Monday, October 28, 2002

 
HOUSEHOLD WORLDS

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Aye, and what then?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Anima Poetae 1816

"In Die Christenheit, oder Europe (published 1826) Novalis sees, that humankind's historical and spiritual apotheosis will be reached when the epoch of science is left behind. The limitless power of Imagination, "magical knowledge," combines all the elements of senses and scientific principles invented by reason - Novalis called his philosophy "magic idealism." The spiritual world is open for everybody all the time. "Was ich will, das kan ich. - Die Welt soll sein, wie ich will." The capital of the universal society, where spirituality and peace prevails, will be Jerusalem."

"A clich� is a clich� because it has an element of profundity." Gregory Corso

Introduction to What Painting Is (pdf)
"A painting is made of paint�of fluids and stone�and paint has its own logic, and its own meanings even before it is shaped into the head of a madonna."
In this compelling and original work, art historian James Elkins communicates the experience of painting beyond the traditional vocabulary of art history, likening the medium to alchemy. For, according to Elkins, the painter, like the alchemist, seeks to transform and be transformed by the medium. 25 illustrations, 15 in color.
What Painting Is : How to Think About Oil Painting, Using the Language of Alchemy

The Scientific Origins of Abstract Art

A Personhood Cosmology

Pigments through the Ages
Intro to the blues

The Blue Flower
Background of The Blue Flower

"Sometimes short stories are brought together like parcels in a basket. Sometimes they grow together like blossoms on a bush. Then, of course, they really belong to one another, because they have the same life in them." Henry Van Dyke - The Blue Flower (Preface)

To dye for
Veronica Horwell discovers how technical revolutions in colour changed the world of painting, in Philip Ball's Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour and Michel Pastoureau's Blue: The History of a Colour

Philip Ball, the author of Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color, talks about the intersection of art, science, and creativity
The Science of the Palette

Goethe, Land, and Color Theory

Modern art has often been accused of being meaningless but could this mean it can bring on mental illness?
Modern art made me blue

Bright Earth by Philip Ball
"One of the least studied aspects of the history of art is art's tools." John Gage
"Any work of art is determined first and foremost by the materials available to the artist, and by the artist's ability to manipulate those materials." Anthea Callen

"If Wittgenstein is right, and language is more than just a tool we use, and is in fact something we exist within, then what does this 'say' about the nature of reality?" Andrew Moore

Whoever discovered water, it wasn't a fish!

"Myth is the twilight speech of an old man to a boy. All the old men begin at the beginning. Their recitals always speak first of the origin of life. They start by inventing this event which no man witnessed, which still remains a mystery. They initiate the history of their race with a fiction. For, whether it was first in the sense of time, life is, for all men, first of miracles in the sense of prime. This is a fact. Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter.
The speech of an elder in the twilight of his life is not his history but a legacy; he speaks not to describe matter but to demonstrate meaning."
Maya Deren - Divine Horsemen of Haiti (The Voodoo Gods)

Information Overflow

The Medium is the Message - The User is the Content

English - the most torrential language?

Koyaanisqatsi- Life out of Balance, live performances

"The New Terra Firma"

Godfrey Reggio will be presenting a lecture at Southern California Institute of Architecture on Wednesday October 30th 2002 at 7:30 pm as part of the symposium entitled "Make it New". Don't miss this exciting opportunity to see Mr. Reggio in person. For more information call 213-613-2200, ext. 348.
Southern California Institute of Architecture, 960 E. 3rd St, Los Angeles, CA. 90013

The Qatsi Trilogy

"To the degree that he masters his tools, [man] can invest the world with his meaning; to the degree he is mastered by his tools, the shape of the tool determines his own self-image." Ivan Illich

"The image itself is the location," Godfrey Reggio says. "The task of this film - Naqoyqatsi - was to deal with the evil demon of images."

"First you make the music, and then the music changes you." Karlheinz Stockhausen

Book II: The Material
"Therefore: What is above form is called tao; what is within form is called tool.

We are shown here that the forces constituting the visible world are transcendent ones. Tao is taken here in the sense of all-embracing entelechy. It transcends the spatial world, but it acts upon the visible world - by means of the images, i.e., ideas inherent in it, as is set forth more exactly in other passages - and what hereby comes into being are the objects. An object is spatial, that is, defined by its corporeal limits; but it cannot be understood without knowledge of the tao underlying it."
Ta Chuan / The Great Treatise

"That which transforms things and fits them together is called change; that which stimulates them and sets them in motion is called continuity. That which raises them up and sets them forth before all people on earth is called the field of action."

I Ching or book of changes
(The Richard Wilhelm translation) Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and Henley,1980, Page 323

"We shape our buildings and our buildings shape us." Winston Churchill


posted by Andrew 10/28/2002 03:15:00 AM

Thursday, October 24, 2002

 
Meanings

"Meanings are not merely the whisper of bats in the night; they cohere into flocks to sleep in the caverns of social thought and reemerge in thunderous flight to ignite a million imaginations together." (Walker, Peter. 1997. Minimalist Gardens. Washington: Spacemaker Press.)

The World is a Shared Dream
"Science" studies the material dimension of the World, the consequences and appearances, and is not qualified to understand the Materia Prima, the inner dimension of the Universe. To seek for a material proof of what is not material would not be ... efficient.
Source of this quotation - http://www.dassigny.hpg.ig.com.br/consciousness.htm

Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist

"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44 (Routledge, New York, 1990, Page 187)

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian philosopher. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, sct. 6.4311 (1921, tr. 1922).

Moments of Cyber-Modernity

"My work consists of two parts: the first part is presented here and the second part consists of all that I have not put on the paper. And it is precisely the second part that is the important one." Wittgenstein on the unwritten Tractatus

Jung's Archetypes
In his later work, Jung was convinced that the archetypes are psychoid, that is, "they shape matter (nature) as well as mind (psyche)" (Houston Smith, Forgotten Truth, 40).

Image Theory

Dr. David Cooperrider in his research in Image Theory expresses the concern that in the culture of the United States today we are living in a toxic social climate of cynicism. As a result of being bombarded by negative messages that are projected by the media ...
The Power of Image in Facilitation

I'm Media

The Medium Is The Rear View Mirror

"V�znamem sd�len� je zm�na, kterou toto sd�len� vytv��� v p�edstav� o sv�t�."
"The meaning of a message is the change which it produces in the image." -- Kenneth Boulding

Kenneth Boulding, in his groundbreaking writing on Image Theory, laid out the following understandings:

We think in images as well as in information
Images are created by messages
Images govern our behavior
Images can change
Changed Images Create Changed Behavior.

The Party at the End of Time


posted by Andrew 10/24/2002 12:32:00 PM

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

 
Release for Peace

THE BALLAD OF FALSE AMERICAN RAY'S EXTENSION

Don't mention the weft
Don't mention the rime
Don't mention the warp

A band called Co
row through history to the end of time
they never look back, singing out -
you were my twentieth century fantasy heckler,
you were a nightmare from which I've awoken

Don't mention the well, the lonely.
Don't mention the fact that the house is a flame
fling your symptoms from the rear of the fright-train
- seize and retrieve your mind entirely -
we cut-up this ballad to suggest a stream
to project a screen, to re-route a feed & in the midst
of an unspent loop to defuse a fear.
I lie here 8 years late for work, drenched in headphones
Breaking open this withering state, emphatically awake
- channels of mass distraction jam the gaian brain -
I surge, I breathe as the edge morphs
I change speed to Cogito Interruptus flash-forward
meanwhile snafu at the test-range
lest we become too happy by far
prosthetic legs parachute west of Kandahar
stay tuned to the news narcosis bodycount & blame

carry on snoring and hurricane mayhem
of men in hate, men in soup, men in deep primeval games
bite-sized pieces of titanic check-mate, poker faces, stasis
stasis & uppity ship-creek for a spot of invisible arms

trading under rules made up & broken
by the al-mighty league tables
who gather where they may

The Fascist Industry can wear my hairshirt

Tariq Aziz - will he Tell it as it is?
I tell you this, as an egg of state
nestles in a cosmic coracle
& a ladder reaches to the moon

we're scattering phantoms, proteins, photo opportunities
splitting from the program of a past impasse
through history sweats and the chatterbark nightmare
news of an i'm alright how about your jackboot future

we're coming to our common gifts
we're gathering our limbs & smiling features
for a brand new Humpty Dumpty
progeny of the mother of all complexity
brother & sister of soul simplicity
tracing an image of an unknown visage
in sand

with nothing for the voyage
except our fellow beings
fully-fledged full-bodied
giving bold form to our dreams

retrieving original bliss after the fall
Are we not shuman, shamen, a band
called human uttering broken heaven-talk
possessing televisions of everything but the goal

one earth family robeson being ear to a tune
I'm coming through slaughter & the wall
I'm coming to my senses, & you're coming too y'all


posted by Andrew 10/15/2002 01:29:00 PM

Monday, October 14, 2002

 
TRANSFORMATION

"A fixed image is the basic mortality error, a ME that cannot be allowed to change ..."
William S. Burroughs - The Western Lands (Picador, 1988 Page 158)

Journey to Immortality

If the sea were ink to write the words of my Lord, verily the sea would fail before the words of my Lord would fail. Koran 18.110

'Jesus, son of Mary (on whom be peace) said: The world is a bridge; pass over it but build no house upon it.' This was inscribed by Akbar on the Bulwand Darwaza, the lofty gateway into the palace of Fatehpur Sikri.

"Gnosis is characterized by its recourse to pure metaphysics: the distinction between Atma and Maya and the consciousness of the potential identity between the human subject, jivatma, and the Divine Subject, Paramatma." Frithjof Schuon

Both the Buddha and Jesus tell us: 'Be of good courage. I have overcome the world.' Renewal, rebirth is the universal aim of all religions. Out of different origins and backgrounds we are reaching out to the one goal." S. Radhakrishnan - The Brahma Sutra : The Philosophy of Spiritual Life.

"Sufi mystic, Ayn al-qudat at Hamadhani says: 'He who is born from the womb sees only this world; only he who is born out of himself sees the other world.'

"The road to the Western Lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world, for it is a journey beyond Death, beyond the basic God standard of Fear and Danger. It is the most heavily guarded road in the world, for it gives access to the gift that supersedes all other gifts: Immortality."
The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs

Selige Sehnsucht (Blissful yearning)

Sagt es niemand, nur den Weisen,
weil die Menge gleich verh�hnet,
das Lebend'ge will ich preisen,
das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.
In der Liebesn�chte K�hlung,
die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest,
�berf�llt dich fremde F�hlung,
wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.

Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen
in der Finsternis Beschattung,
und dich reisset neu Verlangen
auf zu h�herer Begattung.

Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig,
kommst geflogen und gebannt,
und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig,
bist du, Schmetterling, verbrannt.

Und so lang du das nicht hast,
dieses: Stirb und werde!
bist du nur ein tr�ber Gast
auf der dunklen Erde.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1814)

Blake's Songs of Experience

"We must acknowledge the material needs of our existence, otherwise we are not alive; we must admit our relation to the Supreme, otherwise we are not true." Radhakrishnan

As long as we're oblivious of the rule
Die and Rise Again!
We remain dim shadows
on a cloaked globe


posted by Andrew 10/14/2002 01:36:00 PM

Sunday, October 13, 2002

 
EXPERIMENT IN DEPTH

"Totalitarianism is not so much a faith as a psychological technique.
This technique has now been operated sufficiently often for its main features to become evident. As raw material it prefers a nation defeated in war, torn by dissension, suffering under real or fancied indignities; but any people delivered over to passion or fear will serve.

The technique of disintegration

Time and again, throughout the ages, religion has been perverted by substantially the same means. The recipe varies in form but in essence remains invariable. Given a people suitably disposed, a cult of bigotry and persecution is preached. As a first step, the demonic shadow is projected upon unbelievers, infidels, heretics, papists and the like. Upon the faithful themselves a marvellous persona is set: they alone are the chosen people, the holy, the elect, the saints of God. The magical means of victory is likewise theirs: the Heaven-sent leader, the trusty smeller-out of heresy, the infallible doctrine, the infallible rite. Above all they are dedicated to a holy war, a sacred mission, a divine destiny, in which the enemies of God will be utterly defeated and cast down. Such is the well-worn formula for splitting the human psyche and using the archetypal energy so released for purposes of power."

Experiment in Depth - P.W.Martin (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971 edition, pages 194-195)

Who Hijacked Islam? by ANWAR IBRAHIM
"Never in Islam's history have the actions of so few of its followers caused the religion and its community of believers to be such an abomination in the eyes of others."

Failures of Nerve
The Reform Islam Needs
'Why We Fight America':
Al-Qa'ida Spokesman Explains September 11 and Declares Intentions to Kill 4 Million Americans with Weapons of Mass Destruction

"Let not your hatred of others cause you to act unjustly against them." � The Koran

Between I and Thou, my "I-ness" is the source of torment.
Through Thy "I-ness" lift my "I-ness" from between us.
Al-Hallaj

"Nothing is as anti-democratic as murder." Indonesian Government Foreign Ministry Spokesman 13/10/02

"Hubal is the cult of Osama bin Laden, tempter of our generation, leader of those apostates who wallow in literalism and idolize jihad"
Ayman al-Zawahiri profile
The Caliph of Cologne
Osama bin Manson

Confused Jerry Falwell shames himself
Update - Falwell 'sorry' for remark
Chaos cannot occlude the eye of the heart

"One of the most devout Catholics and, at the same time, great scholars of Islam whose concern with Christian-Islamic understanding could have served as a beacon of light for later Catholic scholars, but who has not been as much followed as one would expect, was L. Massignon. See G. Bassetti-Sani, Louis Massignon - Christian Ecumenist, Chicago, 1974 ... and from the Islamic side H. Askari - Inter-Religion, Aligarh, 1977.
M. Talbi, M. Arkoun, and several other Muslim scholars have also been active in this process during the past few years, but strangely enough from both sides little use has been made of the sapiential perspective in making the inner understanding of the other religion possible."
Seyyed Hossein Nasr - Knowledge and the Sacred

Passion and Perspective: Two Dimensions of Education in the Bible - Walter Brueggemann
"The sapiential perspective, as expressed in Job and Ecclesiastes, not only knows but practices a critical unmasking of its own claims to knowledge."

Between tradition and modernity Re�id Hafizovic - Sarajevo

Evangelist - "A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbours."
The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce


posted by Andrew 10/13/2002 01:46:00 PM

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

 
I'm disappearing.

A letter arrived today, and on the front cover was the printed legend - "Your personal illustration is enclosed"

" ... bearer of randomness ... if ... a woman wearing stockings might whisper the word ... " DeLillo - MAO II

It could have been 1989, it could have been 1885 according to Winston Churchill

"The great victories had been won. All sorts of lumbering tyrannies had been toppled over. Authority was everywhere broken. Slaves were free. Conscience was free. Trade was free. But hunger and squalor and cold were also free; and the people demanded something more than liberty. The old watch-words still rang true; but they were not enough. And how to fill the void was the riddle ..."

Terror & Anti-Terror

"In principle we have never rejected terror, nor can we reject it." Vladimir Lenin

... after a century in which more than 125 million people lost their lives ...
The Ineducable Left remains, barely breathing under the rubble, can we revive ourselves?

"'Lenin' is not the nostalgic name for old dogmatic certainty; quite on the contrary, to put it in Kierkegaard's terms, THE Lenin which we want to retrieve is the Lenin-in-becoming, the Lenin whose fundamental experience was that of being thrown into a catastrophic new constellation in which old coordinates proved useless, and who was thus compelled to REINVENT Marxism--recall his acerb[ic] remark apropos of some new problem: 'About this, Marx and Engels said not a word.' The idea is not to return to Lenin, but to REPEAT him in the Kierkegaardian sense: to retrieve the same impulse in today's constellation."
Slavoj Zizek Slavoj Zizek Slavoj - What Can Lenin Tell Us about Freedom Today?

Terror and Just-Response by Noam Chomsky
Chomsky and Kosova
When terror becomes the order of the day

Caleb Carr - The Lessons of Terror - Chapter Six - To Preach Hatred (Little, Brown - New York & London - 2002)

In the European future shaped by the French Revolution lay conflicts and terrors beyond the scope of anything seen on that continent in generations ...

In response to proroyalist military intervention by outside powers, Article 1 of the mass conscription order was passed by the French National Convention in August 1793.
It states:-

All Frenchmen are permanently requisitioned for service in the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge weapons and transport supplies; the women
will make tents and clothes and will serve in the hospitals; the children will make up old linen into lint; the old men shall have themselves carried into the public squares to
rouse the courage of the fighting men, to preach the unity of the Republic and hatred against Kings.
The public buildings shall be turned into barracks, the public squares into munition factories, the earthen floors of cellars shall be treated with lye to extract saltpetre.
All firearms of suitable calibre shall be turned over to the troops: the interior [of the country] shall be policed with shotguns and with cold steel.
All saddle horses shall be seized for the cavalry; all draft horses not employed in cultivation will draw the artillery and supply wagons.

Every element of society, then was expected to specifically and explicitly turn its energies toward the prosecution of a national military effort. In so doing, all elements
would, whether they realized it or not, make themselves potential targets for enemy retaliation. As the British historian and military theorist J.F.C.Fuller later observed,
"Such was the birth-cry of total-war."

From 'The Lessons of Terror' by Caleb Carr (Pages 115 - 117)
Information poisoning

School of Soft Self-Flagellation - On some mysteries of the East in relation to the West
text by Alexander Yakimovitch - in Moscow Art Magazine, No. 22 - October 1998
"A completely modern experience of deconstructive, rough non-enlightening thinking and genealogical demystification of hidden motives is in our hands."

"This is the lesson of both psychoanalysis and the Jewish-Christian tradition: the specific human vocation does not rely on the development of man's inherent potentials (on the awakening of the dormant spiritual forces OR of some genetic program); it is triggered by an external traumatic encounter, by the encounter of the Other's desire in its impenetrability." Slavoj Zizek

That was the Pick that was

BIG OTHER

Cyber and my body - Bojana Kunst
In 1914, the young T. S. Eliot spent a quiet Christmas Eve with his schoolfellow, describing him later in his correspondence as "a vegetarian and the lightest eater I have ever seen." The description pertained to no other than the young Norbert Wiener, the future father of cybernetics, a genius of weak body, and of amazing mind.

... of the lamella in the work of David Lynch, Harpold rightly sees Zizek's ... In performances that make extensive use of cyborg and post-human metaphors, Stelarc ...
http://enculturation.gmu.edu/3_1/herzogenrath/ - 46k

Automatism/Autonomy/Virtual Unconscious II

Psychosis in a Cyberspace Age

On the back cover someone had scrawled - tHE qUESTION IS - Are you being Borged?


posted by Andrew 10/09/2002 02:19:00 PM

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

 
"If you wish to understand the forces which have driven the rise of populist movements in Europe in recent years, read Houellebecq."
John Lichfield

Auto - Camus - 24km outside Sens - January 4 1960 1.55pm

I was stumbling into urgency when the seething wordploy Writing for the Living Web crossed my path and gave me the full Arundhati Roy transcript fever. Now I may be a thief, a lemur, a Lost Mariner, undertaking twice daily Journeys into the Abyss; didn't I see you there just loitering by the apologists?
Would you hesitate to break the back of a word?

The Measure of All Things is one of the finest narrative histories I have ever read.
Read the review by Robert MacFarlane.

Octavio Paz writes - For us who lack gods: pullulation and time.
All we have left is "causes and effects, antecedents and consequences". Octavio Paz

As the nerds of Slashdot discuss a review of The Weblog Handbook about here,
or was it there, I really can't be sure.

"The so-called human condition is a point of intersection with other forces." Lifted from Octavio Paz's 1967 introduction to the Miserable Miracle by Henri Michaux, translated by Helen R Lane.

"Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system." - PJ O'Rourke
(Vancouver Sun, December 20, 1991)
Caffeine Delusions Bud Life
An Eighth - 1/8th ounce bag of weed weighs 3.5 grams.
"Whatever Congress decides, and no matter how long it takes a box of Spoon Size Shredded Wheat to go from twelve ounces to 340 grams, the truth is this : the United States of America effectively converted to the metric system in, or around, 1965 - by 1970 there was not a college sophomore worth his government grant who did not know how much a gram of hash weighed. That little piece of empirical data had become a matter of pride. And, on many occasions, a matter of survival ...
And so today everyone over the age of twelve knows that there are 28.3 grams to the ounce and 35.2 ounces or 2.2 pounds to the kilogram. he may not know how many swimming pools to the standard football field, but he knows how to buy ... "
From 'Snowblind : A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade' by Robert Sabbag (Canongate, 2002, page 101) Originally published in 1976.
Brick - a pressed kilo (2.2 pounds or 1000 grams) of cannabis or coke in the shape of a brick. Although the U.S. uses standard measurements, the usage caught on.
Look inside insight sideways. A measure to treasure. The paradox of oxygen and gold. Encoded Trees.
Primacy of the Body - Excerpt
Focusing and Philosophy - Articles on Gendlin's Philosophy of the Implicit

On the primacy of the link:

"It is the link that gives weblogs their credibility by creating a transparency that is impossible in any other medium. It is the link that creates the community in which weblogs exist. It is the link that distinguishes the weblog -- or any other piece of online writing -- from old-media writing that has merely been transplanted to the Web."
Rebecca Blood - The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog

Blood covers all the bases


posted by Andrew 10/08/2002 02:56:00 PM

Monday, October 07, 2002

 
Bonjour !

"The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." A.N.Whitehead

What�s that buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-zzzzzzzzzzzing ?

Every text has a generative pretext.

Let us consider for a moment - "global interactive cooperation in generating a new context of reading
- encyclopaedic, multi-media, yet alphabetic, photographic, phonographic, filmic, gestural
and dramatic - {and how it} will contribute to our new modes of "raiding" a text in which the
computer will be both a tool and an alter-ego to the readers in their act of re-writing
- the consumer-producers in their act of reproducing."
Hypermedia Joyce Studies, 3.1 (2002), Donald F. Theall

"Most of us are familiar with Joyce's remarks about deliberately enticing his readers
into interminable interpretation, since his book is directed towards "the ideal reader
with ideal insomnia," but the Wake's interdiscursive (or intertextual) aspect as well
as its complex intratextuality goes much further ..." Donald F. Theall -
Joyce's Practice of Intertextuality

"The prouts who will invent a writing there ultimately is the poeta, still more learned,
who discovered the raiding there originally. That's the point of eschatology our book of kills
reaches for now in soandso many counterpoint words. What can't be coded can be decorded
if an ear aye seize what no eye ere grieved for. Now, the doctrine obtains, we have occasioning
cause causing effects and affects occasionally recausing altereffects."
Finnegans Wake 3.3.483

"... the sameold gamebold adomic structure ... as highly charged with electrons
as hophazards can effective it ..." The Joyce of Science - Quantum Physics in Finnegans Wake

Joyce's post-encyclopaedic memory machine - at least for the moment - is beyond the computer
in the speed and range of the linkages and the excessive productivity of what Joyce described as
his "ambiviolence".

"We want a world where global publishing is effortless. We want a world where you don't have to ask
for help or permission to write out loud. However, when we get that world we face the paradox of
oxygen and gold." Clay Shirky - Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing

"All art is really quite Ulysses." Oscar Wilde II

Note - John O'Neill credits Vico with a "wild sociology" in Making Sense Together: An Introduction to
Wild Sociology (NY: Harper & Row, 1974), 28-38.
BEYOND THE ORALITY/LITERACY DICHOTOMY: JAMES JOYCE AND THE PRE-HISTORY OF
CYBERSPACE by DONALD F. THEALL Postmodern Culture_ v.2 n.3 (May, 1992)

The library of the Mouseion in Alexandria may have ceased to exist but evidence of what it once
contained can be gleaned from fragments of papyri found elsewhere in Egypt,
writes Jill Kamil.

What is it that "haunts the pages of the closed book?"
IMPOSTURE BOOK THROUGH THE AGES
Sam Slote

"Our consumers are they not our producers?"

Are you & I going to the Livre?


posted by Andrew 10/07/2002 03:01:00 PM

 
"I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar." Nietzsche -
Twilight of the Idols

Our roving correspondent Verity Vergessen has sent us the following found essay

The Image of Morality

The image of morality is undoubtedly composed of what are called �ideas� and thus can be analysed as part of �popular philosophy� - as the �ins and outs�, the �why and wherefore� of what is �known� to be acceptable and what is not. One may speak of �my idea of what is right and wrong� and this may draw upon one�s own experience of moral concerns as well as upon �ideas� of the same thing. However, as even the �vulgar philosopher� may be aware, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable may be called into question and a certain �relativism� may assert itself - in such a case the �intelligent reader� may even suffer some kind of crisis if only of �ideas�, if only �spiritual��

The image of morality is an image of the law. Thus it is an image of what is - as a matter of fact - against �the law�. �The law�, �the Law�; one is tempted to capitalise the �l� as with proper nouns and, to get to one important point, as with �God�.

* Morality has religious sources, for example, �the Torah�.

Thus we might distinguish between two laws: the �law� as a matter of fact and the �Law� as a thing with a proper name like the Torah, the English Bill of Rights or to give other examples the Titanic, the Levant or the Great Bear. However, there is no such thing as �the Law� even though we do talk and write very often about �the law� whether it be police, the law of the land or whether - a little less purely - sod�s law or the second law of thermodynamics� We can be realist or nominalist about the law; but here:

* The law is - first and foremost - the �law of the land�, made up of acts of Parliament, bylaws, etc.

The image of morality also implies - at least - an image of the self. First of all the self of any moral thinking is free, otherwise he or she has no choice in his or her course of action and can thus only be held responsible for being who he or she is by nature (to cut a long story short, as an animal�). Again we find ourselves in the realms of philosophy:

* Moral philosophy is meta-physical.

Or to put it another way moral thinking appeals to some kind of super-natural decision-making power capable of transgressing or violating laws of human conduct (as well as obeying or even following). One should recall that there is a certain morality in friendship, in work and even in acquaintance: it would perhaps be possible to argue that these moralities and the rules with which they function are - as a matter of fact - images of civil law or �based� on civil law. Nevertheless, I am more interested in showing that an image of morality exists and in trying to get at morality itself: a production or creation of morality that would belong to some kind of legislation or rule making. This free-action might be called morality itself and would in fact be capable of transgression:

* The real morality does not obey the law but engages with it.

The original title for this essay was �the spectre of morality� however I considered �the image of morality� to be more viable. But there is in a sense a �spectre of morality� which we might be able even to name and which is perhaps even more easily recognisable than the image: let us call it �the hell of the subject� or �Gehenna�. This is an accursed place, a place where �nothing goes right� even where �everything goes wrong�, irremediably. It implies the violation of some kind of law, the failure to live according to one�s image of morality and of oneself - here, if we were psychoanalytically inclined, we might even find a place for the super-ego - here we do not like ourselves�

Without wanting to go too fast, we might come up with a name for �the image of morality� (having found a name for the spectre): �normal�, as in �back to normal�, �Normal� as a proper noun or �normality� as an essence, �Purgatory�, or �everyday� or �ordinary� life. How should we dispatch the subject of our essay, so it is unmistakable, to steal its soul with a word processor as it were?

Let us describe a unique thing, a strange white machine called �Normal�. The defining moment of its motor is non-transgression, however, we must be aware that �Normal� is not one single machine, it is �legion�: tens, hundreds� it is hard to count in mind� If it is a vehicle that this �non-transgression engine� runs it is a vehicle which carries many. It is typically shared, again, by many, whether a community, a group or a circle which perpetuates a set of rules of its own alongside the main rules and laws constituting the society or societies in which the many members live. �Normal� typically serves a circle of friends.

* �Normal� is a plane for (leisure) flights.

However, having named the image of morality �Normal� and having begun to describe its functioning we can perhaps separate it from something else, maybe as a �by-product�: �the family�. Bowing under the weight of history, gender or tradition I am inclined to describe this sort of circle of friends as a fraternity even though there may well exist women in such circles. Transgression does occur among the circle of friends, for example drug taking, but it is contained; of course sometimes someone goes too far (perhaps for the others, perhaps for himself�) and there is a rupture, an �excommunication� even a scapegoating or a sending to Coventry or perhaps just a separation.

As a digression we might perhaps reflect upon �air-rage� as an analogy for the appearance of transgression amongst a circle of friends.

Thus the image of morality is a flight, in the sense of a flight of fancy, or even of reason; a mental flight of a fraternal and - I would hazard a moderately cynical guess - even a �generational� nature. If not the flight of a community, it is nevertheless much more a question of communication and reflection than of thinking, it is perhaps even a flight from thinking.

* The name of morality is �Virtue�.

One must undoubtedly conduct some sort of normative adventure; such is �moral philosophy�. One must encounter and go beyond opinion to arrive at thinking. One must go to the source of rules and laws. One must undoubtedly bring about the beginning of one�s own �moral universe�: an idiom. The �idiom� is the project of the virtuous man, his cause, his faith, his destiny and his consistence.

I think, I can. This is the burning bush of the virtuous one: his thinking is potential. It is not deciphering, interpretation or decrypting - it is action, creation, invention, production. He is alone but he is not enfeebled, this is even part of his - thinking - virtue, his strength.
Per virtutem et potentiam idem intelligo. Spinoza: Ethica IV

This ability, however, is not power. It is neither office nor lordship. I think, I can: I am not bound by a bad conscience, I am not following orders, I am free. To think, in this way, is maybe command, but it is certainly a passage: it is the passage to action, and it recurs.

That which is evil can only be power, otherwise one can never be free, without power over others one cannot do morally wrong. However, one can break the law. Breaking the law, from this point of view, can appear good as it can be an act against power. Yet even potentially one can act upon others, one can persuade, influence and inflict violence without office. One can have unofficial power. One can torture, rape, blackmail and �take advantage�.

Power is: the police, violence� There are landlords, there are families, there are schools and there are �public services�.

Virtue does not necessarily break the law, it breaks, or rather goes beyond, the norm. (The virtuous man breaks the norm as the record breaker breaks the record.) Virtuous is above average. The virtuoso does what he does - at least - well.

* Virtue is excellence.

To have an �idiom�, a character and to master one�s actions, one has to be alone. And the ability to tolerate solitude can itself seem like a virtue. One has to learn to like one�s own company. One also needs to rehearse - whatever it is in which one means to excel. One has to come to terms with power; this is one of the best reasons for asserting that solitude is necessary and ultimately ought one not to make an effort to think? One, one, one, one� it comes before two and three�

A possible author of that essay was Wolfgang Hoppyl

Lawrence Lessig Keynote from OSCON 2002 - Free Culture
"In 1774, free culture was born. In a case called Donaldson v. Beckett in the House of Lords
in England, free culture was made because copyright was stopped."
That free culture no longer exists. But somewhere in the interstices -
"You are rebuilding nature. This is what you do. You build a common base
that other people can build upon."

Visit Ecologia Digital

Heckler & Coch is not a double act
a wisecrack
or a whammy or a double-back,
or is it?

"JOHN BUCKLER'S review of M.A. Flower's Theopompus of Chios appeared in the American Journal
of Philology 117 (1996) 495-498. He has also published the first historical commentary on
George Grote's newly found essay, "Of the Athenian Government," in W.M. Calder III
and J. Trzaskoma, eds, George Grote Reconsidered (Hildesheim 1996).
The essay was only recently discovered in London among Grote's papers."

"We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two,
because "two" is "one and one". We forget that we still have to make a study of "and" -
that is to say, of organisation." Arthur Eddington - The Nature of Physics (1958) page 103,
quoted by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in 'Chance or law' - "Beyond Reductionism"
(Hutchinson & Co, 1972)

See also Science. Volume 284, Number 5411 issue of 2 Apr 1999, pg 79
Beyond Reductionism by Richard Gallagher and Tim Appenzeller.
And The Mysterious Matter of Mind by Arthur C. Custance, Ph.D.


posted by Andrew 10/07/2002 11:38:00 AM