Christ is Who?

Her name is Sophia. I'm a Sophia-phile. Another way to say this is "philosopher." But who (worth talking to) is not? My dear dear Sophia, woman most sublime. Truth is a woman.

Umo sells word-power. Umo sells morale. The pen is a sword. Ink trumps steel. Persuasion is force. Do the math (the etymology). To urge is the shove it in, that notion of yours, that seductive command.

For those who paint our picture of the world are our masters. Therefore Marx and his talk of ideology. The slave-class admires its oppressor. The retard does an impersonation of the genius. Both are quite amused.

As energy is to matter, so is faith to action. It's not only in our chatter that courage is manifest.

And what are we without this faith? How, without self-love, can we stand on our own two feet? And without self-love, why should we? Doubters are always servants. The grand narcissists is always a king / queen (the holy hermaphrodite of alchemy).

We are what we believe we are. Perception is reality. Obviously.

A good general knows that faith = courage = victory. This is why the Ancient Jews were forbidden to number their troops. It showed a lack of trust in their war god Jehova.

Words move humans as the wind moves leaves on trees. The word spirit originally meant "breath." Words (and therefore society, religion, meaning) are made of breath. Man is concept. Concept is breath. Man is breath. Man is spirit. God is simply this spirit imagined without the limitations of our human body.

Man is not only concept, though, for man is built on the chimp, which is built on the mammal in general. So man is affectionate, social. Some say feeling is more important than thought. Feeling is obviously more primitive. Our pet dogs are obviously full of feeling.





THE UNSEEN FACE

We seemed to be programmed for religion. But the program is flexible. Opposite causes are powered by the same force, this drive toward virtue, the "ideal".

What is this ideal? We know it many forms. We see the many masks it wears.

In the name of truth. In the name of doubt. In the name of love. In the name of country. In the name of God. In the name of narcissism. In the name of what-the-fuck-ever.

We wear the mask that grins and lies.

Always, always the ideal -- which can be imagined as an unseen face which never appears without some mask.

These masks are all the ways we define ourselves as somehow good, even if we substitute the word "bad" or "evil." These masks are how we define ourselves and our group as ideal, sublime, superior.

This face (a quasi-Jungian archetype) is inferred, not seen. It can therefore be conceived as a positively charged void, a slot that generates its cartridges in relation to the contingent.

"Man is an heroic being." This, at least, she got right (Ayn Rand). This is also the essence of her appeal. She called herself a "man-worshipper" and she worshipped this man in herself. Her conception of man was spiritual, though she might have disdained the word "spiritual" for it's mystical associations.

Back to Kojeve / Hegel. Man is the Concept. Not only Concept but Self-Concept. The being that names itself. The being constantly renaming itself. The being that lives in its poetry. The being that sheds words. The being that shits words.

Time is Concept changing its underwear. Man is concept. Man is time. His dream of future. His revision of the past (history). The unseen face and its endless fashion show, endless masquerade.

History is a succession of heroic poses. History is a sequence is moral fads. History is a series of self-conceptions (the individual and the race, both have their histories).

A man without concept is not a man but only a chimp in man's clothing.

The unseen face is heroism itself. The masks it wears are varieties of heroism.

These varieties of heroism may be contradictory in relation to one another. Hence war.

Group narcissism is the sharing of an heroic mask. The glue of an ideal in common. The flag is a concept. We are stitched into groups via poetry (also known as propaganda or bullshit).

The pacifist (to himself) is a hero. The vigilante (to himself) is a hero. The skeptic (to himself) is a hero. The believer (to himself) is a hero. All are motivated by the same force, the unseen face.

This unseen face is just a myth. A myth is just a theory / metaphor. Theories are tools, toys, teeth.

By "hero" I just mean an ideal or perfect man, the best kind of man --- the conception of which varies from person to person.

What is it we are trying to be? What do we hope to become? What are we already, that we should love ourselves so well? This is my subject matter. How do we define ourselves and why must we do so?

This is why I assume an "instinct" (which only means push or drive). It's built in, like a carrot on a stick that leads a donkey.

To become conscious of this spiritual instinct is to become an ironists, a comedian. If god is just some program in the brain-tissue, the world becomes what Shakespeare said it was.

"All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players." (They have their entrances and exits)

The word personality comes from the greek word "persona." A persona is a mask used in the tragic drama. The greek tragic drama was originally a religious ritual. As their society became more self-conscious and ironic, this religious ritual became not unlike HBO.

But the essence is this. That personality is a mask. Etymology cracks the case.

We are only individuals on the surface. Two inches down we are Generic Human Being. The same 26 chromosomes.

But this crust is delicious. This crust is the maximum. The most beautiful potent humans are (for me) true religion. Give me poets, musicians, dictators, comedians.

Caligula is our common secret stripped bare. All of us are monsters, indescibly beautiful monsters. Indescribably obscene.

Every hero-mask has its villain-mask. The Nazi needs his Jew. The Liberal needs his Nazi. The In-groups needs to exclude, or it is no In-group.

Man likes war. Even if it's only conceptual supremacy, (someone to look down on.)

It seems to yours truly that the hero-myth (or "self-myth") is the only archetype that matters in adults.

The self-myth is the skeleton key that opens all doors.

This self-as-hero myth takes the form of words. Our most important poem is the one we use to justify and glorify ourselves. Sometimes it’s a long and complicated poem. But usually there is the short version, which is sometimes what convenience requires (or sometimes all the small-minded can manage.)

Such a myth reshapes one's life. Life is shaped around such myths / concepts.

Nietzsche -> Zarathrustra. Saint Paul -> "Not I, but Christ in me." Zweydorff -> Onanismo / Umo.

Pseudonyms, the distance of the critical minds. For all is but one slice of me. For I am the bottomless well.

As Zizek says, Woman is a nothingness. And Woman is the truth of Man. Man is the Mask. Woman is the unseen face that can only see, never be. The void at the center of us all. The unblinking eye.

Behind our names and games and gender and race and history and face,
there is "( )"

This nothingness is consciousness itself, which must be inferred. For when have experienced consciousness that was not consciousness of something.

Let us return to the theme of self-glorification. The "anxiety of influence" (Harold Bloom's phrase) is not a problem for everyone.

This anxiety is the hell-hound of poets especially and artists in general.

So much has been said already. Our concept of the hero includes uniqueness, originality. We wonder can we achieve this. Or shall we be yet another bad copy of someone real, someone significant.

Being "weaned" from the mother. Is this not simply the realization that other humans do not want to play the passive, admiring role to our "phallic" displays?
When we try to impress them, we annoy them, for THEY want to impress US. They want us to suck their dicks.

Then again, if the "phallic display" is GOOD, we DO enjoy the passive role. We will laugh at the comedian, be influenced by the philosopher, pump up the volume. But distance helps here, for envy is the omnipresent cancer of relationships.

The Baby is the Phallus is the Star. The wise men bring gifts to Baby Penis, I mean Jesus. Jesus is Dick. The Virgin is perfect dick-love, sublimated trans-carnal dick-love. Virgin = Mind Fuck. For no other reason is her hymen intact. Loveless beings do not ascend into Heaven, become statues.

Jesus is Perfect Cock. Mary is Pussy Sublime. We should all be so lucky. We should all be both. Hard pussy and dripping cock.

If the Star in question is a poet, then Jesus is Virus. (Jesus = Star = Poet = Poem). Good poetry gets quotes. It spreads like a virus.

I hope that the very ideas you are reading share that fate. May this viral verbiage spread like the thighs of an ovulating whore.

What we adopt, we can hardly condemn.

If you want them to love you, make them become you.

Seduce them with theories. Seduce them with new metaphors.

They will love you as they must love a more perfect version of their selves. They must love you as they love their future selves.

For you, if successful as philosopher / poet / moralists, ARE their future selves.

But strong will only take part of you. They refuse to melt entirely on the heat of your verbal cock. They will chip off some useful fragments, integrate these fragments with their own current mask.

It may be that our originally is an illusion, a bluff. Doesn't matter. It's a necessary lie, a necessary assumption. ("To assume the throne.")

Life is a lie. Praise, therefore, the lie.

Persuasion is replication. To persuade is to sculpt the persuaded. This is the Inquisition barbequed heretics. The pope is a jealous god.

To fuck her mind is to fuck her most thoroughly. The pope is an Ideal Penis. The body he leaves to chimpanzees. He wants your soul on his cock (his tall swollen hat).

In chimpanzees we have an alpha male who claims all females (the rest must sneak in an occasional fuck while master sleeps). Despite the monogamy that is culturally recommended among us humans, the chimp way remains. The dominant poets are remembered. The rest are dust.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this, that art today is dominated by chimpanzee sexual politics.

THEREFORE the anxiety of influence. Inferior males must offer up their ass, be inseminated. Be copies, conductors, consumers -- but never (pro-)creators.

Yet all of this is myth. Not 100% true. Not the truth but merely one interpretation.

For my self-myth is complex, ladies in gentlemen. My hero (the holy trinity of me, myself, and I) doesn't get tangled up in his own cord.

Onanismo knows better. (My myth in a nutshell: I know better.)

In the old testament to "know" is to fuck.

Onanismo the Honest. Onanismo the Lie.

All truth is paradox. All paradox is truth. Lies are the only truth. Truth is the only.

The above is 100% B.S.

A dog shakes a rat in its mouth. The rat is a student of philosophy. I am the dog.

And this asshole statement also has its purpose. To shock and eventually awe. To shove this cock in the proper mouth until that mouth has a golden tongue.

Only complete whores know how the cock should be used.

Therefore that strange paradox of ultimate masculinity and its interior collision with ultimate femininity. If man is mask, then who better to invent the perfect male mask than the perfect nothingness / female? The negative is attracted to the positive. The negative paints an image its desire, the perfect man, the perfect something-ness, the perfect lie / illusion / hero.

What is the difference between the Dionysian straight man and the Dionysian gay man? The straight man lusts for himself, prefers his own cock. This doen't mean he will accept no substitute. So, sure, call him (if you prefer) bisexual. But his homoeroticism is merely carnal. His self-myth is DICK / CHRIST. He has no husband but himself.

Christ is Dick that wants to multiply. Even personas breed, non-biologically.

Logos (greek for "word") is Virus. Words like Viruses are neither dead nor alive.

In themselves they are nothing. But they become the essence of their proper host.

These bodies are the slaves of the word - virus. We are the slaves of inherited ideas.

Lucky us that Western Philosophy is so often sweetly Satanic. Which is to say CRITICAL. The Skeptics (whatever their limitations) are TNT.

Doubt is as an Ax That Hacks.

Hack off the phallus of yesteryear.

When it finally occurred to me that I myself was God, that was the End of History. For me, anyway.

Which is not truth but only poetry. The goal is self-divinity. The essence is self-glorification.

I've been to the end of the rainbow. Like Hegel, I figured everything out.

If you hear this statement without its irony, you will surely misjudge me. ("If you read you'll judge")

Onanismo is a fart joke. Onanismo the Buffoon. Onanismo the Con Man.

Onanismo the liberal ironist. Onanismo the Dick of God. Umo the Most Holy, Also Known As the Biggest Hole.

Onanismo the Bottomless Pit.

How nice that the last book in the bible includes the notion of a bottomless pit. How lovely.

"And what I shall assume, you shall assume."

Walt Whitman our American Christ, and a horny one at that. Give him boys girls lepers and presidents.

If a person sees that the secret behind all culture is self-glorification, how can he not laugh, become an ironists, a smart-ass?

He is onto the eternal con, perhaps the eternal nothingness.

It's like that first line in Ecclesiastes: "All is vanity."

All the world's a stage. The zone for moral (read heroic) action. History, including the History of Poetry, is the Poem of such action.

Behind all apparent contradictions, the unseen face, the ineffable totality.

The mysterious union of opposites. That's what Nicolas of Cusa said was God.

All science is conjecture. Nicolas was a man of the so-called dark ages. The dark ages weren't so dark.

It's only the peasants who thought God was just some asshole with too much power.

For others, God was the upper limit of their imagination. God was the name of the Union Forever. God, taken in the best sense, is the supreme accomplishment of the human mind.

Christ is God in Man. Christ is the Union of Flesh and Totality. Christ is Man's realization that He is the Creator of the Creator.

Onanismo if Christ. And Christ ain't Jesus exactly but Jesus was Christ. Christ is the universal God-element, the One Holy Spirit that inflates all heroes.

My best readers, clearly, are also Christ. Else they would not hear of it. Or else false modesty cracks their mirrors.

Lead or follow. And if you lead, you had better have the truth, even if this same truth is also a lie. No faith, no motive. No motive, no direction. What leader worth anything lacks even a direction in which to lead?

the goal

the goal is to smile on the day of your execution, to laugh when you know that you will die in the next ten minutes. the goal is to remain beautiful in the face of what is not. the goal is to feel like christ. the goal is the feel like lucifer. the goal is to be as wise as the serpent and as air-borne as the dove. the goal is to love yourself.
the goal is to say yes to life, and therefore to death, unless you can ignore death. most of us do most of the time.

i want an honest style. i want a direct style. i want the opposite of a boring style. i want to tackle the “serious issues” with a sense of humor. i want to be able to laugh. i want to understand anyone worth understanding. i want to defend the beautiful from the envious. i want to explain the otherwise obscure.

this goal is not universal. this goal is personal, taken piecemeal from here and there. i can use more or less irony as the situation dictates, as taste requires. i
know from the beginning that my best readers will only eat me, assimilate me, shit me out and move on.

the worst vice is advice

if you could meet your young self, what would you tell him?

are we talking about “culture” or biographical advice?

culture. where would you point him? what would you have him study?

oh, i see. i’ve thought about this, actually, because i’m always writing (in a way) for my younger self.

what would you emphasize?

i would push the satanic-byronic hero, the archetypes (jungian), and language philosophy.

let’s tackle them one by one. why the satanic-byronic hero?

well, you know my hero myth theory. the writer himself is a satanic hero. he’s the pope of his own religion. that religion is his personal glory, you might say.

essentially narcissism?

right, but it something to live up to. the great motive is personal glory. don’t misunderstand that as simply fame. fame is nice, i would think, but it’s more important to truly love oneself.

to convince the mirror is more important than to convince the crowd?

right, and i would guess that no one convinces crowds until the mirror has long been convinced.

so you see a secret root of narcissism in all greatness.

yes, i think spirit and vanity are synonymous.

why does vanity have such negative connotations?

“vanity” means empty. we criticize the proud who have not impressed us by calling them empty.

by implying that there’s nothing beneath the fancy wrapping paper?

right, but if we like what someone does we call them “proud” or “dignified.”

so the difference between “pride” and “vanity” is just a matter of taste?

for me, yes. that’s what the words mean to me.

do you think a writer must be narcissistic?

i think a writer who wants to do something new must, yes. of course a person full of guilt might pen a confession that sells millions. it might be well written. so there’s an exception. i’m simply dwelling on writers who see themselves as artist, not as talkers on paper.

what’s the difference?

they pride themselves on it. they claim (in their heads at least) a certain mastery, a certain expertise. the kind i’m talking about want to stand out, be significant. they want to be the opposite of a second rate imitation.

whereas others may just want their story told.

right. there’s the simple human need to communicate and then there’s the artistic need to make something beautiful that is also new, distinct, personal.

but that could be nonfiction, i assume.

right, just think of henry miller or charles bukowski or jack kerouac.

how do you rate them?

i put miller and bukowski above kerouac, but jack has his moments.

any other nonfiction writers you care to mention?

henry roth is something special. his “mercy of a rude stream” is bold. he confesses his narcissism, his aggression, his incest even.

i’ve heard about that.

it’s good. he writes about joyce in those books. also the jews in general. he is an old old man facing death, knowing, trying to get the facts down and what they meant to him. quite good.

anyone else?

not at the moment. not autobiographical.

miller and bukowski seemed to see themselves as “satanic” heroes. would you agree?

certainly. i remember being shocked by miller’s frankness. he was frankly a thief at times. bukowski is frankly a narcissist. he would joke (or not) about rape quite freely. yet the both let us know how tender they could be. they weren’t ashamed of their “good” or “evil.” they wanted to give us the whole of them.

where does kerouac fit in?

in the “subterraneans” he’s also pretty open like this. he just has suych a tendency toward this buddhism and self-abnegation. it bothers me. it turns me off, though a younger me was more amused by it.

so the “satanic” hero, i assume, gets its name from john milton’s version of satan, in “paradise lost“.

right. satan denies the authority of god. he’s the under-dog. he takes chances in the name or “vanity” or “pride.” in fact, he battles omnipotence. he’s the cosmic narcissistic underdog.

i see. and “byronic” comes from the poet lord byron.

right, because byron himself as well as many of his characters are the same narcissistic underdog. but the narcissism was only one element. there was also a nature mysticism.

could you go into that?

i’m not an expert on it, but i’ll try. they saw infinity and serenity and purity in nature, i suppose you could say. instead of alexander pope writing about the idle rich, you had the romantics writing about the power and beauty of landscapes, which were experienced in solitude.

this “solitude” connects the nature mysticism to the narcissism, i presume.

right. you could break it down to the individual and nature. romanticism was much about private feelings. instead of reporting on the observed and often satirized habits of man (the neo-classicists), they were forced to use nature imagery and various symbols to get across their inner states.

so the feelings of the solitary individual become more important than the behavior of mankind in general.

right, pope had said that the “proper study of mankind was man.” pope wrote “the rape of the lock” which was a satire of the idle rich. but wordsworth popped in with these poems about daffodils or pretty little tragic poor girls. some of the romantics used a more direct language, a less “literary” style.

why do you focus on the narcissistic satanic element more than the others?

i think it ages better than the other factors. i do care about writing style of course, but it’s not as important spiritually as the satanic hero.

would you say that the satanic hero functions as your religion?

yes, it does, but not without irony. satanism, the way i mean it, is not the worship of satan but rather the worship on oneself.

it’s more about the emulation of satan.

right, just as a christian is supposed to imitate christ.

but organized religion will often present him as an object of worship.

they do, but i see that as a corruption of christ. of course christ is a fiction. interpret him how you will. i simply prefer the satanic element in christ. he too was an underdog. the jews accused him of blasphemy, of implying that he was god, or the son of god.

so satan’s fall from heaven and the crucifixion of jesus are somehow parallel?

yes, exactly. they are similar heroes.

that idea would surprise most folks.

wouldn’t it? but only the superstitious, i would think.

but what about the sermon on the mount?

the self-sacrifice element in jesus is the major difference. jesus is a strange mix of the satanic and the altruistic. it’s such an unlikely mix that i view it as questionable. did the church tamper with these gospels? in the end, i don’t care what actually happened, whether jesus ever lived. for me he’s a character, someone like socrates, who also wrote no books but was often quoted.

jesus and socrates…was socrates satanic?

yeah, he has satanic qualities. he constantly improved himself. he was ironic. he was probably motivated by self-love. it seems pretty obvious. then he dies in a dramatic way, in quite a smart ass way.

you think his death was sentimentalized?

yes. it’s ridiculous. what was he, 80? not only that but he chose to die. he insulted the jury in a smartass way. he was looking for death. i can only suppose that the real socrates was too complex, too ironic for his contemporaries to understand him. it’s just a guess, of course.

ok, let’s move on to the jungian archetypes.

sure.

what is an archetype?

we see the world through mythological goggles.

what do you mean?

we are programmed to make something our god, for instance. it’s the same with mother and wife.

where does the archetype fit in?

if you look at various cultures you will always find some christ type for instance: buddha, krishna, lao tzu, jesus. they all seem to fit into the same slot. these slots are called archetypes.

why is it important to understand them?

the more conscious we are of our evolutionary program, the more we can modify it, i guess.

what’s so special about the jungian vision?

well, i guess jung is no more important than freud to me. the essence is to study psychology, our built in programming. our human nature is quite malleable, but it’s reasonable to assume a certain structure. the archetypes would constitute this structure.

why would this help a young you?

let’s talk about what jung calls the “anima.” he thinks that the soul of man is an inner woman. if a man thinks that he had this built in inner woman, he won’t fight against it. he will use it. if, on the other hand, all he has to go on is working-class homophobia, he’s going to fight his soul, which is also his muse.

so jung points us to our inner woman?

right, and so does freud of course, in a different way. but jung is more explicit about the value of knowing our “unconscious” self. just as nietzsche points us toward the value of pride, so does jung point us to the value in what we might otherwise repress.

both encourage us into taboo territory that can enrich our lives…

exactly.

let’s move to the language philosophy you mentioned.

sure.

what’s the essence of that?

to know what words are, how they work.

how do they work?

the work is done to a large degree with metaphors.

what’s so important about metaphors?

all the abstract words we live and die for were born as metaphors. let a young person trace the etymology of all the abstract words on one page of his favorite book and he will understand their significance.

i still don’t get it.

let’s imagine cave men, very primitive people.

ok.

they only have words for objects. they have a word for tree and for mammoth and fire and so on.

ok.

at some point they are going to want to talk about their feelings. they are going to get ideas about “spirits.” where will the words for such things come from? they aren’t invented yet. the best they can do is use a word for something literal in a new way. that’s all metaphors are. we put a new twist on an old word.

ok. i see what you mean now. so what comes first, the thought or the metaphor that expresses it?

they come at the same time. thought comes as metaphor. we think metaphorically.

that seems like an overstatement.

if you look at the history of religion or philosophy, you will find that the breakthroughs are always fresh metaphors, that or a new emphases on an old metaphor. in any case, one metaphor (or symbol) is replaced by another. or two are sown together. the pieces are metaphors.

what’s the difference between a metaphor and a symbol?

a symbol is a metaphor with the extra energy that comes from “activating” an archetype. if we put a metaphor in one of those programmed mystical slots, it becomes a symbol.

can you give an example?

the cross, for instance. maybe the crown of a king. it’s not an exact science. it’s what i call a soft science.

what’s a soft science?

well, hard sciences use measurements and equations. they are based on math. soft sciences are based on taste and metaphors.

which is psychology?

psychology is both. i think it’s mostly a soft science though. anything based on words is necessarily soft.

because of the slippery nature of words?

right, because words are a complex web of relationships. if you change the meaning of one word, you sometimes are changing the meaning of another.

how so?

if you change the meaning of the word “god” for instance, you have changed the meaning of the word “sin.”

i see.

then of course we always determine what a word means by look at the sentence we find it in. we experience words in groups, usually. context is anything but secondary.

so words effect one another like chess pieces.

right.

what good is it to understand all this?

it makes sense for a painter to understand paint. it makes sense for a writer to understand words. we think in words. to understand the nature of words is to understand something essentially human. also, it protects us from manipulation.

we are less the victim of words.

right, when we understand that we are only hearing metaphors and symbols, we are less likely to throw ourselves away after hearing a good speech.

so let’s wrap it all up. you would tell your young self about the devil, our biological programming toward gods, mothers, and women, and then also the nature of language.

right. i would give him himself as a new religion. i would give him his soul as a cave to explore, as a woman to love. i would give him the key to writing in general, which is the understanding of metaphor.

and from there he could do the rest himself.

hopefully.

taboo art

let’s talk about taboo art some more. could you sum up your views?

art is taboo to the degree that it rejects self-sacrifice.

how does it do this?

it mocks the ideals for which we are supposed to sacrifice ourselves.

how?

it shows kings and popes as villains and fools for instance. that’s one attack.

it demystifies the king and pope?

right. take “pope” as a metaphor for any kind of spiritual authority. take “king” the same way, as a president for instance. to show either as ridiculous or ugly to indirectly mock our duty toward such.

other idols?

idols is the right word. the sacredness of mother and child is another target. if you paint a mother as a breeding chimpanzee for instance. or if you make an erotic object out of the sacred innocent child.

which is still taboo.

right, the king and priest are fair game now. the mother and child are not quite there yet.

any others?

you have some art-work which is just so intentionally taboo that it seems to mock the very notion of the taboo.

an attack on taboo itself?

yes. if we think of work that is pure brutality or pure perversion. it’s subjective of course. you might interpret this sort of art as the individual confessing or glorifying his actual desires, but at some point that seems unlike. for instance, the canadian who made ear-rings out of fetuses.

ouch.

it’s hard to believe that he is really so enamored of dead babies. more likely he wanted attention. he enjoyed his sense of power in over-coming the counter-force of taboo.

so it’s vanity?

vanity or pride or some other synonym. it’s along those lines.

so attacking taboo is about power?

right, the individual cast himself as the individualist. “look at me” he seems to say. “i just don’t give a fuck what you think.” it’s a rejection of the mob, even where the mob is “right.”

it seems to also be an implicit assertion of the freedom of art.

that too. that’s the thing about non-verbal art. it works on several levels. it’s the perfect opportunity for creative interpretation.

so these “painters” (in your sense of the word) invite interpretation.

surely, and it goes both ways. these taboo artists have thoughts on the matter. so whether their medium is words, they are influenced by words. they are language users. a word-man can describe an non-verbal artwork and make it more significant for others.

just as you are interpreting controversial art right now.

right, a reader of this interview will look at that sort of art differently. he or she will seek out the particular self-sacrifice that is being mocked, rejected.

what about banksy? he sometimes seem to mock hypocrisy.

i agree. to show moralists as hypocrites is more rejection of the morality they impinge on us.

so the moralist is up their with the king and priest?

right, the priest in our day is the marxist or the vegetarian, or whoever essentially accuses, rather than creates.

their creations are accusations, you might say.

yes, they are the poets of accusation. their poetry is shaped by resentment.

the reader should know that, for you, “poetry” is all creative use of words.

right. because moralist rarely write in verse. they do have an other-worldly diction though.

why does one person become a moralist and another one of these tabo artist?

it’s all about their relation to the myth of the individual. most humans choose a mob orientated vision of values. they align themselves with the social good, however various the forms of such a vision are. the other type, the romantic individualist, is more than anything anti-mob, pro-single-self.

pro-single -self?

they want their name to be a thing apart, its own brand. they do not want to serve any cause outside themselves. they pride themselves on personal superiority rather than moral superiority.

aren’t the similar?

they are flowers from the same root, which is the “power drive,” but they are contrary in many ways.

so the moralist aligns himself with universals, ethics for everyone.

yes. now it might be a fundamentalist bible-beater or it might be a revolutionary anarchist. the point is moral indignation. that’s their thrill, to sit in judgment.

from the throne of their universal ethic?

exactly. their ethic is god. they are christ, that ethic in action as an individual.

but what is the god of the individualist?

individualism itself, and not in the general sense, but in a personal sense.

because a general sense would be a contradiction?

right. to be just one more individualist would be absurd.

how does he or she escape that?

the philosopher will create his own system, his personal interpretation of existence, including other interpretations. he may even admit that his ambition is absurd, impossible, but somehow he will make it work.

what about the artist?

well, the artist is going to use new forms, new materials. the artist will simply go around what has been done already.

go around?

just do something different, avoid what’s been done, or modify it significantly (which is about all a modern artist can manage).

so the way to tell the difference between the types is what?

moral indignation, resentment, accusation.

does the individualist accuse?

he accuses the mob. he has an anti-social ethic. you can trace it to the same root, but it’s social expression is opposite.

because the individualist will mock the “idols” of the moralist.

exactly. now it should be understood that in reality the two are mixed. the ethic of individualism is strong in the west, but then it’s often mixed in a questionable way with moralism.

why is that?

human nature. we like to form teams. we want a community. we want a church. so moralists glob together. only those who are essentially individualistic will resist this urge.

it’s easy to see the individualist as a superior type.

i agree. we like the underdog. but then the underdog mocks our idols and we all gang up and crucify the bastard.

i don’t see you ganging up.

well, i’m the individualist type. i fear the mob. that’s the being i want to crucify.

quite a task.

i have to settle with crucifying the mob in my self.

that in your nature which is mob-like?

yes, the higher self must bind the lower, nail it to a cross.

you have said that you want art to be beautiful.

i do. now taboo art is often ugly. so it’s only value is as taboo. that gives it an intellectual value, but it doesn’t keep it from failing as art that gives pleasure.

because the pleasure it gives is only intellectual, not visual.

right. once a taboo is dead for you, you aren’t so impressed by the radical art anymore, not unless it is beautiful as image, as form.

i see. so “transgressive beauty” is something that succeeds on both levels.

right.

the death of god and all that jazz

the death of god and all that jazz. it’s like this: if there’s no one upstairs to spank our bottoms for eternity, we’re on our own down here.

who will reject this view? those who bank on god. some literally make their money as “god’s” representatives. others are conscientious atheists who think that society will fall apart if god does. still others might not want others to know this secret, that god is dead, the better to exploit them.

“religion is the opiate of the people.” said marx. “marxism is the opiate of the intellectuals.” said some other guy.

question: is heroism legitimate?

this will piss folks off. do these communist really care? is it not just vanity? is not just some adopt heroic role? how much of it is sympathy and how much of it is role-play?

if we are essentially selfish beings, what then? if revolution is entertainment for the revolutionaries, what then?

i think of chomsky. i think of marx. were they hungrier for fame or a classless society? was the classless society the white hat one wears for a shoot-out?

let me tell you something, folks. i can live with it, if we are all just selfish chimps. i can die without a god. i can live with self-”perfection” as my cause. i simply don’t feel the need to play the social hero.

so i don’t want to die in your war, for or against the government, not until my gets shitty enough for me to want to throw away. i will fight the mugger and might even kill over honor. but i won’t kill (and die) with a white hat on. my hat is gray.

christianity turned into left-wing politics. but the other half turned into fascism. jesus himself is rarely found. remember, he was the opposite on an accuser.

all this shit of about white man is laughable. we did what the rest did. we conquered and enslaved. we just happened to do it better. so the school of resentment has an easy target. just as john of patmos had his rome, so the verbal-revolutionaries have their western industrial culture.

am i in favor of “western industrial culture?” yes and no. i like my air conditioning. i like the grocery store and the library. i think it’s nothing but moralist pretentiousness to ignore the good in one’s culture to simply whine about the “bad”

one things for certain: more people talk about nietzsche than actually read him. but that’s the naked ape in general. i was like that myself, spouting opinions, wanting in on the conversation before i was ready. live and learn. kids have to shit their pants before they learn to use the toilet.

if i paraphrase nietzsche and what i say sounds good to you, don’t go around thinking you about nietzsche. however right i may be, you better read those books yourself. or don’t, and don’t pretend to know anything about him.

it doesn’t take me long in person to size up what someone knows about something that i know about. one gleans from a few comments.

is it worth knowing to begin with? yes and no, depends what you are shopping for. for me it was important. i took a certain road. most people took other roads. if you are a group sort of person, then nietzsche will not appeal to you. hunt down a clique and read what they read, or read the cliff notes.

the world is clogged with sentimental lies. of course that too is a lie. it’s just not sentimental. you might call it melodramatic but i wouldn’t agree.

people want to hear what makes them happy. their ears perk up when you flatter them. well, nietzsche flatters the lone wolf. he then gives the lone wolf ammunition. you could call it propaganda. one man’s lie is another man’s truth. etc. etc.

you can at humanity as 6 billion dying apes. they want food, sex, and status symbols. these status symbols are sometimes only words. that doesn’t mean that “only words” is inferior to swimming pools and expensive cars. in fact, man has a taste for the other-wordly. poems are his bridge to this.

you can phrase it all in a million ways. give it a try. this is one way. i spit it out. we like to play hero. that’s one of my defining thoughts. put that in your critical study of me.

if a person is conscious of himself as someone who is programmed to play the hero, then how does that effect the way he plays the hero? the answer: ironically.

there are only a few good roles for the self-conscious hero. i think “philosopher/ psychologist / anti-christ” summed it up nicely. philosophy and psychology are on in the same in the end. anti-christ is more complicated.

if christ means humility to you, then the self-conscious hero is opposed to him. if christ is a poet / mystic, things are more open.

i think “the antichrist” was one of nietzsche’s worst books. it’s still damn good but not for morons. if you worship nietzsche, don’t read it. if you worship nietzsche, you don’t understand him to begin with. he was just a good writer, my friends.

nietzsche wanted to smile at the horrors of life. get that down. his battle was one of attitude. he did not want to curse this world.

sometime he was indeed the sort of crybaby he despised. no one is perfect.

his ethic vision was one of affirmation. he wanted to say yes. he did not want to reject this world in the name of some other hidden world, heaven for instance, or truth.

he mocked the stoics but he was related to them. you might call him a noisy stoic. but only if you imagine stoics laughing.

too many morons miss the most vital points of nietzsche. they can’t tell his weakness for his strength. they have their agendas. i have mine. mine is to praise where i love. theirs is to slander where they fear.

i write it with a smile. i know it’s unfair. life ain’t fair. that too is in nietzsche, implicitly. if god is dead, so, apparently, is cosmic justice.

the intellectuals for the most part reject this. they will throw out god but not their hero costume. the ironists role does not appeal to them. they want to play the good guy.

am i just a freakishly selfish person who misinterprets the altruism of others as vanity? it could be so.

“life ain’t fair. deal with it.” that philosophy will work for one type.

“it is our duty to incarnate justice.” that will work for others.

if there are 20 “nihilists” at the party, which do we prefer? i will judge them on style myself. i will judge them by their “art.”

for “art” one could say “artifice.”

how do they speak? how do they dress? what have they written? more important than anything: how do they treat me?

of course.

nietzsche saw altruism as so obviously insincere that it was anti-intellectual on a “”deep” level.

how do you even related to someone unaware of their own need to play the hero? how does a nihilist relate to someone in the Cause?

not very well, but the nihilist can manage it.

why? because he just doesn’t give a fuck. the beliefs of others are just bad taste, until they become a threat of course.


i’m talking about my nietzsche, my christ, my blake, my rorty. if you want to create your nietzsche, your christ, your blake, etc., then read the fucking books. don’t speak on them till you do. just shut up and learn. or don’t, and just shut up.

i simply expect my type to understand me. the others will not. the others (when they don’t simply ignore me) will misinterpret and slander me. such is life.

i’m used to people either not caring or not understanding or both. that’s the world i evolved in. so be it. i hope that’s not too sassy.

if you want to be an idiot, then read a writer for his or her weak points. if you want to enlarge your mind, do the opposite.

eat them. assimilate the good. shit out the bad. it’s not that complicated.

if you like being a fool, then kneel to their statue. put them above you.

if your balls are large, you are already doing the opposite. you are learning from them only to kill them after.

that’s an exaggeration (for those of you without a sense of humor.)

sink your teeth into their brains. suck out the nutrition. shit on the rest. piss on their failures.

do that to me. i did the best i could here, asshole. i tried to teach my non-biological sons something valuable. for that i only demand dismemberment. that’s a metaphor, you psychos.

if you think slang and serious thought are mutually exclusive, you haven’t thought about it seriously.

it’s the same with humor, you constituted would-be priest. i know you want to spit on the plebians. put your time in first.

comedians reveal our hypocrisies. i’m all for them. i’m on the side of comedians. whereas the moralist isn’t. the comedian refutes the moralist. the crowds laughter is proof of that.

the problem with our john wayne intellectuals is their denial of their own wolfish natures. of course they will confess just enough, but then the charge continues. how can i blame them? but for the grace of god, there go i.

but you’re an atheist, i heard one say. so fucking what? i can’t use “god” in a joke?

that’s just it. the asshole is free. he can make a joke from anything. why? because his only cause is he himself, and he himself is a comedian.

yes, an ironists is a joker, professional or not, effective or not.

i’m my own cause, so other causes are threats to me. i can’t embrace them. i mock them in self-defense. i mock charity. i mock self-sacrifice.

that’s what some of these controversial artists do, mock self-sacrifice.

others present unpopular forms of eroticism, “forbidden love.”

others are just plain nasty for the attention it brings, or to mock the hyper-sensitivity of others, which they despise (and also envy?).

satan has always been an endangered species. he’s not what the church and the corporation want. of course he is also the father of lies. he can squeeze in if he wants to.

but if he’s a writer, he just my show himself, piss off the herd.

i’m jesus too, thought. i’m not just the devil, folks. i vote christ on sundays.

why?

cause i can squeeze it all in. i can see reality as one, and mock that belief as illusion, simultaneously. so what if i know it’s a metaphor? i’m a pragmatist. like whitman, i don’t care if a contradict myself. this is life, not some bullshit argument on youtube.

i’m not so much arguing here as persuading.

what’s the difference?

i know how it works, kids. it’s not my reasons but my results that will seduce or offend you.

reasons are secondary. the myth is primary. the costume is primary. i am describing a role that you might want to play. we’re at the mall and you are browsing in my store.

does this mask fit me? that’s what argument amounts to.

in real life situations, it’s different. juries have reasons to argue. but poet - philosophers - psychologists only use arguments as a method of persuasion. they know that its only persuasion.

that’s where these chess-style philosophers go wrong. they take propositions seriously. they are lost in an illusion of man as a rational animal. how comical.

it’s as if they’ve never met the man on the street, the average asshole with his inherited prejudices.

which, by the way, so are mine. but mine are inherited from better sources. so say i, as a matter of fucking taste.

get that down. it’s a matter of taste. you like pepsi. i like coke. this is costume party. didn’t anyone tell you?

i’m telling you now. look around and perhaps you’ll see it, but only if your costume is the guy who thinks it’s a costume party.

tell my mother: i can look at myself from outside myself.

that’s bullshit, the smart reader says, and he is right.

so what? i lied. it’s part of the method. it’s a dirty fucking koan. lord knows that eastern shit is popular.

so what if some of that eastern shit is good? it’s only good if it let’s you mock it. jesus is only jesus if you can put your hand in his side.

i should be on a podium. it’s clear to me now. where are the cameras?

then taboo the bear struts in: “narcissism is taboo.”

i know mr. bear. therefore the fun in wearing it. this is artifice, friends, not the thoughts inside my head.

this is a mask. this is a poem. this is a joke. what’s the difference after all?

fuck derrida. i’ll put america back on top. down with these nutless fools. these nihilist with footnotes.

english, motherfucker. do you speak it?

i will say what rorty can’t. i’m not middle class. i’m self-educated refuse. find me down at the public library.

rorty’s polite. he wants to persuade a certain type. he wants to be friends. i’m just out to spread my seed.

i give the world at large my perverse ironic hero myth. i tear the mask off vanity.

i do it for profit. i do it for recognition. i may even do it for truth, against my better nature.

i don’t feel the need to play the scholar. i don’t feel the lack of a doctorate. i’ve learned enough to huff and puff and bluff myself to the top of bullshit mountain. my technique: i will call it bullshit mountain and climb it anyway.

zwydorff is an update of nietzsche. he takes certain modern developments for granted and focuses on the “will to power” and a pragmatic vision of truth. for him, the “will to power” is manifest as the will to play the “hero.”

he thinks each individual fashions this personal hero myth from his environment. he includes genetics as part of environment but not dogmatically.

he reduces propositional logic to a style of persuasion. he does not privilege it over satire, for instance. he mocks the idea that truth is something arrived at rationally. he mocks the concept of “rationality” itself. much of this is not original, as he himself admits. what is original about him is his use of slang and obscenity. he implicitly rejects the distance between the academic and the bawdy.

that’s right fools. porn is form of art. art is porn for the power drive. this and that and something else. take none of me at face value. look beneath and between the lines. you might sound like an idiot but at least you’re trying.

risk being wrong. mistakes are our true educations, if we survive them of course. don’t drink and drive. use condoms. try not to cheat on your girlfriend, unless the other girl is better.

rorty the anti-plato, who would not hurt a fly. but still, i love the guy. i learned so much from him. what style the man had! he was clear as bottled water.

i would first like to thank the academy, since you gave me this fucking award. then let me thank the language philosophers! you really kicked truth in the balls. kisses to nietzsche who woke me up to a new and improved personal hero myth. salute to carl jung, who motivated to embrace and study my dark side. so many others. jesus. oh yeah, jesus. jesus as poet of self. “i am the truth” he said. “ i am the alpha and omega.” he taugh me how to view myself, you see. i’m christ. did i mention that? also the romantics, who elevated personal masturbation above all else. thus spoke onanismo. kiss my ass.

an interview with david stash

___________________

you have called yourself a sophist. why?

i call myself a sophist to acknowledge right off that i am not that original, though i wish were, of course, for reasons of vanity.

but are you a sophist to the degree that you actually teach the art of rhetoric to paying clients?

no. it’s not a perfect analogy.

i suppose you attribute to the sophist a similar doubt about “rationality.”?

let’s not play the game of guessing what the sophists privately thought. i refer to them positively in contrast to plato, who painted them as the enemies of truth.

are you an enemy of truth?

in some ways yes. in other ways i am only refining the concept.

what is your concept of truth?

the truth is what we believe.

that simple?

it is, really. of course the word is used in various ways, but, essentially, the truth is what we think it is.

perception is reality?

yes, but that’s not all. the key word here is persuasion.

you have said that “the only proof is persuasion.”

right, because it all comes down to votes or violence, unless a person is content with a private vision of truth.

are you?

yeah, i’m content.

i assume that you lump what is traditionally called persuasion with what is traditionally called argument or debate.

that’s exactly it. i think that “logic” is just one kind of persuasion. i’m attacking the apparent difference between persuasion and argument.

you think that “logic” is over-rated?

“logic” is not over-rated if we consider the persuasive power it has on a certain kind of personality.

the logical type?

yes.

but of course the logical type don’t want to hear that logic is not privileged, that it is only a style of persuasion.

you’re right. they don’t.

where did this attitude of yours come from? how did you arrive at this interpretation of logic?

everyday life. just think of all the folks out there for whom philosophy means nothing. they don’t read it or think about. it’s just a vague pretentious term to them. they live and die that way, without it.

but not without logic?

they do still respond to “logic” but more often perhaps to other forms of persuasion, emotional persuasions, mythological persuasions.

so you think “logical” persuasions are those preferred by self-proclaimed intellectuals.

exactly. but look how much they disagree. it’s the lack of agreement in general that helped me realize the futility of so called logic. i was and still perhaps am the logical type. i’ve been using the logical type of persuasion in this interview. the thing is, you realize you’re almost alone. you find a few writers who convince (persuade) you but more often you find misunderstanding, disagreement. why?

different axioms?

i think it’s less “reasonable” than that. i think we should turn to onanismo’s theory of the personal hero myth to answer that.

could you go into that?

well, onanismo thinks that each individual person has an idea of heroism that they imitate in their lives. we adopt these hero myths according to circumstance, inborn talent, for instance, and the pressure and opportunity of the environment.

so myth is more of the force than “rationality.”

exactly. we are not rational animals, not primarily. we are rationalizing animals.

and you include the “great” philosophers in this.

yes, yes, yes. everyone. it’s a theory about human nature. it’s a unified field theory. we should be able to study anyone and get an idea of their hero myth.

what’s yours?

let’s see. the psychologist, the rebel, the poet, the individual. a mash of those. i can trace my hero-myth to the romantics, for one thing.

the byronic-satanic hero?

yes. i confess it immediately. i cannot shake the power of that sort of hero. it’s what i find most sublime. it’s what i’m “forced” to imitate.

are you saying that we become, to the best of our ability, that which strikes as most sublime, most beautiful?

right, it’s as if we were sculpting ourselves, but with different aesthetic principles.

i can only assume that effective persuasion appeals more to the hero myth of the audience than to their rationality.

exactly, but there audiences whose hero myth is “rationality” itself. this is kind you must use a logical style of persuasion with.

the audience of this interview perhaps?

yes, and intellectuals in general. anyone who prides themselves on skepticism. let’s look at how twisted this is. the “rational” person has a taste for the universal. he wants to connect to a truth with power, to a truth that is not just vanity.

but you are saying that such truths don’t exist.

that’s an overstatement, but yes. i’m at least trying to point out the element of “vanity” in what we believe. but if “vanity” is really that prevalent, it can’t be the demon its supposed to be. the word “vanity “ means emptiness, basically. the metaphor of emptiness was applied to self-love. that’s a rough sketch. but if “self-love” is at the root of how we view the world, it’s not so empty.

let’s get to “vanity” in a moment. any other points about “logic” and “persuasion“?

i think the “truth” or “persuasiveness” of my theory is obvious. one can just look around. but the self proclaimed “logical” type will try to refute it.

how does one refute a persuasion?

with a counter-persuasion, which is just more persuasion.

persuasion in the opposite direction?

right. the “logical” type will phrase their counter-persuasion in a “logical” style.

would you consider yourself right and the “logical” type wrong?

no. it’s not that simple. truth is a what a person believes. rationality exists, if only as a fantasy.

are fantasies as real as realities?

that’s just it. there are only fantasies. when enough fantasies overlap, we call them reality. if you are alone with a fantasy you are either an artist or insane.

i can see why your views are not popular.

they are compatible with a certain hero myth. other hero myth either have no need of such a theory or are directly threatened by it.

onanismo said the same thing about his hero myth theory, that the theory itself was a threat to the hero myths of many.

it is. because the do-gooder is convicted of “vanity.” a do-gooder wants to be the opposite of selfishness, not a hypocritical example of such.

are do-gooders hypocrites?

that depends on what kind of myth-scope you’re looking through.

you really believe the truth is that relative.

yes, but at the same time i live my life according to personal taste. still, i want my theory applied consistently, which adds to its persuasiveness.

why persuade in the first place?

vanity.

you just want attention?

yes, but i’m willing to earn it. of course i am also still a victim of the truth-hero-myth. like i said, i offer this anti-logical theory in logical form.

you also said you weren’t the enemy of truth so much as a reformer of the concept.

right, so ultimately we are talking about an expansion of consciousness as well the sense of power.

does psychology have any power when not applied to the real world?

would you enjoy having x-ray vision even if you were not allowed to interfere with what you saw?

yes.

we have a tendency to think of power as involving objective reality, which of course it often does, but that leaves something out. like you said earlier, perception is reality. you can take nietzsche’s “will to power” and tweak it into something like the “will to feel powerful.” x-ray vision makes a person feel powerful. they might not use it for anything. the main thing we seek is to see ourselves as successful incarnations of our hero myth.

so your theory gives you pleasure by helping you believe that you are indeed the psychologist-poet-rebel.

right. it’s hard to play the hero convincingly for yourself if you never have anything to offer other humans.

so you come out with an unpopular theory to actualize your hero myth.

right, because my hero-myth is not the daydreamer but the poet, in the broad sense of the word that includes psychology and romanticism.

it matters then how you are socially received?

yes. it matters to almost everyone. if i convince others, i further convince myself.

that reminds me of a certain definition of a fanatic, that they resolve their doubts by convincing others.

which is true, but it applies to most everyone. we all benefit from treated with respect, from being like the hero we are trying to become, or at high moments think we are.

we have come back to persuasion then.

yes. we should not that self-persuasion is not only as important but perhaps more important than the persuasion of others.

because it’s the last step.

right. “it little profits that a man gains the whole world and loses his soul.”

subversive application of christ!

it all connects. it’s all re-usable. it’s like melting statues to make bullets.

i can see that person now, adored by many, despised by himself.

not a happy camper. who doesn’t go through that though?

why do we doubt ourselves?

we are bombarded by persuasions in the service of others. then of course there is objective reality.

i thought you said there wasn’t.

in the absolute “logical” sense, there isn’t. but in the practical sense there is. one can persuade in the logical sense. one lives in the practical sense.

most people persuade in the practical sense as well as live in it.

that’s true. only an elitist hero myth would motivate us to be so sceptical, so critical. philosophy is a blood sport for the cerebral.

now we are talking about aggression, i take it.

we’ve all been to grammar school. think about insults. an insult is a primitive persuasion, the most basic kind. it’s the renaming of a person.

so when the bully calls little timmy a bad name, he wants to persuade others to perceive timmy that way.

yes. that’s all it is. he wants to persuade timmy and others and perhaps himself that timmy is something nasty. it’s psychological warfare. adults do it to of course.

adults are just harder to convince.

depends on their situation. an effective insult is one that finds the point of self-doubt already vulnerable in the insulted.

which we tend to be good at.

our eyes are in the front. we are the world’s most intelligent killer ape.

so we have positive hero-myth persuasion for our self, including our allies, and negative inferiority-myth persuasions for our enemies.

right. it’s really that simple.

what about someone with a christian hero myth who attempts not to have any enemies?

i suppose they repress their tendency to make a negative hero myth for others. i relate to that myself.

are a christian?

is some sense of the word, i guess i am.

that’s surprise.

“wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove”

i see. you consider the serpent and the dove compatible.

why not? as a poet i’m the “serpent.” as a “mystic” i’m a dove.

the line you quoted is a non-logical sort of persuasion.

right. it’s metaphorical, directly mythological. i love that sort of persuasion. that’s another reason i had to acknowledge that rationality was just one sort of persuasion, and not necessarily the best.

you expanded your notion of truth.

right. i think there’s an urge in us to fuse things, to simply. that’s why mysticism appeals to us.

how so?

take parmenides, for instance. “all is one and one is all,” which is also a led zeppelin lyric. there is power in that statement. but to prove it logically is difficult and questionable.

i take it you don’t feel the need to prove it logically.

not at all. “logical” in the old sense is no longer part of my hero myth.

but it was once.

yes.

so hero myths change.

oh yes. we see it all the time. people change. they re-invent themselves.

why?

because the grass is greener on the other. because they were persuaded to change.

do they choose a new myth because it’s easier to realize than the old one?

that’s one reason. but sometimes we are simply seduced by a new “god,” a new vision of the sublime and beautiful.

and poetry is the vehicle of this sublime?

the primary vehicle, i guess, but the plastic arts and music are nothing to scoff at.

so think a visual image can modify our hero myth?

yes. some people are more sensual-minded than others. you have word people, picture people, sound people. of course all of us respond to all three, but it’s reasonable (persuadable) that we all respond to all the mediums to some degree.

how can music influence a hero myth?

those who are moved by music are of course going to see composers and performers as potent individuals. then you may have a visual --verbal movie about a composer or performer. in real life, sound image and text are often mixed.

so it’s not just music but the verbal concept of the musician and the visual “flattery” of the musician.

right, because a poet knows how to glamorize anything. so does a plastic artist. art focuses on the hero as much as anything else. it’s natural to do so, because the hero is so important to us.

we have music for heroes, poems for heroes, and pictures of heroes.

yes, yes, and yes. you might say the primary theme of art is the hero, that artist reveal heroic possibilities to us.

something like a shopping mall at which we buy personality.

exactly, that’s an excellent metaphor.

we’ve gotten deep into the hero myth, which i suppose is mr. onanismo’s territory. he’s a friend of yours?

a close friend. the fact is that we both sort of developed the hero-myth and persuasion theory of truth simultaneously, together. we sort of agreed to split the difference, divide and conquer.

you ended up getting known for the persuasion theory, he for the personal hero myth.

right, but the two are conjoined twins. one leads to the other. if truth is persuasion, then how are we persuaded?

then we find the personal hero myth determines what persuasions we accept and resist.

right, and if you start with the personal hero myth as primary, then you realize just how irrational humans are, that they think in terms of myths, that arguments are secondary to faith.

which leads to the persuasion theory of truth.

you can see how they are born conjoined.

yes.

what now?

let’s see. as a “matter of taste,” what personal hero myths offend you?

the moralist offends me most, i think.

why?

because the moralist does not pride themselves on individualism but rather the opposite. the moralist is just a cell in a mob. not only that, but i think most moralists do not manage to manifest their heroic ideals.

ecce homo

you have called nietzsche your favorite philosopher. could we go into that?

with nietzsche the mask if finally off. no more priestly modesty. no more getting power indirectly. in ecce homo, modesty is dispensed with; meglomania is naked. this is beautiful. this is hilarious.

it doesn’t go over well with most.

nietzsche himself is a sort of byronic hero. nietzsche is satan in paradise lost, but happier. the “crazy” nietzsche is as important as the “sane” nietzsche. his extreme egotism is the height of poetry. what can any writer desire more than to see himself as great, the greatest even. nietzsche, at times at least, experienced that. you can say he was wrong. you can say he was foolish. for him it was real. not only that, but his leap of faith was a self-fulfilling prophecy. it all reminds me of caligula as seutonius presents him, except nietzsche is a poet, a writer. nietzsche didn’t hurt anyone. you might blame the holocaust on him, but that’s a stretch. he was a poet who enjoyed the notion of himself as humanities greatest poet. in some ways he was right.

you really think nietzsche was that good.

at his best, yes. his self-honesty led him to see the omnipresence of egotism and it’s significance in the stories we tell ourselves. he turned this self-knowledge into a weapon against the philosophers before him. he finds cowardice in kant, resentment in plato, etc. etc. he raises the flag of affirmation. it was an old flag, red with the blood of soldiers. but he raised it in a philosophical context. he incarnated the aesthetic emperor. i think of nero and the giant gold statue he had of himself. nero the god. caligula the god. nietzsche the god. of course there’s a humor in this. because all of them are dead now. they were “nothing but apes.” but do we think they weren’t aware of that? do we think that nietzsche lacked irony, that the caesars lacked irony? they had conquered shame and hypocrisy enough to make a joke of their megalomania and indulge it simultaneously.

but isn’t that anti-social?

it is. who wants their slaves to be megalomaniacs? no one. we want our slaves to fear god, but only to better obey us. that’s what a cynic might say. nietzsche just rips the mask off power. power is not just a means but an end. to be more specific, we want to enjoy ourselves aesthetically as something potent.

you are saying that one of the high points of being human is to see oneself as beautiful and/or powerful.

right, they are one and same. power is beauty. beauty is power.

i thought truth was beauty, beauty truth.

power is truth, truth is beauty. the truth is what i think it is, what i can convince others it is.

but that is certainly anti-social.

yes and no. it’s complex.

how is it not anti-social?

the person who loves himself is radiant, can afford to be generous. i’m more afraid of those who are still seeking proof.

you are saying that a failed attempt at self-love is more dangerous.

yes. at the same time i don’t care if such and such is anti-social. it’s simply not my primary goal to see myself as social.

what is your primary goal then?

like i said, to see myself as potent and beautiful.

is that your notion of ethics.

yes. nietzsche made that bald. he took the mask off human nature. he built on schopenhaur, purged the contradictions. schopenhaur was biological in many ways but topped it off with buddhism, christianity.

so schopenhaur swerved from darwin at some point, got soft.

right. schopenhaur was an egotist of course, but he pitied human suffering. he said no to life, that life was a mistake.

this of course is completely different than nietzsche.

right. at some point nietzsche realized how anti-heroic such an attitude was. at the same time, he was obviously influence by life as will, the priority of will over reason.

so nietzsche corrected schopenhaur.

from my point of you, yes. of course i don’t believe in any “objective” truth as far as values are concerned.

this too from nietzsche.

right. nietzsche emphasized it. surely he had his influences, but who doesn’t. he came along at the right time and got the idea acknowledged.

did nietzsche invent anything?

i’m young. i’m still reading history. all i can say is that i’ve never found anything like ecce homo, for instance. i’m sure there have been many others to see christianity as a slave religion. what nietzsche did was incorporate anti-philosophy into philosophy.

what is anti-philosophy?

philosophers have long been (correctly) associated with priests. there have always been generals and business men with little sympathy toward the ascetic ideal. then the majority of humans also have little sympathy with the life of the mind in general. philosophy was a zone for the anti-worldly. those who think life stinks could retreat to it. then they could write their snotty denouncements of the marketplace and battlefield in esoteric prose.

whereas nietzsche accepted the battlefield and the marketplace?

he accepted the battlefield. he learned to tolerate the marketplace. at some point he saw resentment and moral indignation as weakness. no doubt he remained an aesthetic type. he could not abandon that without becoming a cyclops.

are saying that nietzsche jettisoned all of philosophy but aesthetics?

not exactly, but something like that. he retained the tradition and used it ironically. it was a vocabulary that was good for making jokes with. most philosopher have wanted influence, followers. so they could not afford to proclaim themselves god. instead they proclaimed an esoteric god (or “ideal”) that an elite could share in.

whereas nietzsche leaves no room for followers. to follow him would make one unworthy of him.

right, the only way to “follow” him is to eat him, become him. onanismo declares that onanismo is god. nietzsche is his john the baptist.

do you consider yourself greater than nietzsche?

yes and no. historically, not a chance. no one can take that from him. he was in the right place at the right time. on the other hand, i can absorb in my twenties what took nietzsche a difficult lifetime to learn.

you can stand on his shoulders?

exactly. if you arrive late, you get to stand on the shoulders of genius. on the other hand, it’s more difficult to be important historically.

i see. but one’s egotism can be comparably to nietzsche’s in ecce homo..

right. but to be that sort of egotist without irony would make one intolerable. i view ecce homo as half sincere, half joke.

but what if nietzsche was completely sincere?

he may have been. a brain tumor is the theory now. it’s hard to say. there’s something so pure in his meglomania. perhaps the artist and comedian in him knew what we was doing. but all that is secondary. i relish it with a wicked smile.

you don’t mind if philosophy is humorous.

that’s an understatement. so much of philosophy is worthless exactly because it is so inhuman, so falsely modest, so serpentine in its deceit.

you are disgust by the priestly in philosophy.

right, because when a person realizes that they themselves are god, what use have they for a mere priest? what are plato’s forms to me? i’m no longer looking for “god.” my religion is myself. there is something naked and pure in that beside which these indirect substitutes seems pale.

you think nietzsche offered what all philosophy offered, but in an undiluted form.

right. it was always about power. it always about egotism. nietzsche realized this and instead of cursing it, embraced it.

whereas schopenhaur might have cursed it.

right. schopenhaur cast the life force as the villian. nietzsche just inverted it into the hero. it’s all so contigent, historical. it makes good sense that nietzsche was what he was. he was the next number in the series.

but this doesn’t seem to keep you from respecting him.

not all. i love the man. but more than him i love myself. of course, right? nietzsche more than anyone helped me find myself, provided me with the purest myth, you could say.

is there anything you don’t live about him?

certainly. he’s not always at the top of his game. he exaggerates his originality. he attacks christianity with such an ugly resentful tone. he failed his own ideals at times. his early works are far from perfect. i read biographies of him and he was obviously not born great. he evolved himself over time into something unforgettable. he left plenty of scabs in his wake. get this clear: i’m anything but blind to his faults, his absurdities. i forgive all this in a spirit of humor. the best of the man is the best of any man. nietzsche should be viewed as a sculpture, as a work of art, as a character. anyone who kneels to him as a sage is ridiculous in my eyes. i’m afraid that my own respect for him has been misinterpreted by the under-developed.

they didn’t understand your attitude toward him?

how could they? they don’t understand the mustache (nietzsche). the mustache is probably the most misunderstood thinker in history. it annoys me, these people who believe the prattle and never read the god damned books.

i appreciate what you mean. the half-educated are worse than the non-educated.

so true. yet i too was one of those pretentious fools once. it’s a stage one goes through. no way around it.

why not?

well, it takes a certain egotism to play the smart guy to begin with. this egotism can’t wait the years it takes to be educated. instead it starts playing the asshole immediately, with the few scraps of knowledge it has gathered.

how does one get beyond this stage?

if one has a real love of ideas, of books, then one will slowly replace prejudice with understanding. wait a minute. no, one will replace one prejudice with another that’s more comfortable. it’s a gradual process. on the other hand, if one is not naturally curious, the pretentiousness will last a lifetime i think.

not a pretty picture.

not at all. what’s more odious than an old man who knows nothing and thinks he knows everything?

probably someone like you.

i think you’re on to something. in fact, i retract it all. this was only psychic judo. i’m the opposite of my apparent self. really. i’m a 16 year old girl with jesus tatooed on my ass.