Tillich’s comments on anxiety are poetic, but I fear they are as accurate as Freud’s insistence on Oedipal origins of neurosis. They are avenues of contemplation, but overcome by events.
Modern anxiety is part epistemically instability, but also loss of the integrity required for agency. The first is caused by an increasing rate of change thwarting the establishment of place, relations and ritual, and the second cause by the stripping of dignity by our modern financial condition. Overwhelmed by debt, slaves to corporations if we want any form of status or health, divorced from anything related to craft, métier, the land, or any of the various forms of productive agency, we exist in perpetual peril without hope.
Saying it is fear of death is too generous. Anxiety about the immediate future overwhelmed any thoughtful Edwardian long term mental paralysis.
This was such an insightful read!
Clarice Lispector
As a Brazilian, it is amazing to see Clarice’s words translated for the world. Hope you all give a chance to her and her books.
More about Clarice please.
Pursuant to your latter point, I enjoyed this work:
Milton, Giles. 1996. The riddle and the knight: in search of Sir John Mandeville, the world’s greatest traveller. Allison and Busby, London.
I had never heard of Clarice Lispector…this extract has been a little jewel of a treat this morning…thank you.
I love Umberto Eco’s reframing of Mandeville’s adventures in ‘Baudolino’. Another great post. Thank you.
Tillich’s comments on anxiety are poetic, but I fear they are as accurate as Freud’s insistence on Oedipal origins of neurosis. They are avenues of contemplation, but overcome by events.
Modern anxiety is part epistemically instability, but also loss of the integrity required for agency. The first is caused by an increasing rate of change thwarting the establishment of place, relations and ritual, and the second cause by the stripping of dignity by our modern financial condition. Overwhelmed by debt, slaves to corporations if we want any form of status or health, divorced from anything related to craft, métier, the land, or any of the various forms of productive agency, we exist in perpetual peril without hope.
Saying it is fear of death is too generous. Anxiety about the immediate future overwhelmed any thoughtful Edwardian long term mental paralysis.