The Lenny and Tyler Show

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In this episode I interview Andrew Luber who I have gotten to know through O.G. Rose (Daniel and Michelle Garner) and their weekly “The Net” zoom gathering. Andrew and I discuss his interest and emphasis on Theme and how it arises from stories and conversations.  Some of this was admittedly over my head, but I feel a certain theme has arisen after the fact and it is just that: Theme always arises unconsciously and is recognized only after the fact — apre coup. As with many of my conversations on here, I love revisiting them months down the road and hearing and understanding so much more than I did at the time of the recording. Thank you Andrew. And thank you to anyone that tunes in. 

Just catching up with my friend Seth.

Dr. Richard Boothby is professor of philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. He is the author of a handful of books on Freud and Lacan and Philosophy. I have been obsessively reading his latest two books: Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred and Blown Away: Refinding Life after My Son’s Suicide.  In our talk we lay out how Lacan theorizes anxiety and its relation to das Ding: the enigmatic, unknown zone of the other. Richard shows how this theory of anxiety differs from those put forth by Heidegger and Sartre. For Sartre anxiety was linked to the radical dizzying, nausea inducing freedom that we as humans essentially are. It's not just that we fear falling off a cliff when standing next to its edge, we fear that we ourselves might throw ourselves off. It's our freedom to do so or not. There's no one stopping you from doing it except you. However, Lacan complicates anxiety one step further. Yes, it is eventually linked with one’s existential freedom, but Lacan crucially first locates the primary source of anxiety somewhere else—within the neighbor, indeed the first neighbor: the mOther. Boothby explains how Lacan reframed Freud’s Oedipus Complex insisting that it’s actually the infant, not the father, that weans itself and argues that it’s the the name of the father: the function of language, rituals, symbolic gestures and identities that helps to allay the infant’s anxiety in face of das Ding. For Boothby, these Lacanian concepts ultimately help us to rethink the origin of the sacred, and they shed light on how we might better understand why we continually in the terrifying confrontation with das Ding tend towards forms of tribalism. In the end, Boothby’s challenge is for us to remain open to das Ding. In a similar manner, every effective analyst must undergo a transformation in their desire. One that becomes directed to the unconscious in the other. In the face of the das Ding of the other, the monstrousness of the neighbor, the analyst like the saint courageously welcomes what others have at best only ever tolerated. The analyst with a sincere and gentle curiosity, without judgment welcomes das Ding's arrival. This openness to the otherness of the other and even to the otherness in oneself, is what Boothby sees as the injunction of Christ: to love not only the neighbor, but also the enemy.

My dear friends it’s my privilege to introduce to you the one and only Matt Blakeslee. He has been such a wonderful friend to me for many years. He’s the guy that’s responsible for so many great things Billings including the Art House Cinema and Pub, CMYK (back in the day), multiple albums by some of Billings’ best musicians and his own album: Fare Thee Well — which we talk about a bit during this interview.  He has over the years courageously, publicly shared his struggles with faith, belief, doubt, complexity, ambiguity and has been gracious to me and others even when we at times opposed him — often to later realize one day that we needed his friendship as we too entered our struggles with faith.  Thanks Matt!

We’re back! I’m hoping to record and publish more conversations with friends once again on a more consistent basis. Kole is one such friend that I hope to record regular chats with.  In this episode we learn a little about Kole’s faith, his studies in Bible School, how it related to CrossFit, and then we end up talking a little about the Brother K by Dostoyevsky. 

This week I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Jamieson Webster.  I have recently been reading her book: Disorganization and Sex and highly recommend reading it as well as her recent article in the New York Times entitled I Don't Need to Be a 'Good Person.' Neither Do You.  I was thrilled to get to hear Jamieson's thoughts on the unconcious, superego, guilt, transgression, and how psychoanalysis might help to give desire back to the subject and also how we might alleviate anxiety and guilt on a more collective level. You can find many fascinating interviews with Jamieson on Youtube as well!  ... Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She is the author of The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2011) and Conversion Disorder (Columbia University Press, 2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Pantheon, 2013). She contributes regularly to Artforum, Spike Art Magazine, Apology and the New York Review of Books.

Ideal Ego: who we desire to become (curated Instagram image of self)   Ego Ideal: that for whom we wish to become our Ideal Ego (the person whose ‘like’ or ‘view’ on Instagram matters most, however the Ego Ideal can also be broader and more vague than one person. It can be rooted in what a given society deems important or the values of one’s family. For me, “The Murphy Way” can function as an Ego Ideal.)   When we are released from a "givens" I believe this has occurred because of an intrusion from the real and that this intrusion forces us to reconsider the goodness or validity or substantiality of our Ego Ideal — the object cause of our desire. Losing the object cause of desire can lead to existential anxiety, nihilism, a sense of being unmoored and that we don’t belong anywhere, and depression. If having an Ego Ideal — an other in whose goodness you trust and whose goodness and pleasure you seek to invoke — is necessary for human flourishing, then how do we conciously and wisely choose an ego ideal that will not let us down like the last one did? Is it even possible to conciously choose our Ego Ideal? I kind of don’t think so. Instead I think that the kind of Ego Ideal that won’t break our hearts is the kind that chooses us.   Mari Ruti often emphasizes the idea that as we live life we will find that we are at times summoned by people, places, events, areas of study and any number of various activities and that as we remain faithful to the things we feel compelled to follow — as we heed the summons eminating from certain objects we will find a peculiar kind of freedom. It’s in a sense a paradoxical freedom, because it’s as if we have no say in the matter. Here I stand. I can do no other.   Todd McGowan makes a similar point in a talk entitled Capitalist Subjectivity and Unconcious Freedom:   "The unconcious acts freely prior to the intrusion of conciousness which is always kind of lagging behind and so concious will is never free in the way the unconcious is, but if we're unconciously free this means that freedom is also radically opposed to free will. So whenever anybody says to me, "Do you believe in free will?" I say, "No, but I believe in freedom."   And,   "The most that conciousness can do in the face of our unconcious freedom is to acknowledge its priority and identify the unconcious act as an expression of the subject's desire."   In other words, freedom is concious only in so far as it cosigns the check its unconcious already wrote. And in my experience this feels quite true. Never am I more alive, more guilt free, than when I have remained faithful to the singularity of my desire. I am most myself when I have followed what I know in my heart I have to do even when such a stance is indefensible to others and even to my concious, rational self.   Isn’t remaining faithful to one’s singular desire just hedonism? This is a very difficult question, but ultimately I don’t think it is. Let me see if I can argue for why it isn’t ultimately hedonistic …   Throughout McGowan’s work he argues that we achieve unconcious satisfaction through sacrifice. When we over eat or drink excessively or even workout excessively to the point of injury we sacrifice our future health. There is an undeniable satisfaction in creating problems for ourselves. Life is always at least psychically more interesting, though usually more painful, when it’s imploding. Racking up debt, procrastinating what you really shouldn’t procrastinate, making oneself more machine than man, hitting the “self destruct” button on a relationship by saying the one thing that would cause it to all fall apart — these are all various ways we get unconcious satisfaction. What’s common to all these scenarios is that we in some way are sacrificing what would be our own good. In the same way, remaining faithful to the summons of love sacrifices one’s own good. Often the summons of love calls us to act a fool or destroy our symbolic identities. As Zizek says, “Love is a catastrophe!” It’s not hedonistic because it sacrifices one’s own good.   So what have we learned? I’d argue that a 'release' occurs when an Ego Ideal is revealed as insubstantial. But without an Ego Ideal we are prone to nihilism and depression. Painful though these moments are, confrontation with this negativity is the necessary condition to experience something like a summons in which a new sort of Ego Ideal begins to emerge.

Daniel Garner returns for another wonderful conversation. Daniel explains in more depth terms like "givens" and "releases". From there we touch on Lacan's Ego Ideal and the Ideal Ego and how the loss of faith in the substantiality of an Ego Ideal may lead to the experience of a release. This then brings us to thinking of C.S. Lewis and his conception of Glory as fame/acknowledgement/recognition with God and how love actually does involve desiring the desire and praise of an other. After a release has occurred the question becomes who or what will occupy the position of the Ego Ideal... ?   We also talk a good deal about leisure and how it differs from toil, laziness, and sloth. Daniel brings out an important distinction between toil and work and how as a parent he loves finding that his kids are at times lost in their play and work.  We finish the conversation with some great thoughts on the skills of community building. How consistency is key and how a home is place where the door is always open. 

Alyse, Josh, and I discuss Barbie! I loved the film and started to immediately write an essay on it which I have attached below. I still have lots more to add to it. Alyse and Josh really helped to shed new perspective on the film for me as well! ... Barbie   Starts out with homage to 2001 Space Oddysee ... the girls only have baby dolls and therefore only ever play and dream about being mothers and housewives.   But then The Barbie, a giant monolithic Margot Robbie, is introduced and suddenly a new form of play, a new way to dream, a new horizon of possibility becomes available. The girls destroy their baby dolls. This act symbolizes the growing dissatisfaction of women being relegated to the scripts of mother and housewife.   The film then goes into idyllic Barbieland where the Barbies rule the supreme court and white house. They can be any occupation. We see Barbie as doctor, president, journalist, author, even construction worker. It's a utopia where everyday is positive, beautiful, and fun.    Barbie hosts a dance party at her dream house. All the sudden, in the middle of dancing, out of no where Barbie blurts, "You guys ever think about dieing?!" The record screeches, the party comes to a halt ... Barbie is confused, uncertain of why she's said that. She recovers with a, "I mean you guys ever think about how much your dieing to dance?!"    The outburst brings to mind the Lacanian understanding of the unconcious: a nothing that becomes a something through slips of the tongue, dreams, nightmares and jokes ...these all point to the ways our symbolic and imaginary identities do not correspond one to one with our actualities. In other words the unconcious makes itself known through the difference between the map and the territory.   For Freud such outbursts point to an unconcious desire or uncognized traumatic past event that conciousness is not yet ready to fully confront and take ownership of. Barbie seeks to repress the intrusive thought of death. She covers over the slip with a, "You guys ever think about how much your dieing to dance?!" Which alows the party to resume. We engage in similar acts of repression anytime we shrug off intrusive thoughts that may cause us to challenge our given status quo when we utter thought terminating cliches like, "it is what it is," or, "boys will be boys," or, "just trust the plan." Such phrases stave off for the moment cognitive dissonance and allow for the continuation of the functioning of a given structure. However, for Freud, what we repress always returns through symptoms -- sometimes bodily symptoms as seen with Barbie after she tries the repress the intrusive thoughts but finds that her feet have inexplicably flattened. (It should be noted that Freud eventually came to believe that repression is necessary ... for example its necessary that the ceaselessly questioning child eventually is stopped by the thought terminating cliche, "Because I said so." Such a statement is a necessary tautology. For more on the necessity of Law as form see Todd McGowan's video.)   Barbie's friends tell her that she must go to Weird Barbie to be fixed. Just as the children of Israel had to return to the wilderness and to their prophets when things went wrong so too must Barbie venture to the outskirts of Barbieland. Weird Barbie, a kind of John the Baptist type figure is the only one who can help Barbie ...   to be continued...