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The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition

June 18, 2015 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, reviews, Theory / No Comments

The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental TraditionThe Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition by David Carr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Carr presents us with an interesting puzzle, that speaks about the role of self in the transcendental tradition. In some sense, it’s not a puzzle at all. Kantian scholars often look to the point of “subjectivity” as central to Kant’s critique in inquiry. This is not so. If you read Critique of Pure Reason closely, you will see that Kants main critique is about reason itself; the way in which reason works to supplement understanding, often extending understanding beyond the bounds of what is “reasonable” for reason to speculate on.

Carr shows us at first, the bumbling that rises from the transcendental tradition. He starts off with Heidegger in order to critique him, going through Husserl and then ending later on with Kant. About halfway through we get a glimpse that the two “selves” empirical and transcendental have in fact no bearing within the tradition as a kind of truth. Rather these two points are bracketed speculations. Towards the end then, Carr, goes against the tradition of scholars that wish to push Husserl and Kant into “metaphysical” speculation, tentatively stating that

Both philosophers recognized, I think, that their transcendental procedure did not authorize the transition to metaphysical claims

And this is so! The paradox is rightly present because the scholars that follow misread and wished to pursue their own agenda of subjectivity. In this sense, this already short book, could be even shorter, as the paradox lies wholly within trying to make a round hole squared. For what Carr sets out to do, he does it quite well. Not an easy book to read, because of its heavy terminology, but it is in fact still an introductory book, although it serves as an introduction to a very complex topic.

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aesthetics for temporal cognition

June 13, 2012 / posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, note to self, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

have the nagging feeling that life is slipping me by even though i am productive, in the every day sense, that my actions have consequences for the ppl around me, even to people i have not met.

the sense that i do not have a life, that i do not matter, even though i kind of have a life and even without the sense of community nor with the closeknit friendships ive always had; i still go out several times a week.

this feeling must be based off the faulty illusion that we can “get it”, having achieved something, or experienced something, having it to keep forever. when in fact, even objects, which are the least objective of all, shift constantly, in imperceptible angles, adding up the way the butterfly wings kill entire weather patterns, though, the metaphor is more poetic than actual since complex systems can be expressed in tipping points graphically but not that is not equivalent to being instigated solely by such tiny singularities.

most of all though, what we have is memory. bergson in matter and memory hit the nail on the head — that ontology isnt so much about an experience but a hall of mirrors — experientially echoing in infinite recursion, each recall degrading in imperceptibly, adding up the way butterfly wings shift wind patterns, though, the insect is more poetic than aural, more whimsical than solid, more illusionary than alive… much like that cat of mr. schrodinger’s

i dont think my push to be alive!(tm) could be more actual, although it certainly could be more dramatic. there can’t be more hours in the day. and to be honest i kind of do hate going out. i also love to sleep. look forward to it throughout the day, only to stay up late at night like now.

one of the realisations that LSD gave emily dickinson was that the infinite singularity of the ALL could be found even in a closed space, in the non-all of her room in Amherst. yes, even in Amherst could butterfly wings penetrate walls, and having felt that insect from halfway around the world, she found she could witness it in all things. in the early church calls of the morning or the rocket symphony of a good and tender wine or the heavy walking beats of the bee gees. look at her poetry– YOU KNOW SHE SAW THE MARK OF BUTTERFLIES IN HYPHENS AND ELLIPSES TRAILING OFF THE PAGE IN RHAPSODIC SPLENDOR

so perhaps i need to get out more, or perhaps not. at this point, one life would interfere with another, and together they would not enrich one another. i think at this plateau, they offer the same experience, so i should just choose one and concentrate on that.

but they really dont —

i am mistaking syntagma for paradigms. it’s my mistake, and a common one. formal equivalence is not the same as ontological difference…. that difference being identity, and that kind of paradigmatic difference is what distinguishes a particular woman as soul mate rather than as just another stranger.

of course that’s the sadness about formal reductionisms, that classification at the level of meta promotes the illusion that we can be a soul mate to each and any, every and all– when in fact, to be soul mate is a completely different thing, from one soul to the next.

and of course, our human limitation will not allow us to swallow the whole ocean with our tiny little cups. in pouring more & more & MORE &MORE!, we lose what we have. that’s clear from chuang tzu, perhaps why emily stayed in her room, so as to not lose wings (even if she was only seeing her own pattern strewn across all her furniture and things).

so we seek butterflies out through formal equivalence, rather than gaining a unique deployment with each instance. perhaps this is a facet of a short-cut in cognition, to build patterns and build experience from within familiar patterns. yet we’ve each come across in ourselves and in others, a recognition that experience can be defined solely by patterns we see, when we rely on our syntagasms rather than on the uniqueness of each moment.

yet similiarly to grasp each moment as a uniqueness lends itself to another reductionism, that this can be grasped and is a thing to itself, like the last thing in itself… and this produces another syntagmasm, a meta map for experience that contains each and every, a freshness– so that we insist on finding a novelty in each moment, forcing a short sightedness. we forget to see the entire jet stream and only see butterflys flapping. not so bad, but then why walk with your head down, each foot swinging out. and walk into a pole? or wall? or another charles?

perhaps i am kidding myself. that there is a direction there, and that we can dictate how we surf. but if your walking feet don’t hypnotize then is it possible to see the moon as seperate from the finger pointing at it? bruce lee seemed to think so, and he had great balance though he did die young.

i am rejected, am rebuked, forced back, into the same position i was before, when i started writing this damned thing. yet now feels slightly different, degraded, altered, imperceptibly by me? by time? by metabolism? hallelujah! progress? or is this just another remix for the new year?

heidigger wrote that death encapsulates meaning, a life. that right before one died, when one was dying, then one could be most complete. and having an end point, knowing it’s lurking there, lets us wrap ourselves in meaning, and bring finality to what we do/did, a beauty that when standing on the hill, we can grasp, a beauty which might be lost if we lived for too many 10,000 years. perhaps making bruce a hero too, than if he passed on in bed, an old man filled with regret, living in the past.

so if he was right, with this “a life” we can have meaning, but meaning then, can only be individual, a prior-ity given to prioritize against all other possibilities, potentialities and signifieds… each and every, any and all vectors. that if individual then that precludes the possibility of universal meaning, even if meaning can be shared by the group, by societies, it cannot exist without “a life” and cannot persist without death. bruce’s fingering the moon is the moon to bruce, not to us. then how can the universe not end? how can it not be, unless its meaning was completely inhuman, beyond human and not-human ever at all?

which it obviously is, the way an ant colony understands one things, and ice cubes grasp another, completely foreign actualization.

that we should ride, like a gigantic purple moon over a crazy ocean made of foaming milk and styrofoam, that walt witman with his opium face should preside over an archway of marble halls in deafening revolution be how we find our place — like a daisy on a battlefield — this is spectacular, and betrays our ant colony mentality. but perhaps this is not a weakness at all; that our heads should be bowed when walking. but a strength, a persistence, that happiness is good health and a bad memory, so said the famous addict ingrid bergman, in her shadowy eyes — that one of the so called greatest movies could be just a torrid affair between an older man and a younger woman. that there isnt anything sublime about love, or our role in society, our conflict with the iron will of others…. like a badly painted wall we thinly veil our intentions and let our patterns tell us how to feel.

and can we hope or fear that and each passing moment might penetrate our blindless like a strangely seen roman empire superimposed on los angeles so tormenting horselover fat because only he can step out of that pattern and witness pinkly winking lights, children who fortell of the future, living among tapes, wires, and recorders and dying before the end of the world to the horror of those who hang onto prophecy but freeing us for perspicacity of having a second chance, that death is each moment and in our grasp a creation for each, that even when we hang onto a crystal ball, then can we desire its silence to free us from delphi, free us from expectations, from our patterns, from ourselves…

no authenticity

October 22, 2011 / posted in manifesto, Theory / No Comments

today let us get rid of the concept of ‘authenticity’

without ‘authenticity’ there would be no reason to fake anything.

without ‘authenticity’ there would be simply. and no measure of what is greater, locality or worldliness.

dare i say that there might not be a ‘being’ or ‘ownership’. certainly title insurance would not exist!

there also be no need to ‘lie’ because when we lie, we prize that aspect of things that are ‘true’ over things that are ‘not so’

and then maybe, Heidegger could be completely alive for longer than a moment right before his own death.

and buddhists would also not have to be ‘no-mind’ or ‘buddha nature’ because even daydreamers and schemers are just who they are.

without ‘authenticity’ there would be no ‘poser’ no ‘virgin’ no ‘elite’ no ‘bourgeois’ and no ‘original’.

i think without ‘authenticity’ we can all hold hands and sing kumbaya without needing congo drums or pot. wouldn’t that be nice?

whole foods would go out of business (yay) and the generics would flourish as generics. they wouldn’t have to pretend to be something else.

also, beyond ‘authenticity’

at some point theory is just another text, not to be prized or somehow more genuine than other texts just another piece of bullshit

instead of class, or race, or gender or ‘oppression’ there ought to be another name for that which exercises identity and in the process of

doing so, makes separations, cleaves people & designates, determines them to be lesser or greater.

i guess that’s like the zone of luce irigaray, who i have not read in a long time. i said cleaves and zone to be punny.

i suppose benjamin might want to be brought in, with this notion of art and originals… but anyway

the ‘moron in a hurry’ rests his case.

the Disheartening Metonymy in Facebook

July 28, 2011 / 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….

on Inscripting Meaning into the Universal Void

February 4, 2011 / posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, universal nothing / No Comments

This is why I would miss Dave if something ever happened to him.

I don’t get this level of conversation with anyone else.

In case you can’t tell from these first four lines, I’m going to try and write this out in a different way.

I was at the gym about two weeks ago with him. Immediately after checking in at the counter I picked a random topic of conversation I found interesting.

“Dave! You know that some astrologers up in Minnesota have decided that there are 13 astrology signs?” (link here 13 Astrology signs due to Alteration in Earths Rotation)

Dave did not say anything so I continued. (I know he does not care about astrology at all.)

“So, I told *** that according to the new astrology she’s not really a Scorpio — she’s really a Virgo. And that her kids were actually Sagittarians. She disagreed. I told her that this was a ‘typical virgo-trait’. She then told me that this new astrology sucked and that she could strangle me. Then I told **** that she that we weren’t really virgos but a leos. She said it was only for people born after 2009. Maybe that’s really true but I disagreed. Then I said it was retroactive and she called shenanigans. Then I told ***** that she wasn’t really a Capricorn, but actually a sag. And you know what she said?”

“What?”

“She said ‘ooh, so that’s why my horoscope never matched.’ Haha, it only didn’t work on *****. Astrological-trolling.”

By this time we were sitting at a chest weight machine. We put some weights on and without discussing it were starting to take turns.

Dave: “You know, Alex, this actually makes me really angry.”

“Why?”

Dave: “Because it’s so stupid. Astrology isn’t real. Why should they care about what astrological sign they have? It’s completely irrational.”

“What does it matter? It’s a filter, an arbitrary way of assigning meaning.”

“But it’s not true! Religion is the opiate of the masses.”

This is something we’ve discussed many times. “So? The meaning is what’s true, not the specificity of the actually sign-ology. You may not think that there is a God but you don’t know that. It’s what’s on South Park, that episode about Mormons. It may all be just untrue but it helps people live in a good and upstanding way.”

Dave: “You know, I used to work with a co-worker back at ********** and we would talk about this.” I got onto the machine. “I asked him once, what if you found irrefutable evidence that God was not real. No one knew you had this evidence and it was absolutely convincing. What would you do?”

“What did he say?”

Dave: “He said he would destroy the evidence. He said he would find some way to destroy it so it would be irretrievable and then he would hide the fact he ever found it.”

“He wouldn’t – He wouldn’t bring it out to other people to enlighten them? What if he was afraid of social unrest?” I got up and Dave sat in the machine.

Dave: “He said he would pretend he never found it. And I believed him. I really believed that’s what he would do.”

“Hm.” I watched Dave work the machine. While he was pumping at the machine: “But that’s what faith is.”

Dave: “But he’s being irrational. There’s no reason for him do that. Even if he didn’t want to tell anyone else, he could reform. Why believe in a myth, in an illusion?”

Dave seemed to be getting upset. I said: “There’s a fundamental flaw in what you are thinking — and it’s the opposite of what most people would think. Most people assume that there has to be a solid relationship between reality and meaning. That facts mean specific things and the presence of those items verifies a particular logic. Like everything is sensible like in CSI or in Sherlock Holmes. Most people don’t critically think either, they fit facts into a pre-ordained meaning they would like to see. For example racism as posited by Slavoj Zizek is pathological in the Kantian sense — meaning that perception and meaning tie regardless of the actuality of a situation.” I sat in the machine and in the process of pushing weights I continued to speak: “In Zizek’s example, assume that someone who was Anti-Semitic was faced with a Jew who was misery. That someone would declare, that ‘Jew is misery!’ (because he’s a Jew) and not because (he’s tight with money). You’re just taking it to the next level, that reality and meaning have to be tied together. If meaning doesn’t fit the facts then meaning should change too. The two really don’t coincide. It’s almost like saying, ‘Jews being misery is racist therefore we can never declare someone who is a Jew to also be misery… because that is also racist’.”

I was huffing when I got off and Dave sat in the seat: “There are laws to the universe. Things begin and things end.”

“Sure, so you would believe in the absent watch maker.”

Dave: “What?”

“The absent watch maker. It’s the idea from Deism in the 17th century that the universe is orderly, and that alone determines that there is a God… without religion. He set the watch rolling, disappeared and everything matched up. We all have a place in the universe, our lives have cosmological significance.”

Dave’s turn again. He increased the weights. He got back on. Dave: “This is a weighty subject matter.”

“Ha ha. Reality itself is not orderly. In fact, Lacan hit it on the head when he claimed that the Real is a miss-match of misshapen, disorderly partialities that coincide in an unrecognizable, irreconcilable manner. We each understand and attach meaning to these coincidences, create other from apparitions and claim that this has a cosmological significance that continues beyond our sight.”

Dave: “Sure reality is orderly. I like to think that the ball rolling away appears on the other side — and is the same ball.”

“Sure reality is orderly, that’s why [this gym] is playing ‘Already Gone’ by the Eagles — think that’s a coincidence? No it’s orderly! Because God is Already Gone! All we have left is a universal order WITHOUT the possibility of coincidences!

Our conversation kind of ended there because I forget what happened afterwards. But I think he got what I was saying. If you see order in some places, you might as well extend order into other areas. Without an objective measure that is universally real, there isn’t really any way of determining what should also be objective. Science is one way, but it’s based on our shared experiences, and what we can agree on as a bunch of humans.

Plus, science is out of the realm of philosophy, strictly speaking. When we start to deal with softer issues, like the indeterminateness of tribes in anthropology or ontology — items that we can’t test in an objective circumstance, we begin to lose our bearings. Never mind that science may structure technology which shapes our lives in countless fashions — for our every day human being, we exist in a personal constellation whose orientation is without any outside referents. No one knows what things mean to us, for instance. No one knows how these connections work — except for us, the subject. And so when it comes to culture we too as a society assume that certain items have a weightiness that members outside our culture would not readily attribute.

But that is how we like to fit things. We think that the role of a person in a culture is inscripted into tradition, inscripted into the universe, for time immemorial. When I got to bed in the morning, I will wake up in the same place I woke up at. And if not, then there has to be a reasonable continuity of experience that happens even if I do not directly experience it — that it is in fact experiential (by someone like me). That people are meant to be a certain way, to play certain roles. Each of us then objectively exist in universes that are incommensurably different. Descartes had this problem when he ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’med his way into two distinct substances… then was unable to not only meld the two substances of mental and physical together — but also unable to account for the fact that we while we share physical experiences with others, we don’t also share mental experiences with others in the same way as the physical realm.

If anything, what Lacan notes as being the Symbolic — that realm of meaning making — is itself the horizon of the Real, the bulwark that fends off the insecure unaccountable, ir-reasonableness of the Real. In much the same way this inability to think through facets of reality that deny cognitive metabolism can only be analogized by our continued trips to the gym… going through the pain of building up our the most ir-reasonable, silent, and unaccountable mass of dividuation1 — all for the purposes of assigning and assuring our place without the social continuity as being male, fit and buff… with all their attendant significations. — the other side of our dividuation being namely that other black mass which is our unknown inner portions of our consciousness. Our body is restless, our mind is restless. Each one prompt the other, — Act! much like the tension between personal and social determinations…

In this sense, the only universal available to us is the universal void — not the “out there” beyond the scope of our senses, but that Heideggerian “black box” of Das Sein, somewhere in the non-shape of our Cartesian soft axies of mind and body.

1 It is a split subject divided between itself and a demand that it cannot meet, a demand that makes it the subject that it is, but which it cannot entirely fulfill. From Simon Critchley

On the Freedom of Existence

January 2, 2011 / posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

Freedom is existence even if existence is not always freedom.

Existence is best expressed as freedom.  Relish it.

On Capitalism: A Tragedy1

December 20, 2010 / posted in life as we know it / No Comments

Amusing ourselves to Death

I recently watched Capitalism: A Love Story a documentary made by Michael Moore at a some good friends’ home. Capitalism: A Love Story, argues that capitalism does not work nor does it work for people as a whole. Alternatively, Moore claims that socialism is better because people need to be protected from mechanisms beyond their control. Moore presents the common individual as someone who is happy to wake up, go to work and do what they do. All the complications of the financial work — the nitty gritty of the stock market — are beyond the scope and intelligence of the common individual. Moore’s utopian dream is to usher in a kind of 2nd Bill of Rights straight out of Franklin Deliano Roosevelt’s term — to guarantee the common American a decent job, a decent wage, a good house and food on the table.

This kind of debate is as old as the end of Monarchy. Various utopian ideas from transcendentialism to utilitarianism, socialism have all been offered by thinkers, social critics and philosophers as the answer to the human question: How should we all live together? While most of these ideas have fallen to the wayside, Immanuel Wallerstein in World Systems Analysis offers us a single axis on which to locate people’s political alignment: openness to change. His arguement stems from a loose analysis of the French Revolution — an event which he likens to the social turmoil in the 60s. Wallerstein believes that there are three categories of openness to change: the conservatives, the liberals and the radicals. Only when two of the three groups work together can there be change or the lack of it. To repeat his analysis is more than what I want to get into right now, but it is the fear of change which prompts strict laws, and it is the fear of change which keeps the status quo. This fear, of course, is aligned with those who have the majority of the power.

None the less, fear of change aside, who wouldn’t want everyone to have a home, a decent job and a good wage? What conservatives would claim is that the masses, if given this kind of “Right” would taking advantage of those who genuinely work hard to achieve what they have. They would cite that providing all this would invoke an imbalance of the economy… and that if the “basic necessities” were guaranteed as a right then people having no incentive to work at all.

Personally, I believe think the 80/20 rule works here… 20% of our population basically run the rest of the society so that 80% of us to have our mundane jobs. in a way there’s already too many people around and not enough jobs. As technology becomes more effective, the job market will tighten. Americans work more hours than any other culture in the world because of intense market competition (and the echos of a Protestant work-ethic). Would it possible to spread some of this work around? Furthermore, while competition is often claimed to lead to efficiency, anyone who looks at the current market place will see a large amount of redundancy in our society. Markets may be able to sustain four or five fast food joints in a local area in a big city, but if they are all comporable, do we really need three burger joints each with four or five worker working minimum wage? Other cultures have been amazed at the vast selection of material goods that we have available to us. Is having rows and rows of different toilet paper made by different competitors in a free market really efficient? Do all the different kinds of toilet paper really sell?

This kind of market choice has been touted as a equivalent to our personal freedom. But five or fifteen different kinds of cereal isn’t really the same as an authentic choice. (I could get into this too but that’s time for a different entry!). My point is that, in a way having this kind of market excess is really redundant. If we could take all the brain power that was sunk into making iPods and iPod rip-offs and other mp3 players… it’s conceivable that we could make a super mp3 player that won’t be such a waste. because all the products that don’t work… well, it’s junk. we make a lot of junk. Many of us have what was once the ‘latest gadget’ which is now junk in our desk drawer? What about planned obsolescence? How efficient is that? How good is that for the environment? When money becomes the metric for efficiency, as economists and cost-analysis by political departments are oft to do to justify their policy decisions — then what happens it that money becomes the only item that is ‘generated’ from implementing those decisions.

But capitalism itself has other virtues, right? To create one central “Soviet-esque” department to make iPods would force a single directive, or a single origin for what would or would not be produced. This could destroy our ability to create and be innovate. Furthermore, having such a department that isn’t under any external pressure (such as market pressure) would eventually cause the department to become less efficient. Even still, look at newer information sharing models, such as the open source model that works so well for Firefox in competition with the monolithic Internet Explorer. This model could theoritically be applied to our market economy. So just because things have been done in a certain way so far, and that we have gotten so much ‘progress’ and ‘stuff’ and ‘development’ doesn’t necessarily mean that we should continue in this infrastructure.

But I really don’t want to argue this stuff. I’ll probably end up sounding like Alvin Toffler in Power Shift. To get to issue directly, let’s just jump ahead a hundred years to where our hypothetical Socialist system works and then compare it to Capitalism as we have it..

So let us assume that we we jump to where we work out all the bugs — all the major ones anyway, and people live lax lives because there’s too many people — and technology lets us work so efficiently, so people can work very little and have a minimum. To keep innovation and purpose, I suppose we could introduce a tier-system where people could work harder or more responsible jobs — climb a kind of ladder — and in the process become rewarded by getting more food selection or get more privileges, like being able to have babies… Not to mention that being higher in this rung would engender for them elevated status in the eyes of their peers.

Even still though, we have the same problem don’t we, like the comic linked above by Stuart Mcmillen. In such a world like the one we live in, where we are divorced from daily survival, where we have free time and the technology to insolate and amuse us, in our free time we will always choose to have more of something enjoyable — to the point at which if no one stops us, we would become paralysed by it.

It’s clear in Moore’s film that he takes the position that most people want to work and not care too much about the big picture. While Moore doesn’t suggest why but if you take McMillen seriously is that we are don’t care because we are blind sided by the things we love. Now, I don’t think it’s so much that we have become blindsided by materialism — we are in fact blindsided by materialism — but I think we always have been distracted from what’s going on in the social milieu. Since humans begun to band together and live in settlements and colonies to maximize our ability to distribute work we’ve collectively had the opportunity to have free time and create. While most of our history is undocumented (since we were so often struggling to make ends meet) — only recently in the past 5,000 years have we begun to really flourish as a species — our death rate is historically low — it’s kind of amazing just how uncreative individually we are. New creations in the market place are often offered as solutions to problems — problems in the market place, problems with products — but just as often the majority of us aren’t creative at all. As human beings we all face very similar problems and we respond to them in tired ways.

While much of what we do is very different today than what our predecessors had, the massive still remain at the mercy of those in charge. And those in charge will do as people do — help those who are closest to them. Over time, those relations are bound to crystalize and become inbred… This is where what’s great about capitalism becomes apparent — through the market place. In the process of being innovative and bringing value, there stands a chance for the very poor and disenfranchised to become wealthy and successful too. We do have a system but it’s relatively loose. This is also where capitalism’s weakenesses as a system also become apparent: while plenty of people have made large amounts of money — most of them have not kept it. The value they give society may not disappear, but if money is a metric to social value — should they have not gotten a chance to prosper forever? In our hypothetical system, people would still benefit from the merits of their own achievements. But families would not be able to inheirt and competition for climbing the social ladder would have to be much more rigid. People who want to go off and do their own thing wouldn’t really be able to; there may not be a market for them. You might also add that this is a valid fear: if people have very little rights and very little in the way of being autonomous then they become vulnerable for those in charge to subvert the system against them… because they are uncoordinated and without the means to protest.

Just like what happens in Moore’s film.

Moore doesn’t seem to find fault directly with greedy individuals. And he doesn’t find fault with our government. He finds fault with the system itself, a system that rewards greed in as much as it rewards innovation and successful marketing. A system and a means of distributing wealth and resources that seems to just have popped out ahistorically. Moore’s gripe is not about a particular attempt at world domination, after all, people in charge have tried to get more and more and more all the time. (Moore begins his film with a voice over about the fall of Rome, drawing connections between the United States and a decadent Rome.) This is what more gets at: he named his movie about capitalism — he’s questioning the value of a money driven society. as a patroit, he finds human rights synonymous not with capitalism but with individual quality of life. Gandi’s quote could work here: “a nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members”. Today we are to be insolated from weakness. We don’t see our weakest members. We don’t even die in our own beds. The sick and dying are wisked away and the public is segregated from everything horrific or uncomfortable… Even if this horror is in our own bodies. We are an anaesthesized culture. This is our pervasive attitude towards pain and discomfort — why wouldn’t there be?

After all, if you could avoid pain and go with fun things, why wouldn’t you? If you could live your life in comfort, pleasure and feeling good everyday… why wouldn’t you? Huxley seems to think most of us would. I would agree. Most of us do. Television and entertainment is a huge industry. We decide everyday how we want to live, and most of us to some extent, spoil ourselves with distractions. Video games can be a rewarding experience, the thrill and excitement and relatively low risk involved. The low risk may be the deciding factor, after all, in video games, the work and effort we put into it amounts to very little that’s translatable to the world we actually live in.

And about the world we live in?

Of course, we are integrated into our surroundings. Much like our so advanced cell phones — if taken away from the system it’s invented for — it becomes useless junk. Likewise, we can’t really go back. We can learn to make fires, hunt under the sun and eat wild berries, but it’s questionable how long our soft bodies and our soft processed-food digestive systems can last. we wouldn’t really want to go back either — unless it was temporary ‘fun’.

So to save ourselves, Moore’s film ends with a call to arms against the powers that be. This seems kind of obvious — that we need to do something for ourselves — although his film might have been better said for the masses to awaken and stop being so self involved.

The biggest issue, I believe, with ceasing self indulgence has to do with our general sense of purpose. As a people, there doesn’t seem to be a very strong regard as to our sense of meaning or well being.

Many different contemporary thinkers have wondered at how “in flux” meaning in our day and age is, aptly but ineffectively bringing up a multitude of explanations, none of which have any strong certainty about them. Contemporary thought has bred several giants in our day and age who attempt to give voice to our ennui. Lyotard is credited with coining “Postmodernism”. Derrida wrote tons of books about “Post-Structuralism” of which the most famous phrase is “The center is not the center”. While there are many different ways to ponder why this is, it’s best to approach this issue historically to address the “how”. Philosophy for a long time was a kind of secular theology basing its structure around the structure of theology. So, in a poetic way, it makes sense that the lack of religion today means the end of the master signifier. Without a single signification to anchor how we should approach meaning, our world becomes increasingly fragmented. This makes sense culturally as well, since in an international village where a variety of voices are given credit, there can’t help but be a multiplicity of views. In terms of ontology, we can turn to the last great Ontologist: Towards the end of his life, Heidegger wrote an Introduction to Metaphysics. The last part of the book discusses the “ought” of which Heidegger credits Kant with bringing up — the last kind of being is split into values and ontology. People’s values support an ontology that expresses how people think things should be. Historically this is fitting. Heiddeger wrote this in the fifties. Perhaps still reeling from the end of Facism, the world was split into two major camps: Capitalism and Communism — both of which had several different modes — and all of which vied for what they thought life should be. That Heidegger should see fit activity with ontology — and how ontology should be justified — seems a frightening thought. Perhaps this was his attempt to incorporate what he saw happening — but could not make understandable within an ontological system.

Nonetheless, his prediction about the justification of values proven almost too true. Today, between political parties and pundits, revolutionaries, terrorists and foreign diplomats, our current media explosion of meaning and dialogue isn’t a response to a lack of meaning but exactly what Baudrilliard writes about — Hyperreality. Signification works on its own level to justify itself to an abstracted sense of the universal even if we do not know what a universality is between people: What rights should be, or what kind of humanism pervades culture, even if we have an offering of a variety of points of view. In a very real way, this fourth ontology is lost among the massive amounts of dialogue. Hyperreality affects ontology as a suspension of the ontological metaphysics of presence, making the question of ontology almost irrelevant.

I don’t concur with Baudrillard’s brand of nihilism (even if I agree with his lack of universal content). More importantly though, we have lost the ability to decide for ourselves what should be as this network of significant obscures our ability to attain any kind of Metaphsics of presence. While Moore doesn’t have this level of dialogue in his film, Moore seems to think that we should have a Second bill of Rights to guarantee our middle class lifestyle be available for everyone — and it sounds good at first — but in terms of an ontology and the production of meaning, this doesn’t make sense. Now granted, his film’s purpose isn’t trying to decide for us the meaning of life, but it is trying to suggest how it is we should live. And how we should live directly connects with how we access universal notions of humanity, society and productivity.

The last bit about productivity is off of Heidegger’s beaten track. To address productivity, we can turn to Marx and Wallerstein. Both write that the middle class is the key to engendering a stable society. The middle class act as ‘managers’ to production, ‘oppressing the poor’ and acting as the body for the ‘rich’. If both writers are are are correct about the role of middle classes — then making everyone middle class as Moore suggests would be the end of our civilization as well know. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean the end of civilization — just the end of what we know. After all, if there were truly only 2 classes, the workers and the rich then civilization should collapse because the workers would see that their leaders had everything. Of course, if we are imagining a hypothetical future, then why not have robots (ala the Matrix) do all the hard work? but that doesn’t really solve the issue of people becoming complacent or themselves robotic qua workers. Already we get the common complaint about our cubical brothers and sisters — who go in during the morning on a coffee high and then work themselves into another coffee stupor in the afternoon only to go home, celebrate the latest tv show and then pass out in bed. So while productivity can be suspended it does not directly addressly the issue at stake:

Even if we were to recognize that our society was stolen from us, who would care? Without an originary access to the universal there isn’t any reason for us to do anything. If we don’t ‘get’ how things should be and we are not embodying that metaphysics of presence, then there can be no purpose to doing one particular thing over another. All our distractions — our toys, our drugs and our entertainment become so much more satisfying only because any direct connection to a satisfying life isn’t possible.

This brings us back to the original thought… and Moore’s title the thought about money.

Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus wrote that money is the master signifier. Taking Marx one step further they demonstrate in a more direct way that the cycle of money, M-C-M and C-M-C can’t be broken. Money is the ultimate commodity and money is exchanged, ultimately for itself since the value of a thing is its monetary value. Theoritically nothing is changed but everything is different when Marx wants us to short circuit the cycle and take money out of the equasion by taking it directly out of the hands of the managers. But first, a quote from Deleuze and Guattari

Let us return to the dualism of money, to the two boards, the two inscriptions, the one going into the account of the wage earner, the other into the balance sheet of the enterprise. Measuring the two orders of magnitude in terms of the same analytical unit is pure fiction, a cosmic swindle, as if one were to measure intergalactic or intra-atomic distances in meters and centimeters. There is no common measure between the value of enterprises and that of the labor capacity of wage earners. That is why the falling tendancy has no conclusion. A quotient of differentials is indeed calculable if it is a matter of the limit of variation of the production flows from the viewpoint of a full output but it is not calculable if it is a matter of the production flow and the flow on which surplus value depends. Thus the difference is not canceled in the relationship that constitutes it as a difference in nature; the “tendancy” has no end, it has no exterior limit that it could reach or even approximate. The tendancy’s only limit is internal and it is continually going beyond it, but by displacing this limit — that is, by reconstituting it, by rediscovering it as an internal limit to be surpassed again by means of a displacement; thus the continuity of capitalist progress engenders itself in this break of a break that is always displaced, in this unity of schiz and flow. In this respect already the field of social immanence as revealed under the withdrawal and the transformation of the Urstaat is continually expanding, and acquires a constitency entirely its own, which shows the manner in which capitalism for its part was able to interpret the general principle according ot which things work well only providing they break down, crises being “the means immanent to the capitalist mode of production.” If capitalism sis the exterior limit of all societies, this is because capitalism for its part has no exterior limit, but only an interior limit that is capital itself and that it does not encounter, but reproduces by always displacing it….”If the movement does not tend toward any limit, if the quotient of differentials is not calculable, the present no longer has any meaning….The quotient of differentials is not resolved, the differences no longer canel one another in their relationship. No limit opposes the break, or the breaking of this break. The tendency finds no end, the thing in motion never quite reaches what the immediate future has in store for it; it is endlessly delayed by accidents and deviations…. Such is the complex notion of a continuity within the absolute break.” In the expanded immanence of the system, the limit tends to reconstitute in its displacement the thing it tended to diminish in its primative emplacement. [Anti-Oedipus 230 – 231]

In other words, the there is no end for the system to reach either for the nation-states (peripheral or center as Deleuze and Guattari go on to talk about in a very Wallerstien-esque way) or for the workers within capitalism first who find their life blood sucked away first into dollars per hour and salaries before then finding that same earned money sucked away from them in the form of commodities. On both ends, does m = m + surplus value or, in other words, our lives in exchange for pleasures, with no end in sight. We might be wearily working our minds to the bone typing away at work staring at a monitor (the labor of which is then subsumed by corporations) or we might be wearily working our minds to the bone staring at the vast internet or satelite television… in the big picture, we pay for our own creations (which is the impetus for revolution)! But alas, it makes no difference. If money continues to be the master metric which defines all our efforts like some Mastercard commercial that enforces to us that what’s priceless — i.e. without price (being worth so much it can’t be comodified, or worth so little it can’t be comodified) then that kind of master metric we give to our lives signifies that our lives have no absolute no value themselves being priceless. Each (hu)man according to her talents, perhaps, but also according to her discipline to get up in the morning, to the job opportunities available in her local area, to the assets she already owns (work clothes, a car, a place to live… shower and get dressed) we become useless to the job market without the things that surround us. a computer to find a job, a car to get to work, money for the bus, clothes to wear to work, an education, a common language

Never before have we found our lives without intrinsic value. Perhaps that is the true horror of measuring everything by money. in Moore’s film he has a segment about workers who are insured by their companies — who continue to profit from their employees even when their employees die. This segment is tragic to their families because it shows them directly how much (or how little) their surplus value really is….

Breaking this cycle is perhaps impossible, given our current ontological sophistication. It operates as a kind of stand alone complex. Marx was unable to explain where capitalism came from. He’s also unable to explain how it might end, except through some kind of miracle Proletariat uprising, which won’t happen as long as people remain hypnotized as vanishing mediators for the passage of money. we might have drank ourselves to death in past nations, but today we sit ourselves — bore ourselves — to death. Without a universal content there remains no impetus for us to do anything. Moore might appeal to the highest law in our nation. but that won’t work, you realize. the system would have to collapse to shock us out. A sudden disruption of the cycle of M-C-M and C-M-C cannot be stopped, by natural disaster as people will just build it back up. In a way, the system has to grind to a halt like surplus trash such as in Pixar’s Wall-e although even then, people continued to exist in some kind of suspended techno-world of hypnotized pleasure.

Kojan Karatani in Transcritique examines how Marx and Kant are related — but he also offers this advice for us to step out of M-C-M into a zero sum system of barter and exchange. it’s not enough to awaken workers into Proletariats but also the same individuals need to waken as consumers and choose not to participate in the cycle: the parallax gap that splits production into the two modes of M-C-M and C-M-C needs to be consciously undone. In other words, let pork become pigs again…. and let employees stay human.

I think what’s at stake here, if you don’t follow, is not just a question of how we should live. If anything Moore’s position actually doesn’t go far enough if only because he is still enamoured by STUFF, a house for everyone, a car. The utopia upbringing he talks about from growing up in — that he wants to bring to everyone — is a 50’s daydream — the epitome of being-consumer. Solutions offered to the problem in his film (but not in his film) do exist. But it’s not enough to complain about our loss of freedom or to strive for small government. While our civil liberties are definitely important just like the poorest of the poor’s standard of living — what’s at stake is far more important because our very meaning in living and being alive is what will initiate and maintain any kind of revolutionary change in society. This kind of revolution in consciousness is not something we can easily conceive of because it requires we jump axises. Our current state of legality — like philosophy — marks of our inability to coalesce our subjective differences. It’s not so much as Baudrilliard claims that the multiplicty of meaning destroys any meaningful referent itself — but that as a people, we can’t choose between the many meaningful referents. We are too distracted. Given any political event, like the advent of wikileaks or Russia’s refusal to disarm nuclear weapons — there arises any number of commentators who would have us believe contrary things. Our paralysis — our inability to select just one — becomes our inability to select anything — which then becomes our inability to care. After the news we change the channel and forget about what’s at stake. Conceptually we may reserve the universal ‘citizen’ as the person we are all slotted to be — legally or otherwise — the limit to what is an allowable subject. But when given so many choices in the free market, like so many comments, we can no longer find justification for our daily lives. Why this hamburger? Why this restaurant? Why/what Feminism? Why drive this car? Why choose this life partner? Why have children? Why this clothing store? Why are we alive? If we always choose to do things that make us feel good and look good, we lose sight of what is actually good. Now, I don’t mean that like wall-e we should forgo our technological slumber in favor of walking on our own two feet and cleaning up the planet ourselves (rather than letting robots do it).

Ethical responsibility isn’t in particular actions — and this is especially where Karatani’s Transcritique becomes useful — Marx misses ethics and Kant misses the ability to talk about our every society in concrete terms– ethics is in EVERY action. Any (non)action IS an ethical action. We are not abstracted subjects or even consumers. We are human beings who embody our own resource production and distribution and our lives are statements not just for ourselves but for how we should all be. We can carry the weight of the world. Every action IS a universal action, not in the multicultural sense of (“imho” or “for me”…). This is the gap where Sartre entered after he stopped writing. He began to do rather than just write. Most of us often shrug and say what can we do? Think globally and act locally. Slogans do abound — the answers are right in front of us — if we can distinguish them — but postmodernism as a lifestyle or a philosophy is harmful. Living in a world where everything is equal and a Presidential Administration can claim they are victors and say they write history even before any material change has occurred is not the world we should embrace. We still do have a choice. I don’t mean a choice between paper and plastic, I mean a choice as to how we want to live. Unfortunately such a real choice may no longer easily exist as an option for many of us, as long as we continue to work, buy our food, and drive our cars.

Choosing to uninstall a program isn’t the same as not using a computer… even though not using a computer means wasting more trees… The answers don’t lie within an axis of money or no money or between small or big government but within the values we choose to have and the responsibility and accountability we embody to our fellow human beings.

1 Mostly edited by my good friend Mabbish. Thanks!

manifesto for living

December 12, 2010 / posted in life as we know it, manifesto / No Comments

alot of my friends, and old friends are not people i can really relate to. i started noticing and complaining to myself about it around 3-5 years ago. i don’t want to hear about the latest video card, or the hottest computer game. many of them have stopped talking to me about anime too. this is normal, i think.

crappy but true. people move in different directions.

i find it mostly inane but also insidious how ‘living life’ often means getting drunk and partying all night. it’s mostly harmless fun. but at the same time, it’s terribly wasteful in the same way that your parents probably found it wasteful. and if your parents didn’t find it wasteful then there’s a good chance that they may have not found much time to be your parents (ha ha…?)

but seriously. this is has been a kind of weird transformation over the years. i accept that my nights and days spent ‘partying’ or staying up all night doing ‘fun stuff’ have been lost along the way side. and i don’t really care if other people behave like that (as long as they don’t keep me up or disturb me in any particular way). many of the people who choose to, at times, cut loose and revel in somatic pleasures like drugs or getting drunk or sex or whatever are quite accomplished individuals. they have done great things, they have good career — they are not bad people. i guess there’s a bit of slight disapproval from me though, (not that it matters, because it doesnt!) as i find that the energies that go into such recreation are really just thrown away.

but the larger question comes to be, what isn’t thrown away or lost?

i spent alot of my formative years watching star trek the next generation. this is because my family (and some close friends, at the time) were really into it. i don’t have tv at my house so i watch it on tivo when i am at my parents. most of the time, visiting parents = some break for me, since i don’t have my computer and are not tempted to work late at night since i can’t. i mean i do, sometimes on their notebook computer but it’s purposefully devoid of my materials (and of dropbox) so getting onto the server and working directly from there is kind of a pain… i recognize i need some rest… so that’s how i sort of set things up for myself. anyway, watching sttng is a way of relaxing at my parents house. i really only watch tv when i am there. because there’s not much else to do and because tv is easy. it’s inane and the episodes while i have seen them all, sometimes i don’t recall. so it’s alright.

there seems to be a huge theme running throughout sttng i didn’t notice as a teenager. captain picard or members of the crew are always explaining what it means to be mortal, or whatever it means to be human. they explain to aliens who are immortal or super-powerful energy beings that “we are not like them, we die and live short lives… or explain to lesser developed aliens that “we are like you, we are not gods, we die and live short lives… (sorry if the unclosed quotes are annoying to you i did it because i am talking in his voice and my own)

but sttng is really not an exploration of the universe, but a moralistic tool that tries to brainwash the audience into thinking about the greater good of humankind and of all sentient beings… dead and alive…

this really isn’t something that we humans seem to ascribe to.

i spent about 2 hours this evening going to and coming back from a hipster art performance of sorts in north hills. it wasn’t bad. but i had also spent all last night and most of today working on a program… rewriting code and developing a new schema… i had drank a large amount of caffeine and was very focused. and really feeling impatient.

i arrived late, to meet my friend there… so i missed half the performances. i listened to a sound piece. and wondered why it was so unpleasant. a few years ago i might have tried to think deeply about the implications of various words. but like most sonic art, it escapes meaning by the use of non-linguistic sensations. like dance, it’s hard to translate into text even if it is literally in the kristevan term, inter-textual… meaning that it invokes a wide range of semiotic jolts. sound does that. it jolts us.

eventually though, i lightened up. and enjoyed the atmosphere and the sensation. but it grabs me that hipsters can be connoisseurs of sorts (i don’t consider myself one) of things art… art here, is only a collection of anything that creates different bodily sensations of light, and sound… the point of which is the sensation. so food and dance count. so does hiking and traveling. but this kind of art can be a fascinating exploration of various modes of consciousness in a way; the way a friend of mine’s installation changed the openedness of the space by stringing rope at about 10 feet above us across the room… cutting us off, in a way, from the 40+ high ceiling. these hipsters do it and then they talk about it. i find the talk inane mostly because it’s devoid of abstract language which would specify significant topological features of the individual expressions. but the fact remains really that there isnt any framework for such discussion… (as much as deleuze and guattari would like there to be) and to develop such a framework would be in some sense, to isolate one’s self in inanity…

this kind of art is all well and good, but i find myself asking if this attention to these light kinds of foray into second attentions — second because it’s not our first -daily- attention (to use some language from carlos castenada) really adds anything to our human experience. listening to soft live music from hipsters with guitars… okay maybe. it can enrich us subtly, in a sort of under-consciousness kind of way… if we choose to let it. but that kind of fantastic group explorations, which performance art is and can be, between a performer and the audience — is at best only a distraction from everything else. a sort of island from all our other energies and attentions and times.

i think we can be naked to the Name of the Father as it were, in a kierkegaard or a sartrean or a lacanian or a heideggerian way — submit ourself to the function, become the little warm center of the universe qua subject but that in itself won’t bring meaning to our activities… and maybe such a hipsteresque distraction… much like the drunking and partying that goes on every night in all the major (and minor!) settlements of the world serve as our only buffers to the general apathy of being a subject or quasi-subject. there really isn’t any kind of relief from any oppressive feeling from the Name of the Father. you hate it you love it you commit suicide because of it. and it doesn’t matter because it goes on like some crazy superego gone mad.. always to force an injunction that you comply.

personally i follow sartre mostly. i think, because i believe in choice. i don’t believe in oblivion. i don’t believe in the beautiful death that heidegger does. i don’t believe in submission and i don’t believe in any of the lacanian discourses. really, the Name of the Father is just another nomenclature for the cage of being configured as any kind of subject… and i choose to be a subject who wants to make a difference in the world. the explosion of what it means to be human (or atleast the desire for that) as radical as it sounds — is really a conservative way of foreclosing what could be, for me and i think most every one of us, to be destructive impulses that would really only get me, you and anyone else in trouble… eventually.

i don’t think i would drink myself to death. or get arrested or anything like that. although in a sci fi kind of way, anything is possible. i doubt that i would be as hysterical as the enterprise… streaking across the galaxy looking for something… but not at all knowing what that is… or like a broken record, always having to justify our tenuous position with life and bringing meaning and order in the name of peace and humanity. in a way, sttng is just us repeating to ourselves, everything is okay, we are all right. it’s not a great leap then, that star fleet headquarters is in san francisco, as lovely as that sounds… all right.

but what else is there?