tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951400961276636042.post9132324217564863772..comments2022-10-11T23:58:40.139-07:00Comments on insipidities: Modern life is rubbishUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951400961276636042.post-54065163409704128332013-03-12T08:05:00.684-07:002013-03-12T08:05:00.684-07:00This text, intended as a mere 'comment' ha...This text, intended as a mere 'comment' has gained a higher than usual number of views. For this reason, I have slightly re-written it. I mentioned earlier, that as I wrote it, I became aware of flaws in my argumentation but could not remember at that moment what they were. I think I have now remembered. Firstly, I seem to be making an argument for the primacy of consciousness (an idealist position). Secondly, I am asserting the negative role of consciousness in relation to autonomic/automatic process but what about the process of thought itself (its own pathologies)? Again, this could be read as idealism. For me, these are trivial objections but I record them, even so. Below is a partial engagement with the first objection which I have included in the text:<br /><br />'Eccentric science develops the capacity to make decisions and seeks to introduce a specific experimental judgment at this specific juncture in order that it might later thwart and rescind that very same judgment in circumstances of 'unexpected consequence'. Eccentric science realises the principle of 'decision making' by dismantling actual decisions made at an earlier stage. By definition, it supposes a retroactive practice of reaching back into the mechanisms of production. It engages the ground of its own appearance.'editorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16045036916012734528noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951400961276636042.post-6097621722117187862013-03-11T12:43:39.374-07:002013-03-11T12:43:39.374-07:00Show me who is set free of gravity and I’ll show y...Show me who is set free of gravity and I’ll show you a person with a whole other set of problems. Similarly, elephants are free from the capacity to jump whilst most insects are free to enjoy getting stuck up in ‘surface tension’. <br /><br />The faustian protagonist of the Dutch film, The Vanishing gains the knowledge, ‘what happened’, about which he has become obsessed, at the expense of his own life. He is not freed by the knowledge, quite the opposite. We get what we want at a price we cannot comprehend until the moment we have to pay it, and then we are brought face to face with the unexpected, all those forces we had given no thought to. A life of freedom would be the life of the eloi whilst ‘necessity’ becomes a moralistic club to beat people with. In other words, the marxist categories of ‘necessity’ and ‘freedom’ are intellectually weak. We do not know what they mean. <br /><br />However, I think the way I formulated my sentence which pricked your interest was not well written. I should have said ‘realised’ rather than ‘set free’. However, I would say that we do implicitly understand what ‘freedom’ means, it has a fuzzy sense (which does not bear too close an examination) that reamins grammatically useful. For example, when it gets to Friday evening, I feel released from work, even though this is only relative and also inaccurate. Still, I feel it. And when the biggest billy goat gruff had finished with the troll, he trip-trapped over over the bridge and frolicked in the green meadow on the other side. He was ‘free’. The story ends in that moment. In reality of course, the story only begins at that point. We have bent the world to our will, and then what? Maybe closure is a better word than freedom. <br /><br />I think all this probably means that freedom is not a useful reference point, not a good concept, not a useful political ideal but is still an alright word for everyday experience. I tend not to use it ‘theoretically’, in fact I am not sure I have ever talked about ideals such as freedom as I know the day after these have been achieved the same old squabbles begin again over petty trivialities. We all turn out to be intransigent and uncooperative in the end. And nothing is more de-motivated than a commune where tomorrow has just dawned. Upon that day, we won’t have sprouted wings, we won’t have perfected telepathy, we won’t b singing all day. We will just be the us. For me, communism is not the achievement of heaven on earth but a better containment of natural born foolishness. <br /><br />To draw some sort of theoretical point out of my drivel, I would say that Marxism is very bad at describing communism, it is very bad at thinking about constraints and conditioning in social relations, and is altogether too clumsy for expressing what humans are and can be. The significance of this is that it is fine for someone to sing, ‘I’m set free, to find a new illusion’ (i.e. to talk about whatever is dragging them down and how they wish to get rid of it) but it is a very dangerous concept where it becomes a reference point in the structural planning of social forces. But this is true of any word. I think the word communism should be made to wait, Kafka-like, outside the door to communism and be refused entry by a surly gatekeeper. <br /><br />My favourite image of someone lost before the idea of freedom is Pip in Great Expectations, who when asked to describe his experiences at Miss Haversham’s house, and not wanting to disappoint his eager listeners invents carriages and a game of waving coloured flags. Freedom is a ‘Great Expectation’, i.e. a desire that is born only to be frustrated. <br /><br />Good luck with your dog, but dogs will never be free until they understand the principle of hammocks. Maybe Cassius Marcellus Coolidge had the right idea of what freedom would mean for a dog. editorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16045036916012734528noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951400961276636042.post-71079480825681677302013-03-11T03:37:47.005-07:002013-03-11T03:37:47.005-07:00This is not meant to detract from the more importa...This is not meant to detract from the more important points that could be discussed. It is merely a slight diversion.<br /><br />Yes, and when you say, ‘The royal science of Marxism depends upon the hypothesis that once the fetter of value is removed from the productive process, need is set free to truly express what it is to be human.’….<br /><br />I am instantly drawn to an attempt to compare humans being set free from value in terms of dogs being set free…<br /><br />If humans are no more or less than dogs, only different in some ways, then what does the freedom of dogs look like? If humans are no more or less than dogs, only different in some ways, what does the freedom of humans look like? What is it to be human? Are we animals or are we supernatural beings? In which category does our freedom reside, through which gate should we pass? And this quite in respect of the fact, as it seems to me, that the willing passing through any gate is absolutely impossible for individuals as well as masses, as the will, like everything else, is contingent: a slave to environment, biology and gene-inherited character. Where I live the old myth is that if one is born of certain parents, who are born of other certain parents, then ones character is predetermined. This is one reasonable way of giving primacy to character over the notion that we can do what we want. Of course, the notion of freedom is tied irrevocably to the notion of the supernatural being. The notion of the supernatural being in our time - that is, the notion of the developing human being - it seems, is derived entirely from the Augustinian thesis that God gave humans free will in order that they should prove their worth to God. It is not surprising that some science fiction writers have postulated that humans will eventually evolve into lights of pure mind. Our evolution is written in the Christian past, as is the Marxist ideal. <br /><br />Tonight I will attempt to free my dog…<br />lineshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12704481418468481995noreply@blogger.com