Is it to be above evolution to be above the life-death dichotomy? To be able to see evolution, and judge it, and integrate it into a system… Quite a mind fuck that this very system is a product of evolutionary progress. The competing cycles of life.
This is why the Will to Power is necessary. It’s like the Higgs Boson, really.
Can you smell the void…?
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03-25-2013, 01:26 AM Post: #2
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RE: Above Evolution
It’s just that we are not really subject to naturally selective pressure anymore, most humans can mate successfully regardless of their genes. We do not compete anymore for mates like we used to in the wild, and physical attributes no longer are what tend to further our species’ survival, rather mental and emotional attributes do. But not even that, we survive as a species because we inherit a massive structure of survival ability–culture, language, tehnology–and so we have broken the wheel of natural selection. You might think that logically our natural selection would just have switched over from using physical strengths to using mental/emotional strengths as standards for mate selection, but of course that is not the case, because we have that survival structure of society regardless of how we choose out mates, and of course mate selection is not very conscious and intentional to begin with, for most people. (This is really one of the biggest problems humanity faces currently, that technology has the potential to help fix).
This doesn’t mean we do not evolve or are “above” evolution, it just means our evolution genetically speaking is of a different type. More chaotic, traits important to survival before now tend to stagnate or at least remain flat, while we must now consciously make the effort to value traits that are really beneficial to our survival now.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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03-25-2013, 02:39 AM Post: #3
pezer Offline
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RE: Above Evolution
That would seem to me like arguing that ants have long abandoned evolution. Only two in a colony mate, and who knows what processes ae necessary to get to the top?
Richard Dawkin’s brake-through was to notice that it’s not on the level of a single animal, or any group of animals, or even the gene that evolution can be said to be at work. That’s the level of being-a-product-of, being able, for some cosmic irony or will to power, to notice the originating evolutionary dynamics.
Evolution occurs at the level of philosophy. Nietzsche may not have been the smartest, wittiest, or most convincing, but he is the most important philosopher yet. For noticing that and, as some novelist said about Picasso, ripping it from the world and putting it on a canvas.
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03-25-2013, 02:47 AM Post: #4
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RE: Above Evolution
I don’t know about how natural selection works for insects, but I do know how it works for mammals, and humans have “broken” it.
“Evolution” is always occurring since “evolution” just means “change”. And yes, we as a species and of course as individuals too evolve in the realm of philosophy, of ideas, knowledge and application. But the really significant thing here is not that humans are still changing (of course we are, everything is) but that we must now consciously direct this change in the absence of naturally selective pressures to keep our genome fit.
Basically, unlike other mammals, survival itself is no longer the “goal” of the human species, genetically speaking. Our genes are “free” from needing to be useful to anything.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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03-25-2013, 02:57 AM (This post was last modified: 03-25-2013 03:16 AM by pezer.) Post: #5
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RE: Above Evolution
You are wrong, evolution does not just mean change. Think on that! Arithmetic doesn’t just mean thinking, and a spear-point isn’t just metal.
You have not defined what it is is getting “broken.”
“Evolution occurs at the level of philosophy.” The gene is just one way. One could also say that genes are just an evolutionary product of the processes of RNA. It doesn’t matter, we don’t have to study it like this, we are right smack in the middle of it. We are that which chooses how to go about things, because not choosing would spell our doom. So far as evolution goes anyway. This is why the Will to Power matters… maybe.
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03-25-2013, 06:44 AM Post: #6
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RE: Above Evolution
Evolution means change. It means a kind of change. There are many kinds. My point was that you’re use of the term “evolution” without qualifying what kind, orders and structures/logics of evolution doesn’t make sense. We can talk about natural selection and genetic reproduction, or we can talk about the history of ideas and cultures, science, philosophy, technology, morality, whatever.
Note that I said we have broken natural selection, not evolution.
If you think natural selection operates on levels beyond the genome/mate selection then it is on you to demonstrate that. I’m open to the notion but I’m not just going to take it on faith.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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03-25-2013, 07:07 AM Post: #7
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RE: Above Evolution
I seem to have made a big mistake here. I don’t think I’ll make it again. When I say evolution, every single time, I mean it as an abbreviation of evolution by natural selection. Shorthands, you know how it goes…
"We can talk about natural selection and genetic reproduction, or we can talk about the history of ideas and cultures, science, philosophy, technology, morality, whatever. "
I challenge you to point the difference out to me.
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03-25-2013, 07:12 AM Post: #8
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RE: Above Evolution
On the heels of that challenge, allow me to try to answer yours first.
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03-25-2013, 07:22 AM Post: #9
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RE: Above Evolution
“If you think natural selection operates on levels beyond the genome/mate selection then it is on you to demonstrate that.”
All I have are philosophical arguments, but science has been done on this too. It’s written down in the book The Extended Phenotype.
The argument is the following: look at your screen now. You see a forum, colors, posts, words, maybe megabytes, maybe ideas. But none of this was achieved by any kind of evolution of color, posts, words, etc themselves. It was achieved by manipulating electricity through binary circuits, and even that is a cover of so many other things!
In the same way, perhaps idas, cultures, science, etc, may seem to convey a certain kind of evolutionary information, when the actual processes shaping this information can be understood to work according to the principles of the most primitive evolution by natural selection.
Yet we wouldn’t say that the byte is the basic unit of programming (it would take decades to write the simplest programs!), or that the primitive processes I’m talking about that boil down, equivalently, to the gene, are the basic units of evolution by natural selection. Rather, as Dawkins does, I prefer the phenotype, if anything.
The basic unit of evolution by natural selection is its own products. Only Will to Power can be said to save us from circularity.
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03-25-2013, 08:04 AM Post: #10
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RE: Above Evolution
No one, at least not me, is arguing that everything is produced by naturally selective and “ex post facto” process. But many things are, like living organisms’ bodies and structures of consciousness. Beyond that, I would refer to value ontology for a more complete picture.
Certainly humans create ex ante, after teleological methodology. The propensity to become able to do so exists as a consequence of non-teleological biological evolution, a la natural selection, but once produced this new method goes on to constitute its own essential nature, process and logos. Such is the way of things to transcend the conditions of their own conditional natures. Tectonics comes in at this point, to explain how and why this is the case.
Phenotypes are both genetically and environmentally driven. In fact to say “phenotype” is just to say “genetics + situation”.
Beyond all this, I’m sorry but I fail to see your point. Maybe we are in agreement here, but honestly I have no idea, because I don’t really know what you are trying to say.
RE: Above Evolution
We are not in agreement, essentially, here: “but once produced this new method goes on to constitute its own essential nature.”
Precisely the whole point of this thread is that question, perhaps. Is Value Ontology beyond evolution? The only honest answer that occurs to me is: yes. Or is it?
You know of a void, ChainOfBeing, but can you smell it?
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03-25-2013, 08:31 AM (This post was last modified: 03-25-2013 08:32 AM by pezer.) Post: #12
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RE: Above Evolution
No, another mistake… Not Value Ontology, but Man.
Perhaps if we ask “is value ontology beyond man?” we can reach the same kind of what-the-fuck that I am getting to here.
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03-26-2013, 01:40 AM (This post was last modified: 03-26-2013 01:43 AM by ChainOfBeing.) Post: #13
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RE: Above Evolution
Evolutionary process qua natural selection is very different from the evolutionary process by which humans create ideas. Natural selection works with random mutation and accidental changes, which serve no overt purpose and appear for “no reason”; once they appear thusly, they propagate throughout the gene pool and tend to do so more the more they will give some immediate survival advantage. Read: immediate advantage, random appearance, and overall tendency toward producing individual survival advantage.
Human ideas are created because they serve a purpose, they are intended. They do not arise “randomly” but through guided process and design. There are not “random ideas” appearing and being selected based on how well they further individual survival. Human ideas contribute directly and intentionally to an overall edifice of knowledge, they are not designed to give immediate survival benefit but rather to serve this edifice somehow, to build directly upon previous knowledge and ideas toward the abstract aim of the idea of scientific progress, future benefit, etc. This is not how idea formation works. In fact, natural selection and the process of human ideation are about as opposite methodologies as one could imagine.
The human mind is a teleological (read: future- and purpose-oriented) process. Nature is not.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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03-26-2013, 07:03 AM (This post was last modified: 03-26-2013 07:05 AM by pezer.) Post: #14
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RE: Above Evolution
Honestly man, you’re understanding of evolution is pre-Dawkins. A disparate set of small, immediate, incremental steps might have been the case with the first enzymes or something, but when you are considering the action of many genes withing a single body-unit, no small incremental advantage itself is enough. Or, rather, evolution is such that sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, and the small increments affect each-other in whatever mathematically describable system beyond the simple equation you sketch out.
A body-unit is a conglomerate of such incremental processes, and the interactions between those processes… But so is a colony unit, a family unit, a friend unit, an ideological unit…
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03-26-2013, 12:54 PM (This post was last modified: 03-26-2013 01:00 PM by ChainOfBeing.) Post: #15
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RE: Above Evolution
(03-26-2013 07:03 AM)pezer Wrote:
Honestly man, you’re understanding of evolution is pre-Dawkins. A disparate set of small, immediate, incremental steps might have been the case with the first enzymes or something, but when you are considering the action of many genes withing a single body-unit, no small incremental advantage itself is enough. Or, rather, evolution is such that sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, and the small increments affect each-other in whatever mathematically describable system beyond the simple equation you sketch out.
A body-unit is a conglomerate of such incremental processes, and the interactions between those processes… But so is a colony unit, a family unit, a friend unit, an ideological unit…
Ok, what are these other kinds of changes, other than “small, immediate, incremental steps”? How do they work, physically, biologically? We are talking about natural evolution here, natural selection in your own words. Or are you saying that non-human animals are also directing their own evolution “intentionally”? I am open to what you are talking about, but you need to state it plainly and explain it if you want me to understand. If you think my view of natural selection, the only one I have ever known and read, and which makes perfect logical sense, is somehow no longer relevant, show me where/how this is so. I want to learn. You seem to have this knowledge of this subject, which I seem to lack, so please educate me. Also, remind me what your point was here, as regards humans and evolution.
Here is my take on it: the way an idea is created, in a human mind and society, is very different from the way genes change in natural selection. We know how genes change. Survivable genes tend to beat out less survivable ones. Throw in some random mutation and random environmental events and influences, combined with limited resources, and you basically get… all of nature. But humans don’t produce a bunch of random ideas in a limited environment and then see which naturally “survive” the others; no, we envision things first, form logical deductions, we understand, we anticipate, we create with purpose toward an end. I cannot see your point, that somehow this also takes place outside of the human mind. Where in nature do we see anything analogous to the process of human ideation? Unless you want to reduce human intellect and imagination to mere instinctive operations, in which case, you have an argument there, but still one that I will disagree with, based on my understanding of the rational nature/structure of consciousness.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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03-26-2013, 06:20 PM (This post was last modified: 03-26-2013 06:22 PM by pezer.) Post: #16
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RE: Above Evolution
Beauty… Beauty must make itself. To understand a joke, you must share some amount of the cruel intentions behind it. To smell wine, particles of the elixir have to enter our noses, be broken down, incorporated into our very biological structures, if only as trace amounts of X. This is how we know wine. It becomes part of us.
When you think of the idea of a can of ham. A can. Of ham. The metal, the grinding of can opener gears, the smell of processed cow… All these things must already make a part of you, somehow, and with some extendable balance. Those hows are the tiny increments, but they are of no interest to the end product. A moth has no interest or knowledge in looking like an owl, much less its genes.
Which brings me to my point regarding humans and evolution: Are we above it?
Or do we not notice ourselves under it?
I believe there is a unifying thread to all biological life, and the closer the life-form to our genetic branch, the more understandable their will. This is a grotesque statement, from grotesque thought experiments aided by LSD. Yet it is absolutely true, I have visited the will of a whale for the few nano-seconds that I could bear the horror. I believe this thread extends even further than biology.
Life, as we all know is the principal lesson of evolution by natural selection, is shaped by death; but must it not also shape itself in order to make any sense as a changing system?
Perhaps not. It’s a gamble.
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03-26-2013, 11:53 PM (This post was last modified: 03-26-2013 11:55 PM by ChainOfBeing.) Post: #17
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RE: Above Evolution
(03-26-2013 06:20 PM)pezer Wrote:
Beauty… Beauty must make itself. To understand a joke, you must share some amount of the cruel intentions behind it. To smell wine, particles of the elixir have to enter our noses, be broken down, incorporated into our very biological structures, if only as trace amounts of X. This is how we know wine. It becomes part of us.
When you think of the idea of a can of ham. A can. Of ham. The metal, the grinding of can opener gears, the smell of processed cow… All these things must already make a part of you, somehow, and with some extendable balance. Those hows are the tiny increments, but they are of no interest to the end product. A moth has no interest or knowledge in looking like an owl, much less its genes.
A moth has a great deal of interest in looking like an owl, of course. And its genes naturally change to accommodate such an interest. The moth’s body becomes to resemble an appearance of an owl (or whatever) based on this natural tendency, which is rooted in random mutation and natural selection. This is significant. Of course the moth does not “know” that it is resembling an owl, it does not know what is happening on the level of its genes. But its interests are not predicated upon such possible kind of knowledge.
What you say about the can of ham, yes indeed we must have “bits” of something “inside us” in order to respond to it, to understand it. This I would phrase within tectonics, as how every causal plane and milieu within or among planes constitutes its own particular kind of ‘logical order/ing’ by which “forces” (activities) act and change, and that every such plane or level interacts with what is above AND below it, directly. Most of the conditionality of a thing resides “below” it, but once you move further up the chain the amount of “temporal dimension” (see Kitaro here) a thing incorporates as itself increases, it responds more and more essentially to its “above” also.
Tiny changes exist, accumulate, cause bigger changes. I certainly agree. Sometimes these tiny changes are “random” (you already know my position on “randomness”, of course, so this should make sense to you without confusion about what I am really saying) and some are not random, meaning that some arise from a teleological or logical order/ing directed and aimed at/by some purpose, an ‘end’. Survival is not an end in natural selection, genes do not mutate and go on to either propagate or not based on any kind of end or goal, this phenomenon just happens as a consequence of non-purposeful activity taking place within a space of certain guidelines and rules (limited resources, competition, etc.)
When humans ideate about something, or probably when any animal experiences something there is definitely a degree of “non-non-purposeful change”. Change that arises from a particular kind of logical order/ing and “aim”, namely as the consequent of some rational mandate of a thing (see value ontology here). But let’s not confuse this with natural selection, and let’s not blow its scope or degree of influence out of proportion. Life changes like this, absolutely, but at the heart of biological change is natural selection, without aim or purpose, shaping things to be what they are based only on the fact that in the past their particular forms have tended to produce survivable behavior within a certain kind of environmental limitation. Entities form from this situation and go on to become “valuers”, absolutely. But I merely want us to see the whole picture, and not to confuse one thing incorrectly with another. Proper delimitation is always my goal.
Quote:
Which brings me to my point regarding humans and evolution: Are we above it?
Or do we not notice ourselves under it?
In the sense which we now mean it here, yes humans and indeed all animal life probably is above evolution. Meaning that we force/direct a degree of our own evolutionary change. Or maybe you are right that, too, we do not notice ourselves under it. Much of our human or supposed “enlightened” behaviors still follow a largely naturally-selective and “accidental” mandate, meaning they are what we have inherited and now have “little or no control over”, regardless rather or not these behaviors now make sense or are helpful/useful.
Quote:
I believe there is a unifying thread to all biological life, and the closer the life-form to our genetic branch, the more understandable their will. This is a grotesque statement, from grotesque thought experiments aided by LSD. Yet it is absolutely true, I have visited the will of a whale for the few nano-seconds that I could bear the horror. I believe this thread extends even further than biology.
Life, as we all know is the principal lesson of evolution by natural selection, is shaped by death; but must it not also shape itself in order to make any sense as a changing system?
Perhaps not. It’s a gamble.
I agree with this. Every living thing has a subjectivity, a perspective of/for experience. The “will” of one thing is probably not able to be tolerated by another thing, just because of the immensity of the difference.
Life does shape itself, definitely.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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03-27-2013, 04:53 AM (This post was last modified: 03-27-2013 04:56 AM by pezer.) Post: #18
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RE: Above Evolution
Random. Here is the key.
As I remember, last time we discussed this, someone said something fucking brilliant (and I do paraphrase): There is no such thing as a pure random generator. In the end, the physical computer itself will be the parameters. The smell of electricity is the computer’s “randomness,” it’s WilltoPower. That which forms from the interaction of the components of the self and emerges with demands.
In a world of interconnectivity, as we have agreed upon above, surely this is proof of grand, terrifying and awe-striking potentialities of WilltoPower.
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03-27-2013, 07:01 AM (This post was last modified: 03-27-2013 07:22 AM by pezer.) Post: #19
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RE: Above Evolution
This video is long and isn’t necessary for my arguments, but it is a fantastic illustration of the kind of thing I’m talking about. Feel free to continue the discussion without acknowledging it if you lack time or inclination.
This scientist is both more right than anybody, and a medieval thinker compared to what we can imagine imagining.
[flash(0,0)][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzfSPK9eE_E[/youtube][/flash]
E: Above Evolution
Not potentialities of WilltoPower itself, since it only acts upon itself, but expressions of it. The only demand of WilltoPower is power, and all it can get is more WilltoPower. That is why I am still able to be horrified by the whale’s will. That is the common thread, both the necessary Higgs boson of evolution by natural selection and a very real experience of life.
03-27-2013, 02:30 PM Post: #21
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RE: Above Evolution
What is most important about the WilltoPower is not the WilltoPower itself, its experience really is enough. What is important is what it tells us about our very real, concrete, day to day sorrounding world. There is no God! There is no otherworldlyness that threatens us! There is only WilltoPower, and we must focus only on the things that WilltoPower requires to thrive: only on pursuits of the world of Value, as knowable by Science.
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03-29-2013, 02:46 PM Post: #22
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RE: Above Evolution
And when I speak of science, I mean Post Evolution Science, the type that evolves.
Science is found in the question “how do you know?”
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03-29-2013, 11:09 PM (This post was last modified: 03-29-2013 11:14 PM by Fixed Cross.) Post: #23
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RE: Above Evolution
Regarding the difference between, on the one hand unconscious beings that evolve through trial and error depending on their “fitness” and on the other, conscious creatures, humans, who fit into intellectual/mental schemata that allow them to exist and procreate without having to “survive” in the brutal sense - this seems a false dichotomy to me.
The mental world, the construct or “social contract” that we live by is not fundamentally different from, let’s say “the ocean” or “primordial soup”. It is our soup. It is true that a great deal of relatively physically unfit creatures is allowed to procreate, but there still is a standard for fitness, and this is all that matters to the argument, from a value ontology perspective.
After all, physicality is nothing but a standard to appropriate value (physicality). Intellect is such a standard, as are morals.
What evolves right now is the soup itself. This forum here, this new world order site, is an experiment in the evolving soup. We try to upgrade the substance of the soup that disallows for the good-old version of evolution. To make it less hospitable and rewarding for passivity.
Of course, this is a way to communicate to ourselves, to create a space for ourselves within the soup. But never in history did soup, sea, air or knowledge evolve linearly - rather always in trends. A bird finds out to pick through a milk-bottle cap in England, at the same time a bird finds out in New Zealand. Our seemingly isolated efforts are likely not as isolated as they may seem.
Evolution then will come as two strands of seemingly isolated effort meet and grab hold of each other. At that point an “adaption” occurs - a step to greater power. In a sports team, or in a war effort, the individual has to rely on the utmost effort of those he can not control or perceive. Philosophers (since Nietzsche especially) have to do the same. The Christians used to call this sort of thing “faith”, but only the true fanatics knew how to arrange for this faith to come true. “God helps those who help themselves” is a theme that is recurring now as a meme - we are an interesting group in that we are no longer purely “ourselves” - we have already evolved.
The road is long and bleak and dark, yes. But we are so incredibly far advanced beyond those who have not even set out - we set out two years ago, and the road has further darkened, and it will likely continue to darken, but this is not a reason to cease the effort of making that road. Evolution comes at the end, as a result of this evolved tendency to pioneer. Evolution itself is a product of survival of the fittest. Only those that tend to grow toward a point where they may adapt to increased potential do evolve at all.
To find joy in the struggle is required to keep evolution going. It does not need to be an overwhelming or even a dominant joy, not at all - a grain of pleasure in the desert of pain.
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Guattari’s Machinic Systems
Guattari held that there is something which can be described as a technological consciousness, a mechanic way of thinking that is at the same time human and extra-human (here I remember trajicomic, who really made some inroads into questioning what human is useful for anyway).
I believe this is one of those things where people are commonly simply not able in any sense to accept an abstract reality. The fact is that much of our behavior, of course even when we feel or think otherwise, is determined by machinic systems with a logic different from that of any (traditional?) human thinking. Baudrillard named it well as the homicidal action of science (I paraphrase). In this sense, it is an occult matter.
The reason these logics can persist and make evolutionary sense is the way they are able to blend with the process from which, after all, they were formed. Advanced technology and the consciousness it is linked to came into humanity’s life well before our own animal processes were held to any important analysis and incorporation into, let’s call it, ubermenschity. Thus, its own inertia is demolishing fetal things in us, and our own historical retardedness stands in the way of our curbing it in any significant way.
Guattari never liked simulations and stuff, and I guess the essential difference between him and Baudrillard is that Guattari held it all within the psychoanalytic human ether, while Baudrillard felt free to call this an inhuman, or human-less process. One may be more drawn to Baudrillard’s brutal honesty, but Guattari’s more remixed yet unitary approach offers as an end result a density of knowledge that is largely unmatched.
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03-30-2013, 03:51 PM Unread post Post: #2
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RE: Guattari’s Machinic Systems
It’s been a while since I read Guattari (and really only when he was merged with Deleuze) Baudrillard I have read some essays of, but frankly I just zone out. Bad machine gear mesh, his fault, my fault, who cares…
But could you give me some examples of what G is referring to as this technological consciousness as you see it, perhaps in your own mind, and what one does with this knowledge, if anything. What use is the insight?
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03-30-2013, 05:22 PM Unread post Post: #3
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RE: Guattari’s Machinic Systems
Ah, you thought he was complaining!
In the case of Guattari, he was quite comfortable with the idea of a relentleslly self-dependent wilderness that we can interact with. That is, the world could make sense to him as inhuman. It was inhumanity within humanity that he seemed to me to dislike, and so he took all of what is inhuman about consciousness, patterns of neurological operation, and analyzed them into a kind of body of post-Marxism. The machinic unconscious, techno-consciousness, whatever, are simply the logistical human acts that machines require to function. In Baudrillard’s case, this is seen as innately, or rather evolutionarily human.
What use?
Personally, I saw every single person I saw after that realization differently. For example, we have all been in a place where a logician or scientist dances some circles around us, making us feel less wise. I can now understand that feeling: it is the lack of machinic consciousness. The shame is almost the logician’s now!
Science is found in the question “how do you know?”
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03-31-2013, 08:24 AM Unread post Post: #4
Heathen Offline
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RE: Guattari’s Machinic Systems
(03-30-2013 05:22 PM)pezer Wrote:
Ah, you thought he was complaining!
Actually I figured not, but I wasn’t sure. Bad machine gears was me not understanding.
[/quote]
Still not sure I get it. concrete examples?
Seems like a contrast between mechanical processes in humans that continue existence, the whole sequence of automatic pilot taking the instameal out of the microwave and then shoving in mouth while watching sports news…and I am not sure what he is contrasting this with. But maybe that is not an example of what he means.
Quote:
What use?
Personally, I saw every single person I saw after that realization differently. For example, we have all been in a place where a logician or scientist dances some circles around us, making us feel less wise. I can now understand that feeling: it is the lack of machinic consciousness. The shame is almost the logician’s now!
So when you are experiencing cognitive dissonence the machine processes have stopped for a moment?
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03-31-2013, 10:18 AM Unread post Post: #5
pezer Offline
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RE: Guattari’s Machinic Systems
You may as well think of it as machinic logic, except then I would have posted this in the Philosophy forum.
He is contrasting it, like thinkers tend to with pointlesness, with opportunity cost, and also imaginary opportunity cost. What is it we are not doing? What is it we think we’re not doing?
But the contrast is a tool in Baudrillard, not the point itself.
Effort, Leap, Perception
It has been thinking to me lately that effort is the basic unit of evolution. Unity is required… But where? Only in the beginning. Then it’s all trajectories and equations. Effort describes unity of beginning.
This question would need to be tackled: whose effort is the owl shape of a butterfly’s back?
Very theoretical! Let us take a leap.
Already, to choose praxis is risky, and to travel so short a while back in time puts us on a sure and steady course to crazyness. But to choose Praxis to post in… Why? Why the effort?
I was lead almost by the hand. I thought I was the tip of the drill, and suddenly a small wave of philosophers starts violating my walls, sometimes not even surpassing but jut being beyond my limits.
It’s enough to make one jump into a rabbit hole!
What is it then, once I made the effort, took the leap, that remains?
My preconceived conclusion, of course: pure perception, in the style of paranoia, where effort and leaping is rendered meaningless.
Science is found in the question “how do you know?”
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03-31-2013, 11:50 AM (This post was last modified: 03-31-2013 11:53 AM by Heathen.) Post: #2
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RE: Effort, Leap, Perception
(03-30-2013 06:18 PM)pezer Wrote:
It has been thinking to me lately that effort is the basic unit of evolution. Unity is required… But where? Only in the beginning. Then it’s all trajectories and equations. Effort describes unity of beginning.
This question would need to be tackled: whose effort is the owl shape of a butterfly’s back?
According to Darwinists either no one’s - the machine of other things being eaten more and younger have ‘last man standinged’ them, so to speak; or the crashings of a lot of various localized individual efforts - predators and prey - leading to the statistical advantage of a pattern. If you have eyes on your back, good on ya. If they seem to be attracting predators instead, you might want to wear a cape, being housed in an individual and not being your whole species, let alone the system of your whole species and those species who prey on it. If it works for you to attract predators - cause you end up eating them - well, no cape is needed and effort could be put elsewhere.
Unless one’s own mind/self is that system,with predators and prey - and most minds and selves seem like this - then you get to work with individual efforts based on received patterns.
If that seems to be working for you - or you really just want to let natural selection do the culling - then praxis can be no praxis, first thought is best thought, but not in the Buddhist developmental sense. Don’t push the river, drown, live whatever…
If it does not seem to be working for one to be this predatory and prey system, internally, then some praxis might shift things where one will.
If the very idea of effort creates an internal predator, then some serious contemplation might be a good first step.
A hammer can certainly be used on your own head, but if you were hoping to pull out some nails instead of your own teeth, you don’t know what you are doing when you reach for the hammer. Might be best to find that out and let more effortless desire then make the effort.
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03-31-2013, 12:31 PM Post: #3
pezer Offline
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RE: Effort, Leap, Perception
No, and you still don’t understand my point about fear.
You are right in one thing: the more you let go, the more you will learn where you’d prefer to hang on. It only works if you listen though. Chanting blinds.
A Monkey on my Back
I have a monkey on my back, brought on by the usual: romanticism. Romanticism is like herpes; you can control it, minimize its damage, but you can never fully be rid of it. Non-romantics are usually good enough and kind enough to ignore it.
In my romantic dance with reality, I found Shaitan. Satan. Satanael. Lucifer. Luzbel.
Luzbel…
None of these things, that I love dearly, are real.
If I insist on bringing them up, it is because they point to very real philosophical ground. That ground that only Nietzsche has so far been able to scout without betrayal.
RE: A Monkey on my Back
Ok I will engage.
Once I was in a Lucifer trip, lasted for a couple of years. At the heat of it, I did a meditation, and was guided through the summer city. I walked like a blind man, just trusting my feet, trusting Lucifer to guide my feet. I ended up at a small bookmarket I did not know was there. I walked straight to a stand and picked up a large black book. On the back there was a small silver print: “White Magic”.
I took the book home, and read from it. It was immediately clear that it was dangerous and if used to good measure, very powerful. I only ever used one technique out of it, possibly the most powerful technique I’ve done - the breathing of the soul.
Everything changed after I did that exercise a couple of times, lying on my apartments floor red carpet. Within a week, I had lifted a curse that was resting on my ancestral home. Within a month, I had acquired 50.000 euro’s. A few months later I found myself visiting Faust in Maine, bought a van from his friend, and from there on things got even more interesting and rewarding.
Music.
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04-01-2013, 05:27 AM Post: #3
pezer Offline
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RE: A Monkey on my Back
That was one of the most powerful things I have ever read. How beauuuutifull!!!
But my path is already fraught with sacrifice, I will not stop here.
The path of the Nietzscheous is frought on all sides by the power of the eld and the inequities of those who must answer. For answers are the fruit of our labor, and these would seek to take it from us, give us back some juice of theirs that might or might not include our fruit. If they are smart it includes a scent of it.
The magician is our most fearsome enemy, and we love him more deeply than any other. They can court our hearts, only they have the right to tempt us out of truth. How beautiful their drawings…
Heart breaking.
I love you, executioner!! I love you so!
I will kill you and have no mercy. Then I might kill myself. Who knows, I will become quite powerful if I don’t.
Science is found in the question “how do you know?”
RE: Accept the Dark Side
How dare you ever accuse me of excessive crypticness?
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03-13-2013, 01:39 PM Post: #4
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
So, what does accepting the dark side mean to you, Pezer?
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03-13-2013, 10:07 PM (This post was last modified: 03-13-2013 10:44 PM by JSS.) Post: #5
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
Hey there Moreno…
…welcome to the Nude World Order… wait I mean the New World Oder… wait…hold on… I’ll get it…
…Natural World Oder??
…hmm…
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03-14-2013, 02:51 AM Post: #6
pezer Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
That is a great question, Moreno.
Precisely the one I challenge any reader with cojones to ask themselves. The guy that wrote that song, who Cash covered, asked himself. He was a Christian about it, but by God he did ask himself.
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03-30-2013, 09:11 AM Post: #7
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
I haven’t used that term so much, but I guess the dark side has always covered stuff that I can’t ‘see’ well and that I judge(d) to be bad. ID, Shadow, naughty to evil impulses, the actual motivations which I can’t face and so on. And then I started to explore what this stuff really was and what it felt like to integrate it. Return of energy, less guilt, less splits, etc.
I think there is other unintegrated stuff we are not conscious of, but that doesn’t seem to fit what people focus on when they talk about the dark side - often in the assumptions/judgments area.
I also notice that people who talk about the dark side often focus more on the Yangy stuff, agressive sex and violence, hatred, and very dark ill will. All feeling good to integrate, but then the fear and confusion, for example, seem to get skipped over.
The Dark Side has a Dark Side.
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03-30-2013, 12:21 PM Post: #8
pezer Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
Fear and confusion… I guess it depends on if all “dark” feelings where relegated to the dark side or if some where successfully kept from the get go, that is, if the inspiration for them was a constant that can be interacted with. Fore some feelings, we have simply amputated them from reality. Those are recoverable too.
Science is found in the question “how do you know?”
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03-30-2013, 02:02 PM (This post was last modified: 03-30-2013 02:02 PM by Heathen.) Post: #9
Heathen Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
(03-30-2013 12:21 PM)pezer Wrote:
Fear and confusion… I guess it depends on if all “dark” feelings where relegated to the dark side or if some where successfully kept from the get go,
Yes, people have different self-images from each other to protect. Some hide this, others that. I just notice that some who speak of contacting the dark side nevertheless never seem to develop a tolerance for confusion. The accept their will to power. They accept aggressive undercurrents in themselves. They accept urges to violence. And so on. And then they present as very certain all the time, often habitually ‘owning’ (cough, cough) nasty interpersonal jabs, which ends up being a habit of avoiding the terror of being uncertain especially where others can see it. And also fear in general is often not considered dark. That’s just some sissy thing.
Others start with fear more up front and find this easier to accept, at least to some degree, and feel release and integration when going into anger, but rage and hate are still no, nos. And any hints of perpetrator like energies in themselves are judged, still as bad. Beyond dark. So they are left with integrating righteous anger, victim anger
all the nice angers
and not going down into the stuff that really goes against the good person they are always trying to be, even in this process of getting into the dark side.
Both patterns lack self-trust.
Must be others.
Quote:
Fore some feelings, we have simply amputated them from reality. Those are recoverable too.
So how do you recover them? A praxis question.
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03-30-2013, 05:35 PM Post: #10
pezer Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
Fine, Heathen, I see where you are going.
It’s all a matter of knowing that I don’t know what I don’t know, even if I might already know it. I trust myself deeper than the moment of lust, I know I cannot understand all of my decisions at any single moment. Confusion-san.
I dive in, fully in the knowledge that I am diving into… Water, dark water of unknown depths. “But I haven’t resolved th-” “What about the fluffy in-” “Surely, we should try to calculate how l-” I look around me and have already forgotten what I was looking for. Only hanging on for dear life now exists. Fear-sama.
Those I’m comforable with, even. I wrote this post thinking of cruelty.
Cruelty is like all dark things and grows as it’s ran from.
So yes, there is others. They are mostly me.
RE: Accept the Dark Side
Dive in…?
Roll around on the floor in the dark letting all the shit come out in sound?
Contemplate in neo-buddhist fashion watching the id like a movie?
Graffiti your darkest fantasy on a bank wall?
4) ?
Dive in?
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03-31-2013, 10:56 AM Post: #12
pezer Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
Not quite…
Science is found in the question “how do you know?”
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03-31-2013, 11:12 AM Post: #13
Heathen Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
yah, it was a question. But if you don’t want to answer, that’s fine.
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03-31-2013, 11:27 AM Post: #14
pezer Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
You are asking me to specifically define fear. I’m doing my best.
Science is found in the question “how do you know?”
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03-31-2013, 11:31 AM Post: #15
Heathen Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
(03-31-2013 11:27 AM)pezer Wrote:
You are asking me to specifically define fear. I’m doing my best.
Actually I wanted to know what ‘diving in’ meant.
I thought you were answering my praxis question back here…
Quote:
Quote:Fore some feelings, we have simply amputated them from reality. Those are recoverable too.
Quote:
So how do you recover them? A praxis question.
So I took diving in to be how you recover them. I just didn’t know what that meant. Perhaps it is simply obvious. You dive into the feelings, though if they are amputated, how do you get to them? Or perhaps just the intent carries you there.
Anyway, that’s what i was asking about, not asking you to define fear.
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03-31-2013, 12:25 PM Post: #16
pezer Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
Walking in leaps again… Is the view nice from up there? One would think there isn’t much oxygen.
Science is found in the question “how do you know?”
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03-31-2013, 01:20 PM Post: #17
Heathen Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
OK. I lost interest in trying to communicate with you Pezer.
Must be comfy not quite ever really saying anything. Stay in your ‘profound haze’.
Maybe you will run away again.
Either way, I will ignore you from here on out.
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03-31-2013, 01:21 PM Post: #18
pezer Offline
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RE: Accept the Dark Side
Maybe some day you’ll decide to re-open communication.