TALKING PHILOSOPHY TALK

Being Some Choice Pickings From The Yahoo AIT Discussion List
2001 - 2008


DIALOGUES LEADING TO A DISCUSSION CONCERNING RICHARD EDELMAN

Richard Sansom - Jun 23 2001

When thinking about perception and cognition I see the following process:

A. Observation that SOMETHING is observed (but unknown, i. e. non-epistemic, except possibly for its LOCATION) [This <noticing of SOMETHING I omitted in my original thoughts and I believe it is important -- we initially notice that SOMETHING exists]

B. The cognitive process of IDENTIFICATION of the object and its PROCESS, (or the epistemic perception/cognition) [By PROCESS I mean what, if anything, the object is doing]

C. Continuing perceptive and cognitive reassessment of LOCATION, IDENTIFICATION and PROCESS (these feedback and forth among themselves)

D. Final cognitive decision regarding the facts of the object to the extent possible.

Consider the following scenario: You see an object at some distance -- you notice or witness that SOMETHING is there in your field of view. You do not know WHAT it is. You move closer and think it might be an animal -- a large dog. You move still closer and think it might be a tree stump. You finally get very close and see that it is a piece of abstract stone sculpture. At each passing decision point the cognitive process was busy trying to find correlation with a known thing. (Incidentally this reminds me of Edelman's remarks on SELECTION, and it is interesting to consider selection as playing a part here) Many parameters in the milieu contributed to this process; the environment; one's past experiences; etc. i. e. If one were in the desert the decisions would be no doubt different from those made on the city streets.

Before the object was identified as the category SCULPTURE it was identified as a specific existing piece of sculpture. If the object had been a dog would the identification have first been that it was in the category DOGS, or that it was a specific dog or a specific breed of dog? If the observer did not know of the category DOGS, and had never seen one, would the identification been simply that of some animal of unknown species? Would not such a classification be due to the fact that the cognitive correlation process found (selected?) a match with the category ANIMAL and could go no further? Of course one can imagine a culture that had no such category -- all different animals possessing uniqueness to the point they are not grouped into a universal classification of ANIMAL. This naturally brings up the possibility of perhaps a very linguistically primitive culture that possessed NO such universal categories of anything! Perhaps something occurred linguistically/cognitively that gave rise to such categories??

After some wandering, I will close. Some more food for thought...........

Regards, Richard

Jud Evans June 23rd 2001.

Hi Folks!

Richard's stimulating posting has got me all in a tizzy - and enjoyable tizzy of course. I started to answer his post and then my mind went off at a tangent. I will address your stimulating ideas shortly Richard - thanks for being so patient.

Highest regards,

Jud.

A Rant Regarding Abstractions.

There is no such thing as stasis. The cosmos consists of moving entities of matter and energy engaged in the constant reciprocal activity of ubiquitous and compound cause and effect. All human notions of time and space and existence are perceived in terms of the relationships between those affecting and effected entities. Though T. S. Eliot talked of the possibility of "the still point of the turning world," there is no such modality as 'stillness.' A speculative particle in the very centre of a revolving axle IF it is stationary in relation to its surrounding adjacent atoms, does not have quiescence within the greater circularity of orbital modality within which the axis and the earth itself rotates as part of our universe which itself is merely a bright stud in the glittering ponderously wheeling immensity of the Milky Way galaxy.

Everything in the cosmos concerns entities and the actions they perform, the states they assume, the modalities they change. Our human language has evolved to communicate our individuation of these entities and our description of their existential states, modes and qualities.

The Platonist approach to these modalities was to idealise them into modalic templates he called 'forms,' thus he claimed there is such a thing as 'beauty' or 'squareness' or 'triangularity' or 'goodness' and 'badness' etc. We can see now that he was confusing the existential modalities of the stative and behavioural processes of entities by sorcerizing these states as reified categories that hover around in the ether awaiting to descend on the innocent modes of suitable entities like Freddie Scissorhand's mask to smother them in an orgy of archetypicality.

All measurement is based on the relationship of the human body to the greater world - the length of the average human thumb or arm or fingernail. The illusion of time is concerned with the apparent passing of the sun from the eastern to the western horizon as apprised by the human eye. Everything in mensuration from the A of Audiology to the Z of Zymology is an extrapolation of known human bodily dimensionality and spatial awareness.

There is no such thing as 'tallness' although Plato would have it so, for an object is only tall in relation to others, and those others may themselves be considered small in relation to yet others. There is no such thing as 'distance' - an object may be distant from another, but there is no 'quality' of distance' any more than there is a quality of 'beauteousness,' for it is a woman who has an aspect or mode of pleasing form and symmetry to the eyes of others who is considered beautiful. The term 'beauteousness' is merely an abstraction a reification like 'beingness, nearness, bitterness; holiness, conceitedness; happiness; and kindness, and all those other former adjectives that under the malign influence of Plato have been perverted into forming hypostasised nouns expressing states or conditions. These words like existence, presence, absence, beauty, wisdom, age, youth, are merely convenient shorthand abstractions to ease the exchange of ideas and information and like the word 'Time' are not THINGS IN THEMSELVES, but are merely linguistic devices we use to speed up the progress of conversation and to facilitate the rapid switch of data. A tree has no 'existence' - it simply exists. There is no such a thing as 'essence' which is just a cobbling together of 'esse' with the '-ence' suffix to form nouns expressing: action, reference and reminiscence and so we end up with 'isness' another run of the mill existential addition to be added to the other medieval monkish existential multiplications
(1) existence. (2) Being. (3) Quiddity. (4) Essence. (5) Life (6) Presence. Furthermore an entity can only exist once at a time - it can't (1) exist. (2) Have being. (3) Have quiddity. (4) Have essence. (5) Have life (6) Have presence all at the same time, unless perhaps it's a Siamese-sextuplet, ' or some other six-headed human chimera.

The words convey ideas from one person or persons to another person or persons. What linguists do is to examine the words to see if the semantic cargo that they carry complies with the recipients expectations - for plainly some of the words that we use on this list have a different currency value for materialists or are completely worthless in the marketplace of ideas in which we are attempting to transact our cognitive business. So too for many people, the words that the religious use have a completely different significance or are meaningless to non-deists.

What I am saying is that nouns formed from adjectival descriptions are reificants or hypostatisations, and to say that a woman 'has' beauty is to fall into the trap of primitive Platonism with its belief that there were 'forms' floating around somewhere in the heavens that could be plucked down and applied. No woman 'has' beauty but rather her physical material appearance is pleasing to the beholder, no entity has 'Being' - it simply exists or it does not exist.

Sadly presence is difficult to describe. The very word 'presence' is after all just a stand-in word or alternative word for 'existence. ' If I say: "Existence is the presence of something in the cosmos," then you can with reason ask: "Well what is presence?" And to that I could answer: "Presence is hereness, " then you can quite justifiably ask: "Well what is hereness? " And then in the end I would have no alternative but to answer; "There is no such thing as existence or presence or hereness - they are all abstract concepts - a thing either is or it isn't. " Then, being the intelligent and determined person you are, you could quite justifiably ask: "A thing either is or isn't WHAT? " And I would have no other alternative but to answer: "The *IS* describes the mode of existence of the atoms and molecules and energy in the cosmos." In other words I am saying that the word existence doesn't exist - it is THE EXISTENT that exists. Beauty does not exist - it is the WOMAN that exists who happens to have a MODALITY of appearing beautiful to others. Does something that has no concrete existence, but has only abstract existence, still exist but differently? If something has no concrete existence then it does not exist but exists as a reification of an idea. If I write:

"Anna is sitting on the summit of a pure crystal mountain from which she surveys a patchwork landscape of multicoloured fields and silvery streams. "

I have created a reification - a hypostatisation - an imaginary scenario. We can say that for the purposes of literature that the sentence exists as an idea, if I continued with the story you may like it and decide to temporarily suspend your credulity as Anna embarks upon her quest after the golden rose. At the back of your mind all the time however you know that it is fantasy. Religion is rather like that, but the readers of the stories come to believe in the fantasy land and the characters that populate its chronicles - they remain in thrall to the story they are unable to escape from the fiction from the reifications and hypostatisations. But they are happy there, and why should we want to try to prise them away from what makes them happy?

The old willow tree that used to stand at the bottom of the garden still exists in the present as an idea in my mind that I can recall if somewhat dimly. The idea of the willow exists as a combination of neural connections in the storage area of my brain. Memories of the willow tree bring back memories of my parents and my carefree childhood days but the memories are in the present as is everything. Mankind resorts to reification of existential states as a cognitive tool and the hypostasis of modality from synchronic to substantive entity status can be helpful to the cognitive process when we try to make sense of the world that surrounds us.

And so today the Platonic legacy that has embedded itself in our very language and thought processes continues to exert its malign influence on human logic. Its effects can be seen upon the most sober scientists who in all other respects exhibit the most pragmatic and realistic characteristics of us all, who, though would hotly deny it, are much influenced by the primitive ideology of Plato and his acolytes. Women search for illusory magical creams that will provide them with beauty, men search desperately for an illusory 'togetherness' that constitutes the many acts of emotion that we know as love, cosmologists, conscious that the scaffolding of relativity is supported by the questionable entablature of 'make-believe 'space-time,' scratch their heads and search for some method whereby they can second the chimera of 'time' into a unificatory theory of everything and rid themselves of the reified albatross that hangs about their necks like some ancient starbound mariner of the skies.

Meanwhile the transcendentalists glory in the reifications, clasp the hypostatisations to their hearts and incorporate them into their candlelit litanies. Within the warm recesses of a dark chapel, a throng of withered black-clothed women sing the haunting plainsong of the litany. The flickering candles bathe the deeply lined faces in a yellow wash of pale light as unaccompanied by music, their fervent supplications drift up with the incense into the musty rafters of the high ornate ceiling. For them the Platonic abstractions are real as the hands they clasp in prayer modality is made flesh - the bread and the wine become the flesh and blood of Christ in a bizarre re-enaction of half forgotten ancient rites when the King or High Priest was killed and eaten. There are the Buddhist monks in saffron robes, shutting out the insistent impingements of the world that surrounds them with repeated chants, their bright intelligence intent and convergent upon the Maya. There are no telescopes to be found in a Lamasery, books of science are eschewed in the pursuit 'enlightenment' and spiritual 'knowledge' is sought from within the carapace of their own shaven skulls. But who are we to sneer or to speak contemptuously of the abstractionalism of the transcendentalist? Are the abstractions of the scientist superior to the abstractions of the Christian or Hindu? Are ALL abstractions to be viewed as suspect?

Should we in the twenty-first century seek to cast off the bonds of Platonism and THINK REAL? What would the world be like without abstraction, hypostatisations and make
-believe? Would science grind to a standstill? Would the churches empty and be closed down? Would the mosques be converted to motorcycle workshops? Would the glorious poetry of Shakespeare, the resplendence of Goethe, lose their lustre and appear sickly-sweet and fey mere clever reificatory artifice? I'm afraid so like it or not we are saddled with abstraction and it will ever be so. All that we can hope is that though we need abstraction like a cognitive pharmacopoeia and logical crutch, we will become more aware of the fact that we have one foot firmly planted on terra firma and the other in the soft consolatory mire of a preternatural Heideggerian wonderland.

Best wishes,

Jud.

Richard Sansom - June 23rd 2001.

Jud: The Platonist approach to these modalities was to idealise them into modalic templates which he called 'forms,' thus he claimed there is such a thing as 'beauty' or 'squareness' or 'triangularity' or 'goodness' and 'badness' etc.

Richard: Jud, what a grand, sweeping expose of wrong thinking your lengthy post has provided us. Thank you! (Heraclitus would love you, too.)

The above quote got me thinking (more) about what we call these universal forms. The interesting thing is how Plato missed the point of it all. Of course he was not privy to all the new findings of cognitive science or the wisdom of the likes of Hume and Kant, Edelman, Lackoff and Jud. He confused the way the mind works with some kind of ethereal reality. If a child learns what constitutes a TRIANGLE they will no doubt recognize what could be called TRIANGULARITY in a geometric shape. While Plato (and many others to this day) reify this shape as a universal form, what is happening in the brain is probably rather simple -- and may be called pattern recognition. (Some other animals can do this as well) Being able to recognize various geometric shapes is undoubtedly an evolved capability related in some way to survival. No big deal. But I can understand the tendency to BELIEVE that there is something universal about all such concepts. The harm does not come from such belief as long as the utility of such belief deals with everyday life -- not philosophy. As I have suggested, IMO, philosophy is the search for connections between cognition and the way the world works. If one assumes that the world works is based on the existence of such universals, their philosophy will be skewed dramatically and will go off in many fruitless directions.

Thanks again for a great and entertaining post!

Regards, Richard

Richard Sansom June 24th 2001

Gary: What can be publicly expressed by oneself about oneself, even in terms of "the broadside of the barn", is minuscule compared to what can never be expressed. And I would say, if you except most of this as true, then such 'things' as "sociology" and "psychology" that classifies groups of human beings into types has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY REAL HUMAN BEING and are total obscenities if not outright abysmal evil.

Richard: Hi Gary, I agree with you that public expression of one's whole self is impossible -- nor, I would imagine, would one wish to make such a complete expression, even if they could. It sounds like you are saying that because this is the case, no amount of research and analysis on HUMAN BEINGS can reveal very much about any so called classifications of human types or even human behavioral types. What is hidden cannot be studied. Would you be satisfied if all those sociologists and psychologists caveated their work as only dealing with what people DO, and not what people ARE? Granted, such investigations would be based on that miniscule expressibility, but would it be completely without value? (I don't know where I stand on this issue.) Michael Gazzaniga, a prominent neuroscientist, claims that PSYCHOLOGY is dead, as a useful discipline, and I agree. What is really happening is that the new cognitive sciences are dealing with the material brain -- not the public brain.

Gary: That abstractions are EASY to deal with and are EFFICIENT are not proofs of their truth. And they violate the principle of Ockhams razor, instead of being supported by it, precisely because when you say "The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one," you must really mean "the simplest" which no abstraction is or can be, but which UNINTERPRETED PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE BY DEFINITION IS! So Ockham's "simplest" can also be "wordless", and though "wordless" nonetheless "always already" comprehended as perfectly obvious. We have let abstractions destroy our lives.

Richard: Gary, do you really mean ALL abstractions -- or just those dealing with human classifications, etc.? Removing ALL abstractions would mean doing away with language. Or am I missing something in your remarks?

Regards, Richard

Gary C. Moore - June 24, 2001

Gary: What can be publicly expressed by oneself about oneself, even in terms of "the broadside of the barn", is miniscule compared to what can never be expressed. And I would say, if you except most of this as true, then such 'things' as "sociology" and "psychology" that classifies groups of human beings into types has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY REAL HUMAN BEING and are total obscenities if not outright abysmal evil.

Richard: Hi Gary, I agree with you that public expression of one's whole self is impossible -- nor, I would imagine, would one wish to make such a complete expression, even if they could.

RE: GCM: I am just now catching up on the very most important of my correspondence. I have had an interesting disagreement with my doctor about my illness that is relevant to this. He has several assumptions as to how an illness works EVEN WHEN HE DOES NOT KNOW THE CAUSE. Now, he is a good man, which is not something I say about doctors ever. But, first, the model for the illness is linear mechanical, i. e., it goes from this point, the start of symptoms, to that point, the end of symptoms, CAUSED BY
(remember, he does not actually know the "cause" of the illness itself) 1)medical cure which involves staying on a (disgusting) medication the rest of my life, 2) bodily self- healing which in this case he considers superstition, or 3) death. Now, not all results are in yet completely, however, according to my private knowledge of my experiential body (I do not go to doctors often as they seem to cause more problems than they cure) my memory tells me that I have gone through all this cyclically before, and that the only thing I can do is endure it, work through it as best I can. That I went to him at all was simply because one of the symptoms was clear-cut, 'easily' diagnosed, and easily treated. Now, the medication worked for the specific symptoms, but after a while started causing problems he said was absolutely impossible. But I performed my own experiment - I went off the medication, the terrible side effects went away, the original symptoms came back, I started taking the medication again, and the "impossible" happened again like clock-work. He absolutely insisted this medication DOES NOT cause such symptoms. Now, I'm sure you have already picked up that I did not like it in the first place, but the importance of that is undermined by the fact that ANY pill nauseates me right at the moment, all food either tastes bad or has bad after-affects, and the only thing I can consistently stand right now is water, so that little tiny, tasteless pill is merely one among dozens of things repulsive to me right now. However, my personal knowledge and memory tell me that it did precipitate a bodily crisis and purgation - and I think you know how welcome he would be to that knowledge - that is now letting me become sane and normal again, though no appetite yet, but no nausea either.

Now, how does one even begin to communicate such stuff to a medical practitioner who believes an illness is purely an objective entity and not something totally, but unknowably, attuned to one's subjective life one can hardly objectivize even to oneself? I do not think I am unique in this, but few people have the nerve to believe, even just in their hearts, that the doctor is wrong and misunderstands the situation and nature of the disease. These people either just miserably endure, thoroughly unhappy, or stop seeing the doctor, or become the victim of quacks. The PROBLEM here is that I am always worried, "What if this is an objective disease entity and I am holding out on getting treated because of my "hard headedness" everyone accuses me of?" I TOO can be mistaken. The doctor CAN be right. What I need are objective criteria. But what? I have tried several times when these cyclical things happen to me to keep a record, but have always failed to follow through, merely relying on my memory. An even more terrible move, though, would be to convince other people that, even though just sometimes, I am right BECAUSE I CAN ONLY BE RIGHT FOR MYSELF! PERIOD!

The point is, even though I am using logical thinking, my premises are based on very shaky and shady private, personal knowledge and premises. I mean, it is terribly obscure to me even though it does say something important - if I was another "person" and continued medical treatment against my inclinations, I could well opt out for suicide out of pure misery. So this is a practical matter. Instead of being condemned to a disease, my tendency is always "I will work through it" and keep on living. It is a species of hope and faith, I suppose. Unfortunately, the symptoms seem to be getting stronger every cycle, and if they are not symptoms based on an objective, treatable disease entity, I am in a world of trouble eventually BECAUSE THERE IS NO WAY TO COMMUNICATIVE EFFECTIVELY WITH A MEDICAL DOCTOR!

Now the point you bring up about not wanting "a complete expression" is true, but I could possibly say 'true' on the grounds that, first of all, it would never be complete, and not being complete would only seem to be a mass of trivia without the meaningful form 'completeness' would give us. On the one hand it is obvious that such "completeness' is unattainable, but on the other hand, and I bet you have felt this in your own life, one can start to connect up trivial details that JUST BEGIN to form an indicative pattern of something deeper within you that just shows the bare tips of what it is. I do not believe one would retain all this 'crap' in one's mind if it did not, in fact, occupy connections between things of possibly great importance.

I am beginning to stretch myself beyond my limit. Must conclude.

RICHARD: It sounds like you are saying that because this is the case, no amount of research and analysis on HUMAN BEINGS can reveal very much about any so called classifications of human types or even human behavioral types. What is hidden cannot be studied. Would you be satisfied if all those sociologists and psychologists caveated their work as only dealing with what people DO, and not what people ARE? Granted, such investigations would be based on that miniscule expressibility, but would it be completely without value? (I don't know where I stand on this issue.)

RE: GCM: But if what I have said is true, then nobody EVER 'DOES' ANYTHING like anyone else - unless one is merely satisfied with perfectly describing the mechanical motion through space of this 'doing' because you would have to completely disregard the whole context, purpose, and motivation of the act which is its 'cause', if you will, which not even the doer can understand fully, and even then, many times, only after the fact. This "objective" but 'contentless' psychology was one of the things Heidegger vehemently campaigned against. What people do comes from behaviour. Behaviour comes from 'within.' Worse still, it comes from a within the 'within.' No person owns and controls their motivations, and therefore actions, completely. There is no clear understanding whatsoever. That is why Aristotle based his ethics on the preliminary teaching of children of ethics AS HABIT. In was NOT that they were so much less capable of understanding what an adult could, but RATHER, without that background of taught habit, the adult cannot understand at all to begin with. What you are dealing with is memorized history, not objective facts of any sort. That is why an Aztec could consider tearing out a man's beating heart for the sake of the rising sun a good and noble thing, absolutely necessary for the good of his people whereas we do not. Habits are just habits. And yet we want to know "THE TRUTH". The trouble with sociology and psychology is that they are clearly and self- declaredly manipulative, i. e., they want to "correct" situations. Yet, when you understand what ambiguity "correctness" stands on, my only conclusion is that the real motivation is that "I know what is the right thing to do, and you, ignorant one, know nothing."

RICHARD: Michael Gazzaniga, a prominent neuroscientist, claims that PSYCHOLOGY is dead, as a useful discipline, and I agree. What is really happening is that the new cognitive sciences are dealing with the material brain -- not the public brain.

RE: GCM: That is a much better approach. But what you are "cognating" is cognition itself, its own process, not the whole context, not 'reality.'

Gary: That abstractions are EASY to deal with and are EFFICIENT are not proofs of their truth. And they violate the principle of Ockhams razor, instead of being supported by it, precisely because when you say "The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one," you must really mean "the simplest" which no abstraction is or can be, but which UNINTERPRETED PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE BY DEFINITION IS! So Ockham's "simplest" can also be "wordless", and though "wordless" nonetheless "always already" comprehended as perfectly obvious. We have let abstractions destroy our lives.

Richard: Gary, do you really mean ALL abstractions -- or just those dealing with human classifications, etc.? Removing ALL abstractions would mean doing away with language. Or am I missing something in your remarks?

RE: GCM: If one could truly think of "blue things" as merely a process of intellectual manipulation, abstraction would be all right, but when one says, "My country!" one FEELS this must be a real entity. This is obvious. What is not obvious is that the whole process of giving living spirit to abstractions goes down though the whole course so when one says, "I love psychology", one has made it as truly spiritual as Christ risen from the grave. This just touches the surface, but my mind is breaking down, my stomach is hurting, and the practical world calls.

Regards, Richard

Jon Neivens - 24th June 2001

In previous episodes, Jon said: I'm still trying to think this through in terms of ideas of 'intentionality' which looks like one of the words we use to 'stabilise' desire.

RE: GCM: Desire always has an object and is always therefore intentional, or it COULD NOT BE desire because it is always desire of . . . This is why someone like Bultman, when he talks of "God" or "immortality", and tries to escape the snares of contradiction by saying they are not 'objective' has "always already" missed the boat. At least he realizes there is a problem and tries to figure out what is going on. But in doing so, he ends up with exactly the same aporias as Heidegger, and Heidegger dumped 'faith.' Aporias are not logical absurdities because we are talking about what experience presents us - and experience is not "true" or "false" as it is NOT the result of judgement but just 'is', just 'there' needing us to describe it. And to describe it, we must use language. And language that can communicate facts is ALWAYS logical - as far as it actually goes. I mean, you cannot know what you cannot know. Kant destroyed that in his discussion of "dialectic" in the second part of the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. But he also clearly delineated there can be a desire for things that are NOT AT ALL clearly delineated. You know this from everyday experience when you have a vague desire, but you really don't know for what. The desires are real and demonstrable. It is demonstrable they have intention toward some direction, if not toward a clear cut object. To deny the existence of the desire is just as foolish as to say the existence of the desire proves the existence of its object. So, actuality, I must now proceed to eat my words and say you're right precisely because the more definite the object, the more intentionality does "stabilize" desire. So sue me. No lawyer will take the case. Now, I'm just kidding. If you want amore formal apology, I will be glad to give it. Am I digging a real deep hole?

RE: JON No, but what I was getting at was a certain psychological reification that seems to happen when we say "I intend to.." or "I intended to..." The attempt to take ownership of desire always fails, because I think it actually has to do with the struggle between two desires working in contrary directions. To speak of our "Intentionality" is just the expression of the contrary desire. But 'self-meaning' and 'self-substantiality' always work against each other.

#RE: GCM:# You are saying something extremely interesting, possibly very obvious and therefore somewhat threatening if not downright dangerous. If you are following what I have been poorly expressing to Edward Moore on heidegger-dialognet, language does necessarily reify and well and rationalize whatever it talks about HOWEVER LOOSE- ENDED IT IS, IS INTENDED TO BE, and is KNOWN to be, i. e., YOU KNOW the word "God" is related to real human desires whereas even the theologians the word "God" can logically/literally point at nothing. That, rationally, just leaves the desires as the only meaning of the word we have. Now, you have severely complicated the discussion by saying, "The attempt to take ownership of desire always fails, because I think it actually has to do with the struggle between two desires working in contrary directions." I want, DESIRE to say this is going too far, but my motives would be rather obvious wouldn't they? "Desire" would be then like my first wife - "hard to handle" - thanks Richard
- and we're back to Jack Nicholson in the witness chair saying, to, of all people, Tom Cruise, "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" And then of course, you have "always already" recognized and brought forward a counter-desire to the counter-desire that has no reason to be identical to the 'original' (?) desire.

Re: Jon (running out of colours) I think perhaps this 'counter desire,' that works to stabilise the self, originates in some way from language, even if it can't be stated within it. Although I totally agree with your comments about language and reification, I'm not sure we can place language and desire precisely into two opposed camps. Maybe if we think of a desire for reification or a reification of desire it's closer to the mark? But in another sense this 'counter-desire' has more to do with what what happens when we turn this 'reification/desire' upon ourselves, as a reflection upon the self. But this seems to operate almost as soon as I want to identify myself with 'my' desires. It doesn't require any kind of 'sophisticated reflection' it's maybe just introduced as soon as I try to establish some kind of identity between or across my desires; which obviously also includes the sense of identity through time that is implicit in the word "I." Maybe the very phrase "I want. . . " already involves some essential contradiction. If desire is essentially entropic, then to introduce the "I" means that it's identified with a past and a future, a self-identity through time, that doesn't apply when refer to someone else, simply because when we use THEIR name this is part of ONE'S OWN entropy.

GCM: And there is so much observed evidence for this in psychoanalysis, simply in its detached methodology of actions and reactions - regardless of its true premises and ruthlessly selfish, manipulative goals - Freud was a genius even if an evil genius. So "self-meaning" would be like the Pauline Christian's constant desire for the Spirit and immortality located ONLY in the UNREAL, and therefore undeniable, future versus the "self-reification," the "self-substantializing" that identifies, objectivizes, and promises to bring into the Present-at-hand that even Bultman criticizes Paul for. In other words, if you want it, you want it to be real.

Jon: Whatever you want becomes real, whether you like it or not. I don't now if it's even a question of wanting it to be real, you're stuck with it AS real because you CAN'T free it from your own desire. As Heidegger says at the end of An Introduction to Metaphysics: "You can't jump over your own shadow." There's a 'reality of desiring' and a 'reality of having' that seem to work against each other here.

GCM: I think this is one, just one, of the keys to understanding what time really is, and that somehow one has to even acknowledge this operates even in science and the interpretation of its results. Another key, that possibly spawns the worm-hole can of worms you so graciously opened up for all of us, is that, when desire is substantialized in the present-at-hand wholly and literally, actually having whatever it is inherently, by the very nature of the present-at-hand, devaluing, disappointing, destructive, that immediately turns into a rejection of this "thing" you worked so hard all your life to get is really what you wanted, and that, of course "what you really wanted" is something else altogether that, of course, you have not precisely identified yet.

Jon: It's maybe a case of how can you want what you already have? What you actually wanted was to do with the wanting not the having, so as soon as you have it your identification with it is different so it's changed. Again it's to do with identity and identification generally, and the kind of self-identity associated with having. The very notion of 'having' seems to say that desire is something gravitational, but this works against the original image of entropy, of willing OUTWARD beyond oneself. And the whole notion of self-identity, personality, has to do with continuity through time. So wanting and having are essentially contradictory, inasmuch as the self depends upon entropy, a constant willing outward. This depends upon one's identifying with what one isn't; but self-identity depends upon identifying one's self with oneself, with continuity, motivation and intention. It has to do with positing the self as the source of itself, rather than what isn't already part of oneself- the 'object' of desire. I still need to think some more about this.

Would this not necessarily perfectly identify the nature of time with the nature of human personality, and the nature of scientists whose whole desire becomes identified with the solving of one problem, that when that problem is solved, unless that scientist can immediately deny what they have at-hand as the true meaning of their effort and that it is really, "ITSELF" something they still have not accomplished yet, can cause severe personality problems. I just saw a program on TV about Edison. He developed his electric light, and all the technology to make it publicly feasible as a utility, based upon Direct Current. Tesla comes along, develops Alternating Current that works immensely better than Direct Current technologically and economically, and sells the idea to Westinghouse. Edison becomes completely irrational, and downright vicious, in his fixation on selling people on Direct Current. Another person, more 'abstractly' involved with the results of their efforts would have said, "Well, that very interesting, but I'm involved in something else right now," unobtrusively adopted Alternating Current, and gone on his merry way. So in individual reality, which is the only reality there is - no society, no 'political 'movements', no Spirit of the Times, none of that truly Supernatural nonsense, just individuals totally alone by themselves with their own decisions they almost always attribute to someone else somehow, is literally what creates the time science HAS TO LITERALLY WORK IN! Therefore all these pretty, dirty, greasy desires and counter-desires are thoroughly rampant in scientific development which, though its accomplishments ARE ALWAYS tested on a bedrock of reality, that "testing" is actually done from the infinitely various and slanted viewpoints of each individual involved in a process that has an infinite number of different and even contradictory windows that, nonetheless, still relate to an UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED AND RECOGNIZED SINGULAR BEDROCK OF REALITY.

Jon: This would seem to place scientific knowledge firmly in the realm of the 'reality of having' which itself means that this becomes the way it identifies ALL that it can call 'reality.' So that it places desire (or, at least, EXPERIENCED desire, as opposed to the representation of desire in knowledge of it) at the level of the 'unreal.' But if time belongs essentially to the movement of desire, then science MUST call it 'unreal,' and cannot consistently make use of it in its own representations. Now it gets interesting though, because I said above that 'self-identity' essentially means continuity through time, which means that it's a form of desire. Which also means that it's to do with wanting not having. At this stage I probably need to try to work this out properly, maybe I should get my crayons out and draw a diagram on the wall. Hmm. Jon: "I intend to.." or "I intended to..." as perhaps already signifying an attempt to take ownership of desire.

RE: GCM: Now, that's interesting. You always feel there is ownership connected to desire. But sometimes the desire owns you, sometimes you the desire, sometimes . . .

RE: JON: No, the attempt at ownership is itself a desire, which can't hold itself together.

#RE: RE: GCM:# But by what you described above, "the attempt . . . itself is a desire", has "always already" become "many". As Heidegger said in the first volume of NIETZSCHE (pg. 52), "Now since the will possesses that manifold character of willing out beyond itself, as we have suggested, and since all this becomes manifest as a whole, we can conclude that a multiplicity of feelings haunts our willing." And, at this point in time of his discussion, the distinction between "feeling" and "willing" has become rather trivial. So also, if one begins to approach "Dasein" in this way, it obviously "can't hold itself together," as you say, and needs one overriding and over determining Desire or concern or whatever evasive term you want to use to unify the being of being-there, which can never be here, present-at-hand, but always "there," always futural, always toward death. And, quite literally, death 'exists' as much as "God" does, but no one is going to say they will never die, will they? After all, that is the only way to get into 'heaven,'right? Unless one is Elijah. And this too is science.

Jon: But the whole notion of identity is the desire to bring all these 'hauntings' under the same banner, and call it "I." But this attempt isn't strictly 'made;' we have as little choice here as with any other kind of desire. On the one hand it just becomes one more haunting, but on the other maybe it also means we're haunted by what haunts us? Because it's some kind of desire for 'anti-desire'? Maybe it's introduced by the very use of the word "I," but this is also exacerbated by the whole notion of subjectivity; this also has to do with that whole notion of 'life-experience' that Heidegger introduces in The Age of the World-Picture, and the link between objective truth and subjectivity.

Jon: I keep thinking of desire in terms of some image to do with 'entropy.' What we'd usually want to call a 'self' as constantly dissolving itself into its actions or 'intentions.' But as soon as we say 'intention' we're looking from the perspective of the 'self,' not desire.

RE: GCM: PRECISELY! I wish I had said that! Heidegger believes, and he does have a point, that, once you have realized that ALL of the issues that face you have in one way or another always already been formulated by tradition, and that, however selfish you may think your self to be, all your actions are again formulated in one way or another by other people, and that death is going to erase your petty intrusion anyway, the best thing you can do is surrender the self.

RE: JON: The contrary desire for self-stability only really makes sense in terms of the desire to destroy everything one desires.

#RE: GCM:# How about a corollary to this, although it is all too obviously right, that one WANTS "God" and the "Spirit" and "Resurrection" and "Immortality" - Edward Moore would bring in the necessary correlation here of the Platonic re-existence of the soul - to ALWAYS stay in the future where their 'existence' is unattackable in the nature of the futural, but where one also CANNOT really define what these 'things' are, as Bultmann pointed out to Paul.

RE: JON: That's much more in Bataille's territory than Heidegger's but it's nothing like 'surrender.' Heidegger didn't want to go there because he'd have had to abandon his seriousness- but that's why I struggle for laughter, which isn't always easy.

#RE: GCM:# I think Heidegger abandons seriousness numerous times in NIETZSCHE, and does so quite 'seriously', i. e., fundamentally, the distinction between the "guiding question" and the "grounding question", vol. 2, pp. 192-195.

Jon: I think I see what you mean here, since this maybe relates to his discussion of the DEINON, the terrifying, in An Introduction to Metaphysics p. 149-51, in relation to Sophocles' Antigone. But again, I still tend to link this with Bataille's notion of the Sacred.

RE: GCM: Maybe that is one thing I keep close to my heart from Ayn Rand and I agree with you whole heartedly here - didn't know you were an Objectivist did you? - I can see you running immediately into the shower and washing yourself off thoroughly - baths are always good - they cleanse the body and the soul - but I refuse to give up my self- identity to anyone or anything, to God, to Ayn Rand, to the State, or even to the person who is going to beat my brains in. That is JUST TOO MUCH! But that all relates to your last sentence. If you are really interested in what you say in the first two sentences, you need very much to read Thomas Pynchon's trilogy V., THE CRYING OF LOT
49, and GRAVITY"S RAINBOW after you read his very early story "Entropy" or some such.

It was the first thing I think he ever published, but set the basic theme for everything else he wrote. You also, in order to get everything out of him, need to find out everything about Max Weber, Voegelin, Rilke, etc., etc. And learn the history of the rebellions of Deutsche Sud-West Afrika, the doomed voyage of the Russian Baltic fleet to the Tsushima Straits in 1905, the Kirkhiz "light', the defeat and slaughter of American troops at the edge of a sacred Italic lake in 1944, and the history and meaning and use of the post horn in the 1600's and 1700's in Europe. I have left out NUMEROUS other topics the omniscient Pynchon has in his books, i. e., the sewers of New York, the siege of Malta in WWII, etc., etc. To read Pynchon is a bit of a challenge. But nothing like reading Thomas Harris which impends upon DRASTIC human action. But Pynchon fits very well with your first two sentences.

RE: JON: Damn, I have trouble getting it together even to read a cornflakes packet at the moment. Although I keep getting the image of the way Philip K Dick's characters are sort of out of synch with everything around them. He only really seems to use the 'sci-fi' genre in order to create maximum dislocation.

#RE: GCM:# Are you talking about THE HIGH CASTLE, I think it is called? An excellent book about an alternate time line.

Jon: I've read quite a few including this one, but all of them give me waking nightmares- I think it's actually to do with just how entropic his characters seem to be- held together, and TOGETHER is a very operative word here in the sense of identity, by VERY thin threads. It's to do with the way most people are ACTUALLY held together by their involvements. Philip K Dick went through a pretty serious drug phase at some point
(he bases one of his novels roughly on this- wish I could remember what it's called) and he's one of the few writers actually to use that sense of dislocation really well as a fictional device. The whole 'sci-fi' thing seems much more about creating totally convincing paranoid delusions, since the ultimate delusion is trying to convince yourself that actually you're only imagining they're out to get you.

Jon: But maybe here we have two different forms of stabilisation. Desire seeks to stabilise itself through dissipation of the 'self,' although this also involves the very notion of identity through which the 'self' emerges.

#RE: GCM:# Just "two"? And are you not also getting close to Heidegger's notion of "surrender" - which is NOT AT ALL RELIGIOUS - but seems to REALLY operate like an alternative that 1) is always there, but 2) nobody is seriously going to "do", especially when such 'doing' is as clear as mud.

Jon: Again, would this be a surrender to the DEINON?

Did you know the brain has far more acidic digestive juices than the stomach? I guess that's not news to you.

#RE: GCM# Yes it is . . . Tell me more.

Jon: Damn, I seem to remember there was a lot of Scotch in that original thought. Sort of has to do with the fact that I'm stuck with one of those brains that just NEVER STOPS. I remember writing something really weird a few years ago that linked the precise moment of the Death of God to Neil Armstrong placing his foot upon the surface of the Moon. I was insane to the soundtrack of Duke Ellington for about a week, after coming to that conclusion. If I don't feed my brain plenty of solids it starts feeding on me. Although sometimes it just goes straight ahead and does that anyway. Damn thing usually just does whatever the hell it wants. Spock's no help either.

RE: JON: Never trust cats, they pretend to be inscrutable just to cover their basic stupidity.

#RE: GCM:# GOD DAMN RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now, I have a loving dog named "Sugar" that just scares the hell out of me with the level and intensity of her awareness . . Intelligence, which is the mere technical acquisition of language/logic, is merely a tool. For people to quantify it, "Einstein has more Intelligence than Gandhi," is to merely compare one pile of worthless cow dung with another. "Intelligence" is merely an adjunct to emotional intensity formed and guided by a passion for 'death.'

Jon: I tend to see 'intelligence' as grounded completely in emotional intensity; if it's to do with language then this is just a web within which the intensity is sublimated into more 'subtle' forms. Again, I don't really see language or intelligence as strictly opposed to desire. But we seem to tie ourselves up in knots as soon as we intelligence as separate from desire. But what's REALLY stupid is the idea that intelligence is 'superior' to desire or something 'higher.'

GCM But, of course, "death" used in such a context takes on a whole different meaning than the usual one. The "death" everyone fears, including me ready to . . . , and dreads, and belittles as something no one can do anything about which is perfectly correct in this context, is "death" as becoming present-at-hand.

Jon: This is quite probably something I should have picked up on quite a long time ago. But you are saying that as soon as we seek to contextualise death (which maybe means as soon as we think about it in ANY WAY at all) then we've missed it, because we're already seeing it as something that has to do with us?

GCM: Death is suppose to be important and tremendous, not the present-at-hand triviality it is, i. e., loss of consciousness, feeling, a loss of bowel control, a loss of all control forever. I can guarantee you from personal experience that, not only do the dead not rise again, the 'sense' of this around a corpse is not at all 'profound.' It is like washing a dirty coffee cup. You know THERE IS no more "person." It is something nasty you wrap up and put away. Unless it is a child. {Now, students, what have I said about the evaluation of the praise . ""I can guarantee you from personal experience ." Is it not exactly the same thing I said about being "sincere"? So, can the words I just wrote stand perfectly well all by themselves or not? But that means putting them into your own private experience, does it not? So you can say "Yes" and you can say "No", and you can try to explicate - mainly to yourself - what it means to you - BUT YOU WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO ME.}

Now, to unravel this - Gandhi CHOSE death to complete and validate his story. It was definitely a passion of something he desired very much, though he was also somewhat afraid. With Einstein, we go back to what I said above about the scientist that is never wrapped up in present accomplishments, but all their efforts are always headed toward an unknown future. In his case, the Unified Field Theory which everyone says is wrong . but I damn well bet everyone has the uneasy feeling that in the long run, Einstein will at least be partially right, i. e., his science was always into the future, and with such passion it has become our future. So, with my dog that some 'scientist' would like to dissect while alive to prove that it does NOT FEEL PAIN so it can just be and remain a 'scientific experiment' and not what it obviously is, it has every bit of the awareness that plunged Einstein and Gandhi into their respective futures. Heidegger once said, but just in passing in a text where he had repeatedly put into question and totally undermined what he 'positively' said time and time again - Laughter, Jon? YOU WANTED LAUGHTER? - like "Animals are more limited than man" which somehow later translated into "Animals in some strange way are greater than man and something like the gods."

Jon: Animals are honest in their passions.

GCM: THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF METAPHYSICS: World, Finitude, Solitude - is FILLED with stuff like that - he puts you out on a perfectly secure, common sense limb, then cuts it off. Heidegger said in passing that, because animals did not have language (in another course ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS THETA 1-3, from approximately the same time, Heidegger says, "Well, Aristotle's definition of an animal essentially includes EVERYTHING important for and necessary to language except an extensive use of sound for communication [Yes. They THINK symbolically.]"), it cannot conceive death. But I am sure Heidegger has looked into the eyes of a dying animal. So, yes, I have a four footed Gandhi/Einstein in my garage. So, morality has kind of totally failed in this respect, has it not?

Jon: Maybe the whole morality thing has to with the way we take it to be one more thing that we 'have' whereas this is just a futile attempt to free it from the 'messy subjectivity' of desire? But then, isn't the whole notion of morality that it's something we TALK ABOUT, and not the PRODUCT of our talk. Again, something we have, not something we desire.

'Intention,' on the other hand, is the attempt to stabilise the 'self' through something like 'self identity with itself.'

#RE: GCM:# Jon - I AM SURE JUD HAS - have you seen Orson Welles' THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI? You have got to. The whole movie is relevant from the point of view of motive and counter-motive and counter-counter-motive. But it is the ending where husband (you would remember him as young Kane's lawyer from CITIZEN KANE) and wife (played by the beautiful but intensely sad Rita Hayworth from whom Welles was getting a divorce while he was doing the film) shoot it out and kill each other in a hall of mirrors. I tell you the ending because in really, really good films you CANNOT spoil them in that fashion because you need SOME clue as to what the hell is really going on. The film graphically demonstrates the complexity of thinking behind what you are saying.

RE: GCM: That's something that comes and goes, doesn't it, as I just demonstrated? I hope you appreciate how hard I am working at staying . . . Sometimes you are it, and sometimes it is you. I think Richard would appreciate my abased humility there. But he doesn't know how abased it is right now. I have many, many sins weighing upon my soul. It is better to die. But anyone can say that. Unfortunately, actually acting upon it can be as cowardly and hypocritical as not acting. Has my . . . intention . . . stabilized my desire?

Wouldn't I have to know what my desire wants in the first place? I . . . am but the jerk that takes responsibility for my grammar. Like the Kantian "I" of "I think" where thinking takes over the stage and the "I" cleans up afterwards. I am very tired of being everyone's janitor. I am both egotistic as hell, yet at the same time knows exactly how utterly worthless that statement is. Nothing equals nothing.

RE: JON: It's like it only makes sense for other people to name all this weird stuff 'Jon' and I just use the word 'I' as a way of going along with them. What's 'in' a name?

#RE: GCM:# Well, think of it this way, my "sophisticated solipsist," it is not really important is it if it is merely the present-at-hand truth, right? I mean, for real, what exactly is it that CAN BE confused? It is as if every morning you look out your window and always see the steel rails you think lead trains to Liverpool. They may not actually do so. They may have ceased doing so. But they are always THERE for you. And if one day they are gone, you will feel a loss even though you may have hated them before. The same thing for the "self" - you may know little about what it is, but you would really miss it if it really wasn't there.

Jon: Did I say I wouldn't? My only real point was that the word "I" tends to mislead us about how little we know. But what's knowledge got to do with value?

Jon: It attempts to stabilise desire in terms of choice, but also attempts to subject desire to the notion of identity in terms of seeking what is consistent in desire. There seems to be some sort of attempt here to see desire in terms other than dissipation.

#RE: GCM:# The 'death' Gandhi sought was not "dissipation" but extreme intensity.

RE: GCM: You do not even begin to realize how brilliant you are. If you could take yourself seriously, you could be another Lenin or Stalin. However, gratefully, I have a feeling that would not gladden your heart. So why not write the philosophical masterpiece that begs to be written by your hands, and which we have been expecting? Because if you can make statements like this, you have no limitations. At all. And you would make the rest of us happy.

Trouble with writing 'masterpieces' is it just ends up being an attempt to arrest my own entropy. I'll only start doing stuff like that if I think it'll make me happy. I don't think it will. I prefer writing notes on the sole of my shoe and posting them to lists.

#RE: GCM:# Maybe that is because you possibly have discovered something more important, something much better, and you are in the process of a caterpillar changing into a moth? Have you read THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. I do not mean to compare you to "Buffalo Bill," however, that is one of the keys that Doctor Lecter uses to unlock his character to Clarice Starling. I have ALWAYS thought there was much more to the book that most people thought. And now, and this is truly frightening, I am beginning to 'think' there is MUCH more to their "thought" [re: Heidegger's "understanding that we have discussed] than I thought. There are page by page annotations by a professor at Rutgers for his world mythology class that are bringing out starkly what I refused to "understand" the first time I read the novel. Hannibal Lecter is an INTENSELY moral person. This is absolutely necessary to his existence. And REAL honest-to-God heart's core religion is slowly being revealed in it to me also. And I am just beginning to absorb it. The site is at http://complit.rutgers.edu/mwatts/epigrams.htm. That should land you right in the middle of it. Or http://complit.rutgers.edu/mwatts/background.htm.

GCM: This is not "individualism" as a 'freely' chosen 'moral' value but individualism as metaphysical category, as ontological existential to be more accurate. As such, it is a total situation of existence, applicable to every conscious mind that is necessarily and inescapably aware of its individuality as the very center of knowing and origination of value, not as something one buys off the shelf at the local 'ethics' grocery store, prepared, pre-packaged, and ready to use. Obviously, if 'moral value' is something one merely selects from what is offered you by others, then it is not original - worked out in the clash of desire with the facticity of one's whole situation - or in the slightest way "authentic", i. e., not something you choose in full and consistent knowledge, independently discovered by your own rational deduction from the inductive knowledge of incontrovertible but personal and private experience. For that is the "heart" of the matter isn't it? First, understanding that in reality you can NEVER understand another person's intent that always MUST remain in their own 'heart' except in the most superficial manner through studying the logical consistency of their actions which, however, NEVER gives you the full depth of the total context in which their choices, made in that secret 'heart', are made.

Jon: To me there's something very odd at work here. It always seems as if we see others as far more 'stable' than ourselves.

RE: GCM: You got that sure as shit right.

Yeah, but it's only really other people who have 'names.'

JON: What I mean is that we don't see their dissipation into what they desire, but see them as stable bodies which we can 'read' in terms of 'intentionality.' So it's always our own dissipation and lack of 'self identity' that is somehow 'in the wrong,' and needs to be corrected. Even if we 'know' that they might see us in the same way, we cannot actually experience this. There's a peculiar sense in which our individuality is always outnumbered.

RE: GCM: Maybe you are in the process of writing your masterpiece.

GCM: Any claim contrary to what is stated here would involve the utter absurdity of "mind reading." Second, understanding (using ALL of the senses of that term) your own intents, understanding that, as you have 'matured' from childhood, you inherit, interiorly, a mass of contradictory values that, on the one hand, if you are to be honest with yourself, you must work out, at least, in a consistent manner (this means, consistent in itself, not necessarily at all consistent with the facts of objective reality) and, on the other hand, there is no rational reason to assume you will ever discover ALL of these fundamental values explicitly, much less change them, if they are contradictory to your basic, explicit choice in life.

ERGO, by rational definition of what a knowing consciousness is, a consciousness that 'has' language - a language wholly inherited from others with all explicit and implicit valuations attached - in spite of that inheritance, you are metaphysically, ontologically alone per se. It is a totally inclusive situation for yourself as when Sigourney Weaver says in ALIENS, "If just one of those creatures, just one, gets loose on the earth, THEN you can kiss all this bullshit you think is so important goodbye!" In other words, one situation and one valuation overrides primordially and fundamentally ALL others.

Jon: But at the same time, we can never truly ALLOW this situation and valuation to override all others, because even this never truly 'belongs' to us.

RE: GCM: It is as if at the same moment I own everything, yet at the same moment am just copying everyone else. Everyone wants to be an individual, but no one wants to be absolutely alone in the guilty docket.

GCM: The situation and all the terms may be something created by others, but what you make of it is your responsibility alone, not by choice or refusal, but by the necessary metaphysical nature of human existence. I would amend what Ayn Rand said about Robert Serrvice's verses, "A stranger and afraid/ In a world I never made" where she replied, "Well, why didn't you?" to take in the realization that that world WAS made by you "always already."

Jon: But even the attempt to take in this realisation can't really be taken possession of, since it seems to depend upon others to the extent that one contrasts oneself from them.

RE: GCM: No disagreement here.

GCM: And if you do not like that world, you must understand what it is you do not like, or any change you make will be simply putting new words into OLD values, so that the 'sounds' are different but the "unexamined" intents are still exactly the same.

All meaning and purpose always and only exist into the future. Yet, guess what, the future doesn't exist at all, ever. But we always assume, as if it were practical common sense, that somehow that future will come to be at-hand in the present as available and usable. However, this completely ignores the ontological change in its status from something desired and striven for as not possessed into something possessed and no longer worth striving for. It ceases to be the for-the-sake-of-which of why you act and becomes merely a element in another for-the-sake-of-which. If the individual can so verge on the insubstantial, constantly on and over the edge of choice, then things like "politics", "sociology", and "psychology" really start looking ludicrous when action, praxis as existence, is the only 'thing' which has ANY reality, and it becomes what has always been true to very literal-minded, practical people, i. e., "Abstractions do not exist." Politics as ideology or based on ethical standards of good and evil become as openly silly as people in the back of their minds always thought they were. Politics then begins to be seen as what it is - what is already in place being slowly changed to reflect a rational balance of forces that only proceeds in making judgements on the political situation through Aristotle's epiekeia, the active and continuous balancing of equity between parties so as to best preserve peace in the political entity. In other words, it is literally what you REALLY SEE every day, individual people dealing with individual people step by step, point by point. No grand ideas, no sweeping thoughts, and certainly no triumphs of pure, untarnished justice. And VERY inconvenient. No rule rationally and irrevocably applies to all. Each situation has to be judged on its own merits. Yet how could any government ever work in this fashion? Then you can start to see a real metaphysical basis to Thomas Paine's statement, "Government is evil, and therefore the less government the better." If government is evil per se, then no government at all is the necessary human ideal and logical conclusion.

Jon: The real problem here is that 'government' ISN'T an abstract concept precisely upon the level of the 'government of the self,' and ALL government, at some level, has to take a very explicit position on the question of to what extent the 'government of the self' is possible.

RE: GCM: The totality of government is always in every way the Jack Dawkins you are confronting at the moment. It has no other reality. It is that person who makes the absolute decisions for this moment. Any process of disagreement from that decision is very much like playing a slot machine. You might even win if someone will pay attention. But that in turn will be a John Ratchett or Tom Smith, not the abstract chairman of some board. Individuality is nice in the abstract, but when you confront it inimically in reality, it is a real bitch. And that is exactly what real government is: Real people confronting real people. But one smells sweat and shit, not nobility of purpose.

JON: Only the Greeks made the idea of no government sort of work, and they could do this because it seems they saw no real distinction between 'law' and 'custom.' As Herodotus has Demaratus point out to Xerxes, the Greeks recognise only 'law,' NOMOS, as government. (Just noticed you pick this up below; I'm a bit slow today.)

RE: GCM: You're slow?!!!!

GCM: But simply because someone wants something to be true, however, in the factual world there is absolutely no obligation of any kind on the world's part to make it come true. Not all problems can be solved. Some fundamental problems, by their very nature, CANNOT be resolved. Human desire has no guarantee of any sort of a satisfactory resolve. Fairy tales do not necessarily have to have happy endings. Just read the real BROTHERS GRIMM.

And as to "society", we are on much clearer ground. For it is a totally bogus idea from beginning to end. The 'reality' of society is as invisible as God. Abstractions do not exist. They are only words, or mathematical formulas that operate as intellectual machines and are far more abbreviated, both a benefit and a deficiency, than any word. As words they are only real when used by individuals in the context of their private within public situations, i. e., you only perceive the external expression of intent. They have to be actually used; they do not hang around like ghosts ready to intrude promiscuously into human affairs. Abstractions 'exist' only when a person literally speaks a word set within a sentence (context) defining their futural intent. So when some idiot or bureaucratic thug starts talking about "the purpose of society" and "public morals," common sense tells you they are talking about their intents and purposes that they intend to impose on you, justified in the name of an abstract ghost they can invoke to justify any whim or fraud upon their part.

There is an intentional confusion between the concept of "society" and the concept of "politics" that serves the fraudulent purposes of such people. "Politics" is a concept of process, of how something is worked out in experience in the specific context of a history and situation. This is what Aristotle wrote about in the POLITICS. He choose the rule of the middle class as the most preferable because, as middle, as central to the purpose of the polis, that class of people had as their primary purpose what was also important to the aristocratic and laboring classes, but NOT necessarily always their primary interest. In other words, the middle class as central had as their selfish interest everyone getting along relatively well in a system of equitable political compromise. Law was based on inherited custom as merely the necessary point one had to start from, not as a rigid ideal one had to adhere to! "Tradition" was not an 'ethical' standard along the lines of divine or metaphysical propositions at all, but merely a statement of "This is where we, all in common, are. This is the situation we are all equally in."

Jon: The most peculiar feature of the Greeks that Burckhardt seems to bring to the fore, is that here there is simply no distinction between 'individualism' and 'conformism.' The whole point about the POLIS is that it provides the 'citizen' with an audience upon which he wholly depends for his 'sense of self.' The MESON, the 'middle' or the 'mean,' isn't an 'ideal,' but is imposed through mockery.

RE: GCM: Goddamn you're good. You just explained the whole theory of Greek comedy. I mean, why make the summation of one's tragic trilogy that states the best man can do is make a gesture of defiance, and then end it all with a mindless sexual romp? Have I just said something that everyone knows is true but is not suppose to be so tasteless as to say it? Women of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. I'll willingly be your sex slave. You can write the second book of Aristotle's POETICS. Unfortunately for you, I'm DEAD serious. I abase myself at your feet. Which means, I'm already there, so why not make a virtue of it?

Burckhardt never really quite seems to manage to get his head around the fact that Aristophanes was ALLOWED to do his shit.

#RE: GCM:# "Allowed"? No comprende? Who "allowed"? I always thought it a bedrock part of the extremely aggressive Hellenic culture that only changed with the massive spiritual depression and loss of confidence that descended on the whole Greek world after Aegospotami? (The superhuman sound of wailing rising up and spreading from Piraeus to Athens when the news came in.)

Jon: Yeah, that WAS a pretty dumb comment. I think loss of confidence hits the nail on the head a lot better.

Heidegger seems to want to completely ignore this aspect of the Greeks, because he maybe sees comedy as 'decadent.' The Greek idea of decadence seems to be PHILOSYCHIA, love of life, which is maybe connected to the idea of being addicted to seriousness. I guess comedy's just a subject close to my heart.

#RE: GCM:# Though you are literally right, I wonder, though, if in the possible future someone might find something, like Plato's students did, "under his pillow."

Jon: Could be. Difficult even to imagine an Aristophanes equivalent here though. This is quite probably something I should have picked up on quite a long time ago. But

GCM: The purpose of law was to work out problems of individual cases, not with regard to ant rigid standard of good and evil, but as to what either benefited or caused the least amount of harm to the polis as a whole. The 'health' of the polis was the only irrevocable and unchangeable standard. Jacob Burckhardt in his wonderful THE GREEKS AND GREEK CIVILIZATION beautifully describes the citizens' sense of responsibility to the polis to whom he owes everything. This responsibility centers around not obedience to any code but to continuous obligation to the defense of the polis till the day he died. In other words, the words "citizen" and "soldier" were synonymous and therefore temporally continuous. Every political situation in the polis, even in a state of peace with its neighbors was approached as going in battle, never ever as obedience to abstract norms. This of course had its good side and its bad side. But the degeneration into the obedience of abstract norms became the historical destruction of the polis. All of this was clearly delineated in Thucydides. This decent unfortunately was latent within the form of the polis itself and could be taken advantage of by the totally ruthless and unscrupulous, i. e., those people who said they adhered to a higher ethical standard than the health of the polis. It was the very fact of living in the polis, the ruling and being ruled, which was valued as a continuous education. In the better times the polis gave her people very strong guidance through the honours she could confer on individuals, until here too abuses set in, and wiser men preferred to forego their claim to crowns, herald's proclamations and so forth . So the polis, with its vitality much more developed than that of the Phoenician city-republic, was a creation unique in the history of the world. It was an expression of the common will of the most extraordinary vigour and capability; indeed the polis succeeded in rising above mere village life thanks only to its deeds, the power it exercised, its passion . Hence too their violence. Externally the polis was in general isolated, despite all treaties and alliances, and was frequently competing with its nearest neighbors for its very life. In time of war, martial laws were in force with all their terrors. Internally, the polis was implacable towards any individual who ceased to be totally absorbed in it . . . The polis was completely inescapable, for any desire to escape entailed the loss of all personal security. The absence of individual freedom went hand in hand with the omnipotence of the State in every context. Religion, the sacral calendar, the myths - all these were nationalized, so that the State was at the same time a church, empowered to try charges of impiety, and against this dual power the individual was helpless . . .In short, there could be no guarantees of life or property that ran counter to the polis and its interests. Although the enslavement of the individual to the State existed under all constitutions, it must have been at its most oppressive under democracy, where the most villainous men, ridden by ambition, identified themselves with the polis and its interests and could therefore interpret in their own way the maxim, "Let the safety of the Republic be the highest law." Thus the polis got the maximum price for the small amount of security it afforded. (Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization, ed. Murray, trans. Stern, St. Martin's Griffin Edition, 1999, pp. 57-58)

This whole description of the polis is relevant to the real existence of the individual ontologically. One is not only bound to the Situation one is born into but one is created by it. But the education of the agora provided individuals the opportunity to make their own way, though always within that context. Much the same goes on in these internet discussions. Here, as in the agora, there are no rules except the education of experience, not abstraction. But the whole structure falls apart when one persons claims and can enforce his personal will as that of a universal ethical standard, the "Of course one knows that racism is wrong irrevocably!" BUT WHY? AND IS IT ALWAYS THE SAME IN EACH SITUATION? AND WHY IS THIS NOT HONESTLY OPEN TO RATIONAL DISCUSSION BUT INSTEAD MADE LIABLE TO 'MORAL' ATTACKS THAT NEED NO EXPLANATION OF THEIR PREMISES? This is simply a dramatic example that catches peoples' attention. It is clearly evident in the universal attitude towards Heidegger's Nazism. "Of course he is evil and wrong. That is clearly evident!" But WHY is HE wrong? What exactly were the premises HE based HIS decision on? Hitler made HIS premises abundantly clear, and they are ridiculously easy to argue against. BUT HEIDEGGER DID NOT, AND HEIDEGGER TO US HERE AND NOW IS THE FAR MORE IMPORTANT PERSON!

Ayn Rand would have been one of the few people to forthrightly respond to such questions without reliance on privileged, private information and standards that "of course" everyone else SHOULD know, and that you are a moral degenerate if you do not. Do you now see HOW ethics can CORRUPT? Words should stand and fall on their own logical consequences and implications, and not be judged by the loudness of the moral authority that states them.

Now, words like "society" and even "God", used as the incomplete identification of a desire's futural purpose, can be used meaningfully. But, obviously as such, they would identify nothing objective whatsoever, and certainty nothing with superior authority to your own will. Ayn Rand does use such words as "god", "soul", "spirit" to indicate a superior ideal to strive toward that is ambiguous and not definite in any sense, but she recognizes that there is a desire within which those words ONLY serve as "formal indicators", to use Martin Heidegger's term. The desires themselves are real and objectively ascertainable, but what they indicate cannot be identified in any rational sense, much less made into discoverable, objective entities. I shall here invoke the rule of "Ockham's Razor", that the simplest and most consistent explanation is most likely to be the logically correct one. Desires obviously exist. The literal existence of what is desired does not necessarily follow at all. Simple and self-consistent.

And it is in the concept of "psychology" that Ockham's Razor needs to be applied with savage ruthlessness. So-called 'human psychology' has become an arcane and convoluted mysticism that can justify any arbitrary and sadistic act of a 'scientist' whatsoever. Human consciousness, in factical actuality the secret context, history, and intents of the private 'heart' I described above, are assumed by these pseudo-scientists to be open for the violating intrusion by anyone with the proper degree as if one was discussing the properties of the elements copper and performing random experiments to determine possible unknown properties, proper procedure in metallurgy, but
- Ockham's Razor - simply sadism in dealing with human beings. A 'psychologist' to be a psychologist MUST assume his observed subject does not fundamentally understand what it is doing EVEN IF the observation is to ascertain so-called normality. And if the subject is 'abnormal', then any crack-pot scheme of morals values the psychologist wishes to apply, within limits - true - but to protect administrators and bureaucrats, never ever the 'subject' (just study those rules: each and every one of them came about through legal threat to psychologist, administrator, or bureaucrat, NEVER because someone rationally judged that such actions were immoral and indecent: the basic ethical principle is - you can do it until you get caught - very noble and high minded). No psychologist, unless a very disreputable one, EVER assumes that the 'patient' or subject has ever worked out a rational course of action WITHIN THEIR PRIVATE SYSTEM OF INTENTS, CONTEXT, AND HISTORY because, of course, the psychologist ALWAYS KNOWS the proper rational course of action, absolutely and no matter what, and obviously the 'patient' or subject is never in accord with that. The psychologist MUST operate on the assumption the soul can be laid bare like a frog being dissected. Only Freud thought about giving the 'patient' the tools for working out their conflicts from within where only the patient can go, but then he betrayed that rationality with the most despicable acts. If "consciousness" is simply the whole of perception united in all its forms, then ever person would logically be fundamentally exactly alike - EXCEPT FOR their specific situation, their parents, their history, their overall context. Ockham's Razor then would slice the tortuous complexity of psychology to the bare bones of philosophical premises every human being MUST have, the ascertainment of reality as rational that can only be shaken by a stranger's violation, and the simple logic necessarily inset in the nature of language itself which NO PERSON can ever escape. Which then makes all human psychology merely choices of evasion or honesty. Simple. Consistent. Now, yes, there are problems with that. But, even so, applying Ockham's Razor cuts down the number of those irresolvable problems drastically, truly leaving then problems that truly seem irresolvable as those associated with different kinds of brain damage. But considering the LITERALLY INFINITE complexity of the material brain, the ambiguity of its parts or for that matter any organ of the body which are in NO WAY ANALOGOUS TO MACHINES WHATSOEVER, and its fascinating but erratic ambidexterity of function, EVEN THOSE PROBLEMS REMAIN PERMANENTLY OPEN JUST AS THEY ARE 'PERMANENTLY' IRRESOLVABLE.

So if we take Ayn Rand's "individualism" out of the realm of whimsical 'moral' 'choice' and put it where it has to be, in the fundamental and inescapable 'category' of human nature per se, then the operations of evasion - a much better term is "Bad Faith" as long as you do not arbitrarily postulate an opposite of "God Faith" - and honesty become evident everywhere, and implicated in every act of ever person ALL THE TIME! It is as in dissecting the term 'sincerity.' If what you say is true and fits the facts or will fit the facts, why does anyone need to claim to be sincere? Is that not automatically then an implicit declaration that, somehow, your private and unknown intent to others is NOT in accord with the facts? EVEN when you yourself think they are? Again Ockham's Razor. Let the words stand or fall in regards to the facts on their own. Which is really what you have to do anyway. So why bring in claims of what your 'true intent' is? Especially, if your 'true intent' is a guarantee of some sort. This is why I said "Bad Faith" without a corresponding "Good Faith" is the better term over evasion. Because you MUST HAVE PREMISES. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY you can know what all the implications and consequences of those premises are. But you must act, and you must choose a specific act. That can only be done, on the best grounds, that you have adjudged that act as the best act for your purposes. But you cannot KNOW, repeat KNOW, what the future consequences will be absolutely as if you had the perfect knowledge of God. So you MUST act on faith as if it were knowledge. And since faith acts as if it were knowledge, then it ALWAYS has to be "Bad Faith." It is a matter of, in reality, "You never know where you're going till you get there." But, then, you would never 'go' unless you had a place in mind. But, once again, desire is no guarantee of the object of desire. I would say, if most people could even begin to be honest about the matter at all, that when they got "there", they found "there" worthless considering the true context of their life. Even Ayn Rand supposedly, toward the end of her life, told someone to the effect,

"Was it worth it?" EVEN IF THE STORY IS APOCRYPHAL, STILL, following the necessary logic of any person's life that cannot know the FULL implications and consequences of their acts, is that not a necessary and rationally definable risk in everybody's and anybody's life? Aristotle defined this Situation perfectly when quoting the folk aphorism, "Count no man happy until he is dead." Pay attention only to the facts actually at hand. Never pay attention to any authority however much others tell you - you must heed it. Be a total anarchist all on your own. Be a consistent and rational sociopath. Like Ayn Rand.

That is both explicit and implicit in her philosophy. It is a matter of establishing fundamental premises and working out their implications and necessary consequences as far as you can. Towards the end of ATLAS SHRUGGED, John Galt rapes Dagny Taggert. Taggert's private feelings in this matter are totally irrelevant. But Taggert asks Galt out in the open, Hasn't he committed an act of force? He replies, "I accept the consequences of my actions." That is the whole of so-called morality right there. Nietzsche also said the same thing in a different way: "Honesty in the ONLY virtue." One's words and acts must stand on their own and accept the consequences. This is reality. "Intent" has nothing to do with reality. "Intent" is only a person's private dreams for the future. In no way can "intent" justify the present. As Hegel said, "What is, is rational." Period. End of story. No excuses allowed.

Ayn Rand has become very strange for me. I have tried to write about her several times, but would get fed up. Objectivists are not objective and are totally irrational with their private property sense of privileged knowledge. She encouraged this crap, I guess, to get her message out to the intellectually unwashed public. She succeeded. The foremost side she puts forward, from ATLAS SHRUGGED on, is purely polemicist most of the time. Thomas Sowell, once a Marxist that turned conservative, once made the extremely perceptive remark that the main thing Lenin inherited from Marx was his personality. I cannot read much of Marx for the same reason I cannot stomach much of Ayn Rand. But when they are both rational, I get a great deal out of both. "The purpose of philosophy is not to understand the world but to change it."

Jon: The thing that interests me in Marx has to do with something Heidegger touches upon in his discussion of what 'mathematical' originally meant for the Greeks: TA MATHEMATA, what we already know in advance. The whole analysis of Capital seems to be based on the idea that it seeks to efface all forms of value except that of price, and seeks to objectify social relations in the same way. Capital becomes 'mathematical' in the loose sense that it allows one to have a system of knowing in advance the value of everything; but in order to achieve this 'security' all other forms of value must be effaced or subjugated to that of Capital.

But in terms of 'social relations' it seems to create something that is the very opposite of the POLIS. (I wrote bloody acres of stuff on this a few years ago. I'll have to see if I can dig some of it out, because I can't remember what, if anything, I was arguing for or against.)

RE: GCM: Did you and Jud have a conference in between times? I, on the other hand, am a solitary drunk, the worst kind, unconvertable to nice ways of being and co-operation, mean and nasty as goddamn hell. My soul shall not be saved nor bequeath any good upon this dreary piece of crap, the earth. I am that thing which defines the word "useless." Yes, even I as the slave boy in Plato's MENO could be fascinated by the utter obviousness of Euclid's ELEMENTS. But why is it obvious THEN and not NOW? And I think you have also hit upon the explanatory principle of my mere feeling that Marx NEVER rejected capitalism, but merely wished to politically modify it. Capitalism: it just IS economics. Neither good nor bad, it is simply how things work together in everything whatsoever. ERGO, if there is to be 'value' than immediate need, it is something superfluous to economics. And yet life is not worth living without that superfluity.

I'm probably a lot more interested in Marx's analysis of capitalism than his proposal for a solution. But what interests me is that where you say Capitalism is economics, I'd add that economics is the deferral of gratification.

#RE: GCM:# Isn't this what I said about existence per se?

To that extent, it's the choice between sacrifice of the instant to an ideal future, or sacrifice of seriousness within instantaneous gratification- the wastage of one's resources. Damn, I guess this brings me back to comedy.

GCM: Either one of them could have said that - with adjustments. Several commentators said Ayn Rand got a great deal from Marx, but they were thinking about the dialectic. I think they are completely wrong. In this regard, she is exactly like Lenin, God help my poor soul. Ayn Rand said, "The basis of all rights is property rights." Most people think this only refers to business.

Sounds to me like she's talking about the 'right' to take oneself seriously. Jon laughs...

But I think she was VERY disturbed by the problem of abortion. The woman has a right to her body and yet the child has a right to life. I think discussions of when 'consciousness arrived' in the fetus would have been total bullshit to her. The things she DID NOT TALK ABOUT are extremely interesting. For instance, the concept of inheritance goes against everything she believed in (Did you know that de Toqueville's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA was fundamentally based on a mistake? He thought all inheritance laws in the US had been abrogated. He had misinterpreted some things New York state did on a VERY limited basis.) And the thought of her becoming a helpless old person, senile, unable to make her own decisions probably terrified the utter hell out of her. It does me. These things you can DEDUCE from what she said, but I do NOT remember her ever talking about them - herself!

THE FOUNTAINHEAD is nice but not really heavyweight. ATLAS SHRUGGED is heavyweight but almost unreadable. But there are some fantastic scenes in it though, as when the moronic President of the United States makes a command decision to go on a coal burning train through an extremely long mountain tunnel designed for engines that put out a relatively few fumes. When she described all the workers jumping off the train before it entered the tunnel, it thoroughly gladdened my heart. The rape scene, though very brief, is EXTREMELY important, and refers to something I intend to add on (I send this letter out because it makes me COMMIT myself to the project). After WE, THE LIVING! (I think you would like that novel very much! It is by far my favourite!) she changed from a wild-eyed and socially rebellious Nietzschean stance of worshipping the drastic and aggressive initiative of criminals toward thinking about how one is going to preserve and help endure what one accomplishes and creates from one's self. That is when she decided that all law should ONLY be concerned on the suppression of the use of force and fraud, and that alone. Tom Paine: "Government is evil, and the less government the better." But Paine's statement embodies a painful compromise: One still has to have some sort of government, however minimal. A similar compromise is also found in Ayn Rand that I need to talk more about. Because essentially what she calls a good "sense of life" is not flowers and butterflies, but the aggressive decisiveness of the person willing to risk themselves and anyone else to achieve their goals, i. e., the "ideal" criminal (an early story is entitled that), which of course cannot really closely fit into the TOTAL rejection of force and fraud, can it? So with painstaking nit-picking, one can actually discover a fascinating Ayn Rand with courageous and truly original thinking. NOTE: WE, THE LIVING! had two editions: Before and after the philosophical reform. I do not think it is easy at all to get a complete edition of the first version anymore, but the are fascinating excerpts in THE EARLY AYN RAND. She then truly loved the wild and crazy image of Nietzsche! Then she rejected that image of him as the real thing for Aristotle, TOTALLY UNAWARE Nietzsche himself was going through the same process of accepting ARISTOTLEAN rationality that was finally resolved obliquely in BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL. Now, Nietzsche was considered by his contemporaries as something of a genius in classical philology. The Greek philosopher he almost always attacks is Plato (except he does relate the wonderful little tale I think from Diogenes Laertius about his followers finding the complete plays of Aristophanes under his pillow after he died). He is EXTREMELY equivocal about Socrates, and says things about Aristotle only in passing. But Walter Kaufmann once wrote an essay comparing Nietzsche's ethical thinking with Aristotle's NICOMACHEAN ETHICS - and Aristotle was then revealed to me as pretty damn wild eyed himself!

What's the Kaufmann essay called?

#RE: GCM:# There is one slight reference in "How Nietzsche Revolutionized Ethics" in section five, page 216, in FROM SHAKESPEARE TO EXISTENTIALISM, but the index has numerous references to Aristotle, and I think there is another volume of essays misplaced somewhere in my room. Will search.

I was just trying to find Nietzsche's comments on Thucidydes. As I remember it, he contrasts Thucidydes' honesty to the 'optimism' of Socrates.

Cheers, Jon.

Selfishness was not just a virtue only to Ayn Rand.

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore

"And the rest is silence."

Yabadabado!

Richard Sansom - Sun Jun 24, 2001

Gary:

What people do comes from behaviour. Behaviour comes from 'within.' Worse still, it comes from a within the 'within.' No person owns and controls their motivations, and therefore actions, completely. There is no clear understanding whatsoever.

Richard:

Gary, I have struggled with this issue of WHO IS REALLY IN CHARGE? For many years and have come to the conclusion that we have the evolved the often nasty habit of forming questions which are not only impossible to answer, but are so rigidly founded on assumptions that we are trapped into certain kinds of answers from the start. Many cling to the homunculus theory, that there actually IS someone or some thing at the wheel, providing things like higher level decision making, moral guidance, common sense, etc. The question should never be asked since it fallaciously answers itself. The dense, complex composition of the PERSON cannot be divided into some hierarchy of managers and workers, thinkers and actors, and so on. I really believe that much of this position stems from the early Greeks and Hebrews who strove to discover the unitary force in the universe and placed the manifesting agent of that force in our RESPONSIBLE, THINKING SELF. Hogwash! If we bifurcate our person into the guy in charge and all the rest, we create the tension that often leads to neurosis, various pathologies and perhaps ultimately, insanity. I think we have to free up the mind to go its way without the interference of theoretical meddling as to how we are composed. While I believe that it should be (theoretically!) possible for us to KNOW OURSELVES, even this concept is riddled with preconceptions that are rather obvious. KNOW----- what is that? OURSELVES ----- Who and what is that? Let the mind dance to whatever tune it chooses. Guidance can be dangerous. I probably sound like Nietzsche, but there it is.

I hope things go well with your illness. If I had the time right now I would give the group my litany of a kidney problem I discovered in 1984 and have dealt with ever since -- off and on. The first doctor I had was an imbecile. The second one, brilliant. Such a variation in doctors -- it is a crapshoot.