Obsession is Relative

I have been obsessed with obsession lately.

Of course discussing it on social media and writing about online can be classified an obsession too!

There's a tendency towards an easy, willing and total immersion into obsession that permeates our culture. We are, as a society, obsessed with beauty, youth, sex, food, sports, politics, money, gratification – instant and otherwise.

The language of obsession makes it akin to passion (in its infancy) or to a mental disorder (in the troves of, well, obsession).

Strictly by dictionary standards, obsession is defined as a “fixation, ruling/consuming passion, mania, compulsion, preoccupation, infatuation, addiction, fetish, craze, neurosis...”

It depends on where you sit on the track of obsessive behavior. You can be a crazed fanatic, which means you are literally crazy, or be under the spell of World Cup fever (and this makes it a physical ailment that you surrender to and have absolutely no control over).

The difference, subtle in this case, is that the latter makes you an unwitting victim to the charms of the beautiful game, but the former makes you a willing conspirator in your own descent into the insane.

Norman Mailer had a practical take on it:

“Obsession is the single most wasteful of human activity, because you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.”

Mailer had a practical but also had a cynical eye and by his philosophy obsession is useless. But is it really?

The question, I think, is whether each of these definitions we ascribe to obsession are actually synonymous? 

Most people would probably be offended at the idea that their passion is a fixation – but then, the person in question might be a stalker and, well, legally and morally, the rest of us would lean towards a more negative connotation.

And therein lies the real question, I suppose. Obsession is seen mostly as a negative, but is it always?

More often than not (and this is an opinion and not at all based on any scientific evidence), it seems to me that once you add emotion to the equation, obsession becomes a scary proposition.

“My significant other right now is myself, which is what happens when you suffer from multiple personality disorder and self-obsession.” -Joaquin Phoenix

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.” -Elie Wiesel

But an obsession with an idea is a passion that can lead to progress, to transcendence even!

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.” -Albert Einstein

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.” -Claude Monet

Obsession builds worlds! And it also imagines the harshest of dystopiæ.

“The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.” -George Sand

Perhaps what makes an obsession acceptable is moderation. Certainly, small obsessions (like stamp collecting) are considered harmless and worthy only of slight scorn, but all-consuming fixations – even on things that are pleasurable – are less understood and we condemn what we do not understand.

I've heard obsession called “the very thing that destroyed” someone, but in labeling obsession we change its significance and the nuance of what it means.

An obsession that takes someone out of reality and allows them to fantasize about a world that is not there is dangerous, right? Unless it's Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov or Eileen Collins...

Perhaps acceptance of the condition can be measured strictly on what it ultimately contributes to society.

Certainly there are obsessions that seem completely useless – like obsession with celebrities (whether fueled by our own low-self esteem or influenced by relentless fame-whoring). 

While it has led to reality television; it nevertheless keeps thousands of production assistants, makeup people, photographers, and network executives employed and generally away from the rest of the decent folks.

Fame-whoring has created a cottage industry, therefore fame-whoring is good for the economy even if it also contributes to dumb us down and brings us closer to complete and utter moral decay.

See? It's all relative.