Arquivo de psychology | Page 19 of 21

An Unsuitable Animal [2]

Forced to wait in a line, with nothing to read, I enjoy the moment in a fun activity: trying to list the things I hate most. Here we go: (1) dissimulation, (2) bureaucracy, (3) demagoguery, (4) groups of people, (5) marketing, (6) expansiveness, (7) noise of human voices, (8) futile conversation… I list and have an idea. The smile is immediate. Again, I perceive myself as an unsuitable animal. I consider, perhaps, that my existence is an evolutionist enigma. I have countless contrary manifestations to the environment, so I risk my nature to be the portrait of maladjustment. In me, the intro and the extra are related in hostility, they repel each other without any possible conciliation. I deliberately refuse to integrate the medium, even if I fail and it unbearably persecutes me. I remember the words of Thoreau: “Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society”. Oh, annoying life! Unbearable conventions! Stupid talk!… Goodbye, note, even you cause me anger.

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Desire: the Cancer of the Human Psyche

It is possible to find rational justifications for denying the solutions proposed by the Stoics, the Buddhists, Schopenhauer and many others. But there is a universal truth, present also in Christian philosophy, concerning desire: it is the plague, the cancer of the human psyche, the endless source of frustrations. And if, after careful psychological analysis, we decide to pluck it out at its root, plucking each of our hopes with a hoe, we get rid of an immense, malignant and harmful burden. The problem is that the human being lives on dreams, supports reality in the hope of a better future. To exterminate it, therefore, is to make life lose its brightness, is to give line to indifference, is to deny nature itself, is self-mutilation. Well, that seems to be the way to peace.

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Force the Brain

Extremely useful exercise: force the brain, whip it. I say and imagine myself in front of the original Latinos. At first, the sensation of useless effort; then persistence, obsession: and words, forced, fill themselves with meaning. The technique is not new, much less original; useful from strange languages to texts of abstract essence. The brain seems to reward insistence, to work on the basis of punches, coercion. And if, in its vertiginous flow of ideas, it can often get in our way, when bound, compelled, it works tastefully on our behalf.

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Inspiration: Conscious Brain Stimulation

I read somewhere, a few years ago, a psychologist said that Bertrand Russell used an interesting process when he was involved in complex problems. It would be more or less as follows: Russell thought, with maximum concentration and strength of mind, on the particular problem; he outlined the possible solutions, dismembered them into minor issues, formulated various hypotheses and tried to find, in all, the possible flaws. The question occupied him entirely for hours, sometimes days, and then, when he felt exhausted, he did not publish, nor executed the final wording of his conclusions: he abandoned the problem and let him rest, occupying his mind with anything else. Then, after a few days, weeks or months, suddenly the mind pointed the solution, which came as a violent avalanche, and so Russell sat down to write. What would that be, inspiration? If that is the word, then it is necessary to add that there is nothing divine, fantastic, or superhuman about it. What is there is method, conscious brain stimulation. And if the brain, therefore, sometimes does not deliver an immediate response, it does not mean that it does not work, or that it is not working. In the same way, when it decides to boil at an inopportune moment, it is not doing any kind of magic or exhibiting supernatural powers…

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