Friday, 15 November 2013
Moral and spiritual idealisms with all their efforts and disciplines aimed at the future are forms of the very mode of awareness which give us trouble. For they perceive good and bad, ideal and real, separatively and fail to see that "goodness" is necessarily a "bad" man's ideal, that courage is the goal of cowards, and that peace is sought only by the disturbed.
- Alan Watts Nature, Man and Woman, 1958
Saturday, 9 November 2013
More vs. Cromwell; Gunpowder plots
A man who refuses to believe in a god or an afterlife can never be trusted, only
because he would not acknowledge any authority or principle outside himself.
~ Thomas More
It is rather obvious: democracy has become a quantitative argument rather a qualitative one. This is not paradoxical: staying true to the democracy concept would mean setting a qualification on it. Young and old, male or female, vote by all means,
but only if you pass a rudimentary test. The setting of such a test in itself would encourage deeper reflections on what the political structure is.
but only if you pass a rudimentary test. The setting of such a test in itself would encourage deeper reflections on what the political structure is.
If you define democracy in quantitative terms, the argument will always
be at a pittance: more suffrage (for teenagers now) is such a bottom of the barrel, obfuscatory non-debate. But if you had to prove your interest, have a certain level of understanding, by a qualification test to vote - only then, can a democratic experiment begin.
be at a pittance: more suffrage (for teenagers now) is such a bottom of the barrel, obfuscatory non-debate. But if you had to prove your interest, have a certain level of understanding, by a qualification test to vote - only then, can a democratic experiment begin.
It then wouldn't be condoning xfactor-brow level decision making that sways polls on the naive wavelengths which sway fashion herds thereby proving democracy's failure, which, besides it's corporate cloning, is the real cause of the current disillusionment with politics.
Democracy at a dangerous impasse
Democracy at a dangerous impasse
There are 4 choices:
1. Universal suffrage, or the quantitative position (current 'enlightened' system: the suggestible masses)
2. Compulsory voting.
3. No voting (Russell Brand's revolt, or the reductio ad absurdum to fascism and totalitarianism as an answer to the two party conundrum- is: 'whats the point? may as well give in to the seemingly inevetible' - Cyclops trumps dualism). What nobody wants to contemplate is a return to feudalism - theres a system - no voting, just squabbling Barons.
4. Qualified voting.
Revolution: few questions
Why are those who have public voice, who are using their platform to idly advocate revolution,
not willing to step out of their comfortable police-protected shoes and start one?
not willing to step out of their comfortable police-protected shoes and start one?
Or don't they know how ?
It is obviously a desperate measure, and poses the question - is revolution
entirely committed by the unconscious ? And is that what is being advocated in this
call of the collective will ?
call of the collective will ?
Just how are the subjects themselves going to be become rulers?
(As Hannah Arendt puts it)
(As Hannah Arendt puts it)
Why is it that no one has laid out, measure by measure, what dismantling the system
would entail, or how it would take place?
would entail, or how it would take place?
Or is it supposed to occur spontaneously, entirely unplanned ?
Or is it, by its nature, incontingent ?
If so, are logistics, protocol, and contingency measures which we
should forever seek to do and live without - in the true spirit of revolution ?
Is revolution merely the quest for the organic by the light of complacency through the
eradication of all systems ('constructs') ?
If that is the purpose and spirit of revolution, if that is its definition, then does that explain
the relative failure of its spirit in the past ?
How, after a hypothetical euphoric revolution, would disarmament be enforced on citizens ?
How, after a hypothetical euphoric revolution, would disarmament be enforced on citizens ?
Can the allure of revolution be described as a spirit of irrationality, proven by euphoria?
Has revolution been distinguished from anarchy - and if the revolution is not to be anarchic,
what is it then?
Is it going to lead to more forms or strive to remain anarchic and formless?
Is this ecstasy of revolution merely an emotional sensation which cools ?
The Hypothetical outcome of revolution
1. Starvation
2. Arson
2. Arson
3. Anarchy, then necessary expedient. An arbitrary tyranny or "reign of fear", explained off
as a temporary measure by that eloquent summation: To make an omelet, you have to break eggs.
as a temporary measure by that eloquent summation: To make an omelet, you have to break eggs.
Protesting
To simply affirm the right to protest by doing so , is not to think the unthinkable, it
is to perform that which is completely sanctioned and to endorse that which is entirely impotent.
It is nothing more than gratuitous luxury, a graceless performance of catharsis regardless of purpose, comprehension, or intent.
To the individual, the protest is a self-right to express their 'views' as individuals, in solidarity with others. On the contrary, it re-affirms and upholds the non-society, the non-community ethic of a successful corporate state. Because there is nothing individual or communal about it. Of course, they aren't really expressing their view, as it is nothing more than mere social conformity with tagline, thereby rendering this 'conscious' stance idiotic.
Fighting power is not only oxymoronic, it is also worship of power.
Students protests are nothing new as noted by Machiavelli, they are a sign of a successful rule. Anarchy has always been solely the luxury of aristocrats, artists and students.
The men who are symbolic heroes for the occupy camp*, and villains of the Stuart regime:
*for entirely the wrong reasons. Heroes to resistors of imperial might, their pro-active intent inspired IRA atrocities - not something that most Fawkes mask wearers at Occupy would care to know, nor understand.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/
Monday, 4 November 2013
Bryant Park, NY
"Hell is full of good wishes and desires" - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
The myth of progress, rather like the myth of enlightenment -
collective will, rather than personal will (there's a myth of our epoch).
The American president is "ruler of the planet" (Superman II) Superman is the myth of America's will, the myth of its "enlightenment", that of coke and marlboro.
This isn't merely a naive, innocuous theory, it's a perverse faith which has consequences
that would seek to destroy anything which stands in its way.
The triumph and the summation of the enlightenment is the nuclear warhead.
The triumph and the summation of the enlightenment is the nuclear warhead.
With that phallic-mushroom heresy began the slow rollback of the enlightenment fallacy,
and the beginning of the cessation of the American epoch.
and the beginning of the cessation of the American epoch.
Superman is how America saw itself: forward looking, morally right, generous, magnanimous & the benchmark-keeper of all decency. Now the Apollonian veil of its
clean promise seems sullied, It is now beginning to see itself as it really is.
Its prime mobile was a vehement opposition to old Europe -
clean promise seems sullied, It is now beginning to see itself as it really is.
Its prime mobile was a vehement opposition to old Europe -
backward-looking, too Catholic, too Gothic, too old and full of
charnel-house basilicas to fit its glossy, forward looking ideals.
It was the attempt to roll back the medieval to a Renaissance-inspired neo-classical ideal.
In essence, it seeks to oppose and reject violently the liberality of wall street usury and debt-interest fallacy, that blind mayhem of greed, endless frontier-horizon yellow-bricked roads to neverland, which yields nothing more than the consequent gross commercial idealising of all material. The consequences, however unintended, of Luther, Calvin, & Locke.
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