PANDEMIC DIARY

KNOTS…and other entanglements

August 19, 2020

[Please Note: The August 17 blog post, due to a glitch in ‘sending protocol’, sent two blog posts under a single cover. So, if you scroll beyond the blog “Indisputably White” you will see another blog posted, “A Fond Memory” which I would not like you to miss and know you will enjoy Also, if you read that post by clicking on the link ‘read in browser’ you will rewarded. Thank you.]

As a college student in the 60's, exposed to radical/progressive social and political ideologies, and vulnerable to self-induced forays into alternative mind exploration, both medicinal and meditative, I was most influenced by "anti-establishment" thought leaders and philosophers. An early “WOW! moment” in my youthful, rebelliously inclined intellect visited upon me reading the works of R.D. Laing [RDL], a Scottish psychologist and poet of sorts, (not particularly admired by his peers or the psychology establishment) who, nonetheless, made an impact on the public’s awareness of the nature of mental disorders and contended that forms of ‘psychosis’, in particular schizophrenia, were well within the range of normal behavior. His inference that to not be a little crazy in these times is a sign of insanity, is made quite evident in his most famous work, "KNOTS", a collection of complex and convoluted, word-game like descents into the 'knotty' logic of the psychotic mind. Laing was not "anti-psychiatry" as some claimed, rather, it seems to me, he was "anti-psychiatric establishment". Thus, his fundamental tenet that psychosis is not a "disease", but rather a conspicuous adaptation to an insane world, received little praise from the psycho-therapeutic community. Maybe it was that combination of his peer rejection and my personal alienation that attracted me to Laing.
(Bold italics quotes from R.D. Laing)

“Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.”

The practicing psychiatrist who treats the patient with a social disorder as inherently 'sick', is applying a norm set by community standards. Treatment, then, is not sympathetic or empathetic. Treatment becomes an assault on the assumptions by which the client has learned to frame and adapt his/her life. And, foregoes any analysis of the greater societal environment, beyond family, friends, and school etc., that have contributed to prevailing conditions. Under the best of circumstances, it is nearly impossible, and certainly inconsequential, to define “normal”. At such a time as this, all claims to normalcy seem spurious.

“We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as Love.”

I was reminded of R.D.L. in the context of the first week of the "humpty-trumpty' presidency. Collusion is defined as: "the secret act between two or more people to achieve or gain something illegally"; to defraud another of his or her rights; to appear as adversaries though in agreement". (definition Merrimack-Webster Dictionary) Then, there is the collusion played by two or more people whereby they deceive themselves by denying they are in active collusion. The game is one of mutual self-deception or mutual acceptance of the self-deception. I see this being played out both on a political and social level as happily performed like trained seals by Republican leaders, their cohorts, and their adherents.

“They are playing a game.
They are playing at not playing a game.
If I show them I see they are, I
shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game,
of not seeing I see the game.”

Whereas delusion and illusion are self-practiced, single player games, collusion is necessarily a two-or-more person game...of political parties, or segments of the population. Each plays the other’s game, though he/she may not necessarily be fully aware of doing so. An essential feature of this game is not admitting that it is a game.

We are all players in some manner and degree of complexity and commitment. Some are full-in players and adherents of the game knowing full well it is a game. They deny that they know it is a game and know that you know that they know it is a game. These are people willing to accept the ‘con’ solely for their own benefit. Others are players, “true-believer types”, who believe in the game not knowing it is a game. They believe the game has some higher purpose and relieves them of any responsibility of seeing the game. And, still others, believe that the game is absolutely not a game, adhering to the tenets of the game as zealots, like Evangelicals. I have also noticed people who play the game, know that it is a game, and have too much invested in the game for them to reveal to others (and often to themselves) that they are in the game. We have observed this over the past three years of the T _ _ _ p presidency. Middle level government employees who continue to work under the most reprehensible circumstances but cannot personally afford to declare that they see and know the game for fear that they will lose their positions and jobs and revenue.

“Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”

Worse, in a world of "alternate truth", the necessity to adhere to a known non-truth in order to fixate, distract and manipulate opinion, is a technique of fascist dictators. The colluding parties not only are in agreement as to the intention to deceive or act illegally, they also begin to accept the lie as truth adding another layer of deception. 

“We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.”

It is useless to escape the fact that by dismissing the potency of what is happening, in any manner, we are playing the game of not seeing that we see the game we are playing.

 Anomie: definition
1) the lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group;
2) (also spelled) anomy, in societies or individuals, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals. Émile Durkheim;
3) In sociology, anomie is a societal condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral values, standards, or guidance for individuals to follow. Anomie may evolve from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community.

Anomie is a social condition in which there is a disintegration or disappearance of the norms and values that were previously common to the society. The concept, thought of as “normlessness,” was developed by the founding sociologist, Émile Durkheim.

Anomie. — a poem by Robert Ronnow, August 2015

Should we invite the neighbors over for dinner?
Their politics so different from ours.
All the more reason. Combat anomie!
He's worried the town's losing population
but opposes immigration. I like immigrants
but hate passing people on my morning walk.

The whole mountainous western region of the state
is losing population at a rate of 1% per annum.
The young move out, the old stay put but
young artists priced out of big cities move in
looking for affordable studio space. How low
can the population go as long as rents stay low?

We did agree about the fire department expansion
being premature (him) or unnecessary (me).
He argued we should renovate the high school first
the roof is caving in and walls crumbling.
But you can teach under a spreading chestnut tree
or baobab and science needs the world for a laboratory.

I teach at the old 2nd St. jail in Pittsfield
a town that doesn't know if it's coming up or going down.
A few shootings last month, no deaths.
They're holding their breath but also trying to attract life
science businesses to the industrial park. The local bank's
expanding, buying smaller banks in neighboring civilizations.

Eventually our fire department got the vote they wanted,
just called another meeting and packed the auditorium.
The final winning argument was we can do the school,
the fire house and the police station all at once.
Don't accept defeat, limitations. Defeat anomie!
Anomie means lawlessness and purposeless in Greek

so that's not exactly what we're trying to defeat.
It's the mismatch between our aspirations and resources,
no, the dissonance between our tribe and nation,
no, the individual as ****** animal and intellectual,
no, the farmer and the banker, the loved one and the litter,
no, whatever happens to you after you die and belief in reincarnation.

For me, it always boils down to mortality
every conversation, which is why no one comes to dinner.
Whether the fire department buys an exorbitant parcel
at the expense of a future school renovation
in a town slightly losing population but still viable
with a college, bank, artists and a few working farms

is everything and nothing, as Borges says.
Deutsch says death ought to be curable.
The new high school or fire station, conditions like anomie
v. democracy, new life forms, self-conscious species
from the laboratory or the biome. How de body?
Today ok. Tomorrow I don't know. Potential

energy, lover, killer, anomie. Karl Popper
had such faith in the rational whereas Niebuhr
acknowledged man's ego is uncontrollable except
by force. Conflict is inevitable. But at dinner
we agree it doesn't always have to be violent or terminal.
We can do the fire department, police station, the school and anomie.