I believe that it was Deleuze who pointed out the parallel - ingenious, really - betwixt Capitalism and Schizophrenia. I had myself intuited this condition (and immediately experienced it) from the moment that I committed myself to my first 'paying job'. Thankfully, I never went to the extreme of counting my own money and 'managing my finances'; I would have surely gone Crazy and never even known.
The human mind is not naturally equipped to perform mathematics. This is the theme of my first novel. Give me an imminent Bank Figure and I will take your word (or number) for it.
Ask me to check your math and I will, if I accept and fall into the Devil's hands, become lost in a forest that only the ignorant judge to be totally penetrable.
Deleuze speaks of schizophrenia as the state of agitation betwixt the Absolute and the Real. Numbers cannot exist outside us Absolutely; what is Real is our Conception of them, and 'our' is a tentative word. To say that they are Absolutely Real, one must say that one has Absolute Certainty of them. But Certainty in Mathematics is impossible because we cannot totally eliminate Error. Between any two steps in a calculation, Error might occcur, and we must be vigilant of the possibility of distortion. So, as Camus said, Lucid Reason notes its limits; between my desire for Certainty (or 'Money') and the Actuality of my Conscious ability, the gap will never be filled. At best I have a guess, which is therefore arbitrary. The corroboration of my fellows can at best lend only Assurance. The business-man plotting the 'future' in private is thus a victim of Caesarean Madness; if he believes his plans to be even Theoretically Certain, he has all ready deluded himself. I have seen victims of this. The Unconscious protests the inflation of the Ego. But how could something so simple as an extended math problem be a challenge to one's competence? Were one a person of Thought, one's mind might be put at rest and one's Soul at Peace. Yet for a Business-Man of Action to be a Person of Action, one must take Camus' leap (Ironically) and presume upon an Absolute as a Goal and therefore a Certainty by which not only to reach this (ultimately and originally Impossible) goal but to even justify (the presumption of) its Existence.
Planning for the future is bunk. I choose this truism: If one is truly going in a new direction, the Future is definitionally Uncertain (a more Shestovian idea), but it can be judged to be better simple because:
A. It is Novel,
and
B. The Mode of Travel is intrinsically rewarding.
'Goals' themselves begin to look, therefore, fundamentally flawed as abstract limits and not justifications for immediate, beloved Actions. Finally, Idealism -- not in opposition to Reality, but in Accord with and Because of it -- triumphs over Practicality, and the Life of Thought, rather than being a mere crutch to the Life of Action, triumphs over it and Becomes it, taking an entirely different course than reckless Action and enterprise that would have employed Thought as a crutch.
dm.A.A.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
In Defense of the Truth:
If one Could describe every aspect of Experience, as Hegel posited, one would entirely change (and slaughter) Experience. For this reason, there must be a Reality distinct from description and a Truth beyond mere words.
Dmitry.
Dmitry.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
On the Fallacy of Perfectionism.
At any point in the process of any methodical Act, one is tempted away from an Idealised Goal to deviate. This can be observed in Inquiry; one is tempted to stop a given train of thought entirely in order to re-examine the matter. This comes at a risk; one may never capture again the original train of thought. Yet is the motive itself such a loss? No. To take the risk involves a courage that attempted self-destruction does not.
The temptation towards Deviation is the emergence of the New; one is flooded with new variables for Consideration. This cannot be stopped; one cannot step in the same river twice.
One needs always to withhold this in order to attain 'perfection'.
Yet perfection is always something one has all ready done before, and it is impossible to have a successful repetition.
The only motive for such a perfectionism would be this conviction: That the first time it was done this way it was done poorly. This was because the first time one 'deviates', such as in the case of a person who tries to renounce Thought part-way through an Inquiry. In short, it was Imperfect then, but it sets the standard for what is Perfect now. Yet it will never truly be Perfect because what one imagines to be Perfect has all ready happened and therefore cannot be repeated.
Failure and Success are in many ways Cognitively Arbitrary.
In the process of Inquiry, for instance, to forego one line of thought is simply to enable another. This may be inevitable. Everything is change, and when one Being Reveals itself to us it Conceals another. We think, to use now a Wattsian rather than a Heideggerean image, in waves. We cannot think in words without taking pauses to 'gather our thoughts'. During one of these pauses, one may arbitrarily vow to disavow oneself of all Intellect. Yet this decision is not binding. We are always Two people: The Present and the Future, and at any moment the Future may annihilate the Present.
Here is a potentially frustrating riddle: If I begin a train of Thought and partway through I am tempted to sabotage myself and to disavow all thought, but I conclude the thought in spite of this and forego my disavowal, was the Inquiry a failure? It seems not.
The disavowal itself was futile, if a disavowal of this kind aims at an Absolute; To disavow Thought one must make impossible any success for Thought in the Future. Yet my status in the Future as a free agent ungoverned by the Past renders this futile. The disavowal was therefore Arbitrary entirely. Not only could nothing be gained by it but nothing could be lost by it; the time spent not thinking might have been no longer and no practically different than the Necessary Pause which serves Thought.
What motive might there be to renounce Thought? Forgetfulness.
Truth is the imaginary Limit that Inquiry never reaches. We approach it like a horizon; it is as illusory as Perfection. We try to Leap into it when we get close, at the peak of Reasoning and Thought.
But at the moment we stop Thinking we find nothing so to Leap into so Reassuring as what was there while we were thinking, for Thought created it.
In light of all of this, the Perfectionism and anti-intellectualism of Fundamentalism is understood (to be Absurd).
dm.A.A.
The temptation towards Deviation is the emergence of the New; one is flooded with new variables for Consideration. This cannot be stopped; one cannot step in the same river twice.
One needs always to withhold this in order to attain 'perfection'.
Yet perfection is always something one has all ready done before, and it is impossible to have a successful repetition.
The only motive for such a perfectionism would be this conviction: That the first time it was done this way it was done poorly. This was because the first time one 'deviates', such as in the case of a person who tries to renounce Thought part-way through an Inquiry. In short, it was Imperfect then, but it sets the standard for what is Perfect now. Yet it will never truly be Perfect because what one imagines to be Perfect has all ready happened and therefore cannot be repeated.
Failure and Success are in many ways Cognitively Arbitrary.
In the process of Inquiry, for instance, to forego one line of thought is simply to enable another. This may be inevitable. Everything is change, and when one Being Reveals itself to us it Conceals another. We think, to use now a Wattsian rather than a Heideggerean image, in waves. We cannot think in words without taking pauses to 'gather our thoughts'. During one of these pauses, one may arbitrarily vow to disavow oneself of all Intellect. Yet this decision is not binding. We are always Two people: The Present and the Future, and at any moment the Future may annihilate the Present.
Here is a potentially frustrating riddle: If I begin a train of Thought and partway through I am tempted to sabotage myself and to disavow all thought, but I conclude the thought in spite of this and forego my disavowal, was the Inquiry a failure? It seems not.
The disavowal itself was futile, if a disavowal of this kind aims at an Absolute; To disavow Thought one must make impossible any success for Thought in the Future. Yet my status in the Future as a free agent ungoverned by the Past renders this futile. The disavowal was therefore Arbitrary entirely. Not only could nothing be gained by it but nothing could be lost by it; the time spent not thinking might have been no longer and no practically different than the Necessary Pause which serves Thought.
What motive might there be to renounce Thought? Forgetfulness.
Truth is the imaginary Limit that Inquiry never reaches. We approach it like a horizon; it is as illusory as Perfection. We try to Leap into it when we get close, at the peak of Reasoning and Thought.
But at the moment we stop Thinking we find nothing so to Leap into so Reassuring as what was there while we were thinking, for Thought created it.
In light of all of this, the Perfectionism and anti-intellectualism of Fundamentalism is understood (to be Absurd).
dm.A.A.
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