Society feels entitled to your participation.

Society feels entitled to your participation, and yet it does not allow you to feel entitled to its consistency.

Moralism is a pretentious power attitude. Morals should be one’s own business. One condemns others’ behaviours and attitudes with the intent of claiming power. Cat-calling is not immoral, just transparent. One condemns what one does not do usually out of fear. Being “morally superior” is just a form of entitlement, the very thing of which the inferior is accused. This is the irony: That when you point the finger, you have three more pointing back at you.

Love is difficult. Love should be un-possessive. Salvation through faith alone, not good works. One’s discipline will follow from one’s faith.

Maturity clears these concerns away.

Dm.A.A.

Kresten condemns cat-calling because of a power attitude. He is insecure in the company of strangers who challenge his machismo. He derives power from being in a group that will be an extension of his self, narcissistically. He can pride his self in being a benevolent person by finding a group so conformist that he can edit his routine to fit in with them.

What he finds at fault with others is at fault with his self. He would naturally support any style of life that perpetuates this ruse, such as Shadow projection and hostility. Watts was right; the subject of any in-group’s conversation is the nastiness of the out-group. It was Kresten his self that taught me about ‘group dynamics’. No wonder that I have never fit in with any group of his friends, but only individuals.

He would condemn any sort of risky deviance, from an adolescent norm, that would threaten this establishment, throwing it into the primordial rapture of true chaos.

Andrew can only condemn cat calling on the grounds that it is offensive. Yet this argument is circular, for it does not ask: WHY is it offensive? OUGHT one to be offended? IS there value in attempting it, if only for a message? CAN one endure the scorn, in reason, for the hope and courage that one will find the person who says Yes? Is the ethic based on the culture? Ought the culture not be based on the ethic?

Of course, his concerns are no less Utilitarian than those of Kresten. Kresten, Mike, and Robbie are only unified in popular disagreement. Andrew’s very tendency to appeal to the group for corroboration rather than appealing to his own thoughts is telling of how most people his age do so. The uniformity of their responses evidences their conformity of mind and nothing more. Kresten, Mike, and Robbie want only a “method that will work”, and they care more for the ends justifying the means than for the means to justify the ends. This is a trap. It is just as circular as Andrew’s argument, for here the future is merely projected from the past, and the Present (like the Ethical grounds upon which Culture ought to be founded) is neglected.

Dm.A.A.

Post-scriptum: They both have rape fantasies, and Kresten has power fantasies.

On the Phenomenology of Intuition. Conclusion.

The only way to resolve this problem totally is to suspend Common Sense and to destroy it and to say that in fact the Present IS available to the Past, and that the Future is available to the Present. That when we project upon the Future, when we contemplate the Future, the future is all ready coming in. Because as I have pointed out: The Past is not available to us by our own standards, if we are to be totally Thorough.

Dm.A.A.

On the Ohenomenology of Intuition. V.

Really, if we are to be totally stringent, the only really sensible results that we have had, were from this imperfect experiment which can only make reference to the future, therefore we must conclude that our relationship is only TO the future; we are all ways looking forward. We can never look back. Because again: According to Common Sense, any projection of an aesthetic response to stimuli which are available to us at the present which might have not been able to us at the past is therefore a projection upon the future. Because these stimuli will be available to us in the future. And since the past isn’t really, ostensibly, available to us anyway, since we only really have the present, it seems as though time does come, scientifically, from the future. Not the past. Again: Common Sense IS that in the past, in the archaic, the present was not available but the present will be available in the future. So we’re all ways contemplating the future when we are trying to project something based upon current information. When we are trying to project a theory of the past, we are trying to escape current information, and we are trying to return to that archaic state to imagine a situation where the present was unavailable.

This IS Common Sense, once analysed from outside Common Sense.

But that means that since the past is never available to us in its untarnished form, we must all ways be, therefore, all ways thinking of the Future. I am not saying this as a moral imperative; I am saying this as a matter of fact. Though of course, as with all language, this can be interpreted both ways.

Dm.A.A.

On the Phenomenology of Intuition. IV.

We can review our two experiments:

The imperfect experiment which draws upon information only available to us in our present.

And the more perfect experiment which draws upon the information ostensibly apparent to us in the past (or ostensibly available to us but only using information available to us in the past and not information available to us in the present). Now, of course, this is all ready a bit sketchy, because we are not sure that we actually have available to us right now in the present the information available to us in the past, because of the fallibility of our memories. Needless to say, the perfect experiment doesn’t in fact WORK, doesn’t produce results, or if does, it only produces them In Passing, and they cannot be re-created. The first experiment ALL SO produced results, and to some degree they can be re-created, but you don’t know whether or not this re-creation is or is not simply a continuation of the same experiment, because it Feels phenomenologically as though no time has passed at all between the original sense of inspiration and the Current sense of inspiration.

So what does this tell us?

First of all it tells us that the whole Positivistic ideal of ‘Re-creatable Results”, is really some sort of a Farce, especially if our Creativity is concerned. So Re-creativity is somewhat the Enemy of Creativity, it might be said. But there is something Else about this phenomenologically. And that is: Is that you might say in theory that either experiment Could have produced the same results. But because the results can only be produced ONCE because they are Novel, it must be presumed that whichever one we did First was the one that produced the results and therefore, if we’d done them in an alternate order, the Perfect Experiment would have produced the results. And we’d be happy. We’d go home happy.

But: Presuming upon this, we’d have to admit that either experiment, either arrangement, could in fact create the same effect. And therefore we might all so say that any arrangement, any different arrangement of songs, any different experiment could all so create the same effect. And therefore it can be said that any arrangement is not unique; it is “non-unique”. So the arrangement we are working with right now, which we originally Intuited, does in fact therefore have something to it that the other arrangements do not, and it could only be arrived at through Intuition.

Furthermore: Let’s look at it pragmatically. We can Infer, that since an imperfect experiment can still produce a result, there is something we’re dealing with here which is Unconscious on our part. We are NOT trying to re-create the past; we are trying to project the future, which would of course USE, according to Common Sense, the information available to us at present, and it would be building upon [what is from its point of reference] the Past.

So, what does this mean?

This means that just in the same way as you might say that either of these two experiments is equal, you might say that it doesn’t make a difference whether we are projecting these experiments upon the future, or whether we are looking back on the past. We really cannot set foot in the same river twice. And yet when we’re dealing with this unique instant, and the magic that we have on this album, it is unique. Even the future cannot really re-produce it; it can only challenge it or offer an alternative which would be appropriate to say a live performance or something of that nature. The point is that you could just as easily say that the Present comes out of the Future as it comes out of Past. Because even in our analysis of the Past we are all ready thinking about the Future. But theoretically…

Dm.A.A. 

On the Phenomenology of Intuition. III.

At any rate:

The memory of our success is evidence of another Intuition having been adequate; it is evidence that the Present really does come out of the Future rather than the Past. Somehow I’d Intuited that this album would work out in this way. Coupled with the Intuitions of Kresten and of Ro. As well as what our bodies Did playing our instruments during our recording session. We came out with a Fantastic artistic work, that it’s naive to presume that any alternate arrangement could have really pulled off. For I think that in fact the reason that we appreciate good art is because intuitively we imagine what an alternate arrangement would have been like, and we Know it to be superior. But only someone who has not gone into this with as much depth as we have would condemn it to irrationalism, and that is all ways the case with superficiality. The moment of Intuition should be my main focus, though, even if that means that I am switching to a more extraverted mode of being, because what could be more Divine – and of course we have to make room for that ultimately, as a Conclusion of This – than contacting that stream of knowledge which we cannot warrant Rationally at the time that it is produced. We have to acknowledge that THAT is in fact where our hearts should lie, because there are dangerous things in the Unconscious, and even Sinister things, the Unconscious, in its Intricacy, is much more Informed than Consciousness, in  its relative superficiality. And we know this because, when we DO actually take back aspects of our Unconscious, they become aspects of our Consciousness, which had at one point or another been a matter of Common Sense, or we could not Describe them. That’s all ways the case with Intuition: You cannot DESCRIBE it RATIONALLY because there is no NECESSITY to do so except when imposed from outside. There is no internal, practical necessity to do so, so our minds are not capable of it. Unless, say, we’ve researched it a good deal, and then most critics would not bother to listen to us. And yet we know! And we have to trust it. That the very fact that such an experience that is an inkling which IS again, much like creative inspiration, an act of Novelty, a moment of Novelty, a moment of Revelation, that such a thing can occur and dazzle us, even though our consciousness is not able to account for it, this is Evidence that the deeper store of Unconscious information which we simply wouldn’t be able to handle in Waking Life is speaking to us. And of course if we condemn that and you ask: Why not simply handle it in Waking Life? Well, recognize that people who handle it are the ones condemned by the system to be seen as schizophrenics, neurotics, things of nature, because in fact their genius is that they’re able to formulate aspects of Reality which other people ARE definitionally Unconscious Of. It is the Intuition which is in fact the Survivalistic adaptation which allows us not to have to do that. Because of course in every instance of Yin, there is a little bit of Yang, and in every instance of Yang, there is a little bit of yin. Even in the fairly Fascistic dogmas which condemn these intellectuals to be mentally ill – these people who communicate verbally the textures of their innermost minds – even this is to some degree warranted simply because it is IMPRACTICAL for the Intuition to be rationally expressed; it is simply Unnecessary. This is exactly why the Intuition must be trusted, even When it cannot be rationally expressed, and the individual who COMPELS the Intuition to be justified, by something outside of its self, WHILST condemning the “neurotic”, or the psychotic or the schizophrenic, is putting the individual in a double-bind, and to some degree participating in the worst kind of hypocrisy. Especially since, like all people, this person owes a considerable debt to the Unconscious and the Intuition as well, that only needs to be made again a conscious value.

Dm.A.A.

On the Phenomenology of Intuition. II.

And only to include that which I could have Envisioned! At the moment of conception. Now, of course, at This moment in time I have no access TO that. Because if I pay very close attention: Kierkegaard was right; Life must be lived forwards but understood backwards, because we can only understand the past in terms of our present condition and how we Edit our present condition. Therefore Memory, as it has been scientifically proven, is very fallible, because to some degree it is all ways a Construction. So what do we have? We have an imperfect experiment, as it were, which is an attempt to imagine an alternate course of action yet from the perspective of Current events. And this produces an emotional reaction in people, which would ostensibly have been the original emotional reaction at the thought of this alternative arrangement – at the thought of this alternate course of action. Yet what happens when one tries to run a more perfect experiment in one’s mind and actually exclude all those elements that are mental anachronisms, which are aspects of the future from the perspective of the time we are trying to re-create, and not aspects of the present, or, from our current frame of reference, the past. Well what happens there? What happens There is that no emotion is produced at all; no sentiment is produced at all. Because Intuitively, I all ready know that it does not matter whether or not what I’m working with is an anachronism. As Nietzsche pointed out: It is inhumane to seek information that one does not intend to use. And it is only at the moment that I intend to project what I am contemplating ONTO the course of future events, and that means building on the successes that have all ready happened and not pretending that they did NOT happen: Only then is it possible for me to envisage an alternate course of events. It’s all ways in relation to the Future, therefore. Given that, it does not actually matter whether or not in the contemplation of these songs the image in my mind that is available to me could have been available at any earlier time. Because it is the Essence of the song that I am dealing with. And the moment that I combine these essences there is a chemical reaction that cannot be recreated; that is the moment of novelty and inspiration, or at least the best imitation of novelty and inspiration – the best Controlled Accident – that I can attempt to make, that I can sensibly hope to make.

Now: What does this mean?

Well, this brings me back to an earlier point. Which is that, in fact: Inspiration is all ways new. And therefore you can never recreate inspiration because in order for you to recreate it it would have to be OLD. And novelty can only occur in the psyche in relation to something that is new. We can never step, therefore, in the same river twice. This original intuition by Heraclitus, which arguably I have developed a bias Against, because of short-sighted scholastic education, is actually totally warranted by the Scientific Method. Only, as Nietzsche would have advised, you shouldn’t need to rely upon the Scientific Method in order to intuit this. This is why the Intuition is very important; I can only hope, that if I have abandoned this Intuition, I will be forgiven and I will continue.

Dm.A.A.

On the Phenomenology of Intuition. I.

On the Phenomenology of Intuition.

I really hope that I did not neglect my Intuition this semester in favour of my Rationality. It’s quite possible that my Intuition remained intact but my Rationality simply grew to incredible proportions. Hence the very structure and nature of many of my dreams. And yet hopefully over the course of this month I will break out of that structure and take the necessary action, without necessarily axcessive* premeditation, and I only hope that THIS is not excessive right now.

Obviously, to a considerable degree, I had reason to Abandon Intuitionism, and that might have been from pressure from my professor, and in fact maybe several of my professors; However, I don’t think that I actually carried through with this, judging by the decisions that I made, which were for the MOST part fairly informed, even if I was not Conscious all the time that I WAS following my Intuition primarily. It’s all so possible that owing to my personality type being an Introverted Feeling type this Intuitive aspect of my personality might all ways be secondary to the more Rational aspect of my personality, which is my Value system, which are my Feelings. That’s probably the key thing, that if anything is being blocked right now in my system is responsible for the blockage; Our greatest strengths sometimes become our greatest weaknesses.

Now, that being said:

It seems obvious that the Intuition is one of the strongest functions available to the Human Being. It is our direct contact with the Unconscious. And anyone who calls this into question based upon the grounds of a priori reasoning should really try to apply an a posteriori method before totally disregarding it for everyone. Yes, maybe some people are better off NOT following their Intuition. And yet, for myself, I have found it to be just as glamorous a way of life, and just as rewarding, as Jung had predicted. And that is not just by my OWN standards, but by the standards of other people, in terms of SUCCESS. The best example I can think of Immediately is how I knew intuitively how to arrange the tracks on our album; That is: The demo I recorded with Kresten. Now, I had no way of knowing, even, that one of the songs from this recording would be dropped! Either intentionally or unintentionally [It doesn’t really make a difference when we are dealing with the Unconscious Mind] by our producer, Ro White. Thereby, cementing, one of my strongest songs, “Under the Radar”, as the center-piece of the album. And in many ways this five-song album that we came out with [you know, we were originally planning a six-song album, and then a seven-song album, and then again a six-song album.] This album has an incredible degree of Artistic Consistency and Intricacy running through it. That probably no other arrangement would have had. And we know this from experience because, while we don’t have another arrangement available to us, and trying to make a new arrangement would all ways be the product of a Socratic bias, we know that there are some albums with very good songs on them which just regretably don’t have the right order. And immediately when I introduced my proposed song order to Kresten, he all so Intuitively settled upon it as the best of all arrangements. Of course, he had Some contributing factor in this; he did, in fact, decide what the first track of the album would be, which I totally agreed with him on.

That being said:

There’s all ways, all though, the temptation to question one’s own intuitions through Reasoning, which is one of the projects of Speech and Debate, according to my old friend, Paras Kumar. And of course there is no way of knowing exactly what the original thought process or the original rationale WAS, or if there even WAS an original rationale outside of just the intuitive Feeling. I can TRY to force my mind into those Depths, to uncover what my original plan WAS, but I’ll never know for Certain. What’s more: This gets into the same rutt as Usually the Socratic Ideal does, because: The moment that I’ve all ready stumbled upon a given feeling, a given sentiment that an alternative arrangement might have produced – at that moment I am all ready thinking: Wait! Didn’t I cheat? Because I’d have to admit to myself that whilst trying to imagine my original thought process I’d taken into consideration elements of our finished work which I could not have sensibly, according to a Rationalistic frame-work, predicted, prior to conception.

*I confess that through this Joycean/Jungian spelling I am taking Camus’ Leap.

Dm.A.A.

Conclusion:

Conclusion:

In the process of pursuing the “Truth” of whether or not a given arrangement “would have worked”, one may be disappointed with the lack of cohesion. This is of course a conclusion: The arrangement does not work. Yet what is rightfully an aesthetic judgment, upon which the conclusion can be based, may in such a case be confused with a lack of cohesion on the part of the investigator. One presumes that the lack of cohesion is not aesthetic but cognitive; clearly, these results won’t do, and a mistake was made. But the only mistake was the attempt.

Thus the Socratic Ideal dies again.

On the Phenomenology of Intuition: Prelude.

Really, it is impossible to describe bad art or bad aesthetic choices in terms of substance, because it is entirely the absence of substance -- that nihilistic void that humans meet with awkwardness, a chasm that Art attempts to bridge -- that is bad art. Substance is good art. If good art depends upon anything for its recognition it is that in the back of one's mind one all ways can imagine worse arrangements, and so it is met with awe. But even this arrangement, an attempt to desperately make sense of it, is perhaps more if a sketch than a master-piece.

DM.a.a.


Sent from my iPhone

Road Signs.

“Signs, like road signs, are supposed to indicate a location by reference to it, but they can never totally delineate it.”

 

In this case: “road signs” may be read to be a category of which “signs” is the greater category, as in “Signs, like road signs, for instance.”

However, they can all so be read to be two separate categories that are merely compared, one to another.

Dm.A.A.

On the Kafkaesque Labyrinth.

On the Kafkaesque Labyrinth.

Derrida proved that all language is open to the most absurd [note the lower-case] of interpretations, and any “Truth” can become fixed logocentrically the moment that one chooses to become dismissive. The whole inquiry as it occurs becomes self-referential (contrary to Fromm’s project to direct the LIBIDO out-wards) as the patient becomes aware of her own incoherence – in the eyes of the inhumane Analyst. As the situation gains in Kafkaesque complexity, in its Byzantine Daedalean labyrinth of mis-interpretations, the attempt made by the individual to assert her humanity is to behave irrationally, experimentally. Yet unfortunately the general public has no interest in the artistic expressions of a madman; they fear it because they see the horror of their own injustice reflected within it.

The irrational disorder completes the other half of Camus’ triangle. Yet the disorder does not belong to the neurotic, who of course (like many suicidal cases, using Gloria from V.A.L.I.S. and my own friend Jennifer as an example) is totally rational. [“Rationally insane”, as Dick expressed it.] The disorder is the fault of the World: Those Analysts and lay-critics who create the Absurd tension between her own Rational attempts to be perceived as a human being (as opposed to as an object, which would be a step down the ladder, both objectively* and subjectively**) and their own irrational (though of course, to their minds, as Camus described, Rational) ignorance and bigotry.

Dm.A.A.

*The Chain of Being.

**Psychosis.

The Fallacy of Genetics.

The Fallacy of Genetics.

The immediate presumption that the sister of a psychotic inherited a common genetic defect is out-rightly inhumane. Obviously, the environment was the most probable determining factor in her own neuroses; the real question should be of course the sanctity of the analyst, not simply in respect to the polish on his persona but an inquiry into his motives; WHY does he refuse to take the brother into consideration NOT as a symptom of a common, mystical, “genetic” cause, [Genes ostensibly code for proteins, but all else is theoretical.] but as the immediate sociological cause in his sister’s stress?
It could easily be dismissed as genetic were it not that even the relationship BETWEEN THE ANALYST AND THE PATIENT is sociologically motivated in Nature.

Dm.A.A.

On the Spiritually Ill.

On the Spiritually Ill.

' 

"Disorder" seems to imply permanence and genetic determination. "Neurosis", as Jung used it, refers to a temporary symptom of entirely psychological (not psychiatric) mal-adaptation, such as Frankl's Noogenic Neurosis (the result of not having Meaning in one's life). I really hope that what you said about the diagnostic manual's decision to "up-date" the term is not true.'

By rejecting all neurosis as being genetic in origin we marginalize the Neurotic. The Neurotic is isolated from Society, taught to believe that he must fend for his self without support from others. This renders him a likely social deviant. The disorder to begin with is entirely constructed and imposed. As every attempt the individual makes to assert his lost humanity is rejected on the grounds of this Ad Hominem [“He is sick, so clearly what he says cannot have rational value”], he becomes more neurotic as the environment grows more Kafkaesque. Strangers and even friends re-enforce the notion that he requires treatment simply because they feel justified in his mis-treatment. He is VISIBLY neurotic, but no one wants to help him along his path to psychological recovery by resolving the deep underlying cognitive dissonances of his Absurd situation which make it hard for him to function and find sense in any thing. The situation was from the beginning entirely mental, but we labeled it physical so that we would not have to address our own mental insecurities and uncertainties.

Dm.A.A.

Hate as an Assigned Label.

Hate as an Assigned Label.

Aversion to homosexuality is not intrinsically hateful, but because we co-create reality. “Hate” is just a way to describe an emotion. By labeling homophobia hateful, one creates that, because the grim miracle of human interactions is that the Other all ways has authority over the essence of your actions, et cetera by offering you a mirror in the absence of a personal self-knowledge, even if you have some choice in rejecting the presence of that essence.

Dm.A.A

The problem with all reactionary art.

The problem with all reactionary art like Brinn's piece is that the ethical surface is the first thing to go and be scrubbed off by the natural deconstructing agents of the Unconscious. What remains is the Suggestion: the visceral content of the prose that against our will and admission seduces us with the example it sets of male behavior. Rape fantasies must not have their origin in Nature but in suggestion, but Art only perpetuates them! The media is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Jung's words are as foreboding as ever: what you resist truly persists. The craving to rape, stifled by a strong ego but then re-directed as savage aggression towards those who have the nerve to force the fantasy into reality, is not a function of the 'body' but of the 'mind': it is social, for while one public ally condemns the rapist as a scape-goat the condemnation is only impotent and superficial. In truth: that forbidden urge is the Cognitive Dissonance which all moral reasoning strives to resolve: how can it be that there are men (or women) who do this? Sartre enters the picture. Surely the man Must be human, for his behavior is disgusting to Others. Yet that means that what he is doing is an example for all humans or at least all men. So how can I condemn him without acknowledging the validity of his example? It can only be done perhaps by recognizing the potentiality but rising above it, not by projecting that potentiality upon the scape-goat but by owning it as a part of one's self. This is much more difficult than the indignant veneer of condemnation which usually amounts only to semantics on self-defense.

DM.a.a.