Saturday, October 8, 2011

Breaking The Other's Symbolic Order, Facing My Own Symbolic Order

I'm very happy with the writing I did yesterday.

Not because I think it is good writing.

I don't think it is very good writing. It feels sloppy and sort of all over the place.

But I like how I'm pushing myself to change. I like how the writing was expressly about changing myself. I need to push myself to change. I am.

But it isn't easy to do the things I was trying to describe.

Because there is a symbolic order that determines the moments in which it is or is not appropriate for me to speak to someone.

And as I stood at the bus stop last I still felt that symbolic order in my heart. I knew I was in a space in which it wasn't really appropriate for me to talk to people.

Someone got on the bus and they sat down next to me. They had a cup full of yellow liquid from Pagliacci. It looked like Mountain Dew. It was around 11:30pm. My first reaction was to ask them if they were drinking Mountain Dew. But of course I didn't ask them. I just sat there with my headphones on.

And in that moment I thought about why it was so difficult to talk to people. I thought that it wasn't difficult only because I had to break with my own symbolic order, but because I have to break the other's symbolic order. I have to put someone into a position in which they aren't comfortable. Or maybe they are more comfortable talking to strangers than I think they would be.

But the truth is that I feel uncomfortable. I don't like breaking with the symbolic order that I'm used to. It is really difficult to just talk to people. To just do things that I'm not used to doing. Really hard.

Oh well. This is just one of the observations I have made about the writing I did yesterday.

I think it is important that I try to grapple with issues like symbolic order. That I try to discover the master-signifiers that are shaping my heart and my interactions. But I need to take into account that it is difficult because I am breaking the other's symbolic order.

And, more importantly (maybe), that I am breaking my own symbolic order. And that I'm not comfortable with that.

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About Me

I spend most of my time working as a mental health professional. I have been preoccupied with philosophy, politics, healing, and many other questions for the last 15 years or so. I am currently working on putting together my study of Plato and Aristotle with contemporary work in philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, and trauma research. I use this place primarily as a workshop for ideas. I welcome conversation with anyone working on similar problems. The major contours of my basic project have been outlined here

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