Driftwork

It has reached a stage where I cannot tell whether any comments by american women and men on H.Clinton’s election campaign are infected by misogyny or justifible political disagreement. I suppose what might mark the difference is references to “attack of the 50 foot …” (obviously misogynistic) and so on. Certainly a critique of HC’s politics is possible, but the problem it seems is the words and phrases that make up the critique “back to the kitchin…”

What happened to them ? were they always this reactionary or am i missing something in their history…

To a friend engaged in a spiritual turn…. What seems to be at the core of your relation to religion is the belief that religion is potentially a regime of Truth, which is another way of understanding the different spin, the religious experience you refer to below. My assumption is that the turn marks the argument that it is an extension to Badiou’s four regimes of truth; Science, Art, Love and Politics. This does not require that we accept the individual truths that emerge from these regimes but merely that we should accept the idea that these regimes are ones from which Truth emerges. But if religion is a truth regime what would it’s truths be ? How would we separate them from religions ideologies ?

I can see how this would not prioritize one type of religious practice over another and that the generic notion of religion, justified by its claim to be a Truth regime, does become an area of special study. The specific type of study that is being advocating is grounded through your references to the spiritual godfathers, ( Gurdjieff, Aldous
Huxley, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, Mircea Eliade,Joseph Campell, Carl Jung, Carlos Castenenda, and Robert Anton Wilson )all of whom claim and are granted some special status to religious and spiritual knowledge, within the argument. Whilst I do have great sympathy with the idea that these regimes of Truth need to be studied, the question is what kind of study ?

Obviously I’m not suggesting that Badiou is correct in his construction just that the force of your argument suggests that the justification is founded on the belief of an underlying ‘Truth’, but rather I’m trying to speak into a set of discourses that are outside of my normal framework. The work of the spiritual godfathers suggests a very different understanding of how to study religion, more idealistic and involved than is understandable. This is a very different concept than that which emerges from the study of Indo-European myth (aka “comparative indo-european religious studies” Dumezil) as ideological concepts, of what in the 1930s would have been called “peoples” (a term which is thankfully almost meaningless now). Within this latter line of thought and study there is little or no difference between the monotheistic religions and the myths of Indra and Varuna, and perhaps because from the latter perspective the work of the spiritual godfathers would be just another area of ideological study.

” … ethnobiology, neoshamanism and altered consciousness in the way that Terence McKenna, Daniel Pinchbeck and many others have talked about this, lays out the way for a radical shift inculture and consciousness…"(eric 9th of march)

The philosopher and polymath Raymond Tallis has carried out a great of work both philosophical and practical in the issues of life, death and consciousness, recently he tired as a professor of geriatric medicine specialising in the hot topic of clinical neuroscience. In addition to the philosophy, medical work he has also published some fiction and poetry. He writes in a dense and difficult way, the text sometimes wilfully getting in the way of the argument he making, or it may simply be that his writing on the mind and body displays a breadth and style that is just a little to specifc. It’s his latest text The Kingdom of Infinite Space that seems to reflect on Eric’s new address of conciousness. Because Tallis seems to be following in the spirit of Spinoza when he begins to answer “what can the Head do ?” for Tallis is exploring the Head. Not the Brain, but that part of the body we call the head. This is not then a book about consciousness but something more biological and less human specific. There is a chapter on consciousness but it is just that a chapter. In this book by philosopher and medical/neuroscientist professional such things as MRI/brain scans and neuroscience are thankfully absent, after all when MRI scans are appearing on popular TV series as evidence of institutional racism it’s time the technology is treated with a little more cynicism. The books subject is the whole of the Head and how this relates to identity. In the introduction Tallis makes an interesting anti-brain-worship case and argues against the claims that consciousness emerges as a consequence from the firing of nuerons, of course they do yet as we all know “Selves require bodies as well as brains, material environments as well as bodies, and societies as well as material environments…” Which is why the brain and consciousness does not explain that much about being. As you might expect Tallis who has previously written on The Hand and in I AM on first person is still intent on exploring what the body can do, and is probably best thought of as the descendent of analytical philosophy writes on a number of related areas of the head hearing, blushing, ears, and enjoyably for me on eating; he disagrees with those who treat hunger and eating as fundamentally a biological drive but there is always he argues a social aspect to eating that evolutionary thinkers make secondary to the primary drive. Tallis uses the work of Levi-Strauss to mark the difference between the raw and the cooked which is to mark the difference between nature and culture, and for Tallis it seems that difference is always already there.

Some asked: Would you please elaborate on what you mean by saying “I am against private property"?

My second attempt to answer this is below:

These seem fair enough examples… and I’ll try and remain within the framework. What you touch on below with the examples and especially the use of the term ‘recycled’ is I think central to one of the key issues in what we need to think of as a “lifecycle of property". I’m unsure how to clarify this thought so forgive any inability on my part to get this thought right.

The problem which with the concept of ‘private property’ is that no single ownership can ever exist throughout the lifecycle of the object, one of the central problems with mass consumption whether it is at the level of plastic packaging, tooth brushes or even housing and land is that the lifecycle of the object is never taken into account. So that I purchase a toothbrush for my personal use. From constructed from petro-chemicals, owned by manufacturer, distributer, supermarket, then by me, discraded into the now privatised company that runs the local waste disposal for my Local council/state waste under the rules imposed on the local state by the European rules and laws (EC). Eventually the toohbrush ends up in a landfill or perhaps incinerated and reduced to carbon emissions into the atmosphere. So my toothbrush as a simple 7 or 8 step continuum of ownership, all of whom are collectivle responsible for the toothbrush throughout its lifecycle. The plastic bag it came in is in the meantime floating out into the Atlantic… Logically then in an objects lifecycle there is no singular point of ownership and responsibility. A person/user uses the object for a given period of time and then does not.

In a mass-consumptive society all objects should be considered against their lifecycles, one of ownership and one of the object itself. Within such a framework the idea of ‘private property’ and ownership becomes increasingly problematic and exceedingly difficult to deal with, as the concept of private property seemingly obstructs our ability to consider the object virtually and actually. (difficult this) I own a car, however we humans and non-humans are collectively responsible for the damage and pleasure that this car-object will bring, we are all collectively responsible. So that if I dispose of the car irresponsibly. others will be forced to dispose of the car responsibly. >From a toothbrush, car to nuclear power station it’s a question of re-constructing the relations around the object within this collective imperative ( bit to Kantian but still)

I am not saying that private property is necessarily evil, just that the concept itself doesn’t help us understand what the object and our relationship with the object is, whether at the level of a tootbrush, a sports utility vehicle or a nuclear power plant. All objects are ultimately collective rather than private because during the objects lifecycle they are our collective responsibility.

Finally then the lamy pen in front of me, which I have had for ten years or even longer, is of course my ‘property’ and will remain so until it no longer is… which is fine - however my neighbours sports utility vehicle will be removed from her ownership and destroyed long before its natural lifecycle is over, because collectively it is simply unacceptable that she uses it….

I think you’ll have to hit me around the head about this, please break the thought, as I’d like to see if this can fit the post-commodification line of thought…

(At one time I would have described this in socialist/communist critiques of private-property but it’s not been theoretically sufficient for some time.)

Return to declination. To the text finally translated into its differential elements. The minimal angle to laminar flow initiates turbulence. From which comes, here and there, indefinite in time and place, a world among many others, things and men.

Without declination, there are only the laws of destiny that is to say the chains of order. The new is born of the old, the new is just the repetition of the old. The angle interrupts the Stoic chain, it breaks the foedera fati, the infinite sequence of reasons and causes. It precisely disrupts the laws of nature. Therefrom arises the appearance of living, of everything which breathes, and the horses rush forward. (serres)