images of being-human

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entry for no one

March 3, 2012 / alex posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, universal nothing / No Comments

in a time magazine article the most significant thing i found was a single line saying, “america’s unofficial religion of personal self transformation”

this is true, i feel. and nowhere can it be better exemplified than on the internet where people write about things they are doing and going through.

also, our commercials are so terrible. so wonderful at being terrible. the marketing for any product becomes a hermenuetics exercise to deploy it so it’s central to whatever it we are doing. products are angling that way too; not just like children’s cereal where it’s coco for coco puffs, or trix — not even fantasy nonsense, like lowes wants you to catalog everything your house is made of so you can plan your improvements on there. the deployment is to centralize everything. facebook or microsoft’s the cloud, whatever, my phone (the android one, i have two cell phones) is in some sense more important than my wallet! (although more secure..)

so the connection is that products can transform you too. make you a better person. re-center you. like religion or jesus or a good song… transformative. everything is transformative. embrace the mysticism. those pictures and text ppl are posting on fb now, an extension of lolcats and those inspirational posters — they are so misleading. those universal statements dont mean anything. they are quick bits that may or may not be applied as one likes. but reading it can make you feel good. it’s hypocritical CRAP that can be as a quick justification for any kind of good or bad behavior.

are we so lost that we can’t think for ourselves? we need random one-liners to let us feel like we are making progress?

the whole stupidity of the self transformation junk is that we aren’t transforming anywhere. we dont have a goal, or even a path to find anything. its like some bad acid trip that doesn’t lead anywhere or do anything. it’s not even enough to say this: Report: it all some kind of sick joke because to say the universe cares or not cares, or that it is playing a joke already says too much. anthromorphozie anything you like but it doesn’t lead to any real relationships. lacan was somewhat right — there are no real relationships, only shared fantasies that match up incidentally. if we can’t even see eye to eye with each other what chance is there for us to comprehend what goes on around us?

i suppose the easiest thing to do would be to narrow the scope. fuck the rest of the world, this is about America. or this is about my Family. Or our small group of friends, or even Los Angeles… in our post-cold war environment we still live with the spectre of the apocalypse, and in that sense, we already live in the post-apocalyptic world. we live it daily, pondering disaster scenarios; who we would try to band with, what matters to us when the clock resets… even if it’s only in genre zombie films… so we narrow it to the small band of strangers we are with on a multi-player game on the internet, or whatever — and so meaning has its place in tiny day to day movements, such as get this loan funded, or drive to this place and get a meal with a friend. you could live your life in vietnam so to speak, only worry about yourself day to day and all your past life is so far away.

after 9/11 happened some of us found out or whatever and didnt think much of it. i still drove to school even after my mom told me the 1st tower had been hit (i was in bed). traffic was horrible. i heard about the 2nd tower on my way to school on the radio. i got really good parking. the class was taoism, the first time i was taking it. the professor, a really old woman from montana with bright blue eyes, stood as straight as a rail and was a pedagogical nazi said a few worlds that we needed to hear. our class was there at 1030, mostly because we didn’t know what else to do… and she dismissed us for 2 weeks saying that everyday there is pain around us, all around the world. we just dont always know it because it’s not always in our face. but to be one with the world is to understand that pain is there, and to deal with it daily on a moment to moment basis. and not just pain, but happiness and joy and suffering — all of it at once. not about the things we are limited to in our immediate surrounding but also the whole spectrum of possible feeling. this is something that a sage gets and can deal with, not more easily, but is more prepared for because the spectrum is always open.

transformation is a stupid word. because only when we have a script in a movie, the clever ending is one in which we find we have the answer already. the clever loop gives us back our ability to deal with our depression because we had the answer all along — or we are the answer (like 5th element). and of course, yes, a movie is manufactured, with scripting and acting and takes 1 2 3 and writers and sets… but that’s just one possible narrative of all the narratives that happen simultaneously all the time. its just that the space and time continuum selects for just one narrow band at a time. the virtual unity is omnipresent and is not peaceful, or happy or blissful or accepting. it’s got everything all at once. like when krnsa revealed to arjuna his ‘real face’ in the bhagavad gita and arjuna (who is the avatar for the god indra but does not know it) is scared shitless seeing the naked face of a god…but only able in his mortal form to see just a part of that sublime texture. and that’s not ironic or anything. it’s just that our language based metaphysics which only abstractly supports intuitive concepts like “ontology” is unable to grasp situations that originate out of context, out of the humanity which is the foundation for language.

ive been watching alot of tv lately as my mind has been unable to function. i think i am not inspired by a task i see so clearly in the abstract but when writing it out becomes garbled…

steven colbert told a joke to a minister it went something like this.. an atheist committed suicide. he went to heaven and met god and he was like omg! i was wrong, all this, i was so wrong. there is a heaven! and a god! and why aren’t i in hell? don’t ppl who commit suicide go to hell? and god said yes, but it’s complicated. after all, everyone who has ever been has contemplated suicide at one point. in fact, i thought of doing it once. and the atheist said, well, why didn’t you? what stopped you? well, god said, i thought, what if this is all there is?

you know, the language that surrounds the thesis statement makes the difference. in phrases like “i always sit up straight because i am worried someone will see me” are always ambiguous to me. even if i agree with the first part, the reason for it may not be something i agree with. so do i agree with the conclusion because it’s the conclusion (sitting up straight) even though the reason for it may be completely off? do i vote for a candidate who will effect the changes i want even if he is a complete loon? do actions speak louder than words? and if they do, if actions is all that matters, then actually, there is no such thing as a lie and the entire edifice of language is only for its perlocutionary acts… and i guess, this means that truth is really only the lie — the ultimate lie — that is there is truth… there must be truth, so that we can do what we need to do.

eg, it doesnt matter if nature dies, or if humankind exists, only that the last human alive has a “happy life”. and for all intents and purposes you are the last human alive.

whatever “happy life” means.

so there you go. there’s the clever line. it returns us back to what we knew before, another selected potential in the virtual narrative web of all realities. living life in that abstract, is a dance — select the appropriate form of all possible* forms you have at your disposal.

*possible or potential is wrong here, because when i say virtual i mean that it’s real, just as real as what is reality, the difference is that the virtual is not-selected. while i use potential and virtual near-interchangably, strictly speaking, possible means that it is only different from reality in that it lacks reality. virtual is real in that the relationships are real, just not expressed.

not-being here

February 24, 2012 / alex posted in images of being-human, Uncategorized, universal nothing / No Comments

Kristeva explains abjection as an excess of uncaptured emotion. She uses the word ‘chora’ which comes from greek, something about empty vessels. Energy that is loose. Uncaptured emotion can levitate internal signs, giving to feelings of euphoria, or of mystical revelation.

Uncaptured emotion too, can lead to excessive disgust, the threat of degradation, of disrupting what we hold to be true. Trying to step people out of their box, when they don’t ask for it, often leads to an unconscious warding of this disgust. Question too hard and you will destroy their precious containers, ruin their beloved files. As such, they will try and explain away the threads you create for them, that lead them out of their box. Patch up the holes, and say, hey, this makes no sense.

When it does make sense, its just that they don’t want to go there.

Careful or you’ll break society for them.

Of course, you won’t break society for them. They’ll realign it, just at a different level, and incorporate your new information as a ‘negative’ in their schema.

For Kristeva at least, it’s all a matter of semiotics, of texts, of signs and their captured emotion. Captured emotion is determinate, discrete and safe. Poetry, for example, looses these bonds by butting signs against one another in new ways. Little sparks of emotion are let loose and that feels exciting. For some, poetry is abject. They don’t want that loose emotion rolling around. What are you supposed to do with it? For others, it’s pleasurable because they can roll with it.

Kristeva says poetry will change society by introducing new meanings. Nowadays, poetry is the least of our concerns. There’s plenty more on youtube that introduce new significations… for example… in an “in your face” kind of way.

One thing in common with euphoria and abjection is that the excess of emotion always trails off into the void of the unsignified. This may be a cosmic expression of the Sacred Other or it could be a horrific abyss where we lose touch with everything. This is actually both, depending deployment.

Still though, to say this is real and expect that all emotion be encapsulated, that the mystery itself be contained, is perhaps asking too much of intellect. Knowing how it happens, or knowing tragedy is such depending on one’s point of view does not eliminate the void, and its powerful statement it makes on us, the void in each of us.

What I am indirectly talking about appears to be jnana — one of the indian paths to enlightenment, not by love, (as with hari krishna for example, devotion to krishna) but through knowledge… but really I am speaking of how the void lives in all of us and we are the void. To be in it and one with it, approaches the vector of calmness. Sort of a reverse game of ‘who has it’ which is how we view Supermen, like Natman, or has the understanding/key to everything… except in this one we see that the one ‘who has it’ actually does not, and while he appears to, presents to everyone else that they really do not have it.

at this point you might as well read this article by roger ebert: being there

a debonair affluence of imprecision begets the kernel of being “a” rather than being “some”

February 21, 2012 / alex posted in dialectics, images of being-human, life as we know it, Theory / No Comments

a debonair affluence of imprecision begets the kernel of being “a” rather than being “some”

how being philo-subject is being psychoanalytical

basically getting ‘better’ means to shrink one’s self. we think of getting better as increasing in numeric value, like you are a level 1 and that’s where you start. when you achieve expert you are level 7, or something. or as with weaving there are 304 distinct levels. with vietnamese cooking there are 72 levels. with american ‘southern’ cooking there are 55. like that. with piano, there is 677. and they have marginal stages of increasing complexity and clarity.

but in fact the increase in numeric value represents not an increase in height (if you think 2 dimensionally) but in fact, an increase in density if you think within an additional dimension. what i mean to say is that as one gets better one gets more condense. you discriminate more between what was previously ‘the same’ and your margin for preciseness shrinks. as a result, as you become a more specialized attorney, your area of practice gets more niche and your ability to draw meaningful divisions is more refined into smaller and smaller tools. this is true of coding as well. when you are a generalist programmer you draw broad strokes. but when you get into the nitty gritty, you need to do more with less lines. the lines themselves stand for more, and you take less moves to do the same thing.

like wise, it is as though an artist who has mastered it can do with one stroke what a new artist might take with twenty. or a poet can say with one line what a klutz might grumble on and on about. you get what i am saying.

so we tighten our belts and sink into the same. it’s like, you take the modules for granted but then, you eventually learn to take those modules apart and deal directly with them too.

this extra dimension might be dealt with as a spiral too; going up. if you see it in two dimensions, it’s a constant return, a swaying, an oscillation between two poles. but in fact, you are overcoding one side as you overcode the other. when we have arranged this west end with the new paradigm, the east end must be arranged. and when the east has been arranged with the new consequences, the west must also be arranged. this oscillation is our attention returning to one and then returning back to the other, as change ripping throughout the block. as the block becomes more complex, its grains noted in ever smaller detail, so must we always return back to basics. our foundation shifts ever so slightly.

often, a single oscillation is needed as the theme, then variation and then recapitulation. a sonata or rondo must repeat its A and B themes if it is to complete itself. you start at home, go on a journey in which you introduce variations and different moves, and then return home to reincorporate those moves into a new kernel.

sometimes we want more than a single oscillation. in ravel’s bolero , with each return, we get a louder, more present presence, one in which we can note what was single birds to be a gigantic bird, with the feathers in your face, up close and without the framing of a concert.

this intensive view, this microscoping of a particular was mistaken in phenoemnology of spirit by hegel to be the becoming universal of a particular. and when you are swallowed by the particular up close, thrown into the void like alice through the rabbit hole, you are in it, and it is empty as it is spacious — completely enveloping you as the Notion. be it a religious universality or a cultural whole for which you are both citizen and state, one with the community, one with itself A:A if you like ayn rand.

blast those particulates though. when you zoom back you, you at once see it is a liebnizetian game, each particular a monad running through other monads, commenting and interlocking, intertextual and at once phenomenological and transcendental as we can note monads overwriting monads like a web of individuals in a community, influencing each other, a shifting complex of community consciousness we suppose, as in the movie magnolia. magnolia is another modernist story, one in which we both investigate the graininess of the images and come out of that investigation with a supramacy of kernel, of intensiveness that we can only note as a ‘thing’ a unified whole as characters are commentators on one another, each a progressive level of difference, embedded in one another as a density, a unit you cannot escape, self contained, finite and yet boundary-less.

so depending on how you want to cut your rabbit hole, you can be big alice or small alice, and in either end of the jaberwocky you have either too crampt a house or too empty a room. either a/the Notion or the/a particular.

i suppose the question is often answered within the context of its functionality. if it goes together, and best juxtaposes one another then it is a unit. fingering on a piano is hard to separate from understanding the layout of her scales. and a pianist is hard to divide from the piano especially as the piano continually molds the pianist into her shape-becoming- like a lover who has a favorite position he insists on so the other lover eventually gets to being in it. one is hard to separate from the other so that they are most easily referred to as one.

in that way it is appropriate that lovers have offspring, be it homo or hetereo, when they self-organize into units that become-… best expressed in a new subject, a confluence of tangents that uniquely entwine, carrying with them, the comments of the foundation where they were level 1. in this sense, the reaction of an offspring is still the legacy of the parent. so we return too, to that headspace in how each of us is an interwoven complexity, a multitude of indeterminate, indistinct successions, best known to go with one another as me.

i got a little off topic, but so, the with each oscillation be it a meaningful distinction, a deeper delving of each grain requires additional geometric or even exponential energies to microscope. one resists that attention even as one desires it, as shrinking into a smaller space requires alice to shed herself, what was unnecessary to that smaller space.

indeed it is hard and harder to become experter and experter.

on Art

September 17, 2011 / alex posted in art, images of being-human, life as we know it, manifesto, rhizomatic architecture / No Comments

Sculpture is the most ideal art. Music is the most pragmatic. Dance is the most expressive.

The dream of the artist is to inscribe in the space inside the body outside the body. It’s very much as what Deleuze said regarding the inscription of great books being written in flesh.

I don’t mean that art should be tattooed, but that it should connect what is internal with what is external.

Yet art is not limited to the permeation of membranes or the echo of a model in the head of an artist to the exterior, nor does art have to do with the fidelity of transmission between an external source with an internal experience.

The worst artist is one who carefully conceives of his creations as a matter of controlling the experience of his audience — about transmitting a message, of needing to supplement their art with a libretto or scoffing at those who do not understand their art. Art as a capitalist endeavor is owned, but art as art is experiential germination not teleological. Art is not an essay, it is not about message or medium, although essays can be art. Mediums themselves may be art, and messages can certainly have that artistic impulse.

Rather, to make art is to germinate a form with its ambivalence and its multi-valence and its integral congruity such that the experience of that form extends itself naturally within the substrate of a manifold.

So while each of us are manifolds, select reflections of the world around us, our manifold itself is permeated by forces beyond us from the outside. Those forces can reverberate within our manifold to manifest a chamber of interlaced experience. That vibration, be it pleasurable or stinging — be it without judgement is the result of art. Great art can lead us to intenser vibrations.

Although of course, we judge such vibrations on the face of pleasurable experiences, or singular expressions in allowed social spaces. The accidental death of a parent, or the purposeful interruption of employment can both be traumatic instances, but not permissible within the social realm of ‘art’.

This is how sculpture can be the most ideal form. In the rigidity or fluidity of material, we can experience the visual (and tensile) sensuousness of a form that interrupts a space we are in and informs us of an otherworldly experience. Traditional otherworldly statues of Gods and Demons, plants and other creatures can invoke in us the presence of a static creature such as Venus de Milo. More contemporaneous forms vary in their simplicity or texture to suggest the raw indeterminacy of a gesture — perhaps highlighting the specificity of a bird in space as with Brâncu?i.

In much the same way, music allows for the literal and synecdochiac reverberation of rhythms and beats that bounce within the antechambers of our manifold. We literally vibrate with sounds that resonate with us. As the rhythms align the internal weave of our core, as it is already pre-made with alliterations from familiar genres and languages, so does speech and poetry jolt us with the strength of its diastole and systolic pistons such that we get the hip shaking, head pounding one-step, a halfway intrusion into the expressive realm of Dance.

If you follow me so far, you will understand the how dance and other forms likewise fall under art.

Great art is not the germination of a thought, so much as it is the construction brand new memetics, not of the replication of cliches and icons — although there are room for these too, as art. Art can be any kind of verbal or non-verbal language, it is a modal set operating on other modal sets. And we human subjects are not the only manifolds, although that is our best experience of alien worlds that weave worldly produce in often inexpressible or even inexcusable forms.

Manifolds exist as reflections in the pond, registers in your motherboard — manifolds are topographical maps of the earth, presented as 2D fold-outs. Manifolds are imprints of a system, or a totality along a specific interface, such that the movements of a knight in chess is a particular manifold. A table is a manifold of a factory. A chair is the manifold of the man who made it, the woman who sat in it for fifty years and the weather outside her home.

When Charles Bukowski grew old, wrote poems and started to vomit his brains out, drink is heart and his relationships down the toilet, he is a manifold of a great deal things. His abusive father, his teenage acne, his misery and search for pussy, his subsequent selfishness and alcoholism, his many wives, his days traveling and giving talks. When Michel Hemmingson wrote about the human scum, like the step-father who fucks his step-daughter, or shall we imagine a novel Hemmingson might write… a Vietnam vet who ends up in Hawaii, drugged out, alcoholic, washed out, alienated from the his family, his life interrupted, working a worthless job, waking up drunk each morning, walking the beach dressed like a bum, watching the waves crash on virgin sands, dreaming of the pussy he had, of his children who hate him, barely riding his bike to work once in a while, and his friend who drives a crab truck. This too is a manifold, the manifold written out in words meant to be inscribed in flesh, a way of life. A way of living, a weave, a potential argument for humanity, for existence, for the interruption of alien consciousness on our planetary cosmos.

Philosophers desire to be artists, they desire to walk the thin line that intersects all manifolds, runs through them. But that too is a manifold, one which seeks to imprint its attending indexes onto other manifolds. Plato wrote his Republic as an exploration of what he thought is, justice and the best social roles to express that justice. Heidegger, Sartre, Nietzsche, Marx and even Hegel all wrote on what the best way to live was, the best life to be. The different indexicals that tie these manifolds together act as spaces within a statue, to help formulate the different modes of awareness along bands of consciousness. Shall we name the indexes in Freud? Father, Child, Mother. Lacan? Analyst and Patient, Symbolic and Real and Imaginary. Language works as Moebius Strips that both inform us of our specific meaning along an indeterminate range. Art that does not apply so directly to such vast and vague concepts such as Society and Justice still carry a language a rhythm like Frank Sinatra’s do-be-do-be-do or a do-wop that enfolds us and unfolds within us in a place and time of our being-here regulated by limbs, circadian rhythms of day and night, our social function (formal, wedding or in the bedroom with an intimate guest) and what we had for lunch earlier, our hopes and dreams, the deixis of our self image &c.

In this manner, art is more than just a medium or a message. It is the way in which we weave and are weaved by our surroundings, the ripples of our actions in other’s lives and their actions in ours. We are made and unmade by the minute, by the hour with the expressive forms that carry alien forces directly into our filters, such that the Simpsons expressed in South Park is more than just South Park or the Simpsons, but informs us of each. We watch Lost not as Lost is made or watched by its producers or written by its writers, but as we are made and it is made through us. So the truths and beauties that Moulin Rouge spoke so highly of in Art is less the periodic expression of “partial theories as though formalized through science” but the deployment of our own orientation to that stimulus, our own expression of our manifold as a slice of a context, through the deixical filters of self image and being and through the rubric of oneness, the way evolution isn’t about the development of a single species through time but the cohabitation of a series of forces as they co-evolve, the planet as one massive domino, biome on biome, niche on niche and weather system on planetary rotation.

Living life is art in the broadest sense and our awareness of it does not make it less rich but in fact is irrelevant to its continuation. If anything our awareness is an interruption of a process through the privatization of a deterritorialized space and the prizing of one deixical filter above all others. The projection of ego and selfhood is to mistake the manifold for everything else, when in fact manifolds are little more than dirty mirrors. Remove that dirty mirror from its manifestation and place it in a vacuum and it would be like putting a diamond in a room with no light. Or cutting a figure from a painting out. Taken out of context, the figure lacks all balance of perspective and is no longer adequate to its task. It functions as an empty vector. Unless one projects the original painting around the figure or introduces the figure as a piece in a new manifold, nothing will happen. A mirror in the dark like a soul without a body will falter and vanish completely without a trace like animals in iron cages.

railing against the 2nd attention

September 6, 2011 / alex posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, manifesto, rhizomatic architecture, Theory / No Comments

i was thinking about the fakeness of souplantation along with its faux industrial look (at this location) when my dad decided to strike a conversation with me about the illuminati. started by saying that george washington in a letter acknowledged their existence.

he went on a little bit about the statue of liberty — talking about first how the two men who built it were illuminati… talking about various symbols in the statue of liberty.

i wont repeat the conversation but frankly i found it vaguely annoying because i don’t care. my reasoning as i explained was that such symbols do not do anything. does the symbols on the U.S. dollar bill serve to make the sun shine? guarantee the U.S.’s place in the world? serve to hurry along the 2nd coming of Jesus? when i explained this to my cousin she found it to be incredibly negative. she retorted, saying that symbols are important because they serve to remind one of things. i then mentioned the stain glass windows in catholic churches with the 12 stations. things like that do carry meaning and can help improve one’s life, but the presence of symbols themselves are meaningless — one has to take them seriously and bring them into being with one’s own person, otherwise it’s as plain as decoration. really if one lives it, why does one need symbols?

it seemed that my dad took the presence of such symbols (in some part) to mean the presence of a shadow government, i found that completely bogus. governments and institutions are so ineffectual. for there to be a shadow government ruling the planet for hundreds of years, one would need an incredibly tightknit organization — one completely disciplined and lean with near perfect information (some how). how often do the local police solve crimes (for instance)? i won’t get started on that but i will mention that belief in a masterful conspiracy is really unlikely. government is so cumbersome. and any kind of super secret government won’t be secret for long — because there is no elite squad with near perfect technical information, certainly not fifty+ years ago.

nonetheless, disproving conspiracy theories is kind of a ridiculous thing to do because it’s near impossible. it’s an epistemologist’s field (which i am bad at) but how can anyone prove anything? if we have a choice in what we believe in and how we organize anything then we should have a set of criteria to determine the most effective beliefs.

what i want to get to here, is what carlos castenada calls the 2nd attention.

i want to extend castenada’s thought as exposited in books like ‘the power of silence’ and ‘the fire within’. he calls the first attention to be that of everyday man. the 2nd attention is the shifting of awareness from the first attention into the other bands of awareness, like that of other animals or other creatures not of this world. the 3rd attention is when the entire luminescent being lights up simultaneously, and that is analogous to near immortality or complete awareness or enlightenment. i don’t want to go into detail about this but i will analogize the 2nd attention here.

in a sense there is no first attention…if there were, it would be common sense, or an everyday sense of things. a shared reality of sorts. when getting into the particulars it’s apparent that there isnt a shared reality. there are clusters of shared realities in different groups that reinforce one another. these groups verge into areas that castenada would define as the 2nd attention.

the analogy of the 2nd attention is best explained with the ‘sorcerers’ who search for the truth and power in the 2nd attention. castenada talks about these men, heroically going through unknown areas of the psyche and going mad, or disappearing altogether, lost and unable to come back. often, in castenada’s books, don juan and carlos get stuck somewhere overnight in the desert, because they are wandering through the 2nd attention (in a controlled way by don juan) when they are spotted by a creature of the 2nd attention (sometimes one who was once a man) and they must hide from it and wait until sunrise before they can escape.

in this analogy, the 2nd attention works for ppl who try to identify truth and gain power from it. they are ordinary people like you and i but they are also people who are interested in politics, or religion, or philosophy. they are world-builders, system-builders, mystics who try and find the source. in reality, they are pretty much anyone who gets shaken up by reality, who experiences the death of a close one or a traumatic failure of some sort and comes to question life and existence and meaning. we all wander the 2nd attention in some way, departing from the strict ‘middle way’ of the 1st attention to come up with our own conclusions about life and reality, of the people around us and whatever else that seems to need explaining and ‘fitting into’ with everything else.

in a way, meaning is used to formulate social hierarchies so that we can fit everything together in a way independent of any one individual or according to one individual. we say this is how we should live, this is how society should be — we judge everyone and ourselves — whether it be from a perspective of economics, or a religion, or evolutionary psychology. some kind of universal meaning is introduced to reinforce a social order so that we can say “this is how things should be and our place in those things”

so in that sense, all different theories and systems are equal — because what kind of objective metric for which we can possibly come up with which is ‘right’?

in what sense are things ‘right’?

is it arguable that a paranoid-schizophrenics’ daydream “works” for them as much as my paranoia about paying my taxes on time “works” for me? there are consequences to both! and while we can say well, most of us all pretty much believe in paying our taxes (as we also believe in the consequences) can we say also say that when reading a paranoid-schizophrenics’ exposition (say written in a notebook) about the nature of the universe when we understand that words can have inter-textual, slipperiness? likewise, to capitalize on deleuze and guattaris’ schizo-analysis (which is not about schizophrenics at all, but a structure or a way of connecting things, a different kind of meta-epistemology) can we reject alternate modes of meaning make simply because they are unfamiliar to us? most of us do! that’s the point of meaning! to find the big man, or who should be the big man on campus.

so it comes about that i think a criteria for 2nd attentions that ‘work’ should be whether or not those models are ‘dead-ends’. i think in the ‘planet earth’ series, sponges were called ‘evolutionary dead-ends’ because they could not progress anywhere else. likewise, in the castenada world, many of those sorcerers are dead-ends simply that because while they may gain power, they are also lost, or unable to return from their situation. they are trapped in their own separate worlds, forced to focus and rely solely on the inhumane in the second attention.

example?

many some ppl who know me know that i like philosophy (or that theoretical shit) so that when dan brown’s book ‘da vinci code’ came out, quite a few recommended it to me, equating what i liked to what dan brown did. i know many ppl won’t equate philosophy with whatever dan brown wrote about in his book, but if you think about it, abstractly the two do resemble one another. esoteric knowledge, hermeneutics — systems of thoughts, abstract arrangements of meaning… much like what foucault’s pendulum by umberto eco was about with the knights templar, the crusades, free masons and what not. connections of history and finding a meaningful connection/system in place by which we order the world. the difference between philosophy per se, and this other stuff, is that philosophy isn’t tied so necessarily to individuals nor do specific time and places.

nonetheless such ‘master’ conspiracy theories seek to explicate events and order a grand narrative, much like fredric jameson’s the political unconscious, such that even ‘the end of narratives’ qua postmodernism is incorporated into an articulate structure which cannot but preserve the theory itself. to get back to grotesque conspiracy theories such as those involving the knights templar, such theories often take real ambivalence and incorporate it into the theory so that one’s own ignorance plays a role in reinforcing the theory’s metaphysics of presence.

like the 2nd attention sorcerers, one then becomes trapped in that world.

and what then?

is the purpose of developing such a theory, one founded on history and specific events to continually find more information to support it? even freud with his oedipus complex moved into a different direction as time went on. it’s inevitable that one’s theorys and ideas should slide as one grows older, or changes location. but isn’t it usually the case that ppl abandon their ideas, and forget them if they don’t write them down? we are not our ideas and our ideas are not us. but ideas at a particular time do suffice as the internal workings of how we orient ourselves among everything else.

and if orientation is what’s at stake, then truth is less important than we feel it to be absolutely. i say it is best to have an out look which does not force us into any kind of intellectual, emotional or otherwise ‘dead end’. one should, aesthetically and on principle, seek to come to terms with one’s surroundings… and as we are imperfect beings, in the spinozan sense, we always will have partial knowledge, incomplete and inaccurate. we must continue to absorb, be flexible and evolve.

even when choosing a career, who wants to be hemmed into being just a customer-specialist? it’s true (in nature and in today’s world of specialists) that to survive well, one should pick a robust niche that will exist regardless of market forces, and narrow in on that niche to ensure one’s employability. but that’s only if you want to stay still. staying still though, is much like a mollusk or clam. we can’t direct the environment — it’s too big — so it’s best to just ride along within its shadow.

i think of the energy used to lodge and unlodge one’s self from a position to be analogous in structure to the pianists who practice for hours daily to become virtuosos. when you play a passage, your hand does the motion in the most efficient way for it. but that’s not going to help when you have a variety of complex forms to perform which require a different motion. so to be efficient in those complex forms you need to undo the easiest hand motions repertoire in your subconscious and mold your virtual hand (stored in your head) closer and closer into the shape of a keyboard. and to do that you must transverse the keyboard.

the energy to unbind and re-train one’s hands can be thought of in terms of activation energy. to transition to a lower energy state (smoother motion and thus, more efficiency). this is much like the energy it takes to unravel ‘bad habits’ or in our case, to utilize complex hermeneutical pathways to satisfactorially explain phenomenon. theories which do not explain phenomenon well, require continual maintenance and continual upkeep. it takes a great deal of energy and anger to be a racist or a bigot. it takes a great deal of emotional investment and risk of suffering to be self righteous in the face of society. the harder one solidifies a theoretical apparatus the greater the risk to the thinker if it fails.

i don’t know if enlightenment is ‘real’ in the way of stories. certainly buddhist enlightenment is real, in the sense that is a publically acknowledged phenomenon within various religions. i won’t speak of it, but i will mention that it’s difficult to discern how if ever anyone were to understand that one was not in fact lodged in the 2nd attention and that one ‘got it’. this brings back the question of metrics — or i should say, the lack of metrics. there are so many different systems and ways of understanding. for instance, to bring ‘karma sutra’ back to its origins, there is a warning in many tantric traditions of looking up and trying esoteric meditations and yogic practices by ones self. without the proper teacher, one runs the risk of invoking pain and wandering off the path these practices were designed to follow. the risk in this reminds me of much in the end of the yoga sutra which warns against indulging in the powers that arise from getting close to the unpolished mirror.

when one closes in on the sun, one risks blindness. the closer one gets, the increase in the risk of permanent blindness. if one were on the path to becoming the perfect pianist (assuming such a thing were possible), if one were to stop when one were close, the habits that one has acquired only solidify all the more so, for all the energy and work one has sunken in would help emboss the structures one currently has. it takes more energy to undo errors done in the extreme than it does errors early on.

this warning, of course, only explicitly functions within the context of there being a given path to follow.

real life — naked life, i should say — is fuzzy and without clear boundaries. within the context of organized religion, there is always a direction to tread (as it’s organized in a certain way). slavoj zizek, true to his hegelian loyalties has written extensively that one should follow a given (and perhaps seemingly arbitrary) path as such a path is the best way to guarantee one access to the universal. if one follows the hegelian dialectics for synthesizing meaning, then one should! and so zizek has written a good number of books on why the christian legacy should be protected, and what such a pathway has to offer. aesthetically it’s also consistent that zizek is in fact an authoritarian. the best way to ascend to a universal guarantee of some sort (any sort, for with zizek all roads lead to the hegelian-esque Notion) is to follow a path as deeply as it goes. sufis, as well, have an added requirement that one should master at least two different disciplines in order to understand how mastery extends beyond the prohibitions of a medium.

i have waxed about hegel before, so i won’t do that now, but it will suffice to say that if one reaches beyond the mode of the medium one can encounter analogous structures unbound by a particular medium. we master painter and a master musician can talk! we don’t need to use the language of a particular language to understand that literature of one culture has analogous movements and tropes possibly found in other literatures… and that syntax in computer languages can invoke syntax in non-computer expressions.

in this way, one can seek the various territories of particular fields, as they are woven with their tropes and their memes and their intensive structures to alight on more primary principles. such principles posit indexes which can become expressed in a particular discipline. folks, i am talking directly on deleuze and guattari’s combined notions of plateaus, machinic indexs and territory. deleuze and guattari are right to repeatedly invoke the success of man not only of his hand as a de-territorialized paw (which can become a hammer in holding a hammer, or a screw driver when using a screw driver) but also in his ability to abstract beyond aesthetic and sexual beauty — to combine abstractions in fomulations of bodily meaning, philosophy and the literary arts.

we can be affected! and we can affect! highly developed sensibilities follow the most human of us.

while in the abstraction of so much internal semiosis eventually allowed each of us to experience the reterritorializing of that internal phenomenal space as ‘consciousness’, the process does not guide us in a given direction to further de-territorialize the signs which are re-terrtorialized along specific expressions originating from specific contexts. perhaps a word ‘allegory’ will always remind you of your 8th grade english teacher, or ‘meta-physics’ will always be the astrology and tarot card section in a bookstore. and the sight of lingerie will always afford a sexual or ‘naughty’ sensation. we respond to that with our vaguely deterritorialized bodies, smitten with tattoos and panty hose and other trappings of social signify-ance… and for all our abilities to abstract, build bridges and realize that a pen is also a weapon… remain trapped in the inner workings dependent on the inherited contexts of our social bretherian.

is it enough then, to realize an illumaniti conspiracy theory as a way of gaining access to social order? is it enough to work out a ‘pick-up-line’ system to get laid only to have to invest into that system over and over, and refine it and work it so as to be able to work it? or to vote for a particular political party and rally under that party with the trappings that this is the only way to clear up society and make it ‘what it should be‘ so that it is the ‘best possible world’? to clothe julian assange with the trappings of christ or satan when he is still a man? or in some cases, to claim our less fortunate as ‘mere animals’ for living off welfare?

i don’t write this so much for you, because i don’t doubt that this doesn’t apply to you.

in fact, you already know how things should be, and that it’s very apparent this or that style is the right style and that the order inherent in credit cards and drivers licenses are in fact one of the real orders of things. this is not far from the truth, and if you are thinking i am saying there is a way of mastering reality then you are a bit mistaken.

lets go back to aristotle with his seemingly minor distinction between artificial and natural. aristotle posited an order of things which says that natural things have essence. he aligns the state with natural things, as it is supported by people. artificial things, like wooden statues, do not have that essence, they do not ‘belong’ to the primary motion. and of course, aristotle brings about a taxonomy to get us closer to true immaterial being… a like a great-grandfather of the biological taxonomy we use today. but if aristotle allows the state to have essence because people make the state up, and the state changes over time, so then do all items and things of people. and it is not the objects themselves that we make (artificially) which have essence, but their meanings and ideas. in a very real way, we then go back to the earlier idea in this entry — meaning is what allows us to create social hierarchies for us to orient ourselves to everything (including each other).

reality as such, is all that, by definition, a meta-state of orientation: any kind of grasping or inclusion of another piece is also reality. we cannot unthink reality. very lacan! and given that all our positions, experiences and bodies are different, it makes sense that there be as many Real(s) as there are people. beyond that social criterion of orientation, we do have some abstract ability to understand non-people orientation, such as with chemistry or math. to understand how we fit in with them, however, is to mistake a rock for having the same kind of meaning as a spoon. natural things have essence as they were, but artificial things only have essence by virtue of how it functions (pragmatics — interesting aside but this does suggest that everything is pragmatics in the the deleuze and guattari schizo-analysis sense). in a real way, how you understand things is who you are. and how you change, when you do change, incorporates those alterations in a worldview.

but — wandering in the 2nd attention is not pointless! and to find commonalities in how various relations work in the inexpressible beyond specific signifying processes internal to us is in some sense to grasp the noumenal skin by which we generate context and meaning. certainly not a pointless endeavor! after all, to forgo such a process is to strongly risk being ruled by a 2nd attention dead-end, to be required to bring energy to maintain a world-system, which only asks everything of you — and takes away your free choice as a de-territorialized mammal, denying you much of the energy you might have otherwise, to grow.

wander free and easy.

on nil

August 19, 2011 / alex posted in dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, universal nothing / No Comments

(from twitter)

what’s odd about nothing is that there are 3 kinds of nothing: 1.absence of anything, 2.absence of change and 3.absence of a particular x.

in programming terms, this analogizes to 1. null, 2. loops and 3. zero.

what’s further odd about zero is that in languages like php, zero can be the value zero, empty, null or one. this 0 = 1 is a 4th kind of zero.

i think this overlap has to do with either specific content, the context of expression or the structure of expression —

all of which may be nil.

the most basic nil is in the structure of expression — which is the kantian negativity. context of expression is hegelian negation (zizek)

and of course specific content is what we are most familiar with and deal with everyday. in culture finding the hegelian negation is akin

to finding the “species which is its own genus” as zizek says, the primary case. something i think south park keeps trying to hit.

of course that’s also philosophy’s goal too, to explicate the zero point of structure, find the root of being all that jazz.

the purest case with the simpliest move. we can always tailor our structure to support other items “a priori”, in theory.

Zeros in numbers are a purely expressive entity but as such refers to what would otherwise be uncaptured substance.

Saying that is like making digital analogue. An mp3 recorded on vinyl.

The inexpressible is expressible by virtue of the concept of the negative, by voids in expressive structure.

This is not to confuse a deployed camera’s negation with the negativity of blackness on a movie screen.

Where hegel abuts universality in force is like law taking onto account violations by being more strict than necessary.

Or like good design swallowing common human error.

This is what theoloticians may mean by taking about human freewill made compossible with god’s supreme will VIA Jesus, god as man.

(post-twitter)

god’s will must encompass everything, including that which is free of god.

that’s where determinism and freewill intermix, in a figure like jesus. jesus acts as the central binding agent on the way to universality, as petit objet a, the stain of god on man, a stand in for the subjectivity/godhood.

but if jesus is the stand in, and jesus is negative, how can god be negative? not just in terms of not-man and not-god but also as zero qua one (as stated above).

what’s particularly interesting in this is that in the fullest level beyond universality, hegel still insists on the emptiness of the notion beyond the traditional readings of dialectics.

in a very real way, negation for hegelian dialectics is necessary — one can’t have universality without taking into account that which is not explicated.

joan copjec in her brilliant essay ‘body as viewing instrument or the strut of vision’ takes heed of this when she explains how renaissance painting isn’t simply a field. the field from the subject projects an idealized viewing point just behind the head of a viewer situated squarely before the painting. the ‘final’ negative acts as the last suture, by taking into account that final kernel of understanding — rooted from the subject.

this brings us beyond negation into universality — but the step beyond negation qua universality is to consider the totality itself as self-determining — that Emptiness is Godhood itself which can only be expressed as the zero-sum of structure.

once again, we find ourselves enwrapped in a kantian lock-box of phenomenon — only this time there isn’t a noumenality by which we cannot know, for the noumenal is included as part of the structure itself like how phenomenon is structured.

if anything, at this point we’ve aligned the first three nils on one another: content, expression and structure like an empty structured database, or a spread sheet or pivot table without data, devoid of content. virtually there but inexpressed. what we’ve ended with is the last kind of zero, where it acts in a higher level as one.

this is simply because while one is a totality when viewed from the outside –from a position of immanence, one is needed as zero to establish metaphysics of presence, marking a structural change from pure absence to a structured presence. in terms of programming, a zero is already one bit. a nothing wouldn’t even show up and cannot be considered.

an interesting consequence of this concept of zeroth-ing is to understand that subjectivity itself is the zero point sum, the empty category that establishes the modal structure of renaissance order. this seems to suggest that we understand others as a consequence of our own singularity.

but this grasp of subjectivity as zero misses the point, for we have a totality as one in subjectivity already.

so where is the nil point that is pre-subject?

copjec talks of the gaze as the field that cleaves and binds; for if the subject is us, what does our presence guarantee? how does being one equate to being zero? it is in the consequences of getting to be one that we already assume a zero — in Lacanian language it is the Other that bounces off subjectivity in so as subjectivity requires others. what copjec calls the gaze guarantees both subject and object and acts as the originary marking place. they are dual views of the same situation.

therein lies the structural difference by which noumenal and phenomenal are cleaved, inexplicable but also nil. the ground of being separate must be established before being can be, a crux of psychoanalysis from motherandchild to i and you. in each point epistemologically, we must have the empty container-notion which can contain it all, and is rightly not anything. The set of all sets is not really a set, it is the empty set par excellence.

the Disheartening Metonymy in Facebook

July 28, 2011 / alex posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

In the midst of the ontic we look for ontology. I started at 15 or so, with excerpts from Plato’s Republic, Carl Sagan and Nietzsche which I did not understand at all and did not get past the first few pages.

It is in this search for ontology that one will digest, and read, and seek for a center.

I think most will do this, perhaps, when things are bad or chaotic.

Beyond ontology however, we slip into a regime of mirrors, a hall of confusion by which we must choose that which has Being, a contest between beings which ends either in nihilism, a rejection of ontology or a dogmatic stand that this arbitrary figure is not at all arbitrary and in fact has the real deal. The stand most often occurs with what feels certain, what gives the subject certainty and what the subject likes most naturally.

Many of us don’t share any given subject’s appraisal of Being. Pointing out that this reliance on a figurehead is arbitrary gives rise to relativism and humor which is most prevalent on the underbelly of the internet.

It is in this reliance of values and the questioning of values which I take to be central to any question, something I like to point that Heidegger ended his career with.

The problem now, that I see it, stems from a collapse of long term and short term, personal and public spaces. I don’t believe that what’s good for an individual is good for society and vis versa. But how our legal and political system runs most effectively collapses all these different regimes such that we are slipping into a slow paralysis. We are choking ourselves with the weight of not only ourselves but those before and after us for whom we represent and stand in for. In the interest of American Brotherhood (of equals) each us has access to the universal but it is that access which gives rise to the oppression of living fragmented, dual lives. We can’t deal with each other as individuals but each interaction becomes of political and social significance. Talking to an Other on the bus becomes a gesture of political multicultural relativism. Dealing with your boss or employee becomes not just a negotiation of your individual and professional interests, but also a meter between how any boss or employee should/not interact (Thank you for pointing this out, Walter Olsen). Judges today sometimes cannot pass verdicts they may see as appropriate because they may set precedence for future situations which are undesirable.

We live not just in the present but in the past and the future simultaneously.

This happens as every instance of a category becomes a stand-in for the relations inherent in the category. In otherwords, any employee becomes synonymous with the legitimate boundaries allowable (or not) by every employee.

Of course, some measure of categorization must be appropriate — we must classify in order to better deal with the extraordinary difference out there on the street. But it is the centrality of categorization and classification qua primary that gives rise to the proliferation ontic-value confusion. In the quest of ontological signifiance, we skew via a set of values qua necessary and that proliferation of values generates multiple ontologies which are a priori incompossible (cannot coexist in the same world) leading to nihilism or, that proliferation produces a heady multiculturalist categorization which is inherently racist and Other — threatening both to make each us of into one of five or seven power rangers (of different color and manner but of “equal” ability and status) while obscurating what the purpose of ontological centered-ness is (the actual people in the suits).

So to get out of this skew, we might seek the beyond of values as Nietzsche had suggested. In doing so, we establish for ourselves our own primary motion, that which cannot be but imitated. This is the wet dream of the Uberman, something I do not believe in as it sounds nice on paper but in real life gives rise to dickish, assholish pieces of garbage which often are shadows of what might be an original. (Their lack of originality stems from a production of signs meant to signify originality — insufficient for the condition of Uberman status anyhow).

So my response?

I think my humor has moved into the inappropriate for the most part — as any movement to ontologize values is laughable. So I laugh, and that’s what’s ridiculous (my response). But when you think about it, it’s really the ontologization of values which is something laughable, not the people who seek ontology! Doing something like ontologizing values gives rise to a constant checking of behavior — which in some sense is better than living however you like while preaching the gospel — but it’s a losing battle. We don’t need more special cases — we don’t need more “races” of humans. We exist on Earth, we don’t need the attempt at radical proliferation like it’s Star Trek.

We simply need more application of the generic instance and a refusal to insist on “common sense”.

What I mean by that is that we cannot be beholden to a race of Others for fear of offending them — that’s not the point (since we offend ppl who are like us anyway). For each of us live within the fuzzy range of probable acceptability where we coexist (peaceably, hopefully). For it is in that semi-conscious realm that the foundations for our human interaction are generated and contested and it is because this generation and judgement is in some sense only by partial choice that we cannot solely have nihilism, multiculturalism or Ontology. We cannot lose our values but we cannot ontologize them either, for they these are only metonymetic towards a singular Being — they are not condusive to point to a Way as while there may be Being, there is no universal.

What Facebook has taught me is that I find myself somewhat affronted by individuals’ reliance on signifiers of what’s Real in everyday life, whether they be carriers of “Stuff” or lessons in “Values”. In both, these statuses attempt to point the Way but in fact fail because those statuses are both generated by particular instances only the subject is privy to, and/or it relies on the particularity of the subject while deeming to be of something beyond the subject.

Oddly enough, if anything, I find this to be a real life example of Descartes’ problem of multiple mental realms. Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am, but where I think there are no others. So while I think therefore I am is also Others are where I do not think and I am where Others are not.

(Don’t worry, no Lacan today) but this is the parable of the modern horror movie — they jump out unexpectedly.

So to wrap it up, these thoughts, as perpetrated by others, signify, despite intent, the values they hold within their actual lifeworld and in some sense act as a kind of encompassing meta-physics of presence. That expression qua status updates in social media like Facebook and Twitter are projections of the )(in)compossible universals pointing not only to specific manifestations but also entire universes coexisting simultaneously on one’s update stream. Any one with access can see it, and each are a statement about the nature of everything around it.

I don’t portent that each person who updates their status seeks to establish their creditability as an Ontology — as I extend this blog, it may very well be that Ontology is an outdated model. But as a expression of our here and now Ontology is still something sought by individuals to be established — many of the status updates are in fact an attempts to codify what should be, be it in the form of “THIS IS EPIC” or “PEOPLE SHOULD NOT”.

When we speak of the personal, often these expressions are placed with a deleted subject. We know that someone may be sad, or that someone is angry but the “FUCK &^@%” is not in fact carrying with it a hidden “(In my honest opinion FUCK &^@%)”. And even if it was, the rejection for a place in this universe is still present against “&^@%”.

This kind of sentiment is what makes it political and ontological at the same time.

Even in broader circles, as it is, in political speak in either public broadcast media like NPR or Cable News, people still seek manifestations of the true American spirit to vote or be a particular way, or hold certain views (like ours and other someone else’s). Many liberals who are heterosexual would not engage in a non-heterosexual activity personally, but nonetheless embrace it as being allowed to be. To be an American in this sense is structurally as intolerant (of intolerants) as those who would be intolerant. THat kind of structure, found in abundance throughout political discourse seems unavoidable.

If this isn’t a throwback to a false Ontology found in pre-WW2 Heidegger, then I really have no idea what I am pointing out.

But even today as Nationalists or culturalists or multiculturalists, it is very much the establishment of Ontology(s) meant to be the inclusive bulwark against all kinds of deformations and confusions.

Why am I pointing this out? I find this kind of structuration to be abhorrent. While I do not possess any kind of “solution” to be readily expressed, to do believe that a people obsesses with Ontological establishment, even should they be unaware of doing so, is a people courting a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of reality — and all the ensuing pitfalls that come with thinking that only people like themselves* should be.

*In this case, people like themselves extends far beyond simply being of a race or even a set of values… but of fitting the very categories which we take to be the case. This is where I agree with Zizek (even though I am not a Lacanian) — the distance we need to have from these categories is itself a necessity to living a more complete life of being who we actually are… fragmented and split subjects — allowing us better to come to peace with that, as it were, “outside” of discourse….

Can we function with an outside on the inside?

July 9, 2011 / alex posted in art, dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

Recently, the reaction of one homosexual individual who was hurt by the hateful remark surprised me. Her response was simply that gays are common decent folk — upstanding people too — who deserve basic respect like anyone else. What’s surprising to me was that she failed to incorporate the point of view of the bigot. But then why should she? This post doesn’t explore whether or not tolerance is an issue (because it shouldn’t be), but that there are different standards of acceptability. Granted, standards are due to valuations that individuals generate — that is what makes us individuals — but is it possible that fundamental valuations be generated from a contextual position based off of the larger whole and NOT individual feelings?

I am not debating the content of her remark, but I do find her reaction and surprise itself surprising — all the more because of the obvious evidence that her verbal assailant did not consider her (as a gay) deserving of tolerance or basic respect. If there is a basic orientation to how one relates to others, it’s through the Lacanian filter of the Symbolic. The Symbolic order holds for us subjects a variety of different and individual valuations but the main function of the Symbolic is to provide orientation. The collective Symbolic regime is the resulted of a larger, abstracted social zeitgeist. How we negotiate the perceived regimes’ changing nature and what we allow or disallow provides the vehicle for politics. What we do on an individual level, such as towards our hurt friend, matters, however small. This negotiation of perceived change in the Symbolic forces personal action to be becoming-political. In a way, the hurtful remark made by the bigot is an indeterminate but discrete step.

Immaneul Wallerstein has provided a grand gesture through his World Systems Analysis which classifies a population’s attitude towards change which may be useful to our exploration: conservative, liberal and radical. Conservatives do not want change, liberals want small measured changes and radicals want a total re-orientation of the norms. Wallerstein’s classification is useful but it’s only descriptive, not an examination of the production of meaning in relation to the Symbolic function. To do that, we can turn towards Zizek’s explication of the Lacanian orders through the Gremasian square.

Gremasian Squares are one basic way of determining meaning.

The Gremasian square Zizek draws upon in For They Know Not What They Do, bounces the four positions of basic difference that create meaning surrounding the symbolic function. The four positions are:

all are submitted (S1)
only one is not submitted (~S2)
none are submitted (S2)
only one is submitted (~S1)

Zizek highlights these positions in order to explore different ‘species of judgement’ of a subject are

necessary (S1)
possible (~S2)
impossible (S2)
contingent (~S1)

The basic axis deals with the main difference of Symbolic (S1) and Real (S2). The Symbolic acts as a universal signifying function, establishing a symbolic network of linguistic meaning (S1) that is necessary for us to organize our world. At the same time, within the Real order (S2), we struggle with the impossibility of such a function existing in the universe as part of the universe. The outside Real (S2) remains indifferent and incoherent to our manifested meaning (S1). It is this interplay between impossibility (S2) and necessity (S1) that gives rise to the complexity of the system. In order to facilitate the others who approach us from the untotalizable whole of the Real (S2), we rely on the Imaginary (~S2) to orient us to the Symbolic (S1). It is in the Imaginary that we maintain an interplay of ourselves with others, ultimately enabling us to live together (though Lacan claims this is always through a kind of cross-talking). Keep in mind that the negated lower pair of ~S1 and ~S2 remain imaginary reflections of the actual complex pair, (S1) and (S2). What keeps us hinged in the necessary Symbolic edifice (S1) is a self-image which represents for us the kernel of our own subjectivity (~S1). This self-image however, is not the same as who or what we are. To this end, Lacan rewrites Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” as “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think“. Nonetheless, it is in our personal investment in (~S1) that makes us dependent on what others think of us. This external dependence is how (~S1) is structurally contingent, although the actual content is personal and open to discourse. So within this square, it is the universal function’s failure to completely foreclose the Real and prevent distortions of others (or ourself) that highlights the three different reactions Wallerstien segments as a population’s willingness to adapt to or reject change.

So to return to that surprising reaction, I would have assumed that one who rejects some social norms would understand that with this rejection, their position may occupy an untenable difference within another’s Symbolic (S1). That is to say, a conservative who would be unwilling to accept in themself a difference of sexuality without losing that possibility of self (~S1) would definitely reject that difference of sexuality in another or at least locate the unacceptable difference wholly in another (~S2). Our poor friend however, is hurt by the verbal assailant’s remarks as her subjectivity (~S1) is questioned and she responds by reinstating her own position in the necessary order of things (S1) as a public declaration. The way to read the Gremasian Square is to understand that subjectivity is contingent on both the Imaginary others (~S2) who reject or accept the subject as well as the appeal to the Symbolic (S1) against the Real (S2). Without the Imaginary (~S2) acceptance of the subject (~S1), there is no subject. Such a position is the horror that Zizek calls the space between two deaths, when one is biologically alive but ostrasized from the community, publically dead.

The rejection of that desire as considered by the other to be one’s own introduces an element of the Real (S2) into the fragile Symbolic (S1). No wonder then, that slogans from those who oppose gay marriage include banners that equate one man to marrying another to one man to marrying a dog. The equation doesn’t mean to equate men with dogs but rather, to equate the feeling of beastality with homosexual marriage. This absurd equation betrays their bend as conservative — a genuine fear that should the Symbolic (S1) be extended, that fragile absolute (another title of one of Zizek’s books) may give way. A recent expression of this comes from David Tyree’s equating New York City’s acceptance of gay marriage with anarchy. One wonders then, at how fragile some conservative’s hold on the Symbolic order may be and if we could ever relate to one another without this Symbolic (as it is a point of reference). For the function of the Symbolic, is it possible to include the Real as a space within the function while maintaining tolerance and social order? In other words, how possible is it to locate within the Real a minimal relation to be Symbolic — to provide space in the Imaginary for tolerance and acceptance?

The function of the Symbolic order appears more robust than we might think, as it goes a long way in orienting ourselves to external events. South Park, the popular adult series created Matt Stone and Trey Parker, explores various positions people take in relation to Real, unaccountable events. These events, as a rule, come from media presentations and perverse positions, other (~S2) possibilities which must oriented to the Symbolic function (S1). It is through this accounting that we get a dialectical backlash in South Park between possible configurations of acceptability as the characters attempt to orient themselves within a Symbolic order (usually unsuccessfully) to justify or explain the acceptability of actions. Contrary to most conservative commentary on South Park, the ending configurations of the characters are usually presented to be ridiculous or at least out of proportion to the issue at hand. Earlier episodes in the show’s run were more to the point as to what is a ‘rational’ position ought to be. Some of the later satires reject an overt explanation and choose instead to settle on positions that maximize humor. Even so, for humor to function, it must retain a monocum of the Symbolic as reference. As Julia Kristeva wrote in Powers of Horror, what is humorous is usually only so as the exposure of different signifiers in a novel arrangement create jouissance. In other words, what is humorous is usually only acceptable as humor because it’s not an acceptable arrangement except as humor. The pleasure of humor is the pleasure of play within the Symbolic (so long as it does not shatter that regime).

South Park, as a satire, functions by simplifying most of their character’s interest in maintaining their own contingency, preferring to underscore instead, our tumultuous relationships within the Imaginary. (What makes South Park an examination of actual possibilities and not an examination of the Symbolic is the protagonists often not-listened-to appeals to a standard rationality. The under-grid of Symbolic rationality remains ignored, not questioned.) To give a real world example of this instability with the Symbolic we can turn to the avant gaarde’s push for new directions. Such movements are often offensive to some, as such movements often rebuke representationalism. Representationalism best deploys the Symbolic as over-coding the Real in a 1:1 relationship as though conservatives are less able to handle schisms in the Symbolic. The more extreme the over-coding, the stronger violations of the Symbolic invokes a bodily reaction to events that reveal the Real’s incoherency. The adherence to such an over-coding is what establishes our societal ‘grand gesture’ which in the 20th century was known as Modernism.

Modernism philosophically started long before the 20th century, but as a social movement, Modernism came together in the late 19th century as a style of presentation and coherence that in some ways matched the singularity of world orders like the United Nations. Modernism as a whole, however, is best digested as a rejection of traditional aesthetics, an establishing of new parameters of how we are to experience and relate. Modernism marks the single largest and far-reaching break in tradition. For the life-world, Modernism became coherent as new human existence for a current Now. This emphasis on ahistorical values arises as an absolute order without an outside, the best example being Formalism. In other words, if you are not within this absolute order, you are nowhere to be found.

In the larger picture, while Modernism can be connected with capitalism’s ever expanding market, market capitalism is but one expression of the ‘make it new’ of Modernism. Other expressions of Modernism include Stalinist and Maoist totalitarianism. So while many philosophers such as Lyotard claim that Modernism is dead in favor of Postmodernism, Modernism continues as a grand narrative, under the guise of Postmodernism. Under Postmodernism, deployment of new expressions continues as an ahistorical re-framing of historical contexts. As such, Postmodernism functions as a hyper-modernism, co-opting the small other to illicit a homogeneous world order. Despite the many disavowals of the I and the kowtowing to small others when recognized as legitimate, any and all contacts with global capitalism usually means the destruction of alternate Symbolic configurations in favor of our global capitalism. Any sensitivity of context is a sensitivity necessary in a Postmodern deployment.

I bring this up not because it has anything to do with the dignity that our homosexual couple insisted on, but rather because our current Symbolic order displays an absolutism — that relationships and transactions be concluded through a narrow regime of Symbolic association. For instance, one of the main modes of our Symbolic relies on the filters of money and legal documentation, two contractual basises which form the bridge of our current Symbolic Regime. Fights over gay rights, or the slutwalk occur within capitalism because the market has not established a preference either way (unlike say, stealing). As time persists and capitalism benefits from the religious right and the spending power of the homosexual left so both will continue to contest one another in the public space at the expense of other policy decisions. Most likely though, capitalism is not incompatible with homosexuality and ultimately marriage will be expanded to include homosexual arrangements as this does not hurt global capitalism.

This brings us back to the original question — in terms of our current grand narrative of global capitalism — is the Symbolic completely mutually exclusive to the Real? Is there a psychial configuration that would allow us to better tolerate instances of the Real? Why rely on the contingency of others as deal with ourselves and each other in the imaginary spaces of (~S2) and (~S1)? In seeking to find a philosophical method to explain going beyond the Symbolic edifice, we run analogous to Buddhist thought on enlightenment. Enlightenment serves as a psychial position that exceeds the worldly concerns that structure subjectivity. Now as the order of the Symbolic operates more as a referent than a set content, so a re-centering the four positions can be best understood by retooling the Gremiasian Square through an analogous the structure in Buddhistm known as the Tetralemma.

The Tetralemma is a four fold step introduced as a logical exercise in Buddhist doctrine to expound the doctrines of two truths. Put simply, the two truths at hand are conventional truth — the common place wisdom of existence having substance, and the sacred truth — the emptiness or non-existence of substance. The four lemmas of the Tetralemma involves the precepts:

x
~x
both x & ~x
neither x & ~x

In dealing with the concepts of existence (x) and emptiness (~x), through the exercise of the Tetralemma, we step beyond having just classifications of the conventional existence of substance and the philosophical existence of nothing. In other words, the goal of the Tetralemma is to gain an understanding beyond the distinctions of ontology, of which emptiness is a exposition of the formal constraints of ontology. This is different from the Gremasian square in the sense that the Tetralemma works as a delimiter rather than as a position. The goal is to avoid all four positions, whereas in the Gremasian square it is the orientation of the positions that provide meaning. Nonetheless, used in conjunction with the Gremasian square above, we can utilize two Tetralemmas of emptiness and substance with the two indexes from the Gremasian square as the actual (S1) and (S2) with substance and the reflective (~S1) and (~S2) with emptiness. In the first Tetralemma:

There is a Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S1)
There is no Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S2)
Both (S1) and (S2) apply
Neither (S1) and (S2) apply

In other words, we are dealing with the grounding of both existents and nothingness. Arguably, the social schism introduced by Modernism killed philosophy’s search for an ontological life leaving us with nihilism. Nihilism, like early postmodernism, insists that the formal constraints of ontology are not applicable anywhere, leaving us with nothing (to fit the bill with). Rather than a full blown rejection of the system itself, nihilism involves an adaptation of the system of meaning and its consequential failure to cohere meaning. Nihilism does not mean that there are no systems, only that the metrics we use to find valid systems yields no content. In this way, the third step and fourth step both appear to be alternative universalisations that happen when the symbolic function fails to yield an appropriate conclusion. Nihilism occupies both positions such that we have the system but no ontology or we reject the system and still do not have the authenticity of ontology.

This position reflects the same underpinnings as dialectical nihilism by at first insisting on a universal position although it goes beyond dialectical nihilism by in fact not sublimating the structure of the Tetralemmas at the level of the Notion. It is through the Tetralemma’s four precepts that we gain a richer understanding that unlike conservatives and our gay couple above, it’s not simply enough to be within the function and to desire collapse the Gremasian square to gain a tolerance of the Other so as to live with them (to insist that what I imagine to be the other’s position is in fact where I am as well, that (~S1) and (S1) and (~S2) and (S2) are in fact all super-imposed, without difference… the way to read this desire is that the conservative judges the homosexual to have a desire the homosexual then denies having). The Tetralemma instead goes beyond this to reject both the system and its content reserving neither Notion nor internal distance to uphold this desire or its judgement.

A rejection of the distinction of both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) constitute, in traditional terms, a confusion between how we are to understand our role in the world and how to basically orient ourself in the world. How can we make sense of what we could do vs how things happen to us and what we should make of them? Both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) rely on specific instances in order to provide actual interactions. It is in the application of the function in the imaginary spaces of (~S1) and (~S2) by which we run across the negative Tetralemma. Without addressing the application of the orientations inherent in (S1) and (S2), we run into the profound difficulty of skirting the regime of madness:

There is no self that is I (~S1).
There are no other subjectivities (~S2).
Both self (~S1) and others (~S2) do not exist.
There is neither no subjectivity (~S1) nor are there no other subjectivities (~S2).

The main difficulty in this Tetralemma lies in the lack of orientation a rejection of the application of possibility and contingency implies. Within this regime of non-applicability, we run into pitfalls similiar to those who do not socialize properly. I speak of some criminally insane who do not genuinely understand others, nor read on others the desire and pain, both reflective and independent of their own subjectivity.

What marks the difficulty in deploying an orientation of these concepts isn’t in their conceptual nature. We should not assume that the proper position within the Tetralemma involves a rejection of their concepts as such, but rather a rejection of the desire that navigates these polemics and binds us in these orientations. Movement within the Tetralemma isn’t accurately a dialectic, although I have used the term. Dialectical movements within the Hegelian traditional involve a progression of positions within an order to explain their meaning. The Tetralemma instead involves the limits of expatiation. When we abut a lemma we encounter a failure to grasp the Tetralemma as a whole. This is how the Tetralemma also is not a Gemasian Square — it does not rely on static positions from which we can garnish meaning from the other three positions.

So for applicability, let us return to our original example, it is not that the knee jerk response of our friend is in fact inappropriate. She is correct to understand that her subjectivity is contingent on the external circumstances of others who accept her, legitimatizing her place in the Symbolic. But the most the Symbolic can guarantee her or anyone else is a position of contingency and tolerance. Acceptance within the Symbolic does not assure her of the dignity of her subjectivity, it only imprisons her within the confines of the possibility of authenticity when continually confronted with others. This is the nature of contingency (~S1).

The ‘way out’ as espoused through the dialectical and radically transformative nature of the Tetralemma isn’t in the sublimation of the Tetralemma the way Hegel might want us to distance ourselves from the Notion in order to better find ourselves within it. The key of the Tetralemmas is best expressed through the Real, as the Real remains the threat for all other positions. What makes the position of the Real ‘Impossible’ (S2) is not only the ineffectual application of Symbolic order on a shifting and vague desire — but, from the point of view of the Real, the union between any of the other three relationships are impossible because of the shifting and vague nature of desire undergridding each. When we seek to legitamize ourselves, that legitamcy is in fact never permanent, being contingent. When we seek to understand the other on their terms, it is impossible because we must resort to imagination — we can never know their radical difference, only read on their difference a reflection of our own difference.

This insubstantiability of position that all eight lemmas deploy disallows one to fully invest in any position, opening the door to the Real as it were without casting one fully into it. We acknowledge our own insubstantiality inasmuch as anyone else’s. For instance, in neither accepting being submitted to the function or outside of the function, one rejects both the absolute madness of emptiness and the contingency one might always bear. One can be oneself, as it were, all the while allowing others to be themselves without that reflexivity or demand that one be ‘with it’ or not ‘with it’.

On me watching Porky’s

June 19, 2011 / alex posted in Business, images of being-human, universal nothing / No Comments

I wonder what its like to live a life where you want the world to end. Where you want to put a stop to all sadness or happiness. Every few years you hear rumors that everything will stop — that we are out of control and beyond all reason.

And what must that be like, to be so disappointed?

I’m sure the little things are alright. I am sure that you can still pet your dog, or glance out your side window while driving and see a beautiful bird in mid-flap, soaring by you. I am sure your lunch still tastes good. And that it’s nice to take your shoes off and lay in bed. Plus you can still look forward to orgasms… But to lose your belief, to lose some fundamental faith? What must that be like? And then, why even get up in the morning? Why even stay sober?

It must be disappointing when, like the day after your 10th birthday, you get up and life goes on. Mornings are still foggy. People still stop at starbucks on their way to work, and they don’t seem to care that the sky has fallen, and shown its skeleton — and that there’s nothing there. Only you see it. Nothing left at all. Nothing.

I don’t think that I have a problem with this. But I think some people do. In thirty years, where will I be? I’ve seen now that the super-geniuses can grasp and implement like nothing else. And while it’s magical when that happens, ITS FUCKING REAL. I suppose my fault was that I thought I would always make typos and have to test functions that I just wrote. But the fact of the matter is, everything is well within grasp and it seems the only thing stopping anyone is my own lack of focus. I must have wasted 3 hours just walking in circles imaginging lines of code that I was too tired to write. But it’s all right there, within grasp. The time taken to write anything is well less than the time taken to decide what it is you want to write.

one thing I don’t get is why anyone gets out of bed. about 7 or 8 years ago… I suppose I found my answer. I want to keep things going, keep things interesting… I want to do the things I do because that’s the best way to keep challenged. It’s a play-dough world. But what if you didn’t think it mattered, that nothing was worth doing or that your job was horrible and that was the best you could do?

I can’t imagine what that must be. I can’t imagine what it must be to be the downtrodden of the earth, to be the remnants of something else. To always be 5 minutes off. I mean, there isn’t any perfection. It’s all shit. We’re all lego pieces, stuff that we have lying around that we use as best we can. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about anything. We just have the morals we have because that’s part of the challenge. That’s part of the picture. And even if there isn’t a picture it’s just part of who you are.

Sometimes I don’t understand myself. I think I lost something within the last few months, or maybe a year or two ago, and I just didn’t notice. In a way though, once you touch upon it, there’s really nothing there. You’re standing on your own two feet. And while the mirror of other people’s faces is your own mirror — when they dance or wonder — you respond… so the puppetshow is alive and well, but that’s not what I had thought would be there. It’s like how in the process of learning chess the board will get so big, and other times get so small. It’s a matter of what’s in the box. And yet in the end, you need desire. I can’t account for that. Can you? Men and women greedy in different ways — and need to be greedy in different ways. You need to have unfathomable connections to things like volcanos, unicorns and the bottom of the ocean. And I guess that’s the only way to walk under a continually shattering sky.

Losing faith isn’t like anything actually changes, it’s more like finding yourself in the wrong parallel universe. We’re just sort of trapped in between slides of ourselves. And then when like at the end of a sonata we have the recapitulation, we return home and find out that it’s incomplete, and not right.

You know I hate Lord of the Rings. But that’s Frodo coming home. He’s left and returned to the physical location but unlike Dorothy he can’t go home.

Because there isn’t a home for him anymore.

At times like this, I suppose we need to be the brave travelers of the world. We have to be the sundry spirits of Xanadu or some kind of nonsense like that. the alchemist, whatever. Alchemy is a matter of spirit, a matter of individual transcendence… but that’s the same kind of psychotic misalignment those mediveal alchemists had — they mistook spirit for something physical. Iimagine Rene Descartes or some such philosopher digging through corpses looking for the seat of the soul. And yet all they find is more fibroblasts. Blood, collagen. What does this seat even look like? Madmen have searched through hundreds of dead bodies, eagerly cutting into the dead criminals looking for something they know not what.

That’s the wonder of Star Trek you know. They are messages in a bottle zipping around a deadly serious and completely apersonal universe being hysterical about themselves. I’m sure Herman Hesse’s Stepphenwolf is laughing Mozart right now. That sounds about right. So many directions I can go in! All of them amount to sand though. It’s your own trip. And beneath that, is more of your own trip. That you have a trip, or that you don’t have one. It’s so meta it’s the next Hipster Kitty.

But at the same time it’s like, you can do something about it. so why not “go green” or whatever. Save the Earth! Or fuck the Earth, the Earth can take care of itself lets just drive our cars around and be stupid, cuz that’s the most fun. I really look around and see nothing but that, and I despise it. All those commercials on tv, where everyone just parties and parties. Cuz I guess only so many of us sit in an office, so only so many of us get that — but everyone, and anyone can and should party.

Pointless.

but I guess I prefer to sit in my room and listen to music and stare at my navel. That’s what I did today. And oh, sometimes I crammed small bits of electronic material ushered carefully down fragile tubes to generate more fragile “documents” so as to appease people who were convinced by me (mostly) to pay us hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, to have.

It sounds kind of goofy but that’s only until you realize that it’s not like the money matters either.

This is what ppl do when they have too much time on their hands.

This is what i do.

See what happens when I watch 80s high school comedies about getting laid? I guess this is the same thing. Me laughing at some guy’s penis stuck in the wrong place.

from Social to Universal, what comes after a Monetized Economy?

April 29, 2011 / alex posted in Business, images of being-human, life as we know it, rational choice theory and homo economicus, rules, Uncategorized, utility / No Comments

I’ve written about the failure of our economic models to account for our happiness and welfare in the work place. I want to go into a little more detail about what an alternative view for our society might look like post-money, but first, some more general news about the failure of our economic models to register real value outside of the work place in terms of the Global Economy.

Current Opinion from some Economists today…

…expresses a criticism of the FED. At the Roosevelt Institute there recently was a panel on the Future of the Federal Reserve, a large debate surrounding the current actions and criticisms of the Federal Reserve as well as panel talks about the FED’s current program, the so called QE2 which is scheduled to be halted by June of this year without a clear date (or even plans) for a better and more effective QE3.

It seems that the general consensus agreed upon by everyone except the Fed and the government is that QE2 was in fact too conservative to be a success and was in fact a failure. QE2 did not generate the jobs people hoped for nor did it spark the economy with low interest rates.

The FED becomes an easy target in current debates as to why the economy is at risk as to why haven’t job growth happened and who is to blame. I am not an economist, so I will spare you the details, but I am very interested in the subject. If anything, we are plagued by a systematic failure of the existing financial infrastructure. The problem comes from huge debt. In order to handle many of the national and international debts that are due this year entire nations will have to get debt financing. The question, of course, is who do they get it from?

If the government that prints money has no money to pay for its debt, then who does it?

The current bailout situations and the burst of that financial bubble earlier in 2008-9 resulted in monetizing private debt as public debt. A short term solution seems to be simply to do the same thing again. If that happens, loser in these transactions will be individuals who have saved up money. It will eat away at the savings of the American public — in fact of the rest of the world since the US dollar is known as “reserve currency” meaning that people in other countries will use the US dollar to transact business because their own government’s money is not considered stable enough. In fact, China has the largest amount of US currency in reserve, totalling an astounding 3 trillion dollars.

But of course, decisions the FED stem directly from situations here in the U.S. and not of the rest of the world.

This might stave off the problem for another time, but the debt problem persists. Interest rates will mount and at some future point an even larger debt will be incurred, things time with our public economy and our private savings exhausted… our credit exhausted…

So what is the solution?

If you are not sure if you can trust the reserve currency, the idea is to switch to a currency you CAN trust. In this case, GOLD and SILVER. SO you see that the price of gold is to break $1,600 for a troy ounce by the end of 2011. Additionally companies that mine metals are a desired commodity as well as indicated by China’s repeated bids to buy foreign mining and farming companies. In fact there are rumored talks among some of China’s officials to reinvest their U.S. Currency into Gold.

So why aren’t U.S. officials fazed? Everyone’s doing the same dance right now — everyone’s still using U.S. currency. At some point there needs to be an exit strategy. According to Max Keiser, Goldman-Sachs officials have started sipon money from the stock market into commodities and alternative currencies. One such online company, Zynga, wildly successful for its which had made a move last year in Oct 2010 to create its own currency. With the investment of Goldman-Sachs officials, the Fed is investigating the matter. According to Keiser though, Goldman-Sachs is siphoning money from Wall Street all the while keeping the bubble of pricing up through the use of computers that trade. One of his evidences despite the Dow’s recent record high even in this bad economy stems from the drop in VOLUME even while the PRICE is high. The idea being that the unwitting American shareholder will be left holding the worthless shares when this new bubble bursts.

Holding the bag means holding… what?

So my judgmental sentiments aside, it seems that when the economy “downsizes” in value because of inflation — because the monetization of our economy creates excess value, value based on speculation of the future value of money — the system will implode. Much of this is doom and gloom. One fair indicator of when this will happen in the near future is the fall of the United States as an economic power — passing its economic torch to its largest landowner, China as soon as 2016 according to Chris Martenson.

This of course may not happen, 2016 still is over one presidential term away, and who knows maybe Bernanke will wisen up and the Financial overlords that bombed a 65 trillion dollar world economy to personally make for themselves a few million will find themselves in jail…

But if that doesn’t happen, there’s a good chance that we homo sapiens will have to reorganize into a new resource distribution system. Doubtlessly, this will involve money, as people have always had money, but it may not involve capital as the primary exchange for labor.

This is a little beyond the scope of this post, but it’s perhaps important to note that democratization of private industries is not the key to establishing a more free society. The logic of freedom, as Zizek put it eloquently:

the key to actual freedom resides in the “apolitical” network of social relations, from the market to the family. Here the change required is not political reform but a transformation of the social relations of production—which entails precisely revolutionary class struggle rather than democratic elections or any other “political” measure in the narrow sense of the term. We do not vote on who owns what, or about relations in the factory, and so on — such matters remain outside the sphere of the political, and it is illusory to expect that one will effectively change things by “extending” democracy into the economic sphere (by, say, reorganizing the banks to place them under popular control). Radical changes in this domain need to be made outside the sphere of legal “rights.” In “democratic” procedures (which, of course, can have a positive role to play), no matter how radical our anti-capitalism, solutions are sought solely through those democratic mechanisms which themselves form part of the apparatuses of the “bourgeois” state that guarantees the undisturbed reproduction of capital.

He continues on here, citing how violence is the inescapable and inevitable truth of the States’ impotence, and that extending the logic of the state into new regimes is a needless production of the same. So rather than dwell in violence and democracy, let us instead move back into the apolitical communities where most of us are heavily invested and are infact, as American sitcoms like to show us, largely apolitical.

There are perhaps an infinite number of possibilities but I will cover only one form, Peer to Peer Networks, which, instead of being an extension of state democracy, or state anything, rather is an extension of the communal commons “space” by which most of us interact anyway… (even if it’s not recognized by our current global the economy as such.)

Introducing Peer to Peer Networks

The rosey scenario of so called Peer to Peer Networks comes from a computer analogy but it carries with it a sociological ideology of individuals interacting as individuals and not through the manifests of corporations. Peer to Peer interaction gets a great deal of exploration through P2P Foundation, a utopian organization that seeks to explore the very real possibility of a new form of distribution closer to the maxim ‘think global, act local’ in which interested individuals interact with one another in mutually beneficial ways. If you think this is radically different from Homo Economius, you’re absolutely right. This organization tends towards the touchy-feely-poetics but one article likens the difference between spiritual self-suifficiency vs interdependent interbeiningness via “spiritual collectives” vs “gurus” with the emphasis on collectives as being more wholesome since we are socially interconnected.

There is much to be said and in my opinion (not said) about how P2P is beneficial but as presented here, the impetus is to take a larger view of who we are as human beings and offer a human solution rather than one concocted through the confines of “Rational Choice Theory“. The thinker I would like to cite for this line of thought is Hazel Henderson.

Henderson is a grown-up hippie. Her main attack on the economy today stems from what she sees as two critiques:

Seeing monetary exchange as the only meaningful measurement of production

understanding human beings as theoritical economic creatures that seek only to maximize utility and reduce cost

She points out of course, that people are not so perfectly greedy, although greed is a part of who we are… and that over half of all the meaningful production occurs through the work of women. The PTA meetings, the cooking, the cleaning, even helping your neighbor paint their house on the weekend — these are meaningful acts of production that are not measured in any form of monetary exchange. Likewise, for her, financial instruments whose only purpose is to change a tax status or promote speculation is not a meaningful act of production, although it carries with it a monetary cost. Many of the ‘goods’ we enjoy, like the environment, likewise cannot be monetized, valued or taken into the consideration as a cost inherent in any kind of business plan. As such, the environment is generally worthless and meaningless according to economic theory. Also, our hanging onto the notion of GDP as a meaningful measurement of economic health makes no sense, especially since new cars may be exchanged between two countries and then counted as GDP for both countries. Structurally her critique means a few things:

Money fails as an indicator of meaning since it fails to objectively capture what we value
On the producer side, a variety of interactions exist without any consideration of money (they are valueless, even if those behaviors maintain the quality of life for all)

Our attempt to organize our society around economic theories of value is a terrible thing, resulting in incredible amounts of waste and human misery. We work too long to support those we love who we never see because we have to work. An extensive video of hers can be found here: The Alternative Economy of Hazel Henderson.

If you are like me, then I apologize, because the only thing I find somewhat grating is that she calls it the “Love Economy”. All the same, her suggestion is not to remove money, but to de-center it. Instead of money, we would find meaningful metrics in the healthiness of society through several different axises which are not tied to the market. She cites thirteen separate axises of human need. For instance, the quality of clean air will be measured by environmental engineers on a scale relevant to their industry, not to a dollar value which can then be compared to other monetized “goods” and found to be more or less valuable than other goods as an ‘objective’ dollar amount.

The Love Economy however, is just one expression of P2P. In the larger picture, the Love Economy stems from a trying to arrange society in order to maximize it values, something which is largely impossible to maintain if you hold that the only value is the collection of money.

This would mean the end of the cost-benefit analysis and ROI for decision making. (If you would like to glance a governmental body of text related to the work I do on a daily basis for businesses, take a peek: Cost Benefit Analysis for Americans with Disabilities Act 2010, in particular “side transfer for water closets 602.3”.) Even if this text puts you off, I am afraid most of us would not be able to function without these kinds of “objective” guidelines. How would managers or committees decide any course of action without a financial basis to limit and define meaningful activity?

It’s most likely too, that the destruction of money as the primary signifier/coupler/de-/re-territorialisating agent will signal the end of corporations. The injunction of corporations as legal entities that benefits key players in the corporate hierarchy must end. Corporations as entities of ownership and resource control were seen by Marx as a form of communism and collective ownership, but modern corporations are concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a relative few: I forget where I heard this but something like the top 34 corporations in the world have more GDP than all but the top 8 countries, of which the corporations are “members of”, but you can imagine how long that would last, especially with a weakened US dollar. As reported by Lenin’s Tomb this class struggle is comparable to what’s happening in other countries like the middle east because it’s a class struggle, even if the stakes are somewhat different. If corporations throw their weight around, of course local governments that can’t follow them need to provide conditions for those corporations such that a corporation will understand that it makes monetary sense for them to stay. This is perhaps ironic for those of us living in the United States, as our material wealth in the 50s – 90s had come from corporation’s exploitation and the oppression of other nations for the US’s material interests, as pointed out by Keith Hart.

But now that the corporations have become increasingly powerful in a global economy, they have the option of forcing by design or accident local changes to their favor. It’s not too far off then, that Corporations can be considered the dominant species on the planet.

from Social to Universal in a Global Economy

Given such a dramatic statement, for us individuals to understand our place in the world we cannot rely on simply being just a citizen of a nation or a worker inside another corporation. We have to understand our role as producers and consumers, first and foremost (since that is how we meaningfully interact with a value-system of money). This switch from citizen to consumer/producer fuels much of the current revolution in Search Engine Optimization. Most of the industry is still mulling over how social networking influences online presence.

Online presence includes all the online discussion in the 3rd dimension of consumer to consumer (the first being business to consumer and the second being consumer to business). The freedom of information on the internet has eliminated the days when corporations had control over their timely product unveilings, or their press releases. The internet has allowed companies to have a better feedback of what works for their customers and what doesn’t. Since the speed of information is so much faster, companies need to release products that aren’t perfected in order to remain competitive or deal with informal press releases better. Both Apple and Coke have proven adept at providing expression as their main marketing maneuver rather than the more traditional marketing which aims at offering consumers impressions. The influx of twitters and facebook “likes” and “shares” have proven to have an increasingly huge but causally unclear influence on search engine ranking. Already all the major SEO companies have begun to recognize that in good marketing relationships with customers online, your cusomters produce your best (and worse) content. More often than not, relationship building online and instantaneous information flow has allowed each of us to become both consumer and producer.

Which brings me to back to the original point, the producer-consumer dichotomy. One interesting point, among others, that came from an interview with Rachel Botsman came from her observation that we generally think of ourselves as citizens only, or first. That kind of view will need to change in the near future when we have to reorient ourselves as simply participants. In a peer to peer economy, we will be both consumer and producer, not just consumer. We will be directly responsible for our individual interaction and participation as to how resources are transacted. Her example is eBay, in which strangers can participate on equal footing for remote merchandise that is bought without examination.

The philosophical implications of this are many. The internet has provided a new objective, recordable voting mechanism for companies to be ranked even before consumers open their wallet to “vote” in economic transactions. A blogger can collect a valuable audience which then becomes an asset to marketers. Facebook is an extremely intelligent implementation of this kind of collection of information, perhaps one that rivals even Google, with it’s long term information hoarding. This kind of objective interaction with the Other verges on an interaction with the Universal.

Arguably this kind of dichotomy was marked by the first modern cosmopolitian philosopher, Hegel. Hegel reverses the formalism of Kant by extending Kant beyond subjectivity and as Zizek says, Subjectivising substance devoid of content. By the imposition of his dialectical process, Hegel reaches the notion of the Universal, garnishing a multitudinous rambling along the way. Any contemporary philosopher who seeks to tackle the universal must address Hegel, even if it’s by avoiding the Hegelian Dialectic method.

The most traditional conception of the universal is best expressed through Lacan’s (read Zizek’s) Real in which madness, phantasms and partial objects cannot cohere into a meaningful subject. Is this rhetorically not the perfect analogy to describe the unlinked disorder of the internet where we reach 404 and partial hits on keywords — such as when I search for one word and get something completely different that I click on? I don’t want to go into schizoanalysis or anything like that. Rather I want to point out that our relationship with the universal, especially as monitored through the internet is mediated by a direct attempt by a corporatized other to impose universality on each of us small others through a medley of law (and other paranoiac applications). Whether this be through the paranoid discourse of the state (legality) or through the internet’s opposing hysteria as expressed through Bing’s initial video campagin today we have the increased injunction from the Other Enjoy! and Obey! simultaneously.

This is not a new injunction. I won’t blame this on Hegel, but increasingly in an more ethnic world with global trade, everything becomes relevant for examination — starting with culture and human rights and ending with intellectual property and intangible costs.

Overlawyered.com‘s author, Walter Olson has written extensively about how the legal system has developed into the political monstrosity it exists as today. Apparently attorneys before law school were more pragmatic, trained on their job in apprenticeships. After law school invoked a liberal agenda to use the legal system to argue for change, everything became a matter of litigation — what was perhaps previously a personal dispute between you and your boss now became a matter of employee and employer for all to bear witness to. Increasingly individual concerns have become scrutinized, first through totalitarian states like Stalin and Maoist Communisms, but more recently in the overlawyered culture that exists today — anyone can sue anyone for anything, right or wrong. The influx of attorneys qua politicians (up to 30% or 40% of politicians are attorneys, I believe) comes from the desire to use the court room as a place to change law, which it isn’t supposed to be. Legislation is supposed to change laws.

Anyway, in many ways, the injection of the internet into the intermix of what is accountable (accidential emails, even blogging about belly dancing can ruin a divorce settlement). This kind of dissemination of all aspects of human life even a humorous but somewhat mostly true guide on how to live with your philosopher-relative or life-partner becomes fodder for the voracious paranoia (followed by aimless surfing/hysteria) leaving footprints of human desire and meaning objectified even if this wealth of information doesn’t lend itself directly to meaning.

Don’t get me wrong, participation in the world is definitively more meaningful than retracting into rigid rationalism, i.e., Hegel is more relevant than Kant, who can’t even leave his house without a God as a universal-guideline. After all, isn’t that what WW2 showed Sartre? Young Sartre stopped writing so much and took his place as a public intellectual, held himself accountable for his actions and attempted to take his message of humanism and authenticity in the face of an ever-growing global economy of maginalization and monetization of human meaning. After all, old Sartre knew that meaning was in social interaction not in transactions.

Social interactions is something people complain about losing, in an environment with too many people, when we can be alone in a city of one or fifty million people. Companies are finding out that we got choices — as with any sales person today has to answer to each of their clients: “Why should we buy from you?”

Just like companies are discovering that collecting Facebook shares and re-tweets is the truest indicator of actual meaning. And that meaningful relationship will lead to trust, reliance and transactions. Given this article, that social networking produces the same chemicals falling in love, perhaps I should rescind my statement — that love economy isn’t so far off…. only perhaps “economy” is outdated.

Perhaps we should call it the love network.

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so2 – rhizomatic architecture

entry for no one

not-being here

a debonair affluence of imprecision begets the kernel of being “a” rather than being “some”

on Art

railing against the 2nd attention

on nil

the Disheartening Metonymy in Facebook

Can we function with an outside on the inside?

On me watching Porky’s

from Social to Universal, what comes after a Monetized Economy?

Current Opinion from some Economists today…

Holding the bag means holding… what?

Introducing Peer to Peer Networks

from Social to Universal in a Global Economy

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Lyrical Narratives

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Current Opinion from some Economists today…

Holding the bag means holding… what?

Introducing Peer to Peer Networks

from Social to Universal in a Global Economy

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