mind over matters

Raskolnikov's dream, chapter v, Crime and Punishment.

Mikolka is the embodyment of the violent urges that surge from Raskolnikov's id. By creating a character to house this part of himself he disconnects his guilt administrator ( the superego) from his violence inclined id.

He shouted from the cart – 'and this brute, mates is just breaking my heart, I feel as if I could kill her. She's just eating her head off. I'll make her gallop! She'll gallop!' he picked up the whip, preparing himself with relish to flog the little mare.

Mikolka acts as a separate entity with his own set of id, ego and superego. Deeply disturbing is his superego (depicted as the crowd of on lookers) who seems to bend to the will of his id or are completely dismissed as Mikolka's ego justifies his actions as socially acceptable because they are within the rights of every capitalist.

'Don't meddle! It's my property, I'll do what I choose.'

Two lads in the crowd snatched up whips and ran to the mare to beat her about the ribs. 'Hit her in the face, in the eyes, in the eyes,' cried Mikolka.

Raskolnikov's internalized superego exerts no control over Mikolka in this detached state. Reducing himself to the helplessness of a child he allows Mikolka to have the power to maim and destroy.

Mikolka stood on one side and began dealing random blows with the crowbar. The mare stretched out her head, drew a long breath and died.....the poor boy beside himself, made his way through the crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and kissed it.

Facilitating the rise in power of the id born killing urges inside him, Raskolnikov prepares himself for his ultimate act of cruelty.

'Can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open, tread in the warm sticky blood, break the lock, steal and tremble; hide all spattered in the blood...with the axe.....good god, can it be?'

Posted in: Crime and Punishment on Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at at 1:34 PM 0 comments  

The smoking cube social environment seems reminiscent of an elevator.

a) Everyone is there by necessity.
b) The space is small enough to force some awkward accidental eye contact.
c) Your intention is to get in and then quickly get out as soon as you’ve elevated to a higher level.
d) It smells bad.

Posted in: on Friday, April 16, 2010 at at 8:48 AM 0 comments  

The baby stroller.

10kg of plastic, 2.5 cubic meters in size to carry a 4kg baby, 50 cubic centimeters in size. The lost ability to cling to the side of our mothers as monkeys do was a travesty of natural selection.

Posted in: on at at 8:28 AM 0 comments  

We cannot underestimate the complexity of our social communication with others and the deep effect it has on our emotional development. When another person is live before us in the flesh, we are bombarded by a range of input from the individual (body language, conveyed emotions, suppressed ones, created dialogue) this is weighed up against our own output (prior knowledge of the current situation and predicted emotional response from the other, deep sustained ideas and knowledge of the individual from the past, our own agenda with concerns to that person, our own psychological temperament at that given time) what occurs is a most rich and unique interaction.

Relationships we attempt to re-create over the Internet are effectively retarded by the physical lack of the individual in our space. The Internet essentially stops an emotional reactional feedback loop from cycling through. It cuts off access to the full extent of the input required to move through to another mental position in the loop. This loop is necessary for a rhythmic emotional state that allows a healthy attachment/detachment with another person. The retardation caused here creates a mental standstill, ‘if I can’t form a ‘reality script’ of the situation from my intuition in the presence of the individual how do I piece together their character and the nature of their attentions?’ In our efforts to resolve this standstill our minds return to our mental safety net, fantasy.

We visualise fictitious situations where the person is a real bodily presence in our lives. We dream of the future because our nature states that a ‘disconnected connection’ will never be enough, eventually we long for a physical presence. The lure of this kind of relationship is it is at once immensely self indulgent and satisfying, we have the chance to mediate our reactions towards that person which alleviates the pressure of potential unguarded negative projections, we also build tension and intensity of desire through longing and forced restraint.

The concern here is that we become so self indulgent that we immerse ourselves completely in our online connections or our highly mediated fantasy replica connections. This can lead to a retraction from real world connections which are overwhelmingly complex and taxing by comparison, yet exponentially more rewarding by aiding a healthy continuum of the emotional progressional loop.

Posted in: Internet, philosophy, spain on at at 8:22 AM 0 comments  

Posted in: cartoon, Paul Noth on Saturday, March 13, 2010 at at 12:02 PM 0 comments  

Life has a habit of throwing people into your path who have the annoying tendency of showing you just how ignorant you actually are. From the tender age of 14 I've viewed the Alevis as the carnival freaks of Islam, a people whose leader was a warrior of such repute his emblem became the double edged sword, a people who believed that mosques were evil and ran screaming from bunny rabbits.

My housemate a Danish born scholar of Turkish origin is both a researcher of Alevi traditions and an Alevi by birth. Little accurate information is known about Alevi customs due to the years of political suppression which put this minority religious group in hiding and the nature of the religion itself which comes from a mostly oral tradition. It is widely known that Alevis will not enter a mosque because their caliph Ali was murdered in one. In part this is true and certainly fits into Alevi mysticism. However, at least in the case of the Turkish Alevis who originally preyed in mosques with their Sunni brethren, there was also violent political pressure from the right (predominantly Sunnis) for them to partake in their worship elsewhere (Alevis being associated with the left).

A fascinating branch of Islam worthy of much more academic study and recognition in the political arena than it is afforded, it's definitely worth some of your days 'googling time'.

Posted in: alevi on Friday, March 12, 2010 at at 6:25 AM 0 comments  

Feeling the niggling rise of nostalgia for my home country lately I was inspired to put down in words an image that had been floating around in my head from some months ago.

Home 6.

a name
to name it in soundless words conjures an image
a feeling of stillness, hushed felicity
a fanciful amalgamate of memories
played sluggish through the nostalga of time

ochre powdered rocks shimmer in the heat
dark sandy strands of hair drift unbidden towards the sky
blue grey leaves slide over one another with
muted rustles as the breezes pass
tall feathery reeds bend and float on air, entwined together
crisp eucalyptus and old spice pepper the air
a bold blue jolt of sky and eyes

here
gently warms all the feeling organs
burgeons the senses in rapture
recinding banality

Posted in: home, poem on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at at 12:02 PM 0 comments