I have been reading Rollo May "Love and Will". I read it once before a
long time ago, but the references were all over the place in Yalom's
book so it was almost automatic I would pick up this one next. He has
some very interesting points, but he is a little bit addled and all
over the place. One thing he said that I am in total agreement with.
William James is the underappreciated psychological genius of our age.
He relies on James throughout his arguments, good and bad. As in,
sometimes he re****ts an idea as being Jamesian which clearly is not.
Nobody is perfect!
One thing people might find intersting are his comments on why the
chicks are attracted to the jerks. He attributes the explanation back
to Schopenhauer, that the motive force driving humanities is our
gonads. World as will, will to power. Yes, he has a bunch of Nietzsche
in there too. His Eros is a savage god which has humans scheming and
murdering and raping and flying airplanes into skyscrapers. Those are
the bad days. On good days Eros can get you a decent operating system
(not linux, a _decent_ operating system), a cathedral, Mozart's
Requiem Mass. He has long passages on James' (and Freud's) genius
being a reaction to the dreariness of Victorian culture which
attempted to neuter Eros and bring us all into the service of the
great social experience of the times.
This is all a background to his central point, which is humans today
are schizoid. I like this a lot more than the notion we are all
narcissistic, but it's self-refuting to pigeonhole all of us into the
same pigeonhole. His solution to all our problems, which I interpret
him as an honest representation of the solution to Rollo May's
problems, is that we Do What Thou Wilt. He hasn't mentioned Crowley
yet, or if he did I missed it. He doesn't have much respect for the
Protestant Work Ethic. After you got two houses three cars and the
World's Most Magnificent Personal Library, what then? Huh? What then?
The best part from my own point of view is he has a therapy session
with a guy with a martyr complex and since sometimes I channel my
mother's martyr complex I could really relate. I have a lot more fun
when I channel my father's megalomania let me tell you.
I look forward to the time in the future when I can have my very own
personality disorder.
The other thing which really struck me in his diagnosis of what is
wrong with modern man, mass-man, the salmon people (I prefer this term
and not merely because it is my own invention) is he has them all
walking around in a doublethink daze. If he used the term doublethink
I missed it but that is exactly what he is describing. His
presentation reminded me of Judith Herman's description of doublethink
in the everyday living practice of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
patients, who have to live inside a house where they are being beaten,
raped, abused, whatnot.
Example. I had a conversation with one of my fellow workers the other
day about global warming and fossil fuel burning. He doesn't believe
in it. Not only that, but he believes anybody who does believe in it
is stupid. I pointed out to him that the chairmen of BP and Shell have
both told all of Wall Street that human climate impact is factual and
we have to do something about it.
His reply was, "oh they are just being pragmatic--they don't believe
any of that".
Which could be true. But if it is true that is an enormous burden of
doublethink they are carrying around eight hours a day every single
day. Actually that doesn't really matter because it is only one
example and if we had all day we could come up with a long list of the
doublethink burdens any or all of us have to cope with routinely.
Maybe we all are traumatized. OK this is kind of a tangent but it
might be related. Senator McCain was in a POW camp for five years. We
all know he's got about as much of a traumatic stress stimulus as any
human on earth, and I am pretty sure he's crazy. What I would like to
know is if there is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder scrips in those
medical records he hasn't yet released. Are you ready to vote for a
guy who takes risperdal? I figure the odds of having a prime time
television psychotic lapse are around 50-50.
Which some of you nasty people will be entertained by but I will find
it, if it comes to pass, very sad.
Bukvich
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