March 13, 2005
pop philosophy#2
Many of us live in a shadowland, due to us living damaged lives caused by historical forces beyond our control. Often the clearing illuminated by light is small.
Leunig
I'm not hinking of an event such as walking home from a restaurant this man and being stabbed in the back in a random attack. I'm thinking in a psychoanalytic sense of us mostly we live in the shadowlands and bearing the scars of our past pain.
This way of thinking is usually seen in terms of a split subject divided between the conscious ego in a world of unconscious chaotic forces. Our ego is like a cork bobbing on the ocean of the unconscious.
We struggle to strengthen the ego, the "I" self, the conscious/rational identity, so it would be more powerful than the unconscious. Most of us struggle to become more civilized and productive as well as a correctly heterosexual adult capable of caring for others.
I'm becoming ever more convinced that this is an impossible desire and that we live the illusion of an ego as a unified conscious self identified by the word "I".