Doppelganger by Naomi Klein is a perfect book written for the 22 year old me. I was one of those the candle burning spiritual far-out “liberals” Klein analyzed without the much-needed ridicule. I sometimes find it hard to believe I would make such a jump from recovering believer of certified ancient literature to whatever occultism Alan Moore was selling me in a YouTube video, but I think given the similar context, anyone would have chosen the path to believe in the magical powers of sigils, even just to attempt some stability into their ever so fragile lives.
Human beings are creatures of narratives. We need narratives to make sense of our happiness, our loss, and sooner or later, the void within. Even when the narratives are sometimes mere concepts barely woven into a coherent discourse, as long as it works. Where Grant Morrison school of chaos magic really succeeds is where atheism brings the most pain to their newly recruits, the individual responsibility to come up with their own narratives. Abrahamic religions do great jobs at this, especially with the community theatre aspect which helps builds the suspension of disbelief, but the constraints of impracticality and the need for long-term gratification weigh them down. I’m curious if the generation grew up consuming short video format would have less patience towards the afterlife discourse around these ancient stories. Pop Magick, with the ‘k’, or other pan-occult practices seem to be the perfect middle ground as they soften the cold-heartedness of atheism and yet are ‘rational’ enough since they promise a practical result: manifesting your new reality.
I never questioned myself nor if I really believed in the goofy practices of sigil making, manifesting with meditation, or if I found home in all those Lovecraftian images that come with their manuals. Later I realized that I have always been this trying-ten-things-out-without-questioning-maybe-one-of-them-will-stick kinda person. Luckily, I was always been cautious not to take radical actions, or else I can easily see myself hooked on to three or four substances living under the bridge somewhere in California, Skid Row maybe. But I seem to have more tolerance towards ideas and practices that would, at least on paper, better my life. Whether if it’s a certain type of diet that get rid off my acne with the exchange of all the joy in the world, or going through 20 different self-help books to see what I am doing wrong, or this, creating calligraphic art with someone’s name and meditating with my hands soaked in water while looking it. The rational has always been quite simple: maybe this is the answer.
In Doppleganger, Naomi Klein writes aboout a yoga teacher form a hippie community in Toronto who shows her indifference to the possibility of immunocompromised people dying because of covid. “I think they should die,” she said to Klein, in her candle-burning house that probably places a shrine of Buddha somewhere. Natalie Wynn form Contrapoints also talks about this scene form the book in her Patreon exclusive video called Granola Fascism. They both reached the similar conclusion that disregarding and indifference towards others’ “flawed” existence is the result of believing in the endless pursuit of optimizing oneself. To those who spends most of their waking hours to stay healthy and fit, the ill and the old deserve their inevitable faith simply because they failed to do what “should have been done long time ago.”
Individual’s responsibility of optimize themselves: looking at it from a alienation of modern man point of view, it’s a pretty bleak statement to utter, yet it also makes perfect sense in modern classrooms as well, in fact, that’s the point of all those part-time skill learning websites, fitness apps, or the self-improvement culture in general. Why should such a thing as learning to better your chances in life should be under scrutiny? I haven’t done sufficient reading to answer this question once and for all, nor do I believe my poorly articulated and semi-intuitive thoughts on the purpose of leaning would add anything to the discourse. But as the purpose of this blog, I should be able to clear my thoughts with writing these paragraph and illuminate the paths I should take to investigate these more valuable questions than to say “it is what it is.”
I often feel that there are certain rhetorical questions that stops me from further investigating what I am really trying to get into. “What was I supposed to do in that situation” was the big one growing up, when faced with owning up my mistakes of hurting others, or Andrea Sachs likes to put it, “I don’t have a choice.” And my reflections on the ethics always get distracted by the thought of “there’s nothing wrong with the tool itself, is there?” Or in the case of self optimization culture, “what’s wrong with people trying to live better lives?” But that isn’t what I am trying to answer, and this intellectual laziness is should have been the first to be optimized in order to “better my life.” What I find most relevant to investigate further can be summed up with these meta questions: 1) what makes the outcome of this improvement grant me a “better” condition? 2) do I understand that I have predisposition for improving my life that others may not have?
What these self-optimization narratives served, in my case, is to fill the aforementioned void that, if left unanswered, may have led to a tenfold relapse into something worse than believing in ancient books and radical practices that lead to self-hate. Whether if it’s Dale Carnegie’s soft manipulation techniques or an Oprah sponsored New Age guru’s teachings on spiritual awakenings, or even something practical, learning to code in 24 hours, all they did was to give me a sense of control, after actively disassociating myself from the doctrines that have served as a warm blanket for so long. It didn’t really matter what I was learning or if I believed in the things I was reading along the way, the mere idea of “doing the right thing” was enough to occupy my time, so that there wouldn’t be room for the intrusive thoughts on the void: the “what now?” To simply put, self-optimization was the easiest way out of existential crisis.
I must admit that I have many useful skills along the journey of filling the void. Even those that seemed the least useful have become the go-to methodologies when designing my album covers. And of course, a bit of meditation practice is far from being harmful to a anxiety over-grown teenager in his mid 20s.
Then why should we question the outcome of our learning? I think the answer is twofold: a) time is valuable.
I would’ve laughed seeing this sentence in a self-pretentious essay like this, but now, reaching my 30s, I understand that not every tutorial on YouTube deserves your attention, and not every well-written book should be read even once. Priority matters. b) the desired outcome may help reveal our greed. To give a simple example, I always wanted to learn piano since I was little, but I never had the opportunity until I could afford piano lessons in my 20s. But then, after much reflection, I understood that it wasn’t the piano I wanted to learn, it was the aesthetics of a piano playing aristocrat that I wanted to assimilate. In other words, what I wanted was far more than simply playing Debussy for my self amusement, it was a desire to transcend class and race. Although this awakening had led to waves of depression and melancholy, but the books and conversations to which I have committed myself when finding the answer have been more than beneficial to understand my human condition as a whole.
The second question, the equal opportunity for self-improvement, may be the key to have compassion towards others who are less fit, less elegant and less read. It is a topic I wish to read and write further, especially after living in Paris for a year, seeing how shaped and decorated human body can be when there isn’t a stress of, for example, loosing your career to age as you turn 32. This made me think twice about my occasional self hate towards my body: am I unfit because I was just busy surviving whatever that was thrown at me by my ascribed status? I have been recommended to read Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich. I should comment at least after reading the book, or after I have made sense of a question lingers at the back of my mind: Where do you draw the line between individual responsibility and nihilistic reliance on self-victimizing?
We put so much responsibility on the individuals instead of the systems, Klein wrote. When the responsibility towards oneself is coming from within,I believe, self-optimization becomes a convenient narrative. Social and economic condition or being content with it may or may not be individual’s burden to bear, but when we rely solely on self-optimization or its lacking off to explain human happiness and misery long after the age of God is Dead, we may have been simply filling the void with poison that leads to endless pursuit of materialistic well-being and eventual eugenics.
Yes the color name. 