"Bustling activity will more and more take the place of reasonable consideration...It is not by bustle that men become enlightened. Spinoza was content with the Hague; Kant, who is generally regarded as the wisest of Germans, never traveled more than ten miles from Konigsberg."
---Bertrand Russell.
In time we may find there is no wisdom in space or in space travel.
"A happy life must be a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live."
"What yoke can be imposed on men who need nothing?"
---Rousseau.
Notes from Xenos's lovely 'Scarcity and Modernity'..all ties in, freakishly, with Russell: the need to reflect on desires, on what is meant by need. The need for roots? Well, yes, that's a tough one. Who, today, has any roots? What is close at hand must be disparaged, denigrated in favour of borders to be crossed (is there desire without transgression)? It is often said that needs relate to the isolated individual whereas desires are by their very nature relational. What we desire is at least in part socially constructed. Does the emulative nature of desire lead, eventually, to a "black inclination to harm one another"? (Rousseau).
But is it not the case that, at least at the extreme, it is desires that isolate ( the gambler, the pornographer)? An unmoored imagination, neither constrained by Tradition or social norms or "customary expectations"(E.P.). What is desired is something that cannot be attained, a pleasure that is at once always around the corner and simultaneously satisfied. Perhaps this is a source of unhappiness, our always being on our feet, in motion, 'perpetually moving happiness machines.' Next time things will be better. If we are what we desire then who are we? Are we even sure that we really want what we desire?
If you could track a person's history by the history of what she desired. The world: the locus of the exchange of desires.
But this silent transition in the way we talk, from the language of needs and rights and obligations to the language of desires, preferences, wants: taste is just a crude, arbitrary and momentary feeling that picks up one commodity out of a dazzling array of possibilities. Prior to that, perhaps, is the making over of various 'things' into commodities. One must be made desirable. Even if you ain't got it, flaunt it.
"Trinkets and baubles", Smith said. "Deception" and illusion as the great motors of civilisation? Ever widening and finer refinements, 'conveniences', the profusion of useless things and cheap throwaway products, for nothing must be allowed to last in this shape-shifting world. The "unnatural growth of the natural" (Illich), the relentless pursuit of growth, change, innovation. All very dizzying from a certain perspective, no doubt. If we didn't have that spark would we be confining ourselves to lives of immeasurable boredom? Perhaps. And yet the irony is that the system requires us to be bored out of our wits, to be discontented with our current situation and to believe that anything passing through our hands to be dispensable, dated, never quite the real deal. Life itself is seen as a series of choices (optimality), and if you don't get the best deal in life you've been swindled-except this time it isn't the fault of God or the State but yours because, in the final analysis, it was your choice.
---Bertrand Russell.
In time we may find there is no wisdom in space or in space travel.
"A happy life must be a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live."
"What yoke can be imposed on men who need nothing?"
---Rousseau.
Notes from Xenos's lovely 'Scarcity and Modernity'..all ties in, freakishly, with Russell: the need to reflect on desires, on what is meant by need. The need for roots? Well, yes, that's a tough one. Who, today, has any roots? What is close at hand must be disparaged, denigrated in favour of borders to be crossed (is there desire without transgression)? It is often said that needs relate to the isolated individual whereas desires are by their very nature relational. What we desire is at least in part socially constructed. Does the emulative nature of desire lead, eventually, to a "black inclination to harm one another"? (Rousseau).
But is it not the case that, at least at the extreme, it is desires that isolate ( the gambler, the pornographer)? An unmoored imagination, neither constrained by Tradition or social norms or "customary expectations"(E.P.). What is desired is something that cannot be attained, a pleasure that is at once always around the corner and simultaneously satisfied. Perhaps this is a source of unhappiness, our always being on our feet, in motion, 'perpetually moving happiness machines.' Next time things will be better. If we are what we desire then who are we? Are we even sure that we really want what we desire?
If you could track a person's history by the history of what she desired. The world: the locus of the exchange of desires.
But this silent transition in the way we talk, from the language of needs and rights and obligations to the language of desires, preferences, wants: taste is just a crude, arbitrary and momentary feeling that picks up one commodity out of a dazzling array of possibilities. Prior to that, perhaps, is the making over of various 'things' into commodities. One must be made desirable. Even if you ain't got it, flaunt it.
"Trinkets and baubles", Smith said. "Deception" and illusion as the great motors of civilisation? Ever widening and finer refinements, 'conveniences', the profusion of useless things and cheap throwaway products, for nothing must be allowed to last in this shape-shifting world. The "unnatural growth of the natural" (Illich), the relentless pursuit of growth, change, innovation. All very dizzying from a certain perspective, no doubt. If we didn't have that spark would we be confining ourselves to lives of immeasurable boredom? Perhaps. And yet the irony is that the system requires us to be bored out of our wits, to be discontented with our current situation and to believe that anything passing through our hands to be dispensable, dated, never quite the real deal. Life itself is seen as a series of choices (optimality), and if you don't get the best deal in life you've been swindled-except this time it isn't the fault of God or the State but yours because, in the final analysis, it was your choice.
5 comments:
Hi, b - Here in the West it's Bonfire Night - another opportunity for money to be spent on completely mindless and context-free 'celebration.' Labs are cowering on their sofa, I'm playing Leonard Cohen very loudly to distract them from the bangs and whizzes. Been looking at Black Sun and think you sound a bit 'down'. This might lift you a bit.(We are not alone.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUfS8LyeUyM
thanks, C..but I love bonfire night and I can't watch what you've sent since youtube is banned. don't ask.
So good to hear from you after all this time! What have you been up to? reading?
Salams,
b.
Yes, of course: reading! Re-visiting Henry James, if you must know. Also, I've probably mentioned this before, but if you haven't read Lewis Mumford, I urge you to do so. What he wrote, beginning in the 30s,has ever more relevance as we stagger into the 21st Century.(Technics and Civilisation, 1934)This a quote from The City in History,1961:Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal." Even more unfortunately, the industries that are favored by such expansion must, to maintain their output, be devoted to goods that are readily consumable either by their nature, or because they are so shoddily fabricated that they must soon be replaced. By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale.' YouTube banned? Difficult to believe, but......
Selah, my friend.
What am amazing coincidence!Was just having a discussion with a colleague here about one of Mumford's books (only read 3 chapters but was, as the Yanks say, blown away by it). on the city, or something like that.
One of those books I'm saving for a rainy summer (along with crowds and power; machiavelli moment; homo ludens...)
Yes, i must know!
The last good book i read was truman capote's fab. 'in cold blood'. started a few others but nothing's grabbed me yet. might read yellow birds over the weekend. Currently re-reading Xenos's 'scarcity and modernity'-which is seriously good.
apart from that...just the usual mediocre middle-class life, i guess...trying to keep my head low, looking for a way out/back.
Hmm. and on that happy note...
Take care, our C.
b.
Mumford's Autobiography, Sketches from a Life, is also excellent. Uncompromisingly honest about his personal life, but also giving an in depth account of the intellectual world he inhabited and many of the well-known names of that mid- C20th period. Also, you'll find him a mine of quotable quotes! Please give me some good news from your part of the world!
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