The cock of the Senate crows loudly indeed upon this fragmented dunghill held together by the philosophically inclined and the ideas of their great leaders.
The Post Modern brain has been enveloped in the modern answer to philosophical questions of consciousness and mind: neuroscience. And so let the Senate allow another perspective to be brought into debate for just a moment.
Most of the mysteries of the mind and brain that troubled, divided, and excited philosophers for centuries are no longer cause for such debate. We, or rather they (they being the people who understand the mind--we being the laymen) now understand the connection to between the brain and mind as common fact.
Our brain makes "maps" of our body and uses these maps to construct our place in the world, make memories, and even emotions. All these things lead to the construction of a conscious mind, and some of these are even present in organisms as simple as amoebas. What unifies these things in the brain and the body is the need for life regulation - homeostasis.
(See Antonio Damasias' "Self Comes to Mind")
Perhaps now, Senators, where this point is heading will become clearer -- but perhaps not.
Even the amoeba must make some kind of decision that will lead it towards survival, development, reproduction, evolution. This by no means signifies its consciousness; this only elucidates the elementary roots of our own.
To oversimplify, consciousness forms from a basic need to maintain internal and external bodily homeostasis. We evolved beyond elementary brain activities to something that constitutes consciousness because of the social and cultural constructs of human existence – the need for interaction, to create mental records, build relationships, form memories, and collaborate with each other as we move through life together (because, as evolution has shown, it is together that we prosper most).
“With their collapse of a communal framework people can no longer defeat the feelings of insecurity and uncertainty by belonging to a compact whole.” (Thanks wikipedia’s “True Believer” article)
Now to get back to the Senatorial matters at hand.
There is an existential moment, at a certain hour of each day, all over the world, where the Nietzschian herd is observed and felt intensely by those keen enough to pick it out: the morning commute.
The cattle are transported from the pasture to the farm. Herded along each day, sometimes physically prodded and pushed (Japan) to fit into their transport systems, they are uncomfortable, but they don’t put up much of a fight because it’s early and they’re fatigued, and they know it must be done because that is what is done every day and it has become a habit for them.
So we are presented with another kind of “mass movement” – a communal mass movement that is the movement and algorithms of day-to-day life, a part of our collective consciousness.
That we have been able to break down such a daunting philosophical motif of consciousness to scientific terms and simplified organisms may at first seem cause for despair among students of philosophy such as ourselves. But despair not! The Post Modern sees that many questions are still unanswered; the brain retains its beautiful mystery. The goal remains to break free from the herd in a way such as to be recognized, but not in such a way as to be wholly separate, for that would surely lead, as history itself has proven (and current events are showing now), to self destruction.
This is a cause to get behind. This is cause enough to be a True Believer.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Question of Feeble Hands
"Nuclear Armaments instilled in man, for the first time, an awareness that the earth itself is not immortal."
-Attributed to Albert Einstein
"Primo Levi explains that Nazi camps have given us ‘‘a shame at being human.’’ Not, he says, that we’re all responsible for Nazism, as some would have us believe, but that we’ve all been tainted by it: even the survivors of the camps had to make compromises with it, if only to survive. There’s the shame of there being men who became Nazis; the shame of being unable, not seeing how to stop it; the shame of having compromised with it. And we can feel shame at being human in utterly trivial situations, too: in the face of too great a vulgarization of thinking, in the face of TV entertainment, of a ministerial speech, of ‘‘jolly people’’ gossiping. This is one of the most powerful incentives toward philosophy, and it’s what makes all philosophy political"
-Deleuze
Take these quotations as a starting point, as the inherited lineage of today.
To describe human conscious as "adrift" is an egregious understatement. Within every mind is the potential expression of a base "man of fanatic action."
The ground beneath one's feet- regardless of its subjection appraisal, of its quantum particle fluctuation- is at the borrowed mercy of a material reality. Whether we ever "purely" appraise ourselves or the earth we experience, neither affects nor mitigates the vulnerability of the most fundamental of our material assumptions- that there will be a bottom to the well, that a house or field doesn't contain the potential of one moment's change: becoming ground zero glass and fire.
The definitive narrative of the 20th and 21st century, is denial. What an old greek beggar would have called "the willful delusion of self."
We must believe we are still innocent.
We must believe the world is still both immortal and inexhaustible.
Otherwise.
"It's a great shame on the black political tradition, to have... a warmonger. It's almost as if the Black Community in the United States... maybe we've lost our innocence too."
-Cynthia McKinney
Human beings are nothing beyond a moment. They are nothing, nothing fixed, besides potential expressions. There is as much potential in the victim as in the aggressor- for violence. It is circumstance that differentiates. And circumstance that illuminates.
What qualities we consider of "humanity" are maintained only actively- there is no passive humanity. When food and empathy for a neighbor equates with financial self interest, a tax break- there is no "humanity." When there is something lost with no return, a stake against the flow of self interest- humanity has the potential for expression. Is my conception of humanity an extension of a fundamental Christ complex- self-sacrifice?
As a means of tempering, an anecdote:
Vasily Grossman recounts an episode from his mother's last days, in a ghetto of Poland in the early 40's. She rooms with a man and his family. The man is dynamic and achieves much with very little. In their first weeks in the ghetto, he wheels and deals and accumulates much food and many favors he saves on behalf of his family. They eat relatively well, much longer than most. However, as weeks turn to months, the young men begin to be selected for hard labor, children and the elderly are started to be selected for "resettlement." This dynamic man despairs. He still wheels and deals accumulating food- but he begins to share it with those starving around him- feeding whomever comes to his door. Until he too is "resettled."
Grossman's point is no edification of a "christ-like humanity." Rather an observation, that the hopeful think towards a future and hoard and fight for tomorrows crumbs. The hopeless, they are free to be generous- for there is no tomorrow for saving.
By this line, there is only guilt. No distinction between passive and active guilt. To say "I was following orders and cannot be held accountable" is to say "I forfeited, internally-unto myself, control of how I manifest the potentials that predicate all men. I must be innocent, else the entire delusion of greater passive innocence must fail."
Is philosophy without politic, the same delusion as passive innocence? So much inherent to philosophy is interpretation, refinement- argument between that subjective concept of reality and a material world. What is more essential political than testing and shaping the parameters of that relationship?
What have you wrought?
"A Republic, if you can keep it."
A mind of one's own, if you can keep it.
A conscience, if you can keep it.
A personal humanity, if you can keep it.
A Tolstoyan love, if you can keep it.
An individual amid a mass, if you can keep it.
Reality is transient, as reality is an abstract we impose in reference to the material world. And so it must be reasserted continually, endlessly, for neither the soil nor the individual hold its imprint for long.
A European Union Parliament member asserts that the existence of the sovereign state is an anachronism, belonging to the past centuries.
Things merely happen. Events of violence and love and fear and all human potential predicates. "Reality" and "history" assign those events along a narrative- another abstraction. Perhaps a more bare statement from such a Parliament member might read, "My narrative of the past does not hold place in the present for the concept of the sovereign state." Make a sovereign state and there it is, anachronism or no. It is the estimation that a linear historical narrative is preferable to a cyclical narrative- perhaps as a cyclical approach contains less inherent justification for "progress."
Materialistically speaking: Nothing is Forbidden, Everything is Permissible.
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
-Albert Einstein
Show me technology which hasn't violent military application and I'll show you an overlooked opportunity for more violence.
Progress for peace, just a little further- forever just a little further. Get the 3-D printers and everything will be different- peace will manifest, individuals will be liberated.
Or will guns and shell casings be manufactured now at the home? Will residences be hostage to yet another material necessity, demanding more raw materials to fulfill their need?
Progress is not an end-of-itself, it doubly lacks any aspect of 'inevitable-peace' or 'innate-harmony-through-communication.'
(Video was removed Ehehehehe, so heres a mirror http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zW4AKrOIak)
Watch the short clip embedded above. There is a key phrase. The immediate information, yes yes, the United States feels its narrative of reality is threatened by a more transparent, more trustworthy narrative provided by global news agencies Al Jazeera, Russia Today and CNTV(CCTV). The key phrase: "You feel like you're getting real news." Which is certainly a categorically valid statement.
The presentation and content of these global news narratives communicate a counter-story to the official line, which a segment of the population has grown to vaguely distrust. That is not however to discredit the "feel" aspect of the statement. It doesn't have to be the "news", it needs simply to feel like it. Another subjective hole.
A response would be to imbibe these alternative news narratives, but to maintain the apparatus of hard skepticism which the national news narrative has cultivated.
Never invest so deeply in an argument, belief or conception of reality, that you would be unwilling/incapable of disregarding it in its entirety should immediate experience contradict its evidence. One must also temper their vanity such that they would be capable of then acting upon that new understanding.
Entertain thoughts, as Dying for them is too abrupt.
To twistingly paraphrase the philosopher-king,
"The majority of our controversies, our misinterpreting of the situations we face, come from attributing a singular cause to that which is the result of many."
This is a scatter shot. But their is no singular cause, so their can be no singular conception of this dilemma. It is like attempting to exhaustively describe a cloud.
Nebulous.
We've inherited from the not so distant past, the memory of harrowing instances where our human narratives have crumbled. Let us not rebuild from the same bricks, or by the same design- ignoring the universality of man's violent potential.
Yet, a walk of one thousand deliberate steps- is a much longer frustrated path
Than a treadmill jog, with an i-pod.
Here is a documentary to watch for watching's sake. Or is that an attempt to veil my embarrassment over evoking earnest concern? Watch its 7 parts, or at least the 1st, and consider the nature of narratives.
-Attributed to Albert Einstein
"Primo Levi explains that Nazi camps have given us ‘‘a shame at being human.’’ Not, he says, that we’re all responsible for Nazism, as some would have us believe, but that we’ve all been tainted by it: even the survivors of the camps had to make compromises with it, if only to survive. There’s the shame of there being men who became Nazis; the shame of being unable, not seeing how to stop it; the shame of having compromised with it. And we can feel shame at being human in utterly trivial situations, too: in the face of too great a vulgarization of thinking, in the face of TV entertainment, of a ministerial speech, of ‘‘jolly people’’ gossiping. This is one of the most powerful incentives toward philosophy, and it’s what makes all philosophy political"
-Deleuze
Take these quotations as a starting point, as the inherited lineage of today.
To describe human conscious as "adrift" is an egregious understatement. Within every mind is the potential expression of a base "man of fanatic action."
The ground beneath one's feet- regardless of its subjection appraisal, of its quantum particle fluctuation- is at the borrowed mercy of a material reality. Whether we ever "purely" appraise ourselves or the earth we experience, neither affects nor mitigates the vulnerability of the most fundamental of our material assumptions- that there will be a bottom to the well, that a house or field doesn't contain the potential of one moment's change: becoming ground zero glass and fire.
The definitive narrative of the 20th and 21st century, is denial. What an old greek beggar would have called "the willful delusion of self."
We must believe we are still innocent.
We must believe the world is still both immortal and inexhaustible.
Otherwise.
"It's a great shame on the black political tradition, to have... a warmonger. It's almost as if the Black Community in the United States... maybe we've lost our innocence too."
-Cynthia McKinney
Human beings are nothing beyond a moment. They are nothing, nothing fixed, besides potential expressions. There is as much potential in the victim as in the aggressor- for violence. It is circumstance that differentiates. And circumstance that illuminates.
What qualities we consider of "humanity" are maintained only actively- there is no passive humanity. When food and empathy for a neighbor equates with financial self interest, a tax break- there is no "humanity." When there is something lost with no return, a stake against the flow of self interest- humanity has the potential for expression. Is my conception of humanity an extension of a fundamental Christ complex- self-sacrifice?
As a means of tempering, an anecdote:
Vasily Grossman recounts an episode from his mother's last days, in a ghetto of Poland in the early 40's. She rooms with a man and his family. The man is dynamic and achieves much with very little. In their first weeks in the ghetto, he wheels and deals and accumulates much food and many favors he saves on behalf of his family. They eat relatively well, much longer than most. However, as weeks turn to months, the young men begin to be selected for hard labor, children and the elderly are started to be selected for "resettlement." This dynamic man despairs. He still wheels and deals accumulating food- but he begins to share it with those starving around him- feeding whomever comes to his door. Until he too is "resettled."
Grossman's point is no edification of a "christ-like humanity." Rather an observation, that the hopeful think towards a future and hoard and fight for tomorrows crumbs. The hopeless, they are free to be generous- for there is no tomorrow for saving.
By this line, there is only guilt. No distinction between passive and active guilt. To say "I was following orders and cannot be held accountable" is to say "I forfeited, internally-unto myself, control of how I manifest the potentials that predicate all men. I must be innocent, else the entire delusion of greater passive innocence must fail."
Is philosophy without politic, the same delusion as passive innocence? So much inherent to philosophy is interpretation, refinement- argument between that subjective concept of reality and a material world. What is more essential political than testing and shaping the parameters of that relationship?
What have you wrought?
"A Republic, if you can keep it."
A mind of one's own, if you can keep it.
A conscience, if you can keep it.
A personal humanity, if you can keep it.
A Tolstoyan love, if you can keep it.
An individual amid a mass, if you can keep it.
Reality is transient, as reality is an abstract we impose in reference to the material world. And so it must be reasserted continually, endlessly, for neither the soil nor the individual hold its imprint for long.
A European Union Parliament member asserts that the existence of the sovereign state is an anachronism, belonging to the past centuries.
Things merely happen. Events of violence and love and fear and all human potential predicates. "Reality" and "history" assign those events along a narrative- another abstraction. Perhaps a more bare statement from such a Parliament member might read, "My narrative of the past does not hold place in the present for the concept of the sovereign state." Make a sovereign state and there it is, anachronism or no. It is the estimation that a linear historical narrative is preferable to a cyclical narrative- perhaps as a cyclical approach contains less inherent justification for "progress."
Materialistically speaking: Nothing is Forbidden, Everything is Permissible.
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
-Albert Einstein
Show me technology which hasn't violent military application and I'll show you an overlooked opportunity for more violence.
Progress for peace, just a little further- forever just a little further. Get the 3-D printers and everything will be different- peace will manifest, individuals will be liberated.
Or will guns and shell casings be manufactured now at the home? Will residences be hostage to yet another material necessity, demanding more raw materials to fulfill their need?
Progress is not an end-of-itself, it doubly lacks any aspect of 'inevitable-peace' or 'innate-harmony-through-communication.'
(Video was removed Ehehehehe, so heres a mirror http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zW4AKrOIak)
Watch the short clip embedded above. There is a key phrase. The immediate information, yes yes, the United States feels its narrative of reality is threatened by a more transparent, more trustworthy narrative provided by global news agencies Al Jazeera, Russia Today and CNTV(CCTV). The key phrase: "You feel like you're getting real news." Which is certainly a categorically valid statement.
The presentation and content of these global news narratives communicate a counter-story to the official line, which a segment of the population has grown to vaguely distrust. That is not however to discredit the "feel" aspect of the statement. It doesn't have to be the "news", it needs simply to feel like it. Another subjective hole.
A response would be to imbibe these alternative news narratives, but to maintain the apparatus of hard skepticism which the national news narrative has cultivated.
Never invest so deeply in an argument, belief or conception of reality, that you would be unwilling/incapable of disregarding it in its entirety should immediate experience contradict its evidence. One must also temper their vanity such that they would be capable of then acting upon that new understanding.
Entertain thoughts, as Dying for them is too abrupt.
To twistingly paraphrase the philosopher-king,
"The majority of our controversies, our misinterpreting of the situations we face, come from attributing a singular cause to that which is the result of many."
This is a scatter shot. But their is no singular cause, so their can be no singular conception of this dilemma. It is like attempting to exhaustively describe a cloud.
Nebulous.
We've inherited from the not so distant past, the memory of harrowing instances where our human narratives have crumbled. Let us not rebuild from the same bricks, or by the same design- ignoring the universality of man's violent potential.
Yet, a walk of one thousand deliberate steps- is a much longer frustrated path
Than a treadmill jog, with an i-pod.
Here is a documentary to watch for watching's sake. Or is that an attempt to veil my embarrassment over evoking earnest concern? Watch its 7 parts, or at least the 1st, and consider the nature of narratives.
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