Reading Facebook posts tonight and I'm struck, again, by the wave of posters with captions. Who started this shit and can we make it stop? Probably not.
Well, okay. Here's what I'm noticing. At least from my Facebook friends, most of the posts are bitter, mean, sarcastic, devoid of joy and boring. Most of them suggest that our current political situation sucks. Now, to be fair, the one's that say that opposite are equally annoying.
Now, what annoys me - the cause for this post - isn't that I agree or disagree with any of them in particular. It's the utter lack of joy in so many of the posts. They seem to want to paint the world as one big pain in the ass - one evil place to live where only politicians get their way.
Okay - so they're kind of right. The rich do win. Politicians are bought and constantly lie. All this is true, but yet I'm left with a sorrow that goes beyond the political situation. Are people not experiencing joy anymore? I mean even when we were in huge - literally - World Wars - there was joy in the literature. I mean read the existentialists carefully. Kafka is hilarious - Camus is always affirmative. Beckett - well, okay - I don't know, but fuck it I love the guy.
But when I look at these posts tonight - I don't care about the political side - what I'm sad about is an utter lack of joy. The world IS. We need Nietzsche in these times. Whatever it is - say YES. Hate politicians - fine - hate the president - fine - but please find some moment for joy and pleasure. The world gives. The world is illuminated. The world is also a totally fucked-up place - but let's not forget the former because of the latter. (And this is not some statement about "balance." I mean something far simpler.)
Monday, May 14, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Jerry McGuire and Truth
So the wonderfully cute kid in Jerry McGuire utters three truths: the human head weighs 8 lbs, bees and dogs smell fear, and my neighbor has three rabbits.
What's interesting about this, to me anyways, is that they are all true but true in really different ways. The first statement is true by way of average. Maybe nobody's head has ever weighed 8lbs, but the average of all human heads is 8 lbs. And then there's other interesting questions about who's head counts as human. I would guess that figure does not count infants' heads as heads. But we get what is meant - the statement works.
The next claim is basically universal. We assume ALL dogs and bees smell fear. Of course there are always outliers, but ostensibly they are so small as to be explained - like people who can't see colors. Though, there's a huge and really interesting assumption about fear being something you can smell. What a bizarre and extremely cool idea. I can smell your fear, literally.
Finally, my neighbor has three rabbits. This is by far my favorite of the three. Not just because it's the funniest. Well here's the thing: it's the funniest because it's local. So the idea, what makes it humorous, is that we think Truth should not be local. However, this proves the opposite point - Truth is more exact exactly when it's local. So while my neighbor might not have three rabbits - in fact they don't - they have a litter of loud, hellspawn kids who embrace life in a way that is beautiful despite my dislike for their kind.
So Truth is complicated.
The little kids declarations are the most interesting part of this movie, which has one of my least favorite ideas of love: you complete me. Disgusting. I want to date people who are already whole. It's sweet; it's sentimental. But I don't agree with it. However, I love that kid explaining Truth.
What's interesting about this, to me anyways, is that they are all true but true in really different ways. The first statement is true by way of average. Maybe nobody's head has ever weighed 8lbs, but the average of all human heads is 8 lbs. And then there's other interesting questions about who's head counts as human. I would guess that figure does not count infants' heads as heads. But we get what is meant - the statement works.
The next claim is basically universal. We assume ALL dogs and bees smell fear. Of course there are always outliers, but ostensibly they are so small as to be explained - like people who can't see colors. Though, there's a huge and really interesting assumption about fear being something you can smell. What a bizarre and extremely cool idea. I can smell your fear, literally.
Finally, my neighbor has three rabbits. This is by far my favorite of the three. Not just because it's the funniest. Well here's the thing: it's the funniest because it's local. So the idea, what makes it humorous, is that we think Truth should not be local. However, this proves the opposite point - Truth is more exact exactly when it's local. So while my neighbor might not have three rabbits - in fact they don't - they have a litter of loud, hellspawn kids who embrace life in a way that is beautiful despite my dislike for their kind.
So Truth is complicated.
The little kids declarations are the most interesting part of this movie, which has one of my least favorite ideas of love: you complete me. Disgusting. I want to date people who are already whole. It's sweet; it's sentimental. But I don't agree with it. However, I love that kid explaining Truth.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Ideology
Ideology is the death of thinking. One of the great ironies is that one of the most ideological philosophies is Marxism - which, of course, is based on materialism. In fact, more often than not, I find most of the ideological critiques to be based on a sort of crank-turning nihilism that is always moving-towards-death.
This is basically in response to Coffeen's post about the manner in which someone should critique. Being in academia is an existence that fluctuates between utter boredom and sublime enthrallment. I love when I hear critiques that make something old look new - something familiar look weird. What I hate, despise is critiques that squash difference. "Hey look how this is about my theory too." Now, to be fair, I've done this too. For quite a number of years, everything I saw was proof that Heidegger was correct. But I think, I hope, I've grown out of that.
Perhaps the problem is that academia thinks it's job is about changing something - fixing the evil capitalist, racist, sexist ideologies that exist. Now - to be fair - we have helped that, a little, maybe, I think. But what we should be about is making texts exciting - making people want to read these texts that make us think and rethink. There's no reason to tell a person what a text must mean - but there is nothing more beautiful than showing someone how a text can mean - how it can go and hopefully how it can go in many different ways simultaneously.
This is basically in response to Coffeen's post about the manner in which someone should critique. Being in academia is an existence that fluctuates between utter boredom and sublime enthrallment. I love when I hear critiques that make something old look new - something familiar look weird. What I hate, despise is critiques that squash difference. "Hey look how this is about my theory too." Now, to be fair, I've done this too. For quite a number of years, everything I saw was proof that Heidegger was correct. But I think, I hope, I've grown out of that.
Perhaps the problem is that academia thinks it's job is about changing something - fixing the evil capitalist, racist, sexist ideologies that exist. Now - to be fair - we have helped that, a little, maybe, I think. But what we should be about is making texts exciting - making people want to read these texts that make us think and rethink. There's no reason to tell a person what a text must mean - but there is nothing more beautiful than showing someone how a text can mean - how it can go and hopefully how it can go in many different ways simultaneously.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Bikers and Irony
The standard sort of conversation that was discussed following the death of David Foster Wallace was that his project was an attempt to combat irony. In fact he often mentioned that post-modernism had ran its course and in a wonderful essay on television and US Fiction, he argues that irony is simply not good for the soul.
I say that to say this: Bikers are not ironic. There can be no hipster biker. I recently played two gigs for a set of bikers and we played, well, Biker Music. So I'm playing some tunes that I don't really care too much for - songs by people like Kid Rock, for example. However, while I was playing them - to quote a line from a piece of ironic fiction - I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity: the people listening to these songs, really like these songs. They are meaningful to them and they see nothing wrong with enjoying music that reflects and reinforces a world they understand.
I don't mean this to sound condescending - in fact I mean the finger to basically point back at me - "my people," liberal academics or whatever group I am also in. Basically, what struck me as both sad and illuminating is that none of my friends - myself included - can listen to a lot of music without a stance of irony - a subtle sneer. I have friends that love to point out that the song by Alanis Morissette misuses the word "ironic."
Where this gets complicated is that I have to admit I get a certain amount of joy out of sneering at a few things - Irony is almost a default position and I don't think it's always a bad thing. In fact, a lot of times I think it's a great thing, but I do ultimately agree with DFW that if everything becomes irony - if everything is always-already a parody, something is lost and that loss is hard to articulate but easy to feel.
I say that to say this: Bikers are not ironic. There can be no hipster biker. I recently played two gigs for a set of bikers and we played, well, Biker Music. So I'm playing some tunes that I don't really care too much for - songs by people like Kid Rock, for example. However, while I was playing them - to quote a line from a piece of ironic fiction - I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity: the people listening to these songs, really like these songs. They are meaningful to them and they see nothing wrong with enjoying music that reflects and reinforces a world they understand.
I don't mean this to sound condescending - in fact I mean the finger to basically point back at me - "my people," liberal academics or whatever group I am also in. Basically, what struck me as both sad and illuminating is that none of my friends - myself included - can listen to a lot of music without a stance of irony - a subtle sneer. I have friends that love to point out that the song by Alanis Morissette misuses the word "ironic."
Where this gets complicated is that I have to admit I get a certain amount of joy out of sneering at a few things - Irony is almost a default position and I don't think it's always a bad thing. In fact, a lot of times I think it's a great thing, but I do ultimately agree with DFW that if everything becomes irony - if everything is always-already a parody, something is lost and that loss is hard to articulate but easy to feel.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
On Choice
And so my students, in general think of themselves as radically free-willed individuals. They make choices. They do shit. And they are right, up to a point. The problem is an extension of my last post - our American ideology and even down to the grammatical structure of our language suggest a subject spewing his will all over the object world.
But the world fights back. Reality has its own structure - now you're part of reality, obviously, but you don't control the structure of the world; however, you do contribute, alter, play with, and do all kinds of other things to help that structure be a structure.
So what tends to happen, as I see it, is that things that appear as choices have pull, have a sort of ontologic and even theologic magnetism. For example, I could choose to not use the internet tomorrow, but I would constantly feel it working on me, trying to seduce me. And like most people, I actually don't have the choice, unless I don't want to be capitalistically viable, to not get online. I teach - I check email. I fucking hate email, but I must check it and respond to it, no matter how poorly written it is. On the plus side, student emails are often a good source of interpretative practice in making meaning - or making mean, which is what I seem to be doing now.
Point being - you aren't in control. You are always-already responding. However, you have some control. You can usually choose a more or less meaningful response. I mean sometimes you're just sort of screwed - if the cop asks me why I was speeding - I don't have much room for meaningful response. I think the correct answer is something like "I'm sorry - I'm dying - I'm on my period (which I doubt would work for me, though in a transgendered, hyper-politically correct world, who knows), I am in need of evacuation and so forth. But usually, one has choices, in fact, usually one has too many choices.
But this in itself is still part of the system. If I'm hungry I have lots of choices; however, I don't have choices that aren't there. If I want fastfood I'm in luck in my town; if I want Thai food I'm not. So the choices are always-already limited by the environment.
The point is pretty simple - you aren't in control and neither is the "world." What you are involved in is a constantly evolving negotiation of possibilities.
Okay why does this really matter? Well I am thinking of this in terms of the larger framework of Global Capitalism and something occurred to me in the reading and thinking about Don Delillo's amazingly smart novel Cosmopolis: sometimes the very notion of free-will turns back on itself in weird and violent ways.
In America we are constantly taught an ideology of autonomy. You are you - I am me - and we are not connected unless we choose to be. (Sounds like a bad nursery rhyme) So if this is the ideology that's being manifested it means that outliers - Occupy (Wall Street and so forth) people (who I always pulled for) and extremists like the Unibomber (who I didn't pull for, but will say he's more interesting than most terrorists - not sure that's worthy of an award though) actually contribute to the ideology of choice, which creates the idea that we have a functioning democratic system. "How can you say people don't have power - look at all those protesters?" But those protesters, since they don't have the resources to radically change the global, end up reinforcing the system they are so very mad it. And to be clear - I want them to keep it up, but strategy is more important than ever.
Finally, just to be appropriately recursive: did I have a choice to write this? Yes. Sure. I could have not written it. However, did I feel compelled? Yes. Am I responding to the world? Yes. Perhaps the most appropriate term is neither free-will or determinism, but rather the old, wonderful religious term: vocation. Vocation means that the world calls and you choose to respond. But it's not one choice among many - the choice is to "become who you are" or nihilism. Perhaps not that drastic - but perhaps THAT drastic.
Oh - and nothing is behind anything - that one is still coming in full, and partially implied here.
But the world fights back. Reality has its own structure - now you're part of reality, obviously, but you don't control the structure of the world; however, you do contribute, alter, play with, and do all kinds of other things to help that structure be a structure.
So what tends to happen, as I see it, is that things that appear as choices have pull, have a sort of ontologic and even theologic magnetism. For example, I could choose to not use the internet tomorrow, but I would constantly feel it working on me, trying to seduce me. And like most people, I actually don't have the choice, unless I don't want to be capitalistically viable, to not get online. I teach - I check email. I fucking hate email, but I must check it and respond to it, no matter how poorly written it is. On the plus side, student emails are often a good source of interpretative practice in making meaning - or making mean, which is what I seem to be doing now.
Point being - you aren't in control. You are always-already responding. However, you have some control. You can usually choose a more or less meaningful response. I mean sometimes you're just sort of screwed - if the cop asks me why I was speeding - I don't have much room for meaningful response. I think the correct answer is something like "I'm sorry - I'm dying - I'm on my period (which I doubt would work for me, though in a transgendered, hyper-politically correct world, who knows), I am in need of evacuation and so forth. But usually, one has choices, in fact, usually one has too many choices.
But this in itself is still part of the system. If I'm hungry I have lots of choices; however, I don't have choices that aren't there. If I want fastfood I'm in luck in my town; if I want Thai food I'm not. So the choices are always-already limited by the environment.
The point is pretty simple - you aren't in control and neither is the "world." What you are involved in is a constantly evolving negotiation of possibilities.
Okay why does this really matter? Well I am thinking of this in terms of the larger framework of Global Capitalism and something occurred to me in the reading and thinking about Don Delillo's amazingly smart novel Cosmopolis: sometimes the very notion of free-will turns back on itself in weird and violent ways.
In America we are constantly taught an ideology of autonomy. You are you - I am me - and we are not connected unless we choose to be. (Sounds like a bad nursery rhyme) So if this is the ideology that's being manifested it means that outliers - Occupy (Wall Street and so forth) people (who I always pulled for) and extremists like the Unibomber (who I didn't pull for, but will say he's more interesting than most terrorists - not sure that's worthy of an award though) actually contribute to the ideology of choice, which creates the idea that we have a functioning democratic system. "How can you say people don't have power - look at all those protesters?" But those protesters, since they don't have the resources to radically change the global, end up reinforcing the system they are so very mad it. And to be clear - I want them to keep it up, but strategy is more important than ever.
Finally, just to be appropriately recursive: did I have a choice to write this? Yes. Sure. I could have not written it. However, did I feel compelled? Yes. Am I responding to the world? Yes. Perhaps the most appropriate term is neither free-will or determinism, but rather the old, wonderful religious term: vocation. Vocation means that the world calls and you choose to respond. But it's not one choice among many - the choice is to "become who you are" or nihilism. Perhaps not that drastic - but perhaps THAT drastic.
Oh - and nothing is behind anything - that one is still coming in full, and partially implied here.
Monday, March 12, 2012
The Metaphysics of The Sentence
If you read people like Derrida eventually you're going to run across the idea that the English language - or languages in general - are always/already involved in metaphysics. Now as a philosophy undergrad, I didn't really understand that. It sounded correct, but I couldn't quite grasp it.
Well years later, I finally gave the lecture on the metaphysics of the sentence, assuring myself that I might, maybe, know what the hell that means.
So one of my students in ENG 111 (Expository Writing) asks me about my PhD. And I go - well my focus is Rhetoric and Literary theory. I'm interested in the theoretical. And I go - here's an example.
And I write this: "Bob hit the ball."
Well we could diagram it - or point out that it's Subject-Verb-Direct Object. But, I say, that would be boring. (Now for teachers out there - I do teach them this stuff, but it's not what I care about.)
So I go English language is active/violent by it's construction. (Violence being used loosely) English is always an active subject knocking about in a passive world. It's the metaphysics of our grammar. And, well, it's both good and bad - easier to understand if you put the subject early in the sentence, but always implying a world that's not active which is philosophically, well, wrong.
And I get blank stares from lots - which I would have also given this stare in their position. So I give them the counter example - and I'm proud of this one: Yoda. (This one's for you Phillip)
Yoda is basically a Buddhist and hence he speaks in basically passive voice. Yoda would say something like "Hit the ball I did." Now, we usually just laugh and go "That's how Yoda talks." But it's not an accident. Yoda is talking in a way that conforms to his metaphysical understanding of the world. Yoda thinks the whole problem is a bunch of active subjects thinking they beat up on and manipulate the world of objects. And perhaps we should learn something from him - perhaps not adopt his rhetoric, but embrace the lesson that is metaphysically behind it. (Next time we'll discuss how nothing is being anything. Or something like that.)
Wrote an essay I did.
Well years later, I finally gave the lecture on the metaphysics of the sentence, assuring myself that I might, maybe, know what the hell that means.
So one of my students in ENG 111 (Expository Writing) asks me about my PhD. And I go - well my focus is Rhetoric and Literary theory. I'm interested in the theoretical. And I go - here's an example.
And I write this: "Bob hit the ball."
Well we could diagram it - or point out that it's Subject-Verb-Direct Object. But, I say, that would be boring. (Now for teachers out there - I do teach them this stuff, but it's not what I care about.)
So I go English language is active/violent by it's construction. (Violence being used loosely) English is always an active subject knocking about in a passive world. It's the metaphysics of our grammar. And, well, it's both good and bad - easier to understand if you put the subject early in the sentence, but always implying a world that's not active which is philosophically, well, wrong.
And I get blank stares from lots - which I would have also given this stare in their position. So I give them the counter example - and I'm proud of this one: Yoda. (This one's for you Phillip)
Yoda is basically a Buddhist and hence he speaks in basically passive voice. Yoda would say something like "Hit the ball I did." Now, we usually just laugh and go "That's how Yoda talks." But it's not an accident. Yoda is talking in a way that conforms to his metaphysical understanding of the world. Yoda thinks the whole problem is a bunch of active subjects thinking they beat up on and manipulate the world of objects. And perhaps we should learn something from him - perhaps not adopt his rhetoric, but embrace the lesson that is metaphysically behind it. (Next time we'll discuss how nothing is being anything. Or something like that.)
Wrote an essay I did.
Friday, February 24, 2012
On Mythology
And so I waste too much time on Facebook. Lots of that time is spent talking to genuine, real-life friends, basically using it as something like AIM with a message board. But one of my other voyeuristic habits is reading friends' political debates. I can't help it. I am a post-modern Jimmy Stewart from Rear Window.
And the conclusion I've came to is this: there should be a new discourse called "American Mythological Studies." Now America, as is often pointed out, is not an old country. The one time I was in England - specifically Oxford - I remember often thinking: "this Church is older than my country." But at the same time, countries aren't people, so perhaps the metaphor of growth is problematic. For example, I don't care how old Germany is/was, Hitler was not a good idea. (And damn you Heidegger for complicating my philosophical career.)
Okay, but my point. Our mythological creatures are often referred to as "Founding Fathers." These are our Greek Gods. I guess Jefferson might be Zeus. And let me be clear, I think the greatest and coolest thing about our country is that we are the only country - I think - that was founded by intellectuals. I mean that's really fucking awesome.
However, they were not Gods - they were men. And they were men with interests. Now if they are Gods, then by definition whatever they say is true by fiat. So it's popular in political debate these days to just quote a founding father and using that as evidence that you are correct. This is insane, obviously, because it assumes all the founding fathers agreed on everything. But worse than that it's problematic because it assumes that didn't have real, serious problems.
I think it was Jay, though it might be Madison, that said (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "The people that own the country should run the country." That's not democratic. Obviously everyone knows about the owning of slaves. Now, let's be fair, i.e., respect, revere the brilliant things and dismiss the backwards ideas. But let's admit it's insane that there was ever a time when people in power did not want to keep their power.
The latest and most interesting example is Ronald Reagan. He's become a mythological figure in 30 years. Usually that takes many hundreds of years. I guess technology has sped up everything so much that it has caused dromoscopic delirium.
Reagen the person simply isn't what's being referring to by the current all-too-popular conservative signifier "Reagan." That signifier has become totally post-modern, referring only to itself, not to anything in the world. I feel it's without point to push this argument - but if you disagree, look it up. I still believe that things happen in the world that can be described more or less fairly. If the world is nothing but rhetoric - and I'm getting a PhD in Rhetoric - then we are, to use a technical term, fucked.
Now every act is rhetorical - everything is a gesture - a way of making meaning, but that doesn't imply there isn't a world out there that we share. In fact it's the opposite: only because we share a common world can we gesture to each other in the first place. Communication assumes a common world. We share it and let's learn to share it more honestly.
And the conclusion I've came to is this: there should be a new discourse called "American Mythological Studies." Now America, as is often pointed out, is not an old country. The one time I was in England - specifically Oxford - I remember often thinking: "this Church is older than my country." But at the same time, countries aren't people, so perhaps the metaphor of growth is problematic. For example, I don't care how old Germany is/was, Hitler was not a good idea. (And damn you Heidegger for complicating my philosophical career.)
Okay, but my point. Our mythological creatures are often referred to as "Founding Fathers." These are our Greek Gods. I guess Jefferson might be Zeus. And let me be clear, I think the greatest and coolest thing about our country is that we are the only country - I think - that was founded by intellectuals. I mean that's really fucking awesome.
However, they were not Gods - they were men. And they were men with interests. Now if they are Gods, then by definition whatever they say is true by fiat. So it's popular in political debate these days to just quote a founding father and using that as evidence that you are correct. This is insane, obviously, because it assumes all the founding fathers agreed on everything. But worse than that it's problematic because it assumes that didn't have real, serious problems.
I think it was Jay, though it might be Madison, that said (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "The people that own the country should run the country." That's not democratic. Obviously everyone knows about the owning of slaves. Now, let's be fair, i.e., respect, revere the brilliant things and dismiss the backwards ideas. But let's admit it's insane that there was ever a time when people in power did not want to keep their power.
The latest and most interesting example is Ronald Reagan. He's become a mythological figure in 30 years. Usually that takes many hundreds of years. I guess technology has sped up everything so much that it has caused dromoscopic delirium.
Reagen the person simply isn't what's being referring to by the current all-too-popular conservative signifier "Reagan." That signifier has become totally post-modern, referring only to itself, not to anything in the world. I feel it's without point to push this argument - but if you disagree, look it up. I still believe that things happen in the world that can be described more or less fairly. If the world is nothing but rhetoric - and I'm getting a PhD in Rhetoric - then we are, to use a technical term, fucked.
Now every act is rhetorical - everything is a gesture - a way of making meaning, but that doesn't imply there isn't a world out there that we share. In fact it's the opposite: only because we share a common world can we gesture to each other in the first place. Communication assumes a common world. We share it and let's learn to share it more honestly.
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