Still Chasing 2013?

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Delphic Principles

Celebrating Pythagoras of Samos

Middle Class? WHAT Middle Class?

If the old capitalism ideally involved an entrepreneur who invested (his own or borrowed) money into production that he organised and ran, and then reaped the profit from it, a new ideal type is emerging today: no longer the entrepreneur who owns his company, but the expert manager (or a managerial board presided over by a CEO) who runs a company owned by banks (also run by managers who don’t own the bank) or dispersed investors. In this new ideal type of capitalism, the old bourgeoisie, rendered non-functional, is refunctionalised as salaried management: the members of the new bourgeoisie get wages, and even if they own part of their company, earn stocks as part of their remuneration (‘bonuses’ for their ‘success’).

This new bourgeoisie still appropriates surplus value, but in the (mystified) form of what has been called ‘surplus wage’: they are paid rather more than the proletarian ‘minimum wage’ (an often mythic point of reference whose only real example in today’s global economy is the wage of a sweatshop worker in China or Indonesia), and it is this distinction from common proletarians which determines their status. The bourgeoisie in the classic sense thus tends to disappear: capitalists reappear as a subset of salaried workers, as managers who are qualified to earn more by virtue of their competence (which is why pseudo-scientific ‘evaluation’ is crucial: it legitimises disparities). Far from being limited to managers, the category of workers earning a surplus wage extends to all sorts of experts, administrators, public servants, doctors, lawyers, journalists, intellectuals and artists. The surplus takes two forms: more money (for managers etc), but also less work and more free time (for – some – intellectuals, but also for state administrators etc).

The evaluative procedure used to decide which workers receive a surplus wage is an arbitrary mechanism of power and ideology, with no serious link to actual competence; the surplus wage exists not for economic but for political reasons: to maintain a ‘middle class’ for the purpose of social stability. The arbitrariness of social hierarchy is not a mistake, but the whole point, with the arbitrariness of evaluation playing an analogous role to the arbitrariness of market success. Violence threatens to explode not when there is too much contingency in the social space, but when one tries to eliminate contingency. In La Marque du sacré, Jean-Pierre Dupuy conceives hierarchy as one of four procedures (‘dispositifs symboliques’) whose function is to make the relationship of superiority non-humiliating: hierarchy itself (an externally imposed order that allows me to experience my lower social status as independent of my inherent value); demystification (the ideological procedure which demonstrates that society is not a meritocracy but the product of objective social struggles, enabling me to avoid the painful conclusion that someone else’s superiority is the result of his merit and achievements); contingency (a similar mechanism, by which we come to understand that our position on the social scale depends on a natural and social lottery; the lucky ones are those born with the right genes in rich families); and complexity (uncontrollable forces have unpredictable consequences; for instance, the invisible hand of the market may lead to my failure and my neighbour’s success, even if I work much harder and am much more intelligent). Contrary to appearances, these mechanisms don’t contest or threaten hierarchy, but make it palatable, since ‘what triggers the turmoil of envy is the idea that the other deserves his good luck and not the opposite idea – which is the only one that can be openly expressed.’ Dupuy draws from this premise the conclusion that it is a great mistake to think that a reasonably just society which also perceives itself as just will be free of resentment: on the contrary, it is in such societies that those who occupy inferior positions will find an outlet for their hurt pride in violent outbursts of resentment.

Connected to this is the impasse faced by today’s China: the ideal goal of Deng’s reforms was to introduce capitalism without a bourgeoisie (since it would form the new ruling class); now, however, China’s leaders are making the painful discovery that capitalism without the settled hierarchy enabled by the existence of a bourgeoisie generates permanent instability. So what path will China take? Former Communists generally are emerging as the most efficient managers of capitalism because their historical enmity towards the bourgeoisie as a class perfectly fits the tendency of today’s capitalism to become a managerial capitalism without a bourgeoisie – in both cases, as Stalin put it long ago, ‘cadres decide everything.’ (An interesting difference between today’s China and Russia: in Russia, university teachers are ridiculously underpaid – they are de facto already part of the proletariat – while in China they are provided with a comfortable surplus wage to guarantee their docility.)

The notion of surplus wage also throws new light on the continuing ‘anti-capitalist’ protests. In times of crisis, the obvious candidates for ‘belt-tightening’ are the lower levels of the salaried bourgeoisie: political protest is their only recourse if they are to avoid joining the proletariat. Although their protests are nominally directed against the brutal logic of the market, they are in effect protesting about the gradual erosion of their (politically) privileged economic place. Ayn Rand has a fantasy in Atlas Shrugged of striking ‘creative’ capitalists, a fantasy that finds its perverted realisation in today’s strikes, most of which are held by a ‘salaried bourgeoisie’ driven by fear of losing their surplus wage. These are not proletarian protests, but protests against the threat of being reduced to proletarians. Who dares strike today, when having a permanent job is itself a privilege? Not low-paid workers in (what remains of) the textile industry etc, but those privileged workers who have guaranteed jobs (teachers, public transport workers, police). This also accounts for the wave of student protests: their main motivation is arguably the fear that higher education will no longer guarantee them a surplus wage in later life.

At the same time it is clear that the huge revival of protest over the past year, from the Arab Spring to Western Europe, from Occupy Wall Street to China, from Spain to Greece, should not be dismissed merely as a revolt of the salaried bourgeoisie. Each case should be taken on its own merits. The student protests against university reform in the UK were clearly different from August’s riots, which were a consumerist carnival of destruction, a true outburst of the excluded. One could argue that the uprisings in Egypt began in part as a revolt of the salaried bourgeoisie (with educated young people protesting about their lack of prospects), but this was only one aspect of a larger protest against an oppressive regime. On the other hand, the protest didn’t really mobilise poor workers and peasants and the Islamists’ electoral victory makes clear the narrow social base of the original secular protest. Greece is a special case: in the last decades, a new salaried bourgeoisie (especially in the over-extended state administration) was created thanks to EU financial help, and the protests were motivated in large part by the threat of an end to this.

The proletarianisation of the lower salaried bourgeoisie is matched at the opposite extreme by the irrationally high remuneration of top managers and bankers (irrational since, as investigations have demonstrated in the US, it tends to be inversely proportional to a company’s success). Rather than submit these trends to moralising criticism, we should read them as signs that the capitalist system is no longer capable of self-regulated stability – it threatens, in other words, to run out of control.

- Slavoj Zizek, "The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeosie"

Cynical Distance - "I know what I am doing, but I am nevertheless doing it"

"Soave sia il vento...Gentle be the breeze,
Tranquilla sia l'onda,..and calm the wave,
Ed ogni elemento...and may all elements
Benigno risponda...be favorable
Ai nostri/vostri desir....to our need."

The fundamental gesture of cynicism is to denounce "genuine authority" as a pose, whose sole effective content is raw coercion or submission for the sake of some material gain, while an ironist doubts if a cold calculating utilitarian is really what he pretends to be, i.e,. he suspects that this appearance of calculating distance can conceal a much deeper commitment. The cynicist is quick to denounce the ridiculous pretense of solemn authority; the ironist is able to discern true attachment in dismissive disdain or in feigned indifference. In matters of love, for example, the cynicist excels in denigrating exalted declarations of deep spiritual affinity as a stratagem to exploit sexually or otherwise the partner, whereas the ironist is prone to ascertain, in a melancholic mood, how the brutal making sport of our partner, even humiliation, often just expresses our unreadiness to admit to ourselves the full depth of our attachment… Perhaps, the artist of irony par excellence was none other than Mozart — suffice it to recall his masterpiece Cosi fan tutte. The trio "Soave il vento", of course, can be read in a cynical way, as the faked imitation of a sad farewell which barely conceals a glee at the coming erotic intrigue; the ironic point of it is that the subjects who sing it, inclusive of don Alfonzo, the manipulator who staged the event, are nonetheless authentically taken with the sadness of the situation — this unexpected authenticity is what eludes the grasp of the cynicist.

In a first approach, cynicism may appear to involve a much more radical distance than irony: is irony not a benevolent ridicule "from above", from within the confines of the symbolic order, i.e. the distance of a subject who views the world from the elevated position of the big Other towards those who are enticed by vulgar earthly pleasures, an awareness of their ultimate vanity, while cynicism relies on the "earthly" point-of-view which undermines "from below" our belief in the binding power of the Word, of the symbolic pact, and advances the substance of enjoyment as the only thing that really matters — Socrates versus Diogenes the Cynicist? The true relationship is, however, the reverse: from the right premise that "the big Other doesn't exist", i.e. that the symbolic order is a fiction, the cynicist draws the wrong conclusion that the big Other doesn't "function", that its role can simply be discounted — due to his failure to notice how the symbolic fiction nonetheless regulates his relationship to the real of enjoyment, he remains all the more enslaved to the symbolic context that defines his access to the Thing- Enjoyment, caught in the symbolic ritual he publicly mocks. This, preciely, is what Lacan has in mind with his "les non-dupes errent": those who are not duped by the symbolic fiction are most deeply in error. The ironist's apparently "softer" approach, on the other hand, far more effectively unbinds the nodal points that hold together the symbolic universe, i.e. it is the ironist who effectively assumes the non-existence of the Other.

- Slavoj Zizek, "From Joyce the Symptom to the Symptom of Power"

Symptoms of Increased Repression

..."a cynic doesn't believe in words (in the "symbolic efficiency"), but only in the real of jouissance..."

-Slavoj Zizek, "From Joyce the Symptom to the Symptom of Power"

Living a Slow Motion Life in a Fast Motion World

Astigmatism

To Ezra Pound;With much friendship and admiration and some differences of opinion

The Poet took his walking-stick
Of fine and polished ebony.
Set in the close-grained wood
Were quaint devices;
Patterns in ambers,
And in the clouded green of jades.
The top was of smooth, yellow ivory,
And a tassel of tarnished gold
Hung by a faded cord from a hole
Pierced in the hard wood,
Circled with silver.
For years the Poet had wrought upon this cane.
His wealth had gone to enrich it,
His experiences to pattern it,
His labour to fashion and burnish it.
To him it was perfect,
A work of art and a weapon,
A delight and a defence.
The Poet took his walking-stick
And walked abroad.

Peace be with you, Brother.

The Poet came to a meadow.
Sifted through the grass were daisies,
Open-mouthed, wondering, they gazed at the sun.
The Poet struck them with his cane.
The little heads flew off, and they lay
Dying, open-mouthed and wondering,
On the hard ground.
"They are useless. They are not roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother. Go your ways.

The Poet came to a stream.
Purple and blue flags waded in the water;
In among them hopped the speckled frogs;
The wind slid through them, rustling.
The Poet lifted his cane,
And the iris heads fell into the water.
They floated away, torn and drowning.
"Wretched flowers," said the Poet,
"They are not roses."

Peace be with you, Brother. It is your affair.

The Poet came to a garden.
Dahlias ripened against a wall,
Gillyflowers stood up bravely for all their short stature,
And a trumpet-vine covered an arbour
With the red and gold of its blossoms.
Red and gold like the brass notes of trumpets.
The Poet knocked off the stiff heads of the dahlias,
And his cane lopped the gillyflowers at the ground.
Then he severed the trumpet-blossoms from their stems.
Red and gold they lay scattered,
Red and gold, as on a battle field;
Red and gold, prone and dying.
"They were not roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother.
But behind you is destruction, and waste places.

The Poet came home at evening,
And in the candle-light
He wiped and polished his cane.
The orange candle flame leaped in the yellow ambers,
And made the jades undulate like green pools.
It played along the bright ebony,
And glowed in the top of cream-coloured ivory.
But these things were dead,
Only the candle-light made them seem to move.
"It is a pity there were no roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother. You have chosen your part.

- Amy Lowell, Astigmatism from "Sword Blades & Poppy Seed" (1874-1925)

“Poetry is prose in slow motion.”― Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist

One of Ebenezer's Xmas Spirits...

Male Desire & the Objectification of the Partial Object to Fetish

The Works of Francis Picabia

...and you can bet that it's ALL about control

SoCal Memories

Ethereal dweller, neath southern skies,
With shining, yellow hair
Where gloom awing with wishing flies
And life is fond and fair.

What gardens of the gods aglow
Were tended with thy care
Before this summer land could know
Thy spirit in the air?

Thou siren near the silvery shore
Of verdant flowery lands
The gods bend down to love thee more--
To kiss thy dimpled hands!

On rugged Sierra Madra's crest
The tall dark pines are sighing
That they might clasp thy virgin breast
Where moonbeams find thee lying.

And on the hardened ocean beach
The waves are laughing, foaming--
Then ever strive to nearer reach
Where thou art, ever roaming.

The orange trees stretch out their arms
With golden profferings laden
And nodding flowers bend low their charms
To worship such a maiden.

- Benjamin Franklin Field

Hippy Happy Days

How can we become 'reborn', liberated from the shackles that tie us to the ruling ideology? John Frankenheiomer's "Seconds" tells us the tragic story of a desperate middle aged man who gets to have a second life, but is unable to imagine an alternative. Zizek uses this and the scene of the mass orgy in "Zabriskie Point" as a starting point to explore how revolution is only possible if we are able to dream beyond our existing society.

'We are not simply submitted to our dreams, they just come from some unfathomable depths and we can't do anything about them. Our dreams stage our desires and our desires are not objective facts. We created them, we sustained them, we are responsible for them' says Zizek. "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology" shows us how cinema, as the art of dreams, reveals much about the form and status of our ideology.

- Press Package, "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology"

Super Hero - Expressing the Law's Jouissance

Jouissance and the Clinic

from Wikipedia

Lacan's contribution to the clinic is paramount in regard to the operation of jouissance in neurosis, perversion and psychosis. The three structures can be viewed as strategies with respect to dealing with jouissance.

Neurosis

The neurotic subject does not want to sacrifice his/her castration to the jouissance of the Other (Écrits, 1977). It is an imaginary castration that is clung to in order not to have to acknowledge Symbolic castration, the subjection to language and its consequent loss of jouissance. The neurotic subject asks 'why me, that I have to sacrifice this castration, this piece of flesh, to the Other?' Here we encounter the neurotic belief that it would be possible to attain a complete jouissance if it were not forbidden and if it were not for some Other who is demanding his/her castration. Instead of seeing the lack in the Other the neurotic sees the Other's demand of him/her.

Perversion

The Pervert imagines him-/herself to be the Other in order to ensure his/her jouissance. The perverse subject makes him-/herself the instrument of the Other's jouissance through putting the object a in the place of the barred Other, negating the Other as subject. His/her jouissance comes from placing him-/herself as an object in order to procure the jouissance of a phallus, even though he/she doesn't know to whom this phallus belongs. Although the pervert presents him-/herself as completely engaged in seeking jouissance, one of his/her aims is to make the law present. Lacan uses the term père-version, to demonstrate the way in which the pervert appeals to the father to fulfil the paternal function.

Practice

The practice of psychoanalysis examines the different ways and means the subject uses to produce jouissance. It is by means of the bien dire, the well-spoken, where the subject comes to speak in a new way, a way of speaking the truth, that a different distribution of jouissance may be achieved. The analytic act is a cut, a break with a certain mode of jouissance fixed in the fantasy. The consequent crossing of the fantasy leaves the subject having to endure being alone with his/her own jouissance and to encounter its operation in the drive, a unique, singular way of being alone with one's own jouissance. The cut of the analytic act leaves the subject having to make his/her own something that was formerly alien. This produces a new stance in relation to jouissance.

Psychosis

In psychosis, jouissance is reintroduced in the place of the Other. The jouissance involved here is called jouissance of the Other, because jouissance is sacrificed to the Other, often in the most mutilating ways, like cutting off a piece of the body as an offering to what is believed to be the command of the Other to be completed. The body is not emptied of jouissance via the effect of the signifier and castration, which usually operate to exteriorise jouissance and give order to the drives.

In Schreber we see the manifestation of the ways in which the body is not emptied of jouissance. Shreber describes a body invaded by a jouissance that is ascribed to the jouissance of the Other, the jouissance of God.

The practice of psychoanalysis with the psychotic differs from that of the neurotic. Given that the psychotic is in the position of the object of the Other's jouissance, where the Uncontrolled action of the death drive lies, what is aimed at is the modification of this position in regard to the jouissance in the structure. This involves an effort to link in a chain, the isolated, persecuting signifiers in order to initiate a place for the subject outside the jouissance of the Other. Psychoanalysis attempts to modify the effect of the Other's jouissance in the body, according to the shift of the subject in the structure. The psychotic does not escape the structure, but there can be a modification of unlimited, deadly jouissance.

The Reality of the Virtual

Reprised

What Function Does Ideology Serve?

Ideology is the 'self-evident' surface structure whose function is to conceal the underlying 'unbalanced', 'uncanny' structure.

- Slavoj Zizek, "The Plague of Fantasies"

Sexual Differentiation in the Human Brain

A pioneering study has shown for the first time that the brains of men and women are wired up differently which could explain some of the stereotypical differences in male and female behaviour, scientists have

Researchers found that many of the connections in a typical male brain run between the front and the back of the same side of the brain, whereas in women the connections are more likely to run from side to side between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

This difference in the way the nerve connections in the brain are “hardwired” occurs during adolescence when many of the secondary sexual characteristics such as facial hair in men and breasts in women develop under the influence of sex hormones, the study found.

The researchers believe the physical differences between the two sexes in the way the brain is hardwired could play an important role in understanding why men are in general better at spatial tasks involving muscle control while women are better at verbal tasks involving memory and intuition.

Psychological testing has consistently indicated a significant difference between the sexes in the ability to perform various mental tasks, with men outperforming women in some tests and women outperforming men in others. Now there seems to be a physical explanation, scientists said.

“These maps show us a stark difference - and complementarity - in the architecture of the human brain that helps to provide a potential neural basis as to why men excel at certain tasks, and women at others,” said Ragini Verma, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“What we've identified is that, when looked at in groups, there are connections in the brain that are hardwired differently in men and women. Functional tests have already shown than when they carry out certain tasks, men and women engage different parts of the brain,” Professor Verma said.

The research was carried out on 949 individuals - 521 females and 428 males - aged between 8 and 22. The brain differences between the sexes only became apparent after adolescence, the study found.

A special brain-scanning technique called diffusion tensor imaging, which can measure the flow of water along a nerve pathway, established the level of connectivity between nearly 100 regions of the brain, creating a neural map of the brain called the “connectome”, Professor Verma said.

“It tells you whether one region of the brain is physically connected to another part of the brain and you can get significant differences between two populations,” Professor Verma said.

“In women most of the connections go between left and right across the two hemispheres while in men most of the connections go between the front and the back of the brain,” she said.

Because the female connections link the left hemisphere, which is associated with logical thinking, with the right, which is linked with intuition, this could help to explain why women tend to do better than men at intuitive tasks, she added.

“Intuition is thinking without thinking. It's what people call gut feelings. Women tend to be better than men at these kinds of skill which are linked with being good mothers,” Professor Verma said.

Many previous psychological studies have revealed significant differences between the sexes in the ability to perform various cognitive tests.

Men tend to outperform women involving spatial tasks and motor skills - such as map reading - while women tend to better in memory tests, such as remembering words and faces, and social cognition tests, which try to measure empathy and “emotional intelligence”.

A separate study published last month found that the genes expressed in the human brain did so differently in men and women. Post-mortem tests on the brain and spinal cord of 100 individuals showed significant genetic differences between the sexes, which could account for the observed gender differences in neurological disorders, such as autism, according to scientists from University College London.

For instance, one theory of autism, which is affects about five times as many boys as girls, is that it is a manifestation of the “extreme male brain”, which is denoted by a failure to be able to show empathy towards others.

The latest study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the differences in the male and female “connectomes” develop during at the same age of onset of the gender differences seen in psychological tests.

The only part of the brain where right-left connectivity was greater in men than in women was in the cerebellum, an evolutionary ancient part of the brain that is linked with motor control.

“It's quite striking how complementary the brains of women and men really are,” said Rubin Gur of Pennsylvania University, a co-author of the study.

“Detailed connectome maps of the brain will not only help us better understand the differences between how men and women think, but it will also give us more insight into the roots of neurological disorders, which are often sex related,” Dr Gur said.

Ignavus

Ignavus satrapam dedecet inclytum
Somnus qui populo multifido præest.
Dum Dauni veteris filius armiger
Stratus purpureo procubuit strato
Audax Euryalus, Nisus et impiger
Invasere cati nocte sub horrida
Torpentes Rutilos castraque Volscia
Hinc codes oritur clamor et absonus

---

Indolence dishonors the renowned ruler
Who commands the many concerns of the people.
While the warrior son of old Daunus lay on purple
Sheets, bold Euryalus and nimble Nisus
Artfully entered the Volscian camp
Of the torpid Rutilians at midnight.
Thus made fools, they arose crying in discord . . . - Milton
Jean-Baptiste Roman, "Nisus and Euryalus" (1827)

Passing On

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

-Lord Byron (1788--1824)

Capturing the "others" Attention

Responsibility for My Desire

What we encounter here is the properly perverse attitude of adopting the position of the pure instrument of the big Other's Will: it's not my responsibility, it's not me who is effectively doing it, I am merely an instrument of the higher Historical Necessity… The obscene jouissance of this situation is generated by the fact that I conceive of myself as exculpated for what I am doing: isn't it nice to be able to inflict pain on others with the full awareness that I'm not responsible for it, that I merely fulfill the Other's Will…this is what Kantian ethics prohibits. This position of the sadist pervert provides the answer to the question: How can the subject be guilty when he merely realizes an "objective", externally imposed necessity? By subjectively assuming this "objective necessity," i.e. by finding enjoyment in what is imposed on him. So, at its most radical, Kantian ethics is NOT "sadist," but precisely what prohibits assuming the position of a Sadean executioner.

- Slavoj Zizek, "Kant and Sade: The Ideal Couple"

De-Manned or De-Sired

Either Kill your Father or Cut Off Your Own Balls!

Patricide?

Visual Associative Agnosia vs Neglect

1024 Hz Clock

Consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic and hence also what is most unfinished and unstrong. Consciousness gives rise to countless errors that lead an animal or man to perish sooner than necessary, "exceeding destiny," as Homer puts it. If the conserving association of the instincts were not so very much more powerful, and if it did not serve on the whole as a regulator, humanity would have to perish of its misjudgments and its fantasies with open eyes, of its lack of thoroughness and its credulity—in short, of its consciousness; rather, without the former, humanity would long have disappeared.

Before a function is fully developed and mature it constitutes a danger for the organism, and it is good if during the interval it is subjected to some tyranny. Thus consciousness is tyrannized—not least by our pride in it. One thinks that it constitutes the kernel of man; what is abiding, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him. One takes consciousness for a determinate magnitude. One denies it growth and its intermittences. One takes it for the "unity of the organism."

This ridiculous overestimation and misunderstanding of consciousness has the very useful consequence that it prevents an all too fast development of consciousness. Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it; and things haven't changed much in this respect. To this day the task of incorporating knowledge and making it instinctive is only beginning to dawn on the human eye and is not yet clearly discernible; it is a task that is seen only by those who have comprehended that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all our consciousness relates to errors.

- Nietzsche, "The Gay Science"

Puccini, "Tosca"

I think I'm in love, again!

Palazzo Farnese - The Master Signifier

Visual-Verbal Associative Agnosia

Fear AND Delight!

You fall in love. And it’s crucial [to know] that in English and in French we use this expression; you “fall” in love. You lose control. I claim that love, the experience of passionate love, is the most elementary metaphysical experience, it’s a platonic experience. In the sense of, you lead your easy, daily life, you meet [up with] friends, go to parties and whatever, everything is normal, maybe here and there a one-night stand, and then you passionately fall in love, [and] everything is ruined. The entire balance of your life is lost. Everything is subordinated to this one person. I almost cannot imagine in normal daily life, outside war and so on, a more violent experience than that of love. And I think [this is] which is why all the “advisers” that we [supposedly] need today are trying precisely to domesticate or erase this excess of love. It’s as if love is too poisonous and then they, [i.e.] all the marriage and dating agencies, tell you that the trick is how to find yourself in love without falling in love. This idea came to me when on one of my Transatlantic flights I read one of those stupid airline journals and there was a text in there, in big letters, claiming: “We will enable you to find yourself in love, without the fall”, without this dangerous exposure. And I think this fits perfectly to our daily narcissistic metaphysics. You know the old story that I repeat all the time; we want coffee without caffeine, we want beer without alcohol, and we want love without its dangerous moment, where you get lost.

- Slavoj Zizek, "Love as a Political Category"

What's Your Hemispheric Dominant Functional Specialty? The Overall Whole? Or the Detailed Part?

He has blue eyes
She has brown.
He lives in the country
She lives in town.
He runs
She walks.
He listens
She talks.
He is flighty
She is faithful.
He likes coffee
She likes tea.
He likes you...

But not me.

-Ellen Ryder, "Opposites"

Left - Audition; Right - Vision
Now "share" your dominant results... across the corpus callosum... or NOT!

More Songs of Innocence and Experience

But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.

Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: its own will, willeth now the spirit; his own world winneth the world's outcast.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow.

-Nietzsche, "Zarathustra"

A Song of Innocence
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lambs back was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair

And so he was quiet. & that very night.
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind.
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
---
A Song of Experience
A little black thing in the snow,
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

"Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

"And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."

-William Blake , "The Chimney Sweeper"

Counting Blessings

Home at Last

Man Divided into Parts

Seeding Heroes

Badges? Badges? We ain't got no stinkin' BADGES!

On the Meaning of Life

Outcasts and Freaks Building a New Society of Their Own

Heroes/Superheroes Arise when Ordinary People can no longer do "it"

-Slavoj Zizek, "On Marxist Superheroes and Comics"

Inaugural Post