Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in obliqcinema's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, February 21st, 2006
3:43 am	breaking the spell We cannot let any group, however devout, blackmail us into silence by their expressions of hurt feelings whenever they feel that we are getting close to the truth. That is what con artists do when their marks begin to get suspicious, and that is what children do when they can't have their way, and it should be beneath the dignity of any religious group to play that card. The responsibility of science is to safeguard the well-being of those it studies and to tell the truth. If people insist on taking themselves out of the arena of reasonable political discourse and mutual examination, they forfeit their right to be heard. There is no excuse for deliberately insulting anybody, but people who insist on putting their sensibilities on a hair trigger demonstrate that they prefer pity to respect. -Daniel Dennet (Comment on this)
Monday, February 6th, 2006
3:33 am	an eye for horror, or, why nothing's rotten in denmark against the current of my passions, i'll start this thought on a note of understanding...four or five years ago, quite dissatisfied with the state of modern horror films, i began contemplating the ultimate horror film while serving barbeque to conservative virginians. it occurred to me at the time that horror cinema had grown stale as the world grew more modern and technological. films like the exorcist were no longer scary because the dark, lonely spaces traditionally appropriated for ghosts and demons had been swallowed by an increased popularization of science as well as by a proliferation of instruments that took much attention away from superstitious concerns. films like the ring and fear dot com had failed at moving horror into the technological age. so, i thought, what would it take to really frighten and upset people? it finally occurred to me: using disturbing imagery, i'd create a story where a the citizens of a somewhat multicultural area are assailed by visions where their worldviews are completely effaced and/or inverted. most of these ideas for scenes came to me as perversions of religious imagery and stories. not only would this be horrifying to the person receiving the vision, it would create a kind of twilight zone-ish effect, where the hallucinations would induce xenophobia, hatred and ultimaely chaos, cruelty and violence within a community that could have otherwise been peaceful. so, thinking back on this--and how effective i still thik it would be as a film--i can say that i think i have a sense for the the "why" of the fever pitch created by the now infamous danish cartoons. but in light of those cartoons, i start to get the idea that making that film would be like signing my own death warrant. and it's important that i can say that without a hint of alarmism as an american living in the 21st century. no, no--really important...let me pick up with the current... for the entire history of film, as far back as bunuel and dali's sacreligious imagery in 'l'age d'or', it has been possible for citizens and artisans of the west to portray christianity in whatever light they saw fit, no matter how "blasphemous." not to confuse possiblility with acceptability--certainly films and paintings and books have been protested, burned and banned because they managed to offend somebody's personal superstition. but by the late 20th century, it seemed that most christians had learned to cope with the fact that freedom of religion and freedom of speech went hand in hand. only the fundamentalist splinters--the freaks like pat robertson--would say that these films and books should not be allowed to exist or that their creators deserved punishments from heaven. not so in the muslim world... i can't help but wonder what sense of history--or of their own religion--many of these protestors has (especially the ones who carried signs calling for the "butchering" of those who offend islam presumably by drawing a portrait of a holy figure). how many of them could answer the following question: "why is it prohibited to create visual representations of the prophet?" the answer i suspect (of course, i may be wrong) would have something to do with an all encopassing holiness or sacredness...but the injuction followed from the very insightful notion on the part of muslim clerics that the image of muhammed might come to be worshipped, which would be a gross diversion from those things that muslims are supposed to focus the energy of worship upon. which makes these protests more than a slight bit of hypocrisy. it isn't that the image of muhammed is sacred--it is that, supposedly, his teachings are far more sacred than an image. the teachings, we are told, are of peace and brotherhood. it is safe to say, without being accused of racism or of being anti-islamic, that the core of the message and the fundamental reason for the original prohibition has been completely lost amongst the zealous faithful. to many, moustapha akkad's 'the messenger' was blasphemous because it portrayed prophet muhammed on film. to many telling the story of one of the world's great religions in the cinema was a sin. but even worse was salman rushdie's invocation of the much debated qu'ranic verses. for this? death warrants. for a verse whose existence wasn't even contested by a good many faithful muslim clerics. and today, danish buildings in beirut are on fire because of a cartoon. the cartoon depicted muhammed with a bomb on his head rather than a turban. offended by the suggestion that muhammed might have been a violent fellow (or, apparently, a fellow at all who had features the speculation about which might be drawn on some paper) a great many angry muslims have set out to teach us a lesson by burning down buildings. now, if the brilliance of this tactic escapes you, just think back to the faithful "right-to-life" christians who took to bombing abortion clinics not too many years ago...at a certain point, one might simply remind any aspiring cartoonists that religion does an excellent job of caricaturing itself without any help from the outside. it is history, not religious, ethnic or racial prejudice that tells a rather consistent story regarding religions that accomplish a high level of survival over time: they never, ever do so without the help of violence and corecion. islam (and with it, muhammed) is no exception. nor are the religions founded by christ and moses. aside from the well-documented conquering exploits of muhammed in the 7th century CE, the prevalence of islam in the region we call the middle east has much to do with the fact that, following the roman empire, the next great empire was that of the ottomans. the ottomans were by no means anti-imperial or peaceful. they were expansionist and, at times, quite brutal. much of their success can be attributed to what was called the devsirme system. in this system, the government and the elite of the military are comprised exlusively of slaves. these slaves (all male) were usually recruited before they were ten years old. but islam rejects the enslaving of other muslims--so the slaves taken were almost exclusively christian (not from other lands--they were taken from within the empire itself whose population was both multi-ethnic and multi-religious) . these young boys would then be converted to islam and brought up to serve the sultans either in the government or in the military. and, as with so many "great religions," the heart and soul of islamic power and expansion was the result of the marriage of church and state, when the sultan suleyman "the magnificent" declared himself a descendant of the prophet and therefore the caliph. then, just like the christian conquereors of europe and the armies of king david in mesopotamia, the presence of god was made known--not by word of mouth or because the people read whatever book god had sent, but because many a bloody sword demanded it of an illiterate majority that had not yet developed the tools to fight against imperialism or the mental capacities to think critically. these things, they only tell you in history class--never in madresses. just like they never told us about the spanish killers-for-jesus in sunday school (conquistadors or inquisitors, take your pick). i suspect its because they know that the conscience of a seven year-old is sharp enough to start asking serious questions about the greatness of a religion that killed enough non-believers in a town square to have the citizens knee-deep in blood. and when we do read the accounts of holy wars--which none of the big three religions shy away from in their texts--we are offered them as grandiose tales of the establishment of god's kingdom on earth. by now it should be a truism that the establishment of kingdoms requires a good deal of death, no matter the name or geographic preference of the king. and if we've decided in the past 150 years that this kind of conquest is no longer a desirable trait for the humans species to retain, how can we not condemn god's mercenaries and question the motives (and the supposed goodness) of god himself? days go by and i feel like i am developing a better natured sense of humor about having to share the voting booth and the world economy with people that believe in fairies, goblins, witches, demons, jinns, luck, fortune telling and the like (hey--if you can't laugh at a tragedy, what can you do, right?) but days like today and yesterday, my sense of humor gets overshadowed by an even more humorless bunch. we in the west (some muslims included, believe it or not) have got to the point where the only thing we can think to do sometimes is have a laugh. we've been laughing at christians for decades--that means laughing at ourselves, at our mothers, fathers and grandparents. and now that all eyes are on the middle east, we've just got to take the piss every once in a while. and if we wouldn't withold for ourselves and our own families, what makes any muslim or group of muslims think that they're going to get any fancy priveledges? at least when george carlin made cracks about jesus in the 1960's, nobody could rally a significant enough group of christians together to advocate beheading him. in london, however, the same cannot be said for the danish cartoonists. beheading. i mean, guys, come on. do you not get the picture, as they say? do you not feel the slightest tinge of guilt every time the word 'salam' leaves your lips? but again i might be able to keep my mouth shut if i felt like people here in this country in this century were cozy with that freedom of speech bit, but i don't think they are. there's something that religious moderates and tolerant folks out there are covering up when they defend the right of the religious not to be offended. progressive christians and muslims, along with the bush administration are all united in condemning the foul drawings. but...why? don't we all know by now what happens to a person when they never learn to laugh at themselves? they become bitter, oversensitive--they feel persecuted and defensive. they develop inferiority complexes and often, if left unchecked, they can exhibit some angry and even violent behavior. now take this principle and aggregate it. welcome to the front page. it seems now that making that film i was talking about would be a bit extraneous. and if pasolini couldn't survive 'salo,' i'm certainly not going to gamble. because that's where religious people stand with freedom of speech--in the way...sometimes with a big gun. or a bomb. how much can a slag really hurt if there isn't a lick of truth in it? what breaks my heart is that i want very much to align myself in solidarity with the geopolitical plight of muslims. i refuse to believe that that plight is the re-establishment of a talibanesque medieval caliphate in every land on earth. i believe it is a life free from political and economic poverty and slavery. for many, such as the kurds and the palestinians, it is the right to a home and to self-determination. and, for the afghans and the sudanese, it is the ability to repair a nation crippled almost to death by decades of war. but to most of the people who share these goals, my rejection of religion (of any cloth) is tantamount to a rejection of THEM. just another white prejudiced muslim-hating american. but it is nothing new for people who are disenfranchised and opressed to identify with fanaticism and to take refuge in superstition. but since the end of the great ottoman empire in 1924, this has been the trajectory in the middle east. the tools that we americans use to enjoy our superiority are descended directly from the golden age of islam. too many centuries of wrong-headed western thinking has thought best to keep these tools as our exclusive domain, thereby perpetuating our own prosperity. but they should be given back, with interest. and when i say with interest, i say that because frankly in the interim centuries, we have done some wonderful things, say, with algebra and philosophy (every translation of greek philosophy we read today comes from a latin text which was translated from middle-eastern texts). a few of the things we discovered were things like the benefit of a separation between church and state and the power of rational thinking and the necessity to remain critical and skeptical of any power or voice that claims to own or control you. that includes the voice of god. the circle is coming back around and the snake is biting its own tail. there is something worth caricaturing about that state of affairs--and something worth changing. and it doesn't start with silence. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 2nd, 2006
2:00 am	woes and tomorrows from where i live now, i can hear the subway roll across the bridge at regular intervals. i'm tired of writing, tired of walking, tired of playing, tired of lifting, tired of cars and trains, tired of sore muscles, tired of not sleeping, tired of not brushing my teeth and tired of sleeping in random places. but there's a kitchen that styas open all night, there are new niches to be carved, new fans to make, new (mis)adventures to be had, more things to write, more things to do. somebody once suggested that the meaning of life is 'what do i do next?' if that's true, then i've got a list of meaning eight thousand miles long. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
12:44 am	into the boredrobe now that mainstream christianity (not fundamentalist catholicism, so don't go on with this touting 'the passion of the christ' as a rebuttle to my qualms) knows how to grease the wheels of the market, it doesn't seem to need its old selling points. christianity used to thrive on the dark, on the evil, on the blood and guts, and the seductive qualities of evil. throughout my younger life, these marketing ploys certainly moved me, though not in the direction the christians might have preferred. brutal stories of crucifixion and armedgeddom excited me the most; images of the serpent, stories of posession, excorcism, etc. unfortunately, the 'chronicles of narnia' film finds christianity at its most whitewashed and boring. the battle between light and dark is more of a battle of preschool primary colors, red being the one most often neglected unless it is the color of a tent. the film never establishes any sense of doom or diabolical force that truly needs to reckoned with. its capacity to stir the viewer into a manichean frenzy is thus diminished to a great degree. the four monarchs-to-be appear to be cut from the same disney mold of banality as any future pop star or american idol. i was disappointed by the modern sound of the score, but i later realized how appropriate it was. we weren't witnessing any timeless war or classical allegory--it is pure product. it is, humorously enough, christianity for the new century--the result of a new council on the Book--one that employs state-of-the-art market analysis and demographic targeting. the flagship film for the megachurch era. all of this is to say that it was, basically, uninspired tripe. too bad. in the olden days--the 1980s--even an animated version of the book struck more fear into a child. it seemed more convinced that a world of fauns and totalitarian ice witches would be quite odd and unnerving--and far more convinced that the ensuing war stood for some kind of eternal platonic conflict. the betrayals seemed dirtier, the innocents seemed more complicated. this new film is, as one of member of my party put it on walking out of the theater, braveheart for kids. but where braveheart inspired a renewed scottish nationalism (for better or for worse), 'narnia' is likely to inspire just about nothing and nobody. well, i shouldn't say that. it should inspire the most dull imaginiations and the most lackluster of intellects to aspire to new lows in creativity. all this whitewashing of such dark, bloody mythologies should, on one hand be welcomed. it doesn't lend itself as easily to those moments where religions focus on the carnage--the jihads, inquisitions, and crusades. but it won't be spawning any new c.s. lewises or gilbert chestertons, either. maybe another kelly clarkson or britney spears... (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 15th, 2005
1:52 pm	why anti-war politics are foul this is a simple thing and so i will state it as simply as possible. election turnout in iraq today was so intense that the polling stations stayed open an extra hour. the sunnis, who had shunned the previous elections, turned out to vote in large numbers. a bomb had to be diffused at a polling station in fallujah. mortars went off within yards of two other voting locations. and the turnout was still so overwhelming--even from the "insurgent" position--that the stations extended their hours. and the anti-warmongers still have the nerve to say that if iraqi wanted democracy, they should have done it themselves. this should be a day of joy for anybody who calls him or herself a champion of democracy, of human rights of liberation struggles. liberal and conservative alike should be united on this, just like the shia and sunnis were united risking their lives to cast those ballots, knowing that the promises from the insurgency would be false. no amount of hatred for george w. bush should curb that joy, but it will. the anti-war left will roll their eyes and proceed with the usual arsenal of 'but's. "it's a great thing but..." like "of course saddam is a bad guy, but..." < [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<insert [...] moveon.org/noam>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] this is a simple thing and so i will state it as simply as possible. election turnout in iraq today was so intense that the polling stations stayed open an extra hour. the sunnis, who had shunned the previous elections, turned out to vote in large numbers. a bomb had to be diffused at a polling station in fallujah. mortars went off within yards of two other voting locations. and the turnout was still so overwhelming--even from the "insurgent" position--that the stations extended their hours. and the anti-warmongers still have the nerve to say that if iraqi wanted democracy, they should have done it themselves. this should be a day of joy for anybody who calls him or herself a champion of democracy, of human rights of liberation struggles. liberal and conservative alike should be united on this, just like the shia and sunnis were united risking their lives to cast those ballots, knowing that the promises from the insurgency would be false. no amount of hatred for george w. bush should curb that joy, but it will. the anti-war left will roll their eyes and proceed with the usual arsenal of 'but's. "it's a great thing but..." like "of course saddam is a bad guy, but..." <<insert moveon.org/noam chomsky slogan catch phrases/statistics here>> this is hateful of liberal prinicples, this attitude and it's dishonest. no, saddam wasn't a "bad guy." he was an awful, cruel, conniving tyrant. no, this isn't a "good thing." this is a great thing. and yes, we may need to wait and see if the u.s. follows through. we may need to wait and see if this is all going to work. in the broader perspective of history, we're still 'waiting to see' if jeffersonian democracy will all work out for the u.s. doesn't mean we can't praise what's gone right or feel happy and hopeful about it. this is the kind of moment that the left in my generation thinks it has been fighting for, but it will never get to enjoy it as such. maybe they're still relling over the porto alegre manifesto, it's hard to say. but put a mouse in a shoebox, put your dog in a crate, or put a human being in an overground prison like iraq, saudi arabia or north korea, you will notice similar results. let them out, and you will notice similar results. we already have. we could have waited for the u.n., like you guys wanted--like we did in rwanda. but you failed. your way failed. and success, as the left may have forgotten, is a fairly important element in politics. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 13th, 2005
5:23 pm	people can get away with saying anything from yahoo! news: SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. - Shayna Richardson was making her first solo skydiving jump when she had trouble with her parachutes and, while falling at about 50 mph, hit face first in a parking lot. Although badly hurt, she survived — and doctors treating her injuries discovered she was pregnant. Four surgeries and two months later, Richardson said she and the fetus are doing fine. "Just this last week we went and saw the doctor and we've got arms, we've got legs. We've got a full face. The baby is moving around just fine. The heart rate looks good. So not only did God save me but he spared this baby," she said. ...yes, yes. four surgeries later, GOD saved you and your baby. keep saying the bullshit--the associated press will keep printing it, without a slight nagging or interjection from the conscience of good sense. maybe this is their idea of printing some 'good' news. i'm truly glad this lady and her baby will live. most sincerely, i am. but this news story is, in general, very depressing to me because of what was never said. in one of the most fundamentalist countries in the world (ours), people read things like this and take it as corroboration for their dangerous worldview. people can go on being suspicious of science and respectful of religion, while science saves babies and religion, all over the place, is killing them. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 11th, 2005
8:16 pm	the clash of uncivilizations of course religion isn't the same as civilization--unless you make it so, proclaim it so, and allow religion to direct every motion and artifact of that civilization. if this is the case, one might say that you have an anti-culture, or an anti-civilization. the clash between islam and christianity in nigeria provides an amazing petri dish for observing this phenomenon. it removes such a statement out of the realm of the politically incorrect, intolerant realm and places it it within a domain where the politically correct and the religionists might have to answer some serious questions. a population has lived side-by side (not without tribal conflict and economic strife, but still, side by side for the most part) since anybody can recall. while islam has been a part of the cultural landscape in nigeria for quite some time, the wildfire spread of christianity has now divided the country, quite literally, in half, from north to south. where the two meet, on that "border," violence and rioting is commonplace. resulting casualties run high. the chants through the streets are 'sharia' or 'no sharia.' folks are asked their religion and shot for giving the wrong answer. no folks, this ain't economics, this ain't poverty--this is religion, minus the Enlightenment. christians raid christian communites to attack and burn the houses of the few muslims. muslims raid muslim communities to burn the houses of the few christians remaining in their neighborhoods. it's like clockwork. it appears to obey some natural law--as dawkins says--like a virus. i'll concede, perhpas more than ever before that suicide bombing is a complex phenomenon, incorporating various realms of cultural experience. but this is just the pure stuff, no filler. so many cliches come to mind...'the distance between ecstatic vision and violent zealotry is all to short' rings nicely here. what if we conducted a basic test--standard of living and civil liberty as it compares to religiosity in a given country? would we find that the most secular countries are the most impoverished, that they have the highest mortality rates and worst record of civil liberty? i don't know the real results (i would like to), but i doubt it. it's a kind of judge a person by actions, not words kind of thing. "but," the marxist or sociologist would say, "you forget that in these countries, people take refuge in religion because of the horrible living conditions forced on them." yes, yes, i know. but no good marxist ever seems to go that extra mile and explain why it was, then, that marx thought that, in order for a real revolution to take place, the people would have to shrug off religion. why was his political plan charged with secularism? because he knew that religion was keeping the people complacent--not only that is was keeping them complacent, but that it was a major TOOL of those who wanted to exploit those people for their own ends. it also taught them to value all the wrong things--things that would never be necessary for a real world change. is this not what we see today? crazed imams filling the heads of disenfranchised (sometimes disabled) youth so full of the qu'ran that they are willing to blow themselves up? the prositution of the living by god--fees to be paid in the afterlife...if only there was one... religion is not a bottom-up worldview that starts with economics. classical marxists would say that everything starts in the material world--but that doesn't mean economics only. the brain is also a material entity. max weber knew this. he knew that people also created the world according to what they believe--that the brain could make the world as much as the world could make the brain. and this is why it is important to be less tolerant of the beliefs of certain people today. less tolerant of what they're putting in their brains, because it's ending up in the streets, leaving puddles of blood and charred flesh to show for itself. and this goes back to the doubt, uncertainty, and virtual atheism of everybody on this planet. everybody knows, not too deep down, that they have no idea what happens after death or if there is or isn't a god. these wars and bonfires of hate just start to look like dramatic stagings of that argument you have with somebody who knows they've been caught in a lie. but instead of owning up, they argue more passionately and try to convince themselves that they're telling the truth while they're trying to convince you (hence the doubled effort). those people always argue with the most fervor and agression, all the while accusing you of being the hateful one. people always point to buddhism as a religion that hs never caused much harm. sadly, buddhist superstition perpetuates some of the most foul states of life on the planet right now. it's the wrong question to try to answer. i have a better one: i'd just like to know who has ever waged a war in the name of the law of thermodynamics or the theory of general relativity? how many swords pierced how many chests? how many bullets in how many brains? is there a such thing as a biological fundamentalist? well, yes, that would be all of us. we take the observation of viruses, bacteria and genes to be 100% real verifiable truth to the letter (or number). nobody has to fight about it (unless there is a religionist somewhere whose power is being threatened by such a statement). strangely, when it comes to science, fundamentalism isn't too much of a problem because one of the fundamentals of science is self-criticism and the ability to modify one's conclusions according to new information. religion tries to wear this bage, but it does so reluctantly and wears it so clumsily that one is tempted to take it back. it's dishonest, really, all of this modernized, secularized post-Enlightenment religion. in nigeria, it's honest again. and its so, so ugly. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
12:00 am	the lone, careful liberal "we must be aware of the dangers that lie in our most generous wishes...when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest [we] go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion." -lionel trilling if, as emily dickinson says, brains are capable of containing everything, trilling must have had mountains of knowledge the heights to which most of us can barely fathom in his. some consider him the godfather of neoconservativism, but that's a reach. he was a self-described liberal who cautioned against certain tendencies in liberal thought. he praises orwell: "we may say that it was on his affirmation of the middle class virtues that orwell based his criticism of the liberal intelligentsia. the characteristic error of the middle class intellectual of modern times is his tendency to abstractness and absoluteness, his reluctance to connect idea with fact, especially with personal fact." his recuperation of eliot's christian politics is convincing, even to an atheist. the french revolution and the enlightenment had in mind an answer to the question of what man should become. it proceeded with some notion of an answer to the question "what is the good life?" this kind of morality, he maintains, need not be "absolute," as eliot's was, but eliot's way of considering morality has considerable political advantages. "the radical intellectual of today differs from his political ancestor of even twenty five years ago in the interest he finds in the immediate method as against the ultimate purpose." for an essay written in 1940, the marker of twenty five years that might have otherwise dated this essay holds ever firmer in light of the postructuralist (particularly foucauldian) approach, where vision is violence and method is paramount. neoconservatives took trilling's disposition and created a most disagreeable political ideology. liberals ignore him completely--or, at least, far too much. there is much to quarrel with, but far more to think about, which is not to pass for some blithe comment, as when one says that something is "interesting." mere phrases contain such manifold resonance as to demand their careful, nearly constant unpacking. liberals should reclaim him--along the way, they might discover a kind of politics that people could, at last and once again, not only experience, but implement as well. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
1:27 pm	third party politics aahahhhhhyawn. good afternoon. i'm tired of sleeping all day. i'm tired of not getting things done. i'm tired of running out of money. always, always, running out of money. this time was supposed to be different! i had a job. wasn't only depending on the loan checks for a living. then they put us all on hiatus while they revamped the site. so much for november and december's paychecks. i can't win. then i read an excerpt from sam harris' 'atheist manifesto' last night, which isn't yet published. made me annoyed. not the piece itself, just a few things he reminded me of. put very well. there shouldn't need to be a term like atheist. and it's a damn hard task to be one when it shouldn't have to be. nobody wants it to be a job and nobody wants this job--it's too much work! but it becomes like duty. but unlike the christian who wouldn't know what to do with themselves if everybody finally became christian or the muslim of everybody became muslim--atheists, i believe, would breath a great sigh of relief if everybody was suddenly on the side of skeptical inquiry, against superstition and in favor of rationality. nobody has to remind anybody that they are anti-astrology on a day to day basis. and the forums on his website! the bible thumpers are funny. but the worst are the "sophisticated" christians--the ones who know all the moves. the fanciful abstractions, the interpretive twists, the william james will-to-believers. the ineffible diety. sublime. the insurmountable more-than, or greater-than. the edge. or, at least, that's what they say. turns into a snooze for me right quick lately. intellectual believers in nonsense, idiotic dogmatic ones. well, at least the intellectuals pride themselves on not being fundamentalist and probably won't blow anything up near me any time soon. cheers. thanks for that. on first glance, it's no big deal. then you realize each of them is practicing the act of creating a religion. nothing, in fact, is more vain and obnoxious than the personalized abstract notion of religion or religious experience. mysterians, all. driving me up a wall. we are all atheists with respect to baal and zeus. how hard can it be to go that extra mile, to toss jesus, allah, yaweh, and your new age/academic 'edge' or 'force' or whatever you call your 'own personal' experience of 'the divine' into the bonfire of reason? oh, i forgot, you hate reason. or at least distrust it. meh. this journal entry wasn't supposed to be about this. but how many times have i said that and written something like this anyway. it's all the same anyway. i'm not saying much that's new. methinks socrates was secretly atheist. and spinoza and locke and jefferson and lincoln and paine and, well, the list goes on. and on. but sincerely. i'd really like to spend my time on other things. if all of you asses could keep it private, i could go back to studying the brain and philosophy and politics and literature full time. but you keep putting it in my face, in my government, in my national holidays, in the schools my kids will someday attend--in their science books, even! people from across the globe bring it to my neighborhood to blow me up. i can't very well spend ALL my time on other things. the crusades are back in full swing because americans forgot (or ignore) what their constitution says and because certain iraqis, saudis and pakistanis hate what it says. luckily, this time around, there is a third way. luckily, we live under the flag that, at least where the rest of the world is concerned, stands for that third party (bush may have forgotten it, but jefferson knew it and until the conservative activist judges do a little more work, it's still written into our constitution). and where foreign affairs are concerned, it hardly matters who bush prays to. american soldiers fight alongside the iraqi secular left to secure a country once home to ba'athist dictatorship that rests on the borders of two of the worst islamist theocracies in the region. at home, it's another matter. in the white house and in the courts, especially. but you can't really muster the vitriol it's going to take to fight them here at home if you have sympathy and tolerance for superstition, whatever yours might be. one must first despise servitude before one can adequately despise enforced servitude. (Comment on this)
12:35 pm	barren wow. nobody ever writes on livejournal anymore. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 24th, 2005
2:13 pm	on paradox, splitting hairs, and the use of words like 'barbarian' evil. a term generally appropriated to dehumanize and perform a violent gesture of othering one's enemy. makes me think of ridicule. one can perform acts of ridicule on person OR the person can do something so silly that it ridcules itself, no act, no gesture is required from an outside party. i think what happened in iraq today might be classified as something similar for evil. sunnis bombing hospitals to attack shi'ites... barbarian: of or relating to a land, culture, or people alien and usually believed to be inferior to another land, culture, or people i read an article the other day by an author i enjoy where he used the word barbarian in reference to jihadist killers/"insurgents." at first, it made me squirm. it felt out of line. i'm not so sure anymore. as long as one doesn't use the term to refer to iraq, islam as a whole etc., i might be just fine with calling those who bomb hospitals barbarians. because if we can't call it inferior--if we can't make that judgment call--if we invoke contingency and understanding, by what means to we judge any behavior worthy of fighting against--why fight, why get rid of it if it isn't WORSE?!?!? is collateral damage the same as strapping a bomb to yourself and attacking a hospital because somebody isn't the right kind of muslim? i saw footage the other day of thousands of iraqis flooding out of their houses and greeting american troops with kisses and hugs. photo-ops? how did they co-ordinate that? was it manipulated? was it just one special place in iraq and everywhere else in the country the troops are hated? i'm inclined to think not. i'm inclined to think that the left is so wrapped up in anti-bush politics and has, for too long since the 'give peace a chance' mantra of the vietnam era thought that being leftist meant being pacifist, that they've forgotten that sometimes wars need to be fought, sometimes enemies need to be squashed. if these aren't enemies of peace, who are the enemies? the united states and israel. yes, i know this argument well. israelis in american-made helicopters attacking palestinians who have no better weapons than rocks . IDF soldiers shooting palestinian children. i've seen the funeral photos. it's disgusting. and if anybody wants to tell me this is u.s. economic hegemony over oil interests and not religion that's killing these people, i'd say they're having marxist delusions. don't any of the leftists remember max weber? try a little of both, i say. but erase those books from history--the ones that each claim that the most perfect, powerful ghost gave them some land--and i think the conflict would look much different. is that even worth arguing over--would somebody actually make that argument? well, probably, but i can't deal with the problem that there are too many idiots in the world at present moment... the united states has far to go before they can be called heroic, before they can get out of a conflict like this without lots to account for--devastating tactics, bad policies. naked self interest is evident in everything from what/who we attend to and what/who we neglect. but let's not forget--better yet, let's not paralyze ourselves from saying--that we are fighting a different war, a better war, in a better way. i know we've stooped to the level of these suicide bombers many times in many other wars and conflicts. from japanese concentration camps on american soil to my lai, from hiroshima to dresden, we've fought dirty and we've been responsible for some of the darkest moments in the history of warfare. has anything like that happened in iraq yet? we were simultaneously heroes to occupied france and devils to burning germany. what we did in germany was unecessary and inhuman, provoked though it may have been. just as now, we are heroes to those who love freedom (yes, in this respect, bush is right!!) and democracy and, at the same time, enemies of those who love economic justice and a level political playing field. these kinds of paradoxes should be acknowledged by the left as common and should be addressed realistically. but in this war, i'm only opposed to the economic aspect. as for the level playing field--should we have gone alone or waited for the feeble corrupted u.n. to waste more time and more lives? see if saddam is on the level? keep him in his box? no way. that the power is in our hands right now is at once comforting and worrysome. anyway, my point is that splitting hairs over different kinds of violence doesn't reveal equivalence in this conflict (not until there is evidence of some kind of violation like the ones i mentioned above), but inferiority. something more barbaric in setting out to bomb a hospital than in using less than precise weapons that may produce the unwanted result of civilian casualties. this should stop everywhere and who else to stop it? when is it over? i know the perils of a new cold war paradigm. but jihadists aren't people whose idea for the future should even be considered--caliphate as opposed to trasnplanted american late capitalist democracy, mcdonald's and all? i'll take a big mac, please...super size me...and i have the nagging suspicion that those who have experienced the beginnings of the new caliphate, say those living under the taliban, would second that fast-food motion in a second. i believe, in fact, that they already have. 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Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005
11:41 pm	acts of violence performed on a dead frenchman i'm considering undertaking some kind of ongoing criticism of big postmodern thinkers. i think there might be reason to hold them absolutely ( i just said that to piss them off) responsible for the state of the left today. from an article on derrida: <<"I don’t understand him, he must be stupid!" It came from the back of the seminar room, from a graduate student whose self-deprecating joke summarized a world of responses to Jacques Derrida. I had assigned Derrida’s Of Grammatology, a book about the impossibility of fixed meaning in writing, to my graduate seminar on the historiography of communication. As many obits have now pointed out, Jacques Derrida was an immensely important and influential figure in the world of left academe. Perhaps fittingly for a figure who argued for the impossibility of fixed meaning and intention, his work has been mischaracterized, wrongly interpreted, unfairly dismissed, and subject to at least one unauthorized translation. As a successful French import, Derrida also has the mixed fortune of a wave of fairly uninventive disciples: as deconstruction descends into orthodoxy, it becomes a parody of itself. Derrida is a conflicted character in comparison with his peers: he is much less clear on his political record than a contemporary like Pierre Bourdieu, his philosophical legacy is more uncertain than those of Gilles Deleuze or Michel Foucault, and to even explain the exact nature of his influence on a subsequent generation is tricky. Yet the verb "deconstruct" has come into common parlance in some circles, and Derrida’s celebration of "difference" has been distilled into a battle cry for everything from major challenges to Western philosophy to bland corporate-style multiculturalism. He was successful in ways that his contemporaries were not. Deconstruction, the name for Derrida’s elusive method, has an elective affinity with some schools of thought in Marxist, feminist, antiracist, queer and postcolonial circles. Yet deconstruction is not responsible for these positions as they are represented in academia. They are all, to the one, intellectual responses to social movements that began outside universities. Derrida’s deconstruction, meanwhile is very much an academic invention.>> i have the distinct advantage of not being subject to the consistent criticism leveled against those who decry derrida...i haven't read him. but you don't travel the thoughts i've been traveling for the last several years without getting some sense for what the basic project of deconstruction is. i can't be accused of misreading him or of misunderstanding him, and i like it that way. i think, perhaps, i may not read him as an act in itself. dogmatic, just to piss him off. to one-up him. you can't get anymore inner-circle than that. at this point, if i had to hear about how i had misinterpreted derrida or misread him, i might have to chew off whoever's head housed the mouth that said it. the world is a text and fixed meaning within a text is impossible. have i oversimplified it? GOOD. this is my violence. and maybe this violence is the first step for a good leftist. maybe it's the beginning of something. or, better, the end to a paralyzing trend of thinking. in the quantum world, matter isn't fixed either. but i don't fall through floors for a reason. luckily, it doesn't matter what i think about physics--i can't make myself fall through it--quantum mechanics has no relevance to my reality, where the apple i place on a table stays there. unfortunately, in leftist "progressive" politics, more than half of the army has fallen through the floor, by virtue of collective choice. ok, choice isn't fair. it's just like religion--rather than choice, i'll say it's bedazzlement and wonder for the intelligenstia. no wonder they treated him like a saint when he died. he was a saint--and every bit as worthy of decanonizing as anyone sainted by the catholic church. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 19th, 2005
3:09 pm	deconstruction, dysgenics, hegel and stem cells the audience member crept up to the question mic and said, profoundly, "all men are sisters." zizek paused for a moment. he responded "the only thing i would add is all postmodern men are sisters." and so it went. zizek doesn't really come out punching at postmoderns--he's too aloof for that and he'd rather us spend time listening to HIS theories. but, more and more, i'm realizing that he's accusing them of something pretty harsh. he called bush a symptom of the left. and when the idealistic girl asked him about "getting rid of the bush regime" he cautioned her against neglecting what got bush there in the first place. his characterization of ideology feels correct. and this is old news, but worth recapitulating. belief, in the old sense, almost subsumed it's 'object/ive' in the ritual itself. for example, one takes communion so that they don't have to go home and worry about god or their personal relationship with him. it's the new post-enlightenment believer that has to bother with that. after these new kinds of believers say that "organized religion" is all meaningless ritual, that the institution is corrupt and that god is an abstract being, who is too complex to apprehend, but who they nonetheless believe in or 'hold the option open'--after they say all that, they are the ones left to really worry about god. zizek says he's asked most of the big po-mo guys and gals (and it would be fun to speculate who, but he assures us they are the 'really big names') whether or not they are really atheists. because they all claim to be. but he's right to ask them, precisely how can you believe in the materialist worldview? if the world is a text, it's fluid, socially/linguistically constructed, relative, perspectival, multiplistic, etc. etc.--how? he says they tend to give dodgy answers that, in effect, show the direct correlation i have long speculated--they are in league with the new mysterians. though new mysterians are just obstinant. they say, "the brain and consciousness is simply a mystery and we still believe in mind-stuff." postmoderns are more dangerous. they are new mystics, basically. mystical intellectuals, giving elaborate schematics equivalent to the astrologers of centuries ago. they are updated, pseudosense and pseudoscience. and this in itself is dangerous. but it's true, everything's inverted... and here is why i'm glad i took the course in bataille. on the back of his book 'inner experience' somebody writes: "whereas bataille may be the acknowledged forefather of such figures as barthes, foucault and derrida, this centrality is often not appreciated by american admirers of the latter." bataille is a post-god religious thinker. nobody has any problems saying this. he uses all kinds of terms: sacred, ritual, ecstasy, blah blah. his writing is utterly symptomatic and absolute nonsense. freud told the story of the woman whose husband wasn't able to deflower her on their wedding night. this infuriated her and embarrased her but she couldn't yell at her husband. so, to SUBSTITUTE in her brain for the missed experience, she would knock the RED wine over on the WHITE tablecloth everyday and then scream at her maid as if it had been the maid's fault. such is the case with bataille. after removing god from the picture, he simply re-represents the whole framework. the positive content of what is hoped for is removed, acknowledged to be gone. but the desire to replace it with something resembling it is filled in with the most elaborate, nonsensical negative content. and i see much of the same with the antirationality of post-structuralism and critical theory. and from there we get rational anti-rationality. like bataille's anti god god. like his pages and pages of non-knowledge. like david kilpatrick introducing his project as an avoidance of pursuing discursive knowledge and the proceeding to read us his 20 minute long paper on bataille discussing 'ontotheological' things. umm, hasn't this stuff started to strike anybody as just humorous yet? hi, my name was jaques derrida. i studied husserlian phenomenology and all kinds of philosophy for years and years. but there is no truth, and rationality is a suspect. hmmm....can't anybody in the academy muster even a snicker? well, the answer is, they have. and people like derrida and barthes are rightly taught in literature courses and applied to literary theory. but they're basic project disseminated just like so many other larger philosophical movements do, gradually, gradually, into the public consciousness. now everybody's pretty po-mo, whther they know it or not. we don't generalize, we don't stereotype, we don't condemn anybody for anything because it's their perspective and it matters. in other words, we don't make judgments. ah, but we do--just like postmoderns suspiciously do. because we do judge people whenever they stereotype, generalize, condemn soembody's perspective, because it's culturally specific or whatever. and this kind of thinking is most well assimilated into the left and into counterculture which mostly leans toward the left. i always wondered why left-wingers seemd so much more like a sect, so much more dogmatic and zealous. just look at adult swim. there is nothing in it resembling wit. non-sequitrs are the rule of the day. we laugh helplessly at the disjunctions in knowledge, we don't craft sly plays on words and situations. we'd have to believe in them too much to do that. just like we'd have to believe in judgment calls in order to do anything resembling a political act. (a million people standing in the middle of the street is no kind of political act--it's cowardly narcissism and bush was right to ignore them). post-structuralists wanted to do something humane by pointing out the violence of normalization, generalization, final judgments, etc. but if you are going to get rid of a fascist, you better be ready to do a couple of things. number one is judge him/her. number two is to make a final judgment that you're right, because you better be if you're gonna start getting bloody. generalization and stereotyping are basic ways of knowing the world. the world of radical subjectivity is a world of shizophrenia. so is bataille's world of ecstasy. and, to turn liang on his head, i'm am going to be headstrong in saying that accepting a culture of shizophrenia is not something i'm particularly interested in. neurosis is far better... culture itself is a matter of exclusions and normalizing. postmoderns are, actually interested in the same thing. certain things they want to prune, certain things they want to flourish. they aren't interested in a world full of genocide, last i checked. but they're interested in not being able to be accused of eugenics. but cultural criticism and politics could be considered memetic eugenics (the problem here is that there is no word for cultural eugenics--eugenics refers to genetics and memetics refers to selective processes among replicating cultural information)--it's just eugenics of intercultural inheritance mediated by reason!! now, this isn't an argument for censorship and fascism. quite the contrary--if one follows this darwinian track, the algorithms of selection operate best in conditions of strong diversity. creating healthy culture involves pruning unhealthy bits. it is intelligent selection on our part. so the way to do that is not a retreat from culture as that which excludes, judges, etc. it is simply to make better judgments. culture, as dennett says, is a good deal. i'm into it. so are they, but they've driven a wedge in-between what they want and how they could get it. the good news is, it shouldn't be such a hard revolution to shake. it shouldn't be too difficult because the people who have been up to this are rational, intelligent people. maybe they think that, in the ritual of being rational--writing, speaking, etc, they don't have to worry about the content. but zizek's point was not to laud this kind of ideology--to the contrary, he was talking about real acts and facts, if you wanna fight. the real task is to get people on the left talking sense again. conservatives are exciting to people because they talk sense. their arguments just aren't very sound. i think that, in the end, the leftist argument is simply more sound. people need to make it. show that it's BETTER. believe in it. the good news for the future, contrary to scient-o-phobes, is that we are entering a future where selection, a previously ignorant process, is becoming intelligent. memetic selection grows as intelligence and information multiplies (and is mutated by disinformation, hence the pressing importance of left critiques of media control). genetic selection now has certain kinds of scientific foresight in it's favor. far from being afraid of this, we should welcome it. because, whereas we tend to think of nature as having the ultimate intelligence in design (let's not meddle, man couldn't possibly know), it actually has none whatsoever. to be at it's mercy is not a situation i would work to maintain. such a phobic condition is christian science with a secular face--although i'm sure much of the phobia regarding this major step comes from people who believe that nature has been intelligently designed. in fact, last year in my 'evil in the 20th century class, a position much like this was advanced. let nature take it's course. very strange. but here, i will take up with the critics of the relationship of science with certain kinds of power (not of science itself). in light of this, critiques of power relations in present-day capitalist conditions is of the utmost importance. the benefits of this, we can all too easily see, creating a new kind of class division--and very quickly becoming a morlock and eloi society. it already exists, to a degree, because medicine is little other than a more crude form of this intelligent selection. genetics just makes it a more precise science. as medicine exists today, critics of science should remember that they are fundamentally critics of capitalism and class stratification. the rich have better health care and higher life-expectancy, can afford surgeries and medicines. when genetics, as it surely will, starts making the better designed human, this division will be frightening. so there is reason to panic and reason for excitement. most of all, there is reason to make clear the distinction between critquing science and critiquing power relations and economics. because science offer hope for a better world, a fitter life, while gross imbalances of power threaten to change the species altogether. hegel lives very much with us today. the last man? maybe. but the master and slave relationship is one to learn from. the masters aren't creative--and this bodes terribly for the masters themselves if they decide to advance themselves into another phylum. in this future, creativity creates diversity, bio and memetic. the masters, as a rule, still hock the creativity of the slaves. one can almost imagine a new historical materialism. elite capitlaists are able to modify themselves into a more fit, basically new species. but power gives them this, not creativity. they increase pressure on the slave and the slave's diversity in the field of selection eventually wins out over strength. but what a dark period this could all be. it doesn't have to be. a recuperation of the relationship between science and the left is very much in order. 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Monday, November 14th, 2005
4:20 am	on the uses of death lots of talk about death tonight. zohra and carlin. it crosses my mind sometimes. carlin seems to think that 'live is worth losing' because once nature takes its course, gets rid of this human scum, a trillion more universes will develop and maybe one of them will work out better. so nature is his hero. we're just small. inconsequential. maybe so. but small, inconsequential, heroic--all these things are human notions. after we're gone, nature will not be any hero and we will not be small. no such notions will exist anymore. so if i care to use them, it seems to me that i am, regardless of which side i want to be on--resolutely on the side of humanity. and death is pretty important to me, since i don't pretend to know what will happen at the end. any more than i pretend to know exactly what the gases in the atmosphere of jupiter smell like. it is a FACT that i have no idea and can, by definition, never know due to a fundamental discrepancy in my physical makeup and the chemical composition of those gases. and, by the way, if anybody religious or 'spiritual' is reading this, you're no different from me--you just pretend something i choose not to. if that helps you resolve the abyss of uncertainty and fear that is your own mortality then who would i be to deprive you? (zohra seems to think i say loads and need to dumb it down. it's true. i do. but i can't help it, cos once the hand starts moving, i gots to go with the flow.) anyway, death is important to me. it motivates me. i want to get as much out of this life as i can. which sometimes makes me do seemingly counterproductive things to my health. like smoking and killing my precious neurons with alcohol. but these chemicals can be both good and bad when used for different things. one can drink to celebrate, to experience a bit of oblivion, a break from neurosis. one can smoke because it brings a great deal of physical pleasure into your life on a regular basis, depending on how often you smoke. i have, however drank out of depression and cumpulsion. i have smoked as a means to experience self-destruction on said regular basis. i would argue that, while my uses of these things are still a threat to my health, they have taken on a different status than they used to (although the empirical toll they are taking on my body has not been altered whatsoever). and yes, we still make wars. but do we use them the same way? it is a truism that death is death. a dead baby killed by a suicide bomber is the same thing as a dead baby accidentally killed because bombs don't operate with razor-precision. all i'm thinking--and i haven't worked this idea out yet, is that it seems that progress can be made in the use of death. carlin says that we believe we are civilized but at the bottom of it, we are still savages. i disagree. we are morbidly creative in our uses of death. this causes a proliferation in its uses and in turn a frightening proliferation in death itself. but if was sure that my death would save even a thousand people, i would, i hope (as i think most people would) that i would be courageous enough to do so. this seems counterproductive. but it only seems to be the case. the world also seems flat. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 12th, 2005
4:09 am	a plea i could certainly have asked for an easier lot. my life was, up until i met zohra, had become fairly unhappy. when i arrived in richmond and began my education, i had only years of bad decisions to show for myself, and a few moderately realized creative endeavours. college was a new start for me, getting my life on track, my act together as they say, making use of my brain and my potential--you know, all those things you never want to do as long as somebody's telling you that's what you should do. i arrived in the academy at age 26 in the summer of 2003 as a religious mystic, basically--one who wanted to reconcile the mysteries of the soul with the mysteries of science. i had been preoccupied with religion since i could remember. forever trying to make belief compatible with truth. this started very simply for me, and it happens for most people who don't remain fundamentalists. i realized that the church and proclaiming believers didn't match up to the truth of the divine word. so i decided that one had to locate religious truth as an inner experience, a personal relationship with god and see religion as an ethical way to live, a meaningful way to live. then, maybe by the time i was 20 or 21, i decided that the bible couldn't be better than science (here was the beginning of the end), so i decided that, most likely supernatural flourishes in the text were the result of mythologizing the story, making it grand and poetic. to my mind, this was fine, and it didn't diminish the holiness of it's subjects or its message. i loved the gesture of leo tolstoy and the jeffersonian bible. take the words of christ, his philosophy--these were what really mattered. this was the divine revalation to the human race. genesis was an allegory i said. as millions of believers do. i was a sociology major and professing marxist because i believed that marx's main goal was the same as that of the religions: a classless society of harmony where sexual discrimination didn't exist, where everybody helped everybody else. and sociology was where you studied marx. my first sociology class was 'the sociology of religion.' right up my alley, i thought. it turned out to be a devastating blow to my belief. i arrived at vcu reading the work of simone weil and tielhard de chardin: a philosopher and a scientist--each a devotee to the divine path. but by analyzing religions cross culturally and historically, it turned out that you could distinguish certain governing traits. most importantly, it seemed that a vision of god had more to do with a particular culture's vision of themselves than it did with any universal truth. and, after all, if it was divine, it had to apply to all of us, right? anyway. that christmas break, i spent time on nothing but education. watched a 9 part documentary about the brain. and checked out a philosophy of religion book from the library. i didn't totally grasp the concepts--they were kind of difficult, but it got a few questions circulating in my head. by the late winter and early spring, questions of death and existence were heavy on my mind and i realized a sharp disjunction between what i was feeling about belief and what i had been professing and searching for. but i wasn't spoiled yet. not totally at least. i was mostly preoccupied with lacan and with psychoanalysis. so i moved to new york. not before meeting my wonderful fiancee. we talked about religion, but we seemed to be mostly on the same page. my skepticism toward supernatural things led me to buy a book called 'the problem of the soul' which was essentially about the philosophy of mind. i was running into a difficult question. if scientists knew so much about the brain, so much that a soul wasn't required to explain what made decisions and what acted on the flesh, where was the soul? and without a soul, where was the afterlife, where was religion, where was faith? i had two options: believe in spite of clear evidence to the contrary or, as they say, follow the argument where it leads. i became more and more convinced that mental health was to be my area of expertise and i was not content to adopt the anti-scientist attitude of the psychoanalytic community. clearly the analysts who were using the talking cure on shizophrenics and manic depressives were terribly irresponsible. so i pursued the philosophy of mind, i pursued science and philosophy. and it's true, i read many convincing argument from nietzsche to russell to hitchens to freud as to why religion didn't make sense. but philosophy has all kinds of neat tricks. science, on the other hand, has fewer. i would venture to say there is not one praticing neuroscientist who is now religious. i don't know this for a fact, but i'm guessing... so i set out to get my life together. to make my parents proud. i met a woman who i adore along the way. all of these people, the most important people in my life are religious. their extended families are even more so. i have pretended to be religious to all of them--i say pretended because when i first met them--or when i talked to my grandparetns about it last, say when i was 16, it was true that i had some religion. i fear what would happen if one day samira ever found out how i feel about religion. but the lie i've told her is nothing different than the lie i would tell my grandparents. it's more like sticking with the first story. because nobody lets you go back on that story--the i believe in god story. you can't make your case (well, actually, you can and that's what infuriates believers). she would probably hate me forever. how would my grandfather, the pastor feel if he found out? how would i feel knowing that they feel like i've lied to them and pretended to be something i wasn't? did i ever have a choice? being an atheist is really sometimes like being gay. people fear it. they look down on you, look at you differently as a result--but it's just not a choice! in new york, atheism and homosexuality get a pass so i'm ok in my social milieu. but in my life, where it matters, will i get a pass? will i have to compromise what i believe to be a real ethical position so that i can please those i love, those in my family and those in my future family? can i do it? i've never been able to do one such thing in my life. i set out not to get a degree, but to do real good for people. do be part of a making a better social environment, a better future, all that naive idealist, important stuff. and now it turns out that religion is the enemy of the future. of my future and of those i love. this isn't politics. this is a risk of inflaming and alienating everybody i love. a prospective family with a high public profile to whom religion is, at the very least, not able to be disavowed for publicity's sake. but what would my silence mean? this all depends on my ability to do real work in the world that would be heard. if i could ever do so, as a musician or journalist, how could i neglect this? if i DON'T become a public figure and i just go on with mental health, how do i live such a double life? i can't be a neurologist or philosopher or psychoanlayst and believe. i'm not JUST angry at religion. i see it harming people i love--even in the smallest weys. it did so much emotional violence to me over the years--as it does to most people, but they've learned to euphemize it or glorify it--turn it into a virtue, even. and there is the matter that religion threatens to end the human race. that it is positively, at this point in time, maladaptive. moderation amounts to dishonesty. fundamentalists are the ones with the courage of their convictions. we now call them 'maniacs.' moderates are watered down maniacs. and they vote. they raise children. they get jobs as teachers and lawyers. when the time comes, will i be understood? will i ever have to speak out? will i ever have the chance? i started this by saying i could have had an easier lot in this life. this one is driving me mad, by virtue of its looming threats to all the things i hold dear--my family, my future wife, my loved ones--and my convictions and the future of all of the afrementioned involved does seem to hang in the balance. not that i could ever change anything for sure. but what if i had the chance? major sections of social revolution happen through culture all the time. the beatles did, in fact, help change the world. it also helped that hard sciences and social sciences were involved in the same kinds of revolutions, giving real evidence and real social movements for people to become involved with. they didn't create the zeitgeist, but somebody, on that level, ushers it in. fanatical christians in the white house are bombing fanatical muslims in iraq. religion is more impoirtant now than ever. this is dangerous stuff. we keep hating and killing for something that isn't even there. this isn't a land dispute or an ancient tribal vendetta. it's about ideology. the sensible ones have to prevail. not the bush's and not the suicide bombers. will i have to suffer a castration of my core beliefs about the universe to maintain good graces with loved ones? some will say it's about priorities--you can keep your cosmologies to yourself. but the truth is, you can't go back. once you know it, you can't unknow it. and it's very hard to live a lie your whole life. making sure you don't stumble and say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. it's like resolving yourself to having a lifelong mistress. i don't want that. but i don't want to hurt anybody either. so this is nothing, if not a plea for understanding. 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Friday, November 11th, 2005
5:25 pm	strange revolutions i remember reading richard dawkins' critique of postmodernism in 'the devil's chaplain' and feeling throughly smug about my proficience compared to his ignorance. "jeez," i thought, "i'm just some twenty something kid, barely en expert in theory and this guys a brilliant, world-class biologist--he just doesn't get it." yeah, clearly he had taken the passages out of context. obviously, he had spent more time with his memetic memes than with those of derrida. if he weren't so scientistic, i thought, his eyes would be opened. but he was too much of an empiricist; a reductionist ad absurdum. he couldn't bear the profundity of poststructuralism, the radicalism of it. even if he could, he probably wouldn't choose to since he was a beneficiary of the power structures, that alliance between science, technology, rationalism and "evil." he represented all that i believed at the time was wrong with intelligentsia: he was devoted to the analytic anglo tradition, he was (an is) a snoot among snoots, an atheist and, worse, scientist. the world was much more complicated than his ilk would recognize or theorize, and the power relations so manifold. and, as always, he and his discipline have to be complicit some way, somewhere, with empiricism, the errors of the Enlightenment, on and on... so read i did. even when it literally hurt to do so. i was so determined to wrap my head around marxism, panopticism, historicism, post-colonialism, deconstruction, the topologies of jouissance, and so on and so forth. i was searching for the vanguard and i believed i found it in foucault, kristeva, lacan, bataille, baudrillard, derrida, lyotard. just look at my library to this day: you need fancy theory, i got it. after some hard work and further education, the notions started to come easier. the texts weren't as daunting and i could string together some decent papers on foucault, butler, kristeva, lacan, etc. i really felt like i had arrived. i went to the new school, since it was something of an anomaly in american academia--due to its unique history, it was still teaching continental philosophy as philosophy, not purely as literary/critical theory. i was having face-to-face conversations with some of the world's leading intellectuals, they were understanding me, i was understanding them. i had taken to studying nietzsche, whom, if you want to know post-structuralist spirit, is the bottom line, the quintessential break from the enlightenment tradition, the radical skepticism, epistemic relativism, all of it. deleuze wrote on nietzche, foucault was an outspoken devotee of nietzsche's genealogical methodology. bataille, whom many consider the first heartbeat of poststructuralism, was expounding an explicity nietzschian philosophy of dionysian ecstasis. i started at the blunt, simple, literature of nietzsche (i would hardly call it philosophy) and worked my way to the french 20th from the german 19th. one of the most famous professors in new school history was hannah arendt. her philosophical writings on the holocaust and evil were still mainstays in the cirriculum and i thought her main point was a good point: that the holocaust was made possible, not due to rationality, but due to a kind of mechanical rationality without critical thought. critical thinking, not only having an argument that follows logically from proposition to propsition, as the nazis did, but making sure that those propositions hold up to sound empirical and rational criticism by levelling evidence and solid reasons, which the nazis DIDN'T. i also took a foundational course in critical thinking and informal logic. the professorfor this course turned out to be something of a black sheep at the new school (to this day, i have him to thank for what i consider to be a deliverance of sorts) since he taught--as the cirriculum supiciously entailed--the fundamentals of analytic philosophy. principles of inductive and deductive aruments, modus ponens, modus tollens. i found myself rather astounded at the sheer potence of these notions in their ability to bring clarity and rigor to an argument. i'll say right now that i haven't mastered the application of these tools. but they did force me to start making some simple rational assesments of other theories--many of which were golden at the new school, particularly those of foucault. this was not welcome i found. if the transcendental, centralized subject who speaks truth with a capital 'T' does not exist, then who/what is making these claims and why do they 'mean' anything. more importantly, how on earth could they be True? because if they weren't True, then they were only true. little 't.' and, in a competition of relative truths, with a little 't,' one is being quite disingenuous to suggest that racism, colonialism, genocide, etc. are Wrong. i discovered how to get good grades on my papers: write like a disciple, not a critic. do analysis, and show how these ideas can be applied. pick out one criticism to pay lip service to the school's mantra of 'critical thinking.' you'll be admired for you efforts, but your paper will probably have a comment on it in this place, clarifying what you have 'misunderstood' about said thinker's profound idea. just don't get judgmental. don't make agruments for your rightness or correctness of position. never call anything a 'bad idea.' this is just in poor taste. unless you are talking about nazis. anybody, anywhere will let you say that about nazis. and thank god for that--as tired as i am of talking about the holocaust, it's a comfortable topic since one is at all times allowed to say that their ideas were bad, they were bastards and they deserved what they got. but, as a rule, these kinds of judgments, these kinds of arguments, however, are most often met with the utmost resistance (as we have seen lately in iraq). did i mention that the new school is 99.8% leftist? no, the time has passed for that, i'm told. Enlightenment reason and science have been exposed. an accomplice to genocide, right? the a-bomb. the builder of empires, the backbone of economic oppression. not exactly. i've heard this about religion too. atheism has been exposed. this scientific rationality, says vaclav havel, has reached it's "final crisis." really? because i think stalinism looked like a giant religion, not a frenzy of critical thought, dialectics and debates, competing ideas, contempt for uninformed conformity (i say 'uninformed' because, against radical subjectivists and relativists, i am in favor of a world where some consensus makes social activity possible). science is not the same thing as power. science is also not equivalent to technology. science is a fundamental position and practice: that the world can be (to some degree) known and that reference to empirical evidence should be made when suggesting that one knows anything. when alan sokal published 'toward a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity' in the journal social text , he confirmed may suspicions about postmodernism: that even the experts had no idea what they were talking about. they were stringing together bits of jargon and superficial 'erudition' that amounted to nonsense. hence, the title of 'fashionable nonsense'--a disappointing book that makes litlle effort to argue, and only operates as a compendium of scientifically irresponsible passages that only the scientist could find humorous, since he or she would know precisely WHY the passages are absurd. sokal just quotes, then tells us they are absurd. he may be right--in fact, i imagine that he is--i know nothing of set theory, impossibe numbers and i doubt that kristeva, lacan and badiou do/did either. but it's not a judgment call i can really make and i'm not going to accept their authority on the matter. still, the book is worthwhile if for nothing other than the epilogue, which reads with much more clarity and employs stronger argumentation. what moved me to write this and make a document was what he lists as an answer to the question 'does postmodernism really pose a threat or is it just a flash in the pan?' he answers that it is not as much of a threat as religious fundamentalism but that it does have potential to become a new dogmatism, a kind of mystical sect. but he also quote chomsky saying one of the most agreeable things i have heard him say lately: "left intellectuals took an active part in the lively working class culture. some sought to compensate for the class character of of cultural institutions through programs of workers' education, or by writing best-selling books in mathematics, science and other topics for the general public. remarkably, their left counterparts today often seek to deprive people of these tools of emancipation, informing us that 'the project of the enlightenment' is dead, that we must abandon the 'illusions' of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use" he goes on to say of the left academy: "even in research institutes dealing with strategic issues, participants wanted it to be translated into postmodern gibberish, for example, rather than have me talk about the details of what's going on in the middle east, where they live, which is too grubby and uninteresting, they would like to know how does modern linguistics provide a new paradigm for discourse about international affairs that will supplant the post-structuralist text. that would really fascinate them. but not what do israeli cabinet records shopw about internal planning. that's really depressing." so, welcome to my life. better yet, welcome to the progressive left. the new school is no special case. in fact, if it is special, it is only because it is the monolith of such schools in the country. it is magnified. there, postmodernism hasn't undergone it's rightful relegation to the literature departments (as it has done almost everywhere else, leading its devotees to take it as proof that they are truly radical). the new school still believes in it. kristeva teaches there now. baudrillard spoke the other day. in america, we are the vanguard in the very, very worst way. i don't regret my trajectory or my education. i'm glad to know it. i'd be a far worse opponent of religion if i had never been a christian. thank god for the brave outposts there. hobsbawm, hitchens, monroe and mosca. maybe there are more. but mosca's philosophy of mind takes care of bataille's effacing of anthropos just fine. and it does so with evidence, not bad writing and a philosophy of "non-knowledge" (that one always makes me chuckle). hitchens' engagement with international affairs and willingness make his arguments regardless whether they're published in the nation or the new conservative are far more useful than playing the eternal game of foucauldian finger-pointing. and hobsbawm? he told us all about the absolute terror of monumental technological violence in the 20th century. but notice his take on the matter: "the rise of 'postmodernist' intellectual fashions in western universities, particularly in departments of literature and anthropology, which imply that all 'facts' claiming objective existence are simple intellectual constructions. in short, that there is no clear difference between fact and fiction. bu there is, and for hsitorians, even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely fundamental." he believes that the postmodernist attitude leaves us powerless to refute certain fictions propounded by the most murderous nations. both sides, liberal and conservative, have it terribly wrong. so what does a black sheep look like these days, among the uniformed black sheep and the pristine white coated ones? one side's got a bad vision and bad philosophy (they are in the process, in case you missed it, of taking over the world). the other side's got no vision because they've got no philosophy (they're in the process of drinking some mocha right now--a pastime which i admittedly enjoy with them even if i disdain their approach to philosophy and politics). sokal also makes one other important point: that godels theorem does not inhibit the work of mathemeticians or physicists. as i've said before, the observations of postmoderns are, at best, a curiosity. a mountain made out of a mole-hill, and a counterproductive one at that. i remember, before i could "really get" the ideas of these intellectuals, i had made an observation that i felt like it was some kind of intricate art of ideas. some kind of beautiful pattern building, but i was unsure of its relevance or truth. i knew that there was something erudite and impressive about deleuze--i just didn't know whether or not it was philosophy. part of a healthy critical attitude is being wary of wholesale dismissals. i think deleuze's 'rhizome' still has plenty of good ideas to pay attention to. i haven't abandoned lacan altogether, though i think anybody with half a brain should have been skeptical of his mathemes. but there is plenty in psychoanalysis of all schools that needs to be rewritten as neuroscience marches onward. much of lacan's ouvre will most certainly start to sound as dated as astrology. but some of it just might be the key to bridging the gap between the speaking being and the biological brain. nietzsche is great literature. it shakes you loose from a good deal of nonsese that most of us need some distance from. he's no philosopher though. bataille reminds us what ecstasy can be in the absence of the lie that is christian morality (if you can't afford psychoanalysis)--and why it's tragic. and zizek, well, he gets himself out of almost any trap since for him, philosophy does not answer "what is true" it demands you to clarify "what do you mean when you say this is true." and i'd agree with that. it's almost the analytic ethos, really. which is probably why he's caught on. he fools you into thinking you are talking po-mo when you aren't. it seems that this is the only real strategy for shaking dogmatists loose of their dogma. like christians with moderation, tolerance and fancy canonical interpretation...keep them thinking the language means the same thing, while your interventions have made that irrevocably not the case. 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Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
6:26 pm	bang, zoom another strike against the anti-war, anti-unilateral "peace"mongers. as long as there's no blood on our hands, the left is thrilled to be indignant about genocide and self-righteous about "negotiations"...i'm all for conversation and negotiation whenever, wherever possible. butwhen it buys time for mass murder, there are larger issues at stake. i can't say it better than this: http://www.slate.com/id/2129657/ (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 5th, 2005
8:02 pm	been a while since i noted any poetry, but the time is right and the poem is: The Brain—is wider than the Sky Emily Dickinson 632 The Brain—is wider than the Sky— For—put them side by side— The one the other will contain With ease—and You—beside— The Brain is deeper than the sea— For—hold them—Blue to Blue— The one the other will absorb— As Sponges—Buckets—do— The Brain is just the weight of God— For—Heft them—Pound for Pound— And they will differ—if they do— As Syllable from Sound— (Comment on this)
Monday, October 31st, 2005
11:30 pm	thoughts for the times on, well, death even those who would lay no claim to the freudian tradition are wont to parrot his famous claim that religion will survive as long as people fear death. but it seems to me that this accompanies a very archaic, animal fear of death...a fear that would have arisen at the intersection where the animal instinct to survive met the cultural being of ideas. better stated, the conscious being, whose "i" consciousness--the one that monitors the first consciousness of pure experience, reflects on being--as a the result of these new traits of introspection the 'i' creates something called fear. fear in the cognitive/conceptual sense we speak of it to this day. but is it necessary to the cognitive being whose self-monitoring self has now adopted the faculties of reason? because it seems to me, death under the god of theism is far more frightening (hence the urgent need to appease his wishes). under Him, you musn't merely worry about expiration, you have to worry about whether or not you've said all the right things, participated in all the right rituals that will exempt you from enduring an ETERNITY of suffering. the revelation that the myths of theism are just that, seems to afford those lucky enough to have reached this conclusion great senses of relief and solace. after all, if i was unaware that i didn't exist beforehand, i won't know that i don't exist after the fact. quite nice. life is almost like someone having stuffed a winning lottery ticket in your back pocket without your knowledge, and then (again, without your knowing) it blows away, say, into a sewer. you didn't have it before, you don't have it now. you did for a time. king of the world and you didn't even know. the exchange is irrelevant to you. the loss is trivial. what atheism provides is the knowledge that you are, at this second, king of the world--yours, at least--and when it's over, you'll not be the wiser. it's motivating, liberating and the farthest thing from a fearful state as i can imagine. the fear, if there is any, seems to come mostly from having had those other myths well-established in the formative years, so that one is constantly trying to break with a youthful, fanciful, not-so-true picture of the world. the uncertainty is false--or at least unwarranted. to be clear though, i'm no more certain that there is NO god than i am that there are no invisible green fireflies buzzing my head the moment i'm typing this. but i see no reason to act as though either proposition is correct. atheism is not certainty. it is the reasonable exclusion of unfounded conclusions. where death is concerned, it's positively fear reducing. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 29th, 2005
7:28 pm	a few thoughts on the holiday: hail satan? have adored halloween for as long as i can remember. even (and especially) as a younger lad when it was forbidden as the devil's holiday. i remember having sessions at friends' house on halloween night discussing--quite gravely--the origins of halloweeen as a pagan and evil celebration. the taboo afforded to the subject matter on those nights surely had much to do with ingraining the festival of the dead in my impressionable mind as something infinitely exciting. after all,most of us know, with or without the aid of high-faluten theory like bataille, the close association between prohibition and attraction. the devil was always more attractive. christians, muslims, and jews all know that. if he wasn't, why go to such lengths to prohibit corhorting with him? similarly, we also know, most of us, without the aid of levi-strauss, that one scarcely need prohibit something that nobody desires. so, the question, to the one with no allegiance to god or the devil--myself, that is--would be, has halloween lost it's excitement? what do these images mean now, in the absence of that old framework? why do i still enjoy horror films about satanic cults as if i were still replaying the scene of the young spectator of demonic fascination? well, the first answer would be, of course, i am simply replaying those scenes enjoying some residual effect of that former fascination. but these days, i grow fascinated with the notion of the devil. are we in the age of satan? metaphorically speaking, i think we are. satan never extolled evil-doing, drinking blood, --he was more a martyr to rebellion, to opposition and ultimately to the basic principles that have allowed the kind of progress that even the religious and the faithful now appreciate. he was the voice that said no to authority and to submission. he was, in a sense, a mythical galileo, the rosa parks of the bible. the god of monotheism was a despot authoritarian. cruel, racist, sexist, sectarian, bloodthirsty, and imperialist. the clever interpreters of scripture in each tradition have spent centuries using the tools of rationality to apologize and essentially to rewrite this bastard in the sky as a nice guy. convenient that they use reason when it ameliorates their diety and forclose upon it when it indicts him. the devil is attractive because he represents the things we love about living--freedom, the vitality of the sensual body, of the material world (the only world we have any genuine knowledge of). the kind of freedom of activity and thinking that he represents is what even the religious multitudes desire (after all, it is the countries where religion is mandated that it is largely rejected and in countries where it is repressed, it thrives). on a basic level, people don't like to be told what to do--even religious people. god said bow to me and satan said no. he claimed equal rights--last time i checked, that was something we humans have come to value quite a bit. most christians elevate christ because he made the jewish tradition more open to women, the poor, the meek, etc. for this, the jews killed him. the jews knew very well what the god of abraham expected: worship, submission and belief without questioning. when satan tempted christ on the cross, he performed the most reasonable human action--one that, in any other sphere of life today, we would applaud. 'if you're god, bring yourself down from the tree you're nailed to...' a perfectly reasonable request, can't we agree? evidence, my dear messiah. but jesus said it was essential that we choose to believe. proof would remove the leap of faith (that fail-safe device against epistemological questioning.) and, supposedly, with this, christ made faith a matter of free will. shall we now call science satanic, since it has shown that free will, effectively, does not exist? neuroscientists can prove that the brain makes a decision to act one fifth of a second before the conscious choice to act has been made. a strange thought, but science does now show that we live in a fairly deterministic world. if science is satanic, we must reject vaccinations against deadly disease and watch the human race perish. we all become calvinist christian scientists or admirers of satan--at least that's the way it seems to come down... our values have changed since the religious texts were written. today, satan actually embodies the values we hold dear. yaweh, allah, whtever you call it (it's just a character anyway), embodies those characteristics that we dislike: he is vain, he wants to conquer and destroy those who don't like him: he runs a sort of cosmic big brother state, where all are watched, judged and where dissent and criticism are treason, punishable by torture. eternal torture, that is. it's interesting the way horror films portray satan though. since the highest value at the time was obedience and satan embodied disobedience, the great philosophers of the abrahamic tradition then went on to read satan as he who is antithetical to all 'good' values, including death instead of life, promiscuity instead of chasitity, etc. this bloodthirtsy satan is not actually the satan of religion. satan was the great subversive, not the great threat to human life. satan tempted us to be materialists, tempted jesus to enjoy his life on earth and leave behind his platonic delusions. for this, he is is truly a hero. real satanists, however, are silly. satanists begin with the world-wise track, claiming to be the spirit of the modern age--that they don't believe in magic or any of that. but follow up. most do play with magick (as they stupidly spell it to distinguish their fakeery from the fakery of streetside entertainers), even those in the satanic church. they are just as silly with their rites as a congrgation taking communion. the satanists of horror films represent the rewritten satan that hates the body left intact. he takes souls. satan, the materialist, should have took the piss out of the notion of the soul in galilee a few thousand years ago. not even those writing the villian in those ancient times could see that far ahead. in fact, it should strike one as obvious that horror films, the bible, devils, and demons always associate these 'evils' with things that frightened and puzzled even pre-modern man. fire. the night time, when vision was impaired and survival was threatened. bad weather--thunderstorms and lightning, disease, the puncturing, dismembering of the body, etc. it should also come as no surprise then that originally, god was a creature of power, not love. a protector and benefactor, not one who asked you to turn the other cheek. this kind of thinking about love would come later and prove revolutionary enough--satanic enough--to have its fountainhead murdered. horror films are, outside of a relic of my personal formative past, a great anthropolgical archeaological treasury of our myths, thriving today in popular culture. that films like 'the exorcist' still scare people is testament to an amazing phenomenon--that a desert god from mesopotamia has, by way of centuries of bloodshed and conquest, survived in the consciousness of a secular culture four thousand years its senior in both age and knowledge. sometimes i grow infuriated by the fact that i am watching religious propaganda. other times, i let the confluence of elements come together in a uniquely rich experience that allows me to confront (even revel in) my own fears about the violation of the body and of malevolent forces in my world, even if they aren't supernatural. even better, i'm finding, are these giallo films that make an orgiastic experience out of the body, both in it's sensuality and fragility. sex and violence to the nth degree can have such an effect. but halloween isn't really satanic, it's pagan. which, for a culture that prized the 'regenerative forces' (as called in'wicker man') and the freedom of the body, we shouldn't be surprised that this also was placed in league with satan--conflated, really. the prohibitive god of monotheism had to eradicate those who celebrated their sexuality so. pagans also annoy me and i don't watch films like 'wicker man' with a total sympathy for the people of sumerisle. the film has such depth because one can sympathize with the inspector in that he despises the ignorance of sacrificing a human to make crops grow. silly way to approach agriculture in the modern age. but one can also sympathize with the uptight lawman burning for his foolish arrogance('king for a day'), absolute inability to do anything but condemn their way of life. and, his contempt for eroticism made tantamount to his religious belief is a disgusting result of the abrahamic tradition (which, i must say, only islam manages to repair this contempt for sexuality, though it is still riddled with all manner of sexual condemnations). the horror film is often an homage to the ecstatic experience of old--of the body before the lies of plato. it is a vicarious testing ground where we can experience the skin--or lack thereof--in ways that social life and moral life prohibit. roll 'em... (the bones, that is). halloween is the only holiday when people really have FUN. it's a favorite amongst the young, who are testing their bodies on a regular basis--seeing if it will survive another night of drugs. it's the time for sensual fun, still. it's not about family or thanksgiving. it's about mischief and transgression. it's about fucking your significant (or insignificant, whatever the case may be) other through their costume behind a barn after the hayride. it's not about sanctioned togetherness. it's about lying, masquerading, celebrating death, sex, intoxication, all those things that religion would have us forget, compartmentalize or deny ourselves. but there it lurks, a rupture in the fabric every october 31st. so, do i still love it? yes indeed... (Comment on this)