Toxic virility

“No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.”
~ Simone de Beauvoir

This is “sometimes” true, especially when a man makes virility the center of his male identity. His mission in life being the validation of his masculine worth and supremacy, defending himself against anyone who challenges or adds an air of doubt to this egocentric ideal: the proof and recognition of his manliness.

Rather than explore his underlying fear of emasculation, he scapegoats or blames others for it—sometimes with a vengeance. Unconsciously, he attracts or seeks those who poke at his fear—intentionally or otherwise—increasing his level of anxiety, anger, and aggression.

Libido reimagined

“Libido can never be apprehended except in a definite form; that is to say, it is identical with fantasy-images. And we can only release it from the grip of the unconscious by bringing up the corresponding fantasy-images.”
~The Collected Works of C. G. Jung

As a simplified definition, libido is the energy that animates human life. In and of itself, it is no different than the energy that creates or moves everything in the universe, except that it is scaled down for human use. Libido is sometimes referred to as the life force, sex drive, psychic energy, kundalini, the creative or divine spark, etc.

Like most manifestations of energy, you cannot perceive libido through the human senses or mind alone, unless it presents itself in a form that you’re able to recognize and experience, which is what the Jungian related quote refers to.

We don’t perceive the wind until it blows against or moves something. We don’t see moisture in the air until it forms into a dewdrop, raindrop, cloud, etc. The key word being form: energy or life experienced through form. This necessity for form is not any different for libido, except that it’s often manifested to us through imagined forms or mental projections, especially when a tangible form of something we need or seek to experience does not exist in the outer world (objective reality). As Aristotle once said, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” especially the human mind, and so it imagines what is not completely perceivable or accessible in the outer world as we conceive it.

We experience our lives in both the physical world—if such a thing exists—and imagined worlds of our making—often a hybrid of both: our imaginings projected onto physical reality, like painted art on a canvas. In fact, modern psychological theory straddles the fine line between understanding the effects of the outer, tangible world versus our inner worlds (mental, emotional, and unconscious). Nowadays, there is a great controversy over this very topic, as to what has the greater influence over individuals and whole societies: the so called outer world of tangible circumstances or our imagined worlds—good and bad.

Note: Initially, Freud narrowly defined libido as the energy behind our sex drives, while Jung conceived libido as propelling the full range of human experience, with its many nuances of expression: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, symbolic, archetypal, mythological, creative, artistic, dreaming, etc.

Dystopia #2: The hills

Traded my bus ticket for an old phone with a journal app. No service or WiFi. The bus ticket was useless; where could I go on the remaining $4.72? I’ll travel by foot from now on, journaling as I move along, from place to place, kind of like Marco Polo in Invisible Cities.

So, today, on my way to nowhere, I passed a scraggly looking man in a stained white T-shirt, torn jeans showing too much like a flasher, and a cap with “Sinner” on the front. He was sitting on the sidewalk curb with an old tattered bible by his side, pointing a finger towards the city limits.

I pretended to fiddle with my phone, when he said in a trembling voice, “Fella, watch out for the girls in the hills over there, they’re not fully human.”

He repeated the same to a straggler passing behind me, my curiosity was piqued.

“What hills?” I asked him.

“Down yonder, over there, beyond the city.” His crooked finger still pointing and appearing frozen in place, catatonic like.

Continue reading “Dystopia #2: The hills” →

Invasion of the chatbots

Artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing into the various domains of online activity, mimicking human language, intelligence, and emotions. Without a doubt, we’ve entered the “coming-of-age” era of the AI chatbot, which is intended to blur the lines between human and algorithm. Our ability to distinguish human authenticity from the mere appearance of such, has never been so difficult.

What are the differences between online scammers, predators, and hackers? The web has been overrun by these categories of BS artists, ever since the beginning of the web, but much more so in recent years. The differences between the three are their nefarious agendas, which the typical Internet/social media/app user doesn’t notice until it is too late. For the more aware or cautious users among us, the red flags may become obvious early on, but this is becoming less feasible with time, as the fraudsters adapt and refine their skill set for deception.

Now, however, the AI chatbot has added yet another layer of complexity, transforming digital space into a virtual obstacle course of robotic fraudsters. The scammers, predators, and hackers are not always human anymore, or dare I say, “not often” human anymore. How does one differentiate between human and robotic, when the differences are becoming more indiscernible by the day, as AI technology advances?

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. AI has already infiltrated the domains of social media, news media, publishing, politics, and pop psychology, with its generated clickbait, misinformation, and fake news, which now includes manufactured images and videos that simulate reality with a high degree of precision and realism, further blurring the line between authenticity and appearance.

The imagined and real

What is your relationship with experience? To create ideas and theories around your ongoing stream of experiences? Or wait for an experience to validate your long-standing ideals and cherished beliefs? Many people go with the second option, believing in a collection of unproven abstractions for many years, but later feeling disillusioned by emerging discrepancies between expectation and reality.

Our lives are often like a tale of two worlds: the imagined and real.