a single point.
However complex these insights appear, INTJ's Te often contradicts and challenges Ni. Where Ni might say, "This person likes me very much", the skeptical Te will say, "How is this insight correct? There could be many other reasons and possibilities". Many Te users are about skepticism, application, and simplification. This allows an INTJ to extrapolate, refine, and challenge their Ni insights which helps produce an even sharper and more accurate idea from it. An INTJ will try to approve and disapprove their Ni in an attempt to test its accuracy and relevance in the real world. Yet, it is also between Ni-Te that makes an INTJ play devil's advocate on themselves which produces self doubt.
But because INTJs are Ni-dominants, they tend to develop their intuitive insights first and verify it afterwards with Te (or sometimes with Fi and Se). Ni-doms have the ability to come to conclusions without knowing how they got there, where they "know without knowing" (until they use Te). Furthermore, Ni users will likely consider numerous possibilities and conclusions before they speak about them. This is why INTJs will talk about conclusions as if they are certain that it is correct; or why they don't speak unless they know what they are talking about. Many people think INTJs are judgmental, closed minded, and jumps to conclusions, even when this is often far from the case. When people talk about how INTJs are "goal oriented", they are oriented towards their Ni which consists of achieving some kind of vision, idea, or thought that can be observed and applied to the real world.
The renown intensity of an INTJ comes from trying to get to the core of their insights through Te (they can also display this intensity in silence). As a result, this makes the INTJ's words come across as a powerful lightning strike. Sometimes when an INTJ speaks, their words become fast and precise where they cut straight to the heart of a problem that they are trying to address. When INTJs are proving a point, their words are meant to be impactful because they are trying to get to the truth of the subject at hand (truth matters a lot to INTJs). This occurance often comes out the wrong way to the other person where they think they are angry, even when it is their focus, temper, and confidence that is going through the roof while having it all under control. This is what gives INTJs their commanding presence when they speak about the things they know. Their words are so full of conviction where they may take over the room and everyone either quietly listens or cowers in fear. During this state, the INTJ becomes one of the most unyielding, passionate, and dominating thinking types. Be prepared for a debate if you challenge them. Unless you hold special status, INTJs will go for your throat.
This Ni-Te relationship is what gives INTJs their intense drive and focus. When they are determined to achieve or prove an Ni insight (conclusions or visions of a future they see), you better move aside. If you get in their way by trying to enforce useless rules, they will walk over you (think of your stereotypical ENTJ like Tony Stark or Dr. Strange from MCU whose personality have a tendency to walk over everyone). This drive between Ni-Te is what makes them determined and committed individuals. It is the reason why they often become really good at what they do which earns respect from their peers.
INTJ and People
Due to how the INTJ's mind work, an INTJ who puts effort into understanding people will likely know who they are before the person gets to know anything about them (very similar to INFJs). While they can read people like a book or as a problem to solve, people will have trouble reading them. INTJs have an excellent judge of character and will likely see through most people's everyday masks, intentions, and know when they are being insincere and fake.
INTJs will determine if you are a potential friend or romantic partner by detecting the patterns within the things you say versus the things you do. Many INTJs likes people who are consistent, curious, respect boundaries, and are authentic with them. Some people feel self conscious around INTJs because they have an uncanny ability to analyze people to their last atom. People are afraid of INTJs knowing all their secrets—even when they don't know anything other than an intuitive hunch (hunches and insights which are often correct).
INTJs are driven by their curiosity for the unknown. They naturally try to connect the dots and recognize patterns in everything they see. They may form various temporary conclusions about people that changes over time, but they don't really judge them, even if it appears like it on the surface. It's more like, "This person likes to drink root beer for breakfast? Cool story bro". Similar to INTPs, a lot of them are collectors of (useless) knowledge which either serves as their entertainment or curiosity. Not many things phases them because they are really hard to offend.
INTJs are walking lie detectors who can detect the most subtle pattern discrepancies in people if they put their mind to it. The best way to deal with this is to be as open and honest with them as possible. Try not to keep secrets from them. Not knowing is much worse than knowing a truth that an INTJ does not want to hear. If you want a shot at getting close to an INTJ (and INFJ), do not lie because they can tell or will eventually figure it out (if they catch you, they might not call you out on it, but they will keep it in mind). Intentionally hiding things from an INTJ may tell them that you are being inauthentic which will make them question their future relationship with you (especially if you are hiding bad things). In scenarios where they catch you being inauthentic, they will keep you at arms length instead of letting you get close.
While INTJs may appear uninterested in human matters, they can use very little information to determine and predict lots of things about people via Ni-Te. It can be a single word someone says or miniscule shift in their intentionality which disrupts the Ni's web of information / patterns which makes an INTJ become curious. Sometimes, it can be behavioral and even micro-gestural—such as the tiniest pauses between words or the split second of eye contact, or how a person walks. In some cases, it can be people who are acting normal. It can also be a series of events that happens on the same day which makes an INTJ question why they occurred all at once. Where most people would immediately write it off as coincidence or don't recognize the pattern at all, an INTJ might theorize what might be happening underneath these chain of events; just like how they analyze the underlying structure of reality. Essentially, INTJs uses their Ni to provide insights about people where they will use Te and Se to verify it.
This is why INTJs can easily distinguish good people from the selfish and manipulative. It is also why an INTJ who chooses to spend time with you is a compliment of the highest order. Not only do INTJs sees time as a valuable resource for their freedom (as do most people), they also see many people as a waste of time due to how superficial and fake some of them can be. While INTJs won't mind casual conversations with people they regularly see, they are usually only interested in establishing meaningful relationships. This however, does not mean that INTJs don't know how to have fun. They can be really fun if you can bring them out of their shell—a job best suited for an extroverted type (ENFP, ENTP, ESFP, etc.).
The first thing you want to do when talking to an INTJ is to forget most of the unspoken social rules you know. Many people likes to communicate through body language and dropping hints between the lines so to maintain social harmony. With INTJs, you can give it to them straight (just don't be rude about it). Your best bet at approaching an INTJ is to go up to them and be as bold, sincere, and direct like you have never before with anyone else. You should be as authentic and upfront with them as you can—even if you can't read them properly yet. They appreciate people who are open and honest with them. You need to show them that you are a genuine person in order for them to open up to you. As long as you do these things, a lot of them will accept you for who you are. A mature INTJ understands that no one is perfect and everyone is good at certain things while bad at others, including themselves. If you approach them sideways by lying or playing games, you will run into a brick wall very quickly.
Many INTJs sees social games as a waste of time, so you are dead to them the moment they realize you are playing games—especially manipulative mind games. Their ways of dealing with this can be quite surgical. Some will cut you out of their lives without second thought. Others will call you out on it or ignore you for the rest of their lives (at that point, you might as well not exist). However, this does not mean they won't play social games or are incompetent at them. They will only do it if they think it somehow fits their master plans or if they think you are "worth it"—which is usually never the case (play stupid games, win stupid prizes).
While INTJs can know too much about anything or anyone they put their mind to, they do good things with their knowledge. This is thanks to their third function of Fi which gives INTJs unbreakable morals codes and standards that they live by. It is why many of them are usually honest people—even if they are honest to a fault—or they say the wrong things at the wrong time. Honesty, authenticity, morality, and truth are things most INTJs value.
The Quest for Truth and Morality
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler." —Friedrich Nietzsche
Since INTJ's third function is Fi, it is easy for people to misread INTJs because of how cold they sometimes appear on the surface. Yet, they are quite sensitive and emotional due to Fi. This is why INTJs are considered as one of the most emotional thinkers. Anyone who had the privilege to witness an INTJ's love will know how much they actually feel. An INTJ experiences very deep emotions. And because they run so deep, they often come from a sacred and authentic place that is heavily guarded.
It is only the more developed INTJs who are able to understand their Fi. An emotionally mature INTJ will understand where, why, and how their emotions affects their decisions and other people. While many underdeveloped INTJs may think they value reason over emotions when they make decisions, the decisions of a well developed INTJ are often driven by a moral compass, internal values, and takes account of their emotions. This is why a lot of things INTJs sets to achieve in their life often have underlying moral implications that they see as very "human" to them. INTJs with a developed Fi might draw them to do things that are—in their view—humanitarian. And when Fi is used in conjunction with Ni and Te, the humanitarian things that they do can be obscure and hard to detect for many people.
Most INTJs won't be open about their feelings (the developed ones might be a bit more open). Until they open up to you, the only way anyone can get a good grasp of their emotional life is to sift through the things that they are interested in and do in their lives. Many INTJs are private about their feelings where they naturally process them through Ni-Te that gets mixed into the things that they do. When an INTJ opens up, you better be prepared because they have powerful emotions. Fueled with Ni-Te, their emotions for something or someone are often revealed in a very intense and passionate way (they can be really poetic, romantic, and good with their words). They may surprise you with how much they actually feel when compared to their usual cool and aloof exterior that everyone sees.
While INTJs are one of the most private types, once you understand some of their internal world constructs, specialized / esoteric knowledge and how they think, you will begin to see why they do the things that they do in their lives; or why they say certain things or use certain words under specific contexts. A well developed INTJ is exceptionally concise and deliberate who is almost always in line with their Fi morals, values, emotions, and personal philosophies that they have developed over many years. INTJs with a developed Fi live their life on a mission to discover the truth of the world so they can perhaps do something good for humanity—even if the concept of "good" may widely differ between different INTJs.
Since many INTJs values the truth, they are often direct and honest. When an INTJ is honest with their thoughts and emotions with you, it means they care about you. They tell you the truth because the truth is important to them. INTJs don't just open up to anyone. They are really selective to who they allow in their lives because just like INFJs, they think deep, feel deep, and hurt deep. If you betray or hurt them after they let you in, they may never open up to you again. INTJs are marshmallows covered in tempered steel. Once you understand how their internal world works (which is different for every INTJ), everything they do will immediately make sense, even if they appear contradictory or strange at first.
INTJ and Romance
INTJs are often stereotyped for being clueless in romance. This is not true. Many mature INTJs knows the game, they just choose not to play it or haven't found anyone worthwhile. And when they play it, they can be really romantic and idealistic. Many INTJs strives to be the best at what they do, this includes relationships and love. When an INTJ becomes aware of their feelings for someone, they will try very hard to manage it—sometimes to the point where they ignore and repress it. Part of growing as an INTJ is learning to manage and understand these emotions in a way that makes sense for them and learn how to properly express them at the right time.
Now that you can see how an INTJ's mind work, you may see the troubles they will have when they encounter romantic relationships. Since all of their cognitive functions tailors them to become formidable analysts and theorists, INTJs are known for studying and analyzing the people they love. An INTJ reads people like how they read a book or interpret the world around them. While this sometimes comes out the wrong way, in the eyes of an INTJ, they are trying to understand them with their best intentions. Their goal is to not only figure out their beloved, such as their likes and dislikes, but to predict future conflicts and prevent them from happening. As such, they want to know everything about their love. They want to figure out ways to solve their problems and help them achieve their goals.
Many INTJs are generous and have really big hearts when they care about you. They are your silent guardians and the calm of the storms in your life. INTJs are people who will fiercely protect those who they love. An INTJ who loves you will go above and beyond for you. They will do things that they think can make your life better and easier (more efficient). Quality time is a really big sign that they like you because a lot of them prefers to be alone. If they sacrifice their alone time for you, then you must mean something to them. If an INTJ always appear at places where they know you might be at, then it is another sign they like you.
INTJs have exceptionally high standards in everything they do. In fact, these standards are so high that even the INTJ cannot reach (this is why they are over achievers). But when it comes to their love, they will be proud of the achievements in their life. An INTJ who loves you will bend their standards that they live by just for you. Since most INTJs are immovable rocks when it comes to these standards and moral values (just like other Fi users). The fact that an INTJ is willing to bend them for someone becomes a grand gesture that not many people notice (people don't notice it because being proud of someone we love is common among most people).
Just like every type, the obvious sign that an INTJ loves you is if they tell you. Due to how concise INTJs are, it is safe to say that when an INTJ declares their love for someone, they really mean it (I personally never use the word "love" in my daily vocabulary). There is also a difference between "like" and "love" (among other words). While many people interchange these terms as if they are similar or use them for fun, an INTJ will use words in specific ways. It is from the weight of an INTJ's words and actions where you may start to recognize the level of depth and implications that they carry, such as how much they mean to them within the inner workings of their mind and heart. Hence in one sense, an INTJ's concisions are literal and direct. Yet in another sense, how literal they are usually derives from a much deeper place that can only be understood once you understand their internal Ni constructs. This depth that they have is what makes them an INTJ which enriches and gives meaning to their experiences in life.
If you do anything that they think may threaten you and their future together, they may question your sincerity and how serious you are with them. Things where you show a lack of boundaries with others while pursuing them; or inauthenticity, inconsistencies etc. will be some of the first things they notice in someone. And because they can be really good at reading people, they will know you better than you know yourself long before you realize.
When an INTJ decides to date or like you, they will do so as if it was their objective goal. If you want to date an INTJ, your best bet is to ask them directly. INTJs don't play games. A lot of them approach relationships with reason, understanding, and emotions (once they open up). However, they are also overthinkers—which is why being open, clear, and honest with them is key (this assumes the other party also knows what they want). If you like them, just tell them. If you are interested in them but not sure if you like them, tell them. If there is something you don't like in their behavior or a need that isn't being met, tell them. Good communication leads to good understanding which leads to a good relationship.
When an INTJ commits to loving someone, they really commit. They are single minded who are "all in" types of people. This takes us to why they are so famous for their loyalty which must not be taken lightly because they are loyal not in a traditional sense. When an INTJ is loyal, they are loyal to a certain big picture Ni vision of you and their future together that they want to achieve (this is where INTJs can be really romantic and idealistic). When an INTJ declares their loyalty, they commit to a future with you. INTJs are fiercely loyal and they will not give up easily. In the eyes of an INTJ, no obstacle between two people can't be overcome.
Unfortunately, because INTJs are so loyal, they sometimes won't get over someone for years and even decades (think of Severus Snape who loved Lilly Potter for all his life in Harry Potter series; Snape is an INTJ 4w5; you see something similar in Bruce Wayne and his love for Rachel Dawes). When an INTJ loves, they love incredibly deep, and this really needs to be understood because many people think they are heartless. Both INTJ and INFJ can love someone so much that it hurts them; where they remain faithful to said person with incredible faults. Their love is raw, innocent, and pure like a child. It is very real. Don't take it for granted because they don't give it out very easily.
What we begin to see is how the single mindedness of an INTJ that they use for their life long passion projects are directed towards one person. An INTJ's love is as intense as it gets and not everyone can handle it. Recall when I said how Ni is like a magnify glass that focuses different rays of light into a single point. Similar to INFJs, the power of an INTJ's love is like harnessing all the energy of the sun and focusing it all onto one person with a magnify glass. INTJs do not love broadly. They love absolutely and singularly.
While everything suggests that INTJs are masterminds who are not casual people, they are actually very easy going and open minded. Just like ESFPs, INTJs are free spirits who enjoys living life with as little constraints as possible. Where ESFP values freedom for physical experiences, INTJs value the freedom of mind (ESFP uses the same cognitive functions as INTJs, but in reverse order). If you get to know me, you may notice that I am carefree about most things unless it is someone important and they are doing something questionably stupid. Once you know what to look for, you may start to realize that INTJs are real softies inside. Anyone who can break through their fortified walls will discover that INTJs are some of the most nuanced, thoughtful, sensitive, determined, and devoted individuals you will meet. People misunderstand them because there aren't enough INTJs around for people to understand.
Due to their rarity, they can be really hard to find in the real world. However, there are places where the chances of meeting one is significantly higher. Places such as bookstores, coffeeshops, and other stereotypical INTJ hobbies and interests such as art galleries and museums (I tend to go to these places during odd hours to avoid crowds). Most INTJs are often found by themselves and tend to avoid large social gatherings. If they ever attend parties, they are the ones playing with the host's pets and checking out what books they read; or having a chat about an obscure topic with some person in a corner. You may also find them in the mountains hiking or camping by themselves; star gazing, and other solitary hobbies such as fishing. INTJs do a lot of things alone. They are your lone wolves—even if they are more like a cat.
INTJs are easy to spot. When you encounter them in public, you may recognize them by their speech patterns which is often civil, short, concise, and direct. They usually aren't always good at talking in groups and are better at one-on-one conversations where they can be socially awkward. They also carry a piercing death stare which easily gives them away (accompanied by a resting bitch face). You may also catch them observing the room or staring off into the distance thinking about something. An INTJ's body language often unintentionally screams "Leave me alone" and people can sense it. Some INTJs takes advantage of their unapproachable demeanor as a way to filter out those who are afraid to talk to them. Those who are brave enough to talk are the ones who they know might be friend worthy. While INTJs can be scary to talk to for some people (bro, why is he looking at me like that!?), they are pretty harmless.
INTJs don't always pass people's first impressions, but they are actually good people. In fact, just like INFJ and INFPs, they are morally aware individuals. This is thanks to their great prudence and foresight on what is really going on underneath the surface of the world and everyday life. INTJs usually aren't the type of people who follows group morality. They prefer forging their own paths and make their own discoveries. Many experienced INTJs have all the ingredients to be a leader in their field of expertise, yet they will refrain from taking on the role. Due to the large wealth of knowledge that they accumulate throughout their life, they tend to influence those who encounters them.
INTJs are full of depth and wonder who has the ability to see through many things in the world. Similar to INTPs, they are the bearers of truths and the thinkers of origins. Recall that Ni and Te are contradicting functions. Ni seeks to discover all the underlying structures and patterns that the INTJ observes in the world. Te seeks to challenge, apply, validate, simplify, structure, and refine. Whereas Fi gives INTJs their humanistic values, identity, and powerful emotions that gets mixed into the things that they do in their lives. Finally, Se makes an INTJ understand that every intuitive insight that they acquire must be verified and come from their physical experiences and wonders of the world. When all of these cognitive functions are developed which produces a well rounded INTJ, they become half prophet and half factual. They become mystical visionaries who sees the best and worst of humanity, through the wreck and ruins of the world.
Commentaries, Contemplation, Popular Posts
January 1, 2022 iambobbyyJacques Lacan, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Love, Psychoanalysis, random thoughts
"Love without risk is an impossibility. Like war without death." —Alain Badiou
The question of love is one of the oldest living philosophical inquiries in human history. We study it. We mourn for it. We write and sing about it. Most importantly, we experience it. Love in our contemporary world has largely been undermined by our hedonistic culture which teaches us the reality of pleasure (sex). Today, it would only be fair for me do the opposite: emphasize on love and undermine pleasure. I hope this post will forever reshape how you see human passion and your relationship with others. Love is profound because love is infinite.
This post follows my previous two writings on Lacanian psychoanalysis (hyperlink: part I; part II). You only need to understand part I to read this (you can probably get by without reading it, but you won't understand what I mean by "split subject" and "wound"). While I will try to reintroduce some of the old foundational ideas, I will skip through most of them and jump straight into general psychoanalytic approach to love. Due to the length of this post, I won't have room to talk about the different types of love—namely obsessional and hysterical love. But the general consensus is that love is feminine in nature and obsessional neurosis (masculinity) is a dialectic with hysteria (femininity). I purposely titled this post after Lacan's Seminar XX (20), On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge.
Since this might be my only post of 2022, I decided to write about one of the most important topic in the world. Despite its length, this has become one of my favorite post of all time. I don't write as much anymore due to work. Nowadays, I like to turn my brain off and enjoy the moment because my greatest strength is also my greatest weakness: I think too much. While I am impersonal when it comes to my writings, people might find some of the content overly relatable. So if you think I am talking about you, I am probably not talking about you. And if reading psychoanalysis makes you question your sanity. Let me throw this out there: you are not crazy. We don't use the word "crazy" in here.
Happy reading split subjects!
Imaginary, Narcissism, and The One
"Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves. Then we want to thank the beloved, but find nothing that suffices. We can only thank with ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into loyalty to ourselves and unconditional faith in the other. That is how love steadily intensifies its innermost secret."
— Martin Heidegger, Letters (to Hannah Arendt)
Sigmund Freud once famously argued that who we love in our life is influenced by our past relationships. But what is sometimes overlooked is the relationship people establish with themselves: between the ideal-ego and ego-ideal where the split subject recognize parts of themselves in the "other person" that they see in the mirror. As the split subject looks into the mirror reflection of themselves, the symbolic ego-ideal emerges as the Other (i.e. social laws) which interferes with their own ideal-ego (their self image); they begin to recognize that something is missing in the mirror and how their perceptions of themselves are never complete.
Let us use an example that may appear to have nothing to do with love, but emphasize on the fundamental separation between the imaginary ideal-ego and the symbolic ego-ideal. Consider the influence of social media platforms which functions as the Other and forms the ego-ideal. Recall in my previous post, I spoke about how it is not enough for me to recognize myself as an ideal person because you need the approval of the Other. You must live up to the Other's expectations. It is like looking at yourself in the mirror, but recognizing that there is also the other Other person who is unknowingly standing behind you and sees who you are in a certain way. The symbolic ego-ideal is the recognition of an outside beyond who you are as you evaluate yourself. You judge yourself; recognize your insecurities because the Other sees you in certain ways since they are the one who represents the laws. As split subjects, we are trying to satisfy the desires of the Other.
Think of how people struggle with self image due to social media pressuring them to have impossible body standards (it doesn't always have to be social media, it can be many things—but we will use social media as an example). It is common for people to think that going to the gym and building their bodies would make them feel more secure. Certainly for most people, working out is a healthy activity. Such endeavor would only be problematic if the split subject starts living in the gym 24/7 and avoids other obligations. For the sake of simplicity, let us refer to this man as patient X: someone who desires to become a veiny hulk due to the effects of social media. As a result, this drives him to neglect his daily obligations so he can work out 24/7. His desires to obsessively workout (symptom) becomes a form of addiction. Let us also say that their desire to workout is to avoid confronting the truth that they are insecure (the Real).
In such case, I would imagine that the analyst's job is to help the analysand (patient) reduce their trust of the Other (social media)—or reduce the impositions of the Other's effects on the subject. The analyst's job is to help the analysand touch the Real and discover the truth of their desires for obsessively working out is caused by their insecurities. As such, they must learn to do something else for a change. The truth of such desire can only be produced if patient X desires to discover the reason behind their symptoms (of why they are so obsessively working out). Certainly, by helping the analysand touch the Real does not free the subject from the tyranny of the Other. The Other will still impose the law onto them—and they may still recognize their insecurity. Only this time hopefully, it leads to a healthier relationship between how the split subject conceives of their ideal-ego and ego-ideal (their self-image).
Whatever a split subject perceive as lacking in the mirror is never what they originally lack. The human mind is deceptive in the sense that it always attempts to protect itself from trauma. The object cause of desire (object a; lack) which resides in the Real is like a blackhole that the subject can never fully grasp. While patient X may think they are concealing their lack by going to the gym and neglecting other obligations, their initial recognition of their lack is always a misrecognition or a wishful projection. In other words, while patient X may perceive that they are lacking big arms (due to influence of social media), even when what they are lacking is a lost object that is radically excluded from their consciousness (his insecurities). The solution of touching the Real where patient X recognizes the truth of his desires (symptoms) is caused by insecurities could be a mere invention in his mind. This is to say that their symptom may have nothing to do with their insecurities even if patient X believes to be the case. Yet, it would be as Lacan said on how speaking the entire truth is impossible, but it is through the speech of what the subject perceives as truth which holds onto the Real. Therefore, by helping patient X recognize the truth of his desires of working out 24/7, patient X may change the way he relates with the Real. The goal of psychoanalysis is to reorient patient X's relationship with the Real (their lack; their insecurities) so they can dissolve their symptoms and change or interrupt how they desire.
While this is an oversimplification of such matter, the point I wish to make is that the convergence between ideal-ego and ego-ideal is an impossible task. Perhaps one might think that by achieving big arms, one removes what they perceive to be missing in the mirror. But this is almost never the case because, as already mentioned, getting big arms is a misrecognition of their lack. This is why you sometimes meet really attractive people who are still insecure about something—things that might not have anything to do with their appearance. One can be insecure about their intelligence, work, social skills, and lots of other things. In fact, some may find that the more attractive the person is, the more insecure they are. While this is not always true, sometimes, the more someone recognizes their lack, the more they will try to hide it by throwing on 50 pounds of make-up or become a veiny hulk, etc. At the end, everyone has insecurities regardless of how attractive they are. And no matter how hard one tries to conceal it, there will always be this lack because our ideal-ego is imposed by our laws of society (we are split subjects).
Think of all the things people do in their lives: addiction (gambling, partying, drugs, alcohol, smoke, sugar), people who work too much, play too much video games, people who repetitively does too much of something. While you can't necessarily cure their symptoms since they are always a split subject, you can change and interrupt the way they experience these symptoms. I speak of this repetition compulsion in a similar way to my last post when I provided an example on how people enjoy listening to their favorite songs over and over again; just like patient X who repeatedly lives in the gym. Our daily lives are riddled by these unconscious repetitive symptoms that we are unaware of. Most of these symptoms are harmless and healthy when kept in check, while others are harmful when done to the extreme. We repeat them because we can never get enough pleasure from it since we are split subjects. Enjoy your symptoms!
The experience of narcissism is where the self attempts to unify with their ideal mirror image as One. The movement between the ego-ideal and ideal-ego causes the recognition of a lack when the split subject looks at themselves in mirror or at other people (i.e. I lack big arms due to the effects of the symbolic Other, therefore I produce the fantasy of becoming a veiny hulk). The desire to converge the ego-ideal and ideal-ego together is often referred as "the One". Such term is also used in the same sense on how couples sometimes refer to their significant other as the One—an illusionary One that is produced by the effects of the imaginary. Perhaps our desire to converge with the One also explains why we live in a self-obsessed culture where people are constantly fascinated by their own image.
Now you know why you sometimes see couples wear matching clothes. They are attempting to converge with the other person into their ideal image (they see "parts of themselves" in the other). Rightly so, many couples end up resembling each other in some ways, whether it be their world views, personality, appearance, or habits; something that is normal until it reaches a point where the image of the One remains as the One and does not go through the symbolic which makes us recognize that the other person is actually different from us.
At the fundamental level, love is an imaginary and narcissistic phenomenon. Just as the child who looks into the mirror and says "This other person in the mirror is me!", people also associate their beloved as someone who is similar to themselves. At the imaginary level, love between two people is about sameness so to turn the other into the One. Yet, the image of the One is always stopped short by the symbolic. Furthermore, while all relationships are based on past relationships, imaginary love steals over us before we recognize that this person turns out to be different from our past relationships. In this sense, love truly is blind (and friendship closes its eyes; this famous saying is from Friedrich Nietzsche). Now you know why Freud once said that "Love is temporary psychosis". It is temporary because it is only a matter of time where we realize that the One is never quite "the One" since the other person is different from us. For Lacan, it is not enough for love to exist within the imaginary dimension through sameness. Any forms of love that are stuck within the imaginary are always doomed to fail. In extreme cases, it may lead to psychosis, delusions, and paranoia. This can be seen in the famous real case of Aimee who externally projected her ideal-ego onto an actress and murdered her. Lacan argued that Aimee's love for her ideal-ego that she projected onto the actress turned into hate. When Aimee struck a knife at the actress, she struck an image of herself. After the crime was committed, Aimee goes through a meltdown and began crying where her psychotic symptoms were relieved.
Let us briefly consider the opposite scenario where a person does not seek to turn the other person into the One. Consider an everyday person who says, "I should love my significant other for who they are and I should never love an idealized image of them" (an idealized image that I project onto the other person—my narcissism; the One). Often times, if you continue to ask the same person about their relationship with their significant other, they may also tell you all the things they think are important in a relationship. They might tell you how being faithful is important—something most people would agree. In some cases, this makes a classic example of the One entering into their mind without their conscious recognition. The person who is saying this does not recognize that their love for the other might be their love for the One / ideal self of being faithful to their partner. At times, becoming the ideal One (being a faithful person) is more important than being with their partner. Therefore at times, it is when we believe we are not idealizing the other where we idealize them where we are caught into our own image of the One (our own narcissism). Analysts seem to agree that idealism is an inescapable aspect of human passion. The same phenomena happens when people "love for love sake" where one loves the ideal or idea of love. One of the main differences between animal and human passion is that humans consists of an idealized dimension of love that enters into their minds when they least expect it. We don't just love the person, we also love to love. Or as James Joyce would say, "Love loves to love love".
Symbolic, Love, and Lack
"Love is giving what you don't have." —Jacques Lacan
As we know, it is impossible to converge with our idealized One that we see in the mirror due to the discourse of the symbolic Other. Thus, it is also impossible to converge with our beloved where we project ourselves onto them. Love can never only exist within the imaginary and must go through the symbolic.
While we may spend much of our lives protecting ourselves from experiencing the full force of what we truly lack (the Real), which leads to establishing healthy or unhealthy ways to deal with it (the symptom). In an ironic way, love does the opposite. This is the most profound insight Lacan offered in regards to the experience of love; which is that love reveals our experience of lack where the subject willingly exposes the truth of their desires and symptoms. To declare our love is to give what we lack.
By declaring our love, one is proclaiming that they are split subjects. To say "I love you" is to say "I am incomplete". This is not as simple as saying "I am incomplete and you complete me" so to speak (though it's not wrong). But rather, the one who declares their love is offering what they recognize as the lack (object a; or object cause of desire) that they locate within their beloved. Lacan refers to the declaration of love as "making love" because one literally produces love by saying "I love you". Love is conjured out of thin air through the act of declaration. Perhaps this is what makes these "three special words" so special.
Think of our example of the diagnosis for patient X who must touch the Real by acknowledging their unconscious repetitive symptoms are produced by their insecurities. By confronting the truth of their desires of living in the gym, patient X creates something new in their lives: a difference and dissolves their symptoms (they produce a new relationship with the Real after recognizing their symptoms are due to their insecurities). The recognition of love for the other does something similar. Love also touches the Real which produces a difference to those who declares and experiences it. This is why the encounter of love has the ability to change our lives and who we perceive ourselves to be!
Just as the person will always see something missing in their mirror image due to the effects of the symbolic Other, they also recognize lack when they encounter their beloved. Hence, to love someone is to unconsciously locate our lack in the other. Love is an exposure of our lack which may halt the lover's desire of whatever repetitive symptoms they already have. At its core, love has nothing to do with our desires other than the truth of such desires—which is that X loves Y.
Love also has nothing to do with sex. From the psychoanalytic perspective, sex is basically a bundle of drives attempting to achieve satisfaction. Sex teaches us the reality of pleasure. This is why Lacan famously said that "There is no sexual relationship". There is no sexual relationship other than each person recognizing their own pleasure during intercourse. The only sexual relationship they have is with themselves. In other words, sex is mutual masturbation. If someone thinks they love someone because of their butt fetish (for example), then it is not love, but lust. [The popular interpretation is that while there are no sexual relationships, it is love which substitutes or gives meaning to sex].
It is common for us to mistake desire and lust as love. And if such confusion ever arises, it is because desire and love are two sides of the same coin. It is the encounter of the Real or getting too close to object a which stops our desire (it interrupts our repetitive symptoms; when we get too close to object a, we also experience anxiety). The lack that we unconsciously locate in the other (object a) causes our desire while eventually stopping it in its tracks which produces the experience of love. This is why love feels like it cannot be described by any words or reason. Our desire for the other temporarily comes to a halt and love is produced by what is left over through the symbolic (by what is missing in symbolic language). Hence, Lacan points out how love allows us to experience the Real of our desire without the tragic dimension.
We often perceive the beloved as the One via imaginary even if such unity is impossible because love consumes us before we recognize that the One is never quite the One we perceive. Analysts sometimes talk about the whimsical aspects of love that they observe in couples where the things that each person perceives in the other is not always directly felt or recognized by the other person. In this sense, love—which is complicated by their desires—is a form of misrecognition (just like patient X's misrecognition of his desire for big arms, even when the truth is that he is insecure). The entire notion of dating involves this unconscious search of the lost object cause of desire (a) or lack. Some people manage to locate object a very quickly and those who are able to find it in the other will perceive them as someone who carries a special "glow". Some of us are able to locate object a much easier in certain individuals than others because all relationships are based on past relationships. And when object a is unconsciously located during the first encounter of the other, it sometimes becomes "love at first sight" (I say sometimes because it can also be lust).
Love at first sight is often considered as a short circuit between the imaginary and symbolic where the subject bypasses the Other's laws (such as the Other's demand that we must know someone before we can love them). Lacan once spoke of love at first sight as a form of attack that suddenly overpowers the subject. Its experience is often metaphorically described as getting struck by a lightning bolt (hence the French idiom coup de foudre which translates as a flash of lightning or thunderbolt). There are many famous examples of love at first sight in human history. One of them is from Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (father of existentialism) where nearly all of his works were inspired by his love for a woman named Regina (Regine Olsen). Kierkegaard once described his love encounter of Regina as a form of longing which gave him a strong sense of familiarity (this is transference; will get to later).
Nevertheless, just as one always identifies their lack in the mirror (i.e. I am missing big arms), the split subject also identifies the lack or object a that they locate in their beloved. But as we learned, this recognition of lack in ourselves or beloved is always, in some ways, a misrecognition (i.e. I am not missing big arms as I gaze into the mirror, but something that is unconscious to me; such that I am insecure). Thus, perhaps the moment we think we love the other and recognize them for their good qualities is the moment where we don't love them for their good qualities. Bruce Fink, a renown clinical psychoanalyst, does a brilliant job at explaining how love functions as a form of misrecognition:
"Can we after all, love someone who seems to be perfect, someone who seems to have everything? Isn't it often the case that although we may be fascinated or captivated by someone who appears to have only good qualities, we only begin to love him or her from the moment we suspect that he or she is somewhat (if not deeply) unhappy, quite clueless about something, rather awkward, clumsy, or helpless? Isn't it in his or her nonmastery or incompleteness that we see a possible place for ourselves in his or her affections—that is, that we glimpse the possibility that we may be able to do something for that person, be something to that person? In this case, we perhaps love not what they have, but what they do not have; moreover, we show our love by giving what we ourselves do not have."
Perhaps we don't love the other's perfections and what they have after all. We love what they do not have. We love what the other lacks and we want to take the place of such lack as much as we would like them to do the same for us. Love is thus, born between givers of what they do not have. As Fink might say, to declare "I love you" is to give what we lack and hope the other will handle it with care. In our materialistic world, it is easy to reveal our love by showering our beloved with what we have, such as a fancy dinner or a big bouquet of roses. But it is much more meaningful and difficult to give what we do not have.
This is why Lacan points out how humans cannot speak about love without sounding like an imbecile. We cannot talk about love without situating it into metaphors which represents its lack. For Lacan, love is always mutual. He uses his own metaphor to describe love:
Imagine you see a beautiful flower. You reach out your hand to grab it. But at the moment you do, the flower bursts into flames. In its place, you see another hand appear, reaching back towards your own.
This famous Lacanian metaphor represents the height of love which occurs when the beloved transforms into the lover. When the lover declares their love by reaching their hand towards the beloved (flower), the beloved bursts into flames as their hand reaches back to the lover. This is what some analysts refer as "the miracle of love". It is a miracle that your beloved returns your love! Obviously, the idea that our beloved happens to love us back will not always be the case, even if Lacan would disagree, which he has every reason to do so (will get to later). I won't talk too much about unrequited love today. All I will say is that unrequited love may sometimes make the lover question whether they are lovable or not. "The other does not love me back because I am not good enough to become the One!". To declare our love is to reveal our narcissistic wound that we are incomplete. This is why the pain of unrequited love is unlike any other.
Alenka Zupancic, a contemporary Lacanian scholar, talks about love as a form of surprise. It is surprising that what we initially perceive as the person of interest often turns out to be completely "different", even when the other person had been themselves all this time. Zupancic writes a beautiful passage on the love encounter:
"A love encounter is not simply about everything falling into its rightful place. A love encounter is not simply about a contingent match between two different pathologies, about two individuals being lucky enough to encounter in each other what "works for them". Rather, love is what makes it work. Love does something to us, it makes, or allows for, the cause of our desire to condescend, to coincide with our love. And the effect of this is surprise—only this surprise, and not simply our infatuation, is the sign of love proper. It is the sign of the subject, of the subjective figure of love. It says not simply "You are it!." but rather: "How surprising that you are it!". Or, in a simpler formula of how love operates: "How surprising that you are you!".
Love is about difference, not sameness. Love appears only when something is out of place and misrecognized. The person who is outgoing life of the party turns out to be introspective and thoughtful. The person who appears aloof is just shy. Or the intelligent person turns out to be clueless of social norms. The effect of symbolic love is the surprise of difference.
While the imaginary dimension of love makes us blind to the fact that the One is never quite the One (the imaginary makes us think that the other is the same as us, even when they are different), love at the symbolic level has the ability to traverse differences where two people produces a truth together. Love is what makes differences work. It is where people converge into their imaginary One as they recognize its impossibility through each other's symbolic differences. Thus, real love must triumph over all the obstacles ruptured from the world—even if it may sometimes involve struggle and pain. For, isn't it through the hardships of love which makes it meaningful? That our love for the other is worth fighting for and not easily given up on? Imagine two people who goes through thick and thin with unconditional faith in the other and conquers the entire universe! Perhaps Freud was right in that one day, the years of struggle will strike us as the most beautiful.
But we now also understand what Lacan meant when he asked: "What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them can give you the universe?". Love always involves difference where our beloved can never completely give us our universe (i.e. idealized relationship; the One). Think of some people who are prone to jumping from one relationship to another from giving up on their love after the first obstacle. Some of them wants to find their ideal love and ideal relationship without recognizing that the convergence of the One is impossible. Love cannot exist solely within the imaginary. Love is about difference, and it is hard work.
In the film Arrival, the relationship between Ian and Louise is a good example of a love encounter. Consider the ending where Ian (Jeremy Renner) declares his love for Louise (Amy Adams) by delivering a magnificent line: "I've had my head titled up to the stars for as long as I can remember. You know what surprised me most? It wasn't meeting them. It was meeting you". Not only is love a form of surprise, it requires chance to occur (will get to this later). It is by chance that they meet where they begin their relationship through mutual differences. Where Louise thinks language is the foundation of civilization, Ian thinks it is science. And it is only at the end of the film where such difference gets resolved as Ian becomes surprised by how Louise approached language like a mathematician. Although they end up separating, what makes the ending of Arrival profound and heart wrenching is Louise's act of love and her acceptance of the finitude of being human. Would you give birth to your daughter knowing that she will die at a young age? Just as, would one adopt a pet companion knowing they will eventually die from their illness? The truth is, everyone dies sooner or later. While it might be sad to know that the person or companion we love dearly will one day leave you (or they already left you), it is because they will leave you which makes the time you spend with them meaningful. Every memory is infinite, every moment is forever.
Recall in my last post, when I introduced one of Freud's famous patients of the man who was attracted to the shine on a woman's nose that no one else could see. This is a prime example of transference. We often associate various traits of the other as something familiar to our past relationships. People find and see different things within the other that they love. Hence, not only is love blind, beauty is also in the eye of the beholder. A lot of people tend to think that by achieving ideal body standards set by society, they become the object of desire. While this might be true under the context of desire and sex, people often love characteristics that has nothing to do with these beauty standards because we love what they do not have. This is why everyone has something beautiful and unique about them, even if they don't fit into any ideal standards.
Finally, we also have the experience of hate. Quite the contrary to what most people think. Hate is an extension of love. You might notice that people who break up may sometimes end up hating each other. They might talk behind each other's back and gossip to other people how horrible their ex were. The truth is that nothing annoys us more than the things our lovers do. If we did not love them, we would not care about the things they do because it wouldn't matter in the first place. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. And those who cannot hate, cannot love.
Love and Transference
"Love is giving what you don't have…to someone who does not want it." —Jacques Lacan
Transference is a common phenomenon that happens everyday. It involves the split subject who transfers past experiences, traumas and emotions onto a present object. These past experiences can be applied onto someone or something. Not only is transference central to psychoanalytic therapy, it plays a fundamental role in the experience of love.
Since all relationships are based on past relationships, love is transference. Humans transfer past emotions and experiences onto the present object without immediately recognizing that the present object that we perceive as sameness—such as the beloved—is actually different from our past. Now we understand how our misrecognitions are often produced by transference (our misrecognitions are a form of wishful projection—our desires). This is why analysts often say that when one is in love, they are unconsciously in love with someone else. Who is the other person that we unconsciously love? Could it be our ex-partners? Our mother or father? Our siblings? Could it be someone who one cannot possibly love due to symbolic influence of the Other? One can only imagine the tragic dimension that is absent from the declaration of love as the love that cannot be accepted by someone else. This is the reason why our beloved often resembles someone in our families or past relationships even when they are a completely different person. And this is exactly why love is about difference.
One way of interpreting this last part of Lacan's quote is to think of how many of us sometimes fixate on the failures of our past relationships which cast doubts on our current beloved without our conscious recognition. Just as our recognition that we project onto our beloved turns out to be something else (the person who is aloof is just shy, etc.), perhaps the reason we have doubts about them is due to transference. Thus, perhaps the moment we think the other is not returning our love (a projection from our past where someone did not want our love), is the moment where we find love being returned.
Another way we can interpret this last part of Lacan's quote is to think of how the lack that we give to the other are often traits and characteristics that they see as our imperfections and non-masteries. In reality—and as strange as it may sound—it is often these imperfect annoying traits about the other person that we love most. The reason is because they unconsciously remind us of something from past relationships that we have repressed where they consciously appear to us as disgust and annoyance. In this sense, the lack that we give are things that the other does not consciously want, but unconsciously desires.
Consider the film No Time to Die and the scene where Safin visits Madelaine at her psychotherapy office. The setting of her office reveals that Madelaine is a psychoanalyst of sorts. Such view is reinforced by Safin who points out how it is dangerous for the patient to have an attractive psychotherapist. This is true in the sense that the goal of the analyst is to cause desire within the analysand without the analyst becoming their object of desire. And when the analyst is attractive, it becomes difficult to not become the object of desire. This is why the analyst's desk is located behind the patient's chair (you see Madeleine's desk behind Safin during this scene). It is also one of the reasons why you sometimes hear people talk about falling in love with their analysts or therapists.
Within the analytic setting, the "analysand" (patient) basically translates as "the person who analyzes". When you get psychoanalyzed, it is the patient who does all the hard work by analyzing themselves via free association (i.e. speaking whatever comes to mind). In the perspective of the analysand, the analyst is someone who is "supposed to know" all the answers to their unconscious repetitive symptoms, even when the analyst knows nothing more than what the analysand tells them when they free associate. The analyst's job is to follow the trail of the analysand's unconscious as they free associate and help them locate the key to dissolve their symptoms.
I recall reading about a real case of a male patient who did not know why he always treated and dumped his ex-girlfriends in the exact same way. As he went through analysis, he discovered the reason why he treated them in the same way was because this was how his father treated his mother when he was a child. This is a good example of how childhood experiences affects adulthood—or what Freud refer as the "return of the repressed". It is also a good example of how past relationships influences present relationships (transference). Instead of our made up example of patient X who goes to the gym 24/7, we have a real case of someone who repeatedly treats their girlfriends in the exact same way where the reason is unconscious to them.
This takes us back to the question from my previous post between what the subject wants versus what the Other wants from the subject. Consider Squid Game, where each player is forced into relations with the Other (the show featured a book by Lacan). If you do not conform to the desires of the Other, which is to play by the rules of capitalism (or squid game) so to serve yourself, you will be eliminated from society. Hence, the everyday split subject's desire is the Other's desire (to desire for money, social status, wealth, ideal beauty, etc.; or patient X who wants to become a veiny hulk). This is metaphorically paralleled to the film Inception where it implied Robert Fischer as someone who wasn't sure what his father desired for him. At the end of the film—despite the "inception" that took place—Fischer opens up a safe and realizes that his father does not want him to take his place of owning his business empire. Instead, he wants Fischer to dismantle it and become his own man. One can only assume that the awakened Fischer from the depths of his dreams would live his life satisfying his father's desire.
This is part of the reason why Lacan thinks love is always mutual and will inevitably be returned (some analysts contests this claim). Not only does Lacan argue that the experience of love does not fully emerge until the lover unconsciously recognizes that love is also emerging within the beloved; at the fundamental level, the declaration of love functions as a form of demand which reveals to the beloved as the desire of the Other. All declaration of love is a demand for love to be returned. In order for the beloved to satisfy the desires of the other (i.e. the lover who declared love), love will be returned.
Contrary to these examples, in a clinical setting, the analyst's goal is to not desire the analysand to be like this or like that in the same way the Other would. Rather, the analyst's job is to give the analysand a chance to produce their own desires as the analyst attempts to reduce the effects of the Other's impositions. After all, the subject's desire is the Other's desire. It is by reducing the effects of the Other where it could yield room for the analysand's subjectivity to identify the truth of their desires (symptoms). This procedure is referred as the "ethical act of psychoanalysis". It is not the analyst's job to determine the analysand's desires and what they should perceive as the truth of their desires (instead, the analyst guides them by following the crumbs of their unconscious as they free associate in an attempt to resolve their transference). In this sense, one can say that psychoanalysis is the practice of free speech par excellence. The analysand just sits there and speaks whatever comes to mind.
However, just because it is the analyst's job to give space for the analysand to desire does not mean that the analyst shouldn't desire anything from the analysand. One of the first things that the analysand demands from the analyst during therapy is for the analyst's love and care that they listen attentively to what they have to say. The reason is because speech is a demand for love; just like a baby's cry. Analysts knows they cannot return this type of love—which is why they often speak as little as possible during analysis. The analyst must always be aware of their desires versus the desires from the analysand. What makes psychoanalysis different from other therapies is that the analyst must always try to find something to desire within the analysand. They must try to love and care about something in the analysand in order for psychoanalysis to take place (if this is the case, is the analyst an example of an unrequited lover who must love without expecting anything in return?). After all, how could there be successful psychoanalysis if the patient does not feel like they are being listened to and cared for by the other?
Lacan once famously pointed out how the analyst's job is to temporarily function as the analysand's "right person" (their beloved, but without becoming it). The analyst is the placeholder of the analysand's love and knowledge (object a; lack) that the analysand unconsciously projects onto as they free associate. By becoming the "right person", the analyst hopes that the analysand can experience the metaphor of love in a new way which would make them stop repeating their symptoms. This is one of the reasons why you cannot psychoanalyze yourself. There must always be an analyst or person who functions as the placeholder of the analysand's love and knowledge. As we begin to see, psychoanalysis doesn't just take place within a clinical setting, it happens everywhere through our encounters of love. The experience of love is central to dissolving the analysand's symptoms because it is what allows difference, interruptions, and new knowledge to emerge. The moment the analysand feels like the analyst does not listen or care about them is usually the moment psychoanalysis fails.
Love is the wound of our split subjectivity that we locate in the other. No wonder why we feel so vulnerable when we declare our love! Love is what we do not have—or have very little of due to symbolic filtering. Declaring our love for the other exposes our incompleteness (lack). Yet, to produce love through the act of declaration is to speak nothing of it because its experience infinitely exceeds language.
In the same way patient X must come to the truth of their desires by producing new knowledge that their symptoms are caused by insecurities, the lover must also declare their love so to produce knowledge for the truth of their desires—such that everything they've done for their beloved was because they love them. If you are following my metaphors that are structured in the same way but with different content, you now understand why love marks the limits of human knowledge. It is from the revelation of the truth of our desires where new knowledge is produced from our unconscious mind. And it is from this truth or new knowledge that latches onto the Real which may change the perceptions of ourselves and everything around us. In some cases, it may even change the world! The metaphor of love takes infinite forms because love is the letter (or signifier) from our unconscious mind. Can you imagine the first person who desires to walk on the beach everyday (symptom) and suddenly discovers the truth that ocean tides are influenced by the moon? Or one day, Isaac Newton desired to sit under a tree where an apple randomly fell on his head which allowed him to discover gravity? The famous story of Newton is indeed, a love story. Love is the metaphorical representation of infinity that is conceived through symbolic thought. To conceive of love is to become the thinker of infinities.
If you recall when I said that love is fundamentally feminine, we now understand why a hysterics position (mostly found in women) is infinitely more profound than an obsessional neurotic (mostly found in men). Even an obsessional neurotic must temporarily take on the position of a hysteric so to discover new knowledge and declare their love. This is why obsessional neuroticism is a dialectic with hysteria.
In order for love to arise, there must always be a certain level of risk and contingency. Alain Badiou's philosophy on love is a great example which circles around psychoanalysis. Badiou is well known for criticizing dating apps which uses advanced algorithms to pair people who are similar to each other. He thinks people today are too safe (conservative) and hedonistic in their approach to love in that they always either look for sameness or they look for sex (food for thought: what is the difference between an algorithm that matches people in a dating app, and the person who arranges blind dates and marriages?). In other words, people want love without chance and risk. They want guaranteed love and make sure that the other is their "best fit", even when love only occurs when things don't quite fit. Ultimately, Badiou disagrees with this type of "safe love" and favors love that requires adventure, difference, contingency, and risk.
Regardless of Badiou's critique. Love is an event that is ruptured out of the contingencies of everyday life (like the apple that randomly fell on Newton's head). The encounter of love arises in the most unexpected places which shakes the foundations of your world (the apple that shook Newton's world). One day, you walk into a place and encounter a person who challenges your world (this is the "fall" of falling in love). Love becomes an ethical event that is produced out of pure contingency. In face of such event, love requires a risk that two people must take. Your encounter of the other turns into destiny (just as it is Newton's destiny to encounter the apple which allowed him to discover gravity). It is no longer by chance that you encountered this person, but your destiny to do so. Human fate gives over to another human fate. From this point on, love allows you to see the world not from the perspective of one, but from the perspective of two (difference). And it is through these differences in perspectives where two people produces a truth together. Love becomes a construction of a new life (difference) that is produced over time. As Badiou says, love is a rare experience where on the basis of chance inscribed in a moment, one attempts to declare eternity!
Love is a catastrophe that interrupts your existence and shakes you out of your comfort zone like stage fright. The encounter of love makes you recognize that your world is no longer about yourself (your narcssisism; the One), but what you lack: your beloved. Love is not fetishism, such as the sexualization of the other's body parts (breast, butt, penis, muscles, etc.). Love is a form of care for the other's soul which involves experiencing the world from a different perspective. To love is to want your beloved to be happy. This is love in its purest form. It is what most people refer as "true love" or "unconditional love". In our hedonistic society which teaches us to serve our own pleasures and happiness, love turns selfish into selfless. Many people often confuse love and desire by thinking that love must always consist of possessing or desiring the other. While loving and desiring to be with our beloved should always be the ideal scenario, we all know it's not always possible. However difficult it might be, it is perfectly possible that one can love someone without desiring to be with them. Hence, it is also possible that one can love someone while desiring someone else. But it is very difficult to love without desire or wanting to be with the other because love and desire are two sides of the same coin. It is not recommended that one should give up on their desires for the other because the truth is, everyone wants to be with the person they love most.
Is the experience of love simply caused by hormones and chemical reactions as science claims? While this answer is sufficient for most materialists, it cannot explain the problem between consciousness and the unconscious mind. Perhaps this highlights the philosophical problem between idealism and materialism (the experience of consciousness is non-physical; one can hold onto their physical brain, but they cannot physically hold onto their experience of consciousness; welcome to metaphysics). Personally, I think this is a cold approach to love, even if it is not a wrong answer. Some contemporary psychologists tries to scientifically universalize the experience of love by arguing what a normal relationship should look like (think of the function of the Other defining an ideal relationship, like social media and advertisements defining ideal beauty). Many of them do so at the expense of ignoring the problem of ideology among other things. In psychoanalysis, there is no such thing as "normal" because every individual is unique with different pathologies and histories. Everyone has a different type of love language. There is always something specific and unique about each love encounter. This is what makes love perilous and profoundly beautiful!
Many of us have a tendency of burdening ourselves to be in love despite the risks that it involves—such that the other might not love us back, that it may lead to pain and suffering, or our love might fail in the future. The truth is, whether it is new knowledge, an animal companion, or someone special, humans can do very little without love. Without its lack which provokes our curiosity and desire, one would not be able to declare or produce the question of love and offer a response. It is here, where we arrive at one of the very first questions in human intellectual history:
"The wound can have (should only have) one proper name. I recognize that I love—you—by this: you leave in me a wound that I do not want to replace."
—Jacques Derrida.
On Jean Baudrillard: Seduction, Hyperreality, and the Murder of the Real
April 10, 2021 iambobbyyCritical theory, Hyperreality, Jean Baudrillard, Philosophy, random thoughts, Seduction, Simulacra and Simulation 1 Comment
"Philosophy leads to death, sociology leads to suicide" —Jean Baudrillard
Today, we shall enter the desert of the real and examine Jean Baudrillard's ideas on simulation, hyperreality and their relationships with his concept of seduction. It will address various topics such as nuclear deterrence, gender roles, feminism, sexual liberation, photography, and the death of universities. Many people have trouble reading Baudrillard due to his prose and borderline insane ideas. His works are written with a very distinctive style that happens to be declarative, hyperbolic, provocative, and obscure. Personally, I think Baudrillard is an incredible critical thinker in his own right—even if he does not have his own school of thought. This might be due to how he sort of just quits academia at one point and stops associating himself with any academic disciplines. It may also have something to do with how he grew up in a peasant rural family who was, at first, never considered as part of the 20th century French intellectual elites.
Baudrillard was one of the first philosophers who I read closely back in my undergraduate days when I studied photography. His books left a lasting impact on the way I think. In many ways, Baudrillard's ideas on simulation and hyperreality is a reinterpretation of the Platonic cave. Some of his ideas gained so much fame that his work was featured in the film, The Matrix. One of the biggest mistakes people make when they read Baudrillard is to think he is a postmodernist because he isn't. Baudrillard is a big critic of postmodernism. He is also a sharp critic of Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and many thinkers of his time. Some contemporary scholars believe Baudrillard is Manichean—someone who breaks everything down into dualisms such as good and evil. While others believed he leaned towards being a pataphysician who was heavily influenced by Marcel Mauss.
Baudrillard became well known when he wrote a book called Forget Foucault (1977). At the time of publish, he even sent a copy to Foucault—who was one of the world's most renown philosophers at the time—and asked him to read it (Foucault never responded). While Forget Foucault remains an important book to read, the best books to understand Baudrillardian thought is Seduction (1979) and Simulacra and Simulation (1981) [he has other important works such as Symbolic Exchange and Death, Fatal Strategies and Cool Memories]. These two texts provides two important dimensions of Baudrillardian thought that I will talk about today.
As already cited by many past scholars, Baudrillard was one of the few philosophers who tried to reconcile the incompatible differences between reality and illusion. He sometimes subtly points out how the disappearance of one yields to the destiny of the other. In short, Baudrillard's method can be summarized with a single line from Friedrich Nietzsche: "We do not believe the truth remains true once the veil has been lifted". Today, we will place extra emphasis on the word "veil", which is associated with seduction: the disguise and play of appearance and meanings.
The first main aspect of his thought lies in how Baudrillard thinks we are living in a world where we no longer know what is real and what isn't. Simulacra and Simulation provides one of the best examples. The book begins with an apparent quote from Ecclesiastes, a quote that does not exist in the famous Hebrew bible: "The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true." Many people who read this book for the first time often believes the quote as true, even when it isn't. What is important about this example is not only that the same phenomena happens in contemporary world of simulations, it also occurs from the reader interpreting Baudrillard's book. The experience of reading Simulacra and Simulation emphasizes on this constant state of confusion between reality and illusion.
One can see something similar in the use of "nuclear deterrence" and how its fundamental goal is to make nuclear weapons so to not use them. You sometimes read news about X country producing nuclear weapons without the intentions for nuclear war, but to protect themselves from other nuclear armed countries. In nuclear deterrence, instead of producing a real nuclear conflict via making nuclear weapons, it produces a simulated mode of conflict between countries. If I remember correctly, Baudrillard used the cold war as an example. This is one of the reasons why, in Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard talks about how people dream of nuclear explosions which result in simulating them in televisions and movies instead of making them a reality.
Baudrillard also brings to point on the emergence of photography and how it was invented at a time where reality was beginning to disappear as it got usurped by hyperrealities. He sometimes talks about how realist photography does not actually focus on capturing what is real in the situation. If you look at Baudrillard's own photographic art exhibitions, one might recognize such techniques in his images (often referred as the "vanishing technique"). Regardless, Baudrillard foresaw how the world would eventually be replaced by infinite simulated hyperrealities where people will no longer know what is real.
Baudrillard also uses the Borges fable as an example of hyperreality. The story talks about how cartographers mapped their empire that covers the entire land with precision. Yet over time, the empire falls into ruins and new empires establishes new borders. Reality changes, but the map remains intact and exists as the remainder. The territory no longer precedes the map, it is the map that precedes the territory—just like that of media, books, scholarships, and television. In the same way, Baudrillard believes that reality no longer precedes simulation. Instead, simulations precedes reality, where the latter has become more real than real and more false than false. In other words, instead of producing the map that is based on reality, we now produce reality based on the map (simulation).
It can be said that hyperrealities are produced through interpretation and forcing our ideals onto reality—hence the "murder of the real". Later in Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard introduces hyperrealities as the remainder of society and universities. Unlike gender or reality, the remainder lacks a binary (Masculine/Feminine, Reality/Illusion, Remainder/ ???). The other side of remainder is empty—it is a reflection from a mirror which is the remainder itself. The entire society becomes residual and reality is murdered, but so are universities which produces endless knowledge without finality. For Baudrillard, the real university, just like that of reality, has been long dead. What remains are endless simulation of realities. Even a strike would have the opposite effect, for it can only bring back the ideal of what is possible of a real university, a fiction that is no longer possible within a system of hyperrealities. To put simply, in a world of hyperrealities, people can only produce the simulation of change without making any real change.
This is one of the reasons why "sociology leads to suicide". Sociology, just like that of feminism and sexual liberation (will get to later), seeks to uncover and strip the world naked by producing meaning and simulacrum and declaring what is most real about society. As a result, it produces new realities of the world that often exists independent of our immediate reality and the seductive beliefs people have (then there is also the problem of statistics and induction which plagues the social sciences; Baudrillard often referred statistics as a form of wishful thinking). In other words, sociology is suicidal in the sense that it produces hyperreal discourses that may lead to something like a delusion. Just like that of contemporary media, sociological findings can produce the Borges map that people immediately accept as reality without question. For Baudrillard, we are living in a world where meaning murders other meanings without consequences where we have simulacrum versus other simulacra which becomes endless play of simulacra—to the point that everyone within the system becomes simulacrum.
Near the end of Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard points out how he is a nihilist. Since our world is flooded with meanings, discourses, and hyperrealities, the real has been lost in translation. Reality is dead and what remains is an infinite amount of meanings and hyperrealities that replaced reality—sort of like Starbucks which used to make pumpkin spice lattes without pumpkins in it. In the final passage of the book, Baudrillard emphasized on the irony of the situation. He ends the book by addressing how it is within this space of simulation where seduction begins.
The second aspect of Baudrillard's thought is more complex and it is best highlighted in his book Seduction. In it, there is a chapter called "Death in Samarkand" which tells a story of a soldier who tries to escape death while inevitably running into it. The point of this story is to show how the more people try to deviate from their fate, the more likely they will encounter it. The story leads Baudrillard into talking about the theme of chance which exceeds beyond causality and probability. Chance serves as a fundamental aspect to seduction (many French philosophers at the time spoke of chance in a similar way). Nevertheless, the "Death in Samarkand" story could resemble something like North Korea trying to build nuclear weapons so to avoid war, but ends up being threatened by other countries of going to war. Hence, what we see is a contradiction that Baudrillard highlights: between producing nukes to prevent real conflict, while inevitably running towards their own fate of going into another "real" (hyperreal) / simulated conflict. As Baudrillard writes, one always runs towards their own fate while trying to escape it.
Just like nuclear deterrence which ends up producing the opposite effects of preventing conflict, Baudrillard takes on the position that people's emancipations are doing something similar. This can be seen in feminism and the sexual liberation. In the first chapter of Seduction, Baudrillard provocatively asserts to the Freudian view that the stability and production of reality and meaning is only possible due to the dimensions of the masculine, whereas the play of appearance, meanings and signs are only possible due to the feminine—the latter which he refer as "seduction". Despite appearing on taking the Freudian psychoanalytic position, Baudrillard makes a reverse argument and points out how it isn't the masculine dimension which produces and defines feminine reality as such (patriarchy), it is the feminine which challenges and produces the masculine certainty by exception via seduction. Baudrillard even points out that, the great theorist of split subjectivity Jacques Lacan, along with the entire field of psychoanalysis, also falls into the realm of seduction [ironically, Baudrillard's view that masculinity is produced from the challenge of feminine is inline with various Lacanian psychoanalytic approaches].
The irony that Baudrillard saw within the theme song of feminism (as he puts it) and their desire to break down gender roles is that they secretly had the upper hand in our patriarchal society by strategically manipulating it via seduction through a certain mode of challenge and the play of appearance, signs, and meanings. The feminine had always been the secret force of society which undermined all modes of masculine certainty and power. Yet, Baudrillard points out how feminists are depriving of their own strengths as they get caught up in the world of simulations which led them astray (because a lot of them dread seduction). As feminism sought to deviate from such seductive truth, they ended up producing more gender roles. As a result, it created an even more confusing world of simulations and simulacra. This is where Baudrillard criticizes the sexual liberation, which broke down gender roles. For Baudrillard, while the sexual liberation broke down gender roles via the production of new simulated realities (i.e. new realities of gender, etc.), he saw that people are still deeply seduced by / believed in traditional gender roles—including those who sought to break them down.
At this point, it is easy to mistake Baudrillard as some anti-feminist, even when Baudrillard also did not believe in gender roles. But because he saw how people are seduced by it (they believe in it)—an old idea that is incompatible with our increasingly hyperreal world today, Baudrillard thinks gender roles still holds a lot of power in our society. One of the main problems Baudrillard had with the sexual liberation and the production of simulations is how its environment also produced people who can no longer make sense of their world and their roles in society due to the abundance of hyperrealities—a true existential crisis and mass depression of sorts, where people no longer know what is real and what isn't. The result of this uncertain world would lead people to try and uncover what gender truly is, for example—like what you see in feminist thinker Luce Irigaray who was heavily criticized by Baudrillard in Seduction. Yet, for Baudrillard, it was never about producing or uncovering the truth of sex or gender. Rather, it had been about seduction which reversed and dissolved all gendered power relations via the play of appearances and meanings (think about people who uses their appearance to play on different genders).
Baudrillard always saw how there was a seductive allure to the feminine "sex object" (via play of appearances) who is able to reverse and dissolve all modes of masculine power. In some of his other books, Baudrillard sometimes referred to this way of thinking as the "triumph of the object" which involves the subject who believes they are in power, even when it is the object who holds the power of the subject. The object holds the subject as hostage. It is for example, not the subject in power who watches the television (object), but the television (i.e. media) who watches the subject to the point that it manipulates and changes the subject—reversing all power relationships and creating a simulacrum subjectivity. This reverse relationship is what Baudrillard categorized as being part of seduction. The object is presented to the subject of power as a form of challenge, seduction, play of appearance and signs.
The confusion lies in the relationship between simulation, which comes from the production of new realities and meanings; and seduction which involves the play of these new simulated appearance of meanings and becoming seduced by them. The two terms lives in an eternal paradox, where the production of different realities will also lead to the inevitable play of seduction. In several places from both books, Baudrillard noted that simulation and seduction shares a similar dimension in the sense that the former seeks to become reality (more real than real, and more false than false), whereas the latter is the play of reality and appearances. For Baudrillard, nothing can triumph over seduction and the play of signs, not even the masculine production of simulation. In Seduction, Baudrillard writes:
"Now surprisingly, this proposition, that in the feminine the very distinction between authenticity and artifice is without foundation, also defines the space of simulation. Here too one cannot distinguish between reality and its models, there being no other reality than that secreted by the simulative models, just as there is no other femininity than that of appearances. Simulation too is insoluble.
This strange coincidence points to the ambiguity of the feminine: it simultaneously provides radical evidence of simulation, and the only possibility of its overcoming – in seduction, precisely." (11)
Ultimately, Baudrillard's thoughts provides us with the compatible incompatibilities between reality and illusion (simulation). With the disappearance of reality lies the destiny of simulation—the latter which can be overcome by the force of seduction. For Baudrillard, seduction allows people to accept simulative and hyperreal spaces via disguises and the play of appearances, signs, and meanings. Yet on the other hand, with the disappearance or revelation of simulations (i.e. gender roles) also lies the destiny of reality. While one can simulate some hyperreal truth via production of what is real (i.e. the truth of sex, gender, society, etc.), the desert of the real is recognized once such veil gets removed. For Baudrillard, revealing the truth will only show us that there are no truths because there was never really anything "real" to begin with; since humans had long began imposing their own modes of thoughts, realities, and Borges maps onto reality. This is what Baudrillard refer as "the perfect crime".
Due to how Baudrillard thinks we are living in a world of simulations, he sometimes points out how he is a believer of seduction. This is because, for him, seduction is the solution to our world of simulation and the loss of what is real, which leads to people losing their purpose in this world. The recognition of "truth" via the realization of simulations would lead people to try and recover what is most real which results in producing more simulations like those found in feminist movements, sociology, literature, and other texts. Yet at the same time, the production of simulation would also lead to the eternal destiny of feminine seduction which seduces the subject into believing these simulations as truth. This is the paradox that lives at the core of Baudrillardian thought.
To simplify the second aspect of Baudrillard's ideas while retaining the paradoxes, we can put it as such: while Baudrillard believes gender roles are false, he thinks that because people are still seduced by such idea, we should adopt them and take advantage of it as modes of illusions which would blend or erase their differences. Instead of trying to assert or reveal the "truth" of gender and sex like that of sexual liberation and feminism (which produces more simulations), or completely deny it by claiming that gender is not real like postmodernists, Baudrillard thinks we should adopt gender roles as seductive disguises that is more real than real and more false than false.
Reading Baudrillard is like encountering how these paradoxes and contradictions collides and reconcile with each other, between simulation and seduction, reality and illusion, good and evil, man and woman, masculine and feminine, etc. I often admired the ending of Seduction because I always thought it was very thought provoking. In fact, I cited it several times in some of my older posts. It serves as a good summary to Baudrillard's thoughts:
"The world is naked, the king is naked, and things are clear. All of production, and truth itself are directed towards disclosure, the unbearable 'truth' of sex being the most recent consequence. Luckily, at bottom, there is nothing to it. And seduction still holds, in the face of truth, a most sibylline response, which is that 'perhaps we wish to uncover the truth because it is so difficult to imagine it naked'".