a thread for mundane ironists

“Simple” and “complex” become entwined in how a particular dasein connects a particular set of dots. Here we are discussing what I construe to be complex mental, emotional and psychological reactions—reactions that then become entangled in our behaviors existentially “out in the world”. Or, rather, they do for me. And in ways I believe cannot be pinned down by the philosopher. The poet merely does the best he can. I react to Luno subjunctively—peculiarly as dasein.

I feel – viscerally, intuitively – the manner in which he approaches the relationship between words and worlds [in the Notebooks] is how I have come to approach it too. It is the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of “identity” and “value judgments” embodied in “dasein”.

This is comforting, consoling to me. I feel less alone regarding how I think I understand my “self” out in the “world”. But, again, he may well scoff at all this. But that’s his business.

What does it mean to “waste time” once you have come to accept that human existence is essentially meaningless and absurd? Every behavior can be rationalized from a particular point of view. I wouldn’t read [or expose others to] Luno if it didn’t have some meaning or significance in my life.

[Or we can even argue over “natalism”—whether it is “moral” to bring new life into the world at all…a world suffused with suffering]

But, then, like me, Luno may well be wrong. In any event, thinking about stuff like this is just something I have come to do. Just like you.

But you seem to want this pinned down to a “particular quote”. Something more concrete. But Luno will always remain entangled in my exchange with Olivia…and in her relationship with Victor.

In other words, I really don’t understand what you are asking me to do beyond what motivated me to start reading the Notebooks again. And to bring them in here.

If you read Victor at SAPC you know there are any number of things he recognizes as still well within the bounds of philosophy. And Zen I always associate with Buddhism. And Buddhism with religion. In other words, with yet another rendition of “enlightenment” able to lead one’s soul to “immortality”.

Now, Luno [like me, the “nihilist”] can be accused of espousing/expounding his own dogmatic sense of “the way things are”; but only as an ironist. Or is the ironist guilty of the same “bad faith”.

Here, however, we arrive once again at Wittgenstein’s, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Yeah, right. Like the human mind is programmed to do that!

While it can be frustrating, there is a legitimate reason for it. And you see it a lot in French exposition as it is explicitly pursued by thinkers such as Lacan, Foucault, and I also think (though I’ve never heard it said) Derrida and Deluez and Guattarri. The reason given is that the author does not wish to fix meaning for the reader, but would rather act as a guide to the reader’s own interpretation, to play the role of an influence on the reader’s own process rather than an authoritarian controller. Roland Barthes refers to it as Writerly text as compared to Readerly. Although I’m not really sure this is necessary in that, regardless of how clear a piece of writing is, it seems to me that the reader still determines for themselves what meanings to accept, what to make of them, and what meanings not to accept.

This has always been a personal source of tension for me as I tend to draw towards obscure text because what I know through second hand interpretations only to find myself frustrated by it. As I’ve recently realized about myself, I find myself drawn to French ideas while being equally drawn to the American style of exposition. Although, I did find myself locked in a similar situation with Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Naturein that I kept going. repeatedly, over the first two sections and never getting to the third, and only recently found out, through a reader’s guide, that I’m not the only one who has trouble with first two when the third section, because of its accessibility, is the primary reason for the book’s popularity outside of philosophy departments. This is why I have recently made a commitment to utilize more of the second hand interpretations rather than spend all my time fumbling around with the original text. With the time I have for this, I see no reason not to let others do the work for me. I just have too much on my plate not to.

Hi. there seems to be something odd about the communication here.

I not only have nothing against cryptic communication, I am in favor of it in many situations.

My point is not to criticize ambiguity AT ALL.

I am just trying to understand what Iamb gets from this guy he quotes so much here. I would love to see this working from a specific quote.

Let’s take Cesar Vallejo. A great poet. Makes the philosopher Iam is quoting sound like he is carefully describing how to turn on a toaster in terms of clarity. CV poetry is unbelievably dense, often non-grammatical, very complicated and yes, ambiguous. However if someone asks me why I love him and what I get out of him, I could quote a specific poem and go into why and what I get out of it. This would nto be a complete explanation and I might even be confused about some of what he means. I wouldn’t even try to be thorough. Nevertheless I could explain my interest in the poet.

It seems to me if a philosopher is valuable some kind of paraphras and interpretation can be made and a fan should be able to describe what a specific piece of writing did.

The thing that really sucks about it is that you’re always in between that which is too obscure, thereby making it frustrating while making enough of a challenge to attract, and that which is too accessible and, therefore, unsatisfying. You’re always trying to get beyond yourself which requires that which maintains a delicate balance between the two.

Seriously, think about how you responded here. Can you see the extreme oddity of your response?

Take a few moments to mull it over.

OK. Here’s why I think it is an odd response. If communication is impossible, why spend time COMMUNICATING. Sure, an absurd and meaningless life may lay waste to many things, but if you have the specific belief that communication and interpretation of communication cannot work, then spending time COMMUNICATION COMPLEX THOUGHTS to others is very very silly. Let alone have a philosophy forum.

I don’t want the whole thing pinned down to a single quote, I wanted an example of something that you found profound or philosophically useful that he wrote with an explanation of what insight this brought you or how it affected you.

so I could see how you connected to this thinker.

In a sense I am asking you to do what might be done in an academic OR a social situation. In the former one is often asked to interpret a poem or philosophical essay, the latter generally with a critique. In the latter, one is often asked, when expounding on the greatness of someone’s ideas, what one specific idea is and how this is great (for you).

But oddly this seems not possible.

I would think there would be a way to distinguish some of his cryptic, but useful to you, thoughts, from the thoughts of other cryptic thinkers. Or, perhaps, they are all the same. Though why one would then read more than one, I don’t know, if they cannot be distinguished.

Seriously, this is the oddest exchange I have ever had with an obviously intelligent person on the internet.

As far as I can tell, there would be no reason to read more than one page of this philosopher. Since the first page would be ambigous and cryptic and unexplainable in any way to a third party. So how could it possibly differ from the next page? Each page would be, essentially, the same as all the others. But that’s a side point…

I will drop this now.

And just to be doubly clear. This request was in no way a critique of what you are doing here, nor was it a request to sum up your entire relationship with all of his work.

Hey, I am reading this really great philosophical work, (or work that I really like and find valuable).
Really, wow. I’ve read some of his work. I can’t say I was so moved/affected/inspired by it. Can you give me an example of one of his ideas or a section of writing that really affected you, explain what it means to you and what it has done for you.

Maybe if I saw what you got out of a quote, I thought, I would understand what I was missing. Or perhaps I would see that we are looking for different ‘things’ - not in terms of content, though perhaps that also.

But I give up.

yes, I can connect to that. But again. I am not critical of cryptic writing. See above.

Yes, there must. I got that you had nothing against it. And I agree with your take. I was merely articulating my experience of it.

I also agree that if you are going to show appreciation for something obscure, you should have some justification for it -even if it comes, as it often does with me concerning the French, through second hand interpretations.

Layotard goes into the value of the sublime and avante garde in the appendix to The Post Modern Condition. In it, he point out the potential terrorism in the general human gravitation to the accessible and easily communicated. We see traces of this in mainstream media and the discourses of politics. He then champions the sublime and avante garde as a general antidote to this.

At the same time, I think we have to be careful about how the ego can get caught up in this. Sometimes it will draw to the obscure because makes the individual feel as if they have put themselves above everyone else. And sometimes, it can more about the challenge of the obscure more than actual quality of the work. You see this a lot with movie critics who are always, for instance, giving more privilege to foreign films that are often beyond the grasp of most people. I think the movie The Tree of Life gained a lot of leverage with critics through obscurity and a lot of what felt to me like mannerisms. It was an alright movie, I think. But I would have to watch it a couple times before I could even begin argue that it wasn’t as good as they made it out to be.

I find a good deal of cryptic writing shallow and poser-ish. I don’t think cryptic writing or ambiguous writing has to be this way and there are exceptions. I mean, most ‘clear’ writing is crap. So the issue is not crypticness. But cryptic writing does allow a kind of false depth to be present or a real depth to seem to be present. A lot of new age writing can be like this. Vaguenesses piled up on metaphors that are mixed with other vaguenesses and other metaphors that don’t quite fit with the first ones. People can make that ‘huuuummmmm’ sounds and imagine they are hearing or reading something profound, but really it is a lot of noise.

i don’t think this philosopher is just noise. I think I could even interpret some of the quotes in this thread. I don’t know if there is anything new or that interesting here, however.

I liked the Tree of Life, but more the ‘everyday’ sequences than the more mystical ones. I think he did a better job with spirituality in The Thin Red Line, which is a great movie. I don’t like his spirituality, or much of it, but I think he managed to present it incredibly well in that movie and I think the movie is profound, really presenting us in that facet of life that is aloneness even in the company of others.

I think some of Rumi’s poems, which are quite ambigous and mystical, are very powerful.

I can even enjoy some of Wallace Stevens who is ambiguity and crypticness personified, though he is not one of my favorite poets.

There are sections of Anti-Oediepus which I think work very well, also 1000 Plateus, though these are pretty hard to follow.

Exactly! There was a line in Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathrusta concerning poets who will muddy the waters of shallow pools and act like they have depth.

Actually, I got the same take. The way Brad Pitt played the father really did capture a kind of excellence you see in acting every once in a while. It really was complex.

Once again, I would have to watch the movie again before I form in any kind of final judgment.

And I don’t know that much about the director Mallik. But given the style, I have the feeling he had something to do with The New World and The Thin Red Line.

My main concern is that it presents the possibility of certain mannerisms that critics will latch right on to because it gives them an opportunity to exercise their interpretive skills. For example, not too long ago, I came across the movie Mammoth. And all I saw was some rich guy enjoying the benefits of being rich with few real human dramas thrown in: the death of the maid’s son at the end. It felt like some beginning director’s attempt to cop off of the style of Sophia Copula. Yet it gained leverage in the critic’s eyes by using those mannerisms. Copula even did this to herself by using the same mannerisms she did in Lost in Translation in Aintonette: giving us a series of romantic images of people in privileged positions just enjoying life.

It’s been a while since I’ve read Steven’s. But there was a poem about blackbirds I vaguely remember liking.

My main poets are like Phillip Levine and Sylvia Plath and Richard Hugo. Many will thumb their nose at my choice of Plath. But the woman made the sacrifice necessary to create some beautiful imagery. For instance:

The neon sign flashes on and off like a migraine.

The poetry being put out lately is actually quite beautiful. But it’s hard to distinguish one from another. They seem undifferentiated. But that may be because it’s hard for me to break away from philosophy to read the recent literature like I probably should.

However, I would point out one poet I’m particularly impressed with:

Nicole Blackman. She’s more like a performance artist in that she has done work with bands like The Golden Palominos, Recoil, and KMFDM. But what she does with words is really quite beautiful. She has an audio collection of her poems and others called Poemform.It’s got a lot of cool stuff, some so-so stuff, and some bad stuff. But you should check it out.

Exactly! The Anti-Oedipus does actually give you something you can grasp. A Thousand Plateaus, on the other hand, defies you all the way. But it does give you some imagery that is poetically lurid enough that you have to keep going back to it –like when they’re describing the hairs growing out the skin in a Dali painting. The Anti-Oedipus seems more expositional while A Thousand Plateaus seems more poetic.

The biggest help I have found as far as these are concerned is Brian Massumi’s A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: deviations from Deleuze and Guattarri.

Although, I’m not sure it actually explained anything I read in A Thousand Plateaus. Thinking about it now, I think it was more focused on The Anti Oedipus.

:-"

I have explained all of this before. But you apparently do not grasp the manner in which I construe it as an explanation. Isn’t that typical though of exchanges here at ILP? Ask yourself why. It always comes back again to dasein.

Anyway, again:

1] particular aspects of human interaction are beyond communicating wholly; the communication instead is rooted subjectively [and subjunctively] in dasein [in points of view] interacting out in particular worlds that evolve and change over time.

But, obviously: that explains considerably more for me than for you.

2] this “explanation” may well be wrong; so, as an ironist, I plug my own argument into venues like this one in order to garner conflicting reactions; to test it against conflicting ways in which understand issues like these.

In any event, it can be fascinating to pursue these ideas in and of itself.

3] Whether this communication “works” or not is irrelvant if you choose to interact with others. As you noted above, we really have no choice but to try to make something work.

But this is just me reacting to Luno. You will have to ask Victor to get his take.

What you want here seems [to me] contrary to the spirit of the “exchange” between myself and Luno. You want an explanation for it. Instead every entry quoted and every reaction on my part is an example of how there are limits to rational discourse between situated daseins. At least with regard to the “contexts” or “situations” broached by Luno.

Great? That’s your word not mine. Luno resonates subjunctively with me. As an ironist, I would never suggest that either his or my own end of this cryptic exchange is “great”. “Great” implies a continuum [like least to most ethical] that I do not even believe exists. At least not with respect to the things he broaches in the Notebooks.

To me this is as bizarre as saying there would be no reason to listen to particular piece of music more than once. Or no reason to read a particular poem more than once. In some respects, you seem to reduce this down to logo-centric criteria. That something is cryptic does not mean there are not aspects of it that might click in the mind of any particular dasein. And, again, it is the comfort and the consolation of bumping into someone who recognizes the extent to which we can not communicate any number of complex thoughts and feelings that is most appealing.

It is something analogous to Camus suggesting that suicide is the starting point of any serious philosophical discussion. Yeah, I see what he might mean by this in a world that is essentially meaningless and absurd. But what about this: because we die life means nothing; and because we die life means everything.

But what something like this might “mean” for the ironist is rooted in dasein.

And that you would “give up” speaks volumes regarding the gap between us. But then, in here, whether the discussion revolves around “objective beauty” or “free will” or “antinatalism” lots of very, very flustered folks seem compelled to “give up”.

Again, they seem convinced there really is a way in which to grasp these things “wholly”. They get exasperated because the other side not only refuses to embrace their own explanation but [apparently] does not even make the effort necessary to “get it”!

And then some get exasperated with me because I suggest there might be some things that cannot be gotten.

Me, I try to get what others are saying. But I know what I am up against if I do not: dasein.

Sure. Wholly wasn’t my expectation, not remotely. I wasn’t hoping for something complete. I thought it was clear my request was for something small, a single quote, but one that had affected you in some way you considered important or gave you insight or whatever made you want to keep reading this guy and not spend time in some other way.

I tend to agree.

I actually doubt that, but There’s an irony in you saying this.

And this wasn’t the irony I meant.

Sure. I got that. Other people explain their thoughts, sometimes clearly, sometimes cryptically. Sort of like I am asking for you to do here. You find use in hearing them lay out their positions. This doesn’t mean you no longer find use in cryptic language.

OK. And I assume it is workign for you to repeat this as much as you do.

Or you could help feed the poor or give someone a massage or do some other thing. There are many kinds of interactions with others out there. it seems an almost clinical irony to choose to write philosophy if one is fundamentally a nihilist about meaning. Sure, feeding the poor might also be meaningless, but somehow the seeming concreteness of this interaction with others, given the skepticism about communication, seems like a plus that is being avoided for some reason. Or whatever more concrete activity seems more interesting/attractive. They come, they eat. Perhaps what this means to you is one thing, to them another, but since there is something beyond meaning in the interaction, who cares?

IOW when feeding a hungry person there is an interaction even if the meaning is different or even if it is meaningless.

But when communication is the intended interaction, then there is no interaction if you guys are right.

But you both choose to work in the most vulnerable form.

It is different. If you think performing this other kind of communication with me would stain the exchange you are having with Luno, then I understand your reluctance, though not the causes of the staining. But here’s the thing. You are not having an exchange with Luno. Yes, I did note the quotation marks. You are writing in a public setting, I presumed, for third parties to witness and participate. You are not making notes at home in pads or in your computer. I was interested enough to try to get read a number of these quotes, react to some - was a little surprised to get no reaction to my response to him - and then try to see what was happening for you in a way that might be useful for me, since I seemed to be missing something in this guy, a certain depth. Of course you are free to decline, but your wording and reaction here seems as if you do not understand that you are speaking in public. It seems like you are reacting more as if I entered your private space and eavesdropped on a private process.

I said great for you. I have also worded this in a number of different ways - a rather large number of ways - to try to keep it flexible what the value his writing may have for you, even keeping the options more broad than ‘value’. Now you focus on ‘great’ as if I have boxed you in.

Also, I don’t think great implies ethical goodness, but that’s me.

If I quoted someone as much as you have quoted him in a forum where the idea of threads is for others to join in and interact, this would mean I placed some importance or value in at least the interaction - add in some of my other ways of wording this. My recent interest has been in trying to find out what that importance is.

I don’t think this is strange. IOW my request can make sense in the context and make sense for me, but frankly your response, despite your whole dasein spiel has more of an ‘there’s is something wrong with this request’ edge to it.

If you are treating his writing as a purely aesthetic experience than I agree. I think philosophy tends to have content in a way that music does not.

I can treat a postage stamp as if it was a music, but then for me it is not a postage stamp anymore. If someone asks about its postagestampness when you post a thread about it in a stamp collecting website, I think they would be surprised to hear you say that describing how it functions as a postage stamp would damage your relatioship with the postagestamp as music. I mean, this is a philosophy forum. Just to let you know the context that is part of what is leading me to ask for something more specific in addition to what you are doing here.

I am treating his work as if it was philosophy, which generally means the ideas can be brought out and discussed, even if this is in a context where it is acknowledged that this is incomplete and partially subjective interpretation, etc.

WEll, again no. Unless he is a poet. But even poems I can explain what I am getting out of them. Part of it. Some of it. Approximations. Without implying I capture the whole or that I even capture the whole of what the poem is doing with in for me. Also, I already related ideas about poems, but there is no response to those. It is as if they never happened.

Nope. And I repeatedly made it clear I wasn’t doing this. I have repeatedly respected your process here, affirmed the place of crypticness and ambiguity. It seems like asking for something in addition means that I am rejecting what is there, to you. You can have both. Or, one can. If someone can only have one, they can say this. But the request and even finding value in both does not mean I am rejecting one.

I can read a poem, let its meaning glide through me without trying to paraphrase, simply as experience. I can then also spend time discussing the poem in other ways - some of these while more explicit and language based, need not be logical - and then can even go back and experience the poem as, well, a neo sensual experience of images sounds and meanings as sensed things.

I do not see one destroying the other, necessarily. I can do this with movies, paintings, even relationships…

If it would destroy it for you, well, again, I understand your reluctance. But you seem to keep taking my request as a denial of the value of what you are doing, as an attempt to supplant or replace. That just isn’t the case.

Well, of course. And that you are saying this to me is really confusing. This has been my point all along.

OK. And I do see this as the closest you come to meeting my request. I wish it was attached to a specific quote.

What volumes does it speak? Do you think my giving up means I think one can have a complete and perfect objective exchange? So if I give up it means I am giving up because this is not happening?

I give up on processes that go nowhere for some time or cause me pain without some benefit for some time, as assessed via intuition or feelings or even seeming demonstrated somehow, whatever. Some people are so unpleasant to deal with, so far, that I have put them on ignore.

The volumes my giving up seemed to speak to you were not about me. Of course, I may be wrong when I decide to no longer engage in a process. But life is making these decisiosn of what to continue and what not to. But I am pretty sure you projected ideas you have about ‘other people’ onto me. And whole volumes of projection, it seems, these conclusions about what my giving up means about me and my beliefs.

If you manage to maintain ongoing discussion contact with everyone regardless of how it feels and where the contact seems to go, well, more power to you. I haven’t noticed you doing this in these forums and it seems like you give up on certain exchanges, but I haven’t put in scientific research. Me, I simply don’t have the time and also I feel/think it is important to make choices. In the past I have maintained contact that wore me down, or led to other experiences I did not really wish to have. So I make choices about what I will continue and what I will not. Fallibly, in all liklihood, but from my side of our gap, I can’t see a way to avoid making these choices, so I want to make them better and consciously. In the past when I let painful useless ones continue, i was choosing not to have other experiences with other people.

I have said nothing to indicate I have this belief. I am pretty sure I have said things that go against this.

I got exasperated when your responses had little to do with my request. When you implied I was saying what you were doing was wrong, when in fact I specifically said I did not think so. There comes a point where I am pretty sure I have specifically addressed concerns in a clear way and the other person keeps responding to me as if I haven’t said the things I have or attributes positions to me I have not stated and I get pissed. And from there I figure this feeling is likely to poison the exchange. So, sure I give up. Some times I come back.

I am not really interested, right here, in how you feel others incorrectly get exasperated with you. I am quite sure many things cannot be gotten, and once that is on ground level with specific individuals, it is most things that cannot be gotten by individual A. Any individual. And then there is the added ‘cannot be gotten when explained to them by individual B.’ So I believe that what can be gotten is actually a very tiny subset of things. So a little irritation comes in that you are sort of talking to me here or perhaps through me about problems you have with other people and maybe you realize this has nothing to do with me or maybe you don’t, maybe you assumed it applied to me as it seems you assumed a number of thigns about me above, maybe you didn’t.

But I feel like in your own way you saw me as in a box I don’t think I am in and took my request as a kind of judgment (a negative one) of what you were doing.

I’d prefer not to analyze a quote of his and what it did for me in that way.
or some other statement expressing a preference would likely have worked rather well with me. Not that you could know this.

I suppose ultimately that wasn’t my experience on this issue. It felt like you were responding to someone else.

You mention a number of times about how other people react to you, here in this post. This says to me that my request was taken by you in this broader context where you feel attacked or the focus of negative responses from others.

This, to me, could explain my experience. That my request was seen as a criticism of your position(s) and part of a larger pattern. My experience that you seemed not to be quite responding to me, what my request was, what it meant, what it meant about me and my thoughts. This was on the unpleasant side.

I couple this with what seems like your conception of the thread as really a private exchange between you and Luno - which is how you described it above. You did not use the word private, but nowhere in the description is anyone else.

It did feel like I was reacted to as an intruder.

I can only say this is not a private space, and I think there is a kind of etiquette mis-noticing on your part - of the culture of a forum.

But now I know that this is a thread for an exchange between you and Luno and I will disintrude and please consider my request withdrawn.

[b]Bianco Luno:

How come I never talk about what I had for breakfast?
Or the fact that usually I write in this little notebook in a university cafeteria against a din of slapping trays and scraping chairs and a beach of conversation.
Sometimes I write at work surrounded by small children in big bodies.
Or the weather?..
I do mention my cat; he breaks through but little else.
But is this true?
More used to.
I talked about a flower box I made once, about the people I shared a house with, the old ones at the retirement home, the people I met hitch-hiking, spring walks in the parks, at the market, by the lakes…
(Didn’t I recently mention Gould’s humming?)
What has happened?
Nostalgia is disquieting, the future plastered with fate, the present insists always on being bearable, doesn’t it?
What else can I say about it?
(A wisecrack peeks around the corner.)[/b]

Suffice it to say that talking about the things you do is what most people find disquieting. It is not something one is supposed to think about in that way at all. But it’s not really all that difficult to talk about the things most people do in a way that becomes unbearable. Breakfast and the rights of animal, for example. Or this miserable hot weather and global warming.

I have quoted his insights dozens of times. Then I reacted to the quotes with insights of my own. It would seem [to me] that something should have clicked by now enabling you to connect these dots.

Only in the sense I would attempt to defend a point of view here as I would defend the fact that 1 + 1 = 2.

What interest me though are the thoughts [our own thoughts] that ultimately are cryptic even to ourselves. In other words, they are predicated only on the extent to which we can understand them as dasein. This is where the irony is derived. Luno [in the Notebooks] grasps this in a manner in which I grasp it. Or, rather, I think he does.

But we can then distinguish these thoughts from ideas [and facts] that transcend dasein altogether; things true objectively for all of us. Or as close as I have come to understanding what that means in the here and now.

But this can be said of any behavior that is not feeding the poor. I choose to pursue philosophy because there are others who are not nihilists. And I respect their intelligence enough to challenge them with my own. And I am not someone who believes that life has no meaning—only that meaning revolving around identity and value judgments is rooted [largely] in dasein rooted [largely] in political economy. I am a moral nihilist. I believe that, sans God, all behaviors can be rationalized.

Feeding the hungry can be construed deontologically as a moral obligation. But I construe it only in the context of a narrative. Here we have a greater or a lesser consensus rather than a categorical imperative.

Yes, this is true. His own intelligence still intimidates me. And I doubt he would be interested in responding here because, perhaps, he has moved on to “real” philosophy at the SAPC. But, again, that is his business. Mine still revolves around my reaction to the Notebooks. And the Notebooks must still be meaningful to him in some manner because they are still online. But he has not chosen to add to them in years. At least not publically.

Not aesthetically so much as subjunctively. And music with the right lyrics can be profoundly philosophical. Here it can become very very difficult to make distinctions between cognitive and emotional reactions. Human pschology runs deep. Deeper in my view than can be captured in words. Luno calls it being a “poet”. And poetry can seem cryptic because it often uses language elliptically. But then in order to express certain particular reactions to the world we live in what else is there? Language is only of limited use here.

That would seem more appropriate at SAPC. And I would be interested of course in any exchanges you had with him there. But that sort of philosophy is not for me. Not anymore. My interest in philosophy is existential only. Bring the logic down here and integrate it into the world of human interaction: how ought I to live? and who am “I” anyway?

Luno, perhaps, as with Emile Cioran, would consider himself a “poetosopher”. But in the Notebooks only.

But I am more interested in prose and poetry suggesting that making this distinction is futile. You can’t quite say what it means to you anymore than you can say how it makes you feels. And, more to the point, you recognize that going in either direction involves acknowledging the role that dasein plays in articulating a point of view. A particular point of view rooted out in a particular world.

With Luno I am in touch with the futility of understanding many, many things. And with the understanding that even regarding the things I think I do understand I will one day stop understanding them…for eternity. Cioran’s “the trouble with being born”. As articulated in particular by Fernando Pessoa in the Book of Disquiet.

But this is painful or not only in relationship to the life you actually live.

Also, I created this thread for a virtual friend of mine on line. A kind of Twitter feed as it were.

Regarding these things in particular there are always gaps between “my request” and “your response”. Over and over and over again you see this at ILP. Someone will insist the rejoinder of another is not the one they were looking for at all. Or someone will insist they have already explained [repeatedly] why another refuses to get what they really mean. Or someone will remonstrate against those who do not engage in real philosophy here. The same arguments about the same things. It’s just that, given how I understand identity, value judgments and the limitations of language, I expect this. I am here basically to bump into an argument that might convince me not to expect it.

I think I understand your request from a point of view: mine. And then I respond to it from the same point of view. All we can then do is try to narrow the gap down. Or move on to others if we conclude it can’t be. Or is unlikely to.

Yes, I put you [and others] in a box that is my point of view. What else is there? We can only try to change the shape of the box by having an impact on how others think and feel we think and feel. Or convince others that some things, in transcending dasein, do not belong in a box [or a cage?] at all.

What specifically precipitated this exchange was reading an old letter from Oliva. In it she made a reference to Victor who had made yet another reference to me as “the nihilist”. I always took umbrage at this because I felt he was putting me in a box while suggesting that he was somehow above being pinned down. That prompted me to go online and read the Notebooks again—after many years.

But I found the more I read them the more I felt a bond between us. A bond that revolves around the manner in which I construe the meaning Richard Rorty assigned to the word “ironism”. And I was suddenly curious how others might react to his words. And here we are.

So, rather than discouraging others to respond I was intent on just the opposite.

On the other hand, maybe, subconsciously, you are actually closer to the “truth”. But: Can I ever really know this for sure?

This whole exchange reminds me of why it is I have always considered Art the best expression of the nihilistic perspective. As Archibald MacLeish argued:

A poem should not mean, but be.

In other words, the nihilistic perspective in Art lies in its refusal to directly communicate meaning thereby leaving it in a situation, much like dreams, in which the only meaning to be derived from it can only come from the discourse around it. Therefore, to put it in terms of a movie line from Cool Hand Luke:

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

On one hand, we have Ambig engaging in what reminds me of a dialogue out of a Camus or Sartre novel, that which exploits the full spread of the base lizard brain to the more cognitive. On the other, we have Moreno who is rightfully asking for a more cognitive hint at what it is that makes this particular discourse worthy of carrying on with. While Ambig is more engaged in the expression of the nihilistic perspective, Moreno is more focused on the discourse –which is what we are here for in the first place. Moreno simply wants to turn it into meaning on the terms of Ambig’s agenda.

That said, Moreno, I told you Ambig can be evasive. Trust me, I’m as confused by this as you are. At the same time, sharing a common respect for the nihilistic perspective with Ambig, I kind of get what he is getting at here. For me, the constant d.constructive process that has brought me to the nihilistic perspective, has left me in such a state that the only way I can deal with the ambiguity of reality is by taking oblique approaches to describing it. To describe it directly would only be to expose myself to possibility of being wrong in a way that I would have to admit was correct. This is why my goal is to write in such a way that I seem to be making a philosophical statement while basically writing a prose poem.

To put it in Lacanian terms: what we’re basically attempting to capture is the overflow of the real, that which always glances the corner of the eye and, therefore, cannot be brought into the discourse of the symbolic order. However, if it stays too far out of the symbolic order, it can only fall into the nihilistic pitfall of the psychotic. Therefore, you have every right to make the request you have of Ambig.

We all tend to think in isolation. Liberals tend to think about conservatives while conservatives tend to think about liberals. Atheists tend to think about Christians while Christians tend to think about Atheists. Likewise, those who embrace the nihilistic perspective tend to think about those that don’t; and visa-versa. And we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the other in absence of the other. Therefore, what we tend to find ourselves working with is not so much the other as our mental concept of the other, that which cannot just develop out of our actual experience of the other, but what we need them to be in order to justify our particular view of the world. This is why, while we might know the other, and even grow to love them, we can still slip back into our own little pep rallies that paints the other in terms of our personal agendas. And, sometimes, we tend to get locked in to those mental concepts and forget that the other is far more complex than what the linear language we tend work with can define at any given time.

This is why, while I sympathize and emphasize with Ambig, I have to stand with you on this one in that I believe Ambig is arguing against what he expects you to be rather than what you actually are. But please show a little sympathy (or empathy) for the kind of paranoia that can come from embracing the nihilistic perspective and of being one of two people who actually do on this board.

It’s a nice polemic sentiment, but there isn’t a great poet out there who didn’t also mean. And all the bad ones certainly do. But even then, if we stick to just being, as in a poem should ‘be’…one can still describe what the existence of a beloved line or stanza of a poem did to ‘me’ the reader.

And here’s the first Archibald macLeish poem I found…

An Eternity

There is no dusk to be,
There is no dawn that was,
Only there’s now, and now,
And the wind in the grass.

Days I remember of
Now in my heart, are now;
Days that I dream will bloom
White the peach bough.

Dying shall never be
Now in the windy grass;
Now under shooken leaves
Death never was.

This poem actually contains an argument, not simply scattered meanings. IOW it builds meanings up on previous ones in a loose logic. And it damn well means - even if there are ambiguities and contradictions. To avoid meaning it would have to be a sound poem or perhaps the work of one of the language poets. But I’ve never found either group very interesting.

I am not much of a fan of AM, but I think what he was polemically attacking were the people who wrote poetry primarily to get messages across - with big meanings and messages and who did not let the poem be a kind of sculpture and did not let themselves be guided by intuition, pure aesthetic concerns and a love of language driving them. See Nabokov on why Dostoyevsky is problematic and not quite up to the highest caliber.

ah, but he didn’t mean what he was saying, speaking of irony. He was using understatement as part of the upcoming violence. Violence as communication. He knew PN knew what he was supposed to do and not do. That kind of detached, keeping it cool, when you know you are going to use violence does a couple of things: it allows no small victory for the prisoner when one loses control and 2) it has a soul crushing inevitabilty and control about it that frankly makes everything worse for those about to be crushed.

I know it can seem like this, but even an artistic response to a specific quote would have been a response. IOW he could have responded as an artist or subjectively to a specific quote, but with the aim of showing why the was important to him, rather then questioning and reacting to Luno. Or something rather phenomenological? Or even metaphorically saying what was valuable and unique - given the repeated focus on this philosohper.

Somehow connect up to why this philosopher is being quoted over and over as opposed to another.

Is making a poor interpretation or an ‘error’ a problem? Or explaining incompletely?

Poets interpret and make very certain statements about the nature of reality. Think of Macbeths Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech as the first example that pops into mind. There is tremendous use of absolute statements even in very ambiguous poets. The next poem may contradict it. Or even portions of the same poem often do. But there is little fear of bluntly stating this is the way things are. It’s a trope or natural expression of themselves they use regularly.

Sure, but then…
let me make up a possible response to my request…
Quote X
I read quote X by Luno and it made me realize that I often try to have just one perspective on an issue, which I need not do. See how he comes at issue Y from two angles. I felt a sense of liberation, like I was not constrained so much by consistancy.

Now read that little section and then compare it to your paraphrase of Lacan. Which of the two quotes is a more radical attempt to state this is the way things are?

I can’t really see how even a coquettish Lacan would have much ground, after making that kind of statement, for not explaining how a specific philosopher’s quote affected him and how/why.

Yes, sure. And he has the right to refuse.

Agreed. Though I am not atheist nor Christian, nihilist or not a nihilist, conservative or liberal. I know, you were just giving examples. There is an irony however in a nihilist identifying as a nihilist and identifying some others as not being in that group. That’s not what I experience out there.

[/quote]
Hey, I like the guy. Not that one can tell over the internet, but he’d be one of the first I would let babysit my kids if I had little ones. (if forced to choose one of you all sight unseen that is) And I am sure my approach could have been better in some way.

The thing is if I read a lot of very complicated arguments in favor of nihilism and then a refusal, based on nihilism and the need to maintain ambiguity and concerns about incompleteness, to explain on a more personal level the effects of a thinker, I have to wonder what is really going on. We can put forward very complicated arguments in support of something, using ideas implicit or stated about perception, culture, minds, language, and then universalizing those claims to include everyone on earth,

but to mention a specific quote and describe - even phenomenologically - what it did for you…

this would be a dangerous foray out from ambiguity?

It feels very contrained, and ironically so, as I just argued, given the lack of philosophical constraint and ambiguity elsewhere.

It’s a bit like the irony that physicists sometimes fail to notice: well, after the entire universe suddenly popped into existence it all followed very clear rules from that point. So we know everything follows rules and it would all go to hell if anything supernatural could happen, because then there would be no rules.

It also, it seems to me, makes nihilism anti-life. I cannot speak in terms of certainty, even though this would be an accurate expression of my thoughts AT THAT MOMENT. I cannot interpret a text because that would mean…what, that one is forever tied to that interpretation? that any interpretation should be complete or one should be silent? that it cannot simply be my best guess at describing a process I was a part of at a certain moment?

Words are not containers of truth that get handed from one person to another. Language is doing a lot of other things in process form. We do not speak the Ten Commandments. Most of us. We engage in a dance/dialogue.

It really feels like a strange secular concept of sin lies behind this self-limitation. I suppose I am a bit of an anarchist, I note.

A skeptic can simply not be convinced. They can offer counter-interpretations and claim they are not convinced, the latter claim we are pretty much beholden to take as the truth. They aren’t convinced. A nihilist who has built up an edifice, using ideas about perception, cultural effects on the mind, ideas about language, assumptions about distance between subject and object and subject and subject
can’t really just withdraw and say it goes against their spirit to give a single interpretation (one that can even be temporary and tentative)
as if they hadn’t built an edifice on Tuesday.

The skeptic - at least a certain kind of skeptic - can do this, having not built an edifice on Tuesday. They are not builders who doubt the possibility of building but doubters period, at least hypothetically.

[b]Bianco Luno

The soft rose complexion of a woman’s face.
(You will want to know—but I won’t say—which.
It would invite misunderstanding.
And on this subject we can always use more, no?)
An older man’s reaction to it.
(A younger one’s would be seamlessly connected with it.)
To put a finer point on it: he could be moved to tears by the sight but it should still be called rape and he should be punished accordingly.
His eyes should be gouged out.[/b]

This subject is considerably beyond the ken of philosophy. But [perhaps] a clear example of how convoluted human psychology can appear when it is expressed in a manner that some might construe as philosophy.

The only people who have no right to an opinion about rape are the fathers of daughters.
For similar reasons, mothers of sons, gone off to war, on war.

It is not for nothing, though, that the actual reasons are not broached. Can you think of one?

I’m less confused by Luno now. Why? Because acknowledging my confusion about some things can be a sign of clarity. If you come expecting to be confused about the meaning of the words you can still make your own out of them. But you have to approach the relationship between words and worlds here in a way that many philosophers do not. As an ironist with a particular understanding of dasein.

I expect him to react to me or to you or to Luno as dasein. And here the communication is always [eventually] distorted because 1] there are so many different existential variables that go into the making of any particular “I” and 2] the relationships Luno broaches here are particularly prone to distorted views.

It’s the difference between discussing gender [always present in Luno’s prose poems] as a biological function [the things we can all agree on] and gender relationships as a social, political and economic function [the things that precipitate endless conflicts].

Two doctors discussing abortion as a medical procedure is one thing, two philosophers discussing it as a moral issue another thing altogether.

One is pregnant or one is not. One is raped or one is not. How subjective can Luno be about that? This transcends dasein. But discussing that pregnancy/rape [as a moral issue] in a particular confluence of men and women, can reflect a virtually infinite number of mental, emotional and psychological reactions. None of which are necessarily more conclusive when the time comes to choose or not choose abortion, to rationalize or not rationalize rape.

At best we can form a political consensus in the here and now. And that is no less true of philosophers in my view.

First of all, I’m only familiar with AM’s Ars Poetic because it’s the one that tends to show up in anthologies the most. And that particular line holds a great deal meaning for me because I use to write a lot of poetry. It was more an issue of method than anything. For me, it was always a process of accumulating lines and images until they began to coalesce into something that gave pleasure first and foremost. Generally, if there was meaning (and there often was) it emerged in the process. However, that meaning always seemed to come in a very oblique and ambiguous way. My experience with writing was similar. The same sentiment was, more or less, echoed by Joyce, who warned us against the didactic, and Ezra Pound who advised the poets to “go in fear of abstraction.” In the introduction to the 2010 edition of The Best American Fiction, Richard Russo describes a reading at his university by Isaac Bashevis Singer in which, when asked by a student what the purpose of literature was, he responded that its purpose was to “entertain and to instruct.” The important thing here is that he insisted on putting the “entertain” part first.

My take on it has always been one of “why compromise my aesthetic for something I could express better in an essay or interview”. But then I started off as musician for whom everything was sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And as you suggested elsewhere, I’ve also seen a lot of bad work because an artist put too much emphasis on meaning. Too often, it can come off as pretentious and heavy-handed. I’m kind of struggling with that with the last poem I wrote. It seemed to me to try too hard to mean and was thereby compromised. The only reason I stuck with it as I did was because it was first time in 10+ years one had come together for me like that when I thought it would never happen again. In certain states of mind, it reads alright in that it is the product of years of primarily writing prose. It manages to break from that kind of poetic vibrancy that always haunted my earlier poems. Unfortunately, in other states, it comes off as awkward. I’m not sure I would put it in my “best of” collection. But I’m hoping it will lead to better things. I may even just glue it all together into a prose piece and see if I haven’t found a method of developing those philosophical prose poems I was talking about.

That said, I want to repeat the statement you responded to and put it back in context:

My point was not that art must necessarily be nihilistic in nature and completely without meaning. That would be silly. It was merely that if one wanted to express the nihilistic perspective, the creative arts are the best means to do so as compared to just plain expository prose. It comes out my belief that nihilism does nothing. It never attempts to justify itself. And the minute one attempts to do so by simply trying to explain it, they effectively throw themselves out of the nihilistic perspective. They are no longer in a position to say anything in its behalf. It came out of my 3 year stint of just pumping out visual art which brought me back to my musician days when I thought less in terms of what a thing meant and more in terms of how it felt. It always felt like I was working from the base of the brain. I kind of got stuck in groove with it and was glad, when it came to an end, to be freed up to pursue more MEANINGFUL (and I mean that literally) and cognitive projects.

That all said, there are a couple of points I feel I should make. First of all, I consider the nihilistic perspective to be a tool. That’s why I call it “the nihilistic perspective”. If I wanted to live in it, I would call it plain old nihilism and probably go back to visual arts –either that or join a punk band. So I would certainly agree with the agenda to mix some meaningful expression with the obscure. I certainly wouldn’t want to base my whole intellectual life on speaking in riddles or Zen Koans. I mean I’m intrigued by French ideas. But if I had to base the rest of my intellectual life solely on reading Baudrillard, Derrida, or Deleuze and Guattarri, that is without the interpretive texts, I think I would have to shoot myself in the head right now. It’s just too refreshing to get a little clarity in the midst of all that. In order for something to do me any good, it has give me something I can use; it has to be explained to me like I’m a seven year old. However, you have to keep in mind that it would be silly for me to think, at this point, that I’m going to do a lot of good as a strait forward philosophical orator. I just don’t think I would have anything that important to say –especially since I really don’t have the time to go through the whole philosophical canon required in order to be qualified to make such an attempt. Therefore, I have to hedge most of my bets on the more poetic side of the equation and hope I’ll be able to do some good there. The best I can offer is a perspective. And, quite often, that will require that I use more oblique approaches to meaning and the nihilistic perspective.

Anyway, I wish I had more time to go over more of your posts. But I’ve been using you as an excuse to avoid the project I have set down for myself in The Academy: a response to Aum’s two essays. And while I don’t see much getting done on it today, I still have to overcome my dread and anguish and get some focus back here. But, thanks for the distraction.