They say if you electrocute the floor of a dog it will jump over. Shock both sides enough times and the dog will stop jumping. Shock just the side the dog is on, and it will lay there in its own misery. "Learned Helplessness." I think I've been caught in enough double binds to have embodied learned helplessness, particulary at the time I met the obvious exception. I was unable to percieve a path to pursue pleasure.
She told me once that she can't be that nice or sweet to me because I'm that level of "dog like pathetic." I think she was saying that I have a tendency to latch on to and run with any affection I get. I think that was also true at the time I met her, because of her. I've obviously hashed and rehashed my opinions on her at that time a million times, but I think the simplest description is this: she was pleasurable to be around and so I pursued her endlessly.
Patheticism is something you do, something I did by pursuing this woman and trying to accomplish as many of her subtasks as I could. I tried to understand everything, play everything, read everything, listen to everything because I had no other idea how to pursue pleasure. You might say get a hobby, but as a shocked dog, I've forgotten how to enjoy my hobbies. I've forgotten how to experience pleasure unless it is hand delivered to me. I've forgotten so many things. This is because, in addition to doing patheticism I was also being pathetic. You can stop doing patheticism at any time, but you can't stop being pathetic in any one moment. Being pathetic gives rise to patheticism, and patheticism itself is actually any behavior that betrays the true pathetic nature. Being pathetic is then having no agency. Being pathetic is being in such a dismal state people feel pity for you. Being pathetic is having nothing in your life but your husband. Patheticism is letting your situationship know that she's the only other light in your life and that she shines signfificantly brighter. Patheticism is watching her do less and less so she becomes less deific in your mind, and then still thinking her a goddess for basic human decency.
I can't go back to being the shocked dog that's for sure. I'm worried that my patheticism, my endless pursuit of the life affirming, of the smallest pleasure for the greatest pain is going to cause me to be pathetic in the long run. There is only one escape from this, a Narrative Machine. I will play with words until they sound like something I like and then I will live out those words instead of reality. We like the "endless" and "pursuit of pleasure" so let's keep those, maybe call it *life affirming* to really differentiate it from hedonism. Pain will inevitably arise, so let's adjust this. Perhaps patheticism is defined by the *blind* pursuit of pleasure? Then, it would be less pathetic to pursue with *insight,* a good keyword. We see the pain, something to endure it, but not endurance, that has a negative / neutral connotation, maybe developing *fortitude*? Embracing the life affirming with insight and fortitude? Is that what the dog is to do? How is that any different? It's inside, it's the knock on effect, it's what I feed. I would slam my body on the ground for a laugh because it's fun, not because I'm desperately clinging onto the the smallest morsel of praise I can find. It's virtuous like that, or something....