I think, therefore...?

All I know is that I exist. This ultimately confuses me and sends me into a spin about what to say. It seems to me that the general belief is upheld that a number of things/people/animals have some semblance of reality and/or autonomy. But, of course, since all I can say is that I exist - and not even my body... - then all I can really determine is that I manage to sustain the conception that other things outside of my mind have autonomy.

So, my utterly confused position notwithstanding, let me identify the iconic culture which I wish to dissect, namely the culture of mind-and-body (leaving aside, for now, and in sheer desperation at the already tightly-tangled knot of the situation, the spirit...). On the one hand, we are faced with the deeply-scored line that is the idea of the Mind/Body Dualism; on the other, the equally strong-standing notion that the relationship between the two is not so dualistic. (In fact (of course) the latter relies heavily on the former for its sustenance.)

It is quite clear to me that both the Dualism and the Holism parties have some validity in the world which may or may not 'really' exist outside of my own head. Experiencing physical pain affects one's capacity to function effectively on a mental level; when one exercises one's mind to a high level for a sustained period, physical exertion provides the ultimate balance; overwork seems obviously to result in sickness, the act of the body demanding respite...and other examples, such as the case of 2Shoes, the origin of whose childhood bronchial problems was never clear to me as either physical or psychological.

How I operate in relationship to these two heavily guarded outposts is this: as someone who persistently experiences the body as a traitor to the mind. This, in part, is because I hold my mind in infinitely higher regard than my body, but allow me to explain further. As I have explored in a previous post, I experience a significant discrepancy between my gendered self and my embodied sex. The ways in which this manifests itself constitute (to my mind...) nothing short of High Treason against my mind. The hormonal cycles to which I am unfortunately subject are a prime example. They reduce me to pain, for one, and force me to confront the reality of my sex. In fact, I believe the entire female reproductive system to be deeply flawed, but specifically I feel evolution has let us down somewhere: there are some of us who categorically have no desire to reproduce, and this - we are somehow led to believe - may be a trick of the body also; and yet those of us in this position are still born with the capacity to do so. The ugly and regular rearing of my reproductive system seems to me to be my body deriding some more settled and 'real' version of my self - my mental self. Moreover, the hormones are cunning, sly, and little short of evil, since they also work by disrupting the mind, bringing emotion where there was none, undermining concentration, and generally hindering the realisation of mental potential.

Other bodily systems conspire against my mental control of myself. On the one hand, I have certain relationship with my reproductive system; on the other, I am still subject to that desire for physical, sexual, intimate contact with an other (which is itself an iconic culture...of which more another time...). This desire is, I presume, also a trick of the body on some level. Again, my raging desires, which I feel bodily, work against my mind specifically by working through my mind, and I suspect I am not unusual in this respect: who hasn't found themselves playing mind games in the pursuit of physical satisfaction?

It seems then that the two factions - Dualism and Holism - are not as valid as I first believed. There is in fact another element, which may be a third member of the Dualism/Holism dualism, or instead may make those two fall on the sword of their own dualism: that third element is that the Mind and Body, instead of working independently or together, in service of each other, in fact work against each other.

But, Mind Over Matter, eh? Maybe the Mind can come back and win the day, as it did for Vaughn...