[lbo-talk] alternation

Tom Walker timework at telus.net
Wed Sep 14 11:41:47 PDT 2005


It's both, Doug. The Bush admin is lost in a bubble and it hasn't taken a fatal blow from Katrina. Despite what he may say, President Bush is NOT responsible for the federal screw-ups. And you might even like him personally if you met him. Contrary to rumours, Bush is not psychotic. He's just doing his job. He is, in a sense, only following orders (although exactly where those orders come from and how they are transmitted is admittedly vague and controversial).

I would say, following Sophocles, that a 'nation' is a manifestation of neurosis and the state a kind of psychosis. The amazing thing if you lurk on a Bush-worshiping wingnut blog and a left Democrat blog is that those folks all talk pretty much the same language. It is a language of demonization and victimization. Only the names of the demons and the victims are changed. One man's Pelosi is another man's Bush. The one difference is that wingnuts actually do have a full fledged god-king to worship. But I guess you could interpret Bush hatred as a negative form of worship.

In very broad anthropological and psychological terms, anxiety is a basic condition of human existence and neurosis is a channelling of that anxiety into futile and sometimes pathological behaviors. The postive, progressive role of religion is to channel the anxiety into a benign faith, charity and brotherhood -- the opiate of the masses, so to speak. Obviously, it doesn't always work that way. The positive, progressive role of reason is to tell us when our 'faith' has corrupted into superstition. But, not quite as obviously, reason when it pretends to supercede faith only succeeds in erecting new idols -- e.g., technological infallibility and the invisible hand of the market.

There is a fourth step that needs to be taken on the path from anxiety to faith (or, secularly, "narrative coherence") to reason. That fourth step is dialogue. By dialogue, I mean a process of large group interaction that facilitates a practice of reflection on the forms in which anxiety, narrative and reason appear within us. Without dialogue, it is extremely difficult for people to get outside the constructions of their own narratives and escape from the circles of their reason.

The Sandwichman



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