Chaotic scattering of reasons and fearful sensations have been attacking my wondering mind since I have started thinking about an arrangement of entry points to make a step forward and try to understand what I am interested in. I was lucky to actually find the linguistic form to refer to make an introduction to this essay readable. The most significant words to begin my essay with I found in the Russian interpretation of the opening speech by Michel Foucault given for the French Philosophical Society meeting on 22nd of February 1969 at the College de France. However, I want to start my essay by expressing frustration since I wasn’t able to find any English interpretations of the speech I will draw upon at the beginning of my meditation. Surprisingly, digital sources in the English language seem to keep the translation of the actual lecture of that date, called “What is an Author”, abandoning two brilliant forewords of Jean Wahl and Michel Foucault.
Bearing a vital significance for me I can’t refuse relating to it. I want to take a risky responsibility to interpret a paragraph from Foucault’s introduction speech, or rather say, borrow a core semantic structure to introduce the reader to the points of problematic I experience now. I will rephrase the paragraph to the best of my unprofessional interpreter knowledge, accentuating the primary linguistic structure Foucault uses in italics. The words left with no visual markings (Arial 12) will be of my own. I will also leave an original Russian source link in the referencing section of the end of my essay. This seems to me the most successful way to serve my philosophical needs as well as leave the primacy of the original linguistic conception to its honored author- Michel Foucault.
Absurdly enough, I seem to travel along the same route of feelings Foucault shared with the philosophical committee in 1969 before presenting “What is an Author.” Different points of reference including one of the actual philosophical experiences and another of academic significance are the second field to the cognitive and sensual. Thus it still justifies the linguistic form that perfectly covers the entire chaos of my inner wonderings with a sort of umbrella, the one that Deleuze&Guattari used to ground their chaos with1.
Submitting the work to the academic team of educational state, I indeed believe, without being genuinely sure, that there is a tradition of bringing a body of work, not necessarily finished, but having a clear, distinct structure/s of influences and thoughts, which would present an argument or a potential for an argument to be examined and critiqued. Unfortunately, what I will present in this essay is not of that level of academic importance, as it only makes an attempt to find a potential for an argument. It is rather a long-term project, the analytical experience of a time constraint analysis, where the skeleton lines are seen very dimly even to myself. However, I have a feeling that trying to outline them, kindly asking you to render a judgment for its improvement is akin to the arrant neurotic who searches for the double profit. First of my profits would be saved results of yet nonexistent mental, psychoanalytical work, which hasn’t been succumbed to the critical finalities of “more experienced mind.” At the same time, second of my profits or I would rather say, aspirations, would be to enjoy the impact of the more experienced mind acting like a counseling godfather to the results yet unborn.2
The purpose of this work is highly egocentric and dangerous for the inexperienced author exercising ascetics as it makes an attempt to understand the reality of my psychological and mental states. For this reason, I use “Depressurization” title as a metaphor which vividly reflects the conditions under which to examine following problematic.
This title also functions as a safety boat to the following practice, especially for its academic form and structure of the writing, in case it goes out of control, contradicting or withdrawing the questions and concerns posed at its beginning. To start with, I would like to introduce a technical description of an aircraft depressurization as well as mention its effect on human body.
Depressurization- is the reduction of air pressure in the cabin of an aircraft. Sudden depressurization can result from failure in pressurization system, a structural failure or can be initiated deliberately by a crew member of the aircraft. Failure of pressurization system is the most common cause of sudden depressurization. Malfunction of the engine or compressor, structural failures like incomplete or faulty sealing of doors, windows or cabin wall follow. 3
The effects of sudden depressurization on human body can be hazardous. It can cause hypoxia, barotraumas, pain and sickness, headache, headedness, blurred vision, nausea, bleeding from the eardrum, although fatal possibilities are very seldom. In this case oxygen masks need to be used as soon as possible to restore proper breathing.
Nausea.
Depressurization has happened to me in a sense “Cogito Ergo Sum” meditation has happened to Rene Descartes. It would be highly inaccurate to ignore this analogy as it reflects upon the same things. To understand the place of my mind in the world I had to lose the world around me totally. The extremism of thought based on not being able to find acknowledgment in “more experienced mind” eyes has led me to question my silent assumptions, which were legitimated from my parents and the rest of my surrounding. The point when I started to question the very reason for one or another action/behavior/thought I undertake has immersed me into the deep depression. At that time, I found no other logical escape than to “sweep away all that I had previously taken for granted, and start from the foundations upwards”4. Just like the Descartes did, I have incorporated a method of Universal doubt and tried to doubt all of my beliefs in order to determine what beliefs I have are true. Touching and reflecting upon everything I have been left with insomnia. I have perched on my one-minute rock called “Cogito”, surrounded by a sea of neurotic doubt. To find an oxygen mask or any other building materials to lean upon was my next step from which I had to derive my truths, if I had any.
Blurred Vision.
The only instrument I was aware of was reasoning. (How fancily it feels in time, to trace back, trying to remember one’s old assumptions). Using reasoning alone, I have methodically got rid of many a priori assumptions, which served the world I lived in perfectly. There was no need to show-off ego-trips, in order to boost self-confidence. There was no need for that kind of confidence at all. All the questions of one’s existence, the way I believed things are, and the way they actually are have left me with no confidence at all. I discovered Descrates Meditations a while ago. It helped me to assure that one’s method of reasoning about things by resolving it into conceptual components works about 80% of the time when analyzing it within a certain semantic framework. Although the method proposed well-known ambiguities, which are beautifully outlined in Simon Blackburn’s book “Think”:
“If Descartes’s project is to use reason to fend off universal doubt about the truthfulness of reason, then it has to fail.” (S. Blackburn, Think, Oxford University Press 2001)
Banging one’s head of the wall full of transcendental questions of epistemology it took me a considerable amount of time to comprehend unreasonableness of the questions I pose. However, I was not able to let go off the change that has already been in progress. I had no more enjoyment for the ordinary things I have enjoyed in my life before. Apparently, The Evil Demon from Descartes first Meditation was playing with me, either bringing my consciousness back to the normal life or dragging me into the “inextricable darkness”5 of the problems I gave birth to.
Many philosophers criticized the theory of Universal doubt and tried to push the boundaries of epistemological problems. They break down the studies of limits of human knowledge, nature, and origins into four sections- rational foundationalism, natural foundationalism, coherentism, and skepticism.6 None of them gave the answer to the question of the veracity of an absolute truth, except an answer that there is only relative truth, which strives to relative adequacy, possibility of an event, in which the relative truth model exists more effectively.
Trying to circumnavigate across different theories of epistemology I found myself in the position of fearful skepticism brooding over everything I have read. The entire project of deriving my genuine truths or interests by means of searching them within epistemological sources seems to fail. Although, I was able to come closer to a realization of reasons why such a project was posed in the first place.
Noticing Oxygen Mask.
“We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship, but are never able to start afresh from the bottom” Otto Neurath
What lies in the lower part of my ship then? What is in the heart of my silent assumptions? Surely- experience, and the way I dealt with it. As the ship was built in the harbor, or anywhere else, where it has acquired its floatability, someone, not me (as I am the ship, which should make the reader smile know, not worried), has put the structure beams the way they would support the ship and leave it afloat in the ocean.
Talking about the structure beams or first acquired experiences of an infant, I am to the greater extent, talk about a psychological side of it, rather than epistemological, although, I would have to touch upon it later on briefly. The psychological form of acquiring as Aldous Huxley calls it “unalterably conditioned reflexes”7 are taught by the most dominant group of people i.e. at home. It is here, where choices and questions must be explained, and it is here, where the most respectable group of individuals molds a child’s “unconscious standards,” filling it with love, hatred, fear and other sense-data. Moving into adulthood, depending upon the experience we form our silent assumptions and feels towards them. Many of these produce models and instruments for eliminating our freedom. I guess, the most important one for me is the pain-fear model, which has influenced many of my childhood experiences. This model was inherited by my parents and grandparents due to the communist socio-political order they have existed in and were unavoidably affected by. Their lives became a condition of subjectivity cudgeled by the higher socio-political institutions which aspire for power and control. As Stephanie M. Batters puts it: “… individuals become subject to those institutions for which they must sacrifice some element of their identity and their freedom”8.
The void transformed into experiences was often filled with fear and guilt, which is high-wired with pain sensual experience. It is worth relating to Ivan Pavlov experiment of classical conditioning, which again accentuates the learned behavior of conditioned reflexes, as well as their law of contiguity, which states that conditioned reflexes disappear if taking conditional stimulus away.9
I want to mention another theory in support of Ivan Pavlov, to stress the conditioning by which we receive our sense-data. Sir Russell Brain has given an example of the conditions under which sense-data is produced, which is a series of events in the cerebral cortex. So, the quality of the sensations (whether it is a direct pain, or passive observing of colors, movements, events and other stimuli) is dependent upon pathways by which sensory impulses travel within the nervous system.10
So, in this sense, if fear doesn’t serve me anymore I can get rid of it! I certainly can, but do I want and need to do that? Or it would rather remind of those Alpha-plus creatures of the “Brave New World” described by Huxley? Perhaps, that would eliminate me from the misinterpretation of many existing things, like power, for instance. Whereas it could eliminate me from feeling and thus understanding other, more ethical things like love. Do I have to lose fear, say, if I love something or somebody? I think, using Huxley’s analogy, I would rather become The Savage, whose life has ended so tragically. Here is another quote by Michel Foucault in support of this thought:
“The risk of dominating others and exercising a tyrannical power over them arises precisely only when one has not taken care of the self and has become the slave of one’s desires. But if you take proper care of yourself, that is, if you know ontologically what you are, if you know what you are capable of, if you know what it means for you to be a citizen of a city… if you know what things you should and should not fear, if you know what you can reasonably hope for and, on the other hand, what things should not matter to you, if you know, finally, that you should not be afraid of death – if you know all this, you cannot abuse your power over others.” (Michel Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and truth, p. 288)
In order to continue my ascetic practice, I have to take a pause to comprehend, what kind of problematic I am dealing with. It seems to me, that this problem of fear that I experience is of not being able to find peace or happiness, if you like, in the new condition of mine which is deliberately looking for the ways to apply the theoretical freedom I acquire from philosophical meditations and attempts to understand the truths towards ethical living. This condition is scattering amongst new imperatives born or waiting to be born from its chaotic existence to be tested and applied practically.
My fear, which I identify as one of parental authority is claiming a central stage and a right for the mental and emotional power to control this condition. It is not to say that I want to reconstruct the whole bottom structure of my ship. It is perhaps, to say, that I have to polish some of the ideas that construct it, and demolish the architecture built on top of it, to finally, steer my ship to the direction I wish to choose. It is important for me to realize practically (although it has to settle theoretically first) that there has to be a blockage of transmitting emotional property to the parental sources of power which invade my ethical sense of living. It is important for me to understand, that by blocking this transmittance, I operate as a human wishing to develop myself, by not taking any other living route then of living ethically-driven life in search for the happiness. It is most important for me to also understand, that because of the physical blockage of this transmittance there might be a situations in which discussing particular things I would have no other option than to be quiet, or break my parents conscious with the new acquired model of truths, not fitting in their construction of the “game of truths”11 they participate in. It is of great risk I will follow the latter, as it will contradict the very structure of my ethical life being.
Oxygen Mask- put your own oxygen mask before helping those around you.
I guess, I have to focus on what does it mean, to live an ethical life for me, which could have become a focus of this essay on its own. But as I have warned the reader at the introduction to this essay, it was important for me to find a logical line to open up entry points and problematic of my own in its journey to my own. In other words, if the aim of this essay was to find one’s circles of interest by exercising ascetics it has certainly started to succeed, as it has identified what was preventing its search.
In the last section of my essay I will not go any further to try to identify other circles of my interest, merely because I have to practically resonate with those theoretical models of dealing with the problematic raised during this work. Instead, I want to focus on the methods of dealing with it by practicing freedom, or as Foucault put’s it “care of the self”.
I found this essay called “The Ethics of the concern of the self as a practice of freedom” very useful. First of all, because it speaks of the “game of truths” embodied in the field of power and domination, which seems to have a parallel with concerns I have already defined. Bringing Foucault’s conception of ethics towards the raised concerns it becomes clear that the very exercise in finding a problematic in this essay is a mean of caring of the self and an attempt for an ethical living. The way I understood “caring of the self” before reading the Foucault essay, was more to do with the medical side of it i.e. eating healthy foods, trying to avoid stress, trying to act morally in relation to others, which, indeed, was the predictor to my entire ascetics.
He says: “an ascetic practice, taking asceticism in a very general sense- in other words, not in the sense of a morality of renunciation but as an exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself, and to attain to a certain model of being.”12 Doesn’t it mean that by this liberation I am trying to demolish the base of my ship? It doesn’t seem so, at least it sounds relatively more effective when Foucault examines liberation, which on its own not capable of defining any practical form of freedom. Although it can exist as a form of practice of the freedom, as in sexual relationship where “by liberating our desire we will learn to conduct ourselves ethically in pleasure relationships with others”.13
To behave ethically according to Foucault, is to take care of the self where one cares of the care of others. One is learning non-authoritarian principles of managing fears, desires, appetites etc., to eliminate the power of domination in all existing relationships. It seems that it is only through care of others when ethical living is reached, although further reading suggests that the care for the self is ethically prior in that relationship, as the care of oneself is ontologically prior.
Following that logic, the extent to which media promotes our fascination with the self-love would be an appropriate, independent act of communicating society’s care for ourselves? In this particular sense, it is nothing else than an exaggerated form of self-love, which abuses its power over others as well as neglects them. Thus, there should be a form of renunciation taken by which the subject would eliminate his attachments to every form of self love in its earthly self. Foucault makes a point that renunciation practice as it is understood in Christianity only presents the care of the self as an instrument to get a salvation in the afterlife, whereas caring of the self is a salvation on its own right, as presents a practice of freedom. In Christianity, the focus is rather on the desire of death as an illusion of getting the unknown happiness, or state of pleasure available only through accepting one’s lapse from virtue and its relative absolution as the higher Judgment will be pronounced after death. Instead, Foucault gives an example of Stoicism, where one, by accepting the fact of death (which is exactly the condition for ethical caring of the self) is rather, up to the point, desires the death in order to get to that particular moment of acquiring the truth, conscious self.
To rephrase it again, if I care of myself, in thinking of myself I think of others. Theoretically, that makes different roles we take in society ethical in their being. If I know exactly what duties and understandings I have to master of a household and as a wife, I will enjoy my relationship with others, taking into account that powers are in balance. What if not? Surprisingly, in power relations there is always a place of resistance (strategies which are capable of reversing the situation by different forms of resistance, including one of a murder or other less violent strategies); otherwise, there would not be power relations at all, which is not possible in any social field.
I have to finish my meditation now and properly inhale the oxygen of the above meditation, as a failure to do so will, again, leave me in the ocean of unsettled paradigms and their contradictions. I have to take care of myself, despite the apparent potential for improvement of the work I have done.
References:
- Gilles Deleuze& Felix Guattari, What is philosophy: From Chaos to Brain (Clumbia University Press 1994) p.200-218
- Michel Foucault “ВОЛЯ К ИСТИНЕ: по ту сторону знания, власти и сексуальности. Работы разных лет.” Russian translation to French works published in 1996
- Depressurization- the need, type and management, Global Aviation English
http://aviationenglishblog.com/depressurization/
- Simon Blackburn, Think, Knowledge (Oxford University Press 2001) p.16, ph.1
- Simon Blackburn, Think, Knowledge,The Evil Demon (Oxford University Press) p.19, ph. 4
- Simon Blackburn, Think, Knowledge,Foundations and Webs (Oxford University Press) p.45, ph.2
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World with introductions by Margaret Atwood and David Bradshow (London: Vinatge books, 2014), p. 17.
- Stephanie M. Batters, Care of the Self and the Will to Freedom: Michel Foucault, Critique and Ethics, University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI 2011
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1241&context=srhonorsprog
- Saul McLeod, Pavlov’s Dogs, Simply Psychology, 2007, http://www.simplypsychology.org/pavlov.html
- Sir Russell Brain, The Nature of Experience, Vision and Fantasy (London Oxford University Press New York Toronto 1959), p.8
- Michel Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, (The New Press New York), p.281 http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/events_readings/cgc/foucault_ethics_concern_for_self.pdf
- Michel Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, (The New Press New York), p.282, ph.3 http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/events_readings/cgc/foucault_ethics_concern_for_self.pdf
- Michel Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, (The New Press New York), p.284, ph.2 http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/events_readings/cgc/foucault_ethics_concern_for_self.pdf
KatyaFJ 