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

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 not forcing us to be serious, 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.*

*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.

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

I relate to this as well. I love the offstage joanna newsom, and I adore Joanna Newsom herself. Where did we get that wound? I suppose all of us are beaten into civilized creatures and that men in particular are (most of them) beaten into a performance of masculinity. 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. In another book, Ivan talks about a child being pointlessly abused. I also recall Harold Bloom talking about Iago willing the Moor in him to suffer. Basically the little joanna newsom must be tormented, beaten into a by perhaps. There's also the judge in Blood Meridian, fantasizing about how he'd raise his sons....by throwing them in a cage with wolves. Billy Budd, and so on. Until we finally arrive back at the old cross, and 'we both know it was a girl back in Bethlehem.'

It almost seems too clunky to explicitly break down the consonances, but I think it wonderfully fits with all of this! — csalisbury

I like that quote and love the self-knowledge aspect. Wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove. Different quote, but maybe related. Knowing yourself as a sinner, acknowledging the truth of the your own mother/matter/matrix/cross. Something like that. Hard to find just the right words. Probably never can or will be just the right words, which is maybe part of the lesson. I also think of Schopenhauer differentiating the philosopher and the saint. Articulation is to some degree a separate task, emotion recollected in tranquility perhaps.

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.

Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."

This one makes me think of honest joyful communication, beyond shame and accusation, though perhaps playing at/with them.

Coming at this by way of two synchronicities

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

There's a small market in the town I live in that has this free bookshelf. It's fun to browse because it's relatively small, and the selection is totally random. I sometimes get overwhelmed in book stores because there's so much that seems interesting that you have to instinctively narrow down what you're looking for, in order to carve some sort of signal from the noise. That's still the case with this free book thing, but somehow the filter loosens a bit. In any case one of the books I found there recently is an anthology of diary entries, arranged by day of the year. So part of my morning routine is reading the day's entries. And one of the diarists who pops up is Byron

On January 5th, 1821, he wrote:

"Clock strikes - going out to make love, Somewhat perilous, but not disagreeable. Memorandum - a new screen put up to-day. It is rather antique, but will do with a little repair."

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

I haven't read The Possessed (would like to) but I am currently reading The Dispossessed which has this passage:

"Shevek saw that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they contained a woman, a suppressed, silenced, bestialized woman, a fury in a cage. He had no right to tease them. They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed."


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) - I want to take a look at it, but we'll see what I can muster on a Sunday afternoon. I'm gonna try to stay afloat in it, but might prematurely post depending where I can get to.

To dovetail with what you said above, It makes sense to me that the hatred that the victimizer feels toward the victim is, first, a self-hatred for having themselves been victimized before. Certain abuses are almost like a virus - a transmission - a passing on of possession. There's a cold mechanics at the heart of the community of wounded souls - it's like a series of wires running silently and invisibly through the body of a river.

There are some permutations

(1)
The person abused learns to identify with a part of themselves that will not be abused anymore. Usually: cynical, detached, ironic. The way you talk with friends has a certain tenor - detached, archly amused, separate, mocking. I think the unconscious intent is to put up a sort of buzzy/electric vibe, to secure a psychically protected zone within the broader sea of human awareness. Maybe groups of people wounded in this way, when brought together, amplify the whole thing - if someone slips up, somebody else 'jokingly' jabs at them; in this way a weak spot in the group 'buzz' is identified and conditioned not to arise again. (Have you ever been to an open mic night at a small comedy club? It's really wild - you can see in real time how people are conditioning one another to live in this sort of environment. It's got this roiling, anxious, tense atmosphere) (another thought: one type of joy can still survive here: but an isolate joy - it has to be an irradiating ecstasy with a still humming edge of darkeness. It is joy in an exploding way that maintains a kind of barrier. Maybe The Doors vs The Grateful Dead. Maybe related: Dostoevsky's ecstasy-inducing seizures. It's all Dostoevsky territory, so to speak.)

In 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 - But when you find yourself in this automated habit of thought and speech, talking to an outsider who unexpectedly does buy into it, it cuts through the buzz and opens, at some level, that unprotected field - there's a breach! - and the reflex kicks in : anger and desire to punish. As in The Dispossessed quote - Men's own suppressed, silenced, bestialized inner woman is at the heart of misogyny. The misogynistic act, or jab, has long been-prepared in a self-lacerating space.

(2)
There's another form of misogyny aimed at the Joanna Newsom figure. This isn't someone who unknowingly breaches, as in (1) but who is well aware what the breach is all about and feels a tenderness.

(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) It's funny, I've minimized it before, and haven't thought of it in forever, basically forgot it, but- it was really scary. I would break down, tears, and mom would come to console me - read books in bed, that kind of thing. )

So part of it is: In offering tenderness, she's dissolving the rigidity you had to assume to withstand the onslaught. Some ambivalence: She's both salving your wounds and rendering you more vulnerable to future ones, which will possibly be deeper.

And another part is: Well why is she with this monster in the first place? Because she is (or at least was) drawn, too, to his 'crying.' Which is to say, in blame-logic: It's because people like her exist (that make monsters feel better) that they can continue to hurt others. And that feels like another of those cold, wires of abuse: the tending to the wound somehow wants the wound, and allows it to perpetuate itself.

So the third, and main, part: She's quick to console you now, but will nonetheless allow the abuse to continue.

So another blame-logic: As an adult, you're drawn to 'consolers', but the person willing to console you as an adult is taking the role to you, that your mother took to your father, the very person who left you in need of consolation.

(To collapse all the nesting dolls, quickly: When I think of Cioran, I am reminded of my own calling out, my own highlighting of a wound. But at the same time, I am very skeptical of what my cry is all about. I suspect that Cioran would not lose his wound; I would. Or at least I would lose my fixation on the wound. And I think there is a way to do it. But that comes from letting down the protective 'buzz' - and that's slow, painstaking - it's a slow-flowing feeling of joy. This space is where Taoism is brilliant, but that's another post)


Ok, I had a few more to go (all my above examples involved someone encountering, rather than pursuing, so much is left out), but that stuff is hard to stay afloat in. "Somewhat perilous, but not disagreeable. " I'll take a break, and then try to pivot to some of the lighter parts.

OK, response part 2, the softer round:

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

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. Schop sees beasts eating beasts - suffocating immanance - a claustrophobic room that everyone is locked in. Whitman sees this profusion of joy that wends upward, like a river of incense incorporating all these tributaries, each flows finally into the same joyous yelp.

And at the same time, I see Whitman's 'yelp' as a joyous exultation that builds on a simple foundation. 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)

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

Yeah, very much

(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

I think of Julian Sorel worried about keeping a straight face on his way to the guillotine. How to breed a creature capable of making (and keeping) promises. Interiority is carved out by violence and humiliation.

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

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.

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

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. I think of our conversation right now, which is bold! It would freak some people out in person. They don't have no woman caged up in them, no sir. Or, if they are the new sensitive man, they don't have no tyrant barbarian in them. Our analysis of this situation is aggressive but in the service of naive goodness. It's a dialectical journey. A boy is beaten into the role of a man and eventually becomes daring enough to subvert that role, if not actually relinquishing it.

The skeptic perhaps represses a desire to believe fervently, in a Cause represented perhaps by a man (some weird half-spiritual crush on a youth minister.) There's an ecstasy in debasement, and perhaps that explains the savageness (rude sexuality, superstition) of the woman repressed in a hetero-identified man. The more rational-dominant he imagines himself, the more superstitious-submissive his shadow (which means also those he compulsively misreads in the world.) (I think we agree on this repressed/projected issue.)

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 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. )

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.

I see Whitman's 'yelp' as a joyous exultation that builds on a simple foundation. — csalisbury

You might find it interesting that Richard Maurice Bucke's book, Cosmic Consciousness, published 1901, and an ur-text of the New Age, considers Walt Whitman an example of the genre. He gives an account of his meeting with Whitman here, and says (referring to himself in the third person)

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

Excellent point. And this reminds me of friends who could not give the party a break, who did not do the 'banal' stuff to keep a woman* or a job (who did not grow up, who could therefore not make art for adults, or consider that making art is not all there is in life.) The firewood must be chopped, and often it's not bad to calmly chop some firewood. (I have a public-facing job, so it's more like the low-grade stress that's OK if things are functioning.) A side point, but it's also tiresome to be obsessed with making Art. I love the theme of idleness in Cioran. Yeah we are all sensitive and we love art, but maybe it's tiresome to hear about someone's self-realizing Creativity. I'm thinking of something like 'life itself and conversation is the true art main thing.' Creativity is spontaneously, inescapable, doesn't necessarily need the hype. I make up goofy songs with my wife when we clean the kitchen. I make voices for our pets. I love making her laugh. It's goofy rather than grand but great. Opposed to that is the dark side of artistic vanity, which in my experience has been connected with that infinite drift down ol' miss.

...

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

Maybe it means that the part of us that understands the sayings is the universal part that we all have in common. The flame leaps from candle to candle. The candles are egos-masks-names that come and go. The best in us burns on. In that sense, death is an illusion experienced by our pettier selves. This might connect with disaster and loss as the way to the cross. When we are drunk on success and the pride of life, we're deeply identified with a face and a name, with our mortal part. It's when we fall off our horse and suffer that we soften our hearts and open our eyes to the depths of others, to our connection to them.

FWIW, I don't think in terms of soul-stuff or body-stuff, or some clean separation of the ego and the inner christ, etc. I'm OK with a continuum. I'm OK with imperfect metaphors that get some part of it right. The whole 'I can forgive death because I see myself --the important stuff-- 'reincarnated' in the next generation' speaks to me anyway, though it remains a finite consideration. Fuck, the species itself is doomed in long run! So maybe one forgives death for other reasons, or one is just too tired even to forgive or accuse.

Does it ever come to you that you're looking at yourself when you look at others?

Does it ever come to you that you're looking at yourself when you look at others? — frank

Yes. In good and bad ways.

In good and bad ways. — norm

What are the good and bad ways?

The good way works in both directions. I read lots of old books and sometimes a line captures my reality so well on such an important point that I experience a relief that something has been said. It's as if one big shared soul has been crystallized and manifested, just a little bit more. I often think of philosophy as abstract poetry. It's about getting across a way of being, a mode, a station on the way. (I'm excluding the dreary technical stuff that doesn't interest me much anymore.) So that's me reincarnating them. But I project the process into the future.
(We could also talk about there being only a small set of 'eternal' realizations, the same old human returning to the same old insight in thousands of languages and styles. The wheel of life, reproduction and death, the old mystery.)

I also have a nephew, just learning to talk, and there's the subcultural identification of the core of all of us. Love wraps itself up in a complicated competitive exoskeleton and set of skills. What seems deepest is love, curiosity, courage, the usual fundamental virtues. These shine through details, make the diaphanous details glow with significance.

I would even include the responses to representations of virtue in TV shows, for instance. Our response to virtue is a kind of participation in it. I can only cry sentimental tears in front of screens, because someone did something sweet/noble on Downton Abby.

The bad way is catching yourself blaming or despising someone (maybe an annoying stranger) and remembering how one did that stuff when young or still makes excuses to do that same stuff at times even today. Another item: La Rochefoucauld wrote something like only vanity is offended by vanity. How dare you claim to have the secret or be special! I have it, you silly motherfucker! Very hard to talk about any of this stuff without somehow imposing, displacing, offending. It's all so pugnacious. Wisdom-talk stains the silence, but I'm glad to have read certain books....

La Rochefoucauld wrote something like only vanity is offended by vanity. How dare you claim to have the secret or be special! I have it, you silly motherfucker! — norm

Nice quote.

Nice quote. — Tom Storm

Thanks. He's cranks out all sorts of goodies. He'll put a grim smile on your face. In the most recent translation I've seen (Tancock) the quote is:

If we were without pride, we should not object to pride in others.

But the other translation used 'vanity' in some other phrase.

I don't know which is better.

Another:

Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportion to our fears.

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

Yeah, in terms of parenting - like in terms of how one ought to parent - It's undecidable for me too. Ideally, a dad would do his best to clock what emotional space the kid was, enter that space, and talk to him directly from within it. A tall order, and obviously impossibly to do consistently - I'm not a parent, & understand that it must be very hard- but if you grant this ideal as a hypothetical, at least, then, at it's best, it has he potential to not only avoid the extremes, but kind of dissolve the framework. Realistically, even as an ideal, it could only be a kind of guiding star.

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.

I don't think this is a wishy-washy absence of severity - I think it was quite severe in its own way. If the Reality Principle is a lion your kid's going to have to face down one day, then what he'll need to learn most of all is perception patience, timing, stillness - what you learn on the hunt. 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. What they've really learned is a traumatic [NOT THAT] that shocks and shakes them, and only slowly, as it subsides, leaves them feeling they have to construct a defense against. Not having guidance, they assume stances & attitudes and then compulsively play them out (again, they have a leg up on the coddled kids, who have no defense against any familiarity with violence, and will experience the stances and attitudes to be sources of - rather than weak reactions against - true force. As the anthropology books all seem to say, in communities of hunter, there is a great respect for the lion, and the hunt is very intimate, and measured.)

As an adult, since I had so few of those experiences with my grandfather, and many rougher experiences with my father, I feel like I have to sort of reparent myself out of it. The dostoevskian mold (my father's, for sure) has a hold on part of me, but it seems like something worth slowly, delicately, wriggling out of, like an old skin. (& don't get me wrong, 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) - & I guess I could plausibly be accused of going 3rd order here - but I think maybe I'm saying that as the dostoesvkian orbit oscillates from this to that extreme, its possible - if you plan right, wait patiently - to find the alignment that makes it possible to pounce on, say, Chekhov, let him pounce back, and carry on into that orbit.

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

Definitely. Time-traveling a second, I posted the one you're responding to after nibbling on some chocolate edibles, and I guess I nibbled more than I'd meant - I was very much surfing some inner waves - the, uh, phenomenology of it was these vivid 'pictures' (mix of images, memories, thoughts) coming to mind that were sort of being draped onto the structure of what we were talking about. I think it was something like I have been this and often still am, but somehow it came out a weird mix of pseudo-psychiatric ('the individual who undergoes this, will often go on to do this') and sort of vibe-sketching. 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. It's weird online, there's something a little different, something shifts, but I wouldn't know how to pinpoint that, at least just now.

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

There is definitely a lot of heroism in Whitman, but I have to say I get from him a sort of rolling movement that goes well beyond him - he's just one part of it. 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.) Edit: But I would like to add that we may be describing the same thing in different words, I'm not sure.

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.

Ah, yeah, you know. I believe that Beckett was great to fun to be around. Like, his stuff is funny. & Cioran too, at times, occasionally. I've found that the saddest people are the most fun to be around , at least when they aren't talking solemnly about the sad stuff.

Nice passage - there's something about Whitman's poetry that does seem to tap into something vital in a way you see rarely even in most poetry. He out Wordsworths-Wordsworth, for my money. & It does have that mystical feeling (Blake, in its intensity, but without the brimstone.) The experience the author describes reminds me a lot of some of the accounts you hear regarding experiences with gurus - of course it's impossible to disentangle what was flowing from Whitman, and what the author was tuned to receive, having read him - just as a westerner travelling to India might be primed to read into the guru this or that. but at the same time, it might not matter either way.

As I was saying to norm, I had a pretty profound mystic-like experience when I was about 20 - it does kind of fill you with this desire to talk about, and to explain it to people. At the same time - that's kind of a weird thing because it sort of puts the source 'out there', it was this thing that happened to you, and now you're trying to establish its reality - which is why it's cool that that dude slowly felt it become a part of himself.

The end of that passage feels like it could either be happy or sad, depending on how he felt about it. There is something to be said for not trying to spread the good news. I read the New Testament a couple years ago for the first time (besides scattered readings at mass and sunday school as a kid) and St. Paul is intense - vain, insecure, bombastic, flattering, pressuring, grandiloquent, self-deprecating, inciting rivalry - on and on and on. I empathize, because I have been all these things, often continue to be, and never more so than when I was trying to live my life in witnessing relation to the strange experience I'd had, and convince others of it. But I found it hard to like the guy on like an object-level wavelength.

At a certain point, it feels best to stop persuading others of it, and live its ramifications. What's hard, I think, is that its ramifications are much harder to suss out than the fact of its happening. But there's something maybe compulsive in establishing it, after a while. But that's where faith comes in! You don't have to say that it is, once you can find a way to hold that it is. I think some of the tussles we've had in the past revolve around the spiritual-defining-itself-against-the non-spiritual using the trappings of scientific legitimacy. I still feel that way, I'll admit, but I think the exit from that is just ----release. Imagine Whitman citing books, establishing their pedigree etc, before feeling allowed to then write ecstatic poems. At a point, you just have to jump.

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

Possibly, you have your sister & your sister's kid over, you cook a meal, you put on some music. You play some games with the kid, you talk to your sister about what's going on in her life. Everyone feels relaxed and safe, and free to talk. I feel like these moments - experienced in this way - are surprisingly rare for most people, but when they happen, and really happen, tap back into old memories of stuff as a kid, and establishes this continuity that you can feel is outside death. You inherit the capacity to reach that zone, and then you continue to reach that zone, if you can. But the simplicity of saying it is misleading - its another palette or tone, that feels meaningful and simple when you're in it. As always, it bottoms out in the mystic idea of love as fundamental. What do you do with love?

*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. If they do offer valid counterexamples, you can say: fair point, I'll give a new name for this thing I'm talking about. And if the counterexamples enrich the thing you're talking about, modify it, make you realize it was off etc all the better.

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

Yes, that's exactly it. And this goes back to a certain generous and open spirit that resists temptations to be boringly factually correct about what is not relevant here and now. (This fits in with the theme I harp on elsewhere about ambiguity and context and blind skill.) 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 (I'm OK, You're OK.) They can sense when the conversation is condescending or aggressive. Bit digressive, but I was just posting about pissing contests.

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

Just for clarification, what I was getting it was that we were/are using dragon-skills to defend the princess. I imagine you (and myself) as having sharp claws, by which I mean the psychological insight and intellectual artillery to surgically strike another ego. But instead of playing that game, we use those tools to subvert or civilize that game, showing it as essentially vulnerable. I'm not saying we're the first, but every situation is slightly new.

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

I feel bad about the mask metaphor. I guess I just mean that I don't remember any jokes in Whitman. It's more like he shows a part of his high self. He was probably hilarious too, but left that out.

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

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. I think the whole goal is to bring yourself as well you can to a creative space where transformation can happen - there's something about a certain kind of a correction that is kind of like calling the teacher in when things get too real. That's it's core, anyway, but it gets clothed in faux-authority (i'm the teacher now!). You can feel it happen - people around a campfire, building - someone comes in 'well, but ...' and then a sort of silence that lingers until someone finds a way to start back up, slowly.

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 agree. Or more specifically: what world is that kid being trained for? If he's stuck in the underclass or in some war-torn place, perhaps harshness is actually best But to rise in peacetime capitalism is very much about soft skills. Violence is done to and by poor people (though often directed by the rich.)

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

That sounds great. I wish I had had one adult who would have reasoned with me. Ham On Rye reminds me of my childhood. Or Fante's The Road To Los Angeles. I was half-freak, half-geek, athletic but alienated. My Norton anthology was a bible at 16. Now I think 'wow, team sports are great idea!.' I'd also not spank my kids if I ever had any. I'd reason with them. But then I'm getting old, while my father was just a confused person in his 20s in an unhappy marriage...and his father was far more severe than he was (told him 'I love you' just once in his life, when he was already an old man.)

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

The word 'intellectual' is actually hilarious. What's a better word? I can't deny being proud in some way of what I've got from books, but maybe I'm even more proud of not taking them too seriously. I clung to a certain identity tangled up with those books. I definitely annoyed people in my youth. I wince at how combative and pretentious I've been. Fante's portrait of himself in his first book is just painfully accurate. It's funny in that way that hurts.

Anyone, condescension is indeed the killer. Someone wrote that contempt inspires hate. I think that's true. I like the passing-the-half-pint-around-the-campfire image. 'Where two or three are gathered (in my name) without condescension, I am there.'

As far as the post-fight thing goes, that makes sense. Less illusion. The good stuff is a fragile shared state. Everyone is a sinner. It's about the purity of a moment.

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

Very true. He's a thunderstorm. Some TV shows are like that. It's hyper-dense. I do wonder if the screens will take over because of the dramatic density they offer. Novels take work. TV shows blast you out of everyday life, and the good ones are profound. It's not exactly escapism.