Michael Oakeshott says that people who are not of a conservative disposition are “disposed to recognize government as an instrument of passion.” For them, “the art of politics is to inflame and direct desire.”
I want to add that, writing 70 years after Oakeshott penned these words, this is all true but the object of desire changed because we changed. The greatest erotic attachment of a neoliberal subject is to the self. Consequently, his or her inflamed desire is directed towards the self, and the role of politics is to provide one with access to a climactic enjoyment of the self. I’m sure you can find examples of this everywhere. It’s not about any actual political measures any more. It’s about how being for or against the measures makes one feel. Of course, the feeling is internally manufactured. The measures are but an excuse.
Clarissa's Blog 
This is fizzing and bubbling in my head, in reaction with Orthodox teachings on the passions, and Ellul’s take on total propaganda, the destruction of self, and post-propaganda, the need for constant reinforcement to uphold the amputated psyche: trapped in the present and unable to form durable psychological scaffolding on its own.
I don’t know what salts will be left at the bottom of the beaker, but I want to watch and find out!
It feels as though Oakeshott, Ellul, maybe even Evagrius of Pontus, are all chipping away at the same mineral vein, but from different tunnels in the earth. Different vocabulary: same subject.
-ethyl
LikeLike
The amputated psyche is exactly what it is. One of the things that are amputated is the capacity to attach securely to other human beings instead of fantasies of imaginary others in one’s head. Like this woman in MN who abandoned her children to emote about imaginary migrants.
LikeLike