Heirs to the Wreckage

Freedom can only be truly realized through constraint, which means it is one of the most elusive and incomprehensive phenomena we can encounter. In its purest form, we all desire it, feel its absence and cherish the rare moments when it is present. Perhaps even our most impulsive and instinctual actions channel freedom in its purest form. Yet that does not obscure the simple reality that people are overwhelmed by an abundance of choice, true unbounded freedom typically leads to an existential stalemate.

When first learning about transgender people, there was one thing I kept coming back to, something that didn’t entirely make sense to me within the context of queerness: namely that (some) transpeople changed their names. If the objective is to be free, to be more true to oneself without the oppression of societal norms, why is this freedom only realized by aggressively conforming to another norm (such as changing one’s name from “Luke” to “Luna”)? Certain transitions involve dressing up, acting, empathizing, and doing as much as possible to escape one normative prison only to fall into the arms of another normative prison. The younger me asked: “Why not be who you truly are, why adopt this mask?”. Surely “Luna” is not ‘the real you’, but an amalgamation of norms regarding womanhood, and you seek to inhabit her.” This is a reduction of what’s actually happening, but the question remains interesting for me. This is also why I don’t find the “trans-women are/are not women” debate to be entirely unreasonable, even as it fills up with toxic actors and ideological distortions. My personal theory is that, well if you want to transition (leave your birth identity), you need to transition into something, go somewhere. The domains of man and woman are rigid, but their rigidity-their concrete societal mapping- is what makes them guideposts. Like the beacon of Alexandria guiding people to safe harbor, even if another gender identity is not necessarily more “free” than one’s birth identity, it serves as a dependable space of retreat. To find out who you truly are, perhaps you need to experience it through another mask, through the constraints of “Luna”. Of course many queer people opt for non-binary labels, but I imagine this is confusing in its own way, for to be non-binary is to be in “societally uncharted waters”. Plus there is the conundrum of society never having enough labels, there are only so many ways in which you can express your identity through language. Subsequently, each label- if too integrated into the mainstream understanding of gender- risks becoming its own sort of binary. If anything, language charts the waters and draws up the categories, and those categories can only manage so much complexity when defining any kind of identity (including gender). So, perhaps freedom for certain trans-women can only be realized through the constraint of womanhood, vice versa for certain trans-men.

True freedom, unbounded, is more like saying “I no longer wish to be this”, and then asking “what do I become now?” only for the abyss to remain silent. We all rely on some external structure, some cultural norm to guide our actions in this world. Oftentimes the decisions we make are not necessarily our own, but are informed or directly decided by this external structure. A parochial way of putting it would be that people oftentimes do not want to think for themselves. Capitalism is so alluring in this sense because it feeds on this ontological condition of ours, it is a heightened and universalized external structure, so almost every decision we make is made easier by its norms. “Get good grades in school”, “study the topics that are most marketable”, “attend this college”, “get this job”, “fill this 401k”, “have a suburban family”, then continue to hit all the right milestones until you die. Who is to say that we ourselves choose these pursuits, when they are mandated by an outside or collective influence? But on the other hand, what would we choose if that influence were not there, how would we know what to choose? Freedom perhaps challenges us to transcend that structure, to make decisions that are not obvious, and abridged from the structure. That’s what makes routine so appealing and so hard to discard. Because even if we did not choose it, and even if all those milestones are in service of staving off the not-so-subtle threat of poverty: with those milestones come the promise of identity, of purpose, of happiness, of standing, of safety both cultural and material- things that would be very hard to find on our own if they were not flashed in front of us by the structure.

Note- I am not sure where biological functions (i.e hunger) fit into this discussion, for surely those are involuntary but not external to us (even if they are conditioned by external structures).

The experience of ADHD is difficult to explain, and the modern understanding is limited and does not account for all its manifestations. But it is my personal belief that ADHD enhances the paradox of freedom. There is firstly the well-known psychological phenomenon of “ADHD paralysis”, where a subject feels intense anxiety or apathy when confronted by how many things one could pursue. Conversely, there is also the occurrence of pursuing as much as possible, being relentlessly stimulated by everything that attracts interest. To be ADHD, or to be neurodivergent, is to be someone out of lockstep with reality (well let’s be honest isn’t everyone?): we act on how we feel, on what interests us, we quite literally act out until something cues us to shut in- which has been called “impulsivity” by many. Yet, when we are told to do something or asked to engage in a task that does not arouse our interest, our attention wanders, we fail to follow instructions, we struggle to see or derive any meaning in what is being asked of us. In post-juvenile Gen Z life this takes on a different form. Firstly, there’s the emergence of widespread internet access, the short-term dopamine machine. I opine that no mind craves this bulwark against boredom and the existential stalemate more than the neurodivergent mind. Secondly, there’s the widespread usage of CNS stimulants, adderall, methylphenidate, to condition the ADHD mind to engage in unwanted tasks via an artificial supply of dopamine. The unwanted tasks, of course, typically being the tasks of the external structure: getting good grades, imposing bureaucratic organizational structure on your time, meeting deadlines, applying to jobs, slogging through the most boring and uninspired assignments, etc. When asked to meet the impossible standard of “the way the practical world works”, it is these medications that help us overcome the deficit. Yet a curious thing happens when we become addicted to these prescription pills, the minute we stop taking them we don’t feel any urge to do anything, not even the things we liked and “acted out” for as children. Similarly we find it difficult to be off our phones, for they interrupt the void/existential stalemate with the endless array of amusements they offer. Where dopamine used to flow naturally for specific and “impulsive” things, it now barely flows at all when we disconnect ourselves from the mandates of the structure, quite literally when we disconnect from our phones and our drugs. Because quiet, and the space to make our own decisions, untethered freedom, is unbearable once introduced to the reliability of drug-enhanced productivity and endless distraction. Is this not a sort of complete picture of freedom and how hard it is to grasp? The neurodivergent perhaps experience freedom acutely in the sense that our spontaneous impulses and our most “authentic” behaviors are not conditioned by structure, yet once introduced to structure we are the ones who most suffer without it. We cannot abide ennui, or a lack of purpose, yet we lapse into depressive anhedonia when faced with all the things we could do. Freedom is perhaps the neurodivergent child screaming joyfully in the classroom even if it is disruptive and forbidden; or perhaps it’s the neurodivergent sitting in his bed staring at the ceiling, wondering what the hell he should do with his life, or if that answer eludes him- what should he do in this very moment. Oh well, the phone is right there to subjugate him to the mind circus of social media, games, and YouTube, and avoid the difficult contemplation of freedom.

Georges Bataille had a theory of depense, where a state should expend the energy and resources of its citizens to keep them from encountering the conscience de soi. In the context of this post the conscience de soi is closest to what I have termed the existential stalemate. A good state that put its resources to use would allow the citizens to ignore the existential stalemate and simply live their lives. But modern governments cannot be trusted, we see that more and more now. A modern state that could constrain my freedom in such a way that it is realized without me having to constantly reevaluate those constraints, would be ideal. How to fix that, I have no clue, but let’s not conclude it’s out of our reach just yet.

Announcement: I’ll be dual running this page and a Substack, entries will be posted onto both. I’ll put the link in the About Me page if you’re interested.