MMXXDEMZA:

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

DREAM2252020:

The dream took place in the Dream Theater on the night of the premiere. Everyone from Theory II as well as the entire cast and crew of Mamma Mi were probably in attendance. I had to run about considerably, barely missing call times and doing my best to brush off feelings of severe guilt. One cannot help these things; one must simply thank God and Nature for those that one was able to save, who were not murdered by one’s negligence, all in that ever-looming Spirit of libertarian abandon that haunts the Dream of Freedom.

It seems, doesn’t it, as though there are TWO theaters in these dreams, and I simply divide my time betwixt them. This is not to say that the stories are without their familiar share of travel, migration from one form of temporary housing to another. Perhaps this is a metaphor for astrology; perhaps this represents reincarnation and, more topically (on a lesser scale) but inclusively, (presuming upon a Scientific epistemology wherein the most inclusive definition must consider the most banal interpretations) rebirth in general.

Who knows? All memories of recent dreams, spanning the last five years, are interspersed in the attempts to recall any one of them. It seems that my Dream Self, at least, is not so negligent as to forget them.

Are my visits to Downtown San Diego, both in and out of Actuality, not performances as well? I would do well to recall the nights that I succeeded in such ventures. A single night spent beside Tina ought to outweigh my indignation before two dozen immature women.

I pause the Chicago Symphony as the conductor lifts his arms to signal the introduction of the Ode to Joy. What timing my God has!! I am thankful that He brings Shame to light only so as to expose it for the fraud it is.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

PATERN!S: PART ONE. (963 mots.)

I think the most repulsive concept is this idea that your will to find confirmation in the World is somehow of secondary importance to the World Itself, as though the Reality of your Immediate Experience were somehow separate from the World. I don’t know how it is exactly that people wrap their heads around this, how they manage to hold these contradictory ideas in their minds, at once having strong conviction in what they feel to be a real pattern, and yet at the same time denying that it’s real. That’s really what it comes down to; it comes down to a schizophrenic separation between one’s self and the World.

The fact of the matter is that, when you observe a pattern, it’s like in music: it’s a Motif. There is a theme that is essentially very small: a small detail that comes out of the general woodwork of whatever you’re observing.

Let’s say that what you’re observing is a Work of Art, such as a work of visual media, such as a movie or a television show. Clearly, everything about that is just as contrived as a symphony. If you could recognize a theme, a pattern, in a symphony, you wouldn’t presume on the Unreality of this pattern because you know that the notes are there; the pattern’s there, and you can infer the intentionality of the composer from the presence of the notes. Now, whether or not the composer was aware that he or she was doing this is beside the point. A great deal of music is just improvised, but the fact of the matter is that the pattern recurs, and we call it a theme and we analyze it and we notice it, and it has an objective reality in our communication.

It’s the same thing with writing. Any creative writing is every bit as artificial as a composition, and it’s every bit as REAL as well; it is just a series of phenomena. If you don’t put any EXCESSIVE labels upon it, if you don’t weigh it against this sort of naïve realism, then everything that you experience when you watch a movie is real, as a movie, just as a composition is real as a composition. If you’re talking about the Qualities of the Art, it is quite obvious that the finest art will have certain underlying patterns which are called “subtext”. The patterns aren’t ever given to you overtly. They’re not given to you authoritatively. They are Easter Eggs; they’re hidden. The more you pay attention to them willfully, the more you will notice them. The more you will notice them, the more you’ll want to believe that this pattern, which is in your mind (and you register it as “in your mind”) has an external Reality to it, and the more evidence you will find for it.

To my mind, that proves that it exists.

That is Absolute Confirmation.

That is Absolute Truth.

And I don’t know how it is that people manage somehow to be swindled out of the Truth, to be told that because they have such a passion for the pursuit of the Truth that somehow that invalidates them.

By contrast with what? The entirety of the Scientific Method is a series of pattern recognition. So it is also with Learning, and anyone who participates in the Scientific Method has to be educated in order to attain that sort of status.

The process of Education is Pattern Recognition. You can understand how a pattern works. You can point out certain tropes that a writer uses which are peculiar to that particular Universe in which that writer is operating. For instance, in the Breaking Bad universe, or the Better Call Saul universe, which are essentially the same, there are a series of tropes, chiefly mathematical and based in colour, which recur as means of illustrating themes, covertly. However, wherever they predominate, the writer will oftentimes hint at their presence by having a scene wherein colour plays an essential role or wherein mathematics play an essential role, hinting the mind which is sufficiently curious to start paying attention to that pattern. Of course, some of us have been paying attention to it already, and by that point, it’s simply evidence.

Now, the way that this process of Revelation occurs is quite simple. Your mind forms a conscious map of the stimuli – the input – that you’re getting from watching this show. The moment you turn it on, you are immersed in the World, you are getting all this visual input, and your mind is experiencing it as a Reality. If you begin to notice this pattern, your map has been updated to suit that pattern. Now, should the pattern be disrupted, the map will stay there, much like data on your computer does even after it is deleted, until there is some sort of evidence presented that would suggest that the pattern was never “really Real”. But just as most things that are deleted on your computer can be retrieved, most of these patterns cannot really be negated. They cannot really be overwritten; they’re just there. The question is: how important are they? If they’re not important enough to remember, then you’ll tend to deprioritize them.

Fact of the matter is: if you were desperate, for some reason or another, to find confirmation for this pattern, and the pattern were not there, if you were biased by an inferior impulse, (something lesser than the pursuit of the Truth, as an end in and of itself,) then sooner or later you would be disappointed, and you might be inclined to discard the map entirely regardless of the evidence substantiating it.

This is what people do, also, willfully; this is something we have to take responsibility for.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

D!FF:

Men and women are both prone to duplicity, but there nonetheless remains something so peculiarly female that only a heterosexual male would notice it, for it is so consistent in women and unheard of in men, and while a bisexual might feel inclined to weigh the one group against the other, only the heterosexual would have to.

Suppose I wish to make friends over Instagram with someone whom I had encountered externally. Without fail, this will be met with silence, and any attempts to defy this condition will be disdained. Yet suppose then that I qualify my advance by making an observation in passing, one which also happens to hold practical value. She might then grace me with her consideration, as a child does, but only to an extent. She will not, for instance, go ahead and add me as a Friend, though one thousand people may follow her, quite literally, online. (Literally a thousand, not literally following her around.) She may smile upon my consideration, but only to the extent that it is an end in and of itself, as well as a means to her own ends, though never mine. She may presume that her own ends predominate, though that sort of self-entitled posture remains inexplicably covert. She may commend me, indirectly, for doing “the right thing”, but this will accord me neither status nor mobility in her sphere of influence. The moment that I seek to employ my decency as a means towards an end, in other words, she seems to call it into question.

Yet this leaves us wondering: how did she acquire such status to begin with? Both men and women alike, if they are relatively inconsistent and flimsy characters, may put up a façade of virtue which they will discard when they must cave in to primal desires. The desires themselves are not the problem; humanity would not endure without them. It rather would appear that people of lesser character will resort to vicious means when they grow desperate for what they want, discarding decency as one throws off a mask.

Yet while both men and women do this, women alone tend to PRESCRIBE it, directly for their fellows and indirectly for their suitors. Women will look at a man who is consistent in virtue, and they might praise him for his service, but the moment that he shows a sign of human longing, the sheer instant that he might try to acquire what all men want by noble means (instead of vicious ones), a woman might think him less practical for being so kind and less kind for being so practical. Women drive men, especially heterosexual men, into the state of duplicity, segregating practical life from noble life, for were they to stop doing this then men would not only use their virtue to lord their rightful value over women, but they would by so doing render all lesser means inferior, both in principle and practice, compelling all others to follow their example.

It is ironic, though, isn’t it? It’s almost mysterious:

The opportunity to get to know a person, to share lives, even bodies, is so profound and tantalizing that one would expect others to be more curious, seeking any excuse to pursue this long-repressed urge. Yet some women will behave as though they know already not only the definition for your intention, but also its nature. They know not only that you “like” them, though they have not yet asked you what it might mean, but they behave as though such matters of liking were commonplace problems whose outcomes are familiar.

I am always testing them, to see if they’ll exhibit the Virtue of Wonder.

Do they know that they are being tested?

Are they so insolent that they would fail?

One can hardly hold contempt for the examiner. After all: if she confesses that he is afflicted by a thirst that motivates him, she must just as readily confess that it is a thirst that does not afflict herself. Any social propriety which is maintained by an oligarchy of privileged people can only expose the hypocrisy of those beneficiaries. At least he means to use noble means to quench it.

What sort of a creature would recoil from such a force, as if the power of a character were more frightening than its strength was reassuring? Who runs from Reason?!

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

BODYH!:

I have come to regard the body more highly than I used to, recently. There was a time five years ago when some Leo girl at the local café rejected me nonverbally; don’t think that I can’t read that sort of thing. Afterwards, I asked a girl by the name of Zalea to explain it to me, though perhaps I speak too soon in saying that; she really was just proficient at taking my emotional venting as solicitation for advice.

The way she said it really bugged me: apparently, the girl was justified in rejecting me on shallow grounds, since “I did it too”.

More specifically, Zalea’s meaning was general. It wasn’t that I was in the frequent habit of rejecting people, and I never did so on superficial grounds. It was rather that I was DRAWN TO people for bodily and “shallow” reasons, and they were averted for the same reasons.

You can already see some problems, I am sure.

In the first place: Zalea had no way of knowing what I saw in women, and neither did I. A feminist will presume upon her generalizations, and the World revolves around them a posteriori. (It’s quite contagious, no doubt.)

Furthermore, in Zalea’s envious worldview it’s apparently so that if a man affirms a woman for her body he necessarily rejects other women for theirs, barring the opportunity to fall in love for more, which is of course what the most fervent obsession starts with. Zalea might not [have] be[en] conventionally pretty, but that did not stop men from hitting on her, to her chagrin, so where this envy finds it foothold I can’t say; I can only infer it.

Yet the matter runs even deeper than just feminist projections. In the first place, what qualifies as conventionally attractive in men invariably differs from what is so in women. By some standard, I meet many of my own criteria for what attracted me to that Leo girl, though it’s far more becoming of a lady than a gentleman, and far less so is it symptomatic of an alpha male. The consistency in principle is this: that I may be drawn as much to femininity itself as I am to the woman who embodies it, and because I regard femininity more highly than I regard masculinity I embody it within myself. It’s only that the woman who embodies it rejects it outside of herself, especially in men who also lack masculinity. (Yet I should note that what was most repulsive to my fellows at the time no woman had, for it was rampant and unruly facial hair.)

Even beyond this level of conventional distinction lies the phenomenological question of the mind-body relationship, not merely as a dualistic split but rather as a symbiosis. Herein feminism finds its intellectual death, only because it so often rejects “objectification”.

There is, in fact, plenty of intellectual ground for the objectification and even the fetishization of physical human bodies. Sartre, whose lifelong partner was a feminist icon, wrote extensively about sex from a philosophical perspective, and it’s none too flattering. When I am drawn to someone physically, there is less of an illusory quality to this attraction than when I pretend to share a Mind with this person. If I should find my feelings to be “reciprocal”, I have succeeded in objectifying someone who objectifies ME, yet we can only carry such a relationship out healthily if each of us refuses to objectify his or herself. This is why gymnasiums are considered healthy places to “meet” people.

Now: is this process shallow? Technically, it is actually LESS superficial than it would be to RESIST it. Feminism presumes upon such an ascesis, though feminists often only pretend towards it. The dismissal of physical attraction in favour of intellectual attraction is a form of transcendental escapism. The human mind has a unique opportunity to combine rational intellect with animalistic emotion and human culture to create new forms of erotic experience. The objectification of the body, especially heterosexually, is an entire domain of phenomenological intrigue, and an intellectual who possesses the capacity for such an arousal (and who is effectively aroused BY it) ought not to ignore it. By contrast, if I resist this exploration of my own body and the body of the woman, then I have turned my focus back inwards on the Mind, which is invariably MY mind, for I can only TRULY see things from a perspective that, no matter how much it is informed by Others, is still formally “Mine”. By surrendering physical pursuits in favour of intellectual monogamy, so to speak, I have turned my OWN MIND INTO AN OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE. This appears to be the existential decision we are faced with: what shall I objectify? Others’ bodies or my mind?

Clearly, a subject is of no real use unless it has an object to study, so it’s MORE superficial to dismiss worldly objects than it is to “intellectually masturbate”. That is not to say that Ideas have no intrinsic value; veritably, they are of the ULTIMATE value, though to arrive at such an ultimate position one must not forget the World entirely. People who refuse to be objectified, with self-entitlement, are simply insecure, so they internalize the gaze of others and therefore objectify themselves, losing the game, effectively. Seeking mates based upon physical traits is intellectually profound, for it’s an exploration of physical possibilities in the World. Conversely, seeking mates based upon intellectual traits is pseudointellectual and pretentious, since it amounts only to the execution of foregone ideals, devoid of curiosity. In other words: an intellectual does not need his partner to be intellectual, since his own mind is sufficiently stimulating, though if she should prove PRETTY, then his mind has something not only to experience but to analyze.

Yet here Zalea has a point: if I am unattractive physically, then all the ideas in the World cannot save me. So long as I seek out attractive partners on those grounds, I allow myself, by my example, to be rejected. I don’t need an intellectual partner, and neither does the other, so why ought she not to prefer someone handsome?

Be that as it may, it is extremely shallow to presume that any pretty woman would only want a handsome man; Sartre himself was considered rather ugly, while a young de Beauvoir was a hot French chick by even today’s standards. (Brains were a bonus.) While it would be perhaps the pinnacle of Sartrean “bad faith” to idealize their relationship and to expect it ever to happen again for anyone, it does stand as a testament to a possibility which the Medieval alchemical mythologists called the Alchemical Wedding: a sacred marriage of intellectual detachment, embodied in the male, and worldly beauty, embodied in the female, (though, in this case, the female in question had a notoriously rich inner life as well,) a story that’s been retold by both the likes of Salinger and J.K. Rowling.

In short: pretty girls aren’t shallow for being pretty, and plenty of them CAN find something attractive in a man beyond merely conventional handsomeness. Zalea hardly does women a favour by suggesting there’s no chance.

Yet, while I have all of this to contend with her, I must confess it haunts me for this reason: that I want to believe that, if I stop lusting, love will come by more noble means. My ideal is yet a pre-Sartrean, Romantic one. The truth is that I don’t want to seek only bodies; I want to encounter another mind with fresh ideas. Yet I cannot deny that by so doing I risk myself falling prey to a woman’s intellectual whims, ideas to which she might feel no lasting attachment even as I idolize them as ethical models.

There is a dream I had, almost seven years ago, wherein an attractive Korean girl from high school called herself and her friend “models”. I realize now what she meant by that: I had been modeling myself AFTER women. The dream was making a pun. The joke was told at my expense. I had become so obsessed with finding an intellectual woman that I had begun to turn every idea that women presented me with into an idol. This idolatry they found repulsive, for they were not goddesses to worship. I had simply thought that people would pursue that power.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

ABSTRACT: From Kira to Heisenberg and Beyond

I. The World of Vince Gilligan:

-        Breaking Bad: Consequentialism via Justice.

o  Tragic Hero turns into a Villain.

o  Villain is punished.

o  Dichotomy: Hero/Villain.

§  Hero: Noble Ends, Dubious Means.

§  Villain: Evil Ends, Evil Means.

§  Tragic Flaw: as Means depreciate, Villain overcomes Hero, so the Ends are transformed as well.

o  Justice comes in the form of Physical Consequences for lapses in reasoning.

§  Godlike hubris versus Human Fallibility.

§  “It HAS to work”: the felt sense that man must transcend his own limits. (Ubermensch.)

o  Physical Limitations, including Other People, push the Hero into the use of Evil Means, by force of inertia and necessity, but also deep-seated and repressed Shadow Drives. (Heisenberg’s explosive appearances, represented also by Cancer and the Birth of Holly.)

o  Consequentialism in the Modern World: a Crisis.

§  Beneficent ends become corrupted by the UNPRED!CTABLE necessity for Evil Means.

§  Consequences imply that characters “make their own luck”. We are therefore to ally ourselves at once with Sartre and with Job’s Critics whenever we encounter suffering, as does the Vacuum Cleaner Salesman in El Camino.

·     PROBLEM: This implies that all of Heisenberg’s victims “had it coming.”

1. Jesse: Dealer.

2. Jane: User.

3. Gale: Producer.

4. Victor/Mike: Enforcers.

5. Gus:

§  Distributor.

§  Angel of Vengeance, much like Gilligan Himself.

6. Skyler: Enabler; “mob wife”.

7. Hank: Loose Cannon.

·     PROBLEM: This rewards criminals such as the Vacuum Cleaner Salesman for their vices (Greed) so long as they are practical in their hypocrisy. There is no Cosmic Justice for men like Polonius. Villains are thereby incentivized to repeat the Tragic Cycle by Breaking Bad, as in the case of the McGill Brothers.

1. Jimmy: Consequentialist, on the side of Ethical Egoism. (“Let’s Make a Deal.”)

2. Charles: Deontologist, on the side of Justice. (“See, that's your problem, Jimmy. Thinking that the ends justify the means. And you're forever shocked when it all blows up in your face.”)

-        Better Call Saul: Moderation versus Extremes.

o  Jimmy:

§  James McGill, Esq. Good Ends, Moderate Means.

§  Slipping Jimmy: Moderate Ends, Dubious Means.

§  Saul Goodman: Amoral Ends, Evil Means. (The Joker.)

o  Charles:

§  Good Means.

§  Good Ends.

§  Excellent Virtues.

§  Dubious auxiliary motives.

o  Conflict:

§  Step One: Consequentialism/Deontology. Jimmy’s Ethical Egoism cannot coexist with Chuck’s Deontology. (Cutting corners/by the Book.)

§  Step Two: Moderation/Extremism. Chuck’s “bullsh*t vendetta” upsets Jimmy’s attempts at worldly happiness.

§  Step Three: Pride/Humility.

·     Chuck’s hubris seals his fate, though not without some measure of extreme and uncharacteristic openness.

·     Dramatic Irony:

1. Chuck’s observations are legitimate, though his audience (on the stage side of the Fourth Wall) has no way of knowing this, and he becomes painfully aware of his triggered loss of public discretion.

2. What appears to be the unmasking of an upstanding citizen is in fact the failure to expose a criminal mastermind.

§  Step Four: Justice/Forgiveness.

·     Chuck forgives Jimmy by assuring him that remorse is meaningless.

·     Jimmy chooses to avenge himself by pulling a prank on Chuck, which leads to Chuck’s suicide.

·     This critical turning point, presented right in the middle of the Series, (at the end of Season Three) represents the switch in roles.

1. Chuck McGill: Villain to Victim.

2. Jimmy McGill: Hero/victim to Villain.

§  Step Five: Consequentialism/Deontology.

·     In the absence of Charles McGill, Jimmy has the opportunity to turn his own life around. Instead, he fulfills Chuck’s prophecies willfully. His ethical egoism, already pushed into morally reprehensible territory and criminal secrecy, transforms gradually but markedly into Machiavellian pragmatism.

§  Step Six: Moderation/Extremism. Jimmy goes to greater and greater lengths to preserve his enterprise as Saul Goodman.

§  Step Seven: Pride/Humility. When Jimmy is denied return to his old career as a lawyer, he tosses his briefcase across the staircase, representing his permanent transformation into Saul Goodman.

o  Improvement in Writing:

§  Gilligan begins to temper the extremism of vengeance by telling a story of forgiveness.

§  Consequentialism still acts as a punisher, but it punishes most the following errors:

·     The failure to forgive,

·     Pride,

·     Extremism, and

·     Consequentialism Itself.

§  This last detail creates a Paradox, implying that we OUGHT to be held responsible for the CONSEQUENCES of our actions, compelling us to manipulate events to produce Preferable Consequences, though those consequences can never justify the means.

·     While Chuck’s Deontological Extremism dooms him to a grisly fate, self-inflicted to the last moment, the aftermath of his death and the choices Jimmy makes in Chuck’s absence vindicate Chuck.

·     While one might imagine a world wherein only those who employ Noble Means will be met with Good Ends, this is pathologically naïve in a Universe wherein children and their parents are murdered by mobsters. It follows logically that:

1.  We cannot fairly blame Jesse Pinkman for creating his “own luck”, since he consistently navigates the Criminal World by abstaining from cruelty.

§  He murders Gale only when his hand is forced.

§  He only tries to avenge the deaths of innocent children who had no means to defend themselves.

2.  Since we are judged by the Consequences of Our Own Actions, and since we cannot guarantee that Good Means will produce Preferable Ends, we are pressured to pursue Preferable Ends by Any Means Necessary, and our attempts to save ourselves by Noble Means might become corrupted by Impersonal Forces.

·     The only means by which anyone can live a Good Life would be if everyone within one’s network of influence were forgiving. This represents a transformation on the part of Gilligan: as his characters fall into despair, the writer ascends, where previously his privileged posture compels him to condemn them, presuming upon his own good fortune as proof of virtue.

II. Why Kira’s Critics are more Disturbing than his Supporters:

-        Critique of Postmodern “morality”.

o  Near’s autistic absolutism.

o  Separation of Conscience from Teleology.

§  Near: Clean conscience.

§  Light: Teleological Progress; theory in Action.

o  Presumption on the Law.

§  Hypocrisy of Capital Punishment.

§  Murder only as Deviance.

§  Conformism. (Level Four Morality.)

-        The Players, in Alphabetical Order:

o  K(ira): Justice via Unlawful Order.

§  Noble Ends: a Better World.

§  Discerning Means: the efficient execution of dangerous criminals.

§  Tragic flaws:

·     Hubris.

·     God Complex.

·     Shadow Projection.

·     Machiavellian ruthlessness.

·     Mania.

o  L: Justice via Lawful Chaos.

§  Autotelic Personality: Ends vanish from conscious consideration, except when they are observed in others.

§  Diversified Means, ranging from kidnapping and prolonged imprisonment to absolute transparency.

o  M(ello): Self-interest via Unlawful Chaos.

§  Selfish Ends: to outwit Near.

§  Vicious, criminal Means.

§  Redeemed posthumously by recognizing Near as an Equal and demonstrating their Equality through Solidarity. Dies a martyr.

o  N(ear): Justice via Lawful Order.

§  Autistic Personality: Ends are considered only as strategies, irrespective of Teleology.

§  Means are Consistent.

·     Childlike Innocence.

·     Scientific Method:

1. Constant: Values, virtues and methods.

2. Variable: Unexpected permutations within definite moral confines.

-        Kira as Hero:

o  Kira avenges Misa.

o  Kira strives for a Better World.

o  Kira’s New World attains Pacifist ends via Justice.

-        Near as Villain:

o  Motivated by the Preservation of a Status Quo which is tolerable only to ambivalent moderates, (such as L,) narcissistic criminals, (such as most of Kira’s victims, esp. Higuchi and Demegawa,) and those innocent people that happen to avoid tragedy by chance.

o  Narcissistic fixation upon Pacifist means despite the preservation of a world which is generally more docile and pacifist.

-        Postmodern Problem:

o  Anyone can believe himself to be the Hero, while acting as another’s Villain, but who is to decide the Absolute Nature of Anyone?

o  Solution(s):

§  Redeem Vigilantes such as Light Yagami while learning from their mistakes.

§  Contextualize Justice outside of mere vengeance.

·     Justice is more forgiving than complacency and forcing moral people into helplessness.

·     Ground the Pursuit of Justice in the context of a post-conventional Teleology, including both criminal and lawful methods, embracing both chaos and order, and recognizing that either law OR crime can be either ordered OR chaotic.

·     Avoid Authoritarian Appeals.

1.  Near’s Narcissism.

2.  The Vacuum Cleaner’s Twofaced “Principles”.

3.  Blaming the victims by exposing their vices.

4.  Shadow projection and cruelty.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]