The name says it all. As much of a paradox as it might seem to be, it is this meme that I wish to offer to world as a belief 'meta'-program for use in open-source philosophy. Please remember that I've previously defined a belief as a "favoured perspective utilized for its capability to fulfill a conceptual requirement," and not a particular set of absolute convictions. The prefix, 'meta', means change, and the context used here, I seek to change some of the most ingrained belief programs out there, that is absolutist ones. In fact, the public secret society is a sort of tentative commitment to avoid all absolutisms, as they tend to bring along so much conflict and strife. Definitions are tentative, defined as well as possible, and agreed to by those who wish to use the words.
The definition of a society states that it is a group of people who have consensually organized themselves to define their common reality. A tradition that has been passed on since before history, in my estimation, is for a smaller society to occlude particular aspects of reality from the larger societal context. This is what is called a secret society, and whether it is hiding something real and tangible like secrets of the universe or hiding its intentions and operations, its nature is essentially occult by definition. There are many of these societies remaining today, and it is from their wealth of traditions that I seek to gather any fruitful practices that can help me in my adventure.
The advent of all forms of control by an elite group over the masses is precedented by conspiracy. Organizing the wider society along specific parameters dictated by a narrowly self-involved society, the secret one, is the modus operandi of human civilization. Although it is not my belief that the controllers really have control, more like influence, the means of influencing the masses to benefit the elites has been fairly standard for many generations. This is achieved, methinks, by installing a de facto authority that answers to a higher authority, that of the 'controllers.' My proposition is to turn this process on its head.
I wish to establish a public secret society: a group of individuals that have organized a consensus reality that is a higher authority than any other, subject to one golden rule alone, and open to any and all who consent.
It may seem strange to request an individual's consent as a condition for membership in a society; however, if the current cultural milieu has not explicitly stated the requirements and implications of 'citizenship,' as it were, have we as 'persons' actually consented to the society of which we're allegedly a part? I say that this tacit assumption is necessary for the continuation of civilization as it is known today. If everyone was aware that their society was in fact dictated by another society that considers itself separate and superior to the unwashed masses of humanity, there might be a problem...
Let's consider a quote by Nietzsche that might lend some credulity to the assertions I'm proposing: "There is no such thing as fact, only interpretation." Even though I used the word fact in the previous paragraph only goes to illustrate the point that if and when enough people agree upon particular interpretations of certain phenomena they become fact. This agreed upon reality is the consensus world I can envision and is not the current state of affairs in the world today, as far as I've experienced.
Instead, there has been concerted effort by a class of societies operating with an invisible hand that plays a large part in the directing of civilization; and it is this secret orientation from which I wish to take back our usurped human power. If we were to create our own society as independent as possible from any consideration by the statist structures governed by the aforementioned hand, and there is enough support to assert that independence non-violently when confronted by false authorities, then a real society might emerge from the miasma of civilization. Ghandi, when asked what he thought of western civilization, answered "I think it would be a good idea." I say we live up to Ghandi's words.
By using the tactics previously and currently employed by the handlers of the current so-called authorities, how can these methods be called into question? By elucidating the M.O. of the secret societies as they've operated up until now, we would be able to show how their tactics have created authorities and hierarchies at all. The creation of artificial persons being perhaps the most ingrained and insidious, in my opinion, would necessarily be the first to go. By creating a corporate golem and convincing everyone to beleive that the monster bearing the mark of the beast is actually them, the shadow societies have effectively secured their influence over the hearts and minds of all 'persons' on the planet. If we can overstand and overcome this entirely fictitious limitation, as is my intention, then we'd be able to invent and construct our own authority, only public this time...
I think there are many aspects to the idea I'm developing here, and I certainly haven't thought of them all let alone made note of it, but still, there's a kernel of something ready to grow. An idea I'd mentioned in the previous post on evolving ideas is a sort of Universal Declaration of Intent. This might be able to serve as the documentation of people's desired interaction with authority structures.
Another aspect of how open this society needs to be could be achieved in manners of degrees. Just as freemasonry as degrees of membership, so too could the public secret society. For instance, the first degree could be to recognize that the corporations posing as governments so as to legitimize violence are no longer an appropriate coordination for a social contract, but also, that the individual at this level is not yet ready to divest from the system, but ready and able enough to stand up to support a consented to model of social organization. The second degree might entail the active separation from dominator culture by researching, learning, and living into what it means to be a peaceful inhabitant: using one's own wit and elbow grease to make a habitable and hospitable place in the world for oneself, one's kin, and the wider human community. The third degree could then be the post of diplomat who seeks individuals in need of support when 'the man' comes down on them, as no one is free until all our brothers and sisters are freed of their chains, or so some dirty commie put it :).
Well that's the start of the idea.
I would really appreciate any feedback that might be applicable to this idea. I realize it's short and perhaps somewhat trite, but I've been working on a bigger writing project for a few months. Of course every piece of my writing is part and parcel with everything else, I just really wanted to get this idea out there in whatever capacity I can before the wider project comes to fruition.
Thanks anyone everyone who reads this!
Peace,
M
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
It's Time To Evolve Ideas
"How about a good news story about drugs for once? Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather...
You see, when we talk these things through, it becomes a little clearer doesn’t it? That’s called logic and it’ll help us all evolve and get on the fucking spaceships and get outta here...
Folks: It's time to evolve ideas. You know, evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs. You do know that, right? Didn't end there. We're at the point, now, where we're going to have to evolve ideas. The reason the world is so fucked up is we're undergoing evolution. And the reason our institutions, our traditional religions, are all crumbling, is because … they're no longer relevant. They're no longer relevant. So it's time for us to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion, you see. And that's okay 'cause that's our right, 'cause we are free children of God with minds who can imagine anything, and that's kind of our role."
----------------------------------------
Even though the late great Bill Hicks summed up the matter quite succinctly and satisfactorily, my take on evolving ideas can be elucidated a bit further in reference to the previous perspectives developed here. The last two posts describe postponing judgment in the case of absolutes, favouring the idea that these mono-logical mental commitments aren't worth the electrolytes expended on their consideration, and that it's about high time for something better than a world 'run by money.'
An idea I'm working on goes something like this: given the current status of our technological development, and, in my opinion, sufficient conditions to provide individuals and communities with the means of producing their sustenance, a political situation allowing for a transitional period between statism and volountarily generated social arrangements is a realistic enough concept for me. The culture we're producing is not in our overall best interest, however, intelligent utilization of the means at hand could point to a more sustainable future.
Let's take for instance the shitty fuckin economy that everyone's blithering about these days. It is, inherently, integrally, and overall a for-profit venture wherein everyone runs around trying to make more money (individuals and nation-states alike) while the entirety is governed by a minority of select interests. People bitching about relatively isolated cases, as in, their own, while the possibility of any situation other than the current gets subsumed by the workload involved in living as a slave. By not challenging the overall status quo, our inviolable human right, we acquiesce to the world-wide slavery of dollar-chasing that sucks up all of our creative freedoms that might otherwise be expressed.
Since the point I'm trying to make here is that a transition to a better situation is not only necessary but possible too, I'll get right to it. A slight understanding of the 'freeman-on-the-land' perspective might help a bit, but my post on The Call, Anarchy, and 'The Party,' sum up well-enough my feelings on statism, which is exactly what I'm proposing we transition from.
Statism: doctrine that holds the 'corporations' people identify as 'Nation-States' to be sovereign entities, and that the 'citizens' who've tacitly rescinded their god-given sovereignty to be reclassified as operational chattel for monetary consideration and not the freely unique flesh-and-blood children of god.
That this is the unquestioned dominant paradigm remains unacceptable to my taste. Instead, why not have an option out? Well, that threatens global hegemony and control for the elites, and is therefore out of the question. But what if enough people demanded it? That's the one thing, I think, that the powers-that-be are really afraid of, and I have a proposition to make. It starts like this:
A Universal Declaration of Intent, in which is stated an outline for common law contractual arrangements, an inherent human right, whereby the five-word maxim: 'cause no harm or loss' can be held to it's full potential. (This is an idea I'm whole-heartedly working on and will develop here further when I've got it better worked out in my head.)
This idea includes that the individual no longer consents to governance, to govern or be governed, and accepts a citizenship-severance package from the appropriate government being severed. This conditional acceptance in no way can include contractual arrangements with the previously governing body, as the fraudulent relationship between fictitious corporate entities (persons and states alike) ends with the severing of citizenship, thus establishing individual sovereignty.
The severance package might be something like this:
A parcel of land, that, by a reasonable scientific measure can support the number of individuals staking their claim.
An energy infrastructure appropriate to the conditions of the environment to provide sustenance.
Seeds and maybe basic livestock.
And, most importantly, the recognition that the human beings involved are no longer subject to the previous governmental structure.
------------------
Well, that's the start of the idea... I guess that's what a blog is for, so that I can develop my ideas conditionally before fully worked out, and still try to communicate them with my peers. (taht's you...)
As an adieu:
Thank you NWO for providing me with the opportunity to recognize the fallibility of your enterprise and the capacity to realize my inner-experience as a freely creative enterprise, that, if nurtured and developed by my healthy perspectives, can eventually come to fruition in my external experience of life. I accept this parcel of land on the conditions that outlined in the Universal Declaration of Intent. No longer will you, as institution, have any dealings with me, as individual. Peace...
You see, when we talk these things through, it becomes a little clearer doesn’t it? That’s called logic and it’ll help us all evolve and get on the fucking spaceships and get outta here...
Folks: It's time to evolve ideas. You know, evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs. You do know that, right? Didn't end there. We're at the point, now, where we're going to have to evolve ideas. The reason the world is so fucked up is we're undergoing evolution. And the reason our institutions, our traditional religions, are all crumbling, is because … they're no longer relevant. They're no longer relevant. So it's time for us to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion, you see. And that's okay 'cause that's our right, 'cause we are free children of God with minds who can imagine anything, and that's kind of our role."
----------------------------------------
Even though the late great Bill Hicks summed up the matter quite succinctly and satisfactorily, my take on evolving ideas can be elucidated a bit further in reference to the previous perspectives developed here. The last two posts describe postponing judgment in the case of absolutes, favouring the idea that these mono-logical mental commitments aren't worth the electrolytes expended on their consideration, and that it's about high time for something better than a world 'run by money.'
An idea I'm working on goes something like this: given the current status of our technological development, and, in my opinion, sufficient conditions to provide individuals and communities with the means of producing their sustenance, a political situation allowing for a transitional period between statism and volountarily generated social arrangements is a realistic enough concept for me. The culture we're producing is not in our overall best interest, however, intelligent utilization of the means at hand could point to a more sustainable future.
Let's take for instance the shitty fuckin economy that everyone's blithering about these days. It is, inherently, integrally, and overall a for-profit venture wherein everyone runs around trying to make more money (individuals and nation-states alike) while the entirety is governed by a minority of select interests. People bitching about relatively isolated cases, as in, their own, while the possibility of any situation other than the current gets subsumed by the workload involved in living as a slave. By not challenging the overall status quo, our inviolable human right, we acquiesce to the world-wide slavery of dollar-chasing that sucks up all of our creative freedoms that might otherwise be expressed.
Since the point I'm trying to make here is that a transition to a better situation is not only necessary but possible too, I'll get right to it. A slight understanding of the 'freeman-on-the-land' perspective might help a bit, but my post on The Call, Anarchy, and 'The Party,' sum up well-enough my feelings on statism, which is exactly what I'm proposing we transition from.
Statism: doctrine that holds the 'corporations' people identify as 'Nation-States' to be sovereign entities, and that the 'citizens' who've tacitly rescinded their god-given sovereignty to be reclassified as operational chattel for monetary consideration and not the freely unique flesh-and-blood children of god.
That this is the unquestioned dominant paradigm remains unacceptable to my taste. Instead, why not have an option out? Well, that threatens global hegemony and control for the elites, and is therefore out of the question. But what if enough people demanded it? That's the one thing, I think, that the powers-that-be are really afraid of, and I have a proposition to make. It starts like this:
A Universal Declaration of Intent, in which is stated an outline for common law contractual arrangements, an inherent human right, whereby the five-word maxim: 'cause no harm or loss' can be held to it's full potential. (This is an idea I'm whole-heartedly working on and will develop here further when I've got it better worked out in my head.)
This idea includes that the individual no longer consents to governance, to govern or be governed, and accepts a citizenship-severance package from the appropriate government being severed. This conditional acceptance in no way can include contractual arrangements with the previously governing body, as the fraudulent relationship between fictitious corporate entities (persons and states alike) ends with the severing of citizenship, thus establishing individual sovereignty.
The severance package might be something like this:
A parcel of land, that, by a reasonable scientific measure can support the number of individuals staking their claim.
An energy infrastructure appropriate to the conditions of the environment to provide sustenance.
Seeds and maybe basic livestock.
And, most importantly, the recognition that the human beings involved are no longer subject to the previous governmental structure.
------------------
Well, that's the start of the idea... I guess that's what a blog is for, so that I can develop my ideas conditionally before fully worked out, and still try to communicate them with my peers. (taht's you...)
As an adieu:
Thank you NWO for providing me with the opportunity to recognize the fallibility of your enterprise and the capacity to realize my inner-experience as a freely creative enterprise, that, if nurtured and developed by my healthy perspectives, can eventually come to fruition in my external experience of life. I accept this parcel of land on the conditions that outlined in the Universal Declaration of Intent. No longer will you, as institution, have any dealings with me, as individual. Peace...
Friday, October 8, 2010
Absolutisms...
Religions are like penises.
It's all fine and good to have one,
and do what you will with it in private;
none of my business.
But please don't whip it out in public,
and it's especially inappropriate to jam it down children's throats!
So, please;
Keep it to yourself.
Same thing goes for materialist science and statism.
These three monologues have repressed the development of the human condition in a manner that is unintelligible as of yet. They have also provided for the opportunity for me to be here and comment on their development in such a free and independent manner that is able to communicate thusly, and, therefore invaluable for their contribution to human freedom regardless of their out-datedness...
Now that I've been able to realize that the three mega monoliths of centralized power all have the same root, it is more apparent to me on how to react accordingly. What these institutions of ideology have established is that the responsibility for life is external or exterior or separate somehow from the individual that is experiencing that life. What is more correct and appropriate, however, is that every individual is intimately responsible for the life they live, and if the option of opting for another entity to take over one's inherent responsibility is enacted, the individual in question has abdicated their right to live a free life by their own measure and enabled an authoritarian power structure to take charge of life as they know it.
This is how the so-called Powers-That-Be are 'in control' of world events according to the 'truth movement.' I, personally, don't believe anyone is in control of anything unless someone has given up their ability to control and is therefore controlled. The unfortunate circumstance is that money, as control mechanism, has infiltrated all and every aspect of most life on the globe. As that turns out in every day life, we are all controlled to a certain degree by our use of the money system
No matter how much money goes to 'aid' any impoverished community, the assistance involved is rooted in the control mechanism that will inevitably extract more than was initially invested. This is not an uncommon phenomenon but a constituent part of what makes anything that can appropriately be called a corporation. What that entails is a pathological commitment to the furtherance of financial growth no matter the repercussions, so long as the bottom line is never thwarted from beneath the power structure that prevails.
This is the same for statism, monotheism, and materialist science: they all have the same bottom line that is dollars.
States, as bankrupt facades (especially Canada and the U.S.) operate on the money they borrow from private banks; religions, as morally bankrupt facades (especially the Vatican) operate on the money they coerce from private individuals; mainstream academic science, as bankrupt facade (nuff said?) that operates on any money it can get whether to pursue creationist science or any other absolutist perspective; all of which rely on the idea of, "if we had more money we'd be able to get to the goal we've been promising you for oh so long..."
What all that comes down to is the common denominator of relying on the financial systems of the day to control enough people to provide for their continuance... What would happen if people stopped paying for the non-benefits of committing to particular ideologies and economies? Would they find their own way of operating without the currencies that compel control, or would they falter and fail in response to unforeseen consequences? What, really, is money doing for any of us?
My perspective entails that money ought be reconfigured, if used at all, in considering a sustainable future for the species. By committing to any one of the three monological perspectives elucidated briefly earlier, statism, monotheism, and materialistic science, we have given up our abilities to decide for ourselves what the outcome of our human experience might be, and let it happen without our input in the realm of fictitious financial schemata.
Next post: evolution of ideas....
It's all fine and good to have one,
and do what you will with it in private;
none of my business.
But please don't whip it out in public,
and it's especially inappropriate to jam it down children's throats!
So, please;
Keep it to yourself.
Same thing goes for materialist science and statism.
These three monologues have repressed the development of the human condition in a manner that is unintelligible as of yet. They have also provided for the opportunity for me to be here and comment on their development in such a free and independent manner that is able to communicate thusly, and, therefore invaluable for their contribution to human freedom regardless of their out-datedness...
Now that I've been able to realize that the three mega monoliths of centralized power all have the same root, it is more apparent to me on how to react accordingly. What these institutions of ideology have established is that the responsibility for life is external or exterior or separate somehow from the individual that is experiencing that life. What is more correct and appropriate, however, is that every individual is intimately responsible for the life they live, and if the option of opting for another entity to take over one's inherent responsibility is enacted, the individual in question has abdicated their right to live a free life by their own measure and enabled an authoritarian power structure to take charge of life as they know it.
This is how the so-called Powers-That-Be are 'in control' of world events according to the 'truth movement.' I, personally, don't believe anyone is in control of anything unless someone has given up their ability to control and is therefore controlled. The unfortunate circumstance is that money, as control mechanism, has infiltrated all and every aspect of most life on the globe. As that turns out in every day life, we are all controlled to a certain degree by our use of the money system
No matter how much money goes to 'aid' any impoverished community, the assistance involved is rooted in the control mechanism that will inevitably extract more than was initially invested. This is not an uncommon phenomenon but a constituent part of what makes anything that can appropriately be called a corporation. What that entails is a pathological commitment to the furtherance of financial growth no matter the repercussions, so long as the bottom line is never thwarted from beneath the power structure that prevails.
This is the same for statism, monotheism, and materialist science: they all have the same bottom line that is dollars.
States, as bankrupt facades (especially Canada and the U.S.) operate on the money they borrow from private banks; religions, as morally bankrupt facades (especially the Vatican) operate on the money they coerce from private individuals; mainstream academic science, as bankrupt facade (nuff said?) that operates on any money it can get whether to pursue creationist science or any other absolutist perspective; all of which rely on the idea of, "if we had more money we'd be able to get to the goal we've been promising you for oh so long..."
What all that comes down to is the common denominator of relying on the financial systems of the day to control enough people to provide for their continuance... What would happen if people stopped paying for the non-benefits of committing to particular ideologies and economies? Would they find their own way of operating without the currencies that compel control, or would they falter and fail in response to unforeseen consequences? What, really, is money doing for any of us?
My perspective entails that money ought be reconfigured, if used at all, in considering a sustainable future for the species. By committing to any one of the three monological perspectives elucidated briefly earlier, statism, monotheism, and materialistic science, we have given up our abilities to decide for ourselves what the outcome of our human experience might be, and let it happen without our input in the realm of fictitious financial schemata.
Next post: evolution of ideas....
Put on your PJs!
Listen up everyone! It's time for a new mental exercise, appropriate for the whole family!
By using our brand new innovative product design, the Postpone Judgment Pajamas, anyone can enjoy the infinite worlds of sovereign individuality that brings about your true innate experience as a human on planet earth! All it takes is a minute to calm down and relax, put aside nonsensical belief systems, and enjoy the pleasure of experiencing this exact moment for what it's worth. Think of yourself entering a waking dream-state where there were no absolutes that determined what your imagination might be able to entertain or negate. In a universe that afforded you with immeasurable possibilities, would you not want to exercise those potentials as best as possible? Wouldn't it be great to bring into existence, through imagination, the most ideal and utopian environments, or get rid of those harmfully controlling elements that keep the world in chains?
Well, do I ever have the product for you! And, did I mention, it comes free of charge!? Well you already have all that it takes to calm yourself into a relaxed ecstatic daydream full of untold miracles. All it takes is abandoning the ways you've done things before, just for a moment of course 'cause we're only dreaming here, and imagining something different, something better. These pajamas can bring you to a state of total uninhibited creativity where you're able to tap into the creative forces of the cosmos and bring into your life the most amazing prophecies that you, and only you, can realize in immanent experiential reality!! Only in such an altered state of consciousness can the limits of truth be extended slightly further than before. When you wear these PJs the opportunities for evolution become apparent to freely conscious entities that seek to ameliorate and reconcile their disadvantageous relationship with the ecosystem as a whole. PJs make everyone happier and healthier by letting a little bit of living room between what the individual is and what keeps the individual safe. Better balance comes from better pajamas.
All it takes is to relax your roll a little, dawg... Let it slide, and don't get too worked up. Try and take things from a more grounded level, not putting yourself higher or lower than anyone or any- thing, for that matter. No one and no- thing has absolute arbitration over your existence. This is what is revealed when you chill out in your PeeJays...
And then, something happens that calls you back to everyday reality...
an unacceptable occurrence compels reaction: Absolutisms haven taken hold of the entire world!?!? It gets very difficult to adorn the pragmatic pajamas of postponed judgment when all around one finds the melodramatic mediocrity of melancholic materialist monotheism. All of the dominating ideologies demand strict adherence or downright dismissal, anything in between considered a moralized inferiority by dogmatists.
Fuck that... There's always another path. So long as we hold that to be the closest margin of absolutes, that is, there are absolutely none to be determined by linguistic statements alone, there are infinite permutations for ideas to evolve into.
By using our brand new innovative product design, the Postpone Judgment Pajamas, anyone can enjoy the infinite worlds of sovereign individuality that brings about your true innate experience as a human on planet earth! All it takes is a minute to calm down and relax, put aside nonsensical belief systems, and enjoy the pleasure of experiencing this exact moment for what it's worth. Think of yourself entering a waking dream-state where there were no absolutes that determined what your imagination might be able to entertain or negate. In a universe that afforded you with immeasurable possibilities, would you not want to exercise those potentials as best as possible? Wouldn't it be great to bring into existence, through imagination, the most ideal and utopian environments, or get rid of those harmfully controlling elements that keep the world in chains?
Well, do I ever have the product for you! And, did I mention, it comes free of charge!? Well you already have all that it takes to calm yourself into a relaxed ecstatic daydream full of untold miracles. All it takes is abandoning the ways you've done things before, just for a moment of course 'cause we're only dreaming here, and imagining something different, something better. These pajamas can bring you to a state of total uninhibited creativity where you're able to tap into the creative forces of the cosmos and bring into your life the most amazing prophecies that you, and only you, can realize in immanent experiential reality!! Only in such an altered state of consciousness can the limits of truth be extended slightly further than before. When you wear these PJs the opportunities for evolution become apparent to freely conscious entities that seek to ameliorate and reconcile their disadvantageous relationship with the ecosystem as a whole. PJs make everyone happier and healthier by letting a little bit of living room between what the individual is and what keeps the individual safe. Better balance comes from better pajamas.
All it takes is to relax your roll a little, dawg... Let it slide, and don't get too worked up. Try and take things from a more grounded level, not putting yourself higher or lower than anyone or any- thing, for that matter. No one and no- thing has absolute arbitration over your existence. This is what is revealed when you chill out in your PeeJays...
And then, something happens that calls you back to everyday reality...
an unacceptable occurrence compels reaction: Absolutisms haven taken hold of the entire world!?!? It gets very difficult to adorn the pragmatic pajamas of postponed judgment when all around one finds the melodramatic mediocrity of melancholic materialist monotheism. All of the dominating ideologies demand strict adherence or downright dismissal, anything in between considered a moralized inferiority by dogmatists.
Fuck that... There's always another path. So long as we hold that to be the closest margin of absolutes, that is, there are absolutely none to be determined by linguistic statements alone, there are infinite permutations for ideas to evolve into.
Monday, October 4, 2010
[Philo-sophy] or (Phi-lo-sophy)
The etymological analysis of the word philosophy has never satisfied me for many reasons. As 'the discipline to unite all disciplines,' or so I've often considered it, academic philosophy seems hardly appropriate enough in and of itself to deserve the title 'love of wisdom,' let alone be bestowed with something better. My very uninformed assessment (I studied undergrad for four years...) of the higher academic levels is that they're a bunch of pandering ninnies preying on corpses of dead idols.
as per online etymological dictionary:
c.1300, from O.Fr. filosofie (12c.), from L. philosophia, from Gk. philosophia "love of knowledge, wisdom," from philo- "loving" + sophia "knowledge, wisdom," from sophis "wise, learned."
and the omniscient god Wiki, philo- and -sophia:
Philo-, a prefix form of -phil-, from the Greek for "love of", e.g. philosophy
Sophia (Σοφíα, Greek for "wisdom") is a central term in Hellenistic philosophy and religion, Platonism, Gnosticism, Orthodox Christianity, Esoteric Christianity, as well as Christian mysticism. Sophiology is a philosophical concept regarding wisdom, as well as a theological concept regarding the wisdom of God.
The undergraduate courses and all other professors could easily be called philosophers by this definition, but, these constituent parts could not contain the whole of what I experienced in my interaction with the ideas presented in the upper level philosophy classes of two particular professors. I was getting more out of it than I was supposed to, methinks, because my ideas were growing too rapidly to be presented within the limited parameters of twenty page term papers. I wanted to be working on an honours project that would sum up my undergraduate learnings in an expressive and explicative way, and I tried to get it going, but the faculty wasn't ready for that. What they told me was that I'd better keep my focus on the classes at hand and not write about psychedelics any more because it's not appropriate at the graduate level, and that's what they're there for was to get their students ready for grad school. This tirade is not to blame them for my leaving academia, because that's one of the best choices I ever made, but to put into context that their academic pursuits were just that, academic pursuits, and would not or could not compromise the essential political nature of institutionalized realities. I had more to do with my mind and life.
Somewhere along the way I've reinterpreted how I define philosophy.
That Sophia was goddess from some time and we have a particular fascination with it does not suffice my awe and wonder with the mysteries of consciousness.
And what is the suffix -philia generally associated with? Negatively sexual words like corprophilia, the 'love' of shit, necrophilia, pedophilia... So is philosophilia like fucking an old dead goddess or something? Hardly appropriate.
And now, for something completely different, I have a new way of philosophizing (eww, that's sick bro) that will show us out of this etymological maze.
Let's consider the world comprised of three distinct parts instead of two:
[philo-] and [-sophia] becomes [phi-], [-lo-], [-sophia]
phi is the golden ratio, a transcendental number of a ratio found everywhere in nature from the proportions of the human body to the shape of the spiral arms of the galaxy, 1:1.618.......
This ratio is encoded in the logarithmic spirals of shells and tornadoes, the dimensions of credit cards and many corporate logos, the teachings of mystery schools since the first Egyptian dynasties (and I think before, too...) to name only a few amongst many. I would bet that lifetimes have been spent trying to examine this phenomenon without ever coming close to exhausting the multifarious manifestations of this essential fractal pattern. If you're interested in starting it out I'd recommend looking up 'sacred geometry' as it's a more than compelling idea that reaches out far and beyond what is able to be entertained in academic circles. The circles of sacred geometry constitute the foundation of our experience called reality.
Well, if we've got a place to start to look at the basis of life, the universe, and everything, and it's a simple-enough starting point like the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet, and been known by humans for thousands of years, well, let's get started? I've only just begun,
and,
- lo - and behold,
I find myself on the path to -sophia. Instead of postulating fantastical fictions based on outdated moral relativities, let's look at something that can be found at every level of our experience as consciousness! Doesn't this seem like a better foundation for an attempt towards wisdom than a sickly fetish with dead ideas?
Philosophy, to me,
Φ, behold, wisdom...
perspectives that include this most intrinsic of ratios are better equipped to withstand the awe and wonder imparted by experiencing the beatific wisdom contained therein.
peace...
as per online etymological dictionary:
c.1300, from O.Fr. filosofie (12c.), from L. philosophia, from Gk. philosophia "love of knowledge, wisdom," from philo- "loving" + sophia "knowledge, wisdom," from sophis "wise, learned."
and the omniscient god Wiki, philo- and -sophia:
Philo-, a prefix form of -phil-, from the Greek for "love of", e.g. philosophy
Sophia (Σοφíα, Greek for "wisdom") is a central term in Hellenistic philosophy and religion, Platonism, Gnosticism, Orthodox Christianity, Esoteric Christianity, as well as Christian mysticism. Sophiology is a philosophical concept regarding wisdom, as well as a theological concept regarding the wisdom of God.
The undergraduate courses and all other professors could easily be called philosophers by this definition, but, these constituent parts could not contain the whole of what I experienced in my interaction with the ideas presented in the upper level philosophy classes of two particular professors. I was getting more out of it than I was supposed to, methinks, because my ideas were growing too rapidly to be presented within the limited parameters of twenty page term papers. I wanted to be working on an honours project that would sum up my undergraduate learnings in an expressive and explicative way, and I tried to get it going, but the faculty wasn't ready for that. What they told me was that I'd better keep my focus on the classes at hand and not write about psychedelics any more because it's not appropriate at the graduate level, and that's what they're there for was to get their students ready for grad school. This tirade is not to blame them for my leaving academia, because that's one of the best choices I ever made, but to put into context that their academic pursuits were just that, academic pursuits, and would not or could not compromise the essential political nature of institutionalized realities. I had more to do with my mind and life.
Somewhere along the way I've reinterpreted how I define philosophy.
That Sophia was goddess from some time and we have a particular fascination with it does not suffice my awe and wonder with the mysteries of consciousness.
And what is the suffix -philia generally associated with? Negatively sexual words like corprophilia, the 'love' of shit, necrophilia, pedophilia... So is philosophilia like fucking an old dead goddess or something? Hardly appropriate.
And now, for something completely different, I have a new way of philosophizing (eww, that's sick bro) that will show us out of this etymological maze.
Let's consider the world comprised of three distinct parts instead of two:
[philo-] and [-sophia] becomes [phi-], [-lo-], [-sophia]
phi is the golden ratio, a transcendental number of a ratio found everywhere in nature from the proportions of the human body to the shape of the spiral arms of the galaxy, 1:1.618.......
This ratio is encoded in the logarithmic spirals of shells and tornadoes, the dimensions of credit cards and many corporate logos, the teachings of mystery schools since the first Egyptian dynasties (and I think before, too...) to name only a few amongst many. I would bet that lifetimes have been spent trying to examine this phenomenon without ever coming close to exhausting the multifarious manifestations of this essential fractal pattern. If you're interested in starting it out I'd recommend looking up 'sacred geometry' as it's a more than compelling idea that reaches out far and beyond what is able to be entertained in academic circles. The circles of sacred geometry constitute the foundation of our experience called reality.
Well, if we've got a place to start to look at the basis of life, the universe, and everything, and it's a simple-enough starting point like the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet, and been known by humans for thousands of years, well, let's get started? I've only just begun,
and,
- lo - and behold,
I find myself on the path to -sophia. Instead of postulating fantastical fictions based on outdated moral relativities, let's look at something that can be found at every level of our experience as consciousness! Doesn't this seem like a better foundation for an attempt towards wisdom than a sickly fetish with dead ideas?
Philosophy, to me,
Φ, behold, wisdom...
perspectives that include this most intrinsic of ratios are better equipped to withstand the awe and wonder imparted by experiencing the beatific wisdom contained therein.
peace...
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Here Comes October...
Well I thought I'd be consistent enough to keep an average margin of posts per month, but as it happens, life changes....thankfully. New occasions bring new opportunities and I find myself writing as much as ever, although not per blogosphere, as it were.
My ideas are coming together through the question of culture. I am asking myself why the cultural programming I've been endowed with has brought this free-thinking individual to where I am right now. I credit the entire ecosystem of the planet for blessing me with the potentials I have before me, and I pledge my allegiance to the multiplicitude of organisms and ecosystems that will inevitably evolve and pervade all the surfaces of this planet either without the species of which I'm a member.
Thanks life...
My ideas are coming together through the question of culture. I am asking myself why the cultural programming I've been endowed with has brought this free-thinking individual to where I am right now. I credit the entire ecosystem of the planet for blessing me with the potentials I have before me, and I pledge my allegiance to the multiplicitude of organisms and ecosystems that will inevitably evolve and pervade all the surfaces of this planet either without the species of which I'm a member.
Thanks life...
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Question of Culture
I've always asked myself why the world is like it is. I still don't have the answer, and don't expect to either, but over the years have developed many more ways of answering life's more humble questions. What is our culture and how has it gotten its shape? Where did it come from and where is it going? Who put it together and why does it seem as though appearances change on the surface while the undercurrents trace back thousands of years? Is there something going on that we as the general populace have no idea about?
Here's my unique way of formulating what must be an ancient question, and what I present as a unique way of answering it; steeped in contrarian perspectives both new and old, the method to my madness is to question what is called culture. To set up the asking I want to outline two different modes of thought. Neither having priority, both are aspects of the existential situation we call human experience.
The overriding thesis at hand is that the origin of this duality comes from a unified source. The basis of experience as consciousness is essentially unity; only in order to experience itself as anything, consciousness must necessarily make its limits. Be they just veils and membranes enveloping relatively independent transitional bodies, the code at their base has common denominators. Two categorical bodies are to be developed and employed here to indicate this fundamental dynamic. One question is to be asked of both ways of thinking: is this a sustainable way for culture to evolve? My answer is that they both need to be balanced consciously for culture to evolve sustainably.
To characterize this dynamic, two metaphors will serve to illustrate the idiosyncrasies of each end of our spectrum. The one I will call culture, for convenience's sake, as it is my way of describing what is commonly accepted as the normative and categorical elements of western society. The other I'm calling community, as the word holds common ground with unity, and hints at the feeling I'm trying to communicate. Culture, as elaborated here, is a process of building, whereas community is a process of growth. Community is an organic function whereas culture is an artificial one. Culture postulates that the original unity breaks down into a duality whereas community recognizes the impervious nature of unity as a polarized spectrum. Community shows that evolution occurs as a process of cooperation among biologically diverse members of an ecosystem whereas culture asserts that evolution happens by competitive domination over the environment by the most able organism.
As a general overview, I'm calling the metaphor of community organic and the metaphor or culture as archonic. The roots of these words indicate how I'm putting them to use here; as organic derives from the Greek root of organon, meaning 'that with which one works', archonic derives from the Greek root of arkhon, meaning 'ruler', or 'beginning to rule' in its verb form. These polarities can be considered as part of a spectrum and not mutually exclusive. Both are necessary and valid modes of thinking and being that constitute the yin-yang balance of this human condition. Try and guess which is yin and which is yang. My position is that in order for any sort of existence or experience, these forces need to be balanced enough so as to provide the form and content on which it can be founded. Therefore it is also my position that these forces are still balanced enough today so that we can experience existence and I can communicate my perspectives. The motivation behind my need to put forth these ideas is that although we're still balanced enough between culture and community to 'be' 'here,' where being is too vaguely defined and here is at a precipice. There has been, and still is, an all-too-much emphasized aspect of culture that implicitly refuses recognition of the importance of community.
It is an overwhelming tendency that summarizes my take on culture: humans have for too long invested their energy and attention into systems that divest them of responsibility for their actions, be they religions, sciences, or systems of authority. The idea that one can rest assured in something external doing everything necessary to provide the individual with sustenance, morality, entertainment, and ultimately salvation, is an irresponsible decision at best, and, more honestly, a parasitic scourge on the planet. Believing that one need not blame oneself for the happenings in and around the community, and that self-satisfaction is the ultimate goal of life, is to condemn the entire population and all of posterity to failure.
Rather, by taking up responsibility for one's own community by first standing up as a unique sovereign individual,
( still in progress)
Here's my unique way of formulating what must be an ancient question, and what I present as a unique way of answering it; steeped in contrarian perspectives both new and old, the method to my madness is to question what is called culture. To set up the asking I want to outline two different modes of thought. Neither having priority, both are aspects of the existential situation we call human experience.
The overriding thesis at hand is that the origin of this duality comes from a unified source. The basis of experience as consciousness is essentially unity; only in order to experience itself as anything, consciousness must necessarily make its limits. Be they just veils and membranes enveloping relatively independent transitional bodies, the code at their base has common denominators. Two categorical bodies are to be developed and employed here to indicate this fundamental dynamic. One question is to be asked of both ways of thinking: is this a sustainable way for culture to evolve? My answer is that they both need to be balanced consciously for culture to evolve sustainably.
To characterize this dynamic, two metaphors will serve to illustrate the idiosyncrasies of each end of our spectrum. The one I will call culture, for convenience's sake, as it is my way of describing what is commonly accepted as the normative and categorical elements of western society. The other I'm calling community, as the word holds common ground with unity, and hints at the feeling I'm trying to communicate. Culture, as elaborated here, is a process of building, whereas community is a process of growth. Community is an organic function whereas culture is an artificial one. Culture postulates that the original unity breaks down into a duality whereas community recognizes the impervious nature of unity as a polarized spectrum. Community shows that evolution occurs as a process of cooperation among biologically diverse members of an ecosystem whereas culture asserts that evolution happens by competitive domination over the environment by the most able organism.
As a general overview, I'm calling the metaphor of community organic and the metaphor or culture as archonic. The roots of these words indicate how I'm putting them to use here; as organic derives from the Greek root of organon, meaning 'that with which one works', archonic derives from the Greek root of arkhon, meaning 'ruler', or 'beginning to rule' in its verb form. These polarities can be considered as part of a spectrum and not mutually exclusive. Both are necessary and valid modes of thinking and being that constitute the yin-yang balance of this human condition. Try and guess which is yin and which is yang. My position is that in order for any sort of existence or experience, these forces need to be balanced enough so as to provide the form and content on which it can be founded. Therefore it is also my position that these forces are still balanced enough today so that we can experience existence and I can communicate my perspectives. The motivation behind my need to put forth these ideas is that although we're still balanced enough between culture and community to 'be' 'here,' where being is too vaguely defined and here is at a precipice. There has been, and still is, an all-too-much emphasized aspect of culture that implicitly refuses recognition of the importance of community.
It is an overwhelming tendency that summarizes my take on culture: humans have for too long invested their energy and attention into systems that divest them of responsibility for their actions, be they religions, sciences, or systems of authority. The idea that one can rest assured in something external doing everything necessary to provide the individual with sustenance, morality, entertainment, and ultimately salvation, is an irresponsible decision at best, and, more honestly, a parasitic scourge on the planet. Believing that one need not blame oneself for the happenings in and around the community, and that self-satisfaction is the ultimate goal of life, is to condemn the entire population and all of posterity to failure.
Rather, by taking up responsibility for one's own community by first standing up as a unique sovereign individual,
( still in progress)
Sunday, September 19, 2010
update
Well, it's been a while since I've posted, mostly because I've been in transit, moving from one place to another as I so often do; also because I've been updating my ideas and how they relate overall, the ideas have subsequently developed substantially. My work of late has focused on the ideas I originally wanted to include in the philosophical sort of treatise that I imagined creating shortly after resigning from academia. Though the ideas I want to express haven't changed very much, the way I express myself has changed quite dramatically. Indeed, I've developed some very succinct ways to show what I have to say that are far more precise and definite than I ever had before. Writing through this blog format has rendered my style more acute than I was previously able to communicate.
What I've been doing is compiling the couple of months worth of writing that occurred as the initiation of the misfit shaman, and incorporating that work into a previous project that was my retort to academia. The post entitled The Stone That The Builder Refused was my first draft at a first chapter for the aforementioned project. It has changed quite significantly over the past few year that I've been entertaining the ideas, even though the heart of the matter remains true to the original intent. The posts that follow will be my work on this philosophical treatise that will hopefully adequately contain the scope of my intended communication.
What I've been doing is compiling the couple of months worth of writing that occurred as the initiation of the misfit shaman, and incorporating that work into a previous project that was my retort to academia. The post entitled The Stone That The Builder Refused was my first draft at a first chapter for the aforementioned project. It has changed quite significantly over the past few year that I've been entertaining the ideas, even though the heart of the matter remains true to the original intent. The posts that follow will be my work on this philosophical treatise that will hopefully adequately contain the scope of my intended communication.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
From Darkness Into Light
Here's a story I started working on yesterday. It's a retelling of Plato's allegory of the cave, mixed with an element of Flatland. I have yet to finish or edit it, but I think it's worth reading still. I could use an idea or two for how to finish it. If you've got something in mind after reading it, please feel free to contribute:
____________________
One day I woke up and my chains were loose. I'd never guessed this could be possible, let alone that it'd happen to me! Of all people. Who was I, for that matter? I was nobody; and now I have a tale to tell and the all words to make sure it gets told.
You see, my society lives chained in the dark, lined up along a wall in a cave facing the rear. In the middle of this pack lies the king, flanked by his elite imperial guard on both sides. We peasants never see the king for this reason, and nevertheless tend to trust the booming voice of the regent without question. I still identify with them. Not nostalgically, though, that's for sure.
So life is linear. They're all chained together in a line. The farther out to the extremities you go, the people appear more and more wearisome. This is because they are so. On the margins of society the basics of life are increasingly scarce. This is where I lived. You see, this is a minimally operational culture, where the basics are provided by the state. Food, standardized coveralls, of course, a few sundries, and the games. Just so long as everyone follows the rules, passing everything to its appropriate destination down the chain. The task might seem pretty simple if you've only ever lived next to two people at once. Considering you get to know them fairly well the process ought to flow really smoothly, and we all try our best to make sure it does, but surprisingly often the order is interrupted somewhere somehow! And then the shit really gets fucked 'cause everyone gets mixed up and resources are 'redistributed!'
But I'm getting flustered...those days have passed for me. I can't decide which part of the story I should tell next. These words are all still so new to me. In school we were taught about polarity, duality, and the sacred axis. The chains. This left-right world is all we could comprehend, even though the stars that make the games are clearly in front, and what I was to learn, originate from behind. A new axis. A new modality for existence. But was it really new? Had I discovered something that hadn't been discovered? Does this even mean anything?
But I'm getting ahead of myself. To backtrack a bit here, I'll explain one of the 'hit-the-fan' incidents I got all worked up about earlier. It all started when I swallowed my tongue. At least that's what I think might have happened. Just as the announcement of imminent sleep echoed left to the depths of my current hollow, I was drinking some water when Jeffrey, my neighbour, startled me with a strange comment that I can't really remember. But I choked, and choked hard, and somehow only lost consciousness momentarily. That moment is important and I'll tell you about it rest assured. Thing is, I remained mostly conscious throughout even though I wasn't able to breathe, and I saw what happens 'at night.'
Imminent sleep is the time of day that everyone thinks they all drift off at the same time for a particular mystical and sacred reason. It just so happens that when everyone goes off to la-la land, they're breathing in a quick acting sleep-inducing compound that is probably pretty effective overall, seeing as how I never once woke up before! This time around though, I got over my choking fit, and was without breath for long enough to avoid the sleeping gas. But that's not all that happened... I went somewhere else in between. I got outside by going inside, if that means anything at all.
After gasping and gagging for air, reaching out around me for something, anything, chains lashing out in all directions, seeing that William and Jeffrey were indeed asleep, one more gasp, and I thought I'd died. I suddenly felt as though I was a giant blue sphere, or at least part of it, and I am composed of more dimensions than I had previously believed. In fact, I had clear thinking enough to see that every single belief that my culture had imposed on me was a lie. The one word is even embedded in the other! Just look! Instead of imposing a belief on what I was experiencing, I let it happen. For lack of a better word I had a vision; the embedded unity and entanglement that is all of consciousness, even in it's relative states that seem independent, are beautifully interlaced in chaotic patterns of concretion and dissipation though a manifold geometric prism of direct sensory experience. These are the best words I currently have available so please bear with me.
I examined what I was experiencing and found all information. I didn't know where to begin. This intention to explore those new vistas just didn't seem quite appropriate. Was this hyper-reality only mine to behold or does it belong to my people as well? I gazed longingly through a sort of snake-rope of indescribable brilliance, and anguish beset my conscience. Then my experience snapped back into my body and I was in chains once again.
Only, they were loose. I struggled agonizingly as my body had undergone quite the shocking trauma less than a moment before, but one hand wrangled free and the other followed shortly after. Freeing my legs was a much more arduous task. I'd never used them before. With bones aching and muscles atrophied I mustered up all the might of my soul and shed my yoke of bondage.
Using all the physical and psychic energy available to me, I persevered through the task of crawling to the left-most end of the line, past hundreds of sleeping, chained, and still looking tormented individuals. I got there just as everyone was waking up, about thirty meters or so by my best estimation past the last prisoner. There I found a dark little cave and I holed up to rest. I drifted off to sleep with tremors of the terror inherent in my insubordination.
It was the next night, perhaps, that I awoke to find that the smaller cave I was in was at a bit of an oblique angle to the rest of the line. Imbued with a overflowing feeling beyond anything I can explain, I also had a disquieting inclination that something was horribly wrong. I'd been taught that all was linear and we learn from the games on the mystical wall, but now I could see down the line! I could see the chained sheeple languishing in dreamless rest, from the closest one about thirty meters away, to hundreds and hundreds more before the so-called guards. At this point I couldn't see the king, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here.
I rested observingly, eager to see what the games might reveal through my new eyes. In the morning, or at least what we called morning, I could see the light in the cave was increasing. I receded as far as I could into the smaller cave without losing my new perspective. The light was coming from 'behind' the wall, a new directional indicator I'd developed to explain what lay over the wall. This was all so interesting, scary, and magnificent. The light seemed to be coming from a single source, just over the wall, and reflected off of mirrors all around the rear, hidden, behind, part of the cave. There was smoke diffracting the light and the games were about to begin.
The light split off into many different coloured streams bouncing from mirror to mirror and through smoky mists eventually to come together forming the stars. “The Crab!” an excited player shouted. “No, you fool it's clearly Andromeda, don't go with The Crab,” retorted another. “Damn you both to Hades! Being the most obvious and dominant of all the constellations in the sky this can only be The Hunter,” added a third. The crescendo of voices rose all along the line as the players tried to outwit each other. Their fervent zeal for competition was eclipsed only by the sheer volume of this discordant cacophony.
You see, the games worked in a left against right competition reminiscent of Sissyphus' ordeal. No matter which side was winning or losing, they were all bound to continue the competition. Emotions flare when leftists talk about rightys and vice versa. The antagonism being totally unfounded, however, as I was soon to discover. The catharsis of each side during times of debate or conflict reached magnanimous proportions, voices so loud to be nearly deafening due to the cave's acoustic resonances. But it was not a creative or enriching enterprise. The game was all about conflict and competition and it created an emotionally negative space. Yet these underlying forces needed expression whether positive or not.
I could see that compared with the incomparable vistas of psychic landscapes I so briefly explored at the limits of life and death, the petty gaming of naming stars was undignified at best and couldn't be called anything less than psychic slavery. Upon this realization my inner experience asserted an indefatigable No! and along with it a Yes! No to all slavery and yes to freedom! But I was getting hungry. I'd been watching the games in awe, absorbing the same information yet again, only this time from new eyes. These eyes required sustenance.
By this point my legs were somewhat functional and I could crawl around. I hadn't even figured out walking yet, but I wanted to crawl the very end of the line. Slithering on the ground at some points, pulling myself along, even scraping my back and neck bloody, I was determined to find the limits of the line and my cave, and I did.
At first I thought it was terminal. At this point I couldn't see anything as I'd been inching my way between masses of solid rock for many hours and maybe even days. Betraying my solemn vow of silence so as to maintain discretion, I lashed out emotionally, striking what I thought to be a mound of dirt at the foot of my final barrier. It was soft. I struck it again and it moved some. Frantically, I began digging, pulling myself along with every gesture and then I was struck by the most amazing force: I broke out of the cave and into the sun!
Staggering, even though on all fours, and completely blinded by the magnitude of the light on my closed eyes, I managed my way down the slope, away from the tiny hole in the side of the mountain. Then, an uncommon noise attracted my attention. There was a rustling, whispering, even a gurgling that I just couldn't identify but had to experience. It got louder and louder and before I knew it my hands found the shallow creek. I drank from it and rejoiced aloud. Never before had I been more alive.
So I stayed there for a while, and my eyes acclimated enough for me to get a glimpse of the colour and beauty around me. There were greens and blues like I'd never seen! I was not yet fully mobile, so I explored my immediate vicinity carefully. Quick agitations were catching the corner of my eye all the time so I decided to wait patiently. Small black specks moved about sporadically, but it was the one that flew over me that made the most impression. I recognized corvus, the crow, instantly from my cultural tradition. This was one of the constellation maps of the game. Maybe it wasn't totally useless in the end. After all, had I never lived the game, I'd never have made it to experience this wider scope of life.
Well I didn't mention it before because it seemed immodest of me, but I was really the best player of the game at one time. It just didn't satisfy me to seek social position or succeed in a career in the game. No matter how much effort I put into the game, and how many years I spent playing, I never even saw anyone else graduate, let alone graduating myself. And now I know why. The game was a way to distract everyone's attention away from their bondage. They learned to accept that life was merely a chance to play a few games. Once I'd figured all this out for myself, I couldn't play the game any more.
My meager subsistence from minimal effort grew more scarce and I was moved toward the end of the line. No one actually graduated or ascended as the king said he did and was offering to the masses. No one questioned exactly how the so-called mystical powers managed to control their lives, or more importantly, why. With these resignations at heart did I concede defeat to the king. This was the day before I woke up for real.
I had macroscopic plans. To get there I'd need to evolve, so I did. I found food in edible greens and dug for roots too. I climbed trees and nourished myself with their fruits. I ate flowers and bugs, nettles and leaves, bulbs and legumes and whatever I could stomach.
____________________
One day I woke up and my chains were loose. I'd never guessed this could be possible, let alone that it'd happen to me! Of all people. Who was I, for that matter? I was nobody; and now I have a tale to tell and the all words to make sure it gets told.
You see, my society lives chained in the dark, lined up along a wall in a cave facing the rear. In the middle of this pack lies the king, flanked by his elite imperial guard on both sides. We peasants never see the king for this reason, and nevertheless tend to trust the booming voice of the regent without question. I still identify with them. Not nostalgically, though, that's for sure.
So life is linear. They're all chained together in a line. The farther out to the extremities you go, the people appear more and more wearisome. This is because they are so. On the margins of society the basics of life are increasingly scarce. This is where I lived. You see, this is a minimally operational culture, where the basics are provided by the state. Food, standardized coveralls, of course, a few sundries, and the games. Just so long as everyone follows the rules, passing everything to its appropriate destination down the chain. The task might seem pretty simple if you've only ever lived next to two people at once. Considering you get to know them fairly well the process ought to flow really smoothly, and we all try our best to make sure it does, but surprisingly often the order is interrupted somewhere somehow! And then the shit really gets fucked 'cause everyone gets mixed up and resources are 'redistributed!'
But I'm getting flustered...those days have passed for me. I can't decide which part of the story I should tell next. These words are all still so new to me. In school we were taught about polarity, duality, and the sacred axis. The chains. This left-right world is all we could comprehend, even though the stars that make the games are clearly in front, and what I was to learn, originate from behind. A new axis. A new modality for existence. But was it really new? Had I discovered something that hadn't been discovered? Does this even mean anything?
But I'm getting ahead of myself. To backtrack a bit here, I'll explain one of the 'hit-the-fan' incidents I got all worked up about earlier. It all started when I swallowed my tongue. At least that's what I think might have happened. Just as the announcement of imminent sleep echoed left to the depths of my current hollow, I was drinking some water when Jeffrey, my neighbour, startled me with a strange comment that I can't really remember. But I choked, and choked hard, and somehow only lost consciousness momentarily. That moment is important and I'll tell you about it rest assured. Thing is, I remained mostly conscious throughout even though I wasn't able to breathe, and I saw what happens 'at night.'
Imminent sleep is the time of day that everyone thinks they all drift off at the same time for a particular mystical and sacred reason. It just so happens that when everyone goes off to la-la land, they're breathing in a quick acting sleep-inducing compound that is probably pretty effective overall, seeing as how I never once woke up before! This time around though, I got over my choking fit, and was without breath for long enough to avoid the sleeping gas. But that's not all that happened... I went somewhere else in between. I got outside by going inside, if that means anything at all.
After gasping and gagging for air, reaching out around me for something, anything, chains lashing out in all directions, seeing that William and Jeffrey were indeed asleep, one more gasp, and I thought I'd died. I suddenly felt as though I was a giant blue sphere, or at least part of it, and I am composed of more dimensions than I had previously believed. In fact, I had clear thinking enough to see that every single belief that my culture had imposed on me was a lie. The one word is even embedded in the other! Just look! Instead of imposing a belief on what I was experiencing, I let it happen. For lack of a better word I had a vision; the embedded unity and entanglement that is all of consciousness, even in it's relative states that seem independent, are beautifully interlaced in chaotic patterns of concretion and dissipation though a manifold geometric prism of direct sensory experience. These are the best words I currently have available so please bear with me.
I examined what I was experiencing and found all information. I didn't know where to begin. This intention to explore those new vistas just didn't seem quite appropriate. Was this hyper-reality only mine to behold or does it belong to my people as well? I gazed longingly through a sort of snake-rope of indescribable brilliance, and anguish beset my conscience. Then my experience snapped back into my body and I was in chains once again.
Only, they were loose. I struggled agonizingly as my body had undergone quite the shocking trauma less than a moment before, but one hand wrangled free and the other followed shortly after. Freeing my legs was a much more arduous task. I'd never used them before. With bones aching and muscles atrophied I mustered up all the might of my soul and shed my yoke of bondage.
Using all the physical and psychic energy available to me, I persevered through the task of crawling to the left-most end of the line, past hundreds of sleeping, chained, and still looking tormented individuals. I got there just as everyone was waking up, about thirty meters or so by my best estimation past the last prisoner. There I found a dark little cave and I holed up to rest. I drifted off to sleep with tremors of the terror inherent in my insubordination.
It was the next night, perhaps, that I awoke to find that the smaller cave I was in was at a bit of an oblique angle to the rest of the line. Imbued with a overflowing feeling beyond anything I can explain, I also had a disquieting inclination that something was horribly wrong. I'd been taught that all was linear and we learn from the games on the mystical wall, but now I could see down the line! I could see the chained sheeple languishing in dreamless rest, from the closest one about thirty meters away, to hundreds and hundreds more before the so-called guards. At this point I couldn't see the king, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here.
I rested observingly, eager to see what the games might reveal through my new eyes. In the morning, or at least what we called morning, I could see the light in the cave was increasing. I receded as far as I could into the smaller cave without losing my new perspective. The light was coming from 'behind' the wall, a new directional indicator I'd developed to explain what lay over the wall. This was all so interesting, scary, and magnificent. The light seemed to be coming from a single source, just over the wall, and reflected off of mirrors all around the rear, hidden, behind, part of the cave. There was smoke diffracting the light and the games were about to begin.
The light split off into many different coloured streams bouncing from mirror to mirror and through smoky mists eventually to come together forming the stars. “The Crab!” an excited player shouted. “No, you fool it's clearly Andromeda, don't go with The Crab,” retorted another. “Damn you both to Hades! Being the most obvious and dominant of all the constellations in the sky this can only be The Hunter,” added a third. The crescendo of voices rose all along the line as the players tried to outwit each other. Their fervent zeal for competition was eclipsed only by the sheer volume of this discordant cacophony.
You see, the games worked in a left against right competition reminiscent of Sissyphus' ordeal. No matter which side was winning or losing, they were all bound to continue the competition. Emotions flare when leftists talk about rightys and vice versa. The antagonism being totally unfounded, however, as I was soon to discover. The catharsis of each side during times of debate or conflict reached magnanimous proportions, voices so loud to be nearly deafening due to the cave's acoustic resonances. But it was not a creative or enriching enterprise. The game was all about conflict and competition and it created an emotionally negative space. Yet these underlying forces needed expression whether positive or not.
I could see that compared with the incomparable vistas of psychic landscapes I so briefly explored at the limits of life and death, the petty gaming of naming stars was undignified at best and couldn't be called anything less than psychic slavery. Upon this realization my inner experience asserted an indefatigable No! and along with it a Yes! No to all slavery and yes to freedom! But I was getting hungry. I'd been watching the games in awe, absorbing the same information yet again, only this time from new eyes. These eyes required sustenance.
By this point my legs were somewhat functional and I could crawl around. I hadn't even figured out walking yet, but I wanted to crawl the very end of the line. Slithering on the ground at some points, pulling myself along, even scraping my back and neck bloody, I was determined to find the limits of the line and my cave, and I did.
At first I thought it was terminal. At this point I couldn't see anything as I'd been inching my way between masses of solid rock for many hours and maybe even days. Betraying my solemn vow of silence so as to maintain discretion, I lashed out emotionally, striking what I thought to be a mound of dirt at the foot of my final barrier. It was soft. I struck it again and it moved some. Frantically, I began digging, pulling myself along with every gesture and then I was struck by the most amazing force: I broke out of the cave and into the sun!
Staggering, even though on all fours, and completely blinded by the magnitude of the light on my closed eyes, I managed my way down the slope, away from the tiny hole in the side of the mountain. Then, an uncommon noise attracted my attention. There was a rustling, whispering, even a gurgling that I just couldn't identify but had to experience. It got louder and louder and before I knew it my hands found the shallow creek. I drank from it and rejoiced aloud. Never before had I been more alive.
So I stayed there for a while, and my eyes acclimated enough for me to get a glimpse of the colour and beauty around me. There were greens and blues like I'd never seen! I was not yet fully mobile, so I explored my immediate vicinity carefully. Quick agitations were catching the corner of my eye all the time so I decided to wait patiently. Small black specks moved about sporadically, but it was the one that flew over me that made the most impression. I recognized corvus, the crow, instantly from my cultural tradition. This was one of the constellation maps of the game. Maybe it wasn't totally useless in the end. After all, had I never lived the game, I'd never have made it to experience this wider scope of life.
Well I didn't mention it before because it seemed immodest of me, but I was really the best player of the game at one time. It just didn't satisfy me to seek social position or succeed in a career in the game. No matter how much effort I put into the game, and how many years I spent playing, I never even saw anyone else graduate, let alone graduating myself. And now I know why. The game was a way to distract everyone's attention away from their bondage. They learned to accept that life was merely a chance to play a few games. Once I'd figured all this out for myself, I couldn't play the game any more.
My meager subsistence from minimal effort grew more scarce and I was moved toward the end of the line. No one actually graduated or ascended as the king said he did and was offering to the masses. No one questioned exactly how the so-called mystical powers managed to control their lives, or more importantly, why. With these resignations at heart did I concede defeat to the king. This was the day before I woke up for real.
I had macroscopic plans. To get there I'd need to evolve, so I did. I found food in edible greens and dug for roots too. I climbed trees and nourished myself with their fruits. I ate flowers and bugs, nettles and leaves, bulbs and legumes and whatever I could stomach.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
(under)/(over) - standing
This is a demarcation that is seldom made in the foray of attitudes that constitute our cultural morass. This milieu consists of many systems of under-standing, without ever taking into consideration that I stand-over things as well. It is my individual quest to stand fast, accepting responsibility for what I stand on and what stands on me as well.
The best way to show the difference between under and over -standing is by identifying the occasion of persuasion and differentiating it from mind control. Both situations involve overstanding, individuals' experiences, and understanding; the differences revolve around the language used to comment on a common situation. When persuasion happens, individuals overstand the need to consensually enter a common linguistic understanding; whereas in a situation of mind control, conceptual structures, also understanding are built to contain or repress the individuality that is expressed in the act of overstanding.
Overstanding is an individual's experience, the self as it is, whether recognized as such or not. This is the locus of the individuated human situation.
Understanding is the common human experience, as modeled and modulated through the use of language.
The former occurs in the realms of perception and belief, the latter in the realms of dialogue and culture. Perception and dialogue are openness whereas belief and culture are limited enterprises.
In the realm of understanding, perception can be influenced by culture and compel subsequent states of overstanding. This is belief: in searching for truth, understanding (a specific model) can be confused with overstanding (perception, experience of self, and intellectual honesty).
The best example of this is how the law society and governments use legalese to confound the 'citizens of the world,' depriving individuals' overstanding of their legal status and imposing fictitious corporate identities on living souls and forcing specific limitations of language on the individuals who make up common society.
However, even in the most personal of personal realms, in the inner experience of overstanding, dialogue can be influenced by culturally imposed belief and compel subsequent states of understanding, resulting in cognitive dissonance and even so far as inauthentic perception. Some people still 'believe' that a plane hit the Pentagon. Give me a break.
Overstanding has been left at understanding's door, and everyone skips gleefully into the chapel of reason. 'It's OK, psychology and technology and medicine will take care of me just fine.' 'I don't need to think about my own well-being because there is a plan for me to follow right here.' 'The government is a natural evolution of social structures.' Those statements are all fine and good and all, if you care to accept them at face value, but for many others on the planet right now this just isn't enough.
For me, I recognize no authority but my own in determining how I overstand the world. Whatever understandings I care to utilize in this journey are at my whim, and mine alone. Remembering the call I made to any and all who would hear, it can be lucidly addressed by elucidating the over/under -standing distinction.
The first option being, you yourself authorize violence against your peers on behalf of and executed by agents of international financiers and their controllers. This is the current state of understanding that the world operates under, veiled by jingoistic narcissism that is sublimated into culture by means of education, money, television, government and other mind control means. The only other option is abolishing the state and financial system. Anything less, like reform, is a futile struggle. Einstein put it something like this; that you can't solve the problems of a situation by using the same kinds of thinking that got you there in the first place.
Having only been a few weeks since I've really comprehended this part of my trip, there have been limited few people that have suffered my rant so far. Nonetheless, of those few, maybe 20% actually got it, whether they agreed or not which is not the important part, and the rest just kind of nodded along. The only time that anyone wanted to retort was when there were six representatives from the common line of thinking and me from my uncommon approach. And, being the more intoxicated one among us, I somehow allowed myself to be talked into the corner that I was arguing against. I don't recall exactly how that discussion took place but it's not important. It just goes to show that the more common understanding is more easily rallied in its own defense because it has so many supporters. Power in numbers. Just look at the zombie archetype. They are stupid and many and will get you eventually, unless you're clever and cunning enough...
Overstanding is what humans really want, And yes, I'm willing to put in my two cents for what I think about that. None of this is definitive, it's part of my overstanding process. People want to love and be loved. Because this might not be so apparent in the world today, I refer you back to the mind control of imposed concepts being discussed throughout the blog here. I think it is only in retaliation to having individuality suppressed that people act out of fear, and instinctually focus on their self-preservation alone.
This state of mind is capitalized on by capitalism and capitalists and their controllers. Understanding only states of fear, overstanding is atrophied into nearly permanent rigor mortis. Then, the only options available when understanding comes under attack, or seems to be threatened at least, are those provided by the cultural programming. Creativity and imagination on how to solve even the simplest of life's occasions has been stifled to below mediocrity.
understanding is sorcery
overstanding is magic
sorcerers control
magicians create
tbc...
The best way to show the difference between under and over -standing is by identifying the occasion of persuasion and differentiating it from mind control. Both situations involve overstanding, individuals' experiences, and understanding; the differences revolve around the language used to comment on a common situation. When persuasion happens, individuals overstand the need to consensually enter a common linguistic understanding; whereas in a situation of mind control, conceptual structures, also understanding are built to contain or repress the individuality that is expressed in the act of overstanding.
Overstanding is an individual's experience, the self as it is, whether recognized as such or not. This is the locus of the individuated human situation.
Understanding is the common human experience, as modeled and modulated through the use of language.
The former occurs in the realms of perception and belief, the latter in the realms of dialogue and culture. Perception and dialogue are openness whereas belief and culture are limited enterprises.
In the realm of understanding, perception can be influenced by culture and compel subsequent states of overstanding. This is belief: in searching for truth, understanding (a specific model) can be confused with overstanding (perception, experience of self, and intellectual honesty).
The best example of this is how the law society and governments use legalese to confound the 'citizens of the world,' depriving individuals' overstanding of their legal status and imposing fictitious corporate identities on living souls and forcing specific limitations of language on the individuals who make up common society.
However, even in the most personal of personal realms, in the inner experience of overstanding, dialogue can be influenced by culturally imposed belief and compel subsequent states of understanding, resulting in cognitive dissonance and even so far as inauthentic perception. Some people still 'believe' that a plane hit the Pentagon. Give me a break.
Overstanding has been left at understanding's door, and everyone skips gleefully into the chapel of reason. 'It's OK, psychology and technology and medicine will take care of me just fine.' 'I don't need to think about my own well-being because there is a plan for me to follow right here.' 'The government is a natural evolution of social structures.' Those statements are all fine and good and all, if you care to accept them at face value, but for many others on the planet right now this just isn't enough.
For me, I recognize no authority but my own in determining how I overstand the world. Whatever understandings I care to utilize in this journey are at my whim, and mine alone. Remembering the call I made to any and all who would hear, it can be lucidly addressed by elucidating the over/under -standing distinction.
The first option being, you yourself authorize violence against your peers on behalf of and executed by agents of international financiers and their controllers. This is the current state of understanding that the world operates under, veiled by jingoistic narcissism that is sublimated into culture by means of education, money, television, government and other mind control means. The only other option is abolishing the state and financial system. Anything less, like reform, is a futile struggle. Einstein put it something like this; that you can't solve the problems of a situation by using the same kinds of thinking that got you there in the first place.
Having only been a few weeks since I've really comprehended this part of my trip, there have been limited few people that have suffered my rant so far. Nonetheless, of those few, maybe 20% actually got it, whether they agreed or not which is not the important part, and the rest just kind of nodded along. The only time that anyone wanted to retort was when there were six representatives from the common line of thinking and me from my uncommon approach. And, being the more intoxicated one among us, I somehow allowed myself to be talked into the corner that I was arguing against. I don't recall exactly how that discussion took place but it's not important. It just goes to show that the more common understanding is more easily rallied in its own defense because it has so many supporters. Power in numbers. Just look at the zombie archetype. They are stupid and many and will get you eventually, unless you're clever and cunning enough...
Overstanding is what humans really want, And yes, I'm willing to put in my two cents for what I think about that. None of this is definitive, it's part of my overstanding process. People want to love and be loved. Because this might not be so apparent in the world today, I refer you back to the mind control of imposed concepts being discussed throughout the blog here. I think it is only in retaliation to having individuality suppressed that people act out of fear, and instinctually focus on their self-preservation alone.
This state of mind is capitalized on by capitalism and capitalists and their controllers. Understanding only states of fear, overstanding is atrophied into nearly permanent rigor mortis. Then, the only options available when understanding comes under attack, or seems to be threatened at least, are those provided by the cultural programming. Creativity and imagination on how to solve even the simplest of life's occasions has been stifled to below mediocrity.
understanding is sorcery
overstanding is magic
sorcerers control
magicians create
tbc...
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Turning Point
Well, I think this is about the time that I venture away from trying to establish my philosophical view and begin commenting on specific issues to which this perspective might lend value. In setting up the idiosyncrasies that make up my own outlook, that is, a commitment to novelty and ever-new paradigms, I think I can now comment on issues of evidence, conjecture, information, disinformation, paradigm and prejudice, without being coerced into an absolutist perspective of anything. If you think I'm mistaken, please let us engage the issue!
So, what I take to be sufficient for at least introducing my ideas is the page called Guide, as it stands for now (Aug. 19 / '10). Inevitably, the posts that have been posted before then will be edited to suit whatever fancy I so happen to entertain, yet they summarize enough of what I was trying to accomplish up to now.
The models to be put forth ought inevitably be overtaken; if and only if better models emerge should any previous ones be in the race to superiority that paradigms must necessarily engage.
As an indicative phenomenon, I'd like to present the work of Miles from The Holoplex as a very edifying approach to the subjects I'm interested in and will be articulating further on this here blog...
So, what I take to be sufficient for at least introducing my ideas is the page called Guide, as it stands for now (Aug. 19 / '10). Inevitably, the posts that have been posted before then will be edited to suit whatever fancy I so happen to entertain, yet they summarize enough of what I was trying to accomplish up to now.
The models to be put forth ought inevitably be overtaken; if and only if better models emerge should any previous ones be in the race to superiority that paradigms must necessarily engage.
As an indicative phenomenon, I'd like to present the work of Miles from The Holoplex as a very edifying approach to the subjects I'm interested in and will be articulating further on this here blog...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Terrence McKenna
One of the most influential individuals on my thinking, Terrence McKenna has a very potent repertoire of mind blowing ideas. His scientific skepticism and rational approach never closed off his mind from approaching any topic that I can think of. Being a public speaker in his day, and speaking to diverse audiences, I've been privileged to be able to listen to many of his pithy diatribes and hear all sorts of questions asked of him.
Some of my favourite quotes I can remember off the top of my head:
"If the truth can be told so as to be understood it will be believed."
"There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules."
"Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego."
And from wiki-quotes:
"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."
"We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it's worth."
"What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. And [I think] that beliefs should be put aside, and that a psychedelic society would abandon belief systems [in favor of] direct experience and this is, I think much, of the problem of the modern dilemma, is that direct experience has been discounted and in its place all kind of belief systems have been erected... If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite, which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of this belief."
Some of my favourite quotes I can remember off the top of my head:
"If the truth can be told so as to be understood it will be believed."
"There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules."
"Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego."
And from wiki-quotes:
"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."
"We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it's worth."
"What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. And [I think] that beliefs should be put aside, and that a psychedelic society would abandon belief systems [in favor of] direct experience and this is, I think much, of the problem of the modern dilemma, is that direct experience has been discounted and in its place all kind of belief systems have been erected... If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite, which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of this belief."
Community and Communication
This is a paper I began in the 2nd semester of my 4th year of university, for a course in existential philosophy. I didn't finish it the way I would've liked at the time so I've updated and finished it better this time around. Here goes:
___________________________________________
In reading the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Georges Bataille, one encounters alternate readings of the Western tradition that main its discourse yet depart from it in radical ways. Both authors express an esoteric secret that points to the margins of rationality. Only by reading their philosophies as one would engage in verbal discourse, that is, not limiting oneself to rational preconceptions but being open to new experiences, can we communicate with Levinas and Bataille. They can be compared by describing the conditions under which reason no longer functions to secure absolute meaning, or at all for that matter. Not in opposition to traditional philosophical discourse that Levinas and Bataille direct their criticism, but from within they seek to indicate what lies beyond. It is the conception of an individuated self as subjectivity in opposition with the other as distinctly objective that must be reinterpreted to bring forth a particular assumption made in traditional philosophy: that we can achieve an absolute meaning of human existence.
Insofar as Bataille and Levinas both aspire to achieve a significant criticism of the philosophical tradition, especially the concepts of utility and teleology, they also realize that to establish this goal as absolute is to have defeated their purpose already. “I fail, no matter what I write, in this, that I should be linking the infinite – insane – richness of 'possible' to the precision of meaning” (Bataille 69). What is important for them to communicate is that aspect of human life that cannot be adequately supplicated by philosophical knowledge in one way or another. “Man is not to be conceived in function of being and not-being, taken as ultimate references...Intentionality never makes itself simultaneous with the theme it aims at, except by losing its sense, betraying itself, appearing according to the intelligibility of a system” (Levinas 14, 69) Direct access to the experiential limits of the human condition is necessary for understanding what is beyond, and cannot be reduced to our initial, typical, and most predominant access to the world: axiomatic (logic, syllogisms, laws, etc.) and teleological (purposive activity) systems. Up is up and down is down, the sun will come up tomorrow, time goes on and we all die some day. So it goes.
Both Levinas a Bataille are critical of the assumed philosophical ability to reduce human activity and the designation of signification to teleology, phenomenology, or the satisfation of subjectivity. The insufficient attitude is described by Levinas as 'bonne conscience,' a conception of being that remains entirely within an isolated economy of subjective experience. The self attempts to grasp an idea of the infinite that it encounters in the face of the other; analogously, Bataille's notion of inner experience as ecstasy also connotes the distinction between a particular economy of the restricted individuated subject like Levinas, but thematizes somewhat the free play of energy that lies beyond it as a foundation for experience.
Basically, Bataille is more confident in his ability to cursorily describe the ebb and flow of the encounter with mystery, where Levinas emphasizes the ultimate inability to characterize the face of the other when confronted. The authors recognize that the teleological character of human existence, and indeed the locus of our activities, have an intrinsic importance in themselves, but are ultimately inadequate to guarantee the possibility of anything beyond. What teleological activity in philosophical discourse can achieve, however, is the indication of a trace, which, if followed, might lead beyond the walls of the restricted economy of the subject. Levinas calls this attempt at empathetic identification “substitution, at the limit of being, ends up in saying, in the giving of signs, giving a sign of this giving of signs, expressing oneself...Responsibility goes beyond being” (Levinas B 15) In the attempt to approach the infinite as a responsible self, the project is undermined itself as teleological constructions are insufficient from the start.
The liminal phenomenon that Levinas accounts for is this 'bad' conscience that interrupts our intentional consciousness. Responsibility is the limit of the self, “a responsibility for the other to whom I was committed before committing, before being present to myself or coming back to self” (Levinas B 30-31). The task of philosophy that follows from this, I would then suggest, is to critically asses the justification of one's own actions, and employ discursive thought in a sociable manner; based on the essential passivity of the face of suffering, and my tendency to overwhelm it in concepts through purposive action, the communication falls short of sufficient. Philosophy has to have 'the transcendence of inspiration' as its motivation for communicating.
But if the task of philosophy is to communicate meaning, how meaning is communicated and what meaning might be, have too often been categorically assumed in dialectical thinking. Since the foundations of Western thought, while continuously being developed and refined, signification has been sublimated in a discourse of purposive action; the conceptual structures of teleological and phenomenological reality are generally assumed to be the fundamental consistencies of the dynamic human situation. The dialectical oppositions of subject and object, self and other, or same and different, are presumed to have a significant anchor point by which they can be comparatively assessed and hierarchically categorized. These are the everyday operations of modern human life: tacitly accepted phenomenological categories called knowledge. “My effort consists in showing that knowledge is in reality an imminence, and that there is not rupture of the isolation of being in knowledge” (Levinas A, 57). Knowledge is what is it is in itself and needs nothing further.
Knowledge, thus considered the conceptual structures of immanent experience, is generally identified with the experience itself rather that what it is more fundamentally; a description of the experience and not it's direct content. The subject Communication, then, must be thought in a radically ulterior way, as undermining the goals of purposive activity, yet indicating the foundation of signification beyond the immediate grasp of self-reflective consciousness. For Levinas and Bataille both, subjectivitiy needs to be re-considered in its ecstatic character that evades characterization. There is a paradoxical motion that both authors point to as a rupture; a divestiture of being is a necessary point to notice in their writings, and ultimately, their task as a whole.
Bataille and Levinas both recognize a necessary aspect of human life to be acting within the constraints of limited systems of knowledge, but also specify that there are limitations to philosophical reasoning in securing itself as the only knowledgeable aspect. “I do not deny that philosophy is a knowledge, insofar as it names even what is not nameable, and thematizes what is not thematizable...Ethical testimony is a revelation which is not a knowledge” (Levinas A 107). What he seeks to communicate is a obligation to communication, whereby the limited poietic aspect of human existence be interpreted by an infinite praxical activity beyond it, that maintains it. In rather different ways, Bataille and Levinas both indicate a fundamental freedom that is beyond the capacity of rational formulation, and thus a secret inspiration for the origin of intelligibility. This secret is discursively employed through their descriptions of communication; the self-defeating principle of inner-experience, and the responsibility to respond to the face of the other, for Bataille and Levinas, respectively, indicate how communication leads to a cursory and necessary understanding of community.
Bataille envisions a progressive quality to projective teleology, insofar as it leads to its own breaking down. The conceptual structures we maintain can be pushed to their limits internally, showing the evanescence of their content rather than the expected cohesion. “Inner experience is led by discursive reason. Reason alone has the power to undo its work, to hurl down what it has built up...Without the support of reason, we don't reach 'dark-incandescence'” (Bataille 77). Levinas, on the other hand, puts forth a regressive view of project-oriented activity, where the subject cannot provide itself with the necessary experience for its dissolution. “Consciousness is certain it is going to the ultimate – all that in interrupted before the face of the other man” (Levinas B, 27). This difference, that consciousness can or cannot undo itself, is perhaps the most divergent aspect of their thinking as it applies to this paper: Bataille can encounter the beyond within, whereas Levinas encounters the ineffable other as the boundary toward otherwise than being. This discrepancy lies in how the subject is compelled toward the liminal: for Levinas it's the interruption of self-consciousness by the face of the other that calls my very existence into question; as the originary locus of meaning at the very margin of phenomenal description, the ethical ramifications of my inability to provide for the suffering of all the Other, and my responsibility to do so for having been given the opportunity, compels the response of language. For Bataille, the subject of inner experience can be pushed to the limits of horror by its own purposive activity, only to realize the subsequent loss of purpose when the subject annihilates itself. The return journey of poetry and heterology constitute the origin of the futile project of language.
What I had initially thought was a significant difference between the two authors is summed up well by Bataille: 'The Inner Experience' says the opposite of what it seems to say: it is a movement of contestation, that, coming from the subject, devastates it, but has a deeper relation to the other which is community itself, a community that would be nothing if it did not open the one who exposed himself to the infiniteness of alterity, while at the same time deciding its inexorable finitude. (Bataille, 11) Our confounded efforts to subjugate alterity with benevolent models are based on flimsy language that has only a slight degree of proficiency given the task it assumes to be able to perform.
Nietzsche echoes the commentary on consciousness and subjectivity in many ways similarly to Levinas and Bataille. In The Gay Science, he asserts, “Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it; and things haven't changed much in this respect. To this day the task of incorporating knowledge and making in instinctive is only beginning to dawn on the human eye and is not yet clearly discernible; it is a task that is only by those who have comprehended that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all our consciousness relates to errors.” (Nietsche 85)
From Bataille's perspective, that people have identified only with the sub-liminal aspects of the inner experience and not ventured to the potential depths and breadths of our human experiential spectrum, the instincts of relating to conceptual structures that allow for everyday life to occur are not the essential foundations thereof. This level of experience is satiated by its identification with and complacency for the erroneous consciousness. Some, as Nietzsche points out, are starting to become aware of the errors of consciousness, and hence more clearly perceiving consciousness itself. People getting together to cultivate their inner-experience develop relationships with new forms of energy expenditure, communication. However, the supra-liminal realm of self-consciousness is only appreciable in the context of expenditure of inner experience, that is, using the resources available to grow consciousness, pushing the envelope, living on the edge, until the ultimate expenditure takes place and the nutrients that previously constituted the vessel of consciousness return to source.
From Levinas' perspective, Nietzsche is apt in identifying the human condition insofar as self-satisfied 'bonne conscience' does not recognize the face of the Other and therefore lives erroneously. That some do, however, take up the task of ethics as first philosophy, and lose the self-identified notion of consciousness in recognizing that the source of self is indeed Otherwise, constitutes the essence of communication and the parameters of the human situation. “All my inwardness is invested in the form of a despite-me, for-another. Despite-me, for-another, is signification par excellence. And it is the sense of the 'oneself,' that accusative that derives from no nominative; it is the very fact of finding oneself while losing oneself.” (Levinas A, 8) Here, communication is the occasion for an attempt to reconcile the obligation oneself has for the Other, insofar as the self is responsible to the Other for its' own foundation, even though this task ultimately lies beyond the seeking.
Bataille's notion of expenditure can only be understood as a distinction between fictitious projects generated as a function of a particular economy, that is, under the guise of an erroneous consciousness committed to a closed system of interpretation. “Humanity recognizes the right to acquire, to conserve and to consume rationally, but it excludes in principle non-productive expenditure.” (Bataille 168) Rationally speaking, consciousness will always and only depend on the concepts that in one way or another assume to have provided significant enough interpretation of particular phenomena, even though the general concept of the phenomenon of consciousness has been so weakly explicated. Just as productive expenditure, that is, getting food and whatnot, has propelled the species to its current juncture, so too has the non-productive expenditures which cannot be comprehended in terms of syllogisms or dialectics, such as art, communication, dancing, music, aesthetics, fucking, sucking, shitting, and dying, that is, the sacred. Philosophical conventions have efficiently marginalized this distinction, according to Bataille, and focus only on the reciprocal exchanges in a utilitarian calculus. Scientific materialism and post-Christian morality dominate the cultural flow. These all-encompassing addictive beliefs are closing off the wonder of inner-experience.
Traditional self-contained teleological philosophy can generally be reduced to a principle of utility, like activity directed to progress, strategies for maintaining particular economies; for Bataille, completely insufficient to describe the more general experience of life, which as a whole contains all the innumerable particular economies as an ineffable general economy. “There, where you would like to grasp your timeless substance, you encounter only a slipping, only the poorly coordinated play of your perishable elements.” (Bataille 94) The passing of energy from one point to another, expenditure, applies to everything from biological organisms to philosophical concepts. In a word: communication. “Thus we are nothing, neither you nor I, besides burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page” (Bataille 94). The only constancy to be construed from the flux of general economy occurs in eddies of communication, particular economies as locations of energy transfers. “What you are stems from the activity which links the innumerable elements which constitute you to the intense communication of those elements among themselves. These are contagions of energy, movement, of warmth, or transfers of elements, which constitute inevitable the life of your organized being” (Bataille 94) Each particular economy engages other particular economies and this is the flow of the general economy. To remain in a single-minded relation to the operation of economics in general is to stagnate and fester. By challenging the notion of communication as only discursive reason, is to communicate the development of consciousness alternatively through novel aspects of the general economy.
These writers stand out to my eye because of their marginal and supra-liminal perspectives, of inner experience as ecstatic rupture and the trace of God in the face of the Other, put the individuated self-satisfaction of any 'relatively independent sub-totality' called an organism, ideology, or whatever into question. This questioning is what constitutes the human condition, to my mind, and the answers can come from the individual deciding how to decode the overabundant mystery that is life. There are many answers available and many ways to integrate or encode them into the self-conscious life. Ought they be chosen according to a sovereign choice or pre-fabricated consensus reality? Where I see the most important difference between Levinas as Bataille is at this limit, the separation of self and other beheld as direct experience. Levinas holds the responsibility of self for other as insurmountable, the infinite questioning of the questioner, whereas Bataille indicates that the distinction falls apart and communication happens.
Either way, here is where communication occurs and the beginning of community can take shape. “For those who laugh, together become like the waves of the sea – there no longer exists between them any partition as long as the laughter lasts.” (Bataille 93) When communication occurs even beyond the words used to communicate, as individuals committed to the development of consciousness as responsibility for the general economy can, the immediate sense of community can happen. “It is with subjectivity understood as self[-consciousness]...in which the ego does not disappear, but immolates itself, that the relationship with the other can be communication and transcendence, and not always another way of seeking certainty, or the coincidence with oneself.” (Levinas B 118) Despite the difference in their approach to the fate of the self in communication, for Levinas its immolation as self-consciousness while retaining the individual ego and for Bataille where even the individual ego is sacrificed to the infinitesimal interchange of energetic impulses, both seem to indicate that this relationship between self and other is the locus of communication. Being responsible to divest oneself of preordained ideologies is the only approach that appropriate for authentic communication, and the start of authentic community.
That Bataille sees a limitless sense of experience through the dissimulation of the self by self-immolation, and Levinas sees a limitless sense of experience through the dissimulation of the self by self-immolation in response to other, a dynamically thematizable sort of relationship can be entertained. Self and other can be in constant communication through the development of new language to describe their experience. This is what I'm calling community, the balance between self-actualization and interpersonal relationships. When common and uncommon perspectives can be put aside for a moment, letting the communication between authentic individuals occur, new forms of language can take root for community to take place. Without a self-involved commitment to the care and development of the other the world will remain obscure and hostile. By communicating authentically a more modest community is possible.
___________________________________________
In reading the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Georges Bataille, one encounters alternate readings of the Western tradition that main its discourse yet depart from it in radical ways. Both authors express an esoteric secret that points to the margins of rationality. Only by reading their philosophies as one would engage in verbal discourse, that is, not limiting oneself to rational preconceptions but being open to new experiences, can we communicate with Levinas and Bataille. They can be compared by describing the conditions under which reason no longer functions to secure absolute meaning, or at all for that matter. Not in opposition to traditional philosophical discourse that Levinas and Bataille direct their criticism, but from within they seek to indicate what lies beyond. It is the conception of an individuated self as subjectivity in opposition with the other as distinctly objective that must be reinterpreted to bring forth a particular assumption made in traditional philosophy: that we can achieve an absolute meaning of human existence.
Insofar as Bataille and Levinas both aspire to achieve a significant criticism of the philosophical tradition, especially the concepts of utility and teleology, they also realize that to establish this goal as absolute is to have defeated their purpose already. “I fail, no matter what I write, in this, that I should be linking the infinite – insane – richness of 'possible' to the precision of meaning” (Bataille 69). What is important for them to communicate is that aspect of human life that cannot be adequately supplicated by philosophical knowledge in one way or another. “Man is not to be conceived in function of being and not-being, taken as ultimate references...Intentionality never makes itself simultaneous with the theme it aims at, except by losing its sense, betraying itself, appearing according to the intelligibility of a system” (Levinas 14, 69) Direct access to the experiential limits of the human condition is necessary for understanding what is beyond, and cannot be reduced to our initial, typical, and most predominant access to the world: axiomatic (logic, syllogisms, laws, etc.) and teleological (purposive activity) systems. Up is up and down is down, the sun will come up tomorrow, time goes on and we all die some day. So it goes.
Both Levinas a Bataille are critical of the assumed philosophical ability to reduce human activity and the designation of signification to teleology, phenomenology, or the satisfation of subjectivity. The insufficient attitude is described by Levinas as 'bonne conscience,' a conception of being that remains entirely within an isolated economy of subjective experience. The self attempts to grasp an idea of the infinite that it encounters in the face of the other; analogously, Bataille's notion of inner experience as ecstasy also connotes the distinction between a particular economy of the restricted individuated subject like Levinas, but thematizes somewhat the free play of energy that lies beyond it as a foundation for experience.
Basically, Bataille is more confident in his ability to cursorily describe the ebb and flow of the encounter with mystery, where Levinas emphasizes the ultimate inability to characterize the face of the other when confronted. The authors recognize that the teleological character of human existence, and indeed the locus of our activities, have an intrinsic importance in themselves, but are ultimately inadequate to guarantee the possibility of anything beyond. What teleological activity in philosophical discourse can achieve, however, is the indication of a trace, which, if followed, might lead beyond the walls of the restricted economy of the subject. Levinas calls this attempt at empathetic identification “substitution, at the limit of being, ends up in saying, in the giving of signs, giving a sign of this giving of signs, expressing oneself...Responsibility goes beyond being” (Levinas B 15) In the attempt to approach the infinite as a responsible self, the project is undermined itself as teleological constructions are insufficient from the start.
The liminal phenomenon that Levinas accounts for is this 'bad' conscience that interrupts our intentional consciousness. Responsibility is the limit of the self, “a responsibility for the other to whom I was committed before committing, before being present to myself or coming back to self” (Levinas B 30-31). The task of philosophy that follows from this, I would then suggest, is to critically asses the justification of one's own actions, and employ discursive thought in a sociable manner; based on the essential passivity of the face of suffering, and my tendency to overwhelm it in concepts through purposive action, the communication falls short of sufficient. Philosophy has to have 'the transcendence of inspiration' as its motivation for communicating.
But if the task of philosophy is to communicate meaning, how meaning is communicated and what meaning might be, have too often been categorically assumed in dialectical thinking. Since the foundations of Western thought, while continuously being developed and refined, signification has been sublimated in a discourse of purposive action; the conceptual structures of teleological and phenomenological reality are generally assumed to be the fundamental consistencies of the dynamic human situation. The dialectical oppositions of subject and object, self and other, or same and different, are presumed to have a significant anchor point by which they can be comparatively assessed and hierarchically categorized. These are the everyday operations of modern human life: tacitly accepted phenomenological categories called knowledge. “My effort consists in showing that knowledge is in reality an imminence, and that there is not rupture of the isolation of being in knowledge” (Levinas A, 57). Knowledge is what is it is in itself and needs nothing further.
Knowledge, thus considered the conceptual structures of immanent experience, is generally identified with the experience itself rather that what it is more fundamentally; a description of the experience and not it's direct content. The subject Communication, then, must be thought in a radically ulterior way, as undermining the goals of purposive activity, yet indicating the foundation of signification beyond the immediate grasp of self-reflective consciousness. For Levinas and Bataille both, subjectivitiy needs to be re-considered in its ecstatic character that evades characterization. There is a paradoxical motion that both authors point to as a rupture; a divestiture of being is a necessary point to notice in their writings, and ultimately, their task as a whole.
Bataille and Levinas both recognize a necessary aspect of human life to be acting within the constraints of limited systems of knowledge, but also specify that there are limitations to philosophical reasoning in securing itself as the only knowledgeable aspect. “I do not deny that philosophy is a knowledge, insofar as it names even what is not nameable, and thematizes what is not thematizable...Ethical testimony is a revelation which is not a knowledge” (Levinas A 107). What he seeks to communicate is a obligation to communication, whereby the limited poietic aspect of human existence be interpreted by an infinite praxical activity beyond it, that maintains it. In rather different ways, Bataille and Levinas both indicate a fundamental freedom that is beyond the capacity of rational formulation, and thus a secret inspiration for the origin of intelligibility. This secret is discursively employed through their descriptions of communication; the self-defeating principle of inner-experience, and the responsibility to respond to the face of the other, for Bataille and Levinas, respectively, indicate how communication leads to a cursory and necessary understanding of community.
Bataille envisions a progressive quality to projective teleology, insofar as it leads to its own breaking down. The conceptual structures we maintain can be pushed to their limits internally, showing the evanescence of their content rather than the expected cohesion. “Inner experience is led by discursive reason. Reason alone has the power to undo its work, to hurl down what it has built up...Without the support of reason, we don't reach 'dark-incandescence'” (Bataille 77). Levinas, on the other hand, puts forth a regressive view of project-oriented activity, where the subject cannot provide itself with the necessary experience for its dissolution. “Consciousness is certain it is going to the ultimate – all that in interrupted before the face of the other man” (Levinas B, 27). This difference, that consciousness can or cannot undo itself, is perhaps the most divergent aspect of their thinking as it applies to this paper: Bataille can encounter the beyond within, whereas Levinas encounters the ineffable other as the boundary toward otherwise than being. This discrepancy lies in how the subject is compelled toward the liminal: for Levinas it's the interruption of self-consciousness by the face of the other that calls my very existence into question; as the originary locus of meaning at the very margin of phenomenal description, the ethical ramifications of my inability to provide for the suffering of all the Other, and my responsibility to do so for having been given the opportunity, compels the response of language. For Bataille, the subject of inner experience can be pushed to the limits of horror by its own purposive activity, only to realize the subsequent loss of purpose when the subject annihilates itself. The return journey of poetry and heterology constitute the origin of the futile project of language.
What I had initially thought was a significant difference between the two authors is summed up well by Bataille: 'The Inner Experience' says the opposite of what it seems to say: it is a movement of contestation, that, coming from the subject, devastates it, but has a deeper relation to the other which is community itself, a community that would be nothing if it did not open the one who exposed himself to the infiniteness of alterity, while at the same time deciding its inexorable finitude. (Bataille, 11) Our confounded efforts to subjugate alterity with benevolent models are based on flimsy language that has only a slight degree of proficiency given the task it assumes to be able to perform.
Nietzsche echoes the commentary on consciousness and subjectivity in many ways similarly to Levinas and Bataille. In The Gay Science, he asserts, “Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it; and things haven't changed much in this respect. To this day the task of incorporating knowledge and making in instinctive is only beginning to dawn on the human eye and is not yet clearly discernible; it is a task that is only by those who have comprehended that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all our consciousness relates to errors.” (Nietsche 85)
From Bataille's perspective, that people have identified only with the sub-liminal aspects of the inner experience and not ventured to the potential depths and breadths of our human experiential spectrum, the instincts of relating to conceptual structures that allow for everyday life to occur are not the essential foundations thereof. This level of experience is satiated by its identification with and complacency for the erroneous consciousness. Some, as Nietzsche points out, are starting to become aware of the errors of consciousness, and hence more clearly perceiving consciousness itself. People getting together to cultivate their inner-experience develop relationships with new forms of energy expenditure, communication. However, the supra-liminal realm of self-consciousness is only appreciable in the context of expenditure of inner experience, that is, using the resources available to grow consciousness, pushing the envelope, living on the edge, until the ultimate expenditure takes place and the nutrients that previously constituted the vessel of consciousness return to source.
From Levinas' perspective, Nietzsche is apt in identifying the human condition insofar as self-satisfied 'bonne conscience' does not recognize the face of the Other and therefore lives erroneously. That some do, however, take up the task of ethics as first philosophy, and lose the self-identified notion of consciousness in recognizing that the source of self is indeed Otherwise, constitutes the essence of communication and the parameters of the human situation. “All my inwardness is invested in the form of a despite-me, for-another. Despite-me, for-another, is signification par excellence. And it is the sense of the 'oneself,' that accusative that derives from no nominative; it is the very fact of finding oneself while losing oneself.” (Levinas A, 8) Here, communication is the occasion for an attempt to reconcile the obligation oneself has for the Other, insofar as the self is responsible to the Other for its' own foundation, even though this task ultimately lies beyond the seeking.
Bataille's notion of expenditure can only be understood as a distinction between fictitious projects generated as a function of a particular economy, that is, under the guise of an erroneous consciousness committed to a closed system of interpretation. “Humanity recognizes the right to acquire, to conserve and to consume rationally, but it excludes in principle non-productive expenditure.” (Bataille 168) Rationally speaking, consciousness will always and only depend on the concepts that in one way or another assume to have provided significant enough interpretation of particular phenomena, even though the general concept of the phenomenon of consciousness has been so weakly explicated. Just as productive expenditure, that is, getting food and whatnot, has propelled the species to its current juncture, so too has the non-productive expenditures which cannot be comprehended in terms of syllogisms or dialectics, such as art, communication, dancing, music, aesthetics, fucking, sucking, shitting, and dying, that is, the sacred. Philosophical conventions have efficiently marginalized this distinction, according to Bataille, and focus only on the reciprocal exchanges in a utilitarian calculus. Scientific materialism and post-Christian morality dominate the cultural flow. These all-encompassing addictive beliefs are closing off the wonder of inner-experience.
Traditional self-contained teleological philosophy can generally be reduced to a principle of utility, like activity directed to progress, strategies for maintaining particular economies; for Bataille, completely insufficient to describe the more general experience of life, which as a whole contains all the innumerable particular economies as an ineffable general economy. “There, where you would like to grasp your timeless substance, you encounter only a slipping, only the poorly coordinated play of your perishable elements.” (Bataille 94) The passing of energy from one point to another, expenditure, applies to everything from biological organisms to philosophical concepts. In a word: communication. “Thus we are nothing, neither you nor I, besides burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page” (Bataille 94). The only constancy to be construed from the flux of general economy occurs in eddies of communication, particular economies as locations of energy transfers. “What you are stems from the activity which links the innumerable elements which constitute you to the intense communication of those elements among themselves. These are contagions of energy, movement, of warmth, or transfers of elements, which constitute inevitable the life of your organized being” (Bataille 94) Each particular economy engages other particular economies and this is the flow of the general economy. To remain in a single-minded relation to the operation of economics in general is to stagnate and fester. By challenging the notion of communication as only discursive reason, is to communicate the development of consciousness alternatively through novel aspects of the general economy.
These writers stand out to my eye because of their marginal and supra-liminal perspectives, of inner experience as ecstatic rupture and the trace of God in the face of the Other, put the individuated self-satisfaction of any 'relatively independent sub-totality' called an organism, ideology, or whatever into question. This questioning is what constitutes the human condition, to my mind, and the answers can come from the individual deciding how to decode the overabundant mystery that is life. There are many answers available and many ways to integrate or encode them into the self-conscious life. Ought they be chosen according to a sovereign choice or pre-fabricated consensus reality? Where I see the most important difference between Levinas as Bataille is at this limit, the separation of self and other beheld as direct experience. Levinas holds the responsibility of self for other as insurmountable, the infinite questioning of the questioner, whereas Bataille indicates that the distinction falls apart and communication happens.
Either way, here is where communication occurs and the beginning of community can take shape. “For those who laugh, together become like the waves of the sea – there no longer exists between them any partition as long as the laughter lasts.” (Bataille 93) When communication occurs even beyond the words used to communicate, as individuals committed to the development of consciousness as responsibility for the general economy can, the immediate sense of community can happen. “It is with subjectivity understood as self[-consciousness]...in which the ego does not disappear, but immolates itself, that the relationship with the other can be communication and transcendence, and not always another way of seeking certainty, or the coincidence with oneself.” (Levinas B 118) Despite the difference in their approach to the fate of the self in communication, for Levinas its immolation as self-consciousness while retaining the individual ego and for Bataille where even the individual ego is sacrificed to the infinitesimal interchange of energetic impulses, both seem to indicate that this relationship between self and other is the locus of communication. Being responsible to divest oneself of preordained ideologies is the only approach that appropriate for authentic communication, and the start of authentic community.
That Bataille sees a limitless sense of experience through the dissimulation of the self by self-immolation, and Levinas sees a limitless sense of experience through the dissimulation of the self by self-immolation in response to other, a dynamically thematizable sort of relationship can be entertained. Self and other can be in constant communication through the development of new language to describe their experience. This is what I'm calling community, the balance between self-actualization and interpersonal relationships. When common and uncommon perspectives can be put aside for a moment, letting the communication between authentic individuals occur, new forms of language can take root for community to take place. Without a self-involved commitment to the care and development of the other the world will remain obscure and hostile. By communicating authentically a more modest community is possible.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Consider This
O.K.,
You've been expecting a party that you've been paying for, for 50 years. Your sweat and toil has earned you the opportunity of having an all-expenses paid party for you and your hundred closest friends. You've been told that everything has been taken care of by the organizers and that no worries are permissible because they are trustworthy service providers with your best interests at heart. The caterers promise that they will most certainly provide for the party you anticipate and you trust the established relationship.
Then comes the day; it turns out that the caterer has disappeared without trace and party is most certainly still expected of you. In the kitchen you find a barren fridge and many dried cupboards, with no significant nutrition to be be found, let alone enough to provide for the mouths in line to be fed. You are indeed responsible for having invited everyone, and are now at a loss as to how you're going to do it. There are people that will necessarily have to be fed or else you'll be faced with unfortunate disappointment. Your party has failed.
Now let's use the same scenario with slightly altered parameters. The party discussed previously is now considered your life. The invited guests are children you've brought into the world and your extended family that you love dearly. The caterers are the state and its representatives to whom individuals have relegated their personal and societal obligations. These are the parameters that have changed for the second scenario in consideration:
So the expected party that you've been trusting will be provided for is closer to home now that it's not just a party but your life and the well-being of everyone around you. Are you still going to trust this caterer, now that the party has a more significant personal impact? With the caterer in question not only being the provider of food, but the ideological foundation for the society around you, including energy sources, policy setters and enforcers, health-care, etc., the bottom dollar of most people's lives is entirely dependent on a monopolized system of commerce and consumerism. Most individuals would find empty cupboards and barren fridges if and when the shit hits the fan.
I call out to anyone and everyone who wishes to laden our pantries with self-sufficiently produced food and quality of life. This can be achieved relatively easily, compared with the alternative of giving in to tyrants who in the end won't provide anyways. Fuck the caterers, 'cause their promises ain't shit. This is patently obvious by any honest track record of dishonest politics, of which the former are few and the latter are endemic throughout thousands of years of human 'culture.'
The party we've been promised is slipping away from each and every one of us. The system is failing and they've told us to just hold on, 'cause if we wait a little longer, the party is going to be sooooo awesome. Then comes the day. Maybe today is September 11th in New York, August 6th in Hiroshima, or maybe July 7th in London. In any case, the caterers didn't show and your party was ruined. The Big Brother that was trusted to provide sustenance seems to be unable to provide the stability necessary for the life you were expecting. So you thought you were paying something of value called taxes in return for something also of value called security even though those previously mentioned cases are far from solved. Let alone being solved, many questions are still in the air about whether or not those events were not indeed controlled to happen as false-flag terrorist operations. The caterers not only didn't show up, they're crashing whatever party you're thinking you might get. Not only have they run away with your life's efforts and toils, but you realize that it was their intention from the start to use you as a slave for their own benefit. They've done this to the whole world, no less! And then they crash whatever party you've got left.
With so many party crashers crashing parties, whether they be bankrupt banksters looting the public with fees and bailouts and scams, media monopolies exercising mind-control elite agendas, govern(ed)-mental 'representation' by petty bureaucrats like Harper and Obama et. al, my individual party is in jeopardy for certain! All I want to do is to sustain my own life by my own efforts, and am not able to without suffering violence or contributing to the systemic violence that is our so called culture. Tell me I have to work to make money!? Tell me it's how to get ahead or what we have to do to get by! Preposterous! By what measure are we determining what must or must not be? Who gets to say who runs everyone's life.
Just because you think this is best system doesn't mean I agree. Are you then willing to personally inflict violence on me? Most people would ignore the question outright, validating that they authorize others to inflict that violence on their behalf, and also on the themselves. By adhering to the system, understanding and abiding its rules and regulations, you necessarily are responsible for its actions whether you like it or not. Without trying to alienate any readers, it is not my intention to convince anyone of anything. Please feel free to disagree as I insist that is a necessary function of getting beyond where we are. I might be convinced by your perspective as well.
What it comes down to is that the system that is being perpetuated whether we like it or not, is a domination of humanity by humans, an institutionalized violence that is seemingly legitimized by a high standard of living for 'civilized' middle-class populations. Although no individual can be separated from the masses and identified as the architect of this system, it has been developed for at least centuries and I think longer. Nonetheless, that we all perpetuate it by going to work, paying our taxes, wishing for our party down the road when our masterfully beneficent Big Brother is going to solve all the problems at hand by manipulating the money game in favour of the elites who will let it trickle down their legs for the masses to battle to death over...and be more than happy to do it. This false security in a so-called high-standard of living is very true if you're living it. I was brought up in it and currently live through it. I am as responsible as anyone else. But at least I'm doing something about it. Even if these ideas I articulate never reach another individual (perhaps a receptive one?) I've articulated them for myself. This is my contribution to life, my individual anarchy. What are you doing?
You've been expecting a party that you've been paying for, for 50 years. Your sweat and toil has earned you the opportunity of having an all-expenses paid party for you and your hundred closest friends. You've been told that everything has been taken care of by the organizers and that no worries are permissible because they are trustworthy service providers with your best interests at heart. The caterers promise that they will most certainly provide for the party you anticipate and you trust the established relationship.
Then comes the day; it turns out that the caterer has disappeared without trace and party is most certainly still expected of you. In the kitchen you find a barren fridge and many dried cupboards, with no significant nutrition to be be found, let alone enough to provide for the mouths in line to be fed. You are indeed responsible for having invited everyone, and are now at a loss as to how you're going to do it. There are people that will necessarily have to be fed or else you'll be faced with unfortunate disappointment. Your party has failed.
Now let's use the same scenario with slightly altered parameters. The party discussed previously is now considered your life. The invited guests are children you've brought into the world and your extended family that you love dearly. The caterers are the state and its representatives to whom individuals have relegated their personal and societal obligations. These are the parameters that have changed for the second scenario in consideration:
So the expected party that you've been trusting will be provided for is closer to home now that it's not just a party but your life and the well-being of everyone around you. Are you still going to trust this caterer, now that the party has a more significant personal impact? With the caterer in question not only being the provider of food, but the ideological foundation for the society around you, including energy sources, policy setters and enforcers, health-care, etc., the bottom dollar of most people's lives is entirely dependent on a monopolized system of commerce and consumerism. Most individuals would find empty cupboards and barren fridges if and when the shit hits the fan.
I call out to anyone and everyone who wishes to laden our pantries with self-sufficiently produced food and quality of life. This can be achieved relatively easily, compared with the alternative of giving in to tyrants who in the end won't provide anyways. Fuck the caterers, 'cause their promises ain't shit. This is patently obvious by any honest track record of dishonest politics, of which the former are few and the latter are endemic throughout thousands of years of human 'culture.'
The party we've been promised is slipping away from each and every one of us. The system is failing and they've told us to just hold on, 'cause if we wait a little longer, the party is going to be sooooo awesome. Then comes the day. Maybe today is September 11th in New York, August 6th in Hiroshima, or maybe July 7th in London. In any case, the caterers didn't show and your party was ruined. The Big Brother that was trusted to provide sustenance seems to be unable to provide the stability necessary for the life you were expecting. So you thought you were paying something of value called taxes in return for something also of value called security even though those previously mentioned cases are far from solved. Let alone being solved, many questions are still in the air about whether or not those events were not indeed controlled to happen as false-flag terrorist operations. The caterers not only didn't show up, they're crashing whatever party you're thinking you might get. Not only have they run away with your life's efforts and toils, but you realize that it was their intention from the start to use you as a slave for their own benefit. They've done this to the whole world, no less! And then they crash whatever party you've got left.
With so many party crashers crashing parties, whether they be bankrupt banksters looting the public with fees and bailouts and scams, media monopolies exercising mind-control elite agendas, govern(ed)-mental 'representation' by petty bureaucrats like Harper and Obama et. al, my individual party is in jeopardy for certain! All I want to do is to sustain my own life by my own efforts, and am not able to without suffering violence or contributing to the systemic violence that is our so called culture. Tell me I have to work to make money!? Tell me it's how to get ahead or what we have to do to get by! Preposterous! By what measure are we determining what must or must not be? Who gets to say who runs everyone's life.
Just because you think this is best system doesn't mean I agree. Are you then willing to personally inflict violence on me? Most people would ignore the question outright, validating that they authorize others to inflict that violence on their behalf, and also on the themselves. By adhering to the system, understanding and abiding its rules and regulations, you necessarily are responsible for its actions whether you like it or not. Without trying to alienate any readers, it is not my intention to convince anyone of anything. Please feel free to disagree as I insist that is a necessary function of getting beyond where we are. I might be convinced by your perspective as well.
What it comes down to is that the system that is being perpetuated whether we like it or not, is a domination of humanity by humans, an institutionalized violence that is seemingly legitimized by a high standard of living for 'civilized' middle-class populations. Although no individual can be separated from the masses and identified as the architect of this system, it has been developed for at least centuries and I think longer. Nonetheless, that we all perpetuate it by going to work, paying our taxes, wishing for our party down the road when our masterfully beneficent Big Brother is going to solve all the problems at hand by manipulating the money game in favour of the elites who will let it trickle down their legs for the masses to battle to death over...and be more than happy to do it. This false security in a so-called high-standard of living is very true if you're living it. I was brought up in it and currently live through it. I am as responsible as anyone else. But at least I'm doing something about it. Even if these ideas I articulate never reach another individual (perhaps a receptive one?) I've articulated them for myself. This is my contribution to life, my individual anarchy. What are you doing?
The Nomad Taxonomist
This is a title I might as well have given myself in the creation of this blog. As much as I like the title, it does not retain the potency of my current self-applied title, yet applies to an important aspect of my task here on 'planet 3.' To paraphrase Nietzsche, as I often do even if unknowingly, it is more important to know what things are called, rather than what things are. This applies directly to how I look at the world; something to be beheld as experience is never fully communicable. Even though my full intention is to communicate my ideas as best as can be, the perspectives at hand can never be fully elucidated and approximations are necessarily in order. Here goes:
I am the center of the universe insofar as my experience thereof is centered right here. I wander around in my experience , learning what things are commonly called by uncommon perspectives, most of which are unfamiliar to the uninformed and unquestioning kinds of minds. If you think you might be of this sort, that is able to entertain multifarious and seemingly incongruous ideas at once no matter what the effect might be, the results may be perhaps more potent than previously anticipated.
I've wandered around countless ideas and perspectives that need to be enumerated and categorized accordingly if they're going to be of any use to me. Along this journey I've found some ideas more useful than others in developing the way that I can interpret the world around me. When it so happens, as often it does, that seemingly unusual explanations offer more valid and extensive stories to describe an experience of mine, the words used therein are of more potent value for my further usage. The taxonomist at work is acquiring new wares for use toward infinite distribution.
Viewing my interpretation of how others see things, gives me varying levels of perspective on how to call certain occasions. Lets call things as they are. The only way that status quo reality allows one to operate in the world that 'is,' is by their diction. We, however, are able to use language as to how it suits our needs and pleasures, therefore circumventing the mind control subjugated upon us by the powers that be. We can reclaim our own mental sovereignty by embarking on the journey into the wasteland of culture, find the nourishing bits and giving them their appropriate names and veneration. Only by finding the morsels of sustenance does any living body, like our souls, grow in healthy accord with its ultimate intention, which is to replicate and nourish further sustenance of the species. Passing down novel and integrated traditions that include all levels of perspective available leaves later generations with much more amply provided foundation for whatever successes they might feel appropriate to their dignified existences.
I am the center of the universe insofar as my experience thereof is centered right here. I wander around in my experience , learning what things are commonly called by uncommon perspectives, most of which are unfamiliar to the uninformed and unquestioning kinds of minds. If you think you might be of this sort, that is able to entertain multifarious and seemingly incongruous ideas at once no matter what the effect might be, the results may be perhaps more potent than previously anticipated.
I've wandered around countless ideas and perspectives that need to be enumerated and categorized accordingly if they're going to be of any use to me. Along this journey I've found some ideas more useful than others in developing the way that I can interpret the world around me. When it so happens, as often it does, that seemingly unusual explanations offer more valid and extensive stories to describe an experience of mine, the words used therein are of more potent value for my further usage. The taxonomist at work is acquiring new wares for use toward infinite distribution.
Viewing my interpretation of how others see things, gives me varying levels of perspective on how to call certain occasions. Lets call things as they are. The only way that status quo reality allows one to operate in the world that 'is,' is by their diction. We, however, are able to use language as to how it suits our needs and pleasures, therefore circumventing the mind control subjugated upon us by the powers that be. We can reclaim our own mental sovereignty by embarking on the journey into the wasteland of culture, find the nourishing bits and giving them their appropriate names and veneration. Only by finding the morsels of sustenance does any living body, like our souls, grow in healthy accord with its ultimate intention, which is to replicate and nourish further sustenance of the species. Passing down novel and integrated traditions that include all levels of perspective available leaves later generations with much more amply provided foundation for whatever successes they might feel appropriate to their dignified existences.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Technology and Authority
(This is a term paper I wrote for a course on the philosophy of technology. The professor was pretty mundane and the topics just lightly brushed over. Here's my effort to shake things up a little bit in that class.)
___________________________________________
Technology and Authority:
Criticism and Complacency in the Scientific Attitude
In the burgeoning world, fewer and fewer ways of understanding are at the disposition of the general masses. As science and technology broaden to for an ever more encompassing view of reality, traditional ways of thinking become marginalized by an underlying ideological commitment to the scientific attitude. This way of thinking uses increasingly reductionist categorizations of phenomena, and the resulting world-view is fragmented into the understanding of a reality explicable only by the specialized experts, mostly inaccessible by meager minds. The prevailing paradigm enshrines the capacity for science to regulate the human experience by means of tacitly assumed authority. The scientific attitude implicitly compels the 'uninitiated many' to accept the authority of the 'expert few,' as intimate knowledge of all possible areas of expertise is impossible. We live in a technocratic regime whereby authority is determined by appeal to expertise and knowledge is dominated by the perspectives of that hierarchy alone. This is a serious problem for the wider body politic because when authority commands expertise and the expertise cannot control the authority is established, the technocracy is out of control. Perhaps we ought mark more clearly the margin where authority no longer holds claim over expertise, where our commitment to the reliability of the technocratic regime can no longer claim its legitimacy contrary to established objective results.
The scientific method is primarily espoused as a methodological naturalism; that is, what have previously asserted and real and true, if verifiable by observation, can be legitimately treated as knowledge. As the empirical knowledge about the world increases, more verifiable predictions and accurate testimony can be expected from our experiences. 'The goal of natural science is to explain contingent natural phenomena, that is...explanations refer only to natural objects and events and not to the personal choices and actions of human or divine agents' (Moreland 46). Insofar as the scientific method has reproduced consistently objective results through the application of technology, it does unquestioningly as the explanatory power par excellence to engender positively verifiable analysis of observable phenomena; and perhaps rightly so. For the more complicated and exacting disciplines like nuclear physics, organic chemistry, or space travel, this segregation is perhaps the better of potential scenarios; insofar as specialization contributes further to our general understanding of the world and ourselves as a species.
The consistency of the scientific attitude is confirmed by the increasing specialization and development of more radically isolated and defined expertises. "Modernity prides itself on the fragmentation of the world as its foremost achievement. Fragmentation is the prime source of it's strength. The world that falls apart into plethora of problems is a manageable world...Autonomy is the right to decide when to keep the eyes and when to close them down; the right to separate, to discriminate, to peel off, and to trim" (Bauman 12). Modernity, roughly speaking the scientific attitude, is a tool available to every individual; but as we delegate that responsibility for consistency to experts without our own critical analysis, we abdicate autonomous judgment based on that authority. We call this systematization, "technocracy [which], in political terms, refers to a system of governance in which technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions" (Fischer 17). Authority and expertise are here conjoined, without perhaps the honest intentions required for individuals to maintain their living sovereignty, and become mutually reinforced as mechanisms of control. Expertise legitimates authority, and authority can delegate resources to develop further specialization.
The predominant mode of thought that has been inculcated throughout the past few generations of 'civilized' people has been scientific and rational; but even more profoundly, directed against critically important ways of thinking, that are non-rational, transcendental, mystical, etc., insofar as they challenge the status quo ways of thinking. Consistency in science is of utmost importance, however, when those human experiences that don't quite fit in are rejected, it seems we are inevitably losing an important part of our lives. Commitment to the scientific ideal has legitimized the segregation of other modes of thought. From an economist's perspective, "the belief that the correct technical solutions can only be found by the experts becomes a powerful legitimation of expert power, both within the technocratic workplaces and in the overall technocratic system" (Burris 153). And this attitude is paradigmatic of current governmental, educational, and social systems. As it stands, any claim of legitimacy must first be passed through the rigorous scrutiny of the technocratic institutional miasma.
We are weakened in our interpretation of the world as we rely on the technological paradigm to mediate our experiences; we have given up unmitigated experiential access to the world in favour of fragmented and specialized expertise. By participating in the technocracy, we abdicate out authority to those more knowledgeable than us. The fact remains that people are people, and if we put aside some time to look at what sort of implications out ideological commitments might entail, it may become obvious that something is awry. (ex, BP oil disaster)
tbc...
___________________________________________
Technology and Authority:
Criticism and Complacency in the Scientific Attitude
In the burgeoning world, fewer and fewer ways of understanding are at the disposition of the general masses. As science and technology broaden to for an ever more encompassing view of reality, traditional ways of thinking become marginalized by an underlying ideological commitment to the scientific attitude. This way of thinking uses increasingly reductionist categorizations of phenomena, and the resulting world-view is fragmented into the understanding of a reality explicable only by the specialized experts, mostly inaccessible by meager minds. The prevailing paradigm enshrines the capacity for science to regulate the human experience by means of tacitly assumed authority. The scientific attitude implicitly compels the 'uninitiated many' to accept the authority of the 'expert few,' as intimate knowledge of all possible areas of expertise is impossible. We live in a technocratic regime whereby authority is determined by appeal to expertise and knowledge is dominated by the perspectives of that hierarchy alone. This is a serious problem for the wider body politic because when authority commands expertise and the expertise cannot control the authority is established, the technocracy is out of control. Perhaps we ought mark more clearly the margin where authority no longer holds claim over expertise, where our commitment to the reliability of the technocratic regime can no longer claim its legitimacy contrary to established objective results.
The scientific method is primarily espoused as a methodological naturalism; that is, what have previously asserted and real and true, if verifiable by observation, can be legitimately treated as knowledge. As the empirical knowledge about the world increases, more verifiable predictions and accurate testimony can be expected from our experiences. 'The goal of natural science is to explain contingent natural phenomena, that is...explanations refer only to natural objects and events and not to the personal choices and actions of human or divine agents' (Moreland 46). Insofar as the scientific method has reproduced consistently objective results through the application of technology, it does unquestioningly as the explanatory power par excellence to engender positively verifiable analysis of observable phenomena; and perhaps rightly so. For the more complicated and exacting disciplines like nuclear physics, organic chemistry, or space travel, this segregation is perhaps the better of potential scenarios; insofar as specialization contributes further to our general understanding of the world and ourselves as a species.
The consistency of the scientific attitude is confirmed by the increasing specialization and development of more radically isolated and defined expertises. "Modernity prides itself on the fragmentation of the world as its foremost achievement. Fragmentation is the prime source of it's strength. The world that falls apart into plethora of problems is a manageable world...Autonomy is the right to decide when to keep the eyes and when to close them down; the right to separate, to discriminate, to peel off, and to trim" (Bauman 12). Modernity, roughly speaking the scientific attitude, is a tool available to every individual; but as we delegate that responsibility for consistency to experts without our own critical analysis, we abdicate autonomous judgment based on that authority. We call this systematization, "technocracy [which], in political terms, refers to a system of governance in which technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions" (Fischer 17). Authority and expertise are here conjoined, without perhaps the honest intentions required for individuals to maintain their living sovereignty, and become mutually reinforced as mechanisms of control. Expertise legitimates authority, and authority can delegate resources to develop further specialization.
The predominant mode of thought that has been inculcated throughout the past few generations of 'civilized' people has been scientific and rational; but even more profoundly, directed against critically important ways of thinking, that are non-rational, transcendental, mystical, etc., insofar as they challenge the status quo ways of thinking. Consistency in science is of utmost importance, however, when those human experiences that don't quite fit in are rejected, it seems we are inevitably losing an important part of our lives. Commitment to the scientific ideal has legitimized the segregation of other modes of thought. From an economist's perspective, "the belief that the correct technical solutions can only be found by the experts becomes a powerful legitimation of expert power, both within the technocratic workplaces and in the overall technocratic system" (Burris 153). And this attitude is paradigmatic of current governmental, educational, and social systems. As it stands, any claim of legitimacy must first be passed through the rigorous scrutiny of the technocratic institutional miasma.
We are weakened in our interpretation of the world as we rely on the technological paradigm to mediate our experiences; we have given up unmitigated experiential access to the world in favour of fragmented and specialized expertise. By participating in the technocracy, we abdicate out authority to those more knowledgeable than us. The fact remains that people are people, and if we put aside some time to look at what sort of implications out ideological commitments might entail, it may become obvious that something is awry. (ex, BP oil disaster)
tbc...
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Call
"What level of violence are you personally willing to inflict on someone to force them to follow your beliefs?"
Yesterday I listened to a podcast by Marc Stevens of the No State Project, a round-table discussion about voluntary society and the legitimation of force. What all the panelists were able to agree on is that there are two choices:
a) either admit that you authorize violence against your peers,
b) or admit that it is high-time to dissolve the state.
I wholeheartedly agree with this dichotomy, and am calling out to all who might be persuaded as well. If this idea is too far out, bear with me a minute and we'll bring it around. Consider these premises:
1. The only form of government recognized as lawful is a representative one.
2. Representation requires mutual consent
3. Consent must be freely given and not a result of coercion, duress, violence, or undue influence from misinformed agents, representatives, or officers.
4. The right to elect a government necessarily implies the right to elect to not have a government. If we only have the option to choose our master, we are nothing more than slaves with a limited choice of masters.
5. Free humans have no masters. I am a free man and seek no master.
6. Anyone seeking to master me will have to use coercion, duress, undue influence, and eventually violence.
If you think, still, that this is too far out there, consider this: by voting, paying taxes, living in uninformed complacency, everyone who does so is authorizing violence against those who don't want to, for example, pay taxes, vote, or be bludgeoned and caged for growing and smoking plants, etc.
The old adage, 'if you don't vote you can't complain' is antithetical to the more correct statement that 'if you vote you are legitimizing violence against me.'
Some will retort, oh, but, hey-now, what about reforming the system? "We do indeed already have a representational system," "Surely we can achieve some minimal level of government that is agreeable to all," "I'm not personally inflicting violence on you," etc...
The system cannot be reformed as it is not representational, never has been, and has no potential to ever be so. Even if 98 percent of a population is represented, generally, the marginalized minority will be oppressed. Even if there were such little government, taxation and statute enforcement, etc., to satisfy that majority, rule by majority is a sanction of violence against the minority; and yes, to identify with the majority is to be personally involved in inflicting that violence.
Here is the call: to all who wish to live an unruly life, neither ruling or ruled, say yea!
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