Thus Spake DerridaThustra
J Seymour MacNicely
"*Anarcissie*" <anarc...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:
1172070534....@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
> This is literally sophomoric.
Which would totally eliminate any possibility of its being
figuratively sophomoric, of course.
> Years ago, before the decadence
> of Usenet . . .
Surely there are few who would doubt but that technology can be
altogether so great a catalyst for progress, as for decadence--
depending on who is using it. But no matter how hard Anarcissie or
SirBlob might try, such use as they practice, cannot make Usenet, as a
tool, decadent. Usenet itself, being a product of the 'meta-
narrative' that affirms the goal and possibility of progress can only
be progressive and not decadent. So this goes also to politics: As
progress and decadence are a dichotomy of countervailing forces,
clearly nobody who could call himself a "liberal progressive" can at
the same time affirm the possibility of the "postmodern" as defined
within the constructs of Lyotard and Derrida. But never mind . . .
> those who had just heard of "postmodern" etc. at
> school would pop up and inform everyone that there could be
> no such thing. It would take the slower ones until their second
> year to accomplish this feat. How long have you been working
> on it?
This is to suggest that after four years of a liberal arts education
with a major in sociology and a minor in humanities, and nearly forty
years of 'postgrad' life in the stacks of the library and bookstores,
someone such as myself would not understand the intended distinction
between the terms 'modern' and 'modernism'?
Come, come, my boy, you really must try to do better than that. And
what manner of crackerjack college did you attend that you never
learned a proper scholarly disdain for the "strawman argument"?
It ought to have been quite clear from the statement of my position
that as scholars of the humanities seek for a term to describe a
period of art, literature, architecture and music, which they would
suppose has moved beyond the avant-garde outer reaches of Modernism,
they should realize that the 'modernist' period if it is now truly
over, can no longer with any deference paid to the language and its
meanings, be properly referred to as 'modern'.
If the modern is no longer in modernism, then the term 'modernist' for
it must go. And this would be done just as in the past when the art
of the Romantic period was not called 'romantic' then, but *modern*.
Scholars later on had to think creatively enough to come up with
something better than 'postmodern', so they came up with
"Romanticism".
Even the Dadaists were more creative than such 'postmodernists' as we
see today. Perhaps some permutation of the word 'decadence' such as
"decadent" would do for the 'postmodern'? Let us have a term of art
for a period of art that flatters itself to have gone beyond the
'modern', which has the conceit to imagine it can, so very soon in
history, do that--then by all means! Go ahead and call it
'Decadentalism' which would be ever so much more *itself* than to
merely call it e.g. 'anti' or 'post' transcendentalism--which is
really, in the end what decadentalism (postmodernism) does amount to,
this continual, ongoing decadent return to the rabidly, rapidly
decaying dog-vomit of Nietzsche's revolt against Rationalism.
Where all the transcendental meta-narratives are dead, is where
everything *is* dead, looking forward only to what's dead, or i.e.
Death: a dead future inhabited by dead souls where things are
'postmodern' because nothing new is being said, let alone hoped for,
or dreamed, where matter and materialism is it, and the modern is
entirely in a phase of being retrograde, as in the Dark Ages, the last
time Zarathustra in the form of Islam nearly ruled the world.
--
Mackie
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
"Who Did the Dahlia?"
Now On-Line -- Chapter 16: Blood of the Sun
[As suddenly, massively, transformatively revised]
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
> ...
> Where all the transcendental meta-narratives are dead, is where
> everything *is* dead, looking forward only to what's dead, or i.e.
> Death: a dead future inhabited by dead souls where things are
> 'postmodern' because nothing new is being said, let alone hoped for,
> or dreamed, where matter and materialism is it, and the modern is
> entirely in a phase of being retrograde, as in the Dark Ages, the last
> time Zarathustra in the form of Islam nearly ruled the world.
" ' Dead' is dead."
Do you realize, Mac, that you are probably the most postmodern
(-istic) writer working Usenet today? All surface and no structure.
You should consider running for office. Alas, I can't really
appreciate it all; I think I'm stuck in the 18th century.
sirblob
> On Feb 22, 4:31 am, "J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_the_n...@bigstring.com>
> wrote:
>
> > ...
> > Where all the transcendental meta-narratives are dead, is where
> > everything *is* dead, looking forward only to what's dead, or i.e.
> > Death: a dead future inhabited by dead souls where things are
> > 'postmodern' because nothing new is being said, let alone hoped for,
> > or dreamed, where matter and materialism is it, and the modern is
> > entirely in a phase of being retrograde, as in the Dark Ages, the last
> > time Zarathustra in the form of Islam nearly ruled the world.
>
> " ' Dead' is dead."
>
> Do you realize, Mac, that you are probably the most postmodern
> (-istic) writer working Usenet today? All surface and no structure.
what?! again, why do you think it was postmodernism- and not
unfinished modernity- that invented this all surface and no structure
thing?
> You should consider running for office. Alas, I can't really
> appreciate it all; I think I'm stuck in the 18th century.
well no. you're stuck in a moral majority that doesnt seem to think it
has to explain itself to postmodernism; there's nothing like being
part of a majority in the quest for having reason on one's side.
sirblob
wrote:
> "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:
>
> 1172070534.711309.46...@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
>
> > This is literally sophomoric.
>
> Which would totally eliminate any possibility of its being
> figuratively sophomoric, of course.
>
> > Years ago, before the decadence
> > of Usenet . . .
>
> Surely there are few who would doubt but that technology can be
> altogether so great a catalyst for progress, as for decadence--
> depending on who is using it. But no matter how hard Anarcissie or
> SirBlob might try, such use as they practice, cannot make Usenet, as a
> tool, decadent. Usenet itself, being a product of the 'meta-
> narrative' that affirms the goal and possibility of progress can only
> be progressive and not decadent. So this goes also to politics: As
> progress and decadence are a dichotomy of countervailing forces,
> clearly nobody who could call himself a "liberal progressive" can at
> the same time affirm the possibility of the "postmodern" as defined
> within the constructs of Lyotard and Derrida. But never mind . .
of course, mackie, that's because you think liberalism,
libertarianism and freedom are the neoconservative corporate slavery
you've fallen in love with.
.
>
> > those who had just heard of "postmodern" etc. at
> > school would pop up and inform everyone that there could be
> > no such thing. It would take the slower ones until their second
> > year to accomplish this feat. How long have you been working
> > on it?
>
> This is to suggest that after four years of a liberal arts education
> with a major in sociology and a minor in humanities, and nearly forty
> years of 'postgrad' life in the stacks of the library and bookstores,
> someone such as myself would not understand the intended distinction
> between the terms 'modern' and 'modernism'?
you're not the first ex-far leftist that turns far rightard in his old
age that i've met, and you won't be the last.
>
> Come, come, my boy, you really must try to do better than that. And
> what manner of crackerjack college did you attend that you never
> learned a proper scholarly disdain for the "strawman argument"?
>
precisely your only resort is the strawman, and all because you
neocons are ridiculed by postmodernism.
> It ought to have been quite clear from the statement of my position
> that as scholars of the humanities seek for a term to describe a
> period of art, literature, architecture and music, which they would
> suppose has moved beyond the avant-garde outer reaches of Modernism,
> they should realize that the 'modernist' period if it is now truly
> over, can no longer with any deference paid to the language and its
> meanings, be properly referred to as 'modern'.
>
nah, we'll allow you your modern works. ingres is modern. disneyworld
is modern. hollywood's golden age is modern. and the more exciting art-
works from those periods are modernist. same applies for contemporary
art; you can have the multiplexes and postmodern authors like
spielberg, ron howard and david beckham and postmodernists can take
p2p, jacques rivette, cassavetes and sokurov.
> If the modern is no longer in modernism, then the term 'modernist' for
> it must go. And this would be done just as in the past when the art
> of the Romantic period was not called 'romantic' then, but *modern*.
> Scholars later on had to think creatively enough to come up with
> something better than 'postmodern', so they came up with
> "Romanticism".
>
bla bla bla. so you neocons havent got any control over the liberal
arts for a long time. well you can't blame em, all your artistic
products are shit.
> Even the Dadaists were more creative than such 'postmodernists' as we
> see today.
dadaism isnt what's onscreen, it's the reaction it provokes in the
middle class moron. i guess postmodernism doesnt believe in the need
for ridiculing you today, as it's the bleeding obvious reloaded.
brainwash em while they're young, i mean look at mani deli.
Perhaps some permutation of the word 'decadence' such as
> "decadent" would do for the 'postmodern'?
nah, any worth from today lies much more in postmodernism than in your
postclassicism.
Let us have a term of art
> for a period of art that flatters itself to have gone beyond the
> 'modern', which has the conceit to imagine it can, so very soon in
> history, do that--then by all means! Go ahead and call it
> 'Decadentalism' which would be ever so much more *itself* than to
> merely call it e.g. 'anti' or 'post' transcendentalism--which is
> really, in the end what decadentalism (postmodernism) does amount to,
> this continual, ongoing decadent return to the rabidly, rapidly
> decaying dog-vomit of Nietzsche's revolt against Rationalism.
>
ah nietzsche, the honest conservative, which you havent been capable
of digesting. nietszche reminds me of videogames. ''rationalism''? god
mackie forty years wanking away into books and all you've managed has
to conclude you're a ''rationalist''.
> Where all the transcendental meta-narratives are dead, is where
> everything *is* dead, looking forward only to what's dead, or i.e.
> Death: a dead future inhabited by dead souls where things are
> 'postmodern' because nothing new is being said, let alone hoped for,
> or dreamed, where matter and materialism is it, and the modern is
> entirely in a phase of being retrograde, as in the Dark Ages, the last
> time Zarathustra in the form of Islam nearly ruled the world.
> --
gewd almighty you're mediocre. oh btw, the middle ages were christian
(exactly the same as islam, no wonder you got confused) and many
palestinians were scared away from their land, you eurocentric creep.
> Mackiehttp://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
> "Who Did the Dahlia?"
> Now On-Line -- Chapter 16: Blood of the Sun
> [As suddenly, massively, transformatively revised]
still writing shit, eh?
*Anarcissie*
> On 22 fév, 14:47, "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 22, 4:31 am, "J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_the_n...@bigstring.com>
> > wrote:
> > > ...
> > > Where all the transcendental meta-narratives are dead, is where
> > > everything *is* dead, looking forward only to what's dead, or i.e.
> > > Death: a dead future inhabited by dead souls where things are
> > > 'postmodern' because nothing new is being said, let alone hoped for,
> > > or dreamed, where matter and materialism is it, and the modern is
> > > entirely in a phase of being retrograde, as in the Dark Ages, the last
> > > time Zarathustra in the form of Islam nearly ruled the world.
>
> > " ' Dead' is dead."
>
> > Do you realize, Mac, that you are probably the most postmodern
> > (-istic) writer working Usenet today? All surface and no structure.
>
> what?! again, why do you think it was postmodernism- and not
> unfinished modernity- that invented this all surface and no structure
> thing?
Just going by appearances, of course.
But -- can you imagine PIcasso, Pollock, Rothko, Newman, etc.,
saying as Andy Warhol did, "There's nothing behind my work. It's
just what you see" ?
However, if you want to argue that that kind of thing began with
Modernism or Impressionism, I'll concede you have at least half
a point. By the period of "late" or "high" Modernism, though, it
had been pretty well obscured.
Using painting here to stand in for a lot of things besides
painting, of course.
> > You should consider running for office. Alas, I can't really
> > appreciate it all; I think I'm stuck in the 18th century.
>
> well no. you're stuck in a moral majority that doesnt seem to think it
> has to explain itself to postmodernism; there's nothing like being
> part of a majority in the quest for having reason on one's side.
Explaining oneself has nothing to do with reason. It's
a question of who's holding the gun. I'm amused that
you think I'm a member of some majority, though -- and
a moral one at that!
Ned Ludd
"J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_th...@bigstring.com> wrote in message
news:1172136703.8...@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
>
> --which is really, in the end what decadentalism (postmodernism)
> does amount to, this continual, ongoing decadent return to the
> rabidly, rapidly decaying dog-vomit of Nietzsche's revolt
> against Rationalism.
> Where all the transcendental meta-narratives are dead, is where
> everything *is* dead, looking forward only to what's dead, or
> i.e. Death: a dead future inhabited by dead souls where things
> are 'postmodern' because nothing new is being said, let alone
> hoped for, or dreamed, where matter and materialism is it, and
> the modern is entirely in a phase of being retrograde, as in
> the Dark Ages, the last time Zarathustra in the form of Islam
> nearly ruled the world.
> --
> Mackie
>
Whew! - hot stuff!
So we can't do Nietzsche? We're in an uncreative, hopeless,
'nothing-new' death-world which only allows the retrograde...
and yet we can't do Nietzsche? I suppose we can do Plato and
Derrida, and those other two German twits, but all this dead
retro we're awash in doesn't allow NIETZSCHE??
So you don't like Nietzsche, and you don't like Moslems (nor
even poor dead Zarathustra), and you don't like retro, and you
don't like materialism (nor even matter), and you don't like
hopelessness, and you don't like death, especially dead meta-
narratives.
So, you're a Modernist?
Ned
Mani Deli
look at the stupidity and incompetence of the product. As POMO fades
another guru of artzy mysticism will pop up with a new name for his
accumulation of convoluted theoretical babble, which even his faithful
acolytes will hesitatingly admit they don't understand.
Artzy fartzies prefer bullshit. Especially when it's massive. Ism-itus
is a disease of the uncreative.
J Seymour MacNicely
> > Mackie http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com
> > "Who Did the Dahlia?"
> > Now On-Line -- Chapter 16: Blood of the Sun
> > [As suddenly, massively, transformatively revised]
>
> still writing shit, eh?
Well! insofar as it's being done in a sort of pre-glass & steel, faux
art deco style of pre-postmodernism said to be redolent of the kind
of schitt the pen of Raymond Chandler schatt, the answer to that is
most immodestly, YES.
Ned Ludd
"Mani Deli" <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:vcmrt2he2o4u2kjn0...@4ax.com...
Oh yeah!? Well then how come there ain't no alt.modern? (Or
alt.modernism or any such permutation.) Pomo rules. There ain't
no successor to pomo. And how can there be?
Here are all the art movements. Notice how they all end in
Postmodernism:
Ancient & Classical Art
Medieval & Gothic Art
Renaissance
Mannerism
Baroque
Rococo
Neo-Classical
Romanticism
Hudson River School
Pre-Raphaelites
Arts & Crafts Movement
Symbolism
Realism
Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Nabis
Fauvism
Art Nouveau
Art Deco
Ashcan School
Group of Seven
Modernism
Expressionism
Der Blaue Reiter
Bauhaus
De Stijl
Cubism
Dada
Futurism
Bloomsbury Group
Surrealism
Constructivism
Abstract Expressionism
Harlem Renaissance
Black Mountain College
Pop Art
Op-Art
Minimalism
Fluxus
Indian River School
Situationism
Neo-Expressionism
Post-Modernism
And here are all the Philosophic movements. Notice how they all
end in Postmodernism:
Pre-Socratic philosophy
Sophism
Pythagoreanism
Platonic realism
Pyrrhonian skepticism
Epicureanism
Stoicism
Cynicism
Hedonism
Neoplatonism
Averroism
Mu'tazilite
Scholasticism
Thomism
Rationalism
Empiricism
The Enlightenment
French materialism
German idealism - Immanuel Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel
Continental Philosophy
Romanticism
Utilitarianism - Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill
Marxism
Existentialism - Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre
Phenomenology - Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre
Logicism -- Gottlob Frege
Logical Positivism (with the Vienna Circle, Logical atomism (Russell),
and Ideal language philosophy (Wittgenstein))
Analytic Philosophy -- Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, W. V. O. Quine
Structuralism
Ordinary language philosophy
Modernism (more a movement in the arts, but worth noting for its
connection with below)
Postmodern philosophy -- see also Postmodernism **
Critical theory (Frankfurt School) -- see also Critical theory
Hermeneutics -- Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer
Poststructuralism
Deconstructivism -- Jacques Derrida
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
** Postmodernism
Theoretical postmodernism
List of postmodern critics
Critical race theory
Media studies
post-Postmodernism
Recursionism
Cultural and political postmodernism
Anti-racist math
Decentralization
Defamiliarization
New Age
Reinformation
Syncretism
Remodernism
Coolitude
Continuity thesis
Postmodernism in law
Critical legal studies
judicial shamanism
Postmodernism in theology
Postmodern Christianity
Postmodern Religious Art
Emerging church
Discordianism
Yup, we are definitely at an end-point. There ain't nuthin'
left after pomo. Pomo is it. Pomo is the culminating achievement
of life on earth and Darwinian evolution.
But feel free to start an alt.modernism group if you like.
Ned
J Seymour MacNicely
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:iynDh.2907$PL.
15...@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
> "Mani Deli" <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:vcmrt2he2o4u2kjn0...@4ax.com...
>>
>> POMO is just a later version of the avant-gone. Forget the Artspeak;
>> look at the stupidity and incompetence of the product. As POMO fades
>> another guru of artzy mysticism will pop up with a new name for his
>> accumulation of convoluted theoretical babble, which even his
>> faithful acolytes will hesitatingly admit they don't understand.
>> Artzy fartzies prefer bullshit. Especially when it's massive.
>> Ism-itus is a disease of the uncreative.
>>
>
> Oh yeah!? Well then how come there ain't no alt.modern? (Or
> alt.modernism or any such permutation.) Pomo rules.
Really? Then just try this: bring up a Google window and type,
"museum of postmodern art" -- see the number of hits you get? Now
just delete the "post" from "modern" in that search box, click the
button and prepare to be HIT. How many did you get? Was it like being
mowed down by a strictly postmodern Uzi, or from something more
elegant and stylish, like being drilled full of holes by a strictly
modernist Thompson sub-machine gun?
Pomo does not rule. According to a Google of the Art World it doesn't
exist. :-)
--
Mackie
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
"Who Did the Dahlia?"
Now On-Line -- Chapter 16: Blood of the Sun
New Too Weird for Words Soundtrack from
Benny Goodman and Claude Debussy
Ned Ludd
>
>>> POMO is just a later version of the avant-gone. Forget the Artspeak;
>>> look at the stupidity and incompetence of the product. As POMO fades
>>> another guru of artzy mysticism will pop up with a new name for his
>>> accumulation of convoluted theoretical babble, which even his
>>> faithful acolytes will hesitatingly admit they don't understand.
>>> Artzy fartzies prefer bullshit. Especially when it's massive.
>>> Ism-itus is a disease of the uncreative.
>>
>> Oh yeah!? Well then how come there ain't no alt.modern? (Or
>> alt.modernism or any such permutation.) Pomo rules.
>
> Really? Then just try this: bring up a Google window and type,
> "museum of postmodern art" -- see the number of hits you get?
>
Ten.
> Now just delete the "post" from "modern" in that search box, click the
> button and prepare to be HIT. How many did you get?
>
1.49 million.
> Was it like being mowed down by a strictly postmodern Uzi, or from
> something more elegant and stylish, like being drilled full of holes
> by a strictly modernist Thompson sub-machine gun?
>
It's an emerging form. More like being tasered in the testicles
at git-mo.
> Pomo does not rule. According to a Google of the Art World it doesn't
> exist. :-)
> --
> Mackie
>
Yeah, well, just you wait.
Ned
sirblob
no i think i was saying that the structure and surface of pomo
imitates the surface and structure of unfinished modernity, NOT
modernism. it's a matter of saying whatever to whatever, not pomo's
fault. i mean, faced with an ingres bottom, what can pomo say?
> Using painting here to stand in for a lot of things besides
> painting, of course.
>
> > > You should consider running for office. Alas, I can't really
> > > appreciate it all; I think I'm stuck in the 18th century.
>
> > well no. you're stuck in a moral majority that doesnt seem to think it
> > has to explain itself to postmodernism; there's nothing like being
> > part of a majority in the quest for having reason on one's side.
>
> Explaining oneself has nothing to do with reason. It's
> a question of who's holding the gun.
there are many many many (mani mani mani) who believe in unfinished
modernity believe pomo has to explain itself to them and not the other
way round and they get used to this attitude so much they never
examine themselves and so wind up vomiting laughably thin rhetoric
with gaping holes. a bit like sunday school.
I'm amused that
> you think I'm a member of some majority, though -- and
> a moral one at that!
well unfinished modernity is a majority just like freud's hermeneutics
was a minority, thou pomo is far more conservative than freud. besides
i was just drunk with mackie's prose.
J Seymour MacNicely
> no i think i was saying that the structure and surface of pomo
> imitates the surface and structure of unfinished modernity, NOT
> modernism. it's a matter of saying whatever to whatever, not pomo's
> fault.
Nothing can be more telling than to see the way you so often tend to
personify that. "Not pomo's fault"? Jesus Christ!
Man, can't you see what you're doing? You're a poor, sad captive,
Jack. You got this god named "Pomo" leading you around by that ring in
your nose, your ears, your mouth, your navel; it's got its talons down
in your tattoos, and is dragging you backward by the peak of your cap
into the dark depths of the Nietzschean Tomb of Nothingness, where you
sit with all the other so easily incensed, and personally insulted
Cavemen from Geiko, drawing charcoal representations of your Pomo god/
goddess on the walls with the charred end of your sticks, as you join
poor dead Morrison in the chant, "True Sailing is Dead."
You're so busy making smoky stinking sacrifice of all that is yourself
to your Pomo idol that there is nothing left with which to be
yourself. Look at the very image that you present of the person
supposed to be you, this "sirblob". There is no dignity, no bearing
in a blob, and the 'sir' simply cannot fit. Your god has made a baggy-
pants, hip-hop, crotch-grabbed blob of you, and since there is nothing
you can create except by rip-off of somebody's else's bass track,
except it has exactly that imprimatur of the holy Pomo god on it,
there is nothing *you* can create.
How my soul that was forged in the fires of the Enlightenment does so
absolutely abhor that sort of thing. I hate hip-hop so bad, that I am
presently negotiating for the purchase of 20 acres of mountain-tip in
Missouri where I will never have to hear a single boom-boxed pig snort
of it again.
That's how much I hate your god, Sirblob. :-)
I could compose a jazz knockoff of Coltrane entitled, "A Hate
Supreme".
Hate it, hate it, hate it. You just could not dream of how much I
hate it.
That's why I do wear a fedora wherever I go, and practice prose in a
style of Raymond Chandler while Big Band music plays in my head as I
write, with the fantasy in mind that my typewriter is a big smokin',
fire-spitting sub-gun that will one day blow your god to bloody rags,
and back to the stinking born yesterday diaper pail in hell it came
from.
Ain't that just grand?
--
Mackie
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
"Who Did the Dahlia?"
Now On-Line -- Chapter 16: Blood of the Sun
sirblob
wrote:
btw a few posts ago in that comment where you go ''back in the middle
ages when the world was ruled by islam'' how did you manage to let
islam slip in where christianity stands? it was stunning. how does
that marvelous aryan mind of yours work?
>
> That's how much I hate your god, Sirblob. :-)
>
> I could compose a jazz knockoff of Coltrane entitled, "A Hate
> Supreme".
or thelonius monk? all this jazz improv aint you getting too close to
pomo
>
> Hate it, hate it, hate it. You just could not dream of how much I
> hate it.
>
> That's why I do wear a fedora wherever I go, and practice prose in a
> style of Raymond Chandler while Big Band music plays in my head as I
> write, with the fantasy in mind that my typewriter is a big smokin',
> fire-spitting sub-gun that will one day blow your god to bloody rags,
> and back to the stinking born yesterday diaper pail in hell it came
> from.
>
> Ain't that just grand?
like in your far leftist youth, in your old age you're trying too hard
to be a far rightard. still, it's the only way you extremists can
function.
> --
> Mackiehttp://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
sirblob
wrote:
pomo breaks the suspension of disbelief and its the weak woody
allenesque closet nihilists who are so hysterically frightened by it.
> Mackiehttp://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
Lauri Levanto
>
> Yup, we are definitely at an end-point. There ain't nuthin'
> left after pomo.
>
>
The arth will not end today
it is already tomorrow in Japan
-lauri
James Whitehead
> > Oh yeah!? Well then how come there ain't no alt.modern? (Or
> > alt.modernism or any such permutation.) Pomo rules.
>
> Really? Then just try this: bring up a Google window and type,
> "museum of postmodern art" -- see the number of hits you get? Now
> just delete the "post" from "modern" in that search box, click the
> button and prepare to be HIT. How many did you get? Was it like being
> mowed down by a strictly postmodern Uzi, or from something more
> elegant and stylish, like being drilled full of holes by a strictly
> modernist Thompson sub-machine gun?
>
> Pomo does not rule. According to a Google of the Art World it doesn't
> exist. :-)
But an appeal to Google proves precisely how post-modern you are!
where is the appeal to argument - logic - a hierarchy of respected sources
impartial evidence -
and who am i to tell you this TRUTH - nothing / null - NO - according to
your post-modern methodology i'm 4th from 1.3 million - so with such a
post-modern authority which you have given me - i can tell you - you are a
post-modern- de-facto. Wake up to the truth Neo....
James Whitehead
Post-moderns dont claim artistically to be post-moderns - that would be too
simple / honest / truthful / (i.e modernist) they claim to be modern or
conceptual - which of course is nonsense - only those not in the know think
they can produce post-modern art - or art. Post modernity is the outward
gloss - ceasers palace of modernity- its reality is that google is The
Answer - the reality is that outside disneyland is disneyland...
sirblob
wrote:
> "J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_the_n...@bigstring.com> wrote in messagenews:1172181161.3...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > Oh yeah!? Well then how come there ain't no alt.modern? (Or
> > > alt.modernism or any such permutation.) Pomo rules.
>
> > Really? Then just try this: bring up a Google window and type,
> > "museum of postmodern art" -- see the number of hits you get? Now
> > just delete the "post" from "modern" in that search box, click the
> > button and prepare to be HIT. How many did you get? Was it like being
> > mowed down by a strictly postmodern Uzi, or from something more
> > elegant and stylish, like being drilled full of holes by a strictly
mackles, dont worry... thats cuz more modernists than pomos have
dropped dead.
>
> > Pomo does not rule. According to a Google of the Art World it doesn't
> > exist. :-)
>
> But an appeal to Google proves precisely how post-modern you are!
i ask you the same i asked anarcissie, that appeal to higher authority
was already being carried out by unfinished modernity lovers.
>
> where is the appeal to argument - logic - a hierarchy of respected sources
> impartial evidence -
again? where was this ever carried out? in mars? in the milky way? in
the post-milky way?
sirblob
> On 23 fév, 09:41, "James Whitehead" <somewh...@overtherainbow.com>
> wrote:
>
> > "J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_the_n...@bigstring.com> wrote in messagenews:1172181161.3...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > > Oh yeah!? Well then how come there ain't no alt.modern? (Or
> > > > alt.modernism or any such permutation.) Pomo rules.
>
> > > Really? Then just try this: bring up a Google window and type,
> > > "museum of postmodern art" -- see the number of hits you get? Now
> > > just delete the "post" from "modern" in that search box, click the
> > > button and prepare to be HIT. How many did you get? Was it like being
> > > mowed down by a strictly postmodern Uzi, or from something more
> > > elegant and stylish, like being drilled full of holes by a strictly
> > > modernist Thompson sub-machine gun.
>
> mackles, dont worry... thats cuz more modernists than pomos have
> dropped dead.
btw this sentence should really read ''more mos than pomos'' (im a
perfectionist sry)
J Seymour MacNicely
> btw a few posts ago in that comment where you go ''back in the middle
> ages when the world was ruled by islam'' how did you manage to let
> islam slip in where christianity stands? it was stunning. how does
> that marvelous aryan mind of yours work?
Glad you brought that up--I was looking through your posts today
trying to find that, seeing I most decidedly do have an answer, for
which you will soon receive my reply, soon as I get a few moments away
from playing around in such cheap pulp fictional doo-doo as this . . .
Chat and Cheap Chablis
--
J. Hubert Wigmore was an aspiring writer, heath and fitness
aficionado, and gigolo to the married landlady who had set him up as
manager of the apartment complex just the other side of the lilacs
from the Gillespie twins place. And just as Maurice had noted earlier,
concerning this 'small world' we inhabit, it so happened that J.
Hubert next door, had spent some years researching the Dahlia case. No
small wonder of a small world then that my explanation of "a sudden
case of the sniffles," for which our man needed to go someplace and
sneeze in private, had been accepted so readily, as we their
invitation . . .
The Gillespie twins, Sarah and Clara, seated side by side on Hubert's
large beige modernist davenport, now in their matching tiger-striped
toreador slacks, black cashmere sweaters, the elegant pair-o'-gold-
dice ear-rings, the high, coiling flames of their hair-dos could not
have set up a more dizzying contrast to the rest of the J. Hubert
Wigmore furnishings which were stark, sparse and bland to the extreme
of the non-extreme. Not even so much as a movie poster gracing the
walls, nor vase or peacock feather, nary a pink plume of pampas grass
was there to decorate the large unfigured beige urn that held the J.
Hubert umbrella near the door, where also on the floor was ensconced
his George's Health Spa zipper bag . . .
Hubert wrinkled his nose. "No, you're probably wrong about that East
Chicago doctor."
"See!" said Bright Eyes. "What I tell ya?"
Hubert cared less. "She apparently did have something haywire with her
female parts, a case of vaginal agenesis, or the less likely,
imperforate hymen."
"Your hymen is your cherry," said Clara.
"Pop goes the hymen!" said Sarah.
That was boring our host, so Bright Eyes said, "Im--perforate? Like,
it can't be perforated!"
"Un-poppable!" said Sarah, touching a finger to the fake mole pasted
just under her left cheekbone . . .
"So?" My, but J. Hubert was getting snotty.
"Sew buttons on your health spa bag, hotshot!" I suggested. "It means
she had a uterus, and if there was a passage for the discharge to get
out, there was one for the ol' love dew to get in."
Clara and Sarah screamed with laughter, which really bugged our host.
"Highly unlikely," he said. "Highly, highly unlikely."
"Love dew!" cooed Sarah.
"I'll drink to that!" declared Clara, and as we watched the girls
clinking glasses, a loud clearing of the throat came out from behind
the Remington, followed by the sound of an electric shift key going on
and off--whack-whack--whack-whack. It was the perfect tempo in case
somebody suddenly felt inspired to hum a Louis Prima tune, and since I
was just high enough to do it, I did. I got up and slithered over to
Sarah . . .
"Come on!" She pulled--and it was amazing the kind of strength my
girl could muster when she felt she needed it.
As I was being removed most of the way out the door, I did manage to
call back to the ladies my thanks and see-you-soon's, and despite all
the woman-handling, as we made our way along the balcony toward the
stair, a little of this as well . . .
"Just a gigolo
everywhere I go
people know the part
I'm playing.
Paid for every dance
selling each romance
every night some heart
betraying
There will come a day
youth will pass away
then what will they say
about me?
When the end comes I know
they'll say just a gigolo
as life goes on
without me."
--Ted Lewis, 1931
And that ain't even the half of what has to be cleaned up of tonight's
dirty, nasty, disgusting business meant for up-load to the world
tomorrow . . .
Mackie
James Whitehead
"sirblob" <sirb...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1172223001.0...@z35g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
On 23 fév, 09:41, "James Whitehead" <somewh...@overtherainbow.com>
wrote:
> "J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_the_n...@bigstring.com> wrote in
messagenews:1172181161.3...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > Oh yeah!? Well then how come there ain't no alt.modern? (Or
> > > alt.modernism or any such permutation.) Pomo rules.
>
> > Really? Then just try this: bring up a Google window and type,
> > "museum of postmodern art" -- see the number of hits you get? Now
> > just delete the "post" from "modern" in that search box, click the
> > button and prepare to be HIT. How many did you get? Was it like being
> > mowed down by a strictly postmodern Uzi, or from something more
> > elegant and stylish, like being drilled full of holes by a strictly
> > modernist Thompson sub-machine gun.
mackles, dont worry... thats cuz more modernists than pomos have
dropped dead.
>
> > Pomo does not rule. According to a Google of the Art World it doesn't
> > exist. :-)
>
> But an appeal to Google proves precisely how post-modern you are!
i ask you the same i asked anarcissie, that appeal to higher authority
was already being carried out by unfinished modernity lovers.
I'm not saying there is any higher authority - except in my imagination.....
>
> where is the appeal to argument - logic - a hierarchy of respected sources
> impartial evidence -
again? where was this ever carried out? in mars? in the milky way? in
the post-milky way?
Definitely on mars - i've seen the canals - a delight by the light of its
twin moons...
*Anarcissie*
Iris Chacón.
> > Using painting here to stand in for a lot of things besides
> > painting, of course.
>
> > > > You should consider running for office. Alas, I can't really
> > > > appreciate it all; I think I'm stuck in the 18th century.
>
> > > well no. you're stuck in a moral majority that doesnt seem to think it
> > > has to explain itself to postmodernism; there's nothing like being
> > > part of a majority in the quest for having reason on one's side.
>
> > Explaining oneself has nothing to do with reason. It's
> > a question of who's holding the gun.
>
> there are many many many (mani mani mani) who believe in unfinished
> modernity believe pomo has to explain itself to them and not the other
> way round and they get used to this attitude so much they never
> examine themselves and so wind up vomiting laughably thin rhetoric
> with gaping holes. a bit like sunday school.
I don't see that their behavior is necessarily relevant
to either of us. Of course you can put in some effort
to be fascinated, I supposed, fake it till you make it.
But why?
> > I'm amused that
> > you think I'm a member of some majority, though -- and
> > a moral one at that!
>
> well unfinished modernity is a majority just like freud's hermeneutics
> was a minority, thou pomo is far more conservative than freud. besides
> i was just drunk with mackie's prose.
Heh.
*Anarcissie*
Nothing is finished,
not even the pumpkin-vine
the night it freezes
Ned Ludd
>
>>> Yup, we are definitely at an end-point. There ain't nuthin'
>>> left after pomo.
>>> Ned
>>
>> it is already tomorrow in Japan
>> -lauri
>>
>
> Nothing is finished,
> not even the pumpkin-vine
> the night it freezes
>
Hey, that's GORDON!
Yesterday is History -
'Tis so far away -
Yesterday is Poetry -
'Tis Philosophy -
Yesterday is Mystery -
Where it is today
While we shrewdly speculate
Flutter both away.
- Emily
Ned Ludd
"James Whitehead" <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote in message
news:11722205...@proxy00.news.clara.net...
>
>>>> Oh yeah!? Well then how come there ain't no alt.modern? (Or
>>>> alt.modernism or any such permutation.) Pomo rules.
>>>
>>> Really? Then just try this: bring up a Google window and type,
>>> "museum of postmodern art" -- see the number of hits you get?
>>
>> Ten.
>>
>>> Now just delete the "post" from "modern" in that search box,
>>> click the button and prepare to be HIT. How many did you get?
>>
>> 1.49 million.
>>
>>> Was it like being mowed down by a strictly postmodern Uzi, or
>>> from something more elegant and stylish, like being drilled
>>> full of holes by a strictly modernist Thompson sub-machine gun?
>>
>> It's an emerging form. More like being tasered in the testicles
>> at git-mo.
>>
>>> Pomo does not rule. According to a Google of the Art World it
>>> doesn't exist. :-)
>>> --
>>> Mackie
>
> Post-moderns dont claim artistically to be post-moderns - that would
> be too simple / honest / truthful / (i.e modernist) they claim to
> be modern or conceptual - which of course is nonsense - only those
> not in the know think they can produce post-modern art - or art.
> Post modernity is the outward gloss - ceasers palace of modernity-
> its reality is that google is The Answer - the reality is that
> outside disneyland is disneyland...
>
Poor pomo's a bastard child? I don't know about that. What
about all those new architects like Geary and Calatrava making
those screwy-looking buildings? What do they call themselves?
Certainly not modernists?
Nor am I sure that you can adorn modernism with the attributes
of simplicity, honesty and truth. Complexity and deviousness
were often companions of that project.
When it's all either disneyland or ruins, where would you
prefer to live?
Ned
James Whitehead
Architects-
I was talking about art galleries and the art in them - the artisyts borrow
titles like "conceptual" and "instalation" when they have nothing to do with
the ideas behind the modern art which was conceptual... and the galleries
are called modern - but arnt... as for architects thats interesting - again
because the constructions rely on computing enabling the creation of such
illogical buildings...but best - Herzog and De Meuron's fame rests on The
Tate Modern - which they *didnt* design - Sir Giles Gilbert Scott did - so
it was a ready-made - he also did the pink floyds cover "animals" and the
classic english phone box.
>
> Nor am I sure that you can adorn modernism with the attributes
> of simplicity, honesty and truth. Complexity and deviousness
> were often companions of that project.
>
only when found out! now we have the world already knowing its a lie...
> When it's all either disneyland or ruins, where would you
> prefer to live?
>
its cool to live in either - the important point is you choose (or pretend
to choose)- as opposed to "having" to live there.
My preference
http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/user_pubbar_review_5457.html
everything they say is true!
> Ned
>
>
Erik A. Mattila
I liked the "pub crawl" image. That says it all. Reminded me of 1968
(the end of modernism) New Year's I spent in Ensenada, Mexico. Do
snake's crawl? I mean, there was a huge snake-dance that went into
every Cantina in town. You just jumped in line and it would take you to
the next bar. At one point I discovered that I had a bottle of Tequila
in my jacket pocket - no idea how it got there. So I passed it around.
I don't remember paying for any drinks, actually.
J Seymour MacNicely
btw a few posts ago in that comment where you go ''back in the middle
ages when the world was ruled by islam'' how did you manage to let
islam slip in where christianity stands? it was stunning. how does
that marvelous aryan mind of yours work?
Not "aryan" but Arian--if the more heretical flavor of the thing be
considered--but you'd probably be hard put to call me a Mormon.
Note that "middle-ages" is the term you inherit from *your*
educational regime, and it is not mine, which is *Dark Ages*, a
representation that has its inception with a poet born on the same
date of July (the 20th) as myself, but in 1304, namely Petrarch, for
whom the soul of complaint goes like this . . .
"Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence
and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations,
who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted
the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had
produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable
neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those
who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral
heritage."
Exactly the same axe I have to grind against postmodernism--and
backward baseball caps, baggy pants, the too-long sweater sleeves,
tattoos, clitoris rings, shaved crotches, panty-hose, underwear that
inserts itself *into* the butt-crack, and the "snoop dawg". It's a
*dark age* with a whole lot of polyester up its poop-chute we're
talking here . . .
And now you say, "how did you manage to let islam slip in where
christianity stands?" There it is! the tragedy of what was done to
your head by the regime of education under which you were snookered,
duped and golliwogged. It's sooooooooooooooooooooo sad! I'm sitting
here like that Anna Nicole Smith Judge in Florida wiping big tears, in
my grief over this educational abuse under which you and your
generation have suffered! Now just wait till I blow my nose . . .
Okay. Order in the Court! The case for the defense begins: Generally
considered, what postmodern scholarship wants to refer to as the
"early middle age(s)" circa 476-1000 "C.E." is what my teachers and
professors (some of whom smoked pot) called the "mediæval dark ages".
Now it just happens to be a fact that no sooner had the bloody,
greedy, power-addicted, imperialistic aggression of the nasty, awful
Islamic caliphate of Omar (successor to Mohammed) got going in the 7th
century, to engulf Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and most of
North Africa, than suddenly, people in the West were asking--Did you
say "Palestine"? That includes Jerusalem, which means Bethlehem, and
above all, that sad little stable with the horses and cows where the
poor little baby Jesus was born--? That Palestine is being over-run
by some heretofore unheard of horde of heathen hereticks who are
screaming at the top of their lungs that our baby Jesus never even
died on the cross?
"Born, born, born in Bethlehem!" like the old camp song goes. Not in
Mecca, baby. *Oh Children, Go Where I Send Thee!* Maybe you never
heard the song or went to camp to sing about the "itty-bitty baby born
in a manger"? During the Civil Rights summer of '63, at the fund
raisers and down home camp meetings, we used to sing that old Negro
spiritual a lot. Sang it a lot, that song, to get our Freedom Riders
all charged up to go out, and go way down into Egypt land, to meet the
Man, with his clubs and his face all red and ugly with his ignorant
imperial aggression against the rights of Miles Davis, Billie Holiday,
Duke Ellington and Sammy Davis Jr.
Now put yourself back to the year 711, into the shoes of just your
average Sunday School going Dutch Boy living near the Zuider Zee in
Holland when the news comes in that the Iberian peninsula, nearly the
whole of Spain but for the highest out-back Basque fastnesses of the
Pyrenees had just been invaded by that same troupe of scimitar
wielding, bloody fanatic world robbing madmen and bandits who some
fifty years earlier had over-run and sacked Jerusalem to the defeat of
the mighty Imperial Byzantine Knights of Christendom, driving them
back by assault after assault all the way through Turkey to
Constantinople--this you hear! And more, how that raiding horde of
bloody-eyed sons of ten and eleven year old daughters had already
taken over the whole of Cyprus, Crete, Sicily and Gibraltar; had also
gone so far as into the South of France at Narbonne! there to deny
that the itty-bitty baby born in Bethlehem was the last word on this
earth about the beauty of Peace on Earth--but! now comes a killer with
forty wives, a thousand slaves, and a curvy dagger in his cloak
claiming to know better than the baby Jesus, about what's hip and cool
with God?
Tell me you wouldn't be shaking in your wooden shoes, Mr. young Dutch
Boy. Tell me that a "Dark Age" is not a time of extraordinary fear,
depression and apprehension over a threat looming so large, that by
the time the First Crusade finally, at long last does get started in
1095 that you, the great, great grandson of the other young Hans
Brinker would not be just chomping on the bit, right along with your
horse to get going on that ride with but one thing in mind, to get
back on to the ground of that sad little stable where the itty-bitty
baby was born, and start swinging that sword of yours till the blood
of those alien invaders from Arabia (who never had any place in this
world beyond the borders of their own rocky crest of the Hejaz or the
most, every oasis and date palm grove between there and Damascus) was
sufficient in its boiling crimson flow from your mace and sword to
rise in its depth "even unto the horses bridles?"
When I went to school, yes, we were by some teachers taught to take
for truth (despite the objections of scholars) the legend of Islamic
source (see Bernard Lewis and others) that the Moslem forces of Omar
had sacked and burned the libraries at Alexandria, after which,
according to tradition, "the scrolls were bundled up and delivered as
fuel to the city's baths, where it is said they burned in the furnaces
for six months."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
Well it turns out, after all this time of debate and research into the
matter that this old tale was indeed of Islamic, not Christian or
Jewish source . . .
As from Bernard Lewis: "In fact, the story as we know it may have been
invented by one Ibn al-Qifti, a twelfth-century [or thirteenth] Sunni
chronicler. According to the Egyptian classicist Mostafa el-Abbadi, al-
Qifti may have invented the story to justify the sale of books by the
twelfth-century Sunni ruler Saladin, who sold off whole libraries to
pay for his fight against the Crusaders."
http://elyclarifies.blogspot.com/2006/01/burning-alexandria-library.html
Or if you won't take some blogger's word for it, find the same thing
here . . .
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3517
So, in essence the 'tradition' was entirely true! What's the
difference whether you simply sell off the civilization of a people or
burn it to the ground? whether it was Saladin or Omar--or which is
more likely, *both*? When it comes to the barbaric destruction of the
intellectual archive of an entire civilization--no bloody Crusade is
justification enough for so high a crime of Holocaust as this. No!
Better you should sell the people for slaves, the women for concubines
(since you're busy doing that anyway in due course), their horses and
camels, jewelry, all their gold and silver--but you don't, no, no, no;
you don't sell their books. It doesn't matter what may have been the
manner of that book burning, by flame or filthy lucre--it only goes to
prove their own legend true, so far as what it came to, in the words
attributed to the great Omar . . .
"Touching the books you mention, if what is written in them agrees
with the Koran, they are not required; if it disagrees, they are not
desired. Destroy them therefore."
Sell them, therefore. Sell books? For what? For keeping the baths
warm. Boiling a little goat and camel's milk. Or for setting up in a
hock shop with this burglarized booty to sell them back to the people
of the culture they were stolen from--how about that, for purpose of
getting the most preposterous legend of all started, about how Islam
is to be praised for 'preserving' the philosophical and mathematical
works of the West and providing them to us?
You say . . .
"how did you manage to let islam slip in where christianity stands?"
I put the same question to your teachers.
--
Mackie
Mac the Nice
"sirblob" <sirb...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1172204272.0...@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> btw a few posts ago in that comment where you go ''back in the middle
> ages when the world was ruled by islam'' how did you manage to let
> islam slip in where christianity stands? it was stunning. how does
> that marvelous aryan mind of yours work?
And now you say, "how did you manage to let islam slip in where christianity
stands?" There it is! the tragedy of what was done to your head by the
regime of education under which you were snookered, duped and golliwogged.
It's sooooooooooooooooooooo sad! I'm sitting here like that Anna Nicole
Smith Judge in Florida wiping big tears, in my grief over this educational
abuse under which you and your generation have suffered! Now just wait till
I blow my nose . . .
Okay. Order in the Court! The case for the defense begins: Generally
considered, what postmodern scholarship wants to refer to as the "early
middle age(s)" circa 476-1000 "C.E." is what my teachers and professors
(some of whom smoked pot) called the "medięval dark ages".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3517
"how did you manage to let islam slip in where christianity stands?"
I put the same question to your teachers.
--
Mackie
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
"Who Did the Dahlia?"
Now On-Line -- Chapter 14: A Secret Word
--
.............................................................
> Posted thru AtlantisNews - Explore EVERY Newsgroup <
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James Whitehead
"Erik A. Mattila" <e...@nospamimpix.com> wrote in message
news:dPudnfDRvpGrskLY...@adelphia.com...
A good point - a great forgetting - europe after the rain
sirblob
wrote:
> "sirblob" <sirbl...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:
>
> 1172204272.054965.325...@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
was this before or after the roman catholic empire?
anyway, your born-again christian crap can do very little to eliminate
a postmodernism which on that i certainly do agree with you, is for
the healthy, rich and skeptic. have fun watching werner herzog's
movies. and said' books.
> Mackiehttp://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
Mounard le Fuogueux
>
>
>>This is literally sophomoric.
>
>
> Which would totally eliminate any possibility of its being
> figuratively sophomoric, of course.
>
>
>>Years ago, before the decadence
>>of Usenet . . .
>
>
> Surely there are few who would doubt but that technology can be
> altogether so great a catalyst for progress, as for decadence--
> depending on who is using it. But no matter how hard Anarcissie or
> SirBlob might try, such use as they practice, cannot make Usenet, as a
> tool, decadent. Usenet itself, being a product of the 'meta-
> narrative' that affirms the goal and possibility of progress can only
> be progressive and not decadent. So this goes also to politics: As
> progress and decadence are a dichotomy of countervailing forces,
> clearly nobody who could call himself a "liberal progressive" can at
> the same time affirm the possibility of the "postmodern" as defined
> within the constructs of Lyotard and Derrida. But never mind . . .
>
>
>>those who had just heard of "postmodern" etc. at
>>school would pop up and inform everyone that there could be
>>no such thing. It would take the slower ones until their second
>>year to accomplish this feat. How long have you been working
>>on it?
>
>
> This is to suggest that after four years of a liberal arts education
> with a major in sociology and a minor in humanities, and nearly forty
> years of 'postgrad' life in the stacks of the library and bookstores,
> someone such as myself would not understand the intended distinction
> between the terms 'modern' and 'modernism'?
>
> Come, come, my boy, you really must try to do better than that. And
> what manner of crackerjack college did you attend that you never
> learned a proper scholarly disdain for the "strawman argument"?
>
> It ought to have been quite clear from the statement of my position
> that as scholars of the humanities seek for a term to describe a
> period of art, literature, architecture and music, which they would
> suppose has moved beyond the avant-garde outer reaches of Modernism,
> they should realize that the 'modernist' period if it is now truly
> over, can no longer with any deference paid to the language and its
> meanings, be properly referred to as 'modern'.
>
> If the modern is no longer in modernism, then the term 'modernist' for
> it must go. And this would be done just as in the past when the art
> of the Romantic period was not called 'romantic' then, but *modern*.
> Scholars later on had to think creatively enough to come up with
> something better than 'postmodern', so they came up with
> "Romanticism".
>
> Even the Dadaists were more creative than such 'postmodernists' as we
> see today. Perhaps some permutation of the word 'decadence' such as
> "decadent" would do for the 'postmodern'? Let us have a term of art
> for a period of art that flatters itself to have gone beyond the
> 'modern', which has the conceit to imagine it can, so very soon in
> history, do that--then by all means! Go ahead and call it
> 'Decadentalism' which would be ever so much more *itself* than to
> merely call it e.g. 'anti' or 'post' transcendentalism--which is
> really, in the end what decadentalism (postmodernism) does amount to,
> this continual, ongoing decadent return to the rabidly, rapidly
> decaying dog-vomit of Nietzsche's revolt against Rationalism.
It was Goethe, not Nietzsche that started the trend - see Walter
Kaufmann's - DIscovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant and Hegel. FOr example
Goethe's famous quote " All knowledge is interpretation" which has been
subsequently stolen by Derrida as " ther eis nothing outside the text"
or whatnot.
>
> Where all the transcendental meta-narratives are dead, is where
> everything *is* dead, looking forward only to what's dead, or i.e.
> Death: a dead future inhabited by dead souls where things are
> 'postmodern' because nothing new is being said, let alone hoped for,
> or dreamed, where matter and materialism is it, and the modern is
> entirely in a phase of being retrograde, as in the Dark Ages, the last
> time Zarathustra in the form of Islam nearly ruled the world.
> --
> Mackie
> http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
> "Who Did the Dahlia?"
> Now On-Line -- Chapter 16: Blood of the Sun
J Seymour MacNicely
"Mounard le Fuogueux" <Blinkin...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote in
message news:45EE17C2...@NonEventHorizon.com...
>> this continual, ongoing decadent return to the rabid, rapidly
>> decaying dog-vomit of Nietzsche's revolt against Rationalism.
>
> It was Goethe, not Nietzsche that started the trend - see Walter
> Goethe's famous quote " All knowledge is interpretation" which has been
> subsequently stolen by Derrida as " there is nothing outside the text"
> or whatnot.
Maybe you're a great fan of Nietzsche? So am I, but it's strictly for
the same reason that I love watching *Dumb & Dumber* over and over, or
just about anything else by the Farrelly Bros. It's not philosophy and
it's very far from being 'art', but there is such a glorious rush of
misanthropic glee that comes with such stuff--whether it's fully
sublimated in the form of that champagne cork rocketing toward its
destination to whack all that is 'humane' in the love of man for his
highly endangered 'Snow Owl', or from Nietzsche's Zarathustra . . .
Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: "Even God hath his
hell: it
is his love for man."
And lately, did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: of his
pity for
man hath God died."
--
Wildly hilarious--what? My Nietzsche professor managed to interpret
it in a way such as to show how outrageously comical that truly is, by
such reasoning as this . . .
There is no way for God, if He be a god indeed to die of such pity--if
it were the pity ruling God, rather than God ruling over his own pity.
No, to perceive this joke rightly, it must be seen that this is God
putting an end to the misery of his pity by willfully putting an end
to Himself. To say that God died 'of' his pity is not to say he died
"by" it or "from" it. Rather, God made pity die by willing himself to
die. All that pity made God's life a terrible drag, but insofar as he
is God, nothing can kill God but God--certainly not pity. Rather, God
kills pity by committing suicide.
In short, God looked at man and saw what a gross mistake this had
been, that man should have been there as the inevitable outcome of
evolution, so the whole plan had therefore to stink from the
beginning! It--evolution, creation--had come, in its ultimate fruition
only to torment God, no different than it was with Dr. Frankenstein
and his monster. When the pity became too altogether too grievous, as
man's mismanagement of his own gifts and potential had become just way
too pathetic for somebody like God to bear the sight of it, he blew
his own brains out. Of course! As God is God, he has that power over
pity. Indeed, therefore, God died "of" his pity but not from it.
Nothing can kill God but God. There is no God but God--and pity is not
a god.
I cannot even begin to tell you with what force this interpretation of
Nietzsche's joke hit me that afternoon, in Dr. Black's world
literature class. Up until that day, as a senior in that upper
division course, ever since pretty near my first day in college as a
freshman, I had been an agnostic, just more or less a lapsed, card
carrying and confirmed Episcopalian, a person bored with sermons and
all the liturgical frip-frappery, the superstition implied by the
smoke of incense, a doctrine of transubstantiation, the mythology of
water-walking, raising the dead, exorcism of demons, the implication
of polytheism in the 'hypostatic union' of the Trinity, the
'bodily' (for crying out loud) Resurrection, the Virgin Birth.
Because I had no sense of a Christianity that could stand without all
the hocus-pocus, and in spite of all the xenophobic fascist mysticism
of the Gnostic Fourth Gospel, much of the Pauline canon), thus I had
no notion of a religiosity based solely on the teaching of wisdom to
be found strictly in the Synoptic tradition and Old Testament. I had
no conception whatsoever of God as a mere pure substance of the Good,
nor had I the least inkling that there could be any such thing as a
force of Goodness, which might be perceived as being at unity with the
most fundamental laws of nature which have allowed that there may be
any such ostensibly good thing as nature, at all.
I had never meditated on any of that, let alone upon the plain facts
as they exist before our eyes, that insofar as Being is the case with
an existing universe, and Nothingness is not the case, then Being, we
might easily infer, is Good.
1. That was Number One.
2. As Nothingness is not a good (seeing it is nothing) neither is it
a being, nor is there any evil except Nothingness. All that leads
toward Nothingness is with the 'devil' in non-being.
3. There is only one being, which is good. Being is good, and being
good (so much as one can manage it) is good.
4. Therefore, as Being is the case and not Nothingness, Being is good
and nothingness is evil so far as it is without being, and insofar as
Nothingness is without goodness, insofar as it is without life,
insofar as lies find their non-being of bad faith in it, plus pride,
and hatred, and envy, and everything else that is based in
Nothingness, therefore, as Good is Being, it is the only Being, and it
is logically therefore "a Being", the only True Being, the unity of
all being, and so the only Being, the One Being which must be, by
definition, God.
As, on that day in Dr. Black's class, I had nothing of that kind of
faith/logic going for me so as to enable me to see the humor in
Nietzsche's joke, I took it very badly, as I saw that being an
agnostic was nowhere near to being the atheist, that now, thanks to
the force of that joke, I should now henceforth be. It is nothing to
be--an atheist. A life lived toward an end of non-being is an
absurdity--a joke, and rather a bad one. Ethical considerations become
contingent upon many things beside the Good, like free will,
responsibility, duty, the classless society, the Fuehrer, because
there is no absolute value of good in a life that is bounded at either
end by non-being. But of this there is very much more to say.
The point is that I got the joke. Oh, I got it, and everything that I
admired of Nietzsche was in it. He was so right to have shown us this
melodrama that had gone on between God and his creature, Man. It was
so right that we should see it all the clearer in the crucifixion of
Christ, this pity, as the son of Man's head begins to sag with the
words, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."
Had it not been for that image to inspire it, Nietzsche would have had
no joke, nor even the least beginnings of his philosophy of black
nihilism, his religion of worship for the power of the superhuman
Beast, and the wiles of the Creature in man.
>>
>> Where all the transcendental meta-narratives are dead, is where
>> everything *is* dead, looking forward only to what's dead, or i.e.
>> Death: a dead future inhabited by dead souls where things are
>> 'postmodern' because nothing new is being said, let alone hoped for,
>> or dreamed, where matter and materialism is it, and the modern is
>> entirely in a phase of being retrograde, as in the Dark Ages, the last
>> time Zarathustra in the form of Islam nearly ruled the world.
>> --
Mackie
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
"Who Did the Dahlia?"
Now On-Line -- Chapter 18: Five Deuces
J Seymour MacNicely
"Mounard le Fuogueux" <Blinkin...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote in
message news:45EE17C2...@NonEventHorizon.com...
> It was Goethe, not Nietzsche that started the trend - see Walter
> Kaufmann's - DIscovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant and Hegel. FOr example
> Goethe's famous quote " All knowledge is interpretation" which has been
> subsequently stolen by Derrida as " ther eis nothing outside the text"
> or whatnot.
I got so sidetracked into all that stuff about Nietzsche that I never
addressed your main point . . .
> Goethe's famous quote " All knowledge is interpretation" which has been
> subsequently stolen by Derrida as " ther eis nothing outside the text"
> or whatnot.
If postmodernists are seeing in Goethe the beginning of a trend away
from rationalism, or in Nietzsche's terms, as some see it, from the
Apollonian, to the Dionysian, toward a celebration of the passions, of
paradox, the irrational, the mythical, taking such a statement about
knowledge from Goethe to the extreme of saying there can be no
validity to an absolutely literal reading of a text, well . . .
There is another totally non-deconstructive way to read it, if one
should take the philosophy of Husserl--another mentor of Derrida--into
account. I posted on that subject last week and received, by email,
one reply, rather a nice one, but it hardly helped to carry the
conversation onward.
"All knowledge is interpretation" could not be a more concise
statement, not only of the metaphysics of Husserl, but Kant as well
insofar as Husserl carries Kant forward to emphasize that element of
Kant's philosophy which some take to have been irrefutably proven by
him, that we do not perceive reality through our senses but only an
interpretation of it, an "appearance", a ghostly 'phenomenon'.
All you have to do is swallow about 250 micrograms of LSD (a medium
dose) to see how very correct those two philosophers could be about
that. But I would recommend rather that people should see this truth
by reason rather than chemistry which even at that dosage can be very
risky.
We are not the Ubermenschen with the X-Ray or electron microscope
Eyes. We exist at rather a gross level of reality where things which
look very solid to us, are actually nothing of the kind at the
molecular, atomic and nuclear levels. And Einstein has proven that
what looks like 'mass' to us, at a deeper level is nothing but energy.
All we had to do, thanks to the Manhattan Project, is tweak that mass
just a bit in order to see how true that was; this immense power that
exists not only all around us, but right down inside our own so-called
'physical' being.
But Einstein also showed how all these things are relative, so that on
our own rather gross, mundane level of reality, these 'appearances' or
phenomena that we see, hear, touch, taste, feel, make love to, and
think, are to be distinguished from the sub-nuclear 'noumena' of
what's really out there and down inside us.
Yes, there may certainly be ways, through means of certain mystical
disciplines of meditation, and other oddities of human experience
whereby a true glimpse of the noumenal world of Pure Being may be had--
or who knows, entered during dreams, acid trips, or even as it was, so
they say for Elijah and Christ, permanently disappeared into, never to
return--so far, as yet.
But that's beside the point. At this level of mundane reality, as Kant
and Husserl see it, there are certain determining factors pertaining
to the way our brains work *on this mundane level of reality* which
force us to observe all things as phenomena bounded by a rational
frame of space and time. The process of coming to know how our minds
process and order the appearances we witness was begun by Aristotle
with his *Organon* of studies in logic which he developed entirely at
first by means of discovering the parts of speech, discerning the
distinction between a subject and predicate, and taking off from there
to discern the whole apparatus of Categorical logic which enabled him
to establish the science of biology as ordered by his distinctions of
"genus" and "species".
So, for postmodernists to take from Goethe the notion that simply
because our minds work to interpret, either naturally or logically all
the observations that become what we regard as thought, knowledge does
not mean that this may be done willy-nilly, or with disregard to the
processes of reason which are the very gears of the machine of that
capacity for interpretation.
You can get the appearances, phenomena and interpretations wrong. The
rules that Aristotle discovered in his work from the Organon, *On
Interpretation* he shows are not just some caprice that occurred to
him, but quite to the contrary, these things came to him as the direct
result of his nature studies. There is a knowledge that is valid and
true to nature at our mundane level of nature. And as Kant later
showed, there is a knowledge and an a priori logic of it, that is
valid at another more sublime, metaphysical level of super-mudane
nature, of noumenal nature which man can only approach by means of the
philosophy of Ethics, albeit he learned about this from mathematics
and geometry through contemplation of such a wonder as the Pythagorean
theorem, which presents a truth of nature that could never have been
puzzled out by process of mere observation and logic as we know it, as
this is proven by the fact that no mathematician (so far as I've read
or heard) has ever been able to 'reverse engineer' it, show a series
of calculations or mere linguistic reasonings that would lead to such
a mathematical insight. For this reason, no man understands it, as to
why it works the way it does. One is led to suppose that Pythagoras
may have laboriously come up with it by a process of hit and miss,
trying this formula and that till like Salk with his vaccine, he
finally hit the one that worked.
Otherwise the Great Geometer saw it in a dream, or as part of his
practice of fasting it came to him in a vision when for an instant he
had penetrated the veil of appearances to see what powerful truths
have always lain just beyond it.
James Whitehead
To point this out is not post-modern - but marks the end of modernity...
post-modernity is what we have now - where "all desires have to be
fulfilled"...
(no logical paradox here?)
"J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_th...@bigstring.com> wrote in message
news:1173254072.9...@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
J Seymour MacNicely
> *All* statements of the kind 'All X are Y' are problematic....
So you've got yourself one mighty problematic statement right there,
as of course you knew; it is the Mission Impossible proposition in
logic that self-destructs upon delivery. You don't even have to shoot
the messenger, he just stands there and self-deconstructs. You
postmodernists are such a jolly lot of gleefully mad reason-bombers,
aren't you?
Reminds me of an LSD trip I once took, when I found there was nothing
I could say that made sense. A total freakout. All meaning was gone,
all speech was absurd, leaving nothing but the experience itself,
which just kept getting stranger and stranger.
> To point this out is not post-modern - but marks the end of modernity...
> post-modernity is what we have now - where "all desires have to be
> fulfilled"...
> (no logical paradox here?)
None whatsoever. When all meaning is gone, only experience remains,
whether of desire or dread--one or the other or both, which must be,
as you say, "fulfilled."
--
Mackie
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com
James Whitehead
Yes - its not the idea of "fill in the gap" which is post-modern - its the
disappearance of meaning... and the replacement with desire..
(MS Word - "you appear to be writing a poem......")
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
> "J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_the_n...@bigstring.com> wrote in messagenews:1173345428....@c51g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > "James Whitehead" <somewh...@overtherainbow.com> wrote in message news:
> > 1173271608.5723...@demeter.uk.clara.net...
> > > *All* statements of the kind 'All X are Y' are problematic....
>
> > So you've got yourself one mighty problematic statement right there,
> > as of course you knew; it is the Mission Impossible proposition in
> > logic that self-destructs upon delivery. You don't even have to shoot
> > the messenger, he just stands there and self-deconstructs. You
> > postmodernists are such a jolly lot of gleefully mad reason-bombers,
> > aren't you?
>
> > Reminds me of an LSD trip I once took, when I found there was nothing
> > I could say that made sense. A total freakout. All meaning was gone,
> > all speech was absurd, leaving nothing but the experience itself,
> > which just kept getting stranger and stranger.
>
> > > To point this out is not post-modern - but marks the end of modernity...
> > > post-modernity is what we have now - where "all desires have to be
> > > fulfilled"...
> > > (no logical paradox here?)
>
> > None whatsoever. When all meaning is gone, only experience remains,
> > whether of desire or dread--one or the other or both, which must be,
> > as you say, "fulfilled."
> > --
>
> Yes - its not the idea of "fill in the gap" which is post-modern - its the
> disappearance of meaning... and the replacement with desire..
>
> (MS Word - "you appear to be writing a poem......")
It seems to me desire drags meaning into it.
Maybe you mean the disappearance of official
meaning.
Mani Deli
<mac_th...@bigstring.com> wrote:
> You
>postmodernists are such a jolly lot of gleefully mad reason-bombers,
>aren't you?
> When all meaning is gone, only experience remains,
>whether of desire or dread--one or the other or both, which must be,
>as you say, "fulfilled."
When all meaning is gone it's called Nihilism or better still,
nonsense, the older word for POMO.
James Whitehead
"Mani Deli" <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:5gs0v2520ddjqajf7...@4ax.com...
It may appear like Nihilsm - but nihilism is still a "belief" - as such it
has meaning and logic - a whole arithmatic can be made from empty sets... it
may be a negative answer to the meaning of life - but its still an answer -
to the modern question - why whence wither
> nonsense, the older word for POMO.
"4.003 Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical
works are not false but nonsensical... and it is not surprising that the
deepest problems are in fact not problems at all."
Post-modernity has 'sense' - but only as a feature (a desire) neither does
it work towards it - thats what you have demonstrated above - your total
submersion in the post modern epoch- the meaning is empty - just as all
art is empty - both modern and past. As you appear to be in denial as to the
age you are in - you locate yourself bang in it - you use the internet to
express your 'correct' thoughts - all values are equal - and all valuers are
correct. The customer is always right.
James Whitehead
I think you're right to say 'drags in' - but as Mani demonstrates its simply
a feature of life that one can buy into- (doesn't everyone justify their
actions?) but if meaning arrives *after* the event - its not its cause....
and as things are given - any explanation can never be the cause... i
don't see how existence can be a question- though doing sums can be deeply
satisfying... Mani's arithmetic *is* validated by post-arithmetic AKA
post-modernity AKA Post-everything....
I've suddenly thought how silly Freudian analysis is - as if knowing why one
has desire can relieve it? Is it the opposite - knowing creates new
desires?
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
> "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Early in the evolution of the mind -- say, at the level of the more
advanced bacteria -- living beings discovered that if a given behavior
produced a good thing, repetition of the behavior might produce the
good thing again. Those that could use light learned (genetically
speaking) to swim towards the light, etc. But now an object, the
behavior, was interposed between the being and the good thing it
desire. Thus desire, combined with intelligence, led to meaning:
the X of swimming connected to the Y of light. It is not hard to
see that this procedure could rapidly become far more complex,
and elaborate organs (nervous systems, brains) would evolve to
exploit the possibilities and to seek out new ones. Eventually,
this seeking-out would run wild and create Ys where there were
only Xs, or create incorrect X->Y combinations; then new Xs to
destroy or modify the bad Xs would arise. Thus were Criticism
and Philosophy born, Xs which themselves became Ys.
Periodicaly these pile up and are deleted by yet another
X->Ys, nihilism, say. But there is no real escape from meaning
other than annihilation, which nihilism seems to promise, yet
doesn't deliver. As long as desire exists, meaning will arise.
James Whitehead
But the triumph of modernity was the overcoming of biology - but the reverse
occurred - meaning now exists outside ourselves - we no longer need it - in
fact we definitely don't need it in its pure form as it would destroy the
current epoch - - because we have past nihilism - the triumph of modernity
has overcome everything - and so classes of mid west feminists can discuss
Nietzsche... we thus declare war on terror - where is the logic in this -
where is the meaning.?
CB
>
> But the triumph of modernity was the overcoming of biology - but the
reverse
> occurred - meaning now exists outside ourselves - we no longer need it -
in
> fact we definitely don't need it in its pure form as it would destroy the
> current epoch - - because we have past nihilism - the triumph of modernity
> has overcome everything - and so classes of mid west feminists can discuss
> Nietzsche... we thus declare war on terror - where is the logic in this -
> where is the meaning.?
>
>
And just how have we "overcome biology" ?We've learnt a bit about it, that's
all....
*Anarcissie*
What you say here doesn't mean very much to me. As I pointed
out, in the X(meaning)->Y(desired object) paradigm there are false
Xs such as "war on terror" but this does not obviate the existence
of true, or at least less-false Xs.
As for "meaning existing outside ourselves", if so, where is it?
James Whitehead
"CB" <caldwell...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:jghIh.8455$PV3....@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
Biological evolution - no longer does our species rely on biological
adaptation to adapt - which if it is the means for evolution - has been
overcome.
Survival of the smartest... humanities response to problems now relies on
technology not on biology...
James Whitehead
I dont follow your x, y (far too abstract *for me!*) but how "different" is
it that a cell is attracted to light than an electron is deflected by a
magnetic field?
Meaning is just an empty term (now) there is no meaning - its an idea we
had - very useful - which we now wrap with technology. A simple mistake -
thinking uses language and so implies signification - so we assume the
universe is a signifier - when its not. The whole point of language is its
not being true- so it gives this idea of 'meaning' - useful yes - to get a
grip on reality - to make it as a mental construct - but when we think hard
the whole thing falls apart- like the end of a rainbow...we can never arrive
at meaning - as its generated and located elsewhere by thought - by the act
of thinking... meaning alludes us because when we arrive at where we think
it is whatever is there is another potential signifier.... (i think this
is in the tractatus as well as Derrida)
>
> As for "meaning existing outside ourselves", if so, where is it?
"Its all around you neo - its in the air you breath" :-) seriously its
in Databases and spreadsheets - the spreadsheet is the source of decision
making... our desires are met by technology - so its in technology that or
wealth (credit) knowledge and meaning lies... hasn't google become a
standard response to any feeling of a lack of knowledge? What is myspace
for? How do we expect to live in old age...
Mounard le Fuogueux
> An apology . . .
>
> "Mounard le Fuogueux" <Blinkin...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote in
> message news:45EE17C2...@NonEventHorizon.com...
>
>>It was Goethe, not Nietzsche that started the trend - see Walter
>>Kaufmann's - DIscovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant and Hegel. FOr example
>>Goethe's famous quote " All knowledge is interpretation" which has been
>>subsequently stolen by Derrida as " ther eis nothing outside the text"
>>or whatnot.
>
>
> I got so sidetracked into all that stuff about Nietzsche that I never
> addressed your main point . . .
>
>
>>Goethe's famous quote " All knowledge is interpretation" which has been
>>subsequently stolen by Derrida as " ther eis nothing outside the text"
>>or whatnot.
>
>
> If postmodernists are seeing in Goethe the beginning of a trend away
> from rationalism, or in Nietzsche's terms, as some see it, from the
> Apollonian, to the Dionysian, toward a celebration of the passions, of
> paradox, the irrational, the mythical, taking such a statement about
> knowledge from Goethe to the extreme of saying there can be no
> validity to an absolutely literal reading of a text, well . . .
1.
I don't believe that any pomo wanabees recognize Goethe as an antecedent
(except in German Language departments) - they currently see all pomo
thought as originating from Derrida. The TRUTH that deconstruction
(Heideggers "de-structuring") originates directly with Socrates is a
truth so awefull that pomo can be thought of as a body of work to cover
and occlude this fact.
2. Appollonian vs Dionysian
Norman MacKenzie in "Dreams and dreaming":
There are two types of thought processes...catagorized as R-thinking
(reality adjusted) - thought basically related to the outer world - and
A-Thinking (autistic) - thought turned inward. The first relies
primarily on logic and abstract concepts, the second on association and
imagery.
R-Thinking .. is confined to waking thought, and is heavily dependant on
on a sufficent and continuing sensory input, but A-thinking may occur at
any time. Most people experience it only in sleep or in introspective
momoents, the the possibility of it is always there- and of course, in
the hallucinated person it has invaded and perhaps overwhelmed normal
consciousness.
William Stekel: "We never have single thoughts, but always many, an
entire polyphony... I picture thinking as...orchestral music of which
only th emelody is audible." The melody is R-Thinking; the complex
harmonies are A-Thinking. What appears to happen to a dreamer, or the
person hallucinated by drugs or mental illness, is that the melody is
lost and only the harmonies are heard.
For me, the appollonian is associated with R-Thinking and the dionysian
with A-thinking. Appollo is the god of light (seeing) as well as
healing. But when the facts of reality - death, dasein, reality become
too overwhelming we seek release in the ecstacy of dance, dreaming and
drugs.
As an aside, mescaline was always considered more 'high-church",
natural, european (used by Aldous Huxley et al) whereas lsd was always
more lowchurch, industrial, us-corporate (reguardless of the fact that
mesc was grown in the US and lsd created in Swiss/German factories).
Location,location, location...
3. postmodern means post-contemporary. The only thing that happens after
the "now" is the history (memory) of that now. thats why postmodern
music implies early music. The only escape from the "now" is to memory
and history.
4. Although another really good definition is as follow: Modernism was a
protest against "the establishment" - high modernism (early 20th cent)
still lived in a milleau in which the romantic, standard practice, the
salon, etc) was still present, powerfull and authoritative. So the
"protest" of modernisn had meaning because what it protested against had
meaning and authority.
But the current generation of students are forced to learn and study
protest works without the meaning or presence of that which the protest
works were protesting against. The current "classics" are Dada, Ducamp,
and Cage. Pomo mimics modernism in its "protest" but without meaning and
is vacuuous. This is more in-line with Baudrillard's diagnosis of pomo.
However this vacuity and lack of "that which is protested against" is
not just of theoretical interest, but is actually complained about by
contemporary undergrad and grad students of literature and critical
theory and thus is becomming the new "that which is protested against".
However without real skill or ability to engage the actual forces of
technological change, such protest simply becomes a more caustic and
unhealthy version of the same.
In the Roman Catholic Church the bishops of Vatican II though they were
accompishing something by overturning the traditions and naratives of
the "establishment" of the church, including its language and traditions
since the COuncil or Trent and prior. But the net result in this
"Post-Vartican II" church is simply decay, irrelevance and the dustbin
of history. Similarly for art - the real contemporary art in the artists
studio is now their computer and their cell phone. The landfills of art
and humanities are the humanities departments of universities (as is
pre-Vatican II music, theology, art and Latin-Greek studies).
5. I personally conside Martin Luther to be the progenitor of pomo. We
have had many periods of Appolonian cultural growth that were always
coupled with a corresponding "opposition" that relied on what Nietzsche
called ressentiment and reactive forces (Nietzsche and Philosophy -
Gilles Deleuze). The "opposition" lead to catastrophy from which a new
appollonian epoch emerged (together with its opposition and subsequent
catastrophy). Here's a brief list:
Appolonian Epoch Ressentiment Opposition Catastropy
---------------- ----------------------- ----------
Classical Civ Christianity Feudalism/Dark Ages
Renaissance Reformation 30 years war
Enlightenment Romanticism, Nationaism Napoleonic wars, Revol.
Industrial Rev Great Awakening, Evanglic. WW's
PostWar Tech Rev Pomo, Islam, neocon Permanent War
---------------------------------------------------------------------
My point is that Pomo is not a separate epoch the somehow follows
"modernism" or the enlightenment, but that as a philosophy/politics it
is a reaction/ressentiment against contemporary Scientific culture, and
always has been.
The Atman is the Brahman.
I've always held that mathematics is not in opposition to observation,
but in fact IS observation.
The Pythagorean theorum originally relied on geometrical constructions
for its proof (you might remember geometrical constructions from
Euclidean geometry: use a straightendge and compass to ..)
The original pythagorean proof (as is with ALL proofs) relies on the
OBSERVATION that any square can be "deconstructed" into two right
triangles, as well as the OBSERVATION that the diagonal of triangle can
be used to "construct" a square with the diagonal as one of its sides.
The pythagorean proof then consists of the construction of squares along
the "adjacent" and "opposite" sides of a right triangle. These two
squares are then "deconstructed" into constituent right triangles and
"reconstructed" as a square along the hypotenous. Therefore the sum of
the squares of the adjecent and opposite equals the square of the
hyponenous. This proof is OBSERVATIONAL and discovered by REVERSE
ENGINEERING.
Other proofs have been made using different observations - such as
algebraic rather then geometric.
> For this reason, no man understands it, as to
> why it works the way it does.
Math/science does not ask about "WHY" - it only asks about "HOW". Why is
cultural, how is process and reality.
> One is led to suppose that Pythagoras
> may have laboriously come up with it by a process of hit and miss,
> trying this formula and that till like Salk with his vaccine, he
> finally hit the one that worked.
>
> Otherwise the Great Geometer saw it in a dream, or as part of his
> practice of fasting it came to him in a vision when for an instant he
> had penetrated the veil of appearances to see what powerful truths
> have always lain just beyond it.
Nobody would ever have Aristotle, Kant, Derrida or even God repair their
car.
Mounard le Fuogueux
Mounard le Fuogueux
The point of psychoanalysis might be simply to make ones dreams happier.
The introduction of the psychoanalyst into the patients consciousness
might be translated in the patients dream to represent the patient
himslef as a successfull person in control. This might be sufficient to
make the patients subsequent dreams a bit more optimistic and in control
- and thereby make their life better.
*Anarcissie*
People keep saying things like that, but many counterexamples
can be given. We are not locked up with a dictionary.
> > As for "meaning existing outside ourselves", if so, where is it?
>
> "Its all around you neo - its in the air you breath" :-) seriously its
> in Databases and spreadsheets - the spreadsheet is the source of decision
> making... our desires are met by technology - so its in technology that or
> wealth (credit) knowledge and meaning lies... hasn't google become a
> standard response to any feeling of a lack of knowledge? What is myspace
> for? How do we expect to live in old age...
No answer there either. You seem to be saying that
society, the social order, creates meaning and indeed
it does create many meanings, but so also do tools and
evolution of individuals and species. In effect there is
more meaning than ever, not less.
*Anarcissie*
You don't need an accredited German philosopher for what
I wrote, or even the Buddha, whom you might also have
mentioned. It's just common sense, is it not? Carrying on
about meaninglessness is like the rich fretting about the
burden and essential worthlessness of their many
possessions. As usual, the fashionable custom is dead
wrong, an attractive and indulged delusion.
Mounard le Fuogueux
Thats a very "James Whitehead"-ian thing to say - he's always saying
stuff to the effect of you never learn anything new -eveything you'll
ever know you have known already, like the colour red.
This is wrong because it presumes a view in which a persons knowledge
come from within - rather then without.
What you know - even about yourself and your own being - comes from
without. Your original sense of self was impressed from outside in - by
your parents. If you were raised by ducks you'd think yu were a duck.
Same for all other knowledge you have. What you bring to the table on
your own is actually very little - just a meat-based culture mirror site.
You might think that a mirror cann't do much, but a huge number of
mirrors all pointed at each other in slightly different orientations
will set up extrodinarily complex and emergent interference patterns.
Our brain is similarly an atronomical number of fairly simple neuron
that interconnect back upon each other, and each neuron retransmits a
neural electrical firing pattern frequency based upon that which it
received from its interconnected neighbors.
perhaps each individual neuron is just being common-sensical.
James Whitehead
"Mounard le Fuogueux" <Blinkin...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote in message
The realisation that one can afford to pay for analysis might also make one
feel happier - who not famous doesn't need an analyst... i think that's
where kurt cobain went wrong
*Anarcissie*
<BlinkingCur...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote:
> *Anarcissie* wrote:
> > You don't need an accredited German philosopher for what
> > I wrote, or even the Buddha, whom you might also have
> > mentioned. It's just common sense, is it not?
>
> Thats a very "James Whitehead"-ian thing to say - he's always saying
> stuff to the effect of you never learn anything new -eveything you'll
> ever know you have known already, like the colour red.
But I didn't say that.
> This is wrong because it presumes a view in which a persons knowledge
> come from within - rather then without.
>
> What you know - even about yourself and your own being - comes from
> without. Your original sense of self was impressed from outside in - by
> your parents. If you were raised by ducks you'd think yu were a duck.
>
> Same for all other knowledge you have. What you bring to the table on
> your own is actually very little - just a meat-based culture mirror site.
>
> You might think that a mirror cann't do much, but a huge number of
> mirrors all pointed at each other in slightly different orientations
> will set up extrodinarily complex and emergent interference patterns.
>
> Our brain is similarly an atronomical number of fairly simple neuron
> that interconnect back upon each other, and each neuron retransmits a
> neural electrical firing pattern frequency based upon that which it
> received from its interconnected neighbors.
>
> perhaps each individual neuron is just being common-sensical.
Given the complexity of the situation, and especially
considering those feedback and feedforward loops, I don't
see how you can determine what proportion of meaning
arises genetically, what proportion in the activity of the
individual's nervous system, and what proportion in the
social behaviors of the individuals. It looks like quite a
mystery to me. The only thing that is certain is that
"meaninglessness" is an affected stance, not an
actual experience, except for those with severe
mental problems.
Ned Ludd
>
>>>>> But there is no real escape from meaning
>>>>> other than annihilation, which nihilism seems to promise, yet
>>>>> doesn't deliver. As long as desire exists, meaning will arise.
>>>>
>>>> Schoenhauer
>>>
>>> I wrote, or even the Buddha, whom you might also have
>>> about meaninglessness is like the rich fretting about the
>>> burden and essential worthlessness of their many
>>> possessions. As usual, the fashionable custom is dead
>>> wrong, an attractive and indulged delusion.
>>
>> What you know - even about yourself and your own being - comes from
>> without. Your original sense of self was impressed from outside in -
>> by your parents. If you were raised by ducks you'd think yu were a
>> duck.
>> Same for all other knowledge you have. What you bring to the table
>> on your own is actually very little - just a meat-based culture
>> mirror site.
>> You might think that a mirror cann't do much, but a huge number of
>> mirrors all pointed at each other in slightly different orientations
>> will set up extrodinarily complex and emergent interference patterns.
>> that interconnect back upon each other, and each neuron retransmits a
>> neural electrical firing pattern frequency based upon that which it
>> received from its interconnected neighbors.
>> perhaps each individual neuron is just being common-sensical.
>
> Given the complexity of the situation, and especially
> considering those feedback and feedforward loops, I don't
> see how you can determine what proportion of meaning
> arises genetically, what proportion in the activity of the
> individual's nervous system, and what proportion in the
> social behaviors of the individuals. It looks like quite a
> mystery to me. The only thing that is certain is that
> "meaninglessness" is an affected stance, not an
> actual experience, except for those with severe
> mental problems.
>
Meaning is always a ratio, right? It is always the expression of
something with respect to something else. 'Rational' numbers - to
take the simplest form of 'rationality' - are numbers which can be
expressed as a quotient of integers, ie. one whole number divided
by another whole number. Rationality, and reason, and meaning
itself, is always something expressed in relation to something else.
When you ask, "What do you mean?", you are asking the person to say
the same thing they just said, but say it in other terms, which are
different from the terms they just used, but still equal to what
they just said.
And that's why the accusation of 'meaninglessness', when applied
to the modern/postmodern state is almost never appropriate. It's
why a statement like, "There is nothing outside the text" is also
inappropriate to the (lengthy) discussions which usually follow
such a statement. Because there is always an ENORMOUS amount of
of meaning, and reference to other things, in those discussions.
If you ever spoke to someone who truly expressed meaninglessness
you would tune out immediately and walk away. It would be like
listening to a random word generator.
The amount of shared experience necessary to engage in almost any
discussion between two individuals is similarly ENORMOUS. Talk to
a two-year-old just learning to speak. An experience like that
puts you exactly on the cusp of meaning. Even the modern French
philosophers have fallen far short of that level of meaninglessness
in their wildest, most opaque dissertations.
Ned
*Anarcissie*
> "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote in message
I would not think so off-hand. The term _meaning_ in
such phrases as "My life is meaningless", "What's the
meaning of this?", "The politics of meaning", does is
much vaguer and denotes not a specific scheme of
modeling or representation (whence ratio), but of
connection and implication.
> It is always the expression of
> something with respect to something else. 'Rational' numbers - to
> take the simplest form of 'rationality' - are numbers which can be
> expressed as a quotient of integers, ie. one whole number divided
> by another whole number. Rationality, and reason, and meaning
> itself, is always something expressed in relation to something else.
> When you ask, "What do you mean?", you are asking the person to say
> the same thing they just said, but say it in other terms, which are
> different from the terms they just used, but still equal to what
> they just said.
>
> And that's why the accusation of 'meaninglessness', when applied
> to the modern/postmodern state is almost never appropriate. It's
> why a statement like, "There is nothing outside the text" is also
> inappropriate to the (lengthy) discussions which usually follow
> such a statement. Because there is always an ENORMOUS amount of
> of meaning, and reference to other things, in those discussions.
>
> If you ever spoke to someone who truly expressed meaninglessness
> you would tune out immediately and walk away. It would be like
> listening to a random word generator.
Exactly. A point I have made a few times myself,
so it must be a good one.
> The amount of shared experience necessary to engage in almost any
> discussion between two individuals is similarly ENORMOUS. Talk to
> a two-year-old just learning to speak. An experience like that
> puts you exactly on the cusp of meaning. Even the modern French
> philosophers have fallen far short of that level of meaninglessness
> in their wildest, most opaque dissertations.
I don't know -- sometimes two-year-olds say very interesting
things, but so do random word generators, I suppose.
James Whitehead
"Mounard le Fuogueux" <Blinkin...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote in message
> > You don't need an accredited German philosopher for what
> > I wrote, or even the Buddha, whom you might also have
> > mentioned. It's just common sense, is it not?
>
> Thats a very "James Whitehead"-ian thing to say - he's always saying
> stuff to the effect of you never learn anything new -eveything you'll
> ever know you have known already, like the colour red.
>
> This is wrong because it presumes a view in which a persons knowledge
> come from within - rather then without.
>
Please get it right I never said you never learn anything - i pointed out
Wittgenstein's questioning of learning given in the Investigaions - in which
he discusses Augustine's explanation... it assumes nothingf of the kind -
> What you know - even about yourself and your own being - comes from
> without. Your original sense of self was impressed from outside in - by
> your parents. If you were raised by ducks you'd think yu were a duck.
>
This might be the case though i doubt it - why cant you learn by self
reflection - if we only learn from our parents or others then how is
anything new ever thought up... etc..
> Same for all other knowledge you have. What you bring to the table on
> your own is actually very little - just a meat-based culture mirror site.
>
Or rather *every* thought was once new and original... not learnt from
parents or others...
> You might think that a mirror cann't do much, but a huge number of
> mirrors all pointed at each other in slightly different orientations
> will set up extrodinarily complex and emergent interference patterns.
>
> Our brain is similarly an atronomical number of fairly simple neuron
> that interconnect back upon each other, and each neuron retransmits a
> neural electrical firing pattern frequency based upon that which it
> received from its interconnected neighbors.
>
Smoke and mirrors -
James Whitehead
> On Mar 11, 1:59 pm, Mounard le Fuogueux
> <BlinkingCur...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote:
> > *Anarcissie* wrote:
> > > You don't need an accredited German philosopher for what
> > > I wrote, or even the Buddha, whom you might also have
> > > mentioned. It's just common sense, is it not?
> >
> > Thats a very "James Whitehead"-ian thing to say - he's always saying
> > stuff to the effect of you never learn anything new -eveything you'll
> > ever know you have known already, like the colour red.
>
> But I didn't say that.
Neither did I
neither did Wittgenstein...
>
James Whitehead
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:gr3Jh.8981$PL....@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
> Meaning is always a ratio, right? It is always the expression of
> something with respect to something else. 'Rational' numbers - to
> take the simplest form of 'rationality' - are numbers which can be
> expressed as a quotient of integers, ie. one whole number divided
> by another whole number. Rationality, and reason, and meaning
> itself, is always something expressed in relation to something else.
> When you ask, "What do you mean?", you are asking the person to say
> the same thing they just said, but say it in other terms, which are
> different from the terms they just used, but still equal to what
> they just said.
No - in the case of a bottle with the words POISON on it - asking what the
words mean does not amount to the same thing at all- i.e. it means drinking
this will kill you - all you konw is that "this will kill you" and "POISON
are tautologous - which means nothing!
>
> And that's why the accusation of 'meaninglessness', when applied
> to the modern/postmodern state is almost never appropriate. It's
> why a statement like, "There is nothing outside the text" is also
> inappropriate to the (lengthy) discussions which usually follow
> such a statement.
But just what is the text here - its not clear......
Ned Ludd
>
>> If you ever spoke to someone who truly expressed meaninglessness
>> you would tune out immediately and walk away. It would be like
>> listening to a random word generator.
>
> Exactly. A point I have made a few times myself,
> so it must be a good one.
>
>> The amount of shared experience necessary to engage in almost any
>> discussion between two individuals is similarly ENORMOUS. Talk to
>> a two-year-old just learning to speak. An experience like that
>> puts you exactly on the cusp of meaning. Even the modern French
>> philosophers have fallen far short of that level of meaninglessness
>> in their wildest, most opaque dissertations.
>
> I don't know -- sometimes two-year-olds say very interesting
> things, but so do random word generators, I suppose.
>
Occasionally, but rarely. I've written a couple myself, and they
will produce something interesting with about the same frequency as
the proverbial blind pig stumbling on a corn cob. Which is also
roughly the same incidence of a two-year-old making an interesting
comment.
Ned
Ned Ludd
>
>> Meaning is always a ratio, right? It is always the expression of
>> something with respect to something else. 'Rational' numbers - to
>> take the simplest form of 'rationality' - are numbers which can be
>> expressed as a quotient of integers, ie. one whole number divided
>> by another whole number. Rationality, and reason, and meaning
>> itself, is always something expressed in relation to something else.
>> When you ask, "What do you mean?", you are asking the person to say
>> the same thing they just said, but say it in other terms, which are
>> different from the terms they just used, but still equal to what
>> they just said.
>
> No - in the case of a bottle with the words POISON on it - asking what
> the words mean does not amount to the same thing at all- i.e. it means
> and "POISON are tautologous - which means nothing!
>
OK... If you are suggesting that you don't know what "This will kill
you" means any more than you know what the word POISON means, then I
suppose if I had given you the former answer you would again ask,
"What does that mean?" And I would probably grab my neck with both
hands in a strangling motion, stick my tongue out, make noises like
"Gack!" and "Arrghh", fall to the floor in simulated convulsions and
and then flop down motionless.
And you would then... ??
Ned
Mani Deli
<some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>No - in the case of a bottle with the words POISON on it - asking what the
>words mean does not amount to the same thing at all- i.e. it means drinking
>this will kill you - all you konw is that "this will kill you" and "POISON
>are tautologous - which means nothing!
>
>>
For all this guy's convoluted babble I bet he knows how to count his
change.
Pete Watters
"I expect you to die, Mr. Bond."
Iconography for the post-toastie age at
http://www.desertspace.org/warning_sign/index.html
Pete (who has had far more interesting conversations with some
2-year-olds than those he sees between adults on Usenet...)
--
"No more serious thinking until someone shows us some cash." -- absfg motto
Ned Ludd
"Pete Watters" <eldu...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:eldupree-EBDCD0...@news.west.cox.net...
I heard about this, but it was a couple of years ago. Didn't think
much of it, because there is NO way ANYBODY is going to improve on the
ultimate, perfect POISON sign, or as these liberal, post-nuclear, hand-
wringers want to call it "An effective universal warning sign/permanent
marker for the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository", which is,
was, and always shall be, a human skull, preferably with two crossed
femurs below it. Or as it is familiarly known to the English-speaking
world and its colonies - the Jolly Roger.
> Pete (who has had far more interesting conversations with some
> 2-year-olds than those he sees between adults on Usenet...)
>
Spoken like a true father. How interested were disinterested
3rd-party listeners?
Ned
Pete Watters
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
Make it big enough to be seen from space and strong enough to withstand
10,000 years, and you've got a contender.
> > Pete (who has had far more interesting conversations with some
> > 2-year-olds than those he sees between adults on Usenet...)
> >
>
> Spoken like a true father.
Or a wizened veteran of Usenet.
> How interested were disinterested
> 3rd-party listeners?
As interested as the disinterested can be, I guess. Frankly, I didn't
care.
Reminds me, though, that when No. 1 Son was about 4, he told me about
his notions of good and bad -- that there were " black circles and
yellow triangles" inside people, and sometimes the black circles won and
other times the yellow triangles won. I didn't think much about it until
years later when I picked up Leibniz's "Theodicy."
Pete (anyone working on a random-idea generator?)
Ned Ludd
Done. Put the Jolly Roder on the moon! Carve it was lasers, from here
on earth. I swear I'm going to submit a proposal to either the NEA or
NASA to do this. And we'd better do it now. Because if we don't do it
now and immediately declare the moon off-limits for this kind of stuff,
it won't even be a year before Coca-Cola and McDonalds have their logos
on the moon with us.
Ned
James Whitehead
most when young thinking about infinity and such - which included wondering
what had happened to dead pets and missing grandparents, "what do you mean"
then becomes something more than a rational tautology...
James Whitehead
"Mani Deli" <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:hofbv2137soop5ldv...@4ax.com...
I *never* count my change!
How ignoble change-counters look....
James Whitehead
Another bonus for global warming -
CB
"Biljo White" <biljo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:20070313081743.633$O...@newsreader.com...
> "James Whitehead" <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
> .
> >
> > No - in the case of a bottle with the words POISON on it - asking what
> > the words mean does not amount to the same thing at all- i.e. it means
> > drinking this will kill you - all you konw is that "this will kill you"
> > and "POISON are tautologous - which means nothing!
> >
> > >
> > > And that's why the accusation of 'meaninglessness', when applied
> > > to the modern/postmodern state is almost never appropriate. It's
> > > why a statement like, "There is nothing outside the text" is also
> > > inappropriate to the (lengthy) discussions which usually follow
> > > such a statement.
> >
> > But just what is the text here - its not clear......
>
Not quite - Falwell at least managed to make money and attract a following
:)
George Peatty
>> These guys are to philosophy what Jerry Falwell is to science.
>Not quite - Falwell at least managed to make money and attract a following
Better, these guys are to philosophy what Carl Sagan is to science.
Mani Deli
>"James Whitehead" <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>.
>>
>> No - in the case of a bottle with the words POISON on it - asking what
>> the words mean does not amount to the same thing at all- i.e. it means
>> drinking this will kill you - all you konw is that "this will kill you"
>> and "POISON are tautologous - which means nothing!
>>
>> >
>> > And that's why the accusation of 'meaninglessness', when applied
>> > to the modern/postmodern state is almost never appropriate. It's
>> > why a statement like, "There is nothing outside the text" is also
>> > inappropriate to the (lengthy) discussions which usually follow
>> > such a statement.
>>
>> But just what is the text here - its not clear......
>
>These guys are to philosophy what Jerry Falwell is to science.
I agree. However, unlike these guys, as full of shit as Falwell is he
can speak clearly.
James Whitehead
might you lack the *skill* to understand.... what is - with thought - fairly
clear?
Bloke Down The Pub
"Ned Ludd" wrote...
> "Pete Watters" wrote
snip
> >> much of it, because there is NO way ANYBODY is going to improve on the
> >> ultimate, perfect POISON sign,
snip
> it won't even be a year before Coca-Cola and McDonalds have their logos
> on the moon with us.
Two improvements already.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Mounard le Fuogueux
>
>>On 8 Mar 2007 01:17:08 -0800, "J Seymour MacNicely"
>><mac_th...@bigstring.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>You
>>>postmodernists are such a jolly lot of gleefully mad reason-bombers,
>>>aren't you?
>>
>>>whether of desire or dread--one or the other or both, which must be,
>>>as you say, "fulfilled."
>>
>
>
> It may appear like Nihilsm - but nihilism is still a "belief" - as such it
> has meaning and logic - a whole arithmatic can be made from empty sets... it
> may be a negative answer to the meaning of life - but its still an answer -
> to the modern question - why whence wither
>
>
>>nonsense, the older word for POMO.
>
>
> "4.003 Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical
> works are not false but nonsensical... and it is not surprising that the
> deepest problems are in fact not problems at all."
>
> Post-modernity has 'sense' - but only as a feature (a desire) neither does
> it work towards it - thats what you have demonstrated above - your total
> submersion in the post modern epoch- the meaning is empty - just as all
> art is empty - both modern and past. As you appear to be in denial as to the
> age you are in - you locate yourself bang in it - you use the internet to
> express your 'correct' thoughts - all values are equal - and all valuers are
> correct. The customer is always right.
>
My cell phone and computer pass the turing test.
James Whitehead
"Mounard le Fuogueux" <Blinkin...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote in message
The failure of AI was in thinking logic relates to intelligence...
*Anarcissie*
<BlinkingCur...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote:
> J Seymour MacNicely wrote:
> > An apology . . .
>
> > "Mounard le Fuogueux" <BlinkingCur...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote in
> > messagenews:45EE17C2...@NonEventHorizon.com...
>
> >>It was Goethe, not Nietzsche that started the trend - see Walter
> >>Kaufmann's - DIscovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant and Hegel. FOr example
> >>Goethe's famous quote " All knowledge is interpretation" which has been
> >>subsequently stolen by Derrida as " ther eis nothing outside the text"
> >>or whatnot.
>
> > I got so sidetracked into all that stuff about Nietzsche that I never
> > addressed your main point . . .
>
> >>Goethe's famous quote " All knowledge is interpretation" which has been
> >>subsequently stolen by Derrida as " ther eis nothing outside the text"
> >>or whatnot.
>
> > If postmodernists are seeing in Goethe the beginning of a trend away
> > from rationalism, or in Nietzsche's terms, as some see it, from the
> > Apollonian, to the Dionysian, toward a celebration of the passions, of
> > paradox, the irrational, the mythical, taking such a statement about
> > knowledge from Goethe to the extreme of saying there can be no
> > validity to an absolutely literal reading of a text, well . . .
>
> 1.
> I don't believe that any pomo wanabees recognize Goethe as an antecedent
> (except in German Language departments) - they currently see all pomo
> thought as originating from Derrida. The TRUTH that deconstruction
> (Heideggers "de-structuring") originates directly with Socrates is a
> truth so awefull that pomo can be thought of as a body of work to cover
> and occlude this fact.
>
> 2. Appollonian vs Dionysian
>
> Norman MacKenzie in "Dreams and dreaming":
>
> There are two types of thought processes...catagorized as R-thinking
> (reality adjusted) - thought basically related to the outer world - and
> A-Thinking (autistic) - thought turned inward. The first relies
> primarily on logic and abstract concepts, the second on association and
> imagery.
> R-Thinking .. is confined to waking thought, and is heavily dependant on
> on a sufficent and continuing sensory input, but A-thinking may occur at
> any time. Most people experience it only in sleep or in introspective
> momoents, the the possibility of it is always there- and of course, in
> the hallucinated person it has invaded and perhaps overwhelmed normal
> consciousness.
> William Stekel: "We never have single thoughts, but always many, an
> entire polyphony... I picture thinking as...orchestral music of which
> only th emelody is audible." The melody is R-Thinking; the complex
> harmonies are A-Thinking. What appears to happen to a dreamer, or the
> person hallucinated by drugs or mental illness, is that the melody is
> lost and only the harmonies are heard.
>
> For me, the appollonian is associated with R-Thinking and the dionysian
> with A-thinking. Appollo is the god of light (seeing) as well as
> healing. But when the facts of reality - death, dasein, reality become
> too overwhelming we seek release in the ecstacy of dance, dreaming and
> drugs.
The business about A- and R-thinking, as applied to actual life
and not fanciful play with imagery, would be interesting if it could
be supported with any scientific evidence. As it is, it seems to
me that it is logical thinking which is internal, as a way of putting
other thoughts in order, and associational thinking which is more
engaged with the physical world, because associational thinking
is much faster than logical thinking and appeared much earlier
in evolution. Cats catch mice using associational thinking, not
logic. If they waited around for the wheels of logic to turn,
they'd all starve.
However, I also question whether logical and associational
thinking should be opposed; it seems to me that the former
is a subset of the latter, a peculiar kind of associational
thinking.
> As an aside, mescaline was always considered more 'high-church",
> natural, european (used by Aldous Huxley et al) whereas lsd was always
> more lowchurch, industrial, us-corporate (reguardless of the fact that
> mesc was grown in the US and lsd created in Swiss/German factories).
> Location,location, location...
>
> 3. postmodern means post-contemporary. The only thing that happens after
> the "now" is the history (memory) of that now. thats why postmodern
> music implies early music. The only escape from the "now" is to memory
> and history.
But much of memory and history is imagined.
> 4. Although another really good definition is as follow: Modernism was a
> protest against "the establishment" - high modernism (early 20th cent)
> still lived in a milleau in which the romantic, standard practice, the
> salon, etc) was still present, powerfull and authoritative. So the
> "protest" of modernisn had meaning because what it protested against had
> meaning and authority.
>
> But the current generation of students are forced to learn and study
> protest works without the meaning or presence of that which the protest
> works were protesting against. The current "classics" are Dada, Ducamp,
> and Cage. Pomo mimics modernism in its "protest" but without meaning and
> is vacuuous. This is more in-line with Baudrillard's diagnosis of pomo.
>
> However this vacuity and lack of "that which is protested against" is
> not just of theoretical interest, but is actually complained about by
> contemporary undergrad and grad students of literature and critical
> theory and thus is becomming the new "that which is protested against".
> However without real skill or ability to engage the actual forces of
> technological change, such protest simply becomes a more caustic and
> unhealthy version of the same.
>
> In the Roman Catholic Church the bishops of Vatican II though they were
> accompishing something by overturning the traditions and naratives of
> the "establishment" of the church, including its language and traditions
> since the COuncil or Trent and prior. But the net result in this
> "Post-Vartican II" church is simply decay, irrelevance and the dustbin
> of history. Similarly for art - the real contemporary art in the artists
> studio is now their computer and their cell phone. The landfills of art
> and humanities are the humanities departments of universities (as is
> pre-Vatican II music, theology, art and Latin-Greek studies).
>
> 5. I personally conside Martin Luther to be the progenitor of pomo. We
> have had many periods of Appolonian cultural growth that were always
> coupled with a corresponding "opposition" that relied on what Nietzsche
> called ressentiment and reactive forces (Nietzsche and Philosophy -
> Gilles Deleuze). The "opposition" lead to catastrophy from which a new
> appollonian epoch emerged (together with its opposition and subsequent
> catastrophy). Here's a brief list:
>
> Appolonian Epoch Ressentiment Opposition Catastropy
> ---------------- ----------------------- ----------
> Classical Civ Christianity Feudalism/Dark Ages
>
> Renaissance Reformation 30 years war
>
> Enlightenment Romanticism, Nationaism Napoleonic wars, Revol.
>
> Industrial Rev Great Awakening, Evanglic. WW's
>
> PostWar Tech Rev Pomo, Islam, neocon Permanent War
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My point is that Pomo is not a separate epoch the somehow follows
> "modernism" or the enlightenment, but that as a philosophy/politics it
> is a reaction/ressentiment against contemporary Scientific culture, and
> always has been.
>
>
>
>
>
> > There is another totally non-deconstructive way to read it, if one
> > should take the philosophy of Husserl--another mentor of Derrida--into
> > account. I posted on that subject last week and received, by email,
> > one reply, rather a nice one, but it hardly helped to carry the
> > conversation onward.
>
> > "All knowledge is interpretation" could not be a more concise
> > statement, not only of the metaphysics of Husserl, but Kant as well
> > insofar as Husserl carries Kant forward to emphasize that element of
> > Kant's philosophy which some take to have been irrefutably proven by
> > him, that we do not perceive reality through our senses but only an
> > interpretation of it, an "appearance", a ghostly 'phenomenon'.
>
> > All you have to do is swallow about 250 micrograms of LSD (a medium
> > dose) to see how very correct those two philosophers could be about
> > that. But I would recommend rather that people should see this truth
> > by reason rather than chemistry which even at that dosage can be very
> > risky.
>
> > We are not the Ubermenschen with the X-Ray or electron microscope
> > Eyes. We exist at rather a gross level of reality where things which
> > look very solid to us, are actually nothing of the kind at the
> > molecular, atomic and nuclear levels. And Einstein has proven that
> > what looks like 'mass' to us, at a deeper level is nothing but energy.
> > All we had to do, thanks to the Manhattan Project, is tweak that mass
> > just a bit in order to see how true that was; this immense power that
> > exists not only all around us, but right down inside our own so-called
> > 'physical' being.
>
> > But Einstein also showed how all these things are relative, so that on
> > our own rather gross, mundane level of reality, these 'appearances' or
> > phenomena that we see, hear, touch, taste, feel, make love to, and
> > think, are to be distinguished from the sub-nuclear 'noumena' of
> > what's really out there and down inside us.
>
> The Atman is the Brahman.
>
>
>
> > Yes, there may certainly be ways, through means of certain mystical
> > disciplines of meditation, and other oddities of human experience
> > whereby a true glimpse of the noumenal world of Pure Being may be had--
> > or who knows, entered during dreams, acid trips, or even as it was, so
> > they say for Elijah and Christ, permanently disappeared into, never to
> > return--so far, as yet.
>
> > But that's beside the point. At this level of mundane reality, as Kant
> > and Husserl see it, there are certain determining factors pertaining
> > to the way our brains work *on this mundane level of reality* which
> > force us to observe all things as phenomena bounded by a rational
> > frame of space and time. The process of coming to know how our minds
> > process and order the appearances we witness was begun by Aristotle
> > with his *Organon* of studies in logic which he developed entirely at
> > first by means of discovering the parts of speech, discerning the
> > distinction between a subject and predicate, and taking off from there
> > to discern the whole apparatus of Categorical logic which enabled him
> > to establish the science of biology as ordered by his distinctions of
> > "genus" and "species".
>
> > So, for postmodernists to take from Goethe the notion that simply
> > because our minds work to interpret, either naturally or logically all
> > the observations that become what we regard as thought, knowledge does
> > not mean that this may be done willy-nilly, or with disregard to the
Mani Deli
wrote:
> Cats catch mice using associational thinking, not
>logic.
Have you discussed this with many cats recently?
Mani Deli
<some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>The failure of AI was in thinking logic relates to intelligence...
>
AI is alive and well.
James Whitehead
Do you want to give evidence?
"Let's use 10 to the 15 bits and 10 teraflops as the best available
estimates for the storage capacity and speed of information processing for
the human brain.. so the evidence is overwhelming that in about 30 odd
years we should be able to make a machine which is as intelligent as a human
being or more so.." however On March 25, 2005, IBM's Blue Gene/L prototype
became the fastest supercomputer in a single installation using its 65536
nodes to run at 135.5 TFLOPS.The MDGRAPE-3 supercomputer, which was
completed in June 2006, reportedly reached one petaflop.Google's search
engine system [...] estimated total processing power of between
126 and 316 TFLOPS.. So processing power of between 10 and 100 times
greater - but nothing like intelligence. google for instance is dumb.
expecting a computer to be intelligent appears to be similar to expecting
the
British Library to be so. it is not - its users are.
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
> "Mani Deli" <m...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
He said that AI was alive and well, not that it had
accomplished anything in particular. AI is a collection
of human projects of uncertain purpose.
it may be doing quite well in terms of dollars spent and
man/woman hours of gainful employment provided.
People _have_ constructed programs which passed
the Turing Test by engaging in many rounds of Usenet
discussions, usually as a troll.
James Whitehead
If AI was *alive* given the processing power available it would appear
obvious that a machine capable of out smarting the smartest human should be
possible- such machines would be extremely *useful* to say the least- and
so would have accomplished something... i see no evidence of actual
intelligence - and Mani is yet to offer any :-) towards showing that its
alive and well. If Strong AI theory was correct we should have expected to
see some kind of evolution within AI - and we haven't (please show me if we
have). There is something missing in the strong AI theory - perhaps
"Will"... isn't it strange that the simplest of life strives to keep
alive - yet this computer never ever minds being switched off... and its
strange - does anyone get as attached to their computer as to a chair etc.
The Turing test is silly - (if we see computers building cities and taking
holidays - writing novels and playing golf we might assume intelligence...*)
the computer programs are designed by humans to *fool* the judge - not to
prove intelligence...
Maybe its behaviour that signifies intelligence and not logical ability... i
think we rarely see intelligence - just repetition - which is simpler - and
can be faked in a Turing test- intelligence creates something new..?
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
> "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Does it? What is intelligence, anyway?
Mani Deli
<some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>
>"Mani Deli" <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
>news:gralv2hlrcgml2138...@4ax.com...
>> On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:07:41 -0000, "James Whitehead"
>> <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>>
>> >The failure of AI was in thinking logic relates to intelligence...
>> >
>> AI is alive and well.
>
>
>Do you want to give evidence?
>
Go find your own.
Mani Deli
wrote:
>Mani Deli <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> >
>> >Do you want to give evidence?
>> >
>> Go find your own.
>
>This is Mani's answer for everything.
Of Course!
Associative Memory -- Learning At All Levels
Science Daily — "Green" means "go," but what does "red" mean? Just
about everybody says "stop" since we all have learned to imbue certain
colors with meaning (or we would be road kill by now). Long thought to
be limited to higher levels of information processing, researchers at
the Salk Institute for Biological Studies successfully traced this
type of associative learning to early stages of the visual processing
pathway.
"Sensory neurons in the visual cortex that handle incoming information
are very plastic and what they 'see' is determined by our experience
in the world," says lead investigator Thomas D. Albright, director of
the Vision Center Laboratory. Their findings, reported in the March 14
issue of the journal Neuron, will help scientists to better understand
how such learning takes place in the brain based on our daily
experiences.
Human memory relies mostly on association and objects frequently seen
together to become linked in our mind; when we try to retrieve
information, one thing reminds us of another, which reminds us of yet
another, and so on. Not surprisingly, neurobiologists have been trying
to uncover the underlying mechanisms for decades.
The acquisition of associated memories is believed to result from the
establishment or strengthening of connections between neurons that
represent the associated objects. Once trained and intricately linked,
a neuron that responds to the sight of a keyboard might respond to the
sight of a computer monitor, a coffee cup or reading glasses --
depending on the previously forged links.
In the past, studies on associative learning primarily focused on a
special area of the brain called the "inferior temporal cortex" (ITC),
a high level stage of visual processing. It is known to be critical
for object recognition and for storage of this type of learning.
"We wanted to know whether associative plasticity is unique to such
higher levels of processing or whether it is a more general property
of the brain that can happen even at lower, 'sensory' areas," explains
first author Anja Schlack, a post-doctoral researcher in the Albright
lab.
Our eyes take in the visual environment and break the incoming images
down into simple features such as color, brightness, motion and form.
These pieces of information are channeled from the eye to the brain
along specialized pathways. The ventral pathway, for examples, carries
information about form while the dorsal pathway is sensitive to space
and motion.
Schlack trained monkeys to associate a stationary arrow pointing
upward or downward --a meaningless object for the monkey -- with dots
moving up or down. While the monkeys watched arrows or moving dots,
Schlack observed signals from neurons located in the middle temporal
or MT area, an early way station along the dorsal pathway. It's also
nicknamed the "motion area" since over 90 percent of all neurons in
this area respond to movement in a particular direction but are
relatively impervious to color or form.
Before the start of the training session and just as the researchers
had predicted, stationary arrows meant nothing to neurons in the MT
area while moving dots elicited clear signals. After the learning
process had taken place, the cells responded to both because
experience had changed their tuning. "After the training, the arrows
elicit a recall of the motion and this is what the MT neurons then
respond to," concludes Schlack.
These results might explain the observations made recently in a
different lab with the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI). When shown photographs of athletes in motion, the human
equivalent of the macaque area MT lit up in human observers. The Salk
studies suggest that these brain activations probably result from
learned associations, strengthened by daily experience.
"We are constantly faced with a complex and ever changing
environment," says Albright. "The ability to use information based on
learned relations between objects helps us to make sense out of what
we see faster and more efficiently. This ability allows us to make the
right decisions in a timely manner: Even when presented with a complex
visual scene during rush hour we stop at the red light and avoid
getting hit by the oncoming traffic."
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Salk
Institute.
Mani Deli
>Mani Deli <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> >
>> >Do you want to give evidence?
>> >
>> Go find your own.
>
>This is Mani's answer for everything.
I doubt that you ever read any of my message
>He makes a statement and then, when
>asked to back it up, resorts to schoolyard taunts.
I don't do other peoples home work, especially when it refers to the
their convoluted ignorant drivel.
> My conclusion after
>observing him over a period of time is that he is a troll with no ideas and
>no evidence to back up anything he says. I wouldn't be surprised to find
>that he is about fifteen years old. Or a bot with pre-programmed answers
>similar to Eliza.
Your conclusion is as worthless as your nothing messages and nothing
artwork.
James Whitehead
weapons - whilst the English army in keeping with orders did not- AA guns
were meant to shoot vertically up at aeroplanes not horizontally at tanks...
this was achieved by a mental 'what if' - not by an observed mistake... or
trial and error
James Whitehead
Try answering my question - "do *you* want" - i'm not yet even asking you
to provide any - just enquiring if you want to give some- assuming you have
some.
And in case you fail to reply :-) the reason being this - its strange that
you don't want to give *illustrate* yet you think you might be an artist...
that is
'Go find your own' could almost be a work of po-mo art - if written on the
locked door of an art gallery... well done...
are your feet full of bullet holes?
'not smart - no art' (mine even rhymes!)
J Seymour MacNicely
On Mar 17, 3:20 am, "James Whitehead" <somewh...@overtherainbow.com>
wrote:
> Try answering my question - "do *you* want" - i'm not yet even asking you
> to provide any - just enquiring if you want to give some- assuming you have
> some.
> And in case you fail to reply :-) the reason being this - its strange that
> you don't want to give *illustrate* yet you think you might be an artist...
> that is
> 'Go find your own' could almost be a work of po-mo art - if written on the
> locked door of an art gallery
So funny. Why it's almost a work of art--or, maybe it is!
--
Mackie
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com/
"When you get to be the Devil."
Chapter XX: Night of the Dragons
Now on-line
Mounard le Fuogueux
> Your conclusion is as valid as everything else you make up.
If getting insulted by a machine isn't empirical and objective proof of
passing the Turing test, then I don't know what is.
James Whitehead
"Mounard le Fuogueux" <Blinkin...@NonEventHorizon.com> wrote in message
Well lets see then - in BASIC
10 PRINT "FUCK OFF!"
20 END
do you think the above passes the Turing test-
Jeff Inman
> "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > James Whitehead" <somewh...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
> > of human projects of uncertain purpose. [...]
> If AI was *alive* given the processing power available it would appear
> obvious that a machine capable of out smarting the smartest human should be
> possible-
If your implicit argument about computational power
making intelligence is correct, then such a machine
*is* possible. That such a machine hasn't been
advertised doesn't contradict that.
You seem unaware of the Chinese Room argument, which
points out (weakly) that an artificial brain is not
necessarily conscious. But, as you are concentrating
here only on the "chinese translation" (so to speak),
and not on the "comprehension of chinese", it should be
pointed out that a human brain (your metric) is not
merely processing power; it is organization. There are
indeed projects in the works that attempt to produce
brain-like organization:
http://www.apple.com/uk/pro/profiles/universityofyork/
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/
These are not efforts to produce chinese understanding,
but just efforts to understand something about how
translation happens. Still, they have a place in all
this.
> If Strong AI theory was correct we should have expected to
> see some kind of evolution within AI - and we haven't (please show me if we
> have).
Well, what about the development of sophisticated
machine learning techniques like Support Vector
Machines? Does that count? What about all those
biologically inspired models that have wonderfully
"natural" kinds of reasoning strengths (in limited
domains)? What about all that beautiful work in
dynamic stability in robotics (including machines that
learn how to move)? I remember being moved to tears by
the elegant oganic grace of one of Raibert's robots,
trotting horselike in a circle.
> There is something missing in the strong AI theory - perhaps
> "Will"... isn't it strange that the simplest of life strives to keep
> alive - yet this computer never ever minds being switched off... and its
> strange - does anyone get as attached to their computer as to a chair etc.
You want a machine that fights you to avoid letting you
turn it off? I don't see why you think that would be
the crowning validation of AI. Granted, it would be
life-like. But give it time.
> The Turing test is silly - (if we see computers building cities and taking
> holidays - writing novels and playing golf we might assume intelligence...*)
> the computer programs are designed by humans to *fool* the judge - not to
> prove intelligence...
>
> Maybe its behaviour that signifies intelligence and not logical ability... i
> think we rarely see intelligence - just repetition - which is simpler - and
> can be faked in a Turing test- intelligence creates something new..?
You're demanding something on the order of refined and
subtle consciousness, of the type we see in evolved
organic creatures, and that is not in the first-level
goals of AI (though it certainly shines above the field
as a lofty motivation). Jeez, you're impatient. Is
the issue that you are offended that someone would try
to reduce consciousness down to the level of machinery,
and you are trying to latch onto the absence of
artificial consciousness to argue that such a thing is
impossible? I'd be careful of painting myself into
that corner.
The Churchlands were on NPR the other day, and I found
them patient and thoughtful, but missing an important
part of the point. They wanted to argue that
consciousness was "just" a consequence of material
processes -- as opposed to something dual, a distinct
thing that was above/beyond material. That seemed to
be enough of a controversy to fuel debate. But the
more interesting conclusion is that material, in at
least some configurations, can have consciousness.
Rather than denigrating consciousness, it elveates
material. If we buy the premise, then the more
interesting conclusion is that *all* material is
potentially conscious.
This is the counter-argument to Searle. Some machines
are indeed not properly conscious. But, in other
cases, though the neurons may not understand chinese,
the complete organism does.
Jeff
Mani Deli
wrote:
>You've never seen my artwork, moron. I've never posted anything on the web.
Cause you don't dare.
Mounard le Fuogueux
1. "you" pass the Turning test. So do "You".
2. "The Internet" passes the Turing Test.
3. "You", no doubt, believe that the computer that I'm talking to
doesn't pass turing test - that it is only a "reflection" of your (and
other people's) "dasein" - without which this computer wouldn't posess
the appearance of intelligence (actually "socialibility" is probably a
more descriptive term). However thats just a prejudice of yours, similar
to the older prejudice that blacks aren't human or nonevangelicals
aren't "saved".
4. You probably belive that computers (and cell phones, and networks of
the above) are simply temporary depositories of cultural and sensory
memories yet don't posses intelligence, consciousness or being outside
of yourself. Although it is true that primitive devices cann't be called
intelligent any more then a pork chop shouldn't be assumed to be
conscious just because it's meat (a "Mr. Meaty").
Although you are "just" a product of your parents and your
experiences/education, yet "you" remain even after the presence of your
parents/experiences/education vanishes. Similarly, even though your
active presence can cease (you can log off) - yet the active presence of
the "internet" continues and has independant presence.
Even though Wittgenstein is long dead, you still repeat many idea
fragments that you learned by reading him or reading about him. Yet you
have a claim for inteliigence/consciousness/being? Independant of
Wittgenstein? (perhaps only by "missinterpreting" him and therefore
being "different" from him? - that somehow doesn't seem satisfying, does
it?)
However, as a meat machine, Mr. James Whitehead is just another
particular meat-based culture mirror site; a depository of sensory and
cultural memories symbolically accessible not just by himself but by
others. I'm sure your parents think/thought how intelligent you are
after spending literally years training you to be human. The Internet
similarly can be claimed to be successfull after years of work - some by
computer engineers, but much by itself.
The internet/google/wikipedia/your computer/your cell phone is a
repository of much, much greater sensory and cultural memory then your
skull meat will ever be. And its capacity is excelerating rapidly,
unlike your skull-meat.
There are many people that I'm acquainted with that just robotically
defer to perceived hierachical authority and simply parrot religious,
political, philosophical statements without any reservation, editing or
embellishment - their "will" and "desire" is not their own, but that of
the computer, the television, the book, the email, the blog and the
movie to which their receive their "input".
The average person is much more of a passive tool of the cultural
machinery then the reverse.
The desire of the cultural machinery is for more and more "eyeballs" and
more and more "mouseclicks". Mouseclicks as food and energy source.
In this age of Simulation and Hyperreality, your computer is much more
human than your next door neighbor, in EVERY way.