Why Does Shit Happen?: Addiction and Power Are Not the Ultimate "Problems"

A good friend sent me this Youtube TEDS talk titled The Power of Addiction and the Addiction of Power by the psychologist Gabor Mate. Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cYcSak6nE

She asked my honest response to his talk, and that response can be found in the blog below.

------------------------------------------------------------------

I Mate' jumps into the middle of the problem without asking, "Why are there Problems or pathologies in the first place?". In my opinion, Mate' does not ask the more fundamental questions about Power, Addiction, Emptiness, Parental Neglect, Stress, etc.. He assumes these basic experiences of the human situation are "bad" and then launches off in a Freudian (positivistic) manner to fix them after blaming mostly parental, governmental and other social failures. I understand this approach and clearly such external causes must be taken seriously and may result in horrific social and psychological results. I am not denying what he is saying insofar as it goes, but he begins in the middle rather than at the ontological beginning.

I want to hear our thinkers ask more fundamental questions: Why is there the phenomenon of emptiness? Why is there the craving for fulfillment? Why do we come into this world yearning for mama's nipple and daddy's approval? Why do finite humans crave and seek unbounded Power, Pleasure, and Recognition? These are the three major human needs addressed in the "tests" of Jesus and Buddha--each of the teachers providing a different solution.

A positivist assumes that these pathological phenomena of consciousness arose from a Big Bang which radiated outward for 350,000 years, then forming atoms, then molecules and eventually chemical compounds which through the interaction of gravity and dark energy formed galaxy clusters filled with 2,000 billion billion stars--and at least one star with a planet we call earth which evolved an elaborate ecosystem and life as we know it. In other words, for the positivist, human consciousness entered at the end of the evolutionary trajectory rather than the beginning. This is a huge difference. If human consciousness (with the accompanying pathological experiences of emptiness, power, addiction, violence, depression, the Seven Deadly Sins,  et al) arose via the unmediated chaotic and chance "mashing" of inanimate matter--then he is on the only track left to us. He, like the Buddhist, assumes we have no ontological explanation for suffering; we must simply recognize it and try our best to solve it. If he is right, then yes, we need to empirically analyze society, mom, dad, brother, my boss, Napoleon, the patriarchy, Bush, Obama, etc. for the "original" causes (sins) of harmful behaviors and find external solutions to these meaningless pathologizings. It is up to us to simply see the horror, and to invent and implement humanly devised systems of better parenting, better politics, liberation movements and better pharmaceuticals to be ingested into our screwed up neural systems, etc. 

 But, but-----if Animated Consciousness (mundusimaginalis) actually exists, and in some curious and creative fashion interacts with and even drives this cosmic bio-psychological process--it behooves us to ask, "What larger Purpose(s) do our experiences of emptiness, alienation, power, addiction, violence, stresses, terror, bad parenting, and oppressive governments, and all of our pathologizings serve?". 

Gabor Mate' doesn't begin where I begin, asking, "What normal, necessary and purposeful roles do chaos, disintegration and pathologizings play in the development of human consciousness (and what I call "soul" or "soul-making")?" The same question may be asked and answered at the cosmological level, "What normal, necessary, and purposeful role did the countless icy comets play by violently smashing into the arid molten earth hundreds of millions of years ago?" We are pretty sure that such violent chaotic (pathologizing) periods occurred purposively, in order to provide water and eventuate in a "sustainable" ecosysyem of interconnected organisms. That is what I believe, and what I think. Mate' provides some great provisional solutions on the journey to a more thorough solution, but does not address the larger issues of why such phenomena are here in the first place, and what necessary role they might play. That is why I turn to depth psychology, world mythologies, religion and theological studies. These four distinct disciplines are not synonymous, but they all have in common an ontological basis of reality that goes beyond mere human rationality and sensory data.

Also, part of what I heard in Mate' is an approach to problems that Western culture has been "addicted" to for the past 2,000 years, in both religion and secularism. Both tend to blame the past: Adam and Eve, Karma, my parents, American Imperialism, the Tea Party Republicans, the Progressive Socialist Democrats, the oppressive Patriarchy, the fanatical Feminist Movement, etc., etc., etc. Where does the regression of blame stop? Freudians and Marxists have simply re-invented the secular version of Augustinian "original sin", locating all problems in the human being--either in the "I" or someone(s) who did it to me. At least the religionists rely on a Power greater than the human ego to help with a solution--going outside of the positivist model of reality. Simple logic ought to cause us to ask, "How far back do we go in this methodological scapegoating?" Ironically, many Westerners who have rejected Augustinian original sin have adopted Eastern Karma. That is no solution. I must ask, "Why Karma?" Those who respond, "Well, because we have free will," and I ask, "Why do we have free will?"
I am always frustrated by the postponing approaches of the historical regressionists who just keep moving the problem back in history as if there was no original reason for such problems coming into existence. Someone needs to say, "Look, pathological occurrences play a huge and purposive role in this drama of existence--cosmic and psychological disintegrations are normal, necessary and meaningful. Please stop blaming yourself and your ancestors and recognize the nature of this Cosmos--SHIT HAPPENS." The bigger question that needs to be addressed is this: "Does shit happen purposefully or by random meaningless chance?" And yes, I understand that this position is fraught with horrific implications--my son was slaughtered in Afghanistan and I nearly died twice (that I know of) from alcohol addiction. 

Mate' simply assumes that power and addiction are bad; that Alexander the Great Napoleon became a despot because he was short, and that children cry excessively because their mother's are stressed over socio-political circumstances, etc. Yes, these are actual issues to be taken seriously at the micro level of psyche, but they ultimately solve very little, in my opinion. Many of these secondary solutions remind me of the guy who continually takes aspirins after he touches a hot appliance every day. For that guy there are larger lessons to be learned than how to take an aspirin while blaming the iron or the electric company for channeling injurious energy into his home.

Bottom line, as I see it: Mate's assessments and solutions, and those of others in this blame-happy culture, provide secondary causes and solutions. Are they necessary, accurate and useful causes and solutions? Yes, absolutely. Are they causes and solutions to be minimized, ignored or eliminated? No. But they are addressing symptoms rather than the larger Cosmic and Psychological Patterns behind what I believe to be a telic universe. Such assessments clearly provide some much needed temporary solutions, but will never ultimately help the addict or suffering person fit his/her pathologizings into a larger more purposeful schemata. 

A psychologist who worked with veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan once said to me, "I have renamed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to Purposeless Traumatic Stress Disorder. Once the vet can see the role of his/her pathologies as part of a larger psycho-cosmic tapestry, many of the symptoms disappear, and the others can be weaved into his/her life story as part of his/her narrative with a plot, destiny and vocation." Hopeful thinking? The positivist would say yes. But to that positivist I would reply, "How is a therapy of victimization empowering anyone?" The man or woman who cannot locate a higher meaning in his/her suffering is at a severe disadvantage in making sense of this life.

ADDICTION, ASTRONOMY AND SOUL-MAKING: The Mysterious Role of Dark Matter

Astronomy Professor Dr. Mark Whittle of the U. of Virginia, in a lecture from the Teaching Company titled “Cosmic Acceleration—Falling Outward,” says: “Most importantly, you should understand why dark matter makes the Universe fall outward and accelerate…An important part of this account is still missing! When a sphere of vacuum expands, we’ve made more vacuum, which has mass-energy. Where does that energy come from? The gravitational energy liberated by falling outward creates this new vacuum—it creates the very space into which the Universe is falling! This is a truly remarkable mechanism. The same mechanism is also thought to drive the inflationary launch of our Universe: A very dense vacuum rapidly ‘fell outward,’ making more and more of itself, and this ultimately made our Universe.”

In other words, Dark Energy counteracts gravity. Rather than gravity pushing all of the billions of galaxies together into one unified clump, Dark Energy seems to be pushing them apart while at the same time creating new space and propelling them outward.

In 1917 Einstein introduced the “cosmological constant" which posited a long-range repulsive force that balanced matter’s attractive force” (Cosmology: The History and Nature of the Universe, Professor Mark Whittle)

At the bare minimum, biologically, that means that each of us is living in a harmonic balance between “falling outward” (dark energy) and being pushed downward (gravity)—a mysterious attraction and repulsion occurring simultaneously in order to create new space and orderly worlds! This is the image in Genesis 1 as the Spirit hovers over (presses downward) the expanding oceanic chaos, and other push-pull cosmic egg stories (see Humpty Dumpty).

If we can apply this to consciousness or psycho-spiritual development, then each personality, family unit, and national collective experiences a kind of necessary and normal “psychological or social constant” that simultaneously puts us together and pulls us apart. I have yet to meet a human or study a culture that does not know this experience, although I have met many who do not see it as necessary, normal and inevitable. We live in a time that is deliciously and maliciously obsessed with peace, equality, security, certainty and utopian ideals for all. Perhaps that is the goal on this earth--but I seriously doubt it. The cosmic/psychic design seems to require the isometrics of opposites (the tree of good and evil) and a "fall" outward from the center (symbolized in Eden and Pandora's Box).

Perhaps “addictions” are the psychological correspondent to cosmic “dark matter/energy”. Perhaps my alcoholism, and every other pathology and "disorder" is a dark/unconscious psychic energy that forces us outward into periods of disintegration in order to create new psychic space for the making of more consciousness or soul--the generation of countless new character traits in a lifetime. Perhaps when Genesis says, "In the beginning...God spoke...and there was........" is the first act of ad-diction--a "speaking toward". And from that primordial beginning, existence has been one addiction after the other, pushing us outward into new psychic space via disassembling and reassembling--dark energy and gravity.

The word addiction itself is fun to play with: Ad = toward; diction = to speak. Addiction is "speaking toward," implying that a dynamic word or idea is living and speaking in and through the addictive substance/person/situation. The word or voice of a god/dess is in the addictive process, just as the paradoxical healing was in the brass serpent in Numbers 21--the very snakes that were toxic contain the healing solution (salvation). Jesus (John's Gospel) used this very image of the serpent being raised up to portray his own "healing" crucifixion (John 3:14-15).  Eternal Life, aka God Life, is to be found in the poisonous venom, the horrific slaughter, the toxic disintegration on the cross--what Paul calls the "foolishness of the cross". That our healing is in the pathologized experience is still mocked by the "wise" pharmaceutical and political philosophers of this world (I Cor. 1:18-31). Perhaps our government needs a Dept. of Pathologizing. Then when idiotic and deadly choices are made by high ranking officials (invasion of Iran, Benghazi neglect and cover up), there is a place to deal with and learn from them.

A universe without the necessary phenomenon of "falling outward" connected to dark (unconscious) energy would result in a compressed little speck of unformed and undivided (non individuated) matter. The same is true of the human soul. Our individuation is the direct result of falling apart and being put back together again and again.
Every time my addiction appears, it is “speaking toward” my individual expansion--edging the nascent self/Self toward completion. Every time I ignore the symbolic voice (diction) and submit to the literal substitute (alcohol) in order to experience some surrogate expansion, I simply postpone the inevitable trajectory of my own soul-making course. The unveiling of the new self is located in the object of our addiction. My current state/State of consciousness (individually or collectively) will fixate on either external States (including Statist philosophies in general), or internal states.

As mentioned earlier, the “foolishness of the cross” Paul speaks about seems to point to this idea: that it is in and through our suffering that God (new consciousness or new birth) arrives. Many have understood this to mean that it is meritorious simply to suffer! No! I think Paul means that our suffering (including our addictions) contains merit because each moment of discomfort and pain is the ovum of our evolving personality. Just as Jesus' suffering preceded the resurrection to new life, so do our own times of suffering (addiction) precede a new chapter in life. Each addiction is the potential struggling sperm cell seeking to locate and unite with the egg of our personal calling and next stage of destiny. When the addictive fall outward of the anguished soul and the gravitational force of Holy spirit are working together, something new emerges.

This may help us to understand the idea of Christ's shed “blood” which is so emphasized by the Bible and Christian theology. One can either dismiss this image of shed blood, or try to understand why it has been so powerful for countless millions throughout history. "Shed" or spilled blood is a metaphor for  the “falling outward” of life--the end of a life which contains the seeds (DNA) of a new life. The Islamic Koran says, "In the name of your Lord and Cherisher, who created--created man, out of a mere clot of congealed blood..." (Sura 96:1-2). The Hebrew Bible says, "The life is in the blood," and the sacrifice of blood is the means for atonement and a new beginning. Nearly every ancient and many modern religions shed blood in some life giving and life making ritual, literally or symbolically. Some see the modern phenomena of piercings and tattoos as a new form of blood sacrifice to the gods of Beauty as a means to a new self image: "Modern Day Blood Sacrifice" by Drew Lawrence. Clearly a piercing or tattoo symbolizes a new phase or experience in one's life. Bloody tattoos and piercings typically come with the arrival of a new stage in life, or because of some life changing event. The new "life is in the blood." The shedding of blood corresponds psychologically with the "falling outward" of the dark energy of cosmological physics. Dark Matter's strange fall outward corresponds with death and disintegration prior to new life and reintegration. Christ's "shed blood" captures this idea, and for many affects the psyche in a an experience of disintegrating the old life in order to, in Paul's words, "put on the new self" (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10).

Addiction and Comedy: Both Stem from Incomplete Stories

Addiction and comedy have one thing in common-- they derive from incomplete painful emotional stories.

Some would call them ‘unresolved feelings,’ but that places too much emphasis on just the internal emotion. There is an event that takes place which triggers the emotions I am referring to. The activating event is almost always a loss of some kind; a death, divorce, destroyed reputation, unfulfilled expectation, betrayal and many other kinds of losses, real or imagined. Our emotional reaction is unpleasant. We are sad, angry, hurt, confused, depressed, etc. Rather than move through the emotional story, we find ways to avoid the pain. Substance abuse [including sex, money, religion and fame] and humor are great ways to avoid moving through the experiences.

After we experience any painful event in life, a story begins. The human mind is constructed to create stories. We remember. We review. We replay the images over and over. That reactivates the pain; this is called resentment, which literally means to ‘feel again.’ What we do not realize is that there must also be a middle and an end to the emotional story. Often telling jokes, being sarcastic and getting loaded are ways to postpone "feeling through" the event in order to complete the story. The more adept you are, the easier it is to postpone the process. Usually the more educated and intelligent person can postpone the process the longest. They take great pride in being able to control their emotions and avoid the story.

But the human being is made to get back, eventually, to the story. And if we live long enough, we will. But why? Why do we have these emotions? Why are there tragic events that trigger them? Why so many painful events in life? Why does the mind review and create stories? Is it just an evolutionary fluke? Why do mice and roses have such predictable lives, and we humans lives of so much drama, pain and chaos? There must be a reason for such a process. I think there is, and that it looks something like this:

HHumans are making an invisible self, a 'soul' if you will. Our bodies and the material world in general comprise a kind of embryo or womb for souls. The soul is parasitic in this sense, living off of the experiences of the body and mind as they interact with the various phenomena of the external world. That is why we often feel like an observer in our thoughts, and especially dreams. At moments we can actually watch our selves as detached witnesses. We may even speak to our self, “You are such an idiot!” Or, “Why did you do that?” Etc.

The invisible soul is being made by all of life’s events. Just as the body feeds on physical food, the soul feeds on psychic or emotional food. We must ingest, digest and metabolize the various emotional meals we are served through life. That is why we love stories. They are emotional meals that feed our souls. That is why Jesus said that a human doesn't live by bread alone, but by words or stories, and some stories are more effective than others.

The human body and mind are clearly made to experience pain. We have nerve endings and innate mental categories for anxiety, grief, fear and confusion. We get depressed and disappointed. From a strictly evolutionary point of view, these seem to be useless and debilitating features of the human species. Cattle and trees seem better equipped to deal with the difficulties of earthly existence, largely oblivious to pain and suffering. But, these pains, specifically human emotional pains, make souls. Like a freshly sprouted pumpkin, a human must detach from the life sustaining umbilical cord, be stabbed in the head, opened up at the top by a sharp knife, hollowed out and made ready for a light in order to become a jackolantern. The analogy of the butterfly is often used to exemplify human transformation, and for good reason. The worm uses the material of its existence to form a cocoon, hibernate in the suffocating chamber and transform into a very different creature. The Greek word psyche means night moth or butterfly. The Greeks understood that the psyche, or soul, was being made through the events of life.

Addiction and comedy have one thing in common-- they derive from incomplete painful emotional stories. The story must be completed in order to progress. If the addiction and sarcasm are still enjoyable, by all means have fun! These are part of soul making too. Addictions and chronic humor not only alleviate the pain, they simultaneously aggravate the pain. After each delusional diversionary attempt, another layer of emotional pain is added to the already unresolved pathology. Eventually, a person will go irreparably insane, die or complete his/her story. There is no right way to do this except to resume where the initial activating event took place. Find someone you trust, and tell the middle part of your story, feel the emotions that were set aside. Many find this by going back to or joining a religious organization, some find it in 12 step work, some in therapy, some with a trusted friend. The important thing is to resume and complete the story.

Just a quick word about religion and therapy: Sometimes religion and therapy become a substitute for ones story, or teach a person 'helpful' ways to 'transcend' or control their story. These are really just more forms of avoidance. Both religion and therapy can be of much assistance if they help guide one through his/her own emotional narrative experience, eventually uniting the sublimated raw unconscious psychic material with the conscious soul.