Deconstructing Ourselves

the world that laughs for us….

http://theloverevolution.org.uk/2011/06/the-world-that-laughs-for-us-2/

by George Elerick (theloverevolution)

posted on June 20, 2011

Jacques Lacan was a French Psychoanalyst who posited that our unconscious is structured much like a language.”If the unconscious is structured like a language, Lacan argues, then the self is denied any point of reference to which to be “restored” following trauma or “identity crisis” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind#Lacan.27s_linguistic_unconscious).

Lacan would go on to talk about how what we desire will never be fulfilled. He refers to this unmet desire as the objet petit a; the presumption then is that desire lacks the very thing we think we desire. Hollywood, television adverts, grocery store aisles all play on this truth. Let’s take for example the beauty adverts that seem to prey on women.

Most of these adverts work on the premise that there is already a socially defined reality that informs us all what a women should and should not look like. Some women buy into this, in fact, there are few that don’t; on some unconscious level, we’re all measuring ourselves against some objective idea. It is our thoughts that help create what we believe about reality and ourselves.

When I was younger, I remember learning that matter is made of atoms, energy and particles. In the last few years quantum physics have merged with philosophy and are now positing that all that we see in front of it is not made of matter, but rather, thought. In the narrative documentary ‘What the Bleep do we know?” the content focuses on how and what defines our reality.

They conclude by the end that our thoughts bring things into reality. For example, a tree is only a tree because it has been socially constituted and agreed upon (thought of) as a tree. A moment sipping tea in the garden is never simply a moment sipping tea in the garden, it’s always both more and less than what it appears to be.

The world itself then is desire waiting to happen.

If the two points above are true about how we experience and interact with reality then how perceive the world and what we believe about matters more than we would like to think it would. This is why deconstruction is one of the most responsible acts we can all participate in. It seems the constituted world, well, a world mostly constituted by media, adverts, toys, and ‘stuff’ that world seems to be telling us how to think about what we think about it.

It’s like sitcoms that have canned laughter during what are meant to be funny moments, and we watch having enjoyed the show as if we have laughed ourselves.

Deconstructing ourselves will eventually lead to finding ourselves.

This is why the question is such a powerful thing.