Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Cool idea for a thread, O_T. Could you expand on what you mean by 'spitballs'? I take it to mean stream-of-consciousness musings, more or less.

Funny seeing posts of mine from years back getting exhumed like this - feels like digital archaeology, fittingly. Yeah I was well into 'Cyclo' for a while, certainly. Reza was supposed to have written a sequel by now, in fact I think there was talk of a trilogy, even, but nothing has come of it and I wonder if it's been permanently canned. There's a post on the Urbanomic website about if from more than six years ago, and someone who was asking about it on Reddit recently got this wry reply:

If the book ever does surface, perhaps it'll include an introduction in which internet denizens search to no avail for a book called Mortiloquist by Reza Negarestani that seems to exist, but apparently doesn't.

Anyway:

quietly speculating on the forms of these letters as channels for subtler energies
View attachment 1030
their shape suggests momentum. the rush of horses, the rumble of chariots, the vast distances of seafaring
whereas these are containers of the very same energies
View attachment 1031
their square shape almost suggests domesticity/civility. the end letters also remove some of the aforementioned ambiguity. "this is where a phrase ends, one word does not connect into the next"

Some interestingly ideas here but is the idea of 'domesticity' not contradicted by what you've later written or quoted about the nomadic and pastoral lifestyle of the early Hebrews? It reminded me of this bit in The Power of Myth, which I read over Christmas:

BILL MOYERS: I wonder what it would have meant to us if somewhere along the way, we had begun the prayer “Our Mother,” instead of “Our Father.” What psychological difference would it have made?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it makes a psychological difference in the character of the cultures. You have the basic birth of civilization in the Near East with the great river valleys then as the main source areas, the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates, and then over in India, the Indus valley and later the Ganges. This is the world of the goddess; all these rivers have goddess names finally.

Then there come the invasions. These fighting people are herding people. The Semites are herders of goats and sheep, and the Indo-Europeans of cattle. They were formerly the hunters. They translate a hunting mythology into a herding mythology, but it’s animal oriented. And when you have hunters you have killers, and when you have herders, you have killers, because they’re always in movement, nomadic, coming into conflict with other people and they have to conquer the area they move into. This comes into the Near East, and this brings in the warrior gods, like Zeus, like Yahweh.

BILL MOYERS: The sword and death, instead of fertility.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Right. Particularly the Hebrews. They really wipe out the goddess. The term for the goddess, the Canaanite goddess, that’s used in the Old Testament, is “the abomination.” And there was a very strong accent against the goddess in the Hebrew, which you do not find in the Indo-European. There you have Zeus marrying the goddess and then the two play together. I think it’s an extreme case that we have in the Bible, and our own Western subjugation of the female is really, I think, a function of biblical thinking.

BILL MOYERS: Because when you substitute the male for the female, you get a different psychology, a different cultural bias.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Particularly if you cut the female out and don’t have any — I mean, if the male is on top like this and the female is the subordinate all the way, you have a totally different system from that when the two are facing each other.

(Shades of the original rift between Adam and Lilith in the last line, there.)

Having said that, we're talking about a very early phase in the history of the Semitic peoples, probably before 'Hebrews' existed as a people per se and certainly before they adopted writing, and a quick glance at Wikipedia tells me their alphabet only took on the classic 'square' shape after the Babylonian captivity (an influence from cuneiform, maybe?), hundreds of years later.

I used to be mad into this stuff as a kid - evolution of alphabets, I mean. Still fascinates me.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Something I can never fully get my head around is the fact that writing has been independently invented no more than six times, and possibly as few as three times, in all of human history. And presumably never will be again.
 

other_life

bioconfused
Some interesting ideas here but is the idea of 'domesticity' not contradicted by what you've later written or quoted about the nomadic and pastoral lifestyle of the early Hebrews?
...
Having said that, we're talking about a very early phase in the history of the Semitic peoples, probably before 'Hebrews' existed as people per se and certainly before they adopted writing, and a quick glance at Wikipedia tells me their alphabet only took on the classic 'square' shape after the Babylonian captivity (an influence from cuneiform, maybe?), hundreds of years later.

yeah the idea is they were nomads when using the first script and domestic when using the latter
 

other_life

bioconfused
Something I can never fully get my head around is the fact that writing has been independently invented no more than six times, and possibly as few as three times, in all of human history. And presumably never will be again.
this is also an area for further research. the whole *thing* of writing possibly throws *strict* post-morgan-via-marx materialist anthropology, ie the evolution of culture is always and everywhere tied directly to the arts of subsistence, leaving no room for The Lightning Flash. especially, as i mentioned, the acceleration of development: earliest symbolic art > systems of symbols > pictorial-syllabic scripts > phonetic writing
 

other_life

bioconfused
elaborated some on symbolic art:
The use of writing as a creative pursuit, or for historical documentation, presupposes a much longer prehistory: pictorial representation in general. The stone engravings found at Blombos Cave on the Southern Cape coastline of Africa, c. 68,000 BCE, unearthed in 2002 are considered the oldest of any kind of symbolic art. A 2018 study of the Maltravieso cave paintings, discovered in 1951, dated a hand stencil there c. 62,000 BCE with uranium-thorium. The bull at Lubang Jeriji Saleh dates anywhere from c. 50,000 – 40,000 BCE, making it the oldest unearthed depiction of an animal.

more notes:
“Domestication of animals – in Eastern Hemisphere – gradually introduced pastoral life, upon the plains of the Euphrates and of India, and the steppes of Asia; on the confines of one or the other of which the domestication of animals [was] first accomplished. They came to regions, so far from the cradle-lands of the human race, [which] were areas they would not have occupied as savages or barbarians in the lower status of barbarism, to whom forest areas were natural homes. After becoming accustomed to pastoral life, it was unfeasible for either of these families to re-enter the forests of Western Asia and Europe with their flocks and herds, without first learning to cultivate some of the cereals, with which to subsist the latter at a distance from the grass plains. [It is] very probable that the cultivation of cereals originated in the needs of domestic animals, and in connection with these western [re-]migrations; and the use of farinaceous food by these tribes was a consequence... [On some endowments of the Western over the Eastern hemisphere:] Maize, from its growth in the hill – which favored direct cultivation, – from its utility both green and ripe, from its abundant yield and nutritive properties, was a richer endowment in aid of human progress than all other cereals put together; hence remarkable progress of American aborigenes without domestic animals [with notable exceptions...]; the Peruvians produced bronze, which stands next to the process of smelting iron ore [pockets of the pre-Columbian Americas were in their 'Bronze Age' and on the verge of an 'Iron Age']”
So, there's a lot here:
“They came to regions, so far from the cradle-lands of the human race, [which] were areas they would not have occupied as savages or barbarians in the lower status of barbarism, to whom forest areas were natural homes.”: We remember Adam is not made in Gan Eden (lit. “enclosure of the plain”), but placed there, “to tend and keep it”. Though, queerly, Chavah is “made” in Gan Eden, from the 'side' of Adam, literally “one from his side”. What specifically changed in the life of woman with the development of pastoral life from forest life?
It is also inferred that the intentional cultivation of plants allowed for these pastoral groups to re-enter the forests. Did they violently displace their relatives in doing so? Refer to Gimbutas, “Old-European” and “Indo-European” distinction, and attendant hypotheses on matrilineal culture of former and patrilineal culture of latter. The argument for animal domestication preceding cereal cultivation is strong (strong enough), but did horticulture of other kinds of plants precede animal domestication (from the practice of plant gathering), or succeed it? How did pre-barbarian man discern edible plants? In times of scarcity (which was most of the time), would they experiment (especially after the production of fire) with plants/tuber/fungi about which they were uncertain, before the domestication of animals?
A fuller study of Bronze production in the Americas (did the Australasians/Pacific Islanders work bronze, or metal generally?), its preconditions and consequences, is in order. But deciphering the “Western traditions” is a mess with which we are saddled, for now. A fuller study of metalworking societies of sub-Saharan Africa would also be very illuminating...
 

luka

Well-known member
You started this thread when I was in the middle of an epic booze bender as you may have noticed I don't have this head on at the moment when I put it on again I'll help out
 

luka

Well-known member
But read Prynne. Read a note on metal. Read his correspondence with Olson especially.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i haven't read a single word yet, but i whole heartedly endorse this thread.

i will contribute when i'm in the right frame of mind.
 

other_life

bioconfused
i think im gonna stop sharing stuff from this prolegomena until i'm done w the ethnological notebooks. Let It Cook.
 
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