Category Archives: Philosophy

The Absolute Necessity of Rhetoric

Leave a reply

In President Obama’s recent trip to Afghanistan he told the troops that he would not send troops anywhere that was not “absolutely necessary” (http://frontpagemag.com/2009/10/27/mission-abandoned-%e2%80%93-by-alan-w-dowd/).  When President Bush started the war in Afghanistan he justified it as a crusade, vengeance for 911, a Texas style hanging for Al-Qaida and killing the ones responsible for 911.  I never heard him state that he was going to bring the terrorists responsible for 911 to justice.  He may have made that statement but most of the statements were along the line previously described.  Using these rhetorical ploys Bush was able to get the support he needed to start the war in Afghanistan.  Hatred is always a strong emotion while justice is emotionally a bit puny.  Bush started the war against Afghanistan based on rhetoric about getting Al-Qaida.  To date Al-Qaida is still around and our rhetoric about our enemy Al-Qaida is also used freely about the Taliban.  While no one would suggest that the Taliban is a great group of guys, they were not the stated reason why we went to war in Afghanistan.  Fanning the flames of 911, Bush was able to start a war.  His rhetoric became President Obama’s “absolute necessity”. 

I have previously stated that as leader of the United States, President Bush should have stated that we would bring Al-Qaida to justice.  Preferably, this would be done through the United Nations, the World Court and pressure from the World Monetary Fund (in Afghanistan and Pakistan).  President Bush’s rhetoric should have made justice the guiding principle.  We would have kept the sympathies of the world and made justice the value that everyone, no matter what their political persuasion, sympathetic to the universality of justice.  Vengeance and hatred on the other hand are regionally specific.  Those that hate and want vengeance are driven by their own internal necessity not by any universal appeal, by an ideal that everyone could think is worthwhile.  As I have also mentioned in another paper, barring the earnest attempt to get justice in a region of the world where justice is highly lacking, the alternative would be US Special Forces, the CIA, mercenaries, and covert bribes and pressure.  Don’t think it can’t be done; we had a whole cold war based in Afghanistan against the Russians using these techniques many years ago.  However, the political rhetoric should always be concentrated on universal values not regional and circumstantial emotions.

When our hatred drives our rhetoric the rhetoric can take on a life of its own in popular culture.  The switch from admirable, universal ideals to self-aggrandizing, raw and base instincts that become yet another mindless iteration of the past; it becomes its own necessity.  The necessity driven by hatred always ends badly.  The necessity driven by high ideals, historically always ends well.  Examples of the latter include the founding fathers, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus, etc.  Unfortunately, the earlier is typically the blunder of humankind.

Since rhetoric based in base instinct got us into Afghanistan, I think President Obama had no other choice but to use rhetoric to get us out of Afghanistan.  It has been done before (Vietnam comes to mind) – we declare victory for x, y, z reasons and get the hell out.  We pursue the cause of bringing Al-Qaida to justice using the previously discussed strategies.  As it is, now we are looking at an endless war that has the tendency to expand as these situations typically do.

Another example of rhetoric gone badly is the recent militant rhetoric used by the Republican Party against the Democrats.  The Republican leaders play on the strong emotions of hatred and violence with inflammatory rhetoric and “wash their hands” of it when their words start taking a life of its own in popular behavior.  If you want to understand how Hitler was able to do what he did you can see the beginnings of it in these kinds of rhetorical ploys. 

While personally, I have never opposed capital punishment in cases where there is “no shadow of doubt” about the defendant’s guilt, I have opposed it based on the rhetorical dynamic described above.  When the necessity of rhetoric is allowed to run rampant Texas style executions become more and more “normal” and statistics about wrongful deaths and ethnic inequalities of the death penalty become more and more prevalent.

President Obama should have held to his higher ideals and not adopted the rhetorical necessity handed to him by the Bush administration. 

On a more philosophical level, the dynamic of rhetorical necessity tells us something about human’s unique way of being-in-the-world.  Our narratives of history become our cannon.  The ill-conceived actions that typically follow continue to create generations of veterans and Republican voters that sanctify our motivations and our histories.  The perceived alternative would be to exist in meaninglessness.  God, the self-evident and the a priori surround us as witnesses to our ultimate worthiness and meaning.  In the margins of our hubris plays the alter-ego, the lie of truth and the future seeds of our own undoing.

What is Not

Leave a reply

Rene Descartes wrote of the unique idea of infinity.  Infinity is a word that we know and use.  Even more, today we would say that calculus is the math of infinities.  Yet, according to Descartes, infinity is a notion that overflows itself.  Of necessity, it is a word that must be what it isn’t.  A word or an idea is finite.  Yet, the idea of infinity is a placeholder for what it cannot be.  It is not like the ostensive definition of a cat.  The word cat points directly to a cat.  The word “infinity” does not point directly to any such “thing” as an object.  However, it is a word that gets its meaning by negating itself not for some mystical reason but for something as real as the mathematics of calculus.

The Greeks were very taken by the geometry of the triangle.  Even more, Plato spoke of the forms, the ideal perfection, the real of everything we see.  Everything we see is murky and shadowy.  We know from Einstein that there is no such thing as a perfect triangle.  Space-time is warped and curved by mass so, while we might imagine a straight line, a straight line does not exist.  The real strait line only exists in concept form.  The real triangle is an ideal form but has never existed.  Yet, we use the idea practically all the time.  It is a concrete ideal or as Hegel might phrase it a concrete universal.

While language is a system of signs, signs are not all made the same.  Some signs have a real, ostensive object like a cat.  Others can only point to something concrete by dismantling themselves, by holding the “not” more closely they point to ideals that never “are” in existence and yet “are” as real, concrete and practical as a cat.  What should be observed is that they are what they are by being what they are not.

Perhaps this could be said of all words and ideas to some degree.  They designate over and against to function.  They instantly define by negating what they are not.  Some words and ideas can function as ambiguities, metaphors, poetry, art, etc.  Similar to infinity they can simultaneously hold various systems of thought, ideas or get reduced to a myriad of words.  Take this poem I wrote a while ago:

Oh wistful night of a million suns.
Spawn dancing shadows from nameless orbs.
Through stellar darkness light years are thrown.
Perchance dark grace our sun or moon
And primal night fire my heart drum.

Oh wistful thoughts of a million souls
Spawn dancing shadows from nameless histories.
Through unconscious darkness years are thrown.
Perchance dark grace our I or other.
And primal projections fire my loves

This poem speaks of a natural phenomenon, an eclipse.  Yet, it also holds with it a primal humanity, an archaic origin.  These are not systems of signs that would normally go together but in the metaphor of poetry that can actually elucidate or bring to presence a “reality” of who we are. 

Words can also be mistakes. We can say that a square is a circle or that A is not A but it is simply wrong to insist on such a thing.  In a more sophisticated fashion we can all freely develop ideals or ideologies in politics, religion, morality, etc. that are simply based on wrong facts.  We can put together ways of thinking that do not belong together.  As in evolution, we can make mistakes that can take on a life of their own.  When Einstein first came out with what we now call relativity more physicists opposed him than agreed with him.  Many thought that the universe Einstein envisioned was a step back to the hocus pocus of the dark ages, a step away from the concreteness of Newton.  Over many decades the doubters became less and the believers increased.  Einstein had a set of facts that he observed keenly that embodied many wrong perceptions (see “Einstein’s Mistakes”) but held together enough of unexplained phenomena that the Newtonian physics could not hold together to provide a more plausible showing of our universe.  The point here is that while language allows us to put together systems of signs that do not go together, that are wrong, not based on “facts”, they can also hold enough of a truth, a cohesion that does hold together to make them plausible.  This does not mean that a square will ever be a circle but in curved space-time it is possible to pick a coordinate system in which an object could be described as a square or a circle.  A cylinder can be sliced as either.  Yet, the idealized concept of a square and a circle will always be fundamentally at odds with each other.  To insist that A is not A is opposite to a tautology, an absolute contradiction.  The idea holds together concepts that are absolutely incompatible.  In its “wrongness” the idea comes to be.  Its “wrongness” is always contingent.  It can only be wrong by proclaiming it, by naming it and what it necessarily entails.  It abstractly “nots” itself while at the same time asserts itself.

In every thought and concept there is a “not”.  The “not” has to be for the word, thought or idea to be.  Any idea must be what it is by announcing what it is not, by suggesting it is this and not that.  This may seem trivial but for Hegel the “not” was always an absolutely necessary operative in every concrete word, concept, idea, reality, etc. – the “not” is always necessarily and unequivocally implied by existence.  Post modern deconstruction might think this as the trace of the knot that always must undo itself, a sort of tangential contingency that is always taken up into our surest notions, the dark side of presence, the banal “not” of existence.  It allows and creates existence.  It is always the “other” that cannot be totalized or brought into a cohesive presence.  It must eternally be relegated to the nether region.  For the light to be, the dark must always be a close ally.  Our finitude and mortality can only be in lieu of infinitude and immortality.  Wrong must be for right to be.   This is a step into Hegel.

Knowing this play of signs destabilizes our absolutes, our forms.  This awareness curves in on itself into an absolute singularity, nonsense, a hermeneutical circle.  It frees us of logic while simultaneously necessitating logic.  Normally, only the ravings of a madman would be attributed to such rants.  Perhaps it is madness but it is a madness that must be for the sane to be.  Foucault spoke if this in “Madness and Civilization”.  There is a irrationality that necessarily plays at the roots of rationality.  It can be “deduced” and has been by philosophers and scientists.  Physicists have known about singularities for centuries.  Yet, a black hole is a singularity.  When they recognize a singularity it causes them to reflect back on their theory.  The mind necessarily turns back on itself and doubts itself, its current understanding of physics in this case.  Curved space-time was such a demonic notion for a classical Newtonian.  How can mass get larger with speed?  How can a ruler get shorter with speed?  How can time slow down with speed?  Did you know that one of the first ways relativity was proved was by synchronizing two clocks, putting one in a plane and flying it around the world several times and comparing the results when the clocks were brought back together?  Sure enough, they reported different times.  Can you image being one of the folks carrying a clock around in a airplane to see if speed changed it?  No wonder physicists thought Einstein was insane.  Need I discuss string theory?  Have you heard of the m-verse, the multi-universe?  All particles we observe in our universe are really multi-dimensional strings coming in and out of existence or our brane (membrane).  Just as a triangle can never really exist because all space is curved, our brain tells us that it is and we use it every day as an essential tool of technology. 

You may think that the way the “not” circumscribes and denotes what is is insane but the fact is that it is as a “not”.  I am not making this stuff up, only reporting it in the company of those that are much smarter than me.  Sure there are myriad other ways to process this insanity at the roots of the sane but they may only be the illusions of a brain that cannot allow the contradiction to be.  It may be that the evolution of the brain has made it impossible for the concreteness of an absolute “not” that “is”, that necessarily gives rise to “isness” to “see” what shows itself here.  This absolute fissure in achrony, time, how we perceive, understand, know, etc. is an alterity or otherness that can never be gathered or held together – and yet, it must be in its “not being”.  The sense of this is embodied in the intuition that for God to create being and existence God must be outside of being and existence.  Only by God “being” outside of existence can existence be.  This is yet another indication of the insanity that awaits us in the “absolute impossibility of the possibility of death” as Heidegger suggested.  The “me” that is to die cannot in any way conceive of death and yet death “is”.  Be careful as Nietzsche points out that if we look too long in the abyss the abyss will look back into us. 

What gives rise to the “soul”, the different kinds of awareness’s that enables humans to write books, create art, build technology, in effect, create worldhood?  It is the way that we are thrown back on ourselves in the face of the “not”.  It is the reflection that forces us to doubt our concrete perceptions, understandings, knowings.  When we doubt we re-think, we ponder, we try to make sense of, decipher and restore the cosmos to order.  This is our life long burden and we eternally are rolling the stone up a huge, never ending mountain.  While our dilemma may be insane it cannot be argued that it is not concrete and as “real” as any of our functional and assumed realities.  Only by the denial and sublimation of what the conscious cannot conceive can we have an unconscious, a dark side, a mystic writing pad that in advance of our deliberations writes our history and requires our obedience to a call that we cannot choose.  The turn here can only recognize a sort of Kantian category of knowledge.  Light is invisible and yet when it hits mass, particles it gets filtered sort of like a prism and shows color, sight, objects.  Light is not what we are seeing only the effects of the filtering of light.  Likewise, the “not” that necessarily gives rise to being, existence, concreteness is itself always never perceived but in its wake we are and have our being.

The Criminal and The Human – A Rational Approach to Liberalism

1 Reply

Desperation is pain expressed. Pain necessarily is totalitarian. It encompasses the whole of the person’s existence that experiences it. It demands the person’s full attention. It requires action. There is no free choice in the face of pain. There is only obedience. The person must find a way to stop the pain. Their continued existence depends on finding a way out. There is no `other’ in intense pain. There is no morality. There is no ideology. Rationality is meaningless. There is only the requirement to act immediately. The problem of pain may pose no solution. There may be no hope of surviving. The required action may have no goal other than a desire to stop the pain. The action may only find its termination in death. There may be no other way to return to the living, to the cessation of pain, to the place of rest and repose within existence – the place where the other can have significance.

When a person is in a fight for continued existence there is no `other’ that matters. There is only the imminence of pain. As pain increases the need to act increases. Conversely, the human capacity for the experience of the other decreases. The other as law, morality, concern, ideals, etc. loses its relevance to the person in pain. The self is necessarily projected to the absolute in intense, mortal pain until the self is extinguished in death and is no more. It is important to understand that there is a progression from extreme pain to repose in existence. In rest, the cessation of pain, we can be with others. We can attend to others. We can care. We can show concern. We can love. We can find meaning in being with others. We can sense the necessity of our collectivity, our shared identity, our debt to history via language.

These polarities, pain and repose in existence define our days as humans. There are perhaps those that for biological reasons we do not fully understand are not fully human. They have pathologies such as a serial killer that make them fundamentally different. They look human but they have no soul, no natural response to the other that most of us know and understand in our repose. Pathology, deviation from the norm is real but by definition it is not common. Therefore, it is not essentially human. It is more like a tornado or absolute non-recognition of human. It is totally oblivious to existence as human and owes no requirement for action to the human. It only follows its own necessity for action.

As human we exist in-between pain and repose. To the degree that we experience pain we resort to desperation. Thus, we become criminal. We become self-centered. We take advantage of others. We think more and more of ourselves. The other is sacrificed on the altar of me. The criminal by definition is totalitarian. The criminal is not obliged to act in any way other than its own desire. It has no ideology, no ideals, no concern for the other. It is us to the extent that we experience pain.

At this point, let me add that there is such a thing as phantom pain. There is the perception of threat that sets off all the alarms of pain, the adrenaline to fight or flee without any perceived pain by an outside observer. Anxiety may have no apparent reason to an outside observer. Phantom pain may have a biological component or imaginary. Biological pain that is not apparent to the outside observer can result from physical pathologies, deficiencies or deviation from norms that are purely cellular, hormonal, etc.. As human we have also have the capacity for imagination. Humans can project into the future. We can envision a future, an ideal and take actions to apprehend that future. This capacity also has the ability to deviate from a positive apprehension of the future to a negative apprehension of the future. We can dread the future. We can imagine that the future holds pain and despair. This may for example be at the psychological root of an addiction (not necessarily the physical, biological root of an addiction). We can project the future and apprehend it as negative, undesirable as pain. In this case, all the previously described dynamics of pain are present in the imminence of pain.

To the degree that we act, think, idealize from selfishness, from `me’ at the cost of the other, we express our capacity for suffering, for desperately attempting to alleviate pain. We are only concerned with our survival and not with anyone else’s survival. The driving instinct to self-survival blinds us to the plight of anyone else that may be suffering. For example, we may perceive that we are being taxed to death, threatening our ability to provide food and shelter to ourselves and our family. We may imagine that the future is bleak and we will be living on the street in freezing cold without food. We can do this all the while living in a comfortable 3000 square foot house with our family and a job that pays $75,000 a year. In the perception of this pain there is a need to act, to vote for politicians that we think will lower our taxes and thereby relieve our fears. However, the brute, realistic fact is that there are those that are living in freezing cold with no food. There are those dying in emergency rooms with no health care. There are those that are suffering in a real sense with real pain. The question becomes is my pain really more important than those that are much more apparently suffering?

The option to think this thought is not present for one that is in mortal pain but the possibility for suspension of one’s perceived pain is possible for less extreme situations. The possibility to suspend ones imagined fears for the sake of the other is part of human existence. This, for example, is envisioned in the act of Jesus dying for the sins of the world. We also have the capacity to “die for the sins of the world”. We can refuse to act automatically to our perceived pain and recognize the real pain of the other. We can judge our pain to be less important that the suffering, homeless child. This capacity is purely human.

We can do this because in our repose we can experience ourselves as community, as necessarily understanding ourselves with others. We certainly see proof of this necessity in language. Language fashions how we understand ourselves and the world. Language enables us project into the future, make sense of our past and even make sense of our present. Yet, we did not invent language. It was given as a gift. It already assumes a history, those that went before, those that forged words and thoughts that are essential tools we were freely given.

Aristotle said, “Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.” The reason he said this was because as humans in repose, as essentially a “we” we have the ability to defer to the other. We can make judgments that suspend our desires, our pain and act to relieve worse suffering of the other. This does not mean we always choose this course of action. Pain whether real or perceived pulls us under at times and causes us to act selfishly. This is also purely human. Many philosophers have traditionally thought of our necessary capacity for repose in existence as our higher self. What they mean by this is that we have the innate capacity for acting to relieve the suffering of the other. We can project this capacity into a future and act accordingly. We can think, fashion ideologies that reinforce our higher self. Conversely, we can fashion ideologies that project into the future to reinforce our fears and the need to act selfishly from our pain. We are the ultimate arbiters of how we envision our future. We can indulge our fears or we can hear the cries of the other. We can vote for politicians that we think will appease our suffering or we can vote for politicians that will ask us to sacrifice for the sake of the other. What is required in how we make these judgments is wisdom.

Wisdom is true judgment. Wisdom weighs all the elements of decision correctly. Wisdom is very difficult. For example, we may think all politicians are only out to alleviate their suffering by using politics to enrich themselves and not alleviate the suffering of others. This is the wisdom that true conservatism would teach us. Genuine conservation has the goal of conserving precious resources not for selfishly, perceived goals but for the good of society; so that suffering is addressed efficiently and effectively. When conservatism beats its chest to the Darwinian drum of Ayne Rand1, the Machiavellian war of all against all in defense of an isolated self, a “me” that conquers all and merely takes absolute pride in the destruction of the other for my sake, it sanctifies pain. It does not merely react blindly to pain but it fashions an altar to my right to act only for me even in repose. The question that should be raised here is not moral, altruistic, based on shoulds and shouldn’ts but based on wisdom – how we find ourselves in existence pitched between pain and repose.

As necessarily human we live in the regions of language and desperation, concern for the other and the absolutism of immanent pain and suffering. We are not pure unattached egos, gods free of necessity. We certainly have the capacity for absolute and even necessary selfishness as evidenced in mortal pain but we also have the necessary capacity for collectivity, being with others, love, compassion, concern even at our personal expense. Weighing the outcome of our vote in line with the necessity of our repose, our collective obligation may at times concede that a particular politician is acting for their own pain based reasons but the result of their policies may have opposite consequences. They may be individually, morally reprehensible but they may put programs in place that effectively address real suffering. They may also be individually, morally admirable but put programs in place that only protect their constituents perceived pain (i.e. taxes) while turning a blind eye to millions suffering without health care or basic needs. There are many permutations here but the point is that wisdom requires one to weigh the nuances such that the true outcome is obtained, the goal to alleviate suffering in this case2. Let me also state that this is not a simple matter of Republican or Democrat, it is a matter of recognizing who we are necessarily as humans and requiring that our actions are in line with our projected goals. I have used politics as an example but this discussion has extensions and impacts in many areas not simply civic responsibilities.

We are all accountable to ourselves, our higher selves, our essential capacity to defer ourselves for the other. Again, not due to some perceived altruism, moral obligation, demand from a god or an ideology but because to deny the suffering of the other is to deny the repose of our existence. We need not make repose bourgeois. Neither do we need to make our pain absolute as egoism. A guilty conscious is not called for here at all, only the clarity of wisdom and the actions that necessarily follows.

 

_________________

1 While Ayne Rand stated “I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason” her “reason”s stopped at egoism and the economies of a pain based ideology and could never account for the an equally necessary “we” that is in every way just as much who we are as human as selfishness is in mortal pain. Reason without wisdom goes against who we are, how we find ourselves and fails to truly judge who we are, to see what is in front of us, to take into account the necessary ways we find ourselves in existence.

2 I have also made a similar case in another paper with regard to the free market war of all against all and multinational corporations versus the government. In this case, the interest of repose is best served by their mutual regulation and limitation (see http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/01/04/free-market-eitheror-government/).

A Brief Introduction to Being and Time

Leave a reply

Heidegger (H.) tells us we all have a pre-cognitive understanding of “being” already at work in our “everydayness”.  There are different ways that we relate to being.  For example, when we use a hammer to build something, we are relating to that hammer with a “pre-understanding” of its being.  We are relating to it in the mode of instrumentality.  In German, Heidegger refers to this as zuhanden, ready-to-hand.  In that mode, “being” shows itself as “disappearing in use”.  We relate to the being of the hammer as a “tool”.  If the hammer breaks while it is disappearing in use we immediately relate to it in another mode “present at hand”.  We look at it and say “stupid hammer” how dare you!  It becomes conspicuous, even a bit intrusive.  “Present at hand” is how science relates to being.  In this mode being is present as a thing (substance), an object of study, and shows itself to us.  In German, Heidegger refers to this as vorhanden, present-at-hand.  For H. when being is mis-understood (semblance) we relate to it in in-authenticity.  If we pre-understand our environment as instrumentality, we use it to accomplish a task such that it disappears in use, we use oil to make our cars go, we use trees to build our houses, etc. –  then, we pre-understand the being of nature/environment as “standing reserve”.  This is the problem of technology.  It comes from a confusion of how we relate to the being of “nature”, as a semblance of “nature”.  Why do I emphasize “nature””?  Because this shows something else about how we relate to being, we are historical beings.  We live in a “stretch” of time that goes from a past to a future not an instant present.  “Nature” is a term/relationship to a being that is carried with us from language, philosophy, history – metaphysics.  It tells us a pre-cognitive understanding of what something “is”, its being.  When what something “is” is a semblance we have failed to relate authentically with “it”.  The being of human (dasein) is what H. spends much of his effort on in Being and Time.  A few examples:   The experience of time – there is lived time and abstract, historical time.  Our history informs us that time is a series of abstract “now” moments and yet the way we live time is as a stretch.  When we are happy time seems/feels like it flies by quickly.  When we are depressed time drags on forever.  So the experience of time is different than the abstract notion of time as “now” moments.  Why do we privilege abstract time? – because we are historical beings and pre-understand time as an abstraction (i.e., a history defined by “now” moments) – this informs us about time – not how we experience it.  Another example:  The experience of space – history tells us that space is linear extension, “things” are x number of feet away in 3 dimensional space…but what about lived space?  – When I am looking at a glass of water while wearing glasses the glasses on my face is closer to me in terms of linear extension but in a lived sense I am closer to the glass of water, I am together with the glass of water, co-habiting its space.  So humans can de-sever regions of space and bring them close or far at will.  If I am walking down a hallway I am not calculating the feet to all the walls, floor and ceiling (as perhaps a robot would do) to orient myself, to keep from falling.  In a lived sense, I am co-habiting the region of the hallway and orienting myself accordingly.  Again, we privilege the abstract over the lived (phenomenological) experience because we are historical beings.  This is a short intro. into H. and his work.  It gets better!

Towards Another Heideggarian Discourse (Update September 1, 2010)

Leave a reply

Revision History December 2007
Original
Revision 1 August 30, 2010
Section ii)
Revision 2 August 31, 2010
Section iii)-(1)-(c), (d), (e) and (g)
Revision 3 September 1, 2010
Section iii)-(1) – much of section 1 has changed

Note: These thoughts have been loosely formulated and as such will probably change a lot over time but, for me, that IS philosophy.
—————————————————————————————————————————–

Some time ago I was reflecting on those I know that have gone into professional philosophy. I always admired that profession but I also observed a conundrum at work in the act of being paid to be a philosopher. It appears that the need to publish and receive acclamation from one’s peers produces a timidity on the part of scholars; a stifling of creativity; a reluctance to think out loud and invite dialog without knowing where it will go or even if the course one has set on is valid at all. Perhaps this is something Socrates may have hinted at with regard to the sophist. In any case, in the interest of playful philosophy or perhaps tragic philosophy I have written a partial outline of some new avenues post Heidegger that may at least be given in the spirit that was Heidegger’s robust and creative thought albeit, without the intellectual vigor…

From the end of the lecture “Time and Being”…

“What remains to be said? Only this: Appropriation appropriates. Saying this, we say the Same in terms of the Same about the Same. To all appearances all this says is nothing. It does indeed say nothing so long as we hear a mere sentence in what was said, and expose that sentence to the cross-examination of logic. But what if we take what was said and adopt it unceasingly as the guide for our thinking, and consider that this Same is not anything new, but the oldest of the old in Western thought: that ancient something which conceals itself in a-letheia? That which is said before all else by the first source of all the leitmotifs of thinking gives voice to a bond that binds all thinking, providing that thinking submits to the call of what must be thought.

The task of our thinking has been to trace Being to its own from Appropriation – by way of looking through true time without regard to the relation of Being and beings.

To think Being without beings means: to think Being without regard to metaphysics. Yet a regard for metaphysics still prevails even in the intention to overcome metaphysics . Therefore our task is to cease all overcoming, and leave metaphysics to itself.

If overcoming remains necessary, it concerns that thinking that explicitly enters Appropriation in order to say It in terms of It about It.

Our task is unceasingly to overcome the obstacles that tend to render such saying inadequate.

The saying of Appropriation in the form of a lecture remains itself an obstacle of this kind. The lecture has spoken merely in propositional statements.”

Martin Heidegger

With this in mind…

a) A Possible Heideggarian Resolution (a sketch) – Phenomenology Revisited

i) Definitions

(1) Being when used here is Ontology, the study of Being as predominately meant by Heidegger

(2) being(s) when used here refers to ontic, particular beings

(3) Sorge (Care) is the temporal structure of Dasein’s throwness

(4) Dasein is the ontological level of human being

(5) dasein(s) is the ontic, individual human being

(6) existentiell pertains to individual understanding of oneself `along the way’ B&T, pg 33

(7) traditional ecstasies is the thrown ontological structure of dasein as `ahead of itself’, the `back to’ and the `alongside’ (ontically future, past, present)

ii) Martin Heidegger’s monumental work Being and Time provided an incredible analysis of Dasein (the `there’ of being, human being). Fundamental to Heidegger’s analysis of the Being of human being is Sorge. Sorge is the structure that constitutes Being temporally in its thrownness. Heidegger calls this `ecstasies’ (Greek root combining ek—`outside’, with stasis—`to stand’). The traditional ecstasies is Dasein’s `ahead of itself’, the `back to’ and the `alongside’. This is not an abstract theory about how Being might be thought. Sorge is thought from facticity. Facticity is the practical observations (phronesus) of how humans beings are in the world (Sorgensumsicht). In Being and Time, Being is thought from the ground up where `ground’ is how dasein (individual human beings) experience their being-in-the-world, and pre-cognitively understand Being. This structure is at the core of Heidegger’s analysis and should beg the question, are there any other important experiences of temporality that dasein experiences that are decidedly different from the ones Heidegger discusses and yet, structurally significant for Being? If so, could this impact the `turn’ of Heidegger in which Heidegger himself puts his earlier work, Being and Time, in question? It seems that as Heidegger looks more and more at the nothing from which Dasein is thrown what comes to the fore undermines any possibility for truth (aletheia) and his decisive notion of the possibility for authenticity is cast into a deep and bewildering darkness – Ereignis. This outline is a preliminary sketch and thought experiment into how Heidegger’s analytic might be phenomenologically adjusted to account for Ereignis. In order to do this, two new temporal `ecstasies’ are introduced “Nothing Time” and “Dream Time” and the traditional understanding of ‘ecstasies’ is modified. Much of Heidegger’s traditional analysis will still stand in what is called “Awake Time” but differences will be investigated. Note – The two new ecstasies are first given ontically as existentiell `experiences’ of dasein and then suggestions are made as to why this may be thought as ontologically significant with regard to the temporal ecstasies of Dasein.

I would also add that Heidegger never finished his project of Being and Time. While the final division of Being and Time was never written, Heidegger did leave notes about what it would contain. Heidegger was an Aristotelian scholar. He thought of Aristotle as the first and vastly misunderstood (vis-à-vis the Latin and Christian reading of Aristotle and the misreading of ousia) phenomenologist. However, Heidegger did take exception with Aristotle on the notion on time. He referred to his conception as the common conception or vulgar conception of time. This is time thought in terms of ‘now’ moments. He thought that time read through Aristotle was thought in terms of the ecstasies of being-present (parousia). I would content that if a phenomenologist wants to factually about the temporality of dasein you would have to think about how we experience temporality. We certainly have an experience of the future, the present and the past but these are not the only way we experience temporality. Why wouldn’t we as after the temporality of dreams? Why wouldn’t we question the temporality of dreamless sleep? Could it be that these common experiences give us a hint of where Heidegger may have gone in the final division of Being and Time? Could this lead us in the direction of ereignis?

iii) Three Important Temporalities of Dasein

(1) Nothing Time – “Whoever sees God dies. In speech what dies is what gives life to speech; speech is the life of that death, it is “”the life that endures death and maintains itself in it.”” What wonderful power. But something was there and is no longer there. Something has disappeared. How can I recover it, how can I turn around and look at what exists before, if all my power consists of making it into what exists after?” The Gaze of Orpheus, Literature and the Right to Death, Maurice Blanchot, page 46

(a) The temporality of “nothing time” is what dasein experiences under anesthesia. The patient remembers counting backward and opens their eyes to find they are in the recovery room. The temporality of “nothing time” is what dasein experiences when they close their eyes momentarily to sleep and open them to find that the entire night has passed. This happens more with children. [Note: This could actually be called dreamless sleep. In the stages of sleep every night there is REM where dreams occur and there is deep sleep which is the “nothing time” spoken of here. It happens every night but because there are other stages of sleep the example is clearer from what was given.] The phenomenological experience of this temporality is nothing, no duration. It strikes one as having been only when one awakes from it (if one does). The experience of nothing time is only recognized after it has passed and only tangentially. It gets pieced together as a radical disjuncture epso facto. Worldhood is non-existent for nothing time. There is no retreat of beings. Neither is there any awareness, much less a subject that even recognizes nothing time.

(b) For nothing time, Sorge as constituted as ‘primordial time’ (pg 277 B&T), as traditional ecstasies, is non-existent. The entire existential structure of Being with its ontic manifestations is null. While death may be the possibility for (pg294) the absolute impossibility of Dasein, nothing time cannot be ‘ahead of itself’ or ‘towards and end’. It can only be surmised when dasein rises again into Being, when it’s roused as Sorge .

(c) Ontically, in nothing time, there is no responsibility or decision, accountability is an absolute impossibility. There is no such phenomenality as being-towards-nothing-time as in being-towards-death as Dasein’s ownmost possibility (page 294). However, it is non-relational in a way that even being-towards-the-end is not. Being-towards-the-end is an existentiell possibility of Dasein. Nothing time is not a ‘sway’ of Dasein but a rupture, a black hole that the everydayness of Dasein must cover over. It is an existentiell rupture of dasein. The throwness of dasein as void is highlighted by nothing time. The possibility for dasein as nothing is shown (aletheia) from the ontic capacity for dreamless sleep. Nothing time points to the steresis of Aristotle as semblance.

[Note: “Heidegger says that the basic category of steresis dominates Aristotle’s ontology. Steresis means lack, privation. It can also mean loss or deprivation of something, as in the example of blindness, which is a loss of sight in one who by nature sees. Steresis can also mean confiscation, the violent appropriation of something for oneself that belongs to another (Met. 1022 b33). Finally, Aristotle often calls that which is held as other in an opposition of contraries a privation. Heidegger will point out in his later essay on Physics B1 that Aristotle understands this deprivation as itself a kind of eidos. Thus, steresis is the lack that belongs intrinsically to being. According to Heidegger, with the notion of steresis Aristotle reaches the pinnacle of his thinking about being. Heidegger even remarks that Hegel’s notion of negation needs to be returned to its dependency on Aristotle’s more primordial conception of the not.” Heidegger and Aristotle The Twofoldness of Being by Walter A. Brogan, page 19]

(d) There is no authentic ontology that can be thought from the ontic of nothing time. Nothing time is the radical exteriority that cannot be captured ontologically except as inauthentic. Being has no foot hold in it. There is no light or clearing that can be cast into it, there is no ‘in’ or ‘out’. It can be posited or gleamed only after the fact (inductively) in its recovery into being as only a false ‘not’. As steresis, the time of nothing time is an absolute achrony, an in-between. A false synthesis is only made possible from the falsity of the ‘not’ of awake time (discussed later) of “Being”, as lichtung (clearing) within Being. Being can only totalize nothing time as its light must rise from itself with no penetration into the event horizon of nothing time. For nothing time all information is lost and can only be recovered on it’s hitherto. Nothing time is the absolute zero degrees Kelvin of Dasein. From the light of Being, nothing time is the temporality of mysticism. Nothing time is not ‘my’ time. Light (lichtung) and its absence (apousia) can only change it (totalize it), it cannot capture it. It cannot even be thought as nothing without covering it over. Nothing time as third person, an it, is already a reductio ad absurdum, a covering over of what is aimed at.

(e) From the clearing of Being, nothing time is what is meant by the inauthentic (verfallen) form of time known as the ‘now’ moment. This ‘vulgar concept of time’ is the semblance, the covering over of sheer exteriority that undoes dasein. Dasein assigns an everyday notion of time to it’s (nothing time’s) non-existence. Thus Dasein escapes into a supposed linear succession of ‘now’ moments to account for the radical rupture of itself. The ‘now’ moment, the present, is the in-between being-towards the past and the future. It is kairos, fullness of the moment of being that being can never own, that eternally escapes Being. The ‘now’ is not chronos as Aristotle thought in Physics IV. From the beginning, the covering over is shown by the Sophists that took over kairos. Nothing time can never be recalled only hinted at by induction (epagoge) without light or its ‘not’. It is interesting to note that the ontic of nothing time has no ontological category. This is something that Heidegger would think would violate the whole notion of ontic and ontological. The contradiction is due to the fact that the ontic experience of nothing time can never be captured by the light (lichtung) OR ‘not light’ without eradicating it, totalizing it. The type that is indicated by the finite and the ‘not finite’ (infinite), the mortal and the ‘not mortal’ (immortal), nature and ‘not nature’ (the divine), master and ‘not master’ (slave) is not of the same type as the facticity of nothing time and the rupture of ontology. If the equivocation of these two types is maintained then an essential (wesen) differance (allusion to Derrida) is recuperated back into the canonical narrative of metaphysics. The anarchistic break of metaphysics is lost and taken back into the semblance (phainomenon) of Logocentrism. There is no authentic ‘showing’ of the ontological from the ontic in the case of nothing time.

(f) [possible avenue] Nothing time makes possible the erasure of the trace (deconstruction). The rupture of ontology makes possible the violence of the arche. [Ereignis actually opens the way for post modernism but this analysis may not only give resolve to the Heideggarian dilemma but also give some voice to the concerns of deconstruction, viz. the dynamic of the play of multiple texts.]

(g) [possible avenue] Need to explore how metaphysics, Being as suspended from nothing, is related to nothing time.

(h) [possible avenue] Since nothing time leaves an ontological rupture in Being it opens up Being to the possibility of radical alterity, an alterity that is not even yet an ‘It’. This rupture may allow the kairos of the Other. As such, the radical alterity, the achrony of the he or she that Levinas points toward. The covering over, the neutralization, is the primal violence that eradicates the other. It steals the time of the other as ‘my time’. It sublates me and other. This is the averagness of Das Man. The gap opened in ontology may hold open the possibility for Ethics. In this sense, the Ethical cannot be derived (i.e., from ontology). The radical disruption of the ontic and the ontological in this case is maintained as the Ethical. If this rupture is not maintained then the light (and its ‘not’) becomes the techne of production, the origin (arche) of Being, and Aristotle’s beginning ends in the quiddity of technology, standing reserve; all have become the foundry of nihilism, alienation is the telos of human being. The Decision is narcissistic alienation or the opening Levinas has made, Ethics. [This also depends on the discussion below about how all of these temporalities coalesce with each other. It needs to be fleshed out more here.]

(2) Dream Time – “The void that hollows out is immediately with the mute and anonymous rustling of the there is [ilya], as the place left vacant by one who died is filled with the murmur of the attendants…The there is [ilya] fills the void left by the negation of Being.” Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, Emmanual Levinas, page 3 – 4 “…it is no longer this inspiration at work, this negation asserting itself, this idea inscribed in the world as though it were the absolute perspective of the world in its totality. It is not beyond the world, but neither is it the world itself: it is the presence of things before the world exists, their preservation after the world has disappeared, the stubbornness of what remains after everything vanishes and the dumbfoundedness of what appears when nothing exists. That is why it cannot be confused with consciousness, which illuminates things and makes decisions; it is my consciousness without me, the radiant passivity of mineral substances, the lucidity if the depths of torpor. It is not the night; it is the obsession of the night; it is not the night, but the consciousness of the night, which lies awake watching for a chance to surprise itself and because of that is constantly being dissipated. It is not the day, it is the side of the day that day has rejected in order to become light. And it is not death either, because it manifests existence without being, existence which remains below existence, like an inexorable affirmation, without beginning or end – death as the impossibility of dying.” The Gaze of Orpheus, Literature and the Right to Death, Maurice Blanchot, page 47

(a) The temporality of “dream time” is what Dasein experiences during sleep. Dream time has a feel of duration but there is no traditional ecstasies, no sense of a stretch of time. Dream time is the temporality of writing and the infinite rearrangement of signs. Dream time has Worldhood but without Logos. It is as if Being were cut into a million pieces and thrown into the wind. It is the time of Ilya. Sense and meaning are random and arbitrary; there is only apeiron (chaos); as logic is a random sign so is contradiction. Logocentrism is meaningless. It is as if emotion, profundity, language, history, desire, hate, fear, anxiety, responsibility and decision are all random ‘symbiotic’ syntax. Profound sense and confusion simultaneously reign supreme. The ‘there’ and the not-‘there’ are simultaneously present. The temporality of dream time is disjointed and without consistent narrative. It is multiple narratives without coincidental temporalities. Temporalities without synchronicity, without unity although they can whimsically play at this. Dream time is broken and when dasein awakes can only be remembered, if at all, in pieces in the mode of interrogative. Dream time does not concretize human experience. It only floats human experience randomly. [Dream time is the necessary `symbiotic’ underside of Being. – reminiscent of Blanchot, Scene of Writing. It is the necessary `unconscious’ for `conscious’, the mystic writing pad. Research suggests that hypnosis engages the dream time activity of the brain. This activity operates normally in waking life, i.e., when people drive cars, listen to Bush ;-), etc. It makes people susceptible to suggestion, i.e. marketing, politics.]

(b) Dream time is the temporality of writing, the time of the poet, the representation of the artist (Salvador Dali).

(c) For Being, Dream time is what is meant by the inauthentic form of time known as ‘everydayness’, the possibility to be lost, fallen from ones ownmost, confused and set adrift, the possibility for the random. [It seems to give a phenomenological basis for `everydayness’ – the Das Man is a dream, inauthenticity has its structural roots in this new ecstasies.] However, Being can recover dream time as possibility (i.e., for authenticity), to wake from sleep. [Actually, this more of the hermeneutic of dream time from the perspective of Being (awake time).] It is a temporal contrast to the traditional ecstasies discussed by Heidegger.

(d) In deconstruction, dream time is the possibility for the self-destruction of any narrative. The seeds of the texts demise are always “there” and in its margins. The narrative is understood in the awake time (spoken of below) but the counter texts and other texts are recessed into the temporality of dream time.

(3) Awake Time – “Only an entity which, in its Being, is essential futural so that it is free for it’s death and can let itself be thrown back upon it’s factical “there” by shattering itself against death – that is to say, only an entity which, as futural, is equiprimordial in the process of having-been, can, by handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited, take over its own thrownness and be in the moment of vision for `its time’. Only authentic temporality which is at the same time finite, makes possible something like fate – that is the say, authentic historicality.” B&T, page 437.

(a) Much of this analysis is already done in Being and Time as Sorge. [Note: Need to flesh out confusions of these temporalities here in Heidegger’s analysis.] His analysis concerns itself primarily with awake time. This is the temporality of Sorge (Care). The traditional ecstasies that constitute “the phenomena of the future, the character of having been, and the present” B&T, page. 377

(b) Nullity is a confusion of the traditional ‘ecstasies’ and nothing time.

(c) Everydayness is confusion the traditional ‘ecstasies’ and dream time.

iv) The Overlap of Temporalities

(1) Heidegger’s traditional analysis of ecstasies is the convergence of the ‘ahead of itself’, the ‘back to’ and the ‘alongside’ are primarily the analytic of awake time. Equiprimordial to Heidegger’s traditional ecstasies is nothing time and sleep time. With the addition of these fundamental temporalities to Heidegger’s analysis the analytic of Dasein can find a firmer post-turn and post modern footing. Just as the three traditional ecstasies Heidegger discusses converge as the temporality of Dasein with each retaining its own specificity so too does dream time and nothing time converge as ‘equiprimordial’ with the other three. They retain their uniqueness as well. They cannot be absorbed into the analytic of Sorge because they violate the basic structure (i.e., ‘ahead of itself’, the ‘back to’ and the ‘alongside’) of the traditional analytic.

(a) The new analytic is not de-severance as Heidegger discusses with regard to spatiality. De-severance brings region near and far. However, just as the convergence of the tradition ecstasies can give way to the ontic notions as ‘living in the past’ or ‘living for the future’ or ‘living in the now’ so too can the equiprimordial ecstasies of dream time and nothing time give way in awake time to the temporality of the work of art or the mystic relation with (secret) God.

(i) Much like calculus with differentiation and integration

(2) These `not’s are all seated in the temporality of awake time, Hegelian idealism.

(a) The ‘not’ of awake time is nothing time and dream time.

(b) The ‘not’ of dream time is the nothing time and awake time.

(c) The ‘not’ of nothing time is dream time and awake time.

(3) The overlaps

(a) Nothing time and awake time in the mystics, in deconstruction (as trace), in Levinas (as Other given by the face of the other), in poetry (as radical distance), in religion (as in-effable, the God of unknowing)

(b) Nothing time and dream time in Dali

(c) Nothing time, awake time and dream time confused as the history of metaphysics

(d) Dream time and awake time in Levinas’ analysis of insomnia

(e) Awake and dream time in lucid dreams

(f) Ontology as phenomenology, dialectic of space (Hegel), as metaphysics

(g) Ontic/Ontological, authentic/inauthentic, metaphysical/exteriority – all can be analyzed in terms of these three temporalities

v) Other temporalities

(1) There are other temporalities that bound and overlap the new analytic of Dasein. The other temporalities gird, underscore, make possible the ontic and ontological conditions for Being and allow the new analytic of Dasein. This is not meant as an objective present-at-hand lapse into a confused metaphysics and mere theorizing. This needs to be worked out but any temporal analytic of Dasein and Being must itself be worked towards a completeness that includes overlapping albeit less influential and varying temporalities of wesen (environment). These temporalities cannot be dismissed out of hand or ignored; they ‘ripple’ into the very fabric of Being.

(2) Types [If phenomenology can find another connection with science other than the one Heidegger gave viz., correctness, propositional correspondence viz. the metaphysics of presence (present-at-hand and idea for Plato) it may be that science can add some authenticity to Being and structural agreement in phenomenology or… not. The criticism against Heidegger and nature’s exclusion may be overcome]

(a) Quantum

(b) Nature/Life/Evolutionary

(c) Geological

(d) Astronomical

(3) De-severance Overlaps of other temporalities with Dasein.

(a) TBD [How would this work? If the work of Levinas de-centralizes the totalitarian aspects of Being viz. the face of the other, this could be seen as a Copernican type revolution in the Heideggarian analysis not to think Being as present-at-hand but to think the relationships between Being and Ereignis.]

vi) All of the temporalities previously discussed are meant by Ereignis. [Much work remains to be done here]

(1) The turn of Heidegger, the gap from Being and Time to Enowning are brought about by the gaps in the traditional analytic found in Being and Time. The work of Being and Time is too rich and has impacted philosophy too much to simply dismiss. However, the gaps in the analytic even lead Heidegger to question the whole analytic in Being and Time.

(2) When metaphysics confuses these temporalities [i.e., nothing time, dream time and awake time] we get such notions as ‘abstract’ [i.e., not ‘grounded’ in awake time] and ‘concrete’ [i.e., ‘grounded’ in awake time], ‘profound’ [i.e., the lichtung, light of Being in awake time] and ‘mundane’ [i.e., the underside, night of Being in awake time, can’t fit in logos/logic], ‘real’ [i.e., awake time, logos] and ‘illusion’ [i.e., dream time].

(3) Aletheia unconceals but requires dream time to cover over [dream time is the concealment and from the ‘perspective’ of awake time the root of semblance] – it is concealment in awake time.

(4) Metaphysics requires nothing time. [see What is Metaphysics]

(5) For Hegel, idealism requires the dialectic of temporalities. [i.e., the ‘not’ that overcomes the contradiction of thesis and antithesis so that it can re-instate them both into the higher level of synthesis requires awake time for the contradiction to stand, for Ideas to eternally reinstate/inscribe themselves into history/logos. This may give some sort of phenomenological basis for a ‘perspective’ of Hegel (??)]

…

Any thoughts, ideas, contributions or simple mockery would be appreciated…Mark

A Draft on Love

Leave a reply

Reflections on Loves

Love is a concept that has thoroughly confused philosophers for ages.   For philosophers, Hegel is much easier to comprehend than love.  The Greeks reflection on love confused us from the beginning by compounding love into loves.  The four words for love in ancient Geek were: agápe, éros, philía, and storgē.[i]

Agápe (ἀγάπη) is unconditional love.  It has been used to refer to the love of a parent for a child or for a spouse.  It was used in Christianity for the ‘love’ of God.

Éros  (ἔρως) is passionate love.  It is sensual desire or longing.  It does not have to be erotic love.  According to Plato it can initially be a feeling but it can also see beauty in a person.  It can also go beyond that to the appreciation of beauty itself.  Éros helps the soul recall the knowledge of beauty.  It also helps us understand spiritual truth.  Sensually-based love aspires to the non-corporeal, spiritual plane of existence; that is, finding its truth, just like finding any truth, leads to transcendence.  Lovers and philosophers seek truth through éros.  For Plato éros is the ideal form of youthful beauty.  For the Greeks, éros leads to the uncreated, the lack of origin and genealogy.

Philía (φιλία) is friendship.  It can also be affection.  Aristotle thought philía was dispassionate virtuous love.  It demonstrates loyalty.

Storgē (στοργή) means affection.  It is the natural affection in family.

Éros is Greek Mythology

In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes makes a speech about the original human.  He said that the original human was androgynous, a combination of male and female.  In the Symposium Aristophanes states, “the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and the same number of feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast”.  However these androgynous beings became a threat to the gods.  Aristophanes says of them that “Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, attempted to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods”.  Rather than kill the humans Aristophanes tells us that Zeus decided to split these being into two, male and female.  Zeus thought if this did not work he might split them again so they would “hop about on a single leg”.  Aristophanes notes that

“After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they began to die from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them,–being the sections of entire men or women,–and clung to that.”

After this Zeus made some more modifications by putting the genitals on the front of the human being instead of the rear.  He also made it possible for humans to regenerate with the new arrangement of genitalia.  Aristophanes tells us that this created an ancient desire for us to complete ourselves in the opposite gender.

“So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, seeking to make one of two, and to heal the state of man.”

For Aristophanes, the conclusion is,

And such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together, and yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover’s intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.

Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them, ‘What do you mortals want of one another?’

They would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: ‘Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one another’s company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two–I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire and whether you are satisfied to attain this?’–

There is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need.

And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time, I say, when we were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians. And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like the profile figures showing only one half the nose which are sculptured on monuments, and that we shall be like tallies. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety in all things, that we may avoid evil and obtain the good, taking Love for our leader and commander.

Let no one oppose him–he is the enemy of the gods who opposes him. For if we are friends of God and at peace with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world at present. I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and Agathon, who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the class which I have been describing. But my words have a wider application–they include men and women everywhere; and I believe that if our loves were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then our race would be happy. And if this would be best of all, the best in the next degree must in present circumstances be the nearest approach to such a union; and that will be the attainment of a congenial love.

Wherefore, if we would praise him who has given to us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who is our greatest benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature, and giving us high hopes for the future, for he promises that if we are pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us happy and blessed.

This, Eryximachus, is my discourse of love, which, although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailed by the shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn; each, or rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left.

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sym.htm

Thus, éros is love that is “the desire and pursuit of the whole”.

According to Hesiod, Eros is: “…the fairest of the deathless gods; he un­strings the limbs [makes the limbs go limp] and subdues both mind and sensible thought in the breasts of all gods and all men.” Hesiod tells us that Eros was one of the oldest deities, born from Chaos alongside Gaia (the Earth) and Tartarus (the Underworld).

Eros, the non-generative, without arche, parentless God from Hesiod is neither divine nor mortal.

At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night (Nyx), Darkness (Erebus), and the Abyss (Tartarus). Earth, the Air and Heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Darkness, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Love (Eros) with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in the deep Abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.

Later Eros is spoken of as the child of night (Nyx).  He is also spoken of as the son of Aphrodite,

[Hera addresses Athene :] We must have a word with Aphrodite. Let us go together and ask her to persuade her boy [Eros], if that is possible, to loose an arrow at Aeetes’ daughter, Medea of the many spells, and make her fall in love with Iason . . .

He [Eros] smites maids’ breasts with unknown heat, and bids the very gods leave heaven and dwell on earth in borrowed forms.

Once, when Venus’son [Cupid, aka Eros] was kissing her, his quiver dangling down, a jutting arrow, unbeknown, had grazed her breast. She pushed the boy away. In fact the wound was deeper than it seemed, though unperceived at first. [And she became] enraptured by the beauty of a man [Adonis].

Eros drove Dionysos mad for the girl [Aura] with the delicious wound of his arrow, then curving his wings flew lightly to Olympos. And the god roamed over the hills scourged with a greater fire.”

Socrates tells us of Eros,

“What then is Love?” I asked; “Is he mortal?” “No.” “What then?” “As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two.” “What is he, Diotima?” “He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.” “And what,” I said, “is his power?” “He interprets,” she replied, “between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man; but through Love. all the intercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar.

…

He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father’s nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this: No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.” “But-who then, Diotima,” I said, “are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?” “A child may answer that question,” she replied; “they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher: or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant.

In the second century a story is told of Eros and Psyche,

The story tells of the struggle for love and trust between Eros and Psyche. Aphrodite was jealous of the beauty of mortal princess Psyche, as men were leaving her altars barren to worship a mere human woman instead, and so she commanded her son Eros, the god of love, to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest creature on earth. But instead, Eros falls in love with Psyche himself and spirits her away to his home. Their fragile peace is ruined by a visit from Psyche’s jealous sisters, who cause Psyche to betray the trust of her husband. Wounded, Eros leaves his wife, and Psyche wanders the Earth, looking for her lost love. Eventually she approaches Aphrodite and asks for her help. Aphrodite imposes a series of difficult tasks on Psyche, which she is able to achieve by means of supernatural assistance.  After successfully completing these tasks, Aphrodite relents and Psyche becomes immortal to live alongside her husband Eros. Together they had a daughter, Voluptas or Hedone (meaning physical pleasure, bliss).

In Greek mythology, Psyche was the deification of the human soul. She was portrayed in ancient mosaics as a goddess with butterfly wings (because psyche was also the Ancient Greek word for ‘butterfly’). The Greek word psyche literally means “soul, spirit, breath, life or animating force”.

http://mixermuse.com/blog/2012/02/15/greek-mythos/

Personal Thoughts

The young know a façade of éros.  Beauty has a face.  Éros shines back into Form.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sym.htm

http://mixermuse.com/blog/2012/02/15/greek-mythos/

 

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

Consumerism/Power and Spirit/Love

Leave a reply

Buying and selling is a dominant paradigm that can be used to provide a totalizing view of everything, obviously in commerce, but much more.  Everyone has a line or feels they need to buy into a line to be happy, successful, free, etc.  Even this paper can be totally analyzed in terms of an agenda I am trying to convince you of adopting.  Commerce defines dynamics of power relationships.

In “Structures of Scientific Revolution” Thomas Kuhn vividly portrays how science is all about competing historical/political/theoretical paradigms and how “truth” has little to do with what gets adopted scientifically.  He makes the case that what gets adopted scientifically has more to do with politics, economy, and established paradigms than the “truth” of science.  What gets accepted as “scientific fact” is a result of a process of “commerce”, in the wider sense of the word, and not truth

Philosophers such as Nietzsche with “Will to Power” or Hegel’s progression of Spirit in thesis/antithesis/synthesis or Focault’s analysis or sanity and insanity all push their analysis to be all inclusive dynamics of power relationships.   Psychologists such as Freud set up mechanisms of libido and id/ego/superego that define psychological mechanisms of power.  Adam Smith and Carl Marx also have an obvious agenda of power relationships to sell us.  If you know anything about these philosophers ask yourself what would love be for them?  I think the answer is that it would be yet another form of manipulation, irrelevant in terms of power, a guise for underlying psychological devices, etc.  It would seem as if human community is nothing other than a hopeless tangle of power for those that have something to sell us and those that need to buy.

Spirituality is dominated by buying and selling.  Who has the truth?  Who is the most righteous in their own group’s metaphysical scheme?  Politics is a commerce of ideology and influence.  What is circumscribed in all these areas is an arena of power relationships.  Needless to say there is a lot of fuel for fodder here that could turn into quite a long historical digression but rather than indulge in yet another “revision of world history sales pitch”, I would like to focus in on a couple areas where I am most interested in this topic.  Namely, on interpersonal relationships and what, for now, I will call soulful abodes.

How do interpersonal relationships become games for buying and selling?  Someone has an agenda to convince the other about themselves or their mate and the other either buys or tries to counter sell their own agenda.  Power issues can all too often creep into serious relationships as a semblance of love, obscuring and blocking the qualities that make a love relationship worth having and replacing them indiscriminately with an empty game playing or “one upmanship” kind of activity.

From the point of view of interpersonal relationships, Freud had amazing genius to set the poles with the base instincts of the “I” (id) and mom and dad (superego).  The most significant relationships (whether good or bad, attract or repel) we have, derive from our childhood.  All of our adult relationships are an attempt in one way or another to go back, revisit, and complete something we did not get as infants or children.  We are attracted and attract those that hold the most promise in allowing us to revisit our most profound early moments of existence.  There are so many ways that this plays out.  As men, we find ourselves in relationships with women as mothers to heap to ourselves nurturing we never had or had enough of.  We expect unconditional approval from the women in our lives to get something from dad we never had or thought we never had.  Young men are most often angry if they feel their dads were not there for them.  As women, we look for dads to stimulate our deflated ego to make us feel powerful and like we have value or legitimate boundaries from the world.  We also bemoan and have anger over the lack or perceived lack of nurturing from our mothers.  So we enter adult relationships looking, on some emotional, barely conscious engagement, to address a subtle but seemingly desperate need that requires us to end it, complete it, grow beyond it.  Nevertheless, in most cases the only thing we grow beyond is our current partner and our next partner picks up where the other left off.  In all of these dynamics we are either selling the other on who they are, what they were, or where they are headed or we are buying the other’s pitch or some combination of the two.  Relationships that are dominated by these dynamics can be raised to a feverous pitch where neither person can be honest or even knows how to find honesty and game playing and power relationships rule the day (and night).  All of these intense efforts can result in resignation, despair, despondency and basically make one old fast.  After all, beating your head against the wall for relentless years may be ok for the youthful but at some point one finds that one has become old and lethargic and in the very old soul it appears as a “waiting around for death” (perhaps Freud’s death wish).  Death is kind to those that have lost their way and no longer feel the desire to be.  In any case, we should ask ourselves, “Are we condemned to live as prisoners to these power structures or is there another possibility?”  What could such thing as “love” be that would be overlooked by the dynamics of power?

To start, I would suggest that there is an alternative – learning, inclining one’s ear to wisdom.  Years of good therapy teaches one how to be aware of our incessant, driving needs, where they come from and how we get entangled with exaggerated power from our past sabotaging current and future relationships and condemning us to replaying the past perpetually into our future.  And yet, after that work has matured there is still a vacuum.  There is no longer a need to buy or sell emotional wares in a relationship – the thrill is gone so to speak.  So, do we simply hunker down in a Buddhist like comma and become impassionate observers of existence or is there something more?  Ok, it is a rhetorical question.  I think there is more but this is where I must move towards what could be termed spirituality (which I cringe at somewhat due to the history we have inherited of spirituality).  As Emmanual Levinas has pointed out, there is an inner psychic or interiority that is not historical or subject to the tradition of light, where we can each be released from externality, a retreat from the demands of community, history, and power.  Interiority is where we are not totalized, historicalized, lit up by the tradition of light or rationality, perhaps the Buddhist observer.  There are those that seemingly have a harder time letting go and having an awareness of their interiority.  They are constrained by anxiety, physical or emotional, and seemingly never have a chance to take a step back, reflect, and take a breath.  In any case, it is not that they do not have interiority, it is the way they are situated in their interiority.  A lack of interiority would be purely animal reaction to environmental stimulus.  Perhaps the “human doings” among us get close to this but none of us are merely that.  What is more, interiority is not the “be all, end all”.  It may be that interiority gives us the space, the ability to hear and reflect, to see the parables that speak from every speck of sand and history rather than simply react ‘till death do us part.   Philosophers have always praised interiority as the basis of what makes us uniquely human, reflection.

Outside, history would teach us its narrative, temporality would teach us birth and death and everything marked and measured by the history of Being, and our lover would have us project and be projected upon.  When we lose touch with our interiority we are all like kids that playfully pretend with glee, “Lie to me, no me – my turn”.  We cover ourselves as a blanket with history (personal, social, language, etc.) and interpersonal relationships and in so doing create over a lifetime what I will term as abodes of the soul.  Yes, we can do housecleaning such as getting a divorce, changing jobs, moving and some would say dying/being born again but all the while we simply go back into the world of power and reaction until we are again blocked up in psychic huts of our own creation – soulful abodes.  It seems to me like all the while there is this tangential call, the command of the other in Levinas, this non-recoupable moment that only gets symbolized, parabalized, historicalized ad hoc and perhaps can only be gleamed in the form of the erasure of a trace.  Without trying to sound too mystical it may be that mom and dad are only shadows of something that draws our desires, something that history can’t capture.   Perhaps history whether personal or not parabalizes, speaks in riddles of physicality and externality until we can hear or gleam something more.

As Levinas suggests, the inner psychism of the other is something we have never known or ever can know, shed light on, touch.  The other can’t be reduced in any kind of power relationship or analysis of light.  Therefore, our response must, of necessity, be one of ethics, the day to day encounter with the face of the transcendent other.  I guess the gist of this is that we all, in all of our day to days, are being offered in a totally unique and infinitely individualized encounter with an alterity that can not be evaluated, compared, sifted in any analysis of power.  It can only be known ad hoc by a tradition of light that at best is a parable and at worst is a tyrannical, totalizing reduction.  The experience of alterity is the sense that something more is calling in all the appearances of power, light, externality and this something requires from me an infinitely individualized encounter – no one can do it or get it for me and yet all things are “saying” tangentially.  This “saying” must of necessity get erased ad hoc by history and light.  We tend to deduce an errant cause to the effects we observe in externality.  We tend to reduce to power relationships, acting and reacting, lying and wanting to be lied to, to create these dwellings, these abodes, that only wait to be swept away by the mercy of death and final demise.  All the while “the face of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image it leaves in me” and “commands my desires” as Levinas put it.  We don’t end in the materiality of a mom and dad but perhaps in the spirituality of what they point to – we have a sheltering community and we have an outside to the community, a non-mans land, the howling wild that draws us out and does not caress us.  We can move in and out of these soulful places and even have a hint about their nexus.  The east greets us on the morning and a full day of light and community is sure to follow while the west points to the pioneer, the wild lands, the place of night and darkness.  The winds howl from the west and threaten to blow our communities and histories down.  Republicans gleam a fatherly, pull yourself up by your bootstraps approach to political ideology (in their best light) while the Democrats speak of nurture, government assistance and the help offered by community.  Both of the ideologies seem to rely on each other and seem to have differences that are rooted in paternity.  Communities of clouds gather by winds that they can not know but which determine them completely.  Clouds can not choose to be subject to the winds. They simply are.  We walk with our feet firmly planted on the earth and trudge along with the weight of existence and emotions/needs/relationships and yet the stars fly forever above our small heads.  They ask us in their quiet beauty to look up, look beyond, wake young babes.  Something more than our smallness awaits us in every nook and cranny of the universe and while we have the option of being swept away in our smallness, judgements and in death we always have the option, the potential, the possibility for resurrection, renewal, rebirth.  It may be that death is only a way to free us from the weight of a lifetime of soul clutter so that we can be reset, start again in Maya (playful illusion) and Samsora (endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth) so that enlightenment can once again have its morning voice to the soul.  In any case, the way that existence glimmers in a light other than any known and understood cannot be recuperated into history but can be encountered from my psychism in the day to day interruption of the other.

So, in addition to waxing mystical here I intend to point out that power reductions, relations and analysis are always subject to their own essentially intrinsic limitations.  They already provide a framework wherein understanding is constrained to a certain schema.  For example, love is understood as a means to an end, a power mechanism.  A basis for love that would exceed this framework would render the framework useless, without an answer.  And yet, in our day to day, the face of the other always exceeds our cognitive reductions and pre-understandings of the other.  The other interrupts, contests, and commands our horizon/site/understandings.  What is more, even our experience of “nature” is never complete.  We can pursue nature in scientific reductions (which at their best are power relationships without value judgements or individual based means to an end) but this direction will never answer or attempt to answer the “more” of nature that I just tried to bring out in my mystical digression.  The totally individualized and irreducible communion with the “more”, the transcendent other, the tangential saying (logos) has been on on-going concern with many religions in their best moments.

The interesting feature about power relationships is that they necessarily derive from the past.  The rules of the game have already come from the past.  The past instructs us how to play and what winning and losing means.  The unknown future has already been decided in advance according to rules/power/light, a history.  The more we let the past determine our future, the more we pull the curtains down on our soulful abodes and the more the possibility for something other, something radically transcendent, is reduced.  We pull our histories and totalities around us as a baby’s blanket and try to make ourselves secure in our abodes.  All the while, death waits to sweep our huts away and even more so, the other, the stranger faces us.

A “need” is a perceived emptiness in me, a lack.  This lack is a perception of a loss.  Somehow according to the rules we have secretly (unconsciously) adopted, we have lost, we are deficient, we have turned up “needing” to win, to be whole, to be restored.  When we “need” a lover we already have adopted an implicit but determining power structure that also places underlying expectations on our lover.  These expectations are given from an implicit set of rules based in our personal history.  Our lover must perform, they must deliver – me.  When this dynamic occurs, our lover has been placed in the role of savior or Satan, mom or dad and we have embarked on a path in our relationship that can only result in a continual replay, rehash of the past.  The tragedy here is that we entomb ourselves with ourselves, our history, such that we reinforce the walls of our soulful abodes.  All the while the stranger faces us, radical alterity knocks on our door and a future not blocked by our past awaits us.

Desire for the other, the other which is beyond my rules, games and power is the basis of love.  Desire is not need.  Desire is an attraction for what it does not know.  Desire is a pull towards an unknown future, an unknown other not a sinkhole the other is expected to fill, to play in.  Love and power are certainly two radically different orientations but so easily get confused.  Love for the other is the unknown, untamed, and undiscovered pull towards a future.  Need for the other is the known, tamed and discovered retreat to a past, a hut, a soulful abode.  Love calls from an unknown future.  We do not know how to love.  We are yet babes.  We assimilate love in terms of mommy and daddy and become weak, vulnerable infants.  We lose our power and relegate all of this to the misguided “follies of love”.  We do not know how to love.  The sting of “lost love” is not the loss of love it is the loss of expectation, of power, of potency.  It is the loss of our savior, our Satan, our salvation, our damnation – the promise of our past finally completed and our need finally filled.  Yet, what really happens is that we complete our tomb, our abode and we await the final flood of death to sweep us, our hut, away (so perhaps we can start anew towards the alterity that faces us).  In need and power all has really been determined.  There is no mystery.  There is only competition, playing it out to see who wins – for now.  In the long run, we all lose – we die.  It is a fool’s game.  It is like playing poker in a crashing plane – it is doomed and we are all certainly doomed to lose.  What is our future in this case?  Only the promise of more play of forces, of manipulation.  Is winning, filling our needs, the only things that gives us a reason to go on (to our final loss)?  Love is the “black hole” of humanity.  What we see is not the black hole but the light, the debris and history that is left in its wake.  We live and die in remnants of the past, in our needs, our huts.  And yet an alterity faces us that we never knew, that was never part of my history, my light, my knowledge and says, “I love you”.  Desire towards the other lets us hear tangentially the “more” that is being said in the face that interrupts us, the winds that howl at us and the stars that fly towards us.

When love is need, manipulation, and power, honesty with the other and integrity, honesty with oneself, become less and less important.  Staying in a relationship that has long died is one way in which this plays out.  In this case, the future, love and desire have died.  We do not lose our life to love – we lose to love.  To lose to love is to lose our humanity.  Love does not happen to a remnant of power, one incapable of giving themselves, of letting ourselves go (or letting go what we think ourselves to be).  Love happens to the young, those not yet blocked off in their abodes, those not yet world weary, jaded and resigned to their insecurities.  Desire towards the other pulls us toward “more” than a power relationship, a blocking ourselves in with ourselves.  It calls us to die to our light, our history, and our power.  It calls us to become children, full of exuberance, play and interest in the other we do not know.  Love is not hanging on but letting go.  Need hangs on and uses manipulation to try to fill itself.  Love means making tough but gentle emotional decisions at times, being aware of ourselves and our relationships, growing and being involved in life as children, open to the future and new possibilities.  Love is not trying to change our partner into something they are not nor is it exchanging our partner for a better model to fit our needs.  It is about wisdom, inclining our ear to learning, knowing when we are progressing as lovers or impeding each other, making tough decisions to leave our huts and our mission to fill our needs.  Wisdom is a tangential call that does not play in the world of needs but asks us to leave it for the desire of the other.  We have before us love or need, desire or power, spirit or commerce, future or past, life or death and wisdom informs us of the difference.

Convention and Beyond

Leave a reply

Convention excuses us to mentally slumber while still allowing raw emotions to gurgle up.  We emote while the trappings of con-ventio (Latin for with agreement) organize and arrange how we make sense and reflect on these emotions.  Convention provides a scenario or a drama that plays itself out in a predictable, time-honored, public-sanctioned path (patho-pathos) that accounts for and measures radical interruptions of exteriority.  Emotions (from Latin exmovere – to move out) move us and stir us.  They rouse us from our sleep, our gravitational heaviness.  They demand a response.

We are historical beings not just beings with historical facts (i.e., The Civil War ended in 1865).  We sleep together oh wonderful humans!  We dream insentia, in our absence.  We always elude the lucid, the interrupting (radical) beyond of other (alterity), the profound emotion with our dreary, repetitious enumerations.  We help each other sleep in our shared signs, our flag waving patriotism, our “knowing” gossip laden tribes, our righteousness in the face of “evil”.  We dream in the drunken, inebriation of our idolatrous universal.  This is what it means to be historical beings.

Our historical-ness makes us old.  As we get old, we live in a place that no longer exists (if it ever did) and thus we live in our absence.  It becomes embarrassingly noticeable as we get “older”.  We are not quite “there”.  We live some siren song of the past and only when we bump into a wall in our night-ness do we raise our heavy brows momentarily.  The pleasant surprise of a delectable new taste gets reduced to a bland diet of sustenance.  Passion and sensuality become something that happened in the “good ‘ol days”.  Photographs freeze perpetually the “once when I was”, the “used to be”, the “at one time”.  We sink in rigor mortise that reaches out well ahead of our merciful death.

Religion seeks to capture, dream away, our death as well but the grim reaper is wilder than our historicality.  Our convention pales in the face of that moment to come when our most glorious or hideous, slumbering collective imaginations (image-ings) no longer offer us solace but pull us into a radical vortex, a neuter, a thing that can’t be dreamed away.  Truly, death comes mercifully to the “old”.

When death comes to the young, the future, the yet to be, we are thrown back upon ourselves, we feel strong emotions and we must co-invent (convention) a reason, a purpose that justifies, venerates, martyrs, placates (holds the place of) the loss until the emotion can subside and we can return to the leveling everydayness of our dreams.

My friends we are all co-geniuses (co-originators) of a place to dwell.  A place that gives meaning, explanation and consolation.  Alas, all our places get old and sink away, die and are forgotten.  The young must continually re-invent, re-wrest truth-dreams, spruce up the ‘ol dwellings until they too move to oblivion.

Such strong undercurrents pull us under and under-mine our confidences.  Is this a sinister attempt to toy with us?  I think not.  I think everything must be taken as a wake up call to our soul.  We must shed the weight of sleep, rouse ourselves and look as newborns into the face of profundity.  We must throw off the weightiness of our conventional, historicising slumbers and welcome the radically new, the other that is beyond us.  We must welcome the stranger as strange, as wild, as someone with news that grabs us and questions us.  My friends, death is our best clue that we are yet babes looking with fascination into eternity – not endless co-leveling-dreaming but horizons yet to be, radical otherness beyond our collective imaginations, a language yet to evolve.  These emotions, sensations, loves that momentarily awaken us are hints of what we have yet to learn.  They may question and even topple our conventions but rise from your ashes in a sun-dewed, new day that allows only the eyes of an infant.  The distant call is to grow beyond ourselves, our desire to sleep (sink) together and welcome that other that desires our attention for the first time.