What does Reductionism do to the sense of our human dignity and uniqueness?
Redu 4
Animal
By forced device shall
Honour our reductionist model,
Humble.
Wanton,
Lay your guilty burden
Snug in the forest bran,
Simian.¹
~
Animal
Drives were fundamental
To Freud, who dug the channel
Sexual.
Cleverish
Are culture’s placebos, a varnish,
A sublimation of the drive you nourish,
Inkfish.²
~
Animal
Is natural; unconscious ‘anal
Retentiveness’ coin-collecting. The moral?
Banal:
² The inkfish is a squid. It is applied to Freud, not only because he had used a prodig- ious amount of ink in analysing the unconscious drives of his
patients, but because the ten-tacles of his bizarre theories have taken a hold on those neuroses for which society’s balm were its cultural activities.
¹ To compare us to animals is considered humble not insulting; and it is normal to assert that the sex drive is basic and repressing it makes us neurotic. We should be at ease with our primordial biological drives, even if they are wrong.