Under the broken part of the sky

The curse of the mother

As a patient undergoing deep Jungian psychotherapy, I shockingly discovered that my desire to write was not truly my own. Instead, it was a repressed projection of my mother onto me, an attempt to fulfil her unfulfilled dreams of becoming a writer. I had unknowingly been living out her program, becoming an existential biorobot executing her desires. It was a profound epiphany that left me questioning my own autonomy and authenticity, as well as the very nature of free will.

In psychology, ‘The primary object is the mother, the first person you come in contact with and you are aware of. It is really your relationship with your mother that creates who you are. The father comes into the picture later as the giver of the law.’[1]

The first thought in my mind was one of John C. Lilly, who wrote: ‘All human beings, all persons who reach adulthood in the world today are programmed biocomputers. None of us can escape our own nature as programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less.’[2] Then I remembered Gurdjieff’s thought-provoking assumption that humans are born without a soul and have to earn and develop one – he called this process ‘rabota’.

In the process of therapy, I had to make a harsh decision:

1. to terminate this programming and forge my own path, or

2. to remain under the spell of my mother’s desires.

Ultimately, I chose the latter. While I recognised the influence my mother had on my desire to write, I also acknowledged that it was a weird part of who I am. The spell she cast on me was not one of manipulation, but of love, and I could not bring myself to reject that.

Literature – Evolutionary by-product of dread

This realisation led me to consider the role of literature in our lives. Unlike other biological adaptations, literature has no direct evolutionary purpose for surviving on bloody evolutionary barricades. It is a by-product of other things, such as language, gossip, storytelling and existential dread. And yet, it is an essential part of our existence. It enables us to connect with others, to empathise with their experiences and broaden our perspectives. Through literature, we can transcend our loneliness and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.

But what is the role of the writer in all of this? French philosopher Albert Camus once asked himself, ‘Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?’

Amor Fati

I am a refugee from Abkhazia first, I am a writing machine, as Italo Calvino put it, second. I am 37 years old and I have witnessed three wars in my lifetime and seen my very first dead body at the age of nine. I live in a conflict zone, where wars are not over yet and where the fear of annexation by Russia looms over us every day.

I do not complain at all. ‘Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.’[3] What I am trying to say is that I love my fate to the extent that I would not change anything, not even the comas and overdoses. Amor fati.

For me, ‘the art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man’.[4] But as I sit down to write, I am acutely aware of the difficulty of capturing the horror and despair that grips me. It is as if we are running out of words and metaphors to describe what remains of reality. We are dumbfounded, struck silent by the enormity of the crises we face. Our minds are dulled by PTSD, and sometimes the only way we can keep going is through the help of antidepressants. ‘In a world that is absurd and meaningless, the only true philosophical question is whether to commit suicide or not.’[5]

It is only when we are faced with the darkest of times (wars, destruction, strife, massive extinction) that we can find the strength to keep going. As a refugee, I have seen the worst that humanity has to offer, but I have also seen the beauty that can arise from the ashes of destruction. But even with this knowledge, I still struggle to find the words to express the pain and trauma, the beauty and gratitude that I carry with me every day. The weight of it all can be overwhelming, and sometimes it feels like the only option is to give up. Sometimes I wonder if my ‘Archetype-Orientated Programming’ literary theory matters at all, if it can make any difference in a world that seems determined to destroy itself.

Yet I keep writing, even in the face of this overwhelming terror. I keep putting words together because I believe that literature has the power to heal, change and inspire. My words may be small and insignificant, but they are all I have to offer. I want to use them to re-programme the future.

“Politics of the Future”

As Deleuze said, ‘We need a politics of the future, not a politics of memory.’[6] I want to use my writing to create a politics of the future rooted in the cosmic pessimism of the present. We must be willing to face the darkness that surrounds us, to grapple with the reality of our mortality.

And yet, even in our suffering, there is still beauty to be found. As Camus wrote, ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.’[7] We must hold onto that invincible summer, that spark of hope that keeps us going even in the darkest of times.

Even as I write these words, I am aware of the limitations of our monotheistic, dualistic language which cannot grasp the complexities of rebelling archetypes, but I have to destroy the language by travelling to its boundaries, where words end, beyond silence and whisper, where roaring starts, explaining our deepest emotions. Deconstructed words, created as Programming ‘command lines’ to invoke our deepest archetypal emotions can be more relevant to our times. I believe we must continue to write, even in the face of our inadequacy.

In the end, perhaps the most important thing we can do is to remain hopeful. ‘We must imagine Sisyphus happy.’[8] We must hold onto the possibility of a better future, in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. We must write with the knowledge that our words have the power to inspire, transform and heal. This I know  as a refugee, a recovering addict of 16 years, a person diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, who experiences long periods of depression, a wild child who fought almost every day in the streets to survive, only Literature (my Mother) helped me to overcome all these traumas.

Literature is a kind of Spiritism. It gives you the opportunity to talk to a dead person, gain knowledge from her, imagine her alive like you are now, and overcome the fear of death by acknowledging that the dead also survived their own apocalypses, moments of despair and love, and finally you realise that they know something, a secret, that we, the living, don’t know yet, so we must listen to them.

Manifesto

We are wild children, raised in the ghettos of the ‘Second World’ with no water and electricity, dancing on the ruins of the ‘evil empire’. Our mental and societal problems do not define us, but rather propel us forward as we love, care and dance. We are the ‘shamans among machines’, and we reject the narrow philosophy and worldview of seeing the world as a binary code of dualistic, monotheistic, ape-like politicians’ worldview, because in the world of contemporary programming (imagine: worldbuilding), binary code reigns supreme. The zeroes and ones of the binary represent the foundational language that computers and machines use to interpret information. Yet, behind this seemingly straightforward system of coding lies a limited, patriarchal and dualistic philosophy that is rooted in biases that infect the state of artificial intelligence (AI), applications and world politics.

Binary code reduces everything to a simple yes or no, on or off, one or zero, limiting the potential for nuance, complexity and diversity. This approach to coding is not dissimilar to the dualistic philosophy that underpins Western culture, which divides the world into distinct categories, often pitting them against each other. We reject this limiting worldview, and we celebrate the beauty and complexity of the world.

As Hakim Bey said, ‘We share the same enemies and our means of triumphant escape are also the same: a delirious and obsessive play, powered by the spectral brilliance of the wolves and their children.’[9] Our enemy is the binary-code worldview that seeks to confine us, but our escape is through literature, through the imagination and our wildness. Through the power of storytelling and deep dive into archetypal databases, we can challenge and overcome these limitations.

In the words of Carlos Castaneda, ‘A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.’[10] We are warriors, choosing our path with our hearts, paths of passion, creativity and love. We know that our time is limited and that is why death is our best friend, and we choose to make the most of it by embracing the wildness within us and sharing it with others through literature.

Literature is our weapon. It allows us to transcend the narrow categories and limitations of the world, to explore the mysteries of human experience and to share our stories with others. Through literature, we can create new worlds, challenge dominant narratives and inspire others to join us in our wildness. Through literature, we can immortalisse our mothers and fathers and loved ones and dance to the live broadcast of the multiverse. We are the wild children, the shamans among machines, and the warriors of the imagination, creating politics of the future despite our deep inner cosmic pessimism. We are not binary, we are quantum, and that means we can be in several mental states and states of being at once.

Thank you, Mum, for the curse of literature.

[1] Rafael Sharón, NCPsyA, SCPsyA, Psychoanalyst in Princeton NJ. You can see the video on here.

[2] John C. Lilly: Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer, 2014.

[3] John W. Gardner: Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society, 2015.

[4] Carlos Castaneda: Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan, 1991.

[5] Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, 1991.

[6] Gilles Deleuze: The Logic of Sense, 1990.

[7] Albert Camus: Personal Writings, 2020.

[8] Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, 1991.

[9] Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey): Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism, 1985.

[10] Carlos Castenada: The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts about Life, Death and the Universe, 2001.