Psychology in the West addresses itself to the identity, to the ‘formalised notion of who (or what) we are’. We can’t think what else it could possibly be about. It addresses itself to the purposeful ‘doer’ or ‘actor’ – the executive agent, as we might also say. It is taken for granted that this is the proper subject of our theories, investigations, deliberations, etc.; what else would we be looking at in this connection, after all? Nowhere is this assumption acknowledged as an assumption, however – it’s simply a ‘carry-over’ (or ‘logical extension’) of the invisible assumption that we all make every day of our lives. I feel that ‘I am who I think I am’ – I take myself as being the doer, the thinker, the chooser, the causal or executive agent, as we have said. It follows therefore that this hypothetical or presumed entity is considered (in orthodox psychological thinking) to be the ‘rightful focus of our research’, a proper ‘thing in its own right’ and not just an over-valued or over-valent idea. The existence of the self as a real thing (more than just a real thing, in fact, but ‘the centre of everything’!) is taken as axiomatic and it is therefore our ‘starting-off point’ for everything. We can’t imagine it not being such.
The sense that we have of ‘being this self’ is however the result of an act of identification, the act whereby we unconsciously take up a part or role, as we can plainly see if we were bother ourselves to actually pay attention to what’s going on (rather than just thinking about it, rather than just obediently ‘running with the idea’). I am jumping to the conclusion that ‘this is me’ and so my life (or what I understand as such) takes place on the other side of this jump. The jump itself is invisible – it takes place much too quickly, much too automatically (which is to say, ‘needing no conscious attention in order for it to happen’) for us to notice. What’s more, we’re in such a hurry to do whatever it is that this self wants to do, achieve whatever it is that it wants to achieve, that we don’t look into it at all. We’ve no interest whatsoever – only the matter of ‘what is to be achieved’ (or ‘what is to be avoided’) matters to us. If we didn’t focus all our attention onto ‘the exciting / thrilling benefit that is to be attained’ then the whole endeavour would collapse immediately – if attention is paid to this super-rapid ‘process of identification’ (or ‘taking up the role’) then there would be no possibility of any benefits being received (since we would clearly see that there is no one there to receive them). From the point of view of ‘the presumed-or-assumed identity’ this would of course constitute a complete disaster – the whole show would immediately be derailed, the whole endeavour would be revealed as an utter farce. We would see the actual in-your-face absurdity of the situation (which is something the rational mind absolutely CAN’T see, since it functions strictly on the ‘literal’ level) This is why paying actual attention – which is to say – being conscious, isn’t really our cup of tea. We ‘just don’t see the attraction’. It’s worse than just a ‘buzz-killer’ – it’s the kiss of death. It spoils everything.
This is why ‘being aware of what’s happening on a subtle / implicit rather than the gross / explicit level’ isn’t the positive psychologist’s cup of tea either. Such introspection would constitute an act of rebellion, a shameful betrayal of the collectively assumed reality. Introspective investigation into the nature of selfhood just ‘isn’t a thing’ in contemporary psychology; everything happens ‘on the outside’ as far as we’re concerned – the ‘outside’ being the proper domain of rational thought. There is no ‘inside’ (according to rational thought) – there is no other domain other than ‘the domain of rational thought’ (according to the admittedly biased creator and validator of this domain). Technically speaking, what we’re talking about is a game: assumptions are made and then forgotten about, so everything that happens from this point onwards happens on the basis of ‘something being true that isn’t true’. Rules are put in place and when we accept them (as we instantly do) then we can no longer see them as being rules (which is to say, as being ‘purely artificial contrivances’); instead, we adopt them as the fundamental basis for everything that happens, the fundamental basis of everything that ever could happen. The rules become a way of organising our subjective world – they govern our way of determining what is real and what isn’t. They determine what we register and what we don’t. Thus, when we choose to accept the given rules as being what they themselves implicitly claim to be then we gain residence in a peculiarly shallow sort of world – a world that is true or authentic only insofar as the biases that we have automatically assumed are not ‘arbitrary and automatically or unconsciously assumed’ but rather the absolute unshakable bedrock of everything that ever was, or is, or ever could be. Just as long as we don’t ‘examine the lie’ then this world is real to us, and so we live a peculiar type of unquestioning or unreflective life that somehow seems ‘normal’ to us. On the contrary, it’s questioning that seems abnormal. Questioning equals ‘betrayal’ – by bothering ourselves to reflect on what’s going on we make ourselves into traitors deserving of the very severest punishment.
‘Playing the game’ necessarily excludes all awareness that the game is a game, therefore. This is however necessarily a paradoxical kind of thing – in order to play the game we first have to have the game to play. In order to be able to ‘build on the basis’ we first have to have the basis that is to be built on. Or to put this another way, before we can obey the rule there first has to be a rule there to obey, and there aren’t going to BE any rules unless we ourselves put them there. Playing the game makes the game seem real for us, but unless it’s there to start off with how are we to get started? How do we arrive at this ‘beginning point’? This is no laughing matter from the POV of the rational intellect – it represents a stumbling block we just can’t get over. This situation is more than just a bit reminiscent of Terence McKenna’s ‘one free miracle’ argument. It is something that the thinking can’t think about, can’t in any way look at (it’s ‘a place we can’t go’, to use Frank Herbert’s phrase) and – as we have said – what the thinking mind can’t think about doesn’t exist as far as we’re concerned. This is the (covert) function of thought – to make what is thought about seem real. From the context of the game the game isn’t ‘an artificial reality’ but the real deal; from the context of the game (which is the only context we know) the core paradox is profoundly invisible. From the POV of the everyday mind, there is no paradox. From the POV of the everyday mind, paradoxicality doesn’t exist. Paradox doesn’t feature in our world-view and yet at one and the same time our entire subjective world is a paradox, is a flat self-contradiction. Everything about us (and the world we assume ourselves to exist within) is a flat self-contradiction and so we automatically dismiss it. We can’t see it. We dismiss anything that isn’t part of the game and the info that ‘the game is a game’ isn’t part of the game. Thus, we live out our lives in a (subjective) world in which we can only ever see one half of the self-contradiction at any one time (whilst, objectively speaking, this is merely a conditioned hallucination).
We avoid seeing the paradox by living in an unreal world, (in a ‘half-baked’ world, so to speak). The cost to us for ‘only seeing one side of the self-contradiction’ is that we get to live our lives entirely within the bounds of the Nullity. This of course doesn’t register as a ‘problem’ for us since that statement doesn’t mean anything to us. The concept of ‘the Nullity’ is as alien to us as anything ever could be. it’s not just that we ‘don’t know what it is’ – we are fundamentally incapable of knowing anything about it. When everything we say, think, do (and ‘know’) is ‘a perfect half of an immaculate self-contradiction’ (and when we live our lives in implicit denial of this truth) then this is the Nullity. Everything or anything we do on the other side of the invisible choice to identify with the role (which is the choice that we don’t know we have made) is the Nullity. Everything we do after we make the (instantly forgotten) choice to ‘obey the rules that have been given to us’ (everything we do on the basis of Zero Freedom) is an expression of the Nullity and the expression of the Nullity is of course the very same thing as the nullity, which means that there is no expression of the Nullity (since in reality there is no such thing as ‘Zero Freedom’, no such thing as ‘the choice we have made and then forgotten about’).
Whatever statements we might make as psychologists (or theorists in psychology) cannot be otherwise than ‘expressions of the Nullity’. Since we exist on ‘the other side of the choice that we can’t remember having made’ this argument (as we’ve said) means nothing at all to us. The set of assertions that together constitute not just the edifice of Positive Psychology but the entirety of our World-View do make sense to us (they make sense to us whether we agree with them or not) and it is the undeniable fact that the Positive Reality assumed by the collective of us (the ‘logical doctrine’ that we all opt to live by) does at all times ‘make sense’ that shows us to be in the identified or unconscious state. The world we live in is no more than a projection of thought (or ‘the unexamined extension of our ideas’), in other words, and it is the fact that we don’t know it to be such that condemns us to a life of unending futility.
In the Projected World we are constantly on the go – we are always either advancing or retreating, chasing or fleeing, gaining or losing and the one thing there could never be is ‘stillness’ (which is the only thing that’s worth anything, since it’s the only thing that’s real). Everything in the PW always needs improving, adjusting, analysing, correcting, expanding, and so on – there is always the promise of ‘hitting the jackpot’ (of ‘succeeding’, of ‘getting it right’) but never the actuality. There is no ‘jackpot’ – the self-cancelling Wheel never stops turning and we’re never able to get off it. Relief from the inexorable turning off the tortuously wearisome Wheel is a convenient (and super-attractive) fantasy generated by the Wheel for the sake of incentivising us to keep on pushing, incentivising us to push all the harder. The world keeps on turning (in a perfect sterile circle’) and we keep on thinking that we’re getting somewhere. If – on the other hand – we could see the Loop of logic that lies behind our purposeful / goal-chasing activity for what it is, then this extrinsic source of motivation would of course dry up immediately. Seeing the LOL ‘for what it is’ (i.e. seeing the Nullity to be ‘the Nullity’) is the very last thing we ever want to see, however – this eventuality – on an unconscious or displaced level – constitutes a catastrophe of incomputable magnitude. ‘Catching sight of our true predicament’ is a catastrophe of incomputable magnitude as far as the logic behind our thinking is concerned. We can’t see that this so-called ‘ultimate catastrophe’ is the inevitable outcome of our thinking, that it is our thinking laid bare (and seen for what it is) – if we saw this then we would of course straightaway be ‘free from the disease’….
Image credit – fubiz.net/jeff-gillette
