Normotic Illness and the Question of Healing a Commodity Culture
posted by Stage Name | February 12, 2011
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IcerocketIn his psychoanalytic work in object-relations theory, Christopher Bollas identifies a phenomenon among his work with patients that has been named "Normotic illness" or "normopathy" within the psychanalytic field. Bollas' angle is that such a disorder is created through a misrecognition of "the other". In this context "the other" for Bollas is based on the foundational work of another British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, which terms "the other" as an object's right to have an existence in and of itself that is separate and apart from the rest of the world, but yet simultaneously shares and coexists with the surrounding world of objects. More simply put, everything that exists is both completely whole unto itself and a part in sharing a mutual existence with the rest of the world.
In The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known, Bollas describes operation of a normotic person: "It is truly reassuring to become part of the machinery of production. He likes being part of an institution because it enables him to be identified with the life or existence of the impersonal...The normotic takes refuge in material objects. He is possessed of an urge to define contentedness through the acquisition of objects, and he measures human worth by means of collections of acquired objects." (138). The example provided is one of an individual case, but increasingly this seems to be the case more and more in considering the general operation of our capitalistic, debt-driven, consumer-based society. It is an overgeneralization to say that every person who participates in such a cultural exchange (or lack thereof) is a normotic, but there is an overwhelming urgency for individuals to push towards becoming normotic through the overly massive amount of corporate advertising we are bombarded with day-to-day. It is especially urgent for us to be aware of how the totality of existence, self-worth, and the existence of the other must be preserved. For us U.S. citizens, we live in a country where corporations are given the same rights as individuals through corporate personhood. The creation of a mandate that allows a non-entity the same status a a real person, represents the fetishized power that the collection of material is the only way to be worthy in such a society. Literary theorist, Oscar Mao suggests that "goods" and "gods" are really two sides to the same coin. Looking at the headlines today, the operation of the normotic sensibility is alive and well.
After a series of adventures in graduate school in New York, I have returned to the Houston, sub-suburb where I grew up, which is just outside one of the largest industrial sectors in the world. Exxon is my backyard. On Tuesday there was an explosion at Enterprise Products, which is a company that makes plastics from the byproducts leftover when oil is refined. One worker mysteriously went, "missing" and the details as to how and why the explosion occurred were kept sealed. The amount that Enterprise stood to pay due to a possible lawsuit and bad media was much more than that of what could ever possibly be represented by the single missing person. Corporate personhood...the imposition of a non-entity's will over the right of a individual to exist other than as a part of a production process....=domination. The press releases from Tuesday in their impersonal jargon and weak tonality did not hold anyone accountable. The events were reported without a speculative eye, and the tone of the normotic echoed in the black and white spaces between letters.
Today the press released his name. Rick Shaw, a maintenance worker, died in the explosion. The remainder of all of the articles I read this morning about the case just reported as to what Enterprise Products is doing to handle the situation. The man, Rick Shaw, nothing more than one line. No lawsuits have been filed. Having grown up around the industry, with a father who has worked in maintenance for the petrochemical industry for over 30 years, I have some educated speculation about why the incident occurred.
Odds are that the maintenance work that needed to be done on the unit that exploded had been long neglected. The nature of the industry right now is to reduce the cost of maintenance by using obsolete and worn out machinery as long as possible. The problem is that this machinery often is used in handing, toxic, combustible materials. If the machinery does not function correctly, then "accidents" happen. Most probably this is the case in the death of Rick Shaw. He was going to repair a piece of machinery that should have been looked at much prior to Tuesday, but due to the company's will to push towards a bigger bottom line, the necessary action was ignored until then. Replacing the malfunctioning unit would have costs them too much $$$. The normotic operation of collection and statistics resulted in the death of a man. The same is the case in the Texas City explosion of 2005, and the BP oil leaks from last summer.
Such seems to be the operation of the demon that attempts to possess our culture. Through understanding and communication about our individual power and our ability to come together and institute massive change (see Egypt as example) we can stave off the corrosive nightmare that these poisonous systems encourage us to dream. Let's choose dream differently, and awaken into the world in which we want to be.
Love to all.
Comments
Yeah, I agree...it's coming
— Feb 12, 2011
Yeah, I agree...it's coming from some of my academic work...which always tends to get overly wordy.
Okay ! -
— Feb 15, 2011
Okay, having read and re-read your post , I'm still left guessing that it is that you find value in describing our resource intensive culture of greed by another set of words beyond simply "materialist" . Do the new words and concepts conveyed by the word "normotic" bring you any closer to an understanding of the problems of such a culture ? Or any closer to being able to suggest solutions on how to heal a "commodity culture" ? Or is it simply another set of superfluous descriptors ? I'm not simply being hostile or skeptical , in fact I do share your horror at the actions of the legalized fictions known as corporations and institutions. Does having read , absorbed and finding correspondences with prior thought in the work of Bollas and Winnicott offer new tools or means of creating solutions for our sickened cultures ? Or does it just give validation to prior thought on the matter in the guise of new jargon ? Now if I were a material fatalist I'd just say "The world is the way it is, conform or die.". If I were a transcendental materialist I'd might say "Our's it is not to question the ways of the almighty".
Fortunately , I'm much more chaotic and transformative . I find it important to remember that the main actors behind all the anonymous smoke screens , behind the responsibility denying legal fictions of corporations and institutions are the people , the planet and it's denizens ( some whom we mistakenly refer to as "animals" - as if we are somehow different or better ) and to a lesser extant ( since they are less "local") the rest of the solar system . So , how do we heal all these people and what they have done to the rest of the actors ? The main thrust has been to try to make people aware of the problems they are creating . This works , yet it is slow , and it seems that after being made aware of a large number of successive problems , a large percentage of people revert to prior behaviors and a small percentage of the populace will never accede any credibility to any of the "awareness" campaigns or movements . Why ? Well , the ones reverting to harmful behaviors are seeking comfort in the familiar , they have been "overshocked" . The small percentage deny because they cannot admit their responsibility for creating and profiting from the problems . These are the very rich , those with vast accumulations of the artificial markers known as money that are so often confused with wealth . This is the true "demon that attempts to possess our culture" - they are people ! The enemy is a parasitical part of us ! Now no matter how many charitable works such persons embark upon , they can never rid themselves of the gibbering monkey on their back that is their guilt . They can and do rationalize it and distract themselves from self knowledge . They find there is no harmless and healthful way in which they can return even a fraction of what they have taken away from the planet and all the other people and denizens on the planet. They have backed themselves into an indefensible corner and cannot admit it even exists . They can only defend their way of doing things to our death.
So, awareness works a little , blame and guilt hardly at all , comedy and irony sometimes works a little , legal reform proves a tetter totter of a zero sum game , some forms of music , art and other "mind manifesting" experiences work well for those with the courage to attempt them , attempting to change the systems while part of the systems works just as poorly as forcing change from outside . Technological solutions to problems caused by misapplication of technologies on our world cause further problems , harm and distortions .
It seems we cannot think our way out of these situations . So , what works truly ? I would suggest that rather than "dreams" , which seem to be the unconscious workings of our brain or the interactions of our brains with our immaterial self or the interplay of our brain , our immaterial selves and the akashic fields , we might be wise to look to the imagination of emotions of individuals . To put it in poetic form, an individuals capacity for imagination of empathy of the heart , rather than the experience of their head . What we have seen of display recently in Tunisia and Egypt is emotion. Specifically the imagination of the emotions , starting with empathy , which when invoked by the individual from within erases the "misrecognition of "the other". The other becomes self and similar , we can "see" our selves in their situation , we can imagine our selves having their emotions , we can allow ourselves to express those emotions on their and our behalf . We become concerned and entanglement rises to spread to others who , recognizing the resonance of these emotions inside their selves , also begin to act from the concerns of their heart and this in-forms others with whom they are already entangled . From each individual it blossoms faster than the speed of light beyond the mere numbers of a "dæmocratic majority", beyond mere wants , to a consensus of shared emotional need . It is this that finally shifts the paradigm and renders the old paradigm temporarily untenable . So it is with the purity of beneficent
emotions within individuals and their subsequent empathic relations that cascades into real change .
Truly a (r)evolution of the heart .
;P eace ^!
And thanks (really) for confusing me !
(it's useful to rethink things)
" A rising tide - drowns those without boats " - Cee Are
"The object under your feet is always the dance floor " - Cee Are
I do what I can. Thanks for
— Feb 23, 2011
I do what I can. Thanks for the good thoughts (and emotions). I think you're really hitting at the core of the issue---How do we get people to FEEL something?
