Episode 233 - Transcript

Hello everyone. I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This! Patreon.com/philosophizethis. Philosophical writing on Substack at philosophize this on there. I hope you love the show today.

So we seem to be the only type of creature on this planet… that regularly chooses self destructive behavior on purpose.

Should be said there ARE some RARE examples of this you can find of this in nature: I mean, elephants apparently have done this sort if thing in captivity, you know, certain bees have to die to be able to sting someone I guess…but BY and large, self-destructive behavior is a UNIQUELY human activity— for some reason: people OFTEN make the choice to DESTROY a little piece of themselves…just to feel a little bit better in the short term.

But why would anyone DO this, realistically? I mean if what we are…are rational, survival oriented creatures shouldn’t most of this behavior just be unthinkable? Maybe the problem is that that’s a horrible description of what being a human being IS, to be rational, and survival oriented.

There’s a lot of theories out there about this… but there’s two VERY interesting ones that I’d love to tell you about today that make up what you could call… a philosophy of self-destruction.

ONE can be found in the work of Dostoevsky in his book The Gambler. It’s a lesser known work of his and it’ll help dramatize all the complex psychology behind this— give us a more EXISTENTIAL take on why we do it.

And number TWO… is going to be the philosophy of Georges Bataille. An absolute LEGEND in the world of philosophy that we’ve never TALKED about on this show before.

But he has a very interesting way of framing this self-destructive behavior… one that comes ULTIMATELY from a hidden, underlying ECONOMICS of all places…and it’s one that as your philosophical sherpa… I think it complements Dostoevsky really well and is gonna definitely be worth your time.

So let’s get into it: Dostoevsky spent MOST of his life STRUGGLING… with different kinds of self-destructive behavior himself. He smoked cigarettes, which many people think led to his death. There was alcohol, though it’s up for debate how much he actually did that with his epilepsy. But more than anything, without a doubt… there was the total obsession that he had with GAMBLING. That was the big one.

Roulette was his game of choice…couldn’t STOP himself from doing it at times.

In fact, between the years 1863 and 65… he had played SO much roulette and racked up SO much DEBT with people…that he had collectors coming after him threatening to take him to court if he didn’t PAY them.

So to keep these people at BAY for a while… he HAD to sign what can ONLY be described as an extremely predatory PUBLISHING contract… where in exchange for some money up front…the contract said he had to DELIVER a manuscript by November 1st, 1866…and if he DIDN’T DO THAT…then the publisher would get the rights to EVERYTHING he had EVER written BEFORE in his career, for the next nine years.

He had no choice but to accept it at the time.

So then a long time passes and he FINDS himself…beginning of October…little more than THREE WEEKS to the deadline where he has to hand in this book. And he has absolutely…NOTHING written down on paper.

And the STRATEGY he comes up with to get him out of this situation… SOUNDS like something out of a movie. First of all: there’s NO WAY he’s EVER going to be able to physically WRITE a whole book in three weeks time. So he hires a stenographer by the name of Anna.

She would come over to his apartment, bring a pen and paper…and as he NARRATED this ENTIRE book, she threw it down on paper in shorthand as fast as she possibly could. And on October 31st, just a FEW HOURS before the contract deadline was up…he hands in the completed manuscript. In maybe one of the most epic all nighters ever PULLED in the history of the world.

For whatever it’s worth he also MARRIED this stenographer Anna shortly AFTER this…and they spent the rest of their LIVES together. Guess you BOND with someone when you’re in a stressful situation like this.

But the THING we can TAKE from these circumstances that led up to the book…is that this is GOING to be a lot of Dostoevsky himself shining through in these characters.

You know, if one of the things we LOVE about his work is that he’s always trying to depict how COMPLEX human psychology really is…well with his BACK up against the wall in terms of TIME like this, one of the reasons he chooses a story about a gambler… is because he can LEAN heavily into his own personal EXPERIENCE…as someone who’s struggled with it.

He KNOWS firsthand what it feels like to be DOING self-destructive things, knowing that he shouldn’t be. And it’s this insight that makes MANY of the scenes in this book feel incredibly REAL.

Some modern commentators will say this book is a philosophical exploration.. of a person DISCOVERING their addiction to gambling.

And as much as I respect the language of addiction and it certainly needs to be considered, understand I am but a humble podcaster here today, talking about two thinkers from 100 years ago and what’s EXCITING about them. I’m NOT going to be PROJECTING the addiction language ONTO their work… because it just didn’t exist back then.

I’m ALSO gonna try to make this NOT just about GAMBLING…but about ANY self-destructive behavior someone LISTENING out there might be engaging in, but isn’t really sure why they’re DOING it. Maybe the WORK of these two can help you THINK about this stuff in a different way. In a way that’s HELPFUL, that’s my goal.

That said: the story begins introducing the main character of the book Alexei…who’s working as a tutor for a man people just call The General.

The general’s a retired military officer. And he’s someone at the head of a family… that for a long time has been living beyond their means. He’s MASSIVELY in debt. People are coming AFTER him FOR this money. And his way OUT of this situation, of ALL things… is that he’s sitting around… waiting for his MOM to die, in some translations it’s his aunt…but he’s waiting for this person to die so he can get his inheritance from her…and be able to pay OFF all these people.

Please DIE. PLEASE, he says. He sends telegrams home every day to check if maybe she did.

There’s RUMORS going around that she’s been SICK for a long time. STILL no confirmation though, and in the meantime the creditors are just BREATHING down this guy’s neck.

Now Alexei, the main character… is in love with the general’s step daughter named Polina. They have a very STRANGE relationship between them… where he’ll often profess his love to her with some grand SPEECH he gives. And then she’ll just kinda laugh it off. And then order him to DO random stuff, that he’ll GLADLY do like he’s some kind of lap dog, because he’s in LOVE with this woman. It’s tough to read EXACTLY how SHE feels in the book, Dostoevsky leaves it a bit ambiguous on purpose…but she clearly isn’t smitten by this guy, and she USES her position to MESS with him and get him to DO things for her.

Now one day Polina asks Alexei to take a walk with her up a mountain. And while he’s in the middle of professing his love to her for the 12th time that week…she DARES him to DO something for her.

She dares him to go into the casino, it’s a resort town after all, and place a bet on her behalf on a game of roulette.

Now at first he feels conflicted about it. He knows gambling can be really bad for people. But because he LOVES this woman… and also because he just got done talking about how he’d do ANYTHING for her…he decides he’s gonna go and do it anyway.

He places a bet. And then he WINS a substantial amount of money.

He’s shocked when it happens. He’s ALSO surprised by the EMOTIONS that come over him while he’s doing it. When he LOSES money on the first couple spins… he’s hit with this nausea like he just wanted to run away from the table and never come back. Kind of like ANY time we’re hit with the negative consequences of doing our self-destructive thing.

But then after he WINS… he feels this switch into the OTHER direction…of a kind of euphoria. The RUSH or the NUMBNESS on the OTHER side that we’re looking for whenever we DO something like this.

And little does this guy know…that from THIS moment ON… this FEELING, is gonna be something that he’s CHASING for the rest of his LIFE, or at least as long as we get to follow him in the book. He is a CURSED human being from this moment ONWARD.

He’s excited to get back to Polina and give her all the MONEY that he just won. She takes it. But surprising to HIM she’s not really that happy about it…seems kind of indifferent towards him…I mean the REALITY that HE doesn’t know at this point is that she’s embarrassed because she has to pay off a DEBT with this money he just won. See, she’s ALSO completely broke along with her step-father the general.

But still Alexei SEES this reaction from her… and he BEGINS to think…that if he could just FIND a way to GET RICH, by GAMBLING…then he could solve all of Polina’s problems here. And then if he could do THAT…then she’d DEFINITELY have to fall in love with him at that point too, right?

So he starts playing ROULETTE more. Each time that he does revealing yet another LAYER to the psychology of someone descending into a HABIT of something self-destructive.

He starts to rationalize it to himself. CLASSIC move. I DESERVE to be doing this right now. I’ve WORKED so HARD this week! How is any of this different…than from what everybody ELSE is doing when they have a JOB?

He starts to come up with little superstitions at the table, for example oh the only reason I didn’t win THAT hand was because I didn’t have on my lucky PANTS…or the dealer spun the roulette ball with their RIGHT hand instead of their LEFT hand that time. THAT’S the reason why I lost.

He describes the BODILY FEELING of it all in detail: heart pounding, hands shaking, knees trembling…sweating from knowing that the amounts of money that he’s betting here could completely ruin him if he loses it. And yet he still does it ANYWAY. And he still THINKS he does it because he just wants to make money.

But there’s a key scene in the book where he’s in a Roulette session, he’s UP a lot of money…you know, the money’s STACKED in front of him like he just found a treasure chest practically…and it’s CLEAR he KNOWS that he should walk away in this moment and just stop.

And yet in his OWN mind he chooses NOT to.

And his REASONING to himself… is that he just wants to defy his own fate, ONE more time…that he SHOULD be LOSING given how the odds are always in the favor of the casino…but HE just wants to smack fate in the mouth, one last time. ONE MORE SPIN, he says in the book. This is gonna be an important scene for the philosophy of it all that Dostoevsky’s going for.

Couple more important scenes from the book before we get there though: shortly after Alexei starts spending more and more time in the casino…the mother of the General, the woman that’s supposedly really sick that they’re all waiting for her to die…SHE shows up unexpectedly.

Turns out… she’s NOT sick, at all. In fact, she’s a very STRONG woman it turns out…she’s smart and loud and within five minutes of showing up to the resort town…she knows EXACTLY what’s been going on…everyone’s been sitting around waiting for her to DIE so they can collect all her money.

So she says enough with all YOU people. Alexei: WHEEL me on down to the casino, I wanna see this Roulette game that all the kids have been RAVING about. I mean SHE’S wealthy…she HAS the money to lose. The thinking is that gambling…is really not gonna be something that hurts her that much.

So she starts to play some roulette. And oh BOY… does she play some roulette.

She burns through almost her entire life savings in less than three days.

So what that MEANS is: no more inheritance for the General. No more grandma with money that can take CARE of herself. This three day binge that she went on was a LEGENDARY level of self destruction…made up by the SAME kind of descent into making excuses, feeling entitled, and deluding herself about the concept of fate…she FINDS herself in a place where she has NO concern for HER future, or anyone ELSE’S. And then starts to REGRET it…almost IMMEDIATELY after the rush is gone.

For the rest of the book Alexei slips more and MORE into this gambler identity within his own mind. Gambling becomes simultaneously the way he’s supposedly going to solve all his problems…while also being the SOURCE of most of his problems.

By the end of the book Polina wants nothing to DO with him. He’s COMPLETELY given up EVERYTHING about life that we KNOW Dostoevsky VALUES if you’ve listened to our series on him. He has no love, he has no responsibility, no deep engagement with morality and how DIFFICULT it REALLY IS is to make the right choice. He’s given up his entire LIFE for gambling.

And in a telling scene at the end of the book Polina’s boyfriend is talking to him, trying to be friendly, INVITING him to come with them and rejoin the world of the LIVING…and Alexei says eh, maybe tomorrow. But for now…just one more game of roulette. One more spin. Underscoring how EASY it is to ALWAYS say we’ll STOP doing this self-destructive thing tomorrow. And then to never do it.

Now to Dostoevsky, like OTHER books we’ve talked about from him, The Gambler is intended to be a depiction of yet ANOTHER possible RESPONSE someone could have, once they’ve accepted the premises of Nihilism, that were dominating late 18th century Russian society.

If Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment nihilistically rejects cosmic meaning and then tries to create his own set of values. If Stavrogin from Demons is someone that is SO darkly nihilistic…that his character is intended to show how it doesn’t matter how smart or charismatic you are, without values you always run the risk of being persuaded for any cause people can convince you of temporarily. If THESE are both true, then a life of gambling and self-destruction is going to be yet ANOTHER possible way that nihilism shows up in the world that Dostoevsky wants to put on display in his work.

In fact, the Casino, just as a setting…becomes a PERFECT place for him to DO this. When your life is reduced to a roulette wheel or ANY form of self destruction…there are no values that exist within the walls of a casino like that. You reduce the world to a kind of determinism. And you always do these things in denial…of the responsibilities you have in the network of people and things that you’re a PART of.

MORE than that IN this Nihilistic vacuum…Dostoevsky is asking us to look at what two VALUES are LEFT for Alexei once he gets there. Money and sex. Or the game of roulette…and Polina. And eventually his obsession with ONE of these overrides the other.

This is what Dostoevsky meant when he wrote in a letter to a friend ABOUT the main character of this book: that Alexei is a man who’s “lost his faith.” That by turning his back on EVERYTHING around him that co-constitutes his life…he’s left with only a COUPLE, pretty shallow values that he has to CHOOSE from.

By CHOOSING the self-destructive behavior…he’s essentially saying I feel bad…and now I make the choice to DO this thing…where I transfer this bad feeling that I have…ONTO all the people around me. THEY can deal with the bad feeling now. At least I feel better!

And what Dostoevsky MEANT for all this to spark in a reader…is the difficult question of how much we can HOLD someone like Alexei…morally accountable for what he’s DOING.

Because there are moments in the book… where it seems CLEAR that he’s making a totally conscious choice when he’s GAMBLING. He SEEMS to have FREE WILL in that scene where he’s UP a lot of money, knows he SHOULD leave and COULD… but wants to tempt fate just one last time ANYWAY.

But at the same TIME, as you LISTEN to his self talk AFTER being IN these moments, you’re left to think… that this is ALSO someone becoming more and more habituated into GAMBLING everyday…and thus further and further under the influence of forces that he can’t possibly understand.

Should be said: Dostoevsky doesn’t give an easy ANSWER to the question of whether we can hold him accountable, he leaves it to the reader to contemplate it on their own.

But this is a GENIUS MOVE by him though. IF you fall more in the SECOND camp there where he IS a victim and this is outside of his control…Dostoevsky wants us to NOTICE…how we morally JUDGE him ANYWAY. Despite that.

We STILL read this book… and think that he’s being irresponsible and selfish as he’s DOING these things. We STILL hear about the grandmother who gambles away her entire fortune… and think that at some level this is a woman…that should KNOW better in her advanced years. That she’s unwise in some way.

But if we’re truly approaching this from a place of nihilism…on what GROUNDS can we JUDGE any of these people? His POINT being that we’re all NOT, just coming from a purely deterministic, nihilistic place, and that there’s much more that we need to contemplate here individually.

In fact: many commentators will say that the REAL POINT Dostoevsky was trying to MAKE with Alexei…is that he CHOOSES to gamble…as an ACT of existential defiance.

That in the REST of his life he is just this lowly tutor, he HOLDS no power in the world. In fact there are other characters in the book that just think he’s a servant… because all they ever see from him is that he’s following orders from the general’s step-daughter.

And if in the REST of his life he has to conform to a bunch of these social rules that DEFINE most of what he IS everyday…then maybe by GAMBLING these commentators say…Alexei is ASSERTING his OWN IDENTITY…in one of the ONLY ways he has the power to express it in his life.

That EVEN an act of self-DESTRUCTION…becomes a SMALL moment where at least I am living ENTIRELY ON my own terms. A type of momentary freedom.

Now this FINAL point…is going to have a loose resemblance to the way George Bataille would see these characters in the book.

Because in one of the most INTERESTING theories ever written in my opinion about why human beings engage in self-destructive behavior…Bataille is going to BEGIN his argument…with the SUN.

Yes, you heard that right. You can blame the SUN, at least indirectly, for any self-destructive behavior you decide you’re gonna do today. Not really, but you’ll get what I mean here in a sec.

See, almost ALL of classical economics Bataille says… assumes that the BIGGEST economic problem we face on this planet is one of scarcity. People say we live in a world with a finite number of resources…there’s a lot of people that NEED stuff…and that the BIGGEST issue we face: is how do we organize things to ensure that ALL those people have an opportunity to GET some of those resources.

But Bataille is going to say that ALL of classical economics like that, is actually just a SECONDARY concern of economics…something that is ONLY rearranging the more GENERAL economy… that exists underneath it, at the level of solar energy.

He’d say CONSIDER the fact that every species on this planet… wakes up and lives EVERY day of their lives…in a total SURPLUS of solar energy.

In fact, if you look at the numbers: only 1-2% of the energy radiated by the sun towards the earth… EVER gets USED for things like photosynthesis, or warming the planet, the REST of it just sort of evaporates, with us NEVER being able to harness it.

And if you zoom OUT enough to Bataille…. that surplus is responsible for basically EVERYTHING you see AROUND you when it comes to human culture.

Solar energy helps plants grow initially. Animals then eat the plants. Humans eat the animals AND the plants. Eventually we have agriculture and can STORE food for the future. And to put that in a slightly different way: by STORING food…we are essentially storing condensed solar energy.

That calorie surplus we have…THEN makes it possible for some people to not have to WORK all day, every day. All of a sudden they have time for things like art and science, discovering different ways of organizing things that are better.

In other words: we GROW as a species…by being CONDUITS for solar energy, and then TURNING it into the things we need to grow.

Even things like oil and coal…just come from really dense collections of vegetation, packed underground from millions of YEARS ago. To Bataille these are JUST…ancient forms of compressed solar energy condensed into something we mine out of the earth and use as fuel.

But here’s where things get more complicated for him: in ANY system…whether it’s biological, economic, social WHATEVER it is…this GROWTH process, CANNOT go on forever.

First of all nothing ever produces LESS than what it needs. If it DID it would DIE. And NOTHING ever produces the EXACT amount of stuff it needs with NOTHING being left over. That kind of precision is just impossible in the real world.

So what this MEANS is that everything out there…is always operating at a SURPLUS for Bataille. We SEE this all AROUND us: things in nature often produce FAR MORE than what they require. Civilizations wish stockpile resources and wealth.

This applies at an individual level TOO as we’ll talk about in a sec, but the POINT for him: is that this inevitable SURPLUS that we live within…THAT is ACTUALLY the biggest economic problem we face as a species.

Because AS this surplus accumulates Bataille says… it creates a growing tension. And if civilizations, and individuals DON’T find a way to EXPEND that surplus… as inevitably as it accumulates, it will ALWAYS, ERUPT into catastrophic things that we can see going ON all throughout our history.

Consider an example of this: picture a society that has a surplus of wealth because of an abundance of natural resources and a good trade policy.

Imagine how almost NATURAL it is…for that society to reinvest that wealth…into weapons and military strength to be able to PROTECT the big stockpile they’re accumulating. Imagine how that solar energy will almost CERTAINLY be converted into a higher population. Which then means it’s common for them to want to colonize outward, EXPAND their territory as it gets a little too crowded. Which then almost ALWAYS means you’re encroaching on someone ELSE’S home that probably doesn’t want to give it up.

In the eyes of George Bataille, this constant, economic surplus we live under…in THIS example has now led to a situation where WAR is breaking out.

And this is just ONE example of how the surplus can manifest in catastrophic ways: yes war, but also financial crises with the boom and bust cycles we often see, arms races that never end where the stakes just keep getting higher and higher,

LOTS of different forms of social unrest as this looming presence of a surplus, raises TENSION in the relationships between people. Who gets to CONTROL the surplus of a culture? How should that surplus be reinvested INTO the culture to not just serve a small NUMBER of people?

The point is ALL of this will inevitably happen…if we don’t find a way to EXPEND the surplus FIRST…in a way that RELEASES this tension that’s created. This is also why Bataille CALLS this inevitable SURPLUS…the “accursed share”. We HAVE to find a way to get RID of it… in a way that REMOVES this curse that’s been placed on it.

And the only way to DO that he thinks…is to EXPEND this surplus in a way where it is WASTED.

Now he REALIZES this directly GOES AGAINST the LOGIC of classical economics, but HE thinks:

That If you just REINVEST the surplus BACK INTO the CULTURE, it’ll just produce more and more tension and increase the MAGNITUDE of one of these catastrophic outcomes, when they inevitably come about…no, we have to find a way to get RID of the surplus…in a way that is non-productive and glorious, he says.

Now don’t worry, I’m GONNA explain this whole thing deeper, but my INSTINCTS as a podcaster here are telling me that an EXAMPLE of what he’s TALKING about could be helpful.

If you look at history…SOME societies have found a way to EXPEND this surplus they have in this kind of non-productive, and glorious way.

EVEN if they didn’t fully realize that what they were doing was economics…they still KNEW, at some level, that DOING these things was bringing something HEALTHY to their society.

In the Pacific Northwest where I live…there were native american tribes that every year would have something called Potlatch. He TALKS about this in his book The Accursed Share.

Potlatch was a ceremony, still IS a ceremony for whatever it’s worth, but throughout history this was a ceremony where the CHIEFS, of the tribes… would GIVE AWAY or even DESTROY…ALL the EXCESS stuff that they had accumulated that year.

In THEIR time this could’ve been blankets, food, canoes, medicine, I mean whatever it WAS: the WINNER of Potlatch…would often be the chief that was willing to completely BANKRUPT themselves…because it SHOWED that they valued HONOR…FAR MORE than they valued material wealth and HOARDING UP a bunch of stuff.

Now, Bataille says at first glance… this SEEMS to go against the entire LOGIC of classical economics: I mean, what society just gives away or BURNS OFF the surplus they’ve created?

But the point is it SERVES a larger function for these cultures: burning off the excess in a way that is GLORIOUS and NON-PRODUCTIVE like this…this BINDS a community TOGETHER in ways that are deeply meaningful.

In fact, there’s SEVERAL of these glorious, non-productive ways that people have DONE this throughout our history he says.

Grand festivals or feasts where people come together and celebrate. Animal sacrifice, was another form of taking your excess and wasting it in a way that binds the community together. For the Aztecs this even became HUMAN sacrifice he says.

There’s lavish GIFTS…that one culture will give to another. People throughout history would build giant PYRAMIDS or MONUMENTS…and for what just to honor the position of the stars…to bury a dead KING inside of it? No, Bataille says of COURSE this is a glorious and non-productive way to get rid of this surplus energy, with the added benefit that it doesn’t manifest in more catastrophic ways.

Now here’s the point when it comes to the individual: what WE call modern society doesn’t really have the kinds of collective, non-productive ways of expending surplus that used to EXIST.

We STILL burn off excess it should be said: there’s LUXURY stuff you can buy, you can buy entertainment…but most of it just gets repackaged as productive consumption… meaning we CONSUME…MOSTLY so we can recharge ourselves to go back to work the next DAY and be more PRODUCTIVE. That’s very DIFFERENT than burning this stuff off in a glorious, non-productive way.

And it’s BECAUSE of this…that the MODERN individual is NOT something that Bataille sees as mostly in a state of FREEDOM. FAR more OFTEN…we are people that are ENSLAVED to the logic of utilitarianism he says.

We ALWAYS need to be doing something USEFUL. And if you’re NOT doing something useful with your TIME, then what kind of person ARE you?

See, when practically EVERY bit of SURPLUS you produce needs to get reinvested BACK into your life for the sake of “self-improvement.” or PLANNING for the FUTURE properly…for most people, there’s no obvious or healthy way OUT there to just… waste energy.

And maybe you see where all this is GOING…JUST as it goes on at the level of society…to be CONSTANTLY under this pressure of ALWAYS needing to be USEFUL with EVERYTHING you DO…this creates tension in an individual PERSON’S psychology. And that tension BUILDS over time.

Because look: AS humans… we are MORE than just MACHINES he thinks…it’s NOT SUSTAINABLE if somebody’s WAKING UP everyday…feeling HORRIBLE if they’re not being USEFUL enough with every SECOND of their life.

And no doubt: you can certainly LIVE like that for a while. And you may be able to hold yourself at the BRINK of INSANITY, taking PRIDE in the fact that “I AM crazy! You GOTTA be crazy to be as successful as I am!”

But for Bataille: you are just SETTING yourself up for one of these catastrophic outcomes at the level of your personal life.

Self-destructive behavior in other words…serves a SIMILAR function for the individual… that animal SACRIFICE served to cultures of the past. It is sacrificing a LITTLE bit of health, money, reputation, time ALL the things that we OTHERWISE have to constantly OPTIMIZE in the interest of being USEFUL…and we do it for the sake of undermining the ENTIRE LOGIC… of needing to always be in control.

Keep in mind there’s different forms that this can TAKE for Bataille. Not EVERYONE that’s DOING self destructive things… are self AWARE that this is what they’re responding to.

With the rise of things like addiction in the modern world or ANY binge behavior more generally, Alexei from the BOOK comes to mind…JUST as a society can go to war and not fully realize how connected it is to this economic surplus…most individuals are doing these things… not fully REALIZING what is going on either.

And Bataille’s VERY CLEAR in his work: the fact that someone’s rebelling against the logic of utilitarianism in an unconscious way…that does NOT mean that they’re actually free. No, the DESIRE to be free from it… is ERUPTING OUT of them in ways that they can’t control.

But to TRULY TASTE what he calls “the sovereign”...or in other words to truly feel a moment of ACTUAL FREEDOM, FROM the need to always be USEFUL…anyone doing something self destructive is gonna have to be two things, ONE: self-aware of what they’re doing, and TWO, MORE importantly…they’re going to need to DO something self-destructive TO a DEGREE…that it TRULY has the ability to MESS with their life in an irreversible way.

In other words the ONLY way we actually get this release of TENSION to Bataille…is if someone’s doing something self-destructive…where they could die. Or completely RUIN their reputation in some way.

This is important for him, because if there AREN’T these irreversible stakes CONNECTED to the self-destructive thing…if you’re just DOING something bad but you’re KEEPING it in moderation…then are you ever, FULLY getting OUT, of the logic of needing to be USEFUL all the time?

Think of the difference between Alexei for most of the book, and the general’s mother that loses her entire fortune. MOST of Alexei’s gambling…is FOR some utilitarian END. He’s always gambling to be USEFUL in some way, he’s either placing the bet for Polina after she asks him to, or he’s trying to WIN money so he can use it to solve all of Polina’s PROBLEMS.

But to George Bataille: ANYBODY who sits at a gambling table…and are IN the mindset that they are playing so that HOPEFULLY they can win some money…this is someone that is SO DEEPLY ENTRENCHED, into the logic of needing to be USEFUL all the time…that EVEN their self-destructive, recreational behavior… has turned into something where it needs to produce something VALUABLE for them.

But CONSIDER the general’s MOTHER on the other hand. SHE doesn’t need to win money…she has PLENTY of it. She’s NOT playing roulette to wind down a bit so she can go to work at a FACTORY the next day and be productive.

There’s a sense in which she is CAUGHT in a TRANCE…where she is NOT considering the utility of ANYTHING she is doing. She’s operating in a COMPLETELY different kind of LOGIC than people normally do.

And while she’s not a PERFECT example of what Bataille’s talking about here…she is CERTAINLY the closest example we have in this BOOK…of someone experiencing a FLASH… of the kind of non-productive WASTE that Bataille thinks is so important for us.

So someone could ask BACK here: uh, what’s his POINT in all this? Is he saying we should all go out and risk our lives doing a bunch of reckless stuff all the time?

Well, no. In fact, MOST of what Bataille is SAYING here is him trying to DESCRIBE the way that things are playing out. NOT him telling people how they should be behaving. This is just WHAT is going ON.

And it’s not like he thinks there’d BE some clear moral path even if he WAS trying to give someone advice. Bataille was NOT INTERESTED AT ALL… in grand philosophical systems like that.

I mean as you read him…it becomes clear that even the feeling of sovereignty…that thing that people can EXPERIENCE through these self-destructive moments…even THAT, is just a MOMENT for him. Meaning it’s NOT something static that can be clearly defined by someone or prescribed to other people…feeling true freedom like that…is at MOST just a momentary FLASH… of us ACTUALLY managing to get OUT of always needing to be USEFUL all the time.

Now, if I tried to reduce EITHER of these thinkers, Dostoevsky OR Bataille, to a CLEAR TAKEAWAY that can be summed up neatly at the end of this episode…trying to do that would betray BOTH of their work and the complexity of what they were trying to DO.

You know, not everybody has a gambling problem, or binge drinks, or does things that HARM themselves in ways where they could lose everything. But almost EVERYBODY it seems…DOES do at least SOMETHING…that GIVES themselves away.

And if there’s no neat ANSWERS to be had after talking about all this…maybe there is a QUESTION…that might LEAD to some interesting conversations with yourself.

Is your particular form of self-destruction…an unconscious thing? Where like Alexei, maybe it’s an attempt to feel in control for at least a moment or two in your life when you otherwise DON’T have much control in your life? Or is it more along the lines of George Bataille and the general’s mother at times: where you’re more AWARE of why you’re DOING it, and that it’s NOT about being in control…but about undermining the thing that is constantly NEEDED of you…to ALWAYS have to be in control?

Is it something entirely different?

Hopefully in terms of tonality…this episode comes off with the good intentions that I’m trying to bring to it. What I mean is I hope it helps, people…that’s what I’m GOING for despite my limitations Let me know what you think, about bananas in the comment section.

Patreon.com/philosophizethis if you want to help keep this podcast a thing. And as always: thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.