tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post2143213687951316938..comments2024-02-12T23:25:09.583-08:00Comments on Overweening Generalist: Cosmic Schmucks: Addenda in Rhetoric, Metaphor and Digressionmichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-52632611537035247952013-08-30T03:04:53.908-07:002013-08-30T03:04:53.908-07:00The reverse-chronologicality of Underworld's s...The reverse-chronologicality of Underworld's structure made it really trippy to me, and I think of the number of jesuses doubling through all that. <br /><br />Wasn't a rookie named Willie Mays on deck in case Thomson got on? <br /><br />Thanks for typing out that quote from Delillo. I think of that info acceleration and McLuhan too: how utterly pervasive it's become in 20 short years, how this seems to warp perceived time, how all that info has to be negotiated in some way (even if in default) by individual nervous systems, how learning involves interaction and engaging with others who have a sufficient framework for empathy, how we're probably not evolved emotionally to handle the vast influx of data, how all that data and info interacts with the LITERALLY physical basis on ideas instantiated in neural circuits. <br /><br />And all that explains why I sometimes don't respond to the interesting comments at OG for a day or three: the digital environments have foregrounded how far more gorgeous non-digital environments seem to me. michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-35194183464941088152013-08-28T08:14:59.762-07:002013-08-28T08:14:59.762-07:00No tune from Bruckner's Fourth has gone viral....No tune from Bruckner's Fourth has gone viral...yet. Perhaps it will become the "Call Me Maybe" of 2014. I can only hope.<br /><br />The ending of Underworld made me think of Vico: "There are only connections. Everything is connected. All human knowledge gathered and linked, hyperlinked, this site leading to that, this fact referenced to that, a keystroke, a mouse-click, a password - world without end, amen." (Pg. 825). I think he means the internet here, but it also makes me think about the comments about the labyrinth of languages and etymologies which run through Underworld and Vico.<br /><br />Underworld also made me think of McLuhan from the world of radio and newspapers in 1951 with "The Shot Heard Round the World" to the internet keystrokes that end the novel in the 1990's.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-30724353236710433962013-08-22T15:00:42.760-07:002013-08-22T15:00:42.760-07:00BerserkRL-
Aristotle's invention of logic/org...BerserkRL-<br /><br />Aristotle's invention of logic/organon admits of two values, but other books by him - IIRC his Rhetoric? - seem to move past the rather artificial Excluded Middle logic. The common assumption of structure on arguments in public discourse among audience members still seems to be "Who's right and who's wrong?" In this way (and because certain educations train thinkers to "win" arguments) Aristotle's 2-valued Logic seems emblematic of a rather primitive way of thinking about "reality."<br /><br />If you'd indulge us: please elaborate on those books of Aristotle that encourage thinking beyond false alternatives, and feel free to plug your work/website.<br /><br />Thanks for your contribution!<br /><br />michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-30039095025180908042013-08-22T14:48:52.855-07:002013-08-22T14:48:52.855-07:00Given that Aristotle is always looking for a third...Given that Aristotle is always looking for a third way between false alternatives (though not between logical contradictories), the characterisation of him seems rather inappropriate. BerserkRLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14062423528796946671noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-86489062200566423792013-08-22T00:20:32.189-07:002013-08-22T00:20:32.189-07:00@ Tom-
Vielen Dank fur die freundlichen Worte!
I...@ Tom-<br /><br />Vielen Dank fur die freundlichen Worte!<br /><br />In the two Cosmic Schmuck blog articles I don't think I mentioned Maybe Logic, which I think RAW thought was the most basic way to unite and implement his fallibilist ideas. <br /><br />In all the writings I've seen by him I haven't read anything that (that I recall) that was on the order of "I've been a schmuck and let me tell you how I did it..." The Cosmic Schmuck Principle - as it shows up in Natural Law - says we ought to say to ourselves once a month (if not more often) something like "I've been acting like I know how the world works, which allowing my Cosmic Schmuck-ness to get out of hand." <br /><br />This lessens our Schmuckiness, but I think he thought we couldn't help but be Schmucks, on some level. All of us. The key was to make the condition a little less worse. <br /><br />If I had to point to some aspect of his writing that seemed possibly Cosmically Schmucky, a bit out of hand: there are a large number of articles (most of which don't show up in his books) in which he evinces a virtuoso use of logic within a combative style to engage people he thought were total, hopeless Cosmic Schmucks: modeltheists. The ones worth taking on were often those he labeled "fundamentalist materialists" and various self-described "libertarian" persons whose positions seemed to him to lead to cruelty. <br /><br />While I confess I'm thrilled with his hard-core chops in this sort of "debate" I do often feel he may be doing what Prof Cohen said was one of the problems with Argument as "War": we tend to magnify the differences between me/us and you/them. Do you think RAW was fair to Rothbard in Natural Law? I'm not sure he was...RAW had numerous, withering and at times devastating riffs against the "I'm right" Martin Gardner and a few of the CSICOP dudes, but he did say a nice thing about Gardner in a place or two. <br /><br />RAW enjoyed the sort of writing in Natural Law and The New Inquisition more than the expository prose style in Prometheus Rising. He said he liked to create "dialectical sparks." That would seem to court something that could be perceived as Schmuckiness.<br /><br />Although I've never seen if he said it openly, I think he wished his dialectic with CSICOP guys and Libertarians he had a beef with would blow up into something bigger. He was ready for a bigger stage in his battles with those guys, I think. The Libertarian feuds remained confined to small, specialist magazines, maybe the main reason being that the Republican/Democrat parties have a stranglehold on what passes for "legitimate" political discourse?<br /><br />The CSICOPpers never engaged him, really. But I do think his rhetoric about their epistemological stances had an effect. I've seen a softening overall of the "scientism" I used to read in Skeptical Enquirer. It's not gone - nor should it be - but it seems to me to have been attenuated. Only part of this I would attribute to RAW's rhetoric. <br /><br />RAW did say that Leary could be a "son of a bitch," but I always wished RAW would've addressed what I perceived as his going a little overboard for Leary around 1972-77. I never asked him about it. I didn't know how to. Also, the Bruno/W.Reich State persecution of a brilliant if flawed visionary was so horrific to him I can see why he maybe became a too-entusiastic advocate for some of Leary's ideas, like Starseed, for example. <br /><br />But even that seems explainable, as RAW acknowledged there's so much darkness... that to adopt optimistic stances were heretical and worth doing if for only the reasons that they made you feel better (as we can't predict the future with certainty) and that it was so gawdawfully fashionable to be pessimistic, esp among intellectuals. <br /><br />What do you think RAW was Schmucky about, if anything?michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-22283735500249467232013-08-21T23:28:33.620-07:002013-08-21T23:28:33.620-07:00@Anon-
I recoil in mortal terror every time I rea...@Anon-<br /><br />I recoil in mortal terror every time I realize that someone at NSA looked into the possible troublemaker the OG and his aliases and history and found out he's got a thing for Amazonian tribal women over the age of 60. What can I say? Those old National Geographics in the school library must have imprinted on my nervous system. That SECRET was sacred, a personal thing between me and my libido/imagination. No one at the NSA deserves to know such a thing, but now they do! And now? Fuck it!: I'm telling anyone who reads these comments, and...I...just don't...(sniff) care anymore.<br /><br />Your idea about war/fascism as a meme that won out long ago is an idea that's haunted me since around age 11. Seriously. War and our semantic, collective unconscious. Thanatos. What can be done to (I won't say "combat" it, as that would be too cheap, considering the blather on metaphors in the blogspew above)...mitigate or STEER the paideuma from war? I think you get at something when you hint that most people who use the war metaphors haven't internalized how profoundly horrific it is. <br /><br />Red Oak, Iowa was profoundly affected by WWII. Most of the young men who grew up in that small town never came back alive. It's well-studied. If they did come back...<br /><br />"One Red Oak veteran, who had spent most of hsi war in German prison camps, had a case of the 'nerves' when he returned, his son recalled. Sudden noises, like fireworks, would set his synapses crackling. He was plagued by nightmares and haunted by memories of the time the German guards shot a friend of his who said he was too sick to work and left him lying on the ground as an example to the other prisoners." - p.125, _The Noir Forties_, Lingeman <br /><br />(Oh, but porn is "sick" and will "corrupt" us...)<br /><br />Or just to see your brothers cut in half, to shreds...then come home and realize the already rich had profited off the war...<br /><br />"What are we winning?" Let's keep asking that open question. Let's have more teachers point out that you cannot have a "war" on an abstract noun. Is "terrorism" being put behind bars to make us safer? What IS terrorism? Do other countries think what we do "is" terrorism? How does that work? Are there "drugs" wearing orange prison jumpsuits, waiting for a hearing or sentencing? How do we define "drugs"? <br /><br />Etc.<br /><br />You're right: "What are we winning?" can lead to embarrassment. The real work seems trying to allow the other person to save face if they think the wars are noble and worthwhile.<br /><br />Hey kids! Do yo think there were any Murkan corporations or banks that HELPED Hitler? No? Yes? You're not sure? Well, let's go to the library and find out.<br /><br />michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-46286717251563488272013-08-21T16:47:02.728-07:002013-08-21T16:47:02.728-07:00@ Prof Wagner: "I Perceive Myself As What Som...@ Prof Wagner: "I Perceive Myself As What Some People In Our Culture Seem to Currently Label as a Loser" may have taken the edge off, or at least totally balled-up the rhythm.<br /><br />"But I seem not what I appear to seem."<br /><br />Contemplating small victories seems a very sound strategy in the varieties of cognitive behavioral therapies that I've read and studied. <br /><br />I can't call up phrase one, melodic line one from Bruckner's 4th. I'm pretty sure I've listened to it but none of it stuck. Is there a tune in there that has gone viral?<br /><br />I read Underworld when it came out. I worked in a public library and books like that - big fat ones of info-density - would arrive and no one would check them out, so I read it over about a 10 week period. With books like this, I get involved in a weird way. They seem so engrossing - especially because they seem to be entering into conversations with other books, like Harlot's Ghost or Oswald or Ellroy's My Dark Places and RAW and Peter Dale Scott and Ed Sanders and even Paul Krassner and a few others....I get "lost" and they whittle their way into my intellectual DNA, on the chromosome that has to do with the covert, dark aspects of Unistat after 1945. <br /><br />I would like to publish some 7000 word essay on this SCHTUFF but who's paying? And I have no real contacts. <br /><br />Anyway, I'd like to read it again, for anything I've read once that gave me that particular species of frisson, I want to read again. As it seems now, nero-logically, Underworld as instantiated in my neurons seems dormant, and has entered into a melange of waking dream-like images hard to pin down. It's been awhile.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-24438474134928025242013-08-21T14:43:20.226-07:002013-08-21T14:43:20.226-07:00This is a great commentary on the Cosmic Schmuck p...This is a great commentary on the Cosmic Schmuck principle. I do wish that RAW had given one or two examples of when he thought he had been a Cosmic Schmuck. That would have been more powerful than just talking about it in the abstract. Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson)https://www.blogger.com/profile/07810736442596736041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-62860886214098487432013-08-20T20:09:51.809-07:002013-08-20T20:09:51.809-07:00GRIN if we don't peruse vast amounts of porn t...GRIN if we don't peruse vast amounts of porn the Spooks won't have anything to search through looking<br />for the vast armies of imaginary<br />enemies they are so fond of.<br /><br />Warfare is the basis of modern culture, as a meme it ate all contenders long ago. Like Fascism<br />it contaminated everything that got<br />near it. The only quibble I have<br />with using it as basis for debate<br />is that instead of real warfare,<br />the kind armies and navies engage<br />in most substitute their cartoon<br />version learned from comics, movies<br />and academics.<br /><br />I recommend Sun Tzu and Clausewitz<br />for those who wish to brush up on<br />the subject. I always ask the very<br />embarrassing question about what is<br />being won. Think about our current<br />wars, on terror, on drugs.<br /><br />What are we winning ? Where are we<br />winning ? I don't know how to frame<br />those questions in e-prime, but I'd<br />like to hear an answer that makes<br />some sense and doesn't include an<br />invisible army of fabricated evil<br />doers.<br /><br />Todays magic word is Palantir, the<br />world according to Karp.<br /><br />Keep the good vibes aflow we need<br />them more than ever.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-50901011653521642562013-08-20T15:05:08.798-07:002013-08-20T15:05:08.798-07:00Terrific piece. I kept hearing John Lennon singin...Terrific piece. I kept hearing John Lennon singing "I'm a Loser" in my head as I read it.<br /><br />I have Bruckner's Fourth playing as I contemplate small victories. Keep up the good work! (Have you read DiLillo's Underworld? I hope to finish it this week.)Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.com