Arquivo para April 14th, 2022
The pains, the soul and the Being
14
Apr
In one of the most striking passages, at least for those who imagine
a world beyond the corporeal, Byung Chul Han introduces narrative as part of the cure: “Senseless pain is possible only in a bare life emptied of meaning that no longer narrates” (Han , 2021, p. 46).
He claims and even includes [Walter] Benjamin in “Images of Thought” that speaks of unusual hands that convey the impression that it would be like “telling a story” (idem).
He also cites mothers who, with the “healing force”, sit next to the child and tell him a story, and after explaining the narrative flow with a dam for pain, he concludes: “it is the pain that first puts in [their] path”. (HAN, 20221, p. 47).
We live today in a post-narrative time, says the author, it is not the narrative but the counting that determines life, “the narrative is the capacity of the spirit to overcome the contingency of the body” (Han, 2021, p. 48), a body without a spirit is a body that ignores its own soul.
In her, “the disciplined body that has to repel many pains that come from outside, is poor in sensitivity” (page 49), a totally different intentionality characterizes it, it is not concerned with itself, but with something that comes from outside, and it is this “algophobia” that dominates us.
“This narcissistic, hypochondriacal introspection is certainly co-responsible for our hypersensitivity (to pain), he calls it the “pea-princess-syndrome” recalling an Andersen tale where the presence of a pea on the mattress of the future princess it causes so much pain that she can’t sleep at night, and it’s this kind of illness that happens to many people.
This kind of paradox of postmodernity is to feel more and more pain, with less and less, to the point that pain is not understandable, has no place in life and seems not to be part of existence and this is a form of positivity of Being. , where there is no negativity, and makes Being incomprehensible, or less meaningless.
As the author says, “if the painful pea disappears, then people begin to suffer from soft mattresses” and concludes: “It is precisely the very and persistent absence of meaning in life that hurts” (HAN, 2021, p. 51). ).
What to think, then, of the atrocious pains of war, of innocent victims, of growing political and ideological hatred, everything seems to collapse in a meaningless universe, when pain understood would return to the balance of Being, and the fullness of our existence, distant today, but possible in the near future..
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HAN, Byung-Chul. (2021) A sociedade paliativa: a dor hoje (The palliative society: pain today). trans. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
