“They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield.”
―Philip Freneau
.
And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again?
Archilochus
Okay, we love our imperfections, our shit, our trash. But to cut off entirely from nature and create a completely engineered identity? I think that is too extreme. It's as dangerous as disawowing all technology.
Isn't keeping nature "at bay" so to speak, the "zero level" of all human activity?
Isn't that what lead to the Fall? Our hubris concerning the Nature of Good & Evil?
I remember back in the early seventies, walking up and down the highways with the Boy Scouts collecting bottles and aluminum cans (for recycling $). Now, it seems, every road has a "sponsor" named on a road sign responsible for keeping it clean.
I suppose that I don't know what was worse, seeing all that trash along the side of the road, or having to go pick it all up once a month.
At least, back then, there was a "profit" to be made from the trash.... although we didn't pick up everything (as subsequent generations of Scouts did).
You'll notice the pictures of my good friend Aaron and me in the post below covered in blood, butchering the wild pigs we had just bagged in a tropical canyon on the Island of Kauai. Most people find those pictures "repulsive". We don't. In the Merchant Marine, we both worked in the engine room, running all the machinery that made the ship "habitable". Most people would find the work "degrading", as when time came to clean out the "sh*t" holding tanks or Main Condensers, we were usually the first one's in (like Rick Steve's TV Show "Dirty Jobs"). On a typical day, we worked with dangerous chemicals, petroleum products, asbestos, etc.
I suspect that being "immersed" in the world's imperfections make it easier to love, than being "removed" or "alienated" from them. I know that my wife is a LOT more squeemish about doing these things, (butchering animals, cleaning out dryer vents, etc) than I am.
It's hard to define, but there is something truly lovable about Zizek. It might be, because he is able to maintain a great sense of humor while being truly serious -- a rare quality in human beings. It could also be, because his thinking is so fresh and spontaneous. He hardly ever says the expected thing. Never dull, never a bore.
If he really is a "Communist," he is certainly not one of the doctrinaire variety.
Personally, I'm an avid fan of recycling. If it were up to me we'd find a way to recycle and make good practical use of everything including shît, pîss and vomit. No I'm not kidding.
I remember reading a couple of years ago that someone had invented an automobile that could be powered in processed human excrement. When I wrote about it, everyone gave me the horse laugh.
But it's a CAPITAL idea! Absolutely SPLENDID. Talk about an endless supply of renewable energy. Isn't this the ONE thing of which we have seemingly too much, and can't get rid of fast enough? Think of all that potential to replace icky fossil fuels with icky human waste that's been going to waste for millennia.
Speaking of love -- what could be more loving toward all mankind than to give freely of ourselves effortlessly and inexpensively every day in a way that could be made to work for the material well-being of all? As long as "they" don't try to TAX our BM's by the pound, and REGULATE the process, this revolutionary idea could "bring in the millennium."
And all that garbage the big Teddy Bear of a Man was wading through should be RECLAIMED and REFASHIONED into something useful -- AND profitable.
Imagine our (material) Salvation being the result of creative, intelligent use of things we've traditionally despised the most!
Doctors Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler, who pioneered the science of forensics? Now, they really DID make "progress," despite meeting with the usual rejection and resistance any revolutionary concept is bound to receive, people being what they are. It was a fascinating, compelling story to say the least.
I have to admit I had never heard of these men before? Their existence and their work was all news to me, even though they began their dedicated research and development before the outbreak of World War One.
I enjoyed the program very much. Do you feel it documented a lamentable development in human history? If so, how and why?
Lamentable in the sense that both the corporate product development cycle became so "lethal" and the regulatory control process contributed to the cycle of death (co-opted by corporate interest). And of course, the "hubris" of poisoning products (de-natured alcohol) so as to prevent them from being "abused". Prohibition was LETHAL, and this was soley due to the deliberate regulatory poisoning of legitimate products.
The show points out both the need for and dangers of regulatory excess.
The etymology of the word "man" is humus, as in earth.
Etymology[edit] From Proto-Indo-European *dʰéǵʰōm. Cognates include Sanskrit क्ष (kṣa) and Ancient Greek χθών (khthōn). Related to homō (“human being, man”). Noun[edit] humus f (genitive humī); second declension ground earth, soil
Fj, this is exactly why I like Jung so much. He doesn't delineate good / evil to such an extent.
To know the human soul one has to hang up exact science and put away the scholar’s gown, say farewell to his study and wander with human heart through the world, through the horror of prisons, mad houses and hospitals, through drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling dens, through the salons of elegant society, the stock exchanges, the socialist meetings, the churches, the revivals and ecstacies of the sects, to experience love, hate and passion in every form in one’s body” (CW 7, para 409).
Achilles was the leader of the Myrmidons, men who had "sprung from the earth" much like those Thebans who rose from the dragon's teeth sewn by Cadmus. ;)
And of course, Plato often speaks of the "earth born" from a previous "cycle" of exisence...
from the Jowett summary of Plato's "Statesman"
There was a time when God directed the revolutions of the world, but at the completion of a certain cycle he let go; and the world, by a necessity of its nature, turned back, and went round the other way. For divine things alone are unchangeable; but the earth and heavens, although endowed with many glories, have a body, and are therefore liable to perturbation. In the case of the world, the perturbation is very slight, and amounts only to a reversal of motion. For the lord of moving things is alone self-moved; neither can piety allow that he goes at one time in one direction and at another time in another; or that God has given the universe opposite motions; or that there are two gods, one turning it in one direction, another in another. But the truth is, that there are two cycles of the world, and in one of them it is governed by an immediate Providence, and receives life and immortality, and in the other is let go again, and has a reverse action during infinite ages. This new action is spontaneous, and is due to exquisite perfection of balance, to the vast size of the universe, and to the smallness of the pivot upon which it turns. All changes in the heaven affect the animal world, and this being the greatest of them, is most destructive to men and animals. At the beginning of the cycle before our own very few of them had survived; and on these a mighty change passed. For their life was reversed like the motion of the world, and first of all coming to a stand then quickly returned to youth and beauty. The white locks of the aged became black; the cheeks of the bearded man were restored to their youth and fineness; the young men grew softer and smaller, and, being reduced to the condition of children in mind as well as body, began to vanish away; and the bodies of those who had died by violence, in a few moments underwent a parallel change and disappeared. In that cycle of existence there was no such thing as the procreation of animals from one another, but they were born of the earth, and of this our ancestors, who came into being immediately after the end of the last cycle and at the beginning of this, have preserved the recollection. Such traditions are often now unduly discredited, and yet they may be proved by internal evidence. For observe how consistent the narrative is; as the old returned to youth, so the dead returned to life; the wheel of their existence having been reversed, they rose again from the earth: a few only were reserved by God for another destiny. Such was the origin of the earthborn men.
ps - I suppose then when you are trying to analyze the human psyche, notions of good and evil are equally important.... as we all seem to develop them in a slightly different, culturally determined way.
Such judgements are more likely to impede the process, than lead to a more wholistic understanding of the causes of certain symptoms/sinthomes
15 comments:
Okay, we love our imperfections, our shit, our trash. But to cut off entirely from nature and create a completely engineered identity? I think that is too extreme. It's as dangerous as disawowing all technology.
But I REALLY like what he said about the love object being perfectly imperfect.
Isn't keeping nature "at bay" so to speak, the "zero level" of all human activity?
Isn't that what lead to the Fall? Our hubris concerning the Nature of Good & Evil?
I remember back in the early seventies, walking up and down the highways with the Boy Scouts collecting bottles and aluminum cans (for recycling $). Now, it seems, every road has a "sponsor" named on a road sign responsible for keeping it clean.
I suppose that I don't know what was worse, seeing all that trash along the side of the road, or having to go pick it all up once a month.
At least, back then, there was a "profit" to be made from the trash.... although we didn't pick up everything (as subsequent generations of Scouts did).
You'll notice the pictures of my good friend Aaron and me in the post below covered in blood, butchering the wild pigs we had just bagged in a tropical canyon on the Island of Kauai. Most people find those pictures "repulsive". We don't. In the Merchant Marine, we both worked in the engine room, running all the machinery that made the ship "habitable". Most people would find the work "degrading", as when time came to clean out the "sh*t" holding tanks or Main Condensers, we were usually the first one's in (like Rick Steve's TV Show "Dirty Jobs"). On a typical day, we worked with dangerous chemicals, petroleum products, asbestos, etc.
I suspect that being "immersed" in the world's imperfections make it easier to love, than being "removed" or "alienated" from them. I know that my wife is a LOT more squeemish about doing these things, (butchering animals, cleaning out dryer vents, etc) than I am.
It's hard to define, but there is something truly lovable about Zizek. It might be, because he is able to maintain a great sense of humor while being truly serious -- a rare quality in human beings. It could also be, because his thinking is so fresh and spontaneous. He hardly ever says the expected thing. Never dull, never a bore.
If he really is a "Communist," he is certainly not one of the doctrinaire variety.
Personally, I'm an avid fan of recycling. If it were up to me we'd find a way to recycle and make good practical use of everything including shît, pîss and vomit. No I'm not kidding.
I remember reading a couple of years ago that someone had invented an automobile that could be powered in processed human excrement. When I wrote about it, everyone gave me the horse laugh.
But it's a CAPITAL idea! Absolutely SPLENDID. Talk about an endless supply of renewable energy. Isn't this the ONE thing of which we have seemingly too much, and can't get rid of fast enough? Think of all that potential to replace icky fossil fuels with icky human waste that's been going to waste for millennia.
Speaking of love -- what could be more loving toward all mankind than to give freely of ourselves effortlessly and inexpensively every day in a way that could be made to work for the material well-being of all? As long as "they" don't try to TAX our BM's by the pound, and REGULATE the process, this revolutionary idea could "bring in the millennium."
And all that garbage the big Teddy Bear of a Man was wading through should be RECLAIMED and REFASHIONED into something useful -- AND profitable.
Imagine our (material) Salvation being the result of creative, intelligent use of things we've traditionally despised the most!
WONDERFUL!
I saw The Poisoner's Handbook on PBS yesterday. This was Foucault's "Medical Gaze" run amock!
Talk about the "birth" of the Environmental movement. Previously, I had believed it to be Rachel carson's "Silent Spring". Boy, was I wrong!
Doctors Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler, who pioneered the science of forensics? Now, they really DID make "progress," despite meeting with the usual rejection and resistance any revolutionary concept is bound to receive, people being what they are. It was a fascinating, compelling story to say the least.
I have to admit I had never heard of these men before? Their existence and their work was all news to me, even though they began their dedicated research and development before the outbreak of World War One.
I enjoyed the program very much. Do you feel it documented a lamentable development in human history? If so, how and why?
Foucault and Derrida! Depressing!
Lamentable in the sense that both the corporate product development cycle became so "lethal" and the regulatory control process contributed to the cycle of death (co-opted by corporate interest). And of course, the "hubris" of poisoning products (de-natured alcohol) so as to prevent them from being "abused". Prohibition was LETHAL, and this was soley due to the deliberate regulatory poisoning of legitimate products.
The show points out both the need for and dangers of regulatory excess.
I see, yes. The Law of Unintended Consequences is forever at work. Or what else is it we hear so often, "The Mother of Idiots is always [regnant."
Thought it right away, but kept forgetting to say it:
If we are to love anything at all, we must love the imperfect, because in this vastly imperfect world that's all there is.
:)
Slightly random thought:
The etymology of the word "man" is humus, as in earth.
Etymology[edit]
From Proto-Indo-European *dʰéǵʰōm. Cognates include Sanskrit क्ष (kṣa) and Ancient Greek χθών (khthōn). Related to homō (“human being, man”).
Noun[edit]
humus f (genitive humī); second declension
ground
earth, soil
Fj, this is exactly why I like Jung so much. He doesn't delineate good / evil to such an extent.
To know the human soul one has to hang up exact science and put away the scholar’s gown, say farewell to his study and wander with human heart through the world, through the horror of prisons, mad houses and hospitals, through drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling dens, through the salons of elegant society, the stock exchanges, the socialist meetings, the churches, the revivals and ecstacies of the sects, to experience love, hate and passion in every form in one’s body” (CW 7, para 409).
Achilles was the leader of the Myrmidons, men who had "sprung from the earth" much like those Thebans who rose from the dragon's teeth sewn by Cadmus. ;)
And of course, Plato often speaks of the "earth born" from a previous "cycle" of exisence...
from the Jowett summary of Plato's "Statesman"
There was a time when God directed the revolutions of the world, but at the completion of a certain cycle he let go; and the world, by a necessity of its nature, turned back, and went round the other way. For divine things alone are unchangeable; but the earth and heavens, although endowed with many glories, have a body, and are therefore liable to perturbation. In the case of the world, the perturbation is very slight, and amounts only to a reversal of motion. For the lord of moving things is alone self-moved; neither can piety allow that he goes at one time in one direction and at another time in another; or that God has given the universe opposite motions; or that there are two gods, one turning it in one direction, another in another. But the truth is, that there are two cycles of the world, and in one of them it is governed by an immediate Providence, and receives life and immortality, and in the other is let go again, and has a reverse action during infinite ages. This new action is spontaneous, and is due to exquisite perfection of balance, to the vast size of the universe, and to the smallness of the pivot upon which it turns. All changes in the heaven affect the animal world, and this being the greatest of them, is most destructive to men and animals. At the beginning of the cycle before our own very few of them had survived; and on these a mighty change passed. For their life was reversed like the motion of the world, and first of all coming to a stand then quickly returned to youth and beauty. The white locks of the aged became black; the cheeks of the bearded man were restored to their youth and fineness; the young men grew softer and smaller, and, being reduced to the condition of children in mind as well as body, began to vanish away; and the bodies of those who had died by violence, in a few moments underwent a parallel change and disappeared. In that cycle of existence there was no such thing as the procreation of animals from one another, but they were born of the earth, and of this our ancestors, who came into being immediately after the end of the last cycle and at the beginning of this, have preserved the recollection. Such traditions are often now unduly discredited, and yet they may be proved by internal evidence. For observe how consistent the narrative is; as the old returned to youth, so the dead returned to life; the wheel of their existence having been reversed, they rose again from the earth: a few only were reserved by God for another destiny. Such was the origin of the earthborn men.
ps - I suppose then when you are trying to analyze the human psyche, notions of good and evil are equally important.... as we all seem to develop them in a slightly different, culturally determined way.
Such judgements are more likely to impede the process, than lead to a more wholistic understanding of the causes of certain symptoms/sinthomes
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