Tag: psychology

The Dishwasher’s Anxiety: The Return of the Lesser Tasks

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Doing the dishes brings me (back) to the desert of the real and gives me anxiety. When I’m disconnected from the virtual world, and there are no distractions (like music or TV), and there’s no one else (like my wife) with me in the kitchen, certain thoughts, like dead fish (forgotten to be fed), rise to the surface to float among the oceanic debris of my mind. My thoughts go to where the trash is, to the center of an unremembered psychological gyre, where mental litter has been accumulating for a long time. And as I rinse the first batch of plates and arrange them on the dish rack, anxiety builds. My heart simmers in a saucepan on the gas stove.

Cutting the Umbilical Wire

Unplugging myself from the virtual world has become a little like cutting my own umbilical cord (again and again), separating myself from the pseudo-singularity that intends to keep me in its womb. But this separation never lasts long. Either the umbilical cord — wire — (like a slithering cable, a hissing electrical wire) will come after me to reconnect me to the virtual world, or, after agonizing withdrawal symptoms, I will seek the teat of the (omnipresent, omniscient) machine and start sucking on it.

The artificial universe keeps me busy. It keeps me entertained. It keeps me away from myself, whom it would be hell to spend time with.

[We’ve become like whales. The artificial universe is our sea. We still come up for air, but we are sea animals now.] [We are like foie gras ducks. We allow the ramming of virtual pipes down our eye sockets and ears to enable the pumping of massive amounts of content into our brains.]

But it’s important to note here that disconnecting from the internet is not enough to exit the hyperreal, to reenter raw reality. If the TV is on, or if there’s music playing in the background, I am still in the hyperreal. I must exclude everything from the setting that can interfere with my mind’s idleness — or, to put it differently, for this to work, to experience the anxiety of a man washing the dishes, my mind must be “unassigned,” idle. Only then can the mind drift and, often without the slightest intention, find itself at the center of the psychological gyre, the Atlantis that can only be found when we are lost in the sea of Kierkegaard’s doppelganger’s infinite resignation. Land ahoy! Here it is, then, finally, the island made of everything we’ve thrown (tried to throw) away.

Here, I expect that some of you will say, “But we know you. You spend much less time staring at screens than many of us.” You are right, and this changes nothing. I still (unconsciously and sometimes consciously) keep myself from rediscovering Atlantis. I do this by getting wasted, by constantly intoxicating myself with booze, books, and other boredom-repelling activities. No one wants to stay in the desert of the real, which is exile, or a penal colony of sorts that is paradoxically (the nauseating) freedom (we all cower from). So, like almost everyone in this technologically advanced, becoming world, I am almost always in the hyperreal. It is only when I do things like washing the dishes (without distractions) that I enter the process of exiting the hyperreal: this process is the anxiety I’m talking about.

The Dishwasher’s Anxiety

This anxiety (of a man doing the dishes without distraction) is too intense for me — it’s unbearable. (Is this why dirty dishes pile up in the sink when it’s my turn to do them?) One can only wash so many mugs, spoons, forks, knives, pots, and plates without coming face to face with the [unnamable] that human progress strove to leave behind.

In addition to the above, the anxiety I’m talking about seems to be powered by postponement. It isn’t procrastination because the mind is never idle, and we are always “working.” There’s always something “more important” (which is, in fact, less important) to do, and that’s what we’re continuously preoccupied with. The mind never finds time for defragmentation. (Sleep is not enough since it happens automatically in the subconscious. Conscious, deliberate defragmentation is also needed.) Unfortunately, we constantly postpone things we ought to deal with. We let these things die (like fish) and, as they (remain uneaten and) slowly decompose, join the accumulated trash at the center of our polluted psychological gyres.

“I do not have time for this,” our busy mindset keeps repeating. “I will deal with this later,” we keep saying. We focus on the “important” or more “urgent” things while we postpone going to the dentist or the doctor, postpone spending quality time with the wife, postpone the confrontation with the person who’s been bothering us, postpone the planned dinner with the parents, postpone the call with the mother, postpone the happy hour with friends, postpone calling the plumber or the electrician, postpone dealing with this little issue and that little issue, et cetera, ad infinitum. And when the more “important” and more “urgent” tasks are completed, we find ourselves too exhausted to take care of what we postponed.

In other words, we postpone certain things to prioritize certain other things, and later, the time comes for us to deal with the corpse (or the ghost) of what we postponed more than we should have, which gives us the dishwasher’s anxiety when we, well, do the dishes.

But that’s not all. There are more things to consider. There’s also [The repression of the awareness of death: we do not think about our death; we only acknowledge our eventual death in passing. After all, who has time to look at the hourglass, to count the slipping sands of time? Who is willing to waste their finite time to contemplate mortality?] And also [The repression of the absurd: we do not think about the meaninglessness; we merely acknowledge it in passing as if it’s an acquaintance we’ve never had (or will never have) a conversation with.]

The Fear of Missing Out

While I’d like to exit the hyperreal, I do not want to live exclusively in the desert of the real, where the anxiety is. Of course, in the universe of raw reality, the anxiety ultimately dies away if you stay there long enough. However, in this universe of raw reality, there will come a time when you’ll have to dump your humanness and return to being an animal or worse, a god. And that is not the path I want to take, for I wish to remain human.

And, no, I don’t think that if I stay where the anxiety is and keep searching, I will find Easter eggs that so many gamers love to find. I know I won’t unlock new levels. And I won’t uncover the “hidden” truth, will I? Will I uncover the “hidden” truth? Or is it because I already know the yet-uncovered “hidden” truth that I don’t want to dwell there too long? Or is it the “fear of missing out” that brings me back to the artificial universe? After all, whatever is interesting — or is talked about — is already uploaded or simulated in it.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a trending disorder, for sure. And one of the components of this anxiety that visits me when I’m washing the dishes is FOMO. But FOMO isn’t just the fear of missing out. I would like to redefine it, adjust its definition a little. FOMO is also the fear of having missed out on something. It is also the fear of not knowing that you’ve missed something. And because everything I don’t want to miss out on is in the virtual world (or is communicated to me via the virtual world), we can say that FOMO is triggered when I go offline. Moreover, FOMO is not always about the fear of missing out on something amazing. It can be something terrible, too. For instance, when I’m doing the dishes, I may think of the following things: “What if something happens to a family member, and I’m not there when they message me?” “What if I get an urgent email that I need to action on immediately?” “What if Israel has launched a large-scale attack and is now invading Southern Lebanon while I’m here soaping tea spoons and coffee mugs?” To be connected is to have access to (overwhelming) knowledge that you may or may not need. (And knowledge isn’t power, by the way.) On the other hand, to be disconnected is like swimming in the ocean at night, waiting for something from underwater to tickle your foot and make you shit your pants — or, in this case, your shorts.

The Return of the Lesser Tasks

This inner turmoil, this restlessness, this fear comes when I start soaping the second batch of dishware and silverware. It means that I’m now spending time with myself. And all the “secondary” tasks I previously postponed now occupy my thoughts. I feel guilty, and I worry about the consequences. Here they are, the ghosts of overdue tasks (and things that I wanted to do but didn’t), haunting me. It’s too late to do them now, and I have to decide whether I let them rot in my head (as buried potentialities) or do them anyway by saying, “It’s better too late than never.”

But I must now return to the artificial universe, which is the universe that man made. So, the house he built became his home. And he is home when he’s neither fully in the physical world nor fully in the virtual world. We’re only home when we’re in the hyperreal. But like the occasional hike in nature, it’s good to visit the desert of the real sometimes. It’s good to smell the flowers that bloom in fear. It’s good to hear the birds sing what we can never understand.

This piece was originally published on my Medium account on February 28, 2024.

Review of and quotes from Paul Virilio's The Aesthetics of Disappearance

A Compressed Review and Quotes from Paul Virilio’s The Aesthetics of Disappearance

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Paul Virilio’s ideas flow in The Aesthetics of Disappearance like rainwater in roadside channels. Raindrops (like ideas) come together in these channels and flow (like theories) towards an undisclosed final destination. There’s a (speed-)storm, but the roads are kept from flooding. Major thought systems are merely rinsed; they’re (disappointingly) left undamaged. Virilio’s picnolepsy, which is “the epileptic state of consciousness produced by speed,” flows in roadside channels, proceeds through catch basins, travels through closed pipes, and where it ends up nobody knows… How do underdog theories survive? The book is read casually by a dilettante who remembers only this: the progressive increase in speed entails the progressive disappearance of consciousness. “For the picnoleptic, nothing really has happened, the missing time never existed. At each crisis, without realizing it, a little of his or her life simply escaped.”

Quotes from Paul Virilo’s The Aesthetics of Disappearance

It’s our duration that thinks, the first product of consciousness would be its own speed in its distance of time, speed would be the causal idea, the idea before the idea.

– Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance

Man, fascinated with himself, constructs his double, his intelligent specter, and entrusts the keeping of his knowledge to a reflection.

Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance

Any man that seeks power isolates himself and tends naturally to exclude himself from the dimensions of the others, all techniques meant to unleash forces are techniques of disappearance.

Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance

Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek, Lebanon

Unstructured Reflections on Love: Libido Transfer

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Libido transfer. — To a certain extent, when someone is totally in love, (the essence of) the loved one replaces the self of the lover. We come across this in Sigmund Freud’s An Outline of Psychoanalysis, where the libido of the lover is transferred onto the object, which is the beloved. For the sake of simplification, here, let us assume that the lover in our story is (as is so traditionally) a he, and the loved one is a she. When a man falls madly in love with a woman, something in him changes. His friends notice this first and say things like, “He’s become a different man,” or in sadder scenarios, “He’s not one of the boys anymore.” They don’t understand the transformation their friend is going through because they haven’t been struck by love yet themselves. According to the lover’s psyche, the beloved is no longer a separate individual; reversely, he no longer represents himself alone. The representations (or the qualities) of her self are merged with his, and his actions now represent the synthesis of his self and hers. Love makes him an extension of the person he loves. Then it goes further than that. It is not enough that their souls are entangled and have formed a Gordian Knot, but instead of prioritizing his needs and desires, he now starts prioritizing hers. (Symmetrically, if the relationship is a mutualistic symbiosis, she also becomes an extension of him — after becoming more like her, he sees her in the mirror, and vice versa.) At this point, when the man has become possessed by love, his self’s independence begins to diminish. The invisible love leash chokes him when the distance (as well as the time) between him and his beloved expands. He feels incomplete, even guilty, when separated from her. He gives up his freedom, changes his habits to match his partner’s, and sacrifices whatever he must to preserve the fetters of love. And it’s not only his behavior that changes; he starts to see things from his beloved’s lens. He interprets and experiences life differently by identifying with her needs, desires, wants, ideologies, beliefs, culture, traditions, and emotions. He says, “If she’s happy, I’m happy,” or (in jest), “Happy wife, happy life.” [A test: How do you know if you are the lover or the beloved in a certain set of circumstances? If the actions of the other aim to please you, then you are the beloved. If it’s the other way around, you are the lover.] [I must add a note here: Although the lover-beloved balance between two individuals in a relationship isn’t always in equilibrium, we must remember that love isn’t a one-way relationship. In a healthy romantic relationship, there ought to be scenarios in which you are the lover and scenarios in which you are the beloved, (unconsciously) switching roles with your partner as you go. You’ll need to take turns because you cannot be both the lover and the beloved simultaneously. You can play one role at a time.] The lover must be brave, ready to take big risks. He needs that Kierkegaardian leap of faith. He needs to close his eyes and jump. To love is a courageous act. One must be ready to do crazy things for love. He must surrender to it. Unlike popular belief, a healthy romantic relationship has nothing to do with the preservation of physical or mental health. A healthy romantic relationship is a spiritual relationship that may sometimes include sacrifices such as the surrender of mental or physical health. Nonetheless, the altruistic lover who lets go of his ego altogether is not a real lover; he is a symbiote with an ego mimicking the beloved’s ego. The altruistic lover is the beloved’s machine that generates recognition and satisfaction. The opposite of the altruistic lover, the narcissistic lover, is also not a real lover; he is a parasitic symbiote. He only loves lovers, not beloveds. Those who resist libido transfer suppress (and prevent the development of) true love. They are not ready for true love simply because they are not ready to sacrifice themselves on its altar. They will not be remembered as great lovers… It is no surprise that many individuals resist transferring libido to a loved one. (Their number, in fact, far exceeds those who truly love.) They fear potential heartbreak, they lack trust in people, and they don’t want to lose themselves and their freedom. (Withholding libido transfer is the safer option for those who want to keep the self unblemished.) But when these individuals simulate acts of love by repeating what they read in books and what they see in movies, they’re not loving, they’re only playing the role of the lover. They’re playing it safe and are not really invested in the relationship. They are only showing love but not genuinely loving. Unknowingly, they are pretending to love. They don’t know that those who want to remain who they are cannot love absolutely. When the time of sacrifice comes, they’ll ask, “Why would I live for someone else when I can live for myself?” They’ll ask, “Why would anyone want to lose their self, their Ich, their ego?” While some sacrifice themselves for love, they sacrifice love for themselves. What they don’t get is this: when you love, you don’t lose yourself; you become more than yourself.