It appears we will have no chance to eradicate the word, "truth", from our collective dictionary. Who looks seriously at definitions except philosophers and the bearers of superhuman dogma? Feuerbach spoke not of truth in words but also of the "eye and ear, the hand and foot":
but for that very reason it is antagonistic to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman, i.e., anti-human, anti-natural religion and speculation. It does not, as I have already said elsewhere, regard the pen as the only fit organ for the revelation of truth, but the eye and ear, the hand and foot; it does not identify the idea of the fact with the fact itself, so as to reduce real existence to an existence on paper, but it separates the two, and precisely by this separation attains to the fact itself; it recognises as the true thing, not the thing as it is an object of the abstract reason, but as it is an object of the real, complete person, and hence as it is itself a real, complete thing. This philosophy does not rest on an Understanding per se, on an absolute, nameless understanding, belonging one knows not to whom, but on the understanding of a person; – though not, I grant, on that of man enervated by speculation and dogma; ... it places philosophy in the negation of philosophy, i.e., ... it appears to be no philosophy at all.– The Essence of Christianity, 1841
R. D. Lange spoke of the validity of experience: in as much as our experiences are invalidated, we become invalids. There is also the discouragement of experience in the first place, a sort of educated, instituted or qualified helplessness. So invalidity works both ways; invalids are invalidated.
Science itself claims only to invalidate the false, like justice, to reject the null hypothesis beyond all reasonable doubt. Well, religion eliminates all doubt, science is satisfied with paring it down to a minimum. The key to the juxtaposition of law and science is reason, or more correctly, claims to it. Not truth as absolute, but truth as a matter of probability, and we see in each case this probability is still subject to consensus – objectivity is a pipe-dream. "And what", you might ask "is that burning smell coming from the bowl?" Whatever method of rationality or discovery is entailed, agreement is thought necessary to establish official truth. It's politics, and as Lange insisted, the establishment of truth is a matter of political persuasion – hence, there must always be a schism between the establishment and the bodies it claims to represent or control. Truth always produces invalids.
Now, it is one thing to maintain. with Weber. Thomas, and the other giants of Sociology, that to understand human action requires us lo attend systematically to its subjective component: what people perceive, feel, believe, and want. But it is quite another thing lo exaggerate this sound idea by maintaining that action is nothing but subjective. That extravagance leads to sociological Berkcleyanism (the allusion being, of course, to the English champion of philosophical idealism, not to an American geographic or academic pIace). Such total subjectivism conceives of social reality as consisting only in social definitions, perceptions, labels, beliefs, assumptions, or ideas, as expressed, for example, in full generality by the criminological theorist, Richard Quinney, when he writes that “We have NO reason to believe in the objective existence of anything.‘” A basic idea is distorted into error and a great injustice is visited upon W. L Thomas whenever his theorem is thus exaggerated.
Exaggeration of a seminal truth produces its own brand of error. Total subjectivism, which maintains that only social delinitions of the situation (or other subjective equivalents) determine the character of human action and its consequences, in effect manages to transform the Thomas Theorern into this fallacious maxim:
If men do not define situations as real, they are not real in their consequences.
. . .To correct the imbalance that comes with total subjectivism and to restore the objective components of social situations to their indispensable place, we pIainly need this counterpart to the Thomas Theorem:
And if men do not define real situations as real, they are nevertheless real in their consequences.– Robert K. Merton, (1995) The Thomas Theorem and The Matthew Effect p.396-7
But really, just how real are some of the "real" situations we habitually enter into in the first place? There is always the Queen Mab syndrome to consider.
For the scientist, it is not reality or truth per se, but the assassination of falsity and error, the virtuous assassination that is his forté. How easily this logic turns on itself and exposes the moral justification for slaughter anyway – historic christianity, high school biology, the modern state. Truth has not even loosened the grip of belief and faith except in totalitarian regimes, where all understand that truth is just a decree of the whimsical, but powerful – the valiant prince holds all the permission slips, dispensing validity, like death and parking vouchers, in increments. "You may proceed to dissect your frog, now!" Actually, truth is not a concern in such systems, as experience itself is forbidden without proper authorization. Truth only becomes important in relationships of power or control which tolerate a certain degree of experimentation, and authority is always ready to step in to invalidate any experience it may find threatening, or for no other reason than to keep in practice[1]. The grand illusion: the hegemonic helpless horde justifies authority as the grandest of self-fulfilling prophesy. How soon it was forgotten that before the institution of control forces (a redundancy?), there was no horde, mob nor even a student body.
But if we look from a superstitious perch, that is, from a stand high up in the tree, in a blind waiting for a passing buck but not for that which is (to the highest degree) not-buck, not to know the false before we let our arrow fly true may err, but only on the side of expediency. That is, that we disregard the principle of opposition altogether (not even to speak of false opposition or dialectics), for the not-deer no more defines our target than would a blindfold or introspection as auto-vivisection in search of a morsel reminiscent of venison. Or the 'law' of the process of elimination, that if we must calculate all the false cities we may never get home to Detroit in time for supper. What is it they say? The truth strikes home? Even this only suggests a vague sense of familiarity, a limbic vagal arousal or a sudden urge to find a toilet.
In the real world of 1928, the Thomas Theorem was published in sociological literature as an aphoristic side-note to an anecdote about a paranoid man driven to murder passing strangers seen to be talking to themselves. Basically reiterating a thing every child knows instinctively, the theorem (so-called after the fact, by an inspired Robert Merton) suggested that, since even delusion produces real consequences, why the compulsive obsession over truth & reality other than to establish a motive for judicious incarceration? Well, the second part of the question is my own. But is it not already apparent that nothing unreal can exist, whether or not one defines the situation? Perhaps negation is the only positive afirmation. This theorem is more like a law of nature in that it can be glimpsed lurking behind child-play, Hoodoo magic, modern medicine and in fact (a sic fact, to be sure) the entire society of the spectacle. The prophetic horse, Clever Hans, pretty much showed that it is not only humans who can play at this game, Halley's comet not-withstanding. But that was a Fortean horse, of course, and easily relegated to superstition.
What has been labeled superstition is merely non-dialectical, non-euclidean thinking, and in a big verse, that embraces just about everything but "the good, beautiful & true" thought itself; a verse where fact is a word for a point of interest (or its placeholder) and truth is the experience you then take along with you – a trophy, perhaps, but not something to lose your head over, or anyone else's for that matter. Obviously, other hunters should wear loud orange vests. Only Hollywood would consider plastic poop a prop. Dada would use the real thing, and all our senses are offended. Maybe flamboyance only says, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde, "Make a spectacle of yourself!" Well, that may be so, but not when you're on the hunt or have secrets to protect.
In a world whose chief concern is security, secrecy is only needed to cover the phenomenal consequences of one's experience. R. D. Lange said in a world whose chief concern is security, it is experience itself which must be invalidated. In a world which was not just one big lie after another, would a concern for truth ever even come up? Etymologically, the word refered to "trust", and that is certainly situationally provocative or easily disproved.
Truth as a function of eclectic experience (what other kind is there beyond regimentation and vicarious voyeurism?) is not a matter of re-inventing the wheel for yourself every time you need a quick get-away but digging through the garbage for something new. There are always more chips than arrow-heads. By ignoring the detritus and concentrating on the point, one might, like an archaeologist trained in the old school, miss seeing the target altogether. Such steadfast alienation is David Bowie's groupies refusing to even listen to Jethro Tull. Patriotism. Ian Anderson is beside the point.
You've completely lost me here. Ian Anderson is the target, Bowie fans are the detritus, and Bowie is the arrowhead? Bowie is the target, his groupies are the detritus, Jethro Tull is the arrowhead? I can't put it together or make any sense out of it even if I do.
That's the point. It's complicated and not amenable to reductive calculus. Bowie fans are the economists, largely from the left. Jethro Tull is Bakunin. Ian Anderson is Lao Tze. It doesn't matter. Whatever turns your screw. Tull's fans think Jethro's a real guy and are too young to know who Ian Anderson is. Ian is defined away because the world is dialectic and there are no creative culprits, hidden thirds or tag-alongs allowed. Only brand names. Metalica bears little resemblance to old Celtic tunes, and now Ian Anderson is completely superfluous. There was this smoking cigar and even I can play those grunge licks on my crummy guitar. Funny because if Brian Wilson was Mozart, Ian would be Bacharini.
Among the detritus of obscurity, Ian finds his trusty old mates, Pete, Roger and Eric of The Who and The Animals, the authentic targets of interest from a time when Delta Blues was not confined to New Orleans or three minute 45's, but flourished and loudly variegated in every smoky back street tavern and lyrics were bringing up the scepter of beat poetry (or at least becoming radically meaningful). The Beatles are only the spectacle's witless diversion. Not really bad boys at all. See? We dressed them in suits!
LP means six times more work to produce a single commodity. All eyes turn to the economists, completely missing the point that music is supposed to be enjoyed rather than calculated. There is a matching pattern in Bluegrass besides the fact that Beatles harmonies early on, somewhat resembled the Everly Brothers. Homer & Jethro (no relation to the Tulls) are who and the animals, only a bit older. They were right there when the old country tunes were speeded up to fit on a three minute 78 rpm disc. Everything thereafter changed, in three minute increments. All the important parts were trimmed away, and then excluded altogether. Truth is always a process of speed and exclusion if we are to retain any sense of commodification. Even so, bluegrass makes some pretty awesome sounds.
Like leaning on the needle making the heart go skip, a-skip, a-skip, helpless alienation is a certain position clinging to the trunk of a single tree in a forest, as if immersed in the bark trying to resemble a branch. We aren't so stupid as to think there are no other trees, but they are superfluous, and what is flourishing is not our concern – "ooh the temptation!". This trunk is our personal genre. Exploration without a lifeline connected to a productive cavity like it was a shiny arrow well stuck into the vein, is unimaginable. A pre-trimmed, three-minute tree, not all soppy like an egg or strenuous like productive activity – "ooh the responsibility!". We fear dropping out of any secure nest. There be dragons. We need our rest. Am I making myself clear now?
"Truth is the utopia. A utopia is an imaginary description which ultimately should be reached after following a certain path but is never going to be reached. This seems to fit the whole idea of science in which the reach for the truth is the central and main aim and a theory stands till another theory seems to reach the truth better."– Friso J. van Houdt, In search for clarity a bunch of definitions reaches the sky
"Then Give me Fiction or give me Death!"
If we concentrate on the rich context of myth-time narratives, even as they have been 'corrupted' for a modern audience, most of whom, we suspect are children, we see two connected themes flowing through both history and prehistory. These are the notion of the self-fulfilling prophesy formalised by Merton after the aphorism by Thomas, and the Be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenario played out so often in literature and oral tradition that one might have suspected wishing itself would have by now been abolished as not only preposterous, but dangerously so. If we look at all narrative as parable, then a moral easily emerges: "Don't fuck with mother nature and she won't fuck with you. Elsewise, prepare to defend yourself, rogue!" These words are applicable to everyone, irregardless of class or station (not just in the sense of a power station).
The recognition of fates should not produce a sense of fatalism until all is already lost. Even then, some have risen from the certainty of a death-bed confession to live another year or two. It just means that one can adapt (as a principle of conservation) rather than force the issue, force the world to accommodate to us by meddling with its operating parameters in grand destructive gestures, like removing mountains so that some fat cat can barbecue a burger on a climate-controlled patio. Such a stand is ultimately self-defeating. It only means we may not be the all-sapient species we let on for all these years, assassinating false gods and then thinking we could become them by merely re-defining the situation. Modern narrative erased the bumbling and comedic aspect of the Trickster and replaced the heroic aspect with ourself – Masters of the Universe, RPG™, forgetting altogether that Trickster is also Destroyer.
This is no hypocrisy to a sense of insurrectionism: insurgents are always under an occupation army so blossom-like capability in fertile soil to become Feuerbach's "real, complete person" is already out of the question. If it's not an occupation, colonial or otherwise, it's just a mundane war between states and we all know these do nothing to the overall march (literally) of civilisation – they are it, according to its own self-written histories. Insurrection's a matter of self-defense, a will to live despite the odds, and living is a matter of adaptive malleability or it is nothing. Malleability is the saving grace which grants wishes by encouraging choice, even spontaneity in our movements. This has nothing to do with accommodating to a system of power, like the darwinian moralists would have us believe, but transgressing in, through and around it, like a superweed already saturated with enough herbicide to render any further application ineffectual. The main proponent of this theorem was Rasputin, the Intransigent Russian Peasant shot dead by the British secret service for obstructing the Bolsheviks and industrial expansion into the Eastern Steppes.
Utopia was once called "liberty", before that became a dead metaphor as well. The sense, of course, is in sin, the ability to transgress objects by touch (or other receptive organ: the "eye and ear, the hand and foot"). Virtue only seeks to destroy them, and this becomes so fun, or at least habitual, that they must ever create new objects ripe for destruction, new reasons for slaughter, new laws ripe for the breaking. Forget the meek, the righteous will destroy the planet even in their attempts to save it. All us sinners have ever wished for is to be left the fuck alone. Take truth out of the picture, and utopia resides no longer in fiction in the same fashion that losing the insistence on a distinction between governance and organized crime confines both to the realm of a single ambidextrous dystopia Perlman labeled "Leviathon". What Lao Tze did not say (or did he?) was "Take away truth, justice and morality, and the mass horde will itself disappear" The beauty of the SFP is that, like Poe's Imp of the Perverse, it is "occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good". "Leave us be!" need not be an epitaph, but a wandering vagary. You might just catch it – psychosomatically.
note: [1] hence, there is neither structural nor functional difference between legitimate government and organised crime – opium is the legitimate solution to over 700 legitimate problems, the other three uses being illegal, all the while the financial beneficiaries from both legitimate and illegitimate use are one and the same, as are the large-scale horticultural and manufacturing sources of the product. And remember, even if you have a legitimate problem to which an opiate would be a legitimate solution, your participation in the network will have equally dire consequences without the proper authorization, one way or the other. More folks have died in the Opium wars than all the Crusades put together.
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