Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Just Works
When something 'just works' its presence is imperceptible, its absence is anything but. Generally the air just works, and there isn't much to celebrate about that, it is assumed. But when it doesn't ... you notice.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat
What is the power of a truth that is not expressed boldly? Can we really be expected to judge the question of truth dispassionately? Do we dare permit ourselves to become so bored with truth that it loses its capacity to inspire?
The Source
Words are the occasion for meaning. But this does not mean they are the source of meaning. The source is before and beyond language. Meaning is not found in words, but rather by way of words. A word does not possess meaning - meaning does not belong to a word. Meaning belongs to something much more primordial.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Affirmation is Negation
Affirmation is negation, and negation affirmation. A truth and its opposite run parallel. What is lacking is the bisecting perpendicular, which intersects both truth and untruth at a point so infinitesimal that it remains both unperceived and inconceivable until the uniting schema has already begun to come undone.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Giving Expression
One must give expression to something several times before it can be first articulated.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Profound Truths
Do not be deceived: Just because a truth is expressed simply does not make it any less profound.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Cancer
The purpose of writing is to get others to think. Philosophy is a cancer - it does no good unless it spreads.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Conviction
Do not always believe what you hear - even if it is said with conviction. I want to say - especially if it is said with conviction.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Communication, Interpretation and Trust
In communication of any kind, there are many who give out two books: one that says what they mean to say, and one that tells their listener how to interpret it. These people think of language as being fundamentally personal language, such that you have to provide a translation matrix along with every message that you send out. This seems, as it were, to be the default behavior of human beings today; wishing not to be misinterpreted, we preemptively interpret ourselves. In a manner of speaking, we become both speaker and audience, and thereby leave nothing for our audience to do but uncritically absorb our message.
Everywhere today, this is the predominate mode of communication. However, this is not the mode proper to communication itself. It is rather a reactionary move, a preemptively defensive posture taken on by speakers once they realize that interpretation is a basic function of communication itself. That is to say, I can say what I will, but there is no telling how you will take my meaning. Knowing this naturally fills us with a sense of dread and anxiety, since we do indeed mean something when we choose to speak, and it seems to be wantonly careless to leave the critical matter of interpretive understanding up to someone as unreliable as a listener.
Nevertheless, there can be no communication without trust. To speak is to take a blind leap into the dark unknown of another's mind, hopeful that the other will listen to you with discretion and the benefit of the doubt - that is to say, hopeful that the other will truly listen, and take steps to acquire a genuine understanding. After all, communication is a co-operative endeavor. It is the pursuit for a common truth - and such a journey cannot be taken alone.
Everywhere today, this is the predominate mode of communication. However, this is not the mode proper to communication itself. It is rather a reactionary move, a preemptively defensive posture taken on by speakers once they realize that interpretation is a basic function of communication itself. That is to say, I can say what I will, but there is no telling how you will take my meaning. Knowing this naturally fills us with a sense of dread and anxiety, since we do indeed mean something when we choose to speak, and it seems to be wantonly careless to leave the critical matter of interpretive understanding up to someone as unreliable as a listener.
Nevertheless, there can be no communication without trust. To speak is to take a blind leap into the dark unknown of another's mind, hopeful that the other will listen to you with discretion and the benefit of the doubt - that is to say, hopeful that the other will truly listen, and take steps to acquire a genuine understanding. After all, communication is a co-operative endeavor. It is the pursuit for a common truth - and such a journey cannot be taken alone.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Reading and Writing and...
There are certain people who especially love books and reading and learning of all sorts, and they would especially like it were we to grace them with a label as generous as "bibliophile", but we'll avoid such an abundance of expression at the moment so as to avoid unduly praising that which is too commonly praised in either the spirit of egotism or in a sadly-acceptable appeal to the norms of the status quo. Here, we wish to discuss those who love reading and their experience of reading, in an attempt to discover the meaning of the essence of the being of a book, through the experiences of those who particularly enjoy reading them.
Whenever a reader may first begin to read, and whatever he may start with, he will eventually-invariably come to a point where he thinks to himself the simple and too-simple thought: "This is good." In an implicit acknowledgment of the basic cruelty of the universe, it is at this inconvenient point, when the reader lacks any sort of self-scrutiny or -awareness, that all the critical questions become answered, even before they may be properly asked. But, for us, situated much later than this rhetorically imagined first-reading and first-valuation of reading, we may ask several strange questions. The innocent reader will surely have no idea how to adequately answer our questions (which he has, of course, already and unknowingly inadvertently answered), and so he inevitably answers poorly, aiming to please the questioner rather than drive home some vaguely ethereal notion of the real truth of the matter. So we cannot trust his answers (which are of course our own).
And so we eventually come back to the present, to the advent of the opening of a space adequate for questioning. What is quality when it comes to a book; what constitutes the value of a book? Moreover, what constitutes a "book" and the being of a book? Oddly, our minds immediately fall upon and dwell with the first question, the question of quality, rather than looking deeply into the second, less obviously interesting question of what constitutes the essence of the book's "being". But this is to be expected. While the first question conjures thoughts of a dandy philosophical adventure traversing the bold worlds of aesthetics and ethics in a good and honorable quest to slay that ever-elusive dragon that is the Good-in-Itself, the latter question falls by the wayside in that it does not seem to hold any promise for gold or conquest or glory; it is not a hero's quest but rather a trite and too-ordinary errand. After all, what is a book but a book? Who cares about what a book is? A book is a book - and there is not much more you can say than that.
Nevertheless, it is precisely this latter question that gives the former one its weight and potential for glory. After all, the value of a book may be gauged only against some sort of "Platonic Ideal" of its being-a-book - which is to say, a book is only good insofar as it resembles the singular and ideal Book which is not merely an instance or example of book-ness, but rather the quintessential perfection of a book's basic being.
And so, lengthy preamble aside, what constitutes the essential being of a book, by which we are to gauge the value of all books? Unfortunate as we are, we do not live in Plato's time or times when Plato was taken more seriously than today, and so we are forced not to take his notion of the Form of something quite literally, but rather to consider it within a quasi-Kantian hierarchy of basic human subjectivity. Which is to say, we each of us have different ideas as to what the ideal book is, and these ideas do not perfectly coincide into a single Platonic Ideal; and so we must deconstruct our own subjectivity, and in all hopes, with it the subjectivity of all other judging and value-giving human beings. Which is to say, we shall look back at the time when we were so careless as to think that we knew what we meant, so careless indeed that we unintentionally gave birth to meaning in the things we said - with the additional conflating self-deception that those meanings were inherent to the things we were talking about, and not instead fundamentally subsisting in ourselves.
We were young, we were naive, and we blessed books with the notion of goodness. We are now older, wiser, but still stuck thinking that there are some books better than others. This does seem to be an unavoidably inevitable valuation, discriminating between one sort of thing and another, divvying up reality according to our perceptual appraisals of value... and so we must ask ourselves, what were we thinking when we weren't thinking? If we can be that naive again, can we recall what made us think that certain books were good, that is to say, that somehow they resembled the perfection of being a book? And then, if we are so lucky to get that far, may we successfully invert our perspective and our inquiry so as to reach forward rather than back, toward the future rather than the past, away from reading and toward the reciprocal motion that is, of course, writing?
Let us avoid, right from the start, the sort of dull and overdone discussions of subjectivity that address nothing but the relativity of personal pleasures. It is clear that everyone likes what they like, but we are here discussing philosophy, not psychology, and it would be foolish for us to fancy ourselves psychoanalysts and embark on a lengthy and trivial examination of pleasure. I know that some people like reading some things, while other people like reading others, and for different reasons always. That doesn't interest me. What interests me is the possibility that there is a tendency, if not perhaps even a universality, that flows through all ideas of what a good book is, uniting to form a collectively-subconscious understanding of the fundamental being of a book.
And it does occur to me that there is just such an underlying tendency, although it is not universally present in all instances. A book is always a condensation; more words go into it than come out of it. That is to say, I have a thousand thoughts before I write a single sentence, and somehow I, as the author, have considered the alternatives and set upon the proper sentence for this particular place in the book; and that this process happens over and over until the work is complete. And once it is complete, it is finished. The book stands, for all time, as it is.
It is clear to me that this near-universality is a singular misunderstanding regarding what the basic essence of a book is. A book is supposed to be timeless; that is to say, it stands outside of time despite the fact that it is a product of time. The book is written, and it is finished. It is a "work", and it stands complete. This is how we read and think of books. Although a book may burn or be forgotten, and fall forever from the bookshelves of eternal remembrance, it still stands and subsists in a singular removal from time's flow. And when we are reading a book and consider it to be especially good, it is because this book is somehow more eternal than the rest. How we evaluate this eternality, and what we consider to be a quality that makes a book "good enough" to stand outside of time, is not our concern.
But we said, and maintain, that this is a misunderstanding. Books are created in time, and the goodness of a book lies not insofar as it stands outside of time, but precisely insofar as it stands within time, and within the timeliness of time. It is with this in mind that we say that we should not think of works as stalwart pinnacles that erupt, removed from the course of time, existing without beginning or end, but principally as malleable works of creation, that can be cut and skewered and re-mended a thousand times and still exist just as surely as they did when they existed in a somehow more "virgin" state. For there is no innocent virginity for such a thing as a book - books are products of the worst violence and the most depraved ideological molestations and lexical rapes. There is no purity in a book - the book is an abomination - and the perfection of a book lies exactly insofar as the book presents and represents an extensive and penetrating mockery of existence itself. For this is precisely how the writer gave rise to his work - and who are we to question the originary spirit of creation?
Whenever a reader may first begin to read, and whatever he may start with, he will eventually-invariably come to a point where he thinks to himself the simple and too-simple thought: "This is good." In an implicit acknowledgment of the basic cruelty of the universe, it is at this inconvenient point, when the reader lacks any sort of self-scrutiny or -awareness, that all the critical questions become answered, even before they may be properly asked. But, for us, situated much later than this rhetorically imagined first-reading and first-valuation of reading, we may ask several strange questions. The innocent reader will surely have no idea how to adequately answer our questions (which he has, of course, already and unknowingly inadvertently answered), and so he inevitably answers poorly, aiming to please the questioner rather than drive home some vaguely ethereal notion of the real truth of the matter. So we cannot trust his answers (which are of course our own).
And so we eventually come back to the present, to the advent of the opening of a space adequate for questioning. What is quality when it comes to a book; what constitutes the value of a book? Moreover, what constitutes a "book" and the being of a book? Oddly, our minds immediately fall upon and dwell with the first question, the question of quality, rather than looking deeply into the second, less obviously interesting question of what constitutes the essence of the book's "being". But this is to be expected. While the first question conjures thoughts of a dandy philosophical adventure traversing the bold worlds of aesthetics and ethics in a good and honorable quest to slay that ever-elusive dragon that is the Good-in-Itself, the latter question falls by the wayside in that it does not seem to hold any promise for gold or conquest or glory; it is not a hero's quest but rather a trite and too-ordinary errand. After all, what is a book but a book? Who cares about what a book is? A book is a book - and there is not much more you can say than that.
Nevertheless, it is precisely this latter question that gives the former one its weight and potential for glory. After all, the value of a book may be gauged only against some sort of "Platonic Ideal" of its being-a-book - which is to say, a book is only good insofar as it resembles the singular and ideal Book which is not merely an instance or example of book-ness, but rather the quintessential perfection of a book's basic being.
And so, lengthy preamble aside, what constitutes the essential being of a book, by which we are to gauge the value of all books? Unfortunate as we are, we do not live in Plato's time or times when Plato was taken more seriously than today, and so we are forced not to take his notion of the Form of something quite literally, but rather to consider it within a quasi-Kantian hierarchy of basic human subjectivity. Which is to say, we each of us have different ideas as to what the ideal book is, and these ideas do not perfectly coincide into a single Platonic Ideal; and so we must deconstruct our own subjectivity, and in all hopes, with it the subjectivity of all other judging and value-giving human beings. Which is to say, we shall look back at the time when we were so careless as to think that we knew what we meant, so careless indeed that we unintentionally gave birth to meaning in the things we said - with the additional conflating self-deception that those meanings were inherent to the things we were talking about, and not instead fundamentally subsisting in ourselves.
We were young, we were naive, and we blessed books with the notion of goodness. We are now older, wiser, but still stuck thinking that there are some books better than others. This does seem to be an unavoidably inevitable valuation, discriminating between one sort of thing and another, divvying up reality according to our perceptual appraisals of value... and so we must ask ourselves, what were we thinking when we weren't thinking? If we can be that naive again, can we recall what made us think that certain books were good, that is to say, that somehow they resembled the perfection of being a book? And then, if we are so lucky to get that far, may we successfully invert our perspective and our inquiry so as to reach forward rather than back, toward the future rather than the past, away from reading and toward the reciprocal motion that is, of course, writing?
Let us avoid, right from the start, the sort of dull and overdone discussions of subjectivity that address nothing but the relativity of personal pleasures. It is clear that everyone likes what they like, but we are here discussing philosophy, not psychology, and it would be foolish for us to fancy ourselves psychoanalysts and embark on a lengthy and trivial examination of pleasure. I know that some people like reading some things, while other people like reading others, and for different reasons always. That doesn't interest me. What interests me is the possibility that there is a tendency, if not perhaps even a universality, that flows through all ideas of what a good book is, uniting to form a collectively-subconscious understanding of the fundamental being of a book.
And it does occur to me that there is just such an underlying tendency, although it is not universally present in all instances. A book is always a condensation; more words go into it than come out of it. That is to say, I have a thousand thoughts before I write a single sentence, and somehow I, as the author, have considered the alternatives and set upon the proper sentence for this particular place in the book; and that this process happens over and over until the work is complete. And once it is complete, it is finished. The book stands, for all time, as it is.
It is clear to me that this near-universality is a singular misunderstanding regarding what the basic essence of a book is. A book is supposed to be timeless; that is to say, it stands outside of time despite the fact that it is a product of time. The book is written, and it is finished. It is a "work", and it stands complete. This is how we read and think of books. Although a book may burn or be forgotten, and fall forever from the bookshelves of eternal remembrance, it still stands and subsists in a singular removal from time's flow. And when we are reading a book and consider it to be especially good, it is because this book is somehow more eternal than the rest. How we evaluate this eternality, and what we consider to be a quality that makes a book "good enough" to stand outside of time, is not our concern.
But we said, and maintain, that this is a misunderstanding. Books are created in time, and the goodness of a book lies not insofar as it stands outside of time, but precisely insofar as it stands within time, and within the timeliness of time. It is with this in mind that we say that we should not think of works as stalwart pinnacles that erupt, removed from the course of time, existing without beginning or end, but principally as malleable works of creation, that can be cut and skewered and re-mended a thousand times and still exist just as surely as they did when they existed in a somehow more "virgin" state. For there is no innocent virginity for such a thing as a book - books are products of the worst violence and the most depraved ideological molestations and lexical rapes. There is no purity in a book - the book is an abomination - and the perfection of a book lies exactly insofar as the book presents and represents an extensive and penetrating mockery of existence itself. For this is precisely how the writer gave rise to his work - and who are we to question the originary spirit of creation?
Whatever Man
+: Hey Yo, Yo wha'chu doin' wi'dat cape on ? I ain't nevah seen nobody wit no cape on befoh, you some kind'a supa hero?
-: Whatevah man.
+: Whatevah man, Whatevah man, I ain't neva heeeerd a' whatva' man befoh, wah'choo do?
-: Whatevah man
-: Whatevah man.
+: Whatevah man, Whatevah man, I ain't neva heeeerd a' whatva' man befoh, wah'choo do?
-: Whatevah man
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Dealing With People
How are we supposed to get along with each other, really? This question is dealt with so often that it hardly seems to deserve to be asked. However, precisely because it is dealt with so often gives us good reason to inquire directly into the matter, seeking a philosophically sound and universal answer to a question that is addressed too individually, and answered too variously.
Encountering one another in our daily doings, we are hurled into the chaos of the moment, where anything can happen at any time, and thousands of variables must be considered, calculated and calibrated before anything can be done. Indeed, we are forced to deal with each other without the necessary tools or time to do so adequately. And so we make do, and somehow we get by.
But at the end of the day, after having to deal with each other without any kind of preparation or due thought, we may pause to consider whether we have acted justly, judiciously, or more often just jerkishly. Being constantly forced to accommodate each other on the spot, we should pause and take the time to step back from time and inquire into our personal affairs not only extemporaneously, but also extra-temporaneously.
One of the most common matters dealt with between people is the question of personal offense. It is commonly known that diversity breeds animosity. Of course, it is also well known that familiarity breeds contempt. Basically, we all hate each other. If you are different from me, I hate you for reminding me that mine is not the only way of life. If you are similar to me, I hate you for reminding me of my own inadequacies. Whatever the cause, we always find reason - and good reason! - to hate each other. What are we to do about it?
There are two common techniques. You can either (1) avoid the people you can't stand, or (2) avoid talking about why you can't stand them. But frankly, both of these options are untenable. What kind of world are we living in where we can't voice our contempt for each other openly? I thought we were supposed to be living in a free society.
I offer a third alternative. Rather than working toward a more "sensitive" and "diplomatic" society, let's quit fucking around and just be ourselves. After all, this is America! If we can't openly express our contempt for each other, what else is left to bring us together? We must stand together, united in our common contempt! Only then may we truly call ourselves Americans.
Encountering one another in our daily doings, we are hurled into the chaos of the moment, where anything can happen at any time, and thousands of variables must be considered, calculated and calibrated before anything can be done. Indeed, we are forced to deal with each other without the necessary tools or time to do so adequately. And so we make do, and somehow we get by.
But at the end of the day, after having to deal with each other without any kind of preparation or due thought, we may pause to consider whether we have acted justly, judiciously, or more often just jerkishly. Being constantly forced to accommodate each other on the spot, we should pause and take the time to step back from time and inquire into our personal affairs not only extemporaneously, but also extra-temporaneously.
One of the most common matters dealt with between people is the question of personal offense. It is commonly known that diversity breeds animosity. Of course, it is also well known that familiarity breeds contempt. Basically, we all hate each other. If you are different from me, I hate you for reminding me that mine is not the only way of life. If you are similar to me, I hate you for reminding me of my own inadequacies. Whatever the cause, we always find reason - and good reason! - to hate each other. What are we to do about it?
There are two common techniques. You can either (1) avoid the people you can't stand, or (2) avoid talking about why you can't stand them. But frankly, both of these options are untenable. What kind of world are we living in where we can't voice our contempt for each other openly? I thought we were supposed to be living in a free society.
I offer a third alternative. Rather than working toward a more "sensitive" and "diplomatic" society, let's quit fucking around and just be ourselves. After all, this is America! If we can't openly express our contempt for each other, what else is left to bring us together? We must stand together, united in our common contempt! Only then may we truly call ourselves Americans.
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