It's the social system, stupid

1. Z permalink

   We had this writer visit a few months ago who talked about immigration as a “personal apocalypse” (with reference to this novel http://www.editorialperiferica.com/index.php?s=catalogo&l=42) and I thought of you.

   Somehow connected is this Mailer quotation I have run across, “Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment,” whose origin (in Mailer texts) I do not know. It leads me to think of the distinction between pain for entertainment and real pain. I think much psychotherapy is interested in the former *as a way to evade* the latter.

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2. 
   musteryou permalink

   Ah! That makes a lot of sense…. your last sentence. I don’t really understand the “pain for entertainment”, but I could understand the notion of pain for personal gain, which could be leveled in contradistinction to a deeper sort of pain, which may be hard to speak of.

   Recently, I was watching a documentary of war journalists and wondered whether I may have missed my vocation. I do understand this deeper level of pain, from experience, although it is in a way unspeakable, lending itself to repetitive nightmares, profound guilt and sorrow. The journalists of course, being writers, attempt to put these experiences into words, but I’m sure that unless you’ve had similar experiences you might assume they were merely writing for entertainment. The problem I see here is the cultural milieu, which holds that we all ought to be putting ourselves out there for personal gain and that there is a problem if we do not do so. It was as if, from the current cultural perspective, we are remaining in primary narcissism if we do not communicate — and therefore put ourselves out there — but if we do write, then that is considered to be instrumental narcissism. In either case, and no matter what you do, you are not able to escape the imputation of narcissism, so as to enter genuine communication.

   What puts up a barrier against genuine communication? I think it’s people lifestyle choices. Most people don’t experience much of anything and therefore can’t relate to whatever is beyond their experience. Also there is the issue of the fragility of ego. We are taught to see ourselves in competition with others, rather than in terms of a relationship. That’s not a personal problem, but a problem of the economic system and how it functions or fails to function.

   I relate to the bad dreams and the war guilt (brought on by being spectators of war) that is professed by many of these journalists. They’re not exceptional people in the way that contemporary culture views “awesomeness”. I could relate in particular to one guy who said that as a child he was very shy and alone and being in a war zone was one place he found where he felt in control. There was also the sense that you never feel more alive than when you face the proximity of death.

   Anyway — thanks for the author link. Looks like the sort of writing that appeals to me.