One thing I've been drawn to, reading about Taoism, is the refusal of any one aspect (the mechanical ritual, the normal workings of life, the philosophical frame, the ecstatic experience, etc) to be the 'real' thing - it's all part of it. — csalisbury
Regarding Cioran, Kafka, and Tim & Eric. I think you're right about the castration, the laugh at the void, and all of it. What I want to say is that I think it is, to echo an earlier post, sort of one genre among others. There's this Joanna Newsom song where she sings - plaintively, sweetly, patiently, understandingly - 'honey, where'd you come by that wound?' - and the plaintive, sweet, understanding vibe felt so nice that for a few months, I kept playing that song again and again - the feeling of loving attention gets tied to identifying with your wound. It's a powerful complex of things (in every 'cioran' theres an offstage 'joanna newsom' singing that song. For me it maybe echoes being sick as a kid, and mom taking especial care of me) It is a powerful aspect of life and should be given a spot - refusing loving care is its own temptation - but I also feel that it is not the sovereign genre (or emotion, or stance) I want to take - or I don't want to take any genre (aspect, region, vibe, atmosphere, emotion, frame) as sovereign at all. — csalisbury
It almost seems too clunky to explicitly break down the consonances, but I think it wonderfully fits with all of this! — csalisbury
Warhol did some book that was just 24 hours of his friends and him talking bullshit, uncensored and raw. Maybe they performed a little for the tape-recorder, but I like the aim of sanctifying ordinary life, or making peace with the banal, the lazy, the imperfect. (I wish Byron's journal hadn't been burned. It would have been nasty, sure, but illuminating even in its nastiness.) — norm
What does the little boy learn? A contempt for vulnerability. My dad used the belt, and at some point I could take the whipping without tears and that's about when they stopped. A boy who cries over a little pain deserves the belt in the first place, right? So the sissy soul of the boy goes into hiding or rather projection....and the castrated girls (actually uncastrated one might say) are more fascinating than ever. We end up with a classic system (possibly crumbling) of men insisting on 'sublimated' relationships with one another and saving some secret tender private side for women. (I know this is cis-het biased, and I just can't speak for other situations.)
Returning the The Possessed and Stavrogin's confession: why does he hate the little girl after seducing her? After her confused initial resistance, she is shockingly enthusiastic. I think he is appalled not because of her physical youth but because of her trust, because of how easy it was to deceive her and instill faith in her. He suddenly hates her, because she suddenly loves him, because he was inspired by an imp of perversity or demon of irony in the first place, and certainly not by love. — norm
Yes, we are on the same page, very much. And I like Taoism. If you want to be whole, let yourself be torn. I think you are nailing the tone, which is difficult. It's hard to talk about wisdom and spirituality without lapsing into a certain unpleasant role. It's what Zizek means when he calls wisdom obscene. I totally get that and yet it's obvious that humans want wisdom, which is something like the skill of living well where words are perhaps a secondary part of the skill. IMO, there's a playful attitude that's primary. When disaster is forcing us to be serious indeed, there's a creative ground state that could only play at launching manifestos. I like some of Tristan Tzara's stuff quite a bit, self-eating manifestos that (importantly!) register as joyful and not bitter. There's no definite conceptual content to be communicated. It's the attitude that matters. I project this on Zen, which I don't know well. — norm
Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.
This reminds me of Witt/Heid but maybe it's more like Jung's whatever is unconscious is projected. If Jung is right, then 'unconscious' is misleading. There's what we identity with and as and there's all the repressed/projected stuff that's in front of our face. Othering is self-division. — norm
(I never had the belt, but I was held up against a wall, shouted at with deeply cutting words face-to-face and the rest. (I can almost feel the effort at holding my face fixed against this deluge...which now that I think about is cynicism or irony in essence) — csalisbury
To my mind, both of these quotes (the possessed & the dispossessed) are at the heart of the heart of the darkness (or at least the antechamber to the heart of the heart) - — csalisbury
n any case, you learn to only respect yourself insofar as you can hold to this tone, and to instinctively disrespect the parts of you can't. And part of the jokey routine of the cynic and ironist is to talk to their friends as though they were someone naive or open enough to believe this or that - it's just part of the psychic equilibrium, a staged 'pretending to be' naive and then a cold laugh - — csalisbury
Yes, that's it. The 'everything is one' message can take radically different tones. I find Schopenhauer to be heavy and sodden, while Whitman is envigorating -and it seems to circle around what they make of the central paradox. — csalisbury
I see Whitman's 'yelp' as a joyous exultation that builds on a simple foundation. — csalisbury
The following is the experience of a person well known to the present writer: He called on Walt Whitman and spent an hour at his home in Camden, in the autumn of 1877. He had never seen the poet before, but he had been profoundly reading his works for some years. He said that Walt Whitman only spoke to him about a hundred words altogether, and these quite ordinary and commonplace; that he did not realize anything peculiar while with him, but shortly after leaving a state of mental exaltation set in, which he could only describe by comparing to slight intoxication by champagne, or to falling in love, and this exaltation, he said, lasted at least six weeks in a clearly marked degree, so that, for at least that length of time, he was plainly different from his ordinary self. Neither, he said, did it then or since pass away, though it ceased to be felt as something new and strange, but became a permanent element in his life, a strong and living force (as he described it), making for purity and happiness. I may add that this person's [i.e. the author's] whole life has been changed by that contact—his temper, character, entire spiritual being, outer life, conversation, etc., elevated and purified in an extraordinary degree. He tells me that at first he used often to speak to friends and acquaintances of his feeling for Walt Whitman and the "Leaves," but after a time he found that he could not make himself understood, and that some even thought his mental balance impaired. He gradually learned to keep silence upon the subject, but the feeling did not abate, nor its influence upon his life grow less.
Everything lived is part of it, and at a certain time it can explode gently and expand upward.If it was always and forever that exultant yelp, it wouldn't have all the brilliant firewood he brings in to sustain the flame. I think a lot of american literature wants the yelp to be the ultimate release and flame, self-fueled ( metaphysically, miraculously, non-dependent on firewood) ----raft down the Mississippi, endlessly flowing, with no anchor or destination. A good mystic state - or even period of your life - but it can only be a part among parts (Kerouac comes to mind) — csalisbury
And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."
— Gospel of Thomas
That sounds kind of crazy until you compare it to:
Blessed are the meek
For they shall inherit the earth.
How do you inherit the earth? What do you do with it once you've got it? — frank
Nice quote. — Tom Storm
This issue does seem central, the 'man' and the 'woman.' There's a idea attributed to Freud rightly or wrong that all jokes are about women. 'Only the exaggerations are true.' In another thread about 'rational suicide' I talk about my fantasy of walking into death, alone, fully aware. Why does that seem heroic to me? Why do we like it in Socrates and Christ? Even Joanna Newsom must be a product of violence, at least of some kind of severity of high standards. I also think of Nick in Freaks & Geeks. He's the pot-head narcissist shitty poet who hasn't been shaped by the mocking father. I guess I'm saying that some violence and humiliation is necessary and justified in order to train us into civilized animals (not defending old-fashioned belt whippings, just talking about hurting a kid's feelings sometimes, if they steal, etc.) Interiority depends on repression, of uncouth (often ultimately-selfish 'love' (lust, obsession)) and of course petty aggression. There's something undeciable for me here, though certain extremes I'd obviously reject. If the world is nasty (and my small town was tough for a misfit), then maybe 'dad' should represent the reality principle within limits. — norm
Excellent description. I think that this can morph into a strange brew of confession-and-accusation. I am this, but I am also not this. — norm
I read Whitman (narrator of Leaves) as a heroic creation of Whitman, a beautiful mask, a fresh image of the noble man.) I mean that he grabbed his strongest self and got it on the page. He's a great example of a poet who's as important as a philosopher. (Really the distinction is a joke for spiritual purposes. ) — norm
I find Cioran somewhere in the middle. 'Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.' I recently learned that Cioran and Beckett were friends, that Beckett was a 1-on-1 guy, not a public wit. Cioran makes me believe that he's experienced the highs and lows that my vanity would claim for myself alone. He knows the great vanity of suffering, the enjoyment we can take in despair. Schopenhauer seems to lack this (without ceasing to squirt some accidentally hilarious gloom.) It's his dark cosmic vision of an irrational will at the heart of things, the world as an ultimately senseless machine for making half-sense.
And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."
— Gospel of Thomas
That sounds kind of crazy until you compare it to:
Blessed are the meek
For they shall inherit the earth.
How do you inherit the earth? What do you do with it once you've got it? — frank
*Side-issue, but I can imagine someone saying 'well, that's not Zen.' OK, Cool, I reply. But what matters to me is an attitude/realization that exists now for me, which is maybe (doesn't really matter) what someone else somewhere else called something else. Even a shared American misreading of Zen can be a bridge, or just sharing in the cloud of the concept. Koans and shit! Waking people up to something behind language. Some kind of mutated OLP boredom with mind-matter-blah-blah. Also knowing that what keeps me going might not work at all for someone else and will only work temporarily for me. — norm
Ah! somehow I missed this the first time. I really like this approach, and agree. I find myself using cultural touchstones as shorthand all the time in just this way. I like clarifying it in the way you're describing, like - 'I'm going to introduce this piece to the board, so to speak, as a temporary placeholder for this aspect' Introduced in that way, you can continue the conversation, without having to worry about the conversation degrading into others offering counterexamples for the mere sake of proving you factually wrong. — csalisbury
Long story short - I do often tend to the confessional and accusational, but in this particular case was actually coming from a different primary space, one I don't usually post on here while I'm in it. Though now thisresponse is tending confessional.
You're right though, this conversation does have that same boundary-drawing buzz, in some spots, as the one I was describing. — csalisbury
I'd go so far as to say I don't think it's a mask at all (though of course it isn't the whole man.) — csalisbury
Perhaps you've also noted how easy and natural this is with people who don't think of themselves as intellectuals. I have great conversations with true friends that haven't read any of my favorite books. The whole I'm-smart compulsion can be such an enemy. There's a peer-to-peer attitude that people have antenna for. They can sense when the conversation is condescending or aggresive. — norm
If you 'eat' your kids, the way the lion could (if you only focus on the eating)- well, they might have a leg-up on this or that coddled schoolmate, having at least some familiarity with force and violence - but they still haven't learned any of the softer, quieter, skills that are necessary face to face with the Lion. — csalisbury
I think of my grandfather here. We'd do jigsaw puzzles - quiet and low-key, little verbal communication, he'd point out pieces, we'd organize them etc. But he would also, occasionally, ask me very direct questions or make very direct statements about this or that thing I did. They were value-judgments but they were neither mean or coddling. They were matter-of-fact. It allowed me to reflect on things, without feeling at risk. I think something about the shared project, the stillness, and the directness allowed him to get to my conscience much more effectively, than drilling his way in. — csalisbury
In spades, yeah. Most of my friends aren't 'intellectuals' (i put the scare quotes because they're more interesting than most intellectuals I talk to, just haven't read the books) I guess aggression is ok, if its respectful (that classic thing of men bonding most after getting in a tussle - real, i think!) but condescension is an absolute killer. — csalisbury
I think Dostoevsky is an incredible writer, but I mean that his morality is always at fever-dream extremes with holy men and monsters, saints and whores, resentment and absolution (or it goes 2nd order and its about regular people driven by internalized models of holy men and monsters, saints and whores) — csalisbury
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