Studies in Projection, et al

To what end, I always ask myself. To what good does this perform. And if it does truly work towards good, does not loop back in on itself like a shark, then I go after the good. At some step along the way, there's always a hole in the logic; and if nothing else, there is always the "universal curse of logic" card. Don't believe me? Well, it'll happen. And of course, there's the trump to that; the "we adopt and canonize universally fractional truths because it's necessary" card, the one from our psychology deck. And with what speed and dedication do we play this card. Oh, who am I kidding; it's just me playing the card. Most people aren't even thinking about this when they're happy, if they ever think about it at all. But I guess we're playing the "horrible ugly truths of the universe that manifest themselves only through the lens of the depressive" game.. so, joke's on me.

But enough about that.. Let's look at projection! That is the title, after all.

From this blanket we weave of the universe, our cognition - our very way of understanding all the random, unconnectable (if we probe deep enough) events and misfortunes that befall us - we weave the blanket based on all these fractioned truths. Which are our perception, but they weren't always. Illustration: closing up because of pain, developing thicker skin, doesn't come for no reason. There's always a motif behind it: "Oh, the universe is such a horrible place, every man for himself." And as long as we ten that belief, as long as we hold and carry it with us, it becomes our lens for other realms of operation. And it'll go away and be replaced by other 'casual philosophies' I'm sure, as it always does. And usually for a reason that we don't understand; brain biochemistry is far from being a well understood field.

But let's factor in projection. We focus so much energy that's been provoked and dislodged by something bad, something that we either can't explain, don't want to face, or want to bury... The truth is we never bury it, or rather, it never stays buried. We focus so strongly on some object that we give it qualities. Or we focus so strongly on a person. We personify objects and we objectify people. It's a fluid dichotomy. That object, or that person becomes something more than they are (which I politely request you to dig through my older stuff, rather than have a quick reference on what I'm talking about) - something more than they are to begin with. We are all alone, and people are peripherals which are either a tool, obstacle, or a projection (a personification). And our interactions with people are always driven by some id: the Need to Socialize (personification: projection of self-similarity onto others), the Craving of Sex (objectification), Sustenance (objectification), Stable Ground (fear). And love? Love is the trust that someone else can carry as much of your burden as you ask them to. Disagree? Just look at failed marriages and what causes a relationship to break down. It's always one person asking more of the other than they want to give.

If electricity is that basis of all 'physical' interaction, projection must be the basis - the quantum - of all relationships. The child who projects onto... Rather, the child who seeks out his acceptance, his trust through an object. Security blankets? They're more common than that. It's no different than the adult who projects his need for comfort, for security onto his house, or his own private sanctum. It's a safe retreat, and I think almost everyone does that. Perhaps it could be said it's a reaction to rejection, to being hurt while vulnerable.

Projection is what causes hatred of a person. They take on ideals that the viewer detests (and why do they detest them, you may ask). People don't have a personality until you stick labels on them. A person's self worth is entirely different, and id-driven, than their value to other people. Projection is what causes an angry man to lash out at someone they don't care about. And what is care, anyway.. Projection forms our identity by helping us identify our ids; something hurts us deep inside and we ask ourselves what is it, so that we may protect it and never feel this way again. That person becomes the one who has hurt us. That "person" may be the open ocean, it may be Black people, it may be Hitler (not my 'people', mind you). And through history, these massive aggregators - disease, predators, psychotics - have been incorporated into our mass psyche, to which many of us abide, and many if not all have no choice but to subscribe. Oh, sorry, I mean our culture.

A quick tangent; in response to someone who was arguing the root of war is tribal thought, the tribe is explainable; it is nothing more than, and I know I've described it previously, but it's nothing more than a particular way the individual human minds are brought together and the reactions that ensue. The quantum is the mind, not the tribe. And hopefully, we can discover it's not even the mind, as we (and hopefully before we) all slowly go insane. The person is the root of war. And to be so naive as to think war alone is sufficient to summarize the human condition.

It's not all projection, no, but a lot of it is object-relations theory. Personification, objectification, fear, id, peripherals. The id that makes us afraid, the fear that dislodges our development, the sexual desires that are set into place, the guilt to try and hide our biological drives or our carnality; the horrible crash that results from the displacement, back-up, disorder, and impossibility to make sense out of it. Welcome to the human condition.