An Emergent Order

[shakahislop]

It's not just about the 'content creators' though. That's a specific issue, but I'm also talking about any attempt to construct a framework for these things. I get a similar feeling reading philosophy and 'theory' at times. It's often more rigorous, substantial and stimulating, but I still get the feeling it's just a more committed group of people going on 'vibes' the way the podcasters and commentators are. They've a more developed vocabulary and advanced toolkit to approach the problems with, but they're all contradicting each other, trying to sell their book, trying to stand out. Zizek was on Novara the other day and, yeah, he can be entertaining, but what's the use of it? He was doing the thing about whether or not Trump is a fascist, the same thing some other left wing commentator said is pointless in an article I read a while back. Who's right? How would we ever know? Does it matter?

its a basic aspect of being a human being i think. grappling with these inbuilt limitations on your ability to understand the world. in the end that is what these philosophers and youtubers are doing; providing a way to understand what's going on. at the level of frameworks, concepts and minute to minute mediation of the facts. there's a huge hunger for it. some of it is life changing. the best examples being marxism or feminism or neoliberalism or islam. frameworks provide people a vocabulary and structured way of thinking to understanding their experiences. do they capture everything no. do they contradict each other yes. but that is part of being alive hacking your way through the thicket and trying to make sense of it all. the day to day stuff i am not sure about whether it helps or not. if you are reading the news every day there is a comfort in having someone you trust interpreting it for you. helen thompson did that for me for a while.

 

[version]

its a basic aspect of being a human being i think. grappling with these inbuilt limitations on your ability to understand the world. in the end that is what these philosophers and youtubers are doing; providing a way to understand what's going on. at the level of frameworks, concepts and minute to minute mediation of the facts. there's a huge hunger for it. some of it is life changing. the best examples being marxism or feminism or neoliberalism or islam. frameworks provide people a vocabulary and structured way of thinking to understanding their experiences. do they capture everything no. do they contradict each other yes. but that is part of being alive hacking your way through the thicket and trying to make sense of it all. the day to day stuff i am not sure about whether it helps or not. if you are reading the news every day there is a comfort in having someone you trust interpreting it for you. helen thompson did that for me for a while.

Right, but what I'm finding is that what happens is you can learn more about the frameworks, but that ultimately the frameworks are the frameworks. They aren't 'reality' and may not even correspond to it. It's like learning everything you can about various tablecloths and thinking you now understand the table beneath them.

There also seems to be a sweet spot where you can chance upon a framework and function within it, but if you keep going, look into it further and explore yet more frameworks then it becomes increasingly destabilising and all you start to see are faults, gaps and collapsing models, at which point you either throw your hands up and just wallow in confusion/don't think about it/keep exploring or just pick one despite the faults and try to fix it/defend it as best you can.

 

[shakahislop]

Right, but what I'm finding is that what happens is you can learn more about the frameworks, but that ultimately the frameworks are the frameworks. They aren't 'reality' and may not even correspond to it. It's like learning everything you can about various tablecloths and thinking you now understand the table beneath them.

There also seems to be a sweet spot where you can chance upon a framework and function within it, but if you keep going, look into it further and explore yet more frameworks then it becomes increasingly destabilising and all you start to see are faults, gaps and collapsing models.

yes agree but at some point you have to do it yourself and try to integrate it all with your own experience of the world. in the end no-one and no framework can describe the whole world and everything in it. faults gaps and collapsing models are as good at its going to get

 

[version]

yes agree but at some point you have to do it yourself and try to integrate it all with your own experience of the world. in the end no-one and no framework can describe the whole world and everything in it. faults gaps and collapsing models are as good at its going to get

What do you feel the use is then? Do you need a framework? Perhaps having no particular framework is preferable to operating according to a faulty one. I'm sure Third could swoop in here and say everyone's already operating according to one, that there is no outside, but humour me.

 

[entertainment]

I agree with version. If philosophers and debaters were genuinely serious, they would basically just go "hmm i don't know" at every question instead saying/writing something that could be said/written within the logic of the discourse.

 

[version]

I agree with version. If philosophers and debaters were genuinely serious, they would basically just go "hmm i don't know" at every question instead saying/writing something that could be said/written within the logic of the discourse.

Every thread on Dissensus made up of posts like "Yeah, maybe" and "Well, it's certainly a possibility!".

 

[pattycakes_]

A lot of philosophers and theorists really love the sound of their own intellect. Often find it all a bit dick swingy

Also end up asking myself how much of what they have to say is applicable in the real world. Esp the Foucault types, even though they can be entertaining

Obviously some of it is hugely valuable, but a lot of times I'm like just get to the fucking point and you're only on the 3rd page. I really like people who can say a lot with few words and I would say that the wisest, as opposed to greatest intellects can do exactly that

Am I reading you correctly that you're getting frustrated because they're not delivering some concrete solution to the equation?

 

[version]

Am I reading you correctly that you're getting frustrated because they're not delivering some concrete solution to the equation?

I'm frustrated because we, collectively, don't even seem capable of agreeing on what the equation is in the first place. It's the ongoing nature of it. The constant mapping and remapping of the territory. There's always another development or criticism which needs to be brought in, another book about how we're actually in some new form of capitalism the author's just invented or how some thinker who's been forgotten was actually correct and just needs tweaking.

 

[Murphy]

Humans are always trying to understand the worlds they can’t see and will never see, only to say “I saw it all, you didn’t - why didn’t you see? (insert bibliography)”

 

[pattycakes_]

Impermanence is the only constant tho

 

[version]

Sometimes I'll read a few things and they'll all feel true despite contradicting one another, like Baudrillard suggesting society had either become so overwhelmed by information that it had ground to a halt or sped up to such an extent there was no longer the necessary distance and slowness to really get a handle on anything.

 

[shakahislop]

I'm frustrated because we, collectively, don't even seem capable of agreeing on what the equation is in the first place. It's the ongoing nature of it. The constant mapping and remapping of the territory. There's always another development or criticism which needs to be brought in, another book about how we're actually in some new form of capitalism the author's just invented or how some thinker who's been forgotten was actually correct and just needs tweaking.

yeah, maybe. it's certainly a possibility

 

[shakahislop]

What do you feel the use is then? Do you need a framework? Perhaps having no particular framework is preferable to operating according to a faulty one.

depends on what you're trying to do i think. i'm mostly interested in description myself and there's truth in all of these ideas that get pumped out. all these things are happening simultaneously. there's not a way to get over the fundamental limitation that all these ideas are finally one person putting pen to paper / fingers to keyboard and trying to describe the world as they see it. and the world is hard to know in its entirety. people get a fragment of it. you can try to place these fragments together but it's not much in the grand scheme of things. but you can't deny the feeling you get when you read something and someone has managed to express something that you haven't been able to put your finger on before by yourself.

 

[version]

When we refuse to admit the interchangeable character of ideas, blood flows… firm resolves draw the dagger; fiery eyes presage slaughter. No wavering mind, infected with Hamletism, was ever pernicious: the principle of evil lies in the will’s tension, in the incapacity for quietism, in the Promethean megalomania of a race that bursts with ideals, that explodes with its convictions, and that, in return for having forsaken doubt and sloth ―vices nobler than all its virtues― has taken the path to perdition, into history, that indecent alloy of banality and apocalypse… Here certitudes abound: suppress them, best of all suppress their consequences, and you recover paradise. What is the Fall but the pursuit of a truth and the assurance you have found it, the passion for a dogma, domicile within a dogma? The result is fanaticism ―fundamental defect which gives man the craving for effectiveness, for prophecy, for terror― a lyrical leprosy by which he contaminates souls, subdues them, crushes or exalts them…[…] A human being possessed by a belief and not eager to pass it on to others is a phenomenon alien to the earth, where our mania for salvation makes life unbreathable. Look around you: everywhere, specters preaching: each institution translates a mission; city halls have their absolute, even as the temples ―officialdom, with its rules― a metaphysics designed for monkeys… Everyone trying to remedy everyone’s life: even beggars, even the incurable aspire to it: the sidewalks and hospitals of the world overflow with reformers. The longing to become a source of events affects each man like a mental disorder or a desired malediction. Society ―an inferno of saviors! What Diogenes was looking for with his lantern was an indifferent man…​

​

It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say ‘we’ with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke ‘others’ and regard himself as their interpreter ―for me to consider him my enemy.​

​

“Genealogy of Fanaticism” by Emil Cioran, 1949

A short essay by Romanian essayist Emil Cioran about the “Genealogy of Fanaticism” (1949): certainties lead human beings to their mutual demise.

aphelis.net

 

[version]

depends on what you're trying to do i think. i'm mostly interested in description myself and there's truth in all of these ideas that get pumped out. all these things are happening simultaneously. there's not a way to get over the fundamental limitation that all these ideas are finally one person putting pen to paper / fingers to keyboard and trying to describe the world as they see it. and the world is hard to know in its entirety. people get a fragment of it. you can try to place these fragments together but it's not much in the grand scheme of things. but you can't deny the feeling you get when you read something and someone has managed to express something that you haven't been able to put your finger on before by yourself.

Yeah, I know that feeling. My current concern is what's being expressed may be bollocks, regardless of whether it resonates. People's feelings are wildly out of sync with reality all the time. You might feel a certain way, take it for the truth or the world, then have a change of scenery reveal you were mistaking your immediate environment or personal situation for something universal.

 

[sufi]

Tel us more about the anagram code. That sounds well interesting.

it's this you will love it

The structural properties of the anagram in poetry

This article illustrates the main theoretical and practical problem of the study of the anagram in poetry, the still unknown entity of the anagrammatic combination, which requires specific software in order to perform a structural analysis of the text. This difficulty explains the failure of...

www.degruyterbrill.com

it is fascinating and is based on a box of notes found under saussure's bed about his secret obsessive failed quest to identify hidden messages in ancient poems

 

[sufi]

it's this you will love it

The structural properties of the anagram in poetry

This article illustrates the main theoretical and practical problem of the study of the anagram in poetry, the still unknown entity of the anagrammatic combination, which requires specific software in order to perform a structural analysis of the text. This difficulty explains the failure of...

www.degruyterbrill.com

it is fascinating and is based on a box of notes found under saussure's bed about his secret obsessive failed quest to identify hidden messages in ancient poems

i'm sure @woops is fully au fait?

 

[germaphobian]

Yeah, I know that feeling. My current concern is what's being expressed may be bollocks, regardless of whether it resonates. People's feelings are wildly out of sync with reality all the time. You might feel a certain way, take it for the truth or the world, then have a change of scenery reveal you were mistaking your immediate environment or personal situation for something universal.

Read Niklas Luhmann, read "You Must Change Your Life" by Peter Sloterdijk and read some pragmatists/neo-pragmatists with William James and Rorty being the obvious ones. Bonuss - A.J. Ayer and Feyerabend's "Agains the Method"
Because you are bascially looking for alternative more coherent, less confused anti-foundationalist, anti-essentialist, anti-kantian cannon and these are much better choices than the French obscurists and with all their subdivisions.

​

 

[germaphobian]

the basic problem was and is that the post-modern theory was bound to get caught up in endless self-referential loop because it didn't include it's own criticism so was unable to reflect upon itself. that's why the multiplication of confusions. i'm still preplexed why they left that gap

 

[sus]

The Humpty Dumpty of tradition has fallen off the wall. God is dead. Modernism attempts to put the pieces back together again, although presumably in a way that is more rational and just. Like the King's men and horses it inevitably fails -- the process of constructing and falling anew only accelerates. Finally, postmodernism gives up. It "plays with the pieces." The modernists and old traditionalists snort in disgust. It seems to be pure nihilism.

The Book of Cycles: 001

On structure

maq3.substack.com

Ford and Martel: “The Tower [card in Tarot]… encapsulates Genesis, the concept of the Fall… The Tower [symbolizes] the failure of systematizing processes, of attempts at capturing the totality in some kind of man-made artifact, whether it be a philosophical system or a civilization. The things of this world cannot contains things of the Other World, and if they try, they will eventually come up against the Real, symbolized in this card by the lightning bolt.”

The Tower may have a clock at the top, standardizing and synchronizing the rhythms of the city around it, a construced source of truth… The Tower may have an observatory at its top, with a telescope for star-gazing… The Tower is in the shape of a telescope, eyepiece pointed to the sky… The Tower may support a spotlight, an all-seeing eye—nefariously searching city streets for deviance, or sea-combing to steer a ship around a reef… “The lighthouse of consciousness”: body as tower.

Or the Tower of Tarot is the Tower of Babel is the hope of Esperanto… ONE unified language, ONE god universe (Burroughs), ONE totalizing code and system… A transient and local max personified, masquerading as timeless global peak… A working edifice built through labor which gives great vantage in lofty airs. Which is struck down by a bolt of lightning, a bolt of reality intruding from outside the system (Murphy’s Law), a bolt of the unaccounted-for. Or which is overwhelmed and washed away by the tidal terrors of the Sea’s absolving unity. Or which is blown over by great winds. Or which is ransacked by vandals. Newsom follows Joyce follows Carroll, using the metaphor of eggshells—Humpty-Dumpty’s great Fall. The fragile, protective barrier (structure) cracks up. Finn’s tumbles from his ladder and is resurrected. Christ, mounted on the Cross, reaches the peak of his powers and reincarnates in textual form…

The lesson of the Tower: there will be no final solution… The lesson of the Tower: this too shall pass… The lesson of the Tower: all structure into dust (it is like a desert sphinx)...

The Fall of the Tower is a chance to rebuild: to erect a newer, stabler structure with the rubble of the old. The collapse of the Tower is proof that the Tower no longer stands up to the forces it is tasked with defying. Death is an evolutionary strategy for passing information through time…