GARY. C. MOORE:
Dear anybody who wishes to listen to me,
First, for Jud, or anyone interested – an example of the *free human mind* not controlling its own aims and desires –

When I wrote my first version of the Lecter commentary, I knew the relation of Thomas Harris to Marcus Aurelius was very important. It would seem I would have known something about such a famous philosopher, but I did not. He has always been very unattractive to me, I really do not know why. I never tried to seriously read him until forced to try to understand what Harris found so important in him as to bring him up several times in his novels. I read a few pages, I tried to read about him ----- BORING! Laborsome.

Now, starting the commentary over again, of course the same problem remains thoroughly unresolved. So I tried again. Suddenly he utterly fascinates me and I can hardly lay him down. Partially it has really clicked in my mind that Aurelius is literally and sincerely just talking to himself. So, this then is not actually what literature or philosophy or religion are supposed to be. It is not addressed to anybody whatsoever, and it is only addressed to himself in a terribly Eliminativist way – QUOTES


*It's time to stop rambling. You will no longer reread the notes [hypomnematia] that you have taken, the great deeds of the ancient Greeks and Romans, or the extracts of the works you had been putting aside until your old age [III, 14].

Leave your books alone. Don't let yourself be distracted any longer; you can't allow yourself that anymore [II, 2,2].

Let these thoughts be enough, if they are life principles [dogmata] for you. Throw away your thirst for reading, so that when you die, you will not be grumbling . . . [II, 3, 3].

There are many, many other things even of simply curious interest such as thanking the gods *that I was not brought up longer than I was with my grandfather's second wife . . .* The *notes* were not helpful.

But the point is, when I knew I had a real need to get into Aurelius, why only now after all this time? One can say *Ihe problem has had time to soak into me deeper* but that just avoids the question. Nothing new in this regard has happened to me of note THEREFORE something trivial, much like Dolarhyde's suddenly starting to change into Blake's Red Dragon, haapened to trigger my mind. Reading that may have been it, but it in no discernable way relates to Aurelius that at least I can see. Anyone else?

But it certainly shows absolutely for sure I do not control my insights, my moods, my desires, my understanding or anything else.

And a haapened to trigger my mind. Reading that may have been it, but it in no discernable way relates to Aurelius that at least I can see. Anyone else?

But it certainly shows absolutely for sure I do not control my insights, my moods, my desires, my understanding or anything else.

And a perfect definition of *freedom* for Jud – or at least I think so – fell fortuitously my way when I was trying to readjust my fascination for Flannery O'Connor – QUOTE
*What we drive, drives us.* Pg. xii, A WRECK ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS – Innocence, Guilt, and Conversion in Flannery O'Connor by Brian Able Ragen, Loyola University Press, 1989. Those terms *Innocence, Guilt, and Conversion* do not mean anything at all like their *normal* usage. You would be much closer to O'Connor's meaning if instead you translated them as *Material Reality as You Actually Find It, One Does What One has to Do, and I Find the Truth Out For Myself* - which, I know, is hard to believe coming from a purported Christian – and many Catholic and Protestant Christians violently *purported* she was NOT. She was even accused of obscenity and confusion. And you look at a picture of her and think *That sweet little frail woman could not think evil or harm for anybody! I bet she would even bake cookies for atheists!* But she is a mean motherfucker in her writing and speeches - *The heart of my message to them was that they would all fry in hell if they didn't quit reading trash* or *You may say that the serious reader doesn't have to bother about the tired reader, but he does, because they are all tired. One old lady who wants her heart lifted up wouldn't be bad, but you multiply her two hundred and fifty thousand times and what you get is a bookclub8. And this is all quoted by a priest in Louisville, Kentucky whose introduction sounded too much like a catechism when I first tried to read it years ago. But when I tried further on just now, I found these wonderful quotations. She gives you tons of violence, blood, and gore to a] get your attention, and b] whoever you are, you live in a material – and mortal world. I cannot easily get through the violence, blood, and gore – it is truly gruesome – but in her letters and essays she is a better and more profound humorist than my beloved Mark Twain.

The same challenges challenge everybody. If this were not true, then everybody could have their own truth quite properly, and all would be relativism. I have never liked relativism – even in Nietzsche or William James or Rorty. I have always tried to find hard truth. It mean *hard* in all of its meanings, but primarily the most important is what it means to be flesh and blood and nothing more, not some *answer* that resolves all questions and let's you rest in comfort. Matter is not a comfortable chair or coming to a final resting point in thought but is a puzzle, even a mystery – after you have rid yourself of all comforting metaphysics and theologies – whether one pursues the path of breaking things down to their parts and breaking those parts down to further parts and breaking those parts . . . ad infinitum or how finite objects can exist in the literally observed phenomenon of an *infinite* universe, which simply means we can only know so much and see so far and we know there is more and more and . . . Even if you put fictional boundaries to it, it always evokes a question of what is beyond however unanswerable.

There is nothing terrible or fearsome about this, and certainly nothing requiring *faith*, just as there is nothing terrible or fearsome about the theory of relativity. What happens on a star billions of light years away will effect us either not at all or in such a way we would never think to connect the two. It just raises the question of why the universe is this way, really a very useless consideration true enough, and to do effective thinking we have to set rational boundaries for what we are considering. But still . . . we understand very little of what – not implying ANY singularity or overall concept whatsoever – we are *in*.

Metaphysics and theology no longer deserves any serious regard. They are merely the tactics of liars mutually trying to deceive each other – and to tantalize the ignorant to join them. Unfortunately, the ignorant are truly ignorant, and, as Antonio might say, yearn for an appealing voice of authority, which, even if one assumes that course for the best of reasons, betrays those reasons. The same challenges challenge everybody.

I think Marcus Aurelius is a fine nomination to the Eliminativist Club – Richard, you will be interested in paragraph 8] amongst many other things. And, missed the first time around, is Marcus Aurelius's connection to MATTEO RICCI'S MEMORY PALACE, which then gives two connections into a circle of thinking relating to Doctor Hannibal Lecter. Constructing a memory palace can use known architecture, fictive architecture, or, most roomy of all, known architecture with secret doors leading to fictional buildings. The commentary at http://hannibal.hannotations.com/ may be helpful to newcomers but I see no references to a *memory palace* in a quick perusal of
*hannotatations*. There are references in chapters 74 and 82 and the end acknowledgements mention both Johnathan Spencer's MATTEO RICCI'S MEMORY PALACE and Frances Yates' THE ART OF MEMORY but I know there is much more. MATTEO RICCI'S MEMORY PALACE provides Lecter with just the private rooms in the mind described by Aurelius at  see also below - Also, ibid, 3 - *Men look for retreats for themselves, the country, the seashore, the hills; and you, yourself, too, are peculiarly accustomed to feel the same want. Yet all of this is very unlike a philosopher, when you may at any hour you please retreat into yourself. For nowhere does a man retreat into more quiet or more privacy than into his own mind, especially one who has within such things that he has only to look into, and become at once in perfect ease . . .* pg. 23 These private interior rooms, which Harris says Lecter and Starling are learning to share somehow – QUOTE---chap.
103, pg. 483
*Clarice Starling's memory palace is building as well. It shares some rooms with Dr. Lecter's own memory palace – he has discovered her in there several times – but her own palace grows on its own. It is full of new things. She can visit her father there. Hannah is at pasture there. Jack Crawford is there when she chooses to see him bent over his desk – after Crawford was home for a month from the hospital, the chest pains came again in the night. Instead of calling for an ambulance and going through it all again, he chose simply to roll over to the solace of his late wife's side of the bed.*----are a refuge not only as memory, but a telling of stories as they should have been told. Not her father as a belt buckle and clutter of bones as the reality Lecter brought her from Humble, Texas, but as she best remembered him -Hannah not in the glue factory, but grazing in the fields - Crawford not dying alone, ignored in a legal back room, but with the memory of his wife. The realities are not erased, just put in their place. They are pictures of a person's world as it SHOULD be or should have been, where dirty people like Krendler cannot get their hands on them. Wish fulfillment? Fantasy land? It provides *motivation* such as Richard's urges. Carlo Deogracias – WHAT A NAME FOR SUCH A SUPER VILLAIN! – is trying to ram a cattle prod into Lecter's eye. The brother's are screaming *Blind him and there's no money!* QUOTE------chap. 82, pg. 404- suppose to be in italics -
*Dr. Lecter adjusted the shades in his memory palace to relieve the terrible glare. Ahhhhh. He leaned his face against the cool marble flank of Venus* Dr. Lecter turned his face full to the camera and said clearly: 'I'm not taking the chocolate, Mason.'*------ And this recalls Marcus Aurelius from below – Haines reference – Book IV, 7 – *Get rid of the judgment; you are rid of the 'I am hurt'; get rid of the 'I am hurt', you are rid of the hurt itself.* pg. 25 Haines translates, *Efface the opinion, I am harmed, and at once the feeling of being harmed disappears; efface the feeling, ands the harm disappears at once.* To relieve the pain of the cattle prod, Lecter simply leaves THAT room in his mind and goes into another with a statue of Venus in it. This is another way for the memory palace to work. Also, to possibly wet the appetite, I mention Hannibal Lecter's great love of Stephen Hawking's representation of time as demonstrated at chapters 73 and 103 and probably elsewhere. See file uploaded to Analytical-Indicant Theory at yahoo.com.


QUOTE-----chap. 73, pg. 362-3 –
*Hawking twisted in his wheelchair, speaks in his computer generated voice: [italics] 'Where does the difference between the past and the future come from? The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future. Yet there is a big difference between the past and the future in ordinary life. 'You may see a cup of tea fall off a table and break into pieces on the floor. But you will never see the cup gather itself back together and jump back on the table.' The film, run backward, shows the cup reassembling itself on the table. Hawking continues: 'The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.' Dr. Lecter admired Hawking's work very much and followed it as closely as he could in the mathematical journals. He knew that Hawking had once believed the universe would stop expanding and would shrink again, and entropy might reverse itself. Later Hawking said he was mistaken' Lecter was quite capable in the area of higher mathematics, but Stephen Hawking is on another plane entirely from the rest of us. For years Lecter had teased the problem, wanting very much for Hawking to be right the first time, for the expanding universe to stop, for entropy to mend itself [!!!], for Mischa, eaten, to be whole again. Time. Dr. Lecter stopped his video tape and turned to the news.*
Recall RED DRAGON, page ---186 [239]

“Lecter was reading an actuarial chart at his table and taking notes.”

GARY. C. MOORE:
An actuarial chart calculates statistical risks. Why is he doing this? What risk is he calculating? His death? Whose death? In what sense? Why?

RICHARD SANSOM:
Gary, I hope I have never implied that the evolution of species is a teleological process.

GARY. C. MOORE:
No, I did not actually. The grammer of English and probably all Indo-Aryan related languages inherently supports teleological language. It is highly insinuating and subversive of thought because in simply trying to express one self clearly, to the point, and without long peregrinations of clumsy analysis and explication, one trips oneself up simply trying to state what seems *evident* in order to get to the next point. For instance, my use of *mind* is just such. It is a short word for the mental faculties of the brain. But then there is *mental* and the problem has not gone away. To simply jump to the *brain* as a piece of meat – which it necessarily is and MUST remain no matter how it is sublimated supposedly into something more intellectually flexible and useful – just does not work in and by itself. *Holistic human*, though it works for me because I am familiar with its context in Merleau-Ponty and Sartre which operates directly using the physical body directly with ways of abstract thought, is too broad, initially, to believe other people really comprehend the mysterious unified complexity of a being whose sensuality is point by point concretely connected to every abstract line of thought. How to speak this way sensibly, without continually tripping oneself up with clumsiness and contradictions that readers know the writer does not intend, does not change the fact the writer said it and set the whole line of thought contrawise to their KNOWN intent. And, though everyone's reading Merleau-Ponty's PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION would help establish a rational context for a better kind of speech about the mind/brain, I do not see this ever happening and I cannot see any other pragmatic, effective method to accomplish the aim of coherent writing on this subject.

One of the points related to language that evaluates the human above the cockroach where it is merely a matter of humanoid prejudice – and how can we avoid this, being human? – I am trying to work out with such seemingly incongruous writers as Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Harris. The point is all too obvious and I have never seen it seriously discussed per se, in and of itself, purely and directly. And that question is, What is *IMPORTANCE*? Not what is *important*, as if *importance* were always already understood – which in 99% of all people it is so, but the experience of the 1% of all people totally undermines the assumptions and presuppositions of everything the 99% *believe* - but directly, head on, Does *importance* really have ANY meaning and can it even exist in the face of death as Marcus Aurelius so often face?

Teleological language in and of itself, in its very texture, gives IMPORTANCE to the evolutionary process, that is, it INSISTS evolution has a point. It simply does not. Materialistically it cannot. The judgment of the abilities of different species is PURELY a matter of point of view. And that some of them become extinct has no MATERIALISTIC implication they are ANY sort of failure, in and of themselves, in so far as extinction is ALWAYS a matter of a CONTEXTUAL WHOLE in which the destroyed species is only a small part of the story, and implies absolutely no real *deficiency* upon their part.

Therefore I do not think any notions of *advancement* or *improvement* are valid in ANY situation whatsoever EVEN THOUGH I may contradict myself on this in my very next sentence!!!!!!!!!!!! Nothing is important in and of itself. Things just happen. End of hi-story.

SO – is there any possible context where *importance* is a valid concept, EVEN A FICTIVE ONE, since there is definitely a question of its referring to any objective reality?
*Yes! Of course! My own life!* Exactly. And that is where it stays, undermining all notions of superior values for society, morality, religion, all the *superior* values we are suppose to live FOR . . . when in fact we have turned our own backs on the ONLY thing that gives them ANY value at all whatsoever, that is, *MY LIFE*. If I am dead, morality has no value. Simple, direct, to the point, irrefutable. Why, then, do we teleologically talk all the time as if that fact makes no fundamental difference?

O'Connor and Harris are concern with what is important when all the useless dross others have imposed on us is cleared away from *MY* life. The progressive evolution of species, in such a context, becomes a silly, useless idea. It is a one at a time, one of a kind, absolutely unique question for you or me – but without an *and*.

AND YET WE IGNORE IT CONSTANTLY BECAUSE IT MAKES US FUNDAMENTALLY UNEASY! It puts in question the value of everything and anything we do from the simplest, most direct gesture of kindness to great accomplishments in medical research. It all comes crashing down in the face of the question, Does *importance*, with all its subtle, subversive, insinuative UNCONNECTED implications, simply exist at all as any sort of material, observable object?

And yet in the next moment I wil; l go on discussing your letter as if I have said nothing of any . . . *importance*.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Gary, you have brilliantly stated what I also believe in!. But you have omitted what I consider a very valuable aspect of this *misguided* use of language/concepts: The way the vast majority of humans [especially scientists] see the world and their place in it is from an hierarchical perspective; I believe it to be a part of the way we think – it can even be likened to the syllogism as a condition of the physical world – i. e. containment – as discussed at length by Lakoff and Johnson in Philosophy in the Flesh. As a trivial but telling example, when digging in my garden I invariably cut an earthworm in two; it bothers me a little bit. If I accidentally smash an insect [usually a Jeruselum beetle] , it bothers me more; if I happen to slice through a garter snake with my weed trimmer, it bothers me a great deal – and so on. Such a hierarchy of empathy is seemingly built into me and my perception of the world – or rather my personal heiarchy of empathy.. Of course I know, at the level of these discussions, that are clinically and critically raised above my emotions, that in no way am I superior to the worm or the beetle, but I will kill a black widow instantly with no remorse or empathy. We are built this way. Those of us who kill without remorse are built that way. Today I heard a young man from Israel who left the military in protest to the clearly inhuman treatment of the Palestinians by the Israel military. Upon asking THE big shot general why this was the position taken, the general easily spouted out his version of why the Jews are superior creatures to the Palestinians. That was his perspective – as disgusting as it is -the way he sees things. Human circles of empathy vary.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Contained in the DNA of the egg is the blueprint for future life, right down to the shape of the hen's beak and the color of her plumage.

GARY. C. MOORE:
A *blueprint* necessarily implies a *design*, a *design* necessarily implies a *designer*. This has been the basic watchmaker argument for the existence of God since time immemorial. It cannot be a 8blueprint* but rather the accidental fitting of atoms and molecules according to the only material possibilities of their fitting together purely mechanically and BLINDLY, any
*success* only occurring over great periods of time.

RICHARD SANSOM:
I disagree that a blueprint *necessarily* implies a *design.* I consider DNA a kind of blueprint that was not designed but happened over 3.5 billion years. It is unfortunate that *design* carries the implication of *designer* for some, but there you have it….

GARY. C. MOORE:
But would not the implications be richer and more interesting if you viewed it as an object that just happened to be like the rock you could pick up in your back yard? How did such an object come to be when there is nothing really inevitable in its coming to be? I wish I could remember my geological terms but compacted hard rocks like granite are made inevitable from sedimentary rocks like sandstone because of the inevitable pilling on of great weight by over geological layers. But it is not even obvious that anything that might be considered *living* should necessarily have anything like what we know as DNA. Replication of inherited traitsmay be through a wholly different process altogether. It is imaginable, therefore it is possible. The replicating possibilities of DNA as we know it is purely an accident according to design, though it is materialistically determined in fact. But where we can easily understand the formation of rock like granite on any planet possessing soil whatsoever, and even consider it
*knowledge* that it has happened, DNA is another kettle of fish altogether. Not only is it not desined, it has not design, and it does not design anything else. Simply chemical reactiuons happen. But DNA is of such a RARE complexity that we marvel that it has happened at all on earth and wonder more each day why it is so rare in the rest of the Universe. Others would say this is a proof of God's existence. I say it is simply the facts of the matter and we may never know the answer. They put forward a positive assertion, I put forward a limp, formless uninteresting, perfectly blaah resolution which, despite its unattractive qualities, I think is the correct approach.

RICHARD SANSOM:


Gary, methinks you go too far here. One can believe that the complexity of DNA is only and merely a human invention, based on observation, just as one can see sedimentary rock as the apparent result of compaction and heart over very long periods of time, and, if they choose, see no fundamental difference in these two phenomena. The strands of DNA are all only organic and inorganic chemicals bound together, not for a purpose and not through intentional design, but as the result of a few billion years of chemical/biological interactions and reactions. But since we have invented the concept of complexity, we surely have the right to deem one phenomenon more or less complex than another one. This does not confer the status of superiority on anything, but it does provide insights and mechanisms for deeper investigations that provide us with better health, etc. If it does not do that, it is a waste of time.

RICHARD SANSOM:
I agree with you, except in the following sense: we do dream and have imaginations and what results from those [biological] events however tightly one is bound up in the assumed blindness of *nature* one can realistically ask if there might not be a profound difference in what humans do versus what termites do. Termites can, given the time, bring down a house; they can never build one. One might imagine that one yard stick of *difference* lies in what an organism can do to its environment and its species – for better or worse. In whatever light one sees the difference, or lack of it, that position is bound to be a metaphysical one

GARY. C. MOORE:
I do not think so, but then, other than personally, I see no difference whatsoever between me and a termite.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Then you see no difference between any two things – a position that is too clinically philosophical for me to embrace. It is a nihilistic position that I cannot accept.– [And actually, with all respect, I do not believe you. ] In your opinion what does the word *difference* mean? When you say *no difference whatever* is not that a bit over the edge?

RICHARD SANSOM:
It is now a proven fact that there IS a gene that has a temporal regulatory function – it lies quite near the *white eye* gene on the fruit fly [drosophila] chromosome. [This is all discussed in the book I mentioned – you must read it!]

GARY. C. MOORE:
OK, you have got me interested. Because I am lazy, could you repeat the author and title?

RICHARD SANSOM:

The book is TIME, LOVE, MEMORY – A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior, by Jonathan Weiner -- Knopf. It is one of the most important books I have ever read!

RICHARD SANSOM: and her propensity for various kinds of behavior - but most of all her ability to make another egg.

GARY. C. MOORE: But exactly the same can be said for the egg's point of view.

RICHARD SANSOM: I disagree here. The egg is a *passive* element; the chicken is an *active* one.

GARY. C. MOORE: It is passive only if it is sterile, *dead*. If vibrate, it is extremely ACTIVE.

RICHARD SANSOM:

In what way is an egg active in response to its environment? It has a nice calcium shell and a nice warm mother hen to deal with the environment. In the extreme, and following your position, even in death it is not passive, since it will undergo chemical reactions. Next you will be telling us that there is no difference between the hen and her egg.

RICHARD SANSOM: The egg does not deal with the environment in any reactive manner, but simply waits for gestation or cessation of life.

GARY. C. MOORE: Its environment is within the egg as ours is within the world.

RICHARD SANSOM:

I think this is a stretch. From the contents of this and some previous posts, you have exhibited a disbelief in *differences.* For me, differences and causality [even though they may be simply human inventions, are the sine qua non of all science..

RICHARD SANSOM: When I referred to *survival* this is what I was talking about; life urges life, endlessly, and all that any organism does is geared toward that urging.

GARY. C. MOORE: Marcus Aurelius takes it very seriously with all its moral implications that when we die we dissolve into the elements. Therefore *importance* of self-identity is utterly meaningless and only the elements are – important? [Teleology again] – to Nature. We are not.

RICHARD SANSOM:

If what the elements build are not important, how can the elements themselves be important? In that sense, nothing is important and, relating to the above, nothing is different. Why not just eat tofu at every meal? All matter is the same!

GARY. C. MOORE: Not *urges* in the sense of *aims*, I understand you mean that, but some kind of *desire* - HOW TO DEFINE SUCH?????? - but what you say is confirmed by what the scientists have found as an unaimed*? Certainly undersigned
*motivation* everpresent in humanlike frontal lobes and, in other animals, the same thing somewhere else – WHICH OF COURSE IMPLIES A CUMULATIVE EFFECT AS THE BRAIN GROWS LARGER AND MORE COMPLEX!!!!! I had never thought of this before. The *motivations* can, of course, be in conflict, EVEN necessarily so. But this is fascinating!

RICHARD SANSOM: Adequate verbs for this *process* are hard to come by and avoid transcendental ramifications. But when one sees cell division in a Petri dish and can think without the ogre of Γ©lan vital, they witness only what life is doing – not what it *wants* to do.

GARY. C. MOORE: ADDENTUM TO DOUBLE HEADED CALF ------- One must regard how *benevolent* genetic mistakes come about using Marcus Aurelius' methodological approach. What are we familiar with in our own experience? Negative genetic mistakes. But *negative* only to our desires and intents. Nature always has a reason for what it does. Having a good reason therefore means whatever happens in nature is good. The two headed calf is good because it happened from its casual nature.

RICHARD SANSOM: I wonder about nature having *reason* for what it does. Human hindsight always provides a reason, whereas I would claim that nature proceeds, life emerges without reasons, but via the current biological state of its composition and its environment. I think it dangerous to assign *good* or *bad* to the products of nature; even *successful* is risky.

GARY. C. MOORE: I agree with your point from your point of view, but Aurelius' point of view is different – and very threatening to our ordinary way of life. Good is simply what happens, what is the fact. Personally, he admits that does not work for him personally, but that is his point – IMPORTANCE IS JUST PERSONAL! The extermination of the Jews is just something that happened. It is rather hard to swallow, but he is an Emperor of Rome and knows he has that very power in his hands. And his reason NOT to do anything of the like he knows is merely personal inclination, whereas Caligula wished the world had one neck so he could cut it off. In the purely NATURAL world one's personal inclination is not worth noticing. Once again, teleology intrudes, a purpose is given unthinkingly to NATURE. But we know nature has no intent. We are just a trivial part of nature. We just ARE like a rock in your back yard IS. End of hi-story.

Must go. I am getting VERY stupid.

RICHARD SANSOM:

Perhaps we should copulate with rocks, or find some poetry written by a crab! I cannot believe that you believe that we are just like a rock – except in the most extreme version of what I call nihilistic, clinical philosophy.