I am an enigma
In a mirror
I see strange baleful eyes
a futile chase
Morning dear,
would you like breakfast in bed
If its not a bother, sweetheart
No bother
No bother...
she's lost as I
Our eyes meet,
spectators again of hidden selves -
misery, boredom, disdain
lay beneath bacon strips and freshly squeezed OJ
No bother, she mutters again
I am an enigma to her.
One morning she will awake next to me -
cold, unmoved
waiting for breakfast and an infernal embrace.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Busin'
I got on the bus, the driver told me it would be an hour plus before getting to town. I was fine with that. I needed the time to sort out things.
A wise man told me that people go to graduate school for one of two reasons. One is utilitarian - how can I upgrade and profit from it? - in short, education as an investment. The other is Kantian - you go because you want to figure out yourself - in short, education as essential, an insatiable need for the restless mind. Then again, he left out a third option, my reason: avoidance. You go to school to avoid both the utilitarian world and high ideals. I went to school to delay the inevitable, to past time, to avert my eyes, to forget, to neglect, to preen and pose, and to wait indefinitely for a most definite - and inescapable - sentence. I went to school, on an island, to move on and purge her from my soul. It never did happen.
Sitting at the very back of an empty bus, I looked out at the modest and beautiful landscape around Swartz Bay. I took in a deep breath of the sea air. Being a dilettante and all, I honestly thought smelling nature is experiencing it. That misconception is borne from my inability to do anything else but smell when in nature. While I 'experienced' the natural beauty of the island, an acrid scent perturbed my reminiscences.
A wise man told me that people go to graduate school for one of two reasons. One is utilitarian - how can I upgrade and profit from it? - in short, education as an investment. The other is Kantian - you go because you want to figure out yourself - in short, education as essential, an insatiable need for the restless mind. Then again, he left out a third option, my reason: avoidance. You go to school to avoid both the utilitarian world and high ideals. I went to school to delay the inevitable, to past time, to avert my eyes, to forget, to neglect, to preen and pose, and to wait indefinitely for a most definite - and inescapable - sentence. I went to school, on an island, to move on and purge her from my soul. It never did happen.
Sitting at the very back of an empty bus, I looked out at the modest and beautiful landscape around Swartz Bay. I took in a deep breath of the sea air. Being a dilettante and all, I honestly thought smelling nature is experiencing it. That misconception is borne from my inability to do anything else but smell when in nature. While I 'experienced' the natural beauty of the island, an acrid scent perturbed my reminiscences.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
An awful world
In the absence of a singular deity, Man creates his environment. Man, a limited finite being, names, gathers, and develops systems of knowledge to organize and categorize it, i.e. statistics. This capacity for partition - division, ennumeration, and categorization - remakes 'the world' into compartments and a whole. Knowledge describes and limits environment. The world, as understood by Man, is finite. Knowledge, historically constituted, endures and comes to predate man - that mortal, fleeting, limited beast.
Knowledge (logic, numbers, ideas) compose and limits 'the world'. Man is enslaved to systems of knowledge and its techne - its much too large to be mastered. As a consequence, man fears the world - a fear stemming from an inescapable impotency.
"Fear, whether an instinct or an acquisition, is a function of the environment. Man fears because he exists in a fearful, an awful world. The world is precarious and perilous."
- John Dewey, Experience and Nature.
The modern subject is a paradox. It aspires towards autonomy, but is fearful of what it may entail. Descartes is rejected. "I think, therefore I am" is incomplete. To be free, truly free, the modern subject cannot avoid venturing into 'the world', the environment shared with other subjects, who are equally free - a confounding notion for the ostensibly unique and autonomous subject. To be free is to be limited. To be limited is to be exposed to limiting relations with 'others' and the environment - when the world challenges, can one simply retreat?
Knowledge (logic, numbers, ideas) compose and limits 'the world'. Man is enslaved to systems of knowledge and its techne - its much too large to be mastered. As a consequence, man fears the world - a fear stemming from an inescapable impotency.
"Fear, whether an instinct or an acquisition, is a function of the environment. Man fears because he exists in a fearful, an awful world. The world is precarious and perilous."
- John Dewey, Experience and Nature.
The modern subject is a paradox. It aspires towards autonomy, but is fearful of what it may entail. Descartes is rejected. "I think, therefore I am" is incomplete. To be free, truly free, the modern subject cannot avoid venturing into 'the world', the environment shared with other subjects, who are equally free - a confounding notion for the ostensibly unique and autonomous subject. To be free is to be limited. To be limited is to be exposed to limiting relations with 'others' and the environment - when the world challenges, can one simply retreat?
Monday, September 03, 2007
A setting sun
Sunset - I sat on the rocks beating off to a spectre. Some time passes, darkness descends, climax follows. I clean up and head for home. I felt relaxed, refreshed, invigorated and all that feel-good crap. Some sage advice from a long lost friend: Walking soothes the mind, but irritates bunions. I passed the posh condos along Cook Street and approached my right turn along Fort. Then, she ran me over.
I opened my eyes. I saw the doctors – still in the middle of the procedure. I saw blood. I saw their utensils. I saw my spleen lying in a sterile pan. But, one look at the doctor’s belligerent butcher eyes put me under again.
I awoke, this time to flowers and balloons and the cute eyes of my would-be murderer.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
In praise of American thought
America, the vilified, the villain, acts as a whipping boy for the world's indignation. To call the US incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan unpopular would be an understatement. In spite of the grounds - or lack thereof - prefiguring its supposed imperialism, it would be wrong to summarily condemn America, its citizens, and the ideas borne from its turbulent history. It was Tocqueville who first grasped the potential and perils of American democracy. Indeed, after a Civil War, numerous foreign conflicts, slavery - then segregation and ostensibly disenfranchisement, the ideas and ideals girding the very notion of America are constantly under threat - diminished, nearly forgotten, and their demise no longer inconceivable.
A history of pragmatism - stretching from early statesman and revolutionaries like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, through great minds like Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, and John Dewey, and leading up to contemporary voices for democracy like Cornel West - has been swept aside. The new destiny, represented as an old, immutable one in the form of a "national calling" - ironically built around the dissemination of freedom and democracy throughout the globe - is implicitly derived from Hegel's philosophy of history and adopts Marxist method - more appropriately, an appropriation of Trotsky's "permanent revolution". For pragmatism, knowledge can be adaptable in pursuit of truth. For the latter, ostensibly operating in our present times, truth is immutable, while the world is malleable, adaptable, and, hence, disposable and superfluous in the service of Truth.
What I propose - and what I would like to investigate - is a form of pragmatism forged by great thinkers confronted by substantial and profoundly difficult problems of American political context. C.S. Peirce - the great logican and thinker - starts us off with the problem: the problem of chaos, a world outside of determinism, a 'chancy' existence. Peirce, by refuting with his requisite zeal any kind of determinism, demonstrates to us that in all things governed by law, there can be no certainty, only probabilities. In a world without certainty, where divine providence is assumed MIA, man is assured of no favourable odds, no longer sheltered from the whimsical hand of risk. He can still reason and analyze, but whatever decision he arrives at may still go terribly array. Faced with such odds, some - often those in positions of power and influence - throw up their hands, succumb to the pressure, and just invoke an otherworldly power of guessing - the great American satirist and humanist Kurt Vonnegut presciently lampooned contemporary decision makers as "guessers", playing rock, paper, scissors with the lives of its citizens at stake. In what way is that democratic? Well, on a semiotic level it is. Of course, Charles Sanders Pierce, ironically, has been called the creator of semiotics. Pierce thought semiotics as any action of affect that involved a sign, its object, and an interpretant. Does this triadic relationship translate into the political context? Is it as simple as a sign, a lie-truth, and citizen-dupes? No, that would be a crude and disjointed account. Peirce, the popularizer of pragmatism, objects, things, and the interaction of people with them over high unseen predetermined ideals. With that began an encounter between a pragmatism unique to the American context and an idealism, as exhibited in the work of emigre thinkers such as (but not limited to) Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss, which derived largely from German philosophy - Kant, Hegel, and even Herder.
The richness of American thought is owed to this unique convergence of continental philosophy and homegrown pragmatic thought, for a lack of a better term. This study does not intend to sanctify one wing in relation to another. It intends to first, draw out the historical and philosophical ties of these two tradition, second, to demonstrate the influence both exerted on major political events, and lastly, to diagnose the current maladies afflicting contemporary politics in America.
[Part I]
A history of pragmatism - stretching from early statesman and revolutionaries like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, through great minds like Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, and John Dewey, and leading up to contemporary voices for democracy like Cornel West - has been swept aside. The new destiny, represented as an old, immutable one in the form of a "national calling" - ironically built around the dissemination of freedom and democracy throughout the globe - is implicitly derived from Hegel's philosophy of history and adopts Marxist method - more appropriately, an appropriation of Trotsky's "permanent revolution". For pragmatism, knowledge can be adaptable in pursuit of truth. For the latter, ostensibly operating in our present times, truth is immutable, while the world is malleable, adaptable, and, hence, disposable and superfluous in the service of Truth.
What I propose - and what I would like to investigate - is a form of pragmatism forged by great thinkers confronted by substantial and profoundly difficult problems of American political context. C.S. Peirce - the great logican and thinker - starts us off with the problem: the problem of chaos, a world outside of determinism, a 'chancy' existence. Peirce, by refuting with his requisite zeal any kind of determinism, demonstrates to us that in all things governed by law, there can be no certainty, only probabilities. In a world without certainty, where divine providence is assumed MIA, man is assured of no favourable odds, no longer sheltered from the whimsical hand of risk. He can still reason and analyze, but whatever decision he arrives at may still go terribly array. Faced with such odds, some - often those in positions of power and influence - throw up their hands, succumb to the pressure, and just invoke an otherworldly power of guessing - the great American satirist and humanist Kurt Vonnegut presciently lampooned contemporary decision makers as "guessers", playing rock, paper, scissors with the lives of its citizens at stake. In what way is that democratic? Well, on a semiotic level it is. Of course, Charles Sanders Pierce, ironically, has been called the creator of semiotics. Pierce thought semiotics as any action of affect that involved a sign, its object, and an interpretant. Does this triadic relationship translate into the political context? Is it as simple as a sign, a lie-truth, and citizen-dupes? No, that would be a crude and disjointed account. Peirce, the popularizer of pragmatism, objects, things, and the interaction of people with them over high unseen predetermined ideals. With that began an encounter between a pragmatism unique to the American context and an idealism, as exhibited in the work of emigre thinkers such as (but not limited to) Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss, which derived largely from German philosophy - Kant, Hegel, and even Herder.
The richness of American thought is owed to this unique convergence of continental philosophy and homegrown pragmatic thought, for a lack of a better term. This study does not intend to sanctify one wing in relation to another. It intends to first, draw out the historical and philosophical ties of these two tradition, second, to demonstrate the influence both exerted on major political events, and lastly, to diagnose the current maladies afflicting contemporary politics in America.
[Part I]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)