posted on Jan, 28 2017 @ 10:13 AM
As I sit across from my dog, me, immersed in my book with bose noise-cancelling headphones on my head to cancel out the sound of renovation in the
basement, I catch a glimpse again and again of my dogs face.
She wants to sleep, but the sharp and abrupt sounds intermittently wake her. I brought her up on the couch - not something I generally allow - because
she seems bothered - and the subtle discomfort and fear she feels spurs me into a response. I put her up on the couch, and find myself reflexively
looking at her, giddy inside that she is here with me on this morning, to sit with me, and to be with me.
Suffering
My dog suffers without knowledge of her suffering, so there is no higher 'recursive' world in which she is 'embedded' - witness to her suffering
from which she can find no escape. No. The dogs suffering is open only to a creature who can witness - the Human - and even the littlest suffering -
the littlest discomfort in her, can inspire me into action.
What is this point of this conversation? Consciousness, this wondrous property of mind we have - offers both fruit for existence, as well "bristles
and thorns". My dogs discomfort immediately becomes my own because of my care for her - and my care for her is reflexive: something I cannot help
feeling - as natural to a Human as flying is for a bird.
This openness of my mind to suffering is not unique to me - but to all of us. A consciousness such as we have opens us up to the good and the bad -
and the good is always the fun, joy, pleasure, love, care and support we receive from Others, and the bad is always related to the abortion of the
former - some breakdown within our relational life that 'puts into us' a feeling from which - still - we reflexively look to others for guidance and
coherence. These are the interminable facts of our existence: we exist in the world of 'good and bad' - as the Bible says, we all eat 'from the
tree of good and evil', and indeed, in a world of work - of physical manual toil to make a living - in relying upon others to make our experience
coherent, together, the meanings we make constitute a collective effort to 'make sense' of where we are.
But the tree of life - the source of meaning, clearly, has to do with the relational events that happen between us. That is - our we objects, statues
- is the idol more real than we are? Or, is the idol - the idea, the object - the fantasy and ideal - a "transitional object" in the language of
D.W. Winnicot? There to soothe our confused minds until the time comes when we can be liberated from a world - relationally generated - stuck in the
pits of its projected confusion?
The Necessity of Mourning
Is it a coincidence that the seeding of a satanic cabal into Americas government is said to have been aided by the help of Russia? To me, it isn't.
Of all the horrors of the 20th century, it is arguable among historians which regime was more brutal: the Nazis or the communists? The Nazi death
camps or the Russian gulags? Indeed, it has often been said that the 'ghosts of our ancestors' live through us, and this idea only seems more
plausible and real in light of 21st century systems biology, epigenetics and the elucidation of the mechanisms underlying 'developmental trauma'.
Why not Germany? Look at Germany today, and witness what the power of mourning can do in transforming the dynamics of Human affectivty. We often joke
in our culture about the German - and are pretty quick to make references to the Nazis when we want to make fun of them. Yet, look at them: how did
this transformation of spirit happen?
Following world war 2, the German people had to bear witness to the spectacle of the Nuremberg trials of 1945-46, and later on the Frankfurt trials of
63-65. German historians and philosophers - led above all by Jurgen Habermas - have sought to acknowledge and 'metabolize' the significance of their
actions - the suffering they caused, but above all, they sought to understand the conditions thatunderlined the rise of Nazism - and in doing
so, came to a healthy realization: the need to mourn.
Indeed, any traveler to Germany today - particularly - will be exposed to plaque after plaque naming where Jews once lived - indexing for passerby the
memory of a horror - or a persecution - and a timeless trauma.
What happens to the Human brain when it internalizes the suffering of others, instead of expunging it, denying it, and objectifying it with reflexive
recourse to a "redemptive narrative" (i.e. justification for its happening)? Tears begin to flow - awareness happens - but above all, something even
deeper and more metaphysical seems to be happening; for the German population (not all, of course, but a good majority) the demons of their ancestors
- of their parents and their parents: those who paved the way for Nazism - were 'laid' to rest when they focused their minds on the sufferings of
Jews, gypsies, communists and other victims of the Nazi horror. What was laid to rest, but the spirit of dissociation - or refusing to acknowledge,
know and recognize the same Self that exists in the Other?
To me, feelings flow when recognition happens - whereas it is stifled, mutated, and distorted, in its absence.
Today's Russian people likewise have settled into a culture of relativism, and for many, nihilism has become a plausible - and sustainable -
philosophical position.
What is this but the unacknowledged ghosts of Russia's past, animating the minds of today's generation - fueled by a government motivated by power,
excess and greed?
Russia proves the point - that recognition - attunement to the reality of consequences - of our 'encirclement' with one another - needs to happen
for the 'demons of the past to be purged'.
Alas, the infection has spread, and another people - also haunted by the ghosts of its past (i.e. slavery) - has become animated by the same demonic
forces - arising within those with a similar non-recognition of the actions of their ancestors - and the way those actions, unmetabolized,
unrecognized and unknown, tarnish perception and pervert cognition.
Where trauma occurs, a void is opened - both in the traumatizer and traumatized - they both lose an important dimension of being: the actor, possessed
by the demons of his unmetabolized past - his own traumas, transmitted as always through parents and society - and the traumatized - a victim of the
breakdown of Humanity - a 'sore' which the demons of others cannot bear knowing.
Mourning is there to re-equilibrate and restore the 'system' of our body to a state of coherence. The transformation of German society into todays
leading opposition (to Trump) is not a coincidence, but an effect of the healthiness of mourning.
Dissociation is nothing more than a delay of the inevitable.
The bird flies, the fish swims, the dog smells, and the human recognizes the experiences of others.