Who is a Post-Post-Modern?
pinkh...@hotmail.com
alternately, is NOT) PPM. Then the other person can be (a) persuaded
(b) disagree (c) dubious.
This could be an excellent way to locate and geographize the presence
of PPM as a interpersonal emergence. These small-scale arguments will
soon produce their own effective definitions... something which larger
"attempts to arrive at a definition" may flounder upon.
It will be a particularly good activity when involving personages
concering whom one of us is considerably more informed than the other.
Coco
This may be a controversial proposal in so far as Zizek is most
commonly associated with the European post-modernists, Marxist
political critique, anti-spiritual dialectics, etc. My proposal is
that he picked up keys to PPM cognition through the later-life work of
Jacques Lacan. Zizek's recent book "The Parallax View" is a roaming,
unstructured, hyper-referential attempt to isolate the "parallax"
between certain related but irreconcilable viewpoints. He deftly
located an "edge" of impossibilty between politics and art,
neuroscience and mind, beings and Beingness, etc. What I believe he is
doing is detecting and traversing the inter-quadrant lines found on
Wilber's AQAL grid. Zizek readily locates semantic-psychological gaps
and, rather than merely postulating them as limits of ourselves, using
the Lacanian approach of reinscribing the gap into the world itself.
Thus he demonstrates the principle of trans-gap correlation as opposed
the the "first tier" attitude of reductionism.
>From the editorial preface to "Interrogating the Real" :
"[...] the many ways in which Zizek has so far been read are, to evoke
Hegel, just so many 'evasions of the Thing itself.' But let us be
clear here: this 'Thing itself' is not some noumenal or teleological
end point secretly dictating our actions and toward which all of our
words are aimed, but rather the very movement toward this end point; it
comes about only through the reflection of this end into practice
itself..."
>From "Lacan Confronts the CIA Plot"
"This reflexive twist pertains to communication as such: one should not
forget to include in the content of an act of communication the act
itself, since the meaning of each act of communication is also to
reflexively assert that it is an act of communication. This is the
first thing to bear in mind about the way the unconscious operates: it
is not hidden in the wheelbarrow, it is the wheelbarrow itself."
>From "How to Read Lacan - Introduction"
"For Lacan, psychoanalysis at its most fundamental is not a theory and
technique of treating psychic disturbances, but a theory and practice
that confronts individuals with the most radical dimension of human
existence. It does not show an individual how to accommodate him- or
herself to the demands of social reality; instead it explains how
something like 'reality' constitutes itself in the first place. It
does not merely enable a human being to accept the repressed truth
about him- or herself; it explains how the dimension of truth emerges
in human reality."
This kind of thinking + post-modernism beyond post-modernism + good
humour + relaxed intellectual arrogance makes for a compelling argument
in favor of PPM. Difficulties arise often because of Zizek's
complicate presentation style and his tendencies to explain himself in
deadpan ironic examples rather than clear confessions. Viewers of the
documentary "Zizek!" will see him making all sorts of claims about his
own attitudes that are, in fact, examples of human thoughts that
demonstrate the shape he is trying to describe.
Obviously his spiritual line is not as well-developed as one would
hope. Despite his insights into the core of both Christianity and
Buddhism, he appears to lack a regular meditative or other inner
practice beyond concept-digestion and insight-generation.
ambientp...@hotmail.com
accurately describe the ocean without ever having seen it. Merely
having an accurate description of the borders of limitation does not
posit an individual having passed through those borders. It seems to
me that the over-intellectualization which occurs in contemporary
social theorists itself betrays a fundamentally atrophied stance in
relation to the living IT-condition, at least from my experiential arc.
Those who are familiar with my earlier writings will no doubt recall a
tendency towards bloated formalism and excruciatingly precise
definitions, all of which reflected a limited sphere of action
concerning 'the gap', the signal, the center, IT, ect.
I would argue therefore that cutting-edge intellectuals are not
neccessarily the best exemplars of true PPM- rather they are signposts
along the road, pointing out a limited and foetal version of a fully
functioning PPM, (which, by neccessity must have a vastly greater range
of unqualifiable elements to it than can be explicated
linguistically/rationally).
I posit that a more deeply functioning PPM expression would convert the
base language structures into something much more 'lyrically abstract'.
But, since i haven't read much of either Lancan or Zizek, perhaps i'm
just being an ass.
Coco
This is exactly the concern that confronts in dealing with the PM/PPM
threshold among philosophers and the decently intellectual. There is
no way to know for certain whether "detection" is a strong indicator or
not. In terms of individuals who are available through detached media
(books, movies, etc.) we limited power to assess. It comes down to a
one's own positive feeling and ability-motive to decode that
individual. Even then it it is only a probability. A discussion
thread like this is an excellent opportunity to simply present
arguments for or against -- an try to include which "lines" show good
indicators and which seem lacking. There is a lot of "benefit of the
doubt" involved.
The other valuage aspect of such interpretive readings is that
high-level PM thinkers are, whatever they are today, the future of PPM
-- and in many of their best moments they are already demonstrating
shapes and motions that could help to flesh out the PPM platform.
In as important, perhaps, to isolate and examine borderline cases as it
is to have thoughtful exchange among established cases.
Coco
G.I. GURDJIEFF
The only thing more notorious than his "self-remembering" policy was
the vast complexity of his practical cosmology, running up and down
into the Sun Absolute. His writings and legendary styles of personal
interaction demonstrate free flowing surrealism, ironic playfulnes,
constant air-quotes, and trans-national linguistics. He had an
interest in organic and living foods, pop cinema, racial tolerance and
inter-racial jokes. All that demonstrates at least post-modernism.
As soon as we identify a magus-archetype lurking in this powerful 'new
age' figure, we bump him up a notch in our mentality. Up a notch from
the listed attributes is PPM or higher. Fortunately for us PPM
includes everything high... if only in utero.