luka
Well-known member
Do you want to try and put this in English?
Alfred Adler
- Thread starter Woebot
- Start date
Do you want to try and put this in English?
woops
is not like other people
i'll do it - he means competition (born of desiring what other people desire) which creates winners and losers (an "assymetric system of desire") (or, "status") with winners having more of what everyone desires, and everyone else is jealous ("asymmetric admiration") of their "communal standing" (or, "dominance")
Isn't our whole idea of value based, at least to some extent, on the simple fact that others have or don't have? Ie desire itself is socially created and based upon you wanting the thing others want, with the knowledge that not everyone can have it. If everyone can have it, it's not desirable.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
what is a woops
It does seem that, beyond use value, value is determined solely by context. And desire would be a sort of selection mechanism for determining what is of such social value, seeing as it it isn't self-evident like use value.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
So in the individual psychic system, desire is a selection mechanism geared toward better positioning that psychic system relative to other psychic systems.
But in the larger social inter-psychic system, desire is a selection mechanism that... plays into the determination of the dominant ideology?
But in the larger social inter-psychic system, desire is a selection mechanism that... plays into the determination of the dominant ideology?
Desire is socially created. Like if yoh think of some music, or like we've been talking about zines and other cultural artifacts, a big part of the value is the rarity.
But not just that, I mean something more. I mean that people derive pleasure from having things when they know others can't have them. That's why rich people become more and more greedy. You are never satisfied.
But not just that, I mean something more. I mean that people derive pleasure from having things when they know others can't have them. That's why rich people become more and more greedy. You are never satisfied.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Maybe it has something to do with some runaway instinct of desire? If you have the resources to acquire things purely in order to prevent others from acquiring them, could it be that there is just no ceiling/upper-bound for that instinct to crash against, no body above you to prevent you from acquiring these things? Unchecked, unbalanced, untempered, unregulated, etc.
sus
Moderator
Yes, this is a good phrasing of what I meant. After some base needs, it gets weird and reflexive and social.
@luka less that it's bad prose, more that it's specific language from from Rene Girard (phil) and Joseph Henrich (cultural evolution) that probably means a lot to me/is the best way of putting it in my head, but isn't clear if you're not aware of the frame
"asymmetric gaze" is this idea that people pay more attention or less attention to the people above/below them in the prestige hierarchy. Think how much watching of celebrity or royalty life there is, and how little "gaze" the royals/celebrities return.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Then what desire wouldn't be mimetic? I find it strange to classify material subsistence as being an object of desire, but maybe that is a semantic issue.
sus
Moderator
@constant escape yeah these things are exactly subject to the runaway effect, there's a ton of literature on how this works in animal sexual behavior that seems pertinent
sus
Moderator
I think it's a question of hybrids. Our desire for food obviously has a biological base, but what kind of food we consume is largely cultural. "Doritos?? I'd never eat those, those are for low status losers on the internet"
woops
is not like other people
(perhaps relatedly) in my experience of wishing i had some rare record, expensive synthesiser, personality trait, life situation, the annoyance (for want of a better word) of not having it is much greater than the satisfaction of having such stuff
constant escape
winter withered, warm
This gets near the sort of general climbing function that seems to be present across various scales of physical complexity, but I always have a tough time articulating it without seeming to ascribe consciousness to molecules.
That is, a sort of trans-scalar trend of how systems orient themselves. In general terms it seems to involve an arbitration of an optimal direction, and then a contrivation toward that direction.
@woops re the negative outweighing the positive, another example of asymmetry. We wouldn't keep moving if the scale was balanced, and the system impels us to move in order for it, itself, to move.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Good point, and totally. Arguably no kind of desire is exempt from this kind of mimesis, because where else are you going to ascertain the value of something than from how other minds treat it?
edit: which is why the eradication of desire is central to much of this. But still - you can desire to eradicate desire. I don;t know anything really about Jean Gebser, but apparently he had a term he called "acausal intention", or orienting your psychic impetus in such a way as to not use it as a predicate for a change in your existence. In other words, watching where the cusp of your attention goes, and what it is working towards, what end it is mobilized towards, and then ceasing to reproduce that kind of mobilization.