I was just on the East coast for 10 days visiting family for the holidays. I had a very good time.
I like using this blog as a place for my future self to return to and keep track of my learning and reading. I saw an old friend and he told me he still speaks of 'future Efron' the way that I used to speak of 'future Riley.' I used to say things like 'future Riley will have this figured out...' or 'Gotta do this now, future Riley will be glad I did.' I told my friend that I was thinking about how future Riley never really exists. It's always present Riley. There is, however, a past Riley. I see his traces in the world and I learn about him and me by studying those traces.
I thus leave a trace of what I've been up to.
On the plane ride out I read Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism'. On the plane ride back I read his 'Question Concerning Technology'. Both are tremendously stimulating pieces of writing. I am happy that I am deepening my understanding of his idea of 'destiny' and the seeming project of 'waiting for the gods'. These are thoughts I became familiar with while reading 'What Are Poets For?' and 'Building, Dwelling, Thinking.' The 'Question' also makes a claim, briefly, provocatively, that physis and poiesis are in some sense equivalent, or that physis is a kind of poiesis. This seems peculiar and problematic to me. The ancient understanding of physis, or nature, as I understand it, was always spoken of in contradistinction to law, custom, or nomos. Nomos, I am sure, is a type of poiesis, or making--it is one of the quintessential forms of making.
There is a relation between nature and making, no doubt. And Heidegger is right that the chief task of making is to show things as they are. Making reveals nature. This is of the essence of Heidegger's definition of phenomenology as a type of speaking that reveals things as they are. But to claim that nature is itself a form of making... this seems peculiar to me. We are the being that by nature makes. But I am not comfortable or convinced by the idea that nature itself is a kind of making.
Keir will be exploring this in his dissertation on the notion of production and I look forward to the fruits of his inquiry and our dialogue surrounding it.
It is clear to me now that I need to understand Heidegger's relationship to Holderlin, and how in the world Heidegger arrives at this idea of the 'destiny of being' that reveals itself as the task of thinking. He is so powerful. But as Keir said to me in a text message this morning, 'Read poetry and await destiny. Thanks H that really helps us avoid the technological apocalypse.' There is something so strange in Heidegger's neglect of politics.
I am becoming more comfortable with the idea that history is really a substitute for the ancient understanding of politics, and that relational ontology is a degraded attempt to recover something like a genuine understanding of ourselves as a political animal. Perhaps that is the post I will write next. It feels rich.
I also read an excellent essay called 'Pathologizing Poverty: New Forms of Diagnosis, Disability, and Stigma Under Welfare Reform.' The essay illuminates the way that the 96' Clinton reforms of welfare essentially destroyed genuine social services in America and replaced them with a medicalized form of care that coerces individuals into accepting diagnoses, medication regimes, and inculcates new roles and identities that complicate questions of poverty and mental illness. Someone recently told me that they thought of community mental health as 'government mind control of the poor.' I am inclined to agree with this view, even if there is a part of me that wants to moderate the conspiratorial tones of it. I have, however, been becoming a more conspiratorial thinker.
I also read most of Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps The Score. A tremendous book that I am delighted to have read. My god. The research, the ideas, the practices. So powerful. I only have to read the epilogue in which van der Kolk seems to make a call for a new politicized understanding of trauma and mental illness. Indeed, I saw he wrote a 2019 article on the politics of mental health. I hope to build on that work. There are many places in the book where the significance of socialism is implied. I am more and more convinced that mental health counselors need to be advocates for socialism, and fierce opponents of capitalism, if we are to be anything other than tools of the system.
I also had a chance to see my aunt and uncle who are both therapists in the Virginia area. They told me that a while ago they were at a conference on the DSM-3. My uncle said he asked the chair of the committee, 'What about complex PTSD as a diagnosis?' to which he said 'If we let that trauma stuff in it will take over everything.' There is profound resistance in the psychological and psychiatric community to the idea that mental illness is about social and political violence and cannot be understood adequately through biological etiology. I am delighted that my uncle told me this. Delighted and horrified. It confirms so much of what I am thinking and what van der Kolk is writing about. My aunt bluntly confirmed many of my hunches as well, telling me that she really believed trauma to be at the heart of all this, and that the establishment likes to divide the world into 'those weird ones over there with mental illness and us normal people over here.'
It feels more and more urgent to understand trauma as an extreme manifestation of the violence and coercion that all of us experience at the hands of society. A conflictualist analysis of politics is invaluable in this respect.
I also read a paper on polyvagal theory that clarified my understanding of the significance of Porges' emphasis on evolution.
I also read a paper on Clausewitz and his relationship to Schleiermacher and, potentially, Plato. As Keir said 'everything is coming full circle.' I will speak to my undergraduate mentor, Jon Sumida, at some point, as his work is one of the main influence on that essay. I have been working, slowly and quietly in ways I don't understand yet, to integrate my undergraduate study of military history into my new orientation of politicized and philosophical psychotherapy/psychology. This includes a return to Clausewitz and Collingwood. I will undoubtedly do more work on Collingwood, and perhaps on Clausewitz.
I also read a fascinating essay by Jon Mills called 'Deconstructing Hermes', and when I arrived home last night my copy of his book Conundrums was at my apartment. I am excited to engage his work. He seems spot on with this critiques. I am not sure I am persuaded by his positive alternatives. I watched a lecture of his recently and he seemed to advocate for a return to modern sensibilities as opposed to post-modern decadence. I still favor something more aggressively 'natural' or ancient.
I will continue to reflect on the significance of esoteric hermeneutics. An adequate understanding of esotericism provides not only a viable hermeneutics, but also a politics, a psychology, and an ontology. It frees us from the modern emphasis on 'method', which so flippantly disregards the necessary links between epistemology and ontology.
I will leave it at this. I am excited to be back and to continue my learning. I also just received a copy of Hegel's Encyclopedia, and have 1/3 of Aristotle's De Anima to finish. From there I will be reading, soonish, Aristotle's Politics, some Rousseau, probably some Mills and some other stuff. I'm excited to be able to keep working on this all. It is good to be back. It was good to see my family. I love them very much, and feel sad that this report makes it seem as if though my time visiting the East coast was about my reading. I loved reading while I was there. But I also loved being around them, seeing my old friends, remembering and seeing more deeply where I come from, and why I am this way.
I sent back my great-grandfather's letters from while he was in Germany in the wake of WWII. He had a nervous breakdown there... I want to understand what happened to him so I can have a deeper grasp on who I am, who my family is. I will keep learning.
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