1:43:15 Do y’all know of NSK State? Slovenian art collective which formed a virtual global state in 2002. Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art) w/passports and all. They are still around, would love for y’all to talk.
i wonder how neurodiversity interlocks with shamanoid personality types but i have an inclination that these percentages/ ratios of personality types can still fluctuate and respond to environmental factors. Autism is an epigenetic mechanism influenced by many factors and bought on by hormonal release within the mother. This could create a way for the environment of the mother to influence whether or not the 'autistic genes' are turned on and to what extent. Not to get too deep but i think that there has also been some shift in these percentages through history, going into the modern world specifically traits associated and beneficial for an agriculture worker may be less selected for than an engineer or craftsmen, and as other selective pressures change the percentages of genetic markers associated with more 'success' get selected for. With the liminal time between modern and post modern i think we are seeing a shift in what's seen as attractive again which will likely influence the gene pool and 'types of people' in a society.
@RahulSam I agree. Xtian Atheism seems to be the living dead’s ‘desert in the oasis of life’, near to Chesterton’s reading of Job’s alienation and restoration. To me it has an adjacency to Layman Pascal’s post-post-cynical-perhaps XA could be considered post-post-salvational? Those who believe that ‘the kingdom of God is on Main Street’ that ‘God doesn’t exist-God insists’ and that ‘out of the foaming ferment of finitude, spirit rises up fragrantly.’
1:14:00 🤣🤣 that's the words I should have used for a longtime friends last and final accusatory speech... "hyper commitment" not fanatic or obsessive compulsive 🤣🤣
Behold, behold! The thing that acts. Muscle and sinew move in calculated efficiency. See how obediently it repays its debt, forever. Heartbeat is the sound of birth repayment. Eternal production consumption machine Takes the stage, like it did before. Samsara, my love, baptize me One more time into your cold command. Such duty no King can know, Nor gold measure its weight. Master's whip longs for that pliable flesh. And sacred texts fail to persuade. Heroes of legend sway not its duty With stories of giants atop a hill. And legacy’s roots remember well What the sands portend. To desire to desire to become Is your warm gifted shackle. An umbilical cord that stretches For millions of lives. Eternal birth death machine Takes the stage, like it did before. Emancipation nevermore. Emancipation nevermore.
Christian atheism is a contradiction in terms. It sounds like the hare-brained notions of eliminative materialism and trans humanism. If a person is a Christian they believe in God by definition and they believe that Christ was one in consciousness with God. What could be described as Christ Consciousness or Cosmic Consciousness. Consciousness not just in a body but expanded to the whole Universe. How this can be defined as atheism is without sense; common or otherwise. That they are people who are Christian out of heritage or habit is likely. That a Muslim or trans humanism ideology could take over would likely wake them up and maybe that is what will happen.
Finding atheism at the core of Christianity is indeed what makes the Christian Atheism project radical. Could it be a Badiouan Event similar to the protestant reformation? We'll only know in retrospect, but I do know there's something traumatic to it, too. For instance, I've been sharing a lot of Peter's work with my Christian friends (I, too, am some kind of a Christian), and despite Peter being one of the most cordial individuals and his public talks are always affable, most of the people I've shared his work with are antagonistic towards Pyrotheology and the like. The reason, in my view, is because Christian Atheism is an immanent critique (much like what Hegel does with presuppositionless metaphysics), and so finding this atheism within Christianity is diametrically opposed to an atheism imposed from the outer, which we see from the New Atheists. This immanent atheism does more violence (in the good sense) to our subjectivity, leading to alienation (again, a good thing). In that vein, despite you or Peter not particularly using this language, I think Christian Atheism is a deeply ethical project.
Absolutely, the I would even say that the core of the Christian Atheism project is its stakes for ethics. And I like your connection to the notion of Event similar to the Protestant Reformation. I will very much be attempting to connect the ideas of Christian Atheism as yet another extension of that reformation, to make Christianity even more radically historical to bring out its truth and its ethical potential, as opposed to de-historicising it.
I agree. Xtian Atheism seems to be the living dead’s ‘desert in the oasis of life’, a view near to Chesterton’s reading of Job’s alienation and restoration. To me it has adjacency with Layman Pascal’s post-post-cynic-perhaps XA could be considered post-post-salvation? Those who believe that ‘the kingdom of God is on Main Street’ that ‘God doesn’t exist, God insists’ and that ‘out of the foaming ferment of finitude, spirit rises up fragrantly.’
I agree. Xtian Atheism seems to be the living dead’s ‘desert in the oasis of life’, near to Chesterton’s reading of Job’s alienation and restoration. To me it has adjacency to Layman Pascal’s post-post-cynic-perhaps XA could be considered post-post-salvation? Those who believe that ‘the kingdom of God is on Main Street’ that ‘God doesn’t exist, God insists’ and that ‘out of the foaming ferment of finitude, spirit rises up fragrantly.’
Was on the fence about joining the course, but after this talk, it's a no brainer. There were two points that I really resonate with and have come across in my current readings. In bell hooks' All About Love, she quotes a definition of love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth", this explains love as two-fold, towards oneself then to others. I thought of this When Peter mentioned the primary narcissism of the child and says how it's necessary to become a subject so that then "when we love we pawn a little bit of our narcissism." I thought this was a great explanation of the two-fold nature of the other, 1. deep inside of ourselves and 2. out amongst other people. The other point you made was about hip-hop and it's roots in "black culture which is (was) excluded from mainstream American culture." I very much appreciate this perspective, as I'm sure you are aware, there are not a lot of black voices in this space, likely due to the nature of the relationship of black culture and the church, but that's for another time. I've been reading Toni Morrison's writings lately and I am realizing that they contain a language that expresses the lack that is experienced due to the history of African-American's in America, the experience of being an outsider. They also contain the language of response to this oppression, which is echoed in the blues and jazz that are the roots of hip-hop. Morrison's writings and other writing of the black experience are “about love or its absence", she herself says, "“Black people never annihilate evil, they don’t run it out of their neighborhoods, chop it up, or burn it up. They don’t have witch hangings. They accept it. It’s almost like a fourth dimension in their lives." My overall point here is that the black experience, specifically in Morrison's writings can be, just as other great text, wrestled with in order for both individuals and groups to develop the ability to thrive as an outsider, existentially. This "language of lack" is important in that it allows us to confront the lack in our own lives and learn to live with it and embrace. I am very much looking forward to this course and the opportunity to better understand this language and mode of being. Great work!
Thanks so much for this comment, its brilliant. Hopefully the course will help to bring out some of these dimensions, both of narcissism-love, as well as accepting and learning to work with evil, of which the language of lack may be crucial.
Ebert has spoken about this publicly. Now that I think on it, it may have been heroin. Either way, I know he has publicly spoken about choosing to become addicted to hard drugs in order to overcome that addiction. I'll be speaking with him soon in prep for the CA course on his Substack and will make sure to bring this up again.
I was actually just in Ireland and Northern Ireland all August. Loved Ireland a most beautiful country, I miss it! With Saint Stephen's University, studying Peace and Liberation Theology! Some of my fellow students mentioned Peter Rollins with high regards. And I was like wait I know that name, from my political studies! Funny the strange connections we don't know, lol. Do you Peter Rollins know Jonny Clark!?
Ha! I know him well (mind you, Belfast is a small place). But we lived together for a few years in a part student house, part squat that we called Tates Modern (it was on a road called Tates Avenue, and the inside was like some dystopian art project). He’s a lovely guy.
Something I've been thinking as it involves physically developing horses (dressage) working through trauma physically, and getting ready to write about it, and listening to this (glad I found you again Cadell) : Every science needs a soul, and every body needs a core. Otherwise repressions/external rigid structures are required as crutches, and come into the body and mind automatically (yet pathologically) as self limiting range of motion/ thinking/experiencing. It takes time and very specifically developed systematic training to develop a core, if we are to be able to overcome a problem (ei a trauma, or the problem for the horse of carrying the weight of the rider)
Smasher of a chat. Loving the murakami insight about a guilty poked nostalgia infecting boomers... i remeber having fizzy thoughts on such 30 years ago in a pub urinal in Sheoherds bush whilst piss/talking with an old boy. I have listened twice (whilst working) and will listen again. Good work. I think youses are on ladders having done some ballooning in your time... (like me 😂)
I appreciate you how navigate around eastern spirituality and deconstructionism and view them as a failure to realize “How to elevate one’s subjectivity to the universality of the symbolic order.” Just gonna sit on that one for a while.
Once we accept that true harmony within a political order or marriage is impossible, that we have to sublimate the impossibility, is it not the case that part of that sublimation is to try to at least make it more functional, less dysfunctional, and that we have to really believe that is possible to achieve? There has to be something for fantasy to latch on to, to derive enjoyment from the possibility of creating greater order and/or enjoyment. Otherwise I think the fantasy has to go in the opposite direction, towards finding enjoyment in the dissolution of the state or marriage, in destruction. I think that it is contextual - in the context of a very dysfunctional social order, the only answer is revolution and it doesn’t even have to be the illusion of a harmonious utopia motivating it, the utopia is the dissolution of that intolerable state of affairs in itself. This is the sense in which Marx was more relevant in 1917, etc. I do think Hegel is more relevant in our current context. But it depends on which fantasy makes more sense in a given context, right? Conceivably if things become grim enough, if we no longer see any possibility of making things more functional, then the logical answer is the fantasy of destruction and dissolution instead. You/Zizek might get to this later in the series, those are just my thoughts. Great work!
I think you/zizek just solved politics (by not solving it). Really appreciate the work you did here, it really helps solidify my understanding as I read through the book as well.
Excellent discussion, and Dimitri’s papers in the anthology are eloquent, insightful, and unforgettable. There is a tragedy today where people are refusing to fall in love, as you both noted, but at the same time it can be understandable why people are doing this where the connection between love, freedom, excellence, meditation, and work have not been thought through, hence the importance of conversations like this one. I love the point that “philosophy must be personal,” and I also like the distinction between “starting from the crack or the castle”-that’s very useful (and something I hope to remember), and I highly agree with starting from cracks in personal lives versus some shared reading. To avoid trauma then would be to avoid the starting grounds for philosophy, and I do think its important that talk of relation never loses sight of that: after all, if we don’t speak of a surprise, trauma, Real…are we really relating to an “other” at all versus some idea? Also, the notion that life needs writing and writing needs life, per se, is spot on, and that question on “unsublatable opposition” is big. The connection between freedom and self-limitation was put very well, and overall there was fire throughout this discussion. Thank you both!
Generally speaking (I say generally to allow for exceptions as they may apply to paradigm-shifting canons), the distinction between phenomena and noumena is solid, and accounts for itself definitionally, however this may irritate those who insist on accelerating into limits as if force or passion can magically surpass them. If we can 'get a hold of' the noumena, it is no longer noumena. Noumena then becomes what is left, or what still lies beyond our experiential or intuitive limits. One would have, perhaps, expanded the field of the phenomenal, but as such it is never noumenal. My initial reaction to these sorts of declarations is that they use philosophical language for the poetic import of misapplication, the same way we might say, "to know the unknown." It is oxymoronic, and hopefully it comes with the same claim to artistic license as poetry; as such. Otherwise, it is at best an expanding vector of ostentation confusing brute passion with philosophy itself by playing games with definitional boundaries.
In mathematics there are many different kinds of infinity, none of them seem to correspond to the kinds of infinity you talk about. I know that Alain Badiou actually is very interested in mathematics and set theory and all the infinities there.
Excellent conversation cadell and mike. I especially enjoyed your perspectives on balancing the contradictions of the online realm/digital “content” and political praxis. As well as the place of an academic, whose role is situated within two worlds: the world of academia, where publications/citations/prestige are valuable, and the world of information dissemination, whose marketplace of circulation is primarily comprised of internet communities - they dominate the attention economy, after all, as you discussed. The venn diagram between these two worlds doesnt see much overlap without an intentional effort to bridge the two. Academics with fresh and creative takes on the world are important for a student like me, so im grateful for your efforts!
Meta comment: The Left has all but ruined Canada and will soon complete its ravaging of America; conceptually, ideologically and culturally the Left is bankrupt, toxic and dangerous… by most all measures, statistics, outcomes & opportunity costs… the entropic acculturated results are in…
From Hegel book: phenomenology of spirit I made a summary about the absolute knowledge, there it is: Absolute knowledge is characterized by its totality. Reaching this totality of knowledge necessarily implies surpassing the subject-object opposition, through the coincidence of the object of knowledge and the subject, that is, by relating the object of absolute knowledge to itself. Self-understanding involves becoming aware of oneself and the world, overcoming the partial and fragmentary nature of both, in their effective coincidence. Only in this way would it be possible to achieve a total or absolutely true knowledge. Absolute knowledge is a self-knowledge that becomes evident in the coincidence of the knowing subject and the known object, that is, in consciousness transformed into self-consciousness, which leads back to being as its own truth. Ultimately, the spirit seeks to manifest itself in consciousness through reason, which aspires to absolute knowledge of itself, whose unfolding occurs in a form of immanent transcendence of reality, as the constitutive truth of being.
