24 August 2006
the sewing machine sweats
Toiling with scrap and bit,
elemental cobbler concatenates
sensual tactility,
dimensionality and
dulcet variegation.
Revealed - the heretofore hidden thread
between seamstress and sorceress.
"Wall of Sound"
N. Ford - artiste
21 August 2006
Uneasy Alliance
Capital and classical: how we must overcome the romantic to slay fundamentalism.
Secular humanists among us – we grandchildren of the enlightenment – do now truly despair. Whither the value of reason? Wherefore goes liberty from the light of day, she the one we cannot live without? Perhaps she flees the dark matter forces of fundamentalism eating life like an oak devours sun. Fundamentalism that shrieking hag is based upon an disgusting flaw – we should sacrifice life, that most wonderful expression of universal intelligence, for a make believe never never land.
It is the enemy. Or rather will be the enemy for at least as long as I will live, and so cannot worry about much more. Let us say it is a quintessential nemesis for the foreseeable future and figure out how to defeat it. Our rallying cliché: freedom versus fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism has infected the entire globe, ala 'body snatchers.' It is born of the profound emptiness of modernism. Modernism began when Nietzsche said god was dead, but its seeds were sewn in the Italian Rennaissance and the Pandora's box opened along with ancient Greek texts. Modernism is personified in Eliot's hollow man and also in the men who fight battles which kill hundreds of thousands for a hundred yards of corpse-filled trench.
Modernism, although we must flee it, did come about as the result of a good thing. The intellectual achievements of the late 19th century philoligists, scientists, archeologists and others whose roots were found in the ethnographic impulses of missionaries and other monastic types. These scientific and intellectual achievements eventually blew away our perception of ourselves, the world and the universe. End result: thousands of years of cultural intelligence becomes an empty hole.
Here is what Nietzsche teaches us. Man does not need truth to have an utterly fulfilling existence. The willful flights of fancy of man are perfectly in keeping with a healthy existence. Modern man with his truth is a sick man. Our intellectual and scientific achievements come with a perhaps fatal poison pill – man requires fundamental answers to unendurable existential questions. The questions become 're-unanswered' once we discover our religions are made up entirely by us. The comprehensive history of religions (fueled by the scientific method) is a map of human imagination quite clearly. I think here of Eliade's "History of Religions."
Humans do not want to 'live the question.' I know I do not. There are a few rare born souls with the constitution and mutation necessary to endure it. But we are creatures who need answers, true or not, and then we can 'turn on' life and exult.
Fundamentalism has grown Hogweed-like in the emptiness we cannot quite eradicate a hundred plus years later. Fundamentalism is not new, but I think the virulence of its present manifestation and the WMDs we now possess presents a critical case. Fundamentalism has infected all major religions – Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, et al. How does it spread? By offering a way away from the hell of the emptiness that confronts each individual solitarily. Without meaning man is most in tatters. S/he gnashes teeth and cannot think about much else. We ask, why something instead of nothing? What happens after? The most basic, universal questions cannot go without answer. I still vividly remember lying in bed at night contemplating death as a 7 year old. How horrifying it was. How permanent it was. It kept me tossing and turning.
Here is where the battle is waged. Those of us who profess the love of liberty, enlightenment and rationality must navigate our way out of modernism. We will need a new name. Like bioclassical or some such. Let us leave that to the folks in the PR department and strategize a power map that will allow humans again to live richly, bravely and in good cheer.
Our first directional device is a simple proposition – Life is a sexy expression of universal intelligence and should be honored highly. Our enemies are those who would sacrifice this most sacred stream of energy at the altar of an ideology worshipping death; loving preposterous lies.
We must have an eschatology that is a common denominator. A nondenominational rallying cry to fire up our inner warriors. Because my brothers and sisters I believe it is time to sew our bloodlust such as we may.
A simple eschatology:
Of course there is a universal intelligence, do not worry about it.
Life is sacred and fantastic and its enjoyment is the point.
Knowledge and reason go a long way.
Nothing is perfect, nothing is promised. We have to fight for our love and life.
"Freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness."
Upon these points let us rest our spirit, our chi, our holiness. We do not need death-monger religious freaks to sanctify us. Life sanctifies us. "Life is beautiful and terrifying." It is its own evidence.
It can sometimes feel overwhelming in this dark period of murderous events, how do I shine a light? Luckily others have wandered through similar terrain, and we can learn from them. Called classical, these oases of humanity have surpassed the romantic and entered into hallowed ground.
Edith Hamilton is the one I think who coined the classical versus romantic debate. Romantic is the act of overcoming, it is the typical human condition, and we will never fully be able to live without it. For struggle has been a near universal feature of human life the romantic is the natural response to cheer us in our attempt to make dominion over volatile ecologies.
Bloom says modernism is just a late romanticism, and I think there is something to that. I would say that modernism is the last romanticism. We hard new souls of a good morning, bright sunshiny world must deter the last desire to overcome life, and accept all of it, the classical.
Classical in early times was providence of the upper classes because classical requires leisure time. Since most of our ancestors ambled through sustenance level existences, the luxury of time was only afforded to the few. Classical finds those who can think, tinker, scribble and perceive, observe and measure. Similarly that is why the most sophisticated spiritualism grew first in the jungles of Borneo. Born of a people for whom all the needs of life were readily given and so had leisure in which to discover the power of universal intelligence through the "dream wanderer."
Throughout history conditions have commingled to produce an aristocracy who explore the wonders of the world. Chinese classical, for instance, created hundreds year long periods of civilization whose knowledge was the most advanced in the world at the time.
The classical says, "We must accept everything." It shows the romantic for what it is – a filter on a tough reality so that we may retain our ruddiness. The classical says, "We must honor life, but not worship it." For there are dishonorable lives not worth living. The classical says, "We are the value providers of our lives." Values are created, they are protected, they are fought for. We need no higher judge than ourselves to sanctify our values.
We need a new classical movement. A new expression of the religion of the third eye. But we are not getting it. We look to the upper classes for signs of it, and we see nothing enlightened. We see in fact dull selfishness. Profanity. The brahmins among the top class diluted and squishy.
Presently there is an unhealthy friction between capital and classical. You will not find a capitalism bash in this screed. I find America's domestic capital market to be one of the greatest human achievements. Trade and commerce are as universal as the fall of man. Capitalism has its discontents surely, but look at what deplorable alternatives it surpassess. Thing is, capital holders need to shed the aegis of romantic mythology and see themselves for what they are – time tested catalysts for golden ages.
But us more humble souls cannot wait. We too we should cobble a classical without aristocracy. A trade guild of life lovers. A classical that accepts the essential mediocre limitations inherent in democratic social organization and yet "where everything is permitted." We are at the point in our technical achievements where the conditions are ripe for a birth of a new classical, a universal classical (alas but a romantic idea?)
It will require the pitiless revaluation of humanness as prima fasce sacred. Humans will need to accept tougher, less merciful reality. But it will be the one effective deterrent against the hideous forces of death aligning against us. For the fundamenatalist are growing and let us face it, we would rather fight than live under filthy fundamentalists, the most revolting representative of humanness ever?
Capitalism and its symbiotic partner, democracy, do not need to be enemies of classical.
It will require money of course, capitalist tyrants like Buffet and Gates who understand the sacred act of public building as Greeks and Romans did. But I think also we need an organization, a constituency. A cluster of likeminded souls acting. We all need to hug the romantic goodbye each in our own way, like a freshman year lover, and with good cheer and brave heart, embrace the classical. It will make us crueler but critically will 'turn on' in each of us the love and communion necessary to organize into the entity who will defeat the black menace, hungry for murder, now howling at the outposts.
#
Secular humanists among us – we grandchildren of the enlightenment – do now truly despair. Whither the value of reason? Wherefore goes liberty from the light of day, she the one we cannot live without? Perhaps she flees the dark matter forces of fundamentalism eating life like an oak devours sun. Fundamentalism that shrieking hag is based upon an disgusting flaw – we should sacrifice life, that most wonderful expression of universal intelligence, for a make believe never never land.
It is the enemy. Or rather will be the enemy for at least as long as I will live, and so cannot worry about much more. Let us say it is a quintessential nemesis for the foreseeable future and figure out how to defeat it. Our rallying cliché: freedom versus fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism has infected the entire globe, ala 'body snatchers.' It is born of the profound emptiness of modernism. Modernism began when Nietzsche said god was dead, but its seeds were sewn in the Italian Rennaissance and the Pandora's box opened along with ancient Greek texts. Modernism is personified in Eliot's hollow man and also in the men who fight battles which kill hundreds of thousands for a hundred yards of corpse-filled trench.
Modernism, although we must flee it, did come about as the result of a good thing. The intellectual achievements of the late 19th century philoligists, scientists, archeologists and others whose roots were found in the ethnographic impulses of missionaries and other monastic types. These scientific and intellectual achievements eventually blew away our perception of ourselves, the world and the universe. End result: thousands of years of cultural intelligence becomes an empty hole.
Here is what Nietzsche teaches us. Man does not need truth to have an utterly fulfilling existence. The willful flights of fancy of man are perfectly in keeping with a healthy existence. Modern man with his truth is a sick man. Our intellectual and scientific achievements come with a perhaps fatal poison pill – man requires fundamental answers to unendurable existential questions. The questions become 're-unanswered' once we discover our religions are made up entirely by us. The comprehensive history of religions (fueled by the scientific method) is a map of human imagination quite clearly. I think here of Eliade's "History of Religions."
Humans do not want to 'live the question.' I know I do not. There are a few rare born souls with the constitution and mutation necessary to endure it. But we are creatures who need answers, true or not, and then we can 'turn on' life and exult.
Fundamentalism has grown Hogweed-like in the emptiness we cannot quite eradicate a hundred plus years later. Fundamentalism is not new, but I think the virulence of its present manifestation and the WMDs we now possess presents a critical case. Fundamentalism has infected all major religions – Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, et al. How does it spread? By offering a way away from the hell of the emptiness that confronts each individual solitarily. Without meaning man is most in tatters. S/he gnashes teeth and cannot think about much else. We ask, why something instead of nothing? What happens after? The most basic, universal questions cannot go without answer. I still vividly remember lying in bed at night contemplating death as a 7 year old. How horrifying it was. How permanent it was. It kept me tossing and turning.
Here is where the battle is waged. Those of us who profess the love of liberty, enlightenment and rationality must navigate our way out of modernism. We will need a new name. Like bioclassical or some such. Let us leave that to the folks in the PR department and strategize a power map that will allow humans again to live richly, bravely and in good cheer.
Our first directional device is a simple proposition – Life is a sexy expression of universal intelligence and should be honored highly. Our enemies are those who would sacrifice this most sacred stream of energy at the altar of an ideology worshipping death; loving preposterous lies.
We must have an eschatology that is a common denominator. A nondenominational rallying cry to fire up our inner warriors. Because my brothers and sisters I believe it is time to sew our bloodlust such as we may.
A simple eschatology:
Of course there is a universal intelligence, do not worry about it.
Life is sacred and fantastic and its enjoyment is the point.
Knowledge and reason go a long way.
Nothing is perfect, nothing is promised. We have to fight for our love and life.
"Freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness."
Upon these points let us rest our spirit, our chi, our holiness. We do not need death-monger religious freaks to sanctify us. Life sanctifies us. "Life is beautiful and terrifying." It is its own evidence.
It can sometimes feel overwhelming in this dark period of murderous events, how do I shine a light? Luckily others have wandered through similar terrain, and we can learn from them. Called classical, these oases of humanity have surpassed the romantic and entered into hallowed ground.
Edith Hamilton is the one I think who coined the classical versus romantic debate. Romantic is the act of overcoming, it is the typical human condition, and we will never fully be able to live without it. For struggle has been a near universal feature of human life the romantic is the natural response to cheer us in our attempt to make dominion over volatile ecologies.
Bloom says modernism is just a late romanticism, and I think there is something to that. I would say that modernism is the last romanticism. We hard new souls of a good morning, bright sunshiny world must deter the last desire to overcome life, and accept all of it, the classical.
Classical in early times was providence of the upper classes because classical requires leisure time. Since most of our ancestors ambled through sustenance level existences, the luxury of time was only afforded to the few. Classical finds those who can think, tinker, scribble and perceive, observe and measure. Similarly that is why the most sophisticated spiritualism grew first in the jungles of Borneo. Born of a people for whom all the needs of life were readily given and so had leisure in which to discover the power of universal intelligence through the "dream wanderer."
Throughout history conditions have commingled to produce an aristocracy who explore the wonders of the world. Chinese classical, for instance, created hundreds year long periods of civilization whose knowledge was the most advanced in the world at the time.
The classical says, "We must accept everything." It shows the romantic for what it is – a filter on a tough reality so that we may retain our ruddiness. The classical says, "We must honor life, but not worship it." For there are dishonorable lives not worth living. The classical says, "We are the value providers of our lives." Values are created, they are protected, they are fought for. We need no higher judge than ourselves to sanctify our values.
We need a new classical movement. A new expression of the religion of the third eye. But we are not getting it. We look to the upper classes for signs of it, and we see nothing enlightened. We see in fact dull selfishness. Profanity. The brahmins among the top class diluted and squishy.
Presently there is an unhealthy friction between capital and classical. You will not find a capitalism bash in this screed. I find America's domestic capital market to be one of the greatest human achievements. Trade and commerce are as universal as the fall of man. Capitalism has its discontents surely, but look at what deplorable alternatives it surpassess. Thing is, capital holders need to shed the aegis of romantic mythology and see themselves for what they are – time tested catalysts for golden ages.
But us more humble souls cannot wait. We too we should cobble a classical without aristocracy. A trade guild of life lovers. A classical that accepts the essential mediocre limitations inherent in democratic social organization and yet "where everything is permitted." We are at the point in our technical achievements where the conditions are ripe for a birth of a new classical, a universal classical (alas but a romantic idea?)
It will require the pitiless revaluation of humanness as prima fasce sacred. Humans will need to accept tougher, less merciful reality. But it will be the one effective deterrent against the hideous forces of death aligning against us. For the fundamenatalist are growing and let us face it, we would rather fight than live under filthy fundamentalists, the most revolting representative of humanness ever?
Capitalism and its symbiotic partner, democracy, do not need to be enemies of classical.
It will require money of course, capitalist tyrants like Buffet and Gates who understand the sacred act of public building as Greeks and Romans did. But I think also we need an organization, a constituency. A cluster of likeminded souls acting. We all need to hug the romantic goodbye each in our own way, like a freshman year lover, and with good cheer and brave heart, embrace the classical. It will make us crueler but critically will 'turn on' in each of us the love and communion necessary to organize into the entity who will defeat the black menace, hungry for murder, now howling at the outposts.
#
