Having spent all my time writing and developing the idea, the past three years, I have not been very active economically, and right now I find myself here again, in the editing suite of a small tv station, making my pay, gathering the rent – none of the people here has the faintest clue as to my real work - I have, in the past, tried to entertain conversations with people about what I was writing; it is received with glassy gazes, invariably, even at the first mention of a word like ‘value’ or ‘power’, nervous systems rebel. But I have absolutely no desire to communicate this to anyone - directly, eye to eye - who isn’t asking for it, who isn’t expressing curiosity or who isn’t directly attacking it.
But recently I have finally begun preparations for a more ambtious economic plan. It had taken me all this time to realize what, in terms of my own values and self-valuing, I had to work on. The psychologial implications of VO are as vast as the scientific ones. To self-study using VO was not a given possibility; the terms had to be developed first and this is, retrospectively, what most of my time in the past three years, working with close friends, has been dedicated to. What is a self-valuing psyche? What is its consistency?
Freuds conception the selfs main drives has to be abandoned here, or at least seriously revised; that is one of the first serious implications I noticed. It is simply not possible to self-value consistently within a Freudian hierarchy of pathos; the Freudian attitude towards ones roots (and thus towards offspring) is crude and ultimately groundless, and deadly - by his means of self-analysis, one ends up erradicating the self; thus, in cynical terms, ‘solving’ it - and one dissolves into the fabric of society, economy, expediency.
A question to those reading: consider that I am working in television, and am quite capable of producing quality material, technically. I have tried in vain to conceive of a concept fit for tv that does some justice to philosophy, or what I consider that name to truly signify. It may be, probably is, a lack of imagination on my part. The question then is as simple as this: What could I do with my tv-skills to benefit me as a philosopher? I notice that I am quite thoroughly paralized in this respect. My ambition seems to fail me here - is it that tv is just not a suitable venue? It can’t be that; I am sure there is an angle to be found. But do I truly want to find it? It is true that I quite loathe the compromising nature of the television making process when it comes to content - this is why I am satisfied to work at a smaller station that does not flatten things quite as drastically as, say, CNN does, or equally our own larger stations for which I have directed in the past. It would be absolutely impossible for me to work there, as under this header of societal truth, factual truth is the very first thing that goes out the window, and dignified illusions aren’t often conceived.
Yet I love the magic of television. I love the medium, even if I havent had a tv for maybe two years now; nothing is on it. Theoretically it is great. It always felt good to watch my own programs come on. But I can not muster any enthusiasm for any formula. Give me a new formula. I will mention whoever gives me the idea that turns out to work for me in the credits. Money can be arranged too, proportionally to what I make of course.
Bargain and banter, not very Exalted in my Ambition here. But it’s friday night in the workplace.
I suspect something about your idea is insidious to the common worldviews people cling to for their livelihood. So that perception provokes the fight or flight event, and flight more efficiently restores the status quo.
If you broach the subject with anyone, work is probably the last place you want do so. Most employers demand the conformity of their employees in ways that at first appear well-defined and harmlessly pragmatic but which often turn out to quietly demand a deeper subjugation of thought and creativity. Challenging mindsets are not welcome.
Is the goal that your project will be financially self-sustaining, i.e. are you also trying to make a living from it?
That might be quite difficult.
If that’s not the case, or the primary concern, why don’t you consider YouTube or some other medium for broadcast on the internet?
Many younger people no longer watch television nor find the television subscription model worthwhile anyway.
I keep up with any interesting t.v. network series entirely through online venues.
Pat of this is clearly true, but there is no boss required for this behavior; people are, by their own devices, perfectly capable of recognizing what goes outside of the drawn lines and of distrusting that. Not to mention that it is all quite complicated for an ordinary mind, philosophy in general. Most people ask themselves why the hell anyone would find that interesting, when you can also watch funny stuff or the news, or talk gossip. I dont feel that I am exaggerating here either.
That is not the case at all, I don’t even want that at all. I do not want to make money off my thinking, as this would most certainly put conditions on it. I do wish to use youtube, create a philosophical channel, with no monetary aims, as indeed internet has outgrown television. But the thing with tv is that lots of money goes around in it, and I have the professional capacity and network to get something on air - I just don’t know what it should be.
Perhaps it should be the precise opposite of philosophy - a kind of release, relief; though I do not at all feel burdened but rather liberated by philosophy, so that makes no sense either. Dammit.
In the past I had enough trust in politics to be able to make a political program, now that would be either pure farce, or very dangerous for whoever would broadcast it. It is quite annoying that politics is such pure deception, it means that no sensible thing can be done with it or said about it.
So do I. I like to watch these high quality series, The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, etc - Right now, I find Homeland worth watching. Not because of its social relevance (it’s deceptive enough to be irrelevant) but because it is extremely well made.
An there’s the real issue; I feel that I should be making movies, or high value television, tell great stories.
It’s just that I have this access to tv, and not to cinema. I’d probably have to migrate to get into film.
What about a debate or discussion type show in which the topics and participants are carefully selected so that certain philosophical issues of your interest/design must arise?
A moderator, maybe you yourself, could inject specific facts or questions to tease out the problems on which you want your channel to focus.
I am stuck, or even ‘Fixed’ on the supernova analogy, no disrespect to either Arc, or You, & forgive the pun?Even if it raises to that level.
However, supernovae are spent and enrormous substances, to the best of my recollection, and recently co-incidentally (or not) another cosmological albeit ambigous analogy was made between a gallactic center and a vagina.
In another post i tried to argue that any system of anologies can be set up between two or more things,ideas, and there is no harm done in that.?!
However the scales are astoundingly different, even if the things in question may be qualitatively similar.
Things may look similar, and even behave as if they worked under similar principles, but then what need is to differentiate cosmology from ontology? Is this within the imaginary scope of God’s plan for the cosmos to create a reasonable assessment of it’s self? Would the Cosmos not exist was it not for some intelligent form of reason to recognize it? Maybe Einstein did not dispense with this in his 2nd relativity, or maybe everything in fact is not really relative, -relate-able even? How so ?
His answer may have been well You can set any two things side by side, but does it make sense to do so?
(If the premise hinges on defining self in terms of it’s self, then those definitions would need to make sense,otherwise t remains on the level of the absolutely reduced Cosmos into the realm of the metaphysic of physical events)
This is why the self, the cosmos, or even your self my self, can not be reduced by the way thing appear or behave. The have an intrinsic being, and this is why i personally hive the highest for the alchemical definitions of the Being of the middle ages.
And to whom and what primarily can we thank for these descriptions? Avicenna, Averroes, the Persian mystics, whom nowedays we would classify as those ‘Muslims’
That’s another thought I had…to craft the Ayn Rand type philosophical narrative in t.v. format. That would require the most groundwork, effort, and luck for full realization, though.
By the way, I think those are all great shows, except Deadwood which I’ve never seen. I am getting back into Homeland since the new season is currently on air. I was a little put off by the last season (season 3) which I found too convoluted and unrealistic to accomplish whatever it was trying to accomplish, but I think the current one has started out strong. Carrie is such an awesome character. The only other two shows I’m currently anticipating are Game of Thrones and Vikings, of which I think the latter might be my favorite.
I’m not personally interested in Rand in this way, I do not like her narratives that much. All I care for concerning her writing is her notion of value. There are a good number of historical events that merit a series like Game of Thrones, though.
Yes, Carrie a great character, and I agree with you about this new season; the last one did feel a bit empty, and this was caused by it consisting of so many convoluted layers of not really worked out plotlines. Brody’s situation in Caracas was unsatisfying, you never knew what you were looking at. People were expecting the show to fizzle out without Brody, but it picked up in quality.
Haven’t watched Vikings. I stopped watching GOT after season 2, some of the sadism was a bit too indulgent for me. But it is unquestionably extremely well made.
My friends ambition, among his ambitions anyway, was to be launched in a capsule after his death, or upon it, and plummeted into Jupiter.
He died eagerly, but without taking the required measures, such as earning a billion or what such missions cost nowadays to finance this decadent funeral. He was buried without a stone.
But now he does have a stone, with his sigil on it. At least thats something. But not much.
This is one of the more interesting threads on here. I’m glad you revived it. It seems like, from your reviving comment, you have experienced disillusionment since you first created this thread?
To me, this thread sparks in my mind one of the key issues of philosophy. It seems that the question of what constitutes the good life is alive in the ambition to acheive it, and perhaps that ambition is a part of the conception as well.
Has it been decided once and for all which comes first, the material conditions that act causally, or the ideological conditions that cause us to act materially? Is the answer a matter of opinion, or does an object truth lie at the bottom? To what degree are our ideas are a result of the material makeup of our brain and brain chemistry?
This, it seems to me, is part of what you’re dealing with here:
So are these things, these “findings” of the “scientific clergy” things to be worked through or merely insulted (“nauseating as maggots”)?
Science cannot be done away with by scorn alone the way religion could, because it is built on a much stronger foundation. If the goal is really to overcome science, it cannot be done with the same methods that were used to overcome religion in the time of Bacon and Descartes. There is truth in science where there was only poetry and noble lies in religion. Telling people to do away with reliance on the senses because it is ignoble is futile.
Do you know the concept of technocracy? Through Nietzsche, we come to understand power quite clearly, and not in any narrow sense. What possesses power will dominate what is weak. I think Nietzsche wanted to accomplish a revesal through ideological denegration, but so long as modes of concrete power rest in someone’s hands they will not be done away with by words alone. Even the church combatted heresy with physical coercion. Scientific dominance has ushered in a new state in existence.
Environmentalism, for example, may try to accomplish some surpression of science by raising concrete issues (‘our survival is at stake’) — but then science may come along and say, “Here are the tools to remedy that.”
This is why Nietzsche had hope for a religious revival, but the skepticism of our age runs deep, and means of communication (which are scientific-technological products) are in the hands of those who value the power which science brings. In fact, the ideology of power is probably the worst remedy against science that could be conceived because science is the pure means to power and power creation. We might say that the scrawny man holding the bazooka is less noble than the brave savage, but if we are going to have a “valuation of the earth”, if the brave savage is wiped from its face then his nobility is altogether forgotten and is no possession of the earth.
So as not to keep going on, I want to move in from another (in)direction.
Mystery. Mystery gives a sense of intrigue to life, keeps it from being boring, makes room for possibility. But though we may have an aesthetic for mystery on TV, most do not want it in reality because the reality of mystery is uncertainty and danger. Humans strive for safety and certainty, it is instinctual. We use technology as means to obtain and secure our safety, and as we recreate the environment of safety the mystery disappears. All becomes labelled, familiar, correct behaviors designated — rational, “effective”!
There is a monopoly on pleasure. Yes, a base motive of humanity, part of the scientific outlook on man. We create values which put limits on our pleasures, we create laws which restrict our access to them, or else its packaged and exchanged for a price. Pleasure, I think, is the only thing more powerful than safety. It is just that the road to the fulfillment of our pleasures puts our safety at risk in such a way as to bring pleasure’s opposite, whether in reality or because we are told so — beware the pleasures of the flesh.
Two more hints:
Philosophy reunite with poetry — the pleasure of words, ideas and communication (and incommunicable “experience”)
Philosophy has always made use of the Thrasymachuses (now, the peddlers of pleasure?)
Also to be aware of “Applied Behavior Analysis” — operant conditioning…
That’s a thought! It’s not too much different from thinking of death as plummeting through an eternal void of nothing, except at least there is a destination. In a weird way I kind of like it.
And what’s more, if he actually had amassed a billion’s worth in fortunes at the end, he would not pass it to any children or relatives, or use it as social or political legacy, but he would burn it by paying for his own futile send off.
That’s really funny.
Did you know if he believed in any from of afterlife?
The scientific cointinuum had to change philosophy, i do not see any conflict here between science and philosophy, nor the notion that philosophy has become the handmaiden of science. Sure, science has changed the rudder by which we navigate, and god himself has appearently, so far has gone along with this. Now it is in man’s hands, wither he wants to go with this, toard happines and enlightenment, or, the opposite. Philosophy was science, once, and it still is in the social sphere, where critics allege, that it’s a weak point, wherea societal issues can not use science in it’s broades applications. They are wrong, because philosophy can not disengage , nor can science from philosophy of which, once it was indiscernible. This is only an illusion, such as Adam biting into gthe apple, as if he really knew the difference between eternal salvation and the pleasure of the retrogade origin. He did not realize his difference, (from animals) but noe he is starting to, and his realization will take him to his true identity. He has no ambition, except to be grue to the goal set for him in the reason for his exisgtence. And what is that? To overcome his morphic doubt, and to be able to reflect his sense of the aesthetic perfection, which will forever be sustained, in the moment of his highest pleasure, which contains his will.(to power)
TV has not even been invented yet. Saying we have television and production of real or valuable content is like saying Edison invented cold fusion.
I would try to gravitate toward the leading edge of development in this sense, the sense of the future, and say fuck it to every “pragmatic concern” or moralism steeped in any modern rationale, philosophical or otherwise.
The future world of TV, real content, real value, will bend to your will alone. But first we must learn to be gardeners and farmers, we must see the harvest in the tiny seed we are momentarily content to set in excrement-laced dirt.
I seriously think you are going to contribute to a revolution in TV and film content and production. I have no doubt, I feel the tectonics of the future reverberating at my feet right now just seeing it. Just think about it, this has never happened before; think about VO, all that has been accomplished, laid down, laid bare and lays there waiting to be impregnated; you, and film. Holy shit, man. I mean fuck but this is really it.
Yes. Absolutely.
Well said, and now, perhaps we couldn’t say so 3 years ago, but now we really know what the enemy is. And it trembles in terror at our coming.
I agree with this. I don’t think that science has come into conflict with philosophy, I think that science has come into conflict with life— not necessarily all life, there is much that is served by science. But the life that is conflicted by science will do all it can to oppose it, that is the way of life. Philosophy is the handmaiden of life, so it becomes convenient to put it in those terms (science over philosophy), even if not quite accurate. In reality there is a hidden agenda in putting the issue in those terms.
I’m not quite sure what you mean here by the goal being to overcome morphic doubt, for that reason I hesitant to make a response. But at the risk of being on the wrong path, I might say that doubt isn’t necessarily a bad thing or something to be overcome completely. It is in uncertainty that possibility is opened up— when everything is familiar and laid out before you there is only one (rational) path to follow, and we would follow it mechanically and lose what makes us dynamic as living organisms.
This is the reason I see a conflict between science and life. I don’t think it is all life. It is possible that some might overcome that and their possibility would be in the realm of what idealism and creativity priorly never could be, and the old “human” way of life in doubt, uncertainty and mystery of the universe will seem primitive. Such has happened before in lesser degrees (“civilization” vs “savage”…)
Out of curiosity, do you think, for example, Michaelangelo was more in touch with the highest power than, say, Heironymus Bosch?
Science merely verifies the possibility that a particular philosophy MIGHT be right. It’s primary function is to prove that a hypothesis could not be right through demonstration of observable contradiction in proposal. It cannot verify truth. It can only verify falsity.
I agree with you. I am not sure if you were responding to me, but in a post above I did say there is truth in science. I do think though that through scientific experimentation and other methods knowledge does get discovered that has concrete effects (like creating new technology), and that was in particular what I was referring to when I said there was truth, true or concrete effects, and in the context I was reffering (science vs. religion) the concrete effects are what have allure because they provide immanent pleasure or other desired goods.
True. Materialism is the easier thing to play with and decide to believe because there are “concrete” results. The lure is that people are so very tempted into believing that their theory was right merely because the result comes out as they predicted. That is actually false reasoning, but very common and exercised greatly in Science, especially in Quantum Physics and Relativity.
Yep, and the big boys like playing with easy odds, which is what makes the issue of science different from the past “quarrel” between philosophy and religion a la Bacon and Descartes.
I just had deja vu about both this discussion and the other one with Artimas occurring at once, strange. Did this happen before?
Excellent post AP. You raise all the issues that are related to the lethargy I have encountered.
Absolutely. And here, James will agree. The will to improve oneself, to become more self-harmonious, is the self-harmony. This is reflected in the will to power.
But my issue has been epistemological: what is power, what is harmony, in terms of the human being? “Domination” and “reservation” have go a long way to sketch the generalities, but neither reflects directly on the psyche. My choice of the word valuing is a remedy to that. It has proven to be, and I am as far from disillusionment as I cold possibly be; in fact my ambition has not waned but has been accompanied by a certain fear; the power of the concept is, now that am somewhat changed, separate of the psychological plasma that produced it, a force that operates on its own accord, and no longer needs me as an engine and thus no longer gives me the fire of that engine. At least this was the case until some days ago. I seem to have reclaimed my fire.
The answer is a matter of approach, that is all. I was never under the impression that there is an answer to the chicken and egg question. It is an incentive to ask a different question; the only sensible questions are questions that have answers. Questions must appeal to knowledge.
It is clear that the chicken and the egg evolved as one principle. It is clear that conditions and the things that make us call other things ‘their conditions’ are inextricable. I find that Heidegger was the first to approach causality with this in mind; emerging, disclosing is his answer. Not of things but of relations. The relations acquire sediment which become ‘things’ - processes so constant that we van attribute nouns to them and relate them to one another as constants.
The thing in itself is thereby fully negated, but the question is: should this purist epistemology impact the ways of defining objects? What would be the merit?
Your answer is correct: “environmentalism”. The ‘ism’ of ‘Dasein’, which is the human being as ‘emergence’, to hold a Heideggerian mirror to ‘affectance’.
Surely what emerges emegres out of affectance, but affectance emerges out of emergence equally.
But using the concept value, it is possible to bypass tsuch terms and arrive at an acutely real definition of any situation. That, I think, is what scientific approach to ontology must accomplish.
I clearly spoke of the clerical “belief in base derivations”, not of clerical “findings”. That would be a contradiction, clergy interprets the truth and waters it down for the profane, it never finds anything, it would not dare even to look. It knows its power emanates only from the ‘gods’ - the theoretical scientists, the men who disclose synthetic a priori conditions, who shape the human species by adding significant powers of grasping. Such scientific thinkers are most rare and most precious.
Science has not taken over the role of religion, but of God - by the institution of scientific clergy.
What is this means is that the great concepts that science has produced in the first half of the last century, have now been claimed by a body of men that has no idea how to work these concept in any sensible direction. This is the sorry state of scientific progress - there has been no progress - there have been no scientists. Well, few of them and only humble ones, humbled by the fact that they have no answer for the fundamental problem now to be addressed, but build on different, older layers of physics; most of it captured under the term chemistry, if we take that term broadly. Theoretical physics had not advanced. Neither string theory or the Higgs hypothesis are no advances; they are both veiled confessions of a lack of power to actually control by science; they are introductions of a speculative approach to science. In this, the clergy is most happy. They are like the eunuchs in a late Roman court, more than like maggots; they excel at form, ritual, protocol. To what end? To insulate the ruler from criticism, but most of all, may the ruler inadvertently fall, to keep their jobs, to make their jobs necessary. The apparatus has become more necessary than the truth; science has become bureaucratic.
All that has been developed is a system of implementation of the powers that science has made available. To this end science has come to a virtually full stop; Technology and the pleasures it allowed for has for a century distracted man from the fact that science itself has not progressed beyond Heisenberg, Bohr, Einstein, Lorenz.
the reason for this is probably that the reality encountered commands a different epistemology. This has always been the purpose of my own work.
Even the church? But indeed, the message is not itself the means to bring it across. The “eunuchs” I speak of were the first to capitalize on this.
Suppressing is not going to work and it is certainly not desirable; Rather, the advance of science is required to deal with the wasteful industries we are presently unleashing.
Again, in full agreement here. Here I found the necessity and possibility for an ontology based on the reality of encountering than on the reality of the processed encounter. Hence, the concept of self-valuing; to an extent the truths needs to be obscured to a being for it to be able to be; a being requires certain conditions and the absence of others - and all truths are conditions. This is an unconditional truth, a permanent condition. This realization brings about a voice that speaks a new truth: tread lightly. This is not a fact, but an esthetics; here we arrive at truth in a higher order, the order where pure mathematics has its place, among much other human excellence.
We must include the mysterious, the unnamed, the unnamable, the ‘spirit’, the inscrutable identity of experience in our definitions. Wherever we seek to eliminate them, we are eliminating ourselves.
Newton did not dream of claiming the mystery resolved;much less did Einstein. Their words are not ambiguous in this respect. Their main drive was an immense awe, the sense of wonder that defines every scientist, and to which the cleric is perfectly alien. Only one without wonder can invent something like the church. On the other hand, only someone with a great sense of wonder can design a cathedral. My point Technology can rise to great heights even in a scientific backland, for the simple reason that science, once produced, is applicable by anyone, anywhere if there is enough power involved.
Indeed.
We preserve our life for something, i.e. for pleasure, if we can truly stretch that term to mean happiness.
If life becomes too displeasurable, a creature will seek to end it.
In this sense Epicurus remains the quintessential philosopher.
Yes- the antithesis of philosophical comprehension; the mark of a scientific paradigm ruled by technicians.
The clergy do not direct the way power is wielded; they only profit from its conquest, confuse its limits and decorate its authority, so as for its rule to be extended in the name of what they decorate, and which becomes a phenomenon distinctly different from the penetrating insight and the following bold hypotheses of the scientist. So science is valued in terms of two of its uses; technological power and religious status. To what extent the clergy and the technicians cooperate I can’t say and have no interested in; all I am interested in is a scientific progress, a breakthrough, a thinking that rather than shirking back from it, accepts and makes use of the findings of, from a perspective demanding immediate satisfaction of full explication, irreconcilable certainties at the extremities of quantifiable observation. This use is primarily an opportunity to reform ‘truth-tables’ - perhaps it is calculus itself that needs to be refined, or put to greater use, be integrated in a more substantial pattern-mapping logos.