The body in question

[jporter]

Andrew responding to Don:

>However, I would demur (wouldn't I just) by noting that in
>acknowledging mediation as a concomitant of pleasure one does not
>thereby identify mediation with totalitarianism.


And yet, to a strung out junkie who needs junk not to get high, but just to
"feel right" there must be some identification of mediation, co-opted as
it's been by the dope, with totalitarianism.

> The idea that
>pleasure and its behavioural correlates form an `Ur-consciousness' is
>most objectionable for exactly this reason - that it takes the first
>step down the garden path to a unified human consciousness. One aspect
>of behaviour, whether or not it is subsumed under a particular
>chemical mechanism, is merely an aspect. And although many cultural
>constructs militate the hypothesis of a notional, or perhaps I might
>say nominal, integrity of identity many other aspects of human
>behaviour seems to require a disintegration of this unity (or rather
>deny any such integration). Personal bandwidth has more dimensions
>than just the time axis and limiting oneself to summation (or
>integration) across one or even several of these dimensions is the
>cheapest and meanest form of abstraction.

Yea, I agree. And the above sounds like it might be a pretty fair
description of the constriction of consciouness, bandwidth, whatever, that
the junkie falls victim to, by allowing his or her consciousness,
meaningful behavior, etc. to be unified around obtaining and ingesting the
addictive substance.

Under "normal" conditions one might imagine that the pleasure circuitry, or
"the neural plumbers...dream of transmitters sluicing down CNS pathways"
might be fed by various and sundry sources, rather than just one, e.g.,
heroin, with its capability of diminishing the input of all the others to a
barely significant trickle.

One can speculate whether or not this would in fact happen if the mediation
of pleasure of a particularly intense sort were not centralized in a
common, albeit very complicated, pathway.

Jody