This is more of an update post than a theory/philosophy one.
The semester ended a couple of weeks ago and I am acclimating to my new routine and schedule. I am also acclimating to two new key pieces of technology: my new phone, which is a Galaxy Note 4; and my new tablet, which is a Nexus 9. I attempted a slightly different approach to my upgrades, especially for my tablet: stop thinking about what I could do with them and start thinking about what I will do with them. One could also translate that as: get what you need, not what you want. This was also a pricey upgrade all around; I had been preparing for it, but still, having to spend wisely was an issue as well.
The Galaxy Note 4 upgrade was simple for me. I loved my Note 2. I use the stylus/note taking feature on it almost daily. The size was never an issue. So while I momentarily considered the Galaxy S6 edge, I stuck with exactly what I knew I needed and would use.
As for the tablet, that was more difficult. My old Galaxy Note 10.1 was showing its age. I thought -- or rather, hoped ... speculated -- that a tablet with a stylus would replace the need for paper notes. After a full academic year of trying to do all of my research and class note-taking exclusively on my tablet, it was time for me to admit that it wasn't cutting it. I need a full sheet of paper, and the freedom to easily erase, annotate, flip back and forth, and see multiple pages in their actual size. While the Note tablet can do most of that, it takes too many extra steps; and those steps are completely counter-intuitive than when using pen and paper.
When I thought about how and why I used my tablet (and resurrected chromebook), I realized that I didn't need something huge. I was also very aware that I am a power-user of sorts of various Google applications. So -- long story short -- I went for the most ... 'Googley' ... of kit and sprang for a Nexus 9, with the Nexus keyboard/folio option. I was a little nervous at the smaller size -- especially of the keyboard. But luckily my hands are on the smallish side and I'm very, very pleased with it. The bare-bones Android interface is quick and responsive; and the fact that all Android updates come to me immediately without dealing with manufacturer or provider interference was very attractive. I've had the Nexus for a week and am loving it.
This process, however, especially coming at the end of the academic year, made me deeply introspective about my own -- very personal -- use of these types of technological artifacts. It may sound dramatic, but there was definitely some soul-searching happening as I researched different tablets and really examined the ways in which I use technological artifacts. It was absolutely a rewarding experience, however. Freeing myself up from unrealistic expectations and really drawing the line between a practical use rather than a speculative use was rather liberating. I was definitely influenced by my Google Glass experience.
From a broader perspective, the experience also helped me to focus on very specific philosophical issues in posthumanism and our relationship to technological artifacts. I've been reading voraciously, and taking in a great deal of information. During the whole upgrade process, I was reading Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. This was a catalyst in my mini 'reboot.' And I know it was a good reboot because I keep thinking back to my "Posthuman Topologies: Thinking Through the Hoard" chapter in Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, and saying to myself "oh wait, I can explain that even better now ..."
So I am now delving into both old and new territory, downloading new articles, and familiarizing myself even more deeply with neuroscience and psychology. It's exciting stuff, but a little frustrating because there's only so much I can read through and retain in a day. There's also that nagging voice that says "better get it done now, in August you'll be teaching four classes again." It can be frustrating sometimes. Actually, that's a lie. It's frustrating all the time. But I do what I can.
Anyway, that's where I'm at right now and I'm sure I'll have some interesting blog entries as I situate myself amidst the new research. My introspection here isn't just academic, so what I've been working on comes from a deeper place, but that's how I know the results will be good.
Onward and upward.
Showing posts with label hoarding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hoarding. Show all posts
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Hide and Seek, Part 2: The Sweeping Insensitivity of This Still Life
Hide and seek.
Trains and sewing machines.
All those years they were here first.
Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before.
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life.
- Imogen Heap, "Hide and Seek"
The objects become more "present" in their consecutive singularities. And in each instance, we have to make an effort to justify the existence of each object. And that's it, isn't it? It is up to us to justify that this object is worth the effort of dusting off, packing, unpacking, etc. In this way, the objects seem dependent upon us, since we are the ones burdened with bestowing purpose on those objects. Objects cannot justify themselves. They are, for lack of a better term, insensitive. We, however, are sensitive; and some of us, as explained by Bennett, are more sensitive than others. Perhaps this helps us to understand the hoarder mentality, especially the tears that are shed when something that seems to be non-functioning, decomposing junk is cast away. The hoarder has become invested in the objects themselves -- and bestowed sensitivity upon them. To throw them away is to abandon them.
But here we come dangerously close to the more existentialist viewpoint that it is the subject who bestows value upon the object: that is to say, the act of bringing an object into being is to automatically bestow upon it value. But, let's pause on the moment and process of "bringing." Etymologically speaking, "bring" implies a carrying. There must be a thing (even in the loosest sense) to be carried. The object is at least as important as the subject. Now, I don't want to just flip the model and say it's the thing which brings "I" into being, because that's nothing necessarily new. Hegel implies a version of this in aspects of his Herrschaft und Knechtschaft [Lord and bondsman ... or "master/slave"] dialectic. And there really is no way around the "I": the embodied "I" is a kind of locus of a specific bio-cognitive process. The particular I, of itself at the present moment, is made manifest by the phenomenal environment around it.
The objects by which we're surrounded are (not "represent", but phenomenally, functionally, are) a secondary material substrate through which our cognition is made manifest. A "first" material substrate would be our physiological, embodied brains. But, beyond that, our surrounding environments become an "outboard brain" which helps to carry our cognition.
I cannot stress enough that I'm not speaking metaphorically. The phenomenal world we occupy at any given moment partially constitutes a larger, distributed substrate through which cognitive processes occur. That environment is not "taken in" or "represented": it constitutes the very mechanisms of cognition itself. The process happens as instantly as thought itself, and is highly recursive -- meaning that the better and more efficiently a distributed cognition works, the less visible and more illusory it becomes. The more illusory the process, the greater our sense of autonomy. So, if something goes awry at any point in the process (whether environmentally, emotionally, or physically ... or any cumulative combination of them), then our sense of autonomy is skewed in any number of directions: an inflated/deflated sense of one's presence, an inflated/deflated sense of the presence of objects, skewed senses of efficacy, body dysmorphic disorder, etc. When the hoarder, or even the "normal" individual having to pack up his or her belongings, suddenly must account for each individual object, it causes a breakdown in the recursivity of the distributed cognitive process. The illusion of an autonomous self is dissipated by the slowdown -- and eventual breakdown -- of the mind's capacity to efface the processes which constitute it. Try to accomplish any complex task while simultaneously analyzing each and every physical, mental, and emotional point during the process: the process quickly breaks down. The process of constituting a viable self is quite possibly the most complex in which a human can be engaged.
What then, are the implications to posthumanism? What I'm getting at here is something which a follower of mine, Stephen Kagen, so eloquently said in a response to my Aokigahara Forest entries: "my bias is that the artificial distinction between human, technology, and nature breaks down when examined closely."
Yes it does. The distinction is, in my opinion, arbitrary.
Technologically speaking -- and from a posthuman standpoint -- this is very important. Current technological development allows us to manipulate matter on an unprecedented small scale: machines the size of molecules have already been created. It is theoretically possible for these machines to physically manipulate strands of DNA, or structures of cells. The boundary between human and machine is now -- literally -- permeable. At the same time, developments in artificial intelligence continue, as we begin to see that robots that are learning by physically exploring the spaces around them.
The distinction does, in fact, break down. Posthumanism steps in as a mode of inquiry where the arbitrary condition of the subject/object divide is the starting point -- not the end point. Ontologically and ethically, the lack of boundary between self and other is no longer just a theoretical construct. It means viewing our environments on the micro- and macro-level simultaneously. We must fuse together what we have been warned must remain separate. The smart phone is no more or less "native" to the space I occupy as the aspens in the distance. Within my locus of apprehension, the landscape includes every "thing" around me: things that grow, breathe, reproduce, talk, walk, reflect light, take up space, beep, light up, emit EMFs, decay, erode, pollute, and pollinate. And, the closer and more recursively these various objects -- or gestalts of objects -- occupy this sphere of apprehension, the more integrated they are to my cognition. They manifest my topological self.
And I think this also is where one can start to articulate the distinction between posthumanism and transhumanism. More of that in another post.
Although inspired by Bennett's vital materialism, I'd like to think about why objects give us comfort from the position of "distributed cognition" which I've written about in previous entries (once again, owing much to Andy Clark's work). If we follow the hoarder scenario, there is that jarring moment when the extent of the hoard is thrust into the hoarder's perception by some outside actant. It's at this moment that the hoarder is forced to see these objects as individual things, and the overall seriousness and magnitude of the problem becomes apparent. I think that even non-hoarders get a glimpse of this when faced having to move from one dwelling to another. Even people who aren't pack rats find the task of having to -- in some form or another -- account for each object that is owned. Dishes can't be packed away in sets. Books can't be moved in their bookcases. Everything has to be taken out, manipulated, and handled. The process is exhausting, no matter how healthy the individual is.
The objects become more "present" in their consecutive singularities. And in each instance, we have to make an effort to justify the existence of each object. And that's it, isn't it? It is up to us to justify that this object is worth the effort of dusting off, packing, unpacking, etc. In this way, the objects seem dependent upon us, since we are the ones burdened with bestowing purpose on those objects. Objects cannot justify themselves. They are, for lack of a better term, insensitive. We, however, are sensitive; and some of us, as explained by Bennett, are more sensitive than others. Perhaps this helps us to understand the hoarder mentality, especially the tears that are shed when something that seems to be non-functioning, decomposing junk is cast away. The hoarder has become invested in the objects themselves -- and bestowed sensitivity upon them. To throw them away is to abandon them.
But here we come dangerously close to the more existentialist viewpoint that it is the subject who bestows value upon the object: that is to say, the act of bringing an object into being is to automatically bestow upon it value. But, let's pause on the moment and process of "bringing." Etymologically speaking, "bring" implies a carrying. There must be a thing (even in the loosest sense) to be carried. The object is at least as important as the subject. Now, I don't want to just flip the model and say it's the thing which brings "I" into being, because that's nothing necessarily new. Hegel implies a version of this in aspects of his Herrschaft und Knechtschaft [Lord and bondsman ... or "master/slave"] dialectic. And there really is no way around the "I": the embodied "I" is a kind of locus of a specific bio-cognitive process. The particular I, of itself at the present moment, is made manifest by the phenomenal environment around it.
The objects by which we're surrounded are (not "represent", but phenomenally, functionally, are) a secondary material substrate through which our cognition is made manifest. A "first" material substrate would be our physiological, embodied brains. But, beyond that, our surrounding environments become an "outboard brain" which helps to carry our cognition.
I cannot stress enough that I'm not speaking metaphorically. The phenomenal world we occupy at any given moment partially constitutes a larger, distributed substrate through which cognitive processes occur. That environment is not "taken in" or "represented": it constitutes the very mechanisms of cognition itself. The process happens as instantly as thought itself, and is highly recursive -- meaning that the better and more efficiently a distributed cognition works, the less visible and more illusory it becomes. The more illusory the process, the greater our sense of autonomy. So, if something goes awry at any point in the process (whether environmentally, emotionally, or physically ... or any cumulative combination of them), then our sense of autonomy is skewed in any number of directions: an inflated/deflated sense of one's presence, an inflated/deflated sense of the presence of objects, skewed senses of efficacy, body dysmorphic disorder, etc. When the hoarder, or even the "normal" individual having to pack up his or her belongings, suddenly must account for each individual object, it causes a breakdown in the recursivity of the distributed cognitive process. The illusion of an autonomous self is dissipated by the slowdown -- and eventual breakdown -- of the mind's capacity to efface the processes which constitute it. Try to accomplish any complex task while simultaneously analyzing each and every physical, mental, and emotional point during the process: the process quickly breaks down. The process of constituting a viable self is quite possibly the most complex in which a human can be engaged.
What then, are the implications to posthumanism? What I'm getting at here is something which a follower of mine, Stephen Kagen, so eloquently said in a response to my Aokigahara Forest entries: "my bias is that the artificial distinction between human, technology, and nature breaks down when examined closely."
Yes it does. The distinction is, in my opinion, arbitrary.
Technologically speaking -- and from a posthuman standpoint -- this is very important. Current technological development allows us to manipulate matter on an unprecedented small scale: machines the size of molecules have already been created. It is theoretically possible for these machines to physically manipulate strands of DNA, or structures of cells. The boundary between human and machine is now -- literally -- permeable. At the same time, developments in artificial intelligence continue, as we begin to see that robots that are learning by physically exploring the spaces around them.
The distinction does, in fact, break down. Posthumanism steps in as a mode of inquiry where the arbitrary condition of the subject/object divide is the starting point -- not the end point. Ontologically and ethically, the lack of boundary between self and other is no longer just a theoretical construct. It means viewing our environments on the micro- and macro-level simultaneously. We must fuse together what we have been warned must remain separate. The smart phone is no more or less "native" to the space I occupy as the aspens in the distance. Within my locus of apprehension, the landscape includes every "thing" around me: things that grow, breathe, reproduce, talk, walk, reflect light, take up space, beep, light up, emit EMFs, decay, erode, pollute, and pollinate. And, the closer and more recursively these various objects -- or gestalts of objects -- occupy this sphere of apprehension, the more integrated they are to my cognition. They manifest my topological self.
And I think this also is where one can start to articulate the distinction between posthumanism and transhumanism. More of that in another post.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Hide and Seek, Part 1: All Those Years They Were Here First
Hide and seek.
Trains and sewing machines.
All those years they were here first.
Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before.
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life.
- Imogen Heap, "Hide and Seek"
As the editors of the collection for which I'm writing prepare their final comments and suggestions for my essay, I've been thinking about some of the possible trajectories of the "posthuman determinism" I propose; specifically, the ethical ones. Since I used hoarding as an ongoing example in the piece, one of my editors sent along a talk by Jane Bennett. The subject of her talk was hoarding, and its relationship to the "vibrant materialism" about which Bennett writes. I was taken by her statement that hoarders are "preternaturally attuned to the call of things," as well as her theory that hoarders are under a kind of "animistic taboo" in their attachment to things. Very loosely, Bennett's idea is that despite a prevalent consumerism in our culture, too much or too strong of an attachment becomes a taboo of sorts.
This made me realize that her overall approach generally skews toward artifacts rather than objects. That is to say, manufactured or made objects, rather than more natural objects. Interestingly, however, although there is the occasional hoarder who hoards rocks or leaves, for the most part people are aghast at the hoard as a series of artifacts: of what use is the stuff? Why are you holding onto this (useless) piece of junk?
But if we stand back and put all phenomenal objects (i.e. objects that have extension, and can be physically apprehended), on a level playing field, we find that we have a very culturally constructed -- even politicized -- hierarchy of objects. The environmentalist values the object of the tree, the river, the field as higher than the artifact of the iPhone, the refrigerator, or the shards of lead paint. And that, in specific circles, is desirable, right, and just. Whereas the person who finds comfort surrounding him or herself with artifacts is "shallow," "superficial," or, in the least philosophical sense of the term, "materialistic." Obviously, an obsession with artifacts can have detrimental effects, not the least of which are the very philosophical ones which Heidegger outlines in The Question Concerning Technology. Indeed, falling prey to a predatory consumerism can have terrible effects on us psychologically and culturally.
Now, putting all phenomenal objects on an equal conceptual footing as objects -- making no distinction between "object" and "artifact" or "natural" and "artificial" -- we can, perhaps, alter our approach. Why is feeling a sense of well-being from one group of objects better, or even more "normal" than feeling a sense of well-being from another group of objects? Is there something inherently better in one group than another? Why, exactly, is it better to feel comfort from trees, rocks, and grass than it is from a big-screen TV, a warm blanket, and soft, fuzzy socks? Is it because we have deemed one "natural" and the other "artificial"? Because one is made of certain materials which are safer than another? Or because one group has come into existence apparently without the aid of human intervention, whereas the other has come into existence at the cost of human health and dignity? Fair assessments, absolutely. However, even a cursory investigation of the "natural" scenario can transform those objects into instruments of death and destruction: natural bacteria in the water can make a person gravely ill. The tree can fall over and crush whoever's under it, etc.
These are reductionist, broad-stroke examples, of course. I use them as points of departure. Because if we simply view objects as "other," then we will always fall into a myriad of binary systems by which such objects are classified, or worse, an endless Marxist exercise in subjugation and valuation. As a posthumanist, I see the subject-object/self-other dichotomy as the product of an obsolete worldview. Denigrating the value of ANY objects to our well-being as humans can have negative consequences as well.
There are times when an object, for whatever reason, can, psychologically make us feel good, or give us a sense of place and well-being. A comfortable room, a soft blanket, a childhood teddy-bear, or even a cell phone or tablet that does all we need it to do, can -- albeit momentarily -- "complete" us. I've written repeatedly that, from a posthuman standpoint, an artifact "works" for us when we feel no boundary between it and us. We are in union with it. Immediately disqualifying a physical artifact as a source of an existential moment simply because it is physical, is to cut off an entire field of study.
Furthermore, ignoring the very real materialism around us through haphazardly elevating any object -- including a natural one -- can have serious consequences. Heidegger maintains that applying a "setting-in-order" to nature sets us on a path to the "standing reserve," or a blind objectification of the world around us. I agree. However, I also believe that the variables in this equation can be flipped: bracketing "nature" as something that is other than a materialism is to actually miss out on the authentic vitality of those objects. To plant, to harvest, to conserve are all manipulations of the physical materiality of the objects of nature. Weeds don't commit suicide because they are choking our our tomatoes. Rainwater does not gather magically in the right place and irrigate our terraced garden. Non-native vegetables, fruits, and legumes do not plant themselves. Furthermore, the "natural" enzymes in the manure we spread over the soil will just as easily make us ill if we don't wash our hands (with soap) after handling it. Walking barefoot, not bathing, eschewing vaccines, only myopically represent humanity's "natural" state.
Objects are objects. They always already precede us in the world (or even the lifeworld). This is where Bennett's work comes in really handy. In her characterization of objects as having a "vital materiality," she's not referring to a kind anthropomorphic animus; instead, she's pointing to the unique materialisms of each, and how the material character of objects affect us. She does so without using an existential, subjective conceit: those objects are already in the world we occupy. We do not "bring them forth." They are already there.
As for me, I take this a step further. The "I" is manifested in a world of objects -- not the least of which is the physical body. But that self-aware I, that Dasein, is composed by and through the physical objects around us at any given moment. And as I write through this idea, I'm starting to understand more clearly Bennett's contention that a heightened awareness of the objects around us could be linked in some way to Freud's death-drive, or even Sartre's "being-in-itself" vs. "being-for-itself." Perhaps we don't want the objects to be part of us as much as we want to fall back into the world of objects.
More of that in Part 2 ...
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
On cities, mountains, and hoarding.
I wrote this entry over two days while I was on my semester break in Denver. I was sitting in a Starbuck's, amid the traffic noise, reading through articles to help with a revision of an anthology chapter I was working on. I found myself thinking again about place and topology. And I came to an unsurprising, but somewhat disappointing conclusion: I think better in cities. My mind can make high-end and productive connections so much more quickly when I'm surrounded by a more urban landscape. I find my thoughts more centered, more precise, and less encumbered by counter-productive meanderings.
The reason this is "disappointing" is a more personal one. For an academic who lives in the middle of the mountains, to know that my best thinking doesn't happen in the place where I live is concerning. What would I be like if I taught in an institution located someplace else? How different would my teaching be? I already know that my research would be more productive. So yes, there is something a little concerning there.
But academically, and in the scope of the chapter I'm working on, this is really par for the course in terms of the topological nature of distributed cognition. This also helps to prove an important point that I think a lot of scholars working on "thing theory" may be overlooking. It's quite tempting to look at the types of thoughts analogously with the types of spaces we're occupying at that moment. That is to say, it seems to make sense that if we're in someplace that is quiet, serene, and pastoral, that our thoughts should be similar. But think for a moment about people who visit places that are serene and quiet and find themselves even more stressed and agitated than they would be if they were in their more "native" environment. For me, being in downtown Denver doesn't give me more "cosmopolitan" thoughts. More accurately, the downtown atmosphere seems to match up to, and be more conducive to, a more native modality of thought. That is to say, i can concentrate on things more easily. I can sustain deeper, more complex thought for a longer period of time. At least -- and this is a very important caveat -- it seems that I can. It feels like that's the case. I feel more "me." It would be interesting to perform a more formalized study using various memory and concentration tasks. Perhaps in May.
In terms of the chapter I'm working on, however, I think it's important to move beyond what I mentioned above, and move away from characterizing types of thoughts per se and instead concentrate on the specific thought process that brings forth a specific self-ing one's specific lebesnwelt. Actually, a more accurate way to put it would to simply say "brings forth a particular, individual lebenswelt."
So, let's take the cultural construction of hoarders on reality television, for example. In most of the shows I've seen, the hoarders themselves seem to fall into two categories: 1) the hoarder who has come to the conclusion him or herself that he or she can no longer live the way in which they are living; or 2) the hoarder who has been thrust into an intervention due to some outside circumstance (i.e. a health/fire scare where rescuers could not get into the dwelling in a timely fashion; or a local municipality is threatening to condemn the property due to neighbors' complaints). In the former case, the hoarder is more self-aware and knows that how they are living is -- within the larger cultural framework -- "wrong." Even if they don't see their existence as uncomfortable or unsanitary, they have had some kind of insight or interaction that tells them that their own sense of "home" or "comfort" is somehow sociopathic. In the latter case, however, one can usually see a complete lack of awareness on the part of the hoarder that what they are doing is "wrong," "unhealthy," "sick," or "crazy." In fact, interventions for these hoarders have an added facet of difficulty, in that the hoarder fully and actively works against the team's efforts to help them clean things up.
But in both cases, there is a disconnect between the perception of it being wrong in terms of how "society" sees the issue and what the hoarder is actually feeling. That is to say, the hoarder feels at home in his or her hoard. It feels right to put more things in the home. The squalor and decomposing matter around them doesn't affect them in the ways it does an outsider. Yet, the hoarder is told that it is wrong and feels a certain kind of socially-instituted shame about their condition. And I'm sure that much of that is engineered as well by the reality television industry itself. If we were to really think about it, in many cases, the thing that separates a hoarder from a collector is socioeconomic standing and/or the perception of a culturally-constructed notion of "squalor." The millionaire who owns multiples of the same car, or who has a facility filled with "collections" is simply that, a collector -- probably because he or she can afford to keep the collection in perfect condition -- sans mummified animal carcases and rodent droppings.
But, in terms of the hoard itself, for whatever psychological reason, the hoard is intrinsically related to a sense of self and well-being. The stress from the removal of the hoard comes from the breakdown of that self and well-being. The hoarder's own habits and highly personal and protected "being" is suddenly held under scrutiny, and deemed "abnormal." Shame and/or resistance follows. Removal of the hoard becomes a highly stressful enterprise, causing the hoarder to often just shut down as the hoard is removed, or to actively thwart the efforts of the removal team. As viewers, this is where we often feel the most sense of superiority and when we get to judge the hoarder as being "crazy" or pity the mental illness that brings them there. However, we might be able to find a bit more compassion if we found ourselves having to voluntarily remove one of our own limbs. The "oneness" of our physical bodies is, in most cases, intrinsic to our senses of self. For psychological reasons, the sense of that bodily oneness for hoarders -- pathologically -- is more acutely distributed among the hoard.
I am hesitant, though, to put too much credence in the way in which reality television portrays the hoarder. That being said, the fact that the situation is specifically engineered by the producers of the show to bring about as much "drama" as possible, it is the very fact that the situation is so artificial that makes it compelling and useful to look at the role of the hoard. To present the hoarders' living situation in such an artificial, constructed manner -- constructed for consumption by an audience -- further highlights its pathology through multiple frames.
This entry has spanned two days. And now I find myself sitting in the same spot in the same Starbucks, facing a 4 hour drive back to the mountains. As I drive back over snow covered mountain passes, I probably won't be able to keep track of the shifts in the modality of my thinking. I'll just know that when I sit at my desk at home and look out over the breathtaking landscape, that something will be missing.
The reason this is "disappointing" is a more personal one. For an academic who lives in the middle of the mountains, to know that my best thinking doesn't happen in the place where I live is concerning. What would I be like if I taught in an institution located someplace else? How different would my teaching be? I already know that my research would be more productive. So yes, there is something a little concerning there.
But academically, and in the scope of the chapter I'm working on, this is really par for the course in terms of the topological nature of distributed cognition. This also helps to prove an important point that I think a lot of scholars working on "thing theory" may be overlooking. It's quite tempting to look at the types of thoughts analogously with the types of spaces we're occupying at that moment. That is to say, it seems to make sense that if we're in someplace that is quiet, serene, and pastoral, that our thoughts should be similar. But think for a moment about people who visit places that are serene and quiet and find themselves even more stressed and agitated than they would be if they were in their more "native" environment. For me, being in downtown Denver doesn't give me more "cosmopolitan" thoughts. More accurately, the downtown atmosphere seems to match up to, and be more conducive to, a more native modality of thought. That is to say, i can concentrate on things more easily. I can sustain deeper, more complex thought for a longer period of time. At least -- and this is a very important caveat -- it seems that I can. It feels like that's the case. I feel more "me." It would be interesting to perform a more formalized study using various memory and concentration tasks. Perhaps in May.
In terms of the chapter I'm working on, however, I think it's important to move beyond what I mentioned above, and move away from characterizing types of thoughts per se and instead concentrate on the specific thought process that brings forth a specific self-ing one's specific lebesnwelt. Actually, a more accurate way to put it would to simply say "brings forth a particular, individual lebenswelt."
So, let's take the cultural construction of hoarders on reality television, for example. In most of the shows I've seen, the hoarders themselves seem to fall into two categories: 1) the hoarder who has come to the conclusion him or herself that he or she can no longer live the way in which they are living; or 2) the hoarder who has been thrust into an intervention due to some outside circumstance (i.e. a health/fire scare where rescuers could not get into the dwelling in a timely fashion; or a local municipality is threatening to condemn the property due to neighbors' complaints). In the former case, the hoarder is more self-aware and knows that how they are living is -- within the larger cultural framework -- "wrong." Even if they don't see their existence as uncomfortable or unsanitary, they have had some kind of insight or interaction that tells them that their own sense of "home" or "comfort" is somehow sociopathic. In the latter case, however, one can usually see a complete lack of awareness on the part of the hoarder that what they are doing is "wrong," "unhealthy," "sick," or "crazy." In fact, interventions for these hoarders have an added facet of difficulty, in that the hoarder fully and actively works against the team's efforts to help them clean things up.
But in both cases, there is a disconnect between the perception of it being wrong in terms of how "society" sees the issue and what the hoarder is actually feeling. That is to say, the hoarder feels at home in his or her hoard. It feels right to put more things in the home. The squalor and decomposing matter around them doesn't affect them in the ways it does an outsider. Yet, the hoarder is told that it is wrong and feels a certain kind of socially-instituted shame about their condition. And I'm sure that much of that is engineered as well by the reality television industry itself. If we were to really think about it, in many cases, the thing that separates a hoarder from a collector is socioeconomic standing and/or the perception of a culturally-constructed notion of "squalor." The millionaire who owns multiples of the same car, or who has a facility filled with "collections" is simply that, a collector -- probably because he or she can afford to keep the collection in perfect condition -- sans mummified animal carcases and rodent droppings.
But, in terms of the hoard itself, for whatever psychological reason, the hoard is intrinsically related to a sense of self and well-being. The stress from the removal of the hoard comes from the breakdown of that self and well-being. The hoarder's own habits and highly personal and protected "being" is suddenly held under scrutiny, and deemed "abnormal." Shame and/or resistance follows. Removal of the hoard becomes a highly stressful enterprise, causing the hoarder to often just shut down as the hoard is removed, or to actively thwart the efforts of the removal team. As viewers, this is where we often feel the most sense of superiority and when we get to judge the hoarder as being "crazy" or pity the mental illness that brings them there. However, we might be able to find a bit more compassion if we found ourselves having to voluntarily remove one of our own limbs. The "oneness" of our physical bodies is, in most cases, intrinsic to our senses of self. For psychological reasons, the sense of that bodily oneness for hoarders -- pathologically -- is more acutely distributed among the hoard.
I am hesitant, though, to put too much credence in the way in which reality television portrays the hoarder. That being said, the fact that the situation is specifically engineered by the producers of the show to bring about as much "drama" as possible, it is the very fact that the situation is so artificial that makes it compelling and useful to look at the role of the hoard. To present the hoarders' living situation in such an artificial, constructed manner -- constructed for consumption by an audience -- further highlights its pathology through multiple frames.
This entry has spanned two days. And now I find myself sitting in the same spot in the same Starbucks, facing a 4 hour drive back to the mountains. As I drive back over snow covered mountain passes, I probably won't be able to keep track of the shifts in the modality of my thinking. I'll just know that when I sit at my desk at home and look out over the breathtaking landscape, that something will be missing.
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