tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-274323412024-03-13T04:56:16.198-07:00Phoenix ReflexReflecting on change [as witnessing the vital impulses of mind that 'want' cause, retaining merely a phoenix's graceful gesture of "here"]
*Meanings & Conditions of Reflexivity
*Reflexivity & Conditions of MeaningUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-40659545999013310792007-10-18T03:59:00.000-07:002007-10-18T04:01:51.640-07:00The way a multitude of personae sit in us, some gathered with the cherub hands of 4-yr-old fancy, and we direct ourselves to these portraits, in-and-out of awareness for our outward metamorphosis. In this sense, personae has the elements of directing prayer, of affixing gods within an interior dialogue. With our conduct we make invisible sacrifices to these types—to certain intrinsic qualities—otherwise lost in rational stutters. <br /> <br />p.s. John Rawls should eat poo.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-28383486640704846972007-10-13T15:29:00.000-07:002007-10-13T15:36:47.302-07:00As the lindens greenedDestiny's muses reigned.<br />What variable to weight?<br />Each beautiful, intrinsic<br />a spire or note from the underground<br />glistens in the same caveat of Mind<br /><br />A moment's caress can never be withdrawn<br />never linear<br />unfolding--dreadfully aware of itself--<br />bold, implausabile<br /><br />Love, if you are an "if," a ghost,<br />then my empire seems intactUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-147458511842789102007-10-08T01:14:00.000-07:002007-10-08T01:18:24.087-07:00<a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_aNBEDTx4DAI/Rwnnw-bzW1I/AAAAAAAAAAM/PonVOPjkq3s/s1600-h/nowish.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_aNBEDTx4DAI/Rwnnw-bzW1I/AAAAAAAAAAM/PonVOPjkq3s/s400/nowish.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118877280062626642" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-85893626545622663752007-09-29T14:22:00.001-07:002007-09-29T14:22:45.907-07:00I think historians should become more like novelists, erecting the sovereignty of event, amidst a contextual watercolor…The Uncanny should not be made to sit in the corner of explanation’s reign.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1085689479016258002007-01-16T14:43:00.001-08:002007-01-16T14:43:52.718-08:00Our hands rehearse salvation<br />A sign language<br />We merely measure<br />Playing with hair’s aroma <br />Pleading with the stocks and bonds of disquiet<br />Greeting an infinite with rumors <br />Directed by architects and rulersUnknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-9478219072330816892006-12-05T13:26:00.000-08:002007-09-29T14:33:07.229-07:00Virtue EthicsIdentity is not consistency, but commandment saturated in an elixir that echoes through the self <br />Producing the effect of individual volitionUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-37932357174554102702006-12-02T12:07:00.000-08:002006-12-02T12:13:37.481-08:00Preface to CourageRemember when the shadows on the grass spoke <br />A listless whispering to the other shapes<br />an innocent game, passing triangles, squares and star shapes <br />through holes fit only for triangles, squares and star shapes. <br /><br />For the chubby hands of cherubs,<br />pretty soon it became natural to believe in polymers<br />all science was self-evident, peek-a-boo<br /><br />but when a knee scrapes <br />we want the gentle hands of sentiment<br />immune to the rehearsals<br /><br />the horizon appears a mighty ocean of flesh <br />spying is an incision <br />its museums quiet death<br />yet<br />knowing as the poets do not,<br />that we cannot make ourselves white enough<br />for the white walls of eternity.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-52811827319189183772006-11-26T19:04:00.000-08:002006-11-26T19:15:54.397-08:00scrawls squirming in daylight<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/5525/3348/1600/347275/kyb1.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/5525/3348/320/973251/kyb1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />we wonder, sill breathing<br />circular thoughts<br />that somehow craft experience<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />those enraptured by independent recitals fear the rapturous stark blue of private performanceUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1163904546132794062006-11-18T17:54:00.000-08:002006-11-26T16:26:17.442-08:00Feminine Hungers/scratchworkTo speak of feminism as hungering...<br /><br />Recently the word temporality has afixed itself to the inner sanction of my mental preference. Mostly I cling to this notion to emphasize the flatness of modernity. The horizon-less landscape (circa 20th century) mirrors and informs a sense of self orchestrated around a false synchronization, which is enforced by interwoven time standardizations. <br /><br />I caprice to think of the object of feminism in terms of two variables: personae & time.<br /><br />Throughout life I have been drawn to strong feminine personas (from Artemis & Jean d'Arc to Juliette Binoche and Kate Winslet). What these women have in common is an irreducibility. It is not just that they are complicated as that would imply a tension between relatively equivalent characteristics, but rather, that they have a "hunger," which brings them to engage and become suppliant to many different temporalities (think Waterhouse paintings). These women have the courage or nature to express DRIVES that perform and struggle in the world with the properties of alien dark matter. As a result, they become strong & dynamic people that seem to transgress individual identity, seem to refract the poisons of society, ultlimately seem to engage a kind of entropy that deflates the mind-body dualism and emits a rush of being. -->To grip a kind of vitality under which the scaffolds of time crumble, and the orchestrations of space (logically indebted to time constructions) are exposed as a mirage of "patriarchal" assembly. <br /><br />now...<br /><br />Persona is an extremely confessional means of thinking about the blurred lines between epochs and people without evoking more complicated ideas of phenomenology or collective unconscious, which often act as kill joys to the tantilizing subject of personhood. What the category of personae allows one to do is understand something in the more neutral process of autopoesis. In other words, there is never a sense that you are freezing an object or ascribing to a base causal bias (bottom down or top up); rather, you preserve the essence, which is to say, the dynamic of the thing. <br /><br />to speak of essences is metaphysical and out of fashion. however, the current subtext, which poses conversations, descriptions, and truths around things "self-evident" is extraordinarily obtuse in grappling with dynamic. <br /><br />Heiddegar self-evident as modern. i.e. genes rather than organism. <br /><br />truths = self-evident (the basis for democracy --> mirror of nature<br />self-evident implies that they exist in human nature<br />but as stendahl or mishima attest to human nature is not self-evident. <br /> nor is it weighted. <br />Freud capitalizes on a language by which self-evident and linear truths are activated according to different drives. Unfortunately, his science assumes the activation of an intentionality rather than the suspension of multiple intententionalities. <br /> *see quantonics<br /> <br /><br />relatively equivalent characteristics = Hume (from sentiment to standard)...<br /><br />these women seem to be the guardians of sentiment<br />(and senitment here is not meant to connote its caprice, sentimentality, <br />but rather a kind of sense-perception that preserves the blurs, which become eclipsed by our standardized knowledge claims. taste <br />(there is an important movement here from Hume to Freud) <br />minerva<br /><br />somehow the masculine hungering always seems to address a spiritual dualism (an other-worldliness) that is indebted to a linear thinking as dualism concerns itself with contradictions (thought out in terms of opposing properties). <br />this is st. augustine <br />rather than simultaneity. <br /><br />st. augustine's return to the wisdom of his mother is done in a very dualistic appreciation.<br /><br />to make the human abyss pregnant. i.e. the sudden appearance of a sting-ray.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1160437052328041662006-10-09T16:34:00.000-07:002006-10-09T16:50:49.553-07:00the departed gods of the postcolony<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/1600/cattle.killing.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/320/cattle.killing.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />the Xhosa cattle killing only begins to make sense through the words of Aeschylus...<br />"for they say that when a town is taken, all her gods depart."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1160430857612615822006-10-09T14:46:00.000-07:002006-10-09T14:54:17.650-07:00GreeceI loved the way the water lapped over me. This was the penultimate “cozy” experience; being tucked into the ocean, waves forming blankets—being quilted into the throws of sparkling white crests and other toothpaste aesthetics. I lay quiet, in a mock alligator pose, trying to gently coax myself (through stillness) to synchronize with the ocean’s rhythm.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1159062973816961322006-09-23T18:40:00.000-07:002006-10-09T17:35:43.843-07:00Oh Father, your spirit—<br />The shriek of axels and rolling wheels<br />Strikes at providence with leopard spots<br />Camouflage is the sole personae of the world<br />The scaffolds of prestige digest men like the Cyclops<br />Do you not feel ashamed by the gaze of eternity?<br /><br />Oh Father, my lover rivals you<br />We instruct each other in being<br />Cleansing ourselves of flesh with flesh<br />We trespass the earth & hide from your judgment<br />With the merriment of epicures made divine<br />Our desire lacks the Sirens of self-made man<br /><br />Oh Father, thy keeper of my loneliness<br />It is to you that I submit to bonds sublime & primitive<br />Everything a shadow, your glory (which never was)<br />Haunts & directs my witnessing mind<br />To a linear perseverance, an alien mechanics—<br />That there is to be continuity in my actions. <br /><br />Oh Father, have you ever heard of God?<br />He who made woman without contradiction.<br />He who tells me a story of myself, a self you’ll never know<br />That there is more to life than forced latitude<br />And the trumpet shall be blown<br />So that all those that are in the heavens and all those that are in the earth shall swoonUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1157965619738610242006-09-11T01:40:00.000-07:002006-10-09T17:31:53.616-07:00destined to agency, like the red balloonFor the public intellectual, for the academic even, thoughts always seem to fit tightly. With an idea, the spirit of its occurence is so <em>ipso ergo sum</em>, that mind seems to command with the audacity of a threatening blade. Instantly momentary insights ask to be commodified and possessed. Little sparks of "idea", which may achieve conscious manifestation from such unprovoked catalysts as burden french cinema with a sense of the arbitrary, are acted out in narratives and undergo a process of aggregation. Something thought on a tuesday (post-biscotti) finds its way into a dissertation. In this way, something unwilled is brought into the theatre of wills, into the domain of intellectual production; an idea is harvested.<br /><br />But how do we retain an authentic relationship with something that then moves into the realm of discourse?<br /><br />Is this the stuff of <em>parrhessia*</em>?<br /><br />*παρρησία (παν = all + ρησις / ρημα = utterance / speech) meaning literally "to speak everything" and by extension, "to speak freely", "to speak boldly", "boldness".<br /><br />"More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy." --FoucaultUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1154811017934033582006-08-05T13:47:00.000-07:002006-08-05T13:50:17.943-07:00surrogates for the universalthe scientific method WAS a means of witnessing the intricacy of God’s intelligence. The almost pious nature of the scientific method allowed for science to be seen as indicating universality, but only through relative experience. Science provided a methodology for understanding the universal operations of secondary cause, while building the maxims underlying these operations from relative contexts. The scientific experience of the 17th century was defined by the singular and historical event experiment, which acted as a surrogate for universal experience.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1154810118899494022006-08-05T13:33:00.000-07:002006-09-04T13:23:43.086-07:00<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/1600/fingers.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/200/fingers.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />(i)<br />Pride is born The first time you know yourself<br />to be a stranger From dark matter<br />--humanity made with anti-human means—<br /><br />(ii)<br />Pride, a refuge—<br />A frustrated elegy<br />for the charms of cosmos<br /><br />(iii)<br />Belittled schizophrenia of fallen dew<br />Without origin<br />a sense of competitive speciesUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1152566359591681062006-07-10T14:18:00.000-07:002006-07-10T14:19:19.600-07:00"Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself." --RumsfeldUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1151532288818680212006-06-28T14:40:00.000-07:002006-07-03T07:46:32.703-07:00adopt a scientist<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/1600/royal.gif"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/200/royal.png" border="0" /></a><br />In me the scientist,<br />Always stuck on, always trying this.<br />I try to live on science alone.<br />Analysis and freaky sensitivity,<br />We've gotta live on science alone.<br />* * *<br />I humble to the scientist,<br />always in awe, always attempting this<br />I try to live on god's omnipotence<br />With sweet reason and control of our fancy<br />[Deist chorus] We've gotta live on science alone.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1150875240530489422006-06-21T00:33:00.000-07:002006-06-23T14:37:23.536-07:00The Symptoms of Order--An Individual as Spectator"Spontaneous social order is the basis for personal development and social harmony, and vice versa."<br /> –Adam Ferguson<br /><br /><br />Within the neostoic framework self-interest pursued as vita activa was a ‘natural’ principle governing interpersonal interactions in the public realm. This self-interest, however, was defined as the triumph of reason over the passions. In other words, the self-interest of the liberal subject was one that saw the reasonableness of submitting to civic constancy. In this way, one’s individual engagement in public was dependent on one’s “rational” self-interest. An individual acting in accordance with self-interest required the suppression of the passions. The individual was made ever conscious of his/her disunity—the civil persona was meant to triumph over the “irrational” and socially detrimental ‘passions.’ In this way, the epithet of rationality is implanted as a spectator of individual conscience. <br /><br />Specifically, the consciousness of the spectator becomes a way to conceive of self-interest on the grounds of commercial, social, and national welfare.<br />As Smith writes, “We constantly pay more regard to the sentiments of the spectator, than to those of the person principally concerned, and consider rather how his situation will appear to other people, than how it will appear to himself.” This “double-consciousness” via the internalization of the social body ultimately positions ‘rational self-interest’ as equivalent to norms governing economic exchange. Thus, the spectator leads to the rationalization of the individual. In this sense, “individualism” is kept under surveillance by commodified norms of the invented spectator.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1150874897601848132006-06-21T00:27:00.000-07:002006-06-21T00:28:17.606-07:00<strong>Nature as Secularization </strong><br /><br />To make practical reason substantive implies that practical wisdom is a matter of seeing an order which in some sense is in nature. –Charles Taylor<br /><br /><br />Yet nature is made better by no mean / But nature makes that mean: so, over that art / Which you say adds to nature, is an art / That nature makes. <br /> (The Winter’s Tale, Act 4, Scene IV)<br /><br /><br />This passage from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale typifies a neostoic attitude present in early modern England. Neostoic notions of free will, necessity, constancy, moderation and self-preservation flourished as interlocutors of nature’s mystique. <br /><br />The appropriation of classical Stoic texts was widespread throughout England at a time when political turmoil, religious anxieties, and the rise of commercial society acted to disembed individual identity from local and confessional allegiances. Salvaging the emergent disembedded individual from myopia was the idea of nature. The concept of nature provided a psychotherapeutic horizon for the regeneration of government and individual self-fashioning. The meaning of nature was two-fold, consisting of liberty (free-will) and necessity (God’s will). Ultimately, liberty was encapsulated within necessity. In other words, nature provided the means for the exercise of liberty. Therefore, as quoted from The Winter’s Tale, the art of ‘adding to nature’ was provided by nature. <br /><br />Specifically, with the rise of a disembedded market, the bonds of reciprocity were being reconceived in a language of nature. Confessional language was without the proper authority and rhetorical coherence to persuade and discipline the disembedded self according to creeds of Christian love. Discourses of Christian love had become ornamental and flaccid, in part, owing to propaganda produced in confessional disputes over conscience. As Christian discourses became increasingly censured for shades of opportunism, ‘nature’ provided a new pan-confessional muse for preserving conscience and acted as a scaffold for the construction of national and commercial culture. <br /><br />As a delocalized national and commercial culture developed a new civic persona emerged, which was indebted to stoic values of self-mastery, as the triumph of reason over the passions. Specifically, the passions become associated with absolute egoism, while one’s use of reason directed one to a lesser or relative egoism that ultimately realized the necessity of public order. The association of stoicism with a more utilitarian self-interest, marked by a sociable egoism largely owed to Seneca. As Seneca writes, “Man is a sociable creature, and is made for the common good of others…men of the best judgment do think that that which concerneth the common wealth is of greater importance than that which toucheth their own particular.” In this way, reason became defined as thinking beyond ones “irrational” desires and instead internalizing the “reasonable” expectations of the social body. This process was facilitated by print culture, which effectively legitimated one’s delocalized experience. As historian Adrian Johns notes, it was “the role of print in transcending place and rendering natural knowledge universal.” <br /><br />In summation, natural knowledge upheld a notion of universal individual shared self-interests that facilitated a detachment from localized ‘passions.’ In this way outward engagement offset the individual’s emergent detachment from the local.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1150874751123353262006-06-21T00:18:00.000-07:002006-06-23T16:09:21.736-07:00'Rationalizing Conscience' & the Stoic links of self and society<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/1600/cotton_gin_164w.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/320/cotton_gin_164w.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />“we labour, and toyle, and plod to fill the memorie, and leave both understanding and conscience empty.” --Montaigne<br /><br />The rhetoric and logic of stoicism, as appropriated by early moderns, became encapsulated in a new cultural reflexive dynamic. As a result, neostoicism departed from its antiquarian origin as a philosophy and became a principle rationalizing apparatus for strengthening the relationship between individual and public conscience. This deviation—from a stoicism of self as departure to a neostoicism linking self and society—was instrumental in informing cultural expectations for personal, social, and economic development.<br /><br />* *<br /><br />With the emergence of the disembedded self in English society, the problem of egoism became pressing. As Adriana McCrea argues, “the self-seeking arts come to predominate over that once reigning reciprocity.” On the one hand, the works of stoics were accused of a vulgar individualism associated with a pagan circumscription of ‘necessity,’ on the other hand, stoicism widely influenced an ethos of self-mastery that came to connote a sociable individualism characterized by impersonal market interactions. A radical example of this line of thinking is found in Hobbes’ notion that self-interest motivates individuals to form ‘covenants.’ For Hobbes, social covenants, (which form the basic terms for thinking about a ‘civilized’ social body) ultimately promote and instruct one in self-preservation.<br /><br />Most English thinkers departed from Hobbes and were optimistic in their celebration of the liberal subject who by his/her use of self-interest would naturally promote the public good. Bernard Mandeville is one figure whose work upholds this view. Mandeville’s forthrightness in proclaiming this fact was radical for his time, but nonetheless he articulated a sentiment that was fast becoming a public vision for social organization. Ultimately, Mandeville’s argument for private vice as public virtue in Fable of the Bees forms the basis for the decriminalization of self-interest found in utilitarian theories of economic activity.<br /><br />Mandeville’s thought was largely influenced by Pierre Nicole (1625-1695), a Jansenist who effectively brought morality in conjunction with a practical knowledge of human nature. Nicole’s Essais de morale argues that self-love (the principle governing human nature) is the principle that allows for moral activity. As he writes:<br /><br /><em>It cannot possibly be imagined how there can be formed societies, commonwealths, and kingdoms out of this multitude of people full of passions, so contrary to union, and who only endeavor the ruin of one another. But self-love which is the cause of war, will easily tell the way how to make them live in peace. It loves domination, it loves to enslave all the world to it, but it loves yet more life and conveniences and an easy life more than domination.</em><br /><br />Although self-love has the propensity for domination it also privileges and desires constancy and ‘conveniences.’ Furthermore, Nicole’s notion that self-love brings about knowledge of constancy—that self-love ‘tells’ people how to ‘live in peace’—suggests that this ‘passion’ brings one into a mediation on self-knowledge, whereby reason directs self-love towards an ethos that upholds public constancy. In this way, self-interest is understood as naturally coming from a concern with public order.<br /><br />While in Jansenist thought, religion was effectively “made practical,” this transformation in England was dependent on religion’s circumvention from governing individual actions. Initially, religious rhetoric was used to codify civil actions (e.g. vice as self-interest), but for the most part, a Deistic and Newtonian outlook postured the civil world as incompatible with and distant from religion. In this way, civic and public culture came to see evocations of providential cause as deleterious to the common good. Providence was only permitted as an inscrutable phenomena that was achieved as a collective result of individual rational action. This sense of providence effectively rationalizes individual reason-utilizing-self-interest as an ethos that will allow for God’s providence (as networked outcomes of “reasonable” activity). This idea is made possible by the identification of ‘reason’ with God’s will.<br /><br />The Cambridge Platonists (1633-1688) were among those who helped to normalize the idea that reason and God’s will were intertwined. For the Cambridge Platonists religion and reason were always in harmony and reality consisted of intelligible forms existing behind perception. For these thinkers, reason was the ‘candle of the Lord.’ In this way, divine will was inscrutable, but could be followed by acting in conjunction with one’s reason. As a result, as reason-over-the-passions developed into a governing dictate of self-interest, the result of individuals pursuing their reasonable ends was God’s providential care over markets. Adam Smith’s notion of ‘spontaneous order,’ whereby markets have an orderly function without direct oversight by human agency dates back to a belief in God’s providence. The idea that reason bequeathed providence provided a religious groundwork for many contemporary notions of utilitarianism and certainly for Mandeville’s notion of vice as public benefit.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1150089563056814092006-06-11T22:18:00.000-07:002006-06-11T22:19:23.063-07:00pass the mustarda universal groundwork: The first task in addressing that question is moving away from literal thinking.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1150087097206214652006-06-11T20:49:00.000-07:002006-10-09T17:30:23.406-07:00What divides us into possibility? <br /><br />The concern w/ human determination/fashioning/sidedness weighs heavily against a sense of unity. <br /><br />Possibility is both a disease and a humanism--a human disease. <br /><br />From a certain scale the admittance of possibility is observed as an inferior logic. <br /><br /><br />proclivity vs. necessity<br />attraction vs. fate<br /><br />how they interlope.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1150052997670315072006-06-11T12:04:00.000-07:002006-06-11T12:09:57.676-07:00Ice Oh Tropicdestiny is isotropic: it has no inherent direction, and we can move backward as well as forward. BUT, with each step we pay tribute to a new velocity, feeling authentic w/ the speed and presencing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1147382379759492662006-05-11T13:17:00.000-07:002006-05-21T12:05:04.906-07:00Benign Self-interest<em><span style="color:#ccccff;">Consider a situation in which you are being chased by murderers--bigots who passionately dislike something about you--the color of your skin, the look of your nose, the nature of your faith, or whatever. As they zero in on you, you throw some money around as you flee, and each of them gets down to the 'serious' business of individually collecting the notes. As you escape, you may be impressed by your own good luck that the thugs have such benign self-interest. </span></em><br /><br /><br /><p><span style="color:#999999;">Does capitalism provide the scaffolding for incubating civic ('external') peace? In re-directing self-interest towards the accumulation of capitol, this anecdote illustrates how direct conflict between individuals is avoided. Coming across this prefatory passage in Albert Hirschman's, <em>The Passions and the Interests</em>, I was struck by the charisma of this idea, particularly its historic appeal to an English society emerging out of a "confessional diaspora" (so to speak). The collapse of religious loyalty bonds had necessitated the emergence of a civic religion. The new civic religion was driven by one fear--public disorder. This fear could be ameliorated through a self-interest that sought its 'advantage' through shared linkages of dependency, manifesting in commerce. Essentially, </span><span style="color:#99ffff;">expressing self-interest through capital accumulation neutralizes the passions</span><span style="color:#999999;">. Conflict becomes redirected outside of bodies and into the sphere of economic exchange. </span></p><p><span style="color:#999999;">But how valid is the fear of the 'passions?' To what extent, was and is the sublimation of the ego a necessary recourse for civil peace? </span></p><p><span style="color:#999999;">Examining approaches that aim to redirect the apparatus of capitalism to the local level, we have to ask, what does this do for the ego? How is the ego being re-conceived by these attempts at turning economy to its roots (i.e. management of a household). </span></p><p><span style="color:#999999;">This tension between thinking of economic development as <strong>basic needs</strong> versus its capacity to produce higher yields beyond the domain of local sustainability is not without implications for the subjective dimension. Higher yields become indicative of a system of 'public good' that ameliorates the anxieties and 'passions' provoked by contestations of basic needs. In this sense, the fostering of economies that go beyond local sustainability come equipped with a built in narrative for civil order. In a 'fallenness tone,' individuals are given their economic rights & often national rights at the expense of their passions. </span></p><p><span style="color:#999999;">However, to what degree is the association of civility and 'higher yields' constructed? Do 'un-natural' transactions* dissolve an egoism only to uphold a sublimated individualism (a disunious individualism)? </span></p><p><span style="color:#999999;">Moreover, do Marxist or solidarity economies offer an appealing brand of individualism that can uphold civil peace? </span></p><p><span style="color:#999999;">After awhile, does not all self-interest become benign? </span></p><p><span style="color:#999999;">The difficulty is to try and uphold culturally authenticated modes of economy, but to ask whether or not economy is possible at the local level without relapsing into civil disorder. Notions of solidarity economy depend on a moralistic denial of competitive self-interest. But the categorical imperative of solidarity--for eye to eye interaction--is not iself possible without abiding by principles, which threaten the liberty of self-interest. To localize economy is to appeal to localized forms of reciprocity (based on kindness) rather than nationalized dependencies (based on self-interest). </span></p><p><span style="color:#999999;"></span></p><p><span style="color:#cccccc;">*Aristotle: Natural transactions were related to the satisfaction of needs and yielded wealth that was limited in quantity by the purpose it served. Un-natural transactions aimed at monetary gain and the wealth they yielded was potentially without limits. He explained the un-natural wealth had no limits because it became an end in itself rather than a means to another end.</span></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27432341.post-1147208185681797732006-05-09T13:45:00.000-07:002006-05-09T14:28:24.166-07:00desire & the negative<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/1600/sanskrit.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/200/sanskrit.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1754/2890/1600/sanskrit.3.gif"></a><br /><em>Thereafter rose desire in the beginning, Desire the primal seed and germ of spirit. Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent. </em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0