Post 420. I love it. (On Game Therapy.)

On Game Therapy.

Conventionally, one is apt to regard a game as an escape. It is a means of which one’s temporary sedation and enjoyment is an ends. Admittedly this is how most forms of Art are viewed by the public, except where in the individual recognizes one AS Art. Then the game is at once a miraculous manifestation of Nature, working through the device of Human Nature, and all so indicative OF Nature and its own possibilities. The fascination is primarily technological. That a computer game – and a computer really – could EXIST alone appears miraculous when it is neither taken for granted consumeristically or, in the case of the technician, “understood” through the perspective of computer science (though of course some technicians never lose their wonder). If THIS is possible, what is possibly lurking beyond my window, just behind the monitor? The game seems, by occupying and ensnaring one’s focus, to suggest through puzzles or adventures what the world holds. Its secondary significance is of course MYTHO-logical. It mirrors one’s own unconscious predicament. The dreaming psyche makes sense of the world through symbols; for this reason psychosis, a kind of glitch in the internal matrix, is perceived at times as the invasion by symbols used to make cohesion of reality of the conscious psyche. Sanity seems to depend, as in the comportment of Heidegger or the archetypes of Jung, upon the ability of the mind to refer to the sensory world by analogy to symbol: to map. The map is in the case of a conventionally healthy psyche so clear that one barely notices its presence. Yet when the map tears it becomes obvious. The symbolizing portion of the mind is out of joint with the sensory, and so the subjective phenomenon of schizophrenia is invasion by fantasy trying again, this time Above the threshold of consciousness, probably soliciting its help, to make again a cohesive mythological narrative that accords the senses and the reason with the body and its spontaneous needs.

Perhaps it is this SOLICITATION however tentative in theory, that is the reason we are morally obligated to listen to the lunatics story as fact. The reason that fantasy is flowing into consciousness, rather than being remedied unconsciously as per usual, is that the ego is required to inform it. Of course, one might argue that to lend the ego such authority is too Judging an attitude. Yet it is actually an assertion of existential responsibility. What would be much worse than lucid fantasy is surely bleakness, the hellish condition wherein the world is like a T.S. Eliot poem, retaining its normality but lacking its meaning because the reason has repressed, or believed its self tom the fantasy and kept it volitionally unconscious out of an all too conventional fear of judgement. The noogenic depressive living in this nihilistic duldrum retains the outward advantage of escaping persecution (except for by those fascists that would condemn his depression as physical illness, bullying him without even addressing his own responsibility for his predicament), but he loses the capacity to HEAL. Only by allowing his self to go nuts can he hope to reconcile Unconscious contents, now spilling into the consciousness, with the consciousness: Imagination dancing with Logic and Reason in the general. Some sort of accepted deviance: A rave club, a drug, a concert, might help to provide the Dyonesiac liberation necessary to step into the visionary world of spirits that Shamans navigated. Yet it cannot be enough. Apollo must all so have his say. Poetry, philosophy, and other arts can help the depressive, having gone through the stage of the lunatic, to make sense of his neurosis and become again integrated.

A game does both. If embraced fully it engulfs the player. The player forgets what Common Sense refers to as “reality” and again ventures into the mythological forest of imagination. He is no different in this respect from the philosopher, no less Sane in the grand sense, no less holy, and no less AWARE. In fact he might learn the most important lessons about “reality” through this kind of “escape” from the stultifying boredom of what really is at heart simply his own neurotic ego with its negation of the imagination and its fixation upon problem-solving. By engaging both this problem-solving ego, no longer problematic, and the imaginative Unconscious that reasons in TERMS of these fantasy patterns, the Self not only allows imagination again to appear, dissolving reality and fantasy, inadvertently of course (for to be too self-conscious of this progression is to still pretend the boundary into existence), in a Dyonesiac fashion, but one can work WITH the fantasy components if the game is engaging enough. A victory in the game is practical and internal, for one has inadvertently, unless one is a master shaman, in which case it would be lucid, all so created an internal metaphor that, like a debugger in a computer software, now can be used to fix the system internally.

One does not solve a computer virus by tinkering with the hardware, and so one does not resolve a neurosis by tinkering with the brain; it is just as barbaric, and it has much more to do with the history of how people have (miss)treated madness than with the rigour of genuine research and open inquiry. One solves a virus by operating with it through the software: The virtual spirit of which the hardware could be said to be the body.

If computer science its self works this way, is it any longer archaic* to refer to the Soul of the individual as what should be the focus of Psychology and Psychiatry, the respective study and (ideally beneficent) treatment of the SOUL (Psyche)?

Surely not.

*Many things become less archaic over time, not more so. Wine has taught me this surely.

Dm.A.A.

Charybdis. Csylla. Cunts.

It was a tough time for a while dealing with both you and Mother when you were both being manipulative. The subtle nuances of one manipulative passive-aggressive paradigm makes one less certain of one's own surroundings and self. It makes one more susceptible to the
other.

What does not help is that your negativity is the theoretical obverse of Mother's. She pretends towards good intentions. She seems to feel perpetually justified in her means irrespective of their immediate effects upon me. The model deontologist who is never wrong, right?
Yet you tend to be the pragmatic extreme. Intent does not matter to you at all; only outcome. I could try everything, including not trying, and you would disparage me just for trying (including the things I did not do, and so the times I did not try I was blamed for.).
In such a situation it is easy to take one of two unnecessary and depraving routes. The one is to consider one's self guilty of both sets of circumstances. The other is to blame the one for the other. Perhaps my mother's own delusions I emulated unconsciously, and you became the victim of her abuse through me, inadvertently?
My admittedly (by her own admission) manipulative ex tried to feed me that latter narrative. Rather than advising me to pick my battles the privileged wench, daughter of a psychiatric nurse and behaviourist product, tried to coerce me to stand up to my parents, not for MY benefit, though she told me I 'should want it for my self,' but because it ostensibly 'affected' me in such a way that it was 'damaging' to her.
The shrinks.

It is no wonder I am mortally affronted by leveling. Obviously if two members of the opposite gender in one's life are both cruel, it is proper to stand up to both. There is no hypocrisy in standing up to them; only the consistency underlying the paradox: that of one's own Dignity. And one knows it when one Feels it. A hypocrite could never possess such a conviction. Kresten all ways suffered a lack of certainty because he lacked both discipline and courage. The Rowans knew that.

Of course: it IS possible to take one person's abuse out on an other. I suspect you of having done that. Much of what you said to me about me could be said of Kresten and would appear to most to be less Absurd. It is okay; I must recall that I am in no way like my Mother. Saints get along with saints, sinners with sinners. No conflict betwixt me and Mother would exist were we equals. And neither is she you. Rather people like her have so abused you that you are apprehensive of people like me. The former are lions in sheep's clothing. The other are sheep that have turned into lions, to borrow Nietzsche's metaphor. The former hide the lion, lying in wait, behind the veneer of charity. The latter hide the remnants of a gutted lamb in their stomachs like the Beast or the Frog hides his Princely past in fairy tales and folk's lore.

I never meant you harm. I can tell that my Mother means me harm. At least it is clear she wants power. Her actions are never unconditional and often hypocritical. A paranoid Absurdist would then say: do you Alanna not perceive me the same way? But I am much too clever to be fooled that way. Not only is it possible that you know me to mean well but push me away not with standing. If you did try to accuse me of a will to power it would be Absurd. UN-like my Mother, I have adapted my self to you. Were my Mother to apologise and change her habits, even once, I would never call her 'wrong' for having set an Example of how she would like to treat me. One is not wrong for trying. But most of what I did to you were on your own say-so. You asked me for the Truth, and so I gave it to you, even if I did not believe in it before you asked me. That it hurt you is not my fault; that you raged at me in retaliation is not my responsibility. And by the same token I do not expect my Mother to live in Fear of my own rage. I only Know that prior to the rage was the offence. And that offence is certainly not my fault. If you heard the things she said or saw the things she did some times, then you, not only as a Communications Major but a (more than splendid) human being, would be out-raged your self, even if only for my sake and if it were not directed at you.

Dmitry.

What is a vaccination?

What is a vaccination?

A vaccination is supposedly a number of these little bugs whose sole purpose on this Earth is to kill off the other bugs before they destroy your Body Building from the inside.

Kind of sounds like a video game right?

And the way that you make use of these bugs and help them to full fill their Destiny is by stabbing them into your blood stream with needles.

This is done by adults to children. Some times some adults force other adults to do this to their own young.

If our ancestors do not look back on us a thousand years from now as barbaric, may be they will have fore gotten us.

The key thing about the Herd Mentality is that it is based in insecurity. So long as I participate, I feel safe and sane. I pretend to possess some sort of 'knowledge', and in that I imitate the Western conception of God as having Omni-Science. This is un-like the Eastern conception of God as dancing the Universe un-knowing how it's done.

Dm.A.A.

Circular Reasonings for Life!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjBZ6rKftGs&feature=youtu.be

…[B depends upon] reasonings in argument A.

And those are further warranted by argument B.

I don’t know about you, but for me the more that I explore this the more sense it makes. Hence the circle is not a closed loop or arbitrary tautology.

So part of Argument A warrants Argument B, and part of Argument B warrants Argument A.

The accuser must not believe in cell biology obviously. This seems to follow the patterns of most biological theory.

Now: Look at the accuser’s arguments:

1.       Argument A is inconclusive.

2.       Argument A requires a warrant.

3.       Argument B warrants Argument A.

4.       Argument B is warranted be Argument A.

Or:

1.       A warrants B.

2.       B warrants A.

Or the more knit-pick:

1.       B warrants A.

2.       A warrants B.

Only those in power can afford to be Arbitrary and to impose their preferences, but there we go.

So HERE in is the circularity in the opponent’s own reasoning:

1.       Argument A cannot warrant Argument B because it is inconclusive.

2.       It requires a third argument.

3.       Argument A is inconclusive because it is circular.

4.       Arguments A and B are inconclusive together because they are circular.

5.       They are circular because Argument A is inconclusive. (Were A conclusive, it would function in the same way as the third argument was MEANT to function: As the definite and stable Absolute that the remainder of the system would depend on. As the Logos.)

There is no Logos.

We never arrive at that argument that is totally independent but not Circular. This is because INDEPENDENCE *depends upon* circularity. Only when one draws a circle back to the starting point can some thing be SAID TO BE independent. But one can choose not to, and there it is SEEN AS dependent. But the larger system becomes a larger circle. That is all.

So the argument is:

1.       Argument A is inconclusive.

2.       Argument A occurs in the System that includes Argument B.

3.       Argument B is inconclusive. (Imperfect according to the dogmatic epistemology.)

4.       The System is circular.

5.       The System is inconclusive.

Fair enough. But no system is therefore ever conclusive, because any independent system could be expanded to look like it is dependent upon a larger independent system that is nonetheless equally circular. It just looks like it is not going to be.

Obviously this is very generalized but the point stands. The idea is for this not to be a dogmatic Absolute but to see how the specific instance is not a problem.

So Argument A is a component of the System.

As below, so above. The System can be described as being equal to its parts. So the circle is:

1.       Argument A is inconclusive because it is circular.

2.       The System is circular because Argument A is inconclusive.

Or, if Argument A is equated with the System, (as below so above):

1.       The System is inconclusive because it is circular.

2.       The System is circular because it is inconclusive.

You see?

The question of whether or not Arguments are never circular is not a problem now, for before they were believed to either be Absolutely circular or Absolutely not. By eliminating the Absolute, we solve. It is neither. And both. Depending upon whim. And it could thus be both at once because it is observed multiply simultaneously, occurring in multiple worlds of experience.

The equation of Argument A with the entire System can be challenged: The Whole is greater than the sum of its parts!

The counter-argument: Then that means that Truth is a function of Quantity rather than quality. Simply by having PROVIDED more information we win. The argument for The Whole being Greater is saying that because of the SIZE of the system, the degree of magnification, to use a Wattsism, it is different from the sub-system, which of course BECOMES the system once we skooch in close enough to see it as the Whole. Then the Whole is seen hierarchically as greater than that sum of ITS parts. But this is Absurdly Hierarchical and arbitrary. It is an appeal to SIZE. The Whole is only superior to the parts become it is its self GREATER. At every step in the growth of an argument, the opponent can choose to bring it to a logocentric hault and to say: This is now the Whole. All that had BEEN the whole before now were mere parts. And the longer that the argument grows, the more opportunities are allotted to do this. So the Power to say ‘This is Greater’ depends upon the Size of the argument, a function of the Time that it takes for the Argument to grow to BE that size. And the greater the argument the more power it has because the more it subsumes previous Wholes that had themselves possessed Power over smaller wholes.

So Truth is a function of Power, as Nietzsche said, and Wholeness is a measure of size. Therefore we win by the sheer SIZE of the argument.

Dm.A.A.

Communication.

Jay did not seem to believe that you existed. Admittedly this was an exaggeration on his part. He noted the negativity that was bouncing betwixt me and Tony the moment that he got home. His father had let us in early. It is all ways disquieting to think that two people can be unified in agreement even despite a lingering insecurity about one an other. Have you noticed that? It added to the disquiet of hearing Tony tell me to text Jay because he did not feel “comfortable” in “some one’s home” if that one was not there. He even accused me of lying to Jay’s father when I told him that I would text Jay, and then qualified that I had contacted Jay all ready.

The situation could have not been more Kafkaesque in retrospect than when Jay corroborated Tony’s bull shit by claiming it was “his home” as he lounged in an arm chair, having heard me tell him not to criticise you in your absence, as though might made right. But thank fully we were all smiles the moment the footage was done. Men right? Jay was in toto more open-minded the moment that the work was done. He only accused me mildly of pedestalising you. What ever. He knows that had I not seen the best in people on general principle I would have left Tony at home. Jay and I hit the town and when we returned to O’Harley’s I learned that he was apprehensive about having photographs taken of him. This is the same man who asked if my explanation for your absence was your “exact words”. Who is he to judge me for protecting your privacy? Tony showed up over the course of the night, and Jay left O’Harley’s early. He insisted that it was not owing to issues with his Japanese long-distancer that had visibly affected him over the course of the day. I disbelieve that; Parham and I both could see what was up, and we had both come to the same conclusion independently at the gym earlier.

Of course my mind blairs nonsense as I think this, and it is only alleviated when I write it. Derrida was a genius. He understood how many of our episteme-illogical prejudices come from the prioritizing of the spoken word over the written. Hence I renegotiate now and refuse to call you. Defensively: It is not that I am ditching you. On the contrary, I am honoring the same principle by which I permitted you to ditch me.

The nonsense: My reasoning is circular and therefore irrelevant. Jay’s skepticism owed to his ignorance; his ignorance was evidenced by his skepticism.

1.       I know you are skeptical because you are ignorant.

2.       I know you are ignorant because you are skeptical.

It looks like a tautology. That is only because, though, in one case:

1.       I know( that A is so) because B.

Where as in the other:

2.       I know THAT (B is so because of A).

Hope fully the technicalities do not kill your vibe.

My indignation is that of the Intuitive Introvert. Nothing intrinsically in my explanation, and your excuse, was at all outrageous or out of place. It is totally understandable and common place that one would be apprehensive of a judgemental environment. This does not reflect POORLY upon you as a Communications Major, but Well, for You note the hazards of such a situation.

At times though I suspect that this basic common sense is not so common. It is totally obvious to a person like you or me. Yet to an Extravert like Jay it seems lost at times and lost in time. OBVIOUSLY, given your apprehensions, I cannot read your words verbatim. To be judged out of the context specifically intended for me is abuse comparable to rape in my mind. Besides, I hate people who interrupt a conversation to pull up their phones and read things to me. If ever I prioritise the spoken word over the written, it is to prevent THAT behaviour.

So it happens that since nothing is obvious and few things ubiquitous, (a paradox, since we usually imagine ubiquity only to follow obviousness) I must translate what you have to say into terms that Jay would understand. This would seem condescending to him if I explained it, but only because his own delusions are monarchical. He requires a translator for some thing that was deliberately communicated to me in a way that *I* would understand, neither overwhelming me with things that are out of my context nor sparing me any special privilege in the conversation. To hit that Goldilocks zone between what is theoretically obvious and all too esoteric is intrinsic to good communication, a high art, and it should be just as flattering that I adapt the Truth to my recipient as it is humbling.

And here the accusations of circularity would occur. Obviously, it is Jay’s skepticism its self, of some thing that appears to me totally probable and sensible, that evidences that he occupies a world miles from mine. Of course, he might argue that were I simply “clear” to begin with, had I provided “definite evidence”, then the skepticism would have been absent, yet since I refused to be transparent his skepticism was justified and the fact that the circular reasoning ends with my attacks upon (his character based upon )his skepticism only evidences that it can be reduced to just a childish plaint for being questioned. Yet the confusion could have just as easily been prevented had he listened to (my version of) Common Sense and been generous to your totally sensible apprehensions and my subtle attempts to relate them to him without actualising the object of apprehension: Undue judgement.

I could sum up my point colloquially thus: It was a matter of common sense to begin with that nothing is obvious to every one, however bright( either the thing or the one). That even in SPITE of my efforts to convey this to you (Jay) you do not see it as believable, because obvious, it further re-enforces this conviction. Had I yielded my decency and ready the “evidence” verbatim, it would prove nothing. Your conviction at that point would have been just as arbitrary as your defensive skepticism in actuality, and the occupants of the room, including Tony, would be prone to re-interpret your ([I point to {Alanna]’s}) words out of the context that was several months of correspondence. Yet perhaps I should be flattered by their disbelief. That you seem like an extension of my imagination is not only a profound commentary upon the human condition that CAN be generalised, (even if most do not realise it) but it all so suggests the degree to which we were not only similar upon first meeting but have influenced one an other over time.

Much as in the way that one cracks open a book to a random page and has a different impression of it upon reading a fragment than when that same fragment is read at the end of a reading that began at the book’s beginning, so it is, phenomenologically and ethically, it is as the post-structuralists attested: When we think that we have finally understood it we are further at understanding it than ever. There is no Truth in the text that is ubiquitous; it depends upon the situation of the reader. Even in writing this I had the nagging feeling that I was evading the Truth, that there was some thing I was SUPPOSED to say that I avoided. But really all I did was clear away the SEEMING Truth of the imagined accusations. And now that I see that, I can complete the circle: Returning to the same point of criticism when the authority DEMANDED that Truth of me, I can now proudly say: There was none to begin with! And I have said every thing I set out to and needed to.

Dm.A.A.

Marxism in Romance.

Marxism in Romance.

One naive notion of Marxism is predicated upon the notion of “sharing”. The superstition is that to be a Marxist means to “share” every thing. Yet obviously to “share” food is different than to “share” a woman. One would not eat food that has all ready been digested, in a position of excess, and nor would one cut up a blonde into pieces so that each might enjoy a “piece of her ass”. If this is your view of altruism or paradise, then it is no wonder that Foucault defined INSANITY as the tendency to see disparate circumstances as being unified by signs, such as the word “share”.

Marxism is not inconsistent with monogamy or elitism. What it establishes is that Basic needs, those of Deficiency, are the same from person to person. Yet the capacity for a man to love a woman, for instance, varies from man to man, and depending upon the woman. In a Marxist society, the weak of heart are not compelled to compete with the strong of heart for resources. The love of a woman cannot be guaranteed, but she would do well to choose the stronger of the two candidates, for he will love her more, and so the weaker should know his place. Should the weaker one win he would never understand the affront to the stronger of the two, for he will not know the heart-ache of losing her. He will only exploit her for her resources as well as the more loving man. And this can only occur in a frame of mind and system that dismisses altruism, the full fillment of each other’s needs, as one’s central duty, and that pits these two parties against one another, to be decided by consumerystic whims. The victor in such a system, such a microcosm modeled after the macrocosm of consumer capitalism, would be the most unscrupulous, selfish, and inconsiderate, whose only advantage is a deliberately cultivated charm, a commodity, and the availability of “a good time”.

Why not rather have the weak of heart, the debaucher, have his needs met for a casual sex partner, without having to pretend to be a gentleman? Why not have the lover court his soul mate in peace, without interference, without needing to settle for the life style of a “player”? The former will never understand the latter, and the latter should never suffer on behalf of the former. Why miss-lead the woman by pretending towards the virtues of the other, so that she accuses the latter of the former’s vices because she refuses to believe she was miss-led, and so the genuinely caring is labeled the debaucher and the debaucher is labeled the gentleman? After all, she does not pretend that they are BOTH gentlemen, for even as she insists upon their equality she presumes upon the superiority of one just by the act of choice. All that matters is that she choose rightly, that she not be miss led, and that if she does fail to choose rightly, she is corrected civilly and politely. If she chooses rightly, the ful fillment of a Special Duty is made possible. If not, she becomes a resource to which the debaucher has a Special Privilege. To confuse Duty with Privilege can only be done when there is no interest paid to the virtues of the man, his Capacity for Caring, but only to the resource, which is delivered on a whim just like the victor in a game of rock paper scissors gets the first hit of weed. And the woman commodifies her self as a resource just by the act of choice, with her own consent, though admittedly innocently. The myth that both are EQUALLY entitled to the same resource, one that cannot be shared, but that to privilege the one over the other based upon chance, whim, and consumer preference is somehow sensible, can only occur in consumer capitalism.
The situation mirrors a group interview for a job that neither man wants, because it is too exhausting for the weaker of the two and too boring for the stronger of the two. Welcome to the middle class, right? Capitalism teaches us to assert the self over the Other, competing unscrupulously rather than seeking to civilly decide which world would meet both the Deficiency needs and the Excess needs of all. Marxism does not do that.

Dm.A.A.

My Latest Symbol.

Dm.A.A.