I need to back up a little and respond again to something you wrote Saturday:
"To say that we're all the same inside is to agree with Disney, and this invalidates a huge chuck of anthroplogical and cultural research which points out that even if we're all made of carbon and junk, we don't live in the same world."
This reminds me of something that happened to me twelve years ago. I had gotten to know a strange and very brilliant guy who was going out with my roommate. He was Christian, and I was a little put off by him, but he had this wild, unpredictable way of looking at everything. One evening we were talking about the collapse of civilization. For me, this is a legitimate topic of discussion. It's happened many times before, and given the talk of "global warming" that was just hitting the mainstream at that time, it seemed like environmental crisis might replace "barbarian hordes" as the stimulus for a general breakdown. We were having a good discussion, and then all of a sudden he said, "Well, it'll all be over in twelve years." In other words, all the signs of crisis are really just setting the stage for the return of Jesus in the year 2000. Right then I knew I was never going to be friends with this guy, because we were living in different worlds.
So, we don't all live in the same world in the sense that each of us creates an abstraction of the world, and these abstractions don't always match up. But there's only one self-existent world, and this world that we all share is not just made of "carbon and junk." It has a shared mental content as well as a shared material content.
Just as we walk along the terrain of the planet, we also "walk" along the terrain of the mind. "Mental terrain" is the set of universal habits that have developed over time which channel our thinking in some directions and away from others. So, if you want to say something, the first words to "pop into your mind" will probably be some kind of hackneyed phrase. Cliches are like mental gravity. Unless you exert some creativity, you'll get sucked in every time to the most overused way of expressing something. You get my drift? We're not simply expressing our uniqueness all the time. There are certain ways we think and talk and relate to each other, and this shared reality is purely mental.
Our shared mental environment is a function of habit (not Platonic Ideas.) Some of our habits are getting stronger at any given moment, while others are weakening, ultimately to be displaced by newly emerging habits. You might say the wind is blowing in the mental terrain, continually reshaping it. While the material terrain is spatial, the mental terrain is stretched out across time. It's the living past. Consciously it's memory, while unconsciously it's habit (some of which is personal while the rest is collective). For the material terrain, history has no self-existence. The past is fossilized, and if the fossil that records the past is destroyed, then the past is inaccessible. For the mind the past exists even if we consciously forget about it. The mind exists over time, while the brain exists across space. In other words, they're the same thing. The reason it seems like two things is because time and space manifest it differently. This Bergsonian interpretation allows us to escape Cartesian dualism without trying to reduce either side to the other.
>When you say, "while other form emerges organically" - you mean in 'nature'
>right? and not in the mind? This "stuff" is Lacan's Real (what one might
>typically call nature). The Real is nothing *prior* to consciousness,
prior to
>being "named." The process of naming this "stuff" (the Real) is Lacan's
>Symbolic. So we symbolize "reality" by imposing it on the Real. This is a
>fragmentary task, so the Imaginary makes up the difference.
>
The mind is just as much a part of nature as the earth. The artificial,
human world is also part mental, part material. The process by which we
"name" and "imagine" is governed by habits which evolved long ago and which
are shared equally by all of us. We just put our own spin on it, resulting
in different abstractions which, nonetheless, conform to the same underlying
logic. I could relate to the Jesus guy in the sense that I could understand
what would make someone want to cling to an absurd, absolute answer to
everything.
>Yes, "computer" is a symbolized form, "in our minds" but it is sustained by
the
>imaginary because "computer" without signifiers before, after and around it
>doesn't make sense without reference to other signifiers. We know what a
>computer is because it isn't a dog, or a lamp. This matrix of signifiers
>doesn't necessary give us knowledge of the Real, only fragments. Again,
the
>missing links are filled in by the Imaginary, to "close the gap" and
generate a
>kind of sustained consistency - a kind of "fantasy-screen."
>
Since we're not consciously controlling this process, it must be habitual
and universal. We all do it the same way. It's just that this process
produces different results in different people.
>Lacan would argue that the grammar is imposed, not "self-existent" - in
>other words, socially constructed. Even if (and I likely agree with you
here
>but will phrase it differently) grammar is "hard-wired" this hardwiring is
>without content - and stands to be filled in by the Other (we learn words,
we
>do not produce language ourselves, in a sense).
We all speak *essentially* the same language. The sameness (grammar) is
real. The differences (words) are abstract. Both are mental, but one is
part of the terrain of mentality, whereas the other is merely an abstract
product. A cliche is part of the terrain, though the meaning of the words
in the cliche is abstract.
>
>> Desire wants what it is lacking? You mean desire desires? Why would
desire
>bother desiring when it's already desire?
>
>The desire of desire is the reproduction of desire. "It" desires to
reproduce
>itself. Desire is part of the symbolic register (in Lacan). One desires
>something because something is lacking. The desire of desire is its
>reproduction... so the Imaginary steps in and provides a fantasy-object.
This
>fantasy object, the object cause of desire (objet petit a) is an impossible
>object (the Thing, Das Ding). So one desires Das Ding, but the desire of
>desire will make sure, in conjunction with the Imaginary, that you never
get it
>(if you get what you want, you no longer desire it, and desire dies).
>
>So Lacan's registers break down like this:
>
>Imaginary - demand (I demand the Thing) (I demand to be recognized) (ego)
>Symbolic - desire (I desire cake) (I desire you) (superego)
>Real - need (id)
>
>So one desires cake, for example, but the Imaginary sets up an impossible
>delicious cake, one that any ordinary cake will fall short of. So desire,
in
>line with the superego, says, "that's a crappy cake" and you feel a bit
cheated
>(in ethics, you feel guilty).
Sound like Buddhism. Is there any way out of this cycle of suffering?
>For Lacan, the subject is Real - and this manifests itself as a
>split, between the Symbolic and Imaginary on the one hand, and the Real on
the
>other. Subjectivity is nothing other than this very splitting.
>
The subject is split between its habitual modes of perception and thought on
the one hand, and the material environment from which it must fulfill its
needs on the other. Both of these are real, but what's not real, i.e.
"subjective" is when we try to mix the two together, as if the material
environment actually works the way we habitually think of it.
Ted