Ideology and Alienation | Self-Help vs. Grace

hello there and welcome to another Paro seminar uh for this seminar what I want to do is build on some of the things I talked about last month hopefully you saw last month I was recorded in a bar in LA and in that talk I was speaking about the notion of dusting I started off with a story and I used that story as a way to explore the idea of an inherent unknowing at the heart of the other and within ourselves so that was last month what I want to do is actually tell the same story again and then add another layer onto that story so instead of the usual way of doing things where people use different stories and different analogies to make the same point I want to use the same story but use it to make a different point but a point that builds on all of the things that we were looking at in the last seminar over the course of the next 45 minutes or so I want to look at what ideology is how it's connected to the notion of idolatry I want to explore how change occurs within us and to do that I want to contrast self-help with Grace so there's going to be a bit of theory but also we're going to talk about what does it mean to change what does it mean to be transformed or to use a different word what does it mean to be saved right to have a fundamental transformation of the heart so anyway that's the plan and I'll tell you the story again basically it's a little parable about three people who die on the same day and they go to heaven to get interviewed by Jesus before they get in there is this Mystic there's an Evangelical pastor and there's a Fundamentalist well while they're sitting there weirding Saint Paul comes out and he looks at the Mystic and he says okay you go first so the Mystic gets up goes into the interview room and Paul turns little sign around and the mystics in there for about half an hour 45 minutes and he comes out with a smile on his face and he says oh I knew I was wrong I knew I was wrong and then walks into heaven next up it's the Evangelical posture he goes into the interview room the signs turned round meeting in progress and he's in there for about an hour and when the door finally opens he comes out and he's sweating and he looks unhappy and he's like how could I have been so wrong and then he walks in so finally it's the fundamentalist turn he has this well-worn Bible lots of highlights and underlining and he goes into the room the little signs turned round and he's in there for about five hours and finally the door swings open and Jesus comes out and says how could I have been so wrong right now when I told that story in the seminar last month I told everybody about how that was one of the first little Parables that I ever told as a public speaker and when I told it I told her in the very naive way which is the very manifest way that the story is one where we are supposed to identify with the Mystic rather than the fundamentalist the fundamentalist is a kind of comedic figure and that is true um but that over the years I've come to see the story in a different way that the most radical figure in the story is the fundamentalist and the fundamentalist not through knowledge in fact that Insight that Jesus was wrong was probably very disturbing for him if we put ourselves into the logic of the story but that notion that the absolute God has unknowing within itself is something that has a fundamental insight into the nature of reality and that's what I was looking at as I say last month I made the distinction between what is called epistemological unknowing and ontological unknowing so for the Mystic and the Evangelical they both Express epistemological unknowing you take a philosopher like Meryl Westfall this is something that he Advocates this is a type of humility in the face of infinity there's things that we can know which are in the finite world and then there's the infinite the Eternal the absolute and before that absolute we do not know this is also very pascalian position and we contrast that with this much more disturbing much more scandalous idea of ontological Unknowing which is the idea not simply that I don't know the absolute but that there's an unknowing in the heart of the absolute itself and that as we confront this dimension of Unknowing that is in reality itself something transformative occurs now before I move on to that notion of transformation and why this story tells us something about the meaning of Grace of salvation of change I want to just reference the idea that if this is true if reality itself has a Quantum Dimension I.E a type of wave particle duality a type of asymmetry that kind of haunts everything from the political world to mathematics to physics biology to subjectivity itself then that means well a couple of things will not means that the universe is not deterministic so this is a philosophical argument for a type of freedom not the type of freedom in which one argues that we can make decisions without being moved by other influences that somehow we are not within the web of cause and effect but rather the idea that within the web of cause and effect that we find ourselves there is some short circuit there is something but rather it's a new thing that stops everything from being in a closed loop which stops everything from being connected to another effect another effect another effect if you want to understand this a little bit better we can think about the cosmological argument for the existence of God that was famously puts and it's probably Musa synced form by Thomas Aquinas for Aquinas everything that we see in the world is the results of a cause so in a way he is arguing for a type of deterministic series of cause and effect within the universe but then he says that there must be an uncaused cause that gets everything started one cause that does not itself have a cause and then he says this uncaused cause is what we call God now in a similar way in psychoanalysis there is a notion that language is a series of signifiers that reference other signifiers so there's no such thing as a word that has meaning outside of its relationship to other words so when you open up a dictionary for example every signifier points to another signifier and they all keep pointing to each other in this web of language but then lakhan says that there is what's called a master signifier and a master signifier is a signifier that does not have a signifier that describes it or defines it it's a type of signifier that gives meaning to uh let's call it a language game but itself lacks meaning so for example words like truth justice freedom God can be Master signifiers we can talk about truth and we can argue about it we can write books about it and then when we come to actually try to Define what this word is that we are arguing about we find ourselves always falling short we cannot give it meaning it is the word that everything else orbits around in terms of that discussion but that word itself defies meaning so it's a type of uncaused cause and in a similar way what this notion of ontological Unknowing means is that in this web of cause and effect where everything is affected by of everything else ultimately there is one exception to that and it is a type of Abyss or asymmetry at the heart of all reality that short circuit that just prevents everything from closing in on itself and allies for the possibility of novelty now that's not the subject explicitly of this talk I will I would like to do a talk on freedom actually I think I've done one recently or last year but um will maybe return to that theme of freedom but I just want to say that if this is true that all of reality is Holy and by Huli I mean is full of holes has an Abyssal dimension then that means that there is a there is a concept of Freedom within that we can't build a philosophy of freedom but it's not the freedom of I can freely choose something it's more the idea that uh something can occur within us that throws us of course that throws us onto a new course that we can be in a way kind of Born Again put into a new set of circumstances it's connected then with the unconscious right the the most free dimension of us is a dimension in which we feel the least Freedom where we do something that means we lose our job for example we didn't mean to do that we didn't want to do that but this unconscious eruption within us through us off our tracks and onto a new track so this unconscious eruption is a type of manifestation of this Freedom that is terrifying I mean we're this freedom is not a nice thing it's not something that we like I mean sart talks about how we're condemned to freedom and so many of us go to tarot cards or fortune tellers or the Bible to try to find an answer or a friend someone who'll tell us what we should do but what is more important for this seminar is not the freedom dimension but the idea that if ontological unknowing is correct then there is an inherent alienation to life that alienation is not some contingent thing that we can overcome which is the promise of religion and it's sacred and secular forms but rather alienation is a reality that we must comport ourselves to that we must find a way to even enjoy in a way traditional religion is always about saying that any experience of alienation that you feel is either a reality that you can overcome or an illusion that you can penetrate that in reality everything is one a equals a and you can either return to that Oneness that wholeness that blessed state or you don't have to return to it you just have to see that you are already dwelling within it so for example in the work of blias Pascal we are haunted by a sense of loss of an original blessing that makes life miserable because we want to return to that wholeness we feel and Abyss within us that nothing finite can fill and so we are born with a longing for whom and whom is an eternal fulfillment where desire is satisfied where our drives find there and point and where we can be satisfied but in contrast to this idea of loss which is that we are marked by something we once had what I'm talking about here with ontological unknowing is lack and the difference between lack and loss is that lack is a type of Abyss that did not have an original wholeness so with lack there is no way to fill that to find some sort of Eternal satisfaction but that's not bad news that's good news so for players Pascal life is ultimately miserable because we cannot fill this Abyss that once did not exist but in someone like lacam this Abyss being an essential part of us is not just the source of our misery but also the source of our enjoyment and the word that is used for this is shuisance there is something painful about sacrifice and about dissatisfaction and about anxiety and also there is something enjoyable about those things as well something that gives us pleasure so for example in a relationship if there's no chaos if there's no struggle if there's no sacrifice that's part of it what people will do is they will introduce chaos in some potentially unhealthy way that chaos if it's not healthily in the relationship has to be brought in because we have a desire for desire itself interestingly both Pascal and C.S Lewis draw on an argument that all of the desires we find within ourselves have a potential satisfaction we feel thirsty because there is something we can drink we feel hungry because there is something we can eat we feel sexual desire because sex is possible and while we may be somewhere where we cannot access sex or water or food the desire for them is evidence that they can be satisfied and so both Lewis and Pascal use this to say that we also find within ourselves a desire for the transcendental and so they say this points to the possibility that this infinite desire within us that no finite thing can fulfill can be fulfilled but the response to that is to say that to be human is to not simply have animalistic desires for certain things to be filled we also have a particular type of desire for desire itself and this following Freud is called Drive is a type of desire for desire that finds satisfaction in dissatisfaction it is seen in the Gambler who continues to addictively gamble or the person who is always buying a different house and a bigger house and wants more and more and more it's something that can't be satisfied but where we get pleasure from the lack of satisfaction the idea of the Hunt is a great example of this where the enjoyment isn't actually trying to get the animal famously we have Wiley Coyote who is eternally chasing the Road Runner and gets enjoyment out of the frustration otherwise he would stop I was doing a course recently on Pascal and I used this as an example because in an episode of Family Guy Wiley Coyote in a cutaway is seen to actually catch the Road Runner and he's amazed and it cuts to him in his kitchen with a friend and they're eating the Road Runner and he's like oh this is amazing this tea is so good and his friend asks him you know what are you going to do now and Wiley Coyote says well I don't know um I'm sure something will come up and then it basically cuts to him feeling meaningless until he tries to kill himself with his catapult oh this is delicious I mean you know it's like when you work for your meal when you really work for it it just tastes that much better you know so what are you gonna do now huh never really thought about it been chasing this damn bird for 20 years not really trained for anything else I guess I kind of let my life get away from me well I'm sure something will turn up foreign [Applause] pasta salad uh two Diet Cokes no no it was one Coke and one Diet Coke oh God I'm sorry we've been waiting an hour I know I'm sorry what the hell kind of place is I'm sorry I can't get it I'm sorry all right identity issues right now and I can't think straight up just get off my back because you don't know what it's like Wiley you're fired [Music] mom and dad forgive me for this and interestingly it actually ends within finding religion um which is a very pascalian end to that because for Pascal religion or faith can offer us dissatisfaction a new finite thing can [Music] sudden it hit me I knew who I wanted to be and I untied myself from that catapult and here I am well that is such a relief I know I know so if you have about 45 minutes I'd like to talk to you about the Lord Jesus Christ so if alienation is part of the very nature of reality itself and therefore alienation is part of what it means to be human that we cannot overcome it then what do we do do we just sit back and realize we're always going to be alienated there's always going to be a certain dissatisfaction to life for certain uh sacrifice a certain impossibility and by the way that connects with schupenhar and schupenhar's name for that was the will to life for schopenhar when you reflect on what it is to be human you encounter and eternal dissatisfaction this movement that means that we are never satisfied now schopenhar was actually pretty pessimistic about that he felt that this was a source of some sort of misery in a way he was a type of secular pascalian in that way so if we take a type of pascalion or schupenhari in view of this we might despair of this contemporary life because it will just be full of dissatisfaction however there's a different way of going about this the idea that yes alienation is inherently part of what it means to be a subject but there is a way to comport ourselves to alienation that is productive that is transformative not just for us but for society as a whole now before we look at exactly why that is I know I want to turn our attention to ideology so what is ideology building on everything I've said here ideology can be seen as that which covers over the holy dimension of reality and subjectivity and again I use the word holy in the sense of full of holes but also with that connotation that maybe this is the holy dimension of reality as in the sacred dimension of reality and ideology is precisely that which covers over the lack now how does ideology do that it does it by turning lack into loss this is basically Ground Zero of ideology it says that you're really a nation is something that can be overcome if you have enough sex if you purchase the right product if you have the right religion if you take the right drugs you can find this wholeness and completeness so that is ideology it takes the inherent alienation of reality and it says no that is a contingent thing that you can overcome night that wouldn't be an issue if it worked if ideology give us a plan for how to be happy and content and overcome our dissatisfactions and that would be fantastic the problem is ideology does the opposite the closer you get to the thing that supposedly will fix everything the more frantic you can become that's why a lot of people self-sabotage at the very moment that they're going to get that promotion or get the relationship that will work or get the contract that will make a difference in their life that very point when they're at the edge of getting what they want something Blues up because in a way the enjoyment is in not having rather than having okay so I want to give you a good example of how ideology works and so I want to reference the 1988 movie They Live so nice and contemporary I really recommend you watch it recently I just did an exposure event exposure as a monthly film Theory grip that I'm part of and I did they live so I would recommend you watch it it's it's a beautiful example of emancipatory Cinema and just to give you a little bit of background to it it's set in the 1980s this guy called NADA who is just this uh homeless guy who drifts into La looking for work he discovers that aliens are among us he finds these glasses and when you put the glasses on you can see the aliens but you can also see that the aliens have put messages everywhere that say at Bay Authority Marion reproduce sleep consume don't question all of this all of these messages are everywhere and as soon as you put the glasses on you see a billboard and the billboard disappears and behind it you see consume you see do not question authority you see obey [Music] [Music] squared away [Music] [Music] and when you have the glasses on for too long it gives you this real kind of headache now I want to use this to help describe what ideology is and this will bring us to my critique of self-help and a way to understand the transformative power of Grace so in this movie we can think of three interconnected dimensions there is everyday reality that people are living where they're just consuming and they're working in their jobs and they're feeling pretty alienated and they're just having their relationships and they're glued to the television so that's every day Monday in reality then there is ideology and ideology is all the Billboards the magazines the movies the TV shows the educational system everything that is giving sense of how life could be so whenever you look at all these adverts in the movie it's things like you know holidays to the Caribbean it's it's aspirational stuff it's magazines that are telling you to enjoy your life that you can consume products by televisions buy cigarettes buy alcohol whatever it is these are magazines and billboards and TV shows that are basically telling you how to overcome your alienation and then there is what we can call Surplus enjoyment the Surplus enjoyment is what you see when you put on the glasses and I'm following slavio shizak here who has written really brilliantly on the movie They Live and he talks about this Dimension as Surplus enjoyment because what he says is the glasses show you what you're really enjoying it shows you what is keeping you hooked into Monday and everyday reality because what these aliens are doing is they're trying to make us all into passive sheep so that they can basically take over the planet use it for its resources and then kind of move on and in the movie it says by 2025 they will have effectively taken over the entire planet so we're two years away I think they might be ahead of schedule by the looks of things but anyway um so you've got Monday in reality you've got ideology and behind the ideology you see the Surplus enjoyment what connects people to their mundian reality and stops them from questioning authorities stops them from becoming a revolutionary subjects okay no what's really interesting right is if the glasses show you your Surplus enjoyment and surplus enjoyment I should just Define that Surplus enjoyment is a type of excessive enjoyment that arises as a byproduct of some sort of utilitarian pleasure so for example a child is uh nurturing at the mother's breast and is feeding and it's using its lips to feed and then when that infant gets a bit older they start to suck their thumb right the thumb sucking is a kind of enjoyment in the Surplus right originally the sucking was what you did in order to get the milk nor you enjoy the sucking itself uh in the same way uh I think I've talked before but there was supposedly some people in Japan who I think was after the 2008 crash would go on holiday but what they would do is they would plan the holiday they would pack their bags they would take the taxi to the airport they would fly to the country and then they would fly straight back because what they were doing is they were taking the enjoyment directly from the Surplus right so we think that the enjoyment is the holiday but actually it's the booking of the holiday the parking the getting everybody into the taxi going to the airport and going there and so by directly enjoying the Surplus you kind of miss the the the thing that you should be enjoying this in a way is perversion where in the perverse subject and there's there's an extent to which we're all perverse in a way we begin to enjoy the Surplus so for example you you do certain rituals in order to have sex you know you go on a date you buy a nice meal you dress up you have conversation all of this is the type of thing that you have to do the fantasy that you have to create in order to eventually go home and have sex but sometimes we can actually end up enjoying all a bit up to the sex a lot more right so we kind of start to directly enjoy the the excess that the thing that we were originally just trying was just utilitarian becomes the source of enjoyment itself so that's one way of approaching what Surplus enjoyment is Again The Gambler is a good example where the enjoyment is not so much in the Wind but what makes a gambler a gambler is that they enjoy the process of gambling itself and even the losing becomes its own sort of enjoyment so in this movie uh Freedom comes from putting on the glasses and there's this incredible scene in the movie that lasts about six minutes where NADA is trying to get his friend Frank to put on the glasses and see or that see through the ideology see the Surplus enjoyment that keeps us enslaved to the system and Frank refuses to do this and the way shizak reads this which I think is very very good is this shows how we do not want to be free in a way it's a cinematic representation of Frank who kind of somewhere deep down thinks that he doesn't want to see that that maybe this guy NADA is seeing something and he doesn't want to be freed he doesn't want to be emancipated he wants to stay within the Matrix the freedom is not something wonderful like you see on Instagram whatever but the wonderful thing about Freedom or emancipation is no it's horrific we want to fight against it and we get a Feeling of this whenever we maybe don't look at her bank account because we know what's in it well we don't know what's in it but we kind of have a suspicion and as long as we don't look uh we can kind of keep ourselves in a certain ignorance or we don't phone the doctor surgery after we've been there because we have a fairly good idea something's wrong and as long as we don't call we can maintain a certain kind of ignorance so in other words it's not an Unknowing it's an unknowing that we are responsible for it's annoying unknowing and in the movie that's very important because what the glasses show you is not what is unseen but what we see but pretend to ourselves we can't see it's a we see it and yet we don't see it as subliminal so the message is there to see consume obey don't question authority but we don't see that we see it so the glass is simply present to us something that we already know but decify in ourselves and eventually NADA gets Frank to put on the glasses and you know he sees he sees the Surplus enjoyment so here's the weird thing about the movie at first is how come the Surplus enjoyment is exactly what Monday in reality is right the message behind the Billboards is consume sleep obey all of these kind of things which which people are already doing right they're already doing those things the ideology is get money buy these products retire at the beach you know all of these that's the ideology and yet what ties us to what what the ideology does is in a disavoid way it gives us what we already have right no this is very very key because in self-help it's always about going from A to B right you've got a certain life you're doing a certain thing how do you get from a where you currently are B to where you want to be so basically at its core self-help is always ideological because it either offers you something like better relationships making more money retiring early whatever it is it gives you that or you bring that to the self-help and the self-help offers you various techniques to get there but at the core there is a movement from A to B so in terms of they live self-help is the Billboards the magazines they're all the TV shows the movies they're all telling you in different ways how to get rid of alienation and yet weirdly that's not what we want right and that's why just telling people how to get from A to B rarely works because of alienation is inherent to our subjectivity it is also were our enjoyment comes from without knowing it we enjoy dissatisfaction we enjoy alienation now alienation and dissatisfaction in contemporary Society are completely destructive for most of us right so it's not this is not a good enjoyment but it's like there's something to dissatisfaction that we require as human beings so when you look at something like a Prosperity Church and someone says it doesn't work why do people go to Prosperity churches and what I'll do is I'll educate them I'll show you exactly why it doesn't work I'll show you exactly why I go into Prosperity Church doesn't statistically make you more money than not going right so basically it doesn't it doesn't deliver on its promises they don't realize that that's exactly why it works it works because it doesn't Deliverance promises just like gambling doesn't deliver on its promises it gets you addicted to the Surplus enjoyment of having a fantasy of what will overcome your alienation and not giving you it so that you can maintain a certain uh struggle in your life so you you have a fantasy of what will work but you never because if you did get it you'd realize it being rich doesn't overcome your alienation right so that would be devastating it allows you you to have the fantasy while keeping you stuck in the place you're at this is why you know in the arguments that you see between people who say for example capitalism works right as a system and it works because over time it creates more technologies that are beneficial to people everybody's wealth gradually gets more and more right and then in contrast there are people who say capitalism doesn't work it generates repeated cycles of repressions and depressions and you know alienation Etc within Society rather than the psychoanalytic idea that capitalism Works precisely because it doesn't and it doesn't work in a particular way I would say in an unhealthy way but it doesn't work in a particular way and in the same way with relationships it's not like relationships work or relationships don't work a good relationship Works in a way that doesn't work but it doesn't work in a good way a bad relationship doesn't work in a bad way so two people who are abusive for one person is abusive to another and they stay within this cycle they're not working keeps them intertwined but the answer is to find something that doesn't work in a good way right so coming back to they live you see the Surplus enjoyment which is very strangely the very thing that we're doing and we're enacting and what that means is it means that if for example you're in a relationship and you're always fighting with the person right you're always fighting with them but you're imagining a much better relationship right you're imagining this really good relationship without conflict right that fantasy that ideology of this really good relationship with our conflict covers over the fact that you're enjoying the arguments there's something in you that gets something out of the dysfunction but it's Justified you don't see how you're getting your enjoyment from the dysfunction now in self-help as I said self-help will come along and say I will help you either make that relationship really good or help you get another relationship by the way that might be exactly what you need right but it's self-help that's what self-help does from A to B what does grace do Grace doesn't get you from A to B Greer says a does not equal a right which means Greer says you don't have to do anything except confront yourself right Greer says will have a space where you accept yourself where you experience acceptance from others and as you're able to not move from A to B but just be and look at where your Surplus enjoyment comes from I come to know yourself have Grace for yourself so that because when you don't have Grace for yourself you get into self-denial you tell false stories about yourself you cover over your Surplus enjoyment but when you're in a community of Grace you can confront your Surplus enjoyment confront yourself and in realizing that you are alienated from yourself that's what a does not equal a means right you are not who you say you are you there is a certain form of uh antagonism within you that prevents you from being this whole and complete individual which is what ideology promises you confront your Surplus enjoyment and the Very confrontation with that Surplus enjoyment is what makes you a revolutionary subject a subject that can make changes right so the not having to do anything except confront put on the glasses and see your Surplus enjoyment is what is transformative okay so why is it that simply confronting your Surplus enjoyment is transformative I'm going to use an example I've used in a previous seminar a few months ago so forgive me as an example from like a subpanchic uh and her book what is sex I think she uses it in another book as well but it's in that book and it's a little story about this man this horrible guy who's aggressive and lazy and comes home from work sits down on his chair turns on the TV and shouts to his wife here get me a drink before it starts and the adverture on the TV said he's got the remote control turns to a certain Channel but she brings him a beer he drinks it the adverts are still on and he says get me another drink before it starts and she gets him another drink the adverts are still playing he drinks the beer he says listen get me another beer before it starts and at that point she cracks up and says get your room beer you think I'm just here to serve you and he looks at her in the eyes and he says oh there you go it started right so the whole point of the story is you either listener think that he's waiting for something to start on the TV set but what he's saying is get me a beer before you start arguing right before we start fighting now the interesting thing about the story for sarpanch is that the guy experiences himself as a passive recipient of the argument right he's going it's going to start you're going to kick off he's passively there but of course the whole thing is we the viewers see that he's not a passive recipient of the argument he is an active contributor to it he's the one who gets it started right by his actions and sapan says that in a way for a neurotic psychoanalysis is designed to take you imagine you're that guy to confront the enjoyment you get either of some dysfunctional situation so for example if you constantly think that there is an intruder outside your house right if you think that once or twice whenever you hear a noise that's totally fine it's non-pathological but if every time it's dark and you hear the slightest little creek you think someone's hiding in the cupboard or outside your room or outside the window this psychoanalytic method will gradually go what are you getting out of that belief what are you what what's like what is that covering over what is what is what is the enjoyment in that now you don't know you're enjoying it you don't in fact it feels exactly the opposite but there's something that you're getting out of it and the idea is that when you're confronted by the enjoyment by what it's covering over when you're confronted by that the confrontation itself gets you over it it breaks it right as soon as you kind of are confronted with that so in movie They Live when you're confronted with your Surplus enjoyment you are not broken free of being a passive obedient citizen you cannot be a revolutionary subject um and if that was a dream so let's imagine I had the dream and I go to my analyst and I say to the analyst yeah I had this dream where I was I was at work I was really busy I was really stressed and I came home and I said to my girlfriend can can I have a drink before the game starts and she got me a drink and then I asked her to get me another drink before it started and then I asked her weirdly in the dream to get me another drink before it started and then she started shouting at me now at this point the endless intervention would be oh and so it started right and when the analyst says that line oh and so it started I immediately would be confronted with the fact that oh that's what I was waiting for oh my goodness am I enjoying that am I getting something from that which would change it um I had this actually a decade ago when I was in analysis and I was talking about a relationship that was very chaotic and I said I said it's like a heroin relationship I'm just addicted to the highs and my analyst said or the loose it's all he said I did the kidney analysis they said very little there was no usually very little said so you know whenever those three words were the lose three words and maybe that was the only three words that were spoken in that session it might have been the only three words that had been spoken in the last four sessions right soon as those three words were said or the lose I was confronted with how I was getting an enjoyment out of the dysfunction itself and in that confrontation with that Surplus enjoyment with that truth that shifted something in terms of that relationship didn't have to do anything it just had to see my own alienation and the enjoyment I was getting from the alienation and what this does is it then reorients you in a way in which you are in a better position in relation to this fundamental lack at the heart of everything and we can call this salvation and why I call it salvation is because it is a fundamental reconfiguring of how we desire as a subject and it's a way in which we can operate in the world while not being of it most forms of popular therapy are what's called mental health today is designed to help you integrate better into your life to help you integrate better into your relationships or into your work recently I heard Jordan Peterson talk about his therapeutic practice he's a Dap psychologist and he talked about how he's worked with people who are quite high up in business who often suffer from insomnia and who don't take enough holidays and this causes a lot of bad symptoms in their lives and one of the things Peterson said is he helps those people see that actually to be be more productive if they want to be more productive as a CEO they actually need sleep and they need to go on holiday spend time with friends and what basically is being done here is trying to see the symptoms so say the symptoms insomnia which might actually be the protests that the individual does about being in this system right this type of therapy is designed to make you more productive fit more deeply and to take this symptom which might be as I say a protest against a form of life that is destructive to you and using that symptom which is the protest as a type of conservative way to get you to be more effective as a economic subject right in psychoanalysis the idea is to help you enjoy your symptom not use the symptom in order to integrate better into the world but to help you realize that you as a subject are never fully integrated into the world there is an inherent type of alienation in which you're in the world but not of it and that the idea is how do you enjoy that alienation and how to make it productive for you and society as a whole not always trying to overcome it so with ideology it's always promising you can overcome it the reason why so many people self-sabotage and don't grab the ideological object is because unconsciously they're actually enjoying their alienation it's just a form of alienation that is profoundly destructive because they haven't find a right relationship with it that's why a lot of people here are successful tend towards having perverse or psychotic structures because they um they're more likely to want to grab the ideological object that on someone who is neurotic but anyway that's beside the point um maybe that's taking us too far afield okay so what I'll do is I'll just sum up where we've got to in these two Seminars the idea of ontological Unknowing is the idea that there is a fundamental unknowing in the other in ourselves and in reality itself and this is called dusting and this dimension of the Abyss that is essential it's not contingent it is an eternal reality we can even give it the signifier God as that which is eternal that which is uncreated that which is an inexistent thing this is the source of our freedom and this is the source of our alienation and religion in its sacred and secular forms is ideological trying to render this lack into loss saying oh this alienation is contingent and can be overcome in X Y or Z ways and this life or in the next life but rather a radical approach a parotheological approach is to see this alienation as essential and what we need to do is not do self-help which tells us how to get from A to B right ideology being the kind of this is the the B right the the destination that will make you happy how to get from A to B but rather to embrace and experience Grace Grace being the realization that a does not equal a that that who we are is a type of conflict with ourselves we have a chaos within us we are in the words of James Joyce at chaos moss and seeing that and embracing that and in that Embrace finding a type of Freedom that allows us to be healthier individuals to find healthier ways to sacrifice healthier ways to have alienation and conflict within us that brings life to us what's called drive to not satisfy this drive but rather to allow it to continue to eternally generate knowledge and inventions and relationships and possibilities and Adventures in a process that never ends so we have testing which is not Abyss we have ideology which is the covering over of that Abyss the rendering of this inherent lack into a contingent loss and then we have Grace as the place where we can accept that we are accepted we can confront our Surplus enjoyment confront our alienation and in confronting it turn it into something that is valuable and not as good and the work of parotheology is trying to create those spaces of Grace and that's something that will take up in a future seminar so hope that was interesting thanks for joining us if you're interested in these we have grips where we discuss these ideas and my patreon I'd love you to have you involved that's how I support myself and because of many of you I'm able to do this for a living and I am eternally grateful for that so there's lots of stuff that you can get there or as I say these monthly seminars are free on YouTube so thank you take care bye-bye

Channel: Peter Rollins

Views: 2,188

Keywords: Peter Rollins, Theology, Philosophy, Pyrotheology, Radical Theology, Christianity

Id: Gyv8Nh5ZR8I

Length: 53min 46sec (3226 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 06 2023