December 10, 2023, 8:29
"One emotion to rule them all, and in darkness bind them..."
Today is December 10, 2023, 8:29 a.m. The sun rises on the East...
Last week, as part of an interpersonal communication seminar, we talked about emotions... According to the classic representation, these are of several types: fear, sadness, anger, joy... And can cause different reactions: get-away, fight, paralysis...
Not being aware of this obviously exposes us to generating various misunderstandings, misunderstandings, even conflicts, in our interpersonal relationships. However, being only too aware of it, it seems to me, paradoxically, does not in any way immunize us...
The problem with this system of representation is that it almost invariably and inevitably leads to "believing", in accordance with our so-called "Judeo-Christian" Western cultural heritage which wants us to be the assembly of a soul provisionally incarnated in a body, that it is our responsibility to arbitrate without truce and without weakness between two organs: the heart, seat of emotions, and the brain, seat of reason.
It would only be half a bad thing if it were not accompanied by the establishment of a hierarchy: emotion being trivial, weakness, of the order of the sensitive (not to say sentimentality), or again, of our uncontrolled, unreflective animal instinct... Reason having, on the other hand, the nobility of the spirit, takes us away from the "primary" to raise us to the level of "knowledge" (that is to say of the "divine ")... Hierarchy which implies injunctions: "Don't let yourself be ruled by your emotions!" ; "Use your brain a little more rather than systematically getting involved in irrational endeavors!" ; and also: "Good and stupid it starts with the same letter!" (not in English, but in French it is) ; "And definitely don't try to emotionally blackmail me!"... etc... etc...
Is there not something paradoxical, hypocritical perhaps, even unhealthy, in these injunctions coming from a cultural system whose model, when it comes to governance, systematically uses this recourse to the affective and emotional to establish her "authority" (which is in fact absence of authority, if it must resort to such a stratagem). The considerable developments in social engineering in recent years, beyond ever more efficient "communications" techniques, relentlessly exploit this "weakness" of our "human nature".
But is this really a weakness? Have we not instead constructed a model that makes it a weakness? And what is it exactly?
We have all experienced it, emotion is something which overwhelms us, which, whatever the will we oppose to it, invades us... To claim that it would be "to show intelligence" to rationalize things, "silencing" this overflow, is that really "intelligent"? Is it not precisely this experience, this shock, this wave, arising from the encounter of our individuality with the external world, which constitutes us as human beings? Wanting to "silence" it at all costs, would that not condemn us to remaining below what we could (should) be?... It is about energy, we all know that, and it is quite understandable to sometimes be frightened by it. Especially since our culture has not prepared us to "enter the dance"…
And, speaking of energy, when I spoke of a system of governance that almost systematically uses emotion, what emotion is it in this case? If I take my alternative model of considering emotions as what arises from the shock of the encounter with the reality in which my existence inscribes me... I must consider that it would be, in this particular case, "constructed" emotions... But then... What kind of emotions?
If we refer to the classic typology of "reactions": get-away, fight or paralysis; within a system of governance, the goal can only be to cause paralysis. Get-away or fight being too uncontrollable and often beneficial, they cannot be desired in a general way (with the exception of very specific circumstances). Is there therefore a particular type of emotion likely to be preferentially paralyzing? None of the four classically mentioned and repeated above, it seems to me. They use too much energy, with too unpredictable consequences... But there are others. And especially the one generated by all these cultural by-products ending in "-phobe"... Anxiety seems to me perhaps the most appropriate term to name it...
It looks like fear, but fear causes a flow of adrenaline, which gives you wings to escape whatever the obstacles (we have seen ordinary people achieve astonishing sporting feats), or transforms you in David defying and defeating Goliath... None of that here. Because contrary to the literal translation, if you are xenophobic you are not "afraid" of foreigners, if you are homophobic you are not "afraid" of homosexuals... You are not afraid, "You're just very stupid" said a humorist, or, more respectfully, you just have, for a reason that is specific to you, and which can be easily constructed/induced (and, unfortunately, difficult to deconstruct), something of the order of anxiety, a sort of dull emotion...
It also resembles, in certain aspects, sadness, mixed with anger, but not the sadness that devastates you or makes you scream with rage! A latent sadness, depressive in a way... The one, probably, that Gilles Deleuze speaks of when he says "Power requires sad bodies. Power needs sadness because it can dominate it. Joy, therefore, is resistance, because it does not give up. Joy, as the power of life, takes us to places where sadness would never take us."
Anxiety. A sort of dull emotion, which keeps you stuck in low energies... unless you are pushed...
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Apart from that... We also talked about collective intelligence... Or rather about the instrumentalization of the concept of collective intelligence, its assimilation and instrumentalization (in a manner similar to that, for a long time, of "mindfulness meditation" for example... But that's another subject).
This was brought to my mind by a press article which spoke of the recent mea culpa of the director of the film "Love actually" who allegedly claimed to regret "certain words" put in the mouths of his actors... The journalist underlines and confirms the "regrettable" aspect of some of those scenes, while being surprised that this film is "yet" a "cult" film...
I would not discuss here this "compliance" of the said director with a doxa, which was not yet in use, or much less so, at the time, and which seems essential if you want to work in Hollywood today... It is the journalist's astonishment in relation to the fact that it is "Yet" a cult film, which caught my attention.
What makes a film become a "cult" film? Obviously no doxa, no criticism, nor any box office...
Could we not, therefore, see here something of the order of collective intelligence? Something that would seem... Uncontrollable?...
Well, okay, I admit that I don't know anything about it (which I'm quite happy with)... But I would really like it...
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Ah yes... I almost forgot... Emotions can provoke various reactions, classically get-away, fight or paralysis... But they also provoke, preferentially, something from another dimension, which we cover under the name: Art!