Videocy/Literacy

[Bobo]

How was he talking about his 'insight'? "that there was nothing I did or thought that caused it to happen.(...) That it was not the result of anything." Totally passive, so it would be common that he has no taste for anything, let's say, more active. (That and he desires to be unconditionally loved... I've a hunch on what his thing is about.)

[Leyla Shen]

Lol Bobo. Well, actually, that little snippet of a quote there, in its larger context, I think is born from a premise consistent with Marx's (and, of course, other materialist thinkers') notion that philosophy has no anthropology; it has no history, which of course renders philosophy itself as a causal phenomena rather than as absolute truth. An absolute truth is a very particular thing; a proposition which is true by definition (essentially, a pure signification), and therefore true in any possible world (a bachelor is a bachelor in any possible world since bachelor, not actually having a direct referent like, for e.g., a leaf, means an unmarried man). It's the difference between "if" and "when", and "necessarily so".

This problem of philosophy is one of the "heaven to earth" problems Marx stresses re Hegel, and thus his remark that the genius of Hegel becomes clear once one "puts Hegel on his feet". It is essentially the same problem we see most clearly with literalist interpretations of the Holy Babble, and again generally with other collections and systematisations of ideas (ideology); the assumption that there is something in it more than some human insight into himself, into an existing state of affairs; and philosophical insight is never accessible through literalist interpretations. Kinda why, coupled with the real conditions of living, things can go horribly wrong.

Here's the full quote:

Pam: I would say that only topics about the nature of existence transform, as they are the only topics that engage one's consciousness of existing. In contrast to philosophical topics that focus on existential dilemma's that serve to engage the mind and keep it active, but the exchange of existential ideas is not the same things as experiential discovery of one's existence.

Diebert: It's always tempting to think in terms of "first A then B". In similar fashion it's tempting to think along the line of "topics on nature of existence can lead to transformation". In my experience it's completely unrelated but the context to that lies perhaps in my first experiences of spiritual transformation and the mystical, going back to childhood. The main thing of those experiences was the understanding which broke through with the experience that there was nothing I did or thought that caused it to happen. Instantaneous insight which never left. That it was not the result of anything. What happens in many spiritual lives is the reverse of what is commonly understood to have happened: all the study, talk, mediation or orientation is only result and some kind of echo or expression of what already occurred and is occurring. All of the effort wouldn't bring anyone any inch closer.

The bolded sentence demonstrates recognition of some causal process at work, no?

Maybe Diebert meant to imply that he'd killed at least some part of ego? Though I'd argue not enough! (:

[Leyla Shen]

How was he talking about his 'insight'? "that there was nothing I did or thought that caused it to happen.(...) That it was not the result of anything." Totally passive, so it would be common that he has no taste for anything, let's say, more active. (That and he desires to be unconditionally loved... I've a hunch on what his thing is about.)

PS: But I am definitely interested in hearing more of your thoughts about this, Bobo, if you wouldn't mind.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

But even so, any history of science is still not part of the natural sciences and certainly doesn't contain any precision at all.

It does, thanks to its history.

One can only hope you know what the term "natural sciences" means or meant for Marx. Historical analysis of any culture, society or religions is not precise at all! There's no base for any definite interpretive framework. That doesn't mean there isn't one active in every thinker or writer on the subject. One kind of has to have or echo ones history as this is how our consciousness, our language ability is shaped. But that's just me saying the obvious here: universals cannot live inside language or social processes.

And I think that anyone studying the development of methodology in history as discipline over the last century would know that any concept like "science of history" or "scientific social theory" lies dead in the water, completely abandoned by now.

Says the absolutist, living in his mind the age of pure enlightenment...

Nah, this time it was said by someone knowing a few things about current science and history of science and likes to shake the tree you're hiding in.

Marx was a dialectician. You'd understand him better if you'd stop projecting your own misunderstandings as his.

That has not much to do with what I was criticizing. It helps to know what it means when saying he was dialectical (hint: not much). Lao-Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Heraclitus and Kierkegaard were dialecticians. So what? Historical materialism can still be demolished, even by dialecticians. Especially by dialecticians!

[Leyla Shen]

Dear Jesus:

A three-day resurrection to reassert your immortality with a few self-serving remarks is, well--just that, really.

[Bobo]

He who hates the concrete and plastic of the city also hates Nature. What can be said for one who shuns Heaven in his search for perfection?

It is one thing to wonder at the intricacies of Nature - a spider catching a beetle, or the sky at night. It is quite another thing to wonder at its infinite complexity. And it is another thing again to enter into this wonder. The wonder is not in the trees, or the skyscrapers, or even in the infinite complexity of Nature - but in the end of it.

Never think "why" Nature is as it is. Never think "why" you eat, sleep, and breath. Wisdom says never stop thinking why you should never think "why".

One can only hope you know what the term "natural sciences" means or meant for Marx. Historical analysis of any culture, society or religions is not precise at all! There's no base for any definite interpretive framework. That doesn't mean there isn't one active in every thinker or writer on the subject. One kind of has to have or echo ones history as this is how our consciousness, our language ability is shaped. But that's just me saying the obvious here: universals cannot live inside language or social processes.

What about this:

Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.

-

That has not much to do with what I was criticizing. It helps to know what it means when saying he was dialectical (hint: not much). Lao-Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Heraclitus and Kierkegaard were dialecticians. So what? Historical materialism can still be demolished, even by dialecticians. Especially by dialecticians!

No shit Sherlock, Marx was criticizing all materialism until himself as an abstraction without a core, of social relations, without which atomism is spun off.

[Bobo]

The bolded sentence demonstrates recognition of some causal process at work, no?:

I do think so, but can it become a measure for all causal relations? The not even causal to become a measure of causality?

But I am definitely interested in hearing more of your thoughts about this, Bobo, if you wouldn't mind.

Yep, I was more making fun of Willy-Nillie's notion of a Super-man as a Borgia, and Weininger's notion of the general immorality of unconditional love (as morality can only be conditional).

[Leyla Shen]

I do think so, but can it become a measure for all causal relations? The not even causal to become a measure of causality?

You're right. It's not possible.

[Bobo]

So that is probably why it must be limited by the word "spirit" (...spiritual lives), which funnily enough sounds like the kind of verbiage pertaining to Hegel. Then, the limitation must come from a lack of 'human practice':

Theses on Feuerbach I:
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Dear Jesus: a three-day resurrection to reassert your immortality with a few self-serving remarks is, well--just that, really.

It cannot be escaped, I swear, with Dennis as my witness:

Someone rises up as the explainer, challenger or truth-teller. With a goal to show some error, some limitation here or there. But look: with this a savior is born!

From the birth of baby Jesus, the savior king, it can only continue with two options, born out of causality:

1. he will be persecuted, the lamb that needs to be sacrificed, a victim of circumstance. He will draw ridicule, dismissal but his death, his diminishing is the goal. The savior needs to die, the king needs to be executed after all. It's part of the crown.

or

2. he will become persecutor, judge and executor! With a vengeance he'll relentlessly break down, aggressively, any walls of obscurity, make people feel bad about themselves, creating hosts of victims and complete ruin in his wake. The avenger is born! A fierce warrior becoming only hero (or fool) after slain in battle with others left to talk about what just happened.

There's no other choice. No escape from this, only death and rebirth. One can play it out small or big, endlessly diluted or obscured as the feminine would will but it would have the same results over and over again. There's no way it can be helped.

Amen.

[Leyla Shen]

It cannot be escaped, I swear, with Dennis as my witness:

My heartfelt condolences on your holy matrimony with Dennis; an eternal bond in human subjectivity as universally hollow narrative, til death does both of you both part... and then reunite, and then part, and then reunite...

[Leyla Shen]

So that is probably why it must be limited by the word "spirit" (...spiritual lives), which funnily enough sounds like the kind of verbiage pertaining to Hegel. Then, the limitation must come from a lack of 'human practice':

Theses on Feuerbach I:
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

I don't think you need the word "spirit" at all, if that's what you meant to imply rather than what I inferred from what you have provided; and particularly not from anything Marx said.

The distinction Marx himself draws, expressed in other words to the above:

We are trying to break with the theological formulation of the question. For us, the question of the Jew’s capacity for emancipation becomes the question: What particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the present-day Jew’s capacity for emancipation is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This relation necessarily results from the special position of Judaism in the contemporary enslaved world.

Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew.

Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.

What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.

Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.

An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes that this practical nature of his is futile and works to abolish it, he extricates himself from his previous development and works for human emancipation as such and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement.

[Leyla Shen]

On the other hand, if you meant simply that "spirit" is the limitation imposed upon oneself through the absence of human practice, then I agree wholeheartedly, of course.

[Dennis Mahar]

A vast environmental backdrop supporting the thin and volatile layer of our explicit activities.
it's all geography.
Hotel Marx
Hotel Jew
Hotel California

[Leyla Shen]

No, Dennis. It's all a song and story.

[Leyla Shen]

The story of the postmodern "Universal Man"!

[Dennis Mahar]

Hotel Leyla
off Broadway.

[Leyla Shen]

We know! We know!
Altogether, now
Life is a cabaret!
Nothin' to fix
Cruisi' in the slipstream
Of enlightened beng
Can the can!

[Leyla Shen]

Bless the "touch" phone!

[Dennis Mahar]

The important thing is Marxism as equipment ordering Marxists as tools plugged into certain limited systems of machinery while excluded from others.

in order to for the sake of.

the roles and practices resemble 'hotel'
check in, leave your baggage at the door.

a place to stand in.
geography.

based in a set of assessments,
A range of options
'Winning formula
survival formula

[Leyla Shen]

Here, Dennis; have an apple.

[Leyla Shen]

Remember? They're good for you!

[Dennis Mahar]

Leyla,
You've postulated Marx as a 'bridge to'
from what you deem as an irrational possibility to a rational possibility.
you've referred to 'Scientology Bridge'.

geography.
environmental.

[Dennis Mahar]

Diebert,

It cannot be escaped, I swear, with Dennis as my witness:

A World-discloser such as yourself with a fine appreciation for causality can't afford to have a possibility (prejudice/aversion/preference).
Consequently, oppose, oppose, oppose.

Touching the raw nerve of a preference gets 'shoot the messenger' as response.
dependent arising.
Amen.

[Leyla Shen]

Well, actually, I've been talking about dialectics. It's another sort of bridge. A bridge plagued by trolls, and with opposing forces on either side which meet at the middle until one of the forces overcomes the other, pushing over the edge as troll fodder.

I think, Dennis, there's something wrong with your bridgeness... (: