State of the World Address.

When I spoke of Nico’s “passion of the death of the death of passion”, what I meant was of course “passion of the death of the passion of death”.

Now as for the train of thought from the end of my last post. Conan the Barbarian was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, which reminded me of Sylvester Stallone.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYtI9NtWOkg[/youtube]

A turning point in Stallone’s life was the 1989 movie Batman. No longer needed action movie hero roles be played by bodybuilders like them. Michael Keaton could appear that way thanks to a suit with a sixpack.

Now Tim Burton’s Batman movies were especially influential in my development from late childhood, through my teens, well into my twenties. I think one’s teens are especially important–not least the music one loves then. A major musical influence–along with the darker sides of Sixties music, video game music, and even some (Black) Metal–was Danny Elfman’s score to Burton’s Batman movies. I was tempted, at the end of my post, to indulge in that again for a bit, but as yet I haven’t. Instead, I’ve watched–and still have to finish watching–Oliver Stone’s Alexander, which I never saw before (I haven’t watched a great many movies).

Though Alexander doesn’t seem that high-budget to me (I’m watching it in 720p, if that matters), and I’ve had to bear with it a bit, it did beautifully remind me, just before I stopped watching it yesterday, of a thought I had when finishing the video game The Last Guardian recently. SPOILERS TO FOLLOW. I will use the “tab” function.

[tab]Yes, Trico probably dies, but his species survives, in freedom. However, what’s so great about the latter? What’s great is the travails of Trico and the boy, of Alexander and Bucephalus: the survival of their type is only great in that it leaves open the possibility of a recurrence of those travails.[/tab]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E-1awtLYAY[/youtube]

Self-valuing is necessarily the case for all life, not just our human or earth-animal ones. Thus it is objective, in the true sense; how do we know this? We know it because it is impossible to conceive a life that does not follow self-valuing logic.

If you can conceive a life that does not follow self-valuing logic, I would commend you. But I would strive to show how in fact such life is indeed governed by the deepest logic that proves and provides the fundament of all things, living or not.

I have a problem with any claim along the lines of “well causality might not be the case somewhere else! we just think causality is universal or necessary because we always see it! but look at the quantum world and clearly there isn;t even causality there, so HA!” …I tend to dismiss sub-minds that say such things with a gesture, usually directed toward my Escape key. But hey, let’s break it down for fun. IS it fun? Not really. But sure.

“Principle of sufficient reason (PSR) is not necessarily valid everywhere/always (objectively)!”

“Name one instance where it is invalid”

“Quantums!!!”

“Just because something appears random to you, does not mean it is actually random; it means that whatever causality is governing it has no way of communicating or relating itself to you, thus to you there is no schema of order impressed upon the event with respect to how you measure/detect what is happening there. It is also quite possible that at the sub-atomic level the relative speed of time (change) is such that for every iteration at our own temporal level, perhaps 1 billion iterations had taken place at the level of the causality of the sub-atomic, in which case there would be literally no way for us to make any sense of all those changes with our relatively higher time-scale. Thus when we “measure” the sub-atomic (throw another sub-particle at it) we will get a random point within 1 billion causal iterations, because we have no way of timing our measurements meaningfully to anything within the 1 billion iterations.”

“No, physicists say that it really IS RANDOM! Everything is just a probability distribution!”

“You are confusing methodology with ontology. Probability is about assigning relative quantitative values to certain outcomes, and using this as a tool for forming predictions about something that we do not know yet.”

“Ok well, PSR might not be the case in some cases, there is no reason why everything needs to have a reason!”

“Name one thing that has no reason or cause.”

“…”

“Just because I can’t name one doesn’t mean there can’t be one.”

“The concept of “reason” and “cause” is just another way of saying “exists”. If something had no reason or cause to be what it is, then it would not be what it is, it would be something else. You cannot even talk about what something is without talking about how and why it is what it is; that is what “is” means. You don’t get to pretend that “it is” can mean something “for no reason”. Furthermore, you would have absolutely no way to conceive or talk about anything that truly had no reasons or causes for existing, because such a thing would make absolutely no sense whatsoever, it would be absolutely meaningless, not just to you but to any possible perspective of meaning, understanding, reason or logic or language. So, in light of this, for you to posit that such things exist beyond the scope of the PSR means only that you have abandoned your own reasoning capacity, that you have given up on having a mind. As soon as you actually think that something can happen for no reason, your mind is dead.”

I don’t think any of this touches nihilism in the slightest; you’re just insisting that it does (and indeed, much more than just touch it). And I will keep insisting that insisting is precisely what VO teaches. In fact, what I’ve been insisting upon is that we Value Philosophers should do so explicitly. I mean, I can understand that Trump must lie about his lying, but we are philosophers, not politicians; we should be above the filth of politics in the narrower sense.

This is what I think our attitude should be. Those who cannot conceive such a life, which is probably everyone, will ultimately not be able to resist VO–for such resistance is itself a form of the insistence which VO teaches. And as for those, if any, who can conceive such a life: what do they matter to us? We cannot even conceive them!

Ancestral greatness is, like all subjects, deceptively simple. The man with a great parentage, nay great grandparentage, must fly from misconceptions regarding his gifts in every new actuality of his. (Thus how could he write “ALL subjects”, as if EVERY word from him should not warrant emphasis? A high period after every blocklettered word–when was that tradition left behind? Yes, let us write as if we’re just writing any old piece, proving by our well-versedness how virtuose we are. But what we are on about take right of way even before the subject.

ANCESTRAL GREATNESS–LET ME START AGAIN. ‘Die vornehme Natur ersetzt die göttliche Nature’, “noble nature replaces divine nature”–THIS MEANS, OVER AND ABOVE ANYTHING ELSE, THAT RELATIVE NATURE TAKES THE PLACE OF ABSOLUTE NATURE. THIS IS TO SAY, THE CREATION THAT WAS DONE IN A DIVINE FLASH, THE SIX DAYS OR SIX THOUSAND YEAR OLD WORLD IS REPLACED BY THE NINETY ZILLION YEARS AND COUNTING…

“Meet Kylie Springtime. Kylie is a petite girl with an enormous problem. She must bridge ninety zillion years in order to send a message to her beloved, the [nineteenth century] philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.”

‘If Nietzsche had one teaching, it was his teaching of eternal return. This was the notion that time be a circle, that all that happened had happened before and would happen again an endless amount of times. But this was precisely the teaching that Kylie found hardest to bear: Nietzsche would be born, live, and die again, then there would be ninety years of white noise, and then she herself would be born, live, and die again, followed by ninety zillion more years of white noise, after which Nietzsche would be born again… But wait, did that not give her an opportunity to communicate with him? Could she not speak to him across ninety zillion years, even as he spoke to her across ninety?’

MY PROJECTED CHILDREN’S BOOK CHARACTER–AND WHO TODAY IS NOT A CHILD?–IS ULTIMATELY MOTHER NATURE HERSELF, THE PHENOMENON THAT SCOURGES EVERYONE, EXCEPT THE CHRIST-BUDDHA’S PERHAPS, INTO CONTINUING COMPETITION. BUT BUDDHA, AND ACCORDING TO GRAVES KING JESUS TOO, WAS HIMSELF OF ROYAL PARENTAGE. ESOTERIC BUDDHISM IS REALLY OUTDOING ALL UNDER-ADEPT ZELATORES BY PERSUADING THEM OF ONE’S NOBILITY–CONVINCING THEM BY SWEET-TALKING AND -BEHAVING THEM. IT’S AN ACT–THE ACTIONS AND NON-ACTIONS OF WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN LAW.

‘Suppose that, at first, there was only a herd, consisting of a single type. This type was surely a Sensing type, because iNtuition is a mark of a certain sophistication. Now the morality of custom demands that every herd member diligently honour the community’s customs. But there will naturally be a difference in diligence between members. Some will simply be lazier than others. The lazier ones will be more lax. These are Keirsey’s Artisans–in Jungian terms, Sensing-Perceiving (SP) types. They will be less exacting, more relaxed and open to distractions, loosening of mores. But Keirsey’s Guardians (in Jungian terms, Sensing-Judging (SJ) types) will be horrified of any breach of custom, certain that God will punish the whole community for it. So they start commanding the Artisans… Ordering them around, because they always need a kick in the behind. “Today is Tuesday and you haven’t put on your blue cap yet! Do so right now!” And the Artisans would reluctantly obey. I already said it years ago: the great commanders are the great obeyers. The first commanders, the Guardians (which is a perfect name for them, considering that their first special function was to be the custodians of custom), were in the beginning simply those who obeyed the customs best. Then, as the best obeyers of custom, they came to represent its demands. It was only later that the Idealists (iNtuitive-Feeling or NF types) made their appearance, not to mention the Rationals (iNtuitive-Thinking or NT types).’

TALENT, EVEN GENIUS, IS NOT A DEITY. A GREAT MIND’S EYE IS A GREAT WEIGHT. IT MUST BE BORNE EVERY WAKING HOUR. IT MUST BE SUFFERED–EVEN WHEN WHAT IS BORNE IS GREAT PLEASURE, THE CONTINUING PLEASURE OF HAVING ONE’S MIND EXERCISE ITSELF.

CLASSIC CONTEMPLATION. THE TEMPLE OF THE MIND. BUT PURITY, SANCTITY IS NOT ABSOLUTE. NOTHING AND THEREBY NOONE CAN SUBSIST ON NOTHING, AND THE MIND IS NOTHING MORE THAN HOW A CERTAIN HIGHLY SPECIFIC BODY AND SPECIES OF BODY EXPERIENCES ITSELF, FROM THE INSIDE. SO: BODILY DIET AND HYGIENE FIRST. BUT THE MIND IS ALSO NOTHING LESS. THEREFORE: SPIRITUAL DIET AND HYGIENE NEXT!

THE WORD “SPIRITUAL” HAS OF COURSE BEEN HIJACKED BY THE PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL, BUT IT’S MORE ACCURATE THAN THE WORD “INTELLECTUAL”, WHICH HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY THE PSEUDO-SPIRITUAL.

SO-CALLED INTELLECTUALS MAY PRIDE THEMSELVES ON THEIR LISTENING TO SO-CALLED CLASSICAL MUSIC; BUT THAT IS PRECISELY WHERE MY CONTEMPT OF MODERN MUSIC STARTS.

SPIRITUAL DIET AND HYGIENE MEANS BEING HIGHLY PARTICULAR ABOUT WHAT ENTERS ONE’S MIND, AND THEREBY ESPECIALLY ONE’S SENSES.

ONCE A FRIEND OF MINE MADE ME A MIXED TAPE TITLED “Music for the Soul”. NOW THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT I ARGUE AGAINST. MY MUSIC, THE MUSIC I LISTEN TO, IS MUSIC FOR THE MIND. THE SOUL, THE HEART, SENTIMENTAL OR EMOTIONAL MUSIC MAKES OR KEEPS ONE SPIRITUALLY SMALL, ENTHUSIASTIC, IGNOBLE. SWEET SENTIMENT, NOSTALGIA, HOMESICKNESS–DANGEROUS. THE MIND SHALL NOT BE A HOMELY, ROMANTICISED, IDYLLIC PLACE. IT WILL BE VAST, A TEMPLE.

If we are at least even a little bit Nietzschean then we cannot have such a deep problem with useful lies, now can we?

Also I didn’t lie, not even once. Just wanted to clear that up.

Ok, moving on.

It is not probably everyone, it is everyone.

That isn’t the point, though. You are conflating two things here: That it is possible or impossible for someone to conceive of a life that does not follow self-valuing logic, and that it is possible or impossible for us to conceive of someone who is able or unable to conceive of a life that does not follow self-valugin logic. These are two different claims.

Claim 1: It is impossible for anyone to conceive of a life that does not follow self-valuing logic. <— ontological claim

Claim 2: It is impossible for us to conceive of someone who is able to conceive of a life that does not follow self-valuing logic, therefore such a person would not matter to us (because we cannot conceive of them). <— epistemological claim

I don’t really care about the second claim, the one you are making, at least I care about it a lot less than I care about the first claim, the ontological one. I care even less about conflating them with each other. Granted there is some small overlap in the form of the questions, which can make them both appear epistemological, but in fact only the second claim is truly epistemological while the former is strictly ontological.

If you seriously think that we are unable to ask direct ontological questions without also stipulation that “well it’s just that we can’t conceive of someone/something that would be the exception to this! Therefore we can’t really say there are no exceptions!” then I would suggest you aren’t actually doing philosophy – I don’t mean that as an insult, just an observation. Take it or leave it.

By the way, please explain what this phrase means to you: “insistence which VO teaches”. You used it twice, and I have no idea what you mean by it.

The exception is the one making the 1 st claim, by making that claim, he is asserting an identical claim to claim #1 for everyone else. He or any one else’s need not allude to the second claim, because the first claim is all inclusive, making the second claim redundant.

Redundancy destroy the veracity of the absolute entropy o identity , while misidentifying or, displacing the first claim.

Actually, that’s if we’re at most a little bit Nietzschean. The question the Nietzschean philosopher asks Cartesians at the end of BGE 16 is answered in 230.

Well, I said “we”–meaning we (I?) who do not have access to divine revelation of some kind or other. If you knowingly claim to know something you don’t know, you’re lying.

Sure, and the Bible is the word of God…

Then again, VO “conflates” (explodes the distinction between) ontology and epistemology, remember? In fact, WTP already did that.

Which is not to say I made the conflation you claim I made. I wittingly made a different claim from yours.

Well, I don’t really care whether you really care or not. So there.

Such strict divisions are (post-)Aristotelian. What does bhusis have to do with them?

I’ll decide for myself what to do with it, thank you very much. In fact, I think what I’m doing is precisely philosophy–whereas what you’re doing is sophism. Someone calling himself a philosopher thereby only claims to pursue wisdom; whereas someone who claims to possess wisdom–for example, knowledge of what kind of life every possible and actual being is able to conceive–is rightly called a sophist.

Beings (Valuings) persist inasmuch as they insist on their own value. This is the essence of VO as I understand it. See my signature, and this video (note that “pony” also means “bangs” in Dutch):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELD2AwFN9Nc[/youtube]

Thanks you for your reply. I am too intoxicated to find a true reply, but I assure you that I will reply extensively soon.

The world is deep, and deeper than the day had thoughgt and even than the night had thought.
Odin cant even trace the roots of Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil cant even fathom the depths of Hvergelmir.
Philosophy, what a pompous charade.

But then
[tab]

BOOM! HEADSHOT![/tab]

Or, the world I is a turtle upon a turtle upon a turtle a turtle upon a turtle…

People see things as they are shaped themselves.
I remember a poster called turtle.

youtube.com/watch?v=JbaK6vmNP18

If you dont mind, Im going to start a critical commentary on Truth and Lies in the Extramoral Sense here.

Nature did not throw away the key. The Church did.
In all sane human cultures, man is perfectly aware of his intestines.
The Chinese call that awareness Tan Tien, and consider it the central form of consciousness.

All peoples led by shamans or similar, physiology-based myth and ritual, are aware of the tremors in the fibers, the bloodstream, the intestines. Like I can at will slow down my heartbeat, which is very easy if one decides to not fear that power. I wont be able to stop it. That was my fear as a kid.

So the type of knowledge Nietzsche criticizes here is strictly post-Christian knowledge - metaphysics in the sense of ‘outside of the physical’. And cancer is a direct result of this knowing-outside-the-body.

Spiritualism and pseudo scientific studies took up the slack the church left behind, unless with the exceptions of churches like science of mind. OBE 's (out of body) experiences tread dubious ground.

slither away now wormie.

People raised without reverence for ancestors and gods, which are ancestral ways of valuing, are freed of a lot of weight, which they sense as a freedom. It is not however that they become lion from camel, but rather, they forsake camel-hood, the privilege of an individual path, and, ancesterless, they become ‘bits’ in the livestream of modernity. The treasures stored up in their possession remain untouched.

“Sad.”
-Trump

Of such pitiful types without destiny or fate, the excitables are the best. They are at least aware that stasis is not desirable - but all they are capable of is short burst of being moved, not of self-propelling. They are the parakeets and pigeons of this world, they belong to the scenery of the future. The inert types represent that which disintegrates and expresses the disintegrate nature of their world as truth.

How to turn the excitables against the inert? To devise an ideology that only they are able to reap benefit from.

I think your post fits perfectly well into my OP and its direct inspiration, which was this video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0c5nIvJH7w[/youtube]

Nietzsche probably went mad and died from a brain tumor (and not syphilis). This may mean that, when he first got the tumor, at least, Nietzsche’s mind had strayed too far from the awareness you mention.

It is a thrilling thing to have faith in the Occident.

(could be Scario)

Below is an email I wrote and sent in the early hours of my last birthday, in the timezone I’m in (except for the opening quote, which I’d already typed out with the idea of such an email in mind).

::

“[T]he style and spirit of letters [Briefe, “epistles”] will always be the true ‘sign of the times’.” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, aphorism 329, Kaufmann translation.)

Amsterdam, 12 August 2017

Dear Ariadne,

I have been severely mistaken–though I may be very well taken, have been on my proper right way IN being mistaken (letting myself be mis-taken, mis-taking MYSELF)–, not just for these past ten years, but since ever I started looking for a “mindmate”. I am after all a “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarch”, to speak with James Damore; my mind- or soulmate was always conceived from the deepest of my inner child as a girl or woman, the “Other” to my “Self”. But only my unconscious, all of which I am unconscious, was so conceived. My conscious self could never conceive itself that way–unless it conceive itself as only the infinitesimal “mirroring point” of this account of the Unconscious to itself. This however means that you, my Ariadne, are reduced to that point: the girl or boy is diminished for the (wo)man to hear itself think. Dionysus speaks only to Dionysa, is only followed by Dionysa. My mistake was to muse upon Dionysa as sleeping in Ariadne, potential in Ariadne.

And yet we Dionysi seem to require all of the above. Without our characteristic self-misunderstanding, we would just be lunatics. What wonder that the genius, if I may say so myself, with which we dance on the brink of understanding ourself sound on the brink of madness as well! The brink of genius: that is where I have dwelled all these years. Always looking out at the edge of my pond for my Echo, the nymph I wished would stop fleeing and repeating myself to–myself. From the perspective of relativity, it meant I was left to flow back to myself like the waves. But I may very well have needed precisely that, to erode myself out. Who is who in Blake’s “Good and Evil Angels”? Only other potential “Devils”, to speak with his Marriage of Heaven and Hell, should “embrac[e] the flames of fire”. This is now my whole sanity, that there be other Men. Other Lions, saving me from Tygerhood. The Tyger required the Lamb to keep itself sane. “The stars above would rain their marvel down”…

Now I’m hungry. (“[A]lso hungere ich nach Bosheit.”)

O. DeWaal

Turin, November 5, 1888

To Malwida von Meysenbug

Just wait a little, verehrteste Freudian! I shall send you yet another proof that “Nietzsche est toujours haissable.”* Without a doubt, I have been unjust to you; but since I am suffering from a surfeit of righteousness this autumn, it was really salutary for me to do an injustice . . .

The Immoralist

  • “Nietzsche adapts the Pascal saying (Pensees 455): “The ego is hateful; you, Miton, cover it over, you do not shed it; so you are always hateful.[. . .] If I hate it because it is unjust, because it makes itself the center of all things, I shall hate it always.” This was Nietzsche’s next to last letter to Malwida. Podach rejected Elisabeth’s argument (The Lonely Nietzsche) that Malwida’s protest against Der Fall Wagner hurt Nietzsche deeply and was one of the things which hastened his breakdown.”

Two more high writings, in chronological order:

The difference between Eastern and Western philosophy, or between Buddhism and Philosophy, is that Philosophy does not claim wisdom or enlightenment, only love of it. As such, it is “Mitrabodhi” or “Mitrabuddhy”–friendly love of wakefulness or enlightenment.

What is wiser, calling one’s thought Sophism or Philosophy?¹ In fact, why call it anything at all?

¹ Actually, “Buddhism” is a Western term. Easterners have traditionally called their thought the speech of the elders (the Graecism for this would be “gerontology”, and this is actually somewhat pertinent to Buddhism!) or the great or diamond/thunderbolt vehicle.

'Tseems to me that, when you’re enlightened, it’s understood, since you are then one of the One. Yet the One has to do with the many who are not enlightened; how can it delude them into feeling favorable to it? For it must delude them: they are the deluded, so even (especially?) their understanding of enlightenment must be a misunderstanding. The question is then, not how not to delude them, but how to delude them best–how to make their Delusion most desirable, their desire most pleasurable? Whisper pleasantly, don’t shout! SHUSH least offensively to them…

Ah, but sweet bitterness is most tempting to the most promising among them–most challenging of their best available potential! Or, if you don’t believe me, most effective for containing, harnessing their worst! in case they are the ones furthest from enlightenment.

How different is the Nietzschean approach from the Platonic, “the” Western par excellence? “Let them think he was the ultimate enlightened one, lest others come and make the same claim! Better have it over and done with till the ‘end times’ of our approach!” That has been the popular-Platonic approach.

The Machiavellian has been to teach people that the controlled manipulation of the phenomenal world can bring samsara to an end, not on the part of the self to whom phenomena appear, but on the part of the phenomena themselves. As if the self were not the most apparent of all phenomena, in which the nature of all phenomena is most obvious, most obviously deluded–self-deluding!–; experienced from the inside, as insisting and thereby persisting, on its existence, its right to existence, even its victimhood in existence… And indeed, no experience can help having emerged and persisting. The experience, however, seems to be most accurately described as of willing. (This is the case at least as long as living feels better than dying. This includes living and/or dying “for others”.)

To me it seems that the difference between ignorance and enlightenment is that between experiencing the will as wanting to be more than just an experience or phenomenon, and experiencing it as perfectly fine with being experienced, being a hologram, a depth in this great insect eye on which every (persisting) experience is a facet! That surface is calm no matter how perturbed its depth is. Or, conversely, how stormy it is above the surface. Or is it? Or is it only calm on those facets above whose surface there is a clear sky?