saved1
07-10-2011, 08:14 AM
by Philip Leon
DISEASE OR FEAR: MANIA
What is wrong with the self ? To this question most people would reply, “Just the
self. It is so selfish.” If they were asked what constituted selfishness, they would say,
“Greed,”
Now, greed is a certain kind of desire. What kind it is we shall best see if we
look at it in its extreme form—namely, when it is a craving or mania. A mania
is admittedly something diseased. But according to this reply the self qua self is
something diseased or wrong; that is why the consciousness of the self makes us
sick. We may therefore expect to find the self qua self maniacal or something like
maniacal. :rolleyes:
What are the characteristics of a mania, say of dipsomania? The desire for
drink which is called dipsomania is, in the first place, compulsive: the dipsomaniac
is its victim; he cannot help himself, he feels; he must have his drink, or else—so
it seems to him—something terrible will happen, the end of the world. Closely
connected with the compulsiveness of the desire would seem to be what we may
call its narrowness or rigidity or inelasticity or lack of plasticity. By this I mean that
there is little or no variety in the modes of its satisfaction. Whereas ordinary thirst,
for example, can be satisfied by water, tea, coffee, etc., the drunkard’s “thirst” can be
satisfied by alcohol only. Being incapable of seeking for variety, as most desires do,
it replaces variety by infinity of repetition: it is marked by what I have elsewhere*
called a pleonectic characteristic—the characteristic of Oliver Twist of asking for more
and more of the same thing without end. Lastly, it is Cyclopean and tyrannic: like a
Cyclops, it leads a solitary existence, neither helping, nor helped by, its neighbours,
the other desires; like a tyrant, it tends to subjugate or slay its neighbours. It ends
by infecting the whole of its victim’s life with its own characteristics, or rather by
reducing the whole of his life to itself. Every activity becomes for him merely a
means to satisfying his desire for drink; it becomes for him something which is not
itself real living, real living being just drinking.
We understand, however, the inmost nature of greed only when we see that it is
a fake or disguise. It seems to be very strong desire, so much so that often it is called
by the name of what is desire par excellence, namely passion (so people speak of a
“passion” for drink, for gambling, etc.). But, when we look beneath the surface, we
discover that in reality it is largely made up of what is the contrary of desire. Desire
is a seeking or making for life more abundant, an adventuring forth, an expanding;
its contrary is a shrinking or running away from life, a rejection, a clinging to or
defending of a fixed position—in short, it is fear, for fear consists in just these things,
namely shrinking, running away, rejecting, defending, contracting. Now greed, to
judge by what we have seen so far, is clearly a contracting of life (it contracts the
drunkard’s life to one point, drink, or to a series of repeated points, drinking bouts);
hence, indeed, its apparent strength the violence of a compressed force. If we look
more closely at the dipsomaniac, we shall see that it is also a rejection and running
away—in short, unmistakable fear. For his secret is not that he makes for drink and
takes delight in it as desirous people make for and take delight in that which they
desire. Of delight there is very little in his life, and as his dipsomania grows he cannot
be said even ordinarily to like drink, still less to delight in it. But as his dipsomania
grows, there is something which does grow along with it and proportionately to it,
and it is that something which explains it. It is his fear or even horror, of life without drink.
That life is a wild beast which pursues him, and his dipsomania is just a running
away from it. He desires or makes for drink only in the sense in which we make for
a refuge; drink is for him a refuge from life. His repetition of the doses is the action
not of a desirous lover but of a coward desperately defending a position with a
repeating rifle against an oncoming foe.
We may sum up by saying that greed is diseased desire. Diseased desire is
impure desire—that is, desire mixed with its contrary, fear. In its extreme or
maniacal form it is almost wholly fear masquerading as desire. The marks of disease
are: compulsiveness, violence, narrowness, repetitiveness, monotony, inelasticity,
pleonectic grabbing, isolation, tyranny, defensiveness, contraction, withdrawal,
rejection. :shocked:
SELLING ONE’S SOUL
Dipsomania, cleptomania morphinomania, onanomania, nymphomania,
satyromania—these and some other diseased desires like them have received the title
of mania officially or technically.* But common speech, which is largely moulded by
the common perception of resemblances important for ordinary life, has fixed upon
the similarities between these and far more widespread desires, and has extended
the title to the latter.
Commonly we may call a mania any desire when we are “attached” to its object,
or have “set our heart” upon its object, or have “sold our soul” to or for it. We may
sell our soul to or for anything—power, riches, glory, skill, knowledge, “goodness”
even, in the sense of a fixed code deciding what shall stand for goodness. The life
resulting from selling our soul may be a very rich one reckoned quantitatively—
that is to say, it may cover a very large field of manifold activities. But somewhere
or other in it there is something that is starved, or subjugated, or treated merely
as a means to that for which the soul has been sold. That something may be the
imagination in the busy man of affairs or in the scholar; or it may be the intellect in
the man of feeling; most generally it is something in the affections. Whatever it is,
it marks a shrinking from developing to the full all the possibilities of that life; it is a
sign of impurity or of the admixture of fear, and acts like a piece of dead flesh upon
a large and fine body, gradually infecting its quality or lifeblood. It is that infecting
impurity which is denoted by the sinister phrase “selling our soul.” What we sell is
our very life; what we buy comes to stand for life and becomes, like drink, a refuge
from life. :blush:
PARTICULAR DESIRES
But every particular desire, whether called mania or not, is by its very nature,
it would seem, diseased or impure because mixed with fear. A desire, I have said, is
a seeking or making for life more abundant, an adventuring forth, an expanding. I
must modify that statement by pointing out that a particular desire (a desire for a
particular thing or class of thing) is only a making for those possibilities of life which
include its own particular satisfaction; it is at the same time a shunning or rejection
of all those possibilities, far greater in number, which do not allow of its satisfaction,
and it is a rejection of them however excellent they be in themselves. Thus, if I
have the desire to do something (say to climb a mountain or obtain a job) or to be
something (say to be a scholar), I naturally tend to make for those conjunctions of
circumstances which mean the realisation of that desire; but, unless I am corrected
by something else, it may be by another desire, I no less naturally tend to shun,
fear, deplore all those conjunctions which mean that my desire will not be realised.
Since the number of these conjunctions is vast, it is notorious that every particular
desire is attended by a mighty train of fears, worries, suspicions, anxieties. Further,
every particular desire, in excluding a vast number of conjunctions, by that very
fact is at war with a vast number of other desires—all those which make for these
excluded conjunctions—and seeks to establish a tyranny over them.* Thus, to take
one example, if I desire to obtain a professorship, I am apt to shun all activities
and thwart all desires, however excellent, which might interfere with my success. I
tend also to be afraid, jealous or suspicious of all possible rivals and to thwart their
activities and desires.
If fear, a negative thing, is present in desires which present themselves as positive,
and constitutes their negativity, it is still more likely to be operative in attitudes which
do not even claim to be anything but negative—attitudes like dislike, hatred, anger,
annoyance, indignation, resentment, scorn. That there is fear (as the term has been
defined here) in them when they are what I have called negative Godfeeling, is
obvious, for then they constitute preeminently a running away from life, since God is
absolute life. But do they constitute a running away from life when they are directed
against evil, disease, death itself ? They do, for they constitute an abandonment or
rejection of the effort to heal or quicken what is diseased or dead, and that effort
is the attribute of absolute life or omnipotence. It is notorious that the strength of
the feeling in these attitudes is in direct ratio to our shrinking from exertion, and in
inverse ratio to our readiness for effort and to our confidence. It is true that when we
* What I have called the impurity of particular desires is the phenomenon which is covered, but also
largely misinterpreted, under the term “ambivalence” in textbooks of Psychology.
are negative we plead, in excuse of our feeling, that we are not running away from
curing but that there is no cure—that the situation is hopeless, But hopelessness,
properly speaking, is never in a situation but only in us, and instead of being, as
it pretends, to be, the result of the impossibility of action, it is simply the surest
method of running away from action; it is, in the significant Latin phrase, an ignava
ratio, a reasoning of fear.* :162:
DISEASE OR FEAR: MANIA
What is wrong with the self ? To this question most people would reply, “Just the
self. It is so selfish.” If they were asked what constituted selfishness, they would say,
“Greed,”
Now, greed is a certain kind of desire. What kind it is we shall best see if we
look at it in its extreme form—namely, when it is a craving or mania. A mania
is admittedly something diseased. But according to this reply the self qua self is
something diseased or wrong; that is why the consciousness of the self makes us
sick. We may therefore expect to find the self qua self maniacal or something like
maniacal. :rolleyes:
What are the characteristics of a mania, say of dipsomania? The desire for
drink which is called dipsomania is, in the first place, compulsive: the dipsomaniac
is its victim; he cannot help himself, he feels; he must have his drink, or else—so
it seems to him—something terrible will happen, the end of the world. Closely
connected with the compulsiveness of the desire would seem to be what we may
call its narrowness or rigidity or inelasticity or lack of plasticity. By this I mean that
there is little or no variety in the modes of its satisfaction. Whereas ordinary thirst,
for example, can be satisfied by water, tea, coffee, etc., the drunkard’s “thirst” can be
satisfied by alcohol only. Being incapable of seeking for variety, as most desires do,
it replaces variety by infinity of repetition: it is marked by what I have elsewhere*
called a pleonectic characteristic—the characteristic of Oliver Twist of asking for more
and more of the same thing without end. Lastly, it is Cyclopean and tyrannic: like a
Cyclops, it leads a solitary existence, neither helping, nor helped by, its neighbours,
the other desires; like a tyrant, it tends to subjugate or slay its neighbours. It ends
by infecting the whole of its victim’s life with its own characteristics, or rather by
reducing the whole of his life to itself. Every activity becomes for him merely a
means to satisfying his desire for drink; it becomes for him something which is not
itself real living, real living being just drinking.
We understand, however, the inmost nature of greed only when we see that it is
a fake or disguise. It seems to be very strong desire, so much so that often it is called
by the name of what is desire par excellence, namely passion (so people speak of a
“passion” for drink, for gambling, etc.). But, when we look beneath the surface, we
discover that in reality it is largely made up of what is the contrary of desire. Desire
is a seeking or making for life more abundant, an adventuring forth, an expanding;
its contrary is a shrinking or running away from life, a rejection, a clinging to or
defending of a fixed position—in short, it is fear, for fear consists in just these things,
namely shrinking, running away, rejecting, defending, contracting. Now greed, to
judge by what we have seen so far, is clearly a contracting of life (it contracts the
drunkard’s life to one point, drink, or to a series of repeated points, drinking bouts);
hence, indeed, its apparent strength the violence of a compressed force. If we look
more closely at the dipsomaniac, we shall see that it is also a rejection and running
away—in short, unmistakable fear. For his secret is not that he makes for drink and
takes delight in it as desirous people make for and take delight in that which they
desire. Of delight there is very little in his life, and as his dipsomania grows he cannot
be said even ordinarily to like drink, still less to delight in it. But as his dipsomania
grows, there is something which does grow along with it and proportionately to it,
and it is that something which explains it. It is his fear or even horror, of life without drink.
That life is a wild beast which pursues him, and his dipsomania is just a running
away from it. He desires or makes for drink only in the sense in which we make for
a refuge; drink is for him a refuge from life. His repetition of the doses is the action
not of a desirous lover but of a coward desperately defending a position with a
repeating rifle against an oncoming foe.
We may sum up by saying that greed is diseased desire. Diseased desire is
impure desire—that is, desire mixed with its contrary, fear. In its extreme or
maniacal form it is almost wholly fear masquerading as desire. The marks of disease
are: compulsiveness, violence, narrowness, repetitiveness, monotony, inelasticity,
pleonectic grabbing, isolation, tyranny, defensiveness, contraction, withdrawal,
rejection. :shocked:
SELLING ONE’S SOUL
Dipsomania, cleptomania morphinomania, onanomania, nymphomania,
satyromania—these and some other diseased desires like them have received the title
of mania officially or technically.* But common speech, which is largely moulded by
the common perception of resemblances important for ordinary life, has fixed upon
the similarities between these and far more widespread desires, and has extended
the title to the latter.
Commonly we may call a mania any desire when we are “attached” to its object,
or have “set our heart” upon its object, or have “sold our soul” to or for it. We may
sell our soul to or for anything—power, riches, glory, skill, knowledge, “goodness”
even, in the sense of a fixed code deciding what shall stand for goodness. The life
resulting from selling our soul may be a very rich one reckoned quantitatively—
that is to say, it may cover a very large field of manifold activities. But somewhere
or other in it there is something that is starved, or subjugated, or treated merely
as a means to that for which the soul has been sold. That something may be the
imagination in the busy man of affairs or in the scholar; or it may be the intellect in
the man of feeling; most generally it is something in the affections. Whatever it is,
it marks a shrinking from developing to the full all the possibilities of that life; it is a
sign of impurity or of the admixture of fear, and acts like a piece of dead flesh upon
a large and fine body, gradually infecting its quality or lifeblood. It is that infecting
impurity which is denoted by the sinister phrase “selling our soul.” What we sell is
our very life; what we buy comes to stand for life and becomes, like drink, a refuge
from life. :blush:
PARTICULAR DESIRES
But every particular desire, whether called mania or not, is by its very nature,
it would seem, diseased or impure because mixed with fear. A desire, I have said, is
a seeking or making for life more abundant, an adventuring forth, an expanding. I
must modify that statement by pointing out that a particular desire (a desire for a
particular thing or class of thing) is only a making for those possibilities of life which
include its own particular satisfaction; it is at the same time a shunning or rejection
of all those possibilities, far greater in number, which do not allow of its satisfaction,
and it is a rejection of them however excellent they be in themselves. Thus, if I
have the desire to do something (say to climb a mountain or obtain a job) or to be
something (say to be a scholar), I naturally tend to make for those conjunctions of
circumstances which mean the realisation of that desire; but, unless I am corrected
by something else, it may be by another desire, I no less naturally tend to shun,
fear, deplore all those conjunctions which mean that my desire will not be realised.
Since the number of these conjunctions is vast, it is notorious that every particular
desire is attended by a mighty train of fears, worries, suspicions, anxieties. Further,
every particular desire, in excluding a vast number of conjunctions, by that very
fact is at war with a vast number of other desires—all those which make for these
excluded conjunctions—and seeks to establish a tyranny over them.* Thus, to take
one example, if I desire to obtain a professorship, I am apt to shun all activities
and thwart all desires, however excellent, which might interfere with my success. I
tend also to be afraid, jealous or suspicious of all possible rivals and to thwart their
activities and desires.
If fear, a negative thing, is present in desires which present themselves as positive,
and constitutes their negativity, it is still more likely to be operative in attitudes which
do not even claim to be anything but negative—attitudes like dislike, hatred, anger,
annoyance, indignation, resentment, scorn. That there is fear (as the term has been
defined here) in them when they are what I have called negative Godfeeling, is
obvious, for then they constitute preeminently a running away from life, since God is
absolute life. But do they constitute a running away from life when they are directed
against evil, disease, death itself ? They do, for they constitute an abandonment or
rejection of the effort to heal or quicken what is diseased or dead, and that effort
is the attribute of absolute life or omnipotence. It is notorious that the strength of
the feeling in these attitudes is in direct ratio to our shrinking from exertion, and in
inverse ratio to our readiness for effort and to our confidence. It is true that when we
* What I have called the impurity of particular desires is the phenomenon which is covered, but also
largely misinterpreted, under the term “ambivalence” in textbooks of Psychology.
are negative we plead, in excuse of our feeling, that we are not running away from
curing but that there is no cure—that the situation is hopeless, But hopelessness,
properly speaking, is never in a situation but only in us, and instead of being, as
it pretends, to be, the result of the impossibility of action, it is simply the surest
method of running away from action; it is, in the significant Latin phrase, an ignava
ratio, a reasoning of fear.* :162: