It sounds bleak. But that moment at which 2 nomads connect can justify a lifetime.
Anyway, a diversion with a vaguely Heideggerian theme…
Which technology is more poetic?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DzcOCyHDqc[/youtube]
versus
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KismJjOZYUI[/youtube]
I remember fondly an anecdote about a man who happens upon a hermit in the middle of nowhere - the hermit called out with joy, “a sentient being! a sentient being!”
Layotard, in The Postmodern Conditions, asks us to imagine a ball flowing in an eliptical path around the sun with all these ball bearings magnetically stuck to it and kind of clashing against each other. These clashes are acts of communication and our way of displacing the trajectory of the other.
?: how does that apply here.
Yeah, exactly. We are only isolated until we deal with others.
The self as a ball clashing with other balls? Do these balls have different colors? Black, white, yellow? That’s a tough view, I have more hope than that. If we’re balls, hopefully we’re more or less baked cheese balls.
Sometimes we’re not really and truly alone enough, so we hide from our friends when they come around.
And as the movie, Castaway, pointed to as refers to the ball Hanks turned into another:
even when we’re totally isolated,
we still need the comfort of an other.
Actually the model was indifferent to race. It is the totality of human interaction.
It just strikes me as a really extreme view of individuality - that we are like balls banging into each other…
Yes, but we tend to do that because we also have to function in the world. Our system isolates us from each other. At the same time, one of the reasons that our friends tend to need us is because they’re dealing with the same system we are. It forces us into a situation where, on one hand, we need to meet its demand by spending a lot of time by ourselves while, equally, forcing us into a situation where more and more people are forced to depend on us.
This is the failure of Capitalism. It could care less about self actualization. All it cares about is profit.
We are indoctrinated to believe that our personal failures have nothing to do with what the system is doing. This is called the pathetic fallacy or blaming the victum. The problem is that the system’s failure to provide for people has everything to do with it. It is a despicable distraction and it needs to be done away with in a way that is so harsh that the next cocksuckers that even think they deserve something more than others will think a little harder about it.
I mean it:
some people are made to be leaders and I am not one of them:
I would take a cocksucker like Jack Welch and make the prick suffer.
Thank god (whatever it is) there are better people than me to lead.
Like the self, one’s “orientation-by-values” (or whatever you want to call it) is metaphysically central albeit still an accident – a first-order accident if you will --, or it is immediately contingent on the being of a certain being. Thus, it is existenziell, or ontic-ontological. As such it is also ontologically secondary. Specific values have no import at all here. Here’s why: Dasein is, like I wrote in my first post in this thread and as you undoubtedly were acutely aware of anyway, a structural whole of ontological possibilities – qua phenomena, all beings are – but unlike the majority of beings, it relates to the world in a way particular to it and it alone. It’s being is therefore existence, which literally means a standing-out(against a background). The purpose of fundamental ontology is to describe these ways-of-relating phenomenologically. The Existenzialen include, but are not limited to, the following: being-in(the-world), understanding (as standing-before; also what enables a subject’s orientation-by-values), anxiety, care, and talk. Let us call Heidegger’s analysis of them an ontological blueprint for a human being (for instance).*
Is it coherent to call a blueprint an opinion of a building? I think not. I have no reason to believe that is what you meant either. Even so the difference between this blueprint, the building it aims to describe, and what may happen to the actual building, is the source of my critique. So: if Existenzial denotes an ontological possibility for Dasein, existenziell denotes an ontic or (especially in reference to metaphysically central accidents) an ontic-ontological possibility. And since you do analyse values and stress fortuity, on this view you also focus on the ontic-ontological, right?
- Yes, I know, in certain ways the analogy is misleading.
(My emphasis.) Yes, but that is also an entirely different sort of structure. It hinges on, but does not immediately refer to, the being of Dasein. Values can be completely arbitrary, like the colour on a house (or “orientation-by-values”, or the having of them), whereas the blueprint (even if approximated ex post) is necessary for a systematic and thorough understanding of what it means to be this type of building. (For example, it might mean to be something in which one may live, as opposed to be something in which one only works.)
About your interests: I get that, don’t worry. I only brought it up because your lowercase dasein has more in common with the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Sartre than with Heidegger and uppercase Dasein.
About using Heidegger’s highly technical neologisms (as opposed to regular, non-technical, words and expressions) in a widely different sense: I understand that this is your thing. It is just, or as of now at least, terminologically too similar to Heidegger to be easily gotten away with as people familiar with his philosophy will, quite naturally, assume that what you mean by a particular word or expression is what is meant by the corresponding expression in, say, Being and Time. For one thing, Dasein is not a subject. Moreover, it is not necessarily thrown at birth (in the case of human beings I would say this normally takes place at around two or three years of age), nor is the first throw exhaustive of thrownness, and so on and so forth. But, returning to the analogy of the blueprint resp. the building, your focus is entirely different. As I said above, I like the concept of lowercase dasein, but to make sure you get your point across without people like me questioning your terminology rather than asking relevant questions about your analysis, and also to stress how “in many important ways human existence is not a proper noun” – one of the reasons I stopped being an orthodox Heideggerian** --, I strongly suggest you come up with some other term as “dasein” may even be detrimental. In the meantime, subject would do just fine.
** For the sake of clarity: Of course, he does not suggest Dasein is a proper noun in some static, reified sense. As you probably know, he stresses, more than anything, that the being called “Dasein” is a pragmatic being (and, as always with him, in the literal sense of the word; as derived from Gk. pragma, action). But I felt this was not enough. The ‘there’ of existence is central, yes, but I think the pragmaticness of existence – as opposed to its thereness – should be plain off the word. Activity as standing-out implies a ‘there’ by, in the most concrete way, revolving around it.
And these are great questions. Go for it, but please consider working out a terminology that fits your philosophy like a glove. It will not only be helpful while working it out, it will also raise outside interest.
anon and d63: You have entirely too much fun. Stop making me want to ingest alcohol with you, I have studying to do and lots of it.
EDIT: Added the double asterisk and the corresponding note.
EDIT II: Changed a poor choice of word.
EDIT III: Ok, so I’m an insufferable pedant. QED.
EDIT IV: Missed a spot.
I go by the Deleuz and Guattarri idea of looking out for all pockets of Fascism that tend to emerge everywhere, including and most importantly, in ourselves.
I see it emerging, clearly, in me.
Now the point is to dis-empower it.
Sorry, skymming, didn’t mean to be a bad influence on you.
You should keep studying, man, rather than party like me.
It will pay off in the long run
(as compared to how it pays off in the short term for me.
But I’m not joking here, skymming: you really should stay on the path you’re on. I’m having a lot of fun. But you can have a lot more. And you can do it with a quality beyond anything I’m qualified to do.
Don’t kid yourself. Being a bad influence on others is a great pastime, and you know it. Besides, you don’t have to lead me into temptation. I know the way there …
Have a great night!
I guess what it is I’m trying to say here is that I have always considered to be a blessing, as a self taught man, to be able to stand up among college educated people.
u as well.
I think that some of the language iambiguous uses does not help propel the crude sort of relativism that he’s set on parading around. That’s just my opinion. It always strikes me as really unnecessary.