As we have so many times, we begin with what could be called the Creation myth of the modern era: the awakening of the subject, or ego, to consciousness, an act that brings into being a world around it of objects and other people. This coming to awareness is a creation, yet it is also a fall, since the subject is separated from the objective world, and therefore in a state of isolation and alienation. But there is an interface between subjective and objective, for the body is both and neither: a strange, mysterious borderland, and our experience of it is ambiguous and variable. When we are feeling in good health and good spirits, we feel one with the body, but when we are in pain, or attacked by physically-based emotions such as depression and anxiety, the body may seem an alien other. And the older you get, even if you are still healthy, the more likely you are to look in the mirror and say, “Who in the hell is that?” Yeats in old age cries out:
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May 3, 2024
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As we have so many times, we begin with what could be called the Creation myth of the modern era: the awakening of the subject, or ego, to consciousness, an act that brings into being a world around it of objects and other people. This coming to awareness is a creation, yet it is also a fall, since the subject is separated from the objective world, and therefore in a state of isolation and alienation. But there is an interface between subjective and objective, for the body is both and neither: a strange, mysterious borderland, and our experience of it is ambiguous and variable. When we are feeling in good health and good spirits, we feel one with the body, but when we are in pain, or attacked by physically-based emotions such as depression and anxiety, the body may seem an alien other. And the older you get, even if you are still healthy, the more likely you are to look in the mirror and say, “Who in the hell is that?” Yeats in old age cries out: