The Western Identity Crisis

Are You Living Life Directly and Intensively or Vicariously?

from Google AI:

Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy, intensity is a non-numerical, qualitative difference (such as a degree of heat, pressure, or emotion) that underlies and generates all actual forms and extensions. 

Key Dimensions of Deleuze's Concept of Intensity

• Difference vs. Extension: Unlike quantities that can be divided and measured in space (extension), intensity cannot be divided without changing its fundamental nature. It is a continuous state of flux and becoming. 
• The Plane of Immanence ("A Life"): In his late text "Immanence: a life...", Deleuze describes a pre-personal, pure stream of consciousness or vitality that does not belong to a specific ego or self. This plane of immanence is an open field where shifting intensities and anonymous singularities unfold. 
• Connection to Spinoza and Bergson: Drawing from Baruch Spinoza, Deleuze views modal essences and affects as degrees of power (puissance) and continuous variations in intensity. From Henri Bergson, he adopts the idea that the intensive is tied to duration (durée) and internal movement rather than static spatial objects. 

• The Intensive Order: In works like Difference and Repetition and Anti-Oedipus (co-written with Félix Guattari), living in the "intensive order" means experiencing the raw, unmediated flow of becoming, free from the rigid structures of common sense or fixed representation.