Capitalism
temperament and possibly neurological differences’ . 30 The causes are vague, but what is clear is that it is defined as an individual issue – a personal inability to function properly .
Modern capitalism would not be able to sustain itself without an internal philosophy to (subconsciously) justify compliance to its subjects. To be effective this philosophy must prevent (the idea of) political organization, by persuading its subjects to conform and contribute to its economy. As we have established, this ‘persuasion’ is actively and continually applied, though misinformation (propaganda that declares the efficacy of the system), policing (and all the institutions implicated in police power: militaries, border agencies, the debt industry, the mental health/ pharmaceutical industry, education), and the suppression of anti-authoritarian and non-white voices. Someone with this ‘philosophy’ or mindset has been successfully indoctrinated by the global hegemony. They might believe, for example, that homelessness or poverty comes from a lack of hard work, that the police are a legitimate mechanism for maintaining ‘social order’ , and that true freedom is a ‘free market’ in which your success depends upon your individual dedication and innovation. These people, like everyone, often operate within a specific social sphere, and because of the personal validity of all human emotion and experience, when confronted with the idea they may possess a privilege that not everyone does, they may feel their hard work and their emotional struggles are invalidated. And because of the way in which capitalism attributes (self) worth to social and economic success, they may feel that their entire life is invalidated. They are therefore bound to operate solely within their sphere, so as not to burst the bubble of their existence (the ‘created identity’ discussed in the next paragraph), demonstrating their individual morality through charity, for example. This is the paradoxical nature in which privilege functions. It is not that those who submit to this mindset are immoral, but that those who provide and enforce this system are immoral exploiters. This is the sphere from which all the endeavours of the ‘ w estern world’ , we re created, including the sciences. We have already established how science’s tendency towards rational, atomistic isolation and analysis can be lent to the field of psychoanalysis to serve a political agenda and its alignment with capitalistic values. Th e psychoanalyst and author Trigant Burrow corroborates this idea, noticing that ‘the special disease of uncivilize d man might be described as a block or schism between his brain and the rest of his body,’ describing European dissociation as specifically ch aracteristic, allowing ‘brain - thinking’ to dominate while ignoring all instinctual and bodily wisdom. 31 Philosopher Alan Watts describes the division, in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity , as follows: western science and philosophy has divided the human psyche into two parts, the, self- conscious human ‘I’ – the mind – and the creature of flesh and blood with all its physical limitations, the ‘me’ – the body – , that is a part of nature, effectively removing all of the power of the mind from this physical dimension and aligning our perception of reality with the materialistic values. 32 ‘I’ is reasonable, so critic ize s ‘me’ for its perversity, just as it desires things that the body does not want. This division causes the brain to give orders that the body does not follow and the body to desire what the mind does not allow. We have been told that ‘I’ is solid and unmoving because words enable us to name and isolate parts of experience (to make the distinction between mind and body for example). However, consciousness exists in change – it is a stream of thoughts and experiences. Watts argues that the self-conscious brain is a disorder that manifests as an acute feeling of separation between ‘I’ and experience . It is consciousness that is both awareness and the source of
30 Levine 2018. See also Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) (2018). 31 Hawkins 1994. The mind/body distinction, at least in modern western philosophy, originates with Descartes. 32 Watts 1951. I owe much to Watts for the remarks I make here.
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