The title seeks to convey the two end-points in our lives, as individuals and communities or nations. However, while there is nothing we can do to help our start of the race as individuals, some are fortunate in being able to anticipate the end-point and mitigate or sublimate, if unable to nullify, the ending in helplessness.
This may sound a somewhat morbid discourse, but not all of us are made of the stuff of a Nero who could face his bloody end with a triumphant cry “Qualis artifex pereo” (What a distinguished artist is dying) But that is also no model for imitation! Utopias and Ideologies are seen as threats to social stability by the dominant classes, and it is not surprising if bourgeois propaganda media and educational institutions never cease to denigrate their nature and role.
Ernst Bloch wrote The Principle of Hope (1954-59) in 3 volumes, as a philosophy of hope and the future, a dreaming forward, a projection of a vision, analyzing Ideology and Utopia, which had merited the pioneering attention of Karl Mannheim in 1929. Mannheim was a Hungarian philosopher, who taught sociology at Heidelberg and ended his career in London.
Bloch offered us a dialectical analysis of the past which illuminates the present and can direct us to a better future. The past contains both the sufferings, tragedies and failures of humanity – but also its unrealized hopes and potentials. For Bloch, history is a repository of possibilities that are living options for future action. The present moment is made of latency and tendency: the unrealized potentialities that are latent in the present, and the signs that indicate the tendency into the future. This three-dimensional temporality must be grasped and activated by an anticipatory consciousness that at once perceives the unrealized emancipatory potential in the past, the latencies and tendencies of the present, and the realizable hopes of the future. For Karl Manheim “a state of mind is utopian when (a) it is incongruous with the immediate situation and (b) when passed into actions, tends to shatter the order of things.” Ideologies can be particular or total, depending upon their focus on some or all of opponent’s perspective on reality, but in either case they are in function of one’s individual or group position in the society. It is not unrelated to false consciousness in Marxist thought and reflect a special “grammar” of thought conditioned by one’s social position and class interests.
It is common for depressed people to feel helpless, with little control over their lives. Or, alternatively, to feel that everything relies on them. This extreme perception of control, either too much or too little, helps maintain depression, be it as depressive-maniacs or euphoric-maniacs. With too little control a person stops doing things that could improve its situation. At the bottom of all neuroses are frustrated expectations of appreciation and approval by others.
Trying to please all people is a non-workable strategy. Nobody can exert so much control so that everyone likes them. We need to be aware of how much or little control we assume we have over different areas of our lives. It’s less depressive (and more realistic) to realize that in some situations you do have control but only up to a point. We need to realized that most life events are not ‘completely disastrous’ or ‘absolutely wonderful’, but contain elements of both good and bad. Depressed people think in absolutes. It is important to learn to see shades of gray.
For a healthy emotional life, it’s not extreme happiness that we need, but balanced emotions. So, if you are ‘addicted’ to getting high levels of emotional stimulation from experiences, conversations, relationships and so on, it could be time to start doing with less. For less depression, it’s not more happiness we need, but more calmness.
Since the times of Industrial Revolution and radical re-structuring of families and communities Europe has seen social upheavals and violent revolutions, fed by utopias and ideologies as emancipatory tools for mobilization of the marginalized and traumatized peoples. These upheavals have been further enhanced by the recent decolonization struggles and the ongoing waves of refugees that feed cheap labor to industrial machine.
People who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may find that they become depressed. The symptoms of PTSD are intrusive, terrifying ‘flashbacks’ to their trauma, which keep the brain in a high state of emotional arousal. In such conditions, it is extremely difficult to think in a balanced way. The brain’s default mode of thinking is tuned to ‘all or nothing’. Utopias and ideologies will surge and gain credibility and force while there are unscrupulous social agents, supported by political and military powers that flourish as leeches!
(Teotonio R. de Souza is the founder-
director, Xavier Centre of Historical
Research, Goa (1979-1994).
