Another loose track I must have done sometime:
Ambling
Monday, 13 November 2017
Thursday, 26 October 2017
Late Shopping
LateShopping
Another piece though besides the sound quality these things are also just pretty loose in the moment recordings rather than anything like proper finished pieces.
Another piece though besides the sound quality these things are also just pretty loose in the moment recordings rather than anything like proper finished pieces.
CityRiver
CityRiverGazing
Half my music equipment and my pc for doing music on is on the blink which has prompted me to try to get a bit of use out of a portable recorder I have. Little idea how best to use it so audio quality will probably be on the dreadful side but anyway.
Monday, 9 October 2017
Monday, 2 October 2017
Mililitres
"200 mililitres - what do you think of it?"
"What do you mean what do I think of it?"
"I mean what's your opinion of 200 mililitres."
"My opinion of 200 mililitres? I don't really understand the question."
"God you're not feeling too sharp today, are you!? Out late is it!? All I'm asking is what is your opinion of 200 mililitres. Nothing more, nothing less."
"What do you mean like - of the quantity is it?"
"I can't make it any clearer."
"I suppose it's a reasonable quantity."
"There now, how hard was that?"
"What do you mean what do I think of it?"
"I mean what's your opinion of 200 mililitres."
"My opinion of 200 mililitres? I don't really understand the question."
"God you're not feeling too sharp today, are you!? Out late is it!? All I'm asking is what is your opinion of 200 mililitres. Nothing more, nothing less."
"What do you mean like - of the quantity is it?"
"I can't make it any clearer."
"I suppose it's a reasonable quantity."
"There now, how hard was that?"
The Unconscious
[Just a re-posting of an earlier piece.]
It is my conviction, that is not so much a conviction as, well, not a conviction at all in fact, but simply an idea, an idea for which I feel no bonds of affiliation, this idea merely being a thought, and why bind yourself to a thought - these things which appear and disappear and whose periods of absence are generally far greater than their presences - and anyway this thought is a thing of little import, perhaps more whimsical than anything else, a thought that silently rose up out of the darkness and burst forth humbly but without shame into the light of conscious knowing . . . But, wherever the hell we're going and before we go any further along the route, who was thinking this thought that arose from the invisible and oblivious depths? I, that is 'I', that which we call I and which dwells up here in the visible firmament, as it were, was wholly unaware of any goings-on in these depths from which burst forth the thought. I wasn't even aware of the existence of these depths, and who knows, perhaps all this 'depths' is mere conjecture; this implied dark matter of the soul, this great unconscious, for when you come to think of it the moment we are talking of the unconscious, well then we're in the land of the conscious, not unconscious, and how could it be otherwise?
A man was in search of absolute blackness and so descended into a cave that burrowed into the very belly of the earth. "But this is no use!" he exclaimed. "I can't see anything!" So he turned on his torch and with great satisfaction proclaimed, "Ah, now I see. How wonderful it is. Though this blackness is not half so mysterious and black once you give it a proper look."
You can't flash a torch into darkness and go on calling what you're looking at 'the darkness'. And what's more, the analogy might suggest all too much, as unlike this cave the unconscious never becomes visible. All we have is the conscious. Otherwise how could it be unconscious? I'm not saying it isn't there but what's the good in getting worked up about it, creating some kind of narcissistic fetish out of it, obsessing about this great unconscious, all the while it's actually the conscious you're wallowing in.
I have moved far from this conviction or idea which bubbled up to the surface, though you may be wondering if this idea was merely a literary device, a means towards an end - the end having something to write about, and the means the writing. Words were placed in sequence, how else could they be placed, in the expectation, or perhaps just hope, that some inspiration would in the process be ushered forth from the dark depths...we're back to these depths. There seems, for now, no getting away from them. No, I don't doubt their existence at all, but it's this unnatural, urban, civilized fetishisation of oneself I can't stand. A mental self-lust, a kind of perverted mysticism where instead of release from one's self-imagined self, one wallows endlessly within it. And perhaps that's what in essence this is all about: the intelligentsia seek intellectual justification for masturbation. That seems to me very true, though exactly why I am as yet unsure, but if true it can't be too mysterious.
Their own personality is their greatest love. Deep down (in the depths) even they realise it's a false, sterile kingdom, but they wish to conquer this thought and to rule or dwell in full confidence and complacency within this personality's domains. So all this Freudian self-wallowing wishes to prove that this personality and its desires is all fully real and fascinating, and indeed all there is. It is from the deeper silence that the intimation of the falseness of this remorseless selfhood, this personality, its self-engendering, is felt and therefore to cover up this silence is the task at hand, to silence its silence, so to speak, and to convince oneself one is doing the opposite.
But to cover it up with what? Endless thought, and, entwined mixture of cunning and stupidity that is this 'self', announce that all these words you produce are actually this enemy, the Silence, which you label the Unconscious. You make a load of noise about silence and announce that the noise you produce is this very silence, and what's so special about this silence after all- just a load of noise. And also what could be better than to persuade oneself that this silence is actually something grubby, mere base desires; rationalise it as so and only so. So the very alleged silence, this Unconscious, proffers the justification for this corrupt self-wallowing individual to continue wallowing in itself as you've declared it and its desires absolute reality. And the civilized short-sighted animal proclaims with pride: "We have tamed the animal, the Great Beyond! The rational self is king! We may masturbate with full self-esteem!" For what after all else is there?
How's that for psycho-analysis?
It is my conviction, that is not so much a conviction as, well, not a conviction at all in fact, but simply an idea, an idea for which I feel no bonds of affiliation, this idea merely being a thought, and why bind yourself to a thought - these things which appear and disappear and whose periods of absence are generally far greater than their presences - and anyway this thought is a thing of little import, perhaps more whimsical than anything else, a thought that silently rose up out of the darkness and burst forth humbly but without shame into the light of conscious knowing . . . But, wherever the hell we're going and before we go any further along the route, who was thinking this thought that arose from the invisible and oblivious depths? I, that is 'I', that which we call I and which dwells up here in the visible firmament, as it were, was wholly unaware of any goings-on in these depths from which burst forth the thought. I wasn't even aware of the existence of these depths, and who knows, perhaps all this 'depths' is mere conjecture; this implied dark matter of the soul, this great unconscious, for when you come to think of it the moment we are talking of the unconscious, well then we're in the land of the conscious, not unconscious, and how could it be otherwise?
A man was in search of absolute blackness and so descended into a cave that burrowed into the very belly of the earth. "But this is no use!" he exclaimed. "I can't see anything!" So he turned on his torch and with great satisfaction proclaimed, "Ah, now I see. How wonderful it is. Though this blackness is not half so mysterious and black once you give it a proper look."
You can't flash a torch into darkness and go on calling what you're looking at 'the darkness'. And what's more, the analogy might suggest all too much, as unlike this cave the unconscious never becomes visible. All we have is the conscious. Otherwise how could it be unconscious? I'm not saying it isn't there but what's the good in getting worked up about it, creating some kind of narcissistic fetish out of it, obsessing about this great unconscious, all the while it's actually the conscious you're wallowing in.
I have moved far from this conviction or idea which bubbled up to the surface, though you may be wondering if this idea was merely a literary device, a means towards an end - the end having something to write about, and the means the writing. Words were placed in sequence, how else could they be placed, in the expectation, or perhaps just hope, that some inspiration would in the process be ushered forth from the dark depths...we're back to these depths. There seems, for now, no getting away from them. No, I don't doubt their existence at all, but it's this unnatural, urban, civilized fetishisation of oneself I can't stand. A mental self-lust, a kind of perverted mysticism where instead of release from one's self-imagined self, one wallows endlessly within it. And perhaps that's what in essence this is all about: the intelligentsia seek intellectual justification for masturbation. That seems to me very true, though exactly why I am as yet unsure, but if true it can't be too mysterious.
Their own personality is their greatest love. Deep down (in the depths) even they realise it's a false, sterile kingdom, but they wish to conquer this thought and to rule or dwell in full confidence and complacency within this personality's domains. So all this Freudian self-wallowing wishes to prove that this personality and its desires is all fully real and fascinating, and indeed all there is. It is from the deeper silence that the intimation of the falseness of this remorseless selfhood, this personality, its self-engendering, is felt and therefore to cover up this silence is the task at hand, to silence its silence, so to speak, and to convince oneself one is doing the opposite.
But to cover it up with what? Endless thought, and, entwined mixture of cunning and stupidity that is this 'self', announce that all these words you produce are actually this enemy, the Silence, which you label the Unconscious. You make a load of noise about silence and announce that the noise you produce is this very silence, and what's so special about this silence after all- just a load of noise. And also what could be better than to persuade oneself that this silence is actually something grubby, mere base desires; rationalise it as so and only so. So the very alleged silence, this Unconscious, proffers the justification for this corrupt self-wallowing individual to continue wallowing in itself as you've declared it and its desires absolute reality. And the civilized short-sighted animal proclaims with pride: "We have tamed the animal, the Great Beyond! The rational self is king! We may masturbate with full self-esteem!" For what after all else is there?
How's that for psycho-analysis?
Saturday, 30 September 2017
Friday, 29 September 2017
More Stairs
I'm sure I've written stair based stuff for whatever reasons before but not letting that stop me, here's another one.
There were these stairs.
Were they going up or going down?
Well both, it would depend on which way you were going. If you were going up they were going up, if down down.
How do they do that?
Do what?
Have them going up and down at the same time. Like if one person is going up and another is going down, what happens. Or would the guy going down have to go up with the fella going up and then come back down?
But the stairs don't go anywhere!
But what good are they so if they don't go anywhere?
Yes but they're not moving. They're static.
And how do they manage that?
Manage what?
Having them static.
They just fecking build them out of concrete or something!
And there's nothing to make them move?
No!
God that's amazing.
Amazing that they don't move?
Yeah. But what's the point in them so if they don't move?
It's the people who move!
How?
By bloody walking!
Ah, with their legs is it, that's how the stairs go up and down at the same time. That's ingenious. And what if they don't move?
The people?
Yes. How would they get anywhere then?
They wouldn't.
They'd just be stuck would they? And if there was enough of them not moving, just standing around, I suppose that would mess everything up. There'd be no space for anyone to get past in the end.
Yeah but why would that happen? People go on stairs to get somewhere, not to hang about.
But they might be waiting for them to move. And maybe if they wait around long enough they forget they were going anywhere.
That'd never happen.
It might.
[No more time for now so that's it, also for now.]
There were these stairs.
Were they going up or going down?
Well both, it would depend on which way you were going. If you were going up they were going up, if down down.
How do they do that?
Do what?
Have them going up and down at the same time. Like if one person is going up and another is going down, what happens. Or would the guy going down have to go up with the fella going up and then come back down?
But the stairs don't go anywhere!
But what good are they so if they don't go anywhere?
Yes but they're not moving. They're static.
And how do they manage that?
Manage what?
Having them static.
They just fecking build them out of concrete or something!
And there's nothing to make them move?
No!
God that's amazing.
Amazing that they don't move?
Yeah. But what's the point in them so if they don't move?
It's the people who move!
How?
By bloody walking!
Ah, with their legs is it, that's how the stairs go up and down at the same time. That's ingenious. And what if they don't move?
The people?
Yes. How would they get anywhere then?
They wouldn't.
They'd just be stuck would they? And if there was enough of them not moving, just standing around, I suppose that would mess everything up. There'd be no space for anyone to get past in the end.
Yeah but why would that happen? People go on stairs to get somewhere, not to hang about.
But they might be waiting for them to move. And maybe if they wait around long enough they forget they were going anywhere.
That'd never happen.
It might.
[No more time for now so that's it, also for now.]
Tuesday, 26 September 2017
Monday, 25 September 2017
Friday, 7 July 2017
Friday, 30 June 2017
Net
There was a large net into which if things fell they didn't get out, but the net it turned out worked too well and in time so many things were caught in it that the strain became too great, the mesh tore apart and all fell out.
Saturday, 22 April 2017
Hamlet Again
"What is Hamlet's major character flaw?"
"He's an asshole."
Maybe I should expand a little. Hamlet is extraordinarily intelligent and perhaps spiritually sensitive, but intelligence doesn't excuse all else, and perhaps even the contrary. So why does whoever above say Hamlet's major character flaw isn't indecisiveness or some such but is rather the more complete state of being an asshole? Does he behave badly - if for the sake of argument he does indeed do so - simply because he is pretending to be mad in his efforts to avenge his father? Before we go down that fascinating path, how does pretending to be mad help anything? What does it achieve? It seems it allows Hamlet to behave as the above-mentioned total asshole, but other than that . . . well there is no other than that, that is all it achieves, and there is no sense that it is helping achieve anything else.
But I'm being far too wilfully harsh surely. We get to see Hamlet's intelligence unfettered to the conventions of ordinary decorum and discourse, and engage in wild wordplay and so on. We do I suppose. We also see him behave absolutely horribly to Ophelia who he has professed to be in love with, and who is herself very much in love with him. This is naturally devastating to her. He also kills her father virtually on a whim when hearing someone behind a curtain. His response to this murder or manslaughter is to immediately attack Gertrude, his mother, for her terrible behaviour which has upset him so much. He doesn't seem too bothered about the dead body at his feet though in the midst of his verbal assault on his mother he does mention in passing to be sorry about it. He then makes very witty jokes about Polonius' soon to be stinking body to those trying to find out where he has hidden the corpse.
I don't want to be giving a summary of the play but he returns to Elsinore later and comes upon Ophelia's funeral, whose death he is basically wholly responsible for after she lost her wits due to his vile behaviour towards her, and also his more or less without remorse killing of her father. Hamlet goes into a screaming rage when he sees her brother Laertes declaring his grief at the grave. He has in obvious effect ended the lives of Laertes' father and sister but Hamlet's rage is at the idea Laertes' grief in any sense compares to his own. This Laertes needs putting in his place.
The next scene we don't see much evidence of this grief and Hamlet is mocking with much self-delight the flaws of a very minor character, Osric. Hamlet tells Horatio he earlier turned the plans of his father-in-law on their head and arranged by falsifying a letter to arrange the murders of his childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They I believe were not knowingly trying to do any harm to Hamlet but when he hears of their deaths, he says this means nothing to him and his conscience as they were meddlers.
His great profession of some kind of guilt is before his fencing with Laertes where he tells him he is sorry for having killed his father but he did it when mad so it would be stupid to blame him for it, and in fact rather than the one in the wrong, Hamlet is one of the wronged. We know however he claimed he would only be pretending to be mad but anyway such remorse rends the heart. However if more credence is leant to this idea than may seem merited - that Hamlet's behaviour during the course of the play is of someone mad and not responsible for his actions, well how much interest is there left in such a character and play - a central character not responsible for his actions as he's mad? Not much. As a work of art & investigation into the human world, it would be almost entirely self-negating.
So anyway, I might return to the start of things having fleshed out the contours somewhat.
"What is Hamlet's major character flaw?"
"He's an asshole."
"He's an asshole."
Maybe I should expand a little. Hamlet is extraordinarily intelligent and perhaps spiritually sensitive, but intelligence doesn't excuse all else, and perhaps even the contrary. So why does whoever above say Hamlet's major character flaw isn't indecisiveness or some such but is rather the more complete state of being an asshole? Does he behave badly - if for the sake of argument he does indeed do so - simply because he is pretending to be mad in his efforts to avenge his father? Before we go down that fascinating path, how does pretending to be mad help anything? What does it achieve? It seems it allows Hamlet to behave as the above-mentioned total asshole, but other than that . . . well there is no other than that, that is all it achieves, and there is no sense that it is helping achieve anything else.
But I'm being far too wilfully harsh surely. We get to see Hamlet's intelligence unfettered to the conventions of ordinary decorum and discourse, and engage in wild wordplay and so on. We do I suppose. We also see him behave absolutely horribly to Ophelia who he has professed to be in love with, and who is herself very much in love with him. This is naturally devastating to her. He also kills her father virtually on a whim when hearing someone behind a curtain. His response to this murder or manslaughter is to immediately attack Gertrude, his mother, for her terrible behaviour which has upset him so much. He doesn't seem too bothered about the dead body at his feet though in the midst of his verbal assault on his mother he does mention in passing to be sorry about it. He then makes very witty jokes about Polonius' soon to be stinking body to those trying to find out where he has hidden the corpse.
I don't want to be giving a summary of the play but he returns to Elsinore later and comes upon Ophelia's funeral, whose death he is basically wholly responsible for after she lost her wits due to his vile behaviour towards her, and also his more or less without remorse killing of her father. Hamlet goes into a screaming rage when he sees her brother Laertes declaring his grief at the grave. He has in obvious effect ended the lives of Laertes' father and sister but Hamlet's rage is at the idea Laertes' grief in any sense compares to his own. This Laertes needs putting in his place.
The next scene we don't see much evidence of this grief and Hamlet is mocking with much self-delight the flaws of a very minor character, Osric. Hamlet tells Horatio he earlier turned the plans of his father-in-law on their head and arranged by falsifying a letter to arrange the murders of his childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They I believe were not knowingly trying to do any harm to Hamlet but when he hears of their deaths, he says this means nothing to him and his conscience as they were meddlers.
His great profession of some kind of guilt is before his fencing with Laertes where he tells him he is sorry for having killed his father but he did it when mad so it would be stupid to blame him for it, and in fact rather than the one in the wrong, Hamlet is one of the wronged. We know however he claimed he would only be pretending to be mad but anyway such remorse rends the heart. However if more credence is leant to this idea than may seem merited - that Hamlet's behaviour during the course of the play is of someone mad and not responsible for his actions, well how much interest is there left in such a character and play - a central character not responsible for his actions as he's mad? Not much. As a work of art & investigation into the human world, it would be almost entirely self-negating.
So anyway, I might return to the start of things having fleshed out the contours somewhat.
"What is Hamlet's major character flaw?"
"He's an asshole."
Friday, 21 April 2017
Saturday, 8 April 2017
Nabokov
"Do you prefer Vladimir Nabakov's work as a butterfly killer or as a writer?"
"Who?"
"You know the famous butterfly killer Nabakov who also wrote Lolita."
"Is that about killing butterflies?"
"No, no! It's about a paedophile."
"And are there any butterflies in it?"
"Maybe just the odd reference."
"Why did he hate butterflies so much?"
"Oh no! you have it all wrong. He didn't hate them. He loved them."
"Who?"
"You know the famous butterfly killer Nabakov who also wrote Lolita."
"Is that about killing butterflies?"
"No, no! It's about a paedophile."
"And are there any butterflies in it?"
"Maybe just the odd reference."
"Why did he hate butterflies so much?"
"Oh no! you have it all wrong. He didn't hate them. He loved them."
Rembrandt Link
I was asked to provide a link to this page for my many millions of readers, many of whom are passionate about Rembrandt so here it is
Thursday, 6 April 2017
Death Watch
"Did you ever hear of the death watch beetle?"
"I did I suppose yeah."
"That's a terrible name to inflict on a creature."
"Is it?!"
"Think about it man! Of course it is!"
"I did I suppose yeah."
"That's a terrible name to inflict on a creature."
"Is it?!"
"Think about it man! Of course it is!"
Wednesday, 29 March 2017
Saturday, 18 March 2017
Shorter
"Two men were walking along, one shorter than the other."
"Which one was shorter?"
"Why do you need to know that?"
"Well it fleshes it out a bit, doesn't it, makes it more interesting."
"All right so, it was the one on the right who was shorter."
"On the right as we're looking at them or they were looking at us."
"They weren't looking at us."
Sadly at this point someone interrupted me, the flow was lost and all we are left with is this mysterious fragment of presumably a much greater metaphysical work.
"Which one was shorter?"
"Why do you need to know that?"
"Well it fleshes it out a bit, doesn't it, makes it more interesting."
"All right so, it was the one on the right who was shorter."
"On the right as we're looking at them or they were looking at us."
"They weren't looking at us."
Sadly at this point someone interrupted me, the flow was lost and all we are left with is this mysterious fragment of presumably a much greater metaphysical work.
Friday, 10 March 2017
Lenin & the Spiritual Bourgeois
I wrote in the Lenin post recently of how despite the Bolshevik love of terms & policies like "class-war", Lenin was of course himself not of the blessed proletarian class but in his background very much of the educated middle-class. Someone might retort, yes, in his social background he was a bourgeois but spiritually he was a proletarian. Of course to be a bourgeois in a spiritual sense can imply to be purely concerned with one's comfort and the lack of any higher idealism & these can be genuine criticisms or observations; however spending one's time in libraries, forming theories of the evolution of the past in to the present and the projected future, and ensuring it evolves in the direction it should evolve . . . well, in a different sense this is also bourgeois to the very core.
According to the theory, the proletarian's time by contrast is filled with work and necessities. He exists on the level of primal biological necessities. This intellectual man in the library with his head full of abstractions is by contrast a kind of pure bourgeois, at a total remove from biological necessity and its reality, and his propulsion into the world of physical reality is a colossal urge to force all this chaotic external world to conform to these creations and imaginings of the intellect. Where the more normal scenario is the bourgeois having immersed himself in the academic world then goes onto live his lukewarm, respectable life - which is itself one could say the normal bourgeois essence - still in all walks of life there are people who push things to extreme, and people like Lenin are the unusual but still inevitable examples of the bourgeois pushed to the extreme.
Monday, 27 February 2017
Sunday, 26 February 2017
Saturday, 25 February 2017
Thursday, 9 February 2017
Lenin & Humanity
"Man is broad. Too broad even. I would narrow him down."
Dmitri Karamazov from Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov.'
Naturally enough the political ethos of Adolf Hitler & the Nazis is seen as particularly vicious in its consideration of the status of those it sees as ‘underlings’ or a lower class of humans, their inferiority justifying any kind of treatment even to the point of total extermination as an actual good, it purifying the human population of lower defiling tendencies. To see the attitude of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in a similar vein though I’ve not seen receive much censure or revulsion. Is this because it would be a very unfair criticism & so unmerited? Perhaps in an ethnic sense it would – though I do recall Engels' description of the Slavic peoples as ‘human trash’, which is naturally very much Hitler’s kind of language.
Dmitri Karamazov from Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov.'
Naturally enough the political ethos of Adolf Hitler & the Nazis is seen as particularly vicious in its consideration of the status of those it sees as ‘underlings’ or a lower class of humans, their inferiority justifying any kind of treatment even to the point of total extermination as an actual good, it purifying the human population of lower defiling tendencies. To see the attitude of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in a similar vein though I’ve not seen receive much censure or revulsion. Is this because it would be a very unfair criticism & so unmerited? Perhaps in an ethnic sense it would – though I do recall Engels' description of the Slavic peoples as ‘human trash’, which is naturally very much Hitler’s kind of language.
With regards Lenin though, he tends to get a comparatively
free ride, & in terms of the tragedy of Russia under Communism the tendency is to view Stalin as a corrupter of the true path
of Communism, or for the sake of argument Leninism.
The following for the sake of saving me time might be pretty jagged & brief.
First to show Lenin's attitude to democracy. After allowing general elections to Constituent Assembly in November 1917 the more moderate Socialist Revolutionaries won 41% of the vote, Lenin's Bolsheviks gained 23.5%. Lenin's response was to dissolve the assembly. So clearly he had no interest in a democratic system but instead wished for a "dictatorship of the proletariat"- this of course meaning dictatorship of Lenin and the party of which he
was the head.
Take a phrase like “Enemy of the people” by which was meant bourgeoisie & other elements, all of which implied those opposed to Lenin’s dictatorship. This conveniently included farmers who didn't wish to surrender their crops to the Bolshevik state apparatus. And that is another key point. Compared to even Nazism, this is a far greater degree of totalitarianism: the State owns everything. Under the superficial veneer of idealism attached to an idea like "no private property", the reality is that this means the dictatorship owns everything. To resist this taking of one's property, even the grain that might keep you and your family alive is to be an 'enemy of the people'.
To take a closer look at this very important phrase, which perhaps the intellect tends to sleep-walk past without analysing closer. Again like the abolition of private property, it perhaps even has the veneer of humanitarian idealism, the erecting of a fair system for the oppressed. This is the central point of this essay, whether Lenin was like Hitler genocidal in his ideological core.
Enemy of the people
Like so many catchy propagandist phrases, the intellect isn't supposed to get too active in examining such a phrase but to commit the heresy of trying to do so . . . All people are self-evidently people. So how are any people enemies of the people? It is a narrowing down of the definition of humanity. Now those in support of the Bolshevik dictatorship under Lenin are “the people.” The enemies of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat’ are not people at all! And so there is no need to bother with thoughts of the violation of these people's human rights, since to be a person with human rights you have to first of all be a person. Now any manner of evil in suppression of your false being is justified. This is actually a far more comprehensive philosophy of inhumanity than Hitler’s, the sectors comprising non-people far greater than the comparatively limited categories of Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, etc.
To add a little more. Hatred of the false bourgeoisie was obviously a staple of the likes of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric - purity of self accorded to the oppressed proletariat. There being of course truth to the idea of their oppression but people like Marx and Lenin were themselves of course completely of the bourgeois intellectual class. Lenin though wished to obliterate this class from all reckoning (remember the "dictatorship of the proletariat.") Why? Partly as the proletariat, by and large very much uneducated would simply be lumpen mass or material in the hands of the dictatorship by self-chosen bourgeoisie like Lenin, Trotsky, etc. The power of the unthinking, proletariat masses was to be the means to their individual power, the weapon or weight of their will-to-power; and also some kind of triumph by these theory and power obsessed freaks over their own entire class. Lenin and the gang don't just get to sit atop their middle-class fellows, they get to actually wipe them from all consideration and existence.
And a final thought on one of the key tactical means to Lenin's initial acquisition of power which was the wish to take Russia out of the madness of WW1 - which has a lot going for it. How much does this really speak of Lenin's humanitarianism though? Well several years before WW1 Lenin spoke with longing for just such a conflict as a "treat" he would like the Euopean powers to give such as he as a window of opportunity to seize power out of the ensuing chaos of a mass post-Industrial Revolution European conflict. How much compassion does anyone have who yearns for horror as a supposed means to improving the world, or views terror, and the more rather than less of it the better, as a very valid political tool? And also the Civil War his immediate shutting down of democracy brought about was very much a hellish continuation of such horror on a very comparable scale.
Take a phrase like “Enemy of the people” by which was meant bourgeoisie & other elements, all of which implied those opposed to Lenin’s dictatorship. This conveniently included farmers who didn't wish to surrender their crops to the Bolshevik state apparatus. And that is another key point. Compared to even Nazism, this is a far greater degree of totalitarianism: the State owns everything. Under the superficial veneer of idealism attached to an idea like "no private property", the reality is that this means the dictatorship owns everything. To resist this taking of one's property, even the grain that might keep you and your family alive is to be an 'enemy of the people'.
To take a closer look at this very important phrase, which perhaps the intellect tends to sleep-walk past without analysing closer. Again like the abolition of private property, it perhaps even has the veneer of humanitarian idealism, the erecting of a fair system for the oppressed. This is the central point of this essay, whether Lenin was like Hitler genocidal in his ideological core.
Enemy of the people
Like so many catchy propagandist phrases, the intellect isn't supposed to get too active in examining such a phrase but to commit the heresy of trying to do so . . . All people are self-evidently people. So how are any people enemies of the people? It is a narrowing down of the definition of humanity. Now those in support of the Bolshevik dictatorship under Lenin are “the people.” The enemies of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat’ are not people at all! And so there is no need to bother with thoughts of the violation of these people's human rights, since to be a person with human rights you have to first of all be a person. Now any manner of evil in suppression of your false being is justified. This is actually a far more comprehensive philosophy of inhumanity than Hitler’s, the sectors comprising non-people far greater than the comparatively limited categories of Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, etc.
To add a little more. Hatred of the false bourgeoisie was obviously a staple of the likes of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric - purity of self accorded to the oppressed proletariat. There being of course truth to the idea of their oppression but people like Marx and Lenin were themselves of course completely of the bourgeois intellectual class. Lenin though wished to obliterate this class from all reckoning (remember the "dictatorship of the proletariat.") Why? Partly as the proletariat, by and large very much uneducated would simply be lumpen mass or material in the hands of the dictatorship by self-chosen bourgeoisie like Lenin, Trotsky, etc. The power of the unthinking, proletariat masses was to be the means to their individual power, the weapon or weight of their will-to-power; and also some kind of triumph by these theory and power obsessed freaks over their own entire class. Lenin and the gang don't just get to sit atop their middle-class fellows, they get to actually wipe them from all consideration and existence.
And a final thought on one of the key tactical means to Lenin's initial acquisition of power which was the wish to take Russia out of the madness of WW1 - which has a lot going for it. How much does this really speak of Lenin's humanitarianism though? Well several years before WW1 Lenin spoke with longing for just such a conflict as a "treat" he would like the Euopean powers to give such as he as a window of opportunity to seize power out of the ensuing chaos of a mass post-Industrial Revolution European conflict. How much compassion does anyone have who yearns for horror as a supposed means to improving the world, or views terror, and the more rather than less of it the better, as a very valid political tool? And also the Civil War his immediate shutting down of democracy brought about was very much a hellish continuation of such horror on a very comparable scale.
Tuesday, 31 January 2017
Ecstasy of Saint Theresa - Free-D
One of my favourite albums by a Czech band. Or maybe by any band. Just to add, the first minute or so you might be wondering if there's any sounds coming along but they do.
Friday, 6 January 2017
Precisely
These words were found written precisely in this order lying about somewhere. What is most remarkable of course is that they were and are precisely in this order. Why not some other order? Who knows.
Tuesday, 3 January 2017
Peter
If you, or perhaps someone else, has been wondering what I've been reading, if anything, the answer is 'Peter the Great' by Robert Massie, and very highly recommended it is. Peter a man so extraordinary in himself and his impact on his country that it almost hard to see him other than fated to appear.
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