A Brief History of Lack

One can easily look at the evolution of species--the origins of our descent--as a series of attempts to address lack through what are often novel and ingenious ways. This is not so much the spiritual, psychological, or political dimension of lack--which has been touched on briefly in previous posts--as it is a look into the natural history of lack.

For instance, the migration of various species over the course of what are considered geological aeons by us and our few fleeting decades at best disclose the 'operational presence of lack' in compelling the migration of species to areas where a specific lack may be addressed. Even today one can say that male Chimpanzees of mating age, for instance, will feel compelled to address the lack of accessible females by traveling into a foreign territory. In essence, it makes us humans no different in the principal ways that we are pushed and pulled by forces--especially forces of absence.

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to stumble across a new form of psychological understanding that I came to call Absence Psychology. It struck me how ever since the time of Freud there had been a sense of human motivation deriving from the presence of various drives: sexual drive being Freud's foremost prime mover. B.F. Skinner developed behaviourial psychology on the basis of rewards and punishments, i.e., that we are compelled toward things on the basis of a sense of future reward, while being pushed away from other things on the basis of a sense of future punishment (which we can see evidenced in the penal system). Carl Jung attributed our motivation to archetypal forces that acted upon us from some deep reservoir of collective unconsciousness. Richard Dawkins wrote about the 'selfish genes' that move and shape us to do their bidding. In each instance I noticed the naming of these invisible forces that were considered to be the prime movers and shapers of our existence. INvisible forces that one could see the effects of, but not the cause. No one could see them... only their apparent evidence in how we acted.

It was that understanding right there that led me to begin to consider, 'What if nothing moves us?' What if we are motivated not by the presence of something... but by the absence of something?'

What if it is... as quantum physicists explain about the origins of matter... everything comes from nothing at all? What if our motivation is rooted in emptiness? What if we are not moved by a force or a presence at all? What if absence really does make the heart grow fonder?