Three Concepts of World Understanding

Philosopher Eugene Thacker's book In the Dust of this Planet deals with three conceptions of reality that attempt to unravel the mystique of the supernatural and the horror. This interpretation of the world allows us to look at our surroundings and ourselves from different perspectives in a rather clear and vivid way. The first perception is identified as The World for Us, which can also be understood as the anthropocentric, human-centred world common to the individual. The second concept is called The World Itself, which is more simply understood as Earth, encompassing the boundaries of the world as defined by geology, archaeology, life and atmospheric sciences. At this level of perception, the world reveals itself to us in part. Humanity uses the earth for personal or political purposes, collects data and to some extent owns it, but at this level, much of the reality is still hidden. Finally, the third and most interesting concept in this context, the World without us, also codenamed Planet, moves beyond the subjective World and also exists beyond the objective Earth. At this level, from a tangible and easily perceptible scale, a transfer to a cosmological scale takes place. The planetary concept also refers quite actively to the Triple O theory of speculative realism and to hauntological cosmic pessimism. Leaving aside the anthropocentric, logical relationship of man to his environment, this reality seems to allow the veil of mystery to be pierced into a new, sometimes supernatural reality, which, unfortunately, we cannot achieve on the basis of logic and consciousness alone. In this conception, the human being is irrelevant and the most interesting topic becomes speculative scenarios of what happens afterwards. It is also important to mention that at this level of reality, the dichotomy between man and the world, the relationship between object and subject, and the dependence of man's thoughts on his own are questioned. In other words, there is room in this concept for supernatural, unconscious processes, where the human being, as creator, can become a kind of conduit or mediator. It is true that the concept of the artist as mediator is not new. Many creators all over the world have repeatedly said that their work is not theirs. They cannot explain or justify why certain decisions happened in the process (28). In his book, Thacker also raises the idea that we, as human beings, cannot be sure that our thoughts are our own. Thacker cites the fact that approximately ninety percent of the cells that make up the human body belong to non-human organisms (bacteria, fungi, etc.) (29), but in recent research, scientists have found that approximately 43% of the human body is made up of human cells, and the remainder is made up of microscopic colonists (30). To this rhetorical question, the life sciences offer another argument. In the last few years, research has revealed an increasing body of statistically significant evidence that the gut microbiota and brain function have a close, bidirectional relationship. Although researchers agree that more interdisciplinary, large-scale studies are still needed, we can already observe correlations and trends that the composition of the gut microbiota and its changes from early pregnancy (before birth) to old age determine a person's temperament and personality (31). Thus, if the microbiota is composed of non-human organisms and is capable of shaping character, then we can probably be sure that not all the thoughts that arise in the mind are human. On the other hand, scientists suggest that our social interactions and events also slightly alter the composition of the microbiota. This science-based relationship between human and non-human creatures opens up endless imaginative possibilities to rethink what a human being really is, and finally, specifically in relation to creativity, how much of ourselves is in creativity? E. Thacker, too, raises these questions and considers that the World without us exists in the very cracks and fissures of the first two realities (32). Thus, rhetorically, we can assume that not only the world but also the human being is a fluid and unknowable planet that never fully reveals itself. On the basis of these new scientific insights, unconscious states (which will be discussed in more detail in later chapters) begin to emerge, and the possibility of creation opens up, disrupting the frames of anthropocentric thinking, and thus design, by rethinking the relationship between object and human being, and ultimately overcoming one of the greatest fears of humankind, the unknown, in creative practices. Marina Abramović has also spoken about fears and the artist's confrontation with his fears as a creative foundation in her autobiographical book "Walking Through Borders". The performance artist has also said that art does not have to be beautiful, but it has to speak and contain an energy that is strong enough to make you turn around (33).

If we think that thoughts don't always belong to us, it is also worth remembering the theory of the collective unconscious, which was introduced quite extensively by Karl Gustav Jung in the 20th century. According to K. G. Jung, in the collective unconscious, there is always a question and an answer together. There is, by the way, as in the concept of hauntological reality, no definition of space or time. In other words, the collective unconscious can be seen as the shared psyche of different groups, such as a family or humanity as a whole, which eventually coalesces into the common psyche of the unconscious relationships common to all animal species. These layers, as groups grow larger, increasingly dissociate the collective unconscious from the individual, until finally, in chemical bodies, it becomes universal (34). Thacker's hypothetical idea of inhuman thoughts seems to become more and more plausible when we start to look at the surrounding contexts. The hereditary structure described by C.G. Jung, which goes beyond the individual psyche, is not controlled by conscious acts of will, but rather by the concepts of divinity and devilry, humanity and animality, is not yet distinguishable at this level of consciousness, because there are no categories of morality. The collective unconscious is made up of instinctive and dynamic complexes - archetypes - and its content can only be detected by looking for parallels between the world and, for example, mythological motifs. Archetypal symbols can be found in various cultural expressions that have been shaped over centuries, from one generation to the next, such as folklore, religions and fiction, while in individual consciousness, archetypal symbols are usually encoded in visions, dreams or hallucinations. Forming perceptions and attitudes towards different situations and instinctively stimulating one or another behaviour, archetypes only take on a general, defined form in projection, and their action usually manifests itself when consciousness is suppressed and unconscious affects are awakened. In other words, an archetype evokes emotions close to the passions of primitive people - the experiences, joy and sorrow of many generations of humanity. Archetypes are eternal because they are not contemplated but experienced (35).

So, to continue, let us return to the third concept discussed by Thacker, that of the world without us, which is, in the words of the mysticism of darkness, a "dark, terrible abyss", paradoxically manifested in all the layers of reality. As far as horror is concerned, it is as if we cannot avoid these perceptions of reality if we try to understand horror not as a coping with the individual's fear of the human world (The World for Us), but as the limits of the human being trying to adapt to the world that exists. Faced with a world that is not just a World for us or a World for and by itself, we must also accept the concept of a world without us, which is often the most frightening. In other words, terror is not only fear, but above all the puzzling idea of the unknown (39). As the aforementioned horror writer H.P. Lovecraft - "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown". Ultimately, it is the unknown that makes it clear how strongly and involuntarily it puzzles or frightens us. It is what we cannot perceive, predict or control that is terror. It seems that when horror is anatomically disassembled, all its supernatural quality disappears and we can see how strongly we are influenced by society and culture, which form preconceived, sometimes even involuntary, perspectives on one phenomenon or another. As an example, we can mention Marina Abramović's thoughts in the film Marina Abramović: Participating Artist. The performance artist reflects on fear, saying - "It's amazing how others install fear in us. You are innocent and you don't know anything at first" and gives a personal example of the first time, when she was just a few years old, that she understood what fear is. As she slowly approached and watched a snake in the woods, she was scolded by her grandmother, who seemed to tell her to be afraid (40). These ideas resonate with those of the 19th-century thinker Søren Kierkegaard, as described in his book The Concept of Anxiety. The philosopher argues that we are all innocent to begin with and only later do we encounter anxiety that looks directly at sin. The inevitable fear that travels in parallel with anxiety defines human existence (41). From both a religious and an anthropological perspective, the constructs of fear and anxiety lead to the manifestations of demonicity, sin in the broadest sense, the different perspectives of which will be discussed shortly in the section on "Demonicity and Western Society".

28 VASKE, Hermann. Why Are We Creative: The Centipede's Dilemma. 2018

29 THACKER, Eugene. In the Dust of this Planet. Horror of Philosophy vol. 1. Winchester: Zero books, 2011. p.41. ISBN: 9781846946769

30 More than half your body is not human. James Gallagher. [Žiūrėta 2022 kovo 10 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270 18

31 SUMICH, Alexander; HEYM, Nadja; LENZONI, Sabrina; HUNTER, Kirsty. Gut microbiome-brain axis and inflammation in temperament, personality and psychopathology. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2022. t. 44. ISSN 2352-1546

32 THACKER, Eugene. In the Dust of this Planet. Horror of Philosophy vol. 1. Winchester: Zero books, 2011. p.41.

ISBN: 9781846946769

33 ABRAMOVIČ, Marina. Eiti kiaurai sienas. Vilnius: Kitos knygos. 2018. p. 422. ISBN: 9786094273537

34 BUZAITĖ, Saulė. C. G. Jungo kolektyvinės pasąmonės koncepcija. PROBLEMOS. 1995. t.49. p.60. ISSN 1392-1126.

35 Ibid. p.48

36 Šešėlis arba kitaip paveldėti instinktai; moralinė problema, kuri meta iššūkį visai sąmoningai asmenybei. Pasak K. G. Jungo, kiekvienas meta savo Šešėlį, nes visi turi vienokių ar kitokių savybių, kurių buvimo nepripažįsta. Būtent tos, neigiamos savybės, asmenybės dalis, kurios nenorime pripažinti ir yra vadinamas šešėlis.

37 Plačiau skaityti ,kur aptariamas Eggers filmas „The Lighthouse“.

38 Nuoroda į Joseph. Campbell straipsnio Šizofrenija: vidinė kelionė, publikuoto žurnale Metai, 2007. Lyginamosios mitologijos ir religijos profesorius teigia, kad šizofrenijos schema yra tokia: iš pradžių šizofrenikas atitrūksta ar nutolsta nuo vietinės socialinės tvarkos ir konteksto; paskui jis ima lėtai, giliai grimzti – galima sakyti, jog laikas pasukamas atgalios ir prasideda leidimasis į psichikos gelmes; ten įvyksta visa virtinė chaotiškų susitikimų, išgyvenamos niūrios, šiurpios patirtys ir galiausiai (jei nelaimėliui pasiseka) sutelkiantys, įkvepiantys, darną atkuriantys, padrąsinantys susitikimai, po kurių ligonis leidžiasi į atgalinę kelionę – atgimsta naujam gyvenimui. Lygiai toks pats yra ir mitologinio herojaus kelionės modelis, kurį J. Campbell skirsto į 1) išsiskyrimą, 2) iniciaciją 3) sugrįžimą. Būtent su aprašytu šizofrenijos motyvu, autorė šiame darbe lygina R. Eggers The lighthouse filmo eigą.

39 THACKER, Eugene. In the Dust of this Planet. Horror of Philosophy vol. 1. Winchester: Zero books, 2011. p.41.

ISBN: 9781846946769