Psychological Pain as the Fundamental Process of Negative Dialectics

 It is futile to partake of that which negates life, unless life has lost all value, at which point negation is a necessity of intelligence for the sake of abnegating suffering. Negative dialectics cannot simply be a game or else it fails its own vocation, which is to penetrate reality past the breaking point of psychological pain.

Is the thinker serious about engaging negation? If so one must be prepared to be crushed by negation, but this subtle destruction is not a death, though it implies the experience of a profound wound, a wound that very few have the psychological strength to endure.

What is negative dialectics? It is nothing less and nothing more than thought following reality into the abyss of its own negation, which is to say, comprehending the material horror behind the social facade, which is to say, peering through the psychological frame that seeks to insulate the self from reality.

Above all else negative dialectics require intellectual courage, in addition to this, negative dialectics require psychological maturity. The pursuit of negative dialectics is a pursuit against denial, which means almost no one ventures onto this dark plain. Men have merely played games with thought, they have been altogether too timid to follow thought into the abyss of reality, for there projections collapse and man comes face to face with his own stupidity. The sight of the imbecilic baboon traumatizes the man who thought himself to be something else. And yet, this trauma is necessary to partake of the office of high intelligence. This is the objective value of negative dialectics, that it redeems the species from its delusion, for the first time liberating it toward the cultivation of a real intelligence.

To practice negative dialectics in another form, namely that of theory, is to be deceived by dialectics. Negative dialectics, in order to administer value to the practitioner, must make contact with the thinker's projections. Only then does negative dialectics transport the thinker from inescapable delusions to material comprehension. This transference is a power that allows the thinker, first to comprehend, and then to act against, a natural determinism that sustains itself through a subconscious automation. Negative dialectics rescues the animal from this ignorance, thereby emancipating it from its own psychological cage, for the first time empowering it to labor in the direction of concrete intelligence. Such awareness is absolutely necessary to the cultivation of an advanced species. Where then does negative dialectics direct our attention? To the very conditions that sabotage intelligence: the defense automations of the psychological self. 

The ability of negative dialectics is not merely a theoretical capacity, it is not merely an ability foisted by intelligence, though intelligence can direct its execution, it is above all a psychological capacity and a psychological victory, made possible by social conditions that enable the movement of advanced thought.

The reason negative dialectics imply pain, is precisely because of the Self's projections against negation. It's not that reality is negative per se, but it appears that way, more accurately, feels that way, when pitted against man's psychological desires. Reality is indifferent, our resistance to it is a symptom of our primitive psychology. This ultimately implies that negative dialectics do not merely challenge our sense of reason, but even before the reorientation of reality, they demand the reorientation of our sense of Self.

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