Life has been pretty chill so far, but I think it is going to get busy really soon!

Those who follows some of my writings on here might notice that these posts are hardly “random”. I often select them out of a collection where I look for recurring themes while writing new ones at the same time. They are only random in the sense that some of these were written days, weeks, or months apart where I composite them together like a collage.

Ok byeee. 😁

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Cascando
By Samuel Beckett

1
why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

2
saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of sale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words
terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending
I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

3
Unless they love you

—

Oof. This is my first time reading Beckett’s famous poem. It is passionate, confused, lost, contradicting, as its words struggles with its own rhythm between each line and stanza. I’ve only read his novels and plays, but never his poetry. I miss reading poetry. I always wanted to start writing my own. Maybe I should. But I’d be too embarrassed to share them. 😂

* * *

The Next Major Post…

…is coming soon hopefully. I’ve been planning 2-3 big pieces of writings at the same time, but haven’t made too much progress due to life obligations. It’s also because I am lazy LOL. The piece that I plan on publishing next is only around 50% complete. All I will tell you is that it is not on Lacan or Derrida, but someone who was just as radical, controversial, and even more influential—someone who I always wanted to write about. I don’t want to rush through the work in progress, so I don’t know when it will be ready.

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My Writings and Workflow

I often start most of my writing projects somewhere in the middle and end. In fact, most of the beginning sections of my writings are usually finished last. I always try to find real life and fictional examples and draw inspiration from my own life. I think it is important for us to understand how philosophy and psychoanalysis is not just a “theory”, but with many real world resemblances. Once you see how these ideas work and flow in relationship with our world, it is incredibly difficult to unsee it. Most importantly, these ideas and knowledge will be something that stays with you for the rest of your life.

At the same time, I often structure my writings like a piece of music or film. Some might notice how I have a certain way of writing my endings where I tie all the ideas together that I introduced throughout the post. It is the place where I take out the big guns, ask big questions, and address fundamental ideas in a more profound way. I basically try to curate a crescendo where my goal is to make people say to themselves, “Wow, I never thought of it like that!”.

This writing process somewhat echos my academic essays and research papers from my grad school days. Back then, I always wrote my endings first and my introduction last. Obviously, I am much more formal than I am on here where I have to cite everything (when in doubt, cite it!). Academia has a fetish for clarity which is not always a bad thing. Being a good communicator and learning to articulate complex ideas in a clear and concise manner is a skill on its own!

* * *

I don’t like to sit in front of windows

I don’t know if anyone else does this, but whenever I go to restaurants or coffee shops, I always pick spots where my back is against the window. If I sit facing the window for too long, the sunlight will strain my eyes where I have to put on sunglasses. Though I usually don’t mind sitting with the window next to me, but never facing it directly.

* * *

Humanity, Sex, and Nature

Last time, I pointed out how deep within the unconscious mind lies the failure of a sexual logic that the split subject tries to unconsciously stitch up. As a result, it produces sexual difference. This is the most accepted interpretation of Lacan and agreed by most Lacanians.

One way we can look at this is how it isn’t so much the idea that lack was born unnaturally by deviating away from nature which created intelligent life on Earth (which produces neurosis). Rather, the lack that produced the “unnatural” dimensions of the human animal which allowed us to build our civilizations are part of the Real or the lack of nature (the unconscious of the human animal). This Real of nature also conditions what we consciously refer as our “sexuality”. Hence, Lacan refers to this real as “sexuation”, and not simply as “sexuality” (sexuation is unconscious; sexuality is conscious).

One of the main difference between animal and humans is the question of the unconscious. Animals, for the most part, do not have problems with their sexuality because they are not consciously aware of this lack (i.e. they don’t have complex capacity for language the way humans do, arguably). Whereas humans on the other hand, are aware of the problem of their sex, but only insofar that they can know nothing about it at a conscious level—even if they think they know. Hence the proliferation of the question of sexuality in our world today.

For humans, it is not so much about not knowing anything about our sexuality like animals would. Rather, it is on some level, the knowing of not knowing of sex, where we become aware of this lack as humans recognize how there is something missing in our consciousness. In turn, we can only use our languages, cultures, myths, stories, or identities to describe them which always in some sense, misses the point through the movements of metaphor and metonymy. Just as one does not control who they love. Sexual identity is not a conscious choice. And where the hysteric might ask, “Am I a man or woman?”, a full fledged obsessive neurotic will say, “I am neither a man or a woman”; or, “I am both a man and a woman”.

I talked about this before. How the subject gets split and relates to the Other’s language determines their sexuality (i.e. their neurosis). Our ability to unconsciously locate this split in someone else, which marks a symbolic gap in our conscious knowledge is what produces the experience of love. The failure of the sexual relationship is the recognition of this symbolic gap, where we realize that our being, and all we come to know about the world, ourselves, and the other person is “not-whole” (it resembles the hysteric’s position). That something is missing in it—such as the other person, a new knowledge or truth which gets lost through our experiences of the Other (object a). The anxiety one might experience when they encounter this love will only start to clear away after one reestablish semblance and desire towards that particular person—that is, once they can start talking freely to that specific person. Lacan coined this entire experience as “the love event” where he first situated love in the imaginary, but later placed it in the symbolic. If I remember correctly, there is a book published by NLS called exactly that.

* * *

Freud: Are all relationships really sexual relationships?

“Sexual relationship” is also sometimes translated from French as the “Sexual act”. So there are lots of meaning we can extract from this.

Another way of putting it is that much of our relationships stems from our desires that are driven by our id and animal instincts for reproduction so to ensure the biological survival of our genes. It is nature doing its work. However, in humans, these instincts are interrupted by the Other’s law which functions as a form of prohibition/repression of these desires and produces a form of pleasure called “Jouissance” (the term is always left untranslated in English, but it literally means “Orgasm”). As a result, the imposition of the Other creates all these different ways for humans to try and satisfy desire that is only partial and incomplete (via castration complex). Due to its prohibitive and repressive nature, the Other’s language creates the feeling of guilt which functions as the main symptom of neurosis.

Similar to jouissance, the usage of the term “sexual relationship” is not what most people think (don’t read psychoanalysis too literally). You can have a sexual relationship with hamburgers by consuming it everyday which might give you high cholesterol because it partially satisfies your desires. But you feel guilty about it because the Other tells you that you might die from a heart attack. But you just can’t stop having more hamburgers for breakfast because it makes you feels sooo gooooodd. Yet, this craving never gets satisfied because desire always misses the point. The sexual relationship is like this terrible example that I just gave you because it also misses the point. 😉

On a semi-serious note. If we speak of this from a people-people standpoint. Then in some ways, yes. Most relationships are sexual relationships; or rather, desirous relationships. Though it can also depend on the people involved because the sexual relationship isn’t always about copulation. But if we interpret it literally, then there is some truth to it. I mean if you are a lady, just ask some of your single guy friends if they would sleep with you or date you. Some of them probably would if you wanted it to happen—especially if you fall into the ideal beauty standards of society; though this can be true for anyone. It’s just that most people won’t press on it once you set boundaries with them. But deep down, they would if you gave them a chance.

While some of these things are nature doing its work. In psychoanalysis, it is much more than just biology because we have an unconscious mind. We can also for example, use our sexual organs for non-reproductive aims. This is related to a concept known as “perversion”, which is a symptom and clinical structure that I have yet to introduce because it is tied to human sexuality. But psychically speaking, we can even do things that gives us pleasure without using our reproductive organs, like eating a really good hamburger.

With this said, I would advise against going around calling everyone your girlfriend or boyfriend—especially if you’re a dude. In our day and age, you will likely get a harassment lawsuit. 😂 And if you are married or in a relationship, then be prepared to deal with its consequences. For example, your partner might murder you or show you the “real” of castration, etc. LOLLL

On a more serious note. This is why some people who are aware of these things and are in a serious relationship will sometimes set specific boundaries with certain individuals. And it’s not always out of the concern for making their partner jealous, it can be a matter of respect. While this really depends on the people involved, one should be careful because jealousy destroys relationships. I’ve actually seen it happen first hand which led to a divorce. It’s like playing with fire, no one in their right mind who values their relationship would intentionally make their partner jealous—even if jealousy is pathological in psychoanalysis.

* * *

Podcasting Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

It’s honestly not a bad idea. But I’m too voice and camera shy to do it. Though people sometimes tells me they like my voice. It’s not that deep, but deep enough. Yet according to a stupid online voice test that one of my friends sent me, I am a “certified deep voice chad”. 😂

* * *

More on Picking up Phone Calls...

Due to the fact that I don’t like to pick up calls. If you ever want to know whether I like you romantically, just give me a call and see if I will pick up. I’m not even joking LOL. But I think it’s futile for most people, because there is only one person whose call I would pick up. Too bad she probably forgot about me by now. 😔 I actually had a dream about her the other night. The unconscious is speaking. 🥺

…I loved her yesterday. And I still love her today. 😭😭

* * *

The Birth of the Unconscious and the Mother Tongue

Infants are born into a world of symbols and languages organized in specific ways before they are consciously aware. They are born into a world with a complex history of languages, rules, social norms, cultures, and laws that had already been established long before they came into existence. Lacan famously coined this pre-sexual stage of the infant as the “Lamella”. It is a term that Slavoj Zizek spent a considerable amount of time talking about in relationship with Immanuel Kant’s concept known as “ontological negativity”.

This pre-established domain of language/culture often consists of its own demands and desires that are signified by the parents which imposes a sense of foreignness and Otherness onto the child. It’s sort of like how parents will think of a name for their baby before they are even born, where their names might have some significant meaning to it. Or how parents might imagine who their child might become when they get older in the future. They may also prepare their future bed rooms decorated by languages and signifiers in different forms. The baby is imprinted by all these symbolic languages and cultural meanings before they can consciously recognize any of it. Meanwhile, their cries are also interpreted in all sorts of ways by their parents, which functions as meanings imposed onto them by the Other’s desire (the parent’s desires). Pretty soon, the baby will recognize themselves in the mirror and utter their first words. Language is born through the movement of split subjectivity and the articulation of the Other’s desires. It only arises at the moment desire emerges and something gets lost and repressed within it.

This is why the psychoanalyst will avoid expressing their interpretation of the analysand’s words during the early phases of clinical analysis (opposite to the parents who might immediately interpret the child’s dreams or cries, etc.). The analysand’s speech is no different to a baby’s cry who articulates the Other’s desires as they repress their own. This is to say that symbolic language (the Other) is the breathing and living being who speaks over the subject (hence the “impossible subject” I spoke about in Part I). The Other is the tyrannical subject who usurps subjectivity.

The subject is thinking where they do not think they are thinking, where some of their unconscious thoughts will occasionally surface into speech through the Freudian slip. Lacan actually goes into great depths, where he talks about how the +1 and -1 of language (from Part I) gets ciphered into our words through “a toss of a coin” via heads and tails (+/-1). Our spoken words are chained together as sentences in patterns where it sets up a structure of impossibility for articulating certain patterns. He referred to this as the “symbolic matrix” which structures the syntax of the split subject’s spoken language. I never introduced any of this because it involves a lot of mental acrobatics and ties into a host of other concepts from psychoanalysis and structural linguistics.

Nevertheless, since birth, our unconscious mind is riddled with other people’s desires from our parents, cultures, social norms, and laws of society which are tied up with our own. As we grow up, we inherit and speak the Other’s language and take up the Other’s desires. This is what Lacan refers as learning to speak “the mOther tongue”. Our ability to become a speaking subject comes from our attempts to express our unconscious and repressed desires that always fails and misses the point through the articulation of the Other’s language. It is just like the parents who misinterprets their baby’s cry as their desire for food, even if it might be something else.

This is reminiscent to when people say how, “they know you better than you know yourself”, which translates to “the Other knows you better than you consciously know yourself”. This is to say that we, as ourselves, are always riddled with other people’s desires where we become what they see in us. Or in a clinical setting, the psychoanalyst will see things in us that we don’t see in ourselves as we abide to the Other’s desires. At times, one may even embody the Other’s life goals where they mistake it as their own where we become like them. It’s sort of like those who “follows their father’s footsteps” (to pass on the-Name-of-the-Father); or when people say “you are just like your mother/father”. As split subjects, we are foreign to our own subjectivity, body, and things that we truly desire. We don’t really know who we are as the Other tells us who we must become. This effect can only be remedied through analysis. It is more or less why you cannot psychoanalyze yourself. In extreme cases, the imposition and demands of the Other can be so intrusive that someone may choose to take their own life (please don’t).

* * *

Why are there no psychoanalytic discourse for obsessive neurotics?

I think one of the main reasons is because hysteria allows the split subject to produce new knowledge. Without this ability, the obsessive neurotic would forever get stuck in their own trap, where they try to obliterate the Other who is always already at work (they believe they have control, even when they don’t). Having beef with the Other is a very common obsessive trait. It’s like the teenager who defies their parent’s house rules, or the person who complains about their work and boss. They always want to be in control by defying the law. Yet, they always already embody the impositions of the Other’s language and desires. It is only when they recognize that something is missing in their knowledge and words where it gives them the space to produce new desire and ask questions about themselves. By doing so, something else may eventually surface from their unconscious mind.

For this reason, hysteria had always been one of the most precious dimensions in psychoanalysis—even if they might get criticized outside of clinical contexts when they are analyzed with the political economy. Often times, hysterics are described through feminine pronouns because it is most commonly diagnosed in women. But there are many analysts who also uses masculine pronouns for hysterics.

Another big reason on why hysteria is important is because it escapes science. Many hysterics are known for being psychosomatic where they display physical symptoms of being ill without actually being sick. And when the hysteric goes to a Western doctor, the doc will tell them that they are totally fine, where it is their mind that is producing their symptoms. In psychoanalysis, even things like “stress” are considered as a psychosomatic symptom that can produce profound effects on the body. The symbolic doesn’t just entangle our desires with the Other’s language, it also overwrites our bodies with the Other which makes it foreign to ourselves. It does so by inscribing our bodies with language and meanings (think of body modifications, tattoos, etc.).

Without the subject who becomes aware of this lack, there would be no room to ask any questions which produces a thinking subject (it is reminiscent to Alain Badiou on when he talks about how the event summons a thinking subject who produces a truth). And if there are no questions, there is no new knowledge. And without new knowledge, there would be no truth; a truth which punches a hole in our conscious mind that disrupts everything we know about ourselves and the world. Just like the love encounter.

If there is anything important that psychoanalysis could teach us, it would be that truth is not knowledge because it marks the limits of human knowledge. Jacques-Alain Miller once pointed out how truth is the “blacking out of knowledge”. It is the lack of what we consciously think we know. Truth disrupts all existing knowledge that people think they know, where it catches them off guard as it surprises them with something new and unexpected. Similar to love, truth functions like poetry. As Lacan would say, “we turn to poetry not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom.”

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Love as absolute singularity

It’s a cosmic rhetoric and metaphor I often like to use to describe love because I see it as a form of internal contradiction between the possible and impossible.

You really see this idea depicted in the film called, Interstellar (2014) by Christopher Nolan (SPOILERS). On the surface, the film appears to be about science and interstellar travel into other galaxies to save humanity from extinction (hinted at the beginning when Cooper talks to his father about Earth’s dire condition was produced by consumerism and the wastefulness from previous generations). The movie really is about the love between a father and his daughter that is absolute and singular. During the climax, Nolan throws this idea right at your face.

Recall when Cooper falls into Gargantua (the black hole) where he enters the tesseract as he witness the movement of time being represented as a physical dimension. In the tesseract, he transmits the data of the black hole into the watch that he gave to Murph via Morse code. During this scene, Cooper believed that love is quantifiable. Yet deep down, he realizes that a certain form of love exceeded and escaped him. When TARS asked how Cooper knew Murph would find the watch in her room, he closed his eyes and said, “Because I gave it to her”. This was where the movement of love traversed across space and time. The film depicts love as as an absolute singularity that is seen through the metaphor of the black hole, the singularity of space and time. It is an infinity!

I think Interstellar is one of Nolan’s greatest films because it is riddled with so many philosophical themes that people missed. From what I just told you, to the relationship between chance and fate, all the way to the relationship between past and future. There are a lot of science in it where it tries to sell the idea of humans leaving Earth and colonize other planets. But for me, the gravity of love which drove the heart of the plot towards its ending is pure poetry. The way the film emphasized on love at the end dismantled the impositions of all scientific knowledge in the film. It is a form of love that takes place through space and time towards infinity—just like the “beings” who placed Cooper in the tesseract; beings who had already transcended beyond spacetime—perhaps, through love? And metaphorically, it is this love which transcends through time, not only between the past and future, but also towards the audience. If you ask me, this is master class film making.

It baffles me that Interstellar only won one Oscar. But I’m also not surprised because the Oscars is mostly just politics. 😂 Nolan is like an indie director working with really big budgets. I think he is a great director and writer who often throws subtle philosophical themes into his films that only those who knows where to look, will be able to find.