against regression

Donald Meltzer, in his book called The Claustrum, points out the danger concerning too much reliance upon intuition. Intuition is a way of knowing that seems to give us a very direct feeling of satisfaction. Intuition can enable us to make intellectual and artistic leaps. All the same, those who rely heavily upon intuition in order to feel as if they know the world around them are liable to overlook the importance of reality testing as a means of securing a more accurate assessment of what is true.

Nietzscheans and evolutionary psychologists, as well as those suffering from a borderline psychological condition, all rely heavily upon intuition at the expense of empirical reality testing. Such subjectivism forms a blight on careful scholarship and accurate thinking about the world. One reverts to the infantile state of magical thinking -- ie. that something is true because I need it to be true. At the same time, such a mode of thinking gives one a sense of great power, as if by thinking something to be true, one also made it true. (And there is a seductive drop of truth in this idea, since positive thinking often does affect the outcome of an event -- only not to the extent that those who enshrine subjectivity as their absolute ideal believe it to be the case.) By reading the right book, the mystic is already at the top of the pile of humanity's social organisation. So these non-extraordinary thinkers flatter themselves.

Magical thinking overgeneralises: "all Xs are like Y" is a statement of dogmatic faith that has its roots in magical thinking processes. Such ways of thinking are addictive, because they give the believer a sense of their own personal power and discernment, a feeling of looking into reality in a way that others cannot do. Magical thinking is embraced by those who seek their sensation of inner knowing in all sorts of reductionistic formulas: "Humans are just animals, acting out their instincts." That is a statement that gives the believer a great feeling of power in himself or herself, for by making it, the speaker claims to know the real essence of the human being that is invisible and kept hidden from all cruder observers.

Many forms of identity politics (even those that are most refined and historically based) tend to slip into a mode of magical thinking at times. Recourse to lazy thinking is always tempting, especially when adoption of a more regressive mode of thought flatters the observer: "All women are pure and innocent." "All males are pure and innocent." "All blacks are victims." Such expressions of esoteric knowing (although they may have their drop of truth to them) give the speaker an aura of esoteric wisdom, as if they can see into the very essence of things, to decipher what is essential from what is non-essential in the general phenomena of things.

Ultimately, such generalisations are designed to be self-serving. Those who proclaim that all males are innocent, in their essential essence, nonetheless remain in rabid competition with other men (thus not paying them the respect due to their putative innocence). Those who claim that women are the fundamental essence of purity are quite often extremely spiteful to other women (thus they show little practical acknowledgement of the dignity of women that would be linked with their putative purity.) Those who make statements about victims rarely do as much as they might be doing in order to help. The generalisations therefore clothe some speakers in a mystical garb, but rarely do such speakers manage to take their beliefs into the world in a practical way -- so rarely does the mystic become the revolutionary.

The difference between the mystic and the revolutionary is clear: The mystic makes his or her pronouncements for the primary reason of self gratification on a mental level, whereas the revolutionary is already acting in the practical realm to make real changes there.

So often I have found that the mystic doesn't really believe it is necessary or even possible to act. For the mystic, the imagination has usurped the place of real life and its empirical data. He honestly feels that to believe something is true has already made it true. To grant a certain category of person the benefit of his or her recognition, is the very best that the mystical thinker feels he or she can do.

On the other hand, the revolutionary seeks to change practical reality. Unlike the mystic, the revolutionary has not lost touch with the sphere, through retreat into the claustrum. The revolutionary knows that not all suffering is equivalent to every other form of suffering -- Jestina Mukoko's torture in a Zimbabwe jail is far, far worse than that terrible event of the office girl forgetting you like sugar in your coffee.