[Nettime-bold] FW: CULTURE & THE WAR AGAINST DRUGS

[brian carroll <human@architexturez.com>]

for nettime-bold...

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From: Richard Koenigsberg <Rkoenigsberg@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Reply-To: Theoretics of socio-cultural anthropology
<ANTHTHEORY-L@LIST.NIH.GOV>
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001 13:32:58 -0400
To: ANTHTHEORY-L@LIST.NIH.GOV
Subject: CULTURE & THE WAR AGAINST DRUGS

There has to be a "war against drugs" because drugs are pleasurable. They
feel good because they release the individual from the burden of society. To
be a "head" is to try to move into one's own head--to get to a place where
culture cannot enter. This is the old story of "civilization and its
discontents." Participation in society means removal from the dream of
paradise. We all have a desire to remain in paradise. In order to affirm the
social order, it is necessary to wage war against this impulse. The war
against drugs is war against the wish not to partake of society.

    Society can't say that certain kinds of drugs feel good. It is the job
of culture to sequester the energy of individuals so that this energy can be
used to fulfill the "requirements" society. This is what Freud meant by
sublimation.

     Indeed, we NEED (the mental representation of) society in order to
defend ourselves against our own wish for regressive withdrawal, the desire
to abandon the entire "spear chuckin' scene" in order to return to
"paradise."

    One conceptualization of culture is any idea or institution-the
attachment to which--helps the individual move away from regressive,
narcissistic fantasies. Culture provides and performs a developmental
function. The fantasy of paradise is projected into the future. We work hard
(abandon infantile gratification) in the hope that someday we might be
ushered into the "hall of fame"--become one of the immortals.

    In the good old days, there was a thing called repression. This
mechanism worked to ban from consciousness potentially pleasurable impulses
that threatened the coherence of the self in its relationship to the demands
of society.

    Now, we're aware of many impulses that once were repressed. The war
against drugs is war against the internal desire to use drugs. We attempt to
conquer an impulse by waging war against it.

    War in general may be understood as the externalization of repression, a
way of conquering or defeating an impulse by attempting to destroy an object
in reality that symbolizes that impulse. War (an activity presumably
directed toward the "external world") functions in the name of denying an
inner thought or desire. One attempts to kill off in the world a symbol of a
forbidden wish within oneself.

Richard Koenigsberg

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