nature, lack, castration, and Lacan

It seems to me that when Lacan speaks of the idea that we are "castrated" and thus are introduced into language by virtue of a "lack" he is not really talking so much about language itself but about metaphysics. When we lose touch with the self-sufficiency of Nature, we enter a realm governed by the intellect, which organises the world on the basis of abstract reason along with the postulation of notions of "essences", which are not to be found with the bare eyes, looking empirically for them, in Nature.

What my old Zim school friends seem to lack, apparently, is lack. It seems to me that they do not wander in the corridors of metaphysics at all. The degree of lack in their lives has been so slight, that recourse to the intellect as a way of coming to terms with life has hardly been necessary for them. Their orientation towards the world still remains relatively natural, if not indeed to the degree of being "one" with Nature. Their degree of closeness to the idea and sensations of consolation by Nature is greater than mine.

Unlike many of my old school friends, I have two selves -- one behind the wall of possibility now. The old self is very much undifferentiated from nature, at least in terms of my own subjectivity. My old self expected to move through life without much need to contend for anything. The fluidity of such a self, that would move through society as it moved through a rain forest is gone now. My later self, a much more intellectual and capable self, is free of the naivety that had expected social fluidity. Yet the "lack" (as per Lacan) that is acquired through a loss of unity with nature is ultimately stored up as an excess of unutilised and disconnected possiblities (including the possiblities of meaning something -- an aspect of (unpredictable) resourcefulness stored up within a subjectivity that is necessarily unfinished). The self that is separated from nature is therefore more dynamic than the self that is relatively more attached to it.

I am capable of being both selves -- but, not at the same time. Odd as it is, I revert to the former (less dynamic sense of self) when my old school friends recognise me as the former. Little do they know but this is NOT a Western way of being.