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.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
___________________
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.
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.
offensive to some, certainly juvenile
metaphors
behold the man: an egomaniac. which is what de cassere said. what so many others said.
give me fame. give me respect. give me money. admire my words. admire my face. i don’t call it sin.
i don’t call it sin. get that straight. i reveal it not to revile it. i reveal it to see it whole. there we are, folks. egomaniacs. there we are folks, a thirst for glory.
some call it sin. this too was a path to glory. one path set itself against the other path. all were paths to glory. all were paths to power and self-love.
the rich man with his gold. the holy man with his cross. here comes the light, folks. all the same. all the same. all the same. the word man with his pen.
i too want a piece. i too would like to pose. i vote yes. yes on proposition life. all in all i like it fine. i like to sing and fuck and dine. i feel strong. i feel beautiful. call me faggot or narcissist. i am all of that and more.
new and improved. assimilating everyday. 5 billion serves. i eat the cum in books. books are cum from vanished penises. mental cum.
nietzsche was bisexual dioynsos. he had to keep it on the down low. he was a ahead of his time. i can afford to be obscene. i can scoff at the academic. i can dance naked before i lose my mind.
on the shoulders of henry miller. on the shoulders of bukowski. on the perversity of joyce. on the lean prose of hemmingway.
the academic pose serves it purpose. i don’t need it thought. that era is passed. philosophy has been unveiled. social class dissolved. some are rich some are poor. that’s all folks. no more illusions of modesty. not for me.
i’m nasty. don’t care if you like it or not. expect you to anyway. some of you. this is nakedly elitist. fuck your equality, that fantasy of the inferior. it was hard to write that last line. it seemed so obvious. it seemed so not worth saying. i did it anyway. for those who haven’t noticed yet. the young perhaps. the stupid, the inferior.
god’s not dead. i feel fine. i’m at the top of my game. “he says he’s god. that’s funny.”
that joke is also old. for some quite new. for some quite obnoxious. how strange, this concurrence of attitudes.
some on their knees. some on the breeze. some scratching fleas.
the peak of it all is to see your own damn self as god. if foolsophy can teach you nothing else, it better teach you that. be careful who you tell though. envy is a lion prowling, seeking whom it may devour.
slaves help their masters keep other slaves in line. inferiority loves company. the pseudo-christian self-righteousness is nothing but a power-substitute of course. you might ask why they don’t join the devil. the devil is something for loners. then there’s the confusion of ethics and aesthetics.
i don’t steal or kill. i’m a nice guy. get that down, professor. call my satanism hypocrisy. that would be misunderstanding it though. i believe in the fusion of christ and lucifer. those two are symbols for me. those two are characters. they are not supernatural realities. they are aesthetic models.
jesus loves. jesus understands. jesus forgives. jesus is curious. jesus is an outward force. jesus is a wet cunt. jesus is female.
satan is self-love. satan despises the ugly. satan is the asshole critic. satan is an inward solitary force. satan is a patriarch. satan is dick.
just as the asshole and the pussy are close friends, so are satan and jesus. satan the asshole. jesus the pussy. the truth is an hermaphrodite.
i think solitude is holy. but then community enriches solitude. blah blah. i smell shit on my chin. this is poetry, folks. don’t forget to laugh, if you can manage it with that cross on your back. (or is it a cape?)
behold the man: an egomaniac. which is what de cassere said. what so many others said.
give me fame. give me respect. give me money. admire my words. admire my face. i don’t call it sin.
i don’t call it sin. get that straight. i reveal it not to revile it. i reveal it to see it whole. there we are, folks. egomaniacs. there we are folks, a thirst for glory.
some call it sin. this too was a path to glory. one path set itself against the other path. all were paths to glory. all were paths to power and self-love.
the rich man with his gold. the holy man with his cross. here comes the light, folks. all the same. all the same. all the same. the word man with his pen.
i too want a piece. i too would like to pose. i vote yes. yes on proposition life. all in all i like it fine. i like to sing and fuck and dine. i feel strong. i feel beautiful. call me faggot or narcissist. i am all of that and more.
new and improved. assimilating everyday. 5 billion serves. i eat the cum in books. books are cum from vanished penises. mental cum.
nietzsche was bisexual dioynsos. he had to keep it on the down low. he was a ahead of his time. i can afford to be obscene. i can scoff at the academic. i can dance naked before i lose my mind.
on the shoulders of henry miller. on the shoulders of bukowski. on the perversity of joyce. on the lean prose of hemmingway.
the academic pose serves it purpose. i don’t need it thought. that era is passed. philosophy has been unveiled. social class dissolved. some are rich some are poor. that’s all folks. no more illusions of modesty. not for me.
i’m nasty. don’t care if you like it or not. expect you to anyway. some of you. this is nakedly elitist. fuck your equality, that fantasy of the inferior. it was hard to write that last line. it seemed so obvious. it seemed so not worth saying. i did it anyway. for those who haven’t noticed yet. the young perhaps. the stupid, the inferior.
god’s not dead. i feel fine. i’m at the top of my game. “he says he’s god. that’s funny.”
that joke is also old. for some quite new. for some quite obnoxious. how strange, this concurrence of attitudes.
some on their knees. some on the breeze. some scratching fleas.
the peak of it all is to see your own damn self as god. if foolsophy can teach you nothing else, it better teach you that. be careful who you tell though. envy is a lion prowling, seeking whom it may devour.
slaves help their masters keep other slaves in line. inferiority loves company. the pseudo-christian self-righteousness is nothing but a power-substitute of course. you might ask why they don’t join the devil. the devil is something for loners. then there’s the confusion of ethics and aesthetics.
i don’t steal or kill. i’m a nice guy. get that down, professor. call my satanism hypocrisy. that would be misunderstanding it though. i believe in the fusion of christ and lucifer. those two are symbols for me. those two are characters. they are not supernatural realities. they are aesthetic models.
jesus loves. jesus understands. jesus forgives. jesus is curious. jesus is an outward force. jesus is a wet cunt. jesus is female.
satan is self-love. satan despises the ugly. satan is the asshole critic. satan is an inward solitary force. satan is a patriarch. satan is dick.
just as the asshole and the pussy are close friends, so are satan and jesus. satan the asshole. jesus the pussy. the truth is an hermaphrodite.
i think solitude is holy. but then community enriches solitude. blah blah. i smell shit on my chin. this is poetry, folks. don’t forget to laugh, if you can manage it with that cross on your back. (or is it a cape?)
fire it up
in your first chapter you claim to “dispose of logocentrism.”
right, and i only need 3 pages, whereas derrida needs his entire career.
you think so?
oh yes, just look at him. he argues so rigorously against logocentrism.
harsh.
well, his style is obscene. it makes me sick. they say he was a nice guy, but some of his books are just trash.
but he’s so respected.
that’s probably more “proof” of what i just said. sartre was popular too. i’m learning to hate the french.
let’s get back to logocentrism.
logic is a fraud. it’s a myth. of course it’s useful, it’s significant, but it’s also an illusion.
how so?
those who consider themselves “logical” make an idol of the word and the method it refers to. they think they have truth on speed dial. much of western philosophy is based on proposition, debate, dialectic. call it what you will. it stems from parmenides who “proved” that motion was an illusion.
ah yes. his arguments were impressive.
they were charming. yet movement exist. to call it an illusion is exciting and all that but also absurd. he uses “logic” to show us that the obvious is untrue. he turns our reality into mere appearance, or tries to.
then plato and others took it further.
right, parmenides was a curiosity. his theory had no ethic content. plato, on the other hand, applied this “logical” method to human ethics. he “proves” to us what the ideal society is like. i think they tried it in china.
so is logic a fraud because of the way that plato used it?
logic is a fraud because it pretends to be more than just a style of persuasion. let’s remember that plato defined himself against the sophist. the sophist were just snakes to him. they used dialectic in the marketplace. they taught the rich how to win arguments, trials, etc. they taught it as rhetoric, as persuasion. but plato was a priest. he was giving us the truth. like parmenides he told us that what we thought was real were merely appearance or mask. we could use logic and intuition to find the truth behind all this. he was a sort of propositional mystic.
and after plato?
plato was contagious. a whole tradition followed after him where logic was viewed not as a style of persuasion but rather as the method that gave us “truth“. plato was perhaps inspired by pythagoras. he wanted the certainty of math to apply to the medium of logos, word. this was ridiculous to begin with. language, as soon it becomes abstract, is nothing but metaphors, which are anything but exact. logos is nothing like geometry, period.
so plato got logic taken too seriously?
right. as soon as one takes logic seriously, one is stuck with epistemology. because despite the claims of logic to provide us with truth, there was plenty of disagreement, starting with plato’s star pupil, aristotle.
are you saying that logocentrism is the attitude that logic is above persuasion.
exactly. “logic” is a myth. it’s not completely absurd of course, and formal logic has a validity comparable with math. but as soon as we deal with metaphors, logic in this higher sense deserts us. we are back to persuasion.
so western philosophy insofar as it has viewed itself as logical has been living in a dream?
right, these so called “logical” types have based themselves on a myth, for centuries. i’m not denying that epistemology has been valuable. i’m not denying that this myth of logic has been valuable. i think it has. but i also think it’s a prejudice, something that should be discovered.
so you opened your book with it.
right, to clear the air. i wanted to smack my readers awake. i was going to get into religious myth in the later chapters of course and i didn’t want their narrow minds to rest on the pretense of logic.
you think that myth has been underestimated because of logocentrism.
right. the mind of man is mythological and metaphorical. like i said, logic itself is a myth. but those in the logocentric dream aren’t aware of this. they are biased against metaphor, or think they are. as far as ethics and human purpose are concerned, religion has always been far ahead of philosophy.
that’s debatable.
well, this book is part of that debate. to me it’s clear. i’m a convert from logocentrism. with philosophy you get the categorical imperative or utilitarianism, both of which are laughable, “illogical.”
how so?
must we get into that? just think about either for 10 minutes and you will know what i mean. play the devil’s advocate. look at human history. both are absurd.
i see why the catergorical imperative is weak but what about utilitarianism.
ok, i will humor you. the happiness of the greatest number. first it denies that obvious fact of human selfishness. it’s already absurd right there. it’s a laughable sentimental idealism. second, what is human happiness? what makes us happy? once we are well fed and have a roof over our head, what then? look around, how many unhappy well-fed sheltered people do you see? quite a few. man has a “spiritual” appetite.
ok, i see what you mean. it’s not a simple thing to define human happiness.
exactly, how is “logic” going to do that? then there’s another obvious fact, that hardly anyone cares about logic. only a tiny minority concerns themselves with “logic.” “logic” is just the vanity of a bookish minority, whereas the need and enjoyment of myth is universal.
so “logic” is a sort of religion.
right. a few bookish folks make an idol of “logic” which is actually a myth. others make a myth of “righteousness” that might be personified by jesus or communism. still others might make an idol of “power” and look to hitler or napolean.
hitler?
sure. don’t doubt that villains have fans. it’s exciting to be controversial. we all have a soft spot for bad guys.
there’s some truth in that.
i can’t think of many movies without a villain, nor novels or even philosophies. villains are essential.
ok, i grant you that. i grant you your point on logocentrism. let’s move onto the next chapter, the satan myth.
the satan myth is an evolution of the christ myth. christ attacked priestcraft. christ was the first protestant, as well as the first christian.
right, luther wanted to take christianity back to its roots.
right, he saw the catholic church as anti-christ, as false christ.
but how is satan derived from christ?
christ took god away from the priest and declared that the kingdom of god was within us. he abolished the law in the name of grace or love. so god is no longer the property of the theocrats. he made god personal. he made god incarnate.
still, where is the devil in this?
i’m getting there. so christ made god a spirit that dwelt within the faithful. he democratized god. at the same time, he made altruism the essence of the law. but when altruism is called into doubt, by nietzsche for instance, where are we now?
ok, i see where you’re going. so christ is god in the individual man but with a loose altruistic imperative. if you take away the altruism you just have an individual with “god” in him, which could lead to pride.
right. christ said god is love and also that god is a spirit that lives within us. so the authority of the priest is destroyed in the name of indwelling love. it’s only a step to call god “pride” instead of love, or to modify this love of others into a love of self.
but why compare this modified christ to satan?
let’s compare the two myths. christ rebelled against the organized jewish religion, which represented jehova. satan rebelled against jehova himself. christ did so in the name of love for others, or altruism. satan does so in the name of self-love, or pride. we have parallel myths here, but with a twist.
that’s true. that’s rarely noted.
it is rarely noted. we also have the greek myth of prometheus. in each case we have the individual rebel against something big and established. it also compares with david and goliath.
so god is like goliath?
right, or also the evil corporation for instance. certain romantics read paradise lost and could not help but see satan as the hero of the piece, and indeed he was. how can an omnipotent god be heroic? it’s impossible. the hero must run risks, make sacrifices. satan pursued his ideal in the face of the greatest resistance conceivable. so did prometheus. both of them took on the ultimate power. christ is a lightweight by comparison but he lived, supposedly, in the real world.
do you doubt the historical existence of christ?
i don’t know either way. he may well have existed. in any case, for us he is a myth, unless we are believers in the supernatural and all of that.
so it doesn’t matter if he existed.
not to me, not in less there really is a jehova somewhere.
which you obviously doubt.
obviously.
in your book, you side with the satan myth over the christ myth. is that correct?
to be more exact, i believe in a fusion of the myths. i absolutely reject altruism as a law. what i like about christ is his forgiveness, his lack of resentment. even nietzsche couldn’t deny this. it’s funny. nietzsche wrote a book called the anti-christ and he couldn’t help painting a beautiful portrait of christ. oh, he was critical alright, but he couldn’t help but showing how impressive a character he was. he drove home some of the beauty of the gospels. christ forgave those who were crucifying him. no one could make him hateful, petty.
i see. nietzsche certainly criticized resentment.
right. he saw christianity as founded on resentment. he said that the last christian died on the cross.
do you agree with that?
not at all. spinoza is a sort of christian. i’m sure there have been many christians who took the high road of christianity. nietzsche was simply unfair in that book. but he wasn’t his best there. he didn’t always live up to his ideal. who does? i still love nietzsche. even his faults are instructive. nietzsche is a poem.
you say you reject altruism as a law. could you explain that?
altruism as a law is already a contradiction. if we forgive because we have to, in order to get into heaven, then it’s nothing but prudence. this was jesus’s criticism of the law, except heaven was not involved. he said that the self-righteous pharisees had their reward. their reward was self-righteousness. they were obedient in order to enjoy this self-righteousness. jesus wanted a religion based on spirit, which meant spontaneous emotion. he wanted real religion, not just tradition and self-righteousness.
you say in your book that jesus was a romantic.
he was. romanticism is implicit in christ. jesus was a passionate mystic. he was not the french enlightment, which made a deity of “reason.” voltaire, for instance, blasted the church for its hypocrisy. to a large degree he did so out of love. in this he was like christ. but voltaire had science and rationality for an idol. jesus did not. the romantics were a reaction to this idolatry of reason. they did not want such a mechanical view of the universe.
that reminds me of blake.
blake is a perfect example. he was the romantic poet who made a hero of christ. shelley went greek and chose prometheus. byron went hebrew and made a hero of cain. blake’s romanticism was just a modification of jesus. blake was something like an antinomian. with voltaire he shared a contempt for the hypocrisy of organized religion. blake also saw the similarities between christ and satan. that’s why he wrote a book like “the marriage of heaven and hell.” blake played both satan and christ as heroes, depending on his mood. for most the part he stuck with christ, though.
but he realized christ was a myth?
absolutely. he said “god only acts & is thru existing beings or men.” god only exist within individual humans. he also called god the “poetic genius.” he realized that the imagination was god, the individual human imagination. (or “the human form divine”)
it sounds like you aren’t adding much to what blake already said.
that’s true. i’m not. but blake made some questionable stylist decisions. his prophecies are badly written. he was too afraid to use the common symbols in a direct manner.
good points. no one reads his prophecies.
right. now the “marriage of heaven and hell “ is brilliant thought. it’s written well. that’s what got me into blake. but he wasn’t as explicit as he could have been. if he would have stuck to prose he would have been perhaps the greatest mystic in english. his annotations are great. i doubt he expected to publish them.
i wonder why he wasn’t more direct.
so do i. perhaps it was vanity. of course he said “ i have to create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s.”
do you think he was right about that?
not exactly. he could have written his “system” in prose. instead he was a bad imitation of milton, an influence that overpowered him.
what are his annotations like?
they are clear as ice-water, pure as fire. he lays it out. then there are also the small prose sections in his prophecies, the introductions. he should have stuck to that. his lyrics are decent but his prose is by far what’s important to me.
let’s move on to shelley.
i know less about shelley but i do know that he was an atheist altruist. i don’t think his poetry is very good. the style is wrong. it’s ethereal in a bad way. i much prefer byron.
byron is associated with satan. i know that much.
he himself is a satanic myth. you have incest and irony. you have homosexuality and womanizing. he was the equivalent of a rock star. he was handsome, charismatic, etc. he was the perfect sinister hero. the fact that he was a poet and not a general is significant.
how so?
when jesus made god something personal rather than social, military conquest was no longer that significant. we should remember beethoven, another romantic hero. certainly there was a glamour to napolean, but the priest is above the warrior, especially for the millions who will never be kings. it makes more sense to see the composer or the poet as the ultimate man. romanticism is about the subjective. we expect a more impressive subjectivity from the artist than the emperor.
and yet the roman emperors were viewed as gods.
legally and in their own minds perhaps…
but not in the people’s minds?
i’m sure they were envied, but no one seduces our subjectivities like the artist. i suppose there are exceptions. kings retain a certain glamour. but the man who is not a king will lean perhaps to the artist, who he can more easily become, who penetrates his soul, gives him his idea of beautiful.
ok, i grant you that. a king is not that “romantic “ or poetic. so byron the man was a sort of dark ideal.
right. he had some of the nature mysticism of the romantics but he also had his dark heroes, his sinister loners. then he himself was perhaps his greatest character. it’s the author of don juan that most fascinates us. it’s the ironic narrator and the unpretentious prose style that seduces us. byron makes a joke of everything, because he himself is god -- not jehova, not nature. byron bows to no ideals outside himself. not the late byron. he fought with grecian rebels, but even this he made a joke about. he played at being a freedom fighter. one suspects that it was for the adventure involved, that it appeal to his contemplation of his own image. but that’s conjecture.
you don’t interpret it as altruism.
no, not after reading his poems. he didn’t seem like a person who was burdened by duty. he was an idle rich man. war must have seemed like entertainment. i do think he valued liberty. i don’t think he would have fought on the “wrong” side. i think he was a person who acted from his sense of taste.
i suppose his money and his fame put him in an entirely different situation than a blake.
yes, and blake is not so ironic. blake is more indignant, fanatical. blake had revolutionary blood in his veins. then he was also a painter and a student of the bible and no doubt many other books. it’s significant that blake chose christ as a hero and byron chose cain. blake was less satanic, more altruistic. shelley was the same. prometheus stole fire for the sake of humanity. satan rebelled from god out envy, because christ, a human, was set above him.
right, and i only need 3 pages, whereas derrida needs his entire career.
you think so?
oh yes, just look at him. he argues so rigorously against logocentrism.
harsh.
well, his style is obscene. it makes me sick. they say he was a nice guy, but some of his books are just trash.
but he’s so respected.
that’s probably more “proof” of what i just said. sartre was popular too. i’m learning to hate the french.
let’s get back to logocentrism.
logic is a fraud. it’s a myth. of course it’s useful, it’s significant, but it’s also an illusion.
how so?
those who consider themselves “logical” make an idol of the word and the method it refers to. they think they have truth on speed dial. much of western philosophy is based on proposition, debate, dialectic. call it what you will. it stems from parmenides who “proved” that motion was an illusion.
ah yes. his arguments were impressive.
they were charming. yet movement exist. to call it an illusion is exciting and all that but also absurd. he uses “logic” to show us that the obvious is untrue. he turns our reality into mere appearance, or tries to.
then plato and others took it further.
right, parmenides was a curiosity. his theory had no ethic content. plato, on the other hand, applied this “logical” method to human ethics. he “proves” to us what the ideal society is like. i think they tried it in china.
so is logic a fraud because of the way that plato used it?
logic is a fraud because it pretends to be more than just a style of persuasion. let’s remember that plato defined himself against the sophist. the sophist were just snakes to him. they used dialectic in the marketplace. they taught the rich how to win arguments, trials, etc. they taught it as rhetoric, as persuasion. but plato was a priest. he was giving us the truth. like parmenides he told us that what we thought was real were merely appearance or mask. we could use logic and intuition to find the truth behind all this. he was a sort of propositional mystic.
and after plato?
plato was contagious. a whole tradition followed after him where logic was viewed not as a style of persuasion but rather as the method that gave us “truth“. plato was perhaps inspired by pythagoras. he wanted the certainty of math to apply to the medium of logos, word. this was ridiculous to begin with. language, as soon it becomes abstract, is nothing but metaphors, which are anything but exact. logos is nothing like geometry, period.
so plato got logic taken too seriously?
right. as soon as one takes logic seriously, one is stuck with epistemology. because despite the claims of logic to provide us with truth, there was plenty of disagreement, starting with plato’s star pupil, aristotle.
are you saying that logocentrism is the attitude that logic is above persuasion.
exactly. “logic” is a myth. it’s not completely absurd of course, and formal logic has a validity comparable with math. but as soon as we deal with metaphors, logic in this higher sense deserts us. we are back to persuasion.
so western philosophy insofar as it has viewed itself as logical has been living in a dream?
right, these so called “logical” types have based themselves on a myth, for centuries. i’m not denying that epistemology has been valuable. i’m not denying that this myth of logic has been valuable. i think it has. but i also think it’s a prejudice, something that should be discovered.
so you opened your book with it.
right, to clear the air. i wanted to smack my readers awake. i was going to get into religious myth in the later chapters of course and i didn’t want their narrow minds to rest on the pretense of logic.
you think that myth has been underestimated because of logocentrism.
right. the mind of man is mythological and metaphorical. like i said, logic itself is a myth. but those in the logocentric dream aren’t aware of this. they are biased against metaphor, or think they are. as far as ethics and human purpose are concerned, religion has always been far ahead of philosophy.
that’s debatable.
well, this book is part of that debate. to me it’s clear. i’m a convert from logocentrism. with philosophy you get the categorical imperative or utilitarianism, both of which are laughable, “illogical.”
how so?
must we get into that? just think about either for 10 minutes and you will know what i mean. play the devil’s advocate. look at human history. both are absurd.
i see why the catergorical imperative is weak but what about utilitarianism.
ok, i will humor you. the happiness of the greatest number. first it denies that obvious fact of human selfishness. it’s already absurd right there. it’s a laughable sentimental idealism. second, what is human happiness? what makes us happy? once we are well fed and have a roof over our head, what then? look around, how many unhappy well-fed sheltered people do you see? quite a few. man has a “spiritual” appetite.
ok, i see what you mean. it’s not a simple thing to define human happiness.
exactly, how is “logic” going to do that? then there’s another obvious fact, that hardly anyone cares about logic. only a tiny minority concerns themselves with “logic.” “logic” is just the vanity of a bookish minority, whereas the need and enjoyment of myth is universal.
so “logic” is a sort of religion.
right. a few bookish folks make an idol of “logic” which is actually a myth. others make a myth of “righteousness” that might be personified by jesus or communism. still others might make an idol of “power” and look to hitler or napolean.
hitler?
sure. don’t doubt that villains have fans. it’s exciting to be controversial. we all have a soft spot for bad guys.
there’s some truth in that.
i can’t think of many movies without a villain, nor novels or even philosophies. villains are essential.
ok, i grant you that. i grant you your point on logocentrism. let’s move onto the next chapter, the satan myth.
the satan myth is an evolution of the christ myth. christ attacked priestcraft. christ was the first protestant, as well as the first christian.
right, luther wanted to take christianity back to its roots.
right, he saw the catholic church as anti-christ, as false christ.
but how is satan derived from christ?
christ took god away from the priest and declared that the kingdom of god was within us. he abolished the law in the name of grace or love. so god is no longer the property of the theocrats. he made god personal. he made god incarnate.
still, where is the devil in this?
i’m getting there. so christ made god a spirit that dwelt within the faithful. he democratized god. at the same time, he made altruism the essence of the law. but when altruism is called into doubt, by nietzsche for instance, where are we now?
ok, i see where you’re going. so christ is god in the individual man but with a loose altruistic imperative. if you take away the altruism you just have an individual with “god” in him, which could lead to pride.
right. christ said god is love and also that god is a spirit that lives within us. so the authority of the priest is destroyed in the name of indwelling love. it’s only a step to call god “pride” instead of love, or to modify this love of others into a love of self.
but why compare this modified christ to satan?
let’s compare the two myths. christ rebelled against the organized jewish religion, which represented jehova. satan rebelled against jehova himself. christ did so in the name of love for others, or altruism. satan does so in the name of self-love, or pride. we have parallel myths here, but with a twist.
that’s true. that’s rarely noted.
it is rarely noted. we also have the greek myth of prometheus. in each case we have the individual rebel against something big and established. it also compares with david and goliath.
so god is like goliath?
right, or also the evil corporation for instance. certain romantics read paradise lost and could not help but see satan as the hero of the piece, and indeed he was. how can an omnipotent god be heroic? it’s impossible. the hero must run risks, make sacrifices. satan pursued his ideal in the face of the greatest resistance conceivable. so did prometheus. both of them took on the ultimate power. christ is a lightweight by comparison but he lived, supposedly, in the real world.
do you doubt the historical existence of christ?
i don’t know either way. he may well have existed. in any case, for us he is a myth, unless we are believers in the supernatural and all of that.
so it doesn’t matter if he existed.
not to me, not in less there really is a jehova somewhere.
which you obviously doubt.
obviously.
in your book, you side with the satan myth over the christ myth. is that correct?
to be more exact, i believe in a fusion of the myths. i absolutely reject altruism as a law. what i like about christ is his forgiveness, his lack of resentment. even nietzsche couldn’t deny this. it’s funny. nietzsche wrote a book called the anti-christ and he couldn’t help painting a beautiful portrait of christ. oh, he was critical alright, but he couldn’t help but showing how impressive a character he was. he drove home some of the beauty of the gospels. christ forgave those who were crucifying him. no one could make him hateful, petty.
i see. nietzsche certainly criticized resentment.
right. he saw christianity as founded on resentment. he said that the last christian died on the cross.
do you agree with that?
not at all. spinoza is a sort of christian. i’m sure there have been many christians who took the high road of christianity. nietzsche was simply unfair in that book. but he wasn’t his best there. he didn’t always live up to his ideal. who does? i still love nietzsche. even his faults are instructive. nietzsche is a poem.
you say you reject altruism as a law. could you explain that?
altruism as a law is already a contradiction. if we forgive because we have to, in order to get into heaven, then it’s nothing but prudence. this was jesus’s criticism of the law, except heaven was not involved. he said that the self-righteous pharisees had their reward. their reward was self-righteousness. they were obedient in order to enjoy this self-righteousness. jesus wanted a religion based on spirit, which meant spontaneous emotion. he wanted real religion, not just tradition and self-righteousness.
you say in your book that jesus was a romantic.
he was. romanticism is implicit in christ. jesus was a passionate mystic. he was not the french enlightment, which made a deity of “reason.” voltaire, for instance, blasted the church for its hypocrisy. to a large degree he did so out of love. in this he was like christ. but voltaire had science and rationality for an idol. jesus did not. the romantics were a reaction to this idolatry of reason. they did not want such a mechanical view of the universe.
that reminds me of blake.
blake is a perfect example. he was the romantic poet who made a hero of christ. shelley went greek and chose prometheus. byron went hebrew and made a hero of cain. blake’s romanticism was just a modification of jesus. blake was something like an antinomian. with voltaire he shared a contempt for the hypocrisy of organized religion. blake also saw the similarities between christ and satan. that’s why he wrote a book like “the marriage of heaven and hell.” blake played both satan and christ as heroes, depending on his mood. for most the part he stuck with christ, though.
but he realized christ was a myth?
absolutely. he said “god only acts & is thru existing beings or men.” god only exist within individual humans. he also called god the “poetic genius.” he realized that the imagination was god, the individual human imagination. (or “the human form divine”)
it sounds like you aren’t adding much to what blake already said.
that’s true. i’m not. but blake made some questionable stylist decisions. his prophecies are badly written. he was too afraid to use the common symbols in a direct manner.
good points. no one reads his prophecies.
right. now the “marriage of heaven and hell “ is brilliant thought. it’s written well. that’s what got me into blake. but he wasn’t as explicit as he could have been. if he would have stuck to prose he would have been perhaps the greatest mystic in english. his annotations are great. i doubt he expected to publish them.
i wonder why he wasn’t more direct.
so do i. perhaps it was vanity. of course he said “ i have to create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s.”
do you think he was right about that?
not exactly. he could have written his “system” in prose. instead he was a bad imitation of milton, an influence that overpowered him.
what are his annotations like?
they are clear as ice-water, pure as fire. he lays it out. then there are also the small prose sections in his prophecies, the introductions. he should have stuck to that. his lyrics are decent but his prose is by far what’s important to me.
let’s move on to shelley.
i know less about shelley but i do know that he was an atheist altruist. i don’t think his poetry is very good. the style is wrong. it’s ethereal in a bad way. i much prefer byron.
byron is associated with satan. i know that much.
he himself is a satanic myth. you have incest and irony. you have homosexuality and womanizing. he was the equivalent of a rock star. he was handsome, charismatic, etc. he was the perfect sinister hero. the fact that he was a poet and not a general is significant.
how so?
when jesus made god something personal rather than social, military conquest was no longer that significant. we should remember beethoven, another romantic hero. certainly there was a glamour to napolean, but the priest is above the warrior, especially for the millions who will never be kings. it makes more sense to see the composer or the poet as the ultimate man. romanticism is about the subjective. we expect a more impressive subjectivity from the artist than the emperor.
and yet the roman emperors were viewed as gods.
legally and in their own minds perhaps…
but not in the people’s minds?
i’m sure they were envied, but no one seduces our subjectivities like the artist. i suppose there are exceptions. kings retain a certain glamour. but the man who is not a king will lean perhaps to the artist, who he can more easily become, who penetrates his soul, gives him his idea of beautiful.
ok, i grant you that. a king is not that “romantic “ or poetic. so byron the man was a sort of dark ideal.
right. he had some of the nature mysticism of the romantics but he also had his dark heroes, his sinister loners. then he himself was perhaps his greatest character. it’s the author of don juan that most fascinates us. it’s the ironic narrator and the unpretentious prose style that seduces us. byron makes a joke of everything, because he himself is god -- not jehova, not nature. byron bows to no ideals outside himself. not the late byron. he fought with grecian rebels, but even this he made a joke about. he played at being a freedom fighter. one suspects that it was for the adventure involved, that it appeal to his contemplation of his own image. but that’s conjecture.
you don’t interpret it as altruism.
no, not after reading his poems. he didn’t seem like a person who was burdened by duty. he was an idle rich man. war must have seemed like entertainment. i do think he valued liberty. i don’t think he would have fought on the “wrong” side. i think he was a person who acted from his sense of taste.
i suppose his money and his fame put him in an entirely different situation than a blake.
yes, and blake is not so ironic. blake is more indignant, fanatical. blake had revolutionary blood in his veins. then he was also a painter and a student of the bible and no doubt many other books. it’s significant that blake chose christ as a hero and byron chose cain. blake was less satanic, more altruistic. shelley was the same. prometheus stole fire for the sake of humanity. satan rebelled from god out envy, because christ, a human, was set above him.
fire it up
in your first chapter you claim to “dispose of logocentrism.”
right, and i only need 3 pages, whereas derrida needs his entire career.
you think so?
oh yes, just look at him. he argues so rigorously against logocentrism.
harsh.
well, his style is obscene. it makes me sick. they say he was a nice guy, but some of his books are just trash.
but he’s so respected.
that’s probably more “proof” of what i just said. sartre was popular too. i’m learning to hate the french.
let’s get back to logocentrism.
logic is a fraud. it’s a myth. of course it’s useful, it’s significant, but it’s also an illusion.
how so?
those who consider themselves “logical” make an idol of the word and the method it refers to. they think they have truth on speed dial. much of western philosophy is based on proposition, debate, dialectic. call it what you will. it stems from parmenides who “proved” that motion was an illusion.
ah yes. his arguments were impressive.
they were charming. yet movement exist. to call it an illusion is exciting and all that but also absurd. he uses “logic” to show us that the obvious is untrue. he turns our reality into mere appearance, or tries to.
then plato and others took it further.
right, parmenides was a curiosity. his theory had no ethic content. plato, on the other hand, applied this “logical” method to human ethics. he “proves” to us what the ideal society is like. i think they tried it in china.
so is logic a fraud because of the way that plato used it?
logic is a fraud because it pretends to be more than just a style of persuasion. let’s remember that plato defined himself against the sophist. the sophist were just snakes to him. they used dialectic in the marketplace. they taught the rich how to win arguments, trials, etc. they taught it as rhetoric, as persuasion. but plato was a priest. he was giving us the truth. like parmenides he told us that what we thought was real were merely appearance or mask. we could use logic and intuition to find the truth behind all this. he was a sort of propositional mystic.
and after plato?
plato was contagious. a whole tradition followed after him where logic was viewed not as a style of persuasion but rather as the method that gave us “truth“. plato was perhaps inspired by pythagoras. he wanted the certainty of math to apply to the medium of logos, word. this was ridiculous to begin with. language, as soon it becomes abstract, is nothing but metaphors, which are anything but exact. logos is nothing like geometry, period.
so plato got logic taken too seriously?
right. as soon as one takes logic seriously, one is stuck with epistemology. because despite the claims of logic to provide us with truth, there was plenty of disagreement, starting with plato’s star pupil, aristotle.
are you saying that logocentrism is the attitude that logic is above persuasion.
exactly. “logic” is a myth. it’s not completely absurd of course, and formal logic has a validity comparable with math. but as soon as we deal with metaphors, logic in this higher sense deserts us. we are back to persuasion.
so western philosophy insofar as it has viewed itself as logical has been living in a dream?
right, these so called “logical” types have based themselves on a myth, for centuries. i’m not denying that epistemology has been valuable. i’m not denying that this myth of logic has been valuable. i think it has. but i also think it’s a prejudice, something that should be discovered.
so you opened your book with it.
right, to clear the air. i wanted to smack my readers awake. i was going to get into religious myth in the later chapters of course and i didn’t want their narrow minds to rest on the pretense of logic.
you think that myth has been underestimated because of logocentrism.
right. the mind of man is mythological and metaphorical. like i said, logic itself is a myth. but those in the logocentric dream aren’t aware of this. they are biased against metaphor, or think they are. as far as ethics and human purpose are concerned, religion has always been far ahead of philosophy.
that’s debatable.
well, this book is part of that debate. to me it’s clear. i’m a convert from logocentrism. with philosophy you get the categorical imperative or utilitarianism, both of which are laughable, “illogical.”
how so?
must we get into that? just think about either for 10 minutes and you will know what i mean. play the devil’s advocate. look at human history. both are absurd.
i see why the catergorical imperative is weak but what about utilitarianism.
ok, i will humor you. the happiness of the greatest number. first it denies that obvious fact of human selfishness. it’s already absurd right there. it’s a laughable sentimental idealism. second, what is human happiness? what makes us happy? once we are well fed and have a roof over our head, what then? look around, how many unhappy well-fed sheltered people do you see? quite a few. man has a “spiritual” appetite.
ok, i see what you mean. it’s not a simple thing to define human happiness.
exactly, how is “logic” going to do that? then there’s another obvious fact, that hardly anyone cares about logic. only a tiny minority concerns themselves with “logic.” “logic” is just the vanity of a bookish minority, whereas the need and enjoyment of myth is universal.
so “logic” is a sort of religion.
right. a few bookish folks make an idol of “logic” which is actually a myth. others make a myth of “righteousness” that might be personified by jesus or communism. still others might make an idol of “power” and look to hitler or napolean.
hitler?
sure. don’t doubt that villains have fans. it’s exciting to be controversial. we all have a soft spot for bad guys.
there’s some truth in that.
i can’t think of many movies without a villain, nor novels or even philosophies. villains are essential.
ok, i grant you that. i grant you your point on logocentrism. let’s move onto the next chapter, the satan myth.
the satan myth is an evolution of the christ myth. christ attacked priestcraft. christ was the first protestant, as well as the first christian.
right, luther wanted to take christianity back to its roots.
right, he saw the catholic church as anti-christ, as false christ.
but how is satan derived from christ?
christ took god away from the priest and declared that the kingdom of god was within us. he abolished the law in the name of grace or love. so god is no longer the property of the theocrats. he made god personal. he made god incarnate.
still, where is the devil in this?
i’m getting there. so christ made god a spirit that dwelt within the faithful. he democratized god. at the same time, he made altruism the essence of the law. but when altruism is called into doubt, by nietzsche for instance, where are we now?
ok, i see where you’re going. so christ is god in the individual man but with a loose altruistic imperative. if you take away the altruism you just have an individual with “god” in him, which could lead to pride.
right. christ said god is love and also that god is a spirit that lives within us. so the authority of the priest is destroyed in the name of indwelling love. it’s only a step to call god “pride” instead of love, or to modify this love of others into a love of self.
but why compare this modified christ to satan?
let’s compare the two myths. christ rebelled against the organized jewish religion, which represented jehova. satan rebelled against jehova himself. christ did so in the name of love for others, or altruism. satan does so in the name of self-love, or pride. we have parallel myths here, but with a twist.
that’s true. that’s rarely noted.
it is rarely noted. we also have the greek myth of prometheus. in each case we have the individual rebel against something big and established. it also compares with david and goliath.
so god is like goliath?
right, or also the evil corporation for instance. certain romantics read paradise lost and could not help but see satan as the hero of the piece, and indeed he was. how can an omnipotent god be heroic? it’s impossible. the hero must run risks, make sacrifices. satan pursued his ideal in the face of the greatest resistance conceivable. so did prometheus. both of them took on the ultimate power. christ is a lightweight by comparison but he lived, supposedly, in the real world.
do you doubt the historical existence of christ?
i don’t know either way. he may well have existed. in any case, for us he is a myth, unless we are believers in the supernatural and all of that.
so it doesn’t matter if he existed.
not to me, not in less there really is a jehova somewhere.
which you obviously doubt.
obviously.
in your book, you side with the satan myth over the christ myth. is that correct?
to be more exact, i believe in a fusion of the myths. i absolutely reject altruism as a law. what i like about christ is his forgiveness, his lack of resentment. even nietzsche couldn’t deny this. it’s funny. nietzsche wrote a book called the anti-christ and he couldn’t help painting a beautiful portrait of christ. oh, he was critical alright, but he couldn’t help but showing how impressive a character he was. he drove home some of the beauty of the gospels. christ forgave those who were crucifying him. no one could make him hateful, petty.
i see. nietzsche certainly criticized resentment.
right. he saw christianity as founded on resentment. he said that the last christian died on the cross.
do you agree with that?
not at all. spinoza is a sort of christian. i’m sure there have been many christians who took the high road of christianity. nietzsche was simply unfair in that book. but he wasn’t his best there. he didn’t always live up to his ideal. who does? i still love nietzsche. even his faults are instructive. nietzsche is a poem.
you say you reject altruism as a law. could you explain that?
altruism as a law is already a contradiction. if we forgive because we have to, in order to get into heaven, then it’s nothing but prudence. this was jesus’s criticism of the law, except heaven was not involved. he said that the self-righteous pharisees had their reward. their reward was self-righteousness. they were obedient in order to enjoy this self-righteousness. jesus wanted a religion based on spirit, which meant spontaneous emotion. he wanted real religion, not just tradition and self-righteousness.
you say in your book that jesus was a romantic.
he was. romanticism is implicit in christ. jesus was a passionate mystic. he was not the french enlightment, which made a deity of “reason.” voltaire, for instance, blasted the church for its hypocrisy. to a large degree he did so out of love. in this he was like christ. but voltaire had science and rationality for an idol. jesus did not. the romantics were a reaction to this idolatry of reason. they did not want such a mechanical view of the universe.
that reminds me of blake.
blake is a perfect example. he was the romantic poet who made a hero of christ. shelley went greek and chose prometheus. byron went hebrew and made a hero of cain. blake’s romanticism was just a modification of jesus. blake was something like an antinomian. with voltaire he shared a contempt for the hypocrisy of organized religion. blake also saw the similarities between christ and satan. that’s why he wrote a book like “the marriage of heaven and hell.” blake played both satan and christ as heroes, depending on his mood. for most the part he stuck with christ, though.
but he realized christ was a myth?
absolutely. he said “god only acts & is thru existing beings or men.” god only exist within individual humans. he also called god the “poetic genius.” he realized that the imagination was god, the individual human imagination. (or “the human form divine”)
it sounds like you aren’t adding much to what blake already said.
that’s true. i’m not. but blake made some questionable stylist decisions. his prophecies are badly written. he was too afraid to use the common symbols in a direct manner.
good points. no one reads his prophecies.
right. now the “marriage of heaven and hell “ is brilliant thought. it’s written well. that’s what got me into blake. but he wasn’t as explicit as he could have been. if he would have stuck to prose he would have been perhaps the greatest mystic in english. his annotations are great. i doubt he expected to publish them.
i wonder why he wasn’t more direct.
so do i. perhaps it was vanity. of course he said “ i have to create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s.”
do you think he was right about that?
not exactly. he could have written his “system” in prose. instead he was a bad imitation of milton, an influence that overpowered him.
what are his annotations like?
they are clear as ice-water, pure as fire. he lays it out. then there are also the small prose sections in his prophecies, the introductions. he should have stuck to that. his lyrics are decent but his prose is by far what’s important to me.
let’s move on to shelley.
i know less about shelley but i do know that he was an atheist altruist. i don’t think his poetry is very good. the style is wrong. it’s ethereal in a bad way. i much prefer byron.
byron is associated with satan. i know that much.
he himself is a satanic myth. you have incest and irony. you have homosexuality and womanizing. he was the equivalent of a rock star. he was handsome, charismatic, etc. he was the perfect sinister hero. the fact that he was a poet and not a general is significant.
how so?
when jesus made god something personal rather than social, military conquest was no longer that significant. we should remember beethoven, another romantic hero. certainly there was a glamour to napolean, but the priest is above the warrior, especially for the millions who will never be kings. it makes more sense to see the composer or the poet as the ultimate man. romanticism is about the subjective. we expect a more impressive subjectivity from the artist than the emperor.
and yet the roman emperors were viewed as gods.
legally and in their own minds perhaps…
but not in the people’s minds?
i’m sure they were envied, but no one seduces our subjectivities like the artist. i suppose there are exceptions. kings retain a certain glamour. but the man who is not a king will lean perhaps to the artist, who he can more easily become, who penetrates his soul, gives him his idea of beautiful.
ok, i grant you that. a king is not that “romantic “ or poetic. so byron the man was a sort of dark ideal.
right. he had some of the nature mysticism of the romantics but he also had his dark heroes, his sinister loners. then he himself was perhaps his greatest character. it’s the author of don juan that most fascinates us. it’s the ironic narrator and the unpretentious prose style that seduces us. byron makes a joke of everything, because he himself is god -- not jehova, not nature. byron bows to no ideals outside himself. not the late byron. he fought with grecian rebels, but even this he made a joke about. he played at being a freedom fighter. one suspects that it was for the adventure involved, that it appeal to his contemplation of his own image. but that’s conjecture.
you don’t interpret it as altruism.
no, not after reading his poems. he didn’t seem like a person who was burdened by duty. he was an idle rich man. war must have seemed like entertainment. i do think he valued liberty. i don’t think he would have fought on the “wrong” side. i think he was a person who acted from his sense of taste.
i suppose his money and his fame put him in an entirely different situation than a blake.
yes, and blake is not so ironic. blake is more indignant, fanatical. blake had revolutionary blood in his veins. then he was also a painter and a student of the bible and no doubt many other books. it’s significant that blake chose christ as a hero and byron chose cain. blake was less satanic, more altruistic. shelley was the same. prometheus stole fire for the sake of humanity. satan rebelled from god out envy, because christ, a human, was set above him.
right, and i only need 3 pages, whereas derrida needs his entire career.
you think so?
oh yes, just look at him. he argues so rigorously against logocentrism.
harsh.
well, his style is obscene. it makes me sick. they say he was a nice guy, but some of his books are just trash.
but he’s so respected.
that’s probably more “proof” of what i just said. sartre was popular too. i’m learning to hate the french.
let’s get back to logocentrism.
logic is a fraud. it’s a myth. of course it’s useful, it’s significant, but it’s also an illusion.
how so?
those who consider themselves “logical” make an idol of the word and the method it refers to. they think they have truth on speed dial. much of western philosophy is based on proposition, debate, dialectic. call it what you will. it stems from parmenides who “proved” that motion was an illusion.
ah yes. his arguments were impressive.
they were charming. yet movement exist. to call it an illusion is exciting and all that but also absurd. he uses “logic” to show us that the obvious is untrue. he turns our reality into mere appearance, or tries to.
then plato and others took it further.
right, parmenides was a curiosity. his theory had no ethic content. plato, on the other hand, applied this “logical” method to human ethics. he “proves” to us what the ideal society is like. i think they tried it in china.
so is logic a fraud because of the way that plato used it?
logic is a fraud because it pretends to be more than just a style of persuasion. let’s remember that plato defined himself against the sophist. the sophist were just snakes to him. they used dialectic in the marketplace. they taught the rich how to win arguments, trials, etc. they taught it as rhetoric, as persuasion. but plato was a priest. he was giving us the truth. like parmenides he told us that what we thought was real were merely appearance or mask. we could use logic and intuition to find the truth behind all this. he was a sort of propositional mystic.
and after plato?
plato was contagious. a whole tradition followed after him where logic was viewed not as a style of persuasion but rather as the method that gave us “truth“. plato was perhaps inspired by pythagoras. he wanted the certainty of math to apply to the medium of logos, word. this was ridiculous to begin with. language, as soon it becomes abstract, is nothing but metaphors, which are anything but exact. logos is nothing like geometry, period.
so plato got logic taken too seriously?
right. as soon as one takes logic seriously, one is stuck with epistemology. because despite the claims of logic to provide us with truth, there was plenty of disagreement, starting with plato’s star pupil, aristotle.
are you saying that logocentrism is the attitude that logic is above persuasion.
exactly. “logic” is a myth. it’s not completely absurd of course, and formal logic has a validity comparable with math. but as soon as we deal with metaphors, logic in this higher sense deserts us. we are back to persuasion.
so western philosophy insofar as it has viewed itself as logical has been living in a dream?
right, these so called “logical” types have based themselves on a myth, for centuries. i’m not denying that epistemology has been valuable. i’m not denying that this myth of logic has been valuable. i think it has. but i also think it’s a prejudice, something that should be discovered.
so you opened your book with it.
right, to clear the air. i wanted to smack my readers awake. i was going to get into religious myth in the later chapters of course and i didn’t want their narrow minds to rest on the pretense of logic.
you think that myth has been underestimated because of logocentrism.
right. the mind of man is mythological and metaphorical. like i said, logic itself is a myth. but those in the logocentric dream aren’t aware of this. they are biased against metaphor, or think they are. as far as ethics and human purpose are concerned, religion has always been far ahead of philosophy.
that’s debatable.
well, this book is part of that debate. to me it’s clear. i’m a convert from logocentrism. with philosophy you get the categorical imperative or utilitarianism, both of which are laughable, “illogical.”
how so?
must we get into that? just think about either for 10 minutes and you will know what i mean. play the devil’s advocate. look at human history. both are absurd.
i see why the catergorical imperative is weak but what about utilitarianism.
ok, i will humor you. the happiness of the greatest number. first it denies that obvious fact of human selfishness. it’s already absurd right there. it’s a laughable sentimental idealism. second, what is human happiness? what makes us happy? once we are well fed and have a roof over our head, what then? look around, how many unhappy well-fed sheltered people do you see? quite a few. man has a “spiritual” appetite.
ok, i see what you mean. it’s not a simple thing to define human happiness.
exactly, how is “logic” going to do that? then there’s another obvious fact, that hardly anyone cares about logic. only a tiny minority concerns themselves with “logic.” “logic” is just the vanity of a bookish minority, whereas the need and enjoyment of myth is universal.
so “logic” is a sort of religion.
right. a few bookish folks make an idol of “logic” which is actually a myth. others make a myth of “righteousness” that might be personified by jesus or communism. still others might make an idol of “power” and look to hitler or napolean.
hitler?
sure. don’t doubt that villains have fans. it’s exciting to be controversial. we all have a soft spot for bad guys.
there’s some truth in that.
i can’t think of many movies without a villain, nor novels or even philosophies. villains are essential.
ok, i grant you that. i grant you your point on logocentrism. let’s move onto the next chapter, the satan myth.
the satan myth is an evolution of the christ myth. christ attacked priestcraft. christ was the first protestant, as well as the first christian.
right, luther wanted to take christianity back to its roots.
right, he saw the catholic church as anti-christ, as false christ.
but how is satan derived from christ?
christ took god away from the priest and declared that the kingdom of god was within us. he abolished the law in the name of grace or love. so god is no longer the property of the theocrats. he made god personal. he made god incarnate.
still, where is the devil in this?
i’m getting there. so christ made god a spirit that dwelt within the faithful. he democratized god. at the same time, he made altruism the essence of the law. but when altruism is called into doubt, by nietzsche for instance, where are we now?
ok, i see where you’re going. so christ is god in the individual man but with a loose altruistic imperative. if you take away the altruism you just have an individual with “god” in him, which could lead to pride.
right. christ said god is love and also that god is a spirit that lives within us. so the authority of the priest is destroyed in the name of indwelling love. it’s only a step to call god “pride” instead of love, or to modify this love of others into a love of self.
but why compare this modified christ to satan?
let’s compare the two myths. christ rebelled against the organized jewish religion, which represented jehova. satan rebelled against jehova himself. christ did so in the name of love for others, or altruism. satan does so in the name of self-love, or pride. we have parallel myths here, but with a twist.
that’s true. that’s rarely noted.
it is rarely noted. we also have the greek myth of prometheus. in each case we have the individual rebel against something big and established. it also compares with david and goliath.
so god is like goliath?
right, or also the evil corporation for instance. certain romantics read paradise lost and could not help but see satan as the hero of the piece, and indeed he was. how can an omnipotent god be heroic? it’s impossible. the hero must run risks, make sacrifices. satan pursued his ideal in the face of the greatest resistance conceivable. so did prometheus. both of them took on the ultimate power. christ is a lightweight by comparison but he lived, supposedly, in the real world.
do you doubt the historical existence of christ?
i don’t know either way. he may well have existed. in any case, for us he is a myth, unless we are believers in the supernatural and all of that.
so it doesn’t matter if he existed.
not to me, not in less there really is a jehova somewhere.
which you obviously doubt.
obviously.
in your book, you side with the satan myth over the christ myth. is that correct?
to be more exact, i believe in a fusion of the myths. i absolutely reject altruism as a law. what i like about christ is his forgiveness, his lack of resentment. even nietzsche couldn’t deny this. it’s funny. nietzsche wrote a book called the anti-christ and he couldn’t help painting a beautiful portrait of christ. oh, he was critical alright, but he couldn’t help but showing how impressive a character he was. he drove home some of the beauty of the gospels. christ forgave those who were crucifying him. no one could make him hateful, petty.
i see. nietzsche certainly criticized resentment.
right. he saw christianity as founded on resentment. he said that the last christian died on the cross.
do you agree with that?
not at all. spinoza is a sort of christian. i’m sure there have been many christians who took the high road of christianity. nietzsche was simply unfair in that book. but he wasn’t his best there. he didn’t always live up to his ideal. who does? i still love nietzsche. even his faults are instructive. nietzsche is a poem.
you say you reject altruism as a law. could you explain that?
altruism as a law is already a contradiction. if we forgive because we have to, in order to get into heaven, then it’s nothing but prudence. this was jesus’s criticism of the law, except heaven was not involved. he said that the self-righteous pharisees had their reward. their reward was self-righteousness. they were obedient in order to enjoy this self-righteousness. jesus wanted a religion based on spirit, which meant spontaneous emotion. he wanted real religion, not just tradition and self-righteousness.
you say in your book that jesus was a romantic.
he was. romanticism is implicit in christ. jesus was a passionate mystic. he was not the french enlightment, which made a deity of “reason.” voltaire, for instance, blasted the church for its hypocrisy. to a large degree he did so out of love. in this he was like christ. but voltaire had science and rationality for an idol. jesus did not. the romantics were a reaction to this idolatry of reason. they did not want such a mechanical view of the universe.
that reminds me of blake.
blake is a perfect example. he was the romantic poet who made a hero of christ. shelley went greek and chose prometheus. byron went hebrew and made a hero of cain. blake’s romanticism was just a modification of jesus. blake was something like an antinomian. with voltaire he shared a contempt for the hypocrisy of organized religion. blake also saw the similarities between christ and satan. that’s why he wrote a book like “the marriage of heaven and hell.” blake played both satan and christ as heroes, depending on his mood. for most the part he stuck with christ, though.
but he realized christ was a myth?
absolutely. he said “god only acts & is thru existing beings or men.” god only exist within individual humans. he also called god the “poetic genius.” he realized that the imagination was god, the individual human imagination. (or “the human form divine”)
it sounds like you aren’t adding much to what blake already said.
that’s true. i’m not. but blake made some questionable stylist decisions. his prophecies are badly written. he was too afraid to use the common symbols in a direct manner.
good points. no one reads his prophecies.
right. now the “marriage of heaven and hell “ is brilliant thought. it’s written well. that’s what got me into blake. but he wasn’t as explicit as he could have been. if he would have stuck to prose he would have been perhaps the greatest mystic in english. his annotations are great. i doubt he expected to publish them.
i wonder why he wasn’t more direct.
so do i. perhaps it was vanity. of course he said “ i have to create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s.”
do you think he was right about that?
not exactly. he could have written his “system” in prose. instead he was a bad imitation of milton, an influence that overpowered him.
what are his annotations like?
they are clear as ice-water, pure as fire. he lays it out. then there are also the small prose sections in his prophecies, the introductions. he should have stuck to that. his lyrics are decent but his prose is by far what’s important to me.
let’s move on to shelley.
i know less about shelley but i do know that he was an atheist altruist. i don’t think his poetry is very good. the style is wrong. it’s ethereal in a bad way. i much prefer byron.
byron is associated with satan. i know that much.
he himself is a satanic myth. you have incest and irony. you have homosexuality and womanizing. he was the equivalent of a rock star. he was handsome, charismatic, etc. he was the perfect sinister hero. the fact that he was a poet and not a general is significant.
how so?
when jesus made god something personal rather than social, military conquest was no longer that significant. we should remember beethoven, another romantic hero. certainly there was a glamour to napolean, but the priest is above the warrior, especially for the millions who will never be kings. it makes more sense to see the composer or the poet as the ultimate man. romanticism is about the subjective. we expect a more impressive subjectivity from the artist than the emperor.
and yet the roman emperors were viewed as gods.
legally and in their own minds perhaps…
but not in the people’s minds?
i’m sure they were envied, but no one seduces our subjectivities like the artist. i suppose there are exceptions. kings retain a certain glamour. but the man who is not a king will lean perhaps to the artist, who he can more easily become, who penetrates his soul, gives him his idea of beautiful.
ok, i grant you that. a king is not that “romantic “ or poetic. so byron the man was a sort of dark ideal.
right. he had some of the nature mysticism of the romantics but he also had his dark heroes, his sinister loners. then he himself was perhaps his greatest character. it’s the author of don juan that most fascinates us. it’s the ironic narrator and the unpretentious prose style that seduces us. byron makes a joke of everything, because he himself is god -- not jehova, not nature. byron bows to no ideals outside himself. not the late byron. he fought with grecian rebels, but even this he made a joke about. he played at being a freedom fighter. one suspects that it was for the adventure involved, that it appeal to his contemplation of his own image. but that’s conjecture.
you don’t interpret it as altruism.
no, not after reading his poems. he didn’t seem like a person who was burdened by duty. he was an idle rich man. war must have seemed like entertainment. i do think he valued liberty. i don’t think he would have fought on the “wrong” side. i think he was a person who acted from his sense of taste.
i suppose his money and his fame put him in an entirely different situation than a blake.
yes, and blake is not so ironic. blake is more indignant, fanatical. blake had revolutionary blood in his veins. then he was also a painter and a student of the bible and no doubt many other books. it’s significant that blake chose christ as a hero and byron chose cain. blake was less satanic, more altruistic. shelley was the same. prometheus stole fire for the sake of humanity. satan rebelled from god out envy, because christ, a human, was set above him.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)