ICONOCLAST, n. A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but pileth not up. For the poor things would have other idols in place of those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth. But the iconoclast saith: "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not; and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."
-- Ambrose Bierce

Saturday, March 31, 2012

a necessary universal category?

"The term division of labour is a descriptive category belonging to a specifically expropriative and reductive method of looking at the world (a vorstellungsart or pre-patterning of knowledge). It has become a conceptual filtering device deployed as a means for extracting other pieces of information: where the filter ‘division of labour’ is applied to the relation within a particular set of objects, the patterning of both the relation and the means of knowing of the relation is thereby ‘templated’ and this enables the extraction a certain type of information concerning an interrelated specialisation and differentiation from those objects.

...Division of labour becomes yet another invisible term, another immovable piece of furniture amongst so many similar others, that has to be included in every inventory of the human home. This nonnegotiable furniture clutters up and inhibits the discourse of social transformation. To alter Zizek’s comment on freedom: we cannot articulate a critique of our world because we lack the very language to articulate our alienation from it. The language of social transformation has become silted up with bourgeois categories imported into it by the pragmatist ideologies..."

Where the seeker after possibility is considered inconceivable, or minimally "romantic", then what I'd call a "possibilist" chases the "impossible" in any other language, and the fantasist (some would call "fanatic" or "futile") is the only real realist when saying "nature doesn't work that way; nothing is that certain". As both empiricism and reason eventually lead to irony (especially when juxtaposed together – that is "comedy", if you'll recall George Carlin), the absurdist becomes the most faithfully consistent, all the while a nihilist without a claim to truth (that doesn't mean a lie). Where madness is the most profound sanity, the only way out is in, and that is an aesthetic move – no doubt often we're pushed, but it's our choice to call it "home" and proceed to rearrange the furniture or cast it out the door for a public barbecue (where folks are not consumed or even on the menu).

Where every individual pursues its own interest, society can then be said to be an expression of interest without a contradiction – it only looks like an agreement, there never was a vote or conciliation – and everything remains experimental, except perhaps the wheel. Where there is at least some interest in each other, then the individual and social soon merge (but really they evaporate – isn't it the endearing which endures? Some say just the opposite: a chain, a weight, the state). What is uninteresting simply does not occur (that the population is flexible, movement's not constrained), and the division of labour disappears because labour itself has gone missing even where there's effort. Some would theorise the population itself would vanish in a battle, but that is a half-empty consideration, and as far as the cup is concerned, meaningless ... unless of course, pragmatic playfulness or good ends unanticipated by any means, are also an impossibility in a mad world. But then the world itself would disappear, and so it's starting to appear beneath the superficial varnish. We might rephrase the question, "who's on top, air or water?" but does it really matter except to gravity, the 'love' of an earth mother? Otherwise the argument's between something and nothing. Up in Iceland's always down if you're from southern Africa. A top is just the middle of a spinning gyroscope.

Of course, when pessimism only expresses doubt toward the success of a particular project or aim or a direction (they say "it's possible but I wouldn't count on it"), that expression could be the most favoured thing toward pushing possibility forward: "perhaps we'll try this time, reverse instead." But they're calculating probability confusing that with truth and then get nasty: everyone has witnessed flukes and know that they can happen – that's the beauty never seen by the omniscient – occasionally there are even breaks from prison, and none would dare to call them "hippy drop outs".

If only peoples' other interests were treated like a favorite color, or a type of apple of one's eye without a moral attachment, interference or even too much thought about it. Like the appropriate color is the one which suits you (that is, you put it on not under orders), even if it's new like taste in need of growing, that's for you to know or find out. The egoist only says "my choice is not your business" unless invited or have a wish to try it. And in this sense it's true: it's sharing which makes a communist in old Eutopia, and battle's for those stingy kunts who try to knock you off your feet to stay in line, insisting you be democrat or take your shit without a "by your leave" or any other consideration.

Even in Eutopia property and its acquisition is possible, but where's the fun unless it's shared and then that universal category, proper disappears, unless you're all alone and so malnourished, but then who is there to say "who cares?" And then you're finished. There's never been a society of hermits in a cave. That would be a monastery or house of monetary slaves counting on miracle inventions and saving up their days for someone else's spending, and then repeating "I was framed!"

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