I am now listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, as Michael Lewis describes listening to his favorite music when he writes – this habit activates both sides of the brain. Heaven knows, I need all the help I can get? I woke the other day, 12.13.2016, with a dream feeling a serious dread about to happen! I quickly sat up, threw off the blanket, put my feet on the floor, stood up, slippers on walked out of the bedroom, trying to gain a sense of the real – I was determined to stop this move into depression. It took me several minutes to regain psychic energy and begin my move into the day. Colin Wilson describes this well as The High and the Low energy moment, especially as one wakes up. Colin suggests that normally there is a 1% lowering of energy as we wake-up; I know this loss well, however, I cannot remember ever feeling this level of lowered energy –this must have been over a -2% lowering.
I certainly do not want to experience Leonard Cohen’s loss of energy and set about, not like Leonard embracing Buddhism, by amplifying a series of my unfolding dreams, with what is going on in the world, what I am reading, what I am accessing from the World Wide Web, and what I am discussing with a few close friends. I think Leonard has this right, Everybody Knows, and in my experiment with life – IT needs to be amplified! Put on your headphones and crank up the volume – “everybody knows the dice are loaded”.
Okay, was not this right-brain input up-lifting? This experience is a natural high! However, if we soon hear that Trump has selected Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, in some capacity to represent his incoming administration, I suggest it might add to Michael Moore’s prediction that Trump may be our last US President.
To amplify Moore’s thesis, let us consider Slavoj Žižek – Ode to Joy commentary on those who have chosen Beethoven’s Ode to Joy to represent their country, state, and administration. In our future, is there an orange clock counting down?
If Trump in anyway makes reference to this music, we will need to careful considers Eric Fromm’s thesis in Escape from Freedom written in 1941 as WWII began. In Fromm’s appendix, a direct read of the psychological theory underlining his book, here is something for us to chew over: “… we have assumed that ideologies and culture in general are rooted in the social character; that the social character itself is molded by the mode of existence of a given society; and that in their turn the dominant character traits become productive forces shaping the social process. With regard to the problems of the spirit of Protestantism and capitalism, I have tired to show that the collapse of medieval society threatened the middle class; that this threat resulted in a feeling of powerless isolation and doubt; that this psychological change was responsible for the appeal of Luther’s and Calvin’s doctrines; that these doctrines intensified and stabilized the characterlogical changes; and that the character traits that thus developed then became productive process in the development of capitalism which in itself resulted from economic and political change” (324).
Fromm extends his analytical framework analyzing the rise of Protestantism and capitalism to the rise of Fascism’s ideology; we can extend this same analysis of the rise of Trumpism. A main topic on the Morning Joe Show, 12.16.2016, is comparing Trumpism to Fascism, however, Joe always has a problem thinking deeply analytically. Comparing Hitler and Trump, at this point, is analyzing circumstances underlying the rise of each, not to the end result – the Holocaust. However, stay tuned, buckle-up, and put on these ideological glasses, a disturbance is most likely on the way.
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology 1
David Bowie’s Ode not to Joy – take-off your red shoes and walk barefoot.
I will take up the thesis of Erich Fromm’s Psychology of Nationalism in future posts. Here is a beginning on the negative aspect of “nationalism”. As we listen to this, begin to apply Fromm’s analytical framework to our current circumstances. However, we need to keep our framework open to development. A question for us to ponder is what is the Psychology of Globalization? Colin Wilson, suggests that we need to focus on the High +1% increase in psychic energy, that we do have control over – it depends on how we instigate and manage our peak experiences!
SAScherling
