Rebirth

Read Krister Sundelin's answer to Quantum field theory is our best effort at describing reality. But it cannot be right even though it’s passed many tests. If dark energy and dark matter are real, QFT is not even close. So what is reality? on Quora

Just take a moment and go through Krister Sundelin's interesting answer that covers not only the Quantum Field Theory, but also every model of our world, responding to the question that finally sums up into "What is reality?" . But there is another question arising here: Would the initial query be valid if not comparing reality to a specific model, according to which our experience fails? Yet would one be able to operate in the world without such a model?

Krister very nicely explains why such a model is necessary in terms of useful and good enough. Nevertheless, he implicitly notes how such a model would bring trouble if instead of identifying its scope, one treats it as identical to reality itself.

Of course, our interest here expands beyond the definition given by science, and into the way this basic question concerning life comes from the human subject who invents science in order to find an answer. 

As such, we can say that one's struggle in life is when failing to operate in the way Krister describes, i.e. instead of treating the constructed models as a useful tool of assisting the exploration of the world, the speaking being becomes servant of the very models they made. We construct models of the world navigated by the real of our experience, but then another thing happens: we abuse a model to make hard predictions, treating it as final theory of everything, where the living experience is limited into a pre-constructed framework - this is what in psychoanalysis we call (unconscious) fantasy.

One's task, and the task of psychoanalysis, wouldn’t be to navigate the subject into the construction of a convenient world, because there is no final word/world, but to liberate the process of construction itself which is a constant rebirth: one's body - another name for the place of being - is reformed along with the world. It is magnificent how children are continuously fascinated by “same things” exploring them endlessly, treating them as “new” every time. We grow old precisely when we start considering these things “same old things” i.e. we get old along with them, where we encounter less and less things to be excited about. This is how science should operate and that's why children are the best scientists!

Human desire is about exploration of the world/life that aims at an actual creation/re-creation of it, along with one's place within it, one's own body. It is definitely something that goes beyond what has already been described as fantasy and that's why people who act on their desire never get bored of what they do: they experience this constant rebirth where everything is new.

Happy re-birthday everyone.

Annual Review

If you want to conduct your year-end review, ask yourself the question that Lacan asks in his seminar called The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: “Have you acted in conformity to your desire?”

You maybe respond, “I wanted to, but lockdown restricted me from doing the thing I like”. Well, desire is not only about doing something that I like, that is to say, narrowing it into a specific object of my preferences. What is mostly about, is the inspiration and the will to make-happen. Desire is about creation.

 

Think about a child that wants to play but doesn’t have a playstation, or a racing track toy, or a plain doll. The child that wants to play will find a thousand ways and more to construct those things. The child will pick up a used tin can, a broken branch, a piece of string and play the whole day, wherever s/he may be - and if not, if the child denies to play unless s/he gets a specific toy, then we should consider that there is something wrong with this child.

 

Desire is about making our best out of our current situation. Some people talk about acceptance in a passive and pessimistic way; in a way that “if I accept what’s happening, then I accept that I am a slave”. This forms a necessity, where the only way available is resisting or remaining idle in that situation - which is, too, a resistance because staying idle doesn’t take place without force on one’s body, a force that make the body tired, thus the usual “I do nothing but I am continuously tired”. Acceptance is about considering the current situation as is, and doing what can be done accordingly. If a child is grounded from leaving their bedroom, locked down, and maybe after resisting, would it abandon his game, or would s/he invent one?

 

Don’t place your desire into a specific demand of doing this or that. Desire is the source of creation (another word for life): this is precisely what one shouldn’t lock down.