either/or versus plus/and

Outside the realms of subjective human perception which lead to either/or positions, or what are essentially definitions of classes which exist in the objective world, there are real-world analogs in language and genetics which provide another perspective.

Most complex physical processes are blending processes or plus/and processes For example, if I mix some paints together, I get a blend that essentially averages the inputs into something homogenous. The alternative, and much more rare, combining process is called a discrete combinatorial process. In such processes the combination is not an average – each individual combination has perceptively unique qualities. This means a discrete combinatorial system can generate and infinite number of qualitatively different outputs. In other words, innovation (of develpoment) in its broadest sense can really only be possible when discrete combinatorial systems are at work.

There are only two discrete combinatorial systems that we know of: DNA and human language (and by extension most of what we call “thinking”). It is no coincidence these are exactly the processes that generate endless variety. These two systems have done pretty well so far -- the discrete combinatorics of DNA has resulted in the natural world we live in, and the discrete combinatorics of our language system are what give us the tools to describe and shape the world in which we live.

Though its very shaky ground - I suppose music could also loosely be described as a discrete combinatorial system, though the definition is almost meaningless when applied to human action, which is in itself is the result of an endless chain of combinations.

Anyway - the point is, its the and/plus processes that gives us complexity, that when taken to the Fractalist/Buddhist extreme leads to the conclusion that all 'actors' have a cause/effect releationship with all other 'actors' on a physical/spiritual level. The 'either/or' processes (electron/proton - negative/positive etc) provide the building blocks for further development, but its the combinations - simple or discreet that lead to true complexity.

It strikes me that this physical process (in language and universal grammar in particular) is quite similar to how people build up opinions and moral and political values. A foundation of absolute opinions formed in early life which lead to a more sophisticated and nuanced word view as we grow older - in that sense, the political use of dualism the with us/against us position exemplified by Bush, is not just an appeal to tribalism, but an appeal to an immature, unsophisticated self - an actor that has yet to develop philosphically or emotionally and is more receptive to crassly emotive argument.

There is, of course an inherent conflict between the materialist, scientific approach and the very idea of dualism. Cartesian dualism in particular has been the subject of attack by cognitive and neurologists, who aim to break down the mind/matter divide with empirical biological evidence, but whether or not this is possible, I think the argument that either/or positions are all creations of human perception and classification rather than material objective 'facts' has some merit.

blissblogger said:

see i thought that "plus/and" explicitly meant -- you don't have to choose here, you can have both.

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that's how I think of it as well.

blissblogger said:

but i'm wondering how does this nondualistic, anti-binary whatever approach actually translate into practical life, which is a minefield of either/or choices from the incredibly petty and insignificant to the profound and life-altering

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ok off the top, in super condensed form:

Des Carte inplemented the mind/body split, which has lead the fields of medicine, psychology, etc, down their own respective dead-end alleys. but the origins of dualistic thinking is far older than this... may be the beginning of civilization itself (a recent phenomenon in the lifespan of our species), the rise of hierachical power, monotheism, etc.

there are myriad of advantages to wholistic thinking and practice, and one of the most concrete examples of which is in medicine. I'm not a trained herbal doctor, but I believe, and can testify that it is a far superior alternative to corrupt and lethal mainstream practices.

this may be a bit extreme, but I do believe, on some fundamental level, that all of the world's ills can be somehow connected to / is caused by, dualistic thinking. it is the separation of man and nature, the separation of our minds and our bodies, with dire consequences (ecology, just to name one).

new age cliches aside, there are definite, undeniable truths about the parrallels of the latest descoveries in physics and ancient Eastern wisdom - they basically say the same thing - an infinite field of energy, the inter-connectedness of all things, etc. and when people start drawing boundaries, that's when they shoot themselves in the foot.

As long as you have will, you're not free.

Oh, I can do platitudes til the cows come home.

an even more concrete example:

wholistic medicine does not view physical, mental, emotional and spiritual centers of the body as separate, but as 4 different manifestations of the same field of energy. thus when your stomach hurts, you can be sure there is an emotional equivelent or cause (unless, ofcourse, your drunk mate punched you in the gut), which also needs to be treated, and perhaps even with more urgency.

I'm just beginning to learn a little bit here and there about natural healing and alternative medicine and things, it's a giant body of knowledge...

I've asked someone much, much more knowledgeable in this area (a kung-fu instructor/herbal doctor/life coach) to contribute to the discussion, hopefully he'll be stopping by sometime soon.

Some points:

Descartes might have introduced mind-body dualism in its modern form, but the idea that he or it 'led to scientific dead ends' needs some nuancing. Descartes was certainly a major figure of the scientific enlightenment, massively significant in wresting thought from theocratic control, the inspiration not only for modern dualism, but also modern materialism. Modern science is in a 'dead end' by comparison with what? New Age healing? Crystals? Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying that certain scientific discoveries have led to problems, but...

Even if ONE particular version of either-or i.e. Cartesian substance dualism, is wrong, this doesn't in itself undermine either-or thought in general.

Similarly, it doesn't follow from the fact that Bush presented a false dichotomy (either you support us or you're a terrorist) that every single either-or is equally false.

It's difficult to see how the New Age critique of either-or isn't now a weapon of the currently dominant ideological forces (zen managerialism). As Simon rightly points out, the Blarite Third Way says we can BOTH have capitalism AND socialism. An exemplary expression of this would be the disastrous Public-Private Finance Initiatives, which are in many ways the worst of all worlds. (As Zizek says, the Third way is not the synthesis of the first and second ways, but the elimination of anything that isn't First Way.) Interesting that this plus/ and model is totally compatible with a certain model of 'choice' (which is one of the most tiresomely reiterated pieces of contemporary political rhetoric).

On another tip: occurs to me that this scarcity point links with some of the issues that came up around the problem of 'too much music' ... In conditions of scarcity, choice assumes greater weight... In conditions of surplus, no choice is ever really significant...

k-punk said:

Modern science is in a 'dead end' by comparison with what? New Age healing? Crystals?

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{sighs} And as ever round here, the dominant materialists rouind here can't help but reduce themselves to taking the piss of anyone who doesn't adopt either / or. It's intellectual bullying.

Modern science -- and materialism -- is in a dead end by comparison with its own principles. It is in a similar dead end to theologically conditioned science. In other words, it is so convinced of the rightness, the successfulness, of its own paradigm, that it doesn't believe that any other view point can be imagined, or indeed allowed. The zetetic point of view does not say that science is wrong. It is that science is not scientific enough, that materialism as an ideology -- as a set of assumptions -- is strengthened by skepticism of its own premises, not be enforcement of them. The materialist paradigm is relatively new by human standards, and that tells us little about its fundamental probity. The varieties of non-materialist, or at least non-fundamentalist materialist paradigms, are relatively old by human standards, and that tells us little about their fundamental probity. But the materialists' assumption that theirs is the way, the truth, and the light, that theirs is a paradigm that will never be over-turned, can never be questioned, betrays only hubris and cowardice, not any everlasting verity. And if you think that materialism's paradigmatic certainty is not displayed here, then... well, you're not sitting where I am.

k-punk said:

It's difficult to see how the New Age critique of either-or isn't now a weapon of the currently dominant ideological forces

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It's difficult to see how the rhetorical use of such pejorative language in relation to a set of ideas which has nothing whatsoever to do with Blairite obfuscation can be a product of reasoned or even informed critique of plus / and. To defend plus / and from such charges is identical to defending oneself against the charge, "When did you stop beating your wife".

In contrast, the either / or position boils down to claiming, with ever increasing hysteria, and ever decreasing conviction, "THIS is right, it is, it IS, IT IS, IT IS! IT IS!"

blissblogger said:

Both sets of adherents, interestingly, would claim that their proposition is closer to the True Nature of Reality.

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I suspect that this is precisely the point at which the problems start.

As individuals, we have to make decisions in our everyday lives, thereby following the existentialist either/or imperative every single day. This is what lies at the heart of what Milan Kundera termed the 'unbearable lightness of being.' The sum total of our choices is what defines us as individuals and makes each of us unique.

But if it's a matter of trying to describe the 'True Nature of Reality' - to claim that it's anything other plus/and is surely to conflate subjective with objective. If Bush and his neo-con buddies are relevant to this debate it's because they're trying to do precisely that; and in a position to impose and enforce their own interpretation of reality on others.

"As Simon rightly points out, the Blarite Third Way says we can BOTH have capitalism AND socialism. An exemplary expression of this would be the disastrous Public-Private Finance Initiatives, which are in many ways the worst of all worlds. (As Zizek says, the Third way is not the synthesis of the first and second ways, but the elimination of anything that isn't First Way.)"

Which, er, really makes it as much either/or, doesn't it?

I mean, the problem with Third Way is not so much that it's a mediation between capitalism and socialism but that it's no mediation at all, or that whatever mediation it happens to be is a crap and dishonest one - "we don't have to choose between capitalism and socialism when the latter is never on the table". It is the false dilettantism of purists: "I like both styles of music: country AND western!"

In other words: "Expert Managerial Capitalism or <i>nothing</i>."

Zizek has a good line on the Third Way, but so do most half-intelligent left-wing theorists and not all of them go on to conclude that the only choice remaining is out-'n'-out socialism.

blissblogger said:

[and can anyone explain what that actually means -- plus/and -- why is it formulated that way and not and/plus.... why is there even a slash between the words? and is it actually a term of philosophical origin?]

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Don't think so. Either/Or is Kierkegaard, but I think his term for Plus/And (lots of choices, lots of diversions, no commitment) would be "levelling".

Tim F said:

"As Simon rightly points out, the Blarite Third Way says we can BOTH have capitalism AND socialism. An exemplary expression of this would be the disastrous Public-Private Finance Initiatives, which are in many ways the worst of all worlds. (As Zizek says, the Third way is not the synthesis of the first and second ways, but the elimination of anything that isn't First Way.)"

Which, er, really makes it as much either/or, doesn't it?

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Yes, but only because, in most real-life cases (mystificatory New Age rhetoric to the contrary) it boils down to a matter of either-or. Most of the time, you can't have your cake and eat it (though one plus/ and that does work is: you can be a hippie AND a managerialist ).

k-punk said:

Yes, but only because, in most real-life cases (mystificatory New Age rhetoric to the contrary) it boils down to a matter of either-or. Most of the time, you can't have your cake and eat it

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this is because the world and civilization is built with either/or pieces. these restrictive ways of perceiving has been thoroughly ingrained into our collective psyches and the way we do things.

for the past 5000 years (versus the 2 million or so "humanity" has walked the earth).

more about the dead-ends later...

"Yes, but only because, in most real-life cases (mystificatory New Age rhetoric to the contrary) it boils down to a matter of either-or. Most of the time, you can't have your cake and eat it (though one plus/ and that does work is: you can be a hippie AND a managerialist )."

Alternatively because, as I've argued, there is no plus/and which isn't also an either/or and vice versa. It's a false choice.

blissblogger said:

[and can anyone explain what that actually means -- plus/and -- why is it formulated that way and not and/plus.... why is there even a slash between the words? and is it actually a term of philosophical origin?]

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AFAIK the plus/and comes from Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus as the rhizomic anti-hierarchical opposition to the binary either/or. And of course to answer charges that they have thus set up their own meta-binary - either either/or or plus/and - they stress that the plus/and unravels the binary in a combinatory constructivist creative experimental pragmatics - just use and combine tools/terms/concepts, discard what doesn't/no longer works, create new ones, or re-use old ones... the process qua process is what's important, what's intensified, what dynamics and energies circulate, what desire is allowed to flow, forget meaning and interpretation, what works ? This seems like the perfect paradigm for the mutating electronic music virus proliferating in different directions, disappearing down blind alleys, creating fertile micro-scenes, getting co-opted by the mainstream...

This seems to link up a point from the "Hairshirt" thread also... "Nothing changed from the vantage point of history, ergo you were wrong, it was worthless" - D&G invoke Nietzche and Bergson in this instance - the moment of real creation is a rupture of "a liitle time in its pure state" un-burdened by the "it had to be this way" of history, like Badiou's Event, by definition they come from elsewhere (the finite elements of a set cannot account for the Event from outside the set whether in love, art, or politics).

Surely one point of criticism is to isolate those "I Luv U"/punk etc moments and rescue their innate novelty from the inevitability of history, no matter how reality has healed the scar they made in the meantime (and time really is mean in this sense).

From http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/soren_kierkegaard.html:

Since the aesthete, whose characteristic indecisiveness occupies the center of attention throughout the work [Either/Or] , has absolved himself of all ethical and religious ties, he encounters nothing but figurations and shadows of himself. [...] The loss of all transcendental validity leaves its traces in the aesthete's various moods--melancholia, anxiety, sudden enthusiasm, boredom.

k-punk said:

On another tip: occurs to me that this scarcity point links with some of the issues that came up around the problem of 'too much music' ... In conditions of scarcity, choice assumes greater weight... In conditions of surplus, no choice is ever really significant...

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the primacy of either/or follows from the simple fact of human finitude and mortality -- as simon said in his original post

you can't do two things at once -- or at least, not two things well at the same time -- and there's only so many hours in the day, and so many years in the life

if you want to go out and party at night, then you'll necessarily neglect the tasks of the day -- and if you devote yourself to daytime tasks, you'll have to sleep at night

if you choose to pursue art, you'll most likely suffer in the wallet -- and if you take care of your wallet first, you'll be a dull person indeed

so HUMAN existence is ruled by the either/or

as for NATURE, it appears to be ruled by the and/plus -- recombinant genes, etc, as someone upthread convincingly pointed out

and this simply points to the radical disjunction between man and nature -- he belongs to nature, and yet man's nature estranges him from nature

'then again as per czukay, 'restriction is the mother of invention' one might talk of an aesthetics of finitude coming into play --- the fewer resources and options you have, the better the work -- example being that better results were achieved when producers had far less sample-time (ardkore-era 4 Hero) than they did later on (reinforced sound circa 96/97)

plus/and is the principle that led to future sound of london's over-cooked broth"

Ha ha how is plus/and supposed to even have a fighting chance when either/or is apparently responsible for virtually all good art and music except FSOL?!?

What about the fact that FSOL self-consciously limited themselves to only arty/avanty signifiers for their brand of intelligent sampladelic dance music - isn't that an either/or vis a vis 'ardkore's plus/and attitude towards avant/populism? Isn't the mission statement behind <i>ISDN</i> a perfect example of artists attempting to follow Czukay's maxim, however flawed we might consider the results to be?

Short of absolute montone minimalism, there is very little music which doesn't thrive on the basis of having several components acting together which might, in some other circumstance, seem contradictory (hence either/or), and even in the case of minimalism you can usually point to some sense in which the music evokes some productive split-personality feel. Conversely, there is <i>no</i> music which doesn't structure itself around some self-imposed limitation (e.g. Czukay's maxim). This is why genre exists and works.

The comparison between FSOL and 4 Hero does not, therefore, rest on one being plus/and and one being either/or. Rather, it rests on how each structures differently what is possible and what is impossible.

there is choice in everything we _decide_ to do. maybe the question of potential exists exactly at the "either/or" in the sense that standing firm _in_ the middle ground, without deciding on a choice, means there is always a potential to go "either" way. and in this moment of potentiality there exists something greater than the actual choices present before us. so it would be that to not choose is more powerful than to choose at all. this is the suspension of the choice, and represents infinite possibility and pure potentiality. as in Bartleby, "I would prefer not to", the example (hero) in this situation. to stand in this moment of potential-- to do/choose or to not do/choose-- is the liberation from choice in a culture of over abundance.

the and/plus doesn't sound like a choice to me

such literal, deadpan application of these terms.

either-or and (for lack of better) plus-and are ways of thinking, not descriptions of formal qualities. an either-or track does not mean skeletal bleep and bass, and a plus-and track does not mean diva jazz house with turntable action and african live drumming.

an example of plus-and thinking is more like:

"I'm not going to subscribe to the Academic VS. Underground divide, I'm going to make a track that might appeal to BOTH the faculty at Mills College AS WELL as the raver kids down the block."

or

"I'm not going to EITHER make a dubstep track OR a garage track. I'm going to combine elements of both and make something that would work for both sets."