Brandon writes:
I can think of no Western tradition that truthfully and faithfully transmits the Wisdom of Aging from the dying, elderly, and recently deceased to the young and newly born; nothing that prepares you, in any way, for the actual Passage of Time. Not the general Passage of Time— in evenly-parsed seconds, days, and years— but the perspectival passage from Birth to Childhood to Adolescence to Adulthood to Middle Age to Old Age to Death, with its own anxious brand of Time-reckoning, and its endless compare-and-contrast games with other age brackets. What is this even called, this Wisdom of Aging?
When I'm on the verge of Death, filling bedpan after bedpan with bile-blood-spittle, I'm going to manage, in between heaves, to pen a Children's Book about the Passage of Time. I know Seuss or Sendak did something along those lines, among others, but I don't want to cheer or spare the child— I want to prepare him, morally and martially. To say at points "when you are a child, Adulthood will seem like an unimaginably wide sea, buffering Death. But the moment you wade into the waters, you clearly see the other shore approaching." Or "you will hear older people say that Time passes faster as you grow older, and you will think that they're just speaking loosely, figuratively. They're not. The Passage of Time will accelerate to such a degree that it induces a panic. What you see, in the desperation of the Aging, is people responding to this panic rather than just the Passage of Time itself." Or, "your peers will always appear to be the Neutral Reasonably Median Age. Younger people will always look like Children, even when those younger people are in their forties. Older people will always seem fully matured, even in Fifth Grade. This illusion never subsides. It's something metabolic."
Because Childhood is still the time before Time, only in Adulthood do we feel the Passage of Time, in that second sense, especially with a silent outrage over its irreversibility. The feeling of being pushed through a room by a moving wall. Once out of Adolescence, one of the greatest, secret fantasies we have is the cessation of Time— for the wall of Common Time to halt— expressed not just personally but in ahistorical, atemporal longings. Childhood, and even Adolescence, has no such fantasy except for a teeny-bopping "nostalgia for the present." We get this elation in viewing Groundhog's Day, an elation aside from the empowerment of foreknowledge— Bill Murray is experiencing the ultimate fantasy, the cessation of Time.
The Passage of Time ceases long enough for him to master it: our ultimate fantasy, the pointless fantasy of re-living life from birth with all your current, accumulated wisdom. Or just having a few years, outside of Time, to catch up.
But I think, experientially, most problems related with Aging are dispositional— anxious reactions to the Passage of Time. When in reality, the consequences of Aging— death, disease, and degeneration— are not until the near-end. Still, not counting the age-angst of the young— "I'm not old enough to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live"— our age-angst, begins thirty and forty years before degeneration, on the doorstep of adulthood, or even with the End of Childhood. I wrote about this before, about the meanings of Childhood, and how its perspectives are suppressed— or dismissed— because, one, adult wisdoms follow childhood wisdoms, and thus are seen as superior rather than just horizontally different in a Gadamerian way.
And two, because Children are a disempowered, marginalized voice— one of the only groups whose disempowerment is publicly acceptable and lauded— and therefore add less to the common perspectival Horizon. They're clumped in with the mad, the retarded, animals, and everything else "lacking in reason." But I think the Childhood perspective is vastly under-appreciated— belittled, made quaint— because it contradicts Adulthood prejudices. The dismissal that flows from the Paternal Sovereign, just as it was and is directed toward the Maternal Figure.
And this dismissal badly distorts the personality, which is mostly formed in childhood. What is critical for the personality is a rich synthesis of these life-epochs, in again the Gadamerian sense.
"Time is no longer primarily a gulf to be bridged, because it separates, but it is actually the supportive ground of process in which the present is rooted. Hence temporal distance is not something that must be overcome. This was, rather, the naive assumption of historicism, namely that we must set ourselves within the spirit of the age, and think with its ideas and its thoughts, not with our own, and thus advance towards historical objectivity. In fact the important thing is to recognise the distance in time as a positive and productive possibility of understanding. It is not a yawning abyss, but is filled with the continuity of custom and tradition, in the light of which all that is handed down presents itself to us."— Gadamer.
Imagine historical age being substituted by personal age, and the "naive assumption of historicism" being translated into the common injunction "act your age." I think the Young and Old should work together, to remind and warn one another, for a better, richer, healthier synthesis.
Which brings me to other questions concerning Age as strata, and the stratification of generations. Why are Children and the Elderly rarely friends, in any real way? In what ways is this Passage of Time something metabolic, bound with health? Can we make sense of life-epochs without universal rites-of-passage, like bad marriages and early retirement? Why do these temper the anxieties, if they mark the slipping of Time, just as birthdays do?————— Anyway, I think this will probably begin the next PRG, since I think it strikes a universal chord— or discord.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Shows (Musical Performances)
Brandon writes:
So far, the topics under the knife have been relatively uncontroversial, almost neutral selections— at least as far as our little enclave is concerned. But I really want to hear some strong opinions and weigh-ins on the topic of Shows— musical performances, that is, of the variety that dominate Philadelphian social life. I want a kind of pro/con philosophical rundown of both their loftiest purposes as well as their worst maladaptations and drawbacks, even if its singes friends around the collar. This will be healthy for the Institute in many ways, I think, because it will give form to hunches, and help us figure out how to approach this cultural form in general... and maybe improve where possible.
Slightly exasperated Thesis: Philadelphia— and perhaps the greater United States— is in a state of hypersaturation with Shows. I won't say oversaturated, yet, and reveal my prejudices, merely hyper-saturated.
A young, outgoing Philadelphian could probably go to, on average, one Show for every night of the week. In real terms, a young, outgoing Philadelphian, of the type and caliber we might know, probably does manage around three shows per week. This is the mark of a thriving musical culture, certainly; which Philadelphia can proudly claim. There are plenty of bands and musicians; some even good. But goodness and badness aside, I think Shows completely monopolize Philadelphian, and American, culture. Spaces are organized around Music. Culture is mostly spread on the caravans of Traveling Musicians. And Music has become the king paradigm and criterion of all other culture, to the degree that weird, unrecognizable sapling forms can find little purchase.
Music is what lends legitimacy here, culturally. You can make a faster, stronger grab-and-stab for legitimacy and acclaim with Music than with any other form, even in an ad hoc, horrendously embarassing band (which I sometimes prefer). You get this cool, new totemic association, your band and bandname, as well the chance to follow out its model of horizontal cultural production: stickers, shirts, posters and various propaganda, tours and appearances, interviews and praise, and of course the albums themselves. So all this hubbub creates a non-musical motivation to become a musician, and to book Shows— if for nothing else, than to give all this press and production a center, a backbone. Note: we all feel this, in the desire to start fake bands, with fake band names like The Cryptic Tonsils or The Sharpies or The New Aesthetics. This process intrigues us. It creates desire. And nicely melds together the two dominant forms of young American Culture, Performance and Production.
Nothing above was meant to be a criticism, or even really critical; I love the openness, the amateurism, the flux of culture.
However, because of these perks and pressures, you end up having more performers— and more aspiring, uninspired performers— than proportionate audience...Hence, hypersaturation. So, it is not that Music has done something wrong; only that little else gets a turn... After a stint of calls and messages about bands "wanting to play," and my first inward response is sometimes "go ahead, play... no one will stop you. Why do you need me?" This is of course a little facetious, but it underscores something: that shows are more often for the satisfaction of the performer. Which is fine, great in fact— Culture should spring from desire. However we treat it as though musicians are giving us a commodity, tireless workers playing to meet our needs. Performance assumes the form of a commodity.
My grumbling rumbles much wider than just with musical performance, though. I think that Performance in general, along with Production, monopolizes American culture far too much. A monopoly that we should consider overturning, for the breathing room of other paradigms (oh, maybe, like Action and Dialogue, just to name my darling two favorites— or Rhizome and Hobby, to name another two paradigms).
Me personally, I'm particularly allergic to Performance-gluts because, as an audience-member, a spectator, I have nothing to do. They are monological. Spectation. Two, three, four, five hours of pure perception and zero agency. If I do this every night of the week, I've accomplished nothing with my week. There are plenty possible cultural landscapes in which Culture gives us all something to do, in a happier division of labor. And not just in limelight-sharing and syncopated turn-taking, but all of us, simultaneously. A motto I often return to is that "Culture is just a particularly fervid and memorable form of Freeplay." One reason I return to this is that Freeplay escapes many, if not most, of the traps I want to avoid. Even the Freeplay we associate with childhood: playgrounds, neighborhood adventures, the interlocking imaginations of Make-Believe. There is no fixed center to these activities, nor periphery. They accommodate multi-sided Action; many nodes of interests and many points of departure. There is no stage to command attention and divide esteemed space from everyday space, audience from performer.
Another strain for Shows is that, because Performance is framed by the visual, we are forced to ask "What exactly are we looking at?" or "Why do I have to look at the musicians when they play?" What does this accomplish? Why can't we listen to the music and do other things? The only acceptable substitute is to watch visuals. Or, worse yet, be forced into some kind of "audience participation" which is anything but participatory— because we are acting on cues and commands, rather than a refreshing wellspring of personal agency. Spectatorship, and the perceptive mode by which it spectates, is beneficial sometimes. Attention. Absorption. Listening. Ingestion. Occasionally with cutting, sublime results. I've enjoyed Shows; walked away nourished many times. But there comes a time for other modes. This spiel is distinct from the critique of Entertainment; which is a critique of the object of attention, rather than the mode of attention itself. More importantly, is that this is the heat death of a form in routine. Shows have been routinized, absorbed, lost their Weberian charisma— because we wore them out, after years of seven-days-a-week.
What this indicates, this decay cycle setting in, is that New Forms will emerge with a kind of cultural pressure, a backlash, the Owl of Minerva after many years of gray-on-gray. But because Being is often so habitual, the new forms will have to create just enough routine to gain currency.... I do not think I'm alone on this, this sense of being "showed-out," but I know that I'm hyperactive and idiosyncratic in my preference for recorded music....As a whole, I'm just curious what others might think and offer as remedy...
So far, the topics under the knife have been relatively uncontroversial, almost neutral selections— at least as far as our little enclave is concerned. But I really want to hear some strong opinions and weigh-ins on the topic of Shows— musical performances, that is, of the variety that dominate Philadelphian social life. I want a kind of pro/con philosophical rundown of both their loftiest purposes as well as their worst maladaptations and drawbacks, even if its singes friends around the collar. This will be healthy for the Institute in many ways, I think, because it will give form to hunches, and help us figure out how to approach this cultural form in general... and maybe improve where possible.
Slightly exasperated Thesis: Philadelphia— and perhaps the greater United States— is in a state of hypersaturation with Shows. I won't say oversaturated, yet, and reveal my prejudices, merely hyper-saturated.
A young, outgoing Philadelphian could probably go to, on average, one Show for every night of the week. In real terms, a young, outgoing Philadelphian, of the type and caliber we might know, probably does manage around three shows per week. This is the mark of a thriving musical culture, certainly; which Philadelphia can proudly claim. There are plenty of bands and musicians; some even good. But goodness and badness aside, I think Shows completely monopolize Philadelphian, and American, culture. Spaces are organized around Music. Culture is mostly spread on the caravans of Traveling Musicians. And Music has become the king paradigm and criterion of all other culture, to the degree that weird, unrecognizable sapling forms can find little purchase.
Music is what lends legitimacy here, culturally. You can make a faster, stronger grab-and-stab for legitimacy and acclaim with Music than with any other form, even in an ad hoc, horrendously embarassing band (which I sometimes prefer). You get this cool, new totemic association, your band and bandname, as well the chance to follow out its model of horizontal cultural production: stickers, shirts, posters and various propaganda, tours and appearances, interviews and praise, and of course the albums themselves. So all this hubbub creates a non-musical motivation to become a musician, and to book Shows— if for nothing else, than to give all this press and production a center, a backbone. Note: we all feel this, in the desire to start fake bands, with fake band names like The Cryptic Tonsils or The Sharpies or The New Aesthetics. This process intrigues us. It creates desire. And nicely melds together the two dominant forms of young American Culture, Performance and Production.
Nothing above was meant to be a criticism, or even really critical; I love the openness, the amateurism, the flux of culture.
However, because of these perks and pressures, you end up having more performers— and more aspiring, uninspired performers— than proportionate audience...Hence, hypersaturation. So, it is not that Music has done something wrong; only that little else gets a turn... After a stint of calls and messages about bands "wanting to play," and my first inward response is sometimes "go ahead, play... no one will stop you. Why do you need me?" This is of course a little facetious, but it underscores something: that shows are more often for the satisfaction of the performer. Which is fine, great in fact— Culture should spring from desire. However we treat it as though musicians are giving us a commodity, tireless workers playing to meet our needs. Performance assumes the form of a commodity.
My grumbling rumbles much wider than just with musical performance, though. I think that Performance in general, along with Production, monopolizes American culture far too much. A monopoly that we should consider overturning, for the breathing room of other paradigms (oh, maybe, like Action and Dialogue, just to name my darling two favorites— or Rhizome and Hobby, to name another two paradigms).
Me personally, I'm particularly allergic to Performance-gluts because, as an audience-member, a spectator, I have nothing to do. They are monological. Spectation. Two, three, four, five hours of pure perception and zero agency. If I do this every night of the week, I've accomplished nothing with my week. There are plenty possible cultural landscapes in which Culture gives us all something to do, in a happier division of labor. And not just in limelight-sharing and syncopated turn-taking, but all of us, simultaneously. A motto I often return to is that "Culture is just a particularly fervid and memorable form of Freeplay." One reason I return to this is that Freeplay escapes many, if not most, of the traps I want to avoid. Even the Freeplay we associate with childhood: playgrounds, neighborhood adventures, the interlocking imaginations of Make-Believe. There is no fixed center to these activities, nor periphery. They accommodate multi-sided Action; many nodes of interests and many points of departure. There is no stage to command attention and divide esteemed space from everyday space, audience from performer.
Another strain for Shows is that, because Performance is framed by the visual, we are forced to ask "What exactly are we looking at?" or "Why do I have to look at the musicians when they play?" What does this accomplish? Why can't we listen to the music and do other things? The only acceptable substitute is to watch visuals. Or, worse yet, be forced into some kind of "audience participation" which is anything but participatory— because we are acting on cues and commands, rather than a refreshing wellspring of personal agency. Spectatorship, and the perceptive mode by which it spectates, is beneficial sometimes. Attention. Absorption. Listening. Ingestion. Occasionally with cutting, sublime results. I've enjoyed Shows; walked away nourished many times. But there comes a time for other modes. This spiel is distinct from the critique of Entertainment; which is a critique of the object of attention, rather than the mode of attention itself. More importantly, is that this is the heat death of a form in routine. Shows have been routinized, absorbed, lost their Weberian charisma— because we wore them out, after years of seven-days-a-week.
What this indicates, this decay cycle setting in, is that New Forms will emerge with a kind of cultural pressure, a backlash, the Owl of Minerva after many years of gray-on-gray. But because Being is often so habitual, the new forms will have to create just enough routine to gain currency.... I do not think I'm alone on this, this sense of being "showed-out," but I know that I'm hyperactive and idiosyncratic in my preference for recorded music....As a whole, I'm just curious what others might think and offer as remedy...
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Bodily Noises.
Brandon writes:
Bodily Noises are something— like cursewords, and all things sexual before Freud— that are richly anthropological and lushly revealing, but are nevertheless ignored because they make "inappropriate study," and whose suppression as topics, I think, is connected with their suppression in society-at-large. Yawns, Burps, Farts, Sneezes, Coughs, Hiccups, and perhaps Snoring. They occupy a similar corner of our thinking, to the point where I feel compelled to say "Gesundheit" after another's Cough or Burp or Fart. They are all sudden bursts of air, named in English by onomatopoeia, that puncture social situations with rude reminders of the body and its mechanisms. But why for example does elementary school society esteem the Burper, while a poorly-timed Fart can lead to total banishment? Why are Farts and Hiccups funnier than Sneezes and Coughs? Can we order their rudeness, and what is this order based on? What can we stand to learn from writers like Chaucer and Rabelais and B. Franklin who use them lyrically and quasi-philosophically? And why are Farts so deeply humiliating and rude to some people— banished from Children's Television, prohibited even outdoors, analogous to the fearsome cunt in the curseword canon, and the Bodily Noise with the strongest practical reason for censure (i.e., it fills the room with the aroma of the lower intestine).
I suppose Snores have a practical reason for censure, as well. Dad, snoring loudly and incessantly through the annual family camping trip, robs us of our much-needed rest. But we cannot censure him. One, he's your father. And two, Snoring is an involuntary noise, like normal breathing— more than involuntary really, unconscious by definition. Which is an interesting twist on things, and maybe the reason Snoring barely made the slate to begin with.
There is another shadowy figure which is technically a Bodily Noise, conspicuous by its absence, which is Laughter. When I was inwardly counting off Bodily Noises, I never for a second considered Laughter. I doubt most would, even though Laughter is a "sudden burst of air, erupting from the body," very audible, often rude, and many times involuntary. It sits too close to Language, for us, which is itself technically a set of Bodily Noises. Though involuntary, Laughter responds to meaning more than other Bodily Noises, which we usually think of as results of a physiological process. Bacteria. Trapped gases. Illness. Ugly Stuff and Bad Air. Bodily Noises are our body talking, by contrast, much like another unnamed Bodily Noise, Stomach Growls (known in medical terms as "borbyrygmi").
With true Bodily Noise, the I proper is not speaking, not even subconsciously. There is a clean disjunct with our will and intention. It is vegetative, physiological, less than animal. Voluntary, semantic noises like scoffs, guffaws, and yelps are even closer to Language than Laughter, and are thoroughly discounted. But this body-speaking has something to do with their faux-pas potential in some ways. Much like putting an orangutan on the Board of Trustees, it drags Nature into Culture, and gives the body a chance to say some pretty ugly things. I think Nature-into-Culture imports are often the source of shame, and might be a good way of framing our picture of Bodily Noises.
As it turns out, the Yawn is not the result of a physiological process either, but apparently a relic of proto-Language. That is, the Yawn is not the result of a lack of oxygen, it is a proto-linguistic form of group synchronization among animals, though still involuntary and scientifically proven to be "contagious." That is, it responds to the outside world of sense, rather than the dark, blind, mole-like internal world of process. However this announcement came pretty late in the game and society-at-large always presumed it to be a physiological response to "a lack of oxygen in the tired brain." So, we'll stick it in the drawer with all the other veritable Bodily Noises, for the time being.
Historically, I bet that Bodily Noises were more significant than at present day. Rather than thinking of them as "little pressure valves" they were probably construed as symptoms of looming illness, which in the topsy-turvy world of premodern medicine, was often considered to the result of "bad airs." The connection between Bodily Noises and bad air is hard to miss. Like the cough, they may have all seemed symptomatic rather than indications of healthy metabolism. This may also partially explain their lingering suppression, in a way; that they were signs of the presence of bad, infected airs in the Burper or Farter.
Things shift if we ask what happens when we burp or fart— or sneeze— on purpose. Or when, like Rabelais, we use farts as emancipatory gestures. And who among us can use the Fart as an emancipatory gesture? Who's still ashamed to fart in public—even outside— and why? Burping has come a long way in the West. Obviously, the fart is scatological, and suffers the same suppression and exile as its black-sheep cousin, Shit. I think we can safely say this is the faux-pas power and charge of farts, as a sort of epiphenomena of the scatological, the smoke dancing above the fires. However, the question of "why Shit is shameful" is too steep to tackle as a tangent, though. So we'll save it for later and keep to the question "why its more innocent echo, the Fart, bears this shame," and how this affects our outlooks.
When Rabelais penned entire chapters of Gargantua and Pantagruel about world-historical farts, this was to remind the world of the much-maligned Body, just as the fart does. Rabelais wanted the body to speak up, make itself known, along with all its impulses, needs, and processes. Rabelais wanted a robust body to answer centuries of Christian denial and devaluation. The fart, here, is not just a cheap joke or gimmick. It's allied with a heroic moral purpose, which is what gives Gargantua and Pantagruel such dimension throughout its innumerable fart jokes and wine-soaked vignettes. What can we learn from Rabelais? One, our own hesitation to fart in public gives us a good reading of own Bodily shame, the measure of an ancient body devaluation. We can give the "practical reason" behind it, that "it's unpleasant for others." Still, we are ashamed to fart outside, and might ponder our own deeper motives behind this weird injunction.
Another angle is the pleasure or displeasure of some Bodily Noises. I have a secret to confess: that like many peoples of the world, I engage in recreational sneezing. Playing off old liaisons between sneezes and orgasms, this is comparable to masturbation in some ways, and elicits a similar, though far milder, public discomfort. Here's another interesting factoid:
"1624: Pope Urban VII threatens to excommunicate those who snort snuff because sneezing is too similar to an orgasm," again pitting the Body versus the Church. This emboldens me to take my vice public. To make a special "sneezer" keyring, that I can sneeze at will, whenever and where ever.
Bodily Noises are something— like cursewords, and all things sexual before Freud— that are richly anthropological and lushly revealing, but are nevertheless ignored because they make "inappropriate study," and whose suppression as topics, I think, is connected with their suppression in society-at-large. Yawns, Burps, Farts, Sneezes, Coughs, Hiccups, and perhaps Snoring. They occupy a similar corner of our thinking, to the point where I feel compelled to say "Gesundheit" after another's Cough or Burp or Fart. They are all sudden bursts of air, named in English by onomatopoeia, that puncture social situations with rude reminders of the body and its mechanisms. But why for example does elementary school society esteem the Burper, while a poorly-timed Fart can lead to total banishment? Why are Farts and Hiccups funnier than Sneezes and Coughs? Can we order their rudeness, and what is this order based on? What can we stand to learn from writers like Chaucer and Rabelais and B. Franklin who use them lyrically and quasi-philosophically? And why are Farts so deeply humiliating and rude to some people— banished from Children's Television, prohibited even outdoors, analogous to the fearsome cunt in the curseword canon, and the Bodily Noise with the strongest practical reason for censure (i.e., it fills the room with the aroma of the lower intestine).
I suppose Snores have a practical reason for censure, as well. Dad, snoring loudly and incessantly through the annual family camping trip, robs us of our much-needed rest. But we cannot censure him. One, he's your father. And two, Snoring is an involuntary noise, like normal breathing— more than involuntary really, unconscious by definition. Which is an interesting twist on things, and maybe the reason Snoring barely made the slate to begin with.
There is another shadowy figure which is technically a Bodily Noise, conspicuous by its absence, which is Laughter. When I was inwardly counting off Bodily Noises, I never for a second considered Laughter. I doubt most would, even though Laughter is a "sudden burst of air, erupting from the body," very audible, often rude, and many times involuntary. It sits too close to Language, for us, which is itself technically a set of Bodily Noises. Though involuntary, Laughter responds to meaning more than other Bodily Noises, which we usually think of as results of a physiological process. Bacteria. Trapped gases. Illness. Ugly Stuff and Bad Air. Bodily Noises are our body talking, by contrast, much like another unnamed Bodily Noise, Stomach Growls (known in medical terms as "borbyrygmi").
With true Bodily Noise, the I proper is not speaking, not even subconsciously. There is a clean disjunct with our will and intention. It is vegetative, physiological, less than animal. Voluntary, semantic noises like scoffs, guffaws, and yelps are even closer to Language than Laughter, and are thoroughly discounted. But this body-speaking has something to do with their faux-pas potential in some ways. Much like putting an orangutan on the Board of Trustees, it drags Nature into Culture, and gives the body a chance to say some pretty ugly things. I think Nature-into-Culture imports are often the source of shame, and might be a good way of framing our picture of Bodily Noises.
As it turns out, the Yawn is not the result of a physiological process either, but apparently a relic of proto-Language. That is, the Yawn is not the result of a lack of oxygen, it is a proto-linguistic form of group synchronization among animals, though still involuntary and scientifically proven to be "contagious." That is, it responds to the outside world of sense, rather than the dark, blind, mole-like internal world of process. However this announcement came pretty late in the game and society-at-large always presumed it to be a physiological response to "a lack of oxygen in the tired brain." So, we'll stick it in the drawer with all the other veritable Bodily Noises, for the time being.
Historically, I bet that Bodily Noises were more significant than at present day. Rather than thinking of them as "little pressure valves" they were probably construed as symptoms of looming illness, which in the topsy-turvy world of premodern medicine, was often considered to the result of "bad airs." The connection between Bodily Noises and bad air is hard to miss. Like the cough, they may have all seemed symptomatic rather than indications of healthy metabolism. This may also partially explain their lingering suppression, in a way; that they were signs of the presence of bad, infected airs in the Burper or Farter.
Things shift if we ask what happens when we burp or fart— or sneeze— on purpose. Or when, like Rabelais, we use farts as emancipatory gestures. And who among us can use the Fart as an emancipatory gesture? Who's still ashamed to fart in public—even outside— and why? Burping has come a long way in the West. Obviously, the fart is scatological, and suffers the same suppression and exile as its black-sheep cousin, Shit. I think we can safely say this is the faux-pas power and charge of farts, as a sort of epiphenomena of the scatological, the smoke dancing above the fires. However, the question of "why Shit is shameful" is too steep to tackle as a tangent, though. So we'll save it for later and keep to the question "why its more innocent echo, the Fart, bears this shame," and how this affects our outlooks.
When Rabelais penned entire chapters of Gargantua and Pantagruel about world-historical farts, this was to remind the world of the much-maligned Body, just as the fart does. Rabelais wanted the body to speak up, make itself known, along with all its impulses, needs, and processes. Rabelais wanted a robust body to answer centuries of Christian denial and devaluation. The fart, here, is not just a cheap joke or gimmick. It's allied with a heroic moral purpose, which is what gives Gargantua and Pantagruel such dimension throughout its innumerable fart jokes and wine-soaked vignettes. What can we learn from Rabelais? One, our own hesitation to fart in public gives us a good reading of own Bodily shame, the measure of an ancient body devaluation. We can give the "practical reason" behind it, that "it's unpleasant for others." Still, we are ashamed to fart outside, and might ponder our own deeper motives behind this weird injunction.
Another angle is the pleasure or displeasure of some Bodily Noises. I have a secret to confess: that like many peoples of the world, I engage in recreational sneezing. Playing off old liaisons between sneezes and orgasms, this is comparable to masturbation in some ways, and elicits a similar, though far milder, public discomfort. Here's another interesting factoid:
"1624: Pope Urban VII threatens to excommunicate those who snort snuff because sneezing is too similar to an orgasm," again pitting the Body versus the Church. This emboldens me to take my vice public. To make a special "sneezer" keyring, that I can sneeze at will, whenever and where ever.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Cellphone Ideomotor
Brandon writes:
As I imagine it, the aim of this Research Group is to cull meaning from Experience, from everyday life, in order to double its returns, to create a hypermeaning which is invested back into Experience itself. The ubiquity of Cellphones, if nothing else, guarantees a deep well of meaning and a deeper impress on our Experience, which means the rewards will be all the more hypermeaningful. I get the sense that Cellphones— or Mobile Phones, if you're flipping through Wikipedia— have changed social flocking patterns and personal behaviors in countless, unexamined ways, and I want to understand this switch-and-shift in my own behaviors, if maybe to overcome their drawbacks. Cellphones are also a technology; which means that we can import previous praise and denunciation of technnology— from Plato's hunches about the techne of writing to Heidegger's techno-wariness... to the more technocratic gospel of the modern West.
It also means that— as a technocrat myself— I'm eager to see where our Research might lead in actual cellphone modifications, or other experiments in mobile-phone customs and culture.
So what has changed? I think first off the shape of social space, the topology of social space. Once upon a time, a telephone number indicated a place with a changing cast— a topos, a fixed location. This topos, this place, had certain customs and expectations attached to it, like home, work, public telephones. A telephone number flagged a location, a location that was fixed in space. A telephone call mapped one fixed place onto another; it mapped one sphere of influence, agency, and responsibility onto another. And a set of customs related to that place, that locality— your Work number, for example— all got mapped as well.
Cellphones came along and collapsed our sense of location, locality, and fixity. Ran everything together. They also destroyed the partitions of space that came with locality— including all the good hiding places, excuses, privacy, and the customs associated with place. So for instance, now managers and undesirables can always reach you by phone, and you now need an excuse for not answering your phone, just as you once needed for ditching work. They create a compact little space, that you carry in your pocket, in which we are somehow all crammed in together sardinewise. This compact space also rivals the real space around you, for priority, influence, and interaction. It creates another sort of mental space, a brandnew 21st century Cartesian dualism. Cellphone calls border on a form of telepathy— especially with earpieces, God knows.
So if cellphones demolish the partitions of space we once counted on, we can erect new partitions in time, that is by phonetag and voicemail and things like that. Our interaction with The Unwanted is no longer buffered by stretches of space. We have to find new tricks. The question is not whether you're home— it's whether you are available. Email sits somewhere in between these two logics, having a topos (the computer) and a fledgling rival space (the internet); offering both the possibility for excuse as well as a meeting spot. Sometimes, we desperately want out of real space, an escape hatch into any other rival space that will have us. Girls waiting for the midnight bus, surrounded by leering, creeping, inebriated males, will leap into that compact rival space, just to avoid the undesirables at the bus-stop.
She opens the phone in order to leap into that rival space with her friends.
But since that rival space densely contains all our friends and loved ones (as well as a few foes, fiends, and burdens), the cellphone is anything but a neutral object. It is a pet. An electric pocket chipmunk, that squeaks and ekes, and must be fed and cared for. It mixes comfort and encumbrance. One glance at my cellphone reveals my endearment— and the urge to hold it in my hands. To coddle, almost. Cellphones are not like children though, not even infants. They are lowlier and much lower on the Chain of Being, despite densely representing our burgeoning contact lists. They are pets. Parrots. Hamsters. Microdogs. Hilton sisters, or neurotically wealthy widows in Rittenhouse, might jet around with a cellphone in one hand, and a pocket chihuahua in the other, occasionally confusing one rapport for the other.... And not without reason. I'm surprised, actually, at the lack of true personalization of cellphones— that no profiteers have steered cellphones into the Giga Pets paradigm yet. Such horizons, perhaps for us to explore.
Before I go any further though I'll ask what you think cellphones have done to social time and space, what kind of relationship we have with them, and maybe what class of actions we could do to screw with these ideas.
As I imagine it, the aim of this Research Group is to cull meaning from Experience, from everyday life, in order to double its returns, to create a hypermeaning which is invested back into Experience itself. The ubiquity of Cellphones, if nothing else, guarantees a deep well of meaning and a deeper impress on our Experience, which means the rewards will be all the more hypermeaningful. I get the sense that Cellphones— or Mobile Phones, if you're flipping through Wikipedia— have changed social flocking patterns and personal behaviors in countless, unexamined ways, and I want to understand this switch-and-shift in my own behaviors, if maybe to overcome their drawbacks. Cellphones are also a technology; which means that we can import previous praise and denunciation of technnology— from Plato's hunches about the techne of writing to Heidegger's techno-wariness... to the more technocratic gospel of the modern West.
It also means that— as a technocrat myself— I'm eager to see where our Research might lead in actual cellphone modifications, or other experiments in mobile-phone customs and culture.
So what has changed? I think first off the shape of social space, the topology of social space. Once upon a time, a telephone number indicated a place with a changing cast— a topos, a fixed location. This topos, this place, had certain customs and expectations attached to it, like home, work, public telephones. A telephone number flagged a location, a location that was fixed in space. A telephone call mapped one fixed place onto another; it mapped one sphere of influence, agency, and responsibility onto another. And a set of customs related to that place, that locality— your Work number, for example— all got mapped as well.
Cellphones came along and collapsed our sense of location, locality, and fixity. Ran everything together. They also destroyed the partitions of space that came with locality— including all the good hiding places, excuses, privacy, and the customs associated with place. So for instance, now managers and undesirables can always reach you by phone, and you now need an excuse for not answering your phone, just as you once needed for ditching work. They create a compact little space, that you carry in your pocket, in which we are somehow all crammed in together sardinewise. This compact space also rivals the real space around you, for priority, influence, and interaction. It creates another sort of mental space, a brandnew 21st century Cartesian dualism. Cellphone calls border on a form of telepathy— especially with earpieces, God knows.
So if cellphones demolish the partitions of space we once counted on, we can erect new partitions in time, that is by phonetag and voicemail and things like that. Our interaction with The Unwanted is no longer buffered by stretches of space. We have to find new tricks. The question is not whether you're home— it's whether you are available. Email sits somewhere in between these two logics, having a topos (the computer) and a fledgling rival space (the internet); offering both the possibility for excuse as well as a meeting spot. Sometimes, we desperately want out of real space, an escape hatch into any other rival space that will have us. Girls waiting for the midnight bus, surrounded by leering, creeping, inebriated males, will leap into that compact rival space, just to avoid the undesirables at the bus-stop.
She opens the phone in order to leap into that rival space with her friends.
But since that rival space densely contains all our friends and loved ones (as well as a few foes, fiends, and burdens), the cellphone is anything but a neutral object. It is a pet. An electric pocket chipmunk, that squeaks and ekes, and must be fed and cared for. It mixes comfort and encumbrance. One glance at my cellphone reveals my endearment— and the urge to hold it in my hands. To coddle, almost. Cellphones are not like children though, not even infants. They are lowlier and much lower on the Chain of Being, despite densely representing our burgeoning contact lists. They are pets. Parrots. Hamsters. Microdogs. Hilton sisters, or neurotically wealthy widows in Rittenhouse, might jet around with a cellphone in one hand, and a pocket chihuahua in the other, occasionally confusing one rapport for the other.... And not without reason. I'm surprised, actually, at the lack of true personalization of cellphones— that no profiteers have steered cellphones into the Giga Pets paradigm yet. Such horizons, perhaps for us to explore.
Before I go any further though I'll ask what you think cellphones have done to social time and space, what kind of relationship we have with them, and maybe what class of actions we could do to screw with these ideas.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
On Team Sports
Brandon writes:
Well, the Team-Sports-and-Contingency topic seemed to be kindle enough for the first PRG. For those not there, here's a recap:
I had mentioned how, until relatively recently in my life, I had always contemptuously assumed that Sports Fans did not understand the contingency of sports practices— or the wild contingency, almost arbitrariness, behind their choice of favorite team. Free tickets to a Pirates game in Pittsburgh, with Willie Schenck, mended this opinion. I realized that White Sox fans and Pirates fans revealed this understanding at the edges; with the heckling and teasing and good-natured prodding followed by an otherwise neighborly rapport. These sports fans were willfully chosing their favorite team, despite its contingency, in order to participate in this desire-dynamic of Sports Spectatorship. If they came to every game, indifferent to the outcome, saying "it's just a ball and a stick," refusing to cathect desire, they would be missing the entire point. It's necessary to choose, by fiat if necessary, in order to really care, to feel the wondrous strength of a desire, that makes you forget the distinction between necessity and contingency.
At this, Nate disagreed, saying that the Sublime can be best achieved when a Sports Fan cannot admit, at the end of a game, the contingency of his desires, and of his Team. This is true sports fanaticism.
Nate poses the heaviest question here "Even if you can imagine, theoretically, that your beliefs and desires are contingent on some level, would true belief in the total contingency of your desires lead to a Death of Desire?"
Others rang in on other angles (I'll stop ascribing now, because I can't remember exactly whoisaid what)
There was mention of the purposeful emptiness of sports patter— or if maybe not emptiness, then purposelessness. Two guys sitting in Grumpy's Tavern, running a bleary-eyed analysis on an Eagles game, are not likely to effect any real outcomes, but they are likely to become better pals. This also lead to discussion of the total accessibility of Spectator Sports, the welcoming and rousing call of spectator participation.
Nate had brought up a good point earlier, that I reiterated: the principles of fairness in the Sports World is absolute and sacrosanct. One, because sports, unlike almost any other sphere of culture or human endeavor, is necessarily fair. You can fake your way through the artworld or music industry, climb the political or career ladder through nepotism and connections, navigate academia through deft interdepartmental politicizing, but team sports— team sports will always come down to true performance. I think this Sanctity of Fairness explains a lot— its mythic role among the underprivileged, for instance. In this sphere, Sports, they can escape the flak and friction they would receive in any other sphere or ambition; for once, entering a fairgame in an injust world... almost to the point of being a form of revenge. The Sanctity of Fairness also gives us perspective onto what otherwise might be considered an "hysterical" reaction to Cheating— doping, rigging, and so on. My initial impulse to methamphetamines in the Tour de France is "sure, why not, let them take whatever they will, in order to surpass their predecessors." But this misses the point entirely; it submerges Sports back into a form of economics and economic-thinking, rather than pure performance.
What, in Team Sports, means something other than Sports? What is it sublimating, replacing, symbolizing, indicating, suggesting, and exciting? It obviously has a War Impulse, but does it agitate or replace that War Impulse, making us more or less bellicose? Leslie asked whether Sports Teams had any correlation with the concepts of Nation, or maybe even the historical birth of Nationality in the past 200-300 years. Sports teams in the United States are usually totemic— having a mascot which unifies a team, as totems unified clans before and elsewhere. But why more so in the United States? Does this totem create differences that we cannot get through ethnicity or language, as would be possible in international soccer? Our mascot-totems create a sort of cartoon ethnicity, to create previously unknown clans and unities.
Most people have a myopic sense of desire. They imagine desire like this: first, there is a hole, a privation, or a lack. Then there is a something that will fill this hole, this lack, tab-in-slot. When we put the object in the hole, our desires are satisfied, fulfilled, and over until the next privation. We have an empty stomach, we put food in. We need air to breathe, we fill our lungs. The Penis goes in the Vagina, desire is fulfilled. We have basket, we put the ball in, mission accomplished. However, this is the smallest part of desire. Desires are actually part of large, interweaving, ill-understood desire-dynamics. For example, the desire-dynamic of basketball includes cheerleaders, teams, concepts of Sportmanship and Competition, mascots, jerseys, strategy, stadiums, jeering and heckling, coaches, childhood, and so on. Without which, the ball-in-hole desire does not exist. Imagine the difference between a professional player absently making freethrows, by himself, on his driveway hoop versus this same professional making a freethrow, after the clock has run down, in order to win a championship. It is the same action, ball-in-hole, totally different desires. Or compare these to someone walking past a trashcan with a balled-up hoagie wrapper, and tossing it in. Same action, again, different desire. So desire is, first of all, not merely about the satisfaction itself but everything that creates this ball-in-hole structure. Another example: food.
We imagine, in a simplistic way that the desire to eat is purely nutritive. Food=object of desire. Empty Stomach=Hole. Now imagine someone said "tell you what. I will give you a magic pill that will make you never crave food again. You will never want to eat again..." With this magic pill, you would walk into a supermarket and the food on the shelves would be mere neutral objects. They might as well be made of plastic and plaster. But this isn't what we want. We want to eat. We want to be really hungry and chow down on a huge platter of cheese fries. We want enjoy slurping down milkshakes and smoothies. We want to try different cuisines in different combinations. That is, we want hunger as much as we want food. In sex, we want frustration as much as we want satisfaction... Point being: desire-dynamics are extremely complex, and this obectt-in-hole motion is only one little piece, a piece that gets held up as the whole of desire.
Moving on, I suggested engaging in a Nascar experiment, where we— as total outsiders, ignorant of the game and its written and unwritten laws— get into racing. This way, we can see the process of cathexis in action. Nascar was also perfect, I thought, because it obviously carried a lot of para-sportive meaning. We could see to what degree politics, class, and other meanings were imported and translated into sports. We came up with an idea of finding the "darling of conservatism" within Nascar and publicly supporting him, thereby "disrupting the symbolic order," in order to find out what that symbolic order is. I will leave this Nascar experiment for another post or comment....
(There are also many questions raised by competition-versus-noncompetition, in sports like skateboarding and the new Cologne/Köln sensation, geilo... Along with many other ideas... but others can post and comment at will)
Well, the Team-Sports-and-Contingency topic seemed to be kindle enough for the first PRG. For those not there, here's a recap:
I had mentioned how, until relatively recently in my life, I had always contemptuously assumed that Sports Fans did not understand the contingency of sports practices— or the wild contingency, almost arbitrariness, behind their choice of favorite team. Free tickets to a Pirates game in Pittsburgh, with Willie Schenck, mended this opinion. I realized that White Sox fans and Pirates fans revealed this understanding at the edges; with the heckling and teasing and good-natured prodding followed by an otherwise neighborly rapport. These sports fans were willfully chosing their favorite team, despite its contingency, in order to participate in this desire-dynamic of Sports Spectatorship. If they came to every game, indifferent to the outcome, saying "it's just a ball and a stick," refusing to cathect desire, they would be missing the entire point. It's necessary to choose, by fiat if necessary, in order to really care, to feel the wondrous strength of a desire, that makes you forget the distinction between necessity and contingency.
At this, Nate disagreed, saying that the Sublime can be best achieved when a Sports Fan cannot admit, at the end of a game, the contingency of his desires, and of his Team. This is true sports fanaticism.
Nate poses the heaviest question here "Even if you can imagine, theoretically, that your beliefs and desires are contingent on some level, would true belief in the total contingency of your desires lead to a Death of Desire?"
Others rang in on other angles (I'll stop ascribing now, because I can't remember exactly whoisaid what)
There was mention of the purposeful emptiness of sports patter— or if maybe not emptiness, then purposelessness. Two guys sitting in Grumpy's Tavern, running a bleary-eyed analysis on an Eagles game, are not likely to effect any real outcomes, but they are likely to become better pals. This also lead to discussion of the total accessibility of Spectator Sports, the welcoming and rousing call of spectator participation.
Nate had brought up a good point earlier, that I reiterated: the principles of fairness in the Sports World is absolute and sacrosanct. One, because sports, unlike almost any other sphere of culture or human endeavor, is necessarily fair. You can fake your way through the artworld or music industry, climb the political or career ladder through nepotism and connections, navigate academia through deft interdepartmental politicizing, but team sports— team sports will always come down to true performance. I think this Sanctity of Fairness explains a lot— its mythic role among the underprivileged, for instance. In this sphere, Sports, they can escape the flak and friction they would receive in any other sphere or ambition; for once, entering a fairgame in an injust world... almost to the point of being a form of revenge. The Sanctity of Fairness also gives us perspective onto what otherwise might be considered an "hysterical" reaction to Cheating— doping, rigging, and so on. My initial impulse to methamphetamines in the Tour de France is "sure, why not, let them take whatever they will, in order to surpass their predecessors." But this misses the point entirely; it submerges Sports back into a form of economics and economic-thinking, rather than pure performance.
What, in Team Sports, means something other than Sports? What is it sublimating, replacing, symbolizing, indicating, suggesting, and exciting? It obviously has a War Impulse, but does it agitate or replace that War Impulse, making us more or less bellicose? Leslie asked whether Sports Teams had any correlation with the concepts of Nation, or maybe even the historical birth of Nationality in the past 200-300 years. Sports teams in the United States are usually totemic— having a mascot which unifies a team, as totems unified clans before and elsewhere. But why more so in the United States? Does this totem create differences that we cannot get through ethnicity or language, as would be possible in international soccer? Our mascot-totems create a sort of cartoon ethnicity, to create previously unknown clans and unities.
Most people have a myopic sense of desire. They imagine desire like this: first, there is a hole, a privation, or a lack. Then there is a something that will fill this hole, this lack, tab-in-slot. When we put the object in the hole, our desires are satisfied, fulfilled, and over until the next privation. We have an empty stomach, we put food in. We need air to breathe, we fill our lungs. The Penis goes in the Vagina, desire is fulfilled. We have basket, we put the ball in, mission accomplished. However, this is the smallest part of desire. Desires are actually part of large, interweaving, ill-understood desire-dynamics. For example, the desire-dynamic of basketball includes cheerleaders, teams, concepts of Sportmanship and Competition, mascots, jerseys, strategy, stadiums, jeering and heckling, coaches, childhood, and so on. Without which, the ball-in-hole desire does not exist. Imagine the difference between a professional player absently making freethrows, by himself, on his driveway hoop versus this same professional making a freethrow, after the clock has run down, in order to win a championship. It is the same action, ball-in-hole, totally different desires. Or compare these to someone walking past a trashcan with a balled-up hoagie wrapper, and tossing it in. Same action, again, different desire. So desire is, first of all, not merely about the satisfaction itself but everything that creates this ball-in-hole structure. Another example: food.
We imagine, in a simplistic way that the desire to eat is purely nutritive. Food=object of desire. Empty Stomach=Hole. Now imagine someone said "tell you what. I will give you a magic pill that will make you never crave food again. You will never want to eat again..." With this magic pill, you would walk into a supermarket and the food on the shelves would be mere neutral objects. They might as well be made of plastic and plaster. But this isn't what we want. We want to eat. We want to be really hungry and chow down on a huge platter of cheese fries. We want enjoy slurping down milkshakes and smoothies. We want to try different cuisines in different combinations. That is, we want hunger as much as we want food. In sex, we want frustration as much as we want satisfaction... Point being: desire-dynamics are extremely complex, and this obectt-in-hole motion is only one little piece, a piece that gets held up as the whole of desire.
Moving on, I suggested engaging in a Nascar experiment, where we— as total outsiders, ignorant of the game and its written and unwritten laws— get into racing. This way, we can see the process of cathexis in action. Nascar was also perfect, I thought, because it obviously carried a lot of para-sportive meaning. We could see to what degree politics, class, and other meanings were imported and translated into sports. We came up with an idea of finding the "darling of conservatism" within Nascar and publicly supporting him, thereby "disrupting the symbolic order," in order to find out what that symbolic order is. I will leave this Nascar experiment for another post or comment....
(There are also many questions raised by competition-versus-noncompetition, in sports like skateboarding and the new Cologne/Köln sensation, geilo... Along with many other ideas... but others can post and comment at will)
Monday, July 16, 2007
Introduction to the PRG Programme.
As I've mentioned previously, everyone, the Philosophical Research Group has a rather programmatic nature, in that it is not interested in a standard philosophical discourse. We are primarily interested in Original Thought, brought to bear on the objects, events, and phenomena of everyday experience. However, by "Original Thought," I do not mean that external sources are discouraged— quite the opposite— all sources and angles are welcome, including historical background, anecdote, philosophical or intellectual history, suggestion, strategy, experiment, technical expertise, math and science— anything that excites the group, visibly and verbally. I mean by "Original Thought" that our ultimate goal is not merely learning what other's thought.
This blog will help strike up ideas as well as record them— and also, to helpfully and hopefully decentralize them. I envision half of the PRG dialogue takign place on-line, another quarter at the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study, and another quarter in weirder corners throughout the world.
So the ideas is also that the "Main Posts" will elicit a flurry of comments, and the comments are really the dialogue in action. Each Post acting as the start of the thread. This will remain pretty informal, maybe eventually transfering over to the PIFAS site.
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