Friday 30 April 2010

Animal Farming

It is as if animals had been herded into a highly artificial box. Let us imagine a building with faulty electricity, massive leaking, poor sewerage, no windows, not enough space.

This is the condition of the contemporary proletariat.

Then, one by one, the animals succumb to various “accidents” within this unnatural environ.

Some get sick with cholera through the polluted drinking water. Others are electrocuted. Still more start to develop various symptoms of decline because of a lack of exercise, and due to the poor quality of the light.

Each of them, however, come to believe that their resulting condition is due to individual “choices” they have made, entirely separately.

Wednesday 28 April 2010

From Nietzsche's Ecce Homo

irony and cartesian thinking

I wonder whether Cartesian dualist thinking often prevents the proper recognition of irony, when it is present in a book, or in one's laughter?

Cartesianism, to me, is like milk where all the creamy elements have been extracted. The non-creamy (depleted) elements of the milk are placed into another jar, and labelled "Unconscious". The creamy elements are labelled "Rationality". The two aspects of the milk, whilst once whole and somewhat integrated, are no longer permitted to mix.

Literary irony, however, relies upon their mixture. One expresses delight when what was smooth and tasteless suddenly has a creamy aftertaste: "Where did that come from? It's so unexpected!"

But dualistic thinking tends to see irony as a failure to keep both aspects of milk quite separate. After all, one's apparent failure in terms of rationality itself is, in the eyes of a dualist, no laughing matter.

Sunday 25 April 2010

Bataille and Nietzsche: the rhetoric of "destruction"

Cryptically (or not so cryptically), much of Bataille's writing can be considered as a retraining of the Superego for nonconformity to servitude and slavery. Transgression is not for its own sake, nor to indulge whims and desire. It involves a reorientation towards the world on the basis of one's individual strength to do that which was previously forbidden for one to do. Transgressive engagement is thus undertaken between the individual and himself (formerly his society's mores, that have been introjected as Superego). There is much at stake here -- much to lose. But every gain is an improvement in the range and power of one's will. The territory that one ultimately conquers, though, is one's self.

Nietzsche has a similar (although differently nuanced relationship to the question of his Superego). Zarathustra desires to break the law tables of "the good and the just". Such principled destruction also requires transgression of the Christian value judgements that had commanded European society. These values would probably have been internalised by his intended readers, meaning that, in a way, to destroy the value judgements of the "good and the just" meant destroying themselves, and recreating themselves anew:

What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.

The hour when ye say: "What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self- complacency!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!"

The hour when we say: "What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion."

Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!

It is not your sin--it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!--[my bolds]


Whereas Nietzsche self-identifies as an aristocrat (despite being economically of the middle classes or less, as an ex-professor, who was barely able to survive on his pension) and wants to ascend to the heights of his consciousness on the basis of self-contempt, Bataille chooses a different method.

Bataille self-identifies as a proletarian, an everyday worker (his genuine status, in Marx's sense, despite being a librarian). Bataille want to conquer the superego that would make him submissive to the boss's commands. He wants to think differently, recover his wholeness as an individual, to have the courage to be his own person. But this kind of "sovereignty" [Bataille's term] requires the strength to command and dominate one's Superego (which would have one inwardly -- as well as externally -- conform to those who have power over one). The Superego has to learn who is really the boss -- and that is why Bataille continually subverts it. His point is to teach it a number of lessons.

Thus, both Nietzsche and Bataille use the rhetoric of "destruction" when both are actually talking about the psychological prerequisite for self-commanding.

Saturday 24 April 2010

A patriarch is an enemy of science.

One of the aspects that really seems to hinder learning within patriarchal societies is patriarchal epistemological arrogance. As I have previously mentioned on this blog, the patriarch typically makes a statement that is full of implications that he knows more than thou, but without ever having the courage to make his statement direct and explicit.

So, for instance, in the past I have made a statement along the lines: "Things for me have been extremely difficult, rather than easy." A patriarch is one who will find this statement extremely difficult to believe. One does not dare to question why this is, for this is to put pressure on the patriarch to develop some understanding of himself and his own perspectives -- something of which he is intrinsically incapable, if he is to remain a patriarch.

A patriarch is one who has faith -- rather than reason, or knowledge -- that the above statement, when uttered by a woman, is bound to be false. He knows not why he knows this. He simply "knows". He exercises his faith that what she says is simply untrue.

This, however, is epistemological arrogance. To maintain the position: "I know more about your life than you do, and have the better evaluation of it," is an untenable position from the perspective of contemporary measures of scientific rigour.

A patriarch, however, knows not why he knows what he believes he knows. His ideas are unfalsifiable [Cf. Popper] (i.e. unable to be treated objectively, or as a factual proposition) -- especially by women.

For a woman to question this implicit belief of the patriarch puts her in the category of "hysterical". The patriarch has taken on the trappings or appearance of scientific rigour (whilst maintaining a position based purely on faith) and is now accusing the woman of being incapable of observing the facts of her own life.

As I have shown, a patriarch is intrinsically hostile to critical analysis of reality as it happens to be (as opposed to the idea of reality as the patriarch wishes it to be).

A patriarch is an enemy of science.

Thursday 22 April 2010

The modalities of patriarchal "thinking"

Patriarchy is a system that punishes women for breaching (or merely seeming to breach) gender roles. The structure of patriarchal thinking -- its "unconscious" as it were -- is hidden from general awareness.

Let me try to bring it to light. A patriarch is someone who is incapable of complex thought. His or her mode of thinking is entirely based upon binaries, dichotomies, the simple on-off switch of "Yes" or "No."

Let me put forwards two quintessentially patriarchal formulas:

1. "You are not what you seemed to be."

2. "You are not behaving according to your nature."

On these two principles is established the bulwark of patriarchal hostility to women as natural, free beings -- for patriarchy is nothing if it is not anti-nature.

Let us consider the first principle, whereby women are made responsible for patriarchal male perceptions, including, and above all, the errors in those perceptions. To be what one appears to be is the unwritten law that women are obliged to follow. At the same time, "what one seems to be" is hard enough to discern, for one must place oneself outside of oneself to begin with, in order to try to imagine how one might appear to be to somebody other than oneself. The patriarchal injunction is for women to objectify themselves, so as to become pure patriarchal OBJECTS (but not SUBJECTS!) -- in other words, what they "seem" to be.

The second of these principles of patriarchy is one that most operates according to an OFF and ON switch. Here is how that functions. To begin with, let us presume that I am only obliged to pay attention to you insofar as you are functioning "according to your nature". The minute that your actions fail to correspond to that which I take to be your true, essential "inner nature", I am release from all obligations to you at all. Effectively, you will cease to exist for me. So it pays to learn one lesson: if you have something that you really want to say, then please say it according to your "inner nature". Either that, or I will flick the mighty OFF-switch in my mind, causing you to really seem to cease to exist.

The second principle works pragmatically for patriarchs, since it trains women to comply with certain arbitrary modes of thinking and expressing themselves, under the threat of not being heard at all. The first principle effectively reinforces the second mode of emotional blackmail, by trying to impose a guilty conscious on women whose identities have been mistaken by a patriarch. They are charged with wilful deception -- even though the failure to perceive correctly in the first instance originated in the mind of the patriarch himself.

Monday 19 April 2010

Make omlettes out of failed intent!

The crudest kind of behaviour -- and it is by no means limited to Westerners alone -- is to openly and overtly demand respect. This rarely works, because a demand to be respected rarely coincides with a display of one's respect-worthiness. But also, demanding that one be respected (in other words, trying to force the issue of making another defer to you)is likely to broadcast your intent in a way that makes it seem much narrower than if you were not to express it directly.

I am often astonished by people who use this crude method of relating, that they do not try all sorts of other methods first. The indirect methods of appealing to people tend to work much better than trying to force the other person to see you in the harsh light of day. If you do force them to see you that way, what is there to guarantee that they will come to respect you more than before? The chances are that they will respect you less once you have made it clear to them how very much your views and interests diverge from those whom you were trying to persuade.

This method of trying to get your way is crude and rude because of what it implies about your listeners. It relies upon the existence of a naturally submissive tendency in these others whom you would shock into submission. But get this wrong and you've played your hand. You've spelled out the limited and restricted nature of your intent. You've placed all of your eggs in the one basket, and you've gone ahead and dropped them all.

If your single chance to make a good impression doesn't work for you -- make omlettes!

Your body isn't tense -- there must be something wrong!

One of the peculiarities that I am noticing about American culture is the way they hold their bodies. I am examining martial arts videos to see what others are doing and what they deem to be worthy to teach. All the time I am noticing that there is a way of speaking that is fraught with tension. This isn't precisely in the tone of voice, but rather in the determination to teach something that is universally applicable, precise and understood to be authoritative. I notice this same thing even in American comedies -- the way women hold their bodies with a stiffness that belies their more relaxed mental demeanour.

I see in this stiffness the American puritanical value system at large. (One finds this in Australians, too, and no doubt in the British, to the degree that these are also puritantical.)

If stiffness is a sign of moral forthrightness, then somebody who is loose in movement and in attitude must certainly be up to no good!

There may be an attendant assumption, too, that loose people are inefficient.

Nonetheless, looseness is absolutely vital for mental flexibility. A supple mind and body is vital to avoid sudden attacks, and to defend one's territory.

This attitude of mental suppleness is precisely what is missing from the American videos I have watched.

This can't be taught as a technique, but it's two thirds of what's required for effective action in the martial arts.

Saturday 17 April 2010

Why I am a feminist

I examine my paradoxical and serendipitous relationship to feminism.

To make it plain, the drive behind my feminism has nothing to do with identity politics, at least not in any conventional sense. I'm not an feminist in order to belong anywhere. Nor am I one because I've staked out moral ground that I wish to defend against any other people whatsoever.

The only ground that I wish to defend is that which already lies very far beyond the boundaries of normal civilisation. I stake my life for that, and that alone -- that I have the right to leave normal civilisation and explore its peripheries.

My feminism, it should be clear, is based solely on my affection for the extremes of experience, for without an encounter with these extremes I start to feel as if I were no longer alive.

I defend my right not to be stereotyped -- because that robs me of transcendence, and forces me back within the boundaries of ordinary society to conform to psychologically debilitating norms. To accept the necessity of such a return would turn me into my opposite.

I am a feminist for pragmatic reasons -- because if I let patriarchal men and women get away with routine stereotyping practices that kill the spirit, it will not be too long before that stereotyping is, once more, turned against me.

I am a feminist because that is the only way to live with honour.

Friday 16 April 2010

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

For those who may still be unsure, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not a new religious book. Rather, it is a book that totally breaks with old style religion and any form of priestliness. This is a book that employs the old shamanistic technique of reversal of roles and identities in order to highlight the nature of the roles we play. So it is that the Zarathustra of yore (Zoroaster) is permitted to perform his acts anew, only with the totally reverse conceptions in mind:

It is believed that Nietzsche creates a characterization of Zarathustra as the mouthpiece for Nietzsche's own ideas against morality. Nietzsche did so because—so says Nietzsche in his autobiographical Ecce Homo (IV/Schicksal.3)—Zarathustra was a moralist ("was the exact reverse of an immoralist") and because "in his teachings alone is truthfulness upheld as the highest virtue." Zarathustra "created" morality in being the first to reveal it, "first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things." Nietzsche sought to overcome the morality of Zarathustra by using the Zarathustrian virtue of truthfulness; thus Nietzsche found it piquant to have his Zarathustra character voice the arguments against morality. [ESTEEMED WIKI]


To reverse a previous act of history by reproducing it in part, only with entirely different actors and emotional valences seems to be a common form of shamanistic intervention in history. Marechera has done this, and I have attempted it myself.

In its overarching philosophical and poet sense, however, Thus Spoke Zarathustra should be understood as a formal investigation into nihilism as a philosophical position. That is the meaning of the "abyss" and why no values are rock solid in this book. Rather they are spoken forth and then to some degree withdrawn again. The end sections of the book ought to be understood as a withdrawal of these values from their absolute position, as the author descends further into his own depths of consciousness through rigorous self-reflexivity.

There is a surface contradiction between embracing nihilism and trying to form a more rigorous philosophical outlook on its basis than previous religious systems were able to manage. The bedrock of Nietzsche's book (the non-nihilistic part) is a sense of religious piety that has been inculcated into Nietzsche (and presumably his European readers) through their conditioning in accordance with Christian morality. It is the rigour of this originally Christian piety (which demands truthfulness in morality to an ever greater degree) that, according to Nietzsche, has ended up killing the Christian God. (Paradoxically, as it seems, the Christian religion and its deity could not survive the rigour of Christian piety when taken to more extreme levels.) Taking moral rigour to its extreme produces philosophical nihilism. Yet this nihilism is still driven by a purpose -- that is to find a more authentic basis for living (in other words, the nihilistic project is also morally driven, but in an entirely different way from in the times of yore -- as in when "God" was still alive).

The motif that Nietzsche most commonly uses in opposing the studious "camel" (Zoroaster, according to esteemed Wiki)is that of the lion that destroys existing values and systems of law. Zarathustra can be correctly read as this lion. Nietzsche proposes that instead of using morality as a system for self-preservation, we no longer seek to preserve ourselves but to embrace life as it is, along with our fear of it. This is his reversal of Zoroaster's ancient law, which used morality as a system for self-preservation.

An historical period of destructiveness of the old Christian values is prescribed by Zarathustra, (the nihilistic "prophet" of doom), as a means to restore humanity's innocence again, so that is becomes like "a child", playing with naked reality instead of conjuring up a false system of values (religious morality) in order to protect oneself from it. The means by which this destruction is to be wreaked is actually Christian piety -- but, importantly, without the Christian dogma or belief system.

What is important to realise about Thus Spoke Zarathustra is that it is not a book that is designed to impart to you beliefs -- but rather, an attitude towards a crisis. You are not meant to come away from reading it thinking "women are shit". If you do so, then you have only succeeded in swapping your Christian morality (with its surface appearance of benevolence) for a version of Christian morality stripped of its masks!

the gender police

Of course there is gender (the one you are born with, more rigorously termed "sex") and there is Gender. The first doesn't change, but the second one is mutable. Without a sense of shame, we would not worry about Gender at all. We would all do as we pleased, dress as we wanted to, without concern for how others perceived us.

But, we have Gender. We have cultural clothing to cover up our naturalness. We clothe ourselves in it because we are ashamed of being natural:

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. genesis: 3-7

See how we directly equate naturalness with sinfulness?

Which maketh me wonder: Those gender police -- those ascetic priests of the current era -- what is it that they are trying to cover up?

When they trumpet the necessity of "masculinity", aren't they also betraying the fact that it is something for which they feel ashamed?

Otherwise, why the fervour for social reinforcement of gender roles?

Thursday 15 April 2010

I am a passive consumer: Let me consume harshness!

I remember once being a state of mind whereby I was as naive as the "teabaggers". What I was really seeking was a sense of gritty reality, rather than the numbness of bureaucratised life. In the ultimate sense, what I was seeking was a rite of passage. I had a deep psychological need to be tested by reality/society and affirmed by it. It was not easy for me to find the route to this experience. I found it only very much later in my life, through martial arts, skydiving, intellectual questing and so on. But in my early twenties or so, and even for a few years after that, I thought that the way for me to meet my quest was for all bureaucratic influences to be removed.

Now I look around me and I often see the same syndrome. There are people who want life to be more "real". They want to be tested and affirmed by forces greater than they are. They don't know how to get there, though.

In the case of all too many their solution is: "Life ought to have more harshness in it. Let me consume harshness, by imposing it upon YOU!"

Obviously this kind of solution is destined not to satisfy.

ITF taekwondo style

Tuesday 13 April 2010

training: break free self defence, Zimbabwe

abrogation of the will: It's down to "Nature"

All sorts of ideological implications follow subsequent upon an assumption that all humans need in this life is to allow "Nature" to take its course. For one, mothers and their role in bringing up children are devalued. After all, the mother is just a mediating device through which a larger power takes its course. Also bad behaviour is not remedied, so long as it is male -- for this, too, is down to Nature. Furthermore one need introduce no social remedies whenever society and its elements go off course, for whatever happens in any scheme of things is also... Nature!

I'm pointing out how the abrogation of the human will is built into ideological perspectives that overemphasise "Nature" over nurture.

Note: There is a difference between small "n" nature (which is organic life) and big "N" Nature, which is (as I am using the term here) Nature treated as an authority or principle that commands humanity.

Also note: I have elsewhere used the term "Nature" in none of these senses, but in a way that relates to European Romanticism. As always, the key to good interpretation is context.

Monday 12 April 2010

Break Free Self Defence Zimbabwe

The madness in my method

Let me try to explain how I used the vector method to come to create my shamanistic paradigm, Part of it was personal experience. For instance, I exposed myself to certain worldviews are tried to determine my own reactions to them. Some of these world views, I had deducted to be psychologically regressive, because of some things I had learned from Melanie Klein's paradigm of childhood psychology. I also read widely, to expose myself to different philosophical worldviews, which I then tried to inhabit, by labelling certain attitudes of mine according to these paradigms and their terminology. By employing this method with enough paradigms, I was able to finally vectorise many of their precepts. I saw how the phenomena they described could relate to different aspects of my experiences, with the qualia of my experiences remaining the non-variable in terms of my trying on of different paradigms. On the basis of retaining this non-variable as a solid reference point, I was able to see how different paradigms tended to interlink up to a point. Although their points of view rarely intersected completely, there was enough in common with the various world views for me to create an independent paradigm out of the resulting knowledge. I called this paradigm "shamanism".

Sunday 11 April 2010

Dream last night

In my dream last night, a woman was starting a new fashion line, and showed me her bright coloured wares. I didn't much like them at first, but then they grew on me, and I bought a jumpsuit in purple, white, yellow and green. I was in Zimbabwe and I had to take these clothes to the market, but first we had to store petrol in the car illegally. I thought I would miss my class at university, if I had to travel 200 kilometres to it, but realised that it probably didn't matter anyway.

Saturday 10 April 2010

The process of coming to knowledge: an adventure in uncertainty

Reflecting on certain theoretical precepts last night as I went to sleep has proven fruitful.

Let us just say, that my new insight is based on Anton Ehrenzweig's model of the creative personality -- being one who is capable of willful but temporary developmental regression to an earlier stage of consciousness, to make all things new, as it were. He uses a model that is developed within a certain stream of psychoanalysis, but definitely, he does not use it to define pathology, but creativity.*

But, back to Ehrenzweig. I am interested in his notion that creative types are able to willfully and deliberately move between a stages of consciousness (which were also originally developmental stages) called "paranoid-schizoid" and "depressive".

First: a word of caution. These are highly specialist terms, and do not mean what they may seem to mean. Indeed, they seem to derive from the psychoanalytic tradition of denigrating general humanity. Lacan, for instance, considered nobody at all to be free from pathology: you were either neurotic, psychotic or perverse. Those are the only categories for being in his system of thought.

Although much in psychoanalysis seems very negative, once one has become accustomed to the negativity of its systems, one can look beyond that to find some value in its way of conceptualizing some of the dynamic processes of thought. The state of consciousness that is paranoid-schizoid is only pathological when taken to the extreme, for instance. When it is a mode of thought and being that is used by artistic and creative (including intellectually creative) folks, it involves relating to the world on the basis that one does not really know how it actually is, but only how it seems to be.

This reveals a very fundamental point about how genuinely original thought develops. When I was writing my thesis, I constantly had it in my mind that there were certain ways that things SEEMED TO BE -- which was also perhaps not actually how things actually were.

 Actually, I could not let myself state how things were, with any certainty, without working through how things merely "seemed to be". Thesis writing involves a process of working through selective issues with a mode of consciousness that psychoanalysis calls "paranoid-schizoid" (wherein everything seems unsteady, somewhat confusing, and uncertain), up to a point whereby one gains enough certainty in one's views to say, "This is how things are!" (No longer, merely, "this is how they seem to be").

So, the movement from a "paranoid-schizoid" mode of consciousness to one that is "depressive" is, as Anton Ehrenzweig correctly intuited, the means by which new perspectives come into being. (The more mature stage is probably "depressive" because in this state of mind one accepts reality as solid and resistant to change. Of course, this perspective on reality is only a partial truth, but it is the acquiescent state of mind of an adult who realizes that certain practical adjustments must be made, rather than expecting the world to accommodate itself to his ideas.)

The last stage of this consciousness is the sense of the world having been created, of everything finished and completed -- along with a sense that one's perspectives, having been fully expressed and fully formulated, have taken on a certain rigid quality that can't easily be changed. This is the stage of "depressive" consciousness -- which is driven by the need to come to terms with the world (including that "reality" that is the product of one's own inventiveness) on its own terms. One is in the "objective" world of unchangeable 'thinginess" again -- and no longer moving in the workshop of subjective consciousness, wherein everything one touched seemed to be relatively mutable and fluid.

 2

 There is a rough parallel between writing my thesis, and inventing my life. As my memoir signifies, I have had to work for a long time in a realm of consciousness whereby I was terribly uncertain whether things were actually as they "seemed to be". In relation to my culture, I do not have this sense of uncertainty. I am not divided as how things seem is actually how they are in fundamental ways. In terms of Western culture, that has rarely been the case. Rather, I have nearly always doubted that how things seemed to me were how they were.  I've learned to doubt myself through a series of cultural misjudgments.

Of late, my opinions about Western culture have firmed. I am no longer in the paranoid-schizoid realm of uncertainty about it. It now is clear to me that much of the negativity I saw in Western culture was not merely an imaginative derivative of my mind and its processes. Rather, it has become clear that the economic system that has historically developed is abusive to the majority. That is why Westerners often seemed to me to have a very harsh edge to their personalities. From my present vantage position, I can say with certainty that some things not only have the capacity to "seem" a certain way but this is actually how they are.

--

* Jungian personality types are actually based on studying extremist types -- which, by virtue of being extreme are also pathological -- but then conjecturing the psychological dynamics that run in various types of more normal people on this basis.

Thursday 8 April 2010

Nietzschean studies

One of the very funny things (from a retrospective view) about many of those who embrace Herr Nietzsche's philosophy (often, it seems, as male cosmetics to amplify the exterior appearance of their masculinity)is, well...

One of the funnier things is their view that Nietzsche planted traps in his ideas to catch the decadent and unware.

Well that is a pretty funny notion, because it essentialises so much the idea of the "decadent" who is attracted to the trap (the trap for decadence). The morally pure are, of course, not attracted to it and do not even venture very close. Well, there must be a good reason for that: they are afraid of decadence!

But, actually it's a very funny thing, that idea that women in particular are decadent, and therefore mustn't stray too far off from the Patriarchal Herd.

Why ever not? -- because they will simply fall into those traps that Nietzsche has set up for decadents!

But then again, what is one does go out there, far beyond the Patriarchy, so as to play? And what if the warnings and the accusations as to the "evil character" of those who venture forth is all proven to be entire nonsense?

What if one plays with even those most dangerous ideas, deemed to be too scary to venture towards because they are "traps for decadents"?

If one survives all this, what would one say to those that have been left behind?

dream

THEME PARK
The dream about the futuristic theme park begins with me and Mike. We are supported by a helicopter, which is taking us all over the property. We are supported in harnesses but do not feel them. I hold onto two felt covered handles, and my feet are supported in a sitting position. We float over the terrain, about 70 metres above it, but in effect this is not so high, as we are suddenly only a few metres above some rocky terrain on an incline. The ride goes on for an hour and a half. We travel over boutiques and even buy some textiles – or somehow we end up draped in them. But my handles have become eroded through that accident, and now I am just holding on to long raffia ropes, for security, although I am still fully suspended. Then the tranquil nature of the theme park journey turns to horror. I look down and there are two dead soldiers – generals – that have been shot down in their helicopter in the Vietnam War. Their faces are craggy, bleached and pock-marked. I look to my right and there is a brown bear on a log. It looks like it is sleeping but it has been shot through the neck. These are images of horror. The word, "Walls" comes to mind. It is General Walls, the Rhodesian army leader. But it also sounds like war. My mind is screaming "wall, Emerson, wall, Emerson, wall, Emerson." It's the rhythm of my heart. Then suddenly I am falling as it were, extremely fast and horizontally into nothingness. I am going faster than the speed of light and everything has become bright light shattered into atomic particles. The two sides of me have become one.

Things not to do at home

knife defence

Monday 5 April 2010

Dream

So I had a disturbing dream last night. The only way I can get it out of my head is to write about it. I believe it has to do with the ubiquity of conservatism and my distaste for it.

I am at this British university learning veterinary science. The Zimbabwean lecturer is explaining the harm in clipping dogs ears. They lose their function. I ask something about British dogs and he says that really he is only talking about small Zimbabwean dogs.

Then we leave, and there is battered chicken at the exit of the lecture hall (which now that I reflect on it could have been made out of the legs of small Zimbabwean dogs).

In the quadrangle, I am overcome with thirst, but I am grateful to have finally descended the stairs to "ground level". I can tell that this is so because I see a busy street with buses going to and fro. There is a wedding taking place in the quad, where there is also a small church. I don't know anybody in the wedding party, but they don't know that I'm just passing through. I go to the water vendor, and help myself to a plastic cup, and fill it full of water, which I drink. Then somebody approaches me to ask if they could also have some water. "Are you a member of number 6 bus stop?" I apologise that I am not, and therefore they cannot use my licence to obtain water.

I decide to leave right away, but even though the quadrangle seems small, the ground is becoming increasingly steep. I eventually find I am trying to pull myself up vertically, near the rear of the church. The shape of the church seems to have become distorted based on an earlier perspective of it from the front. The rear of it is very small and narrow, and I am slipping back into the quadrangle. Also I am not assisted in my climb by the fact that I am wearing a huge white, puffy wedding dress. I am in extreme danger of falling backwards down the cliff.

Therefore, I wake up.

Sunday 4 April 2010

Genealogy of Morals

Rereading the Genealogy of Morals last night, it occurred to me that I have a fine way of differentiating between those who submit to a negative mode of life --i.e. slave morality, ressentiment, punishment and self-abnegation -- and those who operate according to a 'master morality'. At the most basic level the question is: Have you submitted to a subject-object reversal, whereby your subjectivity is displaced into some kind of ruling object and its will? Or, are you still your own subject, the master of your own will?

I think there is much room for misunderstanding Nietzsche if one doesn't already thoroughly and fully possess one's own subjectivity. One can invest all of one's philosophical capital in the images that Nietzsche portrays, of oligarchy and a lust for power, along with a kind of unconscious sadism (the eagle that "loves" the lamb). However, there is no point in adopting any of these mannerisms and proclaiming that one is now "master" when one has not first obtained power over one's subjectivity. To assume that one already has this power, when one has not, must be the most common mistake of most of Nietzsche's adherents.

Saturday 3 April 2010

Experiences I avoid

On an intuitive level, I always avoid the sorts of experiences that people are unable to discuss directly. I particularly avoid those experiences which have the supporting argument: "Do X and Y because otherwise you are very silly and you risk losing my respect."

There are very, very many experiences I would like to know more about, but conservative thinkers tend to undermine their position on the basis of the structure of their "arguments".

Again and again, I am forced to analyse such conservative "arguments" as to why I should live life as they do. Again and again, I am compelled to reject their points of view.

My path off the beaten track

I wasn't always off the beaten track. Yes, Sire, I used to walk in lockstep with the best of them. I had good intentions -- and, by that, you know that I was walking in lockstep all the way. And then I experienced being on the outer side of social acceptability. But I didn't know it -- and that is why I was still walking in lock step. I didn't miss a beat -- until the energies I had turned inwards and I began attacking myself.

That was when I took the path off the beaten track. I veered wildly. But the band kept playing on, and didn't notice that I'd missed several beats.

I didn't know it, either, that I had already been marked to take my life off the beaten track. This was a long time before I was born.

Thursday 1 April 2010

Eish! The Ascetic Priest

The main problem with Western philosophical Idealism -- which I take to be the most common cultural milieu in Australia, the US and Britain -- ought to be more self evident. The fact that it isn't even slightly recognised, for the most part, is a product of the logic of a mode of thinking that is divorced from material reality in the first place.

Let me spell out what that logic is, so as to make its limiting parameters more noticeable. I am referring here to the moral idealism of the Ascetic Priest -- for this is the most universal form of Idealism there is, and therefore the one most worth mentioning. The logic of the Ascetic Priest, which is the logic of Idealism, holds that there is no need for action, but only for faith; for trust in the system just the way it is. (Exxtreme Idealists who are also Ascetic Priests will deny that there even is a social or ideological "system" in any possible sense.)

So the person who acts, in terms of the logic of this ascetic ideology, is always the person in the wrong, the person without faith, the person who has descended from a 'higher' realm of spirituality into what I imagine must be posited from a priestly perspective as being a realm of 'materialist filth'. Moreover, somebody who visibly acts will come under intense scrutiny by "all who have theological blood in their veins":

It is necessary to say just whom we regard as our antagonists: theologians and all who have any theological blood in their veins -- this is our whole philosophy. . . . One must have faced that menace at close hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly and almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly […]The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (-- and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing-in-itself -- as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices.


However, of course, there is a difference between those who act visibly and those whose actions are performed outside of the purview of the majority. I am referring to class differences. Whereas the oppressed deny themselves the power to act on their own behalves (because they wish to become/remain 'holy') they nonetheless succumb to the powers of those who are acting powerfully, but invisibly, several flights of steps up beyond the "ceiling" that so apparently divides them.

So, now the logic of Idealist morality becomes even more apparent: One is free to act BUT ONLY IF one's actions remain hidden, veiled from the majority. However, a member of the majority must feel that he is wrong to act in any way on his own behalf.

If one of the majority does act (out in the open, without the protection of institutionalised power, his or her actions will be much more visible, much less protected from discovery), then automatically they are the party in the wrong. The party who acts "invisibly" is always, by virtue of Idealist logic, the party who is in the right.

But, logically, the logic of Western Idealism skews the politics of society wildly towards the Right, since those who already have institutional power (and thus are in a position to hide their actions) now have an unfair advantage in being perceived as more 'moral' than those who are without power. Nonetheless, according to this ideological system, anybody at all who "acts" is wrong.

Cultural barriers to objectivity