Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Ouch
One can meditate on psychic pain, just as one does for physical pain.
To meditate on something in this way is to focus concentration on it and grasp its contours and situate it to one's experience, as opposed to reacting to it, which tends to amplify it.
To meditate on something in this way is to focus concentration on it and grasp its contours and situate it to one's experience, as opposed to reacting to it, which tends to amplify it.
Addictions
What many addictions have in common is an anticipation of a given sensation and the relentless pursuit of it - or the avoidance of it for that matter - as opposed to merely perceiving and appreciating the present.
Though of course the present can be quite unbearable, depending on who you are.
Though of course the present can be quite unbearable, depending on who you are.
Musical Cosmos
In classical music, there is a pouring forth of a multitude of harmonies and melodies, all occurring within the bounds of a unified flow, which is something that similarly happens in African polyrhythmic music, except with a multitude of drums, beats. It induces a profound spiritual affectation, an awareness of the interplay of multitude and difference within a whole.
Stories
A story could be imagined as a progression of emotional movements or perceptions that make sense, with their ups and downs, cut down and simplified.
And yes, I told a story to simplify the telling of stories.
And yes, I told a story to simplify the telling of stories.
Creak
World structure rests on persistent conservative belief, as well as the effect of progressive elements on this belief.
And then conditions for collapse are related to the way a population collectively thinks, and perpetually acts. It is the consequence of myriad relations acting on each other.
And then conditions for collapse are related to the way a population collectively thinks, and perpetually acts. It is the consequence of myriad relations acting on each other.
Fences
Life forms which are antagonistic to each other must be kept separate. Further, any form of life tends to become more antagonistic to the outside world the more they are threatened, as a matter of global function.
Synthesis
There is a practice in philosophical thought which tends to bridge disparate theories or methods, so as to avoid provoking them, and to attempt to include both parties in the discussion. The bridge accomplishes this by containing both sides within it. This can also be referred to as a synthesis in Hegelian terms, which eventually hardens into a thesis, provoking an antithesis. The two crash until their polarities lessen and they are able to consummate.
Book or No Book
I keep feeling as if I should write a book. But why write a book? This Internet writing seems to be conducive to constant change, to the constant revision and even destruction of one's explanatory structures, whereas a book says, "This is it!" But one can write multiple books I suppose.
Social Media
Social media provides a great wealth of information, much of which can be controlled or more or less manipulated by its participants. This information also becomes modulated by the platforms themselves. The preponderance of information is deceitful, as much is still left out, or otherwise distorted. One can't base one's views on it entirely, though one can take some things away from it.
Something or Nothing
Sometimes something must be done. And sometimes nothing must be done.
If there is mass dysfunction, the solution can be to let go and not attempt function, for function can only occur within a landscape that is already locked up with dysfunction.
Or else function should be attempted which is wholly antagonistic to the dysfunction.
If there is mass dysfunction, the solution can be to let go and not attempt function, for function can only occur within a landscape that is already locked up with dysfunction.
Or else function should be attempted which is wholly antagonistic to the dysfunction.
Intergenerational Conflict
The young are still developing regulatory structures through genetic expression and trial and error contact with the environment, their peers, and their family. This is still chaotic and playful, developing forms through life experience.
Elders have much experience, but regulatory structures have calcified even as change occurs. Though of course I've seen older people who are quite dynamic, and younger people who are inflexible. The lines aren't clearly demarcated, but generally hold.
There is a constant traffic and a constant negotiation. Especially for a complex and unstable society - the latter is emphasized - that has to pass through dramatic change to maintain itself.
Elders have much experience, but regulatory structures have calcified even as change occurs. Though of course I've seen older people who are quite dynamic, and younger people who are inflexible. The lines aren't clearly demarcated, but generally hold.
There is a constant traffic and a constant negotiation. Especially for a complex and unstable society - the latter is emphasized - that has to pass through dramatic change to maintain itself.
Press
There is a secret power of the oppressed that lies in their being pressed down, as what is displaced must eventually return, if not where it was pressed then elsewhere.
And what presses down must eventually pass downward.
And what presses down must eventually pass downward.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Keep It Up
There are numerous ways to support and elevate those we love, or those we care about, or even agree with.
Money then is a way of rationing these ways. So what is accomplished by rationing? Who is doing the rationing? Where is the money coming from? And where can it legally go?
Capital then is a limited body, a perpetual reproduction of what the powerful are determining should be reproduced, against the wishes of a majority of the body itself.
There is a constant reforming and negotiating of what the body is going to be, book-ended by a birth and a death, which on their face appear as boundaries or delimited events, but which are continuous.
Money then is a way of rationing these ways. So what is accomplished by rationing? Who is doing the rationing? Where is the money coming from? And where can it legally go?
Capital then is a limited body, a perpetual reproduction of what the powerful are determining should be reproduced, against the wishes of a majority of the body itself.
There is a constant reforming and negotiating of what the body is going to be, book-ended by a birth and a death, which on their face appear as boundaries or delimited events, but which are continuous.
Monday, March 07, 2016
Money in the Coal Mine
The interesting thing about money is the way in which it traces a rough social consensus around a given state of affairs in the real. There are times when the money reality even gains primacy over the real, temporarily at least, but which then contracts and withdraws, tail between its legs, in pursuit of the real.
When you see the money take flight, it is almost always a delayed effect, in which the consensus around a given state of affairs collapses.
I use consensus very loosely here, and it is a consensus that is certainly meticulously constructed and forced.
There is of course a split between those who use the money as a sort of canary in the coal mine, to trace out various realities, and then those that already know that the coal mine is poisoned, and the canary is soon to be doomed.
When you see the money take flight, it is almost always a delayed effect, in which the consensus around a given state of affairs collapses.
I use consensus very loosely here, and it is a consensus that is certainly meticulously constructed and forced.
There is of course a split between those who use the money as a sort of canary in the coal mine, to trace out various realities, and then those that already know that the coal mine is poisoned, and the canary is soon to be doomed.
All That Work
There is a steady and recursive erosion of inherited Western culture and thought which is under way due in part to its overextension in time and space. Centuries, millenia of work is being called into question because of the corruption of the culture, be it various unsound scientific bodies of thought, political and economic philosophy, religious thought, or what have you. The culture is being rejected.
This is not to say that this is a bad thing, or that the good cannot be salvaged, or that even the bodies of thought which we are considering increasingly corrupt were even sound in the first place. But there you have it; it is happening.
And of course it could be picked up again in the future by a later culture with similarities, god forbid.
This is not to say that this is a bad thing, or that the good cannot be salvaged, or that even the bodies of thought which we are considering increasingly corrupt were even sound in the first place. But there you have it; it is happening.
And of course it could be picked up again in the future by a later culture with similarities, god forbid.
Sunday, March 06, 2016
Wait for It
The point isn't to watch for a specific kind of fascism to arise. The rise of fascism is continuous, which is how societies were so smitten by it almost a century ago.
A lot of the reactions surrounding Donald Trump are curious in that it finally took a comically despicable character, who was able to spell out very clearly the advanced state of our social necrosis in his person.
This is the equivalent of shouting and making a fuss when the fire is already lit and visible - arguably when it is too late - after having sat passively and yawning away the constant dancing about with a gasoline can and lit matches the last 40 years.
It has been pointed out that this isn't anything new really.
Terrible things are happening every day that a healthy observer would find absolutely repugnant.
We see mass poverty, homelessness, deaths from shootings and suicides, mass chronic diseases, failures of health care, distant brush-fire wars, tremendous populations in prison, gangster policing, mass looting, the full exercise of white supremacy and bigotry, and well, take your pick. These things aren't registering with enough force on our collective moral meters because there aren't men with pointy black helmets running around, or clear, cartoonishly recognizable villains. The point is that yes, things are bad, and poised to get worse.
Part of this could be related to the fact that this steady disintegration through cruel accounting is difficult to perceive for the average person; we are all bound by this money calculus and thus have some skin in the game, and are all committed to getting ahead at the expense of the other. We are bound in a continuum. And it is all very complex and widely spread out; it is difficult to perceive all at once.
But then angry monsters with pointy hats have a polarizing effect. The accumulated contradictions and the resulting catastrophe have become embodied. You can ignore a homeless man piled on the floor, staring off into space, but you cannot ignore an angry man with a knife in your face. And the police and surveillance state slowly and quietly spreads out its spindly legs in anticipation.
A lot of the reactions surrounding Donald Trump are curious in that it finally took a comically despicable character, who was able to spell out very clearly the advanced state of our social necrosis in his person.
This is the equivalent of shouting and making a fuss when the fire is already lit and visible - arguably when it is too late - after having sat passively and yawning away the constant dancing about with a gasoline can and lit matches the last 40 years.
It has been pointed out that this isn't anything new really.
Terrible things are happening every day that a healthy observer would find absolutely repugnant.
We see mass poverty, homelessness, deaths from shootings and suicides, mass chronic diseases, failures of health care, distant brush-fire wars, tremendous populations in prison, gangster policing, mass looting, the full exercise of white supremacy and bigotry, and well, take your pick. These things aren't registering with enough force on our collective moral meters because there aren't men with pointy black helmets running around, or clear, cartoonishly recognizable villains. The point is that yes, things are bad, and poised to get worse.
Part of this could be related to the fact that this steady disintegration through cruel accounting is difficult to perceive for the average person; we are all bound by this money calculus and thus have some skin in the game, and are all committed to getting ahead at the expense of the other. We are bound in a continuum. And it is all very complex and widely spread out; it is difficult to perceive all at once.
But then angry monsters with pointy hats have a polarizing effect. The accumulated contradictions and the resulting catastrophe have become embodied. You can ignore a homeless man piled on the floor, staring off into space, but you cannot ignore an angry man with a knife in your face. And the police and surveillance state slowly and quietly spreads out its spindly legs in anticipation.
Privilege Contraction
Privilege is held tighter all the more as it is contracting. That is, as it becomes more difficult to maintain a privilege, the privileged demand the same flow of spoils nevertheless, and this generates a self-reinforcinng polarity.
What results from this is that what once was somewhat shared and circulated now pools in one place, leaving those with very little constantly being leeched from, and those with very much keeping all that they take.
Circulation wanes, and because circulation wanes, the currency is perceived as scarce, and is kept. And the poor have no chance to accumulate anything at all because everyone has their hand held out for collections, because everyone else is having trouble accumulating anything themselves, or running their services for that matter.
This is also reminiscent of that point in Monopoly when some dickhead has all the squares tied up with rentier properties and everyone loses their money and resources at a faster rate, and the king rentier accumulates money and resources at a greater rate, and everyone playing the game enters a miserable state of decline as the head monopolist prospers, which is a general displeasure that the game was evidently trying to convey. Though it is pretty ironic that the massively popular game is widely distributed by a corporation that controls a significant portion of the gaming market, and which resembles one of the entities the game was trying to reveal and criticize. But so it goes.
What results from this is that what once was somewhat shared and circulated now pools in one place, leaving those with very little constantly being leeched from, and those with very much keeping all that they take.
Circulation wanes, and because circulation wanes, the currency is perceived as scarce, and is kept. And the poor have no chance to accumulate anything at all because everyone has their hand held out for collections, because everyone else is having trouble accumulating anything themselves, or running their services for that matter.
This is also reminiscent of that point in Monopoly when some dickhead has all the squares tied up with rentier properties and everyone loses their money and resources at a faster rate, and the king rentier accumulates money and resources at a greater rate, and everyone playing the game enters a miserable state of decline as the head monopolist prospers, which is a general displeasure that the game was evidently trying to convey. Though it is pretty ironic that the massively popular game is widely distributed by a corporation that controls a significant portion of the gaming market, and which resembles one of the entities the game was trying to reveal and criticize. But so it goes.
Friday, March 04, 2016
Slap-Back
If both people feel the same way about each other, and expect the same thing in return, that feeling and its effects are amplified. This is generally more true the more self-absorbed someone is.
You see this all the time. Someone is preoccupied with being slighted, and sees some sort of grimace or look of pain in the other, which confirms that the other is disgusted or being disrespectful in some way, without taking into account that the other has problems and preoccupations of their own.
So the first person, upon feeling slighted, reacts negatively in turn, and the other sees this, and the antipathy is established.
This process can be halted upon recognition of the humanity of the other, and not a mere object reflecting one's own ego.
You see this all the time. Someone is preoccupied with being slighted, and sees some sort of grimace or look of pain in the other, which confirms that the other is disgusted or being disrespectful in some way, without taking into account that the other has problems and preoccupations of their own.
So the first person, upon feeling slighted, reacts negatively in turn, and the other sees this, and the antipathy is established.
This process can be halted upon recognition of the humanity of the other, and not a mere object reflecting one's own ego.
Slap Back?
The paranoid aren't necessarily wrong when they express a fear that people can read their minds; people can in a sense. It is the paranoid affect, the fear, that pours into the other and affects the other similarly, and upon seeing that fear reflected back, the paranoid become even more fearful, amplifying the affect and spreading the affect more intensely and widely.
Paranoia seeks to recognize itself in the other to confirm itself, to validate itself: I fear and hate that thing, and look, it fears and hates me! It must seek to eliminate me as a threat, as I do the same for it.
It is a form of communication that confirms itself and generates its own landscape.
It is the establishment psychiatrist, upon pathologizing the paranoiac and seeking a cure, who refuses to see the basic humanity in the paranoiac, which would necessitate letting in that paranoid affect and all of the pain that comes with it. And this is the difficulty with recognizing humanity: it takes letting it in.
This is a basic characteristic of Western culture in general. Even though some of its thinkers have a clear grasp on this, Western culture often fails to grasp the nature of the dialectic, or the presence of the other as oneself, as opposed to some backdrop or object that is to be traversed or manipulated.
And that is because there is a clear direction of power, and of violent expansion. To see the other as oneself is to become engulfed in the fire that one is riding up upon, while to see the other as an object or as inhuman is to neutralize and insulate the fire, which only serves to compress it all the more violently for its eventual return.
Paranoia seeks to recognize itself in the other to confirm itself, to validate itself: I fear and hate that thing, and look, it fears and hates me! It must seek to eliminate me as a threat, as I do the same for it.
It is a form of communication that confirms itself and generates its own landscape.
It is the establishment psychiatrist, upon pathologizing the paranoiac and seeking a cure, who refuses to see the basic humanity in the paranoiac, which would necessitate letting in that paranoid affect and all of the pain that comes with it. And this is the difficulty with recognizing humanity: it takes letting it in.
This is a basic characteristic of Western culture in general. Even though some of its thinkers have a clear grasp on this, Western culture often fails to grasp the nature of the dialectic, or the presence of the other as oneself, as opposed to some backdrop or object that is to be traversed or manipulated.
And that is because there is a clear direction of power, and of violent expansion. To see the other as oneself is to become engulfed in the fire that one is riding up upon, while to see the other as an object or as inhuman is to neutralize and insulate the fire, which only serves to compress it all the more violently for its eventual return.
Yr Utils
The interesting thing about utilitarianism is that it seems to be built for volume. It is an ethics that seeks to deal with large numbers. Its impetus is an abundance of mass, with a proportion that has failed to become absorbed, or accounted for. You're making these difficult choices because there is too much.
But it does make for a useful tool when mixed with something else.
But it does make for a useful tool when mixed with something else.
Broken Windows
Like all dangerously misguided theories that command outsized influence, there is a kernel of truth in broken windows theory.
A little disorder, a little mess, and you can clean it up or fix it.
But if the mess is serious enough, if there are enough broken windows around, or a number of disorderly things, and you don't have the energy to take care of it, then it can cause resignation, or even despair.
You may stop doing small things, because there are so many big things that are wrong.
Which is very different than saying that every minor infraction should be punished severely, so that none will break out at all.
Because then a large enough mess - and the deficit of energy required to ensure it won't be taken care of - can only beg the question: where have these things come from?
And sometimes a large enough mess is affecting enough to do just the opposite: one is moved by the desolation to an extent that one is moved to action.
A little disorder, a little mess, and you can clean it up or fix it.
But if the mess is serious enough, if there are enough broken windows around, or a number of disorderly things, and you don't have the energy to take care of it, then it can cause resignation, or even despair.
You may stop doing small things, because there are so many big things that are wrong.
Which is very different than saying that every minor infraction should be punished severely, so that none will break out at all.
Because then a large enough mess - and the deficit of energy required to ensure it won't be taken care of - can only beg the question: where have these things come from?
And sometimes a large enough mess is affecting enough to do just the opposite: one is moved by the desolation to an extent that one is moved to action.
Violence as Turbulence
There is a profound violence in Yosemite valley, seen in the movement of rock as it rises explosively in sharp spires. This can be felt; one looks upon the rock and feels a hurt, and an awe.
Which does in fact take a kind of perception. What once was viewed statically as a rock of a certain shape emerges as a process not entirely separate from oneself.
The modern human condition can be construed as violence, or at least violent expansion. I'm thinking here of a restaurant and lounge we visited in Tahoe, which rested at the top of a mountain peak, removed from all subsistence save a tram connected by steel cables. An impossible formation save for an explosive exertion of petroleum energy. A spider found its nest in a corner of a hand rail out on the building's deck. How could it have gotten there save for hitching a ride on someone or something on the way up? Of course this is mere conjecture, but moving on.
One suspects that the medieval cathedral - built in part to inspire awe - may share an affinity for these forces of violence and turbulence. These structures were certainly expressing something important in the collective unconscious, or in a collective moment of feeling.
There was a profound violence existing in the European colonial powers, which existed prior to contact with foreign cultures, as there is no other way to account for the savagery with which they treated the foreign cultures they came upon.
Many racist, xenophobic, and homophobic individuals have been found to have particularly bad cases of paranoia, at least in older psychoanalytic studies I've seen. Not sure what the science has found today, and calling these things sciences comes with all sorts of qualifications of their own.
Whatever the case, projecting the shadow comes to mind. One speaks to xenophobes and one gets the sense that one is speaking to profoundly insecure and fearful individuals, in constant search of the monster within the shadow, of something to attack externally, which has its root in themselves. Many of them have been dominated by their society, and likely members of their own family, and then that domination must be passed on.
The police, and the Hillary Clintons of the world see "super-predators" in black youth, and the Neocons and Bushites see the great satan in Russia and the Middle East, without the awareness - or not - that the super-predators and great satans they see are within them, seeking expression in the external world, in the other.
The "white" power formation is perpetually dominating itself, and then finding the need to export that domination to the other, so as to maintain that power without having to begin feeding on itself.
And how is one to relate to such things today? Nietzsche had a love for lonely mountains and catastrophic force, violence. That was then. Today it is something to be mourned, regretted, repudiated. I still have a love for explosive mountains and rock, or soaring and crashing waves, because those things are a part of me, but I know that the tenderness should be reserved for the still and the calm, at least ideally.
Nevertheless, there is confidence through passion, or exertion and movement in a direction, hopefully towards peace. One must exert against what is exerting.
Which does in fact take a kind of perception. What once was viewed statically as a rock of a certain shape emerges as a process not entirely separate from oneself.
The modern human condition can be construed as violence, or at least violent expansion. I'm thinking here of a restaurant and lounge we visited in Tahoe, which rested at the top of a mountain peak, removed from all subsistence save a tram connected by steel cables. An impossible formation save for an explosive exertion of petroleum energy. A spider found its nest in a corner of a hand rail out on the building's deck. How could it have gotten there save for hitching a ride on someone or something on the way up? Of course this is mere conjecture, but moving on.
One suspects that the medieval cathedral - built in part to inspire awe - may share an affinity for these forces of violence and turbulence. These structures were certainly expressing something important in the collective unconscious, or in a collective moment of feeling.
There was a profound violence existing in the European colonial powers, which existed prior to contact with foreign cultures, as there is no other way to account for the savagery with which they treated the foreign cultures they came upon.
Many racist, xenophobic, and homophobic individuals have been found to have particularly bad cases of paranoia, at least in older psychoanalytic studies I've seen. Not sure what the science has found today, and calling these things sciences comes with all sorts of qualifications of their own.
Whatever the case, projecting the shadow comes to mind. One speaks to xenophobes and one gets the sense that one is speaking to profoundly insecure and fearful individuals, in constant search of the monster within the shadow, of something to attack externally, which has its root in themselves. Many of them have been dominated by their society, and likely members of their own family, and then that domination must be passed on.
The police, and the Hillary Clintons of the world see "super-predators" in black youth, and the Neocons and Bushites see the great satan in Russia and the Middle East, without the awareness - or not - that the super-predators and great satans they see are within them, seeking expression in the external world, in the other.
The "white" power formation is perpetually dominating itself, and then finding the need to export that domination to the other, so as to maintain that power without having to begin feeding on itself.
And how is one to relate to such things today? Nietzsche had a love for lonely mountains and catastrophic force, violence. That was then. Today it is something to be mourned, regretted, repudiated. I still have a love for explosive mountains and rock, or soaring and crashing waves, because those things are a part of me, but I know that the tenderness should be reserved for the still and the calm, at least ideally.
Nevertheless, there is confidence through passion, or exertion and movement in a direction, hopefully towards peace. One must exert against what is exerting.
Group and Individual
There is a fascinating tension between group experience and individual experience, or group desire and individual desire, the former of which produces a body, and the latter of which pulls and tears at the body, reforming it, or bursting it apart altogether to form something new.
Nature
Part of the appeal of venturing out into the wilderness is surprise: for all of the complexity of our society, we often entertain a simplistic view of nature upon removal from it in our daily awareness, which makes all the more surprising the multitude that unfolds before us along a deep hike. Certainly the sciences hold knowledge that acquires an astounding depth of complexity concerning natural systems, but to repeat, this knowledge remains compartmentalized and separated from the daily attention, especially for laymen.
So one comes across melting snow, which drips and pools and reflects its surroundings, carrying sediments and percolating into the ground or washing over rock. Insects are buzzing dense amidst floating dusts and pollen. Rocks are passing through a spectrum of colors as moisture and light pass over them.
It is all surprising; nature is doing things that we weren't aware it was doing, right before us, impressing themselves into our consciousness. And it has always been doing these things.
A world is revealed that we were dimly aware of but had forgotten. We see the phenomenal aspect of this nature in arranged music: forces unfold and beget each other as others as passing away after having expressed themselves.
There is a perpetual unfolding and disintegration, these things passing in and out of the consciousness.
So one comes across melting snow, which drips and pools and reflects its surroundings, carrying sediments and percolating into the ground or washing over rock. Insects are buzzing dense amidst floating dusts and pollen. Rocks are passing through a spectrum of colors as moisture and light pass over them.
It is all surprising; nature is doing things that we weren't aware it was doing, right before us, impressing themselves into our consciousness. And it has always been doing these things.
A world is revealed that we were dimly aware of but had forgotten. We see the phenomenal aspect of this nature in arranged music: forces unfold and beget each other as others as passing away after having expressed themselves.
There is a perpetual unfolding and disintegration, these things passing in and out of the consciousness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)