The Therapeutic Imagination
The text below is a composite of two texts to be featured in my upcoming book, Twin Killers: Dispatches Against Global Apartheid and Planetary Ecocide. The book will also include revised and expanded versions of several other dispatches that have been featured on this site over the past year. Please stay tuned for more information on the book’s release.
It reads like the set up for a Hollywood science fiction but it is, in fact, our world today:
Life on our beautiful blue-green planet is being depleted and devastated by a global apartheid regime engineered by a Racial Capitalist Empire bent on planetary ecocide.
As our story begins, a hundred million human beings are already displaced; 2 billion are hungry and 4 billion in poverty; climate catastrophes have only just begun and are likely to submit hundreds of millions more, if not a billion, to these same plights; the planet’s wildlife populations are experiencing a precipitous decline, having plummeted more than two-thirds over the past 50 years; half of the planet’s languages are in danger of extinction and likely to disappear within the next century; and the social and economic fallout from a global pandemic has inspired the governments of the whiter, richer nations at Empire’s core to blow their bureaucratic, militarized border regimes out of all proportion, to repulse peoples from the darker, poorer nations of the periphery.
The powers and privileges that have yielded such psychopathic cruelties are reserved for “white men” who preach the “gospel of growth” and for that “talented tenth” that aids and abets them as proxies and redeemers — the latter having been fractioned off from demographic groups otherwise subject to dispossession, denigration, exploitation, and extermination.
To make matters even worse, the Empire’s floundering hegemon is using its “discretion” to fund its police and military forces above all else in preparation for who knows what…
Hollywood and its many imitators have imagined ecological collapse, pandemics, and the rise and fall of a dystopian Empire bent on destroying all life on Earth, but they have imagined it all as fast-paced, linear, hypnotic excitement, with events unfolding in accelerating succession like the downing of cleverly placed rows of dominoes. In reality, it has been a deathly, nebulous, 600 year slog.
The Hollywood imagination has warped our sense of reality to such an extreme that many of us struggle to grasp the events of immense import that are now unfolding — slowly, surreptitiously, and in a non-linear fashion. What’s more, the Hollywood imagination, with its councils of ingenious and self-consciously venal elites and caricatures of villainous conspiracies, blinds us to the less spectacular but more disturbing reality: the opportunistic collusion of unconscious ethno-class interests that has quietly maintained and advanced global apartheid, and derived both pleasure and profit from perpetrating and perpetuating planetary ecocide. In so doing, the Hollywood imagination has also effectively eroded our ability to even recognize movements of peoples endeavoring to overthrow global apartheid and put a stop to planetary ecocide.
The Arthouse imagination, positing itself as the alternative, turns out to play its own role in this erosion. As learned academics and aesthetes dazzle us with so many inventions and subversions of formal conventions, they prevent us from attending to their indifference to disturbing content and oppressive contexts. The Arthouse imagination does for the refined taste what the Hollywood imagination does for the crude masses: fool us into thinking that our everyday lives are boring, ugly, and meaningless compared to the fantasies that they each serve us as diversions. Different means towards the same end, they both make it easier to imagine a catastrophic end of everything, and more difficult to imagine a graceful end to the global apartheid that is pushing planetary ecocide.
My aim in writing and publishing this book is to counter the debilitating effects of the Hollywood and Arthouse imaginations, and to enable my readers not only to imagine but, better still, to recognize past and present radical peoples’ movements against the twin killers of global apartheid and planetary ecocide.
Reading this book, some will discover that, unbeknownst to themselves, they have already been participating in radical peoples’ movements in the most unexpected of ways. Others will discover that they have unwittingly been complicit in the crushing of radical peoples’ movements. And a good many will discover that they have been, by bizarre twists of fate and circumstance, either by turns, or at one and the very same time, both vital supporters of and fatal accomplices to the destruction of these movements. Consciously or unconsciously, we are all playing a part in the most epic battle for the life and beauty of the Earth: the struggle between the wild and rebellious forces of Nature, and the genocidal, ethnocidal, and ecocidal forces of Empire. Ay, and the imperative for those who discover themselves on the wrong side of this conflict is to make every effort to desert the forces of Empire, and defect to the forces of Nature.
There is an essay by John Berger that I love. It is titled “Wanting Now.”
I have probably read it two or three dozen times. It is short. It is sweet. It is rousingly life affirming.
That being said, having read it so many times, I have come to be acquainted with places where one might slip in, heave up, and throw out elements of the text in order to shake things up and raise issues to greater attention.
The moment in Berger’s essay that I would like to slip into lies in the following passage:
[...] Not all desires lead to freedom, but freedom is the experience of a desire being acknowledged, chosen and pursued. Desire never concerns the mere possession of something, but the changing of something. Desire is a wanting. A wanting now. Freedom does not constitute the fulfillment of that wanting, but the acknowledgment of its supremacy.
Berger is rock solid in asserting that “desire never concerns the mere possession of something,” but what is meant by the claim that desire concerns “the changing of something?” It is easy for one to (mis)read Berger and argue that he is claiming that it is desire that initiates change, but I believe that Berger is saying something else altogether. It is not that desire initiates change but that desire cares for and nurtures that which is already changing and, in doing so, aims to encourage healthy changes. Desire, then, is a specific kind of wanting; it is a wanting to care or, more simply, desire is a caring. A caring now. Freedom does not constitute the fruition of that caring, but the acknowledgement of its priority.
There is no stopping change: it is not only coming, it is forever ongoing. Individuals and movements cannot initiate changes, nor can they ever stop them; they can only ever relate to change, and they can do so either with or without care. The question is not whether things will change or are changing but, rather, how we might nurture changes in process, and changes we see on the horizon. Those who acknowledge, choose, and pursue their desires are those who relate to change carefully and caringly so as to foster healthy, tonic changes. Those who repress their desires are those who relate to change carelessly and uncaringly, so as to allow unhealthy, toxic changes to take place.
Many of us have been taught to (mis)take desire for its opposite. Those who are desirous, we are taught, will seize every opportunity and grasp whatever they can, destroying much in the process. As long as they get what they want, we are taught, the desirous couldn’t care less for the world and its inhabitants. Thus we are taught that desire is a destructive force, and to act on desire is, thus, to negate and destroy.
Nothing could be further from reality than what we are taught.
To negate and destroy is either to restrain, restrict, and repress desire or to lash out against others in reaction to the restraint, restriction, and repression of desire. Blaming frustrated desires for the prevalence of negativity and destructiveness is equivalent to blaming bullied individuals and groups for the prevalence of bullying. It is not the frustrated desire, but the circumstances that frustrate desire, that are to blame for negativity and destructiveness. Again, desire is a caring. It is when people’s efforts to take care are frustrated that they become destroyers instead of caretakers. Indeed, the key to making sense of our world today is making sense of the fact that the primary aggressors are not usually the individuals and groups who engage in the spectacular acts of destruction that demand immediate attention. More often than not, the primary aggressors are those who deprive people of any and all motives, means, and opportunities to become caretakers and, instead, furnish them with so many motives, means, and opportunities to become destroyers.
The distinction between desire and cruel destructiveness can be likened to the distinction between power and force.
Power capitalizes on the successful deployment of force. You and I fight, your forces prevail over mine, you win. That is a successful deployment of force, but it is not yet the formation of power. Powers are formed when the winning forces withdraw on the condition that losing forces henceforth comply with their orders. The classic logic in this regard is, “If you don’t want to get a whooping like the one that I just delivered to that guy over there, then you’ll do what I say when I say it.” Rebels are those who disobey power’s orders and find out if there truly is a superior force behind a given power.
In a similar fashion, cruel destructiveness capitalizes on the frustrated deployment of desire. You want to care for someone or something, but you are kept from caring. Perhaps to care is to disobey power’s orders. Perhaps you are rebuffed by the opposing forces of the other, who has good reason to distrust, or be disgusted by, the ways in which you intend to show care. Whichever the case may be, you react badly to the frustration of your desire and you lash out against the object of your desire. The classic logic in this regard is, “If I can’t have you, no one will.” But the equivalent logic is, “Knowing that you will not be mine forever, I will use you up while I have you in my grasp.” It is a person’s childish inability to deal with the frustration of their desire or, more profoundly still, their inability to deal with the prospect that their desire will eventually be frustrated, that leads to cruel destructiveness. The mature person is one who knows how to deal with their frustration without lashing out against the objects of their desire.
The inability to deal with frustrated desire is, as I see it, at the core of patriarchy, and the (con-)fusion of desire with cruel destructiveness defines the patriarchal power formations that prevail over our deathly world of suffering. Take for instance, the perspective of the “Primal Father” in my poem of the same name:
He could not
protect His child
from being taught
difficult lessons
by Mother Nature
but He could beat her
at her own game
by teaching His child
harsh lessons
early and often
before She determined
the time is ripe.
The Primal Father’s desire to care for his child is frustrated by Mother Nature, and so the Primal Father becomes cruelly destructive towards his child to spite Mother Nature.
Alternatively, consider the homophobe who violently beats up queer, trans, and gay persons. The homophobe does this because they desire relations with queer, trans, and gay persons but their desires have been frustrated by their fear of being persecuted for desiring queer, trans, and gay persons. This is to say that, in other words, the cruel destructiveness that the homophobe exhibits towards queer, trans, and gay persons is the pathological expression of their frustrated desires for queer, trans, and gay persons. Similarly, the cruel destructiveness that the white-supremacists exhibits towards Black and colored peoples is the pathological expression of their frustrated desires for Black and colored peoples, and the cruel destructiveness of masculinist rape culture towards women is the pathological expression of men’s frustrated desires for women. Lacking the maturity to investigate and come to terms with their frustration, the Primal Father, the homophobe, the white-supremacist, and the male chauvinist are all childishly immature: they lash out from frustration, denigrating and destroying the objects of their desires and/or whatever reminds them of such.
III.
The Hollywood imagination would have us believe three things. First, it would have us believe that individuals are responsible for making change and preventing change. Second, it would have us believe that evil are those who actively participate in the most spectacular acts of cruelty and destruction. Third, it would have us believe that unrestrained desire is at the root of all evil.
To this end, the Hollywood imagination works to obscure the fact that evil, in reality, scrupulously insulates itself from spectacular acts of cruelty and destruction and, instead, delights in restraining, restricting, and repressing desire in the subtlest ways, and in depriving people of motives, means, and opportunities to care for themselves and others in the most devious ways. Against the Hollywood imagination, I hold that evil are those who scheme to arrange circumstances to frustrate others’ desires in order to cope with the pain of having had their own desires frustrated. Ay, the root of all evil is not desire itself, but the arrangement of circumstances to frustrate desire and encourage spectacular acts of cruelty and destruction thereby.
The evil doer endeavors to destroy the object of their frustrated desire indirectly by frustrating the desire of other persons for the same or similar objects and encouraging them to lash out in destructive ways. The evil doer does not pull the trigger but, instead, grooms triggermen, guarantees them access to guns, and supplies them with ample motives and opportunities to pull the trigger. Though his actions are cruel and destructive, the white male mass shooter who fires upon a crowd of protestors gathered to denounce police brutality is not, himself, evil. Rather, he is the victim and vehicle of evil. Evil are those reactionary politicians and pundits who endeavor to rewrite history and trivialize the horrors of settler-colonialism, white-supremacy, and rape culture; who enable and encourage guns to proliferate; who promote policies to make employment the only way for most people to secure housing, food, and health care, while also pushing policies that increase un/under-employment; who then blame the “woke mob” for the decline of Amerikkkan masculinity and denounce liberal “cucks” and “snowflakes” for taking away good paying jobs from hardworking white men and giving handouts to undeserving women, queers, and Black and colored people.
Going further and digging deeper, the Hollywood imagination would have us believe that heroic figures are those who spectacularly confront those who perpetrate spectacular acts of cruelty and destruction. So-called “anti-fascists” who take their cues from Hollywood movies believe that trading bullets and blows with neo-fascist Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, Boogaloos, police officers and other white triggermen makes them heroes. Again, nothing could be further from reality. Hollywood heroes and their imitators never actually confront evil doers: they only ever confront victims and vehicles of evil. What’s more, taking into account the spectacularly cruel and destructive manner in which they confront the victims and vehicles of evil, Hollywood heroes and their imitators are themselves destroyers as opposed to caretakers, which is to say that they are themselves victims and vehicles of evil — lesser victims and vehicles, certainly, but victims and vehicles all the same.
Overstimulating our senses with flashy depictions of the cruel and destructive deeds of greater (villainous) and lesser (heroic) victims and vehicles of evil, the Hollywood imagination displays little regard for desire as caring; little regard for freedom as acknowledging, choosing, and pursuing desire as such; and little regard for countering evil by enabling and enacting freedom as such.
We will not overthrow global apartheid and put a stop to planetary ecocide, the evil scourges of our time, by fighting a war of maneuver against the private and public police, militaries, and paramilitaries who guard de facto and de jure borders and secure the factories, mines, and pipelines that manufacture ecocide. No doubt about it: we will have to defend ourselves against these genocidal, ethnocidal, and ecocidal forces of the evil that are Empire, for they are waging a war against us. However, dedicating all of our energies to waging a heroic war of attrition against these forces in return will be the surest way for us to become and remain victims and vehicles of evil..
If we are to overthrow global apartheid and put a stop to planetary ecocide, we must enable and enact freedom as the acknowledgment, choice, and pursuit of desire as caring, here and now, for changes in process and changes we see on the horizon.
We must be humble in this regard and we mustn’t imagine that we can initiate change or put a stop to change. Rather, we must focus and respond to changes happening and likely to happen and do whatever we can do to encourage these changes to develop and unfold in healthy, tonic ways. Sometimes this might mean endeavoring to slow changes, sometimes to speed them up, sometimes to upset their rhythms, sometimes to complement their rhythms. We cannot force changes but we can inflect, deflect, reflect them in tonic ways.
Our inability to force changes is not a flaw but a basic feature of reality that we must leverage against the evil that is Empire. It is Empire, in its hubris, that needs to maintain false claims to have initiated and prevented changes when, in fact, it has only ever inflected, deflected, reflected changes in the most toxic ways.
To think that humans will take the lead in the fight against climate change, for instance, is self-aggrandizing madness. We will need to observe and take our cues from nature, to let forests, shrublands, wetlands, grasslands guide and lead us, rather than forcefully imposing our will on landscapes. The great mistake is to think that all life on Earth, excepting humanity, is mechanically reacting to climate change rather than actively processing and responding to it. We need to carefully observe other lifeforms’ diverse responses to climate change in order to carefully and caringly connect and coordinate our own responses with theirs. To recklessly take the lead, disregarding the sensibilities and sensitivities of other lifeforms, is to inflect, deflect, reflect climate changes in toxic ways, furthering planetary ecocide.
Against the Hollywood imagination, the Therapeutic imagination is patiently attentive: it encourages us to take time to attend to what is taking place in order to take careful and caring action with respect to what is taking place. The Therapeutic imagination dispenses with any and all fantasies of heroic good guys swooping in to save the day by beating up bad guys and locking them away. The Therapeutic imagination knows no superheroes but the most under-appreciated healers of the victims and vehicles of evil, those healers who endeavor to “see the spirit of sickness and remove it before it takes shape”, as described in the old story with which Thomas Cleary opens his translation of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
A lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled in the art.
The physician, whose reputation was such that his name became synonymous with medical science in China, replied, “My eldest brother sees the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house.
My elder brother cures illness when it is still extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood.
As for me, I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords.”
Going even further and digging even deeper, the Therapeutic imagination must also be distinguished from the Arthouse imagination. The latter would have us become like nurses who attend scrupulously to the arrangement and sterility of a hospital room, neglecting the patient lying ill in the very same room until the very last second and only in order to snatch them from the throes of death and place them back to teetering on the edge of the abyss. The Arthouse imagination would have us devote our time attending to the place, without ever properly attending to what is taking place, thereby keeping us from ever taking careful and caring action with respect to what is taking place. In other words, the Arthouse imagination would have us scrupulously attend to forms while neglecting their contents.
By contrast, with profound sensitivity and subtlety, the Therapeutic imagination stays with the trouble of continuously varying forms, faulting and repairing them in order to better convey and care for their ever changing contents. This process of staying with the trouble is a rhythmic process in which moments of patient attention (during which forms are subjected to stresses and strains as their contents change) are syncopated with moments of careful and caring action (during which forms are repaired and rested in order to better convey and care for their changed and changing contents).
The Therapeutic imagination’s syncopation of moments of patient attention, on the one hand, and careful and caring action, on the other, should be contrasted with the Hollywood imagination’s chain reactions, in which action alternates with reaction to create a domino effect, each successive action being a reaction to the preceding action. The chain reactions of the Hollywood imagination narrativize the back and forth between greater (villainous) and lesser (heroic) victims and vehicles of evil without properly recognizing evil doers and evil deeds.
The rhythms of the Therapeutic imagination should also be contrasted with those of the Arthouse imagination, which syncopates moments of orchestration, during which the dominoes are set up, with chain reactions, during which the dominoes fall. By featuring moments of orchestration, the Arthouse imagination recognizes the evil deed and the evil doer but, lacking moments of patient attention and moments of careful and caring action, the Arthouse imagination does not properly recognize healers and healing processes.
Only the Therapeutic imagination recognizes healers and healing processes by and through its syncopation of moments of patient attention and moments of careful and caring action.
In every life, there will be periods during which the Arthouse imagination appeals to and prevails over us, periods during which the Hollywood imagination appeals and prevails, and periods during which the Therapeutic imagination appeals and prevails. It is impossible to lead a life that knows nothing of the appeal of the Hollywood and Arthouse imaginations, but we can and must do everything one can to maximize the appeal and the prevalence of the Therapeutic imagination, and minimize that of the Hollywood and Arthouse imaginations. This is how we will learn to recognize those deserting the forces of Empire and defecting to the forces of Nature.
