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As We Come to The Close of the twentieth century and prepare to embark on a new one, I am tempted to reflect on the monumental and even catastrophic change that our world has suffered over the course of this century. Advances in technology have made it possible to raise the standard of living for many human beings, especially in Europe and North America, to heights that were unimaginable when our century began. Technology also brought us to the brink of destruction when the unbridled arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union took us to the precipice of nuclear war.
Yet, for all their potential for danger, the greatest threat that faces us today is not war or even the famine and poverty that many continue to suffer; indeed, it is those of us who appear to be protected from such horrors that have the most to lose. What we are in danger of losing is not the material comforts to which we are accustomed, but something much closer to our intrinsic humanity. I am thinking about the fragile condition of what was once taken for granted: our capacity to experience.
This may sound strange when, after all, our capacity to experience is something we generally take for granted. We invoke this term every day with such frequency that we seldom give it a second thought. Yet philosophers have written voluminous treatises on the nature of experience, and many psychoanalysts have even included the term in the titles of their books, including Wilfried Bion (Learning from Experience, 1962, Experiences in Groups, 1959); Neville Symington (The Analytic Experience, 1986); Thomas Ogden (The Primitive Edge of Experience, 1989); and R. D. Laing (The Politics of Experience, 1967; The Voice of Experience, (1982).