Nihilism is not just a tacit phenomenon. By tacit I mean, in the widest sense, people covering up the meaninglessness of their existence, filling it with things that mean nothing to them, BUT, crucially, not addressing the problem. It is 'incomplete' nihilism, and it is everywhere. It is best seen when people passively or half-heartedly attach themselves to worldly doctrines that still claim absolute grounds, such as socialism, the most perfect form of which allows everybody to enjoy the fruits of the earth equally--equality is elevated beyond the worldly, 'sensory' realm, to the 'suprasensory', transcendent realm at which all of humanity can fix their gaze and agree that such an arrangement is best.
But nihilism is actually put on display, i.e. expressed explicitly, in pop culture. Consider the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen. There is of course the lyric "carry on, as if nothing really matters" that breathes nihilism: a world without meaning, an accidental humanity, a lack of responsibility.
Then the "I dont wanna die, sometimes I wish I'd never been born at all" lyric. Typical nihilistic stance. No care for the wonder of the world. No joy extracted from living itself.
Then there's the school of thought that says that Queen's song ironically plays on the nihilistic culture that they found themselves in when they wrote the song. They are laughing at us, mocking the "poor boys whom nobody loves" and for whom "nothing really matters." It is after all not a sentimental song. We don't feel sorry for the poor boy. It is usually celebrated wherever it is played. Everybody knows it. It's become an anthem to a culture, a nihilistic culture.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
As It is now
They ate chicken strips and wine gums from the freezer bags Mitch packed for them a few days before they left earth. These items did not go bad, and the wine gums were nice to chew on. They had been George's favourite candy since the eighth grade, when he traded his sister Jane's Wonder Woman comic book to his next store neighbour Cherise for a Beach Boys record and a pack of Maynards. The sun lit up the eastern hemisphere, and he gazed at the soft brown bumps above the indian ocean and wondered not about how amazing it was that his eyes could traverse such a great distance with so little effort, but whether Cherise had done what she had wanted to do years back when she left Sacramento.
It was the first day of the voyage. They were aboard ACT 875,
They go into space.
Say something about the goodbyes.
This will not be
It was the first day of the voyage. They were aboard ACT 875,
They go into space.
Say something about the goodbyes.
This will not be
Monday, May 9, 2011
Some Thoughts on Kafka
I can feel the thigh I'm looking at. It's like a bridge between the chair I'm sitting on and the ottoman my feet rest upon. That thigh is part of me. It's mine. Yet at the same time it is distant, as if it wasn't properly 'mine.' It is, after all, a hunk of meat. The only reason it isn't taken off me is because a) I'm not sitting in a wrecked plane in the middle of the Andes and b) we've evolved enough as a group of animals, I guess, that most people have my well-being in their heads (well not my particular well-being, but they see me as an indispensable part of the community, an anonymous guarantee of their own survival). And if they leave my thighs alone, I'll leave theirs alone too. That's how things go down here.
But there are exceptions to those who don't want to harvest my meaty thighs. Somewhere out there, I might be on a list with several others who've been designated as healthy and good to eat, and my time might be coming. Maybe my entire life has been charted, since birth, according to the growth of my thighs, or even only the right thigh. He had a good run this year, they said after I finished fifth grade. He almost made the cross country finals, but since he didn't, he picked up kickboxing, which grew his thighs more than would a typical race around the countryside. It also made things easier for us. For we didn't have to send a man with a camera into the forested areas of the countryside, where the race was being run; all we had to do was confiscate the tapes at the kickboxing center and track the growth based on that footage.
I've been pretty oblivious half the time, too, so it would be easy for them to keep track if they wanted. I've always been this way. When, for instance, my parents threw a surprise party for my nineteenth birthday a few years ago, I was completely unaware of the preparations. Do you know how much work it takes to throw a party of that size? I only figured out what was happening when my friend Graeme started playing the bagpipes as I approached the cottage. I knew only then that something special was going on around front. The strange cars parked on the road and in the driveway were perhaps slightly extraordinary, but still did not arouse my suspicion.
I wouldn't say that I'm oblivious in general; on the contrary I'm quite an alert person. I read the newspapers, watch the news on t.v., have a pretty good idea of who's hot in Hollywood, and can carry a decent conversation about all of these things with my friends. Maybe the only time I'm truly oblivious is when things are planned around me that immediately concern me, such as the surprise party. But I need to narrow down my point: the kind of obliviousness I'm talking about refers only to a lack of awareness about people scheming around me--I have never picked up well on hints, especially if my survival isn't threatened. Of course, the aforementioned scheme would threaten my survival--nobody can survive without a thigh.
But imagine being a creature that lives in order to die. A chicken, for instance, is hatched into the world for its eggs and its meat. Neither of these things properly belong to it; they belong to the farmer who has a plan for this living thing that involves nothing but its death. Its life is charted according to its value. It is only kept alive because it is not yet ripe. Once it is ripe, it is sent, with the others it has lived alongside, to be killed as quickly as possible. Then it is forgotten. Even at the dinner table, where thanks are rarely given anymore, it isn't singled out or remembered for the life it led, for the ultimate sacrifice it made for the people sitting around that table. It's contribution is judged as no more praise-worthy than the buttered beans and squash that are piled up next to it. Thank god for this good food. Then the head of the house is commended for his superb cooking skills, his expert marinade and his timing on the barbecue. "This chicken is wonderful, Byron!" says granny, and everybody at the table eventually gets to murmuring in agreement.
Parodies that stage characters who are excessively concerned about the life and well-being of the meat that they are about to eat are funny, but they end up only covering up the issue. A scene from the show Portlandia is the only example that I am aware of. A man and woman sit in a restaurant, waiting for the waitress to attend to them. When the waitress arrives at their table, they ask for the special of the day. The waitress tells them that it is a chicken dish of some sort. Right away, the man is cautious about how the chicken will be prepared--as if one way of preparation was less harmful or insulting to the life of the chicken than another. The woman then begins asking about the chicken itself--its name (!), origin, owner, etc. While outrageously funny, this scene is viewed by meat-eaters everywhere as an example, perhaps an extreme one, of the crack-pot, oversensitive ways of those who are concerned for the lives of animals
-scene erases the chicken once again- the overly concerned people are the object of humour and therefore attention
On one hand, stepping back in a kind of horror, or anxious amazement, at how his friends were so familiar to him--the startling fact that he was not alone in this world
Our rule over various creatures is not questioned very often any more.
Nobody inquires any more, it seems, about what it is like to be a certain animal. It is dismissed as poetic hippy language and it is forgotten, like so many mysterious things about human life.
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that people are generally only concerned about their own lives. Granted, some people seem utterly indifferent to the lives of others. They even get slightly hostile when you raise an issue about someone else. After these hostile encounters, one wonders to oneself whether or not one was too intrusive about things, or indeed whether or not one has a life of one's own, or whether or not one has lived well. Very few people reach the final question.
The Metamorphosis is a strange tale. In it Kafka forces our everyday routines, the things we do unthinkingly, into the light. This is one of his great achievements, to make what is regular seem odd, ill-founded, absurd. These absurdities are always hilariously portrayed--his scenes make you stand back, shake your head quickly a few times, re-read with squinty eyes, and finally laugh in a strange, unprecedented way. The scene where Gregor's sister Grete is playing her violin for the lodgers (who invited her in) in the living room is a typical example. Grete plays for a while (her parents watch her hand(!) anxiously while she does) and, strangely, the narrator says that the lodgers appeared bored and disappointed. When Gregor wanders into the middle of the living room, bits of food attached to him via the dust that has built up around his shell, the lodgers perk up and react angrily when they find out that they weren't informed that they'd been living with such an interesting creature. This is a hilarious observation to me, and one that I think reveals the absurdities of human judgment (which is a recurring theme). Gregor does not know that this is why they appear angry. He is given over to his perspective in this regard, confined to his own interpretation of their reaction.
Another thing that Kafka fixes on is the absurdity or magnificent arbitrariness of the human body, its startling presence, its appendages. This comes out in his characters' fantastic desires to be bugs, or in the case of Gregor, transformation into the body of a bug. Is it that the body is strange to Kafka? The instruments unfamiliar? Coetzee picks up on this in Elizabeth Costello, where he says "Kafka saw both himself and Red Peter as hybrids, as monstrous thinking deviced mounted inexplicably on suffering animal bodies."
But there are exceptions to those who don't want to harvest my meaty thighs. Somewhere out there, I might be on a list with several others who've been designated as healthy and good to eat, and my time might be coming. Maybe my entire life has been charted, since birth, according to the growth of my thighs, or even only the right thigh. He had a good run this year, they said after I finished fifth grade. He almost made the cross country finals, but since he didn't, he picked up kickboxing, which grew his thighs more than would a typical race around the countryside. It also made things easier for us. For we didn't have to send a man with a camera into the forested areas of the countryside, where the race was being run; all we had to do was confiscate the tapes at the kickboxing center and track the growth based on that footage.
I've been pretty oblivious half the time, too, so it would be easy for them to keep track if they wanted. I've always been this way. When, for instance, my parents threw a surprise party for my nineteenth birthday a few years ago, I was completely unaware of the preparations. Do you know how much work it takes to throw a party of that size? I only figured out what was happening when my friend Graeme started playing the bagpipes as I approached the cottage. I knew only then that something special was going on around front. The strange cars parked on the road and in the driveway were perhaps slightly extraordinary, but still did not arouse my suspicion.
I wouldn't say that I'm oblivious in general; on the contrary I'm quite an alert person. I read the newspapers, watch the news on t.v., have a pretty good idea of who's hot in Hollywood, and can carry a decent conversation about all of these things with my friends. Maybe the only time I'm truly oblivious is when things are planned around me that immediately concern me, such as the surprise party. But I need to narrow down my point: the kind of obliviousness I'm talking about refers only to a lack of awareness about people scheming around me--I have never picked up well on hints, especially if my survival isn't threatened. Of course, the aforementioned scheme would threaten my survival--nobody can survive without a thigh.
But imagine being a creature that lives in order to die. A chicken, for instance, is hatched into the world for its eggs and its meat. Neither of these things properly belong to it; they belong to the farmer who has a plan for this living thing that involves nothing but its death. Its life is charted according to its value. It is only kept alive because it is not yet ripe. Once it is ripe, it is sent, with the others it has lived alongside, to be killed as quickly as possible. Then it is forgotten. Even at the dinner table, where thanks are rarely given anymore, it isn't singled out or remembered for the life it led, for the ultimate sacrifice it made for the people sitting around that table. It's contribution is judged as no more praise-worthy than the buttered beans and squash that are piled up next to it. Thank god for this good food. Then the head of the house is commended for his superb cooking skills, his expert marinade and his timing on the barbecue. "This chicken is wonderful, Byron!" says granny, and everybody at the table eventually gets to murmuring in agreement.
Parodies that stage characters who are excessively concerned about the life and well-being of the meat that they are about to eat are funny, but they end up only covering up the issue. A scene from the show Portlandia is the only example that I am aware of. A man and woman sit in a restaurant, waiting for the waitress to attend to them. When the waitress arrives at their table, they ask for the special of the day. The waitress tells them that it is a chicken dish of some sort. Right away, the man is cautious about how the chicken will be prepared--as if one way of preparation was less harmful or insulting to the life of the chicken than another. The woman then begins asking about the chicken itself--its name (!), origin, owner, etc. While outrageously funny, this scene is viewed by meat-eaters everywhere as an example, perhaps an extreme one, of the crack-pot, oversensitive ways of those who are concerned for the lives of animals
-scene erases the chicken once again- the overly concerned people are the object of humour and therefore attention
On one hand, stepping back in a kind of horror, or anxious amazement, at how his friends were so familiar to him--the startling fact that he was not alone in this world
Our rule over various creatures is not questioned very often any more.
Nobody inquires any more, it seems, about what it is like to be a certain animal. It is dismissed as poetic hippy language and it is forgotten, like so many mysterious things about human life.
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that people are generally only concerned about their own lives. Granted, some people seem utterly indifferent to the lives of others. They even get slightly hostile when you raise an issue about someone else. After these hostile encounters, one wonders to oneself whether or not one was too intrusive about things, or indeed whether or not one has a life of one's own, or whether or not one has lived well. Very few people reach the final question.
The Metamorphosis is a strange tale. In it Kafka forces our everyday routines, the things we do unthinkingly, into the light. This is one of his great achievements, to make what is regular seem odd, ill-founded, absurd. These absurdities are always hilariously portrayed--his scenes make you stand back, shake your head quickly a few times, re-read with squinty eyes, and finally laugh in a strange, unprecedented way. The scene where Gregor's sister Grete is playing her violin for the lodgers (who invited her in) in the living room is a typical example. Grete plays for a while (her parents watch her hand(!) anxiously while she does) and, strangely, the narrator says that the lodgers appeared bored and disappointed. When Gregor wanders into the middle of the living room, bits of food attached to him via the dust that has built up around his shell, the lodgers perk up and react angrily when they find out that they weren't informed that they'd been living with such an interesting creature. This is a hilarious observation to me, and one that I think reveals the absurdities of human judgment (which is a recurring theme). Gregor does not know that this is why they appear angry. He is given over to his perspective in this regard, confined to his own interpretation of their reaction.
Another thing that Kafka fixes on is the absurdity or magnificent arbitrariness of the human body, its startling presence, its appendages. This comes out in his characters' fantastic desires to be bugs, or in the case of Gregor, transformation into the body of a bug. Is it that the body is strange to Kafka? The instruments unfamiliar? Coetzee picks up on this in Elizabeth Costello, where he says "Kafka saw both himself and Red Peter as hybrids, as monstrous thinking deviced mounted inexplicably on suffering animal bodies."
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
A Day's Events. Pt. !
Yesterday was a day like many other days. I decided to get my hair cut, and was in an extreme enough mood to go for the buzz cut that I sometimes get there. It's also a cheaper option, but that wasn't the reason I had at the time--I wanted it all off. Anyway, the blonde rookie showed me to her chair and razored the whole thing off in minutes. On my way out, the lady who'd been waiting when I went in said something like "a whole different head of hair now" and I chuckled modestly, then she said "you'll have the girls following you down the street" and I looked at the blondie and she was smiling as she entered the amount due into the debit machine. I tipped her 2 dollars and left, smiling, for the seminary. I was on a high. I nodded happily to the lady who was walking her dog on the path--it was a bit of a strange encounter, and would have been awkward had I not been in such a good mood. She looked back as I approached the two of them--the dog was a collie of some sort, and was trailing behind her--and decided to halt both of their progresses and let me by. I thought this displayed a lack of community spirit and, combatting this, made sure to look her in the eye as I passed the two and nodded. I continued down the path and was excited all the way by nature, which I considered, despite my clothing and shoes, to be a part of. Strange rhododendron plants (I call them that because a name should match the odd of a thing) had sprouted up on either side of the path.
The strangeness of this earth, with its vastly different types of life, hit me. Yet following these strange spasms came feelings of homeliness, as if everything had been created for that moment alone, for me to, after being taken away by the seeming absurdity of it all, come back into a renewed relationship with all that is.
The strangeness of this earth, with its vastly different types of life, hit me. Yet following these strange spasms came feelings of homeliness, as if everything had been created for that moment alone, for me to, after being taken away by the seeming absurdity of it all, come back into a renewed relationship with all that is.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Trump on O'Reilly
I must say that I was impressed with Donald Trump's responses to Bill O'Reilly's questions about where he stands on the issues of the American day. He was passionate and assertive as usual (he 'loves this country') but fairly grounded and sensible apart from his his over-proud rant that "I am a smart man, I went to the best universities, etc." Most of his responses were unsurprising for a man of his stature (it only takes a few episodes of the Apprentice to get a rough sense of what his world view might be). For instance, he wants to deregulate Wall St. because "guys in Hong Kong and Switzerland can do it easier." He stated plainly that "he wasn't a regulation kinda guy". There were some surprising responses however. For instance, he wants to get the troops out of Afghanistan because 'there they put up a school, blow it up, then put up another one--but we can't put schools up in Alabama and Louisiana? Its terrible". So developing things at home is his program. On abortion he said he was pro-life, because he knows people who weren't sure whether or not to go through with their pregnancies and they did and they love their sons and daughters. (they still exercised choice in the matter...and whether or not people are happy with the way their kids turned out is completely negligible) But he said that it was a position subject to change. To Bill O'Reilly's question "Is there a Muslim problem in the world?" Trump said that yes, just turn on your t.v.--they're blowing everybody up! But also that most muslims are 'good' people (he knows several) and that it was a case, like so many today, of the minority ruining it for the majority. But he was viciously critical of the people who put up a mosque near ground zero, saying that it was tasteless
One thing I noticed about Trump after watching the third segment with O'Reilly is that he is always talking about the 'good people' he knows--he celebrates his connections. It came up when they started talking about trade unions (he grew up in New York and knows several union leaders, and they're great people apparently) and also when they started talking about Iowa (I forget the reason, probably because O'Reilly thinks Trump might not care about so remote and undeveloped place)...when he said "I love Iowa and its people" and spewed a bit more nationalism. Also interesting--instead of deporting illegal aliens he proposed to review their resumes and decide whether or not they should be deported based on their work ethic, Americanness, and what their references say. (and not simply kick them out, as his republican brethren might push). Oreilly pointed out that this case by case assessment process would take a long time and would be inefficient, and Donald replied that there was no other way. On gay marriage he said he was against it because he 'didnt feel good about it'. O'reilly actually played devil's advocate here and said that they think its their right as American citizens, and Trump said it was a complicated issue but ultimately he didn't feel it was right.
But if The Donald ever becomes president I think there are at least a few reasons to be concerned, and many of those who are familiar with him will start their critique of his potential presidency with paragraphs like this one.
-He wants to deploy troops to wherever the oil is in the world (Libya and other places), occupy that territory, and harvest the stuff as if it was buried in the Gulf of Mexico (and tell OPEC to fuck off).
This is realpolitik at its finest, though he will hate the academic reference if it is ever applied. It's reminds of Buckley's lament following the Vietnam war--something like "we didn't have the guts to go in there and do things right." It is founded on the suspicion that "if we don't do it, somebody else will" and it is fueled by a vigorous patriotism that sees the United States as the best nation in the world and therefore justified in occupying foreign territory to satisfy its interests. So Trump is advocating what many strong-hearted Americans advocate too, but has the guts and the plan to actually carry the mission out.
-what's wrong with Trump's aggressive realpolitik? it can't be attacked on real world grounds. But we can bring up the issue of the environment, an issue that is radically applicable to everybody that has ever existed--maybe this is even an understatement. 'We' have become separated from the environment. Not only in a physical sense (our living spaces, the man-made things that occupy our lives, etc.) but also in a deeper, spiritual sense. And since this is an ethical leap, or perhaps a personal one, it is difficult to bring into the sphere of politics, a sphere that applies to everyone. We can't, it seems, tell people what to do with regard to their spiritual selves, and encouraging people only serves to anger them, as they get defensive about their way of life that has forgotten the environment...
-we can, tho, convince people that 'we are all in this together' and that if people like Trump get in, just like Bush a few years ago (but the stakes are higher as the years go on) the earth is in danger. It is as Heidegger said (his sentences are beautiful) "the forgetting of being sets humans on a wild dash to dominate the earth--hold it for themselves"
One thing I noticed about Trump after watching the third segment with O'Reilly is that he is always talking about the 'good people' he knows--he celebrates his connections. It came up when they started talking about trade unions (he grew up in New York and knows several union leaders, and they're great people apparently) and also when they started talking about Iowa (I forget the reason, probably because O'Reilly thinks Trump might not care about so remote and undeveloped place)...when he said "I love Iowa and its people" and spewed a bit more nationalism. Also interesting--instead of deporting illegal aliens he proposed to review their resumes and decide whether or not they should be deported based on their work ethic, Americanness, and what their references say. (and not simply kick them out, as his republican brethren might push). Oreilly pointed out that this case by case assessment process would take a long time and would be inefficient, and Donald replied that there was no other way. On gay marriage he said he was against it because he 'didnt feel good about it'. O'reilly actually played devil's advocate here and said that they think its their right as American citizens, and Trump said it was a complicated issue but ultimately he didn't feel it was right.
But if The Donald ever becomes president I think there are at least a few reasons to be concerned, and many of those who are familiar with him will start their critique of his potential presidency with paragraphs like this one.
-He wants to deploy troops to wherever the oil is in the world (Libya and other places), occupy that territory, and harvest the stuff as if it was buried in the Gulf of Mexico (and tell OPEC to fuck off).
This is realpolitik at its finest, though he will hate the academic reference if it is ever applied. It's reminds of Buckley's lament following the Vietnam war--something like "we didn't have the guts to go in there and do things right." It is founded on the suspicion that "if we don't do it, somebody else will" and it is fueled by a vigorous patriotism that sees the United States as the best nation in the world and therefore justified in occupying foreign territory to satisfy its interests. So Trump is advocating what many strong-hearted Americans advocate too, but has the guts and the plan to actually carry the mission out.
-what's wrong with Trump's aggressive realpolitik? it can't be attacked on real world grounds. But we can bring up the issue of the environment, an issue that is radically applicable to everybody that has ever existed--maybe this is even an understatement. 'We' have become separated from the environment. Not only in a physical sense (our living spaces, the man-made things that occupy our lives, etc.) but also in a deeper, spiritual sense. And since this is an ethical leap, or perhaps a personal one, it is difficult to bring into the sphere of politics, a sphere that applies to everyone. We can't, it seems, tell people what to do with regard to their spiritual selves, and encouraging people only serves to anger them, as they get defensive about their way of life that has forgotten the environment...
-we can, tho, convince people that 'we are all in this together' and that if people like Trump get in, just like Bush a few years ago (but the stakes are higher as the years go on) the earth is in danger. It is as Heidegger said (his sentences are beautiful) "the forgetting of being sets humans on a wild dash to dominate the earth--hold it for themselves"
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