Depression may be described as the condition in which, no longer investing desire in daily experience, the conscious organism loses the ability to find meaning in its surrounding world. Actually, meaning does not lie in things, or in the signs of language. It is generated by the endless shift from one interpretation to the next, from the uncertain and ambiguous exchange of gestures. Desire is the energy that enables this continuous activity of interpretation. Meaning is the effect of affective communication among language agents. Since meaning emerges in the dimension of affective conjunction, the possibility of meaningful exchange rapidly dissolves when the community of bodies disaggregates. This is the starting point of depression. ~~~ When breathing together grew dangerous, everybody was obliged to breathe alone and the rhythm of individual respiration was obliged to follow the pace of economic competition. ~~~ The subatomic self has fractalized, losing the ability to conjoin with the Other. In a lonely dance in which friendship is forbidden, the inner self is obliged to instead synchronize with the pure abstraction of digital time.
Bifo // Breathing - Chaos and Poetry