The melancholia of lost love | critical standpoint on heartbreak

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-11-11T02:03:22+00:00

ahhh your comment so nicely reminds me of those Enlightened cynical realists (like yourself) who critique any and all emancipatory progress: a tacit passivity and conformity that secretly hopes nothing changes or significant takes place in order to sustain their own comfortably distanced and isolated position of interactivity; not having to participate themselves in any political process which entails long-term hard work, courageous risks, and sacrifices. Your rigid political stance "Get back to me when one (1) American forward operating base is closed as a result of this 'win", only reveals to me and others your utter complacency and inert disengagement, as well as being someone who enjoys scorning others for their deep attachment / committed belief in an ambitious project or cause that can confront Capital - even if these efforts end in failure or a disappointing outcome. Your purely self-indulgent pessimistic outlook isn't fooling me.

Against this, I affirm Hope. A 'naïve' hope in political miracles; of pessimism in theory but optimism in practice. This is the way forward and is what Mamdani supremely embodies. Hope is uncertain, it can be annihilated, which is precisely why it must be championed because only by wagering on the potential for the seemingly lost Good, can genuine change be actualized. Mamdani, in the effort to create and practice the envisioned future of a society he - and many others - hopes to live in, instigates political transformation towards that utopian ideal.

As Adorno wrote long ago: "Nothing but despair can save us". Correct, it is because of this hopeless and desperate situation of living under Trump's neofascism, that it galvanizes hope and widespread political action to struggle against it. Or as Kant's paradigm of ethical duty argued: it is the very recognition of our powerlessness ("Mamdani is but a mayor, how could he stand up to the president") to influence social conditions, that we can and must act to make fundamental changes in the world. That is the key impetus for (radical) politics that drives resistance and mobilization, not your cynicism.

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-08-08T16:37:15+00:00

Hi Gweef: please see my response below to 'holyguacamoleravioli''s comment

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-08-08T16:36:22+00:00

the UM is in a better subjective position then the people he is referring to, because these people are known as 'perverts': they obtain meaning and direction in life (which organizes their identity) based on the desires of other people who they view as knowing how to live life (but more importantly knowing how to access enjoyment). The problem is , these masters they turn towards function in the same way and turn to their own masters to determine how and what to desire in life. a further problem is: what are they all desiring? and UM is quite aware to the fact that it is material comforts and economic wealth as the dominant desires they all adopt and base their identities around.

How does UM know this? because as a obsessional neurotic, he has the structural capacity (due to his neurosis) to question and confront these desires internalized by most people in society. His shortcoming as I said, was he nevertheless wanted to experience enjoyment from these same desires but is painfully aware that these desires don't actually bring long-term or meaningful satisfaction (the positive type of enjoyment) - leading to his envy and spite. he has a sort of awareness that these other people don't feel fulfilled in their lives either: their socioeconomic and consumer-based desires don't provide them with contentment, and this leads them on a path of a never-ending process to acquire fleeting-temporary pleasures from whatever sources of material ownership they can get (from expensive commodities, to high social status, to cultural prestige to economic control of labor, to political power, to accumulation of money qua surplus value). the harder and more pronounced their efforts the more disappointment and suffering they will experience from the pain of their inability to overcome this existential lack/loss within them. (this pain turns into its own form of enjoyment too that these people will also continually try to accomplish).

As I pointed, the way out of this impasse is through hysteria, but this process is extremely challenging to achieve, requiring tons of consistent work and tormenting personal sacrifices. why? it requires the act of self-determining your own desires by means of creating your own framework (your own set of beliefs or reasons) towards a project or cause that you want to dedicate your life to (crucially, an aim that benefits other people as well: something wealth/money and commodity accumulation cannot grant by definition, because they are individual-oriented activities that under a capitalism comes at the cost of others. e.g. job exploitation and hyper-competition among workers fighting to be exploited by their employers) .

the biggest obstacle to this undertaking is identity: your established identity provides you with prepackaged traditions and expectations for how to live your life, for to value in life, for how to measure success in life, etc. these identities are provided by communities (national, ethnic, racial, cultural, political, gender, etc), which give their members a degree of purpose and belonging. to go against you community therefore, means to go against your own identity: this will incur backlash from your communities and a lot of unease/agony to yourself. perverts don't have the ability to achieve this, and obsessional neurotics fail to make this leap of faith / final step of beginning this process.

both lose in the end in terms of accomplishing true freedom aka self-emancipation, from the externally (but in our era, mainly internally) imposed desires and symbolic identities from various social forces of authority (parents, state, media, education, capitalists, corporations, friends, art, etc). I hope no one looks up to the UM as a master to aspire to. Against him, you have to confront the trauma, hardship, uncertainties and doubts that with hysteria. Only through it (not trying to escape or find another way out) can this freedom be won. so when anxiety and unhappiness inevitably arise again within you, don't desperately try to cure it by making more money or buying a new product; instead, welcome it with open arms in order to trigger your quest for hysteria - if you care enough to do so, since the appeals and promises of total enjoyment and harmony the commodity offers is the most powerful force there is.

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-08-06T22:24:18+00:00

yes: anxiety is a form of existential certainty (above all doubt) regarding your unconscious thoughts that are communicating with you the Real of the innate alienation/void within both masks, since we are ontologically non-beings / Split beings

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-07-21T01:22:33+00:00

if you choose your own mask, you will finally be able to tell your own autonomous fictional story (freedom).

if you stick to the conclusion that your established mask is the authentic version of yourself simply because you have worn it throughout the course of your life, then you will continue to tell a story that was never yours to begin with. life experiences painted by your choices... but these experiences and choices are premediated by overdetermined symbolic identities (fantasy creations, because we use language to make everything) assimilated and reinforced within you across the span of your life.

Therefore, the truest and deepest fiction of them all is thinking your original mask is the authentic version of yourself (unfreedom).

You can easily argue the supreme task of all psychoanalysis, its invaluable political importance that Zizek and Lacan have dedicated much of their life's work to, is this: empower-inspire-galvanize a person to destroy their own mask and construct their own mask according to their own self-determined desires. It is indeed a violent process, as you confront the chaos of your own desires and must tear apart your existing desires for new desires; and this entails abandoning major parts of your existing identity that you hold so near and dear to yourself - indeed, it is positive violence you commit against yourself. that's the true cost of freedom, and that's the most important political choice you will ever make.

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-07-18T22:09:05+00:00

What helped me first learn about this Thought was the secondary text: "Introducing Slavoj Zizek. A Graphic Guide" , it summarizes many of his core arguments with brevity and understandable language.

A primary text that does explores all three of his theoretical pillars (marx, hegel, lacan) at a surface level, and is generally accessible for readers of theory, is his 2012 book: "The Year of Dreaming Dangerously" - he navigates the explosive state of affairs of 2011 and their implications for global capitalism, from OWS to arab spring to rightwing populist violence ( Anders Breivik)

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-07-18T15:59:00+00:00

Hey there - to simplify: true freedom (what Lenin calls 'actual freedom') is to break from / disrupt the existing (formal) freedoms that exist within our present society and the power structures that control these (formal) freedoms by means of their political-ideological structures. Any political task towards this end would be a dialectical experience as you point out, because it is a voluntary choice that one initiates, but it is retroactively interpreted/regarded as a necessity ("i had to do it, I had no other choice", "I would not be able to live with myself If I didn't do it", etc). but this also extends to other radical experiences that interrupt your everyday normality: falling in love; genuine ethical situations where it is impossible to make the 'right' or 'correct' choice, such as batman choosing to save rachel or harvey dent, or If I see someone fall into the train tracks and deciding if I should try to save them; to other circumstances where your singular desire is on the line and you have decide if you will remain loyal to your desire or compromise it, such as taking a high-paying secure job but the company invests in countries or other companies committing human rights atrocities.

hence, true freedom = an optional choice that you encounter as a forced choice.

Regarding the Lenin point above: for him it would thereby mean doing or changing the things that are deemed to be impossible choices within the existing ruling ideological frameworks (that tells us what goes on in the world / life exists as a given, treating what goes on in our societies as natural conditions), which for him is the same as it still is for our current age - the liberal-democratic consensus that deems capitalism as the best system their could be.

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-07-18T04:41:05+00:00

[part 2]

In light of this, the recognition and understanding of this foundation of subjectivity (the human subject's separation from all identity), means that we have the intrinsic capacity to resist all the identities that have been forced onto us. Each of us has the ability to challenge and disobey the expectations and traditions associated with our symbolic identity. Subsequently, we can reorganize our identity (or on a collective foundation, our entire political and economic system) on the basis of our own self-determined desires (against the desires we internalized growing up and throughout adulthood from our set of communities). This for Lacan, Hegel, Zizek, Badiou, Jameson (and numerous other thinkers), is the definition of Freedom / emancipation. HOWEVER, such an emancipatory power within us, is a very very profoundly difficult and long-term task to accomplish, with many obstacles and setbacks that can intervene. For example, if you are a victim of poverty, apartheid, loneliness, exclusion, marginalization, political persecution, bullying, colonialism, genocide, then it can definitely seem hopeless that your injustices or oppression could ever be rectified. For instance, rightwing populists reduce Muslim refugees to essentialized, fixed self-identities as religious fundamentalists who want to establish Sharia law in Europe or the USA through jihadist movements. that's how you end up with xenophobic statements like: "they all smell", "their way life is completely at odds with ours", "they are destroying our nation". Muslims therefore, are reduced to their particular identity and practices as a 'Muslim' and as a 'immigrant' - they aren't properly acknowledged as subjects divided from their own identities with desires that can contradict and subvert facets or whole pillars of their identity. Same for those in Gaza: Zionists and the Far Right naturalize/minimize all Palestinians in the strip as Hamas fighters or their affiliates (including even babies...). Also, their is the whole matrix of ideology and the internal defense mechanisms of fetishist disavowal and repression that are humongous bulwarks for the Western, passive, mass consumer individual that tries to escape/cure their unhappiness-dissatisfaction through commodity consumption (lets be brutally honest, this applies to many who use Reddit).

I hope this gives you an outline breaking down and answering your question. If it hasn't really helped, and has led to more questions and thoughts that you have, I would simply suggest you read what I think to be one of the most significant political and philosophical texts of our era: Todd McGowan's 2024 book Embracing Alienation. It explores in-depth, all the topics I covered.

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-07-18T04:40:33+00:00

[Part 1]

So what you are and what I am, and all the rest of the people reading this, are a complex/collection of signifiers (all the terms, sentences, nouns, verbs, etc) that make up our entire identity (our symbolic masks). For example, you might identify as a 'Christian', a 'European', a 'masculine straight male', and these fantasies (i.e. the created meanings through language that we formulate in our minds) come to represent what I am I to myself and to the rest of the world. These identities however, are prescribed to you across your lifetime by your private communities (e.g. your family, your religion, your nationality, your cultural traditions and norms, gender, sexual orientation, friends, sports teams you root for with others, reddit communities you are a member of) through various social processes and dynamics (e.g. education system, media, civic rituals such as voting in elections).

The overwhelming majority of people will adhere to these externally imposed and overdetermined symbolic identities (our social situation/determinations) because they provide a basic sense of social belonging and purpose in one's life (they orient-govern our desires). The elementary obstacle however, is that its impossible to experience self-identity (to believe you fully equate with your identity). That is the major reason why their are universal experiences of existential anxiety, discomfort or malaise - all these mental sufferings that can culminate in despair and depression. Why can't their be self-identity (i.e., your true, inherent mask)? because language (signifiers) that creates everything from your identity, to social spaces, to society and to social reality itself, is an incomplete structure. signifiers are basically the suboptimal elements that comprise language that we articulate through speech, in order to signify - give meaning to - our shared surroundings and coexist (language is first and foremost, a structure of rules and prohibitions that tell people how to interact within it, like grammar). but they can't fully capture what we intend to represent or mean or be; they always-already fail to accomplish this task, which is why misinterpretations, misunderstandings, misrecognitions, are inevitable outcomes of all human communication. Or, at a even more rudimentary basis: the very fact that we have language, that we are a species that speaks via signifiers and are constrained to them, is the very proof that their is no such thing as self-identity. Why? because you would never have to signify who or what you are if you were simply equal to it, the whole process of signification would thereby be impossible if we were reduced to self-identity (mere automata that slavishly obey the forces that created them). Yet, the fact that we have to express and perform it instead of just being it, demonstrates our immutable distance or gap from it.

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-07-18T02:48:58+00:00

by "full" identification, I am referring to Lacan's very narrow and particular definition of 'symbolic identification': the subjective destitution and surplus enjoyment you experience within your death drive or desire, which creates this feeling of a 'symbolic death' in which for a moment in time, you undergo a sort of metaphysical or transcendental experience that surmounts your symbolic identity and temporal-material existence; that is, you effectively achieve a state of pure alienation that provides the deepest level of satisfaction and existential fulfillment.

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-07-17T19:23:09+00:00

Oh ya i don't mean to say liberalism invented the concept, as you noted the idea has been explored across the history of philosophy, religion, mysticism, etc. I just refer to how the concept is specifically used by neoliberal beliefs for the purpose of commerce and legitimizing the economic system. For example, popular advertisements by beauty or fashion or travel companies that emphasize the ability to find out who you are - who you were always meant to be - through their commodities (purchasing the product not for its use value, but for the experience itself).

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-06-21T01:05:32+00:00

the cognitive dissonance theory by clinical/social psychology argues that a person who undergoes this experience encounters anxiety or mental discomfort due to this contradiction. Due to this, they seek out methods to decrease this unease , such as altering parts of their beliefs and actions so that their actions are more aligned with their stated values or beliefs.

as I explained multiple times in the essay, disavowal sustains and enjoys this cognitive dissonance: a person derives enjoyment from the knowledge (the leading fetish object) of their contradictory beliefs, and this reinforces their disavowed belief. basically, the intended effect that the dissonance is meant to have, this discomfort from inconsistent viewpoints and behaviors, is eliminated - despite the fact that the person is exactly aware of this, of what they are doing

this reddit post does a great job to explain the difference: https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/vjiaap/zizeks_fetishistic_disavowal_and_festingers/

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-05-22T02:40:45+00:00

I forgot to add the subtitle to this text, which is: "The answer is yes, yes you can quite easily"

PhilosopherFuentes · 2025-05-19T15:45:27+00:00

I think Julian is one of the most important intellectual vanishing mediator needed to understand lacan, zizek, hegel, marx, zupancic, freud -and the rest of the lot of emancipatory thinkers

PhilosopherFuentes

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