Imagine a fly near both an open and closed window trying to return to the outside world. Which would we conceive to be the greater act of intelligence?- the physical ability to fly and the magnificent feat of bodily engineering that that entails- or the ability to correctly discern the open window as the means of departure? From our perspective, the ability to correctly choose the open window barely qualifies as an act of intelligence. The relevant intellectual process is effectively simultaneous to the act of perception; there is nothing to figure out.
However, this most basic act of intelligence is beyond the capacity of the fly for the simple reason that he is not equipped with the requisite mental apparatus to perform the intellectual actions. Comparative to the most simple exercise of choosing the open window however, the fly is able to perform the astonishing act of flight. How did a creature of such a stupid level of conscious intelligence come to be such a genius at the bodily level?
From there to look at the standard view on Darwinian type logic which is that things evolve so as to give themselves the gratest chance for survival, adapting to the environment and the like. In a sense, things exist so as to exist, and 'improve' their existence so as to continue to exist, which a more cynical mind than mine might describe as tautological nonsense. Another view is that evolution is specifically directed towards heightened intelligence( though not perhaps as a matter of course), and in a sense the physical structure develops as a vessel suitable for, or within which, more refined levels of consciousness can exist. Life is clearly intrinsically charged or motivated towards this progressive evolution of consciousness, such as from the simplest organisms to the higher animals and, for now, ultimately the human.
But to return to our fly at the window, possessed of a physical work of engineering at the level of astonishing genius, but an intellect of almost absolute idiocy. Which isn't to say he is without intelligence, but this is almost purely at the level of automatic response, or an intelligence intrinsic to his unconscious nature. When called upon to carry out the most simple of 'higher intelligence' acts such as recognising the open window as opposed to the closed, or learning from experience that the phsycial impediment of the closed one will continue to prevent his desired departure, then such a conscious action is beyond him.
So how did he get to the stage of development of genius on the one hand, while allied to an obvious dearth of conscious intelligence. In other words, how did he become the organism that he is: who is doing the evolving, adapting to environment, etc? Adaptation to his environment, or whatever paradigm we use, is an intellectual process infinitely beyond his ken. He couldn't possibly formulate or understand the theory or desirability of this adaptation, never mind then instigating the proceses necessary to this evolution. And resorting to even less intelligent beings such as micro-organisms as the vehicles of change is simply a deepening of the quandary, as what in the way of brilliantly directed intelligence are we to expect from a lower species again? Fuck all says you, and you'd be right.
Even traditional evolutionism accepts that life is being propelled by certain forces, though the forces it tends to resort to, or the governing principle, are clearly intelligently incapable of effecting the processes. It would be like if I suddenly appeared in two places at once, here and the local shop, and the explanation for this occurence were that "Oh, this was beneficial to his existence. Bi-location is a very effective survival technique. One self can get food while the other writes this shite." Perhaps it is desirable- even if a ludicrously reductionist explanation- but the desirabilty of bi-location and my ability to become capable of bi-location are two enormously different things. And similarly, for us animals on earth to have become the animals we are involved intelligent processes infinitely beyond our own conscious capacities. So what is this unconscious intelligence that is manifestly present directing operations?
Likewise our finest minds push themselves to their limits endeavouring to understand processes like gravity, and we would have no reservation about describing an Einstein as a genius. Naturally as an extension of this, he is being called a genius because of his capacity, flawed though it may be, to form fragmentary intellectual pictures of the nature of reality. But what about reality itself? We most likely wouldn't describe a critic of Beethoven as a greater genius than Beethoven himself, which to a degree is what an Einstein is. He is reaching into and endeavouring to understand, depending on one's perspective, aspects of an almost terrifying depth of intelligence which is intrinsic to and indeed is reality itself. The only justified sense of self for man within this reality is the utmost humility, and there is a line by the philosopher Plotinus that is apt where he describes the mystical experience as "the flight of the alone into the Alone," but which is also appropriate for the scientific exploration of reality.
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Monday, 28 January 2008
Tea Less Fashionable
Chinese tea-growers have expressed dismay at the falling into redundancy of the expression, "for all the tea in China", which could typically have been rendered:
I wouldn't help that man for all the tea in China.
The implication being that the possession of all the tea in China being greatly to be desired, such is the bountifulness of tea's abundance therein, and inferentially that the man who wouldn't be helped must be of a character extremely distasteful to he who wouldn't help him. That he would sacrifice such a prodigious reward speaks volumes for his antipathy. In the modern world, it would seem this extraordinary abundance of tea no longer evokes the former desired sense of desire, and consumers are more likely to use a more prosaic variation such as:
I wouldn't help that man if you paid me.
I wouldn't help that man for all the tea in China.
The implication being that the possession of all the tea in China being greatly to be desired, such is the bountifulness of tea's abundance therein, and inferentially that the man who wouldn't be helped must be of a character extremely distasteful to he who wouldn't help him. That he would sacrifice such a prodigious reward speaks volumes for his antipathy. In the modern world, it would seem this extraordinary abundance of tea no longer evokes the former desired sense of desire, and consumers are more likely to use a more prosaic variation such as:
I wouldn't help that man if you paid me.
Saturday, 26 January 2008
Pithy Summation of the BBC and its Brethren
Stupidly spending some minutes watching the BBC last night naturally did me nothing that could be described as good, and has belatedly prompted the resurrection of the following few lines:
That state propaganda machines are state propaganda machines should cease to surprise once one awakens from the somnabulent delusion of imagining that state propaganda machines are not state propaganda machines.
This naturally more true the more the state is engaged in acts of war and the centralisation of its autocratic powers, where the necessity of the disemmination of lies and the lack of outpouring of truth is of a very high level of priority.
A slight variation of the above to describe almost the global media industry, which is in ever fewer hands of ever greater power:
That the privately owned propaganda machines are privately owned propaganda machines should cease to surprise once one awakens from the somnabulent delusion of imagining the privately owned propaganda machines are not privately owned propaganda machines.
That state propaganda machines are state propaganda machines should cease to surprise once one awakens from the somnabulent delusion of imagining that state propaganda machines are not state propaganda machines.
This naturally more true the more the state is engaged in acts of war and the centralisation of its autocratic powers, where the necessity of the disemmination of lies and the lack of outpouring of truth is of a very high level of priority.
A slight variation of the above to describe almost the global media industry, which is in ever fewer hands of ever greater power:
That the privately owned propaganda machines are privately owned propaganda machines should cease to surprise once one awakens from the somnabulent delusion of imagining the privately owned propaganda machines are not privately owned propaganda machines.
Friday, 25 January 2008
Vow of Silence
Much feared former West Indian fast bowler Curtly Ambrose used to refuse countless interview requests with the most statesmanlike of lines, "Curtly don't talk to no man."
Whenever Curtly took a Test wicket, his mother would rush onto the balcony of her home in Swetes Village, Antigua, to triumphantly ring a special bell to celebrate. Curtly now plays bass guitar in the reggae band, Big Bad Dread and the Baldhead.
Whenever Curtly took a Test wicket, his mother would rush onto the balcony of her home in Swetes Village, Antigua, to triumphantly ring a special bell to celebrate. Curtly now plays bass guitar in the reggae band, Big Bad Dread and the Baldhead.
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
The Celts and Their Aversion to Straight Lines
The Celts attitudinal individuality precluded nationality. They fought too frequently amongst themselves; inhabited a kindred system too individual, too undisciplined, too lacking in organisation to permit the global ambition necessary to Empire. They never created a lasting political nation: Ireland the most cohesive single Celtic national presence, owed any autonomy as much to the country's geography- a lone island territory- as to any national political impulse among the Irish people or their leaders.
Frank Delaney- The Celts.
To such an individual ethos, the subsuming of the person within the apparatus of a state machine is abhorrent to the entire sense of life, and the very success of a nation as an imperial power, dependent on efficiency and obedience, rather than a proof of that people's superiority is to the Celtic sense proof of that people's atrophied nature. They have surrendered to a dead abstraction- the glory of the state- and this hostility towards the surrender of self a dead abstraction mirrored in Nietzsche's words, "The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Where a people still exists, there the people do not understand the state and hate it as the evil eye."
Delaney also notes that "Just as they never organised into one political unit, they never created a single religion or pantheon."
The necessity of a cohesive religious or philosophical belief system is also something alien to the Celtic sense of life. The living faith in life renders far less important a rational filter into which experience is placed and understood.
An amusing example of the above imperviousness to rigid belief systems is a friend's grandmother saying at a family gathering in a discussion of death, that, sure, didn't we believe we might be reincarnated as a cow, or bird, etc; a lifetime of immersion in Catholicism failing to penetrate her core with the belief that, no, Catholics aren't supposed to believe in re-incarnation.
Delaney also writes:
Celtic art combined the dark and uncanny with the abstract and simplicistic: above all else it responded to the natural world. They abhorred the straight line, pushed organic influences to deliciously abstracted infinity. In Celtic art are very few natural animals, most are fantastic...to the Greeks a spiral is a spiral and a face a face, and it is always clear where the one ends and the othre begins, whereas the Celts 'see' the face into the spirals or tendrils; ambiguity is characteristic of Celtic art.
By contrast, the Roman and British Empires could be described as exactly a faith in the straight line that the Celts abhorred. Another point of interest is what Delaney decribes as "the Celts' practical and mystical" sense of life. The Celtic mystical sense is wholly at odds with the idea of life as illusory or maya, or meditation designed to remove one's consciousness from its bonds to the natural world. The Celt's intimate connection with the natural world renders a desire to overcome it ridiculous; a diseased abstraction, and notions like Manicheanism, or gnosticism, which lead the thinker to posit a fallen world, the creation of a flawed demiurge, are again the product of slaves to reason, with an atrophied sense of the life-force that should course through the veins of their animal nature.
Frank Delaney- The Celts.
To such an individual ethos, the subsuming of the person within the apparatus of a state machine is abhorrent to the entire sense of life, and the very success of a nation as an imperial power, dependent on efficiency and obedience, rather than a proof of that people's superiority is to the Celtic sense proof of that people's atrophied nature. They have surrendered to a dead abstraction- the glory of the state- and this hostility towards the surrender of self a dead abstraction mirrored in Nietzsche's words, "The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Where a people still exists, there the people do not understand the state and hate it as the evil eye."
Delaney also notes that "Just as they never organised into one political unit, they never created a single religion or pantheon."
The necessity of a cohesive religious or philosophical belief system is also something alien to the Celtic sense of life. The living faith in life renders far less important a rational filter into which experience is placed and understood.
An amusing example of the above imperviousness to rigid belief systems is a friend's grandmother saying at a family gathering in a discussion of death, that, sure, didn't we believe we might be reincarnated as a cow, or bird, etc; a lifetime of immersion in Catholicism failing to penetrate her core with the belief that, no, Catholics aren't supposed to believe in re-incarnation.
Delaney also writes:
Celtic art combined the dark and uncanny with the abstract and simplicistic: above all else it responded to the natural world. They abhorred the straight line, pushed organic influences to deliciously abstracted infinity. In Celtic art are very few natural animals, most are fantastic...to the Greeks a spiral is a spiral and a face a face, and it is always clear where the one ends and the othre begins, whereas the Celts 'see' the face into the spirals or tendrils; ambiguity is characteristic of Celtic art.
By contrast, the Roman and British Empires could be described as exactly a faith in the straight line that the Celts abhorred. Another point of interest is what Delaney decribes as "the Celts' practical and mystical" sense of life. The Celtic mystical sense is wholly at odds with the idea of life as illusory or maya, or meditation designed to remove one's consciousness from its bonds to the natural world. The Celt's intimate connection with the natural world renders a desire to overcome it ridiculous; a diseased abstraction, and notions like Manicheanism, or gnosticism, which lead the thinker to posit a fallen world, the creation of a flawed demiurge, are again the product of slaves to reason, with an atrophied sense of the life-force that should course through the veins of their animal nature.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Good Writing Help
Use words like fabulous as often as possible, so as to induce the release of quantities of the chemical serotonin in the mind-body system of the reader, and consequently feelings of well-being will result which will ensure positive feelings towards your writing.
For example:
The sky was a fabulous hue, rich and vibrant in the most marvellous sense. He inhaled both in the normal sense, but also in the sense of visually with his eyes. He felt both fabulous and fantastic in equal measure.
This works as literature in too many ways to discuss for now, but if one is to methodically examine the piece, the most strikingly thematic and poetically unifying element is the use of highly charged positive words such as fabulous, rich, vibrant, marvellous, fabulous again, and finally fantastic. The second daring use of fabulous particularly helps the piece achieve something quite extraordinary. But be aware that this use of repetition is not without its dangers; employing such a device is to walk a tightrope, and in the hands of one unsure of his craft may be enough to unbalance the whole, and Icarus-like, send it crashing to disaster.
The discerning reader may have noticed the echoing of 'sense' in the middle period of the piece, which also helped indissolubly bind the threads of the reader's reality to that of the writing, though the effortlessness with which I achieved such subtleties of expression may fool the undiscerning as to the difficulties such alchemical workings may pose to the lesser creator.
For example:
The sky was a fabulous hue, rich and vibrant in the most marvellous sense. He inhaled both in the normal sense, but also in the sense of visually with his eyes. He felt both fabulous and fantastic in equal measure.
This works as literature in too many ways to discuss for now, but if one is to methodically examine the piece, the most strikingly thematic and poetically unifying element is the use of highly charged positive words such as fabulous, rich, vibrant, marvellous, fabulous again, and finally fantastic. The second daring use of fabulous particularly helps the piece achieve something quite extraordinary. But be aware that this use of repetition is not without its dangers; employing such a device is to walk a tightrope, and in the hands of one unsure of his craft may be enough to unbalance the whole, and Icarus-like, send it crashing to disaster.
The discerning reader may have noticed the echoing of 'sense' in the middle period of the piece, which also helped indissolubly bind the threads of the reader's reality to that of the writing, though the effortlessness with which I achieved such subtleties of expression may fool the undiscerning as to the difficulties such alchemical workings may pose to the lesser creator.
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps, by Naomi Wolf
If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
Rest of Wolf's article here, and here she delivers a talk on the same issue, ie the closing down of a democracy.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
Rest of Wolf's article here, and here she delivers a talk on the same issue, ie the closing down of a democracy.
War's Spiritual Nature?
Earlier on this very blog here, the issue of human sacrifice rituals were examined and seen necessarily as propitiatory offerings to particular deities. And that if such spiritual entities actually do exist, they are nourished by these offerings of human blood. On the other hand, even if they don't exist this is still the projected reason for such practices.
Perhaps one could see practices like war and torture in a similar light, that besides being means towards ends, they are also ends in themselves; this end in the case of war being orgiastic human sacrifice rituals with perhaps pride of place to the dropping of the atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki over civilian populations, ordered by President Truman in 1945. Truman was a 33rd Degree Freemason and Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Missouri 1940-1941; having succeeded to the post of President from 32nd Degree Freemason, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
American diplomats and negotiators in June 1945 told President Truman that the Japanese were seeking to surrender on one condition--that they be allowed to keep their emperor. But President Truman and the United States refused these initial Japanese offers, demanding that Japan surrender unconditionally and agree to give up their emperor- whom the Japanese saw as an inviolate link to the sacred, and of absolute value. Instead of accepting the Japanese desire to surrender, in June and July 1945 American planes, using saturation bombing, firebombed and destroyed 59 out of Japan's 66 largest cities, killing over one million people and leaving 20 million homeless. General Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of American forces in Europe, told Secretary of War Stimson "that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary." In July 1945 Eisenhower met with Truman and advised him not to use the bomb. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Leahy, also advised Truman not to drop the atomic bomb, arguing again that Japan was already defeated.
Back to Truman, and it might be helpful to understand where he saw his priorities. On February 22, 1950 when dedicating the Washington Statue at Memorial Hall, he said the following:
The greatest honor that has come to me, and that can ever come to me in my life, is to be Grand Master of Masons in Missouri.
Grand Master Truman later described the far from benevolent atomic scientist Oppenheimer as "a crybaby scientist", after Oppenheimer became deeply troubled subsequent to the use of the atom bombs over Japan.
Freemasonry views Truman as having ascended towards the very heights of spiritual advancement. In the expectation of seeing some kind of consistency in his character, rather than a schizophrenically divided soul of public and private persona, what might Truman's callousness- pitched to such an extraordinary extreme- tell us about the nature of this spiritual advancement?
Perhaps one could see practices like war and torture in a similar light, that besides being means towards ends, they are also ends in themselves; this end in the case of war being orgiastic human sacrifice rituals with perhaps pride of place to the dropping of the atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki over civilian populations, ordered by President Truman in 1945. Truman was a 33rd Degree Freemason and Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Missouri 1940-1941; having succeeded to the post of President from 32nd Degree Freemason, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
American diplomats and negotiators in June 1945 told President Truman that the Japanese were seeking to surrender on one condition--that they be allowed to keep their emperor. But President Truman and the United States refused these initial Japanese offers, demanding that Japan surrender unconditionally and agree to give up their emperor- whom the Japanese saw as an inviolate link to the sacred, and of absolute value. Instead of accepting the Japanese desire to surrender, in June and July 1945 American planes, using saturation bombing, firebombed and destroyed 59 out of Japan's 66 largest cities, killing over one million people and leaving 20 million homeless. General Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of American forces in Europe, told Secretary of War Stimson "that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary." In July 1945 Eisenhower met with Truman and advised him not to use the bomb. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Leahy, also advised Truman not to drop the atomic bomb, arguing again that Japan was already defeated.
Back to Truman, and it might be helpful to understand where he saw his priorities. On February 22, 1950 when dedicating the Washington Statue at Memorial Hall, he said the following:
The greatest honor that has come to me, and that can ever come to me in my life, is to be Grand Master of Masons in Missouri.
Grand Master Truman later described the far from benevolent atomic scientist Oppenheimer as "a crybaby scientist", after Oppenheimer became deeply troubled subsequent to the use of the atom bombs over Japan.
Freemasonry views Truman as having ascended towards the very heights of spiritual advancement. In the expectation of seeing some kind of consistency in his character, rather than a schizophrenically divided soul of public and private persona, what might Truman's callousness- pitched to such an extraordinary extreme- tell us about the nature of this spiritual advancement?
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
The State and the State
In Of the New Idol I wrote of the dual meaning of the word state, and essentially that there is a kind of battle for reality itself, or the understanding of its nature; the processes, which can be seen as arms of the state in the broadest sense, from birth inculcating the individual with an absolute immersion in unrealities that keep him from a true experience of the state in the sense of the human condition. Aldous Huxley, wrote:
The non-stop distraction of the various forms of media deliberately used to prevent people from paying too much attention to the reality of the social and political situation.
Think of Sky News as a consciousness swamping drip-feed in so many various establishments, from banks to pubs and petrol stations. Or the blanket over reality of the ubiquitous radio station with a dj speaking in a fake awful accent, the incessant ads, plastic saccharine music, and the same bad news on the hour/half-hour on every station deriving their 'news' from all the same sources.
But Huxley could have added, as he most certainly would have thought, that the non-stop distractions are deliberately used to prevent people from experiencing reality itself, rather than just preventing knowing about the political and social situations. It is as much and more an existential issue as an information one. Whether the philosophical nature of the distraction culture is entirely understood in its subtleties by its chief protagonists is debatable, but at a crude level it is certainly understood.
As Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, and a svengali in the worlds of thought applied to consumerism and 'democracy' in the last century wrote:
If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it... The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
The battle for the nature of reality is described by Victor Pelevin, thus:
The evil magic of any totalitarian regime is based on its presumed capability to embrace and explain all the phenomena, their entire totality, because explanation is control. Hence the term totalitarian. So if there’s a book that takes you out of this totality of things explained and understood, it liberates you because it breaks the continuity of explanation and thus dispels the charms. It allows you to look in a different direction for a moment, but this moment is enough to understand that everything you saw before was a hallucination (though what you see in this different direction might well be another hallucination)...
Solzhenitsyn’s books were very anti-Soviet, but they didn’t liberate you, they only made you more enslaved as they explained to which degree you were a slave. The Master and Margarita didn’t even bother to be anti-Soviet yet reading this book would make you free instantly. It didn’t liberate you from some particular old ideas, but rather from the hypnotism of the entire order of things.
Monday, 14 January 2008
Wise Wisdom
Stupidity is no match for vanity, or as was actually rendered, Her stupidity was no match for her vanity.Wolfgang Koeppen
One should not swallow poison out of politeness.
Me
One should not swallow poison out of politeness.
Me
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Knighthood, Dame, etc
Where in return for services rendered, the state takes possession of one's name.
Triumph Amidst Advertisements
Triumph Amidst Advertisements
Scientists in Norway have, after much conscientious and rigorous research, awarded the title of Most Demeaning Human Occupation to the Professional Television Watcher, or 'television critic' as is alternatively known. A brilliant tv critic from The Times accepted the award on behalf of the profession in a ceremony in the Norwegian Embassy in London on Thursday night, saying he was "proud to watch so much television", that "it is a great way of killing time" and "I am even more proud to be paid to write about watching so much television, which is, as said, a great way of killing time." As a philosophical addendum, he added that "Time is the enemy."
Some scientists from Finland, in expression of the notoriously bitter internecine Scandinavian scientific rivalry, have poured scorn on the scientific nature of the Norwegians' research, describing the process as "hopelessly subjective." A Norwegian representative claimed in response that the research was "very scientific" and had "the data to prove it." The Finn accepted defeat, saying this was "fair enough."
Scientists in Norway have, after much conscientious and rigorous research, awarded the title of Most Demeaning Human Occupation to the Professional Television Watcher, or 'television critic' as is alternatively known. A brilliant tv critic from The Times accepted the award on behalf of the profession in a ceremony in the Norwegian Embassy in London on Thursday night, saying he was "proud to watch so much television", that "it is a great way of killing time" and "I am even more proud to be paid to write about watching so much television, which is, as said, a great way of killing time." As a philosophical addendum, he added that "Time is the enemy."
Some scientists from Finland, in expression of the notoriously bitter internecine Scandinavian scientific rivalry, have poured scorn on the scientific nature of the Norwegians' research, describing the process as "hopelessly subjective." A Norwegian representative claimed in response that the research was "very scientific" and had "the data to prove it." The Finn accepted defeat, saying this was "fair enough."
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Of the New Idol, the State
From Nietzsche's Of the New Idol chapter in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
It is destroyers who set snares for many and call it a state.
Where a people still exists, there the people do not understand the state and hate it as the evil eye.
The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies - and whatever it has, it has stolen.
Everything about it is false, it bites with stolen teeth, even its belly is false.
Confusion of the language of good and evil; I offer you this as the sign of the state. Truly, this sign indicates the will to death! Truly it beckons to the preachers of death! Just see how it lures them. How it devours them, and chews them, and re-chews them.
'There is nothing greater on earth than I, the regulating finger of God' - thus the monster bellows. It likes to sun itself in the sunshine of good consciences - this cold monster.
A cunning device of Hell has here been devised, a horse of death jingling with the trappings of divine honours.
I call it the state where everyone, good and bad, loses himself: the state where universal slow suicide is called - life.
Just look at these superfluous people! They are always ill, they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves.
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another and so scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
They all strive towards the throne: it is a madness they have- as if happiness sits upon the throne! Often filth sits upon the throne- and often the throne upon filth, too.
One element of focus I would like to add to this diatribe - which hopefully results in a catharsis through this expression and expulsion of healthy disgust - is the word state itself, which contains a double-sided linguistic nature which may even work in a subconscious level in favour of Nietzsche's idol workers.
In the above usage by Nietzsche we have the state as “the body politic as organized for civil rule and government”, or “the operations or activities of a central civil government”. Though, as Nietzsche argues it is no longer connected to life, or the culture of a living people, but is an abstract and artificial behemoth imposed upon life.
However we also have meaning of state as the condition of a person or thing, as with respect to circumstances or attributes, or the condition of matter with respect to structure, form, constitution, phase, or the like.
The second meaning is in relation to the human condition itself, or life as is. One is born into the human state. However, the rulers of the body politic perpetrate a kind of intellectual or existential coup over pure reality, or 'the state'. Instead one is born into the state in the political sense, and as Nietzsche says, "this lie creeps from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'" Now life and existence within ‘the State’ are so inseparable that its implication is that one is actually owned by the State. And which logic of course played out in 20th century state totalitarianism - and towards which the idol of Statism is always travelling. You have no existence apart from ‘the State’.
Living reality is not 'the state', the State is 'the state'.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Religio-Philosophical Principle of Art
The All is in all.
'The All' being Absolute Reality and 'all' being life in its individuality or particulars.
The true artist has absolute faith in this truth; that he does no need to force truth from beyond the natural confines of his artistic universe to demonstrate something approaching absolute reality. The general is contained within the particular.
For example, the difference between the devil scenes in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. Mann's scene is interesting for its ideas but wholly unconvincing in artistic terms; one could argue his very eloquently effusive and somewhat stuffy bore of a devil exists in the form necessary to the refined intellectual hero figure but he is little more than a mouthpiece of ideas and doesn't touch the flame of reality. Which isn't to downplay Mann's novelistic talents but his art is very much in thrall to the overarching ideas, and is perhaps more in the way of essay than fiction, or that his fiction is lopsided in the sense of being a clear vehicle for his ideas. Which isn't from my point of view off-putting as Mann found the form most suited to his temperament, and for him to write in a less literary style would be unnatural, and to weaken his actual strengths.
Dostoevsky in contrast says far less but also far more in his much more intriguing scene of Ivan's encounter with his sanity challenging devil. Et cetera.
What is contained within the et cetera is, you will agree, far-reaching and profound, and summing up, the All is not in all in Mann's scene whereas it is in Dostoevsky's.
'The All' being Absolute Reality and 'all' being life in its individuality or particulars.
The true artist has absolute faith in this truth; that he does no need to force truth from beyond the natural confines of his artistic universe to demonstrate something approaching absolute reality. The general is contained within the particular.
For example, the difference between the devil scenes in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. Mann's scene is interesting for its ideas but wholly unconvincing in artistic terms; one could argue his very eloquently effusive and somewhat stuffy bore of a devil exists in the form necessary to the refined intellectual hero figure but he is little more than a mouthpiece of ideas and doesn't touch the flame of reality. Which isn't to downplay Mann's novelistic talents but his art is very much in thrall to the overarching ideas, and is perhaps more in the way of essay than fiction, or that his fiction is lopsided in the sense of being a clear vehicle for his ideas. Which isn't from my point of view off-putting as Mann found the form most suited to his temperament, and for him to write in a less literary style would be unnatural, and to weaken his actual strengths.
Dostoevsky in contrast says far less but also far more in his much more intriguing scene of Ivan's encounter with his sanity challenging devil. Et cetera.
What is contained within the et cetera is, you will agree, far-reaching and profound, and summing up, the All is not in all in Mann's scene whereas it is in Dostoevsky's.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Putrid Stench
Tedious and sick as the world of politics tends to be - or soap operatic masquerade for the masses as it is affectionately known - in response to some quick but unhappy glance at democracy via the magic of television I feel the faint urge to quote from Wolfgang Koeppen's The Hothouse, set in post-war Germany, though the urge is at best faint as the necessity of the following observation to exist in the first place is somewhat depressing, but anyways:
All politics were squalid, it was like gang warfare...There is no such thing as truth here. Just tangles of lies.
No, too tedious. If people want to gorge themselves on the most hopeless of hallucinations, sobeit. Though I'll throw in Gore Vidal's "It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.”
A more interesting extract from Koeppen is the following- since I began with him I may as well justify his announced presence:
And then a man was back in the cage he'd been born into, the cage called Fatherland which dangled along with a bunch of other cages called Fatherland, all on a rod, which a great collector of cages and peoples was carrying deeper into history...You were swung on the pole that the great cage bearer had over his shoulder. Who could say where he was going? And did you have any say in the matter? You and your cage might wind up on the pole of the other cage-bearer who was just as unpredictable as the first( and who knows what daemon, what idee fixe was actuating him) in heading for the unknown- an expedition that would be taught to the children in time.
All politics were squalid, it was like gang warfare...There is no such thing as truth here. Just tangles of lies.
No, too tedious. If people want to gorge themselves on the most hopeless of hallucinations, sobeit. Though I'll throw in Gore Vidal's "It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.”
A more interesting extract from Koeppen is the following- since I began with him I may as well justify his announced presence:
And then a man was back in the cage he'd been born into, the cage called Fatherland which dangled along with a bunch of other cages called Fatherland, all on a rod, which a great collector of cages and peoples was carrying deeper into history...You were swung on the pole that the great cage bearer had over his shoulder. Who could say where he was going? And did you have any say in the matter? You and your cage might wind up on the pole of the other cage-bearer who was just as unpredictable as the first( and who knows what daemon, what idee fixe was actuating him) in heading for the unknown- an expedition that would be taught to the children in time.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
The Devil's Dilemna 2: The Great Gullibility Test
Here's an interesting scenario. An airliner is heading for a skyscraper under the command of crazy suicidal hijackers. It hits the building and a huge fireball instantly ensues. However, a break for the authorities: a hijacker's passport sails safely out of this instantaneous infernal chaos and falls to the ground below to be acquired by the FBI, which somehow puts them on the trail of the hijackers' identities.
A coward, as described in Devil's Dilemna Part 1, responded when told of this that this was fabrication by conspiracy theorists, and show the proof that the authorities are making such ridiculous claims as to a terrorist's passport falling to safety from the fireball. In response, he was directed to the official 911 Commission Report, and shown the lines therein:
Four of the hijackers’ passports have survived in whole or in part. Two were recovered
from the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. One belonged to a
hijacker on American Airlines Flight 11. A passerby picked it up and gave it to an
NYPD detective shortly before the World Trade Center towers collapsed. A fourth
passport was recovered from luggage that did not make it from a Portland flight to
Boston onto the connecting flight, which was American Airlines Flight 11.
Our poor coward was then shown this footage of the crash site of Flight 93 from where, as shown, the 911 Commission claims two more passports were recovered. As FOX reporters described "There's just a hole in the ground. There was nothing you could distinguish that a plane had crashed there." "All you could see was a large crater and just the tiniest, tiniest debris."
Our coward then responded by saying yes, this was all quite plausible, and no, there was no question that this all amounted to planted or fabricated evidence.
One might have thought that the authorities could have gone to somewhat greater depths to create a credible plotline for their version of events, but presumably knowing of the impenetrability of the intellectual defence mechanisms of so many of the cowards, they didn't feel it worth the effort.
It might be interesting to imagine a conversation.
"How are we gonna link to the supposed hijackers."
"Simple. We'll say we found a passport that fell out of one of the planes outside the World Trade Centers, that turns out to be that of a dangerous terrorist."
"Come again."
"We find a passport, and that gives us the lead."
"You can't be serious. They'll never buy that."
"They're fucking morons. They'll buy anything."
"Yeah but there's limits."
"There's no fucking limits. Just watch them swallow whatever shit we feed them."
A coward, as described in Devil's Dilemna Part 1, responded when told of this that this was fabrication by conspiracy theorists, and show the proof that the authorities are making such ridiculous claims as to a terrorist's passport falling to safety from the fireball. In response, he was directed to the official 911 Commission Report, and shown the lines therein:
Four of the hijackers’ passports have survived in whole or in part. Two were recovered
from the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. One belonged to a
hijacker on American Airlines Flight 11. A passerby picked it up and gave it to an
NYPD detective shortly before the World Trade Center towers collapsed. A fourth
passport was recovered from luggage that did not make it from a Portland flight to
Boston onto the connecting flight, which was American Airlines Flight 11.
Our poor coward was then shown this footage of the crash site of Flight 93 from where, as shown, the 911 Commission claims two more passports were recovered. As FOX reporters described "There's just a hole in the ground. There was nothing you could distinguish that a plane had crashed there." "All you could see was a large crater and just the tiniest, tiniest debris."
Our coward then responded by saying yes, this was all quite plausible, and no, there was no question that this all amounted to planted or fabricated evidence.
One might have thought that the authorities could have gone to somewhat greater depths to create a credible plotline for their version of events, but presumably knowing of the impenetrability of the intellectual defence mechanisms of so many of the cowards, they didn't feel it worth the effort.
It might be interesting to imagine a conversation.
"How are we gonna link to the supposed hijackers."
"Simple. We'll say we found a passport that fell out of one of the planes outside the World Trade Centers, that turns out to be that of a dangerous terrorist."
"Come again."
"We find a passport, and that gives us the lead."
"You can't be serious. They'll never buy that."
"They're fucking morons. They'll buy anything."
"Yeah but there's limits."
"There's no fucking limits. Just watch them swallow whatever shit we feed them."
Ascribing Greatness
When people extol the genius or greatness of another, it is often merely a form of vanity. The great is simply seen as an eloquent espouser of what the person feels to be his own opinions, and so his own greatness is reflected in the ascribed greatness of the other.
Knowing One's Limits
One comes across writers that are possessed of an intellect that is fine at its proper level, but deluded by the apparent success of their minds when within their limits, they attempt to philosophise beyond their capacity. The larger the attempted scope, the more embarrassing the results; a bit like a reasonable miniature work of art blown up to epic proportions where its inherent flaws become magnified to monstrous and farcical levels. Or perhaps a party balloon persuading itself it is of the full blown hot-air variety.
Sunday, 6 January 2008
Time-Travel
Televisions and the like are time-travel machines. They record a stretch of time in terms of its visual and audio information and this can be played over within another later time. Perhaps our reality is a more complex recording of an earlier time being played back within a later video machine device.
A Once Upon a Time Tale
There was a planet which through a combination of astonishing astronomical circumstances experienced a total eclipse lasting for several days. As a consequence every living thing eventually happened to be asleep at the same time, and from this sleep noone was ever to awaken. Reality needed to exist in the mind of someone and when the last exhausted mind disappeared into the calming oblivion of sleep, reality disappeared with him. There being no reality into which anyone could awaken, noone could awake.
I suppose I could have an alien visitation to the planet and with reality having a mind within which it could exist, everyone awakens- a variation on the Sleeping Beauty tale. Or ponder a collective dreamworld evolving in the minds of the sleeping populations. And perhaps within that dreamworld the given scenario could occur.
I could also hint at the scenario being an analogy to the vision of Huxley's Brave New World parable-prophecy.
I suppose I could have an alien visitation to the planet and with reality having a mind within which it could exist, everyone awakens- a variation on the Sleeping Beauty tale. Or ponder a collective dreamworld evolving in the minds of the sleeping populations. And perhaps within that dreamworld the given scenario could occur.
I could also hint at the scenario being an analogy to the vision of Huxley's Brave New World parable-prophecy.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Justified and Ancient
Robbing a KLF title to excuse a lazy post which is simply a re-posting of an ancient post from the fondly remembered nascent period of this blog so as to form a new post comprised of said post with these few words placed on top.
The Thing in Itself in the Light of a Mirror
Everybody talks about the objective fact or thing in itself all the time; the thing that exists distinctly from and independent of perception. In response, I would like to consider two people looking at a mirror in which each sees the other's reflection. Both looking at the same object which reflects two entirely separate visual realities simultaneously. We could add two more people gazing at the mirror and we have two more entirely separate visual realities in the one object. Or an infinite number of possible points of perspective, each resulting in a distinct visual reality in the entity of the mirror.
So which is the mirror in itself? Are there an infinite number of mirrors and separate realities existing simultaneously or is there one mirror which is a "thing in itself"? If we are to believe in the thing in itself as an objective reality then we seem to be forced to separate this thing's existence from the visual field, and likewise we would seem to have to separate our perception from any contact with reality. Reality retreating from all known experience of it into some kind of idealised realm beyond our perception.
Which would seem to be forming a philosophy to justify a pre-conception, ie that external reality is an objective fact. This possibly explains the desire behind Plato's bizarre world of ideal forms; an escape route from undesired and unsettling implications arising from perception.
The Thing in Itself in the Light of a Mirror
Everybody talks about the objective fact or thing in itself all the time; the thing that exists distinctly from and independent of perception. In response, I would like to consider two people looking at a mirror in which each sees the other's reflection. Both looking at the same object which reflects two entirely separate visual realities simultaneously. We could add two more people gazing at the mirror and we have two more entirely separate visual realities in the one object. Or an infinite number of possible points of perspective, each resulting in a distinct visual reality in the entity of the mirror.
So which is the mirror in itself? Are there an infinite number of mirrors and separate realities existing simultaneously or is there one mirror which is a "thing in itself"? If we are to believe in the thing in itself as an objective reality then we seem to be forced to separate this thing's existence from the visual field, and likewise we would seem to have to separate our perception from any contact with reality. Reality retreating from all known experience of it into some kind of idealised realm beyond our perception.
Which would seem to be forming a philosophy to justify a pre-conception, ie that external reality is an objective fact. This possibly explains the desire behind Plato's bizarre world of ideal forms; an escape route from undesired and unsettling implications arising from perception.
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