The self and the environment: Conclusion
Julio Enrique Correa, M.D.jecorrea@retina.ar
Pvt. Jack Bell:
Love. Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war can put it
out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free. Pvt. Edward P. Train: What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The
land contends with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one
power, but two?
Based on films analysis made over
films chosen for their excellence and their connection with the environment,
we had proposed that together to integrating the lessons of the environment
emerge personal and group processes that are elicited by the narrative of
bereavement and its recreation, that in turn is based on the dynamics of
understanding and sharing together those group interpersonal bereavement
narratives. Thence, it may be stated that the dynamics of loss involve concerns
on both environment and human kind very sensitive matters. Following this,
the recovery of the environment would parallel the recovery in the human
understanding of losses affecting groups and persons. As it can be assessed
in any attempt for correction of behaviour, information is not enough for
inducing change if it is not accompanied by sufficient reflection and
emotional comprehension of the facts involving the subjects, environmental
change follows a same track for achieving acquisition of real practical knowledge
and the skills necessary for establishing the measures that are essential for
it and not for just a cosmetic variation. Such seems to be the case for the
delay if not the failure to achieve earth’s life urgent risks that had be
denounced during late XXth century: starvation, crowding, violence, poverty,
extensive disease and death in the majority of the world populations,
disappearance of native languages and cultures, massive extinction of plant
and animal species, loss of water supplies, deterioration of the atmosphere
indexes, and climate change due to the greenhouse effect [Le Monde Diplomatique Atlas, 2006].
The analysis of the six 2014 films
that were premiered in 2015, showed their protagonists in the midst of
environmental sceneries that trapped them in a most cruel unavoidable way
that in turn was reinforced by their helpless rigid cultures rewarding the
surviving heroes but condemning the most to mortal punishment as mice trapped
in a cheese box [Félix et Meira, 1994], alike thousands of employees trapped
within the Twin Towers, desperately running down the staircases. The
imprisonment under narrow spaces establishes conditioned behaviours to high
pressure settings, as would be determined by work boxes [Sils María, 2014],
by extreme competitive work conditions [Birdman, 2014], by the ruling under authoritarian
rigid social and cultural patterns [Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso, 1994;
Félix et Meira, 1994], by the totalitarian shaped political-religious power
systems [Leviathan, 1994] or by the ancient and contemporary myths adjusting to established socio-cultural needs that subdue persons to their
precise fulfillment [In the woods, 1994]. Only the poet Leopardi contested to
the social environment pressure for endorsing a common modern social self, brandishing
his personal self skills in relation to the natural environment [Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso, 1994].
Summarizing the first five studied
films during the lapse March-August 2015, all five analysis highlighted
denial or else acceptance of bereavement as a central core in the plot of the
stories where protagonists confronted with anguish of death in an unavoidable
very intense way that challenged their whole previous behaviors and beliefs,
which corresponds in the philosophical context to the
symbolization of the demon,
as it was described by Stefan Zweig when studying big solitaries’ literary productions as those from German
authors: Kleist – Hölderlin – Nietzsche (Zweig, 1951). The demon would become expression of
masked death instinct (enclosing death perception, death premonition and
death impulses) in the socio-cultural systems involving the personal,
inter-personal, group, social and cultural sub-systems. As a whole, three of the five films expressed the denial of bereavement
experiences by the protagonists together to praise their skills to remain in
touch with the social skills assuring success of the individual (“Birdman”, “The clouds of Sils María”)
or the group
(“Into the
Woods”; “The clouds of Sils María”);
while other two of the five films counteracted social pressure and denial of
bereavement by defying social criticism and rising claims in behalf of the
individual sufferings brought by despiteful social authorities ("Leviathan”;
“Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso”). Death perception, death premonition and death impulses would become
depressive and/or melancholic mood drives expressing the experiences of
mourning and bereavement under social isolation conditions. Otherwise, within
personal or group creative contexts, re-creative mechanisms for repairing
damage and favouring the understanding of loss, would enhance intimate
conversation, togetherness and trust amongst those close to the suffering (“Leopardi, il
giovane fabuloso”);
although censored by those other denying it ("Leviathan”;
“Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso”). Among the first group of films
denying bereavement, environment would become source of enormous anguish
encouraging suicide or disappearance (Birdman‘s
flight over New York’s skyscrapers; Maloja snake phenomenon surrounding suicide or disappearance of diverse “Sils María”
protagonists; the giant female tree
chopping that squashes over the two character mothers), whereas in the second
group accepting death and suffering at the mourning aftermath, natural
environment becomes the stage of drama, both in the cliffs and shores with
whale bones exposed to sea’s inclemency ("Leviathan”)
and in the volcano’s rage on the land or the island (“Leopardi, il
giovane fabuloso”), that the sky luminaries and earth’s plants might
attempt to accompany in the soothing
aims attempting to relieve anguish from entire solitude.
A
sixth film was selected for testing the hypothesis that established in the plot of all 2014’s stories
to share a common central core confronting protagonists
with masked anguish of death in an unavoidable very intense way.
The plot of the chosen film [Canadian film Félix et Meira,
2014] was not known before the construction of the
hypothesis, the selection criteria was made upon the excellence
(international cinema award/s) and the production and premiere dates (2014/
2015) of the film, hinting in this case the environment as an evasion from ice and freeze of
the cities lodging the protagonists which turn at last –as a discontinuous
gap with the former narrative– into fluent water streets when sailing in the Venice canals. As well that the other five previously
studied films, this sixth film highlighted denial/ acceptance of bereavement as depicted in the two religious and non religious groups to which both
protagonists belonged. It might be
posited that both protagonists strive to save their lives in the search of
environmental conditions that would help them to detach from incomprehension
and loneliness in their respective families and cultural systems and
encourage them to find mutual support for the togetherness they need for
transforming their lives. At last, as in the other analyzed films, mourning
work is not shared with their groups, nor treated in the couple, conducting the
protagonists to unpredictable future under isolation and big unavoidable suffering.
From a social point of view, a common plot in all the six 2014 studied
films would depict the struggle amongst the personal and the group selves with the social self
imposed by culture
and governments, attempting to reproduce and replicate their
organizational models and social stereotypes amongst the population groups
that they persistently intend to command, a task now incredibly facilitated by electronic technology.
According to Taylor (Carnevale and Weinstock, 2011) to be a person or a self in the ordinary meaning is to exist in a
space defined by distinctions of worth. A self is a being for whom certain
questions or categorical value have arisen and received at least partial
answers. Perhaps these have been given authoritatively by the culture more
than they have been elaborated in the deliberation of the person concerned,
but they are his in the sense that they are incorporated into his
self-understanding, in some degree and fashion. Further present attempts developed
in order to control and rule human population behaviors by machines and
diverse technical devices, would intend to standardize human selves into a
social self prototype easy to divulgate and possible to regulate by the State
control systems. In this sense might be seen the enhancement technologies (Elliot, 2011) that would search for
social acceptance of individuals, based on their need to be accepted in
the social groups as pair fellows if not as winners, not to become losers. Such a competition on the self modelling amongst the social narrative
and family narrative models (Correa& Hobbs, 2009)
might indorse discredit of the latter in behalf of the enchantment given by
the uninterrupted offer of multiple communication technologies and devices
that expand fast interactive group communication at expenses of reflective
person-to-person communication (Bowen, 1991).
Under such
dynamics the interpersonal group spaces that are able to achieve real
rational and emotional communication amongst persons and groups in constant
exercise of dialogue, reflection and comprehension, are circumvented by opening
the way to authoritative communicative standards as those masked under
technology. Such channels might accelerate arrival of messages without disposing
from the sufficient time and energy to decode their meaning and take profit
of their help to find real solutions for both the cultural and environmental
problems needing urgent measures to be implemented in order to correct
deviances in the political orders that rule the lives and futures of nations
and individuals. Those currently conduce to closed
alleys of false communication efforts amongst individuals that lead to suicidal attempts or disappearance, as
the ones featured in “Birdman” or in “Sils Maria”; or else to political murder masked as suicide and
inculpation of innocents at the diverse
social groups gathering in institutions and communities (as denounced in “Leviathan”), many times leading brilliant intelligent individuals to
find no possible relief from the hopelessness and desperation of feeling
unavoidably trapped within the totalitarian cruel social systems that impose
extermination to nations, cultures and groups diverting from their dominion
narratives or isolation to challenging
individuals –by different imprisonment methods and procedures that might
endure systematic radio and TV subliminal brainwashing, if not exposition to learned hopelessness conditioning-.
Otherwise perverted social narratives pretend to cast the personal or the
group members’ narratives into the viral
diffusion of commercial and politically biased narratives interested in
the promotion of false assumptions or false information implicating some kind
of irrational discredit of those opposing the establishment ideology.
Transforming into somebody able to escape from social pressures and to
save a surviving Self, keeping alive the desire of freedom and liberation,
would then run in parallel to nature’s survival mechanisms. As a winged god
in the Assyrian palace walls defying the origin of civilization at the same
place where most cruel hatred and terror from the Islamic State IS terrorists
behead scientists and political opponents, as well threaten the ancient
cultures by extermination; the artist challenges the big contemporary city, pleading
for survival instead from becoming erased from business (Birdman, 2014). By
no means Environment -as superior expression of the Divine- would bolster the
destruction of Art or indorse any ideological replacement by political or
religious imposed meanings or interpretations attempting to submit human
lives to rigid conventions. Moreover it reminds us that under such attack to
the core of human nature, environment and art continue to resist. In the realms of philosophy and art,
transformation remains a main transcendent possibility to reach, specially at
those times of changing patterns of life introduced by technology and
advances on diverse fields of knowledge and living standards that alter
radically the horizons of the persons living within the terms of life imposed
by rigid cultural societies and communities. “Birdman” or “The
Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance" ?! (2014), opening this cinema analysis
series, gives itself testimony of such an aim by keeping alive the magic of
an actor and cinema director beliefs even at times of defeat of his personal
strives to become an independent human being. Realizing his sense of failure
at the art profession, the protagonist’s insecurity that stems from it questions
his ability to face life and human relations, opening an urge for reparation.
Willing to become what he actually is, chased by the guilt commandments of
the American prototype winner that he would ought to become –as perhaps Arthur
Miller’s Willy Loman character in “Death of a Salesman”-, Riggan’s “Birdman”
escapes from reality and finds shelter in fantasy, crossing the line from a
theatre actor’s anxiety for success at Broadway to a remake of a Hollywood’s
comic hero, by means of a suicidal attempt that even when it fails, warrants
to be endlessly reenacted at last. The fantastic conversion of reality endangering destruction of men and
their nations into mythic landscapes are basic narrative arguments leading
belief in the power of nature to indorse very difficult human quests against
adversity, both at the individual and collective levels. Such narratives have
guided men trapped into severe disease, family conflict or severe social
situations at war and disaster. Most religions as well political endeavors
emerging at chaotic risk times had find inspiration in such a magic of
change. Even philosophers had become highly worried with such issues defying
personal, social and national values at times when authoritative totalitarian
forms of government clash with extensive social and national survival needs,
transforming them into claims of justice, independence and empowerment.
Instability
and extensive corruption of the ruling governments bring the need to find
security under reinforcement of ideologies that calm down the identity loss anxieties.
Such vulnerability makes individuals to “detach hands from their own
commandment of will”, turning them into “weak and hunted, which can’t guide
themselves into the tempest inevitably thrown against the reefs of their
destiny” (Stefan Zweig, 1951). “All creative spirit is inevitably brought
into a struggle with its demon, and it's always a passionate fight, heroic,
the most magnificent of all the battles” (Stefan Zweig, i). The unexpected end of Birdman looks to
find redemption from heaven as Superheroes would expect to obtain from their
magic skills, defeated from what he would otherwise deserve from his capacity
of developing new insights from the trial of reality and failure. Under this
scope the dialogue amongst the fantastic inner world now easily achieved with
the help of technology and its new possibilities of reaching contact with
larger social groups, don’t assure recognition for the isolated individual
nor that one that is to be departed with the task companions.
On the contrary to the social
format narratives reproducing and viralizing a stereotyped social self through
the social webs, without accomplishing real interpersonal communication and
dialogue, the personal and group narratives develop and grow within family
and small group systems that follow the literary matrix of
communication skills that can be found at the core of folk stories or fairy
tales (Correa, 1982/ 2000), giving enormous sustain for mourning work. In a
similar fashion as we have proposed for family storytelling in order to
transform the personal and family narratives (Correa, 2006), trans-cultural
group stories (Correa & Hobbs, 2007) would detach from enmeshment to past
bonds by establishing new ones aiming to transform guilt and punishment in the
cultural myths and recreate understanding by opening emotional comprehension
about the loss events that run together with environmental change. Natural
group mythopoiesis that stems from the family model of storytelling to the
group has an important function in shaping the group narrative construction
of bereavement integrated with the lessons of environment.
The issue of death anxiety that remained masked or
else it was expressed overtly against the social constraints by the various
protagonists in the seven studied films contrasts with the last two 2014 analyzed films: documentary films respectively centered on the visual narrative of the social and natural environment
and on the personal and group testimonies about the visual narratives
displayed by the cultural environment artists (cinema). This would provide us
arguments to discuss the relevance of the personal self in its involvement
with social and cultural matters that are shared by the different social and
cultural selves of our contemporary “post-modern” life.
1. The
Salt of the Earth directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro
Salgado tells about the personal artistic and social commitment of
photographer Sebastiao Salgado and his family that centered from a personal and family group viewpoints, in the
visual narratives of the human and natural environments subjected to
destruction -showing death and threat of death full expressions
installing in crowds and land that triggered unredeemed guilt and concrete
survival reactions in the narrator/s- as well as in giving
impressive esthetic testimony about their survival signs resisting definitive
loss. So Salgado’s life story enmeshes with the hunger,
thirst, endless wandering in the desert and forest, despair, loss of habitat,
malnutrition, terminal illness and massacre of thousands of defenseless
people. Through his camera and comments he describes the sorrows and pains of
different moments of the mourning process…”Such grim adventure in Rwanda. I left there
not believing in nothing more. I didn’t believe in the salvation of the human
species. We wouldn’t survive to such a thing. We didn’t merit living more. No
one would merit living. How many times I threw the camera to the floor for
crying for what I was watching”. Also, on the other
side he describes his own and wife painstaking spirit in bringing back life
to his family’s barren terrains: “Nobody
had ever attempted to replant the Atlantic tropical forest. Such hint came
from Léila, the photographer’s wife, probably from her desire of maintaining
alive the family spirit. During the next ten years what occurred in those
lands was a miracle that converted since that moment into the Terra
Institute”// “There is more than one thousand springs of water returning anew
to the soil of Terra Institute. There are 2,5 and half million trees planted.
Feral animals had also come back including jaguars.//It’s my life and Léila’s
life once again. It continues to be our history. It took part of my children
story and now it’s of my old age. And so the day that I will die we will
leave here the forest that existed before I was born, therefore a cycle will
be completed. It’s my life history.” (The Salt of the earth, 2014).
2. On the other hand, counteracting the trend of the studied 2014 films
which would attempt to withdraw the protagonists from their personal scopes
up to make them become outsiders of their wills and roles, Ebert’s and James’ message at the documentary
film “Life Itself” that tells about Roger Ebert’s professional biography and
death processes, reinforce the belief in the
possibility of human encounter just when the end would command the opposite. The
cinema spirit of Roger Ebert and his group defies the alien road that would
set human beings on a grim cultural environment at the start of the new
millennium -presided by doomsday events of most ghoulish design as the
terrorist attacks against defenceless people and emblematic architectures of
the past and present, or the world´s destructive irreversible threats to the
environment and the living species-. Although the documentary that takes the title of a book from Roger Ebert that is
called Life
Itself does not consider environment as a
key issue, it surely ends the 2014 film series analysis made since March
2015, as the alpha and omega of relevant art communication concerning the
cultural environment. The
film was constructed with interspersed footage and interviews with Roger
Ebert during the last four months of his life at the terminal
stage of his disease along interviews together with his wife Chaz and other
relatives, his friends, colleagues and
scholars, together with notes on the important association
with film critic Gene Siskel. This film was nominated for several festival awards and
it was premiered at the 2014 Sundance
Film Festival for honoring Ebert.
The quest from both, photographer Sebastiao
Salgado and film critic Roger Ebert as shown in their films made together
with other narrators, builds a narrative that
conveys everybody in the creation of a new group story. It was in the movies around the beginning of the
last’s century decade year period, where particularly could be seen and
heard, the constant talk of the dyad formed by man in his own effort to
communicate and the universe containing him and beating together with him in
the same infinitude. Being able to tolerate
uncertainty when the end of life cycles arrive -as the very hard social
transitions putting at risk man’s identity, man`s natural and urban
environments, man`s family and social appurtenances- later leads fertile
creativity to succeed death, dreadful endings and nature or man-made stormy
destructions, emerging unnoticed alike a fantastic marine creature (see “The Colomber”, Correa & Hobbs, 2007). The myth of eternal return [The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and
History, Mircea Eliade] calls the ability to return to the mythical age as to live in a poetic
dimension, summoning
up story-tellers around the fire or else asked by nowadays technologic
mega-narrators at the screens to listen to their messages, not just for
entertainment but for believing even completely alone in the marvelous ahead,
as it largely endured humans when primitively faced their earth and skies (Correa, 1992). The relationship of man to
the Environment are highlighted at both literature and cinema by creating
“doubles” that amalgamate man and nature into fantastic
characters, nurturing further the cultural appraisal of the environment
through multiple narratives created along the whole cultural axis.
The theatrical mask or “Persona”
arises as a double of the self that might adopt many different disguises in
the adventures played by a unique hero in the
tragic catharsis. This mask must be adopted as a survival device in the same
way animals protect from predators by “fusing” with the environment or hiding
with borrowed elements from nature. Such false appearance would correspond to
a false self or double in the psychological realm (Winnicott,
1965), constituting an overdevelopment
of certain aspects of the self at the expense of other aspects, an adaptive
response to parental pressure in the early family environment that
combines later with social pressures at school and other social environments
attempting to model the individual at their same ways; “Other people's
expectations can become of overriding importance, overlaying or contradicting
the original sense of self, the one connected to the very roots of one's
being”, that correspond to a sense of self based on the spontaneous authentic
experience and feeling of being alive
(Winnicott, 1994). In the process of mourning crystallizes a phenomenon
of psychic integration in the lost nucleus of the true self that evolves in
some treated psychotic patients (Winnicott, 1958), in creativity (Hagglund,
1975/ 1976; Correa, 2001) and in the psychological growth and personal
integration of the dying patient (Zinker & Fink, 1966). According to
Winnicott the dispute between the true self and the false self confronts the spontaneous
authentic experience and feeling of
being alive with the despair of choosing to be another; in fact the “To be or not to be” dilemma is
presented to every dying person eliciting responses to the basic human needs
that might had been largely denied or postponed.
The terminal process of Roger Ebert, depicts a continuous
appeal to life that grew in consonance with the height of his humane
conditions and appalling veracity in his communication appeal with all the
members of his group, while the false transitory aspects of self are
successively discarded, in the same way his physical appearance decayed
through disease and surgical defections of his body. At this point both documentaries
about the visual narratives of photographer Sebastiao Salgado and Steve James’
film over Roger Ebert, Life Itself, tell a same saga of re-discovery
of the real selves under the masks of dead, wounded bodies and environments,
that must be saved and comprehended. In a similar way that establishing
rebirth conditions at the Terra
Institute in the barren wild forest by the Salgado couple; Cinema itself founds further meaning in Roger Ebert’s “nature walks”, comprising
his friend’s recitation of the “The Great Gatsby” last lines -which might
had displayed for Roger hermeneutical significance for discovering death
meanings in Life-, as well that his walks together with his wife and family
in the vacations’ “garden walk”, in his own Caldwell
Lilly pond walk, or in Werner Herzog’s walk down on Hollywood Boulevard,
looking after Roger’s star coming ahead by “looking straight into the horizon,
into the future…”. Such spirit is called on Roger Ebert’s film critic last
appeal to cinema “So on this day for reflection I say thank you for going on
this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies…” (Life Itself final words, Steve James, 2014).
Such would agree with
Kierkegaard’s notion about the “will to be that self which one truly is,
(which) is indeed the opposite of despair” leading to the “the despair of
choosing to be another” than oneself, in accordance with Heinz Kohut’s
concept pointing out those who achieve coherence through identification with
an external personality at the cost of the one's own autonomous creativity. In spite of this, the maintenance of a false self -as it was considered by Winnicott-,
would attempt to prevent the annihilating experience of the exploitation of
the hidden True Self itself [For references in this paragraph see GLOSSARY at
Correa, J.E.,“II) BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS ON ILLNESS AND
DEATH”, 30 Nov. 2015. New edition published in the Blog
ART & ENVIRONMENT]. On the other side, on terms of a defensive mechanism to adapt to
social pressures, the false self would assemble with the social self adopting
a social disguise or mask turned around by the chisel of commercial and
political power and propaganda. In the political
publicity indorsing rigid social self stories there are enhanced and
permanently transmitted leader stereotypes and government prototype measures
of the “good” and the “nationalistic models” that confront the “bad” that
characterize the opposition and the subjection to other cultures. Death and
loss are repudiated as based in the denial of the truth or validity of
something that contradicts the leader omnipotence and its nationalistic
political empowerment. Social pressure would
debilitate the self into a similar detour,
confronting the individual with social blame if denies “patriotic” life
threatening compromise. It might be hypothesized that the social self
competes with the true self in endowing a false self adhered to national,
religious, ideological and institutional appurtenances among body culture,
generic or sexual behaviors and leisure patterns that are highly praised by
groups or community, hence pressing the individuals to adhere to them in a
similar way that the infant compliance
with the parents' wishes/expectations. Public people as politicians and
artists harvest an image that assures public adhesion although it would not
match with the human principles they might state to defend, easily recited in
the formers’ vows to serve the nation although entirely disconnected from the
public functions they would be obliged to fulfill. In the case of academic
and educational careers, scientists, educators and administrators must comply
with obliged standards that establish all or none conditions for remaining in
the system, exceeding any rationale that asserts the fulfillment of the
utmost professional proficiency for the post.
“Where must we go, we who
wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves”
Pvt. Edward P. Train: [narration]
This great evil, where's it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What
seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us, robbing
us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might've known?
Does our ruin benefit the earth, does it help the grass to grow, the sun to
shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night? [voice
over] Pvt. Edward P. Train: Where is it that we were together? Who were you that I lived
with? The brother. The friend. Darkness, light. Strife and love. Are they the
workings of one mind? The features of the same face? Oh, my soul. Let me be
in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things
shining. The
Thin Red Line, Malick, 1998
To Gloria Susana Correa*, my sister |
During a period larger than ten years (at least
since the start of the second 2000 decade up to the 2010 decade) a whole
large wall of a Buenos Aires Hospital (two blocks long) set in front of the
entrance to a dependency of the Argentine State Agency of Intelligence (SIDE)
was covered with a weird painter done by several argentine enterprises –as
told by a list written at the southern extreme of it-. This painter unfold a
“comic-like“ narrative, depicting a naked individual that since his initial
asleep stage depicted in the northern extreme of the wall, close to the
entrance to a private university dependency of Medicine (CEMIC), linked to
U.S. School of Medicine programs, marched through several fantastic sceneries
battling with a dragon or diving into the water, up to finally direct himself
to the skyline of a city. At this final edge of the painter an entire wall
patch was covered with sentences advocating the arrival to a new sense of
social utopia. Such paragraph from writer and scientist Ernesto Sábato, who
chaired the CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons), seemed
to refer to that research, embodied in the book NEVER AGAIN, that opened in
1985 the door for the trial of the military regime responsible for the
massacre-disappearance of almost 40.000 Argentineans, during the military
dictatorship that was integrated by military officers which were initially
appointed by GEN Juan Domingo Perón. His preface to the document NEVER AGAIN
was later adjoined to a new preface in the latest edition of the report, corresponding
to adjustments to the Peronist-Montonero ideology from the Populist corrupted Government of
president Nestor Kirchner.
A mysterious particularity of the drawing set at the
initial asleep stage depicted in the northern extreme of the wall, was a
device similar to a chip that in turn it was handled by a female with bold
head, seeming to be commanding the chip located at the man’s brain**. Both
the dragon and the woman with bold head would be easily related with unconscious
satanic symbols in the roles of active offenders of man’s will akin to the history of Christianity accounting for
numerous reports of Satan having sex with humans, the latter corresponding to a female demon (succubus), believed to have sexual
intercourse with sleeping men. In the Bible, the
devil is described as a seductive power that draws crowds, which would be
translated into a kind of hypnotic effect easing
consent with immoral behavior by inhibiting the capacities of reflection and discernment.
Thence, aside any sort of connections with witchcraft itself, it is
intriguing that such a narrative was to be displayed in the wall in front of
a dependency of the Intelligence Agency of Argentina known to be related with
very dangerous intelligent agents and operations***; moreover placed in the
context of a message brought by the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín, who
established democratic conditions and revitalized the constitutional exercise
of Law, summoning
the military agents to trial being supported by a document that denounced for
the first time in the history of Argentina, about the criminal offenders established
by the Military and Peronist governments.
At the time
of such odd narrative, different situations complying with espionage done by
means of electronic surveillance independent of
wires and connected to chips, dromes and satellites started to be revealed as
immoral sources of information provided in several nations’ Intelligence
Agencies, as was the case for the NSA
files. According to Professor Norbert Wiener (1967)
-from whom cyber can be considered his "brainchild"-, when
concerned about the application of electrical concepts to biological systems’
communication, stated: "While we retain a trace of ethical
discrimination, the use of great powers for low purposes will constitute a
total moral equivalent of witchcraft and simony (…). Among the devoted
priests of power, there are many who look forward to the limitations of
humanity". Examples might be find in the application
of electronic "intelligence" to manipulate human behavior
(currently applied to many subjects, especially in prison environments
(Zuijdwijk et al, 2006****).
An immediate question that comes
to be asked concerning the use of espionage methods done by means of electronic
surveillance in the social context of a nation subjected to massive
disappearance of citizens, besides present and previous extended practice of
torture and mistreatment (apremios
ilegales) policy methods –alike the electric prod-, used by both Argentine and Paraguay dictators linked to German Nazis,
Perón and Stroessner and their teams of
military disappearing people with similar methods, is: Would it be possible
that the electronic wave transmitted through external
devices –as the chip showed over the head of the slept subject manipulated by
a “short distance” transmitter able to follow the individual movements by
electronic espionage from a near-by setting- masks an alien self competing
electron-magnetically with the own self brain electro-magnetic functioning?
Hence technical succubus or
incubus functioning attempting to influence, deviate, or even command the
self’s brain. If so, it can be hypothesized that such effect would become
maximum in the early hours after waking up from sleep and further maintenance
if the subject develops behaviors fed under constant feedback loop***** as paired with external sources of sound
and social inductions. Isolated subjects under personal and family crises due
to economic and psychological vulnerability factors would become suitable for
electro-magnetic essays of such kind. In such cases, the strength of
the self would decay in proportion to the abuser frequency of transmission. Therefore
such alien device would operate through the same mechanisms eliciting social pressures as described for the
competitive functioning of a false self, although in circulating into the
individual through its intra-systemic neural channels of energy would exert a
inhibitory effect over their natural innate defenses and facilitate
expansion, in a similar way the bacilli of leprosy take advantage from the
cells incorporating them with the original aim of stopping invasion but
finally enhancing it.
Deriving from the initial scope centered on the Arts
and the Environment, as moved by exploring the riddle of the sphinx that stands on the Giza Plateau -a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head that would symbolize the strength of a man/animal
self defying at the same time the
desert and cosmos, death and extreme solitude, exerting terror to those
profaners and robbers of sacred tombs and bodies-, a further
research project would attempt to explore the relationship amongst the
individual self and established electronic wave input
transmitted through external devices in the social environment –as those that
at the contemporary intelligence agency would be represented by computer
machines and satellites, or even alarm buttons-. The competition amongst
inner and external sources of electro-magnetic emissions could in turn be regulated
by the relative potency of the continuous external source. Such dependency of
an external electro-magnetic source is destined to provoke imbalance in men’s
equilibrium of electro-magnetic elements, as well the massive growth of
electronic emissions might endanger the earth and atmospheric balance in the distribution
of the natural
elements by altering their mutual relations, which are based on their similarity, difference, displacement
and forms of migration on earth as was long ago established by Mendeleev
(Fersman, 1966). They will be explored the `possible ways
an individual can develop in order to counteract or inhibit any type of
subjection to external electromagnetic emissions.
FINAL WORDS
Death
anxiety triggers aggressive and decontrolled sexual behaviors that are
enhanced by denial of bereavement and processing of stress impacts and loss, and
it can be stated from the empirical psychosocial experiences that most of the
psychiatric syndromes as well the episodes of social violence nourish from
such sources that can find some kind of contention in organized gatherings of
people at football matches and rock and roll concerts, better than revolting
in the streets or marching to war. For
such denial mechanisms arising at the first steps into the incoming wave of death
anxiety and in order to conceal it, individuals become isolated and blamed by
the groups, receiving diverse kind of penalties, as seen in the series of
analyzed films. On the other hand both
documentaries made on visual narratives facing human death and environment
extinction at the social level or personal death and separation from the
environment , showed the relevance of bereavement processing together with
members of the group as well backing the individual on the response to
extreme stress conditions related to disease progression, death and
deprivation of the natural sheltering environment .
If the
social power groups are more concerned with retaining power in their systems
submitting in diverse ways the populations of the planet, that in taking the
appropriate measures to stop environmental damage and human and animal
species sufferings, it matches with a similar sinister track employing
cybernetic machines to control and follow up the citizens’ and the independent
organizations’ behaviors [La SIP preocupada por interceptación de
comunicaciones de periodistas en Colombia, 22 de Diciembre de 2015]. On such
concern, several questions arise at this point: 1) Is it firmly established that the massive
use of electronic emissions don’t alter the atmospheric equilibrium and be
responsible of the increase of electric strength in the storms’ lighting, as
well of aggressive behavior in aquatic species [piranha, killer whales] if
not enhancement of violent behaviors and altered percepts in humans? (Correa,
2011); 2) In the same way that
environment should be preserved by established international regulations
penalizing any intentional deviance or distortion, similar penalties should
be imposed to those invading human personal privacy and/or attempting to
influence behavior by use of cybernetic devices and information storage,
establishing severe condemnation on the basis of international law
regulations. Extreme psychological torture by such means had only be
partially revealed by the U.S. congress, as in the case of some Guantanamo
proceedings using learned hopelessness methods amongst other criminal
procedures. Injury in the biologic systems (Bustaboad & Correa, 2004) as
followed by the psychosocial systems (Correa & Bustaboad, 2007) would possibly endure through mutual
injurious regulations, but at the most regretful cost of human lives and
earth’s destruction. Religions backing those psychosocial systems are still
centered on dominion of beliefs and moral organization of societies (Petronacci de Hacker & Rascovsky, 2000),
exhibiting total disrespect for the independence of thought and individual
developments of mysticism (Tugendhat, 1997).
My sister Gloria S. Correa, a beautiful woman and
very sensitive human being, died at the age of 34 years old, exactly one
month before the Argentinean military genocides invaded Falkland islands with
inexpert, untrained very young soldiers that if not killed, returned to the
country in bad conditions, Many committed suicide or became
mentally deranged, their families devastated. On 1969, aged 22, Gloria wrote
the following on the blank cover page of her book “Jeremiah”, by Stefan
Zweig:
Señor Dios: Ayúdame
a descubrir la verdad, deja que
enriquezca las potencias que me has dado
y que tu amor infinito no me desvíe,
no dejes que me aparte nunca de vos.
Sé cuál debe ser mi camino.
Por favor ayúdame para que sea fuerte y
nunca lo abandone
Lord God, Help me find the truth, let
me enrich the potencies you gave me
and that your infinite love do not divert me,
do not let me never separate from you.
I know what should be my way.
Please help me to be strong and
never abandon it
_________________________________________________________________________________
NOTES
* Physical Therapist, Universidad del
Salvador, Buenos Aires. After the death of our father due to sudden rupture of
a brain aneurism followed by massive intra-ventricular hemorrhage and
cerebral death, she was offered to work at the rehab unit of the Italian
Hospital, placed close to the room where our father was moved with a
mechanical respirator until we had to comply with the decision of removing it
when they were established no signs of brain electrical activity. The following
years she worked as an energetic caring Physical Therapist that received
cooperation from the Mental Health Service Head of the Italian Hospital, Dr.
Pastrana Borrero, as she assisted several patients with movement and
psychological ailments –on such matters she wrote a draft on the treatment of
a girl suffering paralysis a frigore-.
On the same years she moved to live in an apartment [Julián Alvarez 2383, 2nd.
“E”] bought by our mother, that was aside a Police Station detaining
prisoners and subjecting them to some sort of torture, as it could be guessed
by the screams coming from its back courtyard to which it was connected the
open space of the 2nd floor apartment where she lived. Under those habitat
conditions she attempted suicide by switching on gas and closing doors and
windows of her apartment. Gloria was highly attached to philosophical reading
connected to theatre (i.e.: Jeremiah, from Stefan Zweig) and German music,
perhaps influenced by my father who had similar interests (his grandfather,
surnamed Hunzinger, was a German from Düsseldorf), further developed artistic
skills related with music and movement, attending dance classes from Marilú
Marini and joining a theatre group directed by Alberto Ure
(Ibsen’s “ A Doll House”), with the unusual trait of performing their plays at
family apartments (House
of dolls?). All these artists responded to peronist-montonero ideology, contrary
to our family background opposed to Peron`s dictatorship as well full
advocates of democracy. During those years she started showing an odd
promiscuity behavior she had never exhibited before, being seen to be taken
by unknown men in the streets and becoming pregnant of unknown father, a
condition which my wife and I had to assist, providing her abortion. A brief
time later she became pregnant again while she progressed to delirium and
complete denial of her pregnant state; for which she was hospitalized in a
psychiatric clinic where the child was born. At the time of discharge our
mother was recommended to change her from the apartment she lived in, and
following advice from the same real-estate company that sold her the former
property (located in the same block that the police station), bought another
one under cheap conditions that was under judicial auction which belonged to
an officer of the Navy and was set at a building [Pacheco de Melo 2949, 2nd.
“D”] that we acknowledged very long time later that was inhabited by Armed
Forces, Police and Security agents personnel, located aside an accessory
building of the Intelligence Agency of the State (SIDE) -implied in special
operations-. My sister lived there with her baby for a short time as it was
decided she would receive more support if living in the same apartment with
our mother. After Gloria left both apartments I moved my professional office
there.
** On the contrary, this image recalled
me the utmost dreadful final evolution of a young patient with cancer that I
assisted with psychotherapy together with his family that at the later times
of treatment deserted from my help, deciding to follow a group orientation of
psychological assistance based on a sort of mind control scheme. His mother
and sister told me he was hospitalized in a room of the Clinic that, by the
way was located at the opposite site of the wall where the head of the slept
giant was placed. I went to visit him there a short time before he suddenly
died of a hemorrhagic vomit caused by the terminal cancer. His name was Federico
Hellwing and I honored him for his courage to struggle against several
dramatic situations lived by his family that he tried to temper by covering
the absent father, developing caring and energetic roles as the elder
brother. In such context I have felt profoundly hurt at the time the painter
was done in the outer wall of the Clinic.
*** Nowadays, at the same time the populations grow
bewitched by the new media and electronic technologies, the intelligence
agencies apply such technological devices to the espionage and follow up of
citizens and institutions. Since the FBI’s director FBI J. Edgar Hoover, who had an ego that
required constant flattering by his subordinates and early premiered the use
of methods which included illegal wiretapping [Wikipedia], those on
charge of the intelligence tasks comply with immoral features if not criminal
behaviors. On the Argentina
grounds, Julian Assange had reported to have “the most aggressive
surveillance regime of all the medium size Latin American states”. The
Argentine Intelligence Agency SIDE [at present S.I.] has been known to "be
indiscriminately used by civilian and military for the objectives of rinsing
crimes and robberies, money wash, support political campaigns, operate
against the people themselves and forget the specific functions required of
all intelligence agency". In the times the Kirchner couple arrived to
power many criminal actions showed connection to the functioning deployed by
the State’s Intelligence Agency ranging from bloodshed assassination (Martha
García Belsunce) up to mysterious death of Agent Alberto Nisman, the day
before he was to denounce at the national congress the responsibility of
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the Agreement with Iran
concealing the criminal actions of subjects of that nationality in the
bombing of the Israeli Embassy and Jewish Association, killing 85 and 29
people respectively. Immediately after the corpse of the Nisman was found,
both the president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the official attorney
Viviana Fein blamed him for suicidal attempt. Formerly, when his husband
Néstor Kirchner arrived to the presidency of the Nation, he received the
visit from US president, G. Bush (holding his left knee in a photo), to whom
he delivered all the computerized data of Argentinean
citizens, as denounced at the editorial of the prestigious newspaper La Nación.
****Article sent to me by Michele Petit, Researcher
of the National Center for Scientific Research, Paris, France. Author of articles
[as the one published in the same prison journal] and books on Literacy [“The
art of reading in times of crisis”/ “L’art de lire ou comment
resister à l’adversité (2009), Spanish
Version: Barcelona, Ed. Océano].
*****Feedback loop
is defined as the interaction of two (or more) dynamical systems that are
connected together such that each system influences the other and thus their
dynamics are strongly coupled. We say that a system is closed if
the component sub-systems are interconnected in a cycle. Control is
regulated by feedback links of sensing and actuation. The key issues in
designing control logic are ensuring that the dynamics of the closed system
are stable and that they achieve the desired behavior. Examples of feedback
systems are found both in 1) mechanical systems -like a thermostat- and 2)
biological systems as in the female hormone cycle. Hence for designing a
feedback control system is necessary to establish dynamic interactions
amongst two systems in a closed cycle. Source: Feedback Systems: An
Introduction for Scientists and Engineers, Karl J. Åström and Richard M. Murray.
|
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This Blog Art & Environment summarizes research work done by Julio E. Correa, M.D. with no financial support over the years, since started as a project at the Institute for Environmental and Health Sciences (ICAS). Since the early work in experimental models of leukemia that received several national and private grants (Conicet, LALCEC, Bunge & Born scholarship from the National Academy of Medicine), no financial support was ever received for the study on the psycho-social aspects of cancer or the collateral studies in literature imagination applied to the psycho-social approach for the treatment of cancer and other severe illness patients, except short time bourses and grants (British Council Bursar visiting the Department of Psychiatry from the South Manchester University Hospital, UK; UICC fellowship for a one month stay at the Department of Psychiatry at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, US; travel academic FRP fellowship to Canada). The present edition summarizes the work done during 2015, looking forward to extend during 2016 the research on the connection of art and the environment in the context of searching genuine pathways to the spirit of man –the Self- and nature –the environment-, driven by permanent communication and interaction through the life processes that encompass competition, injury, destruction, death and birth of new structures and functions. For such development it will be asked institutional or government support as well other sources of financial support in the sake of the contributions of Art to the environment. Julio Enrique Correa, M.D. jecorrea@retina.ar
M.D., at present developing theoretical
research projects at ESICAS Blog
[Environmental
Space interactions with the Cultural-Art Space]
Address:
Pacheco de Melo 2949 2º"D" TE.: (54 11) 4-8025950
(1425) Buenos Aires Argentina
Matheu 291 TE.: (54 11) 4-8025950
(1878) Quilmes Prov. Bs. As.
