2.13 metres of snow fell over 3 days in the Buffalo area
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Friday, October 31, 2014
Art takes what it needs---the excess of colours, forms, materials---from the earth to produce its own excesses, sensations with a life of their own, sensation as "nonorganic life." Art, like nature itself, is always a strange coupling, the coming together or two orders, one chaotic, the other ordered, one folding and the other unfolding, one contraction and the other dilation, and it is because art is the inversion and transformation of nature's profusion that it too must participate in, and precipitate, further couplings.
--- Elizabeth Grosz, "Chaos, Territory, Art", p 9-10, as cited in "Life Beyond Biologism" by Ted Toadvine, p 264-5
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Leonard Cohen - Nevermind
Leonard Cohen - Did I Ever Love You
One of the saddest songs I've heard in a while, but then also one of the damned funniest and cheesiest.
Leonard Cohen - You Got Me Singing
Another beautiful and sad song.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Valerie June - Wanna Be On Your Mind
--- Elizabeth Grosz, "Chaos, Territory, Art", p 9-10, as cited in "Life Beyond Biologism" by Ted Toadvine, p 264-5
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Leonard Cohen - Nevermind
Leonard Cohen - Did I Ever Love You
One of the saddest songs I've heard in a while, but then also one of the damned funniest and cheesiest.
Leonard Cohen - You Got Me Singing
Another beautiful and sad song.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Valerie June - Wanna Be On Your Mind
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Friday, September 26, 2014
Entangled in the needs and concerns of the "Present" (Gegenwart), we mechanically drift through our days, never looking too far forward into the future or too far backward into the past. Consequently, we lose sight of a more primordial sense of our own temporal constitution. We forget that we are finite beings who have been arbitrarily "thrown" (geworfen) into an unfolding historical situation, as we ceaselessly "project" (entwerfen) forward into social possibilities that guide and define our identities, possibilities that culminate in death.
[...] To be inauthentic is to dwell in meaning, to be caught up in a public understanding of a familiar, meaningful world. It is "in untruth," however, precisely because it is a way of being that creates an illusion of security and permanence about our existence and is forgetful of the fundamental contingency and unsettledness that underlies it. This uniquely human kind of forgetfulness also results in a uniquely human kind of suffering, "anxiety" (Angst).
-- Kevin Aho, "Logos and the Poverty of Animals: Rethinking Heidegger's Humanism," explicating Heidegger's (I claim: anthropological) position (it also seems to me that our being thrown here is too much understood as a fact, instead of an ongoing process)
[...] To be inauthentic is to dwell in meaning, to be caught up in a public understanding of a familiar, meaningful world. It is "in untruth," however, precisely because it is a way of being that creates an illusion of security and permanence about our existence and is forgetful of the fundamental contingency and unsettledness that underlies it. This uniquely human kind of forgetfulness also results in a uniquely human kind of suffering, "anxiety" (Angst).
-- Kevin Aho, "Logos and the Poverty of Animals: Rethinking Heidegger's Humanism," explicating Heidegger's (I claim: anthropological) position (it also seems to me that our being thrown here is too much understood as a fact, instead of an ongoing process)
"Pretending to be anything or anyone isn't allowed"
-- from What names are allowed on Facebook?
Also, includes: "The name you use should be your real name as it would be listed on your credit card, driver's license or student ID"
In response, let us quote some Derrida, and some Bob Dylan:
"It is therefore a certain closing off---the saturating or suturing---of identity to self, and a structure still too narrowly fit to self-identification, that today gives the concept of subject its dogmatic effect." -- Derrida, "'Eating Well,' or the Calculation of the Subject," p. 273.
"I'm only Bob Dylan when I have to be Bob Dylan, most of the time I can just be myself." -- Dylan, Press Conference, 1986, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney
-- from What names are allowed on Facebook?
Also, includes: "The name you use should be your real name as it would be listed on your credit card, driver's license or student ID"
In response, let us quote some Derrida, and some Bob Dylan:
"It is therefore a certain closing off---the saturating or suturing---of identity to self, and a structure still too narrowly fit to self-identification, that today gives the concept of subject its dogmatic effect." -- Derrida, "'Eating Well,' or the Calculation of the Subject," p. 273.
"I'm only Bob Dylan when I have to be Bob Dylan, most of the time I can just be myself." -- Dylan, Press Conference, 1986, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Friday, September 19, 2014
How many senses do we have? - the answer is not five...
Thermoception, proprioception, equilibrioception, nociception, interoception, chronoception...
Thermoception, proprioception, equilibrioception, nociception, interoception, chronoception...
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
"A monument honouring Manitoba's missing and murdered women and girls is unveiled and blessed in Winnipeg on Tuesday."
--- from The Star
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Excerpt (p 9) from The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (a seminar-lecture course from 1929/30) by Martin Heidegger:
Metaphysics is a questioning in which we inquire into beings as a whole, and inquire in such a way that in so doing we ourselves, the questioners, are thereby also included in the question, placed into question.
Accordingly, fundamental concepts are not universals, not some formulae for the universal properties of a field of objects (such as animals or language). Rather they are concepts of a properly peculiar kind. In each case they comprehend the whole within themselves, they are comprehensive concepts [Inbegriffe]. Yet they are also comprehensive in a second sense which is equally essential and which ties in with the first: they also in each case always comprehend within themselves the comprehending human being and his or her Dasein [i.e., there-being]---not as an addition, but in such a way that these concepts are not comprehensive without there being a comprehending in the second sense, and vice-versa. No concept of the whole without the comprehending of philosophizing existence. Metaphysical thinking is comprehensive thinking in this double sense. It deals with the whole and it grips existence through and through.
Metaphysics is a questioning in which we inquire into beings as a whole, and inquire in such a way that in so doing we ourselves, the questioners, are thereby also included in the question, placed into question.
Accordingly, fundamental concepts are not universals, not some formulae for the universal properties of a field of objects (such as animals or language). Rather they are concepts of a properly peculiar kind. In each case they comprehend the whole within themselves, they are comprehensive concepts [Inbegriffe]. Yet they are also comprehensive in a second sense which is equally essential and which ties in with the first: they also in each case always comprehend within themselves the comprehending human being and his or her Dasein [i.e., there-being]---not as an addition, but in such a way that these concepts are not comprehensive without there being a comprehending in the second sense, and vice-versa. No concept of the whole without the comprehending of philosophizing existence. Metaphysical thinking is comprehensive thinking in this double sense. It deals with the whole and it grips existence through and through.
Monday, August 4, 2014
From The Animal Side (2007; translated 2011) by Jean-Christophe Bailly, p. 14-15:
"And yet, sometimes a silent animal looks up at us and silently looks through us."
[-- Rilke, from the eighth of the Duino Elegies]
[...]
The world of gazes is the world is signifiance ["the term signifiance refers to the semiotic modalities and processes of making and conveying meanings" (p. 80)], that is, of a possible, open, still indeterminate meaning. For the percussive impact of difference that is produced by discourse, the gaze substitutes a sort of dispersal: the unformulated is its element, its watery origin. The gaze gazes, and the unformulated is, in it, the pathway of thought, or at least of a thinking that is not uttered, not articulated, but that takes place and sees itself, holds itself in this purely strange and strangely limitless place which is the surface of the eye.
Thus it is even among humans, who compensate, however, through discourse for this lack of determinacy and of articulation. But among animals, the absence of language means there is no compensation for the lack, and this is why their gaze is so disarming when it settles on us, which happens, as Rilke's line says, sweetly and soberly. In the face of that which is and can only be for us neither question nor response, we experience the feeling of being in the presence of an unknown force, at once supplicating and calm, that in effect traverses us. This force may not need to be named, but where it is exercised it is as though we were in the presence of a different form of thought, a thought that could only have ahead of it, and overwhelmingly, the pensive path.
This pensivity on the part of animals, in which some have been willing to see only stupor, is in any case made manifest in a thousand different ways, according to species, individuals, and circumstances. It seems to me that certain people have seen this, have approached it, and that others, who may have glimpsed it, have turned away at once. There are important and serious divisions here.
"And yet, sometimes a silent animal looks up at us and silently looks through us."
[-- Rilke, from the eighth of the Duino Elegies]
[...]
The world of gazes is the world is signifiance ["the term signifiance refers to the semiotic modalities and processes of making and conveying meanings" (p. 80)], that is, of a possible, open, still indeterminate meaning. For the percussive impact of difference that is produced by discourse, the gaze substitutes a sort of dispersal: the unformulated is its element, its watery origin. The gaze gazes, and the unformulated is, in it, the pathway of thought, or at least of a thinking that is not uttered, not articulated, but that takes place and sees itself, holds itself in this purely strange and strangely limitless place which is the surface of the eye.
Thus it is even among humans, who compensate, however, through discourse for this lack of determinacy and of articulation. But among animals, the absence of language means there is no compensation for the lack, and this is why their gaze is so disarming when it settles on us, which happens, as Rilke's line says, sweetly and soberly. In the face of that which is and can only be for us neither question nor response, we experience the feeling of being in the presence of an unknown force, at once supplicating and calm, that in effect traverses us. This force may not need to be named, but where it is exercised it is as though we were in the presence of a different form of thought, a thought that could only have ahead of it, and overwhelmingly, the pensive path.
This pensivity on the part of animals, in which some have been willing to see only stupor, is in any case made manifest in a thousand different ways, according to species, individuals, and circumstances. It seems to me that certain people have seen this, have approached it, and that others, who may have glimpsed it, have turned away at once. There are important and serious divisions here.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
From The Animal Side (2007; translated 2011) by Jean-Christophe Bailly, p. 4:
Speaking of animals. I have become aware, stratagems and efforts notwithstanding, that declarations of intense feeling on the subject of animals quite often not only fall flat but give rise to a sort of embarrassment, rather as though one had inadvertently crossed a line and gotten mixed up in something untoward, or even obscene.
Speaking of animals. I have become aware, stratagems and efforts notwithstanding, that declarations of intense feeling on the subject of animals quite often not only fall flat but give rise to a sort of embarrassment, rather as though one had inadvertently crossed a line and gotten mixed up in something untoward, or even obscene.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Click to see full image.
This strikes me as a funny picture.
From Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Another excerpt (p 21) on philosophy and philosophizing from The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (a seminar-lecture course from 1929/30) by Martin Heidegger:
Insight into the multiple ambiguity of philosophizing acts as a deterrent [abschreckend] and ultimately betrays the entire fruitlessness of such activity. It would be a misunderstanding if we wished in the slightest to weaken this impression of the hopelessness of philosophizing, or to mediate it belatedly by indicating that in the end things are not so bad after all, that philosophy has achieved many things in the history of mankind, and so on. This is merely idle talk that talks in a direction leading away from philosophy. We must rather uphold and hold out in this terror [Schrecken]. For in it there becomes manifest something essential about all philosophical comprehension, namely that in the philosophical concept [Begriff], man, and indeed man as a whole, is in the grip of an attack [Angriff]---driven out of everydayness and driven back into the ground of things. Yet the attacker is not man, the dubious subject of the everyday and of the bliss of knowledge. Rather, in philosophizing the Da-sein [there-being] in man launches the attack upon man. Thus man in the ground of his essence is someone in the grip of an attack, attacked by the fact 'that he is what he is', and already caught up in all comprehending questioning. Yet being comprehensively included in this way is not some blissful awe, but the struggle against the insurmountable ambiguity of all questioning and being.
Insight into the multiple ambiguity of philosophizing acts as a deterrent [abschreckend] and ultimately betrays the entire fruitlessness of such activity. It would be a misunderstanding if we wished in the slightest to weaken this impression of the hopelessness of philosophizing, or to mediate it belatedly by indicating that in the end things are not so bad after all, that philosophy has achieved many things in the history of mankind, and so on. This is merely idle talk that talks in a direction leading away from philosophy. We must rather uphold and hold out in this terror [Schrecken]. For in it there becomes manifest something essential about all philosophical comprehension, namely that in the philosophical concept [Begriff], man, and indeed man as a whole, is in the grip of an attack [Angriff]---driven out of everydayness and driven back into the ground of things. Yet the attacker is not man, the dubious subject of the everyday and of the bliss of knowledge. Rather, in philosophizing the Da-sein [there-being] in man launches the attack upon man. Thus man in the ground of his essence is someone in the grip of an attack, attacked by the fact 'that he is what he is', and already caught up in all comprehending questioning. Yet being comprehensively included in this way is not some blissful awe, but the struggle against the insurmountable ambiguity of all questioning and being.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Excerpt (p 4-5) on philosophy and philosophizing from The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (a seminar-lecture course from 1929/30) by Martin Heidegger:
The negative result is this: philosophy does not permit itself to be grasped or determined by way of detours or as something other than itself [i.e., as science, worldview, art, religion, or history]. It demands that we do not look away from it, but apprehend it from out of itself. Philosophy itself---what do we know of it, what and how is it? It itself is only whenever we are philosophizing. Philosophy is philosophizing. That does not seem very informative. Yet however much we seem merely to be repeating the same thing, this says something essential. It points the direction in which we have to search, indeed the direction in which metaphysics withdraws from us. Metaphysics as philosophizing, as our own human activity---how and to where can metaphysics as philosophizing, as our own human activity, withdraw from us, if we ourselves are, after all, human beings? Yet do we in fact know what we ourselves are? What is man? The crown of creation or some wayward path, some great misunderstanding and an abyss? If we know so little about man, how can our essence not be alien to us? How can philosophizing as a human activity fail to conceal itself from us in the obscurity of this essence? Philosophy---as we are presumably superficially aware---is not some arbitrary enterprise with which we pass our time as the fancy takes us, not some mere gathering of knowledge that we can easily obtain for ourselves at any time from books, but (we know this only obscurely) something to do with the whole, something extreme, where an ultimate pronouncement and interlocution occurs on the part of human beings. For why else would we have come along here? Or have we arrived here only because others also come along, or because we happen to have a free period just between five and six when it is not worth going home? Why are we here? Do we know what we are letting ourselves in for?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dutch Book From 1692 Documents Every Color Under the Sun: A Pre-Pantone Guide to Colors
The negative result is this: philosophy does not permit itself to be grasped or determined by way of detours or as something other than itself [i.e., as science, worldview, art, religion, or history]. It demands that we do not look away from it, but apprehend it from out of itself. Philosophy itself---what do we know of it, what and how is it? It itself is only whenever we are philosophizing. Philosophy is philosophizing. That does not seem very informative. Yet however much we seem merely to be repeating the same thing, this says something essential. It points the direction in which we have to search, indeed the direction in which metaphysics withdraws from us. Metaphysics as philosophizing, as our own human activity---how and to where can metaphysics as philosophizing, as our own human activity, withdraw from us, if we ourselves are, after all, human beings? Yet do we in fact know what we ourselves are? What is man? The crown of creation or some wayward path, some great misunderstanding and an abyss? If we know so little about man, how can our essence not be alien to us? How can philosophizing as a human activity fail to conceal itself from us in the obscurity of this essence? Philosophy---as we are presumably superficially aware---is not some arbitrary enterprise with which we pass our time as the fancy takes us, not some mere gathering of knowledge that we can easily obtain for ourselves at any time from books, but (we know this only obscurely) something to do with the whole, something extreme, where an ultimate pronouncement and interlocution occurs on the part of human beings. For why else would we have come along here? Or have we arrived here only because others also come along, or because we happen to have a free period just between five and six when it is not worth going home? Why are we here? Do we know what we are letting ourselves in for?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dutch Book From 1692 Documents Every Color Under the Sun: A Pre-Pantone Guide to Colors
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Van Morrison - It's All In The Game/You Know What They're Writing About ...
Van Morrison - It's All In The Game/You Know What They're Writing About
Thursday, March 20, 2014
We find the various stages of the logical Idea in the history of philosophy in the shape of a succession of emerging philosophical systems, each of which has a particular definition of the Absolute as its foundation. [...] But the relationship of the earlier to the later philosophical systems is in general the same as the relationship of the earlier to the later stages of the logical Idea; that is to say, the earlier systems are contained sublated within the later ones. This is the true significance of the fact (which is so often misunderstood) that in the history of philosophy one philosophical system refutes another, or, more precisely, that an earlier philosophy is refuted by a later one.
When people talk about a philosophy's being refuted, they usually take this first in a merely abstract, negative sense---in other words, as meaning that the refuted philosophy is simply no longer valid at all, that it is set aside and done with. If this were the case, then the study of the history of philosophy would have to be considered an utterly mournful affair indeed, since it only shows how all the philosophical systems that have emerged in the course of time have met their refutations. But, although it must certainly be conceded that all philosophies have been refuted, it must also equally be affirmed that no philosophy has ever been refuted, nor can it be. This is the case in two ways. First, every philosophy worthy of the name always has the Idea as its content, and second, every philosophical system should be regarded as the presentation of a particular moment, or a particular stage, in the process of development of the Idea. So, the "refuting" of a philosophy means only that its restricting boundary has been overstepped and its determinate principle has been reduced to an ideal moment.
-- Hegel, from The Encyclopaedia Logic, sect. 86, add. 2, p 138
When people talk about a philosophy's being refuted, they usually take this first in a merely abstract, negative sense---in other words, as meaning that the refuted philosophy is simply no longer valid at all, that it is set aside and done with. If this were the case, then the study of the history of philosophy would have to be considered an utterly mournful affair indeed, since it only shows how all the philosophical systems that have emerged in the course of time have met their refutations. But, although it must certainly be conceded that all philosophies have been refuted, it must also equally be affirmed that no philosophy has ever been refuted, nor can it be. This is the case in two ways. First, every philosophy worthy of the name always has the Idea as its content, and second, every philosophical system should be regarded as the presentation of a particular moment, or a particular stage, in the process of development of the Idea. So, the "refuting" of a philosophy means only that its restricting boundary has been overstepped and its determinate principle has been reduced to an ideal moment.
-- Hegel, from The Encyclopaedia Logic, sect. 86, add. 2, p 138
Sunday, March 9, 2014
In both cases [i.e., "the minimal form [...] closure takes for life at the single-cell level, and [...] the minimal form it takes for the nervous system"] we see the co-emergence of inside and outside, of selfhood and a correlative world or environment of otherness, through the generic mechanism of network closure (autonomy) and its physical embodiment [...].
[...] The animate form of our living body is thus the place of intersection for numerous emergent patterns of selfhood and coupling. Whether cellular, somatic, sensorimotor, or neurocognitive, these patterns derive not from any homuncular self or agent inside the system organizing it or directing it, but from distributed networks with operational closure. In Varela's image, our organism is a meshwork of "selfless selves," and we are and live this meshwork [...].
-- Evan Thompson, from Mind in Life, p. 49, emphasis mine
[...] The animate form of our living body is thus the place of intersection for numerous emergent patterns of selfhood and coupling. Whether cellular, somatic, sensorimotor, or neurocognitive, these patterns derive not from any homuncular self or agent inside the system organizing it or directing it, but from distributed networks with operational closure. In Varela's image, our organism is a meshwork of "selfless selves," and we are and live this meshwork [...].
-- Evan Thompson, from Mind in Life, p. 49, emphasis mine
Saturday, March 1, 2014
6.4321 The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution.
6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni [from the viewpoint of eternity] is to view it as a whole---a limited whole.
Feeling the world as a limited whole---it is this that is mystical.
6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.
6.51 Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked.
For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.
6.52 We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.
-- Wittgenstein, from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni [from the viewpoint of eternity] is to view it as a whole---a limited whole.
Feeling the world as a limited whole---it is this that is mystical.
6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.
6.51 Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked.
For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.
6.52 We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.
-- Wittgenstein, from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Sunday, February 16, 2014
A sage was praised to Zarathustra for knowing how to speak well of sleep and of virtue: he was said to be honored and rewarded highly for this, and all the youths were said to be sitting at his feet. To him Zarathustra went, and he sat at his feet with all the youths. And thus spoke the sage:
"Honor sleep and be bashful before it—--that first of all. And avoid all who sleep badly and stay awake at night. Even the thief is bashful before sleep: he always steals silently through the night. Shameless, however, is the watchman of the night; shamelessly he carries his horn.
"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. Ten times a day you must overcome yourself: that makes you good and tired and is opium for the soul. Ten times you must reconcile yourself again with yourself; for, overcoming is bitterness, and the unreconciled sleep badly. Ten truths a day you must find; else you will still be seeking truth by night, and your soul will remain hungry. Ten times a day you must laugh and be cheerful; else you will be disturbed at night by your stomach, this father of gloom.
"Few know it, but one must have all the virtues to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that would go ill with good sleep.
"And even if one has all the virtues, there is one further thing one must know: to send even the virtues to sleep at the right time. Lest they quarrel with each other, the fair little women, about you, child of misfortune. Peace with God and the neighbor: that is what good sleep demands. And peace even with the neighbor's devil else he will haunt you at night.
"Honor the magistrates and obey them—--even the crooked magistrates. Good sleep demands it. Is it my fault that power likes to walk on crooked legs?
"I shall call him the best shepherd who leads his sheep to the greenest pasture: that goes well with good sleep.
"I do not want many honors, or great jewels: that inflames the spleen. But one sleeps badly without a good name and a little jewel.
"A little company is more welcome to me than evil company: but they must go and come at the right time. That goes well with good sleep.
"Much, too, do I like the poor in spirit: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always tells them that they are right.
"Thus passes the day of the virtuous. And when night comes I guard well against calling sleep. For sleep, who is the master of the virtues, does not want to be called. Instead, I think about what I have done and thought during the day. Chewing the cud, I ask myself, patient as a cow, Well, what were your ten overcomings? and what were your ten reconciliations and the ten truths and the ten laughters with which your heart edified itself? Weighing such matters and rocked by forty thoughts, I am suddenly overcome by sleep, the uncalled, the master of the virtues. Sleep knocks at my eyes: they become heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: it stays open. Verily, on soft soles he comes to me, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts: stupid I stand, like this chair here. But not for long do I stand like this: soon I lie."
When Zarathustra heard the sage speak thus he laughed in his heart, for an insight had come to him. And thus he spoke to his heart:
"This sage with his forty thoughts is a fool; but I believe that he knows well how to sleep. Happy is he that even lives near this sage! Such sleep is contagious—--contagious even through a thick wall. There is magic even in his chair; and it is not in vain that the youths sit before this preacher of virtue. His wisdom is: to wake in order to sleep well. And verily, if life had no sense and I had to choose nonsense, then I too should consider this the most sensible nonsense.
"Now I understand clearly what was once sought above all when teachers of virtue were sought. Good sleep was sought, and opiate virtues for it. For all these much praised sages who were teachers of virtue, wisdom was the sleep without dreams: they knew no better meaning of life.
"Today too there may still be a few like this preacher of virtue, and not all so honest; but their time is up. And not for long will they stand like this: soon they will lie.
"Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon drop off."
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
-- Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"Honor sleep and be bashful before it—--that first of all. And avoid all who sleep badly and stay awake at night. Even the thief is bashful before sleep: he always steals silently through the night. Shameless, however, is the watchman of the night; shamelessly he carries his horn.
"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. Ten times a day you must overcome yourself: that makes you good and tired and is opium for the soul. Ten times you must reconcile yourself again with yourself; for, overcoming is bitterness, and the unreconciled sleep badly. Ten truths a day you must find; else you will still be seeking truth by night, and your soul will remain hungry. Ten times a day you must laugh and be cheerful; else you will be disturbed at night by your stomach, this father of gloom.
"Few know it, but one must have all the virtues to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that would go ill with good sleep.
"And even if one has all the virtues, there is one further thing one must know: to send even the virtues to sleep at the right time. Lest they quarrel with each other, the fair little women, about you, child of misfortune. Peace with God and the neighbor: that is what good sleep demands. And peace even with the neighbor's devil else he will haunt you at night.
"Honor the magistrates and obey them—--even the crooked magistrates. Good sleep demands it. Is it my fault that power likes to walk on crooked legs?
"I shall call him the best shepherd who leads his sheep to the greenest pasture: that goes well with good sleep.
"I do not want many honors, or great jewels: that inflames the spleen. But one sleeps badly without a good name and a little jewel.
"A little company is more welcome to me than evil company: but they must go and come at the right time. That goes well with good sleep.
"Much, too, do I like the poor in spirit: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always tells them that they are right.
"Thus passes the day of the virtuous. And when night comes I guard well against calling sleep. For sleep, who is the master of the virtues, does not want to be called. Instead, I think about what I have done and thought during the day. Chewing the cud, I ask myself, patient as a cow, Well, what were your ten overcomings? and what were your ten reconciliations and the ten truths and the ten laughters with which your heart edified itself? Weighing such matters and rocked by forty thoughts, I am suddenly overcome by sleep, the uncalled, the master of the virtues. Sleep knocks at my eyes: they become heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: it stays open. Verily, on soft soles he comes to me, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts: stupid I stand, like this chair here. But not for long do I stand like this: soon I lie."
When Zarathustra heard the sage speak thus he laughed in his heart, for an insight had come to him. And thus he spoke to his heart:
"This sage with his forty thoughts is a fool; but I believe that he knows well how to sleep. Happy is he that even lives near this sage! Such sleep is contagious—--contagious even through a thick wall. There is magic even in his chair; and it is not in vain that the youths sit before this preacher of virtue. His wisdom is: to wake in order to sleep well. And verily, if life had no sense and I had to choose nonsense, then I too should consider this the most sensible nonsense.
"Now I understand clearly what was once sought above all when teachers of virtue were sought. Good sleep was sought, and opiate virtues for it. For all these much praised sages who were teachers of virtue, wisdom was the sleep without dreams: they knew no better meaning of life.
"Today too there may still be a few like this preacher of virtue, and not all so honest; but their time is up. And not for long will they stand like this: soon they will lie.
"Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon drop off."
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
-- Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Friday, February 14, 2014
The age of the "systems" has past. The age that would elaborate the essential form of beings from out of the truth of beyng has not yet come. In the interim, in the transition to the other beginning, philosophy needs to have accomplished something essential: the projection, i.e., the grounding and opening up, of the temporal-spatial playing field of the truth of beyng. How is this unique accomplishment to be brought about? There is no precedent for it and no foothold. Mere variations on previous notions, even if these variations arise with the help of the greatest possible intermixing of historiologically familiar modes of thought, will get us nowhere.
-- Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), p 6-7
-- Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), p 6-7
Friday, February 7, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Of course, it is certainly not impossible to find meanings analogous to [the Japanese phenomena of] iki in Occidental culture and discover some common points through formal abstractions. This is not, however, a suitable methodological attitude for understanding a cultural state of being as the mode of being of a people. Even if we arbitrarily vary the phenomena which carry the ethnic and historical determinants of a state of being, and perform what is called 'ideation' within the domain of the possible, such a method can only obtain an abstract generic concept which comprehends the phenomena.
The secret of success in the understanding of a cultural state of being is to grasp it in living form just as it is, without damaging its concrete facticity. Bergson says that when we recall the past in scenting the fragrance of the rose, we do not associate ideas of the past with the fragrance of the rose. We scent the recollection of the past. The fixed, invariable fragrance of the rose, something shared and conceptually generic for all, does not exist as an actuality. There are only particular fragrances with different contents. Thus to explain experience by means of the alliance of the fragrance of the rose (which is something general) and recollection (which is something specific) is, he says, like trying to produce the specific sounds of a given language by lining up the letters of an alphabet common to many languages. It is the same as formalizing the abstraction of iki by looking for common points with analogous phenomena in Occidental culture. So when we make a methodological enquiry to grasp the phenomena of iki we are questioning nothing but the problem of universalia.
-- Kuki Shuzo, Reflections on Japanese Taste: The Structure of Iki, Introduction, p 33-4
The secret of success in the understanding of a cultural state of being is to grasp it in living form just as it is, without damaging its concrete facticity. Bergson says that when we recall the past in scenting the fragrance of the rose, we do not associate ideas of the past with the fragrance of the rose. We scent the recollection of the past. The fixed, invariable fragrance of the rose, something shared and conceptually generic for all, does not exist as an actuality. There are only particular fragrances with different contents. Thus to explain experience by means of the alliance of the fragrance of the rose (which is something general) and recollection (which is something specific) is, he says, like trying to produce the specific sounds of a given language by lining up the letters of an alphabet common to many languages. It is the same as formalizing the abstraction of iki by looking for common points with analogous phenomena in Occidental culture. So when we make a methodological enquiry to grasp the phenomena of iki we are questioning nothing but the problem of universalia.
-- Kuki Shuzo, Reflections on Japanese Taste: The Structure of Iki, Introduction, p 33-4
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Simmel observes that the entanglement or interlacing of death in life, life in death [...] should cause us to hesitate to attribute life to the godhead. No matter how enchanting a notion the living God may be, it might also be a vulgar stupidity or bedazzlement [...] that lies concealed in all metaphysics as the thought of "spirit" or "life."
-- David Farrell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy, p 95
-- David Farrell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy, p 95
Sunday, February 2, 2014
5. What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow. Don’t imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as an average piano teacher spends on the art of music.
-- Ezra Pound, A Few Don'ts, from here
-- Ezra Pound, A Few Don'ts, from here
Friday, January 31, 2014
This unity [the child], however, is only a point, [an undifferentiated unity,] a seed; the lovers cannot so contribute to it as to give it a manifold in itself at the start. Their union is free from all inner division; in it there is no working on an opposite. Everything which gives the newly begotten child a manifold life and a specific existence, it must draw into itself, set over against itself, and unify with itself. The seed breaks free from its original unity, turns ever more and more to opposition, and begins to develop. Each stage of its development is a separation, and its aim in each is to regain for itself the full riches of life [enjoyed by the parents]. Thus the process is: unity, separated opposites, reunion. After their union the lovers separate again, but in the child their union has become unseparated.
-- Hegel, Love fragment, p 307-308/381, emphasis mine
-- Hegel, Love fragment, p 307-308/381, emphasis mine
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
[The state of nature was taken, by numerous philosophers, to be humanity's 'natural state' before we were brought out of it into the state of laws:]
Now in the separation [of unity from multiplicity] empiricism lacks in the first place all criteria for drawing the boundary between the accidental and the necessary; i.e., for determining what in the chaos of the state of nature or in the abstraction of man must remain and what must be discarded. In this matter the guiding determinant can only be, that as much must remain as is required for the exposition of what is found in the real world: the governing principle for this a priori is the a posteriori. If something in the idea of the state of law is to be justified, all that is required, for the purpose of demonstrating its own necessity and its connection with what is original and necessary, is to transfer into the chaos an appropriate quality or capacity and, in the manner of all the sciences based on the empirical, to make, for purposes of so-called explanation of reality, hypotheses in which this reality is posited in the same determinate character, though only in a formal-ideal shape as force, matter, capacity, etc. Any one of these is very readily made intelligible and explicable in terms of the other.
[...]
But the unity itself can only proceed, as in empirical physics, according to the principle of an absolute quantitative multiplicity; in place of the many atomic qualities it can only exhibit a multiplicity of parts or relations---once again nothing but multiplex complexities of the presupposedly original simple and separated multiple units, superficial contacts between these qualities which in themselves are indestructible in their particularity and capable of only light and partial interconnections and intermixtures.
-- Hegel, Natural Law, p 425-6, emphases mine
Now in the separation [of unity from multiplicity] empiricism lacks in the first place all criteria for drawing the boundary between the accidental and the necessary; i.e., for determining what in the chaos of the state of nature or in the abstraction of man must remain and what must be discarded. In this matter the guiding determinant can only be, that as much must remain as is required for the exposition of what is found in the real world: the governing principle for this a priori is the a posteriori. If something in the idea of the state of law is to be justified, all that is required, for the purpose of demonstrating its own necessity and its connection with what is original and necessary, is to transfer into the chaos an appropriate quality or capacity and, in the manner of all the sciences based on the empirical, to make, for purposes of so-called explanation of reality, hypotheses in which this reality is posited in the same determinate character, though only in a formal-ideal shape as force, matter, capacity, etc. Any one of these is very readily made intelligible and explicable in terms of the other.
[...]
But the unity itself can only proceed, as in empirical physics, according to the principle of an absolute quantitative multiplicity; in place of the many atomic qualities it can only exhibit a multiplicity of parts or relations---once again nothing but multiplex complexities of the presupposedly original simple and separated multiple units, superficial contacts between these qualities which in themselves are indestructible in their particularity and capable of only light and partial interconnections and intermixtures.
-- Hegel, Natural Law, p 425-6, emphases mine
Monday, January 27, 2014
Self-awareness arises to facilitate this sharing. Hence “only as a social animal did the human learn to become conscious of himself—he does it still, he does it more and more” (again, GS354). “Consciousness is genuinely only a connection-net [Verbindungsnetz] between human and human, — only as such did it have to evolve [entwickeln].” So consciousness belongs to our “communal- [Gemeinschafts-] and herd-nature,” and it has “finely evolved” only in relation to “social- and herd-utilities.” We become self-aware, that is, not because it's in our own interest, but because it enables us to be fuller members of the herd: we look inward, the better to align ourselves with others. And this inhibits us, Nietzsche thinks, from understanding ourselves individually, since we become conscious only of our “average” (Durchschnittliches). Our thoughts are controlled by this “genius of the species” that controls consciousness, and are “as it were majoritized [majorisirt] and translated back into the herd-perspective.”
-- John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism, chapter 2, p 91
-- John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism, chapter 2, p 91
Sunday, January 26, 2014
This supplies a further reason why our values are not immediately or inevitably available to us. It's not just that they lie mainly in our drives, rather than in our conscious purposes. It's also that these values are “in” our drives not just by virtue of how those drives are now, but by their past. My values are settled by selection that worked largely before me—in the history of my species and society. And even there, this selection worked quite above or behind my ancestors' conscious sense of what they valued and why. The mechanisms selecting values are opaque to us, despite our ordinary confidence that we understand and choose our own values. We don't really know what we want. To find out, we need genealogy.
-- John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism, chapter 2, p 77
-- John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism, chapter 2, p 77
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Prison Culture: 15 Things That We Re-Learned About the Prison Industrial Complex in 2013
"2. We were still sterilizing women in U.S. prisons as late as 2010."
"Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found."
"2. We were still sterilizing women in U.S. prisons as late as 2010."
"Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found."
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
In that case, happiness [eudaimonia] does not lie in amusement; for it is indeed a strange thought that the end should be amusement, and that the busy-ness and suffering throughout one's life should be for the sake of amusing oneself. For we value almost everything, except happiness, for the sake of something else; for happiness is an end. To apply oneself to serious things, and to labour, for the sake of amusement appears silly and excessively childish. 'Play to be serious', as Anacharsis has it, seems to be the correct way; for amusement is like relaxation, and it is because people are incapable of labouring continuously that they need to relax. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it occurs for the sake of activity.
-- Aristotle, 1176b25-1177a1
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
703
One has confused displeasure with one kind of displeasure, with exhaustion; the latter does indeed represent a profound diminution and reduction of the will to power, a measurable loss of force. That is to say: there exists (a) displeasure as a means of stimulating the increase of power, and (b) displeasure following an overexpenditure of power; in the first case a stimulus, in the second the result of an excessive stimulation--- Inability to resist is characteristic of the latter kind of displeasure: a challenge to that which resists belongs to the former--- The only pleasure still felt in the condition of exhaustion is falling asleep; victory is the pleasure in the other case---
The great confusion on the part of psychologists consisted in not distinguishing between these two kinds of pleasure---that of falling asleep and that of victory. The exhausted want rest, relaxation, peace, calm---the happiness of the nihilistic religions and philosophies; the rich and living want victory, opponents overcome, the overflowing of the feeling of power across wider domains than hitherto. All healthy functions of the organism have this need---and the whole organism is such a complex of systems struggling for an increase of the feeling of power-----
-- Nietzsche, The Will To Power, The Will To Power In Nature
-- Aristotle, 1176b25-1177a1
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
703
One has confused displeasure with one kind of displeasure, with exhaustion; the latter does indeed represent a profound diminution and reduction of the will to power, a measurable loss of force. That is to say: there exists (a) displeasure as a means of stimulating the increase of power, and (b) displeasure following an overexpenditure of power; in the first case a stimulus, in the second the result of an excessive stimulation--- Inability to resist is characteristic of the latter kind of displeasure: a challenge to that which resists belongs to the former--- The only pleasure still felt in the condition of exhaustion is falling asleep; victory is the pleasure in the other case---
The great confusion on the part of psychologists consisted in not distinguishing between these two kinds of pleasure---that of falling asleep and that of victory. The exhausted want rest, relaxation, peace, calm---the happiness of the nihilistic religions and philosophies; the rich and living want victory, opponents overcome, the overflowing of the feeling of power across wider domains than hitherto. All healthy functions of the organism have this need---and the whole organism is such a complex of systems struggling for an increase of the feeling of power-----
-- Nietzsche, The Will To Power, The Will To Power In Nature
Monday, January 20, 2014
From Twin Peaks.
*Spoiler alert.*
Sheriff Truman: He was completely insane.
Agent Cooper: Think so?
Albert: But people saw Bob, people saw him in visions: Laura, Maddy, Sarah Palmer.
Major Briggs: Gentlemen, there's more in heaven and earth than is dreamt up in our philosophy.
Agent Cooper: Amen.
Sheriff Truman: Well I've lived in these old woods most of my life, I've seen some strange things, but this is way off the map---I mean, I'm having a hard time believing.
Agent Cooper: Harry, is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Any more comforting?
Sheriff Truman: No.
*Spoiler alert.*
Sheriff Truman: He was completely insane.
Agent Cooper: Think so?
Albert: But people saw Bob, people saw him in visions: Laura, Maddy, Sarah Palmer.
Major Briggs: Gentlemen, there's more in heaven and earth than is dreamt up in our philosophy.
Agent Cooper: Amen.
Sheriff Truman: Well I've lived in these old woods most of my life, I've seen some strange things, but this is way off the map---I mean, I'm having a hard time believing.
Agent Cooper: Harry, is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Any more comforting?
Sheriff Truman: No.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
634
Critique of the mechanistic theory.--- Let us here dismiss the two popular concepts "necessity" and "law": the former introduces a false constraint into the world, the latter a false freedom. "Things" do not behave regularly, according to a rule: there are no things (---they are fictions invented by us); they behave just as little under the constraint of necessity. There is no obedience here: for that something is as it is, as strong or as weak, is not the consequence of an obedience or a rule or a compulsion---
The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power---this is the question in every event: if, for our day-to-day calculations, we know how to express this in formulas and "laws," so much the better for us! But we have not introduced any "morality" into the world by the fiction that it is obedient---.
There is no law: every power draws its ultimate consequence at every moment. Calculability exists precisely because things are unable to be other than they are.
[...]
624
Against the physical atom.-- To comprehend the world, we have to be able to calculate it; to be able to calculate it, we have to have constant causes; because we find no such constant causes in actuality, we invent them for ourselves---the atoms. This is the origin of atomism.
The calculability of the world, the expressibility of all events in formulas---is this really "comprehension"? How much of a piece of music has been understood when that in it which is calculable and can be reduced to formulas has been reckoned up?--- And "constant causes," things, substances, something "unconditioned"; invented---what has one achieved?
-- Nietzsche, The Will To Power, The Will To Power In Nature
Critique of the mechanistic theory.--- Let us here dismiss the two popular concepts "necessity" and "law": the former introduces a false constraint into the world, the latter a false freedom. "Things" do not behave regularly, according to a rule: there are no things (---they are fictions invented by us); they behave just as little under the constraint of necessity. There is no obedience here: for that something is as it is, as strong or as weak, is not the consequence of an obedience or a rule or a compulsion---
The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power---this is the question in every event: if, for our day-to-day calculations, we know how to express this in formulas and "laws," so much the better for us! But we have not introduced any "morality" into the world by the fiction that it is obedient---.
There is no law: every power draws its ultimate consequence at every moment. Calculability exists precisely because things are unable to be other than they are.
[...]
624
Against the physical atom.-- To comprehend the world, we have to be able to calculate it; to be able to calculate it, we have to have constant causes; because we find no such constant causes in actuality, we invent them for ourselves---the atoms. This is the origin of atomism.
The calculability of the world, the expressibility of all events in formulas---is this really "comprehension"? How much of a piece of music has been understood when that in it which is calculable and can be reduced to formulas has been reckoned up?--- And "constant causes," things, substances, something "unconditioned"; invented---what has one achieved?
-- Nietzsche, The Will To Power, The Will To Power In Nature
Friday, January 17, 2014
On the contrary, since Jesus calls the bread and wine, which he distributes to all, his body and blood given for them, the unification is no longer merely felt but has become visible. It is not merely represented in an image, an allegorical figure, but linked to a reality, eaten and enjoyed in a reality, the bread. Hence the feeling becomes in a way objective; yet this bread and wine, and the act of distribution, are not purely objective; there is more in the distribution than is seen; it is a mystical action. A spectator ignorant of their friendship and with no understanding of the words of Jesus would have seen nothing save the distribution of some bread and wine and the enjoyment of these. Similarly, when friends part and break a ring and each keeps one piece, a spectator sees nothing but the breaking of a useful thing and its division into useless and valueless pieces; the mystical aspect of the pieces he has failed to grasp. Objectively considered, then, the bread is just bread, the wine just wine; yet both are something more. This "more" is not connected with the objects (like an explanation) by a mere "just as": " just as the single pieces which you eat are from one loaf and the wine you drink is from the same cup, so are you mere particulars, though one in love, in the spirit"; "just as you all share in this bread and wine, so you all share in my sacrifice"; or whatever other "just as" you like to find here. Yet the connection of objective and subjective, of the bread and the persons, is here not the connection of allegorized with allegory, with the parable in which the different things, the things compared, are set forth as severed, as separate, and all that is asked is a comparison, the thought of the likeness of dissimilars. On the contrary, in this link between bread and persons, difference disappears, and with it the possibility of comparison. Things heterogeneous are here most intimately connected.
-- Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity, p 249
Something I have thought about: is this the longing for the overcoming of metaphor (what Derrida might call a kind of dream of full presence), or is the metaphor itself a disenchanted relic?
-- Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity, p 249
Something I have thought about: is this the longing for the overcoming of metaphor (what Derrida might call a kind of dream of full presence), or is the metaphor itself a disenchanted relic?
In the hundred different environments of its inhabitants, the oak plays an ever-changing role as object, sometimes with some parts, sometimes with others. The same parts are alternately large and small. Its wood is both hard and soft; it serves for attack and for defense.
If one wanted to summarize all the different characteristics shown by the oak as an object, this would only give rise to chaos. Yet these are only parts of a subject that is solidly put together in itself, which carries and shelters all environments---one which is never known by all the subjects of these environments and never knowable for them.
-- Uexküll, A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, p 132
If one wanted to summarize all the different characteristics shown by the oak as an object, this would only give rise to chaos. Yet these are only parts of a subject that is solidly put together in itself, which carries and shelters all environments---one which is never known by all the subjects of these environments and never knowable for them.
-- Uexküll, A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, p 132
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
I'm going to cheat a little, and use this as a place to 'dump' various articles I find interesting and that I might want to use in my research involving animals.
Maybe you'll find them interesting too.
Male Mice Woo Females With 'Love Songs' Similar to Songbirds
The Science Is In: Elephants Are Even Smarter Than We Realized
The Blood Harvest - on horseshoe crab harvest for biomedical purposes
Small animals perceive the world in slow-motion
Human melody singing by bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrula) gives hints about a cognitive note sequence processing - abstract
Human-introduced long-term traditions in wild redfronted lemurs? - abstract
The Behavioral Ecology of Color Vision: Considering Fruit Conspicuity, Detection Distance and Dietary Importance - abstract
Maybe you'll find them interesting too.
Male Mice Woo Females With 'Love Songs' Similar to Songbirds
The Science Is In: Elephants Are Even Smarter Than We Realized
The Blood Harvest - on horseshoe crab harvest for biomedical purposes
Small animals perceive the world in slow-motion
Human melody singing by bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrula) gives hints about a cognitive note sequence processing - abstract
Human-introduced long-term traditions in wild redfronted lemurs? - abstract
The Behavioral Ecology of Color Vision: Considering Fruit Conspicuity, Detection Distance and Dietary Importance - abstract
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
I offer myself as a nature guide, exploring for values. Many before us have got lost and we must look the world over. The unexamined life is not worth living; life in an unexamined world is not worth living either. We miss too much of value.
-- Holmes Rolston III, Value in Nature and the Nature of Value
-- Holmes Rolston III, Value in Nature and the Nature of Value
Sunday, January 5, 2014
While writing the line "Further, this way of thinking offers...", it occurred to me how I used to take 'way of thinking' as a 'manner of thinking'. But as I work through Heidegger's What Is Called Thinking, I now also hear 'way of thinking' as saying: path of thinking. A way of thinking is not merely a manner of thinking, but it is also a course of thinking.
Somewhat relatedly, but also distant, is the phrase 'of course'. "Of course I think that is best." 'Of course' meaning 'obviously', but also 'of the path', 'of the way', 'of the way things move or flow'.
I say "relatedly, but also distant," because, of course, that which is a way of thinking is not always obvious.
Somewhat relatedly, but also distant, is the phrase 'of course'. "Of course I think that is best." 'Of course' meaning 'obviously', but also 'of the path', 'of the way', 'of the way things move or flow'.
I say "relatedly, but also distant," because, of course, that which is a way of thinking is not always obvious.
Let The Fire Burn trailer
"When gun fire broke out and tear gas was not enough to pull the MOVE members out of the house, the police decided to drop explosives on the house. A fire soon began to blaze, endangering the several children now trapped inside the house. In an infamous decision, the police made the decision to "let the fire burn", resulting in the destruction of over 60 homes and the death of 5 children and 6 adults. The investigation commission that followed found that law enforcement had acted negligently, but no criminal charges were filed."
-- from Wikipedia
May 13, 1985: Philadelphia
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I had never heard of this before today:
http://rabble.ca/toolkit/rabblepedia/fruit-machine
"It was a top secret system of persecution and oppression of queer Canadians, spurred by homophobia . It involved the calculated and systemic demotion and firing of queers in the civil service by the RCMP."
"The fruit machine was not only the systemic targeting of queers in the civil service, but also an actual contraption. It looked like a dentist chair, with cameras and sensor attached along with a black box that displayed images at eye level for the victim."
"Even after Trudeau decriminalized queer sex, the fruit machine kept secret tabs on Canadians in the civil service up until the 1990s."
Saturday, January 4, 2014
If we nonetheless leave science aside now in dealing with the question what it is to form ideas, we do so not in the proud delusion that we have all the answers, but out of discretion inspired by a lack of knowledge.
The word "idea" comes from the Greek εἶδω which means to see, face, meet, be face-to-face.
We stand outside of science. Instead we stand before a tree in bloom, for example---and the tree stands before us. The tree faces us. The tree and we meet one another, as the tree stands there and we stand face to face with it. As we are in this relation of one to the other and before the other, the tree and we are. This face-to-face meeting is not, then, one of these "ideas" buzzing about in our heads. Let us stop here for a moment, as we would to catch our breath before and after a leap. For that is what we are now, men [sic] who have leapt, out of the familiar realm of science and even, as we shall see, out of the realm of philosophy. And where have we leapt? Perhaps into an abyss? No! Rather, onto some firm soil. Some? No! But on that soil upon which we live and die, if we are honest with ourselves. A curious, indeed unearthly thing that we must first leap onto the soil on which we really stand. When anything so curious as this leap becomes necessary, something must have happened that gives food for thought. Judged scientifically, of course, it remains the most inconsequential thing on earth that each of us has at some time stood facing a tree in bloom. After all, what of it? We come and stand facing a tree, before it, and the tree faces us, meets us. Which one is meeting here? The tree, or we? Or both? Or neither? We come and stand---just as we are, and not merely with our head or our consciousness---facing the tree in bloom, and the tree faces, meets us as the tree it is. Or did the tree anticipate us and come before us? Did the tree come first to stand and face us, so that we might come forward face-to-face with it?
-- Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, pages 41-42
The word "idea" comes from the Greek εἶδω which means to see, face, meet, be face-to-face.
We stand outside of science. Instead we stand before a tree in bloom, for example---and the tree stands before us. The tree faces us. The tree and we meet one another, as the tree stands there and we stand face to face with it. As we are in this relation of one to the other and before the other, the tree and we are. This face-to-face meeting is not, then, one of these "ideas" buzzing about in our heads. Let us stop here for a moment, as we would to catch our breath before and after a leap. For that is what we are now, men [sic] who have leapt, out of the familiar realm of science and even, as we shall see, out of the realm of philosophy. And where have we leapt? Perhaps into an abyss? No! Rather, onto some firm soil. Some? No! But on that soil upon which we live and die, if we are honest with ourselves. A curious, indeed unearthly thing that we must first leap onto the soil on which we really stand. When anything so curious as this leap becomes necessary, something must have happened that gives food for thought. Judged scientifically, of course, it remains the most inconsequential thing on earth that each of us has at some time stood facing a tree in bloom. After all, what of it? We come and stand facing a tree, before it, and the tree faces us, meets us. Which one is meeting here? The tree, or we? Or both? Or neither? We come and stand---just as we are, and not merely with our head or our consciousness---facing the tree in bloom, and the tree faces, meets us as the tree it is. Or did the tree anticipate us and come before us? Did the tree come first to stand and face us, so that we might come forward face-to-face with it?
-- Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, pages 41-42
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