The Stranger

standing on the beach
with a gun in my hand
staring at the sea
staring at the sand
staring down the barrel
at the Arab on the ground
I see his open mouth
but I hear no sound
I'm alive...I'm dead

Part I: what a strange man

Meursault, schizoid personality, misanthrope? No, perhaps not, he's a stranger to this world. He's totally honest, cordial, a hard worker, and not at all devoid of virtue. His ways and motives are not the same as what's deemed or conditioned as normal or expected.

Meursault seems limited largely to his sense perception, and operates daily (and in his usually fond memories) on the level of how things taste, smell, look, sound, or feel to him. He seems to take these things as well as relationships quite simply as they are without interpretation, attaching any additional significance, or deriving any particular or expected meaning from them. Meursault can also find himself oppressed by his senses at times. Too much wine, bright sunlight, and heat in particular can prove difficult.

Meursault's neighbor Salamano beat and cursed his scabby old dog for years, but when the dog disappeared, Salamano was concerned of his whereabouts, and he wept. Meursault did not beat or curse his mother, and further acknowledged that he did love her, but when she died, Meursault didn't want to view her body, nor did he grieve. People called Salamano's relationship with his dog pitiful, but he is to be exonerated for his grief. Meursault had no judgement or feeling on the matter; he merely observed the sights and sounds of the situation. Meursault also had no particular judgement or feeling on his mother's death; he merely observed the sensory input of the vigil, procession, and funeral Mass.

I can turn and walk away
or I can fire the gun
staring at the sky
staring at the sun
whichever I chose
it amounts to the same
absolutely nothing
I'm alive...I'm dead

Part II: what a strange world

But that abstraction known as the French People convicted Meursault for the lack of grief over his mother's death, even though his crime was killing an Arab man on the beach.

From right after the killing, there was no doubt of Meursault's guilt; he confessed; his attorney plead guilty. Yet the resulting investigation and court trial were an object lesson in theater of the absurd, and Meursault observed that, "In a way, they seemed to be arguing the case as if it had nothing to do with me." Nor did the proceedings seem to have anything to do with the man whom he had shot.

Meursault is put on trial for all manner of things. Drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette during his mother's vigil. Not crying during her funeral. Premarital sex. Being intelligent. Not having a soul, which somehow the prosecutor contends also implicates him in another murder case going on at the same time...an odious patricide. Everything but the dead man on the beach. Ultimately he's tried and condemned for not attaching the same interpretations, significance, meaning, and emotions to things as others do. Sentence: his head.

I feel the steel butt jump
smooth in my hand
staring at the sea
staring at the sand
staring at myself
reflected in the eyes
of the dead man on the beach
(the dead man on the beach)
I'm alive...I'm dead

Redux

In The Stranger, Camus explored what he called the nakedness of man when faced with the absurd. If you find philosophical absurdism (or its cousins existentialism and nihilism) lacking, don't fret. One can still learn from Meursault even if his radical simplicity is a path far more than one could ever be capable of taking.

We need to learn that things are as they are, which is not always the same as the interpretation, significance, meaning, or emotions attached to them. Perhaps too, we'll need to accept the injustice of men for our non-attachment. Nonessentials are frequently decreed as essentials in religion, science, culture, society, and relationships. We're constantly being required to offer a pinch of incense at the altar of the accepted meaning of these things, and these are jealous gods.

Manufacturing Consent: Ayn Rand

anti-concept: n. an artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term, designed to replace or obliterate some legitimate concepts—a term which sounds like a concept, but stands for a “package-deal” of disparate, incongruous, contradictory elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context, a “package deal” whose (approximately) defining characteristic is always a non-essential.

Our world abounds with anti-concepts. They manufacture opinion; they manufacture consent. They are rhetorical smoke and mirrors calling out pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Find them. Uproot them.

Manufacturing Consent: George Orwell

It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. 1984

Although he didn't use the term manufacturing consent, Orwell coined Newspeak, the underlying premise of which is that if something can't be said, then it can't be thought. This suits ideologues, especially those who are either reactionary or progressive or totalitarian alike, and whose aim is to make any alternative thinking or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the prohibited concept.

In Politics and the English Language Orwell lamented the quality of the English of the time (1946), citing examples of dying metaphors, pretentious diction or rhetoric, and meaningless words, all of which contribute to fuzzy ideas and a lack of logical thinking.

Was Orwell a prophet or was 1984 a how to manual? Redefining and eliminating words redefines and eliminates thought. This is the goal of political correctness. Eliminated and redefined thought eliminates and redefines culture, society, institutions, and indeed man itself. Words, thoughts, consent, culture, and man all become manufactured.

The whole climate of thought will be different.
In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now.

Say What?

Who said what:

1. If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced. 2. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. 3. Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them. 4. Any country that accepts abortion, is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what it wants. 5. There are two mistakes people usually make when it comes to the devil: one is not to believe in him at all; the other is to believe in him too much. 6. History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it. 7. Diane, 10:03 am, Great Northern Hotel. Sheriff Truman and I have just been with the one-armed man or what's left of him. In another time, another culture he may have been a seer, a shaolin priest. In our world he's a shoe salesman and lives among the shadows.

A. G.K. Chesterton B. Fox Mulder C. Joseph Heller D. Dale Cooper E. C.S. Lewis F. Winston Churchill G. Mother Theresa

I gotta new guru

no, no, no, not Ivan Ilyich...

1986
The Death Of Ivan Ilyich
The Cossacks
Tolstoy
-vs-
Grass
Katz und Maus
Die Blechtrommel

...but Ivan Illich

His fundamental argument, widely admired in some quarters and ridiculed and caricatured in others, was that once our institutions developed beyond a certain scale, they became perverse, counterproductive to the beneficial ends for which they were originally conceived. The end result of this paradoxical counter-productivity was schools which make people dumb, complacent and unquestioning; hospitals which produce disease; prisons which make people violent; travel at high speed which creates traffic jams; and ‘aid and development’ agencies which create more and more ‘needy’ and ‘underconsuming’ people.

A Turbulent Priest in the Global Village

Wikipedia: Ivan Illich

Wørd: Totoleration

Camus rightly argues that to commit to a just cause against overwhelming odds is absurd. He further argues that not to commit is equally absurd. Only one choice, however, offers the slightest chance for dignity. And dignity matters.

Totoleration = when toleration takes on totalitarian qualities

Let's not forget that UFOs are unidentified flying objects, or to put it differently (and entirely the same) objects (phenomena), that fly (or are in or come through the sky), and that are unidentified (we don't know what they are).

SI COMPREHENDIS...NON EST DEUS

For if you comprehend, He is not God. Be there a pious confession of ignorance, rather than a rash profession of knowledge. To reach to God in any measure by the mind, is a great blessedness, but to comprehend Him is altogether impossible. — Augustine, Sermo LXVII

That is why the Zen Masters say: "If you meet the Buddha, kill him." Here we must be very circumspect. The "Holy Object" must be destroyed in so far as it is an idol embodying the secret desires, aspirations and powers of the ego-self. — Thomas Merton

The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness.

Feeds Performance
William Burroughs' cut-ups
Old Man of the Mountain: Hassan ibn Sabbah: Alamut: Paradise: Persia: Hashish: Hashshashin: Assassin: Marco Polo
Mick Jagger: Blues: Rock
Anthology: Jorge Luis Borges

Eats Performance
Coil: Love's Secret Domain: Further Back and Faster
Big Audio Dynamite: This Is Big Audio Dynamite: E=mc2
I like that, turn it up...It was Mad Cyril...We have been courteous...I need a bohemian atmosphere

Performance tastes like
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
You must merge gentlemen.
What's been puzzling you is the nature of my game.

‘Merger’ is heard repeatedly in the dialogue, and Mick Brown points to Borges’s theory that “every man is two men,” realized at the end upon the fusion of Chas (the personification of violence) and Turner (pacifism). In the first half of the picture, gangsters (seen reading Borges on their coffee break!), businessmen and lawyers are so utterly lost in their oppressive performance that single-mindedness has left them homosexual. In the second half, Cammell examines what he called “the interchangeability of gender,” via Chas’s overbearing manliness, Pherber’s domineering femininity, and Turner and Lucy’s androgyny, narcissistic characters approaching the liberation of the female-man and the male-woman, a ‘complete’ individual. — Ray Young

Varia: 2_12

Adventures in Success…the NLP Way

...the 1st adventure…
It were pretense sir…and the hysteria that resulted was very real…Mary Warren, you little minx.
Yeah sure, it turned out poorly for Salem, but it needn’t. Better living through pretense…not pretentiousness.

…the 2nd adventure…
Societies of Creative Anachronism…who’s to say that I’m not the king and that I shouldn’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at me…even if she didn’t…
…yet anachronisms can be a bit retrogressive, and time isn’t the only limitation to creatively transcend.

…the 3rd adventure…
You've always had the power to go back...
...close your eyes and tap your heels together three times. And think to yourself. There's no place like Oz. There's no place like Oz.

Mmmmm…garbage wigs

…not in focus? Then you’re not using the right lens.

Varia: II

eat this fruit mind your step __________ sin | dios __________ people are people so are people so people people so people are so people are people

Have you ever seen fire in zero gravity...it's beautiful...it's like liquid...it slides all over everything...comes up in waves.

Varia: I

xyz = 1

The Genealogy of Morals…or…Nietzsche, Still Dead. How about the Genealogy of:

relativism
reconstructionism
nihilism
death culture

Do you need rooting powder to propagate a meme?

René Girard’s anthropology…by Allison & Wiki…the jury is still out…also, the three modalities in Thomistic anthropology.

the body reveals the person
out of harmony
out of our minds
out of control

elastic love in NoWay Valley

Who are you?

It is human to receive an impression of something, but it is doubtful if anybody ever received a post-impression of anything. —Chesterton

An impressionist painting is a composed of a multitude of colored dots and smears (the metaphorical trees), and when the viewer takes a step back he’s able to see the impression, whether portrait or landscape (the metaphorical forest).

It’s all very beam me up Scotty

First comes the internal impression, then the constituent parts that compose the impression are organized, and then the external impression is conveyed.

Have you seen the hideous results when the transporter malfunctions?

But is it art? No, it’s not just art; it’s all communication

Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole

Who are you?

Some of your parts
The sum of your parts
Something beyond the sum of your parts

Be careful what you ask for

Those who sacrifice to other gods will go to those gods. The ancestor worshipers will go to their ancestors. Those who worship the elemental powers and spirits will go to them. So, also, My devotees will come to Me.

What of the self-worshipers, shall they go to themselves...eternity constructed of infinite iterations of self and nothing more. What manner of hell is this; and so too the demoniac shall go to the demons.

East Meets West: I

There are many similarities between the world’s religions, so much so that some think that all religions are just different paths to the same end. As a result, new ways of thinking and new religions have been constructed to promote this ideal such as New Age spirituality or the Bahá'í faith. But do all of the many paths lead to the same place? I don’t think that they do, because while there might be so many superficial or even uncanny similarities, there are also many fundamental and mutually exclusivizing differences.

My query begins at this point: parallels...what does it mean exactly?
<< Preface      East Meets West: I      East Meets West: II >>

It’s difficult for any nondevotee to really understand another’s religion. Krishna said, "Having gained this knowledge, one quickly attains supreme peace or liberation. The irrational, the faithless, and the disbeliever perishes. There is neither this world, nor the world beyond, nor happiness for the disbeliever." On a simpler level what I think he’s saying is that even if you read the scripture and study the religion, if you don’t have the faith, you just won’t "get it". This would be applicable to any religion, but there is more to it than this. Religion is not only about what one studies and believes, it is not only about what one does and how one lives, it is about Who one loves and how one gives them devotion and service.

This is just as true in Christianity as it is in Hinduism, but I think that it is helpful to begin by thinking of Hinduism as really more of a cultural framework (than a singular religion) in which are found many varying schools of thought, religions* (yogas**), and cults***.

*religion comes from Latin and means to bind, so a religion is a system in which someone is bound by and to that which and to whom they believe (see cult 3). This does not need to imply the supernatural in any way, as based on this definition scientism, humanism, atheism, etc are all beliefs that bind conscience and behavior and can therefore be construed as religions. However, the most common context for religion is spiritual or supernatural and so is a system of how one is bound to or united with a god or spirit. In Christianity, for example, we hear Jesus say, "take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me."

**yoga comes from Sanskrit and means to yoke, so from an etymological standpoint, religion and yoga are equivalent. This is particularly true when yoga is used in its broadest sense where it is the process of attaining union with the Ultimate Reality. But there are also many types or schools of yoga. Of particular interest in this context is bhatki yoga, which is the spiritual practice of rendering loving devotion to God. Many in the west are also familiar with hatha yoga, which involves physical and mental exercises practiced so as to order the mind, command the body, and control the passions. For some this is the end in itself, but in the greater context of yoga, these exercises are part of the discipline of devotion and the process toward union.

***cult should always be used in the nonpejorative sense: 1. formal religious veneration; 2. a system of religious beliefs and ritual; 3. a great devotion to a person (deity), idea, or object.

The reason why one should think of Hinduisms instead of simply Hinduism is because there are so many fundamental differences in cosmology, theology, and praxis between the various schools, but instead of looking at this time at these differences within Hinduism, I’m more interested in looking at the first fundamental difference between Christianity and Hinduism.  

What’s the matter?

What is the value of the material universe? The Judeo-Christian view on matter is "and God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day." Since this is the end of the "sixth day", we know that includes every aspect of the created universe including that uniquely spiritual-material being...the human person.

Now not everyone thinks that matter is so good. There have been many sects, who have believed that matter, and therefore the universe is either profoundly flawed or even evil, and that the person is essentially solely a spiritual being who is trapped in a human body, i.e. degenerate or evil matter. Within the western traditions, Gnostics (Manicheans, Bogomils, Albigensians (Cathars), and Waldensians) are some sects that have held some combination of such beliefs. Carried to the extreme, such beliefs have perpetuated an encouragement of sodomy, contraception, and abortion for the purpose of preventing spiritual beings from being incarnated into matter and even encouraged suicide and euthanasia for the purpose of liberating spirits from their material existence. Christianity has rejected all of these means and all of these ends, although some protestant sects have backtracked on this rejection in the past century.

Indeed, Christianity is centered upon an incarnate God...a God who saw that His creation was essentially good, yet in need of redemption, and assumed form within it. Back to Hinduism, we also see a tradition of the Ultimate Reality or Supreme Personality of Godhead assuming material, human form millions of times. Since it’s unlikely that divinity would pollute itself with something that is essentially evil, it then would then be reasonable that the Hindu view is that matter is not evil. However, and this is a big however, common to probably most schools of Hindu and also Buddhist thought, is the concept of maya in which the material world is a lesser reality and a form of illusion to be overcome. This leads to the common view and goal in both Hinduism and Buddhism of the final release of the individual soul from any reincarnation into material existence. What this in turn results in varies by school. For some it is the extinction and absorption of the personality into either nothingness or into Godhead, and for others it involves the preservation of the personality while achieving union with Godhead. In contrast, Christianity teaches the resurrection of the material body into a glorified form, while also preserving the personality and achieving union with God.

There’s a lot more to the matter of matter, and there are many more religions to survey for differences, but the important thing to take notice of in this brief survey is that the understanding of the very nature of the universe and the human body is fundamentally and radically different in various religions, whether these things are essentially good, neutral, or evil is of no little difference. Returning to the question do all of the many paths lead to the same place? Well, the various paths usually state where they believe they lead, and we can see that some paths claim to lead to different, similar, or the same place. Since there’s a world of difference between annihilation and a personalist union with God, why then, should anyone maintain that all paths lead to the same end?

The Erasure of Place: There's no There, There

The idea that all new suburban residential and commercial developments in this vast terrain are virtually identical...where if the vernacular has not been obliterated completely, it has been co-opted in the most superficial of veneers...has been much discussed, so I will only raise the issue as a focal point of serious meditation...beyond the vulgarity that is the aesthetics of the bottom line. Pods where we plug in...one space undifferentiated from the next...vast organimetric patterns. From this omnipresence of tangible space we move on to...

...the reordering of how we identify that space. Space, place, thing is renamed due to politics, economics, ideology. The culture is then required to reorder their history, identity, aims in reaction to place. Saint Petersburg > Leningrad > Petrograd. Candlestick Park becomes 3Com Park, but how do San Franciscans identify that place...how will they in subsequent generations? One singular entity has the power to re-identify place...to re-order culture. There's unease, and it's all too common so we have to sublimate...we have to laugh. The Who plays Olde Springfield's historic Yahoo! Arena. The mundane...Northern States Power is now X-cel Energy. Geographical considerations are rendered irrelevant and substituted with attitudes of success. Power doesn't come from a plant, it comes from a grid...a matrix, until we finally reach the evolutionary leap where...

...there's no there, there. They taught that to children, explaining cyberspace. She remembered a smiling tutor's lecture in the arcology's executive crèche, images shifting on a screen: pilots in enormous helmets and clumsy-looking gloves, the neuroelectronically primitive "virtual world" technology linking them more effectively with their planes, pairs of miniature video terminals pumping them a computer-generated flood of combat data, the vibrotactile feedback gloves providing a touch-world of studs and triggers. As the technology evolved, the helmets shrank, the video terminals atrophied...no there, there.
— William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

   

Cyberspace is where a long distance telephone call takes place, but it's also where the bank keeps your money. Cyberspace is where your medical records are stored. All of this stuff is out there somehow in a relationship to all of the other bits of it, and there's really no point in thinking about its geographical location.
— William Gibson, Interview for Rabid Eye 3, 1995

Project 80 Cabaret Voltaire from The Conversation, 1994. Postscript:

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts...A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...
— William Gibson, Neuromancer

It's a Poet's Poet's World

I was...	...but would have rather been
ee cummings An experimental gram- matical poet, ee cummings was surprisingly boring as an actual person. He wrote on topics of sex and war, and pioneered a new almost concretist style of avant-garde poetry which makes very little sense to the uninitiated.	Lord Byron Quite the Ladies' man, Byron wrote during the early 19th century. He was born with a deformity, and much of his life was spent with a sense of urgency, trying to suck up as much life as he could to make up for his own insecurities. He was a bisexual and died very young of fever.
anyone lived in a pretty how town anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn't he danced his did Women and men (both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn't they reaped their same sun moon stars rain children guessed (but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more when by now and tree by leaf she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone's any was all to her someones married their everyones laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wake hope and then) they said their nevers they slept their dream stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down) one day anyone died i guess (and noone stooped to kiss his face) busy folk buried them side by side little by little and was by was all by all and deep by deep and more by more they dream their sleep noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes. Women and men (both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain	My Soul is Dark My soul is dark - Oh! quickly string   The harp I yet can brook to hear; And let thy gentle fingers fling   Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear. If in this heart a hope be dear,   That sound shall charm it forth again: If in these eyes there lurk a tear,   'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain. But bid the strain be wild and deep,   Nor let thy notes of joy be first: I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,   Or else this heavy heart will burst; For it hath been by sorrow nursed,   And ached in sleepless silence, long; And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,   And break at once - or yield to song. I had to dust off my high school humanities textbook. ee was a mighty fine poet. At least anyone lived in a pretty how town is brilliant. Poor anyone and noone. At least they found each other and have herein been immortalized. Now Byron…fabulous silk turbans and jackets. What an ambi-dandy, and that sense of urgency, trying to suck up as much life as he could…some things we feel in our marrow. My Soul is Dark. Yes, indeed my soul is restless until it rests in Thee o Lord. Which famous poet are you?