Tag: Loss

  • Ask the Editor: “I Am Losing My Hair”

    Ask the Editor: “I Am Losing My Hair”

    Dear editor,

    I am losing my hair. The first time I noticed was a few months ago and I did not think on it much. But the signs are everywhere: cleaning the shower drain, fluffing my pillow. The process is accelerating. Yes, I have been to the doctor. If there is a vitamin or mineral deficiency, it is not showing. Stress, genes and/or hormones, she said. 

    I don’t think anybody can fix this problem with the follicles. What I am left with is a distressed feeling, particularly around the mirror. I dread to run my hands through my hair. What is left of it, that is. Any thoughts?

    Thank you,

    Alex.

    Dear Alex,

    I want to first emphasize that what you are experiencing is completely normal. Despite a high prevalence of baldness and hair loss that affects both men and women, I have yet to meet anyone who was not extremely upset by the process. In psychoanalytic terms this relates to castration anxiety. As the philosopher Slavoj Žižek explains, the horror of castration “is the absence of the penis, i.e., the fact that there is nothing to see where the gaze expects something.” The power of Edvard Munch’s Scream is struck by the subject’s missing nose and ears more-so than the shriek itself.1 When it comes to hair loss, it is the sight of skin where one expects to see hair that is distressing most of all.

    The good news is that this is only symbolic. Like any other loss, the shock of baldness interrupts our imaginary place in the social order. But once we have internalized our new reality, we embrace the social order anew. I’d like to refer you to an article written by Stuart Heritage and published in The Guardian: “Going bald is terrible. But being bald? Actually not bad.” In other words, the worst part is coming to accept the new state of being. Whether your hair loss halts or you get plugs or you shave it off—that will not matter. Once your new state of being is embraced the anxiety will dissipate.

    In sols,

    Your editor.

    Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

    Footnotes:


    1. Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! (Routledge, 1992), 130. ↩︎
  • Ask the Editor: Grieving the Loss of a Pet

    Ask the Editor: Grieving the Loss of a Pet

    Dear editor,

    I’ve lost a cherished pet. My cat passed away earlier this year and this has felt like one of the most devastating losses I have ever experienced in my life. We spent every waking hour around the house together; he loved me unconditionally and he felt like an extension of my soul. 

    As a materialist, I am conflicted. On principle, I do not believe in the afterlife. But in moments of grief I find comfort in the idea of heaven, the idea that I will meet my loved ones again on the other side. How should I think about this philosophically?

    Regards,

    Beatrix.

    Dear Beatrix,

    I am very sorry for your loss. People and their pets can forge deep bonds because these relationships are free of the complicated dramas and personal judgements that often pockmark our interpersonal relations.  

    It is important to understand that the realm of materialism includes both matter and energy. Matter is easy to comprehend because it is visible and something that we can physically interact with. Energy accounts for motion but it is not something that we can see directly. We do not interact with it so much as we feel it. When Marx likens social relations to a “law of gravity” or makes reference to the “life force,” he is affirming a notion of energy being like the glue which binds material objects together.

    If a star loses a planet in its orbit, it wobbles. Though it has lost the gravitational energy of this planet, its former presence can be observed thousands, even millions of years later. This is because the gravity between two objects will make permanent changes that persist long after the relationship ends.

    Likewise with our cherished pets. We may wobble with grief when they are gone and we will be permanently changed after they do. The realm of energy is mysterious and the existence of an afterlife cannot be confirmed or denied by current understanding. But your heart is beating and let Abraham Lincoln remind you that “the memory” of your loved one, “instead of agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.”1  

    In sols,

    Your editor.

    Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

    Footnotes:


    1. Abraham Lincoln quoted in Edith Hall, Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life (Penguin Books, 2020), 230. ↩︎