Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari developed the notion of 'becoming animal' whilst the connotations of feral upbringing and psychiatric/sociopathic degradation may explain the animalistic traits of the human psyche surfacing, the concept of becoming animal has been one which has been adopted and adhered to by occultists and their extremist philosophy.
But where does this lead us, It's hard not to feed the science vs. religion fire within the realisation that our 'instincts' are animalistic and carnal, desire in itself is something that is bred from, or as a result of passions.
Whilst reading some of Gilles Deleuze' writing online, This became something of a fixation to me, in trying to uncover the role of nature within art, i must admit, I was led to his work by a friend of mine who noticed I had been reading Franz Kafka and the article in question ('the body, the meat and the spirit:becoming animal' by Gilles Deleuze) refers to Das Schwert "the sword" from The Diaries of Franz Kafka.
I was perplexed by the writing, and it led me to thinking about our reactions, emotional and physical; and the animalistic traits of each.
We are on the whole, an emotional race, whilst for the most part, purely reactant & occasionally volatile, but what is it about our nature that causes these reactions? As I have mentioned in an earlier post the cost of 24/7 culture and constant streams of media and advertising available at our fingertips, has led to dysfunctions and syndromes within our society which can only be as a result of the urgency and immediacy with which we demand information.
This could be our evolution, a transcendence of sorts, adaptation into what we are to become, or it could be subliminal poison; (I am aware at this point, my negative and cynical opinions of advertising may hinder my ability to persue a career in such a field, but truth be told, I've little interest in advertising, apart from on a psychological level. Colour psychology and appeal to demographics via style, content and copy are more interesting to me than actually creating the advertisement itself) However, We still react to these things in animalistic manners, albeit more docile.
So what is it about media which causes us to react with anger, lust, hunger or other instinctual behaviors? Could it be that the advertising industry have such a grasp on the human mind that we can have strings pulled and cut in accordance with what best suits a product, or is our expectation of the subliminal and that between the lines, causing us to look past the sinister tactics that are being broadcast to us on a daily basis?
If we learnt to advertise through propaganda, were taught to understand through curriculum & study by man-made ever shifting 'facts', conditioned by upbringings and social acceptability then we are all expected to react in the same way, It just leaves me wondering that if we were brought up without any of these constructs, as a 'feral' being, would we be as inhumane as we're led to believe? Or would we infact be less corrupt than we're becoming.
