Logic of Addiction

I think my mother would line up with Georges Battaille on living life. There were those in my year 2 class for whom being organised was satisfaction itself, and I often felt threatened (legitimately: I always lost permission slips and money, forgot to keep the journal I was supposed to keep, forgot it was sports day etc). When I fretted on this she reassured me that there were two ways of living, the careful, insulated, controlling remoteness of being organised and the vital immediacy of living in the moment, which is what she preferred, and thought was better. I don't know much about Battaille, but he was a stickler for the irreplaceable, unmissable, ungovernable excess to be found in sensuous experience; he wrote some (relatively philosophical) pornography.

I think this is part of how addiction functions - if life is to be lived, it has to be given over, moment by moment. A sensuous experience which exceeds the reason's capacities to appreciate and represent is a good candidate to give your moments over to. Battaille and my mother know there's more to it than that, but they are alive to the possibility that there may be nothing better.

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