sporting in the ooze

Which comes first, the psyche or the meat? Or do they co-arise? A series of recent observations shows that some folk feel so alien to some parts of their bodies that they rejoice in an amputation.

The "meat" people say it is a brain disorder. The "psyche" people say it is a psychic or soul phenomenon. Others try to fuse these two explanatory stances by calling it a psycho-somatic problem, where meat and psyche play off each other.

The simplified meat story is that we are chunks of meat birthed by an ongoing stream of genetic flow and that this flow has irregularities or debris which, when the flow "hardens" as a human, affects said human as a bio-neuro disorder.

In its extreme form, the meat view is that the psyche or soul or personality is an epiphenomenon, an illusive vapor rising from the deep swamps of the physical.

If you believe the meat did it, then you search for the cure in the meat.

A simplified psyche story is that we are spirits or minds or souls manifesting as a body (or in a body) and that somehow some of us wound up with the wrong body or, in the case of the willing amputees, wrong body parts.

A second version of this story is that our psyche (or more accurately, the psyche that we are, since if we say "our" psyche we have to now find out who the "our" is) is afflicted and is doing some pretty screwed up sensing.

If you believe the psyche is the root phenomenon, the causal nexus, then you search for psychic resolution.

Let's ditch the theoretical explanations for a moment and do a Jack Webb Dragnet thing. "All we want are the facts, ma'am."

Fact: Some people are so uncomfortable with and dislike certain body parts so much they want them chopped and feel better post-chop.

Fact: Certain parts of the brain do not light up for these willing amputees as they do in the non-willing amputee population.

With just these two facts, what is our plan for relieving the suffering of these folk?

1. Chop body parts
2. Therapeut the psyche
3. Chemicalize or slice the brain
4. Pray for their souls
5. Look at them and say "For Heaven's Sake"
6. Some combo of the above

1 is a quick fix and abhorrent to the non-willing amputee population's value system.

2 is a relatively long-term process and requires faith that the psyche can be therapeuted and skill in the capacity to do so.

3 is another version of 1.

4 is nice but unless you've got some really slam-bang prayer juice....

5 -- Exasperation may feel good to the exasperated, but it is ineffective to just grab people, shake them, and tell them to snap out of it. That's too bad, but that's the way it is.

6 is somewhat of a cop-out: "Let's try everything!"

I'm looking for a number 7 but don't know (yet) what it is.

In my olden age I am beginning to go along with Eric Wilson's recounting of Thoreau's insights in his The Spiritual History of Ice:

"Envisioning the Artist of the universe metamorphosing muck into lobes and globes, Thoreau realizes that this creator is no Jehovah separating chaos and order and no Platonic maker mimicking the static forms of eternity. This demiurge is playful. He sports in the ooze."

7. Track the demiurge down and have a confab.

If we follow Swedenborg's theory of correspondence, that the visible (the spectrum available to human eyes) corresponds to the invisible (that to which our physical eyes are blind), then the willing amputee's dilemma indicates that the universe itself is dissatisfied with its own manifestation and restlessly seeks new forms of being.