NEW PROJECT!!!

I've decided to take on a new project: as indicated in the sub-title of this blog, my aim is now to document my attempt at taking life less seriously, an almost polar opposite of the prior aim of the blog, to explore love, life and paradoxes, all very heavy things.

I'm going to be honest now: I'm pretty desperate. I'm using long sentences, compulsively reading Plathian poetry, and not getting any work done. Diagnosis? Clinically, I'm depressed. More realistically however, I've begun to take myself too seriously. This is different than taking one's work seriously. It's a situation where your whole world has condensed into this little universe that is too heavily filled with proverbial "dark matter". Poems, books, films all revolve around death. Friendships, relationships and professional work is all about life and death. You lose perspective, and each event becomes what your life has always been and will always be. You begin looking for ways out: substance abuse, self-harm, sometimes even academic pursuits. But these are mere placebos, the real problem is festering.

The paragraph above says it all. My life has become an endless natter of self-doubt, depression and this shrunken dark world. It now demands something more than those foolish placebos. It needs a real belief from me, a real commitment that I want to make my life better and more mundane. Not mundane in the boring sense, but in the exciting sense. I want to find things that I really want to do. And when I lose interest in them, to push myself over the recurring ditches to re-find my initial excitement level. Kind of like shock therapy, only a lot less ominous, and with a lot more ice-cream.

Over the course of the summer I want to maintain a blog to document the experiences I take on, different, new: I want to search for new feelings and sensations, but at the same time be cemented by the foundations of my friends, family and career goals. And principles, of course.

Thought for the Day: 4/10/11

Everything that I had done creatively related to two or three incidents that happened to me when I was a child that I'd forgotten. Everything, absolutely everything.

-Pete Townshend, The Who.

Something worth considering in light of my previous post on neo-Freudian psychology.

Collective Unconscious

Last night it was brought to my attention that a certain mischief-maker named Carl Jung believed that my unconscious, when suppressed, would have implications on my conscious behavior.

In a highly intoxicated and rather misled state, I was forced to read a chapter of Jung's book "Dreams", that stated this fact rather tenuously, and told me truths that I was already aware of. That the emotions that I feel would catch up with me, that the dreams I concealed would manifest themselves in my every-day behavior.

Here's the problem:

When I am conscious of my unconscious, what does that make it? When I am aware that I have emotions that suggest something, when I am knowledgable of the fact that I want something that my superego has to suppress, is it still a part of my unconscious?

I suppose that this is my one contention with psychology. As an individual, psychological theories about my unconscious mind tell me nothing- unless of course, I believe in my dreams. However, we know that dreams are very misleading in that they are symbols. Symbols wherein even people or actions may not make direct reference to people (or actions): rather to different people, and different actions. If I dream about a swan, and my best friend killing this swan - I could be dreaming about betrayal? Not by my best friend, but by someone else? Or maybe the swan represents something else, some other metaphor, in which case I'm interpreting it wrong?

My blue pants and I believe that when I begin to consciously evaluate a tenet of my unconscious mind, it ceases to be the latter, and it becomes a semi-former, a perpetuator of self doubt, that makes no sense to follow. I believe that my unconscious influences my actions and decisions in a very direct way, and that there is no point or purpose to be interpreting it unless I've been a) hypnotized or b) consuming psycho-hallucinogens.

However, Jung does put forth one theory that interests me considerably: the idea of a collective unconscious. Of an ancestrally inherited code of archetypal wavelengths, that is present in every human being, divorced from the personal unconscious mind that I referred to earlier.

What about this collective unconscious?

Maybe this is the annoying organ that imparts us with ideas about what's right and what's wrong. Maybe this is the little bit that suggests that it's bad to hurt someone, to complexify simple situations, to betray love, to make bad decisions and cause self-hurt. Maybe the unconscious mind is what makes me love someone, what makes me want to do well in school and what makes me want to stay strong for my family and the people I care about. Maybe the unconscious mind is everything worth knowing.

Or maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe the unconscious mind dictates feelings that are more fundamental than ideas of right and wrong. Maybe the unconscious mind is what dictates why we look for magic, why we believe in God (or choose to reject our intuition). Maybe the unconscious mind is the motivator for why we always pursue happiness over pain, why we are curious, and why we like to make optimal decisions.

My own experiences tempt me strongly towards the latter.

This post is dedicated to NK and his delusions about dreaming.

Consider this.

I think it's from punditkitchen.com. Not sure. Saved on my computer a long time ago.

The Apotheosis of my Math Teacher

Apotheosis (n): the elevation or exaltation of a person to the rank of a god.

Fate, they say, is written at the hands of Destiny, or a Divine Being, or some other word beginning with D. Fate itself is a projection of the future, and Providence an act of mercy amongst it. For multitudes of young minds, this year is the cusp of this impending fate, the proverbial "fork in the road" that will make or break. And so, I present hypothesis 1:

The writer, or diviner, of my fate at this juncture is one who determines which path I will take in this fork.

The College Admissions process has never truly been described as anything other than a life-changing fork-in-the-road (or knife, whatever you prefer. Salad knife maybe.) And so, I present hypothesis 2:

The diviner of my fate, the big decision-maker is he who determines which path I will take in this college admissions process.

Ergo, the diviner of my fate, the writer of providence and exerciser of mercy, is my freakin' Math teacher.

I have been searching for the name of the psychological phenomenon by which one associates figures of great influence in one's lives with divinity/divine power. I am sure there must be many delectable disorders and affable afflictions under the name. I however, feel a sort of need to be approved by this man, by this God (as we have so defined) and this has spiralled onto a very sticky situation. At times I have suffered abjure depression due to a single critical word, and scaled new heights with a nod of praise. I have been associating, nay basing, all my self-validation on the actions of this God-man. Good man (Really? He threw my work on the floor once because I was acting "smart").

This brings me to the more philosophical, QED-esque part of my argument. Basing one's life upon the approval of a person, however God-like he or she may be, is neither advisable nor beneficial. But my question is, are the implications merely psychological?

To reiterate, Praise -> increased performance, Criticism -> decreased performance. OR vice versa. In fact, there was almost a 50-50 chance. Establishing a correlation in such circumstances belies what little Math my demi-God of a teacher has taught me. That then leads me to whether praise provided only an artificial positive implication, especially in a subject like Mathematics.

I know many books have been written on the psychology of positivity, alongside some novellas (How to Make Friends and Influence People) and some pulp fiction (The Secret). Yet this is a compelling thought: what if it doesn't make a damned difference? What if it only gives the do-er the perception that it does make a difference, thus providing an excuse to the do-er (we all know how man likes to find meaning.) Of course, this doesn't apply to all situations, but I'm just tired of being told to think "positively", of my mother trying to "positively reinforce" my brother.

I hope this has laid out some food for thought.

Thoughts on the inaugural "Thought for the Day"

Thought for the Day :: Neil Gaiman (writer, and Dreamer)

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Further Thoughts: I concur completely, Mr. Gaiman.