As much as my desire wants to desire to know what it felt like to be born, I cannot recall such an experience. Was Heidegger right to assume that I have been thrown into existence[i] like a pair of dice on a craps table on a lonely twilight in Reno — casually hoping that my life does not amount to snake eyes? Are we all tossed with equal thrust? Maybe phenomenologically speaking, this is the experience and this how it feels to just become and feel as though this (the I) came from nothing. And maybe I will just aimlessly walk the earth as a self-positing self that happens to have a body— my body is my tool. My cogito will utilize my hollow shell of burrowed out extremities as I see fit— like a hammer, or a burrito, or a sex doll. But, what for what do I desire? Do I desire to be? Desire to know? Desire to function? Desire to be form(ed)?
My dog desires to shit, desires to eat, desires to fuck and, on some occasions, desire to frolic about. But, is this desire or nature? or neither? Does my dog posit from his cogito a natural and (un)conscious desire to shit: I am dog and I desire to shit. Or, conversely, simply and mechanistically he shits as a natural mechanical process— like a machine. A mechanistic agent that has a mechanical process will produce an outputted product in only two ways: it will produce one instance in infinite time or it will produce infinite instances in infinite time. For this, I posit, my dog is a robot created from a dog creating-machine and it is created as a single instance in infinite time— my dog exists only once. My dog will exist infinitely — as Heidegger tosses my dog into existence he will infinitely float in the infinity of space/time only until an opposing force dictates otherwise. As Newton will say- a body in motion, remains in motion (insofar as another body does not stop it). Like a machine, the cogs and belts will become weary in time and without maintenance to counter against the friction of the process, the friction of living, the friction of existence— the machine shall halt and die. And, so goes my dog.
But, this does not solve the problem of my desire to know my own birth. Was I born of machine? Is my father a robot? My logos would posit as follows:
Hypothesis: I am.
Decartes reasons this notion is sufficient in knowing that I am[ii]. But, how do I conjugate myself further— where is the I was, or the I will be?
How about the following:
I think therefore I am in this single moment in time, then in the succeeding moment in time I can posit: I thought, therefore I was. If I can think therefore I am in two consecutive moments in time, have I proven that my notion of agency is not a single instance in infinity, but my thoughts are infinitely produced in infinite time? This process renders the following notions: First, I, like my dog, as a physical being born of a human-machine will be a single instance of existence in infinite time and will exist until mechanical friction, poor maintenance and/or any external force acts upon my body as it soars through existence. Second, my thoughts, inclusive of my self-posited agency, will exist in infinite instances in infinite space/time.
In short: I, in my body, will exist once. I, in mind, will exist in infinite instances.
The aforementioned reasoning brings forth a conundrum: are my desires— everything I ever desire— the necessary elements of body maintenance to maintain my functioning body-machine, or are my desires created in mind, of which they are infinitely rendered in both quality and quantity. Freud argues my Id or my pleasure principle drives my desire and that it is abnormal to fully actualize the desire of my Id and not balance out my ego and superego[iii]. But, what is this? What is the superego, but merely the collective Id? What if I, like my dog, have natural wants and not desires? Like as follows: my dog, in mind, is alerted by its bodies want to shit, or want to fuck, or want to eat. Does the mind desire these things, or merely does the mind acquiesce to the want of the body. I do not desire to eat, but I become aware of my bodies want to eat.
If the body wants are necessities for operation like oil, transmission fluid, windshield wiper fluid, et al, then my desire, as Freud would perceive, is merely the I becoming aware of the wants of the body like noticing the gas gauge is low— and henceforth, acquiescing.
My dog in his primitive form would have natural limits as part of the symbiotic balance of nature and would not have access to unlimited eating, shitting and fucking. Henceforth, the primitive dog would eat, shit and fuck, at every possible instance as the supply will always be less than the demand. Is this not the case for humans alike? Does not the industrial revolution and the subsequently formed ideology of capitalism thrive off the notion of infinite supply? If the body-machine posits a world of finite supply and henceforth infinitely demands, then what is to happen when body-machine is tossed into a world of infinite supply, while maintaining infinite demand? Shall the body consume itself into destruction?
The id-iotic body-machine will demand, demand, demand and the capitalist machine will supply, supply, supply. Freud, as perceiving through observation, persists that the solution to prevent over-consumption of wants (desires), is to balance our desires and not always acquiesce to the wants of the body. But, what happens when I shift my body wants into mind desires? Do my desires become infinitely rendered in my infinite mind? Does my desire to own a bike become a desire to own a car, then home, then TV, then phone, then cell phone, then internet, then information. All the while, always positing my desire of immortality because I am unable to know thyself in future: I think therefore I am, but rendered in infinite instances of the self-positing self implies I think forever, therefore I am forever. Death, as I have observed, is the antithesis of the theory of existence; however, it becomes quite easy to posit that death only leads to another life, an infinite life. If, the hypothesis of: I am is an infinitely self-positing theory then my desire to over-consume is rather irrelevant. As it is impossible to infinitely negate an infinitely self-posited existence.
So how do we prevent the body/mind from infinitely consuming itself into destruction? If I take my dog to the dog park and my dog walks around mounting every other dog, every object, every person— persistently trying to acquiesce to the bodies want to fuck, then the Other dog owners will look upon me with shame. As they have accepted the notion that I, as human, have a priori reason and, from this, I innately frame my desires into the context of will universalizing this desire lead to our species, our superego, consuming itself into destruction? And, because I shall know this, I shall condition my dog to only acquiesce to the wants of the body when I permit. Even though my a priori reason can understand the wants of the superego, I must acquiesce to the capitalist-machine to dictate which wants are Right and which wants are Wrong.
If I am innately endowed with a priori reason then wouldn’t it be reasonable to assert that I can reasonable decide which desires to acquiesce and which to not? But, what if there is NO a priori reason? What if the capitalist-machine allowed the people with the strongest urge or, rather, the strongest Will To Power to champion themselves as the Kings of capitalism and thus claim their position of power as necessary in order to actualize pure reason to prevent over-consumption and destruction and from this codify laws to dictate/limit the infinite wants of the populous at large. But, what if the pawn wants to be king? What if the pawn finds this unfair? The king shall tell the pawn that they also have innate capacity for reason and this reason will reason that it is reasonable to not acquiesce to your wants— look here, I will show you how. You shall eat as you wish, insofar as you eat what I tell you, you shall fuck as you wish, insofar as you fuck when/what I tell you to, and you shall shit as you wish, insofar as you shit when/where I tell you to. But, if the a priori reason is false, then it is the king who is infinitely acquiescing to his infinite supply and infinite demand of the bodies want to consume. Knowing that the more you limit the pawns ability to consume, the more the king can actualize their desire to consume infinitely.
And, for what?
Freud and church and God and state will protest that your infinite desire to acquiesce to your wants is wrong. Your want to eat/fuck/shit your way into destruction implies you are sick— sick in the head and, as the church/God persist, sick in the heart.
As goes Capitalism, as the economic ideological strong-arm of the church/state, that persists you must be punished, condemned, ostracized, labeled for simply desiring and this is reasoned and justified by agents who desire to consume infinitely, including all the people who stand beneath them— ad infinitum. “What a mistake to have ever said the Id”.[iv]
Capitalism calls this freedom.
My dog calls this castration.
SOURCES:
[i] Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper, 1962. Print.
[ii] Descartes, Rene. A Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Waiheke Island: Floating, 2009. Print.
[iii] Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. The Ego and the Id. New York: Norton, 1962. Print.
[iv] Deleuze, Gilles, and Fe Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1983. Print.
Nothing's Sacred 