Mood and Experience: On Escaping the Dismal Science

Opinion and ideology are meaningful on a symbolic level defined by discourse and speech. One represents their thoughts to themselves as ideas and 'conceptions,' and then 'builds' those thoughts until he/she feels 'informed.' Information, however, is embedded meaning, and comes from the moods by which we inhabit and 'know' our environment. In a decontextualized information world, the primary way of thinking and feeling is cynicism, appearing as a mental attitude, but really a bodily disposition - a mood emerging from broken hopes and possibilities lost. The very existence of mass populations involves the separation of (private, personal) 'opinion' and (public, political) ideology, making it so that people can only think autonomously in isolation, and can only relate to others through a separate state-form. This experience involves becoming motionless, or bare life into which various 'properties' are deposited, lacking the relational qualities emerging from proper development. As Bernard Stiegler argues in For a New Critique of Political Economy, the de-skilling of labour within proletarianization was achieved by objectifying the embodied know-how and gestures of craft producers into standard units of time and movement. The 'teeming mass of worms,' as Nietzsche aptly put it, loses its ability to develop its potential - it lacks imagination (the dominance of the unreal and the Other replaces the sense of the yet-to-be-real), and no 'ecstatic' movement toward newness. Unattuned to each others' gestures and affects, which now appear insignificant, the masses cannot 'move' (or be a movement) and must be coerced by forces beyond their control in order to do anything. The long-term need for managers and executive directors giving orders is a symptom of a profound experiential crisis, when our embodied knowledge has been reduced to data and the creativity of actors is no longer socially encouraged. It happens when moods become permanently spoiled (stagnating in lethargic attitudes), when we start doubting everything and breaking everything down (over-analyzing), and when trust and communication disintegrate. Instead, we should look to a more therepeutic praxis, in which hope, imagination, and meaning-making will be encouraged because 'another world is possible' (and only thus, necessary).

The information paradigm is fundamentally flawed. Not only are we not informed enough to make rational choices in our best interests, we rarely explicitly think or premeditate our actions as the model assumes. We come with unconscious background experience revealed to us through practice, and this knowledge 'works' for us on the condition that we let it be in our unconscious (e.g., bodily posture that is linked to motor memory in carrying out a task). This relates to the distinction between savoir (know-how), and connaitre (truth/discourse) as kinds of knowledge. For example, when your computer doesn't do what it is supposed) to do, you may start asking questions about why this happened, and how it could work normally again, but otherwise, you are immersed in relation to it which are largely implicit. Our psychological preferences primarily exist in terms of dispositions and inclinations which can be activated via sense-experience. Much 'knowledge' is conveyed through feelings, moods, glances, gestures, and movements that reveal the situation at hand in terms of how it affects well-being. Therefore, it is impossible to calculate the transmission of information - or better, meaning - involved in split-second decision-making. And so, it is impossible to assume rational choice, whether on economics or in politics.

We should abandon the fundamental principles of a discipline - economics - which is based on the reduction of human beings to bare life (masses), i.e., to the desparate struggle for existence amid long-term scarcity. Only once this fear-inducing standardization is assumed can 'marginal utility' (self-interest) be imputed in these models. A seemingly humanitarian recognition of the need for self-preservation is used to support the very system which necessitates it, by means of profit-seeking. We need joyful wisdom, in all senses meant by Nietzsche and not more of the 'dismal science' of economic self-interest disguised as survival necessity. This is also part of a praxis in which knowledge and affectivity are able to work together, and in which the moods that practically serve us every day are trusted to guide action.

Couple Thoughts

Trying to give someone a voice and release their human potential from its current realization means not just defending (advocating for) this person against structures of oppression, but encouraging them to become a new person, i.e., realizing hidden aspects of life-experience. How we do this without giving ammunition to their (our) oppressors is a real problem. Acknowledging personal weaknesses can create vulnerability in the context of interpersonal interaction, which may make vulnerability worse. Dealing with my own challenges, I would rather fully admit to being pathetic (that I have had my potential limited) and reveal room for development than to affirm my present wounded self as being of equal value to everyone. Shaming the world for this tragedy is one tactic, but it`s not very strategic (especially in the long-term, acknowledging backlash), and it only addresses negative affects usually provoking further unequal confrontations. We need to ask: how can people actually develop in such a way that they avoid falling into these marginal traps over and over again? How can we heal the wounds oppression has left without returning to their marks and licking our wounds? How can we enable meaning-making practices once again, where our interactions have been compressed reduced to grunts and blunt gestures. What good does complaining about the system have when you are afraid to break out of your terrifying condition, which prevents you from embodying the change you admit needs to happen.

Our communication is so weak and ineffective (stilted) at times, not because we need to make it more rational (effective?), but because it`s not firmly grounded in dispositions. Dispositions are the unconscious inclinations that guide people toward certain habits and associations, such as aesthetic ways of perceiving and greeting a familiar person, and then inserting them in the social flow of conversation. There is no formal rule that tells you that you must act as such, but the urge or tendency can still be overwhelming. You may not even notice the non-verbal meaning being communicated. However, I think that people are used to picturing each other as fetishized characters, and that social media further compresses many social interactions to textual info-data, separating people even more from their experience. One the one hand, there is inhibition to speak in social settings, while on the other hand, some unaware people speak completely out of place, ignoring the sense of timing and contextual cues that provide meaning. I notice for the former mass of people, most later talk internally with their clique of friends or acquaintances, while for the latter, the awkwardly social people (socially awkward but not shy) apparently have little depth of thought which they can articulate. Meanwhile, we allow advertising and mass culture to appropriate our popular sayings, gestures, even emotions. Can we have a confident interaction that is not overbearing or instantly spotlighted by mechanisms trying to appropriate it (subordinate it to power), or that must mean something after? The rejection of this ordinary sense (and sensuality) stems from the strained repetitions forced by a state of panic - as well as the larger mood of fear characterizing being hustled and oppressed. We have got to think about our emotional well-being a bit more, if we want to improve the quality of our interactions. But all we think about is our survival, and then we universalize this until it becomes self-interest.