BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Psychology of An Old Man—RAGE WITHIN [F, 1-17-25]
There is a rage deep within each of us. It is because we know life is futile, because we shall die, so what’s the point?
That undifferentiated rage is down at the bottom, below a lot of other layers, but it is there. It is what motivates everything else we do. Without conscious knowledge of it.
It is not just anger. Anger is at the upper levels. Rage is at the foundation. We recognize anger, can even “manage” it. Rage is beneath consciousness.
Adler said all that we do is
motivated by the desire for power. Freud said it was sex. Jung said it was the
collective unconscious.
Adler is right. The desire
for power is the attempt to counter the deep rage. If I can just get power, I
can hold death off. My world of power might be very small, perhaps just one
other person, but if I can have that power, I am invincible. This is the source
of rape, especially the most common rape, men against women. It is from the
wombs of women that life, and thus death, comes. If I can have power against
the life source, even in the life source, I can have power against
death.
Freud is right for the same
reason. Sex is the power to create life. If I can create life, I can hold off
death. This is why poor people refuse to stop having babies, even when they
cannot afford them. This is why pro-birth advocates are so often paradoxical,
being only pro-birth, not really pro-life. They are also pro-gun and
pro-capital punishment, sources of power over death.
Jung is right. In the
collective unconscious is the deep rage against the futility of life.
John S. Dunne, SJ, says there are three strangers that come to us in life: the world, sexuality, and mortality. We experience “the world” mostly in other people, but it is also nature and its ways. Come puberty, sexuality jumps on us like a tiger. Mortality is always lurking. Dunne says that life depends upon whether we make friends or enemies of these three strangers.
I add a fourth stranger. I
call that stranger Christ, but I do so knowing that other people call that
stranger--the Word of God in the world, the Presence of God in the world--by
other names.
If we make friends with God through Christ, all else follows into wholeness, including the world and sexuality and mortality. If we are enemies with God, the deep rage conquers, and we are enemies with the world and sexuality and mortality, enemies of the world and other people and our own true selves.
Jesus said, “I call you
friends.” [John 15:15]
The Wisdom Literature of The Bible [Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon] says Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. I was quite taken with the Wisdom Lit when I was young. Now that I am old, I am not sure that the Wisdom Literature is all that wise.
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity? No, all is God.
John Robert McFarland
I don't cotton much to the rage against death idea. If I am just in a state of denial about the rage roaring deep below my consciousness, then I am wrong. I just don't feel it! I seem to be guided in my life by a sense of gratitude. Of how damn lucky I am to be me and to have experienced all the wonder of my 86 years of existence. I believe in the Hebraic idea of "It's enough". I don't believe that I am either afraid of death or look upon it as some grand injustice. I am happy and appreciative that I was given the capacity to think, to feel, to chose, to create, to understand, to love, and hate...to struggle with pain and disappointment, for so long. The driving force behind it all is the capacity to think, which in religious language is the power of the Word...through which all things are created. To put into words our thoughts, by which we define our relationships with other human beings, the physical world, and contemplations of art, mystery, and divinity. It is enough. (I am not sure I am spelling it right..."De Henu" in Hebrew...It is enough.)
ReplyDeleteThere is a bit of Plains-Indian in there, too. To not get greedy about living. Every day is a good day to die. Avoid grasping at life. Take control of your life, but don't hold tight to the current day. Life is a gift not an achievement. Love the gift and use it wisely. And give it up, when the time comes to do so.
Ah, but you see, that is because you have made friends with The Fourth Stranger!
ReplyDelete