Missing at the occupation? Mutual Aid is neither theoretical device, literary talking point, eutopean desire nor photo-op

... but it may well be, the excluded middle, a space emergeable, we're trained not to see, always behind safety-orange fencing:

I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. In grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its plural is said to be We, but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary. Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but fine. The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to cloak his loot.
ME, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.

– Ambrose Beirce

The body, defined politically, is precisely organized by a perspective that is not one’s own and is, in that sense, already elsewhere, for another, and so in departure from oneself. On this account of the body in political space, how do we make sense of those who can never be part of that concerted action, who remain outside the plurality that acts? ...are the destitute outside of politics and power, or are they in fact living out a specific form of political destitution? ,,,if we claim that the destitute are outside of the sphere of politics – reduced to depoliticized forms of being – then we implicitly accept that the dominant ways of establishing the political are right....Such a view disregards and devalues those forms of political agency that emerge precisely in those domains deemed pre-political or extra-political. So one reason we cannot let the political body that produces such exclusions furnish the conception of politics itself, setting the parameters for what counts as political - is that within the purview established by the Polis those outside its defining plurality are considered as unreal or unrealized and, hence, outside the political as such.

– Judith Butler

"There’s also a clear picture of this nightmare-plain between the theorizing class and the theorized one. The rise of the tablet gives rise to a whole new kind of disfigurement, filth and procedure, a totally defaced face.

"These young women appear to be young women like many other young women. They wear their clothes like many other young women, like how I too have that gray tank top, how she, too, has that striped shirt, how my daughter, too, has that backpack. The fencing around them is the fencing used for snowdrifts. The young women are like weather; they are a kind of ubiquity; they are, on first appearance, a bland and not-very-particular thing. You can turn off the sound and see the young women like a drift behind the safety-orange fencing. They are the ordinary as it is merely obstructed, but not, beyond appearance, contained. There are cameras and cars and elaborately costumed figures of authority. There are people looking towards and people looking away. There are people walking past. If I suspend, for a second, my familiarity with plastic safety-orange fencing, I can think that maybe the safety-orange fencing used for holes in the ground and snow drifts in New York City is so powerful that no human can move past it. Perhaps, in New York City, the safety-orange plastic fencing has a unique power, some electric inviolability or steel-like strength, and that the young women who otherwise appear ordinary are, in fact, a hole through which the other citizens might plummet. This inviolability of New York City’s orange plastic fencing could be why no older woman rushes forward to be among the younger women and hold them like as I would hold my daughter (also a young woman like other young women) or like I, myself, would want at that moment to be held. It could be why no young man or no young woman their lovers would rush forward to shield these young women with their own lovers-bodies, or why no older men (like fathers or uncles) roar. There is fat, bald, middle-aged man like many other fat, bald, middle-aged men (dressed in an elaborate costume of authority), and he is staring at the young women as they fall. His face is turned toward them, but I do not think he is weeping. When he turns his face to the camera he is not weeping, but the young woman in the gray tank top (I have that tank top) is wailing; she is in pain and on her knees. No middle-aged man is crying. No middle-aged man rushes toward the other middle-aged men to stop them. Some man is yelling “police brutality” and “police brutality.” There are three people taking pictures, then four people taking pictures. There are the old and young people taking pictures. There are many cameras in many hands, but there are not hands on the young women to comfort them, and there are not hands on the men of the law."

– Anne Boyer, These Young Women

Unreasonably cheap energy is running out, climate conditions are changing radically, paradoxical economy of constant growth will bankrupt itself, governmental fascism will be declared, racial breeding is practiced to embryos, genetic manipulation will get out of hand, Coup d´état of racistic red necks will happen in the name of revolution, the language loses its meaning, virtual schizophrenia is getting pandemic among the Internet users, obsessed disciples of Tony Robins will get at each other´s throats in the search of lost childhood, fourth world war is waiting at the gates, psychedelic-communistic revolution will fly in the ring like a freshly whiten towel in a heavy weight boxing match while the master is beating the breath out of his competition, heavenly escalator is transporting Jesus down in between the supermarkets while aliens will return to planet earth to complete their work of creation, dystopies and utopies will shake hands, up and down will change the place, emerged birds will withdraw back to the shells. Shit is about to hit the fan, even though a good life needs just bearable conditions and a hand full of material mixed with a drop of good will. We are living strange times – are we? But why?

– baltic herring

The Facticity of Factions

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

...As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

...The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

– James Madison, 1787

:The challenge is an old one, oh "democratic" lords of the autocratic republic. We have been dreaming of freedom, we have talked of liberty, we have aspired to a better world, and you jailed us, you clubbed us, you deported us, you murdered us whenever you could. Now that the great war, waged to replenish your purses, and build a pedestal to your saints, is over, nothing better can you do to protect your stolen millions, and your usurped fame, than to direct all the power of the murderous institutions you created for your exclusive defense, against the working multitudes rising to a more human conception of life. The jails, the dungeons you reared to bury all protesting voices, are now replenished with languishing conscientious workers, and never satisfied, you increase their number ever day.

It is history of yesterday that your gunmen were shooting and murdering unarmed masses by the wholesale; it has been the history of every day in your regime; and now all prospects are even worse.

Do not expect us to sit down and pray and cry. We accept your challenges and mean to stick to our war duties. We know that all you do is for your defense as a class; we know also that the proletariat has the same right to protect itself, since their press has been suffocated, their mouths muzzled; we mean to speak for them the voice of dynamite, through the mouth of guns."

– History is a Weapon

In October 1918, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1918, a law that expanded the list of activities that defined someone as an anarchist and justified deportation. In turn, Galleani and his followers distributed a flyer in February 1919 that said:

"Deportation will not stop the storm from reaching these shores. The storm is within and very soon will leap and crash and annihilate you in blood and fire....We will dynamite you!"

– wiki

Magic, Ignorance, General Strike

What is to be done to replace the departing religion? As the worker believes no longer in miracles, can he perhaps be induced to believe in lies? And so learned economists, academicians, merchants, and financiers have contrived to introduce into science the bold proposition that property and prosperity are always the reward of labour! It would be scarcely decent to discuss such an assertion. When they pretend that labour is the origin of fortune, economists know perfectly well that they are not speaking the truth. They know as well as the Socialists that wealth is not the product of personal labour, but of the labour of others: they are not ignorant that the runs of luck on the Exchange and the speculations which create great fortunes have no more connection with labour than the exploits of brigands in the forests; they dare not pretend that the individual who has five thousand pounds a day, just what is required to support one hundred thousand persons like himself, is distinguished from other men by an intelligence one hundred thousand times above the average. It would be scandalous to discuss this sham origin of social inequality. It would be to be a dupe, almost an accomplice, to waste time over such hypocritical reasoning. 

... If capital retains force on its side, we shall all be the slaves of its machinery, mere bands connecting iron cogs with steel and iron shafts. If new spoils, managed by partners only responsible to their cash books, are ceaselessly added to the savings already amassed in bankers' coffers, then it will be vain to cry for pity, no one will hear your complaints. The tiger may renounce his victim, but bankers' books pronounce judgments without appeal. (Reclus, 1895, Evolution and Revolution)

Since the revolutionary overthrow of religion by the enlightenment, truth has come to be known as that which is determined rather than that which is given. That which is determined is that which is calculated. The last casualty was the truism, "might makes right". It is now "right makes might", only now it is from the left side of things, in contradistinction to its position six months ago. We forget that determinism refers to a cause-effect relation (the former must precede the latter before the collision can occur which sinks the eight-ball) and as well the application of force, hence, "he turneth the screw with a much determined grimace". There was a circle, but we went no where but further in. Bound and determined, might and right still dance together, they've only exchanged leads.

Some will conclude there is, thus, no escape from religion, and Mab was only just another queen, but in her time, there was at least gifting all around, and a circle refered to a group with no sides, a coven (a 'coming together'). Time maybe to think of a 'circle of interest' as an elipse, where there be no center at all? Without a center, both might and right disappear like a flash in the pan at sunset, and no one is necessarily on the same page except the flat earth society.

The greatest weapon we hold is our ignorance – to ignore advice from perverse imps and go our own way brought an end for Queen Mab. According to legend, one little general strike and she up and disapeared. Perhaps it could bring her back in time? Not likely. At least not immediately, but to thwack the impossibilists blocking our paths, we may need to practice a bit more, our own kind of magic.

Above all it is important both for them and for ourselves to get rid of the language of despair.

There are many ways of entering upon death without the vulgar shedding of blood. Perhaps the most convenient is to cease to live in any real sense, to give up the use of the mind, to come to the conclusion that there is nothing more to be known, to drift like a straw on the flood, to take our opinions ready made and repeat them like a parrot, to look contemptuously on all independent efforts and speculation; and although a return to old-world superstition be impossible, for we cannot resurrect the past, these dead in life pretend to be still of the flock of the faithful ... and soon they reach the end they have sought, the annihilation in themselves of every noble human quality. That is the real death; let the cessation of breath be swift or slow to follow, it only causes to be laid in a coffin an object that was long ago a corpse.

But as decided not to see, not to hear, as may be pessimists and men of pleasure--the worst, of the pessimists--they see that a change is brooding over the near future: like passengers in a ship making its way across a stormy sea they feel the trembling of the timbers, the vibration of the vessel on which they are voyaging, and spite of themselves are awe-struck by the possibility of imminent disaster. To-morrow throws its troublesome shadow over to-day: the "social question," or to use their own language, "social questions" stand well out in the foreground of their outlook, and they know that obstacles and delays, however caused, are all in vain to prevent a speedy solution. The new era is at the door, and the great problem demands to be settled and bids all other questions take a back seat.

[...]

It is even said, and I could not venture to call it a libel, that the majority of our scholarly youth are contented with things as they are, and that their great ambition is to indoctrinate society with conservatism, and surprise their friends with what they call the "moderation" of their views; in this respect they modestly claim to be wiser than their parents, who cannot deny to have in their young days shared the prevailing enthusiasm. A strange phenomenon is the sight of young men who boast of feeling tired of life, as if the inability to admire, to enjoy, and to be happy were a merit rather than a misfortune!

But it is quite true that in this way die the idle rich. Beyond a doubt our modern university youth, although naturally proud of having passed through the mill of many examinations, would be unable notwithstanding their extravagant pretensions to teach the workmen much in the sphere of study and thought. No, their business is to be pupils, not to give instruction. In great popular movements--such as that of the Commune--the students were very sparely represented, while workmen supplied in plenty both sinews and brains. Not was the question merely one of work and wages; the interests at stake were those of the whole nation, indeed of all mankind. At the present hour, when a new dispensation is about to be ushered in, when the young knights of reform are preparing for their task, it is not in the avenues of the schools that the questions uppermost in men's minds are discussed most intelligently and with the keenest insight. The graduate is not necessarily the philosopher, nor does a well-stored memory invariably accompany an enlightened understanding. Often the dry-as-dust schoolman is poor in wisdom beside the shrewd man of the world who has gathered here and there the countless facts from which he evolves a wealth of general ideas. Your scientific man may shut himself up in his laboratory as in a prison, and misunderstand the great world without; but the people always form a consistent theory of the universe, be it true or false.

... It is the demoralization of the excellent which become the horrible. ... it seems to us in harmony with human nature that in the period of blossoming adolescence, well-developed strength, and love uncalculating, the young can most brilliantly show what stuff they are made of through acts of courage, sacrifice (I read "risk"), and devotion. If public opinion only encourage them no deed will appear too difficult for their daring... What might we not achieve with these prodigious fountains of strength, sustained by euthusiasm? When the young will no longer have the filthy lucre to corrupt at its very source their ambition, they will move freely towards their ideal, without the disgust of having to despise themselves and to despise their work, when general applause will encourage them to devotedness, what will be the bold enterprise from which they will shrink?

Such is the ideal that we propose to youth. In pointing out to it a future of solidarity and altruism we pledge them our word that in that future every trace of pessimism will have disappeared from their minds. "Give yourselves." But "in order to give yourselves, you must belong to yourselves."

– Elisée Reclus, The Ideal and Youth, 1895

note: An ideal is no fixed idea, worse, no abstraction, and worse yet, no destination. It is only an impression (idea) accompanying a direction ("L"). It can be an experimental turning point. It is a bend toward the future for the pleasings of the present.

The General (Anti-Authoritarian) Assembly

"Do not repay evil with evil" is a fine enough sentiment fueling the dictates of the nonviolent well-equipped with moral authority. But even if we are to retain a moral, ethical or conscientious conviction, we should be clear on what we intend when playing with words such as "evil", "violence" or "order". To abstain from self-defense is certainly a suicidal gesture, the ultimate end in fashionable self-sacrifice. Should one wish to submit to torture, tyranny or trauma, where is the justification for any occupation or insurrection? The promise of better beer?

The clearest hypocrisy is demonstrated by the moralist who spouts mutual aid with the slogan "fraternity, equality & liberty", or even merely "solidarity", yet lays down arm-splayed or retreats with hands on ass as soon as the gendarmes arrive with a memo from the mayor, leaving trauma to be experienced by his friends who may not have the fortune of fleet feet and quick thinking. Even x-tians would call this "selfish and cowardly abandonment", yet who would dispute the notion that "there is nothing offensive in self-defense" beyond the happenstance that one has been placed into that predicament in the first place?

Clearly, self-defense must be tolerated else one would refrain from running away, a violent act against one's comrades who are left behind rather than against the pigs who threaten them, as much as is surrender which only prolongs the power of one's opressors. We must, of course, grant that the mass mayhem of a "general" scattering is a preferable strategy when confronting superior odds. Performed correctly, it opens the playing field for each constituent, it evens the odds just as does the mass assembly or general gathering: no one is more prone to assault than any other. Unity is strength, it is true, but so is dispersal in every direction – that is an occupation of everything.

Today's linguistic usage of "general assembly" seems a bit contorted for my taste. It is politicised, which is an inside-out orientation. Outside-in is no suitable substitute. If the assembly is to be ammenable to one and all, there should be no sides in the first place. Think of an orgy, the preeminent assembly, where in and out are in no opposition whatsoever, but repeated as frequently as the passions permit.

Historically, the assembly was a provisional or ad hoc gathering called up for its diversity of talent and opinion, among other useable qualities such as more arms to swing hammers (or sickles). The "council of elders" variation does not represent a seated institution, but folks with more standing experience in matters at hand than a lone one in a quandary can handle. It is the quanderer who calls it forth. It is only a provisional or fleeting advisorial (not adversarial) association. It may even be the case that the lone one has advice for "them" – a crasher of podiums or toppler of pedestals. Either way, it is a "take it or leave it" afair – consensus only applies for those who concede (is that common sense or condescension?).

Today's general assembly, however managed, is a self-appointed body dictating outwardly to the totality of bystanders. The executive funktion among an indeterminate populace is a government no matter what you call it. A government is, of course, a man-made structure (usually very tall or very broad) which functions to oversee and administer others.  It may produce greater good, whether that feels good for you or not. But like any party or gathering, the greatest good is only as much as one can take away from it. Otherwise, where's the fun?

– see Luigi Galleani, The Principal of Organization in Light of Anarchism

The Sole & its Sylph, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum

SYLPH, n. 
An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization. Sylphs were allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively, in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious. Sylphs, like fowls of the air, were male and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they had progeny they must have nested in accessible places, none of the chicks having ever been seen.

– Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1906

SELF, n. 
1. one's own personality, especially as derogatorily or clinically perceived by others 
2. one's own individual interests and provisional well-being 
3. a complete and individual personality, especially one that somebody recognizes as his or her own and with which there is a sense of ease, save provarication by quibbling rivalries
4. the set of organs and tissues that the body recognizes as its own and does not attack without provocation
5. Science Fiction has definitively proven that no two clones are identical.
6. (soul)-mated; like an old married couple, republicistic as well as democratic – "for the kids' sake" – along a line of mutual inertia and hard to disentangle (see "A Fool & Its Money is no substitute for a Boy & Its Dog" by M. Harlan Stirner).

"The same, sole self is a self-same soul;
one of a kind – like a rock 'n a role."

– The Other Dictionary, 2006

Genetics & Corporations

As with gods and other corporate bodies, the reason old folks so overwhelmingly go in for the idea of genetic determinism (and nature-over-nurture in general – as if one is exclusive of the other) is that it detracts from their own maleficent complicity in breaking, er, domesticating children and excuses their own inability to act any differently. Then there is the related oxymoron (on analogy with oxycodone, an oxygenated retard – see also: 'hot air' and 'backfire'), "pre-existing conditions", which is to say "under the influence of an environment yet to exist", which is also to say "in debted to future events unfruited in the past", unless, of course, the existence of which we are speaking is your own.  In light of the prevalence of disobedience, "pre-existing conditions" can only refer to the expedient amnesia (called "euphemism" in polite circles) regarding one's own arrearing.

Thinking and Thought

It is strange to find searchers coming here seeking thoughts, followers after truth seeking new lamps for old, right ideas for wrong. It seems fruitless to affirm that our business is to annihilate thought, to shatter the new lamps no less than the old, to dissolve ideas, the "right" as well as the "wrong". "It is a new play of artistry, some new paradox," they reflect, not comprehending that artistry and paradox are left as the defences of power not yet strong enough to comprehend. If a man has the power that comprehends, what uses has he left for paradox? If he sees a thing as it is, why must he needs describe it in terms of that which is not? Paradox is the refuge of the adventurous guesser: the shield of the oracle whose answer is not ready. Searchers should not bring their thoughts to us: we have no scruple in destroying their choicest, and giving them none in return. They would be well able to repair the depredations elsewhere, however, for nowhere else, save here, are thoughts not held sacred and in honour. Everywhere, from all sides, they press in thick upon men, suffocating life. All is thought and no thinking. We do the thinking: the rest of the world spin thoughts. If from the operation of thinking one rises up only with thoughts, not only has the thinking-process gone wrong: it has not begun. To believe that it has is as though one should imagine the work of digesting food satisfactorily carried through when the mouth has been stuffed with sand.

The process of thinking is meant to co-ordinate two things which are real: the person who thinks and the rest of the phenomenal world, the world of sense. Any part of the process which can be described in terms unrelated to these two – and only two – real parties in the process is redundant and pernicious, an unnecessary by-product which it would be highly expedient to eliminate. Thoughts, the entire world of ideas and concepts, are just these intruders and irrelevant excesses. Someone says, apropos of some change without a difference in the social sphere, "We are glad to note the triumph of progressive ideas." Another, "We rejoice in the fact that we are again returning to the ideas of honour and integrity of an earlier age." We say, leprosy or cholera for choice. Idea, idea, always the idea. As though the supremacy of the idea were not the subjection of men, slaves to the idea. Men need no ideas. They have no use for them (Unless indeed they are of the literary breed – then they live upon them by their power to beguile the simple). What men need is power of being, strength in themselves: and intellect which in the thinking process goes out as a scout, comparing, collating, putting like by like, or nearly like, is but the good servant which the individual being sends afield that he may the better protect, maintain and augment himself.

Thinking, invaluable as it is in the service of being, is, essentially a very intermittent process. It works only between whiles. In the nadir and zenith of men's experience it plays no part, when they are stupid and when they are passionate. Descartes' maxim "Cogito ergo sum," carried the weight it did and does merely because the longfelt influence of ideas had taken the virtue out of men's souls. Stronger men would have met it, not with an argument, but a laugh. It is philosophy turned turtle. The genesis of knowledge is not in thinking but in being. Thinking widens the limits of knowledge, but the base of the latter is in feeling. "I know" because "I am." The first follows the second and not contrariwise. The base – and highest reaches – of knowledge lie not in spurious thoughts, fine-drawn, not yet in the humble and faithful collecting of correspondences which is thinking, but in experienced emotion. What men may be, their heights and depths, they can divine only in experienced emotion. The vitally true things are all personally revealed, and they are true primarily only for the one to whom they are revealed. For the rest the revelation is hearsay. Each man is his own prophet. A man's "god" (a confusing term, since it has nothing to do with God, the Absolute – a mere thought) is the utmost emotional reach of himself: and is in common or rare use according to each individual nature. A neighbour's "god" is of little use to any man. It represents a wrong goal, a false direction.

We are accused of "finesse-ing with terms." No accusation could be wider off the mark. We are analysing terms; we believe, indeed, that the next work for the lovers of men is just this analysis of naming. It will go completely against the grain of civilisation, cut straight across culture: that is why the pseudo-logicians loathe logic – indeed, it will be a matter for surprise that one should have the temerity to name the word. So great a fear have the cultured of the probing of their claims that they are counselling the abandonment of this necessary instrument. They would prefer to retain inaccurate thinking which breeds thoughts, to accurate thinking which reveals facts and in its bright light annihilates the shadows bred of dimness, which are thoughts. Analysis of the process of naming: inquiry into the impudent word-trick which goes by the name of "abstraction of qualities": re-estimation of the form-value of the syllogism; challenging of the slipshod methods of both induction and deduction; the breaking down of closed systems of "classification" into what they should be – graded descriptions; these things are more urgently needed than thinkable in the intellectual life of today. The settlement of the dispute of the nominalist and realist schoolmen of the Middle Ages in favour of the former rather than the latter would have been of infinitely greater value to the growth of men than the discoveries of Columbus, Galileo and Kepler. It would have enabled them to shunt off into nothingness the mountain of culture which in the world of the West they have been assiduously piling up since the time of the gentle father of lies and deceit, Plato.

It is very easy, however, to understand why the conceptualists triumphed, and are still triumphing, despite the ravages they have worked on every hand. The concept begets the idea, and every idea installs its concrete authority. All who wield authority do it in the name of an idea: equality, justice, love, right, duty, humanity, God, the Church, the State. Small wonder, therefore, if those who sit in the seats of authority look askance at any tampering with names and ideas. It is a different matter from the questioning of one idea. Those who, in the name of one idea do battle against the power of another, can rely upon some support. Indeed, changing new lamps for old is the favourite form of intellectual excitement inasmuch as while it is not too risky, is not a forlorn hope, it yet ranges combatants on opposing sides with all the zest of a fight. But to question all ideas is to leave authoritarians without any foothold whatsoever. Even opposing authorities will sink differences and combine to crush an Ishmaelite who dares.

Accordingly, after three quarters of a thousand years, the nominalist position is where it was: nowhere, and all men are in thrall to ideas – culture. They are still searching for the Good, the Beautiful and the True. They are no nearer the realisation that the Good in the actual never is a general term, but always a specific, i.e. that which is "good for me" (or you, or anyone) varying with time and person, in kind and substance; that the Beautiful is likewise "beautiful for me" (or you, or anyone) varying with time and person, in kind and substance, measured by a standard wholly subjective; that the True is just that which corresponds: in certainties, mere verified observation of fact; in doubt, opinion as to fact and no more, a mere "I think it so" in place of "I find it so." As specifics, they are real: as generalisations, they are thoughts, spurious entities, verbiage representing nothing, and as such are consequently in high repute. The work of purging language is likely to be a slow one even after the battle of argument in its favour shall have been won. It is observable that egoists, for instance, use "should," "ought," and "must" quite regularly in the sense which bears the implication of an existing underlying "Duty." Denying authority, they use the language of authority. If the greatest possible satisfaction of self (which is a pleasure) is the motive in life, with whose voice does "Duty" speak? Who or what for instance lays it down that our actions must not be "invasive" of others? An effete god, presumably, whose power has deserted him, since most of us would be hard put to it to find action and attitudes which are not invasive. Seizing land – the avenue of life – is invasive: loving is invasive, and so is hating and most of the emotions. The emphasis accurately belongs on "defence" and not on "invasion" and defence is self-enjoined.

No, Duty, like the rest, is a thought, powerless in itself, efficient only when men give it recognition for what it is not and doff their own power in deference, to set at an advantage those who come armed with the authority of its name. And likewise with "Right." What is "right" is what I prefer and what you and the rest prefer. Where these "rights" overlap men fight it out; their power becomes umpire, their might is their right. Why keep mere words sacred? Since right is ever swallowed up in might why speak of right? Why seek to acquire rights when each right has to be matched by the might which first secures and then retains it? When men acquire the ability to make and co-ordinate accurate descriptions, that is, when they learn to think, the empire of mere words, "thoughts", will be broken, the sacred pedestals shattered, and the seats of authority cast down. The contests and achievements of owners of "powers" will remain.

– Dora Marsden, 1913

see as well – The Intellect and Culture

Humanism & Tenacity

Humanism

As a positive afirmation, humanism, contains the hypocrisy noted by Lenin's wife: "You love mankind but hate men!" Max Stirner may not have been the first (but was certainly the loudest) to whisper "Man is a spook". As the object of "greater good", Man, for Aristotle, is the state. Obviously, the call to worship humanity (like any other categorical imperative – a moral legislation deifying named categories just like the gods of Homer's day) eliminates any personal aesthetic involvement (aka "choice"), thereby cancelling any notion of affinity group beyond spatial proximity or a conspiratorial sacrifice.

The contradiction in "The Brotherhood of Man" should by now be obvious: Testosterone Rules. That is, rulership is tenaciously testaceous – a mere shell-game: "a fraudulent scheme for defrauding or deceiving people".

But suppose humanism was rephrased into the negative. It would read simply thus: "Don't be an asshole!" That, of course, must be a personal journey which can rarely be traveled alone. Another lesson from the ouroboros, demonstrating the obscene interest in one's own backside?

(And you thought I was going to use the "Dick" metaphor as a rule for measured men!)

Tenacity

Isn't every dictionary just an encyclopedic collection of conceded aphorisms? If western logic enframes our discourse, then, under the influence of any other logic (say, poetic, pataphoric or schizophrenic) every a priori truth is "really" just an a priori opinion at worst (every intellectual argument is over semantics; every theory is a specialised dictionary), a heuristic guide at best. Heurism is the illustration of a turning point, the acknowledgment of possibility, the generation of a question. Coherence within a tautology and consensus are only justifications for intransigence. Where is the voice of optimism toward transience? Every tautology outside of pure mathematics contains or generates hidden assumptions we may not even hold to. Purity is the fiction as well as fixation of the calculus. Pure mathematics is a spook. Pure theory is nonsense let loose from imperative dictionaries and books of grammar. Real meaning is likewise, therefore, phantasmagorical.

Another word for iconoclasty, a synonym found in no thesaurus, 'Pataphysics is the way out of constrained logic. "It's all absurd" does not well line up with "all is false, fiction and futile", that misapprehension of Jarry & Artaud by Albert Camus. The latter equation suggests the children should stop misbehaving as it is all pointless: to travel a neutral road, one goes nowhere. While not imperious on any point, that is precisely antonymical to any optimistic advice or encouragement. We must remember that deep down, or when all is said and done, all grace (the absurd fluke) is free, whether feted, fetid, fated or fantastic. Logic is the ligature around sets of nimble absurdities to create obstinate normality. What this sentiment hides is the alternative exposition that normality is merely the chance co-occurrence of commonalities. The terrain is the same either way. One expression promotes tenacious sedentism, the other transgression, which can be none other than 'running after possibilities'.

[note in plainspeak] IMPERATIVE: The imperial bequest "commanding, forceful and demanding the obedience and respect of others"

Intent and Accident, Controller and Controlled may be Bogus Gods:

no prime agent, no secondary automaton, no norm, no freak

The circle of interest

Aesthetics is the ceaseless hunt of the universe, nature and humanity to prove that nothing supernatural exists, for the truth of aesthetics is namely nothing other than the naturalness of the unnatural, the humanity of the inhuman, the health of the anomalous and sick, the clarity of the darkness, the good-fortune of misfortune, the competence and power of the incompetent and powerless, the significance of the insignificant, the track of the trackless, the reality of the unreal, the rightness and the truth of the intolerable, of dislike, nastiness, faithlessness, lack of respect, disobedience, injustice, recklessness, cynicism, distrust, insincerity, falseness, immorality, irresponsibility, crime and lawlessness, the order and utility of the capricious, the ephemeral, the terrible, the awful, the doubtful, the uneven, the unusual and misplaced as well as the unusable, useless, inept, disordered and impractical, in short, all that is not interesting except in its immediate effect, the new, the radical, the original and experimental, the fertility of the earthquake.

– Asger Jorn's Luck and Chance: Dagger and Guitar

Suppose there were four other principles operating in the universe which, in an interpenetrating dance, eliminated the dialectic argument of the mover and the moved altogether, where the distinction between "I grabbed the stone" and "The stone grabbed me" was nothing? That the language used was merely an acknowledged simplification of a bazilion events coming together in a single moment of mutual grabbing, the sense of which was owned by no one but the meaning or intensity grasped by all?

1.) Luck: events outside one's "control" are favourable, making agency merely the opportune recognition of chance happenings (cf., situation. There is a theory that this is the basis of capitalist accumulation when occurring at the end of a dagger and where chance and tune are eliminated or disregarded). Chance does not imply discontinuity or disconnection. That is the function of orderly dissection and precise (or "cutting") definition.

2.) Chance: Unrecognised, unforeseen events (accidents, gusts) enabling left and right or fore and aft decisions or coarse and cursive course corrections. Law is merely the iteration of these choices. In an ordered arrangement, chance is a spontaneous divergence from law, the appearance of difference. Chance as well may cut into an ordered arrangement like an asteroid or a dagger, bringing a certain lawful assembly to an end. When a straw appears which breaks the camel's back, so too a law is birthed by repeated observation: the law of excess, tipping point or thermodynamic entropy. Chance is for the most part arbitrary: that which is unintended (and undesired) by law-abiders brandishing daggers. The fragility of law-abiding systems is everywhere noted and glossed "erosion" or "death". This suggests a super-abundance of chance over law, that chaos is the norm and order the fluke. It may be that order and chance occur in no linear sequence nor represent "stages" of events: that they are merely two instruments of observation on the same phenomena resulting in distinctly different after-images, all re-enacted on a stage which itself cares not which performance is played. Were spectators not aware that staged events are only a matter of entertainment, they would be performers and the stage itself would disappear.

3.) Dagger: the point of interest, but also the inertia of movement without regard to contingency, erroneously regarded as purpose, personal choice, control and manipulation – a positive feedback spiral or thrust beyond the point of no return. "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!". So also, the prick which propells. Every dagger inserted into the mouth of an equation is, irregardless of its modification along the way, expelled from the ass, still the dagger even when labeled "an important piece of shit", something which might be uttered by an hungry tulip with an iron deficiency. Goethe suggested imagination without taste only produces dissonant sounds or dystopian places.

4.) Guitar: the harmonics of stochastic but possibly not predictable contingencies which are necessary for the reproduction (memory) of choices – referring to art, flavour ("taste"), poetry, creativity, imagination. These harmonics respond to the lightest touch and are nothing but meaning, auspice, kinship, a gentle ringing. Their recognition is originality, their originality is their production. Their sharing is communication and their result is their initiation – movement. Only spontaneity generates organisation and direction. Try to eliminate spontaneity and every intended organisation becomes a system of increasing entropy, to the point of rupture, rip, tear, dissolution of future expenditure and debenture, sacrifice and theft, the very principles of social engineering but as yet unheard of in improvisational jazz.

Where Everything is contingent, there is no longer cause and effect, stimulus and response. There is only interest (and that is aesthetics) and choice (and that is movement). The abstraction is a game of eight-ball or the simultaneous strum of the first and fifth note, ignorant of the perspiration on the sawyer's brow over the same tree which became the cue stick and the guitar's slim neck.

The guitar should be a dead give-away or no-brainer, to use two aptly dead metaphors, revived with expended potlatch and renewed with play, or simply admiration. When one can admire (enjoy) the play of the other, the distinction between performer and spectator is also reduced to nothing beyond the sharing of gifts, which in this case are the mutually perceived movements of the vibrating instrument. If the sawyer and luthier are also among the "audience", where does one place primary agency? The tree or the the fertilised soil upon which it fed? Certainly it is the nature of the grain still living in the resonating soundboard which produced the sting in the player's heart when s/he chose that instrument over another! Certainly as well, it is the nature of the grain in the gut of the sheep who shat upon the soil from which sprouted the spruce. Something of that very entrail was entailed in the gut of the sheep which later became the "catgut" string setting the board to vibrating.

maybe complicity

COMPLICITY

An interesting, rare & unique synchronicity,
constructing a rilchiam of "complexity" and "simplicity",
results in the familiar or meaningful "complicity".

                                                 – The Rilchiams of Language

PERHAPS

testosterone
has wrecked a million
times more lives than heroin.

                                     – Anthony Weir, Poems from the cave

There is no people!

And what is the people? It is an ensemble of subjects characterized by the will to live under a single legal system. The geographical element is not enough to define the concept of the people, which requires the consent to the same rights and a community of interests. The people is a political and historical identity, which has access to stories and memories, the right to commemorations, demonstrations and marble gravestones. The people is visible and speakable, structured in its organization, represented by its delegates, its martyrs and its heroes. It is no accident that its myth has been embraced by authorities of every stripe, or that it was abandoned decades ago by libertarians (at least by the less lobotomized ones).

[...]

It is certainly no accident that the Greek word for assembly is ecclesia. If the most perfect organization in the universe can be called God, then the link between politics and religion is emphasized. Less obvious is the attractive force it exercises over those who intend to subvert this world from top to bottom. The monstrous aberration that causes men and women to believe that language is born to facilitate and resolve their mutual relationships leads them to these collective gatherings, where they debate how to face the affairs of life. That these affairs are experienced in different ways among those present, that the debate cannot be equal since capacities will not be equal (those who know more and speak better dominate the assembly), that the minority has no reason to accept the decision of the majority... all this gets noted only when one doesn't frequent the agora. As soon as one sets foot there, perhaps prodded by events, old perplexities dissipate; a miracle that occurs much more easily if one discovers that he has a fine “capacity for oratory”. And yet there are still those who go on thinking that this effort to unite individuals into a community, to supply them with something to share, to render them equal, is odious. Because it is dripping with hypocrisy. The same hypocrisy that, after ignoring the slaves that allowed the ancient Greeks to deliberate non-stop, after removing the amorphous and anonymous plebeian unworthy of being a part of the people, is now prepared to overlook the fact that human beings can join together only if they renounce their respective worlds – sensitive worlds, without supermarkets and highways, but rich in dreams, thoughts, relationships, words and loves.

[...]

Thus, after having so thoroughly criticized the conviction that one can return to a science of social transformation, after having affirmed that there are no laws that control social events, after having refuted the illusion of an objective historical mechanism, after having cleared the field of all the fetters that get in the way of free will, after having sung the excess that repudiates every form of calculation, one goes back and takes a yardstick in hand to measure the steps carried out. The participants at initiatives get counted, the media coverage received is controlled, continuous forecasts of the balance are made. Clearly then, the passions were not so wicked, the desires were not so wild, interests were not so distant.

Nor is it understood why direct democracy, as a mediation between various forces in the field that arises in the course of an insurrectional rupture (as has happened historically) should become an ideal to realize here and now in collaboration with various mayors, local authorities and politicians put on the spot by disillusioned citizens. Direct democracy is a sham good idea, It shares with its big sister, Democracy in the broad sense, the fetishism of form. It holds that the manner of organizing a collective pre-exists the discussion itself, and that this method is valid everywhere, at all times, and for every kind of question. Defending direct democracy, counterposing – as “real” democracy – to “false” representative democracy, means believing that our authentic nature can finally be revealed when it liberates from the constraints that weigh on us. But being liberated from these constraints supposes a transformation such that at the end of the process we will no longer be the same, or better, we will no longer be what we are in this civilization based on domination and money. The unknown cannot be reached by known routes, just as freedom cannot be reached through authority. Finally, even in accepting the possibilities of establishing an effective direct democracy, there would still be an objection: why should a minority ever adapt itself to the desires of the majority? Who knows, perhaps it is true that we are living in an ongoing and terrible state of exception. However, it is not the one decreed by power in the face of its own rules – rights are a pure lie invented by the sovereign who is not held to be consistent with this lie – but rather that of the individual in the face of his own aspirations. It is not living as one would like to live. It is not saying what one would like to say. It is not acting as one would like to act. It is not loving who one would like to love. It is having to lower oneself, day after day, to compromises with the tyranny that condemns our dreams to death. Because here it is not about winning or losing (a typical obsession of militants), but of living the only life one has available, and living it in one's own way. Small gestures and common words can hold crowds and crowded streets together, but can we only seek these gestures, these words, outside ourselves to satisfy a new sense of belonging to a community? Not unless we want to give the individual a blank check, only in order to later let them know that it was really toilet paper.

– Machete!

Egoism or Aesthetics?

"duty" -- a teaching which puts a fetter in place of attraction

Egoism is (1) the theory of will as reaction of the self to a motive; (2) every such reaction in fact. This double definition is in accord with the usual latitude due to the imperfection of language, in consequence of which an identical term covers theory, individual fact and mass of facts. I apprehend that in making this fundamental definition I shall have provoked the dissent of some readers well enough grounded in mental philosophy to perceive that on accepting the definition they must speedily consign any claim for an unegoistic philosophy to the realm of mental vagaries. They will accuse me of begging a question in the definition; but I cannot wish to lay down a definition less fundamental than that which will be found sufficiently comprehensive and exact in every relation of rational motive and resulting volition and action. When I shall have done justice to "Altruism" it will be seen that there is here no begging of any question. The alternatives which the "Altruists" propose may accord with such of their own conceptions as they wish to term "Egoism," with which, however, I have no complicity.

By "the self" I mean the living person or animal, as recognized by the senses and consciousness, and not any mysterious, intangible entity or supposed entity, – "soul," "mind" or "spirit."

By "motive" I mean any influence – sight, sound, pressure, thought or other energy – operating upon the self, and thereby causing a change in self, under which process it reacts to seize what contributes to its satisfaction or to repel or escape from what produces or threatens its discomfort or undesired destruction.
If my definition be imperfect, the gap is in omitting to mention reflex action together with will. I regard reflex action as probably connected with a species of will in the nerve centers (and in other plastic matter in the lowest animals). However this may be, reflex actions are not subject to serious dispute in any speculative moral aspect. The omission, therefore, if any, would concern the exhaustiveness of the definition, not its quality. But the merit of a definition is not in its exhaustiveness; it is in drawing the line at the right place. As I do not purpose further defining "will," I will just say that reflex action being granted to be in effect self-regarding, all that remains to be done in order to universalize, according to these views, the recognition of the Egoistic theory, is to establish all determinations to voluntary activity as reactions, plus consciousness in the brain, like reflex actions without it. Any controversy against the Egoistic theory will range along the line of voluntary action; hence that part of the line of Egoism is all that is essential to be put into a definition. But if I have omitted reflex action in (1) the theory, I have not ignored it in (2) "such reaction in fact," for "such" refers to the self.

Consulting convenience, I have written "the self" whether meaning apparently the whole co-ordinated energies of the self or the attracting and repelling powers of any organ or member thereof. Probably never were the whole energies of any animal exerted at once under the stimulus of any motive or combination of motives; hence the common expression is an exaggeration.

A course of reading in history, philosophy and science, especially standard literature on evolution, together with personal observation of animal, including human life, will gradually convince any intelligent person that all voluntary acts, including a certain class of acts popularly but erroneously called non-voluntary, are caused by motives acting upon the feeling and reason of the Ego, and that the reaction of the Ego to a motive occurs as surely according to the Ego's composition and the motive as does any chemical reaction; that the only difficulty for our understanding is in the complexity of motive influences (motives) and composition of the subject acted upon. To avoid this conclusion the dogmatists have spoken of motive as if it were something self-originating in the thoughts. Plainly, motive is any influence which causes movement. There must be a cause for every thought as well as every sensation. That cause must affect the Ego, and the Ego cannot but react if affected – therefore according to the character of the motive and the manner and degree in which the Ego is affected in any of its parts, otherwise there would be no nature, no continuity of phenomena. In short, man in everything is within the domain of nature; that is, the regular succession of apparently self-correlating phenomena.

[...]

Can the altruistic be included in the Egoistic? According to a standard definition, quoted and adopted in Webster's dictionary, from the Eclectic Review, the reply seems to be that it can. That definition reads as follows:

ALTRUISTIC, a. [from Lat. alter, other]. Regardful of others; proud of or devoted to others; opposed to egotistic.

If Egoism were the same and as narrow in meaning as egotistic, of course the question would have to be differently answered. But egotism bears the same relation to Egoism as the term selfishness, used with purpose in the derogatory syllable, bears to my newly coined term, selfiness; hence we will set it down that some constructive use for the term altruistic is not of necessity excluded from Egoistic philosophy. But let it be observed that claims made for Altruism, based upon an ignorant or capricious limitation of the meaning of Egoism, and a glorification of the doctrine of devotion to others, intended to produce a habit of self-surrender, are held in our mode of thought to be pernicious, and attributed, in conclusions from our analysis, to defective observations and reasoning, and to the subtle workings of selfishness. To be regardful of others within reason, is intelligent Egoism in the first place, but before we go far in this we draw a distinction between such others as are worth regarding and such others as present no title to regard unless a barren and superstitious form of respect obtrudes itself and makes a claim for "others" because they are "others," makes a virtue of sinking self before that which is external to the self. This is the principle of worship, mental slavery, superstition, anti-Egoistic thought. To be proud of others, of the right sort for us, is one form of Egoistic rejoicing. When reflection has done its work efficiently the habit of care for others, of the right sort for us, continues until checked by some counter experience; but let the habit become strong, let the avenues to esteem be unguarded and the sentiment of worship usurp the place of good sense, then the Ego is undone. He is like the mariner who has set sail and lashed his helm in a fixed position, fallen asleep and drifted into other currents under changing winds.

[...]

The Moralist pretends to be under an obligation to respect the rights of others and never do them any wrong; but he defines their rights and does not allow them all their rights. He abdicates his own and cripples theirs and then flatters himself that the mutilation and effacement constitute superior Right. He protests against Egoism because it wrongs his system. At times he imagines that the Egoist must talk in the language of Moralism and must mean that in acting with Egoistic right the Egoist would pretend not to do wrong to an other; wherein the Moralist becomes absurd, for the Egoist does not pretend that he can always exercise his right without wrong to an other. It is a matter of expediency with the Egoist what wrong to another he shall do.

"Right wrongs no man," exclaims the landlord, and drives the tenant out of a house. The inclement weather beats upon the unsheltered, and their nerves are wrung. The landlord exercises his right, but lies moralistically.

The word wrong is a variation upon the past participle of the verb to wring, to twist. Victor and vanquished are two, and the Moralist simply looks away from the facts of life when he preaches a universal natural Right and ignores individuals with their various wants and powers and the probability that what is good to one may entail some ill upon another.

But the species? The Moralist, driven from the former position of a divinity ordering all things in harmony in the world, or at least the conceit that his own species is favored at the expense of all below it, and this not by its intelligence but by a divine decree arbitrarily making the spoliation of the world and rule over inferior animals Right, takes refuge in a belief that the welfare of the species may give Moral law to the individual. Hence the dogma that the individual exists for the species. Were it so, the individual might insist upon existing at any cost, assuming that he is what he knows best of the species, and that his stubborn will might probably be a provision for the species. That is Right, says the Moralist, which best serves the species. And what best serves the species? The Moralist will generally reply: "that which is Right," thus completing a little circle in dogmatism. Nature, however, seems to say that species survive by the survival of their individuals. The Egoist will find in himself certain loves and aversions, and he may think that the species is taking care of itself just in proportion as he is following those paths which give him satisfaction.

The Moralist, becoming more philosophical, suggests that the war of interests will cease as men understand their similar needs and the possibility of mutual benefit, hence wrongs in the species may become fewer or cease. With all our heart, say the Egoists, only you are not to begin by sacrificing us. If the later Moralism be merely a prophetic dream of a harmony of interests through wisdom, we are not without hope that at last the dreamers will recognize individuality as the condition precedent to the fulfillment of their hopes. The fellow feeling in the species is a certain fact. Let us take it for what we find it to be and not attempt to place it in antagonism to our individualities. As these are developed the necessity will appear for each one to recognize somewhat the individuals of his species, and thus the "claims of the species" will be recognized.

The Philosophy of Egoism – James Walker

note: certainly, there is more in an other which attracts one's interest, be it person or thing, than its potential use, keeping in mind that interest is foremost a matter of aesthetics (or the recognition of a turning-point – a possibility!) and only thereafter, economics? Of course, one could say the basis underlying all economic value is pleasure or esteem "in the moment", as it were, but then wherever we read "egoistic" in the text, we might, without risk of too much corruption, safely substitute the term with – "aesthetic". It might just be the undoing of economics altogether.


More luck in the draw than Miss Dora Marsden, J.L. Walker escaped the confines of the mental ward by dying before the accusations could be made. And who begat that round of accusations but their mutual "friend", the esteemed Benjamin (PR) Tucker, all for the defense of Tucker's endorsement of the institution (fixed idea) of private property together with its industry – the contract-law and dystopic, industrial corporatism of Lysander Spooner – a spook if ever I saw one. And to think today we call Tucker an anarchist and them mad!

Rough & Smooth:

sticky (adj)

tacky, gluey, gummy, adhesive, pasty
muggy, humid, sultry, close, steamy, clammy, hot, oppressive
antonym: dry

slippery (adj)

greasy, oily, icy, slimy, glassy, smooth, slick
antonym: dry

sneaky, untrustworthy, shifty, crafty, devious, dishonest, dodgy
antonym: trustworthy

– Considering the Rough & the Smooth

The Really Real

Welcome to obscurity. This blog is merely a facade. When is a good cover-up bad advertising? Is there a difference? Find out on the really real blog for all your secret, hidden message needs:

Kindred Spirit?

"the use of ideas should be strongly discouraged (except perhaps for mental gymnastics). In thinking, they have no true place. Their use corresponds to that of incantations in science. They are made up of misty thought-waste, confusions too entangled to be disentangled; bound together and made to look tidy by attaching an appellation – label, i.e., a sign. It is the tidiness of the sign which misleads. It is like a marmalade label carefully attached to an empty jar. Remove the label, and confusion vanishes: we see the empty jar, the bit of printed paper, and know there is no marmalade. And so with abstract terms and ideas. Consider liberty – we have already considered it. A name, and a confused description of certain activities and nothing more: no objective liberty. We have moreover distinguished between an idea on the one hand and hypotheses and opinion on the other. We make the distinction again. An hypothesis is an attempted explanation of facts: in the very act of proffering itself it requests its own annihilation: by proof to wit; an hypothesis is the half-way house of the thinking-process, the ultimate destination of which is knowledge of the concrete. Opinion is hypothesis with a dash of prejudice thrown in: it is an hypothesis behaving like a tiresome child. But an idea! An idea is a privileged assertion. It is seated high on a pedestal above question and offering no explanation. The only concern is to learn the most fitting form of rendering such idols allegiance – justice, law, right, liberty, equality, and the rest; each matched with a spouse, its negative. It is part of our work to shatter the pedestals: since idols dwindle to nothing, as soon as they touch common earth. If the process gives a sense of intellectual insecurity it merely shows upon what illusions the seeming security was based." – dora marsden,1913

"Here, then, we have it – the cause of Freedom. Freedom is the devil which drives. We must get a nearer view of it. What have we in mind when we say Freedom? We detect three elements: two notions and an atmosphere. There is the notion of a force, and a notion of a barrier which the force breaks through. A "breaking through" is the single complex which is the "getting free." A definite action, therefore, with a positive beginning and a definable end: limited in time and complete in its operation. There exists nothing in this which explains the vague unending thing called "freedom." To "get free" apparently is not freedom which is something which carries on an independent existence on its own account. This separate existence is the atmosphere. Freedom therefore is made up of loose association with the two notions which coalesce into the one action of getting free, plus an atmosphere. The action is the individual affair, the thing which must be done for oneself and permits of no vicariousness: the other, i.e., the atmosphere, is the part which one can create for others. This atmosphere is an interesting study: examined, it reveals itself, half swoon, half thrill. It is the essence of sensation, the food of the voluptuary. The thrill is the memory, the aroma of far-off fair deeds: the swoon is the suspension of intellect which allows vague association to make these deeds appear in part as one's own. Deeds, mark you ! definite things. Now we can ask the question: What is the relationship of the simple, normal, definable life-process of over-coming specific resistances which we call getting free to the vague symbolic indefinable thing called Freedom. The second is a blatant exploitation of the first. The first is an individual affair which must be operated in one's own person and which once done is over. The second is not an action: it is a worked up atmosphere, secured by culling special nose-gays of "free-ings," the most notable deeds of the most notable persons by preference – bunching them together and inhaling their decaying sweetness with exactly the same type of pleasure as that which the drugtaker and the drunkard get out of their vices. As tippling is the vicious exploitation of the normal quellching of thirst so the following after "Freedom" is the vicious exploitation of the normal activity of working oneself free of difficulties.." – dora m,1913