Behind it all is a beckoning cry. Who beckons? Man- that name is growing into a curse. What about planet?
What shall we say of the intelligences of the teeming multitudes?
What is planet without our meddling? This meddling is technology. What is technology? -It's what we do, here and now (reading/writing a blog). But are all things we do here and now a part of technology?
Technology is described as a "setting-upon," it is ultimate micro-domination and micro-nano-control of every aspect of our ontic being. Like a swarm of locusts, like an example of domestic violence, the goal is power and control.
But technology mediates: and the question of technology is also the question of the book, when we had the book. Part of the book is outmoded. It may be that knowledge itself is moving into various phrasings: either the phrasing of a "blog" like this one, a long (I apologize, but I will at least speak to myself in length, and with heart...) speculative rant of some kind, or the micro-Bestandsaufnahmen of Facebook, which invites dialog, and a murmur of warm (sometimes scathing, vitriolic) social echoes.
It is all a matter of faith. (It has always been.) "There was a time when only wise books were read," writes Milorad Pavic (Landscape Painted with Tea). At that time it was a matter of faith: faith in the book. The book was a Holy Book.
Now we have evidence, and everywhere evidence pours in, monitored on our increasingly effective monitors, our endless, ceaseless micro-monitoring (always wary of the hidden hermetic thief: literally of our money, we "keep tabs" in order to "keep the books straight."
But the books haven't been straight, it's been an entire CIVILIZATION that bears a shadow of conquering bloodshed and greed.
There's been the Bible ...and accounting ledgers. "Never use your Torah for a shovel," writes a Kabbalist: there is cleanliness and hygiene in civilization: there is Kosher and Halal. And the "Halal/Kosher" separates the violence of exteriority from the everyday-world by a simple prayer. We utter a prayer to address the split between violence ---and our will to perceive ourselves as somehow good and kind.
Of course we believe that -- that kind of prayer is the RIGHT prayer... but why? -Threat of annihilation. Of course we could do away with prayer, but then we would also do away with a sense of conscience about our split: we are kind/unkind.
The formulation of the split could be writ in Leonard Cohen's lyrics, "
The Story of Isaac:"
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
Do you have so much faith in a unifying principle for the Cosmos, or for the inner Cosmos, the human psyche? And remember, how we in the name of "human beings" and "mankind" threaten to be one of the greatest ecological disasters ever to set on this planet. Your book has always posed a threat to my infantile grandiosity! Displacing magic as an attempt to heal a neurosis, the Mithraic split of being the sacrificer and the sacrificed. Mithraism forces a prayer to "heal the split." But then Modernism, a recent spiritual development, Athiesm, a way of breaking the sticky threads of anima attachment (and yes, a bitter story of personal maternal-attachment). Look at Wittgenstein simply referring to philosophy as a kind of "therapy" for resolving the neurotic split of consciousness: modernism that seeks to say all modes of ensouling are obsolete terms... -I, for one, am inclined to believe you! But let us not be seduced by the fleshpots or by the gods! Let us address the heart of the issue:
What about the presence, at all, of any infantile grandiosity, whatsoever?
The book of Genesis writes the words "...and it was good." (...and it seems grossly inappropriate to refer to the Judeo-Christian "holy-book" as a reference for any reasonable discussion: authority is disputed from the start!) What one can say psychologically-of-the-book is that by pronouncing "creation" good, the book acts as a self-affirmation of technology. I would say that Genesis,
יתבְּרֵאש, from the first, the "rosh," head, still deals with ALL things as best it can: it deals with the herds of animals, swarms of insects, the ocean, the starry firmament, the plants and trees: on the last day is created "Adam." It does not appear as though the list of created beings is limited or finite (It only pronounces a blessing, a displacement, "it was good."). It does not pronounce a totality, nor does it waver over the humorous displacement of the Borgesian "
Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge's Taxonomy," nor does it hover like a predator over "Scientific" research data.
But you have always deferred this conversation, perhaps perceiving the pain incipient in such a discussion. What is the point of stridence? Is it not better to believe in your governing principle of nurturance, the all-pervading teat? Perhaps because to nurture remains stuck on the teat, and there is something more out there than this "practical explanation."
Civilization itself bears the indo-european root of "
Kei," it speaks to what is held "tender," and what is "cherished." But Civilization bears the shadow of colonialism.
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
But accounting ledgers were the province of religion from the beginning: to see it all comes down to tabulation of stores of energy, contribution, borrowing and lending based on good faith.
Faith in the book, and the sickening righteousness of the faithful. But if there is no book... Then faith abides. The book remains to pronounce a benediction on the "multitudes," an effulgent pleroma.
It does not pronounce a benediction on human beings alone.
This is the contention I have with science: if it seeks to benefit ONE "sense" of reality, always provisionally the "best," is there enough faith that such an emerging sense is somehow good? Can it displace itself?
(Personal note: I find myself struggling in relationship with how to displace myself and not negate myself.)
What this work attempts to do: this work attempts to construct a few loosely strung fragments of thought on a Sunday Night before the start of a work week. It is an exercise in speculation, theoria, perhaps an exercise in "leisure." It does not seem to affect the business of the week, nor does it seem to be affected by business of the week. Saying this contaminates it. But the contamination remains held by a thin thread of faith.
"Magic is said..." (and I believe it, still) (
J. Gordon Nelson, in an analytic session, June 2008) "magic is the ability to hear someone, or something." Magic is sense: that one reflects, listens, hears, something outside oneself. Moreover there is some way in which what is reflected, however distorted, is true enough to itself to not necessitate further technological verification (oversampling, redundancy, surveillance). This reflection is a resonance, and I see in the Other the broadening sense of my self. The "self" is "born" in that moment of extending, listening, perceiving. The alternative is a hellish solipsism, a crowded darkness of reflections of a human-abstraction in a world of night (
Munch's Scream):
"Yahweh is no friend of critical thoughts which in any way diminish the tribute of recognition he demands....Yahweh needs the acclamation of a small group of people. One can imagine what would happen if this assembly suddenly decided to stop the applause: there would be a destructive rage, then a withdrawal into hellish loneliness and the torture of non-existence, followed by a gradual reawakening of an unutterable longing for something which would make him conscious of himself."
Notice in the Scream that there remains an exterior: a landscape that defies the solipsism of the screamer, even as it wobbles to the effect of a scream... even as the other strollers along the boardwalk fade into the insubstantiality of the background. Nevertheless there is a background, there is a landscape of searing sky, and disquieted earth that does not assuage the uncertainty of the screamer.
