FINDING OUR INNER SELVES IN A POST-MODERN TIME
Mutual respect of the world and others can ease anxiety, Larry Green writes.
What is at stake in a panic attack? Loss of one’s mind; loss of self; loss of one’s soul. It doesn’t really matter what we name it — mind, self or soul — the loss that is feared is the most profound possible.
Experientially, the sufferer feels like they are losing their anchorage or going to pieces. If he or she manages to shut down this massive explosion of nervous energy, then they find themselves depressed, no longer the person they took themselves to be.
There are a number of stories or narratives that “explain” anxiety and depression. It has been understood as a kind of moral or religious despair: a sense of having gone past the point of redemption. An alternative understanding was offered by psychoanalysis: Anxiety and depression occur when one has stopped engaging with life. Instead, one has become self-absorbed. More currently, a neuroscience narrative is favoured: depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. “There is nothing wrong with myself; it is just a matter of tweaking the brain’s biochemistry.”
In this article I will be looking at a factor that has been overlooked in the above “explanations.” They all locate the source of the trouble as internal: something is wrong with the self. Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong place. I suggest that the material from which the self is formed is not internal. Although consciousness is definitely an internal capacity, it constructs a self with information drawn from the outside. That is, the way our parents and siblings regarded us, gradually became what we took ourselves to be. First our family; then our neighbourhood; then school and friends; and finally, images from the media. Like a patchwork coat, our self is a collage of these external influences.
Initially, that self fits the social environment from which it was drawn. When a culture changes slowly, so can the self. “My culture changes very slowly, therefore I can assume that the foundations of my self will continue to be adequate.” I remember thinking that I could tell when a man’s identity had hardened by their hairstyle: early Elvis; early Beatles; late Beatles; goatee in the ’90s; shaved head in the new millennium, man buns and shaved sides now. These hairstyles signified the culture in which their selves had formed.
But what if the culture that was imported to build a self no longer exists? Here are some assumptions that have exceeded their best-before dates: a postgraduate degree guarantees employment; marriage is till death do us part; men are providers, protectors and leaders.
This partial list identifies only assumptions that have already been challenged. There are many other, unidentified assumptions that also are losing their fit with current social circumstances.
What are some of the emerging characteristics of our time? When walking down the street you hear more foreign languages than native; you find that the video stores that had opened just “yesterday” have closed; pop musicians can no longer make a living from their recordings because of file sharing; newspapers and magazines are cutting back or closing down, replaced by social media; pornography has become mainstream, flirting has become dangerous; gay marriage has become possible in a number of jurisdictions; transgender people are demanding inclusion.
In other words, “normality” can no longer be assumed.
When normality can no longer be taken for granted, then the foundations of selfhood begin to shake. And if the shaking is perceived as weakness, then the first response will likely be to deny and hide rather than acknowledge and change. Or, more likely, the first response will be to visit one’s doctor and leave with a prescription for an antidepressant.
When change happens so rapidly that religion, ideology, customs and traditions can no longer offer reliable guidelines, we are in the era of post-modernism or liquid modernity.
I prefer this latter name because it points to fluidity as the medium in which we now exist. Formerly, we had solid ground on which to take a stand.
Now we are either sinking or learning to swim.
To summarize: first we had religious explanations, then psychoanalytic, then biochemical and now cultural narratives to explain our increasing disease and agitation. Each narrative generates its own “solution”: with religion it was conversion, with psychoanalysis it was therapy; with biochemical explanations it was a prescription. What does the cultural narrative suggest? It suggests that our troubles are not psychological but cultural. That is, we need to stop denigrating our selves. Rather, we need stable and viable social forms to function effectively as a collective. For example, could it be that we need to practise civility? Should we renew the Sabbath or its equivalent as the still point from which we can organize our responses to the demands of contemporary life?
If we were to devote one day a week to being instead of doing, what would result? After our initial agitation ran down, could we rediscover our capacity to experience the sacred or the transcendent — something beyond what individual will can produce? When we don’t make the necessary time to experience the ineffable, then exhortations by clergy, rabbis and imams sound like hollowed out cliches. Their words land on hard ground. On the other hand, when we cultivate a receptivity to the sacred we treat our world and each other with the respect that acknowledges that we come from the same source. That mutual respect would go a long way toward warding off depression and anxiety.
This area (Skagit watershed) is a priceless natural oasis.
If it’s logged out it will become another eroded valley that will take hundreds of years to recover to its natural state. Paul Berntsen, letter writer Formerly, we had solid ground on which to take a stand. Now we are either sinking or learning to swim.