Pressure from outside on our mind

The idleness we die of, to my mind, is the idleness of mind seizing us, as soon as pressure from outside on our minds decreases.

It seemsto me that nowadays mental activity often nolonger is a product of autonomous decision but of external pressure. What Vaneigem means, I guess, is not our physical, but our mental death.

The idleness of mind is a phenomenon I get conscious of, as soon as I sit down to write this article. Why, after a long and hard working day, have I got to reactivate my brain, white at the same time there would be a nice, movie on TV to comfort my actual need of relaxation? Why, after having dedicated my efforts to others all day long, should I now turn to others again instead of enjoying and dispersion right now?

I’m afraid I don’t, as turning away from "the rest of the world" and letting myself sink into my "homemade amusement park" consisting of the TV, the HI FI-tower, and magazines would comfort me in the short run only. In the long handle reality, i.e. the active partecipation in other people’s ideas, needs and problems, and so would do me no good. I feel that it is that participation that keeps my mind alive and that keeps the amount of death I carry inside me from reaching the saturation point.

I also feel that the exchange with others has also to be product of my own initiative in order to keep myself from mental paralysation. As external pressure inducing me to communicate and to cooperate doesn’t leave me much of a choice to whom to turn to in which respect.

How comes that more and more people in my surroundings withdraw, as soon as they have the chance to do so? How comes that active participation in other peoples lives and affairs more and more becomes a matter of the "compulsory part" of every-day-life (i.e. work, school etc.), while "voluntary steps" into the direction of the other — as it seems to me — are more and more seldom made?

The answer to these questions may be found in the increasing pressure put on us at work, at school or wherever the compulsory part of our every-day-lives takes place. Getting along with people often has got nothing to do with fertile cooperation and pleaceful coexistence anylonger, but resembles a struggle for succes and acceptance at charge of the colleague or schoolmate. Considering that the economic welfare we go for mainly depends on our skills to stand keen competition and to arrange with hierarchies I feel our (mental) surviving to be wear indeed.

But what are the conclusions to be drawn from the discouraging or even frustrating experiences we often make socializing with other people in our everyday-lives? The solution of this type of conflicts certainly cannot be found in avoiding confrontation with other people, their ideas and problems. This would infact mean to cultivate a fear of life that more than the respect for life would prevent us from touching it, waking it up and rousing it from its torpor.

The way to go in my opinion would lead into the direction of a "counter-clock-wise behavior", i.e. to pull down the barriers built up against other people inside ourselves right in the moment, when we feel most like hiding behind them, to open ourselves up to others, when we tend most to withdraw. It might help us to fight the idleness of our minds and to keep the amount of death we carry inside us to reach the saturation point.

ANTIE EGBERT