The Insane Asylum and Plato's Republic
Robet Kalarghan
or psychiatric ward?
I don't really want to be treated, I just want to be commited to one,
and live out my life there.
Seriously, does anyone have any real advice on how I can just drop out
of society and the rat race? Its not healthy for me. And keeping a
malcontent like me among society can't be good for society either. For
my own good and society's I just need to be isolated from my "fellow"
humans. they will only harm me, and I will only harm them. Thats what
the Lutheran Kierkegaard thinks the Catholics got right and the
Protestants are missing. The monasteries were a safety valve that
allowed people antagonistic to this world, to escape it without
disrupting the system. We really don't have that in our age, other
than the "choice" to starve on the street, which is where I'm headed.
There really is no safety valve or escape hatch. I don't know maybe
there are some deserted islands out there in the Pacific, where I
could literally be a Robinson Crusoe. Probably not realistic though.
Well if those islands exists, I suppose its possible I could somehow
get there with a few thousand dollars. I probably wouldn't last long
in the wild. But nature is a less cruel enemy than man. Nature will
kill me but not enslave me. Or being a hermit somehow, but that takes
capital. I just need to get
away from it all. I reject all social relations. I never want to see
another human again. The very sight and smell of them repulses me.
I've really lost touch. I just don't get humans. I used to think I
did. But the more I study them, the less I understand them. Or maybe I
understand them empirically, I know what they actually do and on an
intellectual scientific level I can understand their motivations
partially. But I can't get inside their heads. Their endless cruelty
just escapes me.
I mean I guess part of it is the Hegelian recognition, the master must
enslave to be recognized. And Nieztche elaborated on it as the will to
power. And you can try and make it scientific by just transmitting the
Will to Gene. The human fascination and lust for cruelty just escapes
me. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that is what you need to survive, and I'm
just a Darwinian miscarriage. Or maybe I have too much of Freud's
superego. I've internalized too much of what society SAYS is good and
become that. In that sense I am the society I hate so much-
personified.
I'm the materialization of the spiritual imagination of society. I'm
the Feurbachian God made flesh. I can understand the mind of God,
which is the spirtitualization of society, more clearly than that of
man. The regret at what man could have been and what he actually is
before the flood. I suppose the God's eye view of the universe, is a
curse and burden to us worm, dust, dirt.
I belong in solitary confinement. The prison population of course is
the embodiment and hyperdistortion of man's will to power, although I
would say the difference with the general population is only
quantitative in nature. So obviously prison itself is no utopia. But
solitary confinement in the "hole" would be my paradise. To be free
from all human contact and all activity. To just sit in an empty cell
24 hours a day. And to have guards slide in the food. It has come to
the point where my only conception of freedom is liberty from
humanity. And so freedom becomes a prison cell. IDK, I guess at the
rate I'm going I will probably end up in an insane asulym believing
I'm Napoleon Bonaparte. As long as I make the leap of faith and truly
believe I'm the Emperor, then nothing can imprison me. The insane
asulym is in its own way a utopia, and it beats the streets.
I think for my personality relative isolation would be far worse than
total isolation. I'm a spiteful resentful person who can not bear
having my social betters above me. I'm in a period of relative
isolation now having dropped of school and not seeking a job. Just
living off my money which should last .5 to 1 year. I was friendly and
jovial with my housemates at first, but now I try to avoid seeing
them. The thing about my depression and need for social isolation, is
it stems more from existential metaphysics than anything personal. So
I'm basically getting a taste of what living on a fixed income would
be like now. And the USA has one of the worst welfare states in the
world, we love the struggle to the death.
I'm thinking of committing myself, but not being cured. In a way it is
utopian. Like Plato's Republic being watched over by authoritarian all-
powerful guardians who are trying to fix you. There is complete
equality among inmates, all your needs are met without work, and no
private property. The trade of security for freedom. But that is the
nature of utopia, nearly all since Plato's time have acknowledge the
need for both the sacrifice of individuality and freedom, and a strong
authoritarian bureaucracy. That is the type of power the asylum has
over you, their power is institutionalized and bureaucratic like in a
utopia. There is the loss of the human element. It is mechanical
machine like. But it is precisely the human element of subordination,
domination, and power that makes it so humiliating and unbearable. I
would prefer to be a patient over an employee. A prison can be a
utopia. Bentham's utopia is designed as the perfect prison system. And
of course the mental institution itself is the petproject of a
plethora of progressive enlightenment reformers overcoming the dark of
superstition with the light of science. It is itself a utopian project.