prynne, leary & thinking in stages

[entertainment]

"Seeing things from beyond their end - as transfinite, so to speak. They appear in an entirely different light. Events come to you from the opposite direction in time, from the depths of their past occurrence.

It is the same with concepts in theory: you see them coming from another direction than that of their logical unfolding - from the depths of their accomplishment, which is also their end, as in a film run backwards.

One should always maintain a kind of balance in this way between a thing and its extreme final term, hold the two simultaneously in tension. Thus we live both with the system and with the extreme consequences of the system."

Baudrillard, Fragments

Brilliant!

 

[entertainment]

when i was a teenager, maybe younger, i got this idea in my head that i would forgo a lot of normal rites and experiences in order to get a glimpse of the sights beyond those parochial confines. but it turns out there are actually people who do both. my bad!

When I was a teenager I used to think that depressed people were the ones that had realized a larger truth about existence and the world. I thought they were the most exciting people. Later I realized most of them were just unhappy with their lives/themselves. Partly by being one myself.

 

[sus]

via Allport

 

[luka]

chilling

 

[sus]

Development was a mistake maybe

 

[version]

Goethe came up with something he called the "genetic method". He'd focus on a particular plant, trace its creation and development as far back as he could, then use his imagination to close the gaps between the steps he'd identified and try to visualise the process as an uninterrupted whole.

"Nature leaves no gaps,"

 

[sus]

[Olson] participated in early psilocybin experiments under the aegis of Timothy Leary in 1961

 

[sus]

Been reading the Prynne-Olson letters (attached) trying to understand the man (former) and stumbled upon that bit +

Meanwhile I am sending the enclosed emblem of apprenticeship, for no
very clear reason except that the attempt means nothing to anyone in this context over here.4
It’s a wordy gesture, I know, but some of the words concerned
here have very deep roots—in any case the craft is to be learned, allegiances
to be declared and fused with the changing weather. A landmark, if no more
than this.

"emblem" here being Prynne poem “After So Much Pride" (Prynne was 25, Olson in his 50s)

and incidentally the year they begin their correspondence is 61, year of Leary trials

 

[luka]

Yeah apparrntly he was gulping them down like sweeties

 

[version]

... our sciences and technologies have accustomed us to see everything in terms of a continuous evolution, which is never anything other than our own - the theological form of our superiority. The essential form, however, is that of discontinuity.

Everywhere in the universe, discontinuity alone is probable. The Big Bang itself is the absolute model. Might it not be the same for living things, events, language? Infinitesimal as is the passage from one form to another, it is always a jump, a catastrophe - from which the strangest most anomalous forms ensue unexpectedly, with no regard for the end result. Closer to home, languages also provide a fine example of this singular discontinuity (from one signifier to the other, one language to the other), developing in largely random manner, without any continuous progress or superiority of one over another.
BAUDRILLARD, IMPOSSIBLE EXCHANGE

 

[sus]

Yes Jean its called punctuated equilibrium theory, it's been the major topic of debate in evolutionary science since the seventies