Public Journal:

Rhizome 9/9/18:

Today just finished Rorty’s Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth while doing my footwork and started on the latest issue of Philosophy Now (in which I have a letter to the editor, BTW (at the library. My plan is to keep reading PN (which is about Continental philosophy (at the library and getting some things done around the house during my footwork sessions. These Nebraska rains have put me in a situation where my yard has become like fighting a jungle that just wants to be. After this digression into PN, I have every intention of finishing my Rorty immersion with Heidegger and Other Essays. Everything’s an experiment, right?

But before I put the previous book behind me, I want to clear up some misconceptions I may have instigated myself. I have generally talked about this “pragmatic overlap” between Rorty and Deleuze. And Rorty actually backs me on this in the way he tends to refer to continental philosophers –most notably Heidegger and Derrida. And I do believe there are overlaps between American Pragmatism and the Continental approach in that they do have some similar goals: most notably the undermining of authoritarian narratives and epistemological systems -what Marcuse referred to as “operationalism”.

However, if there is anything I have learned from my recent excursion into Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, it’s that American pragmatism tends to distance itself from the radical nature of the continental and opts rather for the practical. It sees the continental as strong on diagnosis while weak on prognosis (that is in its futilism (and solutions.

Of course: who knows what will result from the Age of Trump.

Rhizome 9/10/18 (and please excuse the dear diary moment:

Today, I read an excellent article on Derrida in Philosophy Now (issue 127): Mike Sutton’s “What is Derrida Saying to Us?” But first a couple of confessions. First of all, I should admit that I mainly know Derrida through secondary text. I mean the guy is notoriously obscure. And I’m not sure I have enough time left in my lifetime to immerse myself in him enough to even broach (or traverse as the postmoderns like to say (any respectable claim to authority on him. Secondly, as I have said before, I tend to judge other writers in terms of what I can use for my own process. And these two points come together in my confessing that my main respect for Derrida comes from what I can use in him based on what I have gathered from secondary texts on him. And I praise Sutton’s article in that spirit and for its focus (crystallizations of my own understandings (on 3 important Derrida-ian concepts:

Logocentrism
Diffe̕rrance
and Deconstruction
(which should be spelled d.construction. But another time on that.)

Logocentrism pretty much goes to what Rorty is opposed to: this notion that there is some kind of final language by which we can judge all other languages. We can also translate this to Rorty’s point in Philosophy as a Mirror of Nature: this erroneous notion of some transcendent epistemological system by which we can judge the validity of our assertions.

Diffe̕rrance goes to the foundation of why we can never hope to find any all purpose solutions to every problem we face. Diffe̕rrance forces us to wing it because no matter what situation we’re up against, we can never find an original cause that we could, once diagnosed, change and fix everything for the good. This is because, in the same way that meaning is deferred in language, causality (therefore meaning (is always deferred: multiple chains of cause and effect converging into the horizon and disappearing into nothing.

(At the same time, it is important to note a different kind of Diffe̕rrance in Deleuze and Guatarri. In their case, it is about an infinite rhizomatic universe in which there is no center, a complex in which the horizons are always within the matrix itself.)

Deconstruction (or rather d.construction –just consider it guys!!! (to me feels like the misinterpretation of Hegel’s dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis (on steroids. Deconstruction (or once again: d.construction (is what I believe has led to the nihilistic perspective that I am attempting to pimp. As I have said: it’s not just a perspective you just say: sounds good, think I’ll take it on. It is rather what results from an ongoing process of (dare I say it?(d.construction that leaves you with no real foundation.

Yesterday, in a discourse on Democrats are Stronger Together (facebook.com/groups/Democra … up_comment ), I went off on this particular rant:

“It goes deep, girls. These red pill sights in which white beta males complain about their frustrations with females (which is generally innocuous (too often digresses into misogyny and rape culture. The In-cells (the involuntarily celibate (only get there quicker. Now imagine the racism that might result from seeing white women go with men of other races. Imagine what a prime recruiting ground these red pill and In Cell sights would be for Neo-Nazis and the alt-right.”

And I know how strange it must have seemed in the context given that the board is primarily focused on the political which tends to be more mainstream and practical in nature –understandably so. I understand why it got no response. It was just one of those situations in which my tendency to straddle the political and theoretical led to me breaking into a theoretical rant that seemed out of place to those witnessing it.

However, in my defense, I read, today at the “library”, an excellent article in Philosophy Now, Scott Remer’s “A Radical Cure: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil on the Need for Roots”, that kind of went to my point. I quote in reference to Arendt:

“Indeed, the atomized and individualized mass is a necessary precondition for totalitarianism (p.318). Languishing in a “situation of spiritual and social homelessness” (p.352), shorn of sustaining social bonds and ties, individuals are forced to live in a world where they cannot exist meaningfully and fruitfully. They try to escape this agonizing limbo and, in the absence of powerful inclusive left-wing alternatives, they look to exclusivist reactionary movements for succor.”

Now, of course, Red Pill sights were not foremost on Arendt’s mind. They didn’t really exist in her time. But still her point seems prescient given what we face in the age of Trump and the alienated that constitute his followers. And as is made very clear, Arendt roots this in the alienation created by producer/consumer Capitalism and the “in-crowd” mentality that emerges from it and leaves those who are not part of that in-crowd in desperate situations.

Hence: their distaste for the intellectual elite (the democrats and progressives (that Trump exploited. But more on this tomorrow. It’s far more complex than today’s window would allow.

“One of the questions asked in anguish by many addicts and depressives is, “Why me?” Bataille’s philosophy (particularly his search for and attribution of meaning to the different, deviant, and repulsive) helps answers this question, so providing much needed comfort.
Bataille suggested that the sacred can be found in extreme experiences. These fall into two categories, the external and the internal. It’s helpful to associate these two categories with two stages of addiction. The external experience is akin to the addict’s acting-out experience pre-recovery. Recovery enables the addict to experience the sacred via internal experiences, free of the need to act-out through substances, processes, or other people.” –from Micheal Moccata’s Philosophy Now article ‘George Bataille’s Experience’

“One must still have inner chaos in order to give birth to a dancing star.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

“Don’t give up your vices. Put them to work for you.” –also Friedrich Nietzsche

Please (once again (excuse the dear diary moment; but this particular subject hits close to home as my life, since my teens, has been a weird mix of creative and intellectual curiosity and ambition supplemented by a propensity towards compulsive and addictive behaviors. I have always had my vices, even when I tried to escape them. (And I would note that I generally attempted to escape them due to more practical matters.) But I’ve always been lucky in that my creative and intellectual ambitions always kept my embrace of the chaos in check: an anchor that allows one to embrace the creative chaos (to absorb the edge it can give a process (while not succumbing to it. So while I agree with the point (consider it a valid process:

“Bataille suggested that the sacred can be found in extreme experiences. These fall into two categories, the external and the internal. It’s helpful to associate these two categories with two stages of addiction. The external experience is akin to the addict’s acting-out experience pre-recovery. Recovery enables the addict to experience the sacred via internal experiences, free of the need to act-out through substances, processes, or other people.”

:it’s not the only story out there. Sometimes you can embrace your vices (even your mental illness as John Nash showed through mathematics (and still be happy as long you maintain a healthy respect for the footwork involved. To give a ‘for instance’, Jim Morrison emphasized throughout his process the important influence of shamans and Indian peyote rituals. And it clearly paid off for him. Where he went wrong was in failing to recognize the sober footwork that went into those rituals. The shamans didn’t just go out and take peyote in the valley and consider it a job well done. They rather went through a series of sober approaches towards enlightenment: sweat lodges, meditation, dances, and most notably a ritual in which they hunted down the peyote and shot it with a small bow and arrow.

The main point I am trying to make here is that embracing chaos can be productive as long as one maintains a healthy respect for order (the act of doing a thing (as well. This is implicit in a statistic I came across a long time ago: data that showed that creative people are 6 times more likely to suffer from depression while having the compensation of better resources to deal with that depression -once again: John Nash.

And I am not arguing that this understanding will work for everyone. Bataille’s was clearly a different situation. All I am saying is that there are alternative narratives.

“What the way we have responded to Trump reminds me of is the movie Darkest Hour about Churchill dealing with the approach of Hitler. Churchill was basically negotiating a path through Britain’s desire to maintain peace and Hitler’s aggressiveness. They just didn’t know what to do. They didn’t want to fight. But they didn’t want Hitler taking over: achieving his ambitions. We are dealing with a very similar situation with Trump as progressives. We just don’t know what to do.” -me

“This mess isn’t going to end with the end of Trump.
We need to be very clear on that.” -ibid

I have several concerns here:

For one, I can’t help but feel that the troll mentality has broken from cyberspace and become a real-world issue. We clearly saw it in what the tea bagger’s have been up to: the modern-day equivalent of the brown shirts. But I think it’s become a little more subtle than that. And before I go on, I will admit that I am working with gut instincts based on anecdotal evidence. The best I can hope for is that it resonates enough for you to consider it.

That said, Bruce Cannon Gibney wrote an excellent book (by which I mean he made a convincing argument for his thesis (called A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. And I would not dismiss his argument -that is altogether. However, things I have seen lately (especially on the boards (has brought me to believe that not all millennial nuts have fallen that far from the tree. That sociopathic MO seems to be at work in a lot of young people I encounter on these boards.

And I don’t think I’m the only one seeing this. I recently watched a movie called Untraceable about a serial killer who killed his victims online just to show the system that more people would watch than we would like to believe. And yes, it is just a movie and not solid proof for my thesis here. But there is something about the comments on the antagonist’s board that rang true: the way they adopted the mannerisms of professional critics, in a kind of ironic way, to comment on the performance of the murder.

I saw it as well in the first episode of the latest season of Black Mirror. A brilliant computer programmer (the latest version of the Nietzscheian overman (takes people from his real world situation and programs them as simulacra for his own personal fantasy which involves him being a modern day Captain Kirk, a scenario in which he becomes a tyrant to the perfectly sentient replicas. And you can easily see the troll MO at work here. But you see it even more in what happens when the simulacras rebelled and broke free. They found their selves in a gamer’s universe confronted by a gamer who, when he found they had nothing to trade, threatened to blow them out of his quadrant if they didn’t leave immediately.

“Yeah,” he said after they left, “I am king of the fucking universe.”

And you can see a connection (a rhizome (with a point I have previously made on these boards:

“Today I want to explore the InCel (involuntarily celibate (movement and the Red Pill sights they are associated with. It is, of course, tempting to mock it –and many highly intelligent people do. But I’m not really sure that is the smartest approach. For one, it can only exacerbate the situation by taking (what seems to them, at least (a kind of “in-crowd” tone that is, in the sense of not being part of that “in-crowd”, the very source of their understandably painful experience of alienation. And this is important to understand since it may well be this experience of painful alienation that lies behind most of the mass shootings we’re seeing in America. I mean this could well be the reason this is mainly occurring in High Schools and Colleges, the outright cauldrons of narcissism and vanity in which being part of an “in-crowd” is everything. And I’m not blaming the victim here. Kids will be kids. But what I will suggest (and I apologize for my opportunistic Marxist jab (that a lot of this comes from producer/consumer Capitalism and the way it bombards us (via TV ads (explicitly with images of what it is like to be part of an “in-crowd” while implicitly implying that if you are not like one of those people you see, you are no one.”

And I would further reiterate the connection I see between this movement (the alienation involved (and the fascist experiment we are currently engaged in. I would reassert my theory that such sites are prime recruiting grounds for neo-nazis and alt-right types. I’m not altogether sure that jobs are the only thing that white heterosexual males are afraid of Mexicans stealing. (And in my defense, just look how I got trolled when I suggested that world peace could only be achieved when, through interbreeding, we became a world of mutts.)

My other concern is that this propensity towards fascism can only get worse as the pressure to emigrate from third world countries gets greater. As climate scientists have argued, the first main effects will be close to the equator: the place where third world countries are. And I can’t help but see a mob/threshold dynamic in that we are primarily dealing with people with low thresholds for now. But what happens when more and more immigrants overwhelm our capacity to help them out? All I can see is people with higher thresholds (higher tolerances (succumbing to the fascist/troll mentality.

Dear diary moment 9/24/2018:

The latest rhizome I have turned to is classical mythology. And I have done so by downloading three audible lecture series: Greek mythology, Roman mythology, and a great courses one on classical mythology in general. And I’m on the one on Greek mythology right now. And when I am focused on these lectures, it tends to work with my method of operation in that they usually offer a PDF study guide that I can use for a “study point” when the footwork is done and I can go to the “library”. The thing is that at the end of the notes, they generally offer the things you would expect from college courses: suggestions for further reading and, more relevant to my point here, questions to consider.

And the question to consider that struck me today was:

What was the relationship between Zeus and Hera?

And the reason I zeroed in on this is because the mythology of Zeus and Hera (the Jungian archetype (represents a dynamic that haunts us to this day. If you think about it, we see a similar dynamic at work in modern media that portrays rich couples as a relationship between a philandering husband that cats around while the wife tolerates it so she can maintain her social status and abuse it as well. Zeus (as I am coming to understand (was a major player spreading his seed into whatever female he could trick into getting down to the dirty.

Hera, at the same time, was always working behind the scenes: manipulating everything to her own elitist status.

I mean how familiar could that story sound?

Dear diary moment 9/29/18:

Something new (to me at least (that came up in my recent immersion in Greek mythology is that, in Homer’s Odyssey, the song of sirens promised fame and glory. I didn’t know that before. And I must admit a certain amount of confirmation bias in the why of what I am about to follow with here. But the main reason I took note of this is that it is perfectly compatible with my sense of Odysseus’ endeavor to hear the siren’s song without risk of self destruction.

There have been two myths that have haunted me for some time now, myths that I see as potential articles with philosophical implications very much in the spirit of Camus’ essay on Sisyphus. One is Orpheus’ attempt to bring Eurydice back from the underworld and his failure to do so because… well, he just looked back. This one, to me, illustrates Lacan’s notion of Jouissance.

In the case of Odysseus’, what I see is an individual that desperately wanted to experience what most mortal minds don’t get to. Hence the external restraints on his behavior (being tied to the mast and having wax plugs put into the ears of his rowers (as compared to arrogantly depending on his capacity for will power. And this goes back to points I made on a previous rhizome concerning George Bataille: facebook.com/groups/6757450 … 493297244/

In Odysseus, we see the epitome of the intellectually/creatively curious individual. One who, much as Charles Bukowski and Silvia Plath (as well as many other artists (reflected, was perfectly willing to broach the edge of the abyss, in order to see something most others don’t get to, but was smart enough to impose upon himself external restraints on his behavior.

If the recent events regarding Kavanaugh and Lord have shown us anything, it’s that we are dealing with a cult dynamic here –exactly, mind you, as Bob Corker (a republican (suggested. And in this case (as concerns the attacks on democrats), what we are looking at is the very Cassandra complex that tends to accompany the cult dynamic. What the repugs are basically spinning to their base (via confirmation bias( is the notion that the left of center attacks on Kavanaugh are purely political when the repug’s arguments, as far I can tell, are basically meant to make it look as if Kavanaugh was being unfairly persecuted when, in fact, they have completely failed to establish, for instance, that Lord was some kind of politically driven nut job out to sabotage Kavanaugh’s career. And that whole FBI investigation was little more than a sham that Trump channeled towards his ends to make it look as if the repugs were being fair and balanced.

It’s a little like being in love with a sociopathic player: they’ll go out and screw around on you (establish their power over you (then turn it around on you to make it seem like everything is your fault.
*
To give you a real sense of the cult dynamic involved: have any of you noticed the way in which people around you are watching FOX News or listening to people like Glen Beck or Alex Jones? It’s like they’re programming their selves. Their world (which was once working great for white heterosexuals –especially male ones –think make America great again (is no longer working the way it should. And, of course, to bring into a political discourse the argument “what’s in it for me alone?” simply would not work in something meant to find a working compromise. So it stands to reason they would have to turn to the “in-crowd” of the cult. This was foreseen by Kierkegaard’s Continuation of Sin in which the individual, rather than face the guilt of their bad choices, leans into sin. Everyone knows, at some level, hate can only lead to ill and evil.

So why wouldn’t they turn to gurus like FOX News, Glen Beck, or Alex Jones to make their self indulgence seem a little less evil than it actually is? Make it feel a little less irrational and unreasonable?
*
And the cult dynamic always begins and ends the same. It always starts with a lot of promise, arguments for how you have every right to self indulgence, that the only thing standing your way is such and such. But, by the end, all you’re hearing about is what you must do for the higher purpose of what the guru is offering you.

And make no mistake about it: Trump is a guru. At least that is the way he sees himself.
*
Such is the misdirect that the emerging oligarchy under producer/consumer Capitalism must turn to in order to establish itself.

And the Republican platform is its primary form of expression.

Dear diary moment 10/7/2018:

Had a thought last night. Or, rather, it was fusion of thoughts I have had before. I have pointed out before that a lot of this comes out people expecting way too much from our political system. As anyone who has taken a poly-sci 101 class knows, politics is the art of mediating between a very diverse multiplicity of interests. Therefore, a perfect (or better said: working (democracy consists of a situation in which everyone is happy with some things while being unhappy about others. And the only thing that would disrupt this are utopian notions about what would be perfect if only such and such weren’t in the way. And by this understanding, we can now see how Trump and his followers are basically utopians –that is despite the dystopia we see coming out their belief systems.

And this becomes all too clear when you compare my model of lowered expectations to the element of utopianism demonstrated by Trump and his followers and the authoritarian dynamic that emerges from it. As I have said before: it always starts with these appeals to self indulgence (even if it comes at the expense of others (and always ends with all this talk about what you must sacrifice for the higher good. In other words: what starts with an experience of perfect satisfaction always ends with an experience of perfect misery.

In other words, in order to fix this, we have got to deal with this demand for perfect satisfaction as concerns government. We have got be analytic and see it for what it is and see our own ideas about the perfect society as nothing more than ideas –that is in comparison to democracy which is the only political and social system we really need.

Reference: facebook.com/groups/Ethpols … 847478785/

“D Edward Tarkington I may need to refresh my idea of Utopian.

While your view makes sense to me to a point there is still a disconnection in my mind.

In my mind to be Utopian in any sense, disregarding the fact that I disbelieve in both personal and collective utopias, requires some thought and planning. For instance we don’t say kids are Utopian because they may want to eat candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We may consider that foolish or inexperienced or something else but I’ve never heard it described as Utopian.

I think in the same way i think the majority of hateful, violent, bigoted (and on and on) people do not think things out. I think they compartmentalize so much that they fail to achieve any type of possible reality.

For instance if you want the government to create and maintain a social safety net for you but do not want the government to have the resources or the laborers it needs to do so, nor do you want anyone to contribute to it. In my mind that is similar to the kid wanting candy 24/7.

So in other words I don’t feel they have thought out their positions enough to know what they truly want.”

First of all, Sitty, I apologize for posting what we already know: your post. I do this for two reasons –especially when it comes to someone not familiar with my methods of madness. For one, it makes it lot of easier (through copy and paste –that is on a Word document (to wind through, point and reference to, and comment on various points you have made. (You’ll see what I mean in the following.) Plus that, it allows me to groom it for cross pollination.

That said, I once again am empathetic with your argument when you say:

“D Edward Tarkington I may need to refresh my idea of Utopian.

While your view makes sense to me to a point there is still a disconnection in my mind.”

I am asking a lot when it comes to asking you to take on a broader understanding of the term “Utopian” as compared to how we normally think of it. This why I actually think (in the context of the general understanding (the normal logic (of the term (you make a good argument when you say:

“For instance we don’t say kids are Utopian because they may want to eat candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We may consider that foolish or inexperienced or something else but I’ve never heard it described as Utopian.”

That, going by the framing you are working from, is a good argument. Where I am departing from you (that is from the framework I am working from (is the recognition that those children are actually acting in the capacity of Utopians to the extent that they are imagining a perfect world, one, BTW, that certain adults are always standing in the way of. And I would segue this into the argument that we are all basically Utopians in that we all have these ideas about what the perfect world would look like. However, if we’re realistic, we also recognize that there is a big difference between the world as we would like it to be and the world that we can hope for. And this is the distinction between the Utopian and the democrat. The democrat recognizes (as any Poly Scy 101 class will tell you (that politics is the art of mediating between diverse interests. Therefore, the optimal situation would be one in which everyone has things they can appreciate while still having issues. The Utopian, on the other hand, seeks perfect satisfaction (even if it comes at the misery of the other), and can only result in a situation that goes from perfect satisfaction (generally at the expense of the other (to perfect misery when all those appeals to self indulgence turn into a lot of talk about what you must sacrifice for the sake of the higher principle that bought you that self indulgence in the first place.

And there is more to say about this, Sitty. For instance, we can see the same Utopian dynamic at work in addicts who will turn to ill for the higher principle of that first high. But my window has run out. My main point for now is that for all the libertarian and FreeMarketFundamentalist claims and criticisms of socialists being Utopians, and dismissing them based on that (on being too idealistic), they (and I include Ayn Rand’s nonsense in this (are no less so.

Dear Diary moment 10/25/2018: As Kyle from South Park would put it: I had a thought today:

I now see the importance of Deleuze and Guatarri’s rhizomatic model (as compared to the arborescent (in terms more entwined with my own model of the Metaphysics of Efficiency as compared to the traditional Metaphysics of Power: that which leads to a Culture of More –which I will connect to Trump later.

If you think about it, the Metaphysics of Power is always dependent on arborescent models: tree-like models with an original cause at the bottom of it all. For instance: the recent issue of a disturbing number of young African American men being shot by cops under precarious circumstances. The left, of course, will designate the root cause to the prejudice of policemen. The right, of course, will delegate the root cause to the criminal nature of young African American men in the inner cities.

And this is the Metaphysics of Power at work: two sides attempting to offer a solution to some mythical original cause propped up by the traditional arborescent model. But let’s look at it from a more rhizomatic perspective. Let’s look at it from the perspective of a complex feedback loop between the desperation that might emerge in the inner cities, the desperate acts members of that environment might engage in, the fear that might provoke in those trying to enforce law in such an environment, and, yes, any prejudices those experiences with desperate members of that environment might reinforce.

My main point here is we can see how the Metaphysics of Power (the authoritarian mindset (would tend towards an arborescent model with some imagined “root cause”. We see it all over Trump with all his Gordian Knot solutions. It’s always a matter of clear-cut villains at the root of it: too much regulation, too many taxes, Obamacare, too much government, immigrants, etc., etc… And I realize I have mentioned several causes which would seem to contradict my point. But Trump, due to the arborescent model he is working from, sees every issue as something like a different tree that he has gained special access to the root cause of. This is why he (as well as his followers are (is completely incapable of grasping any issue in its true complexity.

To go back to the subject of the democratic (as compared to the republican (platform being evolutionarily mandated, I want to look at recent trends in the university system. It use to be that the university system was the main institution by which we created responsible citizens. As Rorty argued: primary education was about creating functional members of society while the universities were about creating enlightened citizens. And I would argue that at that time the universities played a major role in our evolution as a species –that which we must do if we are to survive as a species.

However, due to the Regan Revolution of the 80’s (and the animosity of common hicks towards intellectuals), it changed for the sake of tax cuts for the rich which led to less federal funding for universities and their consequent increased dependency on corporate funding. What gradually resulted from this is our universities being dominated by the tyranny of the functional inherent to the corporate sensibility. The emphasis turned from enlightenment to what can make money. This is why, for instance, the philosophy departments gravitated from continental philosophy towards the more analytic: that which seemed more “scientific” and could appease philosophy’s guilt at not being able to create an I-Phone. On top of that, it became more about writing books that could actually sell. Think: Dennett, Searle, Pinker, etc… Even art became a matter of what some corporate CO would like to hang on the walls of their company, that which would express their power.

What the tyranny of the functional (via the republican platform (fails to recognize is that progress (in other words: our evolution as a species (is that (in the sense of Deleuze and Guatarri’s social production (is completely dependent on exchanges of energy between the functional and non-functional acts of creativity. Our history has shown that by focusing purely on the functional, our society (our economy even (can only fail. We need non-functional acts of beauty in order to facilitate the functional acts of progress.

If I have learned nothing else from my recent immersion in classical mythology, I have learned this. It’s buried in us.

“Indeed, incessant cycles of deterritorialization and reterritorialization through axiomatization constitute one of the fundamental rhythms of capitalist society as a whole - what Marx referred to as the "constant revolutionizing of the means of production [and] uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions [that] distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones"46: capital is extracted from one locale (the rust belt, the United States) and re-invested somewhere else (the south, the Pacific rim); labor skills corresponding to certain means of production are, for a time, fostered and well paid, only to become worthless a few years later when new means of production prevail; consumer preferences are first programmed by advertising to value one set of goods, only to be deprogrammed so as to consider them “out of fashion,” and reprogrammed by another advertising campaign to value a “new” set of goods. The terms deterritorialization and reterritorialization thus presuppose and reinforce the notice of a “common essence…of desire and labor,” referring without distinction to the detachment and reattachment of the energies of “production in general” (including “consumption”) to objects of investment of all kinds, whether conventionally considered “psychological” or “economic.” “ -Holland, Eugene W… Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis (p. 20). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Unfortunately, guys, this is going to be a bit wordy (the very thing I tend to complain about the French being –so call me hypocrite if you will (as there is a lot to quote and a lot to say here. But if it’s any consolation, much of it will be Holland’s writing.

That said, we can easily see here how Capitalism (by the model of D & G( can lead to the very right-wing nonsense we are dealing with now: this constant state of change that many people would prefer not to be involved in, people who might choose to capture everything into a paranoid center. We can even see why such people might resist the D & G agenda of accelerating that dynamic until we somehow break through it to the other side. Hence: their orientation towards reterritorialization: a hopefully permanent one in their minds. And this is implicit in Holland’s next point:

“Closely linked with deterritorialization and reterritorialization are the parallel terms “decoding” and “recoding,” which bear on representations rather than on concrete objects. Decoding, it is important to note, does not refer to the process of translating a secret meaning or message into clearer form: on the contrary, it refers to a process of dis-investing given meanings altogether, to a process of “uncoding,” if you like: the destabilization and ultimately the elimination of established codes that confer fixed meaning.”

This is what Trump and his followers don’t get: it is profit seeking behaviors that is taking the meaning (the certainty (from their lives. They would rather focus on the shiny objects (who wants to be a millionaire? (that Capitalism (via media (flashes in front of them and blame everything on those who fail to meet the criteria of ideal producer/consumers: immigrants, welfare queens, gays, minorities, government even, the people you see on shows like COPS, etc., etc…….

Capitalism rewards identity (as is all too obvious in TV ads). Becoming is always suspect until it can be conscripted into the producer/consumer agenda: the Platonic realm of ideal forms according to corporate owned media.

Today, I want to mainly work in the overlaps one finds among various philosophers, the primary territory, I believe, we all tend to work in having chosen to pursue such a thing.

“The law tells us: You shall not marry your mother, and you shall not kill your father. And…docile subjects say to [them]selves: so that’s what I wanted!” –quote from Anti-Oedipus

“Such is the ruse of the law prohibiting incest (and perhaps of law in general): it presents desire with a falsified image of what desire “wants” in the very act of prohibiting it. Desire is thereby trapped in a first paralogism, a classic double-bind that Deleuze and Guattari call the “paralogism of displacement”: docile subjects supposedly discover what they desire at the same time that they discover they cannot have it.” -Holland, Eugene W… Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis (p. 37). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

This, of course, is also a major issue with Žižek as well. And what I’m reminded of is Sartre’s Vertigo of the Possible: that which is not so much a fear of falling into the abyss as throwing one’s self in. And it is important note in the context of D & G’s rejection of Freud’s Oedipus Complex and the way it channels desire as compared to simply describing it. And we can get a sense of this when we consider Freud’s concept of Wish Fulfillment as concerns dream psychology. Under the Freud regime, it was generally assumed that if you dreamed about yourself committing some weird or odious act, it meant that you had some subconscious desire to do so. But Sartre’s Vertigo offers an alternative. What it tells us is that if you find yourself dreaming about an act like blowing up a church or killing a baby or kicking puppies or even find yourself naked in a tub with your mother, all it really constitutes is the mind recognizing that the possibility exists. And in defense of that, I would note how in such dreams we find ourselves in a state of panic wondering why we would do such things. And we see a similar dynamic at work in D & G’s attack on the Oedipus in that it creates the possibility (the vertigo even (of killing one’s father in order to sleep with one’s mother –that which is then translated to the model of a fragmented self (which is actually our natural/schizo state (that can only be put back together by re-establishing our relationship with a father figure such as the psychiatrist. Think ego psychology. Think Dr. Phil.

Another overlap I would like to approach here has to do with the binary of the neurotic (that which puts its emphasis on anti-production (and the pervert: that which puts its emphasis on hyper-production. It seems to me that we can see an overlap between the neurotic and Carl Jung’s malady of the extrovert, what he referred to as the hysteric. In that case, the subconscious (always working to counter the conscious subject (attempts to overwhelm the subject which is always focused on the world of objects. In other words, much like the neurotic, the hysteric is always engaging in an extreme form of anti-production.

Dear Diary Moment 11/29/2018:

While reading Eugene Holland’s secondary text on the Anti-Oedipus, and going through the part about the relationship between the savage, the despotic, and Capitalism, I found myself asking the same old questions:

How deep do I really need to go into such theory? How important is an expert understanding of it to my process?

Not that I would abandon it. I’ve found too much I can use in it. (Especially the rhizomatic aspect: perhaps the source of a D & G auto-critique (And D & G do encourage us to not ask what it means but, rather, what it does. And I’m perfectly capable of writing about and describing what it does, but in a very blue-collarized way –one that might even be considered naïve by some of Deleuze’s (w/ and w/out Guatarri (more passionate devotees. But for me, this is mainly the input/output dynamic of taking in a lot of different information from a lot of different sources, letting it churn in my mind, and seeing what it can produce in the form of writing (or art (or poetry (or just whatever. I’m just not sure this requires that I put all my energy into it when there are other things I’m interested in doing.

That said, one of the things my filters are starting to pick up in Holland’s book is the transformation as concerns the Oedipal between the savage, the despotic, and the capitalist is how it went from a system of horizontal exchange in more savage systems (their BwO (or socious (being the earth (to the vertical power structure of despot who was basically given a free-pass on the incest taboo since he was basically father, mother, brother, and sister (as well as friend (to all his sovereign. So it stands to reason how he might find himself at some paranoid center since he had open access to any woman under his command. It would stand to reason that, eventually, other men would seek to overthrow him. And given the genealogy involved, it would stand to reason that Capitalism would establish the Oedipal dynamic in which the metaphorical son (or son’s (overthrows the father figure to achieve the potential mother.

The thing to note here is how the incest taboo, in savage societies, was mainly an issue of encouraging exchange with others outside of the immediate family structure.

“The connective synthesis concerns instincts and drives, and the ways they endow objects with value or erotic charge; roughly speaking, it translates Freud’s notion of libidinal investment or cathexis and the functions he assigns to Eros or the life instinct. The disjunctive synthesis involves the functioning of pleasure, memory, and signs in the psyche, along with what Freud called the death instinct, or Thanatos. The conjunctive synthesis, finally, is about the formation of subjectivity.” -Holland, Eugene W… Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis (p. 25). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Today I want to take a more personal approach to the model described above (D&G’s syntheses of the unconscious: connection, disjunction, and connection (through an old and trusted riff of my own. And I am doing so in preparation for an article I would like to write for a UK magazine I’ve allied (or rather affiliated (myself with: Philosophy Now. So any input (whether it succeeds or fails (would be appreciated. Consider the sentence:

At what point are you in this sentence right now?

Now think about your experience of reading that sentence. First there was the connective synthesis of connecting one word to the other –all of them partial objects that somehow related to the object that followed and somehow connected. But it wasn’t long before the disjunction kicked in of not having the full meaning of the sentence until you reached the end. On top of that, there was the disjunction of discovering a question which you couldn’t answer while it was being asked which, technically, means you never really answered the question. As Deleuze put it in Difference and Repetition: you were dealing with a past present that was never really there.

But, finally, you reached the end of the sentence and experienced the conjunction (this kind of collapsing on itself (of getting the meaning of the sentence. The problem, however, is that you were never really there to answer the question as it was asked.

Now we can translate this to the point Holland (via D&G (was trying make as concerns the subject (that which occurs after the fact): that it is always the aftereffect of the syntheses of the subconscious but is always naturally prone to claim all processes (all syntheses that led to conjunction (were the results of its own efforts. And it’s easy to see the problems this could lead to.

“Such delegation explains why the family can appear to be a microcosm when really it is not; why familially constructed subjects often seem, on the one hand, so ill-suited to the specific content-requirements of social-production at any given moment of its development; why, on the other hand, the family’s degree of abstraction as an apparently separate reproductive institution produces subjects perfectly suited formally to a system of social-production in constant flux. For what they learn in the nuclear family is simply to submit, as good docile subjects, to prohibitive authority - the father, the boss, capital in general - and relinquish until later, as good ascetic subjects, their access to the objects of desire and their objective being - the mother, the goods they produce, the natural environment as a whole. But that is all they need to learn: the content-requirements of social-production, as capitalism “continually revolutionizes the means of production,” change too fast for the family to play much of a role in job training, for example, just as fashion and life-style fads change too fast for parents to play an adequate role in consumer training. What the Oedipal family-machine produces is just enough: obedient ascetic subjects programmed to accept the mediation of capital between their productive life-activity and their own enjoyment of it, who will work for an internalized prohibitive authority and defer gratification until the day they die, the day after retiring. Far from being autonomous, much less originary, fundamental, or universal, the Oedipus complex of the nuclear family appears as though it had been “fabricated to meet the requirements of…[the capitalist] social formation” (101/120), from which it in fact derives by delegation.47 And to challenge or rebel against such Oedipally constituted authority would amount to committing incest! The Oedipal machine, to the extent that it works, effectively straight-jackets desire.” -Holland, Eugene W… Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis (pp. 55-56). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

And to go straight to the source itself:

“From the very beginning of this study, we have maintained both that social-production and desiring-production are one and the same, and that they have differing regimes, with the result that a social form of production exercises an essential repression of desiring-production, and also that desiring-production - “real” desire - is potentially capable of demolishing the social form. (116/138)” –Ibid: quote from the Anti-Oedipus

I know this is a lot. And if it is any consolation: the bulk of it is Holland’s writing and not mine. But it gets at the heart of what the Anti-Oedipus is about; all else is just elaboration and articulation. At the same time, I should admit that there is a little (maybe a lot of (confirmation bias at work here in that it confirms some of my initial instincts about the book and overlaps with one of my main concerns about Capitalism: what I refer to as the tyranny of the functional. And much of what follows will be framed in terms of that tyranny.

I would first note a point made elsewhere in Holland’s book: that, under the Oedipus, the nuclear family provides a kind of elementary preparation for functioning in a Capitalist society (very much like the 3 R’s in American primary education: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic): a prohibited in the form of the incest taboo (the mother (and a prohibitor: the paternal father figure –that is against a desire that probably wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the prohibition in the first place.

What this creates is a situation that (at a more nominal/blue collar level (Capitalism engages on a regular basis: of creating a situation that serves its purposes at the expense of others while wiping its hands clean of it. And the way it does this (via psychoanalysis (is by separating desiring production from social production via the nuclear family; by making it seem as if what we are and do is purely the result of our individual circumstance within the family; our individual psyches. It is as if Capitalism is saying (via, once again, psychoanalyses: that if there is a problem, it is not Capitalism that needs to be reformed, it is you.

And nowhere is this clearer than in Ego Psychology in which the assumption is that if you are having problems, it is due to a fractured ego that can be put back together if you submit to a paternal guru type. And that is when we are, by nature, fractured selves. Think Dr. Phil here: the epitome of Ego Psychology and the tyranny of the functional. And is not Dr. Phil not the very kind of psychologist that Guatarri was seeking to undermine when he allied himself w/ Deleuze?

Dear diary moment 12/9/2018:

Today I want to focus on the “New Earth” agenda of the Anti-Oedipus: this perpetually deterritorialized state in which the socious is brought more in line with the deteritorialized state of the unconscious: the BwO. First of all, I would note how it seems to cycle back to the savage state in which the earth-based socious and BwO are so closely bound that is hardly worth talking about desiring production as distinct from social production. The primary difference between the two, however, is that the New Earth socious would lack the codes and mores that the savage milieu was dependent upon. It, as compared to the savage, would be a complete unleashing of desiring production. And I would note here how D&G’s agenda retains an element of “the noble savage” that has been put into question by more contemporary thinkers as Steven Pinker.

(And I would also note how this pretty much confirms (that is to confirm the confirmation bias at work on my part (what I’ve always suspected about Deleuze: that the creative act was never that far from the back of his mind.)

But what I mainly want to point to is the overlap between D & G’s Utopian vision and that of other thinkers. Most notable here is Marx’s vision of a society in which an individual could be a fisherman in the morning, a musician by noon, and an artist by night. And I would note, here, the Maslowian concept of the hierarchy of needs that comfortably overlaps with D & G’s unleashing of desiring production. And I would also note here how Capitalism (as D & G suggest (has made this possible via technology: for instance, how computer/digital technology has made it easier to make movies or songs or graphic art. Think sampling here.

And to push the issue even further (that is at the risk of gerrymandering), we can even see this unleashing of desiring production in Rorty’s argument that we need to quit worrying so much about what constitutes a given discipline: science, art, philosophy, etc., etc. (quit recoding and reterritorializing (and let our acts be the “unforced flowers of society”.

Once again: the creative act never seems that far from Deleuze’s mind. But then, it never seems that far from Guatarri’s, Marx’s, Rorty’s, or even Maslow’s either. And I suspect this is because we are talking about creative people that basically wanted to spread the joy.

One of the grievances I’ve developed with MSNBC (call it a lover’s quarrel (is their tendency to refer to FOX News as “state TV”. This, of course, is a reference to Orwell’s 1984. And it is inaccurate –or, rather, partially so. It’s only (and in a conditional way (“state TV” when Republicans are in control. And it is only so within the framework of what the republican platform represents: a complete submission to Capitalist values and almost religious faith in the market. In fact, if FOX News is anything, it is anti-government or state. The truth is that what FOX News is actually playing lip service to are corporate values.

Now some may protest that issues such as immigration, PC issues, or abortion are hardly corporate concerns. And, to some extent, they would be right to the extent that profit seeking behaviors are generally indifferent to such issues. But at the same time, these issues do serve their interests either indirectly through misdirect or in more direct ways as I will describe below. The misdirect, of course, is that as long as a group of intellectual hicks keep voting republican because they’re pissed off about immigration, PC culture, or even abortion, or even being picked on white guys (that is when most of the rich are white guys), that can do no other than serve the interests of the rich and the emerging oligarchy they are participating in –that is with outright contempt for the masses including those who support the republican platform. And this is what republican drones don’t get: while they are focusing on the failures of government (while they are engaging in all this talk about “liberty”), they are surrendering their selves to the very thing that lies at the source of pretty much all their problems: profit seeking behaviors. On top of that, they are attacking and undermining the one institution they have available to them to act as check and balance to corporate power: a government that could (should we make it happen (act in its proper capacity and facilitate a fair (mind you not an equal (distribution of power.

The direct way in which corporate interests profit from republican issues (mainly immigration and abortion (is that an expanding economy (that which profits them as investors (is an expanding population. Capitalism rides on constant expansion. So we hardly need reflect and elaborate on the very real impact this could have on our environment and LIMITED natural resources. Hence: the republican (as well as FOX News (tendency towards denial when it comes to such issues. On top of that, we get so-called “enlightened entrepreneurs” who will address these issues no further than will hurt their profits while making it seem like the market is the only solution we really need.

And this is my issue with MSNBC. By calling FOX News “state TV”, they simply reinforce an outdated notion of what an oppressive society might look like and therefore add to the smokescreen for an emerging oligarchy.

I have never quite understood the essence of writing a blog. It is so absurd and awkward letting people know everything about your life, its mysteries and its boredom. It is not eloquently said that a blog is a necessity for who I am. I do not detest writing a diary, nor a journal, nor an essay but I do conspiracy theories inside my head. I do reject writing a blog about it all of me, suddenly bursting into flames when I receive the thought of an online blog. Everything about it is not at all true for it is expressing the obvious. I sit in my bed using my laptop computer, with the airconditioner turned on and I feel very satisfied, relaxed and contented with myself as the internet artist. However, I still do detest writing online blogs since it seems unrealistic to be writing revelations and contemplations about your inner self, innate ideas and your whole true life. And so I conclude, with my post in these so called debating forum of opinions and facts not untrue however strategically confined.

:-k :-" O:)