Here in 5 Walking we’re concerned with the living of the life of an activist. The one who is writing this is a libertarian socialist  . . libertarian embraces a whole lot, there is no sectarianism here but, rather, the opposite: we're concerned here with the #pluriverse of people, and their emotional landscapes; and the literacy of navigating in this space. We’re concerned, first, with the emotional life of the activist whoever they may be and, second, of people generally. Both of these, pivotal concerns of activist political conduct.

 

This is a fundamental, difficult field of evolutionary #literacy, a critical sector of the #longrevolution. Post-Trump and post-Brexit (I write in 2018) amid fundamentalisms and fervid nationailsms, no-one could underestimate the central contribution that is made in politics by affect, emotion and deeply entrenched formations of Self and Other; by splitting and identification; by (necessary?) fighting and (wise?) embracing; by involuntary movements-towards and movements-away.

 

This stuff - deeply in the body, forceful, refractory, ceaselessly arising in what the dhamma calls #sankhara, mental formations - is the pivot of wisely or foolishly staying the same and intentionally, carefully, becoming different. We need literacy in these things - and how! This is the deepest challenge of our times.

My sense of what it takes to navigate these things in real-life practice means that along the way we’ll need to look at these four vectors, at least:

• Affiliation and clinging, selfing and #Othering . . the well of sankhara; dhamma traditions.

• #Splitting, 'basic assumptions' vs ‘work group’ sensibility in groups, the vernacular handling of counter-transference outside the consulting room, ‘unconditional positive regard’ in everyday life . . the Bion/Tavistock/Klein tradition in psychoanalysis and ‘sociatric’ work; Carl Rogers.

• Historians’ approaches to socialism, 'a common culture' and sankhara @ Britain mid C20 . . Raymond Williams on capturing & working with structures of feeling (#culturalmaterialism  #longrevolution). Also, EP Thompson on ‘the moral economy of the crowd’ .   an ambivalent, volatile and by no means progressive phenomenon, but critical in the continuing self-making of the working class?

• The compass of #affect-shame - an aspect of the #negativity_bias of our species’ partially evolved human mind . . the enormously powerful and frequent, defensive and protective, affective process, of disaffiliation, shutting-down, turning-off of appetite and interest . . a fundamental and intrinsic dynamic in human affective machinery which, in modern times, is a root of confusion and havoc, being triggered so frequently in a world of persistent forceful image and affiliation, and constituting such a force itself: bludgeoning, hammering, thuggish, a neurochemical/endocrine cosh. This is the experiential chemistry of what, in psychoanalytic discourse, might be spoken of as ‘death-instinct’, and which is, indeed, a powerful and immediately present physiological force, which ‘deathifies’ live experience, opens a yawning liminal chasm, inhibits openings of the heart and mind, and generates actual sensation and body-sense that trigger actual physiological defence (which has, within its compass, violence, flight and passivity - a range of autonomous vagus responses).

• Etcetera.

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Follow these links for expansion on these perspectives . .

• Clinging, Othering, sankhara

• Splitting, ‘transverse’ practice and counter-transference in everyday life

• Historians, structures of feeling and the self-making of common/s culture

• The compass of shame, the negativity bias of humans' minds

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