Destroyed by Madness
I saw the best minds of my generation, destroyed by madness, starving hysterically naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.” Allen Ginsberg. Howl [i]
Like the Abnormal energies of a facade, or like Pain’s simmering or sudden outburst, Self-deception is a force from our emotional underworlds. It pushes us to chase people, places, and things that feel good (or help us feel less bad) but don’t benefit us and don’t enlarge us. They do not EXPAND us.
The heart of Self-deception needs to be understood beyond what we normally think of as addictions. Here we can include compulsions, fetishes, sexual drama, even unrealistic positive perceptions. Self-deception is a gravitational drive in our psyche that can be as well developed as Pain. Because we’re mammals that can think in extraordinary ways, we have an astonishing ability to deceive ourselves (rationalizing, minimizing, excusing, and denying) as we focus on what feels good or better.
To clarify, we all have people, places, and things that can be gratifying, pleasing, diverting, and, in fact, do help us grow. Many pleasures do serve a purpose. But all of us, also, have problematic pursuits that often remain unacknowledged. For a time, any pleasurable endeavor feels delightful and is largely under our own volition. But, eventually, some of those pleasures fatten and grow enormously, becoming another demanding pull in our nervous system. By repetition, neural networks in our brain deepen with similar events . . . layering pleasures . . . to form a robust neuro-gravitational state of Self-deception.
For instance, we learn that drinking alcohol invites social connection, friendships, and it also helps us feel calm (particularly important if you suffer any social anxiety), and creates opportunities for sex (partying, being wild and crazy), and a sense of freedom. Just as trauma upon trauma will deepen a neuro-basin of Pain, pleasure upon pleasure can deepen the positive feeling and energy in a basin of Self-deception. Different “feel-good” states get all mixed powerfully together.
Because Self-deception can exist as energies that are cut-off from our conscious cognitive awareness, it is not something we can talk ourselves out of. As Self-deception evolves into a more and more potent memory network that we get “triggered into,” it is quite similar to activating a traumatic memory. We can find ourselves suddenly “in it.” Taken over. Lost in it.
[i] Allen Ginsberg, “Howl,” poetryfoundation.org, I lines 1-2