Life drive and Death drive
(This is to be read in conjunction with my comment on tyler's video post.)
All action aims towards progress. This is the meaning of the life drive. What is nonaction? Is it necessarily the negation of life? Two shades color this world. Our existence comes on top of this partition, swaying half towards this, half towards that. Life and death are somehow the same, and the differance holding us in the one and out of the other can be crossed over in the blink of an eye.
Now I wrote this when I was high and on a bus. And I didn't make the point I wanted to make. Which was this. I feel like of everyone I know, there are two paths that are being chosen between. Either we're entering the world wanting to make a direct difference, seeing a problem and wanting to fix it, or we're deciding to exist within the world but wanting nothing to do with it. There are two branches to each of these. In the 'entering the world' option, one can either do it with a will to change things (hippies, peace core joiners, teachers, political revolutionaries) or simply to make money (businessmen; lawyers come somewhere in between). For those of us who are more or less disgusted by how the world works-- and let us not suppose that there has been any time in the past several millenia that this was not the choice people had to make-- there are again two paths. Either we become 'absurd men' who decide to exist within the world that nauseates us but attempting to live more authentically, less commercially, more enlightened -- and this we do by writing books, making films, or perhaps by being actors or playpersons (read: Don Juans). Or we withdraw completely, we become recluses, hobos, hermits. These last are of course the fewest among us, and certainly, among the hobos and hermits of the world, there are few that have chosen of their full and principled volition to be such. The point, though, is this. Either we enter the life of people, of politics, government, social concern, and revolution; or we do something else. The question is: is this something else opposed to life? Is a life of nonaction, such as that intended by doctrinal Daoism and some Zen Buddhists, necessarily a negation of life, some sort of death drive?
I truly believe that among the aggregate of all persons in the world, there are those who are on the side of life, and those on the side of death. These are of course really one and the same, because we all are EXISTING whatever we individually choose to do with it. But all the same, there is still a fundamental difference between choosing to do with our lives what society (parents, peers, media) tells us to do with it, and deciding to do something that is somehow always in opposition to that social reality, that social drive, that drive towards progress, that drive towards directly helping people, that life drive -- and I believe that to do the opposite is precisely to engage the death drive. Thus the two shades, thus the swaying this way and that. And in terms of the blink of an eye, well, this is the freedom that every man always has, whether or not he should wish to confront it. Death is always just a slip or a jump away.
Any thoughts?
All action aims towards progress. This is the meaning of the life drive. What is nonaction? Is it necessarily the negation of life? Two shades color this world. Our existence comes on top of this partition, swaying half towards this, half towards that. Life and death are somehow the same, and the differance holding us in the one and out of the other can be crossed over in the blink of an eye.
Now I wrote this when I was high and on a bus. And I didn't make the point I wanted to make. Which was this. I feel like of everyone I know, there are two paths that are being chosen between. Either we're entering the world wanting to make a direct difference, seeing a problem and wanting to fix it, or we're deciding to exist within the world but wanting nothing to do with it. There are two branches to each of these. In the 'entering the world' option, one can either do it with a will to change things (hippies, peace core joiners, teachers, political revolutionaries) or simply to make money (businessmen; lawyers come somewhere in between). For those of us who are more or less disgusted by how the world works-- and let us not suppose that there has been any time in the past several millenia that this was not the choice people had to make-- there are again two paths. Either we become 'absurd men' who decide to exist within the world that nauseates us but attempting to live more authentically, less commercially, more enlightened -- and this we do by writing books, making films, or perhaps by being actors or playpersons (read: Don Juans). Or we withdraw completely, we become recluses, hobos, hermits. These last are of course the fewest among us, and certainly, among the hobos and hermits of the world, there are few that have chosen of their full and principled volition to be such. The point, though, is this. Either we enter the life of people, of politics, government, social concern, and revolution; or we do something else. The question is: is this something else opposed to life? Is a life of nonaction, such as that intended by doctrinal Daoism and some Zen Buddhists, necessarily a negation of life, some sort of death drive?
I truly believe that among the aggregate of all persons in the world, there are those who are on the side of life, and those on the side of death. These are of course really one and the same, because we all are EXISTING whatever we individually choose to do with it. But all the same, there is still a fundamental difference between choosing to do with our lives what society (parents, peers, media) tells us to do with it, and deciding to do something that is somehow always in opposition to that social reality, that social drive, that drive towards progress, that drive towards directly helping people, that life drive -- and I believe that to do the opposite is precisely to engage the death drive. Thus the two shades, thus the swaying this way and that. And in terms of the blink of an eye, well, this is the freedom that every man always has, whether or not he should wish to confront it. Death is always just a slip or a jump away.
Any thoughts?
posted by Tongue-tied Lightning at 11:50 AM
3 Comments:
Hmm.. I haven't read the death drive, although it's high on my list, whatever that means. I do have a few innocent points to make concerning your post, however. I'm not sure that either path is necessarily social nor anti-social. Absurdism could be viewed also as a path of progressivism. This is what I mean: an absurdist author, or even an hermit, is a narcissist (I'm not moralizing) insofar as his work is completely self-referential. And by doing so, by producing his work, by choosing to make a life outside of society, he is nonetheless releasing his production into the world, even if its just something he writes on a napkin and immediately burns. His life is a kind of protest of the way our society has destroyed language (made it impossible to derive truth from it). The thing is, I don't think that there is such a thing as non-action. Even death is an action within itself. Being dead is also an action, as it is a form of being, and to be is to act. To escape the world is not to deny its existence, but to validate its existence on an existential level. Or existence validates itself ultimately by those who try to escape it. Perhaps I'm not englightened enough in order to think otherwise (i.e. to not-think), but just the fact that I think of enlightenment as something separate from myself means that it is not something separate from myself, and therefore it's a catch-22 to choose to lived an enlightened life. As soon as you place yourself or the theoretical subject on ANY sort of path, whether or not its a path to 'non-existence', you are on a path (i.e. progressivism). And you can't progress towards 'non-existence', which is the reason why I have a problem now with dogmatic religion and spiritualism. It provides an alternate path, but that is still a path. I think its better to live your life the way you live your life. Which is not to say that being a hermit is not a way to live your life, because that is exactly what I am saying. What about suicide? How does that relate to the death drive? (I really don't know, its not a rhetorical question.) Because I would view that as the ultimate action, the ultimate form of protest against life - and thus the ultimate affirmation of existence. Simply, I just don't think you can choose death. Death chooses you, as does enlightenment. I think that a business man has as good a chance of enlightenment as does a zen monk. In fact, maybe even a better chance.
Also, I want to say something about self-contempt.
Contempt for the world is a form of self-contempt. Therefore, the hermit who hates the world and tries to escape it is taking an action based on self-contempt. The same goes for the businessman who hates himself the way he is and thus tries to better himself by achieving wealth and power. The same goes for the progressive activist (or radical) who tries to change the world in the name of some future utopia. In fact, the same goes for pretty much everybody! I would like to live my life without hating myself for it every minute, which I think a lot of people do, whether or not they recognize it (which is why guilt is so deep and essential within each of us). But how do we escape this guilt? It's certainly not by sitting here writing this. Yet it's certainly not by not sitting here writing this. It's so simple, and we are so complicated, that we can't understand it. It's not innocence; it's not sin. It's not success; it's not failure. It's not the past; it's not the future. It's not you; it's not me. It's not him; it's not her. It's not this; it's not that. It's not anything; it's not nothing. Ok, I'll tell you what it is:
Oh, on re-reading your post, I also want to add that the person who works in opposition to social reality (what is that, a serial killer?) is also working on self-contempt, it's no different than the basic motivation of a progressive activist. It's necessarily based on a future outcome, whether or not that future is to have no future (impossible and therefore the attempt is in vain). Unfortunately, we are not masters of time. We exist within it, and thus we are forced by the dint of our birth to act at every moment, for every moment. No action is any different than any other action when you look at it from an amoral point of view. Each is as chastisable as the next, and each is chastised in its own way, and each is a commendable, and each is commended in its own way. Sure, we can choose to not-act, but that is no different than acting, precisely because it is a choice, and a choice is necessarily an action. And action is necessarily intended to mold the future, which is, as I understand it, the same as the life-drive. In fact, the death drive may be the only thing we don't have a choice in. The way I see it, you can't engage the death drive because it already resides in all of us as our eventual death. It engages us?
I'm sorry I'm dealing so much with the subtext of your post.
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