Earlier this year Elon Musk proclaimed to millions of Joe Rogan fans, “The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.” This is where we live--in a culture that openly rewards sociopathy and demands empathy remain within the boundaries of a homogenous crowd to not slow down capitalism. 

In his book, The Agony of Eros, critical theorist Byung-Chul Han diagnoses western civilization as narcissistically disordered and practically damned were it not for his hope in Eros:

 Through its universal power, [Eros] combines the artistic, the  existential, and the political. Eros manifests itself as the  revolutionary yearning for an entirely different way of loving and  another kind of  society. Thereby, it remains faithful to what is yet to  come.

A few months ago, CCP celebrated its 40^th Anniversary. We spoke of our history as well as our sense, as individuals and as a group, of not belonging wholly to this culture. For whatever reason this is the call we have each responded to and maybe this sense of alienation can allow us more pride in our belonging to this crowd that doesn’t belong.

CCP aims to expand the reach of this alienation: our Racial Equity Committee will begin its second year of work, incorporating the recommendations of the Holmes Commission Reading Groups and CCP is also launching a pilot project, The Community Psychoanalytic Track, to bring psychoanalytic training into community mental health centers. 

This effort to turn and see who is excluded becomes a more pressing issue with each social media news cycle. Belonging to something demands this responsibility toward our patients, to each other, and to those unlike ourselves. 

The poet Claudia Rankine wrote in Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: 

One waits to recognize the other, to see the other as one sees the self. Levinas writes, “The subject who speaks is situated in relation to the other. This privilege of the other ceases to be incomprehensible once we admit the first fact of existence is neither being in itself nor being for itself but being for the other, in other words, that human existence is a creature. By offering a word, the subject putting himself forward lays himself open and, in a sense, prays.”

As powerless as we may be in this political landscape, our responsibility according to Levinas is, at the very least, to not look away from the suffering of others. 

In his book, The Tao of Wu, RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan outlined his own metaphysics built on Islam and Christianity, kung-fu movies and Taoism, the Hebrew Bible, the speeches of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, as well as the mythologies of Shaolin monks and Marvel comic books, to say:

 … right there, that may be the most important lesson you can get. It’s Mathematics, baby. We’re all one. But in this world, that kind of thing can take decades to see clearly. Not everyone has that much time, or those opportunities.

We have the time and our opportunity to continue weakening western civilization the best we can. 

If you haven’t already, please join us here. 

Thanks

Zak Mucha

Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis