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Today, the term “spirit” is associated with a soul that is inconveniently housed in the flesh: the body dies, and the immortal soul lives on. Yet, the origin of “spirit” in ancient Greece referred to respiration: breath.
Reconsider spirit as essentially (definitionally) a physiological act, an interchange between the external world and the internal self: to bring the world in, then expel your merged self back.
Segregating the spirit from the body sanctions the breath, penalizing living.
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You must reiterate who you are to self-narrate what you will and will not tolerate.
These behavioral mantras, pronounced in public, exhibit:
1) our malleability to talk ourselves into being what we are naturally not
2) a fear of losing our “place” (which we have confused with ourselves).
Consider this: By intermittently (occasionally, randomly) repeating your frailty or anger, you manipulate others into not only paying attention but obsequiously submitting to your voice. This is attentional power. You are using their kindness/compassion/empathy to shore up your faltering sense of self.
You may consider your pronouncements as “standing your ground,” as a moment of strength when it is truthfully the opposite: a social ploy of “acting out.”
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Lacan’s jouissance is paradoxical enjoyment that reaches a painful, disruptive state: not necessarily ecstatic, but destructive pleasure.
Such a state can be neurotic: compulsively scratching your "itch" both soothes and traps the individual in a repetitive cycle (hoarding, grooming, sex, counting, organizing, procrastination, work-a-holic).
This "symptom" (Freud’s term) is an early compromise of conflicting desires manifesting in a distorted manner, a sign of unresolved unconscious issues. Yet, Lacan says we can recognize—and accept—our unconscious satisfaction gleaned from our symptoms: it is not merely a problem but a meaningful expression of the self.
Žižek
takes it further, saying ideologies are a collective "symptom" offering what feels like pleasure/enjoyment while masking deeper issues and contradictions. (For example, consumerism provides satisfaction and alienation; politics is often about tribal affiliation and winning over moral motivation.) Like Lacan, Žižek is not interested in eliminating the "symptom," which only moves the symptom elsewhere, but in learning from it.
To accept that our pathology is linked to—integral to—our identity reveals our uniqueness as "symptomatic" of our inability to handle conflicting desires: jouissance reveals our sickness, which is our identity.
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We have a concept of who we are, an amalgam of accrued parts and patterned responsive behaviors. This notional “self” has stabilizing benefits: we can ask ourselves what we would do, and the “self” develops faster responses until our allegiance to “our self” is an unthinking, habitual reflex.
Yet many of us experience pain because of “our self,” yet we do not correct it or escape. Our suffering is maintained by affiliation to an intersubjective conception of self: not only are we convinced of who we are, but others have bought in, accruing upon us in a petrifying abstraction. We assume this is who we are.
And yet, under tension (extreme anxiety), we find we never knew ourselves: the abstractions are fractured when we must move to survive.
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Cognitive dissonance is not only having two non-complementary beliefs that clash, the contradiction producing anxiety about who you are and what you value, but the antagonistic beliefs are handled by doubling down: over investment rather than correction.
While doubling down may protect the self image (ego) it is merely a temporary soothing of the psychological disjunction, more of a means to displace and distract by acting out and blaming others.
The longer cognitive dissonance is held, the more pathological the response: to remain traumatically blind we become defensively aggressive; protecting the internal battle through external histrionics.
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The blurred boundary between spirituality, religion, and morals has been appended to the more secular concepts of ethics and law.
Though distinct terms, we blend and link values, swapping and confounding terms until we have woven a shaky, contradictory moral framework: to be ethical (legal) is to be moral (personal), which is to follow a transcendent higher-good (religious/spiritual).
Moreover, being legally traitorous is also morally sound given the law’s unethical nature (unjust, unequal convictions at differing rates for different people).
Heck, to be moral requires rebellion, which is spiritual; ask Satan or the early Christians.
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A century ago, street preachers screamed judgment and redemption, channeling their fervor and insanity through faith, framing their cries within an accepted grand narrative.
Today, in a secular age, that passion is turned inward before being expelled: the individual subject is the grand narrative, the personal grievance replaces the religious outrage.
We now assert personal grievances without the constraint—or comfort—of a larger belief system, without a community to merge and shape our discontent, both reducing the impact of our fevered exhortation and making our outcry so unique it becomes fragmented, self-serving, and appears crazy.
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The hard work is often tediously painful for both the personal and political.
Digging into ourselves for years in order to hold ourselves accountable and responsible for pains taken and inflicted is work we want to avoid, so we quickly displace our emotions into projection and transference: we blame someone else or fall in love with someone/something else.
Likewise, doing local election research is tedious, and filling out forms to sway a monolithic bureaucracy is soul-numbing. I would rather vent my feelings or develop insightful, pithy rejoinders to my opponents.
Yet, the hard work of both tasks (personal and political) examines reality over rationalizations and takes accountability: We damage others because we will not repair ourselves, and our state is a bureaucratic institution little swayed by communal catharsis.
It is not flashy; it doesn’t feel good, but this is how you make substantive change: patient accountability over decades.
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When you are victorious against all odds and naysayers, you’re persistent.
When your stubbornness hinders you, leading to failure, you are obstinate,
Success determines whether it is self-destructive or self-confidence.
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