In those societies where, for historical/cultural reasons, it is acceptable, even encouraged, to talk about internal states of mind, individual motivations and autobiography, there are many diachronics and these will often take centre stage. It should be noted however that, as they do this, they are not exposing their selves, their individuality, their personhood, their agency, to the harsh light of day. They are doing something quite different; they are telling stories about themselves to others, which should not be mistaken for the complex business of being oneself among others.
We've come to see the world, after centuries, even millennia of repetitious instruction, as composed of in-outies and out-innies (or innies and outies, like the navel but with the connotation that this specific inny is an avant garde or par excellent constituent of generalized "other" innies, outies being those in need of surgical democratisation or disposal) in a multitude of narrative forms: individualist/socialist political discourse; Jungian introspective/extrospective (or "version" there-of) personalities; but rarely do we hear from those (I can think of Arthur Conan-Doyle and Milton Erickson in medicine and hypno-psychology, Samuel Butler, R. Buckminster-Fuller and esoteric zen in metaphysics and certain – who might be considered "post-modern" – biologists) who see the so-called "ego" itself as a nested or recursive, at times tautological community of events and participants:
...Moreover, to the internal continuity of the blob must be added another continuity: that between blobs...the exposed parts of the different blobs are not fully distinct one from another. They are organically united with each other. We are a social species and, as is the case for other social species, the fully isolated Cartesian individual cannot be anything other than what it was for Descartes – a thought experiment. – op cit
If the self is only a referent of the bawdy organism-community, then the "I" is never more than a limited spokesperson or interface to other bodies and not a holder (or hoarder) of power or executive function outside of neurotic circumstances or environmental psychopathy. So much for Mr. Grey Matter and its delusions of grandeur. This would explain the secrecy of most bodily functions and habits like a heartbeat or flow of air or humour to the always serious, often arrogant intellect who is blind to its own whereabouts and what-fores without addressing the coordinates on a map or otherwise instruction manual. Curiosity may be its only virtue.
Stanley Kubrick brought up the idea of in-out-in-out as a bawdy designation for sex between bodies but it also resonates with Buckminster-Fuller's "in-outness" as a quality or attribution of all so-called identities. Clearly it's a behavioural notion rather than a narrative perspective. Rather than a dialectical position of either-orness like a two-step or march or class structure, it is a non-dialectical ambling shifter with no reference to speed. Another word for this is free movement (although it used to be called sloth). It is part of Humberto Maturana's autopoiesis and Butler's inconsequence of the chicken-egg argument. Sequential (or linear) determinism is thrown out the window and the dilemma or paradox or dialectical tension not only relaxes, but disappears entirely. Hegel may have used too much formaldehyde in mummifying Plato & Aristotle and all three became deified.
The project and the process of all institutional logic is religion and its generation of truth, representing the retying of past ligatures just like loose shoe-laces. Of course, belief in the dictums of competing institutions or alternative representations is idolatry (or heresy), extra-institutional sex (unsanctified or unregistered by church & state) is fornication just as the sin of bloodshed is only recognised when outside the avant garde institution of warfare or police action (this is why killer cops always go free or with a merry slap on the wrist to appease the spectating public who expect to see virtue in the authorities who distribute the punishments for everyone else's sins).
The triclycler, Augustine listed "carnal" or organic pleasure, pride (from the self-acknowledgment or inward rumination of outward or others' encouragements – and I should think necessary to give any sort of thanks), and "unnatural" curiosity as triangulating upon every possible transgression. These were the big three motivating forces of the big three sins (idolatry, fornication and bloodshed) which seemed to suffice for peaceful congregations who encountered too much trouble with the initial ten, till the theocracy got back on its feet, when these were later expanded to seven[1], which is also a pretty easy number to remember.
This shift is the beginning of thought crime, where motive (or intent) is the proof of the pudding and the act is only a cosmetic detail. In other words, if no conspiracy with the imp of the perverse can be established, payment is unjustified (or at least reduced).
The first u.s. patriot act, in a reasonable evolution of rational discourse from the seven deadly sins through the already omnibus criminal code, was twelve-hundred pages long, a mere appendix taking up about as much computer space as a complete dictionary of the english language. Obviously today, there is no escape from sin and no counter-virtue[2]. Government has gone post-modern in the recognition of the irreality of both rights and morality, the very two invented notions (neologisms) which gave them a leg up in the first place: their own property rights and the appeal or petition (prayer) for charitable mercy or regress of chastisement upon a proper demonstration of one's own chastity.
Virtue turned out to be a big joke on the calculators of morality who produced jurisprudence, the juxtaposition of the virtues of justice (the balance of sacrifice and theft as well as crime and punishment) and prudence (the stingy management of resources which covers charity or taxes and chastening or austerity). The modern word is "political economy" which effectively combines all seven christian virtues, the other four accompanying justice and prudence being temperance, the restraint from ones desires; love, the pacifist or self-sacrificing stance toward whatever harm might come your way; the related courage, endurance without complaint through pain or deprivation; faith which accepts orders without question and finally hope, the amnesia of the past and disregard of the present in the preferential preparation for the future (progress, debt &/or death).
The beauty (from the point of view for statecraft) of the seven deadly sins (and all modern legislation) is that they can be seen to apply to anything anyone does: they are virtues of the powerful and sins of the wicked (the weak). The meek, on the other hand, have the proper airs required of citizenship in any kingdom: cowed, showing a bovine submissiveness and lack of initiative or will. This is also called self-control, an effective invisibility cloak disregarded by police. And if they do become collaterally damaged, no one will care. No one (of any importance) has ever believed in natural virtue when it comes to humans – it must be indoctrinated, in every sense of the word. Naughty children are the proof of the pudding smeared all over their faces, walls, tables etc., another vicious cycle of political discourse just inviting a slap in the face (or ass, as pertains the current rate of exchange) lest one spend life in humility and debt – "not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run", to quote Mark Twain.
Politics, ‘the science and art of government,’ has little or nothing to do with the anti-politics of liberating life from the control complex.– The Maximal Attack on the Totality, John Moore
[1]: One is perfectly appropos to confuse clerks and clerics, as both measure distance from the norm or standard (set value) and hand out a comparable bill of trade, the incurred (to beat a dying dog with a willow branch for the crime of meandering or bending like a snake or river away from the master's intentions) debt in any transaction or wager with receipt on payment, in either or all, pence, penance or penitentitude. Latin 'salic' meant willow (the tree which also gave us aspirin or salicilic acid) and became saligia or "sin". The one punishes the other after the axiom, "It takes one to know one": it takes a contrary to cure or kill a contrary, thus justifying all uses of state power.
The seven sins are superbia (pride), Accidia (sloth), Luxuria (lust), Invidia (envy), Gula (gluttony), Ira (wrath) and Avaritia (greed), spelling Saligia for mneumonic effect. The latinized words are revealing. Notice the sins are feminine in gender or personification, illustrating the association by Salic Law (forbidding matrilineal inheritance) of guild (old Norse for a community of shared interests), guile (a presumed female trait, once related to "agility" as in "nimble" or "in the act", agon, which only an impotent patriarch would find agonizing, confusing ingenuity with in-geniality), gild, (a reference to the matrilineal/matrilocal neolithic or so-called Bronze age ended by the iron-wielding gods in their clash with the Titans, specifically with the institution of marriage as a property arrangement) and gluttony, referencing a special distaste for the Epicureans who promoted taste itself and thereafter, on approval, enjoyment. Quality, chance or risk, passion and abundance are equally transgressive lines of thought. It appears Mark Twain was right when he cited soap, education and hypocrisy the three virtues of civilisation and chiefly responsible for most massacres.
[2]: Synonym for manliness or rod-like, "virtue" was always just a drilled or purchased (provisionally "inalienable", not indigenously rooted) right, otherwise a rite (ritual) exercised to avoid or deliver punishment, well after "righteous" had been divorced from the more matronly, even child-like gift-giving by "wrong-doing", an archaic rip-off creating all modern senses of moral economy restricted to "trade", a word once meaning trample, crush, flatten, press, stomp & squash, still alive and well in the phrase "I've been wronged!".
No comments:
Post a Comment