Some notes on Wittgenstein:

Language isn't a rule-governed activity; rules are a language-governed activity. Rules are when language takes on the guise of government.

Philosophy is language on holiday, and language is monkey grunting on holiday. Just like many advances in technology came from leisure time and play, so too advances in thought. And just like with language, play has rules when it will, as one kind of play.

"Who Are You?"

This question "who are you?" implies a double deterritorialization; first, of a question (primarily for identification or responsibility) that we use to affix someone to a certain range of power, certain possibilities for interaction, and their social "place" as it relates to us. "Who did this" when asked of evidence of the exercise of a human body--whether creative or destructive. Who stole my sandwich? Who fixed my car? "Who is that," when asked of someone we see at a gathering of people that includes those we aren't familiar with. We dont ask "who is that?" for people that we've lived with unless we don't recognize them, or "who did that?" for actions that already have markings that inextricably imply one known to us. Except--we can do this and there is nothing stopping us from doing this; it is a deterritorialization of a response to the strange that falls upon the familiar, making the familiar all the stranger.

The second deterritorialization is when this strangeness is asked of someone by someone else, placing before that person a violent question. We are, surely, the last person who could possibly answer for ourselves "who are you?" The problem is not that we don't have a narrative,but that we have far to many that we tell about ourselves, and they are all contradictory. We have privledged access to the events of our life, and this is what makes the telling of a story that "fits" impossible--we know all of the special cases that contradict the descriptions, and all the things that get left out in the recounting. We can hide things that conflict with a public narrative, but those things aren't hidden to us. We can even veil certain memories from ourselves, but they always return as repressed.

This questioning affixes the "who?" to the lacuna of self-definition and its impossibility, making it universal. This transforms the nature of all "who," whether of ourselves or of others. Strangeness pervades everything. I think Jesus may have clued into this when he spoke of hating one's father, mother, siblings, etc. Even one's own self! In a sense, ecumenism starts with the universalizing of natural human xenophobic even to one's own self. Though, when one places the exotic within one's self we gain that beloved paradox: the love of the neighbor and of God the same as one's self.

But the question, when asked properly, does invite us into this strangeness, and to find the power in us that is outside of all the narratives we incessantly tell ourselves. My father was a long veteran of the commodity exchanges in Chicago; he saw much of their rapid rise since the early seventies, then their slow decline into nothing, as the system of total, global economic commodification of the earth as resource ceased to territorialize itself on hyperactive and very, very social interactions between human beings on a trading floor, to the rise of computerized trading. Along the way he experienced many legendary ups and downs in fortune. He was able to make lots of money for other people, investing their money in futures and options. but when he invested his own, he became self-conscious and failed miserably. it was the detachment, and i think a certain knowledge of the ephemerial nature of the whole thing, that gave him this power. They even had a nickname for him "Its Not My Money!"

During one down period, when he was working as a clerk on the floor during a tumultuous time in the market he applied the knowledge gained in this way to predict the moves of the market. he would predict the prices of major indexes and of individual stocks with a seer's accuracy, often within cents and a hour of the predicted move. But, having no money and being down and out in the bussiness, all he could do was impress his collegues in a lower-eschalon job that went unnoticed by the real desciion-makers. finally, he impressed one fellow by calling the decline of the market during the crash of 87, just before the news reports came in on the television screen. and on the chart he was working with he whimsically drew a little hat on top of the the last peak and proclaimed "I have capped the market." And then the crash happened. The person he was talking to had nothing to say expcept:

"...Who are you?"

The answer, if one was given, is unimportant. The question isn't answered with either a story or a definition. I just told you the story--it doesn't answer, but merely begs the question "who are you?" "I'm the guy who capped the market." "Yes, I know...but who are you?" It is asked when things don't add up and can't add up using the narratives we have available. It is the question asked of knowledge and deeds from outside of what is possible within the confines of a system, coming from a place that is outside of the predictable: ie, outside of the stories that we can tell about the future. It is the out-power versus the over-power; the power that proceeds from mystery, rather than within a circumscribed set of rules meant to limit, direct, and contain human potential and which serves ultimately to feed back into those limits. The power that exits control, but also the power that is already exited, and the power that was never under control in the first place, but feeds into it for its own purposes.

It is so for iracles, as well. Pilate asked Jesus, in the face of the miracles "are you the king of the Jews?" and the only reply was "you have said so." But the truth of the question that Pilate asked was not in the reply, but in the actions themselves: the miracles. "“Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else? Jesus replied, 'Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.'"

But more than the miracles, it was the place from which they came and still proceed outside of, as a healing power; as the saving power. The font of all miracles, including the foremost miracle of the order that miracles could violate. The ground of miracle is in the...violable. Not in the absolute anarchy or the ironclad law, but in their crossing into each other across a line that makes them both. not a line as irreconsilable ceasura, but a line declared across one place, that has an effect on the mind, just like when you're a kid and don't wanna "step on a crack and break your back." Except what if mind itself is the building of these rules out of the great spirit?

Shamanpunk 2020: Interview.

I: So what is this place? Is it a farm, a school, an ecovillage?

S: Well each of those answers would have an element of truth to them, but would also be slightly misleading. If I may go through them?

I: Of course.

S: The gathering of the food that grows on the land is a livelihood that every human here participates in, and it saturates our culture. Though it is not the only livelihood to be found here, it is the one most widely shared. At this point it has become so natural that we rarely even think of it, you should notice that I didn't call what we do 'farming' as that suggests something done with extended deliberation. Instead we gather and cultivate food here with the same natural care that you digest food with. Each step of digestion going on quietly and without notice unless something goes a bit wrong, in which case you can adjust slightly (using medication, different food, or different movement) to set things back on their own course.

Extending that metaphor, this place is as much a farm, as you are an eater. Farming is an intricate part of our existence and of our way of life, but it is not what makes us who we are; any more then your diet defines your character.

Let me say, I appreciate your patience with my meandering pace.

I: I appreciate the time to digest what you say.

S: As to the accusation that this place is a school. Most of the humans living here are engaged in a life of constant education growth and change. Further more, we take in several people a year and work with them, developing skills and understanding in a range of masteries. Permaculture, Philosophy a whole series of crafts: smithing, ceramics, carpentry, masonry, woodwork, cooking, mechanics, husbandry, weaving to name just a few; also sciences, maths, sociology, linguistics, political science are offered as areas to explore.

But it would be reductionists to call this place a school. You are no more definable as a eater or a learner, then this place is definable as a farm or a school. Though they are in all cases apt observations.

Eco village suggests community a shared life and in that regard may be a more appropriate descriptor, but it is still just a descriptor and falls short of really giving a rich account. Giving a comparison of the form I did for the previous cases: Saying you are an urbanite is accurate, as is saying I am a villager. But 'urbanite' is not, I speculate, the answer you would give to the 'what are you' question any more the 'villager' is the answer I would give, or 'ecovillage' or 'village' is the answer that should be given to the 'what is this place' question you asked.

I: I understand, though I can't really say what answer I would give if the question were turned back on me. I might say that I am a journalist, but if pressed I would admit that wasn't quite right. Since you're the philosopher here, can you help me get to a good answer about this place.

S: Be careful who you call a philosopher around here...

Well, you asked about this place, you asked about something physical... but in a way that doesn't look for a name on a map. The acreage, water, plants, animals, humans, and buildings here are collectively an organism of sorts. You have asked in effect about a body. But really I suspect that the physical properties or even the various functions of this body are not the scratch for the itch of your question. I think you really want to know who's body it is. You want to know the character of who lives here, of who is here.

I: The spirit of the place.

S: The person of the place.

I: I don't understand the difference.

S: If I ask you 'who are you' I would not be asking for a spiritual answer. I would want to know about the person you are.

I: Ok, and what would you want to know about that person.

S: Perhaps a great deal, but first and foremost I would want to find the narrative that you are enacting. What is the relation between yourself, existence, and the fates.

I: Oh! Is that all?

S: It sounds to huge to approach in such grandiose language, but in fact it is quite mundane. The story of Gilgamesh is quite straight forward to tell. He is a divinely born king of Uruk, who struggled with his mortality after being traumatized when Enkidu was struck dead by the Gods. See how simple that narrative can be, but there are a thousand ways to tell any one.

'Who are you' isn't a question that has a particular or definite answer. But it is a question that can be responded to by telling your story. It starts with an account of how you got here, and then has a telling of what you are doing here, what your life is, and builds up to an account of where you are going.

Not an explanation of why you must be here, and not a prediction of where you will be. If you are driving and someone asked you 'where are you going' your answer wouldn't be a prediction of where you will be when you stop driving. Instead there would be a narrative you are enacting, maybe with a destination in mind, maybe one with just the open road ahead of you. I don't say intent, because I don't want to suggest that there is any consciousness of the narrative. As a matter of fact it is now normal to not know who you are.

I: Is all of this then just smoke and mirrors to avoid my question, because you don't know who you are? Because you don't know what the story is?

S: No, I am building up to it, dramatic device. As a Shaman I am the teller of the story to be enacted. Like providing the music for the dance. But so much of the story is hard to uproot from the enacting. And no telling of the story is at all definitive, the story is changing (BwO) even as the words stay the same by the way it is taken by the actors. So I will now give you a story, but only on the agreement that this is just one way to tell it among countless.

I: Ok, but some how I feel like I am getting a lot more then I asked for, or meant to ask for at any rate.

s: Chalk it up to my generosity.

For a long time now, the great philosophers have been trying to reground their though in the world outside of their increasingly isolated ivory tower. Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein each tried to find something one might call 'the simple life' to take root in. And others besides them too. But they all failed or had limited success at best. Because they did not understand the life they sought.

Some looked at the world man had built and said it was mad, and fought it, but they either were crushed, frustrated or worst of all victorious in their fight which tragically would but add to the madness. A fugue of pessimism could be heard in the halls where philosophy was studied. Its most sacred task, that of finding a way to live well was at risk of impossibility.

But everything needed for a good life was there for the grabbing, and it was all so simple so long as classic mistakes could be avoided. Confusing 'a way to live well' with 'the way to live well'. Designing a way of life that required people to be better then they are to get started.

So they started to spin the yarns that would build this. They practiced the story to be enacted, and they started playing at enacting it. Just a children in a tribe play at enacting the myths that in adulthood they will live by unerringly.

Now you see why story and narrative were stressed, because this is a story of story tellers. But the abstract stories of the ivory tower were not of interest, the stories told in increasingly isolating idiolect. No what was needed was a story that in a very real way saturated every pore of life.

By time the land was had, the yarns and stories were well rehearsed, and were woven into the ground. And new yarns were spun, twisting together the threads that tied together the life on the farm with the threads of thought that tied together the philosophers.

But there weren't philosophers anymore. They were now tied into the land, a part of a whole. You have to understand, hundreds of yarns were used at this point. Yarns fisrt told by Nietzsche, Quinn, Mollison, Dewey, Buber, Odum, Curtis, Deluze, Campbell, Buddha, Holzer, Carter, Carse, Veil, Jesus, Fukuoka and many many many others. And with those yarns, the threads of life between Fir, Pine, Quail, Worm, Blackberry, Thunder, Wind, Sun, Moon, Grass, Duck, Bat, Bee, Flower, Grasshopper, Fungus and many many many others. These threads formed a tapestry, this very story being but a single fiber of it. The story that can be told is not the tapestry.

Now we live hear, we spinners of yarns, forever beautifying the tapestry of our lives.

I: So you work to improve yourselves?

S: That is so, but not with any ideal or fixed goal, with out a standard. Each of us seeking our own fulfillment of the story, and collectively weaving those stories into a shared mutually supportive tapestry. Even the ducks and the goats and the olive trees have their own genius to contribute to the tapestry.

I: And what is your position in all of this, as a shaman?

TO BE CONTINUED

Toward a New People.

To be a people, and not a state is to have one's own language of virtue. But, what of a people of linguists. In Ishmael, Quinn suggests that the story of first sin in the Bible is a story that originates from a leaver (primitive) society explaining what had gone wrong to make takers (civilized); that this leaver story was later appropriated by a taker people. If so what of a people of translators, to re tell the civilized worlds stories into earth first stories.

Stories are important, a people needs its story. And the story must extend through time, not the the history but the future of the people. Where they came from, what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

A New People should come up, but not one with a story that drowns out the preceding stories, but one that orchestrates them. It will be simplist for me to just tell the story in my next post.

Brief Review: L'homme qui plantait des arbres - The Man Who Planted Trees (1987)

A 30 minute animation of a short story that you can learn about here. I really don't want to say much, but I was quite touched by the story of a man who planted a forest. The story, narration, and animation are all very good. Watch it here, right now.

Brief Review: Beyond Civilization, Danial Quinn

This book compliments his Ishmael series, which is urgently recommended reading for any one looking at this blog. What Danial succeeded in showing in the Ishmael books, he tries to flat out say in Beyond Civilization. BC includes many important distinctions and thought experiments that bring the earlier works into focus, and examples of tribal life that are workable but not entirely fleshed out. More then anything BC is written to clear up misconceptions that Quinn has encountered about Ishmael. If you loved Ishmael, give it a go, if you didn't love Ishmael you are unlikely to like BC, and if you haven't read Ishmael you should give it a go first.

Y'all might pray in this manner.

Our Father who art the Sky.
Loved be thy face.
Thy Eden is to appear to the hearts of man, as it lies upon the Earth.
Give us this year our yearly rain.
And hear our calls, as we hear those to call to us.
And lead us not into corruption, but deliver us from weakness.

"No one knows what its like..."

What is it like to be a bat?

God only knows what its like to be a bat.

Some Species of Nihilism.

Nothing ever happened.

Nothing's happening

Nothing will ever happen.

Nothing's ever(-)happening

Happening was/is/will be nothing.

and so on

More Nuggets From My Wisdom Dispenser:

If there's one thing I know about people, its that they like collecting trading cards. Treat this as a general phenomenology of tourist experiences. Facebook, too (and and I count this as a kind of tourism of one's closest spaces, extending even to the social discourses.)

The Strangest Kind of Science:

There is a kind of philosophy that is an experiment on your head; the sort of thing that sets up a research station of the mind and runs certain thought processes, within the rat's maze of an algorithm whose content *only* is undecided. To see how they strive for that piece of cheese at the end, in this case a soothing neuro-chemical. The experimental vantage may be camouflaged, may not declaire its experimental voyuerism, and may even follow a prime directive to not interfere with the wild and "native" thoughts that run past. These strive for an equilibrium after the balance or homeostasis of the subject of the experiment (indeed, insofar as it existed before either as homeostasis or as subject) is upset by being warped through language to go somewhere it didn't inhabit before--but largely being taken from the savage jungle of the brain, to cages at a world's fair put on by the brain for itself, subjugating its own wild, flowing electricity and the divine feeling whose conviviality it so enlivens.

But there is another kind of philosophy--the ideal of philosophy--where philosophy passes out of itself and becomes an experiment in life, or of a life. this is where the research station in one's head gets overrun; where the experiment mutates and runs amok like the atomic monster, starting inside parameters but breaking them down. Breaking through the maze, not even go to the end but going out, to multiply in all the crevices of the City. Where the researcher in the research station strips off his clothes, puts on a loincloth and starts running in the pack like a madman, all decked out in warpaint and with a bone through his nose.

No doubt, the tribe he runs with goes through its development and becomes civilized in its own right--really, in a blink of an eye, for civility or the state is as old as the primitive; but it is a new civility, an alien civilization--even from another planet. An ornate, classical civilization. The thoughts do not just stay thoughts, and this new civility is not just the creation of "values" by a man outside the process of creation, but is where the creator gets created by his creation. Then, afterward, one is as a sojourner in the strange land of one's birth, not as an experimenter who is cataloging field data for the mothership, but as a kind of shipwreck who could never find his way home.

The first and probably last of a dying, noble line of kings whose homeland is a planet annihilated before it even existed--but still for that possessed of the impulse of a converter seeking to civilize the natives. In the course of time it is discovered that there can be a science in this process, and that it can be applied through the whole of the society, if we could just set up a research station and ascertain its fundamental laws. So that our mind could become therapy for its sickness.

In this way we get further and further from home, and by now with all this experimentation we are far away from home indeed. Many light years berift of the earth and eden; and, on the present course, infinite light years back home if we are to go the circuitous route of following the universe out to where it loops back in on itself. If only we could forge ahead at light speed! Surely this is possible with a kind of warp drive...

Oh, if only we could create the fabric of the universe of which we could bend, to bring home to us, anywhere else but in our heads. oh--if we could even do that! Meanwhile we drift in space, no longer under any power at all, but gliding silently in the vacuum. This is the ideal of the ideal of philosophy--a perfect peace--but I ask: what good is it?

I dare say it would take a miracle happening for the laws of space, especially of inner space--a turning of the "water" of energy into wine; for it is this inner's space itself that's the barrier, and the truth be told we are already home, just like the hero and sojourner in The Wizard of Oz. We have but to click our shoes and wish, for the deepest wish of the heart. There's no place like home. If only God had become man, incarnated not just in one but in the whole world of people and things. Then we would already be home.

We're gonna meet some day in paradise. In that place the Jew is gonna rib the concentration camp guard and joke about "that one time" he gassed his whole family. And the guard will blush and say "entschuldigung!!!!!" Am I being offensive? Far be it for me to profess belief. I disavow, and say that I am just the sojourner in a strange land charting strange customs and rituals by leading them to a startling conclusion.

Things that I haven't yet been able to puzzle together into a complete picture, but surely will some day. To come up with an exact taxonomy of the concept traced out of the initial events of the life of man. Surely the idea is what you get when you add together the Mithraic cult+the Elysian fields+roman populism and the whole ressentiment+Osirus/Dionysus Zagreus+Essenic fanaticism and the sublimation of the messianic political hope. and these ultimately come from the totems and the primal horde, or else some other band of monkeys. And what is this all rooted in but the tragic, promethean act where a fire was set in the tongue. There are some missing links to this narrative, but surely future generations of spiritual science will tidy up and get the whole thing quite in order to place in the museum.

Until then, out of these gaps between totems and their more advanced permutations (but after all they're still just totems,) the dream time speaks as a quite different "fabric of reality," as what connects when causes do not connect up; and it whispers dreams in our ears that are, like the Freudian dreams, fulfillments of a wish. Indeed--the foremost wish of the human heart, which is just that we are already home. If only we could wish this wish with all our hearts, then we would already be home.

Maybe, just maybe we can. Maybe we already are wishing this wish with all our hearts. Then we would truly already be home.

I want to believe.

I like making up sciences. Neural Geometrics, for instance, or void dynamics. Or the institute for the study of non-metallic systems.

A priest and a psychoanalyst walk into a bar.

Priest: Jesus said "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple."

Psychoanalyst: "Ok, I'm with you so far..."

Fundamental Postulate of Physics:

Energy is never conserved, but insofar as we treat it as a number it oscillates infinitely; sometimes rational, real, irrational, negative, of n- dimensions. Some times--zero. And, most importantly, not just over time but over space, so that all of these can be places as well--how else could we understand the space that moves?--though not places within a coordinate grid. That is, unless he happens to want to be finite, flat, or a plane, or a three-dimensional axis, or a four-dimensional time-space, or be conserved, or be a calculable or incalculable number at all.

They can want this--after all, nature loves to hide. surely, in the infinite depths of space and time, there is a perfect sphere. There is no reason to say one shape is any more or less possible than any other shape, and it just so happens that this perfect sphere is but a shape among shapes, an object among objects. It exists somewhere (a holy grail) and the quest is to bring it here the only way one knows how, barring an impossible crossing of the oceans of space and time. That is: by making it, which amounts to just such a voyage. As luck would have it, all shapes are already in any old block of stone--and the only shape that isn't in it is the shape that surrounds it. Its shape--the one that belongs to it--is the thing that is not it, but is just the the fabric that the uni-verse keeps wrapped, closer than close, around it.

I postulate this in reply to Feynman's definition of energy:

“There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law—it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in the manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same. (Something like the bishop on a red square, and after a number of moves—details unknown—it is still on some red square. It is a law of this nature.)

However, I am loath to admit that, unlike the much-hallowed physics, we can't do a whole lot with mine. With all discretion I leave what is lacking in mine up to your imagination to decide.

the (un)selfish gene:

Mutation is a most beneficial mutation.

Method acting as education

For years now my mental toils have taken place with in an imagined farm, one which I hope to one day realize. But it isn't as much a farm as an academy, an educational system translated into a farm, or a farm and an academy that are maps of one another.

Wolfram's 'A New Science' and the 'Tao Te Ching' as mappings of one another, with the gospels as explorations in the same land.

Some Aphorisms:

Everything is nothing in particular.

I is a strange loop.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

This ought not be an injunction, or a maxim for the conducting of philosophic inquiry, which would discuss the things we cannot talk about so as to establish a fact about them that they are beyond our talking. If one cannot speak of something--one cannot speak of it. There is nothing to be done with such a statement, or at least nothing to be done differently.

Rather, it shows both the contradiction that is the heart of the word. That is, speaking of what cannot be spoken of. Would language be an infinite chain of symbols that never touches the world, but refers to itself the purity of a language that owns itself? Would language become a sui generis, saying itself out of itself? The experience of Wittgenstein's thinking shows that such a language could not simultaneously reach in a purity inside itself, and have anything to say in the world. Not even as a structure of world or event, but as the structure of structure, which never can show up in the world and is never completed, but is always structure striving after itself, building over itself. And this purity, where language strays out of the world and cannot be heard, is just the silence from hence it came.

For the world is not coextensive with structure, and having within it a structure of structure would annihilate that which is not coextensive with structure, because this structure of structure would offer an absolute point of reference, collapsed to completion in itself, to which all else would have to be related in a structure. There is no structure of structure. Nor is there a chaos of chaos. Always--the chaos of structure, the structure of chaos. Language game and form of life.

We know that it is always the silence, and then words. All the din of words and meaning is just noise, first, and just like the tree falling in the woods with no one round to hear, this noise is brought to question in its essence as anything over and above silence. But this silence is also brought to question. For if silence can speak; if noises can speak themselves out of silence and into the word, then it gives itself over it with any hearing. and the bustling noise of the world, even, speaks the word of God:

"And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

So we see it is hearing that transforms noise into word. It is hearing that founds language. That the god's voice was on the wind to the ears of people, and then to carry our voice. And this hearing..what can be said about it?

"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows,

And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented."

This reminds me of something modern:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvsX03LOMhI

Hearing is of God. I say again, hearing is of God. What is this silence that the thinker tells us we must be? Could it be dumb silence, or could it be the silence of hearing?

"“Let there be light,” and there was light."

Why does the singer sing of a neon god? Is it not because this light, which is the light of Christ, could be bent and shaped and sent on a circuit that spells out words for us to hear? But these words boom out of the emptied spaces, the marginal spaces of our planet; they echo off the cold, built environment. And they return as the warnings of the prophets, that in our ways we could repent in sackcloth and ashes. They return as a picture of themselves as a beast; the devouring earth, that will devour itself like the hated Babylon.

Except this light that would be channeled still, as the light of Amida, shines out of all. What could channel it, contain it? It shines already in everything, with full intensity.

The word is, assuredly, of God and saying is divine.

So is sight, which gives of light and night.

And so is the bread and wine, which sates the beast.

Some day the lion will lie with the lamb.

Memo to Heidegger

"Sakyamuni Tathagata,on mount Lanka,

prophesied to the multitudes that in south India

the Mahasattva Nagarjuna would appear in this world

to crush the views of being and non-being"-Shinran

Monism and/or Dualism (and incipient multiplicity out of contradiction...)

Love!--and then there is nothing besides.