Normal, Anti-Normal, and Trans-Normal (1.04.12)

There seems to have been a bit of confusion yesterday in at least one reader, who compares our approach to that of the psycho-cultural left, but there is really no similarity. The whole point of my thesis (or Bollas's thesis) is that the normotic is not normal; rather, he has a pseudo-normality that conceals and oppresses a true self which has been developmentally stunted somewhere along the way. As the reader sarcaustically put it, "Normality is oppression! Be a non-conformist! Free your authentic self from the constraints of bourgeois morality!"

Please. This is not my point. Rather, I am coming at it from a conservative classical liberal point of view, in which (to paraphrase someone), individuality is freedom lived. But one might just as well say that freedom is individuality lived. It should go without saying that you are only truly free when you are yourself. Otherwise, who is free? And for what?

Actually, I prefer "liberty," which is perhaps the second most important Raccoon macro-value after truth (in fact, you cannot have one without the other, for one must be free to discover truth, and truth is what sets one free; this is why the compulsory truth of political correctness, or of reductionistic Darwinism, is an intrinsic contradiction).

You might say that Truth + Liberty = Authentic Being. Being that the left denies absolute or transcendental truth, you can see that we have nothing in common. And being that they believe in positive liberties granted by the state instead of negative ones conferred by the Creator, there is again no common measure between us. The leftist substitutes for timeless truth the petty dictates of time-bound political correctness, which strangles the self and nourishes the hardened collective ego.

I could go on, but you get the point. Belief in permanent truths results in the ordered liberty, or "disciplined mischief," of the Raccoon. To deny them results in mere horizontal license, and in a system that cannot be sustained. To the extent that these people appear "unconventional," it is in an entirely conventional and drearily conformist manner (the "herd of independent minds"). There is nothing creative about a Madonna. She can only engage in a kind of parasitic "anti-normotic" illness that mimics actual creativity and true selfhood.

It is the same with many homosexual disturbances, which may superficially seem so "out there" but are really just a form of psychic slave rebellion. As Bollas writes, "the homosexual's adornment in exaggerated representations of the subjective element can be a defiance of the normotic way of life. Where the normotic parent may have stressed 'reasonable' thinking, the homosexual may espouse the superiority of anti-reason. Where the normotic parent never tolerated the controversial, the homosexual may become perversely addicted to collecting controversies."

Bollas adds that compulsive sexual promiscuity among homosexuals "has the character of a material phenomenon, and is in part an inverted representation of the normotic illness." Honest and self-aware homosexuals will know exactly what Bollas is referring to. The rest will feel victimized, which is to take a secret pleasure in participating in one's own self-subjection. It is also abnormal, so you can't win.

It seems that this topic of normotic illness struck a resonant chord in many readers, which surprises me, since I was just riffing off the top of my head as a prelude to moving on to the last arcanum, The World. We'll get to that later, but I think you'll see that the two themes tie together, because the point of that card is to meditate on the idea of the world as a work of art, and the real artist is an example of "freedom lived," or of potential actualized, at least in the aesthetic sphere.

For example, in a banalogy I have used before, I am "free" to play the saxophone, but not in any meaningful way, unless I undergo the years of discipline it takes to transcend "mere freedom" and transform it into something higher. Although, say, Hank Mobley, was much more constrained than I am when he picked up a sax, those musical constraints -- or boundary conditions -- are precisely analogous to the intrinsic truths that allow the self to ascend to its proper soul station.

Just so, to deny the intrinsic spiritual truths that in-form the soul is like trying to play the sax without harmony, melody, chords, etc. But conversely, to only conform to these moral truths in a rigid, exterior way, without realizing and assimilating their inner meaning, can result in a superficially good and decent person, but still, something will be missing. That something is the true self. And for the true self, truth, virtue, and beauty are consciousness of a plane of reality, not conformity to a rigid exterior model. I don't just want my son to "be good." Rather, I want him to understand goodness. Nor do I want him to merely obtain good grades without being intelligent.

So we see right away that our essentialist idea of a true self parts ways with the existentialists in all their variety, who believe that the self is entirely self-made, so to speak. First of all, the true self cannot possibly be self-made -- any more than you could make your liver or kidneys. It is an organ, except that it is a multi-dimensional organ that transcends space and time, at least to a certain extent. But the fact that the self may know timeless truth proves that its ultimate source is outside time.

Like all other organs, the self requires time in order to reach maturity. But the function of the self is much more complex compared to, say, the kidneys, which mostly filter blood. The self, on the other hand, has the ongoing task of metabolizing and synthesizing internal, external, past, present, and transpersonal experience into a higher subjective unity. This is why you might say that the self is man's first "hyperdimensional virtual organ," so to speak. It is just as busy as the heart or lungs, except that it accomplishes its feats in a higher space that obviously exceeds three or four dimensions (cf. the phenomenon of dreaming).

In turn, this is why the normotic personality may appear outwardly normal, even while living a life in which he systematically denies the sufficient reason for man's existence. From the human standpoint, it can never be "normal" to be a radical atheist or leftist, for both of these categories prevent man from discovering transcendent truth and becoming what he is -- from actualizing his real nonlocal potential.

Yesterday I mentioned the "destiny drive," which is to the self as final cause is to biology. Biology is incoherent in the absence of final causation, in that each organ obviously has a function to fulfill within the context of the whole, and failure to achieve this function is the very definition of pathology. In other words, we can only know about sickness because there is a thing called "health" (which with good reason is etymologically related to wholeness). For example, I have a diseased pancreas, because it doesn't spit out insulin in the way it was designed to.

But what was the Self designed to do? If you are a Darwinist, it is a moot question, because the self reduces to biology, which in turn reduces to physics, which has no purpose. This down-and-backward looking metaphysic hurls the self against the dead rocks of the cosmic past, so it can actualize no intrinsically real future, i.e., destiny.

Let's talk about the self's destiny drive, and define it with more precision. Tomorrow.