“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Does My Body Really Want Me Dead?

(1) For me it's more like mechanical periodicity makes us project: "my computer wants to go to sleep now," "this washing machine wants to have less laundry in it."

My point is that the periodicity doesn't care about you--it's indifferent. To me this is the essence of death drive.

(2) Nevertheless, we have to ask why repetition and periodicity happen at all. Fundamental, structural inconsistencies in lifeforms (and I'd argue in all objects). These inconsistencies are like logical contradictions. They result in infinite loops.

I grind my teeth at night presumably because my brain detects some inconsistency between my teeth and my jaw. Slowly my brain grinds them to an equilibrium state: the lack of teeth.



1 comment:

khadimir said...

Freud whispers into your ear, "thanatos."