Quotes & Notes

[Corpsey]

"There is a Hindu school of philosophy that says that we are not the actors in our lives, but rather the spectators, and this is illustrated using the metaphor of a dancer. These days, maybe it would be better to say an actor. A spectator sees a dancer or an actor, or, if you prefer, reads a novel, and ends up identifying with one of the characters who is there in front of him. This is what those Hindu thinkers before the fifth century said. And the same thing happens with us. I, for example, was born the same day as Jorge Luis Borges, exactly the same day. I have seen him be ridiculous in some situations, pathetic in others. And, as I have always had him in front of me, I have ended up identifying with him. According to this theory, in other words, the I would be double: there is a profound I, and this I is identified with—though separate from—the other. Now, I don’t know what experiences you might have had, but sometimes this happens to me: usually at two particular kinds of moments—at moments when something very good has happened, and, above all, at moments when something very bad has happened to me. And for a few seconds, I have felt: “But, what do I care about all this? It is as if all of this is happening to somebody else.” That is, I have felt that there is something deep down inside me that remains separate.

And this, surely, is what Shakespeare also felt, because in one of his comedies there is a soldier, a cowardly soldier, the Miles Gloriosus of the Latin comedy. The man is a show-off, he makes people believe that he has acted bravely, and they promote him and he becomes a captain. Then they discover his trick, and in front of the entire troop they pull off his medals; they humiliate him. And then he is left alone and says: “Captain I’ll be no more; / But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft / As captain shall: simply the thing I am / Shall make me live.” “No seré capitán.” He says simply, “the thing I am shall make me live.” That is, he feels that above and beyond the circumstances, beyond his cowardice, his humiliation, he is something else, a kind of strength we all have within us, what Spinoza called “God,” what Schopenhauer called “will,” what Bernard Shaw called “life force,” and Bergson called “vital impulse.”

from A Lecture on Johnson & Boswell by Jorge Luis Borges

 

[Corpsey]

Came home to my parents' the other day and I happened to pick up one of those Penguin Classics mini-books - an excerpt of Boswell's Life of Johnson.

That's what led me to finding that Borges lecture and to reading the chapter in Bloom's The Western Canon on Johnson, which led me to this quote by Johnson himself:

"There lurks, perhaps, in every known heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself. This vanity makes one mind nurse aversions and another actuate desires, till they rise by art much above their original state of power and as affectation, in time, improves to habit, they at last tyrannize over him who at first encouraged them for show."

The excerpt I read of Boswell very quickly became boring, just an almost uninterrupted stream of Johnson pontificating about morality (invariably beginning or including "Sir!") – and I find it difficult to believe that a thousand-page book along these lines isn't a slog. Maybe it gets better?

But the quotes I came across in Bloom were more enlightening, and made me think it would be worthwhile reading Johnson's criticism.

 

[woops]

as with most writers it'sa question of the style for me, if you can get your head round all the pompous "Sir!"-ing and deferring and all that there will be some good nuggets in there. i understand the Life doesn't get good until Boswell actually meets Johnson though and I didn't get that far

 

[Corpsey]

I enjoyed reading it, it just seemed highly repetitious. It has charm to it. Gusto. Something like that. But it read more like a diary (entirely concerned with noting down johnson's remarks) than a biography.

There's a huge compendium of quotes here:

The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page

The most comprehensive collection of Samuel Johnson quotes on the web. Over 1,800 quotes from the great English lexicographer and essayist Samuel Johnson, indexed by topic.

www.samueljohnson.com

 

[constant escape]

"A spectator sees a dancer or an actor, or, if you prefer, reads a novel, and ends up identifying with one of the characters who is there in front of him."

And the sleep state is sustained by the suspension of disbelief.

Interesting how various enlightenment discourses figure this sleep state as also being hyperactive. Rapid, reactive autopilot is paradoxically the sleep state. "Stopping the world" amounts to opening your eyes.

edit: and it seems Gurdjieff's methods involve trying to observe yourself from a totally passive spectatorial position, without casting judgement, or identifying with anything, or having your attention "taken" by stimuli.

 

[version]

If it was a video-file that I was trying to watch, then at the bottom of the screen there'd be that line, that bar that slowly fills itself in - twice: once in bold red and, at the same time, running ahead of that, in fainter grey; the fainter section, of course, has to remain in advance of the bold section, and of the cursor showing which part of the video you're actually watching at a given moment; if the cursor and red section catch up, then buffering sets in again. Staring at this bar, losing myself in it just as with the circle, I was granted a small revelation: it dawned on me that what I was actually watching was nothing less than the skeleton, laid bare, of time or memory itself. Not our computers' time and memory, but our own. This was its structure. We require experience to stay ahead, if only by a nose, of our consciousness of experience - if for no other reason than that the latter needs to make sense of the former, to (as Peyman would say) narrate it both to others and ourselves, and, for this purpose, has to be fed with a constant, unsorted supply of fresh sensations and events. But when the narrating cursor catches right up with the rendering one, when occurrences and situations don't replenish themselves quickly enough for the awareness they sustain, when, no matter how fast they regenerate, they're instantly devoured by a mouth too voracious to let anything gather or accrue unconsumed before it, then we find ourselves jammed, stuck in limbo: we can enjoy neither experience nor consciousness of it. Everything becomes buffering, and buffering becomes everything.

 

[Corpsey]

Source please

 

[luka]

Bit boring this thread

 

[luka]

Self plagarisation

Quotes from books that have lit you up

As in - they've stuck in your mind, they've sent subtle shock waves through your thoughts and feelings, they've become part of you. Stuff you've underlined and made a note of. Could be of anything you've read, could be of stuff you're reading now. As a complinent to the what are you reading...

www.dissensus.com

 

[Corpsey]

"But when the narrating cursor catches right up with the rendering one, when occurrences and situations don't replenish themselves quickly enough for the awareness they sustain, when, no matter how fast they regenerate, they're instantly devoured by a mouth too voracious to let anything gather or accrue unconsumed before it, then we find ourselves jammed, stuck in limbo: we can enjoy neither experience nor consciousness of it. Everything becomes buffering, and buffering becomes everything."

What is happening when the narrating cursor catches up with the rendering one? When we're in a shocking or frightening situation?

 

[luka]

He grew up way up north in the Province of Québec, a vast territory called Abitibi, nothing but endless boreal forests, lumber camps, trailer parks. Like most teenage kids, he didn't know what the f**k to do up there, so when some guys he knew asked if he was interested in doing some "heavy metal", black magic, devil-worshipping stuff deep in the woods, he was bored enough and stupid enough to say yes.

Some of his friends came too, it started out like a cliché, reading from an old book on an altar at midnight, torches all around, he thought it was kinda weird in an uncomfortable way but went along with it.

Then the demon really showed up.

It looked like a bald, very tall, very old naked man, but with the legs of a rabbit, no fur though, just skin. It was clearly *not* a suit, he had never even seen that kind of s**t in a horror movie. The demon looked at everyone there, very silently, slowly, straight in their eyes with his own pitch black eyes. Some of the girls there started crying. The ringleader who had summoned him then said that one of his names was Baal, and that everyone needed to surrender their souls to him.

My friend ran like hell. In fact, he left his mom's place and moved to a small town down south of the Province (where I met him years later; there was no explaining our very deep friendship, I saw him there sitting at the table where we worked, we smiled at each other, I sat down besides him, and somehow we knew we would be closer than brothers for the rest of our lives.)

He was on the bus one day, having almost forgotten what happened in the woods, when he noticed a little girl staring at him. Her eyes turned pitch black, and she started grinning at him in the same inhuman way "Baal" did years earlier. He got off the bus in a hurry.

 

[luka]

Remember that controversial black woman doctor who from the highly censored press conference who openly believes (or perhaps *knows*) that "alien DNA" and "demon sperm" are used in private lab research everywhere on Earth? Yeah... what if the Bill Gates vaccine has some sort of otherworldly seed inside of it? If you accept to get injected and permanently identified as a part of the pseudo-medical cult-like system, don't be surprised if an "alien-demon-thing" begins to grow inside of you...

 

[luka]

30 to 100 days away from woman when you get to 14yrs, training hard (similar to daoist kung fu horse instance) so you LEARN to NOT let your MIND guide your ENERGY to your PENIS!
that is the same in daoism, you have to naturally - if you are a REAL daoist, not those pervs from daoist bum forum - learn how to not ejaculate, therefore, no more FLAP, etc...

when a male learn this he start to have orgasms via the vagus nerve (as females have, as science just discovered - but daoists texts says so for a looong time).

because, in man, the down converting of SHEN (light) into JING (lead) end up in EJACULATION ADDICITON

Ejaculation addiction that is related to what?
CORTISOL-DOPAMINE CYCLE!
that is the MODUS of all these perverts, phaedofiles/predators, violent people all around us.

So, YES! the immaterial realm starts to COLONISE OUR SPIRITS via our EMOTIONS.

and FEAR is the biggest DOOR there is for them to come to this realm

 

[luka]

1. Convince the general public that there is an outbreak of a deadly new virus. To sell the story, poison or otherwise kill people, then attribute their deaths to the phony virus.
2. Once the fake pandemic is up and running and the public is terrified, announce that there is a vaccine that can defeat the virus.
3. With the help of global elites, NGOs, and world governments, inject everyone on the planet with this “vaccine” as quickly as possible.
4. Surprise! The vaccine is designed to permanently sterilize all or all but a certain percentage of the people who take it. Sit back and relax as the global population drops from 7.8 billion to about 500 million in a single generation, ushering in a new era of plenty.

 

[version]

Source please

Satin Island.

What is happening when the narrating cursor catches up with the rendering one? When we're in a shocking or frightening situation?

Depends what you're talking about. One thing which came to mind whilst reading it was capitalism. The "voracious mouth" struck me as the market and buffering the kind of stagnation Mark talked about,

"... instantly devoured by a mouth too voracious to let anything gather or accrue unconsumed before it... "

We've often discussed how new music scenes, movements etc have no time to gestate and end up being chewed up and spat out before they've even had a chance.

 

[version]

Also made me think of the hypothetical internet addict cramming in more and more information they're incapable of putting into practice due to being more or less in stasis glued to the screen.

 

[constant escape]

But if they could somehow be engineered to anticipate and withstand that digestive power...

 

[constant escape]

Also made me think of the hypothetical internet addict cramming in more and more information they're incapable of putting into practice due to being more or less in stasis glued to the screen.

Another instance of pure capitalism. Constantly upping the investment and never cashing in.

 

[constant escape]

All assets to be reinvested, compounded, leaving only minimum subsistence for consumption.

 

[constant escape]

Pretty sure that was part of Adam Smiths definition of capital.