Section V.7B (“The Problem of Scale (Part 1)”)
Capital, the Pleasure Principle, (De)compression, and Friendship
Thinking Lacan, Freud, Marx, Aristotle, and Hayek Together
As Cadell has taught on during “The Month of Libido” (January 2024) at Philosophy Portal, we learn from Freud and Lacan that the brain naturally works according to “the pleasure principle,” which is to say that we naturally make choices relative to what will increase pleasure (“the pleasure principle” and what Augustine means when he says “bad motivations are impossible” seem related). From eating food to uncrossing my legs to avoiding anxiety — all of these can be seen as operations of “the pleasure principle,” which society must “check and balance” with “the reality principle” (restrictions, “givens,” etc.) so that our desire for pleasure doesn’t lead to profound problems (say everyone has sex freely and there are countless orphans, everyone consumes and never works so the society falls apart, etc.). Critically, we find pleasure in the act of understanding itself — it is more pleasurable to understand then not — which is a reason why we avoid “lack” and anxiety (cutting ourselves off from Childhood), and also it means we enjoy the “act of compression” the brain carries out so that we can understand the world around us. When I look at a bookcase, I don’t experience its fullness, only a “compressed image” of it, as necessary so that I can understand it. Otherwise, I might lose my mind and find myself unable to function.
“Compression” is pleasurable (as is “belief,” according to C.S. Peirce), and yet this suggests we are vulnerable to reductionism because we enjoy it, which is to say we might engage in a reductionism that leads us to “The Meaning Crisis” because we enjoy the road along the way. Also, Freud and Lacan are adamant that our brains are not “unsexed” or neutered, capable of rational thought independent of other bodily functions. The brain is sexed, which means it is not just “rational” (no matter how much it might think of itself as “autonomously rational,” which though it is capable of doing, causing all kinds of problems), but instead it is a mixture of “the rational and nonrational” (or “the true and the rational”) which is to say “rationality and desire,” which means that what we define as “rational” is naturally sexed and trained according to desire (no matter how much we might think otherwise). Ultimately then, under the pleasure principle, what we (happen to) define as “rational” will be according to what increases pleasure, but if there is a point where pleasure can prove destructive, this means our very rationality could be part of the problem, leading us toward self-effacement. This being the case, we should not assume that just because we act “rationally” we therefore act “best” (“rational” and “best” are not similes), which is to say that pleasurable acts of “compression” might lead to trouble.
Understanding is pleasurable, which for one suggests why it is possible that “talking could be pleasurable like sex” (as Lacan famously suggested), but also suggests that the pleasure principle could direct us toward making the world understandable. This is a good thing, yes? Well, assuming we don’t “overfit” our tendency to compress, which is to say we don’t compress too much (like enjoying too much or in the wrong way), but this brings us to Capital and why perhaps we have taken Capital too far. As we learn from Marx, Capital “compresses” everything into prices and numbers, which for one is why operations between very diverse people under Pluralism is possible (the power of “systems” versus “negotiations”), and in fact systems of the market have a very useful function in communicating important information quickly (I frankly don’t always need to know “the whole story” behind a wrench in a store — I just need to know the price). Pricing and Capital “compress” information just like the brain does, which is one of the reasons they seem to work so well: they match the form and operations of the brain, which the brain is willing to participate in, precisely because “understanding” is pleasurable, and “compression” can make things understandable/pleasant. I’m not surrounded by so much anxiety. The world feels more intelligible.
Indeed, “the pricing mechanism” as described by Hayek increases intelligibility across numerous people of great diversity effectively, and it makes possible a coordination of resources that otherwise seems impossible to manage. Again, the society becomes so much more intelligible that profound coordination becomes possible, but here is where the trouble can start. We love pleasure, and as we learn from James K.A. Smith, we “are what we love,” which is to say our habits form around our loves (which in The Fate of Beauty will be important to understand for why “beauty” can shape character). Understanding is pleasurable, which means “compression” can form habits, and so we can be trained by Capital into habits of treating things and the world as “compressed,” so much so that we get out of the habit of being capable to de-compress them back into their “fuller state.” And at this point (temporary) “compression” becomes “flattening,” as Marx warns about, because Capital trains us through our pleasure principle to make the world understandable for the sake of economic functionality and productivity, only for us to eventually get in the habit (due to pleasure/love of understanding versus suffering anxiety) of treating things as “compressed” to the point where we forget that we are treating things as “compressed,” and so we believe “the compressed version” is “the full version,” because we forget that an alternative version is possible (and if we lose through habit-formation the capacity to de-compress, then in a real sense “the compression version” is/becomes “the full version”). This arguably is a key problem with Capital, which is when Discourse prevails (and the possibility of Rhetoric is forgotten). If it was possible to operate within Capital/Discourse without this habit-formation occurring which turned “compression” into (more permanent) “flattening,” we might achieve a negation/sublation of Capitalism out of “True History” into “Absolute History,” for this would be for us to successfully spread (anxiety-facing) Childhood (those whom the pleasure principle didn’t control but who instead mastered their own pleasure principle).
If “compression” via pricing and Capital was a temporary measure (like a “zip file,” an example which suggests the relevance of Alex Ebert’s “Fre(Q) Theory” for what we are discussing), that would be one thing, but the problem is that the pleasure principle makes it very hard for us to make sure such “compression” is temporary. It is just too enjoyable to understand things, which though makes possible “philosophy as pleasure” (as we will actually need for “the spread of friendship,” please note, just sublimated), also puts us at risk of being controlled by Capital (“for good reason”) (and please note “the pleasure of understanding” is also a reason why philosophy is always at risk of becoming tyrannical and autocannibalistic, as David Hume warns on). Capital naturally “overfits” the pleasure found in understanding to all things via “compression,” which trains us into habits by which we “get out of practice” of de-compressing entities or “facing things in their fullness.” If there are not social institutes like families or churches to say help us remember not to “overfit compression” (say in reminding us that “we don’t know everything” or that there is an infinite God out there and perhaps within our neighbors), then the likelihood that (temporary) “compression” becomes (permanent) “flattening” is very high, at which point we will suffer pathologies and self-effacement. Worse yet, if social practices train us in the opposite direction, which is to say if they train us further into habits of “compression” like Capital does, then we will have an entire socioeconomic and political order which trains people into habits that lead to a dehumanizing and pathological “flattening.” And I would argue that our “technological society” does indeed train us to “compress” even further, in addition to how Capital trains us, for everyone now seems to be an image on a screen, a performance, a platform…As Marx warned that Capital turned people into personifications, so technology can do the same (the “technological essence” Heidegger warned about is an extension of “the logic of Capital,” I think, A/A).
Capital works because it channels the pleasure principle into making the world more understandable through “compression,” but precisely because that understanding is enjoyable and lovable, we can form habits that threaten our very humanity, because humanity requires “facing fullness” which is facing anxiety and not understanding. “The logic of Capital” is “the logic of compression” which is Discourse (and A/A, for there is no “otherness (B) to pass into,” as Hegel would discuss — that is “compressed-away,” per se), and this logic tends to become “autonomous” precisely because of the habits which the logic forms (please note though that if it didn’t become “autonomous,” “the logic of Capital” would arguably be just fine and very useful — the problem is that it is not naturally dialectical in training us into habits out of dialectical thinking, precisely due to the pleasure principle). Ultimately, the negation/sublation of “True History” into “Absolute History” is basically a matter of learning to live with Capitalism without absorbing the habits of Capitalism, which is when Capital/Discourse dominate and we suffer self-effacement. This is for us to be Children, for we learn to use A/A as a tool (versus a totalizing worldview) that never comes to replace A/B. This is very hard to do though, precisely because our pleasure principle will enjoy replacing A/B with A/A if we let it. Stopping this from happening though require lifelong training and practices, which suggests a need for new communities and even new Religious thinking — a major concern of “The Liminal Web.”
I am against anything “autonomous,” for that is A/A and self-effacing, and it is unfortunately natural for Capitalism to train us into “habits of compression” which result in us enjoying a “flattening of the world” until one day we find ourselves unable to un-flatten or de-compress the world and at the same time find everything “flat” and meaningless. Because of the pleasure principle in concert with Capital, we find ourselves enjoying a training into a world where everything is (more permanently) “flat,” and by the time we realizing it, we’ve lost the abilities through habit-formation to escape — a terrible victory of irony, for we “compressed” the world in the name of pleasure, which lead to a “flat” world where pleasure is “flat.” What we did for pleasure is why we lose capacities for pleasure. The pleasure principle’s victory is boredom, a point on which we might see why wealth and the Great Enrichment could to a degree cause boredom without being its direct cause: the Great Enrichment leads to Capital, and Capital trains the pleasure principle to lose habits of “de-compression,” without which all pleasure eventually feels “flat” and empty. This formation of “bad habits” could happen to the rich and poor alike, for the rich and poor are all under “the logic of Capital/Discourse.”
It is very probable that “the logic of Capital” come to be autonomous (A/A), which means it becomes self-effacing versus a useful tool, precisely because Capital works so well and so much like the brain, which naturally operates according to the pleasure principle (for it is unnatural to sublimate “pleasure” into something more like the “depth” found in Children, which though is necessary for Absolute History). In “compression” we gain the pleasure of understanding, but the problem with this pleasure is that it can be at the expense of the things we understand, precisely because we leave behind their fullness (as we ironically and tragically must, to some degree). “Fullness” is also terrifying, because it is an Unknown which can prove a source of both Lovecraft and Dante. In their fullness, people entail dimensions we cannot access, which if “openings” and “lacks” (instead of “nothingness”), mean something might “emerge” we cannot predict or plan for (which might “reduce us to ash”). All we can do is be prepared for the Unknown, but Capital naturally trains us out of the habits needed so that we might be so prepared. And so we atomize and separate — it’s only rational/pleasurable.
Perhaps we might say the “noumenon” is like “the reality principle” that in Kantianism we deal with by saying it is inaccessible, thus giving the pleasure principle free reign. “Phenomena” are perhaps a product of pleasure/rationality, and if all we can ever access are phenomena, all we should ever worry about is “enjoying ourselves” — it’s not our fault we can’t cross the noumenon, after all. But if Hegel is right that the noumenon is in and part of the phenomenal realm, then the reality principle is part of the pleasure principle, and if the pleasure principle thus totally overcomes and tries to even destroy the reality principle, pleasure will destroy itself (which is perhaps exactly what “boredom” is: the suicide of the pleasure principle, as perhaps aided by Capital). “Flattening” follows from a hard noumenal and phenomenal split (A/A), but “compression” does not have to lead to this if we can keep them together as noumenal/phenomenal (A/B), which is not easy though, for A/B is much harder to understand than A/A, and the pleasure principle enjoys understanding.
To keep Capital from becoming autonomous (A/A), we must be capable of “compression” and “decompression” (A/B), which means we do not let our pleasure principle master us versus we master/sublimate it (which I would note is good for Capitalism, for this is how we keep alive Rhetoric over Discourse and so can “create demand” versus just “stimulate demand”). This all suggests the distinction between “thinking” and “perceiving” brought up in (Re)constructing “A Is A,” and basically all thinking “compresses”: a word, a thought, a notion — all of these “compress” so that we might understand and live in an intelligible universe (which doesn’t “reduce us to ash”). This is not the problem, and in fact we require A/A for A/B to be possible: the problem is when we get into habits that makes us “compress” and incapable of “de-compressing.” This is the issue with Capital, though theoretically if Capital didn’t form these habits, it could be a remarkable tool. Unfortunately, we make our tools and then our tools make us (but also “fortunately” if “spreading Childhood” and “spreading Net Tradition” are somehow connected).
For “compression” not to become “flattening,” we must sublimate pleasure into a difficulty and Childhood that keeps us in A/B, which means we overcome “the logic/loves/habits of Capital” that is culminating in Artificial Intelligence (for AI is the Nash Equilibria which follows when everyone is “autonomously rational” according to the pleasure principle, as trained by Capital). To “spread Childhood” is to “spread the conditions in which ‘compression’ does not become ‘flattening,’ ” which is to say we spread the conditions in which different habits (following A/B) might form, which means we spread the conditions in which different “loves” might arise. Much comes down to love, and thus much will come down to regaining the possibility of friendship (which we will not prove able to keep or maintain without understanding “forgiveness,” hence our reflection on The Sunflower). Philosophy can train us to be capable of “(de)compression” (both “compression” and “de-compression,” A/B), but seemingly only to the degree philosophy stays in “The Real” and doesn’t become abstract and divided from “common life” (as Hume warns about, which is also arguably when “rationality as a mental illness” becomes the case, as Matthew Stanley discusses, Ep #125 — rationality is always “potentially” such, and “is” at “The End of (True) History”). This is why philosophy needs friendship, I think, but it is also the case that friendship needs philosophy: when they are together, we learn to enjoy (de)compression and the Unknown, which can train us by loves into habits that we employ wherever we go (even amid Capital).
Friendship is the realm in which we learn to enjoy decompression, which is to say encountering the ever-growing fullness of the Other, as possible because of the existence of Interiors (perhaps possible after Writing), but we also need compression to engage in this enjoyment, for none of us can handle the whole fullness of the Other all at once (we can hardly handle our own Fullness, hence why we need to be able to “compress” ourselves to ourselves, which means though we must be at risk of “self-deception” to live fully, as we must be at risk of A/A to prove capable of A/B). Where there is (de)compression, we learn to think in a manner that suggests the movement of Dante and God’s Hiddenness, which is necessary so that “a process in which we gradually come to be able to handle more of God” becomes possible. The movement of “(de)compression” is what Virgil and Beatrice guide Dante through, and this is what (philosophical) friends are to likewise guide one another through. “Capital” in this way is the force opposite of “Beatrice,” but as Dante had to work through Inferno and Purgatorio on his way to the Paradiso, so we must walk through Capital and anxiety. To avoid them is for there to be no journey — only boredom and self-effacement.
Where we look at the sun directly we can go blind, but where the sun is completely gone there is darkness. Both of these are “autonomous mistakes” of A/A, which suggests that “B” must metaphorically be a “cloud” which conceals the sun so that we might look at it, gradually moving aside as our eyes adjust so that they are not burned and yet able to see more of the light. If the cloud doesn’t move though, it is A/A, and so there must be motion and development (“process(ing”). A friend like this is an “Absolute Friend,” per se, and perhaps no other friend is ultimately possible or sustainable. Hard to say, but this suggests that friends are those who help us think beyond Capital and Discourse, and if friends stuck in “a logic of exchange/Capital/Discourse” are friendships which will ultimately fail or prove problematic, then it does not seem wrong to say that “philosophical friends are the only friends” — but I don’t want to overstep. Friends are like Beatrice to one another, for friends know we are all like Dante.
Friendship is what trains us out of “habits of compression” by teaching us to love people in their fullness versus love an understanding trained by Capital which leads to “compression” and then (inescapable) “flattening” once we forget how to “de-compress” in losing the habit and ability for its possibility. “Philosophical friendship” is a “common space” in which people are trained to maintain the capacity to “(de)compress,” which means they stay dialectical and Childlike. Though it will have to be elaborated on throughout Belonging Again (Part II), without “(de)compression” and hence friendship, we might find that Democracy, Capitalism, and the like are not possible. “We cannot negate/sublate “True History” into “Absolute History” without friends.
A lot more needs to be said on friendship and its connection with Lacan, but I will wait until later in Belonging Again, but we can glimpse here why “the question of commons” is tied to the question of “philosophical friendship” and the possibility of training an alternative logic (A/B) to “the logic of Capital” — which requires Childhood, which means “spreading Childhood” has something to do with “spreading the commons” (which will bring us to the work of the incredible Michel Bauwens). Capitalism without “the logic of Capital as autonomous” is Capitalism with Rhetoric and Childhood, which seem to be the conditions which caused “The Great Enrichment” (McCloskey) — but this condition does not naturally last. “Capitalism is unstable,” as we learn from Keynes, and if we want to make a distinction here between “Capitalism” and “Capital” (which I cannot promise I will ever use again), we could say that Capitalism naturally devolves into Capital because of the very “pricing mechanisms” Capitalism employs thanks to Rhetoric. These mechanisms then naturally generate “habits of compression” (because the pleasure principle likes compression/understanding) which can train us into (inescapable) “flattening,” which then effaces the very Rhetoric that made Capitalism enriching. Rhetoric is hence “flattened” into Discourse, and Capitalism becomes mere Capital. In this way, we see how “Capitalism is unstable” and naturally becomes “Capital” (a “compressed version of itself,” to suggest some wordplay), which would mean that “spreading Childhood” would be to keep “unstable Capitalism” from self-effacing into Capital, which leads to AI and Land. If there is no other way though to deal with “the knowledge problem” (Hayek) or “the coordination problem” (Mises) without “pricing mechanisms” (which are “habitually” very dangerous), this would mean “spreading Childhood” could be our only hope, for “Absolute History” is a matter of keeping Capitalism from becoming Capital like it naturally does and as our pleasure principle would naturally enjoy until we found ourselves like “rats in utopia.” “A Little Fable.” Kafkaesque. (The exit is “facing” No Exit.)
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