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Title: Musings on Nothingness Author: baedan Date: summer 2012 Language: en Topics: sexuality, identity, queer, technology, language Source: authors’ manuscript, baedan — journal of queer nihilism, issue one
I should have liked to talk to you about encounters. I have a notion
that the moment that provoked — or provokes — them is located outside
time, that the shock spatters the surrounding time and space, but I may
be wrong, for I want to talk about the encounters that I provoke and
that I impose upon the lads in my book. Perhaps some of these moments
that are set down on paper are like populous streets on whose throng my
gaze happens to fall: a sweetness, a tenderness, situates them outside
the moment; I am charmed and — I can’t tell why — that mob of people is
balm to my eyes. I turn away, then I look again, but I no longer find
either sweetness or tenderness. The street becomes dismal, like a
morning of insomnia; my lucidity returns, restoring within me the poetry
that the following poem had driven out: some handsome adolescent face,
that I had barely caught a glimpse of, had lit up the crowd; then it had
disappeared. The meaning of Heaven is no longer strange to me.
~ Jean Genet
We were shadows, shadows in what you refer to as “everyday life”:
countless invisible figures you walked past in the streets. Faces that
reminded you of something but you were never sure of exactly what.
~ anonymous
Abandon yourself to peace, to the point of annihilation.
I should have written nothing[1] at all, but it is far too late for
that. Sin and guilt[2] have entered the world[3]— never mind where from,
since in any case it would do no good to close that box — and I am no
longer striding the crests of my dreams, filling my lungs with air and
expelling it again, now instead I am manipulating the keys of a
machine[4] striving to thus let my dreams pour and play out across the
space of an information-obsessed plane of existence.
There exists no good reason[5] to occupy this space, especially when I
have the heights and depths of life wholly available to me at any
moment, and yet something compels me, God help me.[6] I have no hope
that I will save anyone this way. Not even myself. I know I will not
even reach to prevent the wretched[7] from abusing whatever I create. It
is a fact that to take something from oneself and put it out into the
world is to let it escape and become everything you didn’t want it to
be. They say this is so for God the Father as for every human father. I
do not believe in either one, but their stories both hold a strange
beauty for me.
One can create a monster[8] or a babe; the difference is purely
aesthetic. But it is this question of creation. Many simply put it
aside, to their own loss. They still create things but they deny they
are doing so. They are befallen by atrophy.[9] Others take on the
question of creation by accepting the market assurance that whatever
makes money must be good because, so the logic goes, people buy things
that are good.[10] They become lost to the world of production. Others,
in reaction to this, turn toward smaller and smaller circles to keep
their creatures safe from the real world. But these spaces are either
infected by the social disease or else suffocate for lack of oxygen.
There are some rare exceptions. No one can say where they come from.
They destroy all that has come before. They blow into a dying ember.
Without them there would be nothing at all.
Now, we have to say that the whole world without them would be an
empty[11] dull[12] pale[13] and suffocating lifeless and deathless
nothingness, and that they themselves are also a nothingness, but an
ecstatic explosion of creative destructive nothingness. So it will be
worth keeping in mind that there is a huge and unspeakable gap between
the qualities of different sorts of nothingness. Otherwise everything
will be overcome by an immense confusion.[14]
The first aspect which ensures that there is something interesting
rather than nothing is the explosive energy of the sun. The second is
the implosive energy of the earth. These provide for the habitation of a
thin membrane where their intercourse takes place. Here there exists a
tension between them. Much life forms by rebelling against being crushed
into the bowels of the earth and the depths of the sea, whether this
rebellion is volcanic, evaporative, or organic. Life must protect itself
from being lost in the emptiness of space or scorched in the heat of the
sun, and so it also flows, crumbles, burrows, glides, swims, falls and
floats downward. This might be all, were it not for something else.
Organization, organism, orgasm.[15]
The incredible rise of yoga[16] as a recent phenomenon among certain
populations in the United States can hardly be attributed solely to a
need for stress-reduction practices in an environment that is becoming
increasingly stressful, nor even to hollow people’s frantic search for
more authentic spiritual practices which must, as a precondition for
their interest, be drawn from somewhere at least east of Constantinople.
Rather, it must be seen as a physical practice which forms part of the
total demand of the postmodern economy for people to become more
flexible[17] in every way.
In other words, the demand of the economy is no longer that one simply
conform or adapt, but even more that one takes upon oneself a dedication
to the labor of becoming flexible, that one see it not as simply the
necessary submission to a pressure exerted from outside but instead to
act as if it would be ideal to no longer even be able to feel any
externally-imposed force as such. To believe in oneself as the agent[18]
of one’s own life, but to see oneself thus also as the agent of the
control[19] of the same.
In this world, the static individual is the sorry loser, the irrelevant
nobody because the tides shift so rapidly that it is no longer a matter
of steadfastly weathering the storm nor of hurrying to keep up with the
latest fashions and trends, but in actuality a spiritual, metaphysical
discipline of becoming so flexible as to become the waves themselves and
be washed peacefully in the sea of society.
Whenever the postmodernist speaks of becoming, not being, we must ask,
“becoming what?” For, if postmodernity was birthed in the revolt of May
‘68, its maturation has been under the decades of punishment for such a
transgression. And the answer will always be, in the end, becoming
capital.
The challenge is not to make a staunch appeal to the past forms of life
but to critique those that arise today, to refuse to presuppose their
awesomeness simply from their newness.
In becoming there is always a gap between being-this and being-that. The
affirmation of becoming as more fundamental than being (a la “nothing is
static, that is mere myth; the essence cannot be frozen because
everything is always mutable, so a thing is never itself and a being
cannot identify since it will become other in the process; so becoming
is primary and being is mere reduction to falsity…”), however, fills
this space positively, or at least tries to incorporate an existential
negativity[20] into the realm of the symbolic order, logical systems,
and the functioning of the existent (which is no longer really the
existent, but instead the scope of all becomings), negating its
negativity by positing it as axiomatic[21] to the order of things
(rather than as excluded as by the old logic-systems and ontologies),
which are no longer understood as things nor necessarily ordered, but it
would be absurd to expect this chiasmic flux to be anarchic when in fact
it is founded upon the attempted incorporation of an ontological
negativity into a system of ontological subjectivity.[22]
Yes, all becomings are being thrown under the rule of biopower, if the
postmodernists have their way.
But what does this mean? Things cannot get worse, can they? It means
that the unfolding of postmodern rule is a complex and systematic ruse,
not a simple sovereign rule nor a dialectical machine. It is a creeping
and pervasive trick that gets people going to meditation[23] classes and
buying indulgences in more-ethical consumer products. It has people
going on walks[24] with headphones on and into virtual[25] reality to
play and socialize with their real friends. It terrorizes the population
with cyborg-futures in the movies and, while the debate rages[26] on
about the ethics of implanting machines in human bodies, human’s bodies
already spend most of their time implanted in machines. (We could be
more precise and point out that there is no resistance to but only more
demand for the improvement of the interfaces between human and machine,
such that as these interfaces become more streamlined, seamless and
user-friendly, humans are turning into machines and machines into humans
because the point of their separation which is the interface is becoming
more efficient, more transparent, more permeable, less of a true
separation.) And so cyborgization[27] goes on unchallenged on its course
because people have no chips implanted in their body and believe that
they are safe. The fear of implantation merely functioned as a
distraction, propagated through the Spectacle, from the workings of the
Spectacle in reality, from what it is truly effecting by means of its
distracting from itself through itself. The idea is for people to see
the images on the screen but never to see the screen itself nor the
logic of the images’ movement and story. The answers are always right in
front of you, but your perception of everything is always preventing you
from truly perceiving anything at all.
I hear:
“Do you want to walk?”
“Eve, we’re going to walk.”
Right here there is a sign advising that the water is too polluted[28]
to eat fish from, or even swim in. Right there is part of an
infrastructural system that turns trees into commodities. At my feet is
a plaque reminding park-going citizens that a major lumber company
donated money to build the park.[29] Passersby talk about some gossip in
a way that pretends real concern and other emotions. Why would someone
say that they are appalled if they actually are? Either it’s a ruse or
they have lost any meaningful way of communicating. I suppose it goes
hand-in-hand to accept such platitudes and to lose the idea of what real
emotions feel like, or to use referents to emotions because showing them
is impolite, and then losing them in the process. How appalling.
The gossips[30] whisper when they come near as if they were talking
about a real and important secret…
Earlier a grossly cheerful young woman was talking about her friend who
is depressed. It goes without saying that being depressed is bad and he
needs to get over it…
“Nancy?”
“Yeah, she’s so emotional sometimes!” Disapproval.
“It’s so pretty[31]… Look at the capitol over there. Wow… I wish I had
my camera I could take a picture it’s so pretty.”
Flatly. Almost like she doesn’t believe what she’s saying any more. Like
she might crack at any moment, lose the false appearances and unleash a
flood of… well, something real, anyway. Like a dam that’s fit to burst
she’s just plugging up holes and pretending. She looks at the sign that
warns that the water is poisonous. She has a sick half-smile stuck to
her face. Does she not see?
“This is a pretty little grass here… sea grass or something…” (referring
to part of the landscaping)
“Ornamental grass?”
“Yeah…”
“The water over there is beautiful…” (the same woman who just read the
sign) “…postcard or something.”
You can’t quite see the mountain because the huge barge-loading crane
cuts it into thirds.
There are kids playing a game[32] of combat. The boy changes the rules
on the fly. “No, you didn’t kill me, I’m invincible to bullets.” They
learn quickly[33] from their parents how rules work.
“Counted my pillows and I had like 40…”
She laughs.
Rule[34] is always arbitrary.[35] Its arbitrary nature exists beyond the
question of what purpose any particular rule serves or what explanation
can be given for it. Rule is its own explanation and justification,[36]
founded only upon itself and the negation of its negation. The child
asks “why?” and an answer may be given but this answer will meet the
following “why?” until the authority figure has lost all capacity and
patience, admitting that it is simply “because I said so,” to which
there is no recourse. Yet power has revealed its nakedness.
The exception to the rule proves the rule. The exception has nothing to
do with the negation of rule. The negation of rule is not its
suspension, but rather the recognition of its nakedness. The emperor who
is wearing no clothes is less laughable than the subjects who pretend he
is clothed. The absurdity of the ritual carries its own destruction by
destroying all who are duped into it.
The particular rule may have a reason. The critic points instead to its
function, which is force. The fact remains that it is arbitrary because
rule itself relies only on reason itself and force as such. To be more
clear, it is arbitrary because it does not care about its own reasoning,
does not care for its own reasoning, and does not measure itself by its
own reasoning. Reason is merely its outgrowth, a certain manner of
extending itself.
Something is arbitrary if it is based on choice or whim and not on any
reason or system. So rule is both arbitrary and non-arbitrary. It is a
system that is not based on a system, but is nevertheless systematic in
itself; a reason that is not based on reason. What is the reason for
reason? Always just because I said so.
Reason lacks playfulness with itself and with any deviations from it. It
is thus both arbitrary and serious. The queer finds this funny and
laughs at the rule, and the ruler, and the straight line.
There is no such thing as a straight line to be found anywhere except
for one place, and that is the beautiful world of pretend known as
mathematics. Once an enjoyable diversion, an amusing gamble between
companions to see who could travel farthest away on a flight of
fancy,[37] mathematics somehow became a serious[38] game that today
imposes itself on every child as a discipline mandated by the state.
Some will object that straight lines do exist, in the things that humans
make, and others will say that a sunbeam travels in a straight line, but
neither assertion is true.[39] Man-made rulers and even computer-drawn
lines are only crude approximations of the impeccably straight and true
lines that exist only in our own minds. The sunbeam’s path is curved by,
among other things, the forces of gravity and the curvature of space.
All straightness is farce,[40] more or less successful.
As mathematics has become more serious, it has manifested an
overwhelming[41] and terrifying[42] desire to become more than a complex
game playing[43] with numbers, a desire to produce information monsters
to solve problems, and to try by all means to make the world as it
understands it (a complex system of information, a large matrix of data
points), and the world as it is, one and the same.
I don’t understand this.
But in any case, something has always escaped[44] it. At first, nearly
everything escaped it, all that mathematics could do was try to count
the grains of sand on the shore[45] until one was forced to erupt in
laughter at remembering one of the simple beauties of life. But then,
zero[46] was invented. This was a strange concept having to do with
nothing, but what the invention of zero accomplished, completely by
accident, was an incredibly fast way to express and perform calculations
on numbers that were once impossibly large, too large to even conceive
of. One still could not count all the grains of sand on the shore, but
thought began to gradually lose its humor.[47]
What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk
about we must pass over in silence.
~ L. Wittgenstein
1.1 The total quantity of energy in the universe is constant.
1.11 Magic[48] is a form of energy.
1.12 If magic once existed in the world, then it follows that it must
still exist.
1.13 Everything tells us that magic once existed but does not anymore.
So it must either be that magic still exists, or else everything is a
lie.
1.14 Magic can be defined as all phenomena such as cannot be modeled
through a system of mathematical functions such that the models have a
reasonably strong capacity to predict the behavior of the original
phenomena.
reasonably strong capacity? There is no way to establish a rubric for
the measurement of such a datum except through the establishment of a
rubric for the measurement of reasonability itself. This latter rubric
is, however, reasonably enough defined: the citizen is the one who is
logical and thus can know what is reasonable. The one who shows herself
to be mad[49] can reasonably be disqualified from citizenship.
1.15 As such, all turbulent[50] phenomena (atmospheric, aquatic,
mineral, animal or cosmic) are magical.
1.2 Were it not for the practice of scientific[51] inquiry, everything
would be magic and nonsense.
1.21 Scientific inquiry thus has a way of making unpredictable phenomena
become predictable.
time considered illogical and inconceivable that inquiry could possibly
convert phenomena from an unpredictable flux into controlled behavior,
as if the whole natural world was entirely made up of unruly
schoolchildren who stood quite still and walked in perfectly straight
lines when being overlooked by their stern[52] and serious master, but
who would immediately start to play and fight and act chaotically[53]
when no longer stared at. The fact that the proof of this is actually
quite straightforward and apparent never occurred to the perspective of
scientific inquiry until a few of its adherents had looked at such small
things so closely and for such a long time that their eyes had begun to
cross and their data came out all wrong. At this point they came to a
very definite conclusion, which was that things were much more uncertain
than they had thought, and that their observation caused some very
uncertain clouds[54] of possibility to snap into place like
schoolchildren or objects in the more recent versions of Adobe InDesign.
now, things in the world tend to behave in a substantially more
predictable manner while under human observation. Like an animal that
has learned to run away from all humans, not knowing which of them might
be carrying weapons, or like the transparent worm-shaped[55] spots[56]
one sees drifting across the film of one’s vision, which escape one’s
trying to look at them directly,[57] all magic tends to flee from all
civilized humans. This is, however, a condition that is far from
irreparable.
1.22 The name for the way in which scientific inquiry converts the
unpredictable into the predictable is seriousness.
1.23 Seriousness cannot destroy humor. Seriousness is nothing more than
the lack[58] of awareness of humor, just as science is nothing but a
manner of looking that overlooks magical phenomena.
anything funny at all.
but seriousness just does not see it. It is not even quite clear why
not.
its ears and not knowing what to do, seriousness blushes to such a great
extent that the blood rushing in its ears makes it so that seriousness
can no longer hear it.
never get it.
take oneself seriously is the most terrible form of arrogance.
he who takes himself seriously is empty of himself.
1.24 Laughter always immediately destroys seriousness.
back.
1.25 Much of laughter is silent, and much of humor is dry.
capable of laughing. It’s just not all that convincing.
1.3 A prediction which is arrived at by means of the scientific method
has a definable probability of being correct. This probability is
between 0 and 1.
1.31 A prediction which is not arrived at by means of the scientific
method has an undefinable probability of being correct.
accomplish feats that the later scientists would consider hopelessly
impossible and magical. Yet in their slow, certain[59] way, scientists
today still seek the same goals of transforming lead into gold and
achieving immortality. This can be observed by the pursuit of controlled
and practical nuclear fusion, which could turn lead into gold, and by
the reappearance of the quest for eternal life among the stated goals of
the transhumanist movement.
outside of their field of vision, the scientists have already
accomplished both of these feats. If they were able to recognize their
accomplishments for what they are, they would certainly behave much in
the manner of Doctor Frankenstein toward his creature.[60]
1.32 If the thing predicted happens,[61] the prediction is correct, and
if not then it isn’t. That’s all there is to it.
proposition.
container is both alive and dead until the scientist looks in the box.
But the scientist is dead all along.
2.1 The most pressing problem in mathematics is the question of whether
or not there exists a mathematical process capable of solving every
mathematical problem.
2.11 Said problem has not been solved.
2.12 The second most pressing problem in mathematics is the question of
whether or not there exists a mathematician capable of getting the joke.
3.1 Sexual intercourse is whatever takes place between a phallus[62] and
an orifice.[63]
explosive (or repulsive) energy, and an orifice is whatever has an
implosive (or attractive) energy. Understood materially, a phallus is
whatever protrudes and the orifice is whatever consumes.
anus, the cunt, and the eyes. The six secondary human orifices are the
ears, the nostrils, the naval (the orifice which begins to atrophy upon
birth), and the urethra. The tertiary human orifices are the one
thousand one hundred pores[64] of the skin.
every orifice fucked[65] at once. The atrophied form of this fantasy is
the double or triple penetration, while its sub-cosmic form is the
simultaneous penetration of all of the one thousand one hundred and
eleven orifices.
limbs, and the cock or clitoris. The twenty-seven secondary human
phalluses are the nose, the ears, the tongue, the chin, the nipples, the
ten fingers and the ten toes. The tertiary human phalluses are all the
three thousand three hundred hairs of the body.
one of one’s phalluses sucked at once. Atrophied forms of this fantasy
appear in fetishes[66] such as toe-sucking, while its sub-cosmic form is
the simultaneous felatio of all of the three thousand three hundred
thirty-three phalluses.
is concave. The strength of the phallus is thus conceived of in relation
to the extent of its protrusion, and for the orifice its depth.
pure orifice is infinitely deep. These are thus neither concave nor
convex, but hyperbolic.
orifice in the urethra as well as its many pores, is therefore not a
pure phallus. The human cunt, whose depth is finite and which has its
own phallus in the clitoris as well as its many hairs, is therefore not
a pure orifice.
pure orifice. Neither, however, is pure or hyperbolic.
hole to a pure orifice. Neither, however, is pure or hyperbolic.
Big Crunch would have to be a pure orifice.
3.12 All intercourse takes place between a phallus and an orifice.
and the pure orifice, since these are the beginning and end of the
universe, respectively.
3.13 Therefore all intercourse is sexual intercourse.
3.14 All human intercourse is queer.[67]
means of a simple proof: Heterosexual intercourse is whatever
intercourse takes place between a pure phallus and a pure orifice. Since
there exists no human being who is a pure phallus or pure orifice, every
body having one thousand one hundred eleven orifices and three times as
many phalluses, it thus follows that human intercourse cannot be
heterosexual.
human intercourse is more queer than any other.
than other forms of intercourse. For example, the penetration of a cunt
by a cock is straighter than the penetration of an ear by a tongue,
which is in turn straighter than the penetration of an anus by a fist,
which is in turn straighter than the penetration of a naval by a nose,
and so on.
because straightness can only be understood as a measurement, a question
of how closely a particular fuck measures up to the grand old fuck
between the pure phallus and the pure orifice. Queerness cannot be
understood as a measurement, but only as the humor in the face of the
fact that no measuring stick can ever be right, that the rightness of
any measurement can only be measured by how far off the mark it is
relative to another stick.
heterosexual, since only a couple can be heterosexual.
is heterosexual, when what is meant instead is that the couple is
remarkably more successful than most couples at presenting itself as
approaching the heterosexuality of the intercourse between the pure
orifice and the pure phallus.
heterosexuality to the extent that its members are extremely polarized
from each other in terms of the various gendered attributes which
include physique, personality, dress, and mannerisms.
He is at least a head taller than she. He has put his arm around her,
and it is the size of her thigh, it as if it is his cock that holds her
around the waist, as if his member were the size of her thigh. They show
themselves off as if to provoke in every passerby the staggering thought
of such a large member penetrating such a small body, as if they were
playing at being daddy and girl (which is still one of the most popular
fantasies, though it may cloak itself as schoolteacher and student,
father and babysitter, and so on) and she is made up so well that on the
one hand it is strikingly obvious how made up she is, but on the other
hand this face is understood by anyone who is watching to be nothing but
the perfect expression of her true nature, which is to say her
superficiality, and this again has the effect of staggering the
onlooker, who can hardly imagine how a girl so lacking in depth could
take it from such a beast of a man. What a champ; it must be truly
painful.
purely from the obsession with the penetrative act being performed at
the most extreme levels of stretching, as if the heterosexual
imagination’s ideal fantasy would be the image of some monstrous cock,
possessed perhaps by a titan or by Zeus himself, penetrating inexorably
into the tightest of holes.[68]
the degree to which a tight orifice is stretched by a large phallus. It
has as its atrophied form the fetish for a large cock or fist
penetrating a tight hole. On the sub-cosmic level, its forms are birth
and death. On the cosmic level, this and the other two hyperbolic sexual
fantasies converge as the passage of the infinitely-large body of God
through the infinitely-small hole of a moment in time.
understood to possess a strong (re)productive power, while the
imperfectly gendered couple possesses a weak (re)productive power,
perhaps to the point of sterility.
homosexuality to the extent that its members are extremely similar to
each other in appearance. To the extent that this similarity is
performed in the manner that heterosexuals perform difference, it is a
farce. But while to the heterosexual imagination the importance of
intercourse is understood as (re)productive and strengthened by polar
difference, intercourse understood queerly is a narcissistic endeavor
that proceeds in spite of the tremendous variations between different
individuals.
intercourse in the heterosexual imagination is measured as more or less
straight.[69]
strong (re)productive force that the polarized couple exerts does not
pass from their loins to their offspring (as they themselves believe)
but rather from their image onto everyone who perceives one pole of that
couple as his or her ideal and strives to realize it him or herself.
However futile, this effort (which is queer both in that it rests on the
fact that people are not real men or women and in that people have to go
through at least one sex change in the course of this effort) is itself
a powerful (re)productive process.
is a man or a woman except to the extent that they strive to realize the
ideal man or woman and trample desperately upon the backs of whoever
they find beneath them in an enormous game of king of the hill where the
hill is a pile of human bodies.
4.1 All logic is phallic logic.[70]
consists in propositional energy: the putting-forward of various[71]
elements, definitions, claims and proofs.
universally repulsive in nature.
negational logical processes would negate the claim that all logic is
propositional or positive. It is true that there is negational logic.
However, this logic is only negates certain specific claims. Indeed, all
negational logic can be seen to negate a certain claim only and ever for
the purpose of justifying the opposite of said claim. Moreover, even
negational logic must put forward a series of positive claims in order
to reach the denial of the opposite claim. Hence, all logic is negative
only ever deceitfully and in passing and is always positive and
propositional in its true process and aim.
of all logical propositions without putting forward any propositions of
its own. These qualities, however, would disqualify this hypothetical
kind of logic from being logic at all.
4.11 Given that all logic is phallic, there is also an orificial
counterpart to logic, namely madness.
technically incorrect to posit that they exist, since they do not and
cannot. This is a difficulty not yet resolved, and the expression ought
to be taken for what it is, while keeping this caveat in mind.
4.12 The intercourse between logic and madness is thus heterosexual
intercourse between a pure phallus and a pure orifice.
4.13 The intercourse between logic and madness is governed by logic.
Madness yet has a tendency to defy every form of this governance.
liquid. When logic forms a bowl to hold it, madness evaporates. When
logic encapsulates the gas, madness burns away. When logic uses this
fire for itself, madness perishes. When madness perishes, logic perishes
with it.
single-celled or complex. To have substance, the organism must
incorporate and breaks down solids to build itself, but to not stiffen
and freeze it must drink water and become water. But to not dissolve
away it must envelop the water in a membrane. But to not be pierced and
thus lose its insides it must be able to sense dangers and move around
them. To move and sense it must have energy. To have energy it must
absorb this from the sun. Since the sun is not always present it must
store energy in a certain form and burn it later. This storage of energy
makes it a potential target for other organisms seeking energy. And so
on.
by the logic of survival, and would proceed with or without
consciousness. However, consciousness is more than a mere coincidence,
happenstance, gift from God, or defiance of God’s will. It is also the
greatest trick by which to guarantee a precise and brutal play of the
game of survival.
5.1 Creation is never purely phallic except when it is the creation of
logic.
masturbation.[72]
5.11 Unconditional love[73] takes three forms. The first is the love of
the creator for its creature. The second is the love of the creature for
its creator. The third is the love of oneself. All other love, such as
occurs between creatures, is conditional.
is a perverse form of egoism. One must only observe how the parent
adores the baby and thinks it to be so perfectly lovely even though it
is so obviously stunted and ugly, cries all the time even at night when
one is sleeping, and feeds constantly. This is because in its adoration
of its creature it is trying in a roundabout way to love itself.
If this were not so then what in the world would conceivably motivate it
to create?
cruelty imaginable.
because it believes it to be its own. However, its creature is not its
own, so all hell breaks loose.
its creator, is the purest form of love, since it is directed at the one
who got it into this whole mess.
creature’s denial of its creator is what brings hell into the world,
that the creator makes a great sacrifice by forgiving this sin and
through this sacrifice repairs the horrible suffering. In this story,
the creature’s love of the creator should be only natural, since the
creator has sacrificed everything to forgive the creature. Yet the
creator is unable to secure this supposedly natural act except by
offering a pie-in-the-sky reward: sacrifice for me through your whole
life, and I will redeem and reward you after your death, forever.
5.12 Always there exists a tension between the force the creator exerts
and the force the creature exerts. In this tension, is not possible to
not be a traitor. The only question is which kind one will be.
be avoided. This is strange. Everyone and everything in the world
demands a pledge of loyalty. What’s more, most of these pledges were
contracted in one’s name before one was born. To never betray anyone or
anything is to always betray oneself. Thus it is impossible not to
betray anyone.
friend, a chance that is likely to cost one’s life, one must always
choose the friend.
very meaning of friendship.
5.13 The creator always allows its creature an unlimited play of
choices, always within limits. This is the nature of the tension which
is usually understood in terms of free will and determinism.
may not deny the creator. In the Torah, the heavenly form of this limit
is the First Commandment, and its earthly form is the Fifth Commandment.
sacred, while the body must be understood as debased. Sexual intercourse
is thus supposed to be understood as a special transcendence of the
body, a divine intervention.
born from the creator’s sexual intercourse. To deny it is to deny the
creator.
to always think of its creator while in the throes of intercourse.
5.14 Freedom, which is as different from choice as creating a monster is
from creating a baby, is the creature’s betrayal of the creator.
true act of freedom, can only be possible if the creator feels true
unconditional love for the creature.
creature. It usually can only love its creation, which is perfect, but
sees its creature as flawed. This is again because of the creator’s
egoism. The creator can only love the part of its creature that is its
own, and to the extent that its creature is not its own the creator
cannot love it.
5.15 The form that the creature’s betrayal of the creator takes is the
denial of the creator.
5.16 The creator’s betrayal of the creation is a self-betrayal. The
creature’s betrayal of the creator is a self-assertion.
creation’s betrayal? This is a way of asking whether the creator’s love
is love truly unconditional. But the question falls flat, because the
point of the betrayal is this: There is no creator. There never was.
5.2 When the creature sacrifices for the creator and when the creator
sacrifices for the creature, what is lost is life itself. remark: The
creator’s self-sacrifice is great, the creature’s self-sacrifice is
small and pathetic.
5.21 Life is neither matter nor energy, therefore it can truly be lost.
Its loss is death.
5.22 Redemption for such loss can only come through the greatest of
sins. A betrayal.
depth.[75]
5.3 Time[76] the experience of the tension between means and ends.
tension. Thus can it observe cause and effect. remark 2: In annihilating
the tension between means and ends, one develops a tension between
oneself and what exists.
distorted by gravity can only be arrived at by means of a more
fundamental distortion, which is time itself.
substantial variance in the qualities, or intensities, of this tension.
quality never be really intense. Only intensities can be intense.
5.31 Sensual intensity finds itself close to cleanliness.
In this sense does cleanliness find itself next to godliness.
a human differs from a pure phallus or a pure orifice precisely to the
extent that a human is dirty and the pure is pure.
thinly coating the surface of the body, wax building in the ears and
dust getting in the eyes, but it goes all the way to the point of being
a being with a body, with a collection of orifices and protrusions which
distance one from being the pure phallus or pure orifice.
clarify a way of perceiving the world. Thus does one wash out all of
one’s orifices in order to heighten the senses: one rinses the wax from
the ears to heighten the sense of hearing, scrubs the pores to sensitize
feeling, dusts out the naval to heighten the atrophied sense of direct
connection to another being, flushes the anus to intensify the
perception of death, and washes all of the crevices of the body to
stroke the sense of the unknown. But one does not cleanse a phallus,
which in any case does not collect so much dirt except within its
crevices.
because they have no crevice in which to collect dirt. This is because
of their hyperbolic shape (the infinite protrusion of the pure phallus
and infinite depth of the pure orifice).
is considered the sense closest to God. The cunt is washed every month
as one bleeds. Thus pleasure is considered the sense furthest from God.
observed from the fact that orgasm is greater than the sum of all the
sensations that give rise to it. In this sense, orgasm is along with the
pure phallus and pure orifice both pure and hyperbolic. Orgasm is
neither pure phallus nor pure orifice, but rather an experience of their
intercourse. It is thus akin to the thin membrane where the intercourse
of the sun’s repulsion and the earth’s attraction are in balance and
where one can find enjoyment.
observing how cleanliness may heighten sense but may not deepen it.
5.32 One can understand enmity as taking two forms.
The first is enmity without kinship. The second is the form that enmity
takes place when two brothers find themselves on opposing sides of a
war.[77]
other.
5.33 At any given moment, there is only one thing to do that can truly
be considered great.
immutable is its presence.
last thing you would think of.
the process of logical inquiry.
6.1 The difficulty that exists within the sphere of computer technology
as concerns issues of efficiency, random[78] data, complex algorithms,
and of course the imminently important field of cryptography,[79] all
comes down to the inefficiency of using a model based on pure orifices
and pure phalluses to map and calculate the behavior of impure orifices
and impure phalluses.
no farther than /b/.
6.11 One of the most pressing tasks that society has set itself is to
develop computing machines capable of manipulating non-binary and random
data at rates of efficiency substantially surpassing existing
technology, for cryptographic purposes.
6.12 What scientists have yet to understand is that there has never been
a scientific breakthrough achieved on the basis of the scientific
method.
the scientific method.
6.2 Any statement that is true is also a truism.
affirmations no more insightful than remarking that water is wet,
phrased in more or less interesting and more or less roundabout ways.
The rest are lies.[80]
6.21 By its very nature, a logical system can never consist of more than
the sum of its parts and can never attain insight, properly speaking.
occurs the intrusion of a foreign agent, a eureka!
predictable.
000110010010111010111111001101110010001101101001011101010011011110111100001101100001101110100111
You have to do away with the mind, as with literature. I say the mind
and life communicate at all levels.
[1] Nothing, nil, zero, naught. The Germanic root of ‘thing’ meant not
an object but an appointed time. The origin of the word ‘naughty’ is
parallel to, but more interesting than, that of ‘nothing.’ Its sinister
meaning is related to its derivation from ‘naught,’ whose etymology
(nawiht, nothing) reveals a further delight in the Old English wiht
(thing, creature), of Germanic origin (still appearing, albeit very
rarely, in the modern spelling ‘wight.’)
[2] ‘Sin,’ through the Germanic sense of transgression, is ultimately
rooted in the sense of being true. Is this from the sense ‘he is truly
be the guilty person,’ or because to be true necessitates transgression?
Guilt is of unknown origin.
[3] The world, originally just the domain of ‘human existence and
affairs’ or ‘humankind’ (its pre-Germanic root was literally ‘age of
man:’ wer- [man, as in ‘virile’] -ald [age, as in ‘old’]), has been
extended gradually include most everything, as we well know.
[4] Via a many-layered and intriguing etymology one may reach through
Latin and Greek to that a machine is kind of a means for enabling one’s
ability to do something.
[5] If we go back far enough to the pre-Latin we find the origin of our
word ‘reason’ rests in counting things.
[6] The origin of ‘God,’ via the Germanic, means to call upon or invoke.
[7] The ‘wretch’ was once the German hero or warrior recke (Cf.
‘wreck’). It is thus a just account of the banishment and sorrow
intrinsic to the hero.
[8] Of Latin origin, ‘monster’s root (monere, to warn) reminds us that
misshapen animals were once regarded as foreboding omens.
[9] From the Greek atrophos (malnourished) negative of trephein (to
fatten) as in trophy.
[10] It is a fact that long before ‘good’ was ever used to refer to
property, it meant something with the quality of goodness, and before
that it was only an adjective. Before even it took on a moral color, its
Germanic root referred simply to what fit or belonged together.
[11] Empty once meant unmarried, at leisure. Literally to have not.
[12] Referring to lack of wit before taking on the sense of lacking
(mental, then physical) sharpness, ‘dull’ is of a dusty pre-Germanic
origin.
[13] Before it was used to distinguish between races, ‘pale’s root words
refer to a lack of saturation, as in ‘pallid,’ and not to a lack of
darkness. Its dullness of color could be grey, brown, white, or yellow.
[14] From the Latin confundere (to pour together).
[15] All with the same root. But of them, orgasm has the purest relation
to its pre-Latin root -werg (to do, related to -wrog, urge) which is the
origin of ‘work’ (Germanic), ‘energy’ (Greek), ‘urge’ (Latin), and
‘orgy.’ The original urging takes on the meaning of swelling, becoming
excited, in the Greek organ, to then become orgasmos, ‘orgasm.’ The
others come by way of the Latin organum (organ or instrument, as in an
organ of the body’s functioning).
[16] ‘Yoga’ and ‘yoke’ are yoked together by their common root jugom (to
join or unite).
[17] Flexibile derives quite naturally from a Latin root meaning to
bend.
[18] Latin agentem (effective, powerful).
[19] ‘Control,’ exerting authority, derives from the Latin contrarotulus
(a rotating counting device used to keep records).
[20] Latin negativus (that which says no).
[21] The Latin axioma, the founding principle, is regarded as already
established. This apparently derives from its material worth, or axios,
which in turn came into meaning through the development of scales to
measure weight. The first part of the pre-Latin root ag-ty-o (weighty)
is ag- (to move), also the root of ‘act,’ ‘action.’
[22] The subject is the one who is thrown under power, as evidenced by
its Latin origin: sub- (under) -iacere (to throw).
[23] Whatever its more refined flavors, ‘meditation’s origin lies in the
measures necessary for proper statecraft. It shares the same root as the
Greek medon (ruler) and Latin modus (measure) from which we receive
‘mode,’ as well as the Modern English term ‘modern.’
[24] A peculiar word, ‘walk’ took on its shape from the Old English
wealcan, (to toss or roll [something]). It thus shares a common root
with ‘vulva’ and ‘revolve.’
[25] ‘Virtual’ comes from the Latin virtus (excellence, literally
manliness), then quite inexplicably comes to mean ‘being something in
fact though not in name,’ which bears absolutely no relation to its
common modern sense of computer simulation.
[26] The Latin rabies (madness, fury), also the virus.
[27] ‘Cybernetic’ plus ‘organism’ becomes ‘cyborg.’ ‘Cybernetics’ was
coined by the Wiener who founded it, based on a Greek word meaning ‘good
at steering,’ this because cybernetics was developed to make machines
better at steering, a skill once proper to humans.
[28] ‘Pollution’ was originally the discharge of semen anywhere other
than its proper place, an act considered defilement.
[29] ‘Park’: an enclosure. The probable root meant the fences
themselves.
[30] The Old English godsibb (godparent) was extended to any relative,
especially those asked to attend a birth, then to the kind of talk
engaged in by relatives or familiars, and only recently to rumor. The
related ‘sibling’ has remarkably egoistic roots, as the pre-Germanic
sense of kinship from which it derives refers literally to one’s own.
[31] ‘Pretty’ gets its sense from prett, meaning a trick (Germanic).
[32] ‘Game’ (and its cousin ‘gamble’) derives from pre-Germanic gamann,
literally people together.
[33] Germanic, lively, from a root for living from which ‘bio-’ also
comes.
[34] Closely related to ‘right,’ ‘rule’ derives from the Latin regula (a
straight stick or guide) from which we also get ‘regulate.’
[35] Meaning deciding on one’s own discretion and will, ‘arbitrary’
comes from the Latin arbiter whose name conveys the fact of his coming
and going (as witness or judge) — in other words, a kind of displacement
inherent in the legal process.
[36] A curious concept, ‘justice’ unsurprisingly derives from a Latin
concept of (especially legal) right, ius. The Old Latin ious only found
its way into the common tongue by influence of the religious cults.
[37] ‘Fancy’ is a recent (six centuries back) contraction of ‘fantasy,’
whose roots have to do with picturing to oneself.
[38] Ultimately a matter of having weight, ‘serious’ has a different
heavy root than ‘axiom,’ one that did not come to bear material worth.
[39] Behind the pre-Germanic sense of good faith, ‘truth’ derives from a
likeness to the steadfastness of a tree (-dru, tree, as in ‘druid’).
[40] Originally to stuff, as with meat. Latin.
[41] Turning upside-down: in Middle English whelmen is to turn over.
[42] It seems that every variety of fear resonates with trembling: the
ancient origin of ‘terror’ meant to shake.
[43] Once revelry, frolicking, enjoying music, from Germanic plegan.
[44] To get out of the grasp of your pusuer, quite literally leaving
them with only your cape. Latin.
[45] Shore from pre-Germanic skur- (cut) related to ‘shear.’
[46] From the Arabic sifr, cipher (empty, null), from Sanskrit sunya-m
meaning empty place or desert.
[47] A long and amusing path takes us to get wet. Completely aside: Per
H.W. Fowler, among the eight types of humor, humor (as a subset of
itself) is the one interested in discovery in the realm of human nature.
[48] ‘Magic’ sits aside the machine as a kind of power. They share the
same root in their relation to the capacity to do.
[49] From the pre-Germanic ga-maid-jan (changed, abnormal), related to
‘mutate.’ The old English word of choice for madness was once ‘wood,’ an
adjective of a different Germanic origin than the wood of trees. It
comes from a root wet- to blow, inspire, or spiritually incite.
[50] From the Latin turba (turmoil, crowd) as in ‘disturbed.’
[51] Looking further back than the roots that deal with knowing, we find
that ‘science’ derives from separation, cleaving, division, rending. In
this it shares the same with ‘consciousness’ as it does with ‘shit.’
[52] ‘Stern’ is a cousin to ‘stare’ and ‘sterile,’ all from a
pre-Germanic root for stiffness.
[53] The Greek khaos: the gaping abyss is vast and empty, like a yawning
mouth. The sense of disorder did not arise until the modern era.
[54] Originally a mass of rock (as in ‘clod’), ‘cloud’ was extended
almost a millennium ago to the things in the sky by similarity of
appearance.
[55] ‘Worm,’ from Germanic meaning worm, serpent, or dragon.
[56] A ‘spot’ was once specifically a moral stain before being taken up
for other uses, such as the stains left by immoral activities. Germanic.
[57] In ‘direct’ we have again a word that concerns itself with guiding
or setting straight. (See ‘right,’ ‘rectum,’ ‘regulate,’ etc.)
[58] ‘Lack’s source was used to describe a just-trickling spring.
[59] In fact, certainty is, like science, based on separation.
[60] This prediction was not arrived at by means of the scientific
method.
[61] ‘To happen’ once meant to occur by hap (by chance). ‘Hap,’ little
used today, is of Germanic origin (chance, fate, luck).
[62] Like orgasm, it is ultimately a matter of swelling, since the
phallus introduced into Greek by the cult of Dionysus that worshipped it
was always erect.
[63] Via the Latin orificium, speaking of the mouth.
[64] Greek poros, also a pore, literally a passage or way.
[65] Parts of ‘fuck’s etymology read more like a detective story than
scholarship, but point to the Germanic ficken (to fuck, earlier to move
quickly back and forth, and earlier still to itch or scratch).
[66] From a Portuguese word for sorcery, further back in its Latin roots
it refers to the act of creation.
[67] Of Germanic origin, queerness comes from being oblique or
off-centered, an imperfection that can make a wheel or machine part
wobble awkwardly (or interestingly). Further back in time we find this
notion derives in turn from twisting and turning.
[68] ‘Hole’ has the root kel- meaning to hide, shared with ‘cell,’
‘conceal,’ and ‘hell.’
[69] A truth can be discerned from the Germanic root of ‘straight,’
which has nothing to do with perfect lines and is all about tension.
Indeed, ‘stretch’ and ‘strain’ both derive from the same point as
straight.
[70] From logos (word, speaking).
[71] ‘Variety’ gets its sense from bodily variation; it is related to
‘wart.’
[72] ‘Masturbation’ is to defile oneself (stuprare, related to ‘stupor’
and ‘stupid’) by hand (manus).
[73] The impoverished Modern English has one word where it once had
several. Variations of sibb (see above) covered familial affection.
‘Love’ is of Germanic stock and carries the caring and desiring aspects
of love, which were distinguished in Greek between phileo (as in
‘pedophilia’) and erao (as in ‘erotic’), along with agapao (which became
the out-of-use English ‘agape,’ for the Christian charity unaffected by
passion; lost on the church was the irony that it comes from a root
sense of desire shared by ‘whore’ and the first word of Kama Sutra) and
stergo (the paternal love of the parent toward the child as well as the
ruler toward the subject). Back in the Germanic lineage, ‘friend’ and
‘free’ both have their roots in an ancient idea of love.
[74] In some ancient religions, it was taboo to speak the word for
horse.
[75] From the Germanic deupaz, depth’s sense of deep, hollow gave rise
to the additional senses of mysterious and solemn.
[76] ‘Time,’ like science, consciousness, and shit, derives its sense
from cutting, dividing, but through Germanic lines. It was originally
used as a specific time, and only later abstractly for continuous
duration.
[77] The Germanic relatives of ‘war’ suggest its original sense was
bringing into confusion.
[78] ‘Random’ is from the Frankish root rant (running).
[79] From the Greek kryptos, hidden, and -graphy, which ultimately
derives from carving or scratching in stone.
[80] Earlier forms of ‘lie’ referred to speaking untruths but also to
deceit and betrayal in general.