On Covid-19 and the Actor-Network Theory.

How the Coronavirus ‘Wants’ to Change Our Lives

———- “of course the virus doesnt want anything…”

The tack I now take is towards people not being miserable; I am not really anymore trying to explain some grand sense of the universe into which everyone must fit. But of course those two kinds of approaches on sensibility can overlap.

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I am falling away from the belief and intention that there is a noble and knowable unity to which knowledge is attached. I lean towards what has been being told to us for a while, that whatever knowledge is, it is ultimately human knowledge and nothing else, Yet, and so much as it is “human knowledge and nothing else” these two facets necessarily inscribe a world that is not being recognized. 

This is to say that I’m pretty sure there is some grand noble big truth to which knowledge must be attached AND There is not. The truth is is that both of these situations exist simultaneously without having to fall or reduce into the other for another big T unity of truth. The truth is uncomfortable. The truth of the world is uncomfortable and uncertain.

The plain facts of the matter is that most human beings are not so open minded and flexible. Most human beings want to find a concept that Makes them comfortable. yet at the same time, Most human beings are rigid in their concept of self other, and world. And this is OK, but my job as a counselor is not necessarily to have a rigid formulation of truth into which these people seeking comfort must for themselves to be comfortable.

It feels and is becoming more apparent to me that it is this rigidness that is the source of most “amicable to the couch” mental disturbance or issues. It is not necessarily that the structure of one’s mind is incorrect or that the way that they are thinking about things is incorrect, or that there is some “illness” that is attacking them. But, it is possible that such formulations will help them to get over their mental situation that they find problematic.

Nevertheless we might say that mental issues arise from the inflexible ideal of self attempting to impart upon that in flexibility a certain flexibility in approaching that particular problem. This is extremely difficult enactment, and yet, if one could be just a little more flexible in their self-concept, the application would become rather simple.



Within this flexible notion of world in which we are not able to Become separated, by this flexibility, we should see that there are different types of human beings. Just as a human being is not the same as a child, is not the same as an adolescent, is not the same as a young adult, is not the same as an adult, nor an older adult, nor aged, nor near death. There is not one comprehensive human mental state or approach that works successfully to accommodate the human being from birth until death, just as there is not one manner by which we designate a human being must live, must think, the foods they must eat, the way they must dance, what they find funny…

AND There Are indeed systems toward helping human beings with mental issues that will work with different types and situations of human beings. For example, since my recent post had to do with psychoanalysis and particularly Lacan, there will be people for whom psychoanalysis will be effective, but it does not mean that the people  for whom psychoanalysis is not effective require them to work harder or something, or requires that the psychoanalytic theory needs to be better worked. 

The effort of counseling, seems to me, requires that the counselor be humble in their estimation of theory and practice, be amicable to the reality that their particular theory of what mental issues are and how they are treated is not true, that is, in so much as there may be another theory which will be effective for that individual person.

Now, this flies in the face of not only what and the majority of human beings think, how they think of themselves and their own thoughts and the world and universe and how they do for those various cosmological narrations to grand narratives, but also I’m sure very offensive to the counselors themselves.  The reason for this is people in general but practitioners of any sort of doing must believe that what they believe is true. And because of this self centrality socially speaking we have the idea of “opinion” and relativity as a grand narrative which coincidentally coincides with the physical contingency of 20th century physics as a colloquial explanation.

We know that even many counselors (but particularly psychiatrists and psychologists) for the most part are rigid in their ideals of what mental health is what mental illness is because hardly none (most likely) Will even take the 30 seconds to think about what relativity and opinion means for that pet theory, but will rather stick to their guns about “personal truths”; this is to say that Everyone gets to have their own personal truth as long as that personal truth coheres in and correlates with a grande system which tells us about the “big truth, the “actual truth” of what mental health is within the actually true universe that has been bestowed upon the big idea of humanity in general as we move through this big picture of history.

The point I’m making here is not that everything is not relative, but that we do not have a sensible and coherent philosophy of how relativity actually functions in application. Rather, we have a bunch of self centralized ideals attempting to assert upon one another and argue with each other which one has the better contact with the great transcendent big T truth. 

OK!

Now to the reason why I reposted that post on actor network theory.

The disclaimer in that post that I quoted above, “of course coronavirus doesn’t want anything”, is a blatant statement of how actor network theory is being commandeered toward the faith in the big truth, and not conveying a proper understanding what actor network theory is actually saying about the condition of the human being of knowledge.

For my question would be: why is not the coronavirus wanting anything?

And I’m going to leave you readers with that, that is you readers who are actually trying to think…

…I’ll also leave you with the strange idea that what I’m talking about above does not mean that counseling has to do with “whatever works”.

🌈 have an excellent corona day. 🌏



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