In Soviet Russia(1), you realise yourself through labour in the natural world...

In Zen Buddhism, World realise(2) You.


1

2

What's the difference between a duck?

One of its legs are both the same. ;P

Alienation of the Name-of-the-Father [pt1]

Thinking is the sickness of the Mind - Philip Kapleau

The Jesuits are reputed authors of the maxim, "Give me the child until the age of seven, and I will give you the man", and are supposed to have followed it closely in the education of their protégés. Their idea was that thorough indoctrination and habituation to Christian values,  carried out before a child is old enough to make its own moral judgements, will set the little blighter up for a life of virtue. Underlying this is the belief that human beings are born flawed, stained by Original Sin, and that only the most stringent pedagogical steps can make for ultimate Salvation. The practice of attempting to bring souls to God when their defences are weakest was widespread: another Jesuit technique was to seek conversions in the fever wards of hospitals, or after exposing the intended convert to prolonged fasting and isolation,  when he was at his most 'suggestible'... and most open to receiving the 'Good News'.

To anyone with a libertarian bent, practices that seek to tightly mould the thought patterns of an infant (or adult) and to break its will seem cruel and unnatural... amounting to a kind of spiritual pederasty. Contemporary theories of child development are much more to do with nurture and guidance, and less about the exorcism of innate wickedness. Yet the Jesuits' psychological insight - that behaviours learned at the beginning of life are hardest to  forget - can hardly be denied. I know of no-one who has studied the human mind, since the beginnings of the Jesuit Order in the 17th century, who has doubted this. With these points in view, I'd like to re-consider the writings of two of the most influential founders of modern (and post-modern) ideas: René Descartes and Jacques Lacan, who were both schooled by the Society of Jesus. While both rejected many aspects of their earliest training, its mark remained on their thought throughout their respective careers.

Descartes made Mind-Body Dualism fundamental to subsequent Western Philosophy and Science. Following the early death of his mother, he was sent to the Jesuit College Henri-le-Grand (pictured), where he excelled in his studies despite ill health. From the Jesuits, he gained the admirable pragma of accepting nothing that one had not rigorously scrutinised and found to be true by rational inquiry. Thus, he applied radical skepticism when producing his Meditations on First Philosophy, an attempt to find fundamental and indubitable truths on which to build the edifice of human knowledge. Famously, he concluded that because anything experienced by the senses might possibly be hallucinated, or implanted by some 'evil genius', the only thing that Descartes could be sure of was that he was thinking thoughts. Cogito ergo Sum... I think, therefore I exist: famously.  From the Cogito, a number of conclusions were gradually deduced [I'm omitting a great deal of reasoning here, read Descartes yourself if that bothers you ;)], the most important of which, for our present purpose is this:

 The material world, including the human body, is mechanical and governed by laws of cause and effect, but the mind/soul has free will, and must therefore be a radically different substance.      

Descartes thus creates the preposterous image of the human being as a 'Ghost in a machine', which went unchallenged in Europe for quite some time. How the immaterial ghost could make changes to the clockwork material universe was a bit of a moot point, although Descartes was happy to invoke God (and some mysterious vapours) as the agents which effected physical change when someone's mind willed his finger to twitch, say, or his eyelid to blink.

A consequence of this Cartesian Dualism was that a scientist could see himself (please note the male pronoun, it was pretty much all dudes) as a rational observer, abstracted from the physical world under observation. For the natural sciences this was a major boon, for the humanities it was a very stinky red herring. A physicist could record the result of experiments, and deduce mathematical laws of nature from them,  without being arrested for disagreeing with Aristotle or the Pope. Similarly, chemists could seek the fundamental elements without making sacrifices to Hermes Tresmegistus, or spending years purifying their souls. which was nice. But applying Cartesianism to people's individual and social lives was an enormous cock-up - I aver.

Such monstrosities as Bentham's panopticon rely on a cartesian viewpoint, indeed any practical utilitarianism relies on the cartesian view:  for a society to be governed in such a way as to create the 'greatest happiness for the greatest number' someone has to be rational and impartial enough to figure out what this happiness would consist of, and how to implement it. Such a person or group cannot be 'part of' the social system to be improved.

All imperialisms and totalitarianisms subsequent to Descartes have used similar rationalisations of their power. The hegemony is natural because the in-group are better educated, racially superior, more scientifically socialist, whatever, than society at large.  The ordinary citizen is in some respect less of a cartesian mind, and more of a mechanical object to be manipulated... due to some gap in his rationality, he is a victim of bodily or subconscious reflexes, or too muddled in his thinking to see the true facts of the larger situation. The citizen or the conquered race must be treated as a toddler in the care of benign Jesuits... to be improved by Discipline and Punishment, or simply to be administered and managed by the intelligent minority.

 Quantum theory in Physics, and many findings of modern neuroscience have undermined the ghost in the machine view of humanity... and depth theories in psychology have undermined the idea of a unitary, transparently rational mind. Yet our social structures are still set up as if the 20th century never happened. The ubiquity of CCTV is the mark of an improved panopticon, economic theories still assume everyone to act from rational self-interest (self-interest being equivalent to financial profit seeking, apparently). So it goes, blame Descartes!

One more point about mind-body dualism, before we have a peek at Lacan's jesuiticality. In the mediaeval, pre-Descartes, world... people felt at home in the world, now they feel much more isolated. Erich Fromm has a lot to say on this, he attributes the change in consciousness to the rise of proto-capitalist modes of production, and to the Protestant Ethic. I agree with Fromm here, but I can't overlook the power of Dualism to create a lonely, isolated subjectivity. Fromm is coming from a Marxist perspective, where changes in the cultural/subjective superstructure must be determined by the economic base. Be that as it may, Descartes theory alienates the thinking mind from its own physical body, as well as from the body politic, and the natural world. The ghost in the machine is a lonely ghost. In the language of contemporary psychology... the Cartesian position is a schizoid, even a psychotic one.

My fundamental contention - which I maintain throughout this blog, and elsewhere - is that the natural and happiest condition for human life is one where the distinctions between subject and object, body and mind are broken down. [this is not the same as the Hegelian concept of spirit realising itself in the world] I believe this is philosophically tenable, and I know it can be lived experience. In the next part of this post, I'll defend my stance against Descartes, and against his fellow Jesuit alumnus Jacques Lacan.        

   

       ... to be continued.