anomieandme

Think about it...

2007-04-02T00:45:00.000-04:00

The developing world has been similarity transformed from colonies into independent states. Many people there are still desperately poor and oppressed, and we still get the natural resources we need. But we now pay native rulers and “elites” for such imports and therefore are – or at least feel – morally disconnected from the misery of locals.

So a suspicion, […], is that the celebrated historic transformation of our moral norms has mostly produced cosmetic rearrangements. Imagine some visionary European statesman, in 1830 say, posing the question of how the advanced states of Europe and North America can preserve and, if possible, expand their economic and political dominance over the rest of the world even while bringing themselves into compliance with the core norms of Enlightenment morality. Find the best solution to this task you can think of and then compare it to the world today. Could the West have done any better? (Pogge, 5)

Pogge, Thomas (2002) _World Poverty and Human Rights_. Cabridge: Polity.

Geertz on ideology

2007-01-14T16:42:00.000-05:00

Geertz outlines two inadequate theories of ideology common in his day: interest theory, and strain theory. The first understands ideology as a mechanism of the powers that be in any given society: it indoctrinates the masses, and sustains the hegemony the dominant group. The latter understands ideology as a coping mechanism. This theory has a much greater descriptive power then the former as it can account for considerably more variance, and explain how factors actually submit individuals to such false consciousnesses. Ideology is seen as the result of weakness, or disease, or unfortunate circumstance; it must be diagnosed and remedied. But for Geertz neither gives an adequate account of how these ideologies are different from one another; how they manifest themselves; why the manifest themselves; and the kinds of outcomes they may bring about. He believes they lack the kind of interpretive power a “thick” ethnographic theory could offer.

What struck me was all the negativity towards ideology. I suppose this was symptomatic of a time and place – a world recovering from the first half of the twentieth century. For Geertz, such negativity towards a widespread social phenomena hinders a good social science. By dismissing such systems rich with meaning, as irrational or irrelevant to the supposed “reality,” we sell ourselves short. To not try and take account of ideology on its own terms is a fatal mistake. Geertz goes on to illustrate some situations in which ideology has been a very real mobilizing force. He states rather strongly:

The function of ideology is to make an autonomous politics possible by providing the authoritative concepts that render it possible […] It is when neither a society’s most general cultural orientations nor its most down-to-earth, “pragmatic” ones suffice any longer to provide an adequate image of political process that ideologies begin to become crucial as sources of sociopolitical meanings and attitudes. (218)

I agree with Geertz whole heartedly. Though his conclusions resonate doubly for myself. Not only is an adequate account of ideology necessary for a “thick” social science, but it is also necessary to any deliberately normative program for change. In a upcoming post I will discuss this latter function more thoroughly.

Cited:
Geertz, Clifford. _The interpretation of culture: selected essays_. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Ps. If you’re in the mood for a sound mind-fucking check this out: http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

Some humble predictions on the coming course

2007-01-10T00:36:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow “Our president” – the president of the world, and Canadians by default – will outline his future plan for Iraq. The media has been abuzz with talk about the coming “surge.” Of course I have my misgivings; flagrantly increasing the number of troops, and setting off into the quagmire, last I heard, has little chance of success. Let’s compare it to pilling on a couple more sweaters and jumping headlong (that is to say with no exit strategy) into a burning building. But all this pessimism lacks constitution – and what’s punditry without constitution? … Well I suppose that’s just what punditry is, but let’s suppose we knew a thing or two about history and events, and such and such, and hence possessed the wisdom to talk about what might likely happen. That is to say, I will try and outline a series of events that will give form, or context, to the coming slaughter of innocent Iraqis, malignant Iraqis, and duped American troops.

First, the surge will occur. There will be an increase in the number of American troops in Baghdad, and a coercive attempt to subdue the civil war there. This will fail. But this will not happen over night: it will need to be put into action, it will need to fail, and then we will need to endure the several months of rhetorical denial that tradition dictates. This should take at the very least a year, and perhaps even two. This will bring us precariously close to the next presidential election. Immediately prior to the grand spectacle of democracy, one of two scenarios may play out, but I doubt this will effect very greatly what is to come. Either the Republican Party will start another war, or create some other ridiculous patriotic solidarity building event, or they will not. For some reason, I doubt that they will – as the troops have been by this time completely run thin, and the Democrats control the other two branches of government. Instead I think they will try and run a presidential candidate that deliberately differentiates himself (his white penis wielding self) from Bush and his legacy. Perhaps McCain. Someone will win the 2008 election (maybe a black man or even a woman), embroiled in controversy, as usual. Finally the inevitable will occur: conscription. It does not matter which party is in power, their line will be as follows: “We are a new authority. We represent a radical break with the past. Bush made many mistakes, but we are in a new world now – one that we must negotiate. We must seek the best course of action. We cannot allow the middle east, home of the world’s largest oil reserves to disintegrate into chaos.” There will be an illusion of frankness and honesty: “Bush was in it for the oil all along, but these reserves have to be protected at all costs. The American way of life depends on the stability of this region. Yes it was foolish of past presidents to allow such dependencies to occur, but we must make due with the situation that history has allotted us.” All this will of course be true. Stability in this region is necessary for the current geo-political order – an order that I doubt will go down without a fight. Queue the rhetoric: “We must band together and fight for our way of life, our future, and our children’s future. For Democracy, against all evil!” And so the seeds of a potential global conflict will be sown. There are many more ensuing insanities that I humor as I write this, but unfortunately after this point all we can do is speculate on what is to come. Perhaps China will not appreciate a direct and coercive American military presence in the middle east, etc…

The “interpreter effect” and Punk, and moving forward

2007-01-07T02:20:00.000-05:00

When I was writing the preceding post I had a second criticism in mind that I didn’t bother putting down. Today I was doing some readings for a class of mine and I came across this: “Cultural unity or disunity is in large part a function of the vocabulary and the theoretical presuppositions of the investigator” (Author’s italics, 17). While reading Clark’s article I couldn’t help but get the impression he was overlooking this. Perhaps he was a punk at one time – perhaps he’d still like to think himself one. Maybe he’s simply met so many self-declared punk rockers that he felt there must be some promising commonality called “Punk” that bound them together. My point is that he seemed to presuppose it, then seek evidence of its coherence wherever he could. Furthermore, once he had set this procedure into motion, it was as if punk had actually been revived – as if his declaring its life in death actually succeeded in resurrecting it. But did we really need a cultural theorist to do this for us? I mean there’s enough kids out there calling themselves punk and desperately cutting and pasting their own renditions together, that if all we need is a presupposition of its existence, Punk is alive and well. However this Punk, as a hack job semiology or bricolage, seems to hardly ‘live’ up to the kind of radical promise proposed by Clark’s version. Since when has re-arranging cultural signifiers been enough?

So what in my mind’s eye would have constituted a satisfactory account? The “interpreter effect” threatens more than just a coherent articulation of Punk; it threatens any claim to cultural cohesion in general. It certainly begs the necessity for reflexivity. “The investigator, as well as the conceptual apparatus he or she brings to the study, must be considered as an active factor … in understanding what culture is…” (23) If this is the case, what are we left with? According to Neil J. Smelser, the author who I’ve been quoting here, there are four other features of a good culture description. First, pragmatism, the piece “should be assed primarily on its explanatory adequacy or its usefulness as an explanatory element…” (23) Second, such conceptualizations, though heuristic, need not be arbitrary; they can and should correlate with observable data. In this way “culture becomes similar to a hypothesis” (24). Fourth, particularization, it should not be treated any more then is necessary as a “global entity.” Rather it should be “disegregated into discreet parts” (24). Finally, it should be prepared to give an account of its potential for incoherence, and assume that such a potential is already in play – that is to say, “one should identify the whole range of individual and social pressures and tendencies that work to present the culture as more coherent or less coherent then it appears” (Author’s italics, 25).

Cited:
Smelser, Neil J. “Culture: Coherent or Incoherent,” in _Thoery of Culture_. Ed. Richard Munch and Neil J. Smelser. Berkley: University of California Press, 1992. Pages 3-28.

Punk had to die so that WE could live

2007-01-06T02:08:00.000-05:00

“Punk had to die so that it could live” (223) Dylan Clark opens his article, “The Death and Life of Punk, the Last Subculture.” He closes it with the following paragraph:

Punk had to die so that it could live. By slipping free of its orthodoxies – its costumes, musical regulations, behaviors, and thoughts – punk embodied the anarchism it aspired to. Decentralized, anti-hierarchical, mobile, and invisible, punk has become a loose assemblage of guerilla militias. It cannot be owned; it cannot be sold. It upholds the principles of anarchism, yet it has no ideology. It is called punk, yet it has no name (234).

Earlier he claims, “… [Punk is] making its presence felt in the Battle for Seattle, Quebec City, EarthFirst!, Reclaim the Streets, and a variety of anti-corporate movements” (234). But Clark commits a categorical error – it is not Punk itself that lives on, but the punks that once confined themselves to the semiology of this identity. Punk had to die, so that WE could live. The anarchist afterward is not a continuation of the movement, but a definite break with it; at most the punk spirit may carry on in the memories of the bearers of these narratives, but only in those that bother to re-visit it. The aforementioned movements are events in themselves. Attempts to attribute Punk to them is as misguided as attributing to them Liberalism or Platonism, other lineages that might be traced through them should we wish to try. The authentic punk, supposedly is she that realizes the death of punk rock and redirects her attention – alas, there is nothing authentic about this attitude, though it is surely revolutionary in quality. According to Clark, I’m about as punk as they come for being so critical about it. This feels rather tautologous. Maybe it was the prigs that tried to censor the Sex Pistols that were the punkest punks there ever was, for realizing that this whole endeavor was misguided from the start. Thankfully, the passage of time has been able to show us that there is nothing radical in averting ones critical responsibility by shaving the sides of one’s head, and shoving a safety pin through one’s penis.

Cited:
Clark, Dylan. “The Death and Life of Punk, the Last Subculture,” in _The Post-Subcultures Reader_. Ed. David Muggleton & Rupert Weiznierl. New York: Berg Publishers, 2003. Pages 223-236.

Prattle

2007-01-02T00:22:00.000-05:00

I’m a strange fellow. Lately I’ve been sort of trying to get into contact with a few folks I haven’t contacted in quite awhile. I seem to always be on the move: I went to many high schools, I’ve had many jobs, last year I moved across the country. I’ve changed my regular group of friends so many times. I guess I used to think this was normal, but recently I’ve started to realize, that although I come and go, many of the people that constituted the groups that I’ve been a part of, still seem to associate quite a bit with one another. I become some other. I’m not really sure exactly why this is the case – nor am I really sure what to make of it. It’s just something I’ve noticed recently. I suppose I’ve always known that I was a little more transitory than most, but maybe only now am I realizing just to what extent. In the past, pondering my tendency toward disequilibrium made me anxious. I suppose I’ve never really decided on just what to make of it.

Yet another integer: reluctantly looking forward

2007-01-01T15:26:00.000-05:00

So it’s another year today: 2007. For a long time there in the early 0’s I’d talk like it was 2000. You know round down and all. My age – roughly 15. Obviously this stopped working a couple of years ago, but nonetheless the habit persisted. Well I suppose we’ve definitely crossed the point of no return now – it’s nearly 2010 whether we like it or not; it’s time to round up. I reflect nostalgically on the days when the Second World War happened only 50-55 years earlier. Oh those days of yore – of innocence and discovery. Today, it happened 60-65 years ago. Happy new years. From this day forward I will reluctantly take my bearing off the end of the decade. The years they are a passing.

Crusader vs nomad

2006-12-31T09:57:00.000-05:00

In my last review I used the word crusader and to be honest I’m a little uncomfortable with it – what for all its historico-religious undertones. Not to mention it sounds a little more aggressive then I’d like it to express. Nonetheless, I'd like it to go further than the ambivalence of the Deleuzian "nomad":

"Nomadism" is a way of life that exists outside of the organizational "State." The nomadic way of life is characterized by movement across space which exists in sharp contrast to the rigid and static boundaries of the State … The nomad, is thus, a way of being in the middle or between points. It is characterized by movement and change, and is unfettered by systems of organization.

The dichotomy between nomad and state is an insightful and very fruitful one, but it falls apart in practice – especially when another of Deleuze’s juxtapositions are taken into account: the major and the minor. What happens to the major within the nomadic group? Is it simply impossible? Or do we constantly have to try and overcome it, just as any other group might want to try? I think the latter is more likely. Obviously the nomadic lifestyle seems to produce greater opportunities for this overcoming, mainly due to its disequilibrium – it may even require this constant overcoming in order to sustain itself – but nonetheless some authentic idea (to cheat Derrida) must be maintained. A progressive truth requires a progressive body – likewise a progressive body requires a progressive truth ... a transitory body – a transitory truth etc. Hence my call for trajectory, or directional orientation. The crusader seeks something – to some extent in blind faith – but nonetheless he seeks. He is going some place, he is overcoming something, he is in transition. He may wish to change where he’s headed at some point, but nonetheless he is always in a state of transition: dog’n it out in the "intermezzo." But let’s return to Derrida for a second – and the messianic promise. What? "Blind faith," I already spoke of, and history is there too. Maybe this crusader necessarily does contain the kind of historico-religious undertones I slighted above. Maybe this word is adequate. Maybe it’s actually the history of religion that has tarnished this figure. Anyways – I’m done.

A review of a review

2006-12-28T03:07:00.000-05:00

So far what I’ve read, and seen, of Slavoj Žižek hasn’t really impressed me, but alas, perhaps I have been mistaken. At least so far as the direction an anonymous reviewer of his latest work, Organs Without Bodies: on Deleuze and Consequences, I seem agree with him on some points. Of course I won’t go into much detail here, the review is long and dense – so dense I, an undergraduate, am left feeling a little overwhelmed. But I would like to touch on a couple of points that really stood out for me, by offering up some important quotes. I’ll close by lofting a few criticisms that immediately come to mind.

First,

Yet, philosophy and politics constantly risk becoming disassociated in the academy. In Organs, Zizek explains how intellectualism gets "caught up in the academy" through the fetishistic splits performed by academics. A prevailing assumption in the academy across disciplines (from literature studies in the humanities to anthropology in the social sciences to quantum physics in the hard sciences) espouses the "necessary" split between one's "theoretical" academic work and one's life, between one's theory and one's practice. Instead of somehow unleashing our intellectualism, the split produces a spatial gap and a temporal lag that affords capitalism the space-time to further self-revolutionize.

This is a point that those that know me well, know I like to emphasize. It’s generally summarized in brief statements like, “we have to begin by assuming that NOTHING is not normative.” Even if this normativity is negative: via apathy, or passivity – the lines of communication are to omniapparent now for anyone to deny that there is suffering. If you are not trying to do something about it, then you are lame (Of course this does not call for blind action – you might try and figure things out.), and you are onl contributing to its prolongation. The neutrality that so many academics seek is so much the driving force of “late capitalism” (that’s Jameson, and the reviewer does a great job of integrating him into his review). Postmodernism, at least as it is most broadly practiced seems to fall flat on its purportedly emancipatory face. The origins of my distrust lay in two places: firstly, Jameson was the first theorist I ever read; secondly, my own uneasy ascent from poverty into the bourgeois academic establishment. I disliked intellectuals then, and I do now – either you have some goal in mind, and in this respect you are a crusader (for whatever cause), or you are a lifer, and a parasite on society. Why? I can only use this terminology in retrospect, but a crusader has a clear becoming – they are someone, a trajectory for instance, I can speak to.

Also, Zizek will argue in tandem with Lacan,

Only a new and original form of collective social life can overcome the isolation and monadic autonomy of the older bourgeois subjects in such a way that individual consciousness can be lived - and not merely theorized - as an 'effect of structure' (Lacan).

Interestingly I’ve been saying some similar things lately, only I derive my analysis from Foucault. It is rooted in the onto-epistemic triangle I have already outlined in a previous post. Truth, and this means any critical claim also (whether or not any ‘absolute’ truth is possible by the means of critique), is rooted in man, in society, and in the world; it manifests itself always and everywhere, at any given moment. It cannot, ‘exist’ in itself – it cannot be reified; it can only occur in practice. Practice being the becoming, the presencing, the processing of the process we’ve already described. Practice, because none of this is anything without the active subject. If we wish to alter truth, we can only do so by altering the system, the society, or the body that manifests it. Hence the call for a structural shift – as long as we are not trying to overcome it, we will produce truth conducive to (this epoch of) capitalism. The trouble lies in just how we are meant to overcome this – and apparently our determinism as a part of this system. Zizek seems to think this might be accomplished by returning to some of the tenements of psychoanalysis. He thinks Foucault’s model is great at describing the current situation, but lacks libratory content. The unconscious holds what remains hidden, and hence it is here that we must look to find alternatives. (I think I might look to Spinoza – but this is for another day.)

Today I got back from Trios-Rivieres Quebec

2006-12-28T01:11:00.000-05:00

So recently I read Island by Aldous Huxley, and what a fantastic book it was. Basically it’s about a journalist that is paid by some oil baron to go and investigate the potential merits of some resource rich tropical island paradise, and try and convince the local leadership to join in the industrious ways of the rest of the world. Of course the theme has been visited many times by many authors and filmmakers, this conflict between nature and paradise and man and industry, but in this story the island people are so much more then benign savages. They are actually quite developed scientifically and culturally, but where they really shine, and what really sets them apart from the rest of men, is their uncharacteristic sensitivity to the dynamism of man. Their mantra, rather then efficiency, is to develop human beings. All men have potential and it can be realized – as man changes so too does the way in which he experiences himself and the world around him. As such, they have, more or less, rejected truth. In some ways they allude to Heidegger and Foucault as they denigrate the onto-theology and clinical psychology of the West. It is up to man to recognize his situatedness in a world worlding as he himself becomes, and it is up to him to recognize how he effects this process in constructions of truth yadda yadda. Man has an extraordinary power to shape himself and his own society and all the rest – but how romantic it all is in this lovely tropical setting. It’s one thing to speak abstractly of these things, but reading Huxley’s attempts to synthesize an account of the real thing – how it might take place – is an absolute delight, and nothing short of motivating. Something that really stood out for me is their emphasis on forming the body (though at times the story seems to drift eerily near to eugenics), something real, if not the most rudimentary of components, but something I often tend to overlook.

Aah! This post blows, but read the book anyways for a loose account of how I’d build the society I’d like to build, should that be an option that any of us could actually have. Furthermore, although utopian, as someone that has studied all of this junk, what surprised me about Huxley’s account was that it seemed oddly possible. However, perhaps this only attests to his skill as a writer.

A joke

2006-12-24T02:01:00.000-05:00

I over heard this joke while anxiously waiting for my logic final to begin the other day. It just about leveled me – but this may have been due more to my frail condition as a result of having spent the last two days maniacally studying and finishing various assignments. Alas, I’m done for the term, and already bored out of my fucking skull. Please say hello. Oh… yeah… here’s the joke – apparently it won a prize for the best joke at some philosophers conference.

What’s brown and sticky?

…A stick.

[Edit] Someone has pointed out to me that everyone has already heard this joke – surprisingly I don’t think I have. Nonetheless, what makes this joke really funny to me, is not so much the joke itself, but the fact that it was chosen by philosophers as a deliberate jibe at themselves. Of course it alludes to our tendency to make up and modify words – sometimes, and especially, when it isn’t called for ;)

On the meaning of life

2006-12-21T04:33:00.000-05:00

As a philosophy major I’m often asked this question – it’s basically the epitome of the token questions that you ask some poser cerebral type. Here I will provide a few equally token replies.

1) This is the first, and probably most obnoxious response. If you get it from me, it means I’m probably not that interested in talking at the moment. It basically goes like this: “What is the meaning of life? Why are you asking me this? You are totally committing violence against me. You ask me what the meaning of life is and you assume I think there is one! Why should there be?” So much for discourse…

2) The second is a little less severe, but the kind of reply you would generally expect from a philosophy guy. “What is the meaning of life? Well you seem to assume that we both already agree on the definition of the words ‘meaning’ and ‘life.’ What is meaning? What is life? Furthermore, what about the ‘what’? You are asking me a question, but have we any idea what a question is? Moreover, what constitutes an adequate response? Perhaps we should start with something a little simpler then the meaning of life… Let’s begin with Socrates…”

3) Finally, this is the reply you’re most apt to get – mostly because of the sociology side of me. I understand you probably came to me with some good intentions, and I’m empathetic enough to not want to let you leave empty handed and disappointed. Furthermore, depending on how you reply to this, I may even learn something very valuable about you. It goes something like this: “What is the meaning of life? Well [drawn out pause for effect] … that’s a very difficult question, and it means many things to many people, and I’m not really sure that I’m the one to tell you. I’d rather not deprive you of the opportunity of seeking the answer for yourself. Nonetheless, in formulating my own meaning I have drawn on many sources, of which many have been other people’s accounts. It helps to read the great philosophers, most of which spent considerable time thinking about this very question. Plato thought the meaning of life was eternal, and beyond our temporal grasp, but nonetheless we should seek it by the means of reason. Many agreed with him. I situate myself nearer to Marx, and possibly Levinas a little (Though I’m not terribly familiar with the latter – my knowledge of Levinas is more or less hearsay.). With Marx I agree that men realize themselves in their labour – their creative ability to engage in their material world, their social relations, and themselves. Meaning is derivative of production, though this production simply means to actively engage ones historical situatedness creatively (I’d probably clarify some of this later on). Furthermore, following Levinas, I think we all carry an immense responsibility to the Other. By Other, I mean our fellow creatures, perhaps even our natural world. But all this is very brief, and my knowledge of the meaning of life is more practical then it is intellectual. I understand I’m on the right trajectory when I can stop and enjoy a beautiful sunny day. It’s up to you to find your own take, but I do maintain the belief that you’re most apt to find the most fruitful results by seeking learning and experience, and by always remaining reflexive. What do you think?” Of course I have totally bagged the question. To me meaning is a personal quest for meaning, through intellectual endeavor and heterogeneous experience. My conclusion that this is the best way of finding the meaning of life only affirms my own project. Clever eh? Moreover, there is a conflict of interest here. It is of my own normative opinion that if more people thought this way, my life would be easier … Woops, I mean the world would be a better place.

I propose we 'bag' the question instead

2006-12-20T14:51:00.000-05:00

On the controversy surrounding the use of the expression, “begging the question.” Very few people realize they use it wrong, but everybody seems to – that is except for a few pedantic philosophers and academics. Ever since a prof pointed out to me the correct usage, I’ve been noticing it every time I see or hear it. I’ve concluded that the entire literary establishment – and by literary establishment I mean the popular press – uses it to mean something along the lines of, “Our discussion has brought us to a point where we’ll have to ask this other question.” For example any discussion about winning the Iraq war begs the question, “Is the Iraq war winnable?” The correct usage implies a logical fallacy along the lines of, “The premises of the argument already posit its conclusion.” For example if we were still discussing the war in Iraq, “There’s only one way to win the war in Iraq and that’s by force. We could try some more diplomacy, and even talk more with the troops. We’ll even talk to Iran, but we’re going to have to deploy more troops.” The first premise that force is necessary presupposes the conclusion that we’ll have to send in more troops.

Since I’m hardly a purist I kind of like both usages. In fact, I often find myself tempted to make the wrong usage. I mean, there needs to be an expression for this activity – “raising the question,” is so passé. I think from now on I‘m just going to use both whenever I like. But what if I were to distinguish the two by changing the root word in beg. “Bag” looks and sounds just about the same, only it is just different enough to be distinguishable. The only problem is then deciding which gets to maintain the word beg, and which has to change. The latter usage seems the most like bagging the question to me. The argument actually seems to contain the conclusion … as though it were enclosed within … or bagged. Now if I could only get the rest of the world to agree with me on this…

What is evil?

2006-12-18T00:05:00.000-05:00

I’d rather not address this question directly, as I feel to do so might sell us all short. In fact it begs the question – it assumes that I already believe that there is already some thing such that it is evil. Heidegger would probably have me ask how is evil, but I’m not sure I’m going to take that train of thought either. Nonetheless, in a truly phenomenological spirit, I am prepared to juxtapose my idea of this so called evil with my thoughts on the becoming of the good. How is the good? Here I ascribe to Spinoza, when I say that the good is activity – it is rigorously and incessantly enacting ones reasoning and critical powers. But I will waver from Spinoza’s as to where I suggest this critical application might take us. Whereas Spinoza sees truth in nature, I see no truth except in man’s nature – a nature not posited in god, his essence nor his thought, nor in any eternal anything for that matter – but in the very becoming of his being and hence the becoming of his goodness. Now I know all this probably doesn’t make any sense, but it does in my head, and besides it makes me feel good about myself. Where I’m going with this is good for goodness sake, where man is already good in as much as he is actively seeking goodness.

Now goodness has no center, in fact it’s a sort of Foucaultian truth. Goodness is arrived at when one approaches an understanding of where one thinks one’s goodness is headed in the first place. Thus an account of the good also requires an account of itself. It is the accounting itself from which we derive goodness. The process of seeking, of performing an archeology on our good, is precisely the point from which goodness blossoms – as we open up other more fantastic or mundane possibilities. Goodness grows. In our search for the good, we create the good – but we only become aware of this creation by formulating an awareness of how we feel this goodness grows. The point here is the formulation itself – an occurrence that can only play itself out in activity. Hence the arbitrary expositing of the good for goddness sake, and for the sake of activity.

Now, as long as there is becoming, an activity, there is no evil. On might call passivity evil, as Spinoza does, but I don’t think this is the case. Passivity is just neutrality. You see, with no obvious final destination, to not strive for this destination is not a problem, merely a missed opportunity. For Spinoza there is some ultimate truth. The truth in my understanding is completely derivative of man in relation to himself: individually, socially, and materialistically. And to follow Marx, always changing.

Anyways, that’s all for now – maybe I’ll take this up again another day.

Foucault's ontico-epistemic dance

2006-12-13T17:14:00.000-05:00

The bellow is an excerpt from a paper i recently finished.

[...]

Moreover for Foucault the right also plays an integral part in the process of the production of truth. As such it is impossible to take a position such that one is able to normatively decide which exertions of power are legitimate or not. He explains that we ought to think of the relation between power, right, and truth, as a triangular one, and inextricably bound up with one another.

I have tried, that is, to relate [power’s] mechanisms to two points of reference, two limits: on the one hand, to the rules of the right that provide formal delimitation of power; on the other, to the effects of truth that this power produces and transmits, and which in turn reproduce this power. Hence we have a triangle: power, right, truth (93).

[...]

Foucault’s triangle does not occur in the ether. It is intended to play out between, and be constitutive of, very real relations among men, societies, and discourses of truth. Let us begin with society. “There are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body” (Foucault, 1980, 93). Furthermore, “these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse” (93). This discourse is invoked as an “economy of discourses of truth” (93). Thus what we have here is a society, constituted by relations of power, and organized according to the relations of an economy of discourses of truth. These economies order society according to the truth, giving legitimacy to a certain right, and the social body imposes its rule according to this right. In this respect the society renders the orderings of the right. Power permeates, but society and truth gather up unto themselves, and in relation to one another. Society manifests itself empirically as technologies and institutions, orderings and classes – truth manifests itself transcendentally as concepts, discourses, languages and signs. Now let us consider man. “We are subjected to the production of truth through power” (93). I will speak of man here as an agent. The agent feels the effects of truth. I am willing to say this is because of the way in which this truth disseminates itself in discourse and constitutes the social. The agent is subject to his or her situatedness within the broader institutional and technological complex, ordered by the right, and hence subject to its power. Furthermore, we “cannot exercise power except through the production of truth” (93). The agent exercises his or her own power through the production of truth. In this respect the agent reconstitutes the economy of discourses of truth, and to some extent the social as a result.

It is important to note that power permeates, and is constitutive of all three points of the triangle. Furthermore the various stages, and their powers occur in continuum and not at intervals. Foucault is illustrating a structure, one of which could not be conceived of without all its parts. Thus, the social, the agent, and the discourses are in some sense, one and the same – constitutive of one another. Likewise the power that permeates, in every conception is also permeated itself by the truth and the right, and visa versa. The unity of the whole lies beyond definition, but seems to allude to Spinozian like conception of nature (I think it would be exceptionally interesting to take this digression up with regards to Spinoza’s understanding of freedom and will. Could such an argument be used against accusations of determinism and objectivism in Foucault’s schematic?).

a terrible post to crack off a new season

2006-10-08T17:32:00.000-04:00

What with the sorry state of today’s geo-political affairs, it’s common for a lot of liberal tree-hugger types to talk. Sometimes when I study a little history I realize that this trend to doom-say runs deep. In fact, it would seem that everyone in every generation before me also thought the world was coming to some kind of catastrophic end point. But let’s think about this for a moment – sometimes it did: WWI, WWII, the Great Depression, and if you lived in Russia this happened only about 15 or so years ago. If you live in places like Sudan or Iraq, it’s happening right now, and has been for sometime now. The truth is that the world falls apart sometimes, and maybe we’re not so nuts to be worried. Furthermore, what if we didn’t worry? Maybe it’s all this worrying that’s kept things rolling for as long as it has – because if there hadn’t already been half a green movement maybe the global warming would already be upon us. It is this doom-saying that keeps us alert, it keeps us critical, and it keeps us prepared to initiate change. At any given point our current way of life is stretching out into future histories, some of which forecast our immanent destruction and others that secure our prosperity. If we aren’t engaged now, there’s no telling where we’ll end up.

The above post is not meant to only pertain to me and people like me. Throughout this whole post I’ve been talking of some kind of “We.” As the world globalizes this We is ever expanding. Whereas in the past we might have talked of We as a nation, now its becoming ever more apparent that a new We, that’s more inclusive, needs to be formulated.

The enemy within and a suggestion on what to do about it

2006-06-07T00:59:00.000-04:00

Please forgive me, I've just written this and it's late, and I currently do not have a spell check; I will proof read this and insert links later.

Mark Kelley, a favourite CBC reporter of mine, recently went to Europe to do a cover story on racism, "the islamic threat", and "the enmeny within." England and the Netherlands were the focus of his survey. Apparently British nationalism is strong in the midlands, and the dutch are implementing some of the most racists and ethnocentric immigration policies the world over. I knew these things were going on, mostly because i'm interested in these sorts of things, but it was interesting to see Kelley's 'naive Canadian' approach. Basically he posed questions, to both 'natives' and immigrants, like "I'm an innocent Canadian and I just can't understand how you all hate eachother so much." He acted shocked by their callous replies. It was a good story, sober, and well balanced -- but it was obviously doen with the intent of foreshadowing some earie possibilities in Canadian race and cultural relations. Europe over is cought in the grip of a general anti-muslim sentiment, and a general retaliatory radicalization of the muslim community. The whites don't like the browns, and the browns are being ghettoized -- instead of taking it lying down, the browns have taken to isolationism, finding internal solutions to their perdicament. In places like the midlands, the whites are also ghettoized, for other socio-economic reasons. But there have been multicultural innitiatives, open door immigration and the rest, for some time now. The whites weren't always mean, but this isolationism has forced a reality check -- "And now they're trying to bomb us! They have not excepted our invitation for integration. they refuse to even learn our language. Look at them in their little neighbourhoods -- they're planning our overthrow!"

This brings me to Canada, and the purpose of this post. The truth is (and Truth is a word I like to throw around :P -- treat my use of it lightly) these things are dialectical, and it takes two parties to hate eachother and construct the kind of negative race relations described. If the two continue to be so assanine, things will only get worse. I get the impression this is the direction Europeans are headed in, but what about Canada -- are we also destined to a similar bitter demise. As someone that grew up in a "multicultural" city like Vancouver and who now lives in the very "multicultural" city of Montreal, based on my own experience and observations, I believe that, unless something is done soon, we may be. The problem is integration. As clear as that word may seem -- it's loaded. In the case of many europe nations it meant something along the lines of, "we welcome you to assimilate." Meanwhile the newcomers came to the West for liberty and democracy, neither of which involve assimilating. In a liberal democracy, there is no need for assimilation, in fact there is no need for integration -- once I have my citizenship and vote, I am free to associate with whomever i please, whenever I please. Why should we expect these muslims to accept our so called "olice branch" for immigration -- but more importantly, is it even an olive branch?

"In a democratic community, where we both have equal worth, I accept you -- no I even invite you! -- to do as I do." What a titilating gesture... The problem is that despite centuries of debate concerning democracy, too much emphasis has been placed on articulationg constitutions, and economies, instead of communities and societies. This has a lot to do with the general historic conditions of its rise: power ralations, the bourgeoisie and the rest; but, I'm not goign to go into all that here. The problem is that a functional democratic state requires democratic communities -- and the olive branch aforementioned falls hopelessly short. The point is, that in a liberal democracy we all carry equal worth, and if we are going to forge community we have to do so with this in mind. In other words, their wacky customs are as valid (and interesting) as my wacky customs. That is as far as our constitution goes; I will have to carry the rest. If I am about to forge relations with this person, I should do so with the realistic expectation of them putting as much effort into understanding my wackiness, as I put into understanding theirs. This I believe is where we as a society and civilization, for some time, have fallen violently short.

So what can we do? There are many things we can do, but here I will at least present one. We can begin by implementing reverse innitiatives; or, innitiatives which work to teach 'us' as much about 'them', as our initiatives try and teach 'them' about 'us'. It may be necessary to implement these with the children first, or in the public education system, as I speculate many adults may be unsympathetic to my proposal (This is an ethical can of worms I'll cover another time -- should the State, the 'Society applied' be usurping us?). Finally, I think this is where Canada's saving grace lies. To orchestrate these kinds of initiatives in places like most European NATION-states, may be next to impossible; their vision of state and country is hopelessly bound up with notions of identity, history and ethnicity. However, in Canada we have the advantage of having no 'real' nationality. We are essentially only a cohesive entity on paper. Ask someone what it means to be Canadian, and they'll probably cite a bunch of values outlined in our liberal democratic constitution: our only common denominator (A few 'true' Canadians may cite Vimy Ridge, but they are mostly in the margins.). Do to our fragmented concept of nationality, Canada is one of the few countries in the world where the kind of localized approach necessary for the success of such initiatives is possible -- as such initiatives must be orchestrated locally. This is because, depending on where you live, you will have different neighbours. These neighbours are the people you will be needing to form bonds with. I propose that in places like north Surrey, the community where I grew up, and where there is a significant Sikh population, classes be tought at an elementary level on punjab culture, religion, and language. Likewise, the curriculum should still include the usual primers in citizenship and western history. At the very least it will give the sikh children, and the "white" children something to talk about. Maybe in another community such as richmond, the initiatives should inculcate the mandarin culture instead. But not all intiatives need be 'orchestrated.' All of us, on our own time, and by our own motivations, can make efforts to learn about, and understand eachother. The adage is old, but relevant to the present more then ever -- you cannot know the plight of your neighbour until you've walked a mile in their shoes." Although it is obviously impossible to take this literally, we can at least take steps in learning about those shoes, and the miles they've covered. Once understanding* is established, I don't doubt that many a cohesive community will follow.

PS I've completely skipped over the Quebec problem, (no not the seperatism thing) the fact that they have some incling of a national identity. I am not that well informed, but I understand that this may also be the case for Newfoundland aswell. Is there such a thing as Newfie nationalism. I'll deal with my misgivings concerning Quebecois culture (I myself am Franco-Quebecois) another time.

* I've made a conceptual leap here, and I am aware of it. Some other time I'll take up just what I mean by "understanding" and its implications. Nonetheless, I feel that the jist of my train of thought is communicated.

Terrorists Attack!

2006-06-04T13:11:00.000-04:00

Well not really, but judging by all the media coverage following this story -- terror suspects arrested and charged in Toronto and surrounding area -- you might have thought so. Some people are on the edge of their seats; however, I am not -- and this being a blog, and my blog to boot, I geuss I'll tell you why. I'm only just under twenty-one years of age and I've already grown cynical of canada's legal and executive systems. Just as in past terror arrests it's unlikely we'll get much more information than the peanuts they offered us yesterday, anytime soon -- it will probably be in the courts for years with all kinds of press bands on publication. Since it involves security and CISIS there's a chance they may never tell us anything, as they have in the past. When they tell me what happened i'll surely pay attention, I'll even take note, but until this date there's little point in getting to excited. The Man knows what he knows, and a part from the publicity stunt -- the deliberately vague and patriotic, pat ourselves on the back, press conferences -- he'll tell us what he wants us to know, and when he wants us to know it. On the bright side of this, some of those persons arrested were canadian citizen, which means the security certificate deportation BS can't be levied on them as it has on others. After they're out, whenever that is, they'll still be able to use their rights as citizens as a platform for telling their story. Also, some of the the detanies are youth -- so many a watchdog will be all eyes. Hopefully things will be delt with and explained as soon as possible, but I'm not holding my breath.

Salvete

2006-06-04T13:10:00.000-04:00

Well I'm back from my travels and explorations, and I think it's about time I begin posting on at least one of my former blogs again. Please mind my spelling, as my Microsoft Word is currently out of order, and my spellcheck by implication. Yes I am young enough to be of that generation of children that can't spell worth a damn, and whom the educators tried to defend in the nineties in the face of the onslaught of spelling software. And I am rambling.

Where am I?

2006-05-02T12:55:00.000-04:00

I havn't been on in awhile -- I know, it's sad. I just finished up a month of final exams and papers, and now I'm on vacation (a.k.a. drifting across Canada). So far everything has gone great. I'll be in Vancouver as of the 5th of april. Maybe I'll post in the next few weeks, and maybe I won't, but I'll surely get back into the jive of things come June. I'm sure I'll still have plenty of things to whine about then :P

Peace and Love
later-chuk

Moral dissonance

2006-04-03T20:37:00.000-04:00

Ethical nihilism, why not? That’s a question I spend time analysing, like a pop punk song stuck on repeat in the back of my head. Because I maintain a way to much faith in humanity. Here’s my manifest contradiction:

Morality is a social construct.
I should be sensitive to, and respect the other.
The other has some BS notion of morality.

Do I respect their morality, or do I do what I see fit?

Obviously my own morality is subject to the same constructivism, which is why it is that much more pertinent that I respect the morality of the other. Outside of the social, morality takes on very little relevance – we are moral to be sociable: to be accepted by, and function within the social. Morality is a social gesture, and to simply abide by your own morality isn’t likely to get you very far as a social being; arguably it defeats the whole purpose of what it means to be moral. But do I blindly except the morality of the other? Fuck no, because it’s a crock of shit – at least generally speaking. Most of the time it’s simply used as a tool for internalizing oppression. So I suppose I’m shit out of luck. At what point do I transcend (dismount?) my idealism and say – “You know what? I don’t give a shit what you think because you’re wrong!” Finally, there’s also the Dogville paradox, in which my accepting the other and all it’s shortcomings, and play their petty games for their sake (out of respect?), comes off even more contrived and condescending then just being an egocentric prick.

Excerpt from paper: Lewis on counterfactuals

2006-04-01T15:01:00.000-05:00

David Lewis instances Hume’s outline of causation: “we may define cause to be (1) an object followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second. Or, in other words (2) where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed” (italicized by Lewis, numbered by me). Most of the debate on causation has revolved around the first part of the definition, and although Lewis feels that progress has been made since it was originally penned, he thinks it is time to take a look at it from another perspective.

Lewis outlines causation as it stands when the article was written, “a cause is defined (roughly) as any member of any minimal set of actual conditions that are jointly sufficient, given the laws, for existence of the effect.” This is a regularity theory of causality, and it is saying that all that is required for any given event to take place is that all its antecedent factors be present.

He in turn presents his alternative, a counterfactual analysis of causation, by appealing to the second part of Hume’s definition of causation: that if the cause had not been, there never would have been an effect. To extrapolate on his theory, he invokes a methodology of modality. When we speak of causes, we think of causes having made a difference, or producing events alternative to how they possibly could have been. Thus, possibility is key to any analysis of cause. Counterfactuals are presented at “face value,” as “statements about possible alternatives to the actual situation, somewhat vaguely specified, in which the actual laws may or may not remain intact,” or simply, statements about possible alternatives. By constructing statements about causation as such, Lewis hopes to avoid many of the inconsistencies cited above in conjunction with regularity theories of causation.
To speak of actuality, he introduces his concept of comparative similarity. That is to say, an actual world is a possible world that most closely approximates actuality. Thus one that more closely resembles actuality than another after taking into account all the factors that are similar and different. We might say that we can arrange these possible worlds along a spectrum according to similarity, with the one nearest actuality being the actual world.

Using the above modality, it follows that for any two propositions A and C, we can construct a counterfactual proposition: A->C, where “->” symbolizes counterfactuality, or “if it were the case that a, it would be the case that b”. The operation is demonstrably true accordingly:

A->C is true [at an actual world] iff either (1) there are no possible A-worlds (in which case A->C is vacuouse), or (2) some A-world where C holds closer (to the actual world) than is any A-world where C does not hold.

That is to say a counterfactual is not vacuously true iff it takes less deviation from actuality to make the consequent true together with the antecedent than it does to make the antecedent true without the consequent (This is a gross paraphrase). Thus A->C implies the material conditional, if A then C at a world approaching actuality. He calls this conditional dependence, (C depends on A: if not A then not C) counterfactual dependence.

Lewis, in turn, adapts the above theory involving propositions to events and constructs his general theory of causation. Presumably events are not propositions, however we can signify events using propositions. Counterfactual dependence applies to events in as much as they correspond to their respective signifying propositions. If proposition E corresponding to event e, counterfactually depends on proposition C corresponding to event c, then it follows that event e counterfactually depends on event c. It translates, that two events causally depend on one another, e on c, at a world approaching actuality iff, “if c had not been, e would never have existed.” So the same conditional dependence described above, counterfactual dependence, can be applied to events, and subsequently used to depict causal dependence. Then e depends causally on c. He expands causation, introducing the concept of causal chains. If e depends causally on c, and c on a, then it follows that e, by virtue of a causal chain, depends causally on a. Causation is ‘transitive’, and thus causation from a to e is possible without direct causal dependence. Finally, “one event is the cause of another iff there exists a causal link leading from the first to the second.”

A proposal for a pragmatic virtue theory

2006-03-22T19:05:00.000-05:00

Loosely, Aristotle’s virtue theory can be outlined as follows:

Virtuous actions are actions performed by virtuous people.
Virtuous people are those who act virtuously.

It’s obviously circular, but that’s not the point. Aristotle is trying to root virtue in a particular kind of being, or way of living. In this respect he is ahead of his time. Unlike the likes of Kant and Mill, who thought that virtuous acts could be calculated for every situation, he thinks that the most ethical course of action is determined intuitively, and prior to the moment, by the condition of already having a virtuous predisposition. Such a disposition is arrived at by the pursuit of practical and intellectual knowledge, and practice, and or repetition. The problem arises when we ask ourselves how we ought to model this disposition. Aristotle argued that we should appeal to our elders and prior experience, but where do we turn to in a world where social science has demonstrated to us that we should not necessarily trust our elders, and that we should not trust our experience sans reflection – in other words, a world without neutral knowledge. I think this dilemma can be resolved by appealing to a pragmatic virtue theory. The best we can do is what we ought to do, and fortunately for us we live in a world in which our elders have outlined the prior mentioned dilemma. So we add the clause, “question one’s elders, and act reflexively,” to our already long list of clauses that cultivate a virtuous being. Such is the reality that a virtuous person must navigate in this day and age. Thus the clauses that constitute a virtuous person are constantly in flux, and different depending on our point in history. The elders of our day, or the experts and scholars that came before us, are our source for virtue like every generation prior to ours, except the things they say have changed. The usefulness of the development of a cohesive social science is evident here to the development of past and future virtuous ways of living. Finally there is still a particularity to such an approach, and which, I believe, forces me to side with Rorty and his notions on ethnocentrism. We simply can’t escape our context, but are obliged to act in the best way we see fit, taking into consideration the things we can. I think there is some interesting work to be done concerning an ethics which includes the clauses I listed above – should we call it a sceptical virtue theory instead, and can we justify that such an approach is preferable to one that doesn’t include a hefty dose of questioning? In other words can questioning, or a critical disposition, be virtuous? I at least like to think so.

Existentialism made me do it

2006-03-21T09:47:00.001-05:00

Existentialism got me in trouble on the weekend. Although I’m something of an existentialist myself, whenever anyone else claims to be one, I gag. “How cliché,” I mumble to myself. Existentialism is supposed to be a dark secret you brew about alone in the privacy of your own home, and or with the occasional woman that spends the night and likes to talk after sex. Why is this? Because existentialism ain’t much. It blows my mind to think that there is actually a school espousing such prophecy. Existentialism is kind of like scepticism; if you actually abide by it then you aren’t being very existential (this from a guy that regularly attends an anarchist reading circle). Essentially it is the philosophy of being for the sake of being – and this being can be manifest however you see fit. So if you tell me you’re an existentialist you aren’t telling me much. All your saying is that you have nothing useful to propose about yourself or anything else, except you are aware of your “Being” and this makes you better than everyone else at the party. Next time I’ll snap back with a “well I’m an alchoholisist, and I drink for the sake of drinking, but I am aware of and embrace my problem”… or maybe I'll save that for the AA meeting.

Finally what spurred me to write this post? Even though it’s not even 10am yet, I’m pretty sure I’ve already experienced the highlight of my day in this post over at the weblog.

Survival and teleology

2006-03-20T13:38:00.000-05:00

“For an organism is self-maintaining, self-developing and self-reproducing structure, and that is to be essentially a teleological unit.”

No it isn’t! The excerpt is from a lousy antiquated text I have to read for my metaphysics class. I’m tired of people assuming that from survival follows teleology. The logical conclusion of this kind of reasoning is that there is some kind of teleology to evolution.

I haven’t been very clear. There is nothing intrinsically teleological to an organism, not even a will to survive – no matter what some folks seem to think. It may be the case that some organism have a will to survive, and there could be considerable work done in regards to expanding on and explaining this, but to say species such as squirrels are inherently survival inclined is as foolish as saying that species such as humans are naturally motivated, or not lazy. It is simply the case that most of the squirrels we come into contact with have survived (no kidding), and those that lacked this ‘nature’ just didn’t survive. It’s a conflation of genus and universals otherwise, and then attributing final cause to them. In laymen’s terms, we are circling the shots in the barn door after we fired them, and claiming to be perfect shots. If it follows that there are teleological ends to everyday organisms like squirrels, it is not much of a stretch to claim such ends for other organic entities such as the world, solar system, and universe. Outside of a theological explanation, such an appeal is quite obviously foolish. Which brings me to Darwin and the theory of evolution, and why I think it’s important we stop misinterpreting it. It is controversial because it allows us to deny teleology. This is why those that try and attribute 'whys' to things like being (religious folk mostly) have such a problem with it. Unfortunately it is very rarely read as such, except by those in the field. Survival is based on coincidence, and or circumstance, rather than nature, or teleology.

I'm still not clear I was very clear.

On love, sex and fleeting moments

2006-02-25T21:49:00.000-05:00

There are many thinkers that consider sex to be the coming together of self and other. I disagree. There is never any coming together of self and other, but sometimes we forget about ourselves. This is love. That moment when we no longer matter, and the only thing that does matter is an other. This other can take on many forms, it may be the subliminal, as in the humility we face when we stare nature squarely in the face, or it may be another human, when we care so passionately about them and their welfare that we forget our own needs and wants. Traditionally we recognize the love between the parent and its offspring as among the strongest. It is easy to draw out the selflessness that occurs in such cases.

Sex on the other hand is generally about power. The goal of sex, is for most, your orgasm, your climax. Orgasm feels good, so does heroin, so does a hot shower, and so does a long piss. Often there is a satisfying of the ego involved. You get what you want, you manipulate another into playing along, maybe there’s an exchange and you both, in a rational way, get what you want. There is a mastery of one over nature, and one over an other at play.

You think I’m nuts. What is this “love” you speak of. Sex is great and I feel like a king when I do it. Anyone that has ever had really good casual sex and really good caring sex won’t disagree. The latter is ineffably better. Try it sometime; find someone you care so deeply about that during sex all you can focus on is your partner’s health and orgasm. Ideally, if the love is mutual, all they’ll be worrying about is yours. I assure you it’s worth it. Most interestingly, you’ll cherish this person with or without the sex, and the moments of ecstasy and ‘happiness’ won’t begin and end with a strange expression on your face, and a release of bodily fluids. Just looking into their eyes should do the trick, and there won’t be a mess to clean up afterwards.

(This was brief, but I’m pretty sure I’m onto something here. But there is a problem: What of submission? Is this healthy? Or is this something else?)

On dichotomy

2006-02-01T14:45:00.000-05:00

I think philosophers can be a little too keen to dichotomize. I agree with Putnam in his essay, “Pagmatic Realism,” when I he calls for a review, and even a rejection of age-old dichotomies. I was particularly impressed by his criticism of the objective/subjective distinction. It seems to me these models are sometimes taken for granted. Often the concepts dichotomized tend to be better treated with regards to a gradient than classified as bipolar. On my walk home from class this morning I chuckled to myself as I played out in my head the dichotomy of black and white. I imagined some eager classic philosophers arguing over in which camp the shade of grey stands.

Post-pubescent rant

2006-01-27T18:15:00.000-05:00

I am not a knight in shining armour. I will not sweep you off your feet. I don’t believe in picking up women. I don’t believe in women picking up men. Why? Because it’s violent. Acts of courtship – ‘picking-up,’ ‘hitting-on’ – are violent. If not, then they are manipulative: romance, allure, solicit, and so on. What of this? Why is it that two people cannot get romantically involved without abusing one another? Is there something inherently abusive in romance? ‘Fucking’ sure is vulgar, and it certainly seems injurious. ‘Sex’ on the other hand seems a bit more mutual. Does all of this have something to do with possession? Submission? We seize our partners; our partners submit. Do we submit as well? Are we seized? Is there such a thing as mutual seizure? Is this romance? My favourite romantic moments have been tranquil ones: cuddling on the couch, a long walk, a good laugh. I don’t remember any seizures. Where’s the hurt? Or is romantic violence violence without injury – even a welcomed violence? Do we all have some primal yearning to be abused? Abuse without pain? This doesn’t make any sense.

Perhaps we can distinguish a philosopher from an everyman by their will to act when in a state of confusion. The former simply never acts – this gives him plenty of time to figure things out. I’ll be single for some time – maybe some day I’ll actually get something figured out. This sux.

Did anyone else notice this?

2006-01-26T21:00:00.000-05:00

"Hamas sweeps to election victory"

Is it just cause I'm young and only just now beginning to seriously pay attention and understand the headlines, or is the world coming together and falling apart more than usual these days? Anyways…

"Israel rules out talks with Hamas"

Cause once I was punk

2006-01-25T23:53:00.000-05:00

New school

Stars - Set yourself on fire
(Up and coming Canadian indie band.)

Old school

Dwarves - The Dwarves are Young and Good Looking
(Did you know Nirvana used to open for these guys?)

Back to originality

2006-01-25T14:02:00.000-05:00

I actually wrote this about a month ago during my dry spell with the intention of posting it later. Well now is later.

Maybe this time with a little more sense. I will return to my earlier discussion on originality, and bring up some further problems with the debates: ‘what is art?’ and ‘what is good art?’ There is a difference between originality and the original act, in my earlier post I argued that the latter was not possible, at least not in the traditional sense of the term ‘originality.’ This had to do with the need for originality to take its bearing off the origin. I concluded that an original act could only be, at best, an attempt at producing the mirror image of the median. I neglected to address the more obvious concept of the original thing, which is loosely, any thing produced, to which there is no thing like it in existence prior to it. The trouble with such a concept is that it is at the same time very possible, even necessary, and also utterly impossible. Possible in regards to the fact that no thing can be exactly like another thing, without being the other thing – and thus all things are inherently different and original. But in also in the same breath, no two things can be completely unalike, and no thing can be understood without referent to another, and thus it cannot be completely unlike. Thus a spectrum emerges on which we set arbitrary standards of originality. This spectrum itself is arbitrary in that it can only be assigned to attributes, but in order to be useful it also has to act as an umbrella over wider concepts. I.e. Painting A is black and there are many black paintings in existence, painting B is white and it is first ever like this; they are both paintings. Thus the colour attribute may be original, but the latter referent of the painting is not – in fact it is for all intention and purpose universal. There is also an arbitrariness in the use of time as arbiter: painting B being ‘the first ever,’ and any white painting produced after it will not be original by the same standard. But let’s return to the functional role of ‘orginality.’ Though I will not accept originality as any thing in itself, it may serve some useful purpose.

Let’s suppose a concept of time is necessary to a concept of originality. Thus, attributing originality also attributes a time qualifier. To be original is to be the first. If this is all originality is, then perhaps there is no harm in it. If we treat the expansion of human capacities normatively, and many do, then originality can be very useful (Expansion also caries a time qualifier: things can only expand over time. It also implies linearity.). In order for something to be the first, it implies that it was not there before; it is something else, something new, something other – a new boundary or an expansion in capacity. I have no problem with this use as long as we accept the validity of the normative assumption. But is the acceptance of a normative aim, the expansion of capacities, antecedent to art?

What of genuineness? Should an act that is genuine but not necessarily original, not be considered useful? Arguably an act could be artificial, inauthentic, un-genuine, and still be original. Should such a thing be accepted? Art isn’t mechanical or is it?

Afterthought: I feel inclined to want to tie this call for originality in art up with a modernity, and strategic rationality. Money is mechanical, and the assigning of monetary value to art creates a need for its mechanization. Maybe more on this later.

Where was I going with this?

No assembly required

2006-01-23T02:53:00.000-05:00

Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to
secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor. Adam Smith.

People sometimes ask me why I call myself an anarchist. I think the above quote just about sums this up (I don’t like the "bourgeois kids"). I also happen to be against most forms of private property. Go figure. But recently I’ve been thinking: maybe 'anarchist' is too harsh of a word. The truth is I’m not as much an anarchist as I am a post-structuralist pomo windbag. I’m open to the possibility of the Other – that’s all – and it so happens that anarchism, the un-presence of law and state, is that other. This makes for a curious structural relationship between anarchism and the way things are. You see, absolute anarchism is, well, impossible. Thus, it will always by that intangible Other no matter how it's pursued and for whatever duration of time. I feel that it is just that – its impossibility and subsequent utter open endedness – that makes it so tantalizing. It is less a pursuit of some fantastic decided upon utopian dream, as it is an unwillingness to accept just such a notion. There is no narrowing of the imagination needed, nor any assembly required.

Quote of the moment

2006-01-22T04:25:00.000-05:00

"Fucking bourgeois kids make me sick... so revolting i just want to vomit class warfare all over them." - me

The first thing I said to a close friend of mine upon seeing my ex-girlfriend's myspace account for the first time.

Consuming outside inside out

2006-01-22T03:10:00.000-05:00

Check this out. Read it form top to bottom. It’s dead on. Authors Heath and Potter say what I’ve been trying to figure out since I was sixteen and a particularly critically minded teacher asked the class whether any of us could genuinely claim that we stood outside the mainstream. It all seemed so futile, no matter what you did you were always a part of it – even in being anti-mainstream, the mainstream held synonymous with consumer culture, you were still whoring yourself to some label or brand – you were still its progeny, you were still a consumer. In The Rebel Sell, the authors point out the error in conflating mass culture and consumer culture; we can’t set ourselves apart from the mainstream by merely consuming differently. Consumption is the dominant medium, and unless we’re willing to shed this, we are just a part of the dominant culture as the next poor dumb indoctrinated bloke. (Can we shed this? Are we fuct here by an ‘ought-to-actually-can clause’? Marx might cry out about the realization species being. Is this a shortcoming in Marxist analysis?) The ball is taken further, when they illustrate how our counter-mainstream consumptive practices only exacerbate the situation. Sigh.

Oh and I came to this link from a comment on this blog: Marginal Utility, maintained by author Rob Horning. This blog is extraordinary. I can only aspire to one-day write with the clarity and insight that Rob does on matters that seriously matter. Honestly, I came across this blog because one of his blog posts was an assigned reading in one of my classes.

emabrrassed

2006-01-18T21:57:00.000-05:00

This is a little embarrasing, I havn't been posting much lately. Have no fear, I will be back, this month has just been a little strange.

How coumod are you?

2006-01-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

On the cover of Critical Theory (1994), by Couzens and McCarthy is located a ‘striking’ etching by Francisco Goya. It depicts “a figure presumably the artist, asleep at his desk while monstrous creatures of darkness swarm about him. On the desk itself is written the title of the etching, ‘El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.’” The phrase can be understood as either, “The sleep of reason produces monsters” or “The dream of reason produces monsters.” In one instance, the failure to use reason produces monsters; in the other it is reason itself that produces monsters. They associate this juxtaposition with two historical frameworks of meaning: that of the modern enlightenment, which is aligned with the former, and the counterenlightenment, which is aligned with the later. What struck me upon reading the two interpretations was my immediate inclination towards accepting the latter prior to any further explanation. Off the top of my head I couldn’t even tell you what the counterenlightenment is. Perhaps this suggests that within me is a deep-seated distrust of reason. I wonder if this sentiment is apparent in others also. Could this be a nifty (over-simplified) way of distinguishing between the moderns and counter-moderns among us? (It should be noted that, according to the writers, the most widely accepted interpretation of the piece is the former.)

Ummmm.... just click on the links

2005-12-21T18:47:00.000-05:00

Flipping channels this evening and I glanced something interesting on CNN. I seriously never watch this network, but I keep it on dial (I only have 16 channels on my dial) for those occasional moments when planes crash into towers, and hurricanes wipe out cities. It was ‘situation room,’ an ambiguous name, for an equally wanting regular segment. They had an old fuck (imagine Rex Murphy but American... *shiver*) reading viewer emails in response to some “discussion” that I imagine they had earlier the show. Presumably it had something to do with some recent films about brown people, because the topic read something like: “Should Hollywood be making films that are sympathetic to the terrorists?” I’m not even going to ask the question, “What the fuck is ‘the terrorists’ referring to?” In fact I’m not particularly disturbed by the question in general; I trust Hollywood about as much as the next guy – they have been sympathetic to many a terrorist, and yes it makes me uncomfortable. What got my beef was some of the responses. A couple were fine, sober reflections and all that jazz whether or not I agreed with them, but there were a couple others that sent chills down my spine. They were flat out denials of any need to tell any other side to what is going on in brownland. I sensed in them some serious denial on their part – like these terrorists aren’t human, and shouldn’t be treated as such. Sorry bloke, just because they had a shitty life, or simply disagree with you, doesn’t mean they aren’t human. This kind of mentality only contributes to more war – as long as we continue to de-humanize our adversaries we sure as hell won’t stop bombing the shit out of them – and it’s doubtful they’ll ever stop bombing the shit out of us. Even if a cease fire ever did come about, we still need to regard them as human – remember the Treaty of Versailles? Ironically, I don’t doubt that these terrorists have a similar mentality concerning us – I have a hard time conceiving of a 9/11 without al least one guy, and more likely a lot of guys, thinking like this. For my last point (was there a point?), I’m going to suggest a more global definition for 'the terrorists' – we need global definitions for global discussion (I’m so pomo I disregard my pomoness and blatantly universalize shit from time to time.) The terrorists are folks that dehumanize other folks in order to justify their bombing the shit out of our fellow man for their own gain, whether it is for oil or forty virgins in the clouds – or both. (I’m not sure that you can bomb the shit out of anyone without dehumanizing them – or yourself even [damn you Kant!].)

PS And for those nasty folk that sent in those nasty letters, because you are sooooo a cog in the system, you are sooooo a part of the act. (Whom am I kidding – I’m a soci major, I can’t expect anyone to be accountable for his or her own actions.)

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Quote of the day: “Group sex has been legalized by the supreme court.” Wow, if you’re a swinger (sex maniac) in Canada, today is a good day for you.

Should I be worried? Can I be dangerous by association?

2005-12-19T23:45:00.000-05:00

Wow, how nice of Human Events: The National Conservative Weekly to draw up a lovely introductory reading guide to the human sciences. However, what an odd title: “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.” Except maybe Mein Kampf, all these are must-reads. Alright I’m done patronizing – John fucking Maynard Keynes!? John Dewey!? Are you kidding me!? August Compte, who incidentally coined the term sociology… I didn’t realize conservatives in America had declared the whole of social science – not just unsavoury - but dangerous! Jesus mother fucking Christ – they don’t even have the Turner Diaries in there and that one is an actual how-to for white trash terrorists (That might I add was actually used). Anyways – I’m done – I’m so outraged I don’t even want to continue. If you want to know what I’m up to, for the next few years – I’m studying these texts; such is an arts education in anything other than economics in any other country in the world except America – (and maybe Iran [I’m sure they at least cover Das Kapital in China]).

Rex over at Savage Minds (A wicked anthro blog), a little less tempermental than I, gets all nostalgic:

I long for the time when ‘conservative’ meant ‘people who read Burke and Oakeshott and Macintyre.’ And when did ‘conservatives’ stop reading the Great Books and focus exclusively on the Christian bible? Sigh.

Sometimes I dismiss my apocalyptic pessimism as youthful naivety; gosh, people have been saying the world was going to end tomorrow since well before yesterday. It is days like today, that I have to seriously revisit this assumption.

P.S. If I havn't convinced you, check this out.

Post leaders debate commentary… cause I’m sure you care

2005-12-16T23:09:00.000-05:00

Well the debate just ended and I watched most of it: about two thirds through, I realized the paint on the walls of my apartment wasn’t quite dry yet – they were only painted six months ago. Nonetheless here’s my opinion of the goings on.

Martin is Martin. He’s surprisingly mild and harmless, for someone with such a big money, big power pedigree. He’s proved himself to me last election, so not much was new from him. Although I did like it when he broke from his normal stutter-monkey self to declare his love for Canada and Quebec – good for him. Nonetheless, I’d never vote for him – he’s impotent.

Harper is as evil as ever, and it was nice to see the other parties point out his hypocrisy on the notwithstanding clause issue. He still lacks charisma, personality, emotion and a new hair cut. Essentially that party needs a new leader.

Jack was clear and concise, but he still sounds like a bad public service announcement. He needed to stop talking past the end of his allotted response time. I’ll probably vote for him anyways, but that's just cause I’m a bleeding heart socialist like him.

Finally, like last year, Duceppe took the cake for me. I think I’ve figured out why he’s so great, why his answers are so level headed, and why he always looks so casual. He’s not even running for prime minister! What the fuck is he even doing there! Well it’s not that he’s of no use, it was refreshing having an everyday Joe on the panel, even if his national vision sucks.

Where am I now? I’m calling for electoral reform! What a joke that I’m forced to vote for one of these schmucks. This is why kids don’t vote anymore, there’s nothing to vote for – don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote, but not because I want to. I’m also still having a hard time imagining any of these guys keeping this country together.(PS This is what seperatism looks like)

Today it snowed a lot

2005-12-16T19:07:00.000-05:00

Another great moment in the history of philosophical discourse brought to us by some anonymous contributor on wikpedia:

Hegel's dialectic, which he usually presented in a threefold manner, was vulgarized by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis. Hegel rarely used these terms himself: this model is not Hegelian but Fichtean. (I.a.)

Sigh... such good fun. Apparently this sort of thing is endemic to critical theory - upon my initial introduction to Marx, I was told not to confuse him with Marxism. I can only hope to one day aspire to having a bastard philosophy bear my name, or better yet someone elses.

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It snowed over 40 centimetres this morning - almost shut down the city - but I don't think we're going to call in the army... Toronto. (I am so almost an authentic montrealer; I’m already on Toronto’s case.)

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The Leaders Debate is tonight, and I am excited.

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I totally juiced the format for this post from Marginal Notation, the first blogger ever to add me to their blogroll. How incredibly awesome is that! Since then I’ve read up a little more on how search sites find sites, and it's led me to consider starting my own blogroll. The reasons I haven’t already are: (A) I don't want to upset anyone by associating them with me and all my retardedness, and (B) I'm afraid my own feelings might get hurt - I don't want to be that loner who says all the cool kids are their friends, but the kids don't even know his name.

Two evils: efficiency and government intervention -- Discussion

2005-12-15T18:03:00.000-05:00

This discussion originated in the comments of a previous post on cognitive dissidence and the ideology of individualism.

Wayne: The Conservative anti-government/pro-freedom view is not that the individual/consumer knows the best course of action, they couldn't possibly. There's two points to make here. First, the government cannot possibly know the best course of action either, for there is no "one-size-fits-all", not in anything. There is wide individuality, human diversity, in just about anything you choose to measure. Secondly, more importantly is to clarify the Conservative idea, which I reiterate is not to propose we know it all. Rather the idea is that as a free individual, you should be able to pursue whichever course of action you deem best for your own life. If that means that you WANT to eat a cheeseburger, then go ahead. It should not be the stand of government to say to you that you MAY NOT because it is not a healthy action. Could you imagine if Government had the power to enforce all the 'generally best' rules of action. You would have no freedom whatsoever, your meals/actions/hobbies/jobs would all be prescribed to you, in an exact amount, as some specialist sees fit.

Me: As for your first point - you're right. Your second point is correct too - i doubt any bleeding heart like myself would disagree with these points. But you'll probably also agree with me in saying that we need a degree of state to insure these freedoms ( ie. to enforce human rights, and to provide a minimum level of social services.). We probably disagree on the degree.

Wayne: Yes, I absolutely agree that a certain level of government is necessary for the protection of human rights and in order to protect the quality of life for many of the less fortunate. It's funny that'd you'd hit so quickly on "We probably disagree on the degree" - I find that to be the single largest factor that seperates my moderate right-wing from many of the left-wing people I debate politics with. How much government is too much? Do we need MORE funding? How much is too much taxes? I'd argue that there is far too much Canadian government, which is painfully overfunded with excessive taxes. It's mostly a matter of efficiency - Government is terrible at spending money - they have few to no free market incentives to drive innovation and improvement.

All right, efficiency… ‘Efficiency’ is not inherently normative, so I think I’m going to talk a little about this. I’ll borrow Lyotard’s definition of efficiency in contemporary society: “a technical ‘move’ is ‘good’ when it does better and/or expends less energy then another.” This says nothing about what we’re trying to accomplish: efficiency is not an end in itself. It only talks about how we make a decision between two comparable ‘moves.’ Arguably, according to this definition, the most efficient act is no act at all, since in an absolute sense this would expend the least energy. I doubt that this is what is meant. I think there is an assumption being made, the assumption that there is actually a kind of act in question, and not just an act, but an act towards some ends – actions don’t come about for and of themselves – acts don’t act for act’s sake… Sigh… Where am I going with this? Oh yeah! So if efficiency isn’t an end in itself, then there has to be some end – but is that end necessarily the most efficient one. This is a trap. Efficiency implies an end, and can only be considered in relation to an end, but it cannot be used as a criterion to decide between two ends. You cannot decide this end is better than this other end, because this other end is more efficient (The most efficient end is no end [thus no need for act] at all.). We cannot argue for more or less government intervention based on a criterion of efficiency, first we have to decide on what end we want to be efficient towards. Now the question is do we agree on that end? Can we agree on this end? Am i making any sense?

I’m a car wreck

2005-12-15T15:36:00.000-05:00

This post over here at the weblog, got me thinking about my own paranoias when telling stories. In brief Kotsko hates himself when he tells a story twice to the same person, so he suggests that creating a kind of database to keep track of to whom he has told what stories. Obviously everyone should be cautious when telling stories; nobody wants to be thought of as a ‘story-repeater.’ His predicament got me thinking of another awkward, and sometimes unavoidable situation: when you have to tell a story to someone, but there is another person present that has already heard it. Sometimes when I’m talking to someone, I can completely wig out in my head – it’s a little strange because it seriously feels like I’m working on parallel planes of consciousness. (I’m sure I’m not the only one this happens too.) This is one of those situations. First I freak out because I convince myself that the person that has already heard my story probably doesn’t want to hear it again, but generally I can correct this by trying to re-focusing on the person that hasn’t herd it. Unfortunately the second wig out wrecks me. It occurs to me that the other person has herd my story already, and I may not tell the story the same way again – I worry I might emphasize something that I didn’t before, or even worse my mind will lapse completely and I’ll tell an almost completely different story. I couple this with enough knowledge of post structuralism to know that it is totally impossible for me to actually tell the same story again. So now before I’ve even finished to tell the original story, I’m frantically trying to justify to myself what I’ve gotten myself into, and I’m trying to piece together a justification to the persons listening should the discrepancy in my two accounts come up. By now I’ve spent so much time thinking about all this, that I’ve surely either drifted off into my own head and started mumbling intermittently, or I’ve managed to keep the dialogue going but it’s completely ran away with itself, and my greatest fears of telling a completely different story have been realized. Anyways I’m a car wreck. This is what majoring in sociology and philosophy does to you. Not only am I hyper aware of myself and others, but I approach it hyper-analytically. Sometimes I’m jealous of sociologists that can just care too much, or philosophers that can just think too much.

Of course I don't know what's good for me

2005-12-12T11:51:00.000-05:00

Does thinking you know what’s best for yourself in every instance make you more submissive? I think yes.

How do you tell people they don’t know what’s best for them? Seriously, this is something that I’m noticing has begun to spring up often. Just now, I was reading up about The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a ‘non-profit’ organization that advocates the rights of consumers (a.k.a. the rights of the restaurant and food industry.). In their own words, “Defending enjoyment is what we're all about!” They fight the good fight against all those “terrorist” militant activists and “big brother” bureaucrats. What’s their normative claim? “We believe that only you know what's best for you.”(For another example of this ideolgy at play that is getting my beef these days, see here.) But people don’t know what is best for them – how the hell could they? The world is a complicated place and becoming increasingly more specialized in every respect. It’s one thing to know what is best for yourself in some respects but it’s foolish to think you do in all; I’ll be the first to admit that I have know idea how to eat properly – or even cook in general. But if I meet someone that does, I’m not going dismiss him or her as a ‘blue east-coast liberal-intellectual.’ But maybe that’s because I am a blue east-coast liberal-intellectual (of the Canuck variety), and maybe that’s what separates the cats from the dogs – a willingness to think you might not know everything, a kind of open-mindedness if you will. That said I think there’s more at play here. There is definitely a power game going on when big money is involved. Does thinking you know what’s best for yourself in every instance make you more submissive? I think yes. I’m going to treat it in the context of cognitive dissonance – a social psych theory I learned about this term. If you think you know everything, and somebody with the upper hand makes you do something that is against your own interest, you have to justify this to yourself somehow. Someone that knows everything can’t be tricked into doing things against their interest. So you convince yourself it was a good thing your first-born son was gunned down in Baghdad. Ironic isn’t it, that radical individualism can induce conformity in such a radical way. Such is my amateurish attempt at micro theorizing the dialect between hegemony and radical-individualism.

Calvin and Hobbes and autumn

2005-12-10T18:02:00.000-05:00

In this morning’s comics, Calvin and Hobbes basically summarize my sentiments concerning autumn. Being from Vancouver this whole four seasons thing is really knew to me, and so far I’ve enjoyed it immensely. This time of year back home, crisp days and coloured leaves were hard to come by, while out here they seem to be the norm. On coming out here, I expected to be a little wearier of winter by now, not delightfully surprised. But, it being my first year and all, I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to experiencing winter’s ‘frigid cold’ for experience sake. Maybe next year I’ll share Calvin’s anxiety when I’ll actually know what’s in store.

Hobbes: I love fall – I like the cool days, the low sunlight… and the sky looks even more blue when the trees are yellow and red!

Calvin: I dunno… I think autumn is melancholy. Summer is over and in a week or two; everything will be hunkered down for the long bleak winter. Nothing lasts. Fall is just the last fling before things get worse.

Hobbes: If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?

[Calvin contemplates]

Calvin: I like to have everything so good I can take it all for granted.

How pomo are you? 2

2005-12-05T23:04:00.000-05:00

This morning I was having a conversation on msn with a friend concerning something or other, as I typed up a short assignment on Foucault. What pomo assignment is complete without a reference to 'fetish'? Unfortunately 'fetish' didn't want to do what I wanted it to. Since I didn't feel like getting out the whips and chains, I decided to ask my friend for a little help. I made the following comments, and they reminded me of a previous post, so I decided to post them too. Maybe this could become a regular feature on anomieandme - How pomo are you?

Can you verbify 'fetish'?

Can you even verbify 'verb'?

Shit. I’m so pomo I just make these words up as I go along.

Funny

2005-12-04T03:16:00.000-05:00

I’m not generally the type to really bring these sorts of things up – but these two cases are just too much. First this humorous anecdote about a couple of students getting harassed for having sex in a profs office, and then crying sexual harassment! Second, this, from a link off the comments of that same post - Soci 69: Sociology of Sexuality!

Decon’n novelty mutha fucka!

2005-12-02T07:45:00.000-05:00

Aethetics, or shall we just call them art - art in the plural: music, paint, theatre, dance etc. So ever since my last post on the matter, and a few more conversations with my friend’s roommate, I’ve been thinking long and hard about the matter in between all the other thoughts that I think long and hard about. I’ve been trying to resolve the issues of pastiche and simulacrum criticized by Jameson. If all contemporary art is garbage expressions of post-nostalgic reproductions, co-opted and distributed by the System to further perpetuate societal psychosis, what the fuck are we supposed to do? Well I think I’ve got it – it’s got something to do with the act. And since I’ve been reading Derrida this evening/morning I’m sure it’s got something to do with deconstruction. But lets first discuss an attribute often assigned to the act – originality or in context: the act of originality or the ‘original act.’ You might already be able to gather where I’m going with this: the act of the ordinary is intrinsically tied up in the act of originality: stemming from the ordinariness of the origin – the arche, or the thing from which all things are born, and all things are made up – the ordinary or at the very least the median. Suppose the uber-act of originality totally blind to the origin, but in being so blind of the origin it has no way of knowing that it’s set apart or original at all; thus, an awareness of the origin is needed in order to act with originality. But all that plays out in a lovely ideal-typical sign world. What about the artist? Well let’s apply it. The onus is placed on the artist to be as aware as possible of the origin, and to constantly renewing this awareness with every attempt at difference. So is the original possible? Nope, but neither is the un-original – one can’t act the same twice. The point that I’m trying to get at here is that this obsession with originality is a foolish one – one that I think Jameson ties nicely to capitalism and oppression. What is needed is an act from the artist – not from the origin (keep in mind the median). Maybe I’ll follow this up one of these days with what I think this expression is. For now, I will go as far as saying that we need to keep in mind that the artist is soooooo dead (and I’m soooooo over it.), but nonetheless the act is text, hence it certainly plays a dialectical function.

It's time for Popper

2005-11-30T17:16:00.000-05:00

It’s been nearly two weeks since my last post. It’s time. Time to write a lousy quantity-over-quality post about anything, simply in order to get myself back into he habit of posting.

So what’s on my mind today? Popper. Karl Popper. I’m lucky enough to have to write a rather lengthy final paper about him for my epistemology class.

I like Sir Karl. Basically he’s a big deal because he presents a viable solution to Hume’s problem of induction. How can you make empirical predictions -- predictions about the physical world – if it doesn’t follow that, just because something is the case in one case, it will be in all cases? For example, just because every swan we’ve seen is white, how can we know all swans are white until we’ve seen every swan there is. Philosophers had tried to resolve this issue for sometime but had always assumed that by induction was the only way to gain empirical knowledge. Popper agrees with Hume’s observation but disagrees with the latter assumption. He argues that rather than obtain knowledge through induction we should do it instead by deduction. That is to say that, if something is the case or is not the case, rather than seek evidence of the case, we seek evidence of it not being the case. Thus by falsification we can make empirical claims – but never about what is, only about what isn’t. He says a bunch of other important stuff too about demarcation and corroboration, but I don’t feel like getting into them here. Maybe I’ll post part of my paper later. For the record, I don’t particularly agree with his philosophy of ethics, society and social science; I’m not sure that those things can be reduced to the same kind of methods as the physical sciences. He also has many critics.

Understanding not-understanding

2005-11-19T18:34:00.000-05:00

Something just occurred to me as I was studying Quine’s "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". I’ll often make sense of things without understanding any of the terms involved; I mean to say that my mind seems to inherently interpret things on a structural or formal level, rather than in a practical, “this and this,” sort of way. Ironically, I’ll often make sense of things I don’t get at all. For example I love visiting physics sights and just reading the jargon: I’ll understand how they got from their premises to their conclusion, and even have a vague idea of what’s being said, but only as a whole; if you asked me to explain one part, I couldn’t. In my mind everything has always been relational -- it’s no wonder I take such a liking to structuralism and post-structuralism. I suppose if I had to attribute this to something, it’s probably the years I spent in French emersion without ever bothering to try and adequately learn French. There were countless words I didn’t understand, but as long as I could grasp the operands, things “made sense.” Meh; maybe everyone’s mind works like this?

Concerning the Bible

2005-11-18T12:43:00.000-05:00

If you've ever wondered why types like me have such a hard time taking the bible seriously, read this post on Total Drek. Be sure to click on all the linked words to learn more about how God with a capital 'G' hates niggers and fags, but loves cloning and women's lib. Unfortunately, Drek neglects to mention that each of these factions is well aware of all the 'wrong readings' of their blessed holy text. That's why they've each spent their entire lives rationalizing their decision with claims to divine interpretation, or revelation by prayer and meditation. Yeah you're right. The bible is infallible. It says you're a fuking moron; at least that's what Jesus told me in a dream last night.

“This place is fuct"

2005-11-15T22:23:00.000-05:00

“This place is fuct. The social structure is completely broken down.”

Comments by a CBC reporter concerning a community in Africa devastated by aids. Where do we go from here? What the fuck do we do for a people - to a people - after we’ve fuct them up this much? Yes we fuct them up! By conquering them, enslaving them, exploiting them, followed by half a century of righteous grossly misguided west-centric “development projects,” two-decades of half-assed AIDS policy, and committing just about every other nasty thing against them we wouldn’t even wish against our neighbour’s dog. Where the fuck do we go from here?! How the hell do you ‘fix’ a people? How do we re-construct a broken social structure? Fixing people sounds pretty fucking condescending doesn’t it? Can we resolve this? Or should we just fuck’em and leave’em? This is where we’re at folks! These are the questions we need to be answering.

“I didn’t know what my father was suffering from, I just thought it was TB.”

Comments by an African girl on the condition of her father, upon finding out he had aids. JUST TB! How tragic it would be if your neighbour’s dog got TB. Can you fucking imagine how much your world would have to suck in order to say a thing like that! No SUV, no white picket fence, no college education, nothing!!! We should all go to hell for the mere fact that we sleep at night, and knowing how much suffering goes on in the world.

Prose and ideas

2005-11-14T06:38:00.000-05:00

The use of prose in philosophy is an attempt at avoiding the unavoidable: the infinite reduction of argumentation. The text is used as a smoke screen to hide the fact that not every premise can have a premise, and thus the normative subtext behind every idea.

For example try and depict an idea in point form. When taken apart and put so plainly it’s obvious that each claim would need support, and so on and so on; your assumptions are those premises you not to explain. In essay format, it’s considerably more difficult to pick out assumptions unless they are stated explicitly: “I am making the assumption that…”

Musing: a special dimension. Imagine any paragraph but in point form with each sentence corresponding to a separate point. It seems to take on a very different and more transparent shape. Is it sentence structure that hides meaning or paragraph structure? A case of the reification of a textual forms – is the paragraph (sentence even) not simply the sum of its parts?

Which brings me to another thought: the cultural dynamic of assumptions. Some claims can be made in light of certain circumstances. I.e. I feel no need to explain that words are abstractions and deferred from signifieds (A hidden and underlying assumption throughout this post.).

What not to do

2005-11-12T05:50:00.000-05:00

Read Frederic Jameson and then watch The Wedge on Much Music. Here’s an excerpt from Jameson to illustrate my point:

When the links of the signifying chain snap, then we have schizophrenia in the form of a rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers. …. If we are unable to unify the past, present and future of the sentence, then we are similarly unable to unify the past, present and future of our own biographical experience or psychic life. …. The schizophrenic is reduce to an experience of pure material signifiers, or, in other words, a series of pure and unrelated presents in time.

Jameson kicks the feet out from under the iconoclastic pastiche inspired indie-post-punk-rockers. Music videos that were already void of meaning are exposed as just that: being void of meaning. Fragmented images of androgynous musician-types flash across the screen in sync to monotonous beat-types; the empty vocals and generic instrumentals dissipate into un-meaning slipping further and further into the simulacra abyss. All of a sudden it’s just not good enough to only not be something pop. All the while...

Faceless masters continue to inflect the economic strategies which constrain our existences, but they no longer need to impose their speech; and the postliteracy of the late capitalist world reflects not only an absences of any great collective project but also the unavoidability of the national language itself.

The “we’re fuct” that howls perpetually in the back of all our minds impregnates my conscious, but only for a moment; I’m going to an artsy party tonight and I’m excited.

F*ck conservatives

2005-11-07T01:53:00.000-05:00

Another conversation doo-dad cause I’m trying to put Dear Infatuation out of business.

Jay and I were out wondering and loitering the other night in the McGill student ghetto, looking for random parties to crash. We eventually stumbled into one that I thought had a pretty cool concept. It was -- drum role please -- “The all parties party.” What does that mean? Well most major political parties have youth wings, and this particular party was a gathering of the McGill branches for each of these wings. Try and imagine a whole whack of wasted poli sci dorks debating the impact of NGOs in contemporary political theatres. Normally I’d have found myself in the thick of this and only not soon enough, however on this particular evening I was completely sober and feeling less inclined to unintelligible dialectics. What did I do instead you ask? The only thing an intelligible male in my predicament could do. I located the most good looking and wasted girl at the party and proceeded to strike up conversation (I’m being cynical here, I can’t stand drunk chicks – especially the pretty ones. In other words, if I was talking to her she wasn’t that drunk.). Jay’s comments on the matter made my night. For the sake of context, I’m an expired-card-carrying member of the NDP (democratic socialist).

**Later on the walk home**

Me: Wow I can’t believe I got her email address; she was hot.

(Walking)

(More walking)

Me: I can’t believe she’s a conservative. (Chuckles) I should go for coffee with her sometime.
Jay: You should fuck her too …you know, do to her what the conservative party is doing to us.

(Righteous laughter all around)

How pomo are you?

2005-11-01T17:28:00.000-05:00

Just before philosophy class a couple of guys in the corner of the class are talking about Heidegger. I don’t particularily like Guy 1, but his comment on being pomo made my day.

Guy 1: Heidegger is awsome. His phenomenology.
Guy 2: Yeah, he's only like the king of 20th century philosophy.

(casual consent all around)

Guy 2: But he was a Nazi.
Guy 1: Whatever.

(giggles all around)

Guy 1: Whatever. We’re so pomo we don’t even give a shit.

(righteous laughter all around)

Crappy post on Canadian politics.

2005-11-01T16:50:00.000-05:00

Well today was the big day; the first of the two-part Gomery report was released. Basically it told us a bunch of stuff we already new: the monolithic Liberal Party of Canada has people in its upper echelons that are corrupt – they take kick backs, exploit federal funds for their own gain. Such is politics is suppose. Such is politics when the same party stays in power for over a decade. Heck, Bush’s government can’t seem to avoid this and they’ve only been in power for half this time.

What annoys the hell out of me is all the people now saying they’re embarrassed to be Canadian or they’re embarrassed of the Canadian government, or they’re embarrassed of the liberal party, or they’re embarrassed about whatever. The only thing to be embarrassed about in any of this is that we live in a country with four major federal parties of whom none of which seem to have any chance of offering an alternative. Why is this?

We have three alternatives: the NDP, the BQ and the Conservatives. Two of those parties don’t represent anyone except themselves and a small minority of Canadians. In my opinion both have every intention of breaking Canada up – the Conservatives, from the west, seem to lack the cunning to appreciate anyone east of the Ottawa river on anything more than a “we need your votes” level. Not to mention any Canadian household with any ‘Canadian values’ or who’s annual income is less than 80k. The BQ is a lot clearer about their intentions. I’m not really sure what to make of the NDP, from what I can tell they appreciate Canadian values, and they certainly appreciate the majority of Canadians whose incomes are below the Conservative cut off line. But how the hell can they not get a vote in Quebec! They seem to seriously lack something, and I think it’s political savvy a.k.a. the ability to equivocate and bullshit your way into power. Anyways, I doubt they’d want to break up Canada but until they learn to get votes in Quebec they’re not helping anyone.

So who wins every election: the only party that can get votes in all provinces. It’s not the Liberal Party’s responsibility to teach the opposition parties how to represent Canadians. Nope they’re going to have to pull up their socks themselves, and until they do I blame them for the redundancy of Canadian politics.

OMG

2005-10-26T02:28:00.000-04:00

Oh my god. It's snowing. I think i'm going to puke.

Can't seem to get enough of Google

2005-10-22T17:11:00.000-04:00

This laziest of all lazy posts is coppied verbatum from here. Boing Boing is truely a directory of wonderful things and i recomend it to everyone with a way too much time on their hands. Please don't judge it solely by the Suicide Girls plug in the right hand column; it has so much more uselessness to offer. What are suicide girls you ask? I don't really want to talk about it. [As angst swells in my belly and just how degenerative the world - and yes even the alt world - have become.] Thank heavens that I've still got this bowl of macaroni and cheese, and author Meghann Marco to cheer me up:

Writer begs publisher to give her book to Google Print

One of Kottke's readers is a writer named Meghann Marco whose publisher is joined to the suit against Google over the excellent, writer-friendly Google Print service. She has written an amazing open letter to her publisher:

I asked my publisher, Simon and Schuster, for my book to be included in Google Print. I was told they did not do that.

Lack of exposure is the primary reason that a book like mine would fail in the marketplace. I spend most of my day trying to get attention for my book. Not for the money, but because I believe that it is well written and funny. Very few authors will become rich writing books. We do it because we have something to say. If we wanted to be rich, we'd have invented a search engine!

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help. After all, it's perfectly free to check out a book from the library. I have no problem with my book being indexed by your site. In fact, I wish it was!

Someone asked me recently, "Meghann, how can you say you don't mind people reading parts of your book for free? What if someone xeroxed your book and was handing it out for free on street corners?"

I replied, "Well, it seems to be working for Jesus."

Link

(And back over to chuk.)P.S. Oh, and while we're still on the topic, on the news last night they mentioned that the verb 'Google' has in fact been added to the Webster's Dictionary. (And what the hell does 'P.S.' stand for anyway?)

I can dream can’t I?

2005-10-15T12:43:00.000-04:00

Go here, read the post, then read a bunch of the comments. Can you imagine? This totally blew my mind; I doubt your mind even cares.

*******

So imagine - I start this blog in my first year of university and keep it up for the next ten or so some odd years. One day I actually start making sense, and people start thinking things like, “wow, I like the way he thinks.” Then, when my tenure gets revoked all these people seem to care, and I’ve already got his crazy reputation setting me up for the next leg of my journey… ok ok… but a guy can dream – right?

An ode to Google

2005-10-14T09:41:00.000-04:00

I came across something interesting while skimming through an article at BBC News Online about Google starting a charity organization. It turns out Google's corporate motto is "don't be evil." I thought this was kind of a funny, since Google is one of the largest and richest corporations in America. However, there is something rather charming about the conglomerate; I fell in love with the unobtrusive search engine sometime ago - my browser has called it home ever since (it had been yahoo). I remember thinking it was some kind of indie/alt search engine - no adds, few links, and a simple layout. They decorate their banner on holidays, kind of like the old couple that stick turkey cutouts on their front lawn for thanksgiving. If you've never used Google images or maps you're missing out.

Google is accomplishing much more than just offering a convenient service, it's infiltrating my day-today living. It's so convenient - it pops up every time i open my desktop - I use it without even thinking, as naturally as I would my right hand. I'm sure that the verb 'google', if it isn't already, is only a stones throw from werming its way into dictionaries. Today in Greek philosophy class I received a handout on satyrs with an image on it titled, "random Google image for satyr." A blog I frequent, Total Drek, recently innitiated a new contributor with a Google images produced pictorial history.

That all being said, despite their motto, I’m pretty sure Google is evil. It's stocks are sold publicly, thus it has share holders, and thus it must keep their interests in mind at all time, thus profit above all else, thus, thus, thus. That's as far as I’m going to go with this post but, it's a little frightening isn't it, that even the phrase "don't be evil," has been co-opted by evil. On a lighter note, wikipedia is still "good" right... right... is there anybody out there?

CELEBRATE!!!

2005-10-12T00:29:00.000-04:00

The CBC strike is over. The National is back!

What about Surrey?

2005-10-11T00:43:00.000-04:00

Found this floating about on the net. Thought it sort of summed up the whole surrey stigma thing.

[I'm] Relatively new to Vancouver and then I heard this Surrey slut/bum/trash....etc jokes from all walk of life. Went to Surrey twice and it looks like typical American car-friendly suburban to me...... Where is this Surrey slut thing come from?? Actually I start to notice on my job that people said they live in White Rock are actually just in Surrey! I thought that there was a municipality called South Surrey... as there are North Vancouver, West Vancouver.....etc because some people emphasized their address are in South Surrey (which never exist in official post code). When I asked folks in my office that anyone want to go to Surrey with me, my co-worker were puzzled and said "Why would anyone wants to go to Surrey?"

Am I the only one!?!

2005-10-04T16:52:00.000-04:00

While keeping on the topic of current fashion trends, 80’s fashion revival, WTF!?! Why in gods name? I mean I suppose it was inevitable. I can only tell my lady friends so many times about how gross spandex under skirts, leg warmers and big hair are, without jinxing the entire world. Sigh. Maybe this is just a Montreal thing… Is there anybody out there? Who am I kidding I saw this coming, I watch enough CBC Newsworld to catch the occasional Fashion File, I just tried to block it out of my head. And it almost worked too… That is until they started sitting in front of me in class and beside me on the bus!! Someone the other night broke things down for me, I thought pretty well. We all had a blast in the 60s and got wasted, we didn’t know to stop while we were ahead in the 70s, and so the 80s ended up being those hours from 2-5 am that we don’t remember. The 90s were just one long hangover. Am I the only one that doesn’t want to relive Saturday morning’s three-hour blink around the water cooler Monday morning? Please, I can’t remember them just let it be. Out of sight out of mind.

note: I tried finding a bunch of images for this post but apparently this trend is so 'NOW' that the web hasn't had a chance to respond yet. Or maybe it's always been like this, like montreal has just been stuck in some kind of time warp, and i'm just new here. Or maybe i'm just lazy and didn't search hard enough.

Well it's been a month...

2005-10-04T00:44:00.000-04:00

Well it's been a month since my last post, which is pretty pathetic, especially considering my previous post of resolutions. Just think if I’d never written down maintaining this blog as one of my goals, I wouldn't be obligated now, and i wouldn't look like such a cunt.

Well, alas, to get us back on track, here's a weak excuse for a post: a link to someone else’s post who seems to be quoting someone else. A Gauche is bang on though for fishing this little ditty on blue collar style out of the water.

You want to wear a trucker cap? Go on and wear it. Relax. Wear it right. Don't be shy. Downward mobility - unlike access to higher education or to white-collar wages - is free of charge.

Odd... CNN

2005-09-18T07:44:00.000-04:00

Something seems off. I’m watching CNN right now and for the past 24 hours or so they’ve had a scroll on the left hand side of the screen, showing images of missing children of the Katrina fiasco. Why is it that when I watch footage of the Katrina refugees about 90% of them are black? And yet, somehow about 75% (well maybe half) of the children in the scroll bar are white? Maybe it’s just me being cynical.

Katrina Blows the Shit to the Fan

2005-09-04T00:05:00.000-04:00

The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week.

This is an excerpt from an insightful article at the BBC found here. Read the rest of the article. Go on. If this event ever becomes the political front that I would like to think it would, I hope it will be drawn up along these lines.

30 Mintues of CNN

2005-09-02T10:15:00.000-04:00

I think i'm going to shoot myself. Why CBC. Why!!

Wow this New Orleans fiasco is really getting serious. I just started getting interested this morning after hearing a couple of rather shocking rumours; the CBC has been out of order so to speak of late. Pathetic yes, I have to admit I’ve all but stopped watching the news since. Alas, this was the wrong time of all times to stop watching the news. So, since I’m home after a ten hour shift and there’s road crews outside my window preventing me from sleeping, I’ve decided to scan CNN on the web and TV to figure out just what’s going on. HOLY SHIT! What a mess. (I hope this impression has nothing to do with American press sensationalism.) There are people getting shot! Louisiana is turning into a killzone.

Well, let’s put this into a naïve first year undergrads concept of context. I’m a post-structuralist, but I’m also a structuralist, and thus I consider at least some human behaviour to be symptomatic of prevailing social-political-economic conditions: people just don’t go nuts and start looting and shooting people. There is something inherent in the American psyche that creates incentives. In my last post I associate this loosely with capitalism. In this post I’m not going to bother hypothesising on what these conditions are, rather, I’m going to pose questions that set up a compare and contrast. Did this happen when the tsunami hit?” What are the differences? Why?

Note: 30 minutes of CNN and I just about want to vomit at the generic look of their anchors and reporters. God bless the BBC and its appreciation of ugly people. Who would think after watching CNN that hotness and intelligence or perspective don’t coincide.

Note, after note: Oh my god! The more I watch the more I want to puke! They’re praising Coca-Cola and various other fats [fast] food corporates for sending aid to the astrodome. Shoot me! If the hurricane hasn’t killed them maybe we can with fatty foods. (Has anyone else noticed just how many really fuking fat people are victims? I don’t remember seeing any fat tsunami victims.)

Note again: Please! I can’t take it! Somebody shoot the anchorwoman before her chiselled jaw line kills me first. No wait let her over emphasize just one more word!

Note: How many more black people have to die! Seriously, what’s with everyone being black, I thought the US was an egalitarian society. Seriously, that’s what they told me. Why are all the poor people black? Are there no poor white people in Southern US? Ahh! There’s that anchorwoman again!! Expel the demons!

It is Completely Out of its Mind!

2005-08-31T22:37:00.000-04:00

If one ever wonder at just how completely fuct Montreal is as a city and as a people, read this excerpt on the naming of streets in Montreal from Wikipedia:

"According to the rules of the Commission de toponymie du Québec, the French-language form of street names is the only official one, and is to be used in all languages: e.g. chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges; rue Sainte-Catherine; côte du Beaver Hall. Most English speakers, however, use English generic equivalents such as "street" or "road", as do English-language media such as the Montreal Gazette. Officially bilingual boroughs have the right to use such names in official contexts, such as on street signs. In the past, a number of streets had both English and French names, such as "avenue du Parc" or "Park Avenue", "rue de la Montange" or "Mountain Street", "rue Saint-Jacques" or "Saint James Street". Some of these names are still in common colloquial use in English, and perpetuated by the tourism industry. Many streets incorporate an English specific name into French, such as "chemin Queen Mary", "rue University", "avenue McGill College". There are also a few cases where two names are official, such as "chemin du Bord-du-Lac/Lakeshore Road". Ironically many francophones have resisted the change to some French street designations; in the Verdun area, "rue de l'Église" street is referred to as "rue Church".

In English, the pre-Francization names are still commonly used, thus, although only the French is 'official', in English one often hears names such as Park Avenue, Mountain Street, Saint Lawrence Boulevard, Pine Avenue, Saint John's Boulevard etc. Canada Post accepts the French specific with English generic, as in "de la Montagne Street" or "du Parc Avenue", although many such forms are never used in speaking. Another anomaly is René Lévesque Boulevard. Once called "Dorchester", it was renamed for Quebec nationalist René Lévesque. However many Anglophones still refer to it as "Dorchester."

I especially like that last line about René Lévesque Boulevard and Dorchester. Yes, politics is everywhere here, it perverts all aspects of daily living. It follows you to work and watches you while you eat from the café across the street. It lives in your closet and peers at you while you sleep. It knows whether you’ve been bad or good, and knows if you’re awake… And it is completely out of its mind!

Looting in New Orleans

2005-08-31T21:10:00.000-04:00

The people of the US and the folks in Iraq really aren’t so different. I get annoyed when cheeky american politicians who seem to think they occupy some kind of moral high ground dismiss their contempararies.

Well it’s already been two years since the looting of Baghdad but I can’t help but be reminded of it by the recent looting of New Orleans. I can remember at the time George Bush smirking and dismissing the looting of Iraq’s national museums and landmarks as unfortunate but a sign of just how long gone the people were after years of amoral rule under Saddam: a view shared by many on ‘the right’ including this guy. Well how bitterly ironic it is today when we witness the looting of Louisiana, a state that supported Bush in the last presidential elections. What kind of crazies would do such a thing, and when the community is most vulnerable! Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

Alright, alright, alright. As one blogger puts it, the good people of ‘Katrina ground zero’ may be “merely searching out basic supplies after being stranded for 36+ hours.” I’m sure we can’t expect them all to starve while they wait for aid from governments that didn’t bother to evacuate them in the first place. Maybe we should be less jugdmental when they decide to grab a TV or stereo on the way out. Fair enough, they aren’t exactly looting the museums (that we know of), but arguably, they are taking many a ‘sacred’ of american materialist consumer society. When people start taking things without paying for them in America, “chaos and anarchy” ensue – as many a nerwsheadline will tell you.

Alas, I suppose my point is that the people of the US and the folks in Iraq really aren’t so different. In a capitalist society, one in which property is necessarily protected by the law, if you knock out the man, whether it be by miliatry brute or natural forces, you can’t help but expect folks to start taking what they feel they need (Often what they feel they need, and what they actually need are two very different things.). Many of the iraqi people had been a lot longer than 36+ hours without rescources; I’m sure when they stoll ancient manuscripts that they had some pecuniary use for them in mind. I get annoyed when cheeky american politicians who seem to think they occupy some kind of moral high ground dismiss their contempararies.

A Blurp on Context

2005-08-29T01:13:00.000-04:00

I apologize, my spell check isn’t working properly and it’s very frustrating.

Contemporary society is a disjunction juxtaposing the absurdity it is and the rational way it should be.

Following from my last post, we touched on the issues of the postmodern actor feeling unable to affect his situation. Is it their inability to place context – or find that place “where all these images converge” – to the simulacrum that surrounds that renders them apathetic. What is context? How do we find context? Arguably a great deal of the past fifty years of social theory – post-structuralism, decunstrcution – has been along these lines. I read somewhere that when Derrida says “there is nothing outside the text, (this may or may not be the exact quote – I can’t for the life of me remember – but it grasps the general idea.”) he is actually trying to imply that there is nothing outside of context; the text for Derrida is very broad and includes all cultural symbols (means of communication [poorly worded]); we come to understand them and thus ourselves by understanding their contexts. He calls this process deconstruction (overly simplified). Thus this ongoing ‘deconstruction’ of this and that is more a search for and a greater undertsanding of contexts rather than an attempt at overturning establishments. Ironically it seems that the more intouch we become with certain texts and their contexts, we realize just how absurd they actually are. For example the context within which a WASP sociobiologist of the turn of the last century might argue that blacks are an inferior race. Or in a more specifically related example to Derrida and his ‘suplements’: what is in the text and what isn’t in the text? Thus pushing the boundaries of where the text even begins. Where does the American Declaration of Independence begin and end?

So we began by saying that what is wrong with society today is we lack the ability to put context to our day to day lives. Apparently, trying to understand context isn’t the right way of producing it, since it would seem the more we come to understand it the more alienated we become. This places us in a strange perdicament: either we need to go back to the board and really question just what our version of context really is, or we must conclude that the problem with contemporary society has more to do with a disjunction juxtaposing the absurdity it is and the rational way it should be, that the more we come to understand it the more we feel alieanted because it just plane doesn’t make any sense. I suppose that if we asume the later this might imply that we adopt the normative view that we should work at making it more rational.

Digressing from this point onward…

This does not mean that I am pro-fascist or for any other extreme macro rationalizing mechanisms. I think the earlier post commenting on the modern man did a good job of pointing out the absurdity in such approaches. I would be more inclined to question the context within which we view ‘rationality’ – perhaps the current interpretation is actually is absurd. See for example an earlier post of mine: Jumping Off Bridges and Playing Chicken and the Global Free Market.

Assimilating Ideas on the Postmodern 'Actor'

2005-08-27T23:06:00.000-04:00

Well it has certainly been awhile. This post is vague and unclear and meant to be more of a 'getting back into the flow of things' piece. I think I set out in it to accomplish too much.

“The postmodern man is an observer, not a participant: a film enthusiast, not a life enthusiast.” - Michelle

"Heidegger’s essay on the Age of the World Picture remarks on the distinction between a time when man was a spectacle for the gods, the object of a perception which was itself beyond conception, and a modernity wherein man is fundamentally the perceiver of a world that offers itself to him as or is posited as a picture. Benjamin, in his Artwork essay, also alludes to man’s former status as an object or show for the gods. Fascism, he famously remarks turns humanity into a spectacle for itself. At the same time, the gigantism of this spectacle – the rallies, the giant screens, the massive advertisements careering towards the random city dweller from the sides of buildings, magnifies man to God-like proportions. The modern citizen is miniaturised before the Olympian powers of industrial society but also watches them, agog, and lives vicariously though them." (rest here at Long Sunday)

The Long Sunday article then goes on to depict the world through the eyes of John Berger as he flips through a magazine:

"The ‘plane’ on which these images co-exist is inhuman, there is no human point of view where all these images converge."

Heidegger is talking about a modern world, while I think Berger and Michelle are talking about a postmodern one. Somewhere between Mussolini and Wal-Mart (which by the way is in my Microsoft spell check, even if Heidegger isn’t) there is a ‘gap’. During modernity man did see himself as observer, however he also saw himself as taking-part by becoming as an essential cog in the larger socio-political order. I think this has a lot to do with the general tendency of the period of subscribing to larger reified ideologies. With the breakdown of the ‘grand narratives’, the post modern ‘actor’, though still viewing them self as an observer, now think they are lying outside the larger order unable to affect it.

Benjamin describes the modern man:

"Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics, which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art."

But he is not insane. He believed in the ideologies that guided him, and it is only from a historical perspective that we become aware of his alienation. The postmodern actor on the other hand is insane. He is handicapped by the inability to form a “human point of view where all these images converge”. They have been enlightened to their impending destruction, but being void of perspective are unable to remedy this, and yet still derive aesthetic pleasure from it!

A Couple of Things

2005-08-06T16:25:00.000-04:00

Thing 1

Infinite Th0ught brings up a very good point in her post today, “death side by side with suicide .” How ironic is it that we are so disgusted with how someone can be so fanatical that they would blow themselves up, and yet we ourselves are on the verge of suicide. Whom among us is unaware of the unsustainability /suicidalness of current conspicuous consumtption habits, and yet whom among us is prepared to give any of this up? Though this is a tad over simplified, what is more egregious, some damage done by “a bunch of teenagers with bombs made of nail-polish,” or the end of living organisms?

Thing 2
I think this is the hippie-generation-in-a-nut-shell-summary I’ve been searching for. I found it here. It's a great essay, so click the link and read it.

“Fascism comes to a nation when a group of fanatical outsiders forge alliances, based on political and economic expediency, with a corrupt ruling elite -- as all the while, a fearful, distracted, denial-ridden public surrenders their liberty (then, inevitably, their souls) for the illusion of security and a few material goods. I first began to take note of the acceptance of proto-fascistic tendencies, in the cultural banalities evinced in the 1970s, even in those of us who were too young to have cast a vote for Nixon. I noticed my fellow peak-years-of-the-Baby-Boom teenagers were not the progeny of The Woodstock Nation, as the beleaguered authoritarian types of the era had feared. Instead we were the floating spirit-incarnate of a pop culture Weimar Republic. As a rule, we used drugs neither to expand our awareness nor as an act of social or political rebellion -- rather they were utilized as apolitical agents of anesthetization. Like the sound and fury of our pinball machine distractions, and our Muscle Car imperialism, and the pseudo-edginess of the so-called FM radio revolution (that was, in reality, the advent of corporate rock) -- our seeming rebelliousness was, below the lank-haired, faded denim-clad, reefer-reeking surface, a pervasive anomie ... the metastasizing of an insidious indifference -- to a large measure a radical renunciation of anything more challenging than those things available within the immediate confines of our comfort zones. It was a revelry in adolescent, pop culture narcissism, punctuated by incessant self-medication, that was mistaken for the excesses of freedom ... In short, just the sort of numbed-out, muck-headed Sturm und Drang one should expect from young minds -- bereft of life experience, brainwashed by an existence inundated by commercial manipulation, and incompetently educated by the state -- that were larded with Quaaludes and the like, for Christ's sake!”

Sounding Smart and Things to Do

2005-08-05T16:55:00.000-04:00

So after a great deal of research (scanning a bunch of blogs, making mental notes on bibliographies, and general word of mouth) I’ve concluded that the key to sounding smart within critical social theory is having an extensive knowledge, or at least knowing how to talk endlessly, about Foucault, Badiou, and Habermas. So, not so much in order to sound smart for smarts sake, but because I think I’m smart and I’d like to sound smart, I plan on studying the aforementioned over the following months beginning with Foucault. I may not get as far as Badiou, but I would definitely like to know a thing or two about Habermas and the entire Frankfurt School in general. I am beginning with Foucault because from what I can tell he seems to be among the easier reads of twentieth century philosophers, I am already most familiar with him, and I already tend to agree with him on a number of issues. I had hoped to begin with his work on gender, but I can’t get an English copy of his Histoire de la Sexualite, and so I will be beginning here.

I am adding these studies to my list of, teaching myself high school math, further inquiries into the philosophy of identity (another necessity to sounding smart), reading a novel a week (give or take a week), teaching myself Quebecois French (would probably be easier if I actually knew French French), maintaining a full course load with a 3.5 GPA, not loosing my youthful good looks (remain active), the continued upkeep of this blog, and all the while trying to maintain a reasonable standard of the “good life” (I need a girlfriend or I need to get laid.).

Wow, this is a lot of stuff to do in a year. Gosh Michelle, I’m starting to sound a lot like you… so that stomach pain didn’t end up being an ulcer? I’m quite pleased with my “new life,” only a few months ago, trying to achieve even one of these would have seemed highly unlikely. (I still think the novel a week is little unlikely… shhhhhh…)

It’s a little intimidating committing all this to text. Now it seems a little more binding.

Edit: I missed Nietzsche... He’s important too but in more general terms.

Assimilation and Radicalism

2005-08-04T19:35:00.000-04:00

The appointment of Michaëlle Jean has also got me thinking about another matter all together. Recently we saw the very public debate over the appointment of a new judge to the Supreme Court in America. I doubt there will be any public outcry in Canada over Madame Jean’s leftish leanings. What strikes me is the way Canada’s “mosaic” reacts to major political appointments as opposed to the American “melting pot”. We would think that an assimilated population would get along better than an eclectic one. Why isn’t this the case? I’m feeling lazy this evening so I won’t go any further, but I’m thinking somewhere along the lines of assimilative practices and the radical polarization of populations being closely related. It would seem that the more eclectic you make a debate, the more difficult it is for nut-jobs to legitimate their ideologies. Is this a good thing? I think so.

Yeay, Michaëlle Jean!!

2005-08-04T19:34:00.000-04:00

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m a quite pleased with the recent announcement that Michaëlle Jean will be our next governor general. She’s young, she’s black, she’s French, she’s an immigrant, she’s got it all. But I think what I like most about her is that she’s a journalist with an amazingly accurate and philanthropic world vision. In an interview on the CBC, one of her coworkers – at the CBC – said that she struck him as the kind of person that would speak out on issues that mattered to her. I think that’s fabulous. I’m all for sober second thought when its warranted, and especially if the thought is actually sober. I am especially excited about her pledges concerning child poverty but I hope she will also raise her voice on issues of immigration and third world poverty.

Religion and God, and My Theoretical Framework

2005-07-31T14:57:00.000-04:00

I’m something of a postmodernist... critical theorist... structualist...

God is this abstract omnipotent, omniscient, and omni benevolent being. Religion is all text associated with god.

I spent most of my adolescents thinking about the question of religion and god. I’ve also taken a course on natural philosophy and religion. I did two years of seminary on the bible, which has also proved useful.

It’s difficult to talk about my opinion of religion and god without piecing it into my all around theoretical framework, which has managed to complicate itself and recomplicate its self exponentially over the past couple years with every new thing I read. Basically theory in general is my passion and I tend to assimilate it into a hodgepodge of my own. This makes for an extremely vague and often contradictory frame of thought. Some professors have told me that this is totally normal and eventually things will become more concrete as I mature.

That being said I’m something of a post-modernist/ critical theorist (vanilla Marxist)/ structualist (I tend to lop post-structuralism in with post-modernism). Translated, this means essentially that I think irrationality is an essential consequence of rationality and vies versa (structuralism). Thus, we all need to create our own mini-narratives between the two for dealing with our day-to-day lives (post-modernism). All the while, we need to keep in mind that there are powerful forces at play within society that may try and manipulate us to act in their interest rather than our own (critical theory).

Applied to religion and god, I should first clarify why I keep saying religion AND god. God is this abstract omnipotent, omniscient, and omni benevolent being. Religion is all text associated with god. Text is essentially everything (vaguely Jacques Derrida). Everything being the dogma, the institution, the scriptures, or the very name and function associated with god. Basically god could be anything; once we start textualizing (talking about, writing about, gesturing about etc.) him, this second stage takes on the form of religion.

After this there's a long spiel about the imperfection of text as a man made system of symbols, the disparity between the signified and the signifier (vaguely Ferdinand de Saussure I think), and how it doesn't do god justice.

Basically it all concludes with me arguing that god may or may not exist but this is hardly relevant as whether he does or not we should still be good people (this roots itself in totally different conclusion on the innate innocents of man and universal morality). Religion is of man and thus somewhat arbitrary and extremely susceptible to the manipulations of those in positions of power. This does not necessarily negate it, for many it serves a very important function, and as the saying goes, "what's wrong with a crutch if you need it." I don't mean that pretentiously, I mean it within the context of us needing to construct our own realities according to our own needs. (Lately I’ve been deeply contemplating to what degree I use theory in a similar manner; I think I may touch on this in some previous blog posts). The pious, just like myself, should always be weary of potential power structures within their chosen dogmas (in my case academia).

In conclusion, I’m doubtful of whether Jesus actually existed or not, although even more sceptical of his role in some kind of grand atonement as the Son of God. I am basically convinced the bible is not the word of god but man's. Religions tend to creep me out but I recognize that there are several kind and virtuous people within these institutions. Some of my closest friends are deeply pious, and I respect them for the fact that they stand for something and constantly strive to better themselves. I will often say "hi" to missionaries because I know they're young men that believe they are genuinely trying to make the world a better place and are sacrificing a great deal for this cause. I often lament that the world of Christians and other self-proclaimed religious types not take their prophets teachings more seriously and actually extend olive branches to one another. I get very upset when the church and the state interfere too much with one another, but this has more to do with civil liberties and democratic majority versus minority politics than any threat posed by the content of religious doctrines. Every once and awhile, and to the lament of my pious friends, when I’m feeling especially small, I’ll pray to what I don't understand, which is a great deal. Even though I am essentially praying to the space between the atoms, this often works. For romantic sake I sometimes like to think that this is less of me playing a mind trick on myself, and more some tacit universal force or spirituality reassuring me that none of us are actually alone.

Nobel Pizes for Everyone!... but me

2005-07-30T08:31:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I wish I were going into something that could bring me a little status and coin.

I was recently reading an article on economic sociology that I found on post at pubsociology. (I can’t cite the exact article because the motherfukers at the Boston Post want me to register. Might i add, only after i read three pages of the four page article. God knows I hate it when potentially useful sites have to bugger you with usernames and passwords.) The article begins by introducing some of the cacophony between economists and sociologists, but not without first mentioning that a mid-century economist won a Nobel Prize for his work using economic exchange theory to describe social phenomenon. Wow I sure whish sociology could have countered that with a Nobel Prize winner of our own. That’s when it occurred to me that such a come back would sure as heck be easier if there actually was a Nobel Prize for sociology like there is for economics.

For some reason in the back of my mind (and I’m sure in the back a many other minds) having a Nobel Prize seems to legitimize just about everything... just a little. This probably has something to do with the often talked about Nobel Peace Prize. So how the hell did economics get such an honour, to be associated in the same breath as Nobel and peace, and in virtue of this all things good and kind? Easy. I did a little research and it turns out the peckers bought it. “In 1968, the Bank of Sweden instituted the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. (nobelprize.org)”

Damn, sometimes I wish I were going into something that could bring me a little status and coin. To make matters worse two posts down Bart Simpson adds his commentary to my predicament:

Bart Simpson: "I was so bored, I cut the ponytail off the guy in front of us."
(Putting ponytail on his own head) "Look at me! I'm a grad student! I'm 30 years old and I made $600 last year."
Marge: "Bart! Don't make fun of grad students! They just made a terrible life choice."

Niger and Me: Hiding From the Way Things Are, With What I’m Going to Do

2005-07-25T19:26:00.000-04:00

I know what’s happening and I know what’s wrong but I justify my existence using my passive awareness and the thing I’m ‘going’ to accomplish.

I can’t fucking stand it; it makes me want to vomit. I just caught the latest update on the famine in Niger on BBC World. These people are dying slow and painful deaths in consequence of our luxury. And don’t tell me that they’re lazy and we work harder and that’s just the way supply and demand works. A three-month-old child born into starvation and surely suffering brain retardation from mal-nutrition can hardly be blamed for their circumstance. We weep when a dozen or so get shot up by some spoiled others in a school shooting but thousands are dying of starvation because of our own ignorance.

But what really makes me sick in all this is myself. I know what’s happening and I know what’s wrong but I justify my existence using my passive awareness and the thing I’m ‘going’ to accomplish. I know what’s happening but what can I really do? These things are macro problems (Take that you post-modernist. Actually I’m a pot-modernist, only a critical one) and need macro solutions. So I bury myself in an education so that I can keep telling myself that one day I’ll write the book that changes all this.

But what if such intentions are just a façade typical of the intellectualizing class. Maybe we construct such aims in order to hide from the truth. How many intellectuals are there and how many really make a difference? So one or two every fifty some odd years sifts through all the pretension and posturing and writes something worth reading. And this is the goal I set for myself because if I didn’t I couldn’t justify anything.

Someone once asked me whether I thought this kind of accomplishment was really a realistic goal. I replied, “No, of course not.” Then I repeated myself, and trailed off. What else was there to say? At that moment I understood the existentialists, but what does this mean? Is my seemingly benevolent cause only a justification made in blind faith, a kind of mega-justification on which all the other justifications of my fragile life relies?

Jumping Off Bridges and Playing Chicken and the Global Free Market

2005-07-25T18:41:00.000-04:00

Written quickly and poorly but I thought the ideas were kind of clever and worth publishing. Could definitely make for a fun and interesting article with a little research and effort.

If your friend jumped off a bridge would you follow? Who never had their parents tell them this after demanding that they buy them the latest fad? Then why would you jump off a bridge if your competitors do? Welcome to the child games of global market forces. Once again two large Canadian banks want to merge, they’re justification is that they must in order to keep up with larger global competitors (watched this on CBC News Business). This is how global free market capitalism works.

Market forces could also be compared to a game of chicken with each business moving ever closer to the brink of complete and total destruction. Don’t believe me? Let’s use the environmental analysis. Who in their right mind believes that if we let the oil companies do what ever they want they wouldn’t destroy the planet. Ironically what profits could an oil company reap from an extinct planet?

Both games are illogical in virtue of their unsustainability; they were illogical when we were children because they might eventually kill us. And yet we consider them to be the accepted rules of engagement. Maybe we’re completely doomed, or maybe these are just growing pains. Capitalism is also still in its infancy but just like the rest of us it won’t grow into a fully functioning adult of it’s own. An effort needs to be made to mature it through socialization (pun intended). I don’t think letting it run wild is going to help it much.

Poser For Life!

2005-07-23T18:53:00.000-04:00

I think this is just some kind of a note to my future self. It’s fairly poorly written and it sounds as if it is in the voice of a depressed teenager. It’s mostly just something on paper for blog’s sake because I haven’t written anything in awhile.

I’m an intellectual, or at least on my way to becoming one. Having grown up in punk rock and skateboard culture I know that a more appropriate name for what I am is a poser. Everybody starts off a poser.

I hate calling myself an intellectual because that term screams pretentious. It is pretentious because it sets me apart from others, as if I’m authentic and they’re not. But what about a poser intellectual? I suppose I’m something of a try hard that probably doesn’t deserve any respect from either the unauthentic or the authentic crowds. Unlike many posers before me I’m actually quite happy where I am. I don’t want to become an intellectual in order to exclude people. I want to become one in order to learn things, to better understand my life, and to maybe one day make the world a better place. I doubt leading an exclusionary lifestyle is going to fulfill any of these motives. I sometimes wonder why people of the intellectual breed act in such manner since they are of higher learning and must realize the virtues of knowledge, understanding, and kindness. Maybe true intellectuals are just the ignorant excluding the ignorant.

I suppose some ironies always stay the same. When I was punk, there were punks that called other punks posers. Ironically they were the excluded excluding the excluded. I was a poser then too I guess because I hated excluding.

Everybody starts off a poser but I hope that never changes for me. I’d rather be the excluded for life than ever be an excluder. I’m sure I’ve excluded someone somewhere in my past and that’s not cool. We’ve got to learn from past mistakes.

Famines Don't "Strike"

2005-07-18T20:25:00.000-04:00

Impending famine cover stories lack the iamges of the emaciated and dying necessary to trigger viewer reaction.

The news headline tonight on BBC WORLD: “Famine strikes in Niger.” Are we so obsessed with by the minute shock and awe news headlines that we need to use a verb like strike to depict the occurrence of famine? There is nothing sudden about famine. It only comes as a consequence of severe error on the part of local and international authorities over a long period. People do not starve to death overnight.

The broadcast explained that that the famine occurred following a late rainy season. This implicates the food production cycle, which extends over seasons. The rain didn’t come to water the planted crops so they began to dry out and die. Then when it finally did rain, it only succeeded in flooding the scorched earth bringing with it insects and disease. At what point during this process did it not occur to observers that there would be no food grown. When no food is grown rations run out and people begin to starve.

Some might argue that when food doesn’t grow of course people starve. Well, when food doesn’t grow in Saskatchewan or Nebraska people don’t starve. Where was the plan of action when the experts first noticed there would be no food this season? Where was the international aid?

The BBC referred to their story as “exclusive.” What is exclusive about large-scale starvation? As far as I know starvation typically occurs over large geographical areas. I'm sure it must be accesible to more newsgroups than the forementioned. The story wasn’t exclusive to the BBC, rather the BBC was the only broadcast willing to investigate and run the story. It’s a shame the story couldn’t have been broadcast several weeks or even months earlier when the chain of events necessary for such a large-scale event began occurring. Unfortunately, I suppose, impending famine cover stories lack the images of emaciated and dying necessary to trigger viewer reaction.

By telling the story after the fact and as if it has just happened the long term history and socio-political economic conditions may be overlooked by some audiences. Rather than question the world systems that facilitate such events they will simply see the images and dismiss them as unfortunate. They may think to themselves, “what a shame nothing could have been done for that little dead girl.”

I am aware that the BBC is among the best television sources we have for such things, as most other networks won’t pay any attention until human death counters reach appropriate disgust levels. When they do, people will be horrified but unable to do much. Perhaps there will be an aid drive and someone will be able to unload his or her pity or guilt with an instantaneous twenty-dollar donation. Meanwhile the same inadequate social structures will continue producing many more famines in the future.

Because We All Hate These Quizzes

2005-07-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

I found this at The Weblog. Though I've never read this book, the bio seems to work. I especially like the last line.

You're The Sound and the Fury!

by William Faulkner

Strong-willed but deeply confused, you are trying to come to grips
with a major crisis in your life. You can see many different perspectives on the issue,
but you're mostly overwhelmed with despair at what you've lost. People often have a hard
time understanding you, but they have some vague sense that you must be brilliant
anyway. Ultimately, you signify nothing.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Life is my Right and Yours

2005-07-13T14:56:00.000-04:00

Blow me up tomorrow and call me a martyr. If I die in the subway at the hands of a terrorist go ahead and celebrate.

In light of the recent bombings of the London subway, I thought I had might as well join the bandwagon and put my opinion down on the matter of “terrorists.” Especially since the media seems to be so damn sure it will happen in Canada next. Due to the class-race dynamic here (more on his some other time), I’m inclined to believe if one does occur it will most likely occur in Montreal.

Blow me up tomorrow and call me a martyr. If I die in the subway at the hands of a terrorist (I hate that word) go ahead and celebrate, I died for what I believed in. I died going about my daily affairs well aware of the risk but unwilling to bow down. If the CESUS or the USA or any other takes me out, fuck them too; terrosists come in shades of grey not brown. Life is my right as a human, and creature of this world, and I won’t allow anyone to restrain that whether that is through coercion or fear mongering or any other means.

I would like to stress that murder is not the only way to deny someone of their right to life. Denying someone any fundamental human right also denies them of their right to life. I use the expression of my right to life loosely. It simply means to live: to be able to experience this world freely, and to be able to realize ones potential as they see fit. Language, press, religion, and assembly are all means by which we experience this world and realize our potentials.

This doesn’t mean I’m an asshole that thinks I have a right to an automatic machine gun, private property (I’ll right another essay on this some other time… I’m not a communist), and to do whatever the fuck I want regardless of others. You see those things indirectly deny others their right to life, and that my friend is the only restriction I must abide by. If in order to reach my full potential I must deny others of their potential then I am not realizing my potential at all. I have no right to deny another of their right to life, and that is what these “terrorists” are doing, and that is what makes them terrorists. I will continue going about my life conscientious of how my actions affect others, trying not to impede another’s experience.

Naturally there is a normative almost Kantian implication to this. It is rather unlikely, if not impossible that I can go about my entire life without ever stepping on someone’s personal freedoms. What is necessary is that I never act in such a way that I can be accused of not trying to be conscientious of others. Can I be perfect, no, but I can contemplate my own actions using the knowledge I’ve acquired and decide whether I’ll repeat them. Make special note that I have mentioned the knowledge I’ve acquired. I also would like to imply that it is also my responsibility as a human to seek out knowledge in order to better understand my past actions.

Those terrorists are those that narrow their minds to their own fundamental values and disregard other’s right to life. They are not fulfilling their responsibilities as humans to continue expanding their knowledge in order to not impose on others. They are not prepared to consider the wrong in their own actions in consequence of this refusal to reflect, and thus they fail as creatures of this planet.

Pretention and 'The Sublime and the Beautiful'

2005-07-05T23:14:00.000-04:00

It is void of debate in consequense of its inefibility. In otherwords it’s a convorsation killer. What better way to feel full of yourself than by capitalizing on the final word.

Awhile back, a good friend of mine told me of a jackass in her English Lit. Class that never seemed to be able to shut up about the “sublime and the beautiful”. She had deduced him to be a fourth year student making up a credit in her first year class. He would proclaim the phrase with a kind of astuteness that made all the ignorant beginners about him feign with envy, or at least he seemed to have this in mind. Naturally his pretension just made everyone despise him.

I made special note of this, concluding in my typically knave mind, that this! Yes, THIS must be the ultimate path to pretension (I’m not sure whether finding this inspired me to avoid it so as to not become a dick, or on the contrary, to use it in convincing mankind to despise me.) If only I had a clue of what the sublime and the beautiful were. I don’t mean that I wanted to figure out some kind of age-old debate on what are the good things in life. I mean that I had to look up sublime in the dictionary. Although it was useful to know that it was something “Characterized by nobility; majestic," (Dictionary.com) this didn’t seem to elevate the statement to the kind of prolific meaning that would cause such a feeling of status in the mind of the speaker.

Time past, and the terms came up together often in many academic and literary texts however there never seemed to be a common bind between them. I was beginning to give up hope until today. While passing time dodging through the Wikipedia: The Free Encyclodedia I came across the term under “gothic horror.” Upon clicking the link this poped up:

“For Immanuel Kant, the sublime represented a feeling derived from aesthetic judgment, in which we realize the limits of our human nature: that is, we realize we cannot conceive of something because it is part of the noumenal realm. Much like being next to a brick wall, we know the wall is there and that, presumably, there is something inaccessible on the other side. For Kant, the thrill we get from this realization is true sublimity; the realization that we cannot fully comprehend our own nature. (Wikipedia)"

Naturally it dawned on me right away. How could I have missed this? Obviously the sublime and the beautiful, being as grandiose as they are, must be completely and totally beyond classification or witness. It is all encompassing and hence empty. It is void of debate in consequense of its inefibility. In otherwords it’s a convorsation killer. What better way to feel full of yourself than by capitalizing the final word.

An image of several intellectuals gathering at a table in silence. Like a dewl, once the last actor is seated they simultaneously as quickly as possible, blurt out the coveted words. The first to bleat them out completely wins the debate. Naturally, since they are of a supurior moral quality, he silently rises and leads the others out of the room. They disperse into the night. The great debate is over.

Testing, Testing... First Political Thing I Ever Wrote: "Anarchy"

2005-07-05T17:22:00.000-04:00

This essay was written about five years ago, when i was fifteen. Since i make reference to 9/11, I must have edited it at a later date, most likely the following fall.

Radicalism: a word that sends most people running for shelter after hearing someone even whisper it. It brings thoughts of riots and tear gas, war and death. But is it really all that bad.

Without radicalism there often would have never been change. It is something that people see and hear. What good are ideas if they are not heard? It is so easy to dismiss or not even mention peaceful protests because once they are over, they are gone; however, a destructive riot will be remembered for years to come, particularly if someone died in it. We very rarely hear of protests in social studies which didn’t have costs.

It is the job of the radical to get the attention of the people on top. Sometimes the people on top refuse to change, even if they know the whole world is against them. It is in situations like these, where the majority supports the change but the boss isn’t listening, that violence may be an option. He might just listen when he has a gun pointed at his head.

Though their acts of theft and vandalism are generally more of a nuisance then a contribution to society they can occasionally make a positive difference. Look at the war of independence for example. Most Americans don’t regret the blood their ancestors shed for them to be free.

In the case of the Quebec City Riot I honestly think the radicals were a necessary part of the protests. You see the government kept the peaceful protesters so far away from the picture that foreign leaders probably wouldn’t have even noticed there were even protests going on. By breaking the barricade they delayed the meetings, thus forcing them to notice. I would also like to note that the barricade was the only thing they broke. They did not vandalize any surrounding property. Perhaps even the radicals are looking for more exact methods of getting attention. Notice how they only wrecked what they were protesting; a fence witch symbolized oppression.

Unfortunately today we are faced with a great threat to radicalism. Since September 11th they have been selected as scapegoats for terrorism. It is dangerously easy for the “man” to get rid of opposition by labeling them terrorists whether they are or not. Laws are being passed that would give the government rights to act on such persons without following the usual judicial procedures. Would you consider the protesters in Quebec City terrorists?

It often scares me just how trusting people are of the government and how little they are willing to do to change things that are obviously wrong. In a country of pacifists maybe we need a few small cliques of extremists to keep the government on their tows and the people up to date with what’s really going on.