Bronnen bij Het alfa- en bèta-denken: psychologiseren
| 5 okt.2009 |
Een van de grote verschillen tussen de alfa- en de bèta-geest is de houding
tegenover het eigen individu. Daar waar de bèta geneigd is zich bezig te houden
met zaken die zich buiten hemzelf bevinden: de levende en de dode natuur, de
werkelijkheid, gaat de eerste aandacht van de alfa uit naar de zaken in zijn
eigen hoofd. Waar de alfa een psychologische roman leest, leest de beta een
sciencefictionboek - en er staat niet veel gepsychologiseer in sciencefiction
boeken. Een reden dat sciencefiction door de alfa's, die de smaak in dit soort
dingen bepalen, niet tot de literatuur wordt gerekend.
Je zou zeggen: zo veel zelfstudie dat moet toch wel iets moois
opleveren ... Wat natuurlijk een ironische opmerking is, want iedereen weet dat
het tegenovergestelde het geval is: de ultieme alfa, kunstenaar, is een neuroot,
die zwelgt in Weltschmerz en ook op allerlei ander manieren zich niet
gelukkig voelt. Wat zich onder andere uit in een redelijk hoge frequentie van
drugsgebruik in die kringen.
De relatie tussen dit soort Selbstanschauung en de wat
minder gelukkige gevolgen is heel treffend beschreven door Bertrand Russell, in
zijn The Conquest of Happiness (Hoofdstuk 1: What Makes People Unhappy)
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...
Perhaps the best introduction to the philosophy which I wish to advocate will be
a few words of autobiography. I was not born happy. As a child, my favourite
hymn was: `Weary of earth and laden with my sin.' At the age of five, I
reflected that, if I should live to be seventy, I had only endured, so far, a
fourteenth part of my whole life, and I felt the long-spreadout boredom ahead of
me to be almost unendurable. In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on
the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to
know more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say
that with every year that passes I enjoy it more. This is due partly to having
discovered what were the things that I most desired and having gradually
acquired many of these things. Partly it is due to having successfully dismissed
certain objects of desire - such as the acquisition of indubitable knowledge
about something or other - as essentially unattainable. But very largely it is
due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself. Like others who had a Puritan
education, I had the habit of meditating on my sins, follies, and shortcomings.
I seemed to myself - no doubt justly - a miserable specimen. Gradually I learned
to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to centre my attention
increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of
knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection. External interests, it is
true, bring each its own possibility of pain: the world may be plunged in war,
knowledge in some direction may be hard to achieve, friends may die. But pains
of these kinds do not destroy the essential quality of life, as do those that
spring from disgust with self. And every external interest inspires some
activity which, so long as the interest remains alive, is a complete preventive
of ennui. Interest in oneself, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a
progressive kind. It may lead to the keeping of a diary, to getting
psycho-analysed, or perhaps to becoming a monk. But the monk will not be happy
until the routine of the monastery has made him forget his own soul. The
happiness which he attributes to religion he could have obtained from becoming a
crossing-sweeper, provided he were compelled to remain one. External discipline
is the only road to happiness for those unfortunates whose self-absorption is
too profound to be cured in any other way.
Self-absorption is of various kinds. We may take the sinner,
the narcissist, and the megalomaniac as three very common types.
When I speak of 'the sinner', I do not mean the man who
commits sins: sins are committed by everyone or no one, according to our
definition of the word; I mean the man who is absorbed in the consciousness of
sin. ......... |
Maar geen kunstenaar die er vanaf zou willen.
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