Right vs. Left: The Pleasure Principle vs. The Reality Principle

On the map of the national psyche, the Left represents the reality principle and the Right represents the pleasure principle. As long as this situation persists, the Left will not understand the source of the Right's appeal - and the Right will always win

Nymphs and Satyr - William-Adolphe Bouguereau (Source)

My editor, Rabbi Aloof, challenged me to write about the connection between sex and politics. On one hand, he argued, you have a lot to say about politics, and on the other hand, you have a lot to say about sexuality, but I've never heard you talk about the connection between the two fields - all our conversations about them move along parallel lines. I decided to accept the challenge because I believe there is actually a deep parallel between these two domains: in both, one can characterize the deep structure as a struggle between the pleasure principle and the reality principle.

Let's take the last two American presidents as a case study. Obama was an extreme representation of the reality principle and was characterized by realpolitik and weakness in the face of reality and its limitations, which led to an opposite pendulum swing towards an extreme representation of the pleasure principle, which does not distinguish between its desire and reality. If Clinton was all super-ego (and therefore not arousing empathy), then Trump is all exposed and authentic childish id.

This division is also valid in Israel. The Right is characterized by the mental movement of "I want" (for example, the land), and therefore it is a stronger tendency from a mental perspective, compared to the Left which is focused on the limitations of "I can", and therefore it is a stronger tendency from a cognitive perspective. The Right excels in the ability to see the world deeply from your perspective, and less to see yourself from the perspective of the world, in which the Left excels, often finding itself as a representative of the external and international world in the national psyche.

From all this, it emerges that the Right and the Left represent two principles in the psyche - the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The Right will see in the Left defeatism in the face of reality, while the Left will believe that its identification with the reality principle makes it superior to the Right, which is infantile. But the truth is, of course, that in a healthy psyche there is both, because an excess of the reality principle also leads to a lack of motivation and pleasure and a lack of inner strength. The Right is characterized by a lack of understanding of why one can't simply do what one wants ("Let the IDF win"), and enjoys those who do what they want, while the Left is characterized by masochistic criticism and a lack of pleasure.

The media will always be leftist and the Right will always despise its representation of reality not because of the "leftist mafia" or some bias that can be corrected, but because journalism is the reality principle, as is academic research and even high literature in the current era of realism. The ability to balance between the two principles - both in literature and in life - is rare. That's why it's difficult to write high fantasy literature that manages to create a sense of reality. And that's why people choose a political opinion or personal stance on this axis of pleasure and reality principles, and the political system is always positioned on an axis and not on other structures like a circle or a plane.

This is a spectrum on which we can place people around us, and many move along it on the time axis of life: starting from childhood in the pleasure principle, which peaks in the infant experience, and slowly throughout life maturing and giving up and losing desire towards the reality principle, which peaks in death. The Left is a child born old while the Right is an adult who hasn't grown up, and each of these two types has its own attraction.

The attraction between the sexes is also often characterized by the directionality of this axis. Not that one sex is necessarily positioned in one direction, but the traditional direction of attraction is opposite between the sexes, and this is often the direction of a long-term relationship. Men are often attracted to women who represent the pleasure principle for them, while the classic direction of attraction for women is to a man who embodies the reality principle for them, someone they can rely on, who is stable and mature and established. If we combine this with the movement on the axis throughout life, we'll understand the source of men's attraction to younger women and women's attraction to older men. A man who behaves according to the pleasure principle will be considered a jerk among women, or worse - infantile. Only among men, in parts of the homosexual world, can one find a full and unapologetic realization of the pleasure principle.

There is no arena where the pleasure principle clashes more sharply with the reality principle than dating sites. These are the equivalent of general elections between the sexes, and there the tendencies collide to the point of inability to form a coalition - as the demand for enjoyment grows. The hedonistic addiction of our time has created an inherent advantage for the Right in the human psyche, and therefore the new Right is surprisingly liberal in terms of sexuality, while it is precisely the Left that is preoccupied with limitations on sexuality and the power structures behind it. Humanity in our time is leaning more and more to the right, towards narcissism, and it gives people unprecedented powers to change reality, to shape it according to the pleasure principle and to overcome it. As long as the Left does not find within itself new sources of pleasure and fantasy - its realism will be turned against it.