Epic multithread reweave! I can't help but turn the finger on myself as one who repeats my position without significant modification, even if I'm not guilty of promoting mystic or ecstatic fulcra. I really like the back-trace concept of progress. It reminds me of a friend's objection to the typical part-whole relation, which proceeds forward from part to whole. His conception is agnostic to direction. Partitioning/analysis might come before [re]construction. Wholes might be prior to parts. I got this feeling from von Neumann's iterative construction, too, just less explicit.
The Sontag article was fantastic. It covered many of the issues I have with enjoying the produce of diseased minds like Lovecraft or maybe Kaczynski. But I also can't help turning it back onto myself. My glorification of the *muck*, the banal, the every day stuff (like Spillers' grounding of culture in seemingly mundane things like recipes or hairstyles) both contradicts the ecstatic and plays into the prurient notes of the fascist aesthetic. Maybe that's the cause of my trypophobia. 8^D As always, I find myself unable to sufficiently "other" the others. Thanks. On September 23, 2021 2:22:09 PM PDT, David Eric Smith <[email protected]> wrote: >So the Monbiot article below is really interesting. > >Let me put in the link to a pdf (I don’t know whether legitimate or in >violation of some paywall) to an article I mentioned before: >https://campus.albion.edu/gcocks/files/2013/08/Fascinating-Fascism.pdf ><https://campus.albion.edu/gcocks/files/2013/08/Fascinating-Fascism.pdf> >specifically the first section on Leni Riefenstahl and what Sontag called >“fascist aesthetics”, a term that appears to have quite strongly affected my >thinking, because many things keep coming back to it and taking an orientation >from it. (n.b. the criticism of Sontag’s philosophical style in the great-fun >article by Justin E.H. Smith that Glen forwarded a few days ago; I am aware of >that at the same time as sending this link because I think there is worth in >it.) > >That the Nazis should have advocated many things that (raised in other >contexts) we consider good choices, like non-destructive land management or >things of that sort, the Sontag article brings me to the question of not what >they endorsed, but why they endorsed it. > >I would quasi-summarize her idea of fascist aesthetics in a line or two by >saying that it wants ecstatic experience to be the ground for choosing. I >couldn’t tell you why my dislike for this orientation is as intense as it >appears to be — I”m sure it reflects something wrong with me, but I don’t >really care, reflecting something else wrong with me I’m sure — but it seems >to be commanding decision-making in a lot of areas at the moment. (b.t.w. >this is also why I can’t summon the delight in William James that some people >keep wanting me to experience, people who seem to think James and Peirce were >of a piece on what Pragmatism is, where to me they seem almost poles.) > >There seem to be communities that are now dismayed, or just bored, with the >way scientific argument gives you a back-trace to its conclusions. Arguing >that they follow from “first principles” is I think an error: all this >language is very much middle-out, and figuring out how to properly use a >middle-out language is a profound and interesting problem (“problem” sense of >“puzzle to be worked on”, not sense of “thing to be denied or rejected”). But >the back-trace connects some choices to other choices, and its big value is >that it is more than nothing. Getting more than nothing is rather a rare >prize, and something worth working toward and then protecting if you can have >a little bit. > >But those bored with it, who seem to endlessly repeat their position, and when >asked to clarify, will repeat it again, seem to have a position something like >“you’ll see when you see”. It is distastefully close, in my perception, to >those who will say “you really are a spiritual person, and you just won’t >admit it. When you stop resisting and admit it, you will come around to where >I am, and you will see.” That doesn’t seem to me like any way to make >decisions that differs from what leaves us in our current mess, since people >have been doing it forever. Yet those who are into it now are convinced that >this time they hold the true innovation. > >Very hard for me to understand. > >Eric > > >> On Sep 24, 2021, at 1:57 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.com%2fcommentisfree%2f2021%2fsep%2f22%2fleftwingers-far-right-conspiracy-theories-anti-vaxxers-power&c=E,1,YQWY-Qx-D6GAp4uFSbw9DpsNm0UPherqjbJBTzVjSG_of5c03uW3M1Peo6dUo_IiTgPC8e0gxQA9PhkeNnQbLgsUGzPtJnH2zqUVd0qr3S7PDBI,&typo=1 >> >> "The notion of the 'sovereign body', untainted by chemical contamination, >> has begun to fuse with the fear that a shadowy cabal is trying to deprive us >> of autonomy." >> -- glen ⛧ .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
