I feel obliged* to warn you all that this post has a high content of continental philosophy, pseudo-structuralism and a dash of queer theory tossed in for "funsies".
After the last post, I have Foucault's Madness and Civilisation on the brain. The question I keep returning to is how one might live out one's madness as a valid instantiation of being in the world whilst also not doing so in a manner that is alienating.
My reading of Foucault comes through the filter of the bias footnoted below and I make no claim as to it's being particularly the best reading. Because of this, I intend to stick to the ideas that reading Foucault has given me rather than trying to elucidate the text. Here endeth the disclaimer.
Rights talk is more than a little incoherent philosophically but it is a very useful way of talking about the privileged space that should be accorded the individual within a society. Because of the way human rights play into the way in which the mad are treated, it is perhaps the most appropriate way for me to approach this question of how to live out madness validly.
Oh God: It has just become stunningly clear and perspicuous to me that this is going to take much longer to write than I intended and it's late. I'm copping out.
I will stop with a question. Might the mad have a human right to be mad insofar as it is subjectively desirable and does not lead to harming others? If so, how would this work? The axiom I take for this is that madnesses are unique, that they are not total and as such are a valuable, non-fungible individual experience. Our current ways of treating madness implicitly devalue madness and deny that the content of madness has in it anything relevant to the human experience. Is this right? Does this infringe on the right to self-expression?
No, this is not going to be an anti-psychiatry rant. Psychiatry has done great things for me. But it's not perfect and it's worth using new ways to analyse it as a whole.
More soon and in the meantime, I welcome everyone's thoughts on the matter.
____________________________________________________________________
*I am obliged by my increasing Anglo-American Analytic Philosophy bias - the LSE tends to entrench any such tendencies. In real life, these distinctions matter less and less but they do persist in that we study the philosophers who wrote when the distinction was more real.
Showing posts with label Age of Reason. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Age of Reason. Show all posts
23 December 2009
20 December 2009
Failings
It's a Sunday and I have therefore been thinking over what I'm doing in my life; not that I don't think about it on other days but Sunday is a particular prompt. Over the past three days I've had my semi-annual semi-collapse, something that seems to happen irregardless of my general health, in wet weather years and in fine. For a few days to a week, I hibernate, skip bathing (embarrassing but true), eat unhealthy food and avoid talking to people. It's exhaustion and nerves and while it feels like a waste of time, it seems to be an inexpungible part of my constitution.
The result of this is that I have come to the conclusion that I have been failing to take myself seriously. I have not given myself much credit for anything, I have doubted my own agency, I have abrogated to others my opinions of what is good and of what I ought to do. This has not been a total state - I have got myself off to grad school despite other people's best, well-meaning and insidious advice, after all. However, I can see that I have often done things by half-measures and deliberately obscured myself in order to avoid seeming to think too much of myself when I ought to have let myself try my talents and tested myself by truer measures rather than let the expectations of others dictate how far I should pursue success and enjoyment.
I know where this started. It was when I started school here in London at the beginning of tenth grade. My parents enrolled my sister and myself at a school that follows the American curriculum. All my life before, I had gone to public schools, which is American for state schools but the school I went to here was independent, which in American would be called private, and private schools have a tendency to look down on the quality of education available in a state school. I had all my life been in honors classes and moved up grade levels in maths and English. However, this new school automatically placed me in mainstream track classes and when I queried this, they informed me that it was because this school had very strenuous high standards and they knew that I would not be prepared for their honors classes. This happened during orientation; they held it in the library and I remember quite clearly sitting on the round table in the front of the library where I later spent much time studying with my friends after school, and thinking that perhaps they were right. After all, I had never done well in school before. No one, neither I nor my parents nor my teachers, had ever thought this was because the work was too hard for me: on the contrary, I was always told that I was more than smart enough to be attempting the classes I was in.
I never had been able to complete more than half the homework I was assigned, much to the confusion of myself and all the relevant adults. I still struggle to make myself do all such things in vaguely timely fashion. I now think that this is part due to the strain of mental illness and part due to the fact that it's just not interesting to do - I have much less trouble when the assignment is at all substantial or challenging - and largely due to bad habits. I think that the first two led eventually to the last: as a child, I rarely had recourse to any defense but withdrawal and refusal. But at the time I didn't know why I found it so hard to be like everyone else, I only knew that I had never been able to do it.
By the time I reached tenth grade I was, as you might imagine, very discouraged over the whole school situation. So, when it was suggested to me that the honors classes I was used to might be too hard I was ready to take this advice - it was a new idea about why I did not do well and I wanted an explanation and I wanted a release from the constant strife with teachers and with my parents. Perhaps I had been setting my sights too high and perhaps I wasn't as smart as I thought. Apart from pressing them into putting me in French 3 (I had already completed French 2 and languages have always come easily to me - French was one of the two classes I could usually actually do my work for), I gave up the battle and accepted their judgement that I wasn't good enough for their honors classes - disregarding entirely the fact that I started school a year early, that I had always been above grade level hitherto and my consistently high standardised test scores.
I'm afraid that that sounds quite snotty but it is the plain truth of the situation. Besides, pretending that I am less than I am is what has gotten me in to this particular mess in the first place. I may as well stop doing it now as at any other time. Why ought I to be modest to the point of feeling ashamed about having the abilities I am lucky enough to have? I am very smart and quite good looking and I have a nice dry wit in conversation and I know it. I don't think it makes me better or more worthwhile than other people - it's an accident of birth and as such has nothing to do with whether I'm a good person or not. It doesn't cancel out my less desirable qualities, such as being very untidy and a mediocre cook and lazy about schoolwork and turning library books in on time. Nor does it cancel out my slatternly tendency to digress when I'm writing. . ..
My point is that I have believed other people who tell me I cannot do things that I reasonably think I am able to do. Since that initial concession at the start of tenth grade, I have given in on innumerable things, large and small and let myself be guided by other people's expectations. There are several important instances where I have not given in but plenty where I have and still more where I have equivocated. I am obedient when I ought to be stubborn. The worst of it is that I moderate my ambition - instead of aiming to do well, I aim not to fail. Sometimes not failing is the best I can do but I apply the same remit to situations where I could do much better. I ought not to do this. I especially ought not to give up without trying; I especially ought not to just fail to do anything at all.
All this is by now compounded with my mental ill health and what various people think I ought to do or refrain from doing in order to protect it. Foucault, I must admit, was largely right in his assessment of the effects of the moral management of mental illness - that the unique experience of madness was denied and devalued and with it, the agency and personhood of the mad, that it creates an internal police state within the individual (he didn't put it quite like that but that is how I take it) that makes the mad individual her own oppressor, her own restraint and a restraint ultimately more insidious and cruel than chains because it disintegrates the individual and makes all herself, her feelings and attitudes and actions, invalid. He argues this more strongly than I would personally but I do concede his point in the main and I'm digressing again.
O for brevity! O for clarity! O for the ability to be succinct and to use fewer parentheses!
This is where doubt strikes me, whence fear springs forth. If I want to do anything with my life and if I want make it through without being bored half to death, I must stop listening to others at the expense of listening to myself.
The result of this is that I have come to the conclusion that I have been failing to take myself seriously. I have not given myself much credit for anything, I have doubted my own agency, I have abrogated to others my opinions of what is good and of what I ought to do. This has not been a total state - I have got myself off to grad school despite other people's best, well-meaning and insidious advice, after all. However, I can see that I have often done things by half-measures and deliberately obscured myself in order to avoid seeming to think too much of myself when I ought to have let myself try my talents and tested myself by truer measures rather than let the expectations of others dictate how far I should pursue success and enjoyment.
I know where this started. It was when I started school here in London at the beginning of tenth grade. My parents enrolled my sister and myself at a school that follows the American curriculum. All my life before, I had gone to public schools, which is American for state schools but the school I went to here was independent, which in American would be called private, and private schools have a tendency to look down on the quality of education available in a state school. I had all my life been in honors classes and moved up grade levels in maths and English. However, this new school automatically placed me in mainstream track classes and when I queried this, they informed me that it was because this school had very strenuous high standards and they knew that I would not be prepared for their honors classes. This happened during orientation; they held it in the library and I remember quite clearly sitting on the round table in the front of the library where I later spent much time studying with my friends after school, and thinking that perhaps they were right. After all, I had never done well in school before. No one, neither I nor my parents nor my teachers, had ever thought this was because the work was too hard for me: on the contrary, I was always told that I was more than smart enough to be attempting the classes I was in.
I never had been able to complete more than half the homework I was assigned, much to the confusion of myself and all the relevant adults. I still struggle to make myself do all such things in vaguely timely fashion. I now think that this is part due to the strain of mental illness and part due to the fact that it's just not interesting to do - I have much less trouble when the assignment is at all substantial or challenging - and largely due to bad habits. I think that the first two led eventually to the last: as a child, I rarely had recourse to any defense but withdrawal and refusal. But at the time I didn't know why I found it so hard to be like everyone else, I only knew that I had never been able to do it.
By the time I reached tenth grade I was, as you might imagine, very discouraged over the whole school situation. So, when it was suggested to me that the honors classes I was used to might be too hard I was ready to take this advice - it was a new idea about why I did not do well and I wanted an explanation and I wanted a release from the constant strife with teachers and with my parents. Perhaps I had been setting my sights too high and perhaps I wasn't as smart as I thought. Apart from pressing them into putting me in French 3 (I had already completed French 2 and languages have always come easily to me - French was one of the two classes I could usually actually do my work for), I gave up the battle and accepted their judgement that I wasn't good enough for their honors classes - disregarding entirely the fact that I started school a year early, that I had always been above grade level hitherto and my consistently high standardised test scores.
I'm afraid that that sounds quite snotty but it is the plain truth of the situation. Besides, pretending that I am less than I am is what has gotten me in to this particular mess in the first place. I may as well stop doing it now as at any other time. Why ought I to be modest to the point of feeling ashamed about having the abilities I am lucky enough to have? I am very smart and quite good looking and I have a nice dry wit in conversation and I know it. I don't think it makes me better or more worthwhile than other people - it's an accident of birth and as such has nothing to do with whether I'm a good person or not. It doesn't cancel out my less desirable qualities, such as being very untidy and a mediocre cook and lazy about schoolwork and turning library books in on time. Nor does it cancel out my slatternly tendency to digress when I'm writing. . ..
My point is that I have believed other people who tell me I cannot do things that I reasonably think I am able to do. Since that initial concession at the start of tenth grade, I have given in on innumerable things, large and small and let myself be guided by other people's expectations. There are several important instances where I have not given in but plenty where I have and still more where I have equivocated. I am obedient when I ought to be stubborn. The worst of it is that I moderate my ambition - instead of aiming to do well, I aim not to fail. Sometimes not failing is the best I can do but I apply the same remit to situations where I could do much better. I ought not to do this. I especially ought not to give up without trying; I especially ought not to just fail to do anything at all.
All this is by now compounded with my mental ill health and what various people think I ought to do or refrain from doing in order to protect it. Foucault, I must admit, was largely right in his assessment of the effects of the moral management of mental illness - that the unique experience of madness was denied and devalued and with it, the agency and personhood of the mad, that it creates an internal police state within the individual (he didn't put it quite like that but that is how I take it) that makes the mad individual her own oppressor, her own restraint and a restraint ultimately more insidious and cruel than chains because it disintegrates the individual and makes all herself, her feelings and attitudes and actions, invalid. He argues this more strongly than I would personally but I do concede his point in the main and I'm digressing again.
O for brevity! O for clarity! O for the ability to be succinct and to use fewer parentheses!
This is where doubt strikes me, whence fear springs forth. If I want to do anything with my life and if I want make it through without being bored half to death, I must stop listening to others at the expense of listening to myself.
21 November 2009
The Benthamite Utility Monster is Eating My Claims About Art: Help!
Last night I went to the ROH for the first time since moving back here, which was a thrill. I have missed it! It was only to go the Linbury Studio Theatre but any disappointment I might have felt at not getting in to see the main house was more than mitigated by the fact that I was there to see an old school friend of mine who had had some of his work commissioned for the ROH Firsts 09 season. The programme was a mixed bag but that's what happens with series like that.
Unbelievably, I have not even made it to the Tate Modern (easy enough walking distance from university) nor the National Gallery (ten minutes walk, if that far) since I got back here. No art, when that was one of the things I had most looked forward to having back. I have been just a little bit busy for some reason...but still.
I feel a lot better today than I have for a couple of weeks and I blame that entirely on my theatre excursion. I have for years realised that studying ballet was what got me through all the depression I had in high school, and that singing at church and working at the gallery have been a mainstay for me over the past few years. Nevertheless, I was genuinely surprised at how much better I felt last night. Art, it seems, is actively good for me. At the moment, I would say that it helps as much as klonopin does, though I wouldn't vouch for that being true if I were really in the depths.
I have generally been against the idea that art has or ought to have a utility value on the grounds that art works are not fungible in any meaningful way and utility values function off of a notion of exchangibility, which implies price and thus that art should be wholly a means rather than an end in itself*, so I worry about making a medicinal utility claim about it. However, I don't think that such a claim harms the dignity of an individual art work if I restrict the claim to art as a species of human activity and the end to which I make a claim that art is a means is an occultly achieved human end that art can achieve as a generality. I don't know; that's still a bit Benthamite. However, I do not make this claim universally: I imagine that there are others for whom the football or foreign language study or collecting match boxes achieves much the same end when art would not do the same. Actually, though, that is Benthamite ('pushpin is equal to poetry'). Oh dear. The dangers of making any claim to utility!
I need to have a think about this, but for now I shall just say hurrah for Art and hurrah for feeling better. At least for today, that has priority to philosophy.
*This is part of the good remains of the time I spent as a devout deontologist and secular humanist.
Unbelievably, I have not even made it to the Tate Modern (easy enough walking distance from university) nor the National Gallery (ten minutes walk, if that far) since I got back here. No art, when that was one of the things I had most looked forward to having back. I have been just a little bit busy for some reason...but still.
I feel a lot better today than I have for a couple of weeks and I blame that entirely on my theatre excursion. I have for years realised that studying ballet was what got me through all the depression I had in high school, and that singing at church and working at the gallery have been a mainstay for me over the past few years. Nevertheless, I was genuinely surprised at how much better I felt last night. Art, it seems, is actively good for me. At the moment, I would say that it helps as much as klonopin does, though I wouldn't vouch for that being true if I were really in the depths.
I have generally been against the idea that art has or ought to have a utility value on the grounds that art works are not fungible in any meaningful way and utility values function off of a notion of exchangibility, which implies price and thus that art should be wholly a means rather than an end in itself*, so I worry about making a medicinal utility claim about it. However, I don't think that such a claim harms the dignity of an individual art work if I restrict the claim to art as a species of human activity and the end to which I make a claim that art is a means is an occultly achieved human end that art can achieve as a generality. I don't know; that's still a bit Benthamite. However, I do not make this claim universally: I imagine that there are others for whom the football or foreign language study or collecting match boxes achieves much the same end when art would not do the same. Actually, though, that is Benthamite ('pushpin is equal to poetry'). Oh dear. The dangers of making any claim to utility!
I need to have a think about this, but for now I shall just say hurrah for Art and hurrah for feeling better. At least for today, that has priority to philosophy.
*This is part of the good remains of the time I spent as a devout deontologist and secular humanist.
31 July 2009
Don't Found a Church That Will Be Headed By Committee
Or do, perhaps. It seems still to be working for the Presbyterians.
I'm not sure if anyone who reads this has been paying attention to the state of the Anglican Church since the Episcopal Church in the US had General Convention recently but it is a sorry state of affairs. You can read about it here, our Presiding Bishop's letter is here, Rowan Williams' response is here and reflections from the Anglican communion institute are here.
Now, I have infinitely more patience with the Church trying to figure out what to do with non-heterosexual people than I do with the government (Barack Obama, what is the matter with you?) but I do not have much patience for wrongheaded arguments from anyone. My problem with the arguments coming out of Canterbury is that they frame the debate about opening ordination to non-celibate queer people and giving blessing on same-sex partnerships in terms of sex. It is not about sex, it is about love. Secondly, these arguments tend to implicitly assume that queer people exist outside of the community and are somehow intruding on the Church. This is not the case. Every single queer person on earth has parents, often siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends - they are not a discrete group of individuals but rooted deeply into society. To deny the full humanity of queer people affects not only any individual queer person, nor even merely those who fall into that category but also anyone who is a parent, child, relative or friend of someone who is queer.
Thirdly, to close up ranks by brandishing church tradition in the faces of those who want change and making threats of schism and rival communions is not Christian behavior. Nor, indeed, is doing so philosophically consistent with the origins of the Anglican church. To me, the great miracle of the Anglican church is that from its very beginning it managed to unite anti-monarchical Puritans with those who might have preferred to remain Catholic through having a single Book of Common Prayer. There is no clear reason, it seems to me, to think that it cannot hold us in communion now.
Blegh, such a frustrating mess. And all it will lead to is another report and then a conference and then an advisory and so on into darkness. It never will be resolved if the argument cannot be framed in proper terms because, until then, we will all be talking at cross purposes and waffling all the while. Nothing was ever solved by informal fallacies!
I'm not sure if anyone who reads this has been paying attention to the state of the Anglican Church since the Episcopal Church in the US had General Convention recently but it is a sorry state of affairs. You can read about it here, our Presiding Bishop's letter is here, Rowan Williams' response is here and reflections from the Anglican communion institute are here.
Now, I have infinitely more patience with the Church trying to figure out what to do with non-heterosexual people than I do with the government (Barack Obama, what is the matter with you?) but I do not have much patience for wrongheaded arguments from anyone. My problem with the arguments coming out of Canterbury is that they frame the debate about opening ordination to non-celibate queer people and giving blessing on same-sex partnerships in terms of sex. It is not about sex, it is about love. Secondly, these arguments tend to implicitly assume that queer people exist outside of the community and are somehow intruding on the Church. This is not the case. Every single queer person on earth has parents, often siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends - they are not a discrete group of individuals but rooted deeply into society. To deny the full humanity of queer people affects not only any individual queer person, nor even merely those who fall into that category but also anyone who is a parent, child, relative or friend of someone who is queer.
Thirdly, to close up ranks by brandishing church tradition in the faces of those who want change and making threats of schism and rival communions is not Christian behavior. Nor, indeed, is doing so philosophically consistent with the origins of the Anglican church. To me, the great miracle of the Anglican church is that from its very beginning it managed to unite anti-monarchical Puritans with those who might have preferred to remain Catholic through having a single Book of Common Prayer. There is no clear reason, it seems to me, to think that it cannot hold us in communion now.
Blegh, such a frustrating mess. And all it will lead to is another report and then a conference and then an advisory and so on into darkness. It never will be resolved if the argument cannot be framed in proper terms because, until then, we will all be talking at cross purposes and waffling all the while. Nothing was ever solved by informal fallacies!
16 January 2009
First Day Back
As I sat in my first class this morning, I couldn't believe my eyes. The light was clear. All around me were students from different years. Some of them were happily chatting to their neighbors, two behind me were bemoaning the lack of party opportunities in our fair city and talking of transferring to one of the other state universities. Some were silent, as I was. It was warm in the classroom and I sat comfortably at my desk.
It was not at all what I remembered.
One year ago I had my first class of the semester in this same classroom, taught by the same teacher. But that day it was too dark to see properly in the classroom so that the edges of things blurred and crackled against one another. That day, the air was sharp and rough, and made me cough. That day, the desk felt too small and I sat squeezed uncomfortably while my fellow students made a chorus of raucous guffaws and descant whispers. My hands were numb while I was damped with sweat and shivering.
It was not that the heating system had been redone, nor the building remodelled, nor the desks changed nor the students. It was me.
The stark difference between my memory and my immediate perception was startling. I had new eyes!
We rely on our senses for unmediated knowledge. Our modern sciences are based in empricism, i.e. the idea that knowledge must come from direct observation. This has led to many innovations: the helio-centric theory, evolution, calculus, even our dear friends psychology and psychiatry. Empiricism as a code of action and of evaluation has reached into history, political thory, philosophy, art. It is always with us, even in such hackneyed sayings as "I can't believe my eyes." This expression would carry no great meaning if we did not understand that our senses were our best conduits to understanding. Divine Illumination it is not.
I thought that I was entering the port of an earthly purgatory; imagine my surprise when I found a welcoming place instead.
It was not at all what I remembered.
One year ago I had my first class of the semester in this same classroom, taught by the same teacher. But that day it was too dark to see properly in the classroom so that the edges of things blurred and crackled against one another. That day, the air was sharp and rough, and made me cough. That day, the desk felt too small and I sat squeezed uncomfortably while my fellow students made a chorus of raucous guffaws and descant whispers. My hands were numb while I was damped with sweat and shivering.
It was not that the heating system had been redone, nor the building remodelled, nor the desks changed nor the students. It was me.
The stark difference between my memory and my immediate perception was startling. I had new eyes!
We rely on our senses for unmediated knowledge. Our modern sciences are based in empricism, i.e. the idea that knowledge must come from direct observation. This has led to many innovations: the helio-centric theory, evolution, calculus, even our dear friends psychology and psychiatry. Empiricism as a code of action and of evaluation has reached into history, political thory, philosophy, art. It is always with us, even in such hackneyed sayings as "I can't believe my eyes." This expression would carry no great meaning if we did not understand that our senses were our best conduits to understanding. Divine Illumination it is not.
I thought that I was entering the port of an earthly purgatory; imagine my surprise when I found a welcoming place instead.
04 January 2009
Pajamas, Bipolar Disorder and Capitalism
I want to know when I’ll have things together again. I’m entirely useless in December: it takes me quite a while to get over being away for Thanksgiving. That whole process is hampered by my knowing that I’m going away again in three weeks. Then I go away again, act surly around my family and come home full of woe.
Now that I’ve been back for seven days (really? that many already?) I’m starting to feel settled in again. I am looking forward to getting back to a real schedule with school and work and church. That’s the main difficulty with going away. I get jogged out of my routine and then the bipolar disorder gets the upper hand and I forget how to get dressed and eat and sleep, which rather gets in the way of doing anything at all.
Worrying about staying on top of things has me thinking. I’m not good at it. I do best in a well-worn rut, so I’ve been running around trying to make mine a little deeper before school starts. Some of the things I’m trying to get under control are reasonable and unequivocally good for me like eating and not wearing my pajamas all day and sleeping. Others I wonder about. They seem to be concessions to capitalism and, though they are often taken to be innate to human nature, I’m not sure that they are.
I worry about this because I live in capitalism. I don’t know whether I’m against it or not: at the moment, I’m just trying to figure out how to live in it. We tend to accept capitalism as an objective fact but to me it appears instantiated in history, crafted by human theory and a not entirely predictable force in the shape of the world. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to fit very well into the social structures capitalism has created. I’m not the only who doesn’t fit into the current ideal of human being that modern capitalisms require. Nuns don’t, for example, and neither do various of the disabled, nor certain criminals. Nor do lottery players and inheritance beneficiaries: they’re after money not tied to their own labor. But all these people still exist and it seems worthwhile to theorize capitalisms that might include them and include me.
One aspect of modern capitalism that seems worth exploring in this light is our collective concern with time. We have bound time and work together in such a way that their meanings have significantly altered. If we look back to John Locke’s Second Treatise*, we will see that he identifies ownership and by extension tradability and value with mixing one’s labor with the material world. Time, except that labor must pass in its duration, does not enter into the value of work as a sufficient component. The specialization of skills, the usefulness of the finished product, does. What happened that we are now fixated on forty hours a week as a valuation of labor? Can we have an economy such that individuals can have control over their labor rather than the other way around?
Attempts at answers will be found in the next post.
* “. . .every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.” John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, italics his. Quoted from page 19 of the 1980 Hackett edition, C.B. Macpherson, editor.
Now that I’ve been back for seven days (really? that many already?) I’m starting to feel settled in again. I am looking forward to getting back to a real schedule with school and work and church. That’s the main difficulty with going away. I get jogged out of my routine and then the bipolar disorder gets the upper hand and I forget how to get dressed and eat and sleep, which rather gets in the way of doing anything at all.
Worrying about staying on top of things has me thinking. I’m not good at it. I do best in a well-worn rut, so I’ve been running around trying to make mine a little deeper before school starts. Some of the things I’m trying to get under control are reasonable and unequivocally good for me like eating and not wearing my pajamas all day and sleeping. Others I wonder about. They seem to be concessions to capitalism and, though they are often taken to be innate to human nature, I’m not sure that they are.
I worry about this because I live in capitalism. I don’t know whether I’m against it or not: at the moment, I’m just trying to figure out how to live in it. We tend to accept capitalism as an objective fact but to me it appears instantiated in history, crafted by human theory and a not entirely predictable force in the shape of the world. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to fit very well into the social structures capitalism has created. I’m not the only who doesn’t fit into the current ideal of human being that modern capitalisms require. Nuns don’t, for example, and neither do various of the disabled, nor certain criminals. Nor do lottery players and inheritance beneficiaries: they’re after money not tied to their own labor. But all these people still exist and it seems worthwhile to theorize capitalisms that might include them and include me.
One aspect of modern capitalism that seems worth exploring in this light is our collective concern with time. We have bound time and work together in such a way that their meanings have significantly altered. If we look back to John Locke’s Second Treatise*, we will see that he identifies ownership and by extension tradability and value with mixing one’s labor with the material world. Time, except that labor must pass in its duration, does not enter into the value of work as a sufficient component. The specialization of skills, the usefulness of the finished product, does. What happened that we are now fixated on forty hours a week as a valuation of labor? Can we have an economy such that individuals can have control over their labor rather than the other way around?
Attempts at answers will be found in the next post.
* “. . .every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.” John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, italics his. Quoted from page 19 of the 1980 Hackett edition, C.B. Macpherson, editor.
03 January 2009
Why Intermittently Rational?
Why Intermittently Rational?
I’m a philosophy student and I’m bipolar. I found out about the latter in the middle of being the former. I had been through three and a half semesters and nearly completed my major when I lost my mind. I had to drop out of school, I had to navigate the state mental health care system, I had to go to the hospital and I had to face the fact that something was seriously wrong with me: that something was wrong with my mind.
In those semesters studying philosophy I had learned about the school of thought that underpins our democratic governments and our theories of rights. Much of what we see as innate and intransigent about the world was born in the Enlightenment Era, the Age of Reason. We have our rights because we are possessed of reason. We can be citizens and are fit to elect our government because we are possessed of reason. We are human because we are possessed of reason. We can write geometrical proofs of God’s existence because we are human and we are reason.
So what happens when someone loses her reason and then gets it back? What happens if she has a chronic disorder that means she will someday lose her reason again? What happens if you can identify someone who will always be only intermittently rational?
We don’t make too much use of this in our political system unless there’s a crime involved. We’ve all heard of people being incompetent to stand trial by reason of insanity, a designation that has a very specific meaning in jurisprudence. But what does it mean to be insane and not criminal; what does it mean to be insane in ordinary life? There is no formal response but there is much confusion and fear and loathing. There is so much conflict about how to treat those with mental illness, either medically or socially. How dangerous are they? Are they lepers or just sissies? Is it okay to exclude them from schools and universities? Is it okay to give them health insurance? When they’re in the hospital, should you call or just assume that they’re as embarrassed as you are and won’t want to talk? Are they immoral? What did they or their parents do that they are that way? Why don’t they pull themselves out of it? Have they tried fish oil? Vitamins? Aromatherapy? Aren’t anti-depressants for the weak and hysterical? Is she going to come into the office one day and kill us all?
And then there’s me, asking myself all the same questions: wondering whether I would be giving in if I took medication, thinking that I was weak for being unable to carry on. Into every life a little rain must fall, and so on. Things will be better tomorrow. If I would just face up to my responsibilities I wouldn’t have all these problems. If this isn’t my fault and it’s never going to go away, how am I ever going to keep a job? What if I become homeless? What if I don’t need this medication and all its fun fun side effects? Maybe I could just take St. John’s wort instead.
What if I’m faking?
If you have the misfortune to be a philosophy student the wondering will not stop there. It will spread, invading all corners of your life. The Declaration of Independence will never sound the same.
I’ve become hyper-aware, during the past two years, of the dialectic of madness in predominantly English-speaking societies. My neck prickles at every passing mention of someone being crazy, at every prescription drug ad, and all the news stories about mentally ill graduate students and their firearms. It seems to me that we are all dead set on hiding mental illness and pretending it doesn’t exist while denouncing anything we don’t agree with as crazy. What are we talking about? Who are we talking to? Where is all the madness in its raging glory and suffering viscera?
What does it mean to be intermittently rational? I did get to vote for Barak Obama, so my political concerns are not at the forefront although I did glance up at the psych ward in the local hospital on November 4 and wondered whether they got to vote. I can’t buy firearms but I never wanted to in the first place. I want to spend my life writing about social and political philosophy: am I allowed to do this, considering its origins?
Let’s find out.
All right, gentle readers, bring it on. I want all your words for crazy. Give me the words, give me the context if you can, tell why you like them and hate them and love them. Tell me what you call yourself and what you call your relatives behind their backs. Let’s see what’s out there.
I’m a philosophy student and I’m bipolar. I found out about the latter in the middle of being the former. I had been through three and a half semesters and nearly completed my major when I lost my mind. I had to drop out of school, I had to navigate the state mental health care system, I had to go to the hospital and I had to face the fact that something was seriously wrong with me: that something was wrong with my mind.
In those semesters studying philosophy I had learned about the school of thought that underpins our democratic governments and our theories of rights. Much of what we see as innate and intransigent about the world was born in the Enlightenment Era, the Age of Reason. We have our rights because we are possessed of reason. We can be citizens and are fit to elect our government because we are possessed of reason. We are human because we are possessed of reason. We can write geometrical proofs of God’s existence because we are human and we are reason.
So what happens when someone loses her reason and then gets it back? What happens if she has a chronic disorder that means she will someday lose her reason again? What happens if you can identify someone who will always be only intermittently rational?
We don’t make too much use of this in our political system unless there’s a crime involved. We’ve all heard of people being incompetent to stand trial by reason of insanity, a designation that has a very specific meaning in jurisprudence. But what does it mean to be insane and not criminal; what does it mean to be insane in ordinary life? There is no formal response but there is much confusion and fear and loathing. There is so much conflict about how to treat those with mental illness, either medically or socially. How dangerous are they? Are they lepers or just sissies? Is it okay to exclude them from schools and universities? Is it okay to give them health insurance? When they’re in the hospital, should you call or just assume that they’re as embarrassed as you are and won’t want to talk? Are they immoral? What did they or their parents do that they are that way? Why don’t they pull themselves out of it? Have they tried fish oil? Vitamins? Aromatherapy? Aren’t anti-depressants for the weak and hysterical? Is she going to come into the office one day and kill us all?
And then there’s me, asking myself all the same questions: wondering whether I would be giving in if I took medication, thinking that I was weak for being unable to carry on. Into every life a little rain must fall, and so on. Things will be better tomorrow. If I would just face up to my responsibilities I wouldn’t have all these problems. If this isn’t my fault and it’s never going to go away, how am I ever going to keep a job? What if I become homeless? What if I don’t need this medication and all its fun fun side effects? Maybe I could just take St. John’s wort instead.
What if I’m faking?
If you have the misfortune to be a philosophy student the wondering will not stop there. It will spread, invading all corners of your life. The Declaration of Independence will never sound the same.
I’ve become hyper-aware, during the past two years, of the dialectic of madness in predominantly English-speaking societies. My neck prickles at every passing mention of someone being crazy, at every prescription drug ad, and all the news stories about mentally ill graduate students and their firearms. It seems to me that we are all dead set on hiding mental illness and pretending it doesn’t exist while denouncing anything we don’t agree with as crazy. What are we talking about? Who are we talking to? Where is all the madness in its raging glory and suffering viscera?
What does it mean to be intermittently rational? I did get to vote for Barak Obama, so my political concerns are not at the forefront although I did glance up at the psych ward in the local hospital on November 4 and wondered whether they got to vote. I can’t buy firearms but I never wanted to in the first place. I want to spend my life writing about social and political philosophy: am I allowed to do this, considering its origins?
Let’s find out.
All right, gentle readers, bring it on. I want all your words for crazy. Give me the words, give me the context if you can, tell why you like them and hate them and love them. Tell me what you call yourself and what you call your relatives behind their backs. Let’s see what’s out there.
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