> How do you know anyone ever lived an "actual life"? What is an actual
> life, anyway, and how would you recognize one. Where is that pure
> kernel of identity which is hidden or distorted by the horrors of
> "reality"?
Rather than referencing some period in history or prehistory as you might expect, I'd instead say something like very early childhood in the case of myself and some indefinite number of my peers, although it's tempting to propose something just short of the embrionic state for people born more recently owing to the increasingly pernicious and invasive tendencies of marketing, branding, and the media/technology sector in general.
Carrol wrote:
> I'm not sure you really want to claim this. If you look at it, it is too much like
> the Platonic "The unexamined life is not worth living" -- which suggests that
> someone or something is in the position to dictate from on high what it means
> for a life to be "worth living." Marta Russell has commented acidly on such
> claims.
I'm all for self-definition by whatever means, and I was certainly including myself and the vast swathes of humanity under the yoke of capitalism in my assessment of the state of things vis-a-vis self-knowledge and living an "actual life." I was tempted to mention the previously contentious p-word, psychosis, but I'm not sure I can talk about it the way I feel compelled to without raising a red flag in your court (even if I hold out an olive branch in advance?). The thing is, I can't find another word to describe what seems to me to be the fundamental character of the individual living in the capitalist system. As far as I can tell, this seems to be the first economic system to rewire the human cognitive apparatus so completely. A metaphysician of old might have called it possession, but I think that diagnosis suffers somewhat in light of our present knowledge. Or maybe we've come full circle...
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/ dave /