Sacrifice

I had an epiphany this evening, we shan't trouble ourselves with where or why - these details I shall divulge to my biographer, cunningly disguised in a great tumult of anecdotal verbiage of questionable veracity and virtue - and it struck me so profoundly that I determined to write it down here, lest I forget it.

I was considering the problem of choice, of free will, and I realized that the nature of every choice is sacrifice. We do not choose that which we do, for we have no way of knowing that we will achieve the objects we set out to achieve; what we CHOOSE is to give up those other things that we might have done instead. We do not know what we will gain, there we always step out on faith; but we may be sure of what we are losing. It is the loss, the sacrifice, that vests the choice with meaning and value.

Freedom then, manifested in the choices we make, is necessarily bought with sacrifice - in a meaningful sense, freedom IS sacrifice. And sacrifice is not mere loss: it is the free choice to give up something of value, the investiture of that sacrificed value in the choice pursued instead. Neither is sacrifice a mere deficiency; we cannot say that the man born blind has sacrificed his sight, although the man who puts out his own eyes rather than see his children suffer surely has.

And this thought led me to another: that none of us who have not actually sacrificed anything can call ourselves free.

What, gentle reader, have you sacrificed? What is your freedom worth to you?

From the Archive - Beth

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth”
~ Pablo Picasso

While I'm still being pretentious, let me talk a moment about what I think it means for art to be made. One can, with only a little exercise of the imagination, picture a rock formation which is a perfect or near-perfect analogue of some abstract sculpture - perhaps by Henry Moore - and then pose oneself the question: which of these is Art? We can skirt Paley and assume that the rock formation is not a 'made thing' in the sense of being the product of willed agency; we might then conclude that the sculpture is Art, while the rock formation is not, because of the artist. From that point, we can then, with only a very tiny further exertion of our imagination, conceive of a grilled-cheese sandwich, likewise made by the willed agency of that same Henry Moore, and assert that this would not be Art. This assertion would not necessarily invalidate our thesis; we could evolve it slightly to suggest that what makes an artwork is the willed intention of the artist to make Art. This concept achieves its apotheosis in the artist who makes Art simply by declaring of something that pre-existed that it has become Art - a clarifying elaboration of this concept actually won a Turner Prize for the artist Simon Starling a few years back, and will again be something to which we return (assuming, as I must no less than I assume your existence reading this in the metanow, that you are still with me when Starling reappears in this narrative). We could make different assertions concerning rock and sculpture and sandwich - we could imagine an aesthetic in which only the sandwich were Art, or in which none of these things were Art - and there might indeed be some profit in following these alternative aesthetics to their conclusion (and you can find counterparts to Starling for any of them, from Chris Ofili to Tracey Emin to Andres Serrano). But I will advance here, without at this point providing anything substantive by way of justification, the argument that Art is made by the intuition of the Artist in the eye of the Observer.

To really elaborate on that it's necessary to return to an earlier, and similarly unsupported, argument: I can only be, I said, without troubling to define any of those terms. I'm now going to embark on one of the more foolhardy quests available to the philosopher, and examine what I understand being to ... be. In doing so, I make no presumption of authority, nor even of adequacy to the task. I simply intend to express, to my own satisfaction and with my own nebulous appreciation of the broader form of my expression as a whole, what it may be to be a being: in what senses some entity may be understood to be.

From the Archives - Aleph

"Mountains and Rivers"



"Before enlightenment, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.
During enlightenment, mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers.
After enlightenment, mountains are again mountains and rivers are again rivers."

~ Zen Koan



I have a fondness for Zen koans. Cynics will suggest that this is the foolishness of the man who mistakes his own failure to find meaning for the presence of profundity; or perhaps that it is the foolishness of the man who professes profundity in the exhibition of his own emptiness. To these, I remark that there are worse things than being a Fool; and they, I'm sure, shake their heads in disgust and go on. They do not want to be taught by me.

It is very important to understand, before we go further, that I do not wish to teach, either. I wish to express, and it is possible that what you gain from your willed interaction with that expression manifests to you as learning, but that is not my purpose. More: it is not within my power. I cannot teach you, because the tao that can be taught is not the Tao. I can only be.

I'm sure this sounds very pretentious. It's difficult to find the right place to start with this... expression. There is what the late Douglas Adams, through the able mouthpiece of Dirk Gently, referred to as the Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things (which I abbreviate to FIAT; Latinists or Liverpudlians among you may appreciate the happy accident of the acronym) - we'll be returning to this, insofar as we ever really leave it, which, when you come to consider it, is difficult to do without abdicating the Dasein - that both reassures and confounds one in the effort to find a starting place. The temptation to evoke a Joycean solution is strong, and the slew of references that will, I suspect, flavor if not pepper this treatise and the ones that follow is perhaps evidence that this temptation was not wholly resisted.

If you're confused, please take that as an indication that I haven't begun to properly express myself yet. Imagine this series of writings as a Seurat painting in progress - at present, the dots are disconnected, and you are still too close. But the day will dawn when there is a sufficient proliferation of them, and you are sufficiently distant, when you can look upon them with older and newer eyes, and see what has been made. Persevere, I urge you.

A Musical Quiz

I'm given to understand, by somebody I trust more than I have reason to but still less than she deserves, that there is in the Philosophy lobby (from which I am self-exiled, best beloved) a periodic trivia quiz thing. I am fond of trivia quizzes, although mine are more... well, they're more like me, I suppose. This is an old favorite of mine, which I offer to you so you can be as frustrated by it as many before you

Bear in mind that it's a MUSIC quiz.

* * * * *

Given that 1 + 1 = 41, evaluate the following:

1. A single digit
2. Nil
3. Lucifer's former home
4. Lucifer's current home
5. Le Tour de France
6. Abandon
7. Bob, for example
8. A palindromic plane
9. The original temptress
10. The Yellowhammer State

Rules

This blog post is not JUST an excuse to share with you all a song that I love very dearly; it's not even just an excuse to invite speculation as to how much I identify with the person she's singing to (I don't, as it happens; but I am constantly vigilant against the possibility I might present like him - and I can think of some people who'll read that, if they read that, and think I'm lying to myself or them when I say it, and that's okay, too, and part of the parasimplistic point).

It's a sort of not-announcement, in the way a lot of the things I seem to be telling people aren't actually telling them anything. It's about rules. Hence the title, see? I love it when a plan comes together. Ew, cigars.

Where was I? Ah yes, here. And there you are. Shift a little left, thank you. I like the look of that fireplace.

So. Rules. I live by a set of entirely arbitrary rules. None of them are binding. All of them have exceptions (this is in keeping with one of the first rules, to whit, "nothing is true; everything is permitted" ). These rules are absolutely essential to my continued functioning. I'm aware that one day they will not be so; I'm aware that I can't conceive of that day in any terms that allow me still to be here. So, insofar as the person I am here is myself, the rules are considered pragmatically to be inviolate. They define this person that I am being.

One of these rules is actually an emergent corollary, but it's going to impact how I interact on here somewhat. It amounts to a new phase (I'm not sure if the progression has a terminus, or if it's either cyclic or asymptotic, or indeed how any of us could tell the difference between those) and so it is a good thing, whatever the hadith has to say about innovations and hellfire. What is godly in us is the creative spark.

The rule is this: I can no longer interact in any space I have not made. PM windows are acceptable, and by an unrelated but convenient rule nobody is ever barred from PMing me. Chatrooms I have created are acceptable. Two chatrooms I have not created are acceptable, because exceptions are required under my Prime Directive and because of the persons who have created them (and they know who they are, although they may not realize quite what that means, and that's also okay, being another part of the parasimplistic point - meaning is, to a large if arbitrary extent, the enemy of my task-oriented projects).

Anyway. That's the not-announcement. Further nonsense will follow in these here blog entries before too much longer, but it won't be about this.

One Thousand Faces

#1 Jerry Cornelius jerry cornelius
#2 KelliPeleLani KelliPeleLani
#3 Phoenix Vail Phoenix Vail
#4 lazerbeak lazerbeak
#5 Veronica Fox Veronica Fox
#6 playwithmic playwithmic
#7 binyamin65 binyamin65
#8 La dolce vita La dolce vita
#9 JessicaZen jessicazen
#10 jdiego94 jdiego94
#11 Adorable Prince adorable prince
#12 severus snapple severus snapple
#13 Lonnasia lonnasia
#14 Ems_ ems
#15 DeucedJokers deucedjokers
#16 LostAlgorithm lostalgorithm
#17 GoodQs4GoodAs goodqs4goodas
#18 Madame Hussein madame hussein
#19 MysteryGirl654 mysterygirl654
#20 Sunnysider sunnysider
#21 Caucasboy24 caucasboy24
#22 Frank the Rabbit frank the rabbit
#23 Funrider funrider
#24 Sweetiewhobleeds4U sweetiewhobleeds4u
#25 senketsu senketsu
#26 OperaGhost operaghost
#27 call me diego call me diego
#28 jacen hearn jacen hearn
#29 MidNyte_BunnyWolf midnyte bunnywolf
#30 Rascal Axel rascal axel
#31 Hypergurl65 hypergurl65
#32 holyholly holyholly
#33 Brandijoi brandijoi

Borderline

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1PUpLcs6YFd

With friends like these...

I know this guy, let's call him Schmerry Schmornelius, and he had a friend on here - let's call her Schmeet Schmove. They seemed to have a good thing going. They played wordy. They chatted. They didn't crap on each other. They didn't have expectations or make demands. They were pretty chill.

And this guy, for reasons that needn't concern us, was having a bad moment or so. Just some regular crap of the sort that blights all of our lives from time to time, nothing major. He overreacted to it; he does that sometimes. He doesn't get enough sleep, and he stretches himself pretty thin. He doesn't look after himself the way he should, which is unfortunate when he has to lean on others.

It's unfortunate because he has to, see. If he just did, and it was okay when they flaked right back because they too were having a bad moment, things would be fine.

So he was trying to play wordy, and his computer froze up in mid-game - this after he'd just had to abandon a game to deal with some other real-life shit that cropped up. Schmeet seemed to have no problem with that, which was reasonable and consistent with Schmerry's experience of her. He got back online, eventually, much flustered, because it turns out he'd actually got quite a bit of his equilibrium riding on just playing out a companionable game of wordy. And he was not at his best and brightest, it must be said, and Schmeet said something, and he took it wrong, and things escalated, as Ron Burgundy would say, quickly. And she blocked him. Which was probably a fair call, I'm posting the conversation either with this blog or to a gallery so you can make a judgement yourself if you care (and why should you?).

So then he got mad all over again, really fucking mad this time, because this was a profound betrayal from his perspective, and he blocked her. Maybe she'll calm down and maybe she won't, and maybe she'll want to be friends again and maybe she won't, but the sad thing is that this is now ruined as far as he's concerned. And that's very melodramatic, I suppose, but really, what the fuck good is a friend on here if you can't be yourself round them?

So it was a useful experience. Schmerry had more friends than he knew what to do with anyway, and I'm sure Schmeet will not miss a beat either. I think he's being pretty unreasonable, but at the same time the core of it seems to make sense. It doesn't seem, when you think about it, terribly worthwhile making any investment in something that flimsy.

A couple of years ago, Schmerry would have rage-deleted. A couple of months ago, Schmerry would have tried to patch things up. I don't know if old Schmerry is getting smarter or dumber, caring more or caring less. But it does seem like something in him has changed, after all.

"We are the music makers; and we are the dreamers of dreams."

There is a parable I am fond of retelling, partly because it is a parasimplistic fable inasmuch as it is possible to draw a variety of morals therefrom, and partly because it has an elephant in it.

I am fond of elephants. Elephants mourn their dead, did you know that? They venerate their ancestors. They have an awareness of loss. They understand the value of life. Little elephants use their trunks to grasp the tails of mommy elephants and thereby be guided through life. Elephants are splendid. I should have an elephant picture.

... Oh, yes, a parable. In this parable are featured, alongside, although perhaps also not alongside, that being one point of the parable, the elephant, and I'm aware that that clause was horribly fractured but just go with it, people, go with it, let the sentence carry you inexorably towards its conclusion, don't question it too deeply, it's just an experience in a moment like all experiences in all moments, that also being perhaps another point of the parable, which I promise you we will eventually arrive at, a little warm but not at all astonished, are six men, among whose many unremarked commonalities is a singular trait by which they are for parabular if not parabolic purposes identified, to whit blindness.

I am fond of that sentence. If that sentence were an animal, it would be an elephant. Or perhaps an anteater, or sloth. I am fond of both anteaters and sloths, also. To my knowledge neither species venerates its dead, but that's not actually a criterion for likeability.

In the parable, which I do, perhaps in defiance of expectation at this point, that being another point of the parable albeit somewhat indirectly arrived at, intend to relate, the six blind men hear - we shall not concern ourselves with how or from whom, drawing over these prolegomena a veil of discreet mystery quite becoming of the humble teller of tales - that there is in town, visiting in the company, one may assume, of a drover or merchant, an elephant. They have never encountered an elephant, though they have heard many tales, and they are desirous of expanding their knowledge first-hand. So they make their way, staves in hand, arms waving before them, loudly declaiming their blindness and generally interrupting the quotidian business of their neighbors in a vexatious fashion, to the town square, where, for once confirmatory of rumor, stands the elephant, which placid pachyderm will remain in this statuesque and unresponsive pose for the remainder of the tale.
The six blind men, excitable and quite without scruple, let alone sense of self-preservation, proceed to poke and prod at the unfortunate beast of burden, each remarking at increasing volume on their findings for the edification of their peers.

"An elephant," opines the first, touching the beast on its trunk, "is very like a snake."

"Begging your pardon," corrects the second, feeling its leg, "but it seems more like a tree."

"You mean," silkily interrupts the third, rubbing his hand on its flank, "a wall. An elephant is like a wall."

"If," sneers the fourth, tentatively touching its tusk, "by wall, you mean spear, then I suppose you have a point. Although not so sharp a point as that of an elephant."

"The elephant is as pointless as your remark," waspishly observes the fifth, tugging rather harder than the elephant would prefer upon its ear. "If anything, it is like a sheet."

"An unravelled sheet, possibly," snaps the sixth, tugging no less gently upon the poor creature's tail. "An elephant is like a rope. And a somewhat unclean rope, at that."

And the six of them fall to bickering, striking at one another, and indeed anybody else luckless enough to enjoy propinquity with them, with their sticks, and generally interrupting the quotidian business of their neighbors in a vexatious fashion, exactly as before.

* * *

There is an obvious didactic purpose to all this, of course: but what, gentle reader, what is it? Ordinarily, I would leave that to you to decide; but here, I actually do have a particular point I want to pick out, although please don't let that keep you from inferring an entirely different one. The story itself is an elephant, metaphorically at least, and we, metaphorically at least, are blind. Each of the blind men in the story was accurately observing an aspect of the reality of the elephant, and accurately speaking his personal truth; but no blind man accepted any other's truth, and none of them understood the wholeness of the elephant. When we misidentify as Truth what is merely Consensus, or, perhaps more commonly when we misidentify differences in perspective as differences in knowledge of some particular truth, we are falling into the same pattern as the six blind men in the story.

Everybody has their own perspective, is the point. Within that perspective, everybody experiences their own truth. I'm not advocating the peak-relativistic position that everybody's truth is equally valid; I don't believe it is. Sorry, special snowflakes. Some of you guys are just whackjobs.

But what I am saying is that, if you and six other people observe something, you'll generate between you seven different subjective truths. Some or all of these may be coincident on some or all points, and, to the extent that this is the case, truth and consensus can have many features in common.

Empiricism rests on the idea that an event is really real if it is repeatedly and independently observed to be real, but one of the lessons of the six blind men and the elephant is that an event's reality may only be discernible in the aggregation of unrepeated and subjectively contradictory reports.

As a practical matter, we can say of any apparent entity that what people agree to be true about it shapes its reality far more than what it is in itself. We could digress here into the more obvious parable of the Emperor's New Clothes, but we won't, because there are no elephants in it, the Emperor's priapic bragging notwithstanding. What we will say is that people are - metaphors again - icebergs, only a fraction of them visible above the surface. We see of people only some of what is there. JoHari windows, of which we may speak further otherwhen, illustrate that people show us both what they mean to show and what they do not know to hide. But people also withhold from us both what they mean to hide and what they neither know themselves or betray about themselves. People are, in fact, both what they are and what they say they are, simultaneously, even as they are also both what we see them to be and what we say they are. And people are, as well as being icebergs, ships navigating through the choppy Arctic waters. This is why I advocate a parasimplistic approach to human relations, characterized by zero-expectation, non-attachment, and other cryptozen buzzwords.

It is also why the world is both susceptible to narrative interpretations, this being the function of consciousness, and beyond narrative interpretations, since so many of the characters and plotlines of these interwoven narratives turn out to be simultaneously themselves and something quite other than themselves. And this is why the old notion of the coincidentia oppositorum turns out to be such an instructive approach to epistemology.

Storytime: Day 27

This is another sad one, and it has resonance for me with recent events. Nobody wants to be a stepping stone. I'm not making stepping stones of anybody.