Postcards:

For all things philosophical.

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d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Note: this is an excerpt from a work in progress:


There has lately, in America, been a major push by Democrats to increase the minimum wage. And while some of us can applaud the effort and see the short term benefits, and even support it in that capacity, we can’t help but look at the long term deficiencies. While it may well create demand in the short run, thereby, economic expansion, the inherent dynamic of our market economy will only over-ride the effects through inflation, via wage push and wage pull and the greed of investors until we’re right back where we started. We could easily see a day, for instance, when janitors are making six figure salaries but are no better off (if not worse) than they are now. This is because, as well intended as the Democrats are in this matter, they’re merely perpetuating more of the same by failing to get outside of the expansionary model of producer/consumer Capitalism and, consequently, may be inadvertently contributing to an ever increasing appetite for consumption that could result in our self destruction through economically motivated wars, environmental destruction, and the depletion of our natural resources.

Nor should we see the egalitarian model as practical or effective. First of all, if we can agree with anything the conservatives or the right have to say, we can agree that Marx’s assumption that people will naturally find their calling in such a system, that doctors will choose to be doctors, or engineers to be engineers, just because they love a certain activity was perhaps a little over optimistic. We have to admit that while a calling or passion is a powerful incentive, there have to be incentives as well that inherently involve inequalities. And the problem was never that some people happen to have more than others. The problem has always been having more at the expense of others. Secondly, it still works within the Capitalist values of more and its covert sibling “less”: give a little more to some while giving a little less to others. And while we can never truly escape the dynamic of more and less, we all have to think outside of it to escape our current predicament. It is not just a matter of changing policies. It is equally a matter of changing sensibilities if it is to truly work.

Sooner or later, whether through choice or force of circumstance, we have to step outside of the market paradigm that works strictly in terms of more and less. We simply cannot, for instance, rest on the old adage that workers want more compensation for less work, while their employers pose, against these demands, their own requirement for minimal investment at maximum return. It might seem common sense. But with a closer look, we might see that the two positions are not so deeply entrenched. If they were, the workplace would hardly be worth any amount of compensation, a perpetual battle with management while struggling to stay afoot in the mass competition toward better paying and easier jobs. And how can one be so happy at 10 an hour and another so miserable at 20? The janitor whistles, easily, while mopping his floor. He seems entranced, content, as if in meditation. Another man, sleek and muscular from hauling furniture, makes enough to go to the bar, nightly, and wakes each morning to sweat it off. At quitting time, the cycle repeats. And no random piss tests. Vagrants, drifters, and welfare recipients continue to scrimp through their hand to mouth lives. Meanwhile, a white collar manager slumps over their computer, grumbles often, and when they can, steals a moment on Monster.com. He’s hardly afraid he’ll get caught and, sometimes, even hopes.



And then there are the intellectually and creatively curious, strange creatures that, in their ass-backwardness, approach the hierarchy of needs from the top down. They neglect basic creature comforts while clinging, often self destructively, to the drug-like addiction of self actualization. And what are they working toward? That is when so many of their heroes, the successful and famous, live public lives of misery, and sometimes kill themselves.


Clearly, we need to break it down to individual needs, demands, and desires. We need to penetrate the multiplicity and interrogate the interactions. Furthermore, we need to recognize that it is primarily about expectations and their satisfaction, and that satisfaction only seems binary and digital by virtue of a molar perspective on the issue. We need to consider the molecular multiplicity of efficiencies: that which is maximized by minimizing the differential between the resources put in to a thing and the resources gotten out of it.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Rhizome 5/8/16 in which I go over some points made in my graphic guide to Marx’s Das Kapital (and thumb down your nose all you want; it is providing a lot of insight into some of the micro-aspects of his description of the mechanics of Capitalism that I will have to go over repeatedly to fully comprehend (and hopefully connect it to my work in progress on Efficiency:

I would first note here Marx was a kind of exploration of Efficiency (especially as concerns Coexistence (as I conceive it. While most FreeMarketFundamentalists would portray him with the well known beard, but with horns and cloven hooves, the truth is that he was a man who found what he loved to do and wanted to create a society in which everyone could do the same. In other words, he wanted to create an environment in which people could find their higher selves (an instance of Expectation (without the distractions of the overwhelming instances of Expectation involved in the Petty and Mundane.

Anyway:

“Speed-up is central to capitalist production and culture because only the quantitative dimension of time counts. The qualitative dimension of time, the point of experiencing something in time, is routinely seen as a “waste of time.” –from Das Kapital

“The pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives.… Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most, time’s carcass. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything; hour for hour, day for day. —Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy” -Wayne, Michael (2012-05-29). Marx's 'Das Kapital' For Beginners (p. 52). For Beginners. Kindle Edition.

One of the main issues I take with Marx (via postmodern thinkers like Baudrillard (is that his focus was primarily on the production side of things. Hence: the use of the term “efficiency” in its more diabolical sense (think: efficiency experts (as compared to the more benign one I am using it in. But then Marx didn’t have the advantage of seeing what Capitalism would do with modern technology. Still, I see that as an obstacle to an authentic understanding of what I’m talking about: a straw man for the FreeMarketFundamentalists and FOX News.

At the same time, I can’t help but feel that this anticipates a point made by James Burke in TLC series (that is when TLC was actually The Learning Channel (concerning the progress of technology in the 90’s:

That it was doing so in a fashion similar to Galileo’s Law of Falling Bodies: at a constant rate of acceleration. And it was that acceleration of innovation along with optimism and credit that drove the Clinton boom in America and elsewhere. The only problem, as Burke rightly pointed out, was that that kind of acceleration tended to leave people with a taste for novelty.

And if you think about it, that legacy and residual sensibility may well underlie the success of Trump in American politics (among other things as I hope to describe later (in that he is a kind of novelty. As I like to say: he reminds me of an episode in the excellent British version of Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, in which a smart-ass cartoon character engages in a successful political campaign.

[Pause as I just remembered today is Mother’s Day: a definite disruption in the coexistence of efficiencies had I of not remembered.]

But it is this taste for novelty that serves as a misdirect from the very real source of everyone’s problems: producer/consumer Capitalism much as Marx described it.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Rhizome 5/17/16 in which (as I come to the end of my vacation and work my way back to my normal routine (I apply my concept of Efficiency to my present immersion in Peter Cave’s beginner’s guide to ethics –my prize, BTW, for getting my answer to the question of the month, “what is your best wisdom or advice?”, published in issue 113 of Philosophy Now, which makes me wonder if they weren’t trying to tell me something given my wisdom of the unwise:

Anyway, not to pat myself on the back: but as I go into the second chapter of the book on Utilitarianism, I’m starting to see how Efficiency (or more accurately the always supra-efficiency of the coexistence of efficiencies (or Coexistence for short (addresses many of the arguments and (think Dennett (intuition pumps presented against it.

This became really clear to me in Cave’s presentation of the surgeon’s dilemma in that were they presented with a lot of people that needed their help, would they be obligated to give up everything else in their life (even what they also loved besides treating people (to take care of everyone at their expense? But while the criterion of Utilitarianism would say that it is an imperative to the surgeon (that the answer is an unqualified “yes” (the Coexistence of Efficiencies would say no: that surgeon, as an individual, clearly has other expectations that need to be addressed. Therefore, the only imperative at work would be that on Coexistence to provide for the training of additional surgeons.

We see something similar at work in the classic intuition pump of if 5 people were in front of a train and the only way to save them would be to throw the fat guy on the switch. What is always missing from this equation is that it is an individual that has to decide to throw an individual fat guy over the bridge. What is also always missing is that it is a matter of fate that those 5 individuals ended up in front of a train. In other words, if the individual failed to throw the fat guy over the bridge, they would not be morally responsible –and for good reason. Ultimately (from the perspective of Coexistence: the choice would have lain with the fat man himself: his calculations between his expectations and resources and the expectations of the 5 people in the context of Coexistence. Had anyone else thrown him over, they would rightly be accused of murder and likely prosecuted as such. And even if the fat guy had not chosen to throw himself over the bridge to prevent something that fate created (something greater than us all (he would not be morally responsible. All he would be is a spectator to a horrible event –one, BTW, that will suffer a lot of guilt over it.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Rhizome 5/19/16 in which, bouncing off of Peter Cave’s beginner guide to ethics, I approach my looser more pragmatic approach to ethics:

“John Austin, a one-time close utilitarian friend of Mill, quipped that a man should not consult the common weal, the common welfare, before kissing his mistress: to do so would undermine the relationship the loving relationship and hence happiness. How would we feel were people to perform utilitarian calculations, or any calculations at all, before kissing us –or before keeping promises?”

And that’s just it, isn’t it? Do we really need such calculations, as ethics offers, to know that such things as rape, murder, or theft are wrong? We just know. And it seems to me that it is all we need to know. But then I tend to assume this which is likely why, up until this book was given to me by Philosophy Now, Ethics has been a point of negligence. Still, given my critical stance towards the dominance of producer/consumer Capitalism, I can hardly get around it. It is always there in that back and forth spectrum based on my revision of Will Durant’s concerns of philosophy:

Metaphysics/Ontology<>Epistemology/Logic<>Ethics/Aesthetics<>and the Social (the human condition/political

And make no mistake about it, given my critical stance towards producer/consumer Capitalism, I would love nothing more than to be able to prop up Kant’s DeOntic assertion that people should always be seen as an ends rather than a means. And I’m quite sure Marx would have shared the sentiment. Still, such DeOntic assertions can too often end up becoming authoritarian in nature. Flashing the badge of authority propped up on “reason”, they end up as power relationships as described by Foucault.

I would therefore stand by my pragmatic core and assert that we accept certain moral codes because they just work. Few of us want to be raped, murdered, or stolen from; therefore we agree not to do so to each other. It just seems to me that this is all we have: a perfectly human construct based on a perfectly human agreement –as well as perfectly subjective empathy.

At the same time (as I am finding out in this particular immersion: there is some value (in evolutionary terms even (in the pursuit of the holy grail of Ethics as it has been pursued. And we can take our cue from Wittgenstein in that, in the pursuit of that Holy Grail, we evolve through the language games we engage in.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Rhizome 5/21/16 in which I start a three day experiment quoting three paragraghs from Ronald Bogues's Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts and bounce off of them as they get at the heart of my relationship with Deleuze:

"Organisms and environments, then, are "mutually unfolded and enfolded structures" (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch) engaged in a process of bringing forth a world. And that world is not ruled by the logic of the "survival of the fittest." Natural selection (if one must use the term) does not prescribe what life forms will exist, but simply proscribes those life forms that are not viable. Within the broad constraints of survival and reproduction, mutually enfolded organisms engage in a process of "natural drift", exploring a vast range of possible lines of development. Those possibilities do not have to be the best (survival of the fittest) but simply good enough. The evolutionary process is "satisficing (taking a suboptimal solution that is satisfactory) rather than optimizing," and it proceeds via "bricolage, the putting together of parts and items in complicated arrays, not because of some ideal design but simply because they are possible."

First of all, let this be like a sharp edge driven into the heart of every basement overman (the Neo-Neitzscheian gospel of the fearlessly fanciful) I have or ever will encounter on these boards (in fact, every established thinker that based their nonsense on Social Darwinism: think Rand or Nozick. Let this be the knife that stabs the sacred cow of Nietzsche.

And now that that’s out of my system, what I mainly want to focus on here is the import of bricolage to Deleuze’s method or what could be said to be his agenda for philosophy. And I do so in full confession that I may be reading my own bricolage-like method into him. I may well be making my obsession his. Still, in my defense, this seems to be the agenda (the manifesto (he, with Guatarri, seems to be approaching in What is Philosophy when he claims that philosophy is about the creation of concepts. And while it was not explicitly said, I would infer from it (and everything else that I know about Deleuze (given that the creative act never seemed that far from his mind (that the primary point of philosophy is conceptual play for the sake of creating concepts.

And we can, as Bogue points out, reasonably found it in the nature of things. Consider, for instance, the nature of dreams and the recognition (as many creative people do: bricolage (that there is something about the mind that likes to juxtapose one thing on the other. As science is starting to discover, dreaming is mainly the result of brain activity when we sleep. So there is every possibility that what is happening is that the brain is doing a kind of inventory of its contents and randomly morphing various elements together until it finds certain patterns that resonate with and seduce it. It then turns those patterns into elements that it tends to repeat while morphing it (through a kind of experimentation (with other elements: repetition and difference. And I would note here a point brought to my attention in J. Allan Hobson’s very short introduction to Dreaming: that dreams may be, from the perspective of neuroscience, playing an important role in brain plasticity and, in fact, playing an important role in our evolution as a species via brain plasticity.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Rhizome 5/26/16 in which I answer Alexis’ question “Why do we dream?” and hopefully connect it with Ronald Bogue’s Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts:

I would first point out, that I am not responding here to school anyone on anything. I mainly point this out because I get the feeling from a lot of the responses to this question that it is coming from younger people who are going through that same phase I went through where one wants everything to feel magical. And I am perfectly aware of how it feels to have that magic sucked out of a thing. But for me, that process of demystification has played a crucial role in my process. Furthermore, there is ultimately no way of knowing I’m more correct now than I was then. I am merely offering an alternative possibility.

I just think that many of the responses are attributing more cognizance to the subconscious than it really deserves, a tendency I attribute to Freud or the misinterpretations of him. Beneath the languages we use to describe it with, the subconscious, as Neuroscience is pointing out to us, basically consists of pre-linguistic drives and impulses that, as they work their way to the surface, get translated into language: the very language we see taking form in our dream states as well as the discourses that tend to form around them. It just seems to me that the subconscious is not capable of the kind elaborate symbolic systems attributed to it by the dream dictionaries that emerged back in the 70’s.

I would argue that the very reason we dream is an extension of the very evolutionary process that went from single cell organisms to us. It is, as science has suggested, what facilitates brain plasticity: a kind of bricolage in which the brain and mind does a random inventory of its individual atoms of knowledge, randomly fuses them together into patterns, then, when it finds hybrids and patterns that resonate with and seduces it, stores them as individual patterns that it can randomly fuse with other mental atoms.

In other words, we dream for the same reason we create (creation involving a kind of bricolage similar to that of dreaming: to evolve as a species. And this is rooted in physical evolution. As Bogue points out:

"Organisms and environments, then, are "mutually unfolded and enfolded structures" (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch) engaged in a process of bringing forth a world. And that world is not ruled by the logic of the "survival of the fittest." Natural selection (if one must use the term) does not prescribe what life forms will exist, but simply proscribes those life forms that are not viable. Within the broad constraints of survival and reproduction, mutually enfolded organisms engage in a process of "natural drift", exploring a vast range of possible lines of development. Those possibilities do not have to be the best (survival of the fittest) but simply good enough. The evolutionary process is "satisficing (taking a suboptimal solution that is satisfactory) rather than optimizing," and it proceeds via "bricolage, the putting together of parts and items in complicated arrays, not because of some ideal design but simply because they are possible."

I would also note the import of those patterns that the brain/mind tends to repeat which, along with emotional content (a stormy sea for instance, is where we mainly need to be looking for meaning in. They’re basically refrains as described by Deleuze via Bogue:

“Roughly put, Deleuze’s contention is that the refrain is any rhythmic motif that may structure an organism’s milieu, territory, or social field, and that composers encounter and transform refrains when they create music.”

One only need look at their own creative process to understand this: that of repeating what we know (the refrain (until we somehow get beyond it.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Rhizome 5/27/16 in which I carry on thoughts about dreams without tying it down to Bogue’s book on Deleuze:

In tying my points down to Bogue and Deleuze, I neglected an answer I had developed as concerned Alexis’s question of why it is we dream, one that may be more fundamental than my point concerning its facilitating our evolution as a species.

Another concept we need to look at is intentionality: the fact (and may the wrath of Professor Strunk rest in its grave (that consciousness is always consciousness of something. In other words, in order for consciousness to exist, it has to, at bottom, perceive that it exists. It’s similar to the point that Descartes was getting at with his “cogito ergo sum.” And by some models of sleep patterns, there is a deep wave delta phase in which we experience nothing: the absence of consciousness. And at the risk of a anthropomorphic fallacy (even though it seems perfectly appropriate in this situation, isn’t there the possibility that consciousness, given the role of intentionality, might resist this state of nothingness: of not perceiving that it exists? I think of a line out of the movie Moonlighting by one of the elderly characters:

“I hate sleep! It’s too much like death.”

This would explain why, when we’re moving from a conscious to a sleep state, we have those twilight dreams (products of the beta state: we’re just laying there thinking until our thoughts become visual and something we fear comes at us and causes us to jolt awake. That would be consciousness resisting its own non-existence –that is until fatigue overcomes it. So it makes sense that the mind would create the dreams it does in order to be conscious of something.

We can take this phenomenological route to understand other aspects of dreams as well. For instance, we have all likely had the dream in which we’re running from something and finding ourselves unable to do so. As phenomenology describes: for every external event (noema), there is a corresponding internal event (noesis). Now think about when you’re running in the real world. What you’re working from and with is inertia and the mass of your legs. You basically ride on a kind of momentum. But that is a noematic phenomenon. Dream states, on the other hand, are pure noetic states. You have nothing more to work with than the veil of perceptions. Therefore, in that noetic state you completely lack the advantage of mass, inertia, and momentum.

This may also be why our dream landscapes always look so faded: in not confronting the noematic directly, we are always looking at the impressions (the recordings to use a Deleuzian term (left by it.

Lastly, as much I hate/and kind of love (maybe "like" would be a better word (being able to do so, I have to risk stealing the magic again. Lucid dreams are not what we think they are. I use to have them all the time. But what I eventually realized was that every time I did, I ended up doing the same thing: lift my legs under some force and start flying around. In other words, lucid dreams are not your conscious self participating in the dream. They are rather, your dream self (the same as in any dream (simply realizing they are in a dream as a kind of plot twist. At the same time, after I realized this, I did have another lucid dream in which I was in a house with my dead father. When I realized he was dead, I chose something different than flying. I realized I was free to grope every woman in the house and took full advantage. This, of course, is not something my real self would choose to do. And my father was a bit of a perv which suggests a bit of an associative connection.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Rhizome 5/28/16 in which I push deeper into Deleuze’s concept of the refrain via Bogue’s book (BTW, thanks William​ (on his relation to the arts:

“The refrain territorializes chaos in forming a milieu; it deterritorializes milieu components and reterritorializes them in a territory proper; and deterritorializing forces constantly play through the territory, thereby opening it to the cosmos as a whole. Yet the basic function of the refrain is “essentially territorial, territorializing or reterritorializing, whereas music makes of it a deterritorialized content for a deterritorializing form of expression." The refrain, then, is “a way of impeding”, of conjuring music or doing away with it.” Music takes the refrain as its content and transforms it by entering into a process of “becoming” that deterritorializes the refrain.”

I would also paraphrase Frost in an interview:

“We rise out of disorder into order. I would sooner write free verse as play tennis with the net down.”

I would also note his dual refrain in the poem “Mending Wall”:

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”

“Good fences make good neighbors, my neighbor says.”

Once again: the creative act never seems that far from Deleuze’s mind. But then it is not uncommon for any creative person to refer to the nature of the act they are engaged in. Most creative acts (if not all (end up being self referencing in that they are a manifesto for the individual’s particular mode of operation.

And we can see the roots of Deleuze’s respect for the refrain in Difference and Repetition based on the analytic/metaphysical assertion that even a pure repetition, at best, can only be different instances of the same thing; therefore, the only thing that can truly be repeated is difference.

And we see it all over the creative act. This is why, for instance, the refrain in Ginsberg’s “Howl” is so powerful to us: because it was powerful enough to him to set off a whole chain of associations. And anyone that has written poetry knows this. But it is not just within the work itself; the refrain is important as well in the life of creative –that is if they are to be creative. Think, for instance, of a dialogue out of Cronenberg’s The Fly in which Jeff Goldblum describes Einstein’s wardrobe. According to it, if you had looked into Einstein’s closet, what you would have seen was a repetition of the same uniform: a refrain. The reason he did this was because he didn’t want to waste a lot of mental energy on deciding what he wanted to wear that day.

(And I would note here how this goes to my concept of efficiency: the lowering of resources exerted towards one thing so that they can be exerted towards something more important.)

That said, what I hope to get into tomorrow is how, as Deleuze sees it, such repetitions: refrains (via becoming (become a path to social justice: a source of empathy which is all we really need to make things right.

We repeat ourselves to get beyond ourselves.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Rhizome 5/29/16:

“That said, what I hope to get into tomorrow is how, as Deleuze sees it, such repetitions: refrains (via becoming (become a path to social justice: a source of empathy which is all we really need to make things right.

We repeat ourselves to get beyond ourselves.” –from rhizome 5/28/16

"Music, then, is a form of becoming, and it is "inseparable" from three specific forms of becoming, , "a becoming-woman, a becoming-child, a becoming-animal (with a becoming molecular implicit in all three).... Why a becoming-woman, -child, -animal? Social coding operates by way of asymmetrical binary oppositions, in Western societies through an implicit privileging of male over female, adult over child, rational over animal, white over colored, etc. A becoming deterritorializes such codes and in its operations necessarily engages the underprivileged term of each of these binary oppositions. Hence, "There is no becoming-man, for man is the molar entity par excellence, whereas becomings are molecular". –From Ronald Bogue’s Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts

“We’re going to build a wall; and the Mexicans are going to pay for it.” –Donald Trump

If we really think about it, we can easily see how Trump’s phallocentric and molar nonsense might appeal to republicans and the right. He comes off as the tightfisted patriarchal figure that will brush everyone aside and, seeing the simple answer in the midst of confusion, heroically set everything straight. And this, of course, appeals to fancy which, as described by Coleridge , is characteristic of intellectual and creative laziness that, in its laziness, fails to make the transition to imagination: the molecular understanding of the actual complexities involved in the issue of migration –not the to mention the simple detail that Mexico is not likely to comply. The frightening irony at work here is that the Republicans, in their molar simplicity, are basically supporting Trump (as they do many republican candidates (that is despite their many references to Stalin in reaction to progressive policies (for the very same reason that Russia supported Stalin at the end of the Russian revolution: he was a tightfisted can do kind of guy. And the same can be said for Hitler.

And as a progressive in the Midwest, I can see this phallocentric and molar dynamic all over the right. I mean there is a reason they also tend to talk about hunting and listen to country music, why the underlying message is always: keep things simple. It’s always about empowerment. I mean take a poll at any Nascar race and you’re likely to find that most of them are Republicans. Any sporting event for that matter –most of which will be sponsored by Bud: the hard beer. Of course, one has to wonder what happens when the system tells them: sorry guy’s, there is no longer enough fossil fuel left to support wasting it on trivial races. Will their fanciful selves come up with government conspiracies aimed at bringing down white males?

It is this present human and social condition that makes Deleuze’s emphasis on becoming (via creative play with concepts (bricolage if you will (so important.

We become to evolve. It takes creativity to do so: the transition from fancy to imagination (the molar to the molecular. And if we don’t evolve (become more feminine or childlike or animal (I really do love my dog because my dog really loves me, we may well end up destroying ourselves.

I mean there is a reason that most creative people tend to be progressive and, in America, support the Democratic Party.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

Contrary to previous issues I may have had with Rorty (the suggestion that it was the equivalent of going back to Ginsberg’s Howl in poetry (I find myself fumbling around at the edges of my comfort zone in his Essays on Heidegger and Others. The main thing to put in mind here is that these quotes are from the essay in which Rorty attempts to pinpoint the pragmatic aspect of Heidegger while Heidegger, himself, attempted to distance himself from pragmatism. At the same time, it has given me a glance into the deeper implications of pragmatism.

"We change them [the Kantian categories] (as, for example, we changed from an Aristotelian to a Newtonian understanding of space and time) whenever such a change enables us better to fulfill our desires by making things more readily manipulitable.

Once we take this final step, once human desires are admitted into the criterion of "truth", the last remnants of the Platonic idea of knowledge as contact with an underlying nonhuman order disappear. We have become pragmatists."

Starting with the simple implications at work here, I would first note the suggestion that the revolutionary aspect of pragmatism lies in its willingness to accept the role that desire (what I like to call resonance and seduction (plays in our philosophical assertions: the fact (and may the wrath of Strunk rest in its grave (that, contrary to the highest hopes of scientism and the analytics, there is simply no way around it. The nuance and subtlety of it lies in connecting this with the recognition that language is not just a signifier/signified relationship, but more so (that is if we look at it in evolutionary terms (an act we engage in with other members of our species in order to achieve certain effects. And in this sense of it we can see the pragmatic overlap between Rorty’s pragmatism and the pragmatism of Deleuze.

At the same time, I would point out Rorty’s distance from Heidegger (that is as I understand it (in that Heidegger took this model as a kind of unavoidable downward escalator from Plato to Pragmatism. Heidegger saw it as a degradation to the technological frame of mind: that which saw everything around it as something to be utilized. Heidegger opposed to this technological frame of mind the import of Being. This is why he emphasized the import of the poetic approach to philosophy. The problem was, out of his ambition to touch history, he turned the poetic approach into a kind of mystical and esoteric hierarchy in which he would serve as the high priest.

In order to appreciate this, we only need look at the uses that such French writers like Deleuze, Foucault, and Lacan put obscurity in exposition to as compared to that of Heidegger’s. For the French, it was basically a matter of writing in the language they were comfortable in based on their own processes in the hope that their readers would extract (steal even (for the sake of what they could use for their own processes. As Barthes put it: writerly text. This would be the democratic approach. Heidegger, however, was more authoritarian and hierarchal in that he saw his obscure exposition as something you had to study hard in order to reach the level he was at. In other words: he clearly had a guru complex –much like Manson and Hitler did. This would be the authoritarian approach. And as Rorty described Heidegger: a swharzhaug hick.

And he should have known better as Rorty points out describing Heidegger:

"That is to say: Being, which Plato thought of as something larger and stronger than us, is there only as long as as we are here. The relation between it and us are not power relations."

In other words, we cannot, as Heidegger recognized, separate our being from Being. Still, Heidegger, out of a mystical ambition, attempted to achieve guru status by recognizing it when, in fact, all talk of Being is little more than an act we engage in order to achieve a given end: guru status in the case of Heidegger.

I hope I haven’t totally fucked this up.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

“To say that it [literature] is more fruitful is just to say that, when you weigh the good and the bad the social novelists have done against the good and bad the social theorists have done, you find yourself wishing that there had been more novels and less theory.” –from Rorty’s Essays on Heidegger and Others

I would first offer one criticism before I throw myself in with Rorty. This isn’t totally fair in that it seems to be the theory itself that caused the problems. But as I like to say: ideology (therefore theory (does nothing; people, on the other hand, do. And we can assume here that he is mainly reacting to what happened in communist countries under the banner of Marx. But the atrocities committed were not the result of theory itself. They were, rather, the result of baser impulses reading what they wanted into theory and using that to do what they would have naturally done without the theory. This is the result of trickle-down nature of theory –that which always involves misinterpretation. For instance, Marxism did not exterminate 6 million plus people. (Marx would have been appalled.) Stalin did. And I would note this for all the American Republicans that happen to read this. When the Russian people voted in Stalin to bring in the communist revolution, they did so for very same reason that many Americans vote in Republicans: he seemed, being an ex-military man, like the tight-fisted can-do kind of guy that could get the job done.

That said, I tend to agree with Rortys nominalist sentiment here in that, first of all, literature (as well as cinema (does tend to have more effect on the general population for the very reason he describes: it gives us an opportunity to get into the lives of people unlike us; it allows for empathy which, to me, is the only moral or ethical code we need work by. But more importantly, to me at least, it confronts the issue of theoretical inertia: the tendency of a body to resist a change in motion. This involves static inertia (a body standing still (or dynamic: a body in motion. And from a nominalist perspective we have to work in between the two as concerns social and political policy. On one hand, we have theoretical laziness (static inertia (which we can see in Stalin and Trump and his followers. On the other, we have theoretical overreach (such as can sometimes be seen in Zizek and extreme leftist interpretations in which the eight-ball being black takes on sinister connotations (I actually heard this theory posed (that have no practical application to the problems at hand. Now granted: we need people to think a little more. This is pointed out in American talk shows in which people are offered questions about actual facts (geographical, political as concerns our system (and get them wrong; or, in the case of Jimmy Kimmel, asked to comment on false information to which the respondents act as if they are true. But I personally don’t need every worker in the world to read Das Kapital in order to know they are being exploited.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the conceptual play of theory. It’s what we turn to philosophy for. Our poetry. But when it comes to social and political policies, we need to set our esoteric egos aside, give up the ether-speak, and start speaking clearly in terms of real world solutions to real world problems. We simply cannot expect everyone to rise to the level of philosophical discourse. Therefore, it is up to us to disseminate it.
d63
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Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

"Still, pace Culler, I think that all of us -Derridideans and pragmatists alike- should try to work ourselves out of our jobs by conscientiously blurring the literature-philosophy distinction and promoting the idea of a seamless, undifferentiated "general text"." -from Rorty's Essays on Heidegger and Others

"Before the Appearance of books like M. H. Abrams The Mirror and the Lamp, it often did not occur to students of English literature to read Hegel. During the same period, students of analytic philosophy were encouraged to keep their reading in literature well clear of their philosophical work and to avoid reading German philosophy between Kant and Frege. It was widely believed that reading Hegel rotted the brain. (Reading Nietzsche and Heidegger was thought to have even worse effects -doing so might cause hair to sprout in unwonted places, turning one into a snarling beast.)" -Ibid

It would appear that Rorty’s dream is coming true. But it’s not because it sounded like a good idea (which it did), but rather out of necessity. This becomes evident in how issue-based contemporary philosophy has become as can be seen in the in the Philosophy Talk podcasts and issues of Philosophy Now. And it stands to reason. I mean you can only rehash the old Philosophy 101 issues so many times. And even the poststructuralist and postmodern attempts to revamp them in novel/avant garde ways can only go so far.

To give an example, I would point to the history of Philosophy Talk. For a long time, it mainly focused on the basics such as the philosophy of mind or certain philosophers or movements. But lately, it has become more issue based –that is based on whatever book a given philosopher (sometimes not even a philosopher) has written on a current issue.

And I see no problem with that. In fact, I see blurring those lines as the next evolutionary step. And going by Deleuze and Guatarri model of machinic production, of seeing ourselves (the intellectually and creatively curious) as little more than nodes in a system of exchange, I see it as our only hope (as a culture) of getting beyond the next creative hymen through the momentum created by breaking down the barriers (the deterritorialization) of the various disciplines. In this sense, we’re left with Rorty’s way of distinguishing philosophy from other disciplines: a matter of those who have happened to have read a given body of text: Hegel, Kant, Deleuze, Rorty,etc. etc..

At the same time, I see a place for the purists and specialists in that they, given their focus, may be able to arrive at understandings that those of a more synoptic/holistic approach may not be able to. But once they have, nothing stands against the more synoptic approach stealing it and using it to their own ends. As T.S. Eliot said:

“Mediocre poets imitate. Great poets steal.”

Of course, I’m working from the perspective of one who likes the idea of taking in a lot of influence from a lot of different sources and seeing what I can produce because of it.
d63
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Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

“We can, first of all (and from the feel of it: the hysteria involved, assume that it is a form of neurosis in a very Freudian sense. As I often like to joke: it always feels like someone so busy trying to convince everyone else that they’re not gay that you’re never really sure they have convinced their selves.”

I think one of the main reasons this became important enough to write about is that, in America, the hysteria of homophobia rears its ugly head, yet again, over bathroom use based on gender identity for transsexuals. And working where I do, around a group of tight-fisted wrench monkeys, I am getting a front row seat to it. On top of that, we recently had a local event in which a young transsexual male was assaulted for trying enter the women’s restroom at a bar by some guy who had a girlfriend in that same line. Now I’m quite certain the guy who did it was having all these fantasies about his self being some kind of white knight riding up on his white stead seeking to defend the virtue of his princess. But what this particular Lancelot, in his lack of capacity for self scrutiny, was in denial about was the fact that even if the transsexual had used the men’s room, he would have likely gotten his ass kicked for making some white knight uncomfortable.

The fact of the matter is that the guy who perpetrated the assault was little more than a thug: a bully who, like many bullies, picked out the most vulnerable male available to him to prove how tough he was.

But more to the point is how I’m seeing homophobic hysteria playing out over new laws about gender identity and what bathroom they use. First of all, it pretty much comes down to the same thing that has characterized a lot of reactionary resistance to gay rights: a lot of worry over nothing: fancies. What these guys fail to get is that, either way it works, it will always involve the privacy (and isolation from sight (of a stall. If it is a man becoming woman, it will be a matter of either bathrooms that only have stalls or one toilet bathrooms as most bars utilize. If it is a woman becoming man, then due to their physical mechanics, they will be forced to use a stall. The only time we might have to worry is if they start installing urinals in women's restrooms.

The one reaction and concern I got to the issue (the one that, in some weird way, seems almost reasonable (proves to be silly and little more than a misdirect as well: the idea that some men might dress up as women in order to be able to leer at women in bathrooms. And I am not kidding here. I have literally heard this argument made. First of all, this seems like a pretty extreme measure to go to in order to look at women while they’re doing something that I, as a heterosexual male, would prefer to think that they’re above doing. But more important, it fails to recognize that lewd conduct laws would tend to kick in if males dressed as women stood in front of a stall and stared at a woman as she was taking care of her business.

Hysteria, by definition, is complete nonsense based on a few reasonable assertions. But more importantly, given our situation, it has become a distraction from very real problems. Note, for instance, the success of Trump based on hysteria. I still would argue that most of following he has built comprises of dispossessed tea baggers.
d63
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Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

In the Great Course’s lecture I am listening to, 20th Century Culture, Professor Lloyd Kramer makes an argument based on a dialectic between positivism and anti-positivism. And I do consider it a legitimate model –it really has been a fruitful experience. At the same time, I would offer an alternative model that covers the whole of our cultural history: the dialectic between classical realism (that which claims that we can know reality perfectly if we have the right tools (and the nihilistic perspective: that which sees everything we can say about reality as ultimately breaking down to assumptions that float on thin air.

It can, for instance, be seen in Socrates’ proclamation (or starting point (that he knew nothing. Now this is not to say he was, by any measure, nihilistic. Given the dialectic we are talking about here, the classicist realist position represents the diametrical opposite of the nihilistic perspective. At the same time, it was that claim to know nothing that was at the beginning of a long process undermining assumptions with other assumptions that, in turn, were undermined by other assumptions that, in turn, had to be undermined.

In other words, it has always been a process of elite, hierarchal forms of thinking being continually undermined by those who had to suffer the results. Take, for instance, Socrates’ claim which was passed on to us via Plato’s dialogues. While it was an expression of the nihilistic perspective, Plato used it to eventually establish a republic (a hierarchy (analogically based on mind, emotion, and body. While there was an assumption of ignorance, there was still an assumption that that starting point could lead to a perfect understanding of reality. Of course, after a while of suffering autocracies based on Plato’s model (the idea that those in charge were of superior mind and reason (we made the romantic break that gave emotion and sensation (body (equal status with mind and reason. Or to put it another way: Plato’s appeal was the result of civilization being relatively young. We had just crawled out of the muck, if you will. Therefore, the dominate sensibility was: civilization and all it produces good; nature bad. With the romantic break we see a return to the muck.

And that process (that back and forth (has gone on since. Hence the most accurate expression (the end game (of the nihilistic perspective in postmodern culture of which American Pragmatism is a more accessible form.
d63
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Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:55 pm

Re: Postcards:

Post by d63 »

“I like the term "subjectivism" since all we have was subjective in the mind of at least one person, finally becoming intersubjective when embraced by all. Nihilism is to tear down or oppose, and what else but realism and associated circular reasoning? Anyone who opposes realism is a nihilist in that context.” –David McDivitt

“Nihilism: A theory promoting the state of believing in nothing, or of having no allegiances and no purposes. The term is incorrectly used to characterize all persons not sharing some particular faith or particular set of values.” –from Simon Blackburn’s Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy

First of all, I mainly point out Blackburn’s entry because it was the catalyst for what, for me, evolved into my embrace of the nihilistic perspective -that is to point out the subtle differences while maintaining a connection. The main distinction here is the difference between saying one believes in nothing and being tapped in to the underlying nothingness of things –hence the confusion. By focusing on the belief in nothing, we end up with the cliché of the non-chalant individual dressed in black and full of doom, gloom, and destruction and punctuating every statement with “not that it matters anyway.” But by being tapped into the underlying nothingness (even if it is taken in a metaphorical sense (that implied by the fact that things are when they could very well not be and that all statements about reality break down to assumptions that ultimately float on thin air (we begin to see the former cliché as a failure to understand the actual implications of “believing in nothing.” It puts the cart before the horse by assuming that nothing must, by necessity, have a fixed trajectory towards negativity and destruction when, in fact, nothing, by its inherent nature could not possibly have such a fixed trajectory. For instance, from the nihilistic perspective, while there is no solid foundation for following a given moral principle (since they are human constructs (there is equally no solid foundation for not embracing it.

And to prop up my digression from Blackburn’s description, I would point out the etymology of the word itself. We first have Nihil which means nothing (or nothingness (and “ism” which suggests a belief system based on it. Nothing about it fixes the meaning of nothing on the more superficial/social way the cliché the trendy nihilist does. Still, I felt it necessary to make a distinction by taking about the nihilistic perspective.

“Would 'skepticism' be a better term here instead of 'nihilism'?” –Steven Orsolini

As I see it, Steven, Skepticism is just an expression of the nihilistic perspective. Skepticism, like existentialism, is the nihilistic perspective with an excuse. Skepticism continually has to justify itself by undermining any argument presented to it. The nihilistic perspective, on the other hand, sees no need to. It just is what it is. This is because it is not something you can look straight on. It glances the corner of the eye. Therefore, the minute you start to talk about it (in other words: justify it (you have lost it completely. I would finish with a point I made elsewhere:

“Basically, what you are engaging in here is the same language game that other Neo-Classicists have with the skeptic’s paradox. It is the same dynamic. And it becomes more interesting and telling (and you will know what I mean) when you group the nihilistic perspective with skepticism:


Say you approach a skeptic and the nihilistic perspective with the argument:


“You cannot say there are no absolute truths since to do so is to try to establish an absolute in itself.”


The skeptic will do what they’re naturally disposed to do: scrutinize. And, eventually, they will come to see it for what it is, a language game, and recognize that there is a big difference between saying we live in a world in which there are no absolutes and actually living in one. The nihilistic perspective, on the other hand, will just glare at you, cross its arms, and snort:


“Right. Nothing is engraved in stone; not even that nothing is engraved in stone. What’s your fucking point?””
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