Eastern/Asian philosophy general. I think the Chinese and the

>>8825554
Generals are for rejects, create a thread about some specific topic.

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>>8825566
Fair enough. Let me ask some more specific question then:

Does Eastern philosophy BTFO Zizek? Why doesn't he like it? I know it's because the Bhagavad Gita sanctions violence, but is martial-arts violence Musashi-style really the same thing as political violence?

See pic related: it's my boy RG. What I like about RG is that he will say the problem, as always, is violence; and this is because mimetic desire compels everyone to follow the self-destructive logic of the duel. In Clauswitzian terms this makes sense to me: but is kungfu or martial arts violence the same kind of violence that someone like Zizek say can be understood in Lacanian terms? Maybe it isn't.

I agree with most everything RG says. Except that the martial arts violence I want to talk about here may have nothing to do with myths, texts, or even politics itself as the sniffler understands it.

On top of that I am wondering how fucking boss Confucianism is in general, since hyper capitalist Western civ today is just 114% libidinal economy to me and headed for one disaster after another that I don't even care about anymore. Chinese philosophy looks good. Maybe not China itself but the thought most def. Also Musashi.

The last Eastern philosophy thread was very interesting until some absolute cunt shit it up with something that probably should have been reported. I'm picking up where that left off.

Let's talk about violence, anons. And kungfu. And samurai shit. And what it all means.

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>>8825623
*more Taoism than Confucianism. Positivist STEMfaggery welcome also. Go ahead and shit on the Tao all you like, I'm behind 4000 monks over here.

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>>8825648
*also that this is clearly Zen and not the Tao but w/tf/evs

>>8825554
The problem with western philosopy is the definition of truth changed due to enlightenment which leads to materialistic views which leads to thinking life is about happiness. The same thing is happening in eastern culture now though.

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>>8825662
Yes. I agree completely. And capitalism confirms all of this stuff, whether consciously or unconsciously/ideologically. Religion is not attractive to people anymore.

I think Girard is crazy fucking interesting. But I also am open to exploring what seems to me very interesting indeed about questions of violence and desire that - if these are indeed what drive the libidinal economy - I think are going to be made to look very silly indeed when a wise old Taoist monk teaches them some kung fu. I could be wrong.

But I think the West is growing sick of materialism. And I think there is some incredibly interesting stuff going on with Eastern philosophy vis-a-vis psychoanalysis. Or even Deleuze.

If people don't like Christianity that's fine. But I'm wondering about what else might be considered. My reasons are weird and perverse. But I think the tragic conception of life is overblown, and I say this after being That Guy about Nietzsche for many a year.

>>8825623
Of all the problems Zizek could have with philosophies, I cannot imagine the allowance of violence being one of them.

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For anyone interested in a short but very interesting read, Herbert Fingarette's book on Confucius is super interesting.

Chinese epistemology doesn't do *choice,* only the discrimination between alternatives. There is no choosing, no rhetoric of the fateful, tragic, binding choice - and also, no violation or obeisance to anything like a Freudian law (that is, 'don't fuck in the family'). It's legit interesting. And I think it does crazy things to the world of capitalism.

It's hard to say if Confucianism is a religion or not, but mainly because we look at this in Western terms: there is religion and then there is non-religion. But I think this all gets back to more serious and difficult (but interesting!) questions about violence, the transgression of laws, vengeance, duels, and so on.

Also, I'm a giant fag.

>>8825689
This is the thing.

Z does not like the Bhagavad Gita for the same reason he does not like Islam: as he will say, he thinks that it is not the case that because God is dead that everything is permitted, but the opposite: it is because one believes that God is with them that they then receive the holy imprimatur to inflict violence, enslave, crusade, blow up buildings, etc.

Except I think he's compromised in this regard. Even a communist revolution is going to be violent in some degree - not that he, or I, believe this is even remotely a possibility any longer - and this is why he does what he does. He will say that violence proceeds from words that cannot be spoken, words trapped in the body, and so on. This is why everything for him is ideology, driven by sexual desire, and so on.

But what if he's wrong? What if speaking itself isn't important? What if the body just is better off learning martial arts and not talking at all? What if talk is overrated, and *silence* is what you really want? You wind up with a very different world. Shaolin monks are deadly, but they're not usually found on crusade (or appropriating other people, as in Hegel...and I would be delighted to get some Hegelians in here).

>>8825623
id read the bible twice where i dont even have the nerve to smirk for a photo and it doesn't even use the word victim. there's so much going on his first sentence doesn't even make sense. guy looks very proud

>>8825689
But maybe I haven't answered your question.

I don't mean to valorize any philosophy because it in turn sanctions or approves violence: I am asking if the concept of violence as understood by these systems is not one which is radically different from violence understood in conventional Western/Marxist/w/e sense.

Is violence a universal, independently analyzable, metaphysical process? I'm not sure. I think capital is, but this is the thrust of the Marxist argument: it runs on desire, stuff that Lacan will talk about, and this is what ultimately produces ideology.

But even Lacan himself goes to Japan and says, 'it doesn't work here.' Why not? And what the fuck does that mean?

Sorry. I'm a little excited atm. I'll calm down.

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>guy gets boiled alive
>on a low simmer so he doesn't die for a day and keeps screaming
>describes how his meat looks like parboiled chicken meat
>guy masturbates to the sound of the screams
>then hate fucks a young boy

Is the author trying to make me hate Japanese people?

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>>8825711
RG has a very particular take on this. It's a douchey photo no doubt. Here's a better one, and maybe a more interesting quote.

But RG is a guy I think worth considering. His whole question is very similar to Zizek's - the mimesis of desire, that desires are dependent on each other - but with a different sensibility. For Girard, violence emerges when desires are thwarted, when they become unsharable. In the long run he will trace this right down to the foundations of civilization, as this quote indicates.

It does make sense, I think. I've read everything on libgen that I can get ahold of. But I don't blame you for thinking he looks like a douche or sounds like a douche. He does.

Violence though. This is the question. Violence, victims, appropriation, slavery, all of that. You can't run a civilization without it. And Zizek's point is that capitalism works, in a sense, the same way: we go chasing after something we need that we can't ever really possess all the way.

>>8825727
I love that book. Read it twice. Might read it again fairly soon.

Anyways, it's not all the Japanese. Just Yabu. Toranaga is awesome. And it's not like the Dutch are so awesome, either. Clavell distributes the shade pretty fairly.

>>8825736
>>8825727

*I think it's Yabu, anyways. Might be Omi. It's been a while.

>>8825729
Must it, though? Assuming we are including the more abstract forms of violence - the spiritual forms, the expressions and enforcement of hierarchy either legislated or imagined, and so on - must civilization include these things? The gut reaction is to say yes, based on, as the Girard quotation sums up rather well, all of history before us right down to its very roots. But is the conception of civilization itself rooted in violence? Would a civilization without violence be possible, and if not, would that be a sound foundation for the argument that civilization was a mistake?

I'm not forming any particularly coherent thoughts here, nor am I really addressing your topics, OP. I'm just sort of rattling off idle, facile thoughts. Still...

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>>8825758
I think it is. I'm *concerned* that it is. But I also think there's another way. But it requires thinking through these questions of violence and desire. In general analysis has done a pretty fucking amazing job of asking these questions, about how we work, deep down - and it all started with the Neetch, for whom it must be remembered that the tragic view is the highest and noblest mode of existence. He may be right - but we have to play the game anyways.

>Would a civilization without violence be possible, and if not, would that be a sound foundation for the argument that civilization was a mistake?

This is exactly 114% the question. Remember this: that capitalism, when it begins to emerge in the 17C, is intended to be a *check on the ambitions of princes.* All of Europe is fucked up by the Thirty Years' War, and along comes the Enlightenment: put those wars aside, gentlemen, and concentrate on trade instead. It works. It makes sense.

Today? Not so much. Why? Because *nobody ever has enough.* Nothing in capitalist society is ever based on satiation, but on *excess,* but this is Z's point: you can never fully satisfy the demands of your libido. You repeat, again and again, forever.

We are presently seeing the results of this everywhere: fucking disaster. And much of this, I would say, deals with the failure of a religious or philosophical sense to be able to fill in the void. Continental philosophy is good at explaining the *mechanisms* of capital, but not their solutions...besides, of course, revolution. Which I do not believe in.

I prefer philosophy. And I'm wondering if Chinese philosophy doesn't look at violence in a way that is interesting. And this is already to leave out Girard's solution: in short, read the gospels. I'm not a Christian myself, but he makes a very good case for that.

But if that's not going to happen, then I think the result is going to be violence - simply the constant product of unfulfilled desires which are *by design intended to be unfulfillable.* There is never a final McNugget. There is only an infinite sequence of McNuggets, to be eaten again and again, until you die. Bleak stuff. But maybe what we need is a philosophical perspective that takes this into account, that sees things as not having beginnings or endings, and which doesn't privilege desire so much, and has a more enlightened take on the concept of violence in general...

Anyways, rattle those thoughts to your heart's content anon, that's what this thread is here for.

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>>8825798
I should have picked a sexier picture of a McNugget to make my case more clear. I was thinking about the sexy green M&M but clearly the gods are taking an interest in this thread, because it would be hard to top this:

Anyways, you get the idea.

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Here she is, anyways, for what it's worth. I would love to hear what Z has to say about this.

Anyways. I'm going to get my mind out of the gutter and think about severe Taoist grandfathers teaching kungfu, and resist the call of the flesh - or, in this case, the smooth candy coating.

Continental philosophy is fucking weird, man. It is some weird, wild shit.

>>8825798
I wonder whether it's pertinent to bring up that the ways in which we address the complexities that come from the way things work nowadays - alienation, depression, a wide range of dissociate disorders and so on. In particular my crosshairs lie on cognitive therapy courses, which I partook in for a time during a low point in my life, and have a very strong emphasis on addressing the utility and origin of emotions. There is, I think, some decent value in the minutiae of these programs, and yet as a whole I found them unfulfilling. The discussion in this thread has given me cause to consider why that might be the case.

In the courses there was often a very strong effort to emphasize that our emotions 'weren't us.' While this comes from a sincere position of wanting to help one identify the causes and effects of their emotions, I wonder if perhaps it is the opposite of what we ought to be doing. Is that separation itself a form of repressive violence? Does it, by systematizing and categorizing one's emotional responses and tendencies, by seeking to address these aspects as 'problems' to be solved, in itself continue to perpetuate systemic violence? Does the separation then itself create, for each individual, their own neverending McNugget cycle, a sort of lugubrious stepladder to intoxicate oneself with one's own problems rather than others' as we might be prone?

He is perhaps nowhere near as rigorous as others considered here, but Jiddu Krishnamurti once spoke of emotions, in particular of guilt, being YOU - not a part or an aspect, not even the self, but the entire You that is present. Once you see yourself in that light - you are your guilt, you are your happiness, you are your anger, and so on - it's then akin to holding it in your hand, a precious bud, which can then flower, wither and die, as all things ought to do.

But then there is the other possibility, and I don't like this, but it is there, that perhaps it is the violence itself that motivates us. I don't mean in the tedious, tired way which so many ardent primitivists tend to mean it, but rather, is it possible that while there are varying levels of devotion between the Shaolin monks and the cognitive therapy practitioners, is the ultimate function the same? Does violence, perhaps, originate from an inability or refusal to otherwise structure ourselves?

can I just say something here. Capitalism isn't the problem you know. Civilization isn't predicated on violence you know. The problem is the mofo (((gvnm))) that steals money through taxation and justifies it and then everyone is a moral relativist by proxy.
violence is force inflicted on a body. if it's a human body it is never justified. because humans have this called brain you know and if something doesn't work, it won't work if you cut 1 head or 500 heads. It might seem like it worked but you just cut 500 heads. No argument is won on the other person dying.
So I don't know the whole chinese philosophy but martial arts isn't the same as violence as in a robbery. what changes is consent. if a samurai fights a ninja they both consent to use violence to achieve the result which is winning the battle. (((gvnm))) asks no consent.

now capitalism: you could make the argument that capitalism is violence in the sense that you need money to survive as you can't get money without slaving yourself and that argument could be done. Still it's easier to make the argument against the government and there are no free lunches so I don't think capitalism is the problem. PLUS we don't even have a free market so blaming capitalism at this stage isn't blaming the capitalist philosophy it's just blaming a faulty system which, I agree, is predicated on violence

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I have to head out for a bit, but I'll leave a prompt here: whether it's Judge Holden, or Bane, or whoever, we have - on /lit/ or elsewhere - a kind of collective preoccupation with violence. In TDKR, there's a happier ending; Batman saves the day. In Blood Meridian, not so much; War is Holy and some very dark shit goes down in the outhouse.

Obviously we don't like this. But violence, yo. Violence and desire. Maybe it's because we worship this stuff.

Now a smart guy like RG will say that in a true masterwork, such as Blood Meridian (or, in my vastly less important opinion, the recent Batman films) you have in *great literature* an understanding of violence that goes beyond the superficial, and really digs down into the meaning of this stuff. Great authors rarely valorize violence, because they see in it it's essentially tragic dimension: even Homer does this, and in Homer the violence is legitimately awesome. And may it ever be.

Blood Meridian disturbs us because are horrified to think that somehow this *makes sense* in ways we don't really want to believe. And McCarthy doesn't make things easy for us.

Bane is all violence, in this way, but he lacks *faith* - and this is why he never climbs out of the pit. He lacks that one extra component that Batman possesses.

What if we looked at this the way the East did? What if violence was just a component of a much larger process, and desire was overrated?

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>>8825893
This is awesome stuff, so thanks first of all for contributing. I actually can't get into the details of this now (I have to go and hang some Christmas decorations!) but I will definitely come back with a response to this before long. In the meantime:

These are *exactly* the kinds of questions I want to ask: theory of affect. Are our emotions 'us?' When I am afraid, I feel as though they are; and there is nothing more frightening than violence. Even professional fighters get adrenaline rushes like this. But they're trained to deal with that in a way that regular folks like myself are not.

So:

>Does it, by systematizing and categorizing one's emotional responses and tendencies, by seeking to address these aspects as 'problems' to be solved, in itself continue to perpetuate systemic violence?

I would say that Zizek would agree. Globalized tail-chasing by and with $$$ is the late-postmodern condition.

>But then there is the other possibility, and I don't like this, but it is there, that perhaps it is the violence itself that motivates us. I don't mean in the tedious, tired way which so many ardent primitivists tend to mean it, but rather, is it possible that while there are varying levels of devotion between the Shaolin monks and the cognitive therapy practitioners, is the ultimate function the same?

Brilliant. And I would say it would make a lot of sense, would it not? Because this is what I think defines the tragic mode: restless uncertainty, and a total disruption of self, the affects being in all directions, and a total destabilization of signs and signifiers. It's the tyranny of choice: when you go into a grocery store for a bottle of spaghetti sauce, and there are fifty different kinds, whose fault is it for you not being able to choose one? Yours. Because you don't know yourself well enough, you're not like one of the satisfied people in the ads...

>Does violence, perhaps, originate from an inability or refusal to otherwise structure ourselves?

I would say it is *desire* that does this, and violence is what emerges when we get really, really fucked up about it. Which is the only logical thing that could be expected to happen from living in ultrafucked capitalist disneyland - and by the way, there's no God either. Console yourself with Cheese Whiz - if you can...

It's a nightmare. But you have raised so many good questions in that post that I just have to salute the whole thing. Thank ye sir, please bring another when you please. I certainly have a lot more to say about this myself...

>>8825935
Unfortunately I'm kind of wrung-out for now, but I'll have a bit more coffee and try to come back later if the thread's still around. Cheers, OP.

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>>8825902

I guess my point here is that to some degree I'm not too concerned *yet* about context. I want to say with the metaphysical aspects. I *will* say that the government monopoly on force and violence is germane to this conversation, because this is getting to the grain of this question: violence, in the forms we find most objectionable, does not require consent and acts transgressively. If it has the imprimatur of the law, so much the better; but I am entirely open to this question of what it is that The Law really means, if indeed the question is only one of force and application, and justice be damned. Which may indeed be the case.

Whether the system is free-market capitalist, a planned economy, whatever, the issue here is the role of violence in human civilization and interaction, and that's only to talk about it's outward political manifestations. There is at the same time an entirely inward psychological/psychoanalytic meaning to all of this as well, which is more in my wheelhouse. But you're right to bring all of this up.

In the end my basic claim is that capitalism itself is the phenomenon at work, but this is a government-independent idea. Whether it's selling goats in Afghanistan, fruit in the Congo, energy deals in New York or aircraft carriers in Russia, the process is the same: libidinal economy. And this system of transactions - *so long as it is profitable* - underwrites every form of human government imaginable.

The Big Three today - the US, Russia, and China, *all* run forms of state capitalism. All of them. And when you put those together you are now talking about the entirety of the planet earth and probably half of its gross planetary product (around $67 trillion, last I checked).

As Frank Herbert says, The Spice Must Flow. And what I think makes this so is violence - sometimes the act itself, sometimes *fear* of the act. And these are all things I'm hoping get discussed.

Shai-Hulud: it's literally like a gigantic penis rolling through the desert, and don't forget: it produces the universe's most desirable commodity. I don't think Frank Herbert was aware of this, and frankly I think if he had thought about it too much he might not have written the books at all. It's actually kind of gross to think about.

And this is why we need more stern Shaolin monks, I tell ya...

>>8825982
No worries. Like I said, I need to hang some decorations. I'll check in on this thread tomorrow maybe. Take care anon and thanks for contributing some 10/10 thoughts.

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Figured I might include one more thought here, just to get some feedback on it: it's Paul Atreides meets Slavoj Zizek.

In analysis Z will sometimes talk about 'the subject supposed to know.' For your tortured and fucked up modern subject, being 'the subject supposed to know' is this profoundly uncomfortable place to be. Because you don't know what to do with your libido. Nobody does.

Well, here's Paul: the ruler of Arrakis, the entirety of which is basically crawling with gigantic sand worms. And Paul has *visions* of the Golden Path, he's supposed to be the leader - but, of course, he fails to bring these to fruition, because what does he see in his dreams? Jihad. Only war. A war infinite and galaxy-spanning. And he *does not like this* (and not only because he hasn't played W40K).

Because the worms are a planet-sized unhinged libido with no place to go. And poor Paul is in a position where he's supposed to make sense of this. Herbert isn't entirely sure what to do with this either, I think, so he has him go blind - a sort of shout-out to Oedipus itself - and then re-emerge as a preacher who shouts down everything he used to believe in. But by that point it's too late. Nobody knows what to do with their libido. And Arrakis is where it is because it is a literal Planet Desire - not so much unlike our own.

It's not as if Herbert himself was a stranger to the Greeks either: Paul's own last name, Atreides, is a reference to the 'Sons of Atreus' in Homer: Agamemnon and Menelaus. Herbert had a sense of how all these things worked. Dune, I would say, is a sort of massive space-fantasy version of analysis, although it's as interesting as it is because Herbert was a very interesting man.

I would say Dune has more to say about the world today, for example, than Tolkien - but that's another thing. The point here is that so much of our fiction points out this kind of stuff: the problems of excessive desire. Admittedly my reading there is basically what you learn to do in first-year cinema studies, but I figured I would share it in case anyone wants to talk about that or stuff like it in the thread.

Note also Herbert's fondness for 'Zensunni' philosophy as well, as well as a martial form of knife-fighting, which is what enables the Fremen to *defeat* the imperial forces. That also seems worth mentioning.

tl;dr Eastern formless nondual philosophy has a lot of interesting answers for recursive capitalist fuckery

Can believe nobody has mentioned this: the ENTIRE western ideal of violence comes from Homer where it is glorified leading to our hero paradigmes, battle of agincourt etc.

Eastern tradition has nothing compared to this. Martial arts are simply another form of art akin to poetry, crafting, etc. The goal is perfection of the craft and the human soul as a result of the pursuit. Rather than glory.

Ps recs for any erudite books on east asian martial arts theory appreciated. Ive read most. Everyone on this thread needs BO5R at least.

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>tfw you cheat on hanging xmas decorations

>>8826127

Good post anon. I would say, however, that Three Kingdoms in many ways compares to the Iliad (people do call it the Iliad of China). For me the decisive moment is the tragedy for Zhuge Liang, where he has Sima Yi trapped in his camp, which is now on fire: and, for reasons that are truly tragic, the rain comes down.

ZGL is the hero of the second part of the story, because he has this perfectly aligned Taoist/Confucian sensibility: he's a good guy, and he *should* win and help Liu Bei unite China. But for reasons which are truly unfathomable, the Mandate of Heaven is against him. Life is just fucking unfair sometime.

But it's not like Homer, that's for sure. Homer is indeed incomparable. The Odyssey doesn't glorify violence in quite the same way as the Iliad, tho...

...I may have to return to this comparison later on, I think. There's definitely a need to think about those two texts and look into this further. Good call anon.

>Eastern tradition has nothing compared to this. Martial arts are simply another form of art akin to poetry, crafting, etc. The goal is perfection of the craft and the human soul as a result of the pursuit. Rather than glory.

This is true and really super important. The point here is that it might be possible to ask if Western civilization *over*glorifies violence, and the East is interesting because, if you are correct, violence in those traditions have a different meaning: that is, that it is a *discipline* and not necessarily a...well, whatever we think violence is. And yet, it would also be interesting to ask why it is then that martial arts traditions developed over there that are so interesting, especially in forms of unarmed combat for peasants.

Jared Diamond - not always popular - made another point about this, saying that to some degree it was also because *rice is more difficult to grow than wheat*, and for this reason you have to be very careful when you fuck with the peasantry. Lots of people can learn to grow wheat, but the rice harvest takes practice...

>Ps recs for any erudite books on east asian martial arts theory appreciated. Ive read most.

Pic related was pretty good.

>Everyone on this thread needs BO5R at least.

No diggity. We need to turn this conversation away from Zizek and back to some Asian Warrior shit. (Although all I can really talk about is analysis...sigh...)

>tfw when *such* a fucking weeb, i cannot lie

>>8826188
*jesus murphy that is a big post

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I'm not as well read as anybody else ITT but does anybody have thoughts on Han Fei or legalism? All of this confucianism is beyond me.

you sound like a complete fag.

violence is just what people do when their humanity is not given what it needs.

try checking some poetry and painting.

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>>8826193

I've got a few. Also going to post some unapologetically cozy weeb (cheeb?) shit, just to clearly signal that I am a gigantic nerd, in case that wasn't already patently obvious.

From what I understand, the Hanfeizi is an attempt to rule by Taoist practices, rather than by Confucian ones. The HFZ was attractive back when, IIRC, because thinkers such as HF (and Xunzi, who I also like) felt that the people were simply too cynical to be governed as Confucius would have wanted. It works for a little while, but then I'm pretty sure the people wind up revolting because HF's philosophy is pretty unforgiving and cruel. China has just seen it all.

He's Xi Jinping's favourite guy though (and Nick Land has also talked about him on his blog). The ghost of Han Fei is alive and well. Read on:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/kerry-brown/han-feis-china-shiver-of-authority

http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopher/

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/06/13/chinese-hobbes-xi-jinpings-favorite-philosopher/

>>8825729
>You can't run a civilization without it.
only retards want a civilization/society

>>8826237
what is the difference between taoism and confucianism

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>>8826204

>you sound like a complete fag, you should do some un-faggy shit like poetry and painting

>what's the matter, fag? don't like watercolors and the consciousness-shattering verse of Matsuo Basho? what a fucking fag

>what's up fag. still reading descartes - like a fag? haven't you read heidegger? still believe in mind-body dualism? that's for fags, fag - etc etc

I'm so glad there's a Key & Peele skit for this.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x26jv0c_key-peele-school-bully-sub-esp_fun

Anyways...I *am* a complete fag, anon. (Or is it cuck? I forget). But this is exactly what we're talking about here: humanity not being given what it needs, because it *always needs more.*

But honestly, I have to thank you for being the first anon ever who has called me a fag and then in the same breath recommended that I look into poetry and painting. I feel like this is worthy of a shout-out.

So here's to you, anon. I honestly have to just salute that post.

>>8826253

i like civilization-society
it gives me nice internets
fight me

>>8826260

What a question. In brief, I would say that Taoism is the internal and esoteric form of nondual thought that the Chinese practice, and Confucianism is a more materialistic kind of epistemology which can basically be described as the interpretation of ritual. They go, I think, hand in hand (the Tao/the Way is a term which figures in both). Check out the Great Learning - link below. It starts on page 11. It's one of my absolute favourite passages.

http://www.indiana.edu/%7Ep374/Daxue-Zhongyong.pdf

You might find this link interesting also, it's the famous - but probably apocryphal - conversation between Confucius and Laozi.

http://wwmr.org/tao.htm

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>>8826266
>always needs more

wrong. you will always need more if you are getting palliatives for your real needs. if the whole being gets what it actually needs it will be satisfied just being one with its surroundings.

and yeah, i fagged you cause you sound too politically and intellectually oriented. those aspects are not something negative, but are just parts of a larger whole. the arts will correct that one-sidedness.

>>8825698
could you elaborate on the second line? i'm not understanding it well

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>>8826402

I am mos def too politically and intellectually oriented. It's actually why I'm attracted to Eastern thought in general: it's the only cure I know for Zizekian tail-chasing. Even if I think that this is the default condition of postmodernity.

>you will always need more if you are getting palliatives for your real needs. if the whole being gets what it actually needs it will be satisfied just being one with its surroundings

I agree, of course. And in fact you've used a brilliant word - *palliatives* - which is exactly the thing. For myself I think my issue with libidinal economy is that it collapses these distinctions between wants and needs. Something like YouTube, for example, which now monetizes subscriptions, all points to how this works: it's in many ways an *attention-based economy* and this is absolutely going to compound this kind of ongoing self-obsession, which in turn feeds back into this notion of palliation.

Hegel, Lacan, Girard (and Plato, v/thymos) are all going to make this argument: desire is the desire of the other. And so we wind up with a world in which it becomes hard to know what are real needs and what aren't. One's 'whole being' - and I agree, this is indeed what has to be looked at - never gets seen, and it becomes difficult to be satisfied with one's surroundings.

Now I should make it clear that it's important to distinguish, as Z says, between one's own personal issues and those of the world, precisely b/c this is exactly what ideology means: you think there's something wrong with the world, but in reality there's only something wrong with yourself. And of course I agree.

I think for me the feeling that I have is that I imagine a *completed* psychoanalytic process to lead one, in the end, to a kind of semi-Taoist place: you are able to join in with the cosmic dance without feeling weird about it. To *relax*, in other words, without being sleepy. Or, as the Chinese say, wu-wei: actionless action, sage-being.

4chan has its own way of saying this: don't get trigged. Way back when I used to be a Stoic, but this was before I discovered Nietzsche. Now, I'm basically trying to find a way past Nietzsche that I feel good about - but this has involved going through, more or less, everyone that has followed from him in the 20C.

And now I think the Great Learning is the tits. Maybe it's because I think the West is in love with sex, death, wealth, and power, and I'm tired of living in the underworld. When I imagine what it would look like to come out the other side, I have a hard time envisioning something other than China and cool mists on the hills.

>>8826433
Be a little more specific? I'm not sure which one you mean. The part about Freud?

>>8826470
man... ease up, knowing how to give a description of the chemical and molecular composition of water wont quench your thirst. and you actually dont need anything like it to drink and be satisfied.

lemme share a nice quote of a chinese painter describing painting and its whole process, including all its aspects in interrelation:

>Let one who wishes to portray these masterpieces of creation first be captivated by their charm ; then let him study them with great diligence ; let him wander among them ; let him satiate his eyes with them ; let him arrange these impressions clearly in his mind. Then with eyes unconscious of silk and hands unconscious of brush and ink, he will paint this marvelous scene with utter freedom and courage and make it his own.

our minds paint reality into our being. its ink and brush are intellect and imagination, its canvas experience.

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>>8825687
Try Maps of Meaning by JordanPeterson.

He basically said that after the fall of Christianity (because it could not update iself due to the power structures of governments/etc), western people gravitated moe towards nihilistic attitudes.

Nietzsche talked aboutthis in Beyond God and Evil, where one must find their own meaning. However, you do not disregard entirely of the previous structures.

Christianity is like literature, where it is a simulation of stories that one can enter into for clearer solutions on how to handle problems. The problem with most religious people in the west that are prtrayed inthe media are eitr to leftor too right about their views

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>>8826433

Another long post...

I'm pretty sure the one about Freud is the one you're asking about. What HF points out is that in Confucian thought there is a concern with people carrying out their *duties,* but the whole concept of existential stuff is not intended to conflict *tragically,* as in Freud (or for the Neetch). I'll let HF explain.

>The notion of choice as a central feature of man's existence is only one element in a closely related complex of notions, and the absence of such a concept of choice reflects the absence of the rest of this complex. Among the chief notions closely linked to choice are moral responsibility, guilt, deserved (retributive) punishment and repentance.

>The intense concern of Confucius that a person should carry out his duties and act according to what is right reflects one aspect of our notion of responsibility. But if this were all that was characteristic of our notion of responsibility, it would be a redundancy - another way of saying that one should carry out one's duties and act rightly. What gives distinct content to the idea of responsibility is derived from the root 'response.' Herein lies the peculiarly personal commitment - I answer for this deed; it is mine - and this in turn links the notion of (moral) responsibility to those of guilt, deserve punishment and repentance. It is the one who must respond whose response may involve guilt, acceptance of punishment, repentance, restitution or merit, pride, reward.

>The view that never appears in Confucius, the view that is peculiar to the Graeco-Hebraic-Christian tradition and for the most part profoundly contrasting with utilitarianism, is that punishment is justified not simply by its consequences but because it is *deserved* by virtue of what went before. Punishment is an appropriate moral response to prior guilty wrongdoing by a morally responsible agent. Repentance, in turn, is not simply a device which is appropriate or not depending on its psychological consequences; it is repentance for the past deed...

>Were punishment, guilt, and repentance to be unrelated to prior moral wrong for which the person was responsible, we would have social engineering rather than morality - and this was precisely why Confucius took the use of 'punishments' as a main target and saw his own positive teaching as in direct contrast.

Anyways, this is the kind of stuff I'm into. You hear talk of West/East blame/shame culture, and I think it's born out in interesting ways. Social engineering rather than morality will make you think, for sure...

I have to say, I really like Confucius. Falling in love with large-scale social engineering for a country of 1.4 billion is going to be a tricky proposition, but Confucius really comes at things from a different perspective than the Neetch - and virtually everyone else since him - does.

Book here (pp. 24-27):

http://faculty.smcm.edu/jwschroeder/Asian_Religions_2015/textdownloads_files/Confucius%20chp1%262.pdf

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>>8826509
>man... ease up, knowing how to give a description of the chemical and molecular composition of water wont quench your thirst
he did it the mad man

delete this board

>>8825662
>problem

no way, that's the reasoning of people who hate doctors because they're the ones who identify that someone they love is sick.

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>>8826509

>man... ease up, knowing how to give a description of the chemical and molecular composition of water wont quench your thirst. and you actually dont need anything like it to drink and be satisfied.

I know. All true. I don't mean to sound hysterical. Honestly this is just the way I talk and think and write. I don't mean to bludgeon anyone, and I hope that's not the effect.

That's a beautiful quote, also. My thanks for sharing. I fucking love Chinese culture, I really do. I love the...humanism, I guess. I can't quite explain it, but it seems they don't fucking hate themselves as much as we do. Or maybe it's just me. And I know that if I go there it will be as fucked up as any other place. I get all that.

Anyways, that's a really wonderful passage, anon.

>>8826531

Peterson is a hero. Huge fan. Haven't read MoM yet but I've got right here next to me. Have literally just paused the Rogan interview to write this. No lie.

Nihilism is indeed the thing to be overcome. And I know it when I *see* it - for instance, in that quote that anon above suggested. Or when I read Sheng-Ji Yang quotes in Alpha Centauri. But I shouldn't be frivolous.

I really am starting to like religion, too. Was never a Christian before. Still not. I think Confucius is easier for me to follow than Christianity, if only because I'm still too shallow to understand that Christianity isn't *all* about guilt and suffering...

Morality is a *motherfucker,* yo. It really is. Maybe just I think Confucius has a better solution for it than Kafka. Something about the Tao really makes sense for me. I dig it muchly.

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>>8826570
Yeah, being religious is toally fine. It's just sad that so many people take it so literally.

I am not to familiar, but the hypothesis is that because we lost or moral foudations after the rejection of Christianity, did the same happen in the east? For example, what allowed for Maoist China, Japanese imperialism, and Pol Pot, to you?

>>8825554
>I think the Chinese and the Japanese get it. I really do. Could be because I'm psychoanalysis/continental man and I think everything is about capitalism and desire and violence and ideology.
could be because you're psychoanalysis/continental man and you fetishize obscurity

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Long post...

Semi-serious question: what's better? Existential torment, or social engineering/the greater good? Shame or blame?

We've already seen the Neetch tee off on Plato and Kant. Okay. We all buy his argument, mostly. But Nietzsche also talks about *good Europeans.* Surely he doesn't mean postmodern anarchy. Personally I find that line of thinking more interesting than ubermensch stuff because the ubermensch is going to be more interesting when they're the product of a rich and thriving civilization, no? And isn't that the point?

Just a random thought, w/evs.

>>8826641

Awesome question. I mean, one of the things that has to be born in mind here at least in recent years is that for the CCP the revolution has already *happened.* It succeeded. They did it and they think it's great (and if they don't, they might wind up in jail). And now just compare that to Western Marxism, where the revolution is always going to happen, later on, when it does, etc., etc. I don't mean Stalinism or Cuba, I mean the idealized Real One that Badiou, Zizek et al want.

>the hypothesis is that because we lost or moral foudations after the rejection of Christianity, did the same happen in the east?

I mean this is a brilliant question to ask: *is* there anything like an analogy for the death of God in China? I would say there isn't, and this is what makes their worldview so different from our own. But bear in mind also that Confucianism is kind of mysterious precisely because it is so hard to say whether or not it *is* or *is not* a religion in the Western sense of things.

I think you can assess the general perspective on Confucius himself, which - I am not an expert - I think is generally trending upwards again now. There are times when he is probably not popular. And of course generalizing doesn't get us too far.

But in the main I would say that this question of a loss of moral foundations is indeed a question to ask. Remember that a large part of the Chinese philosophical canon is composed of Confucius and his interpreters: Mencius, Xunzi, Mozi, and Hanfei. They're all sort of carrying on his work and thought, but they don't all agree. Mo Zi thinks Confucianism is inherently unstable, and he takes a utilitarian view; Han Fei thinks Confucianism is simply unworkable, and the people need something stronger; Xunzi kind of agrees with Confucius, but takes the perspective that people are essentially crappy and evil rather than good.

There is really nothing like a decisive break with Confucian tradition, afaik; but even in the West nothing like this happened either. Even today, when Christianity is perhaps as unpopular as it ever has been (except, interestingly, on /lit/), we still feel guilt. In another thread I was actually saying that this is what I think SJW-itis is: repressed existential rage that is essentially theological in nature but expressed politically.

posting randomly from my asia folder

>>8826656
>could be because you're psychoanalysis/continental man and you fetishize obscurity

It's true. I *do* fetishize obscurity. It's obscure! I want to know what's happening there!

But after many a long year of fetishizing it it doesn't seem all that obscure to me anymore. It makes a lot of sense.

Don't get me wrong. I need more STEM in my diet like I need broccoli and exercise. The fact is continental stuff isn't really as obscure as it looks. It just looks that way on the surface.

Or I'm completely stupid and I've got it all totally ass-backwards. Could be that too. But I don't think the guys I fetishize do. Warrants mentioning.

>>8826687

And it's not like *all* guilt we feel is theological in nature. But in terms of guilt, God, suffering and so on, there is no extant body of literature in the West that even comes close to approaching the significance of the Gospels. And even Nietzsche's work is, I think, a continuation of a very long exegesis of this, however much he tried to buck the system (and may yet succeed in doing so).

>>8826695
the dichotomy isn't stem or deliberately obscure esoterica; if it doesn't seem obscure to you anymore, you should be able to explain it
if explanation doesn't seem to suffice, it's because you don't understand it -- you've just come to be okay with sitting in the dark

this is fine, just make sure to take it for what it is, and more importantly, what it isn't: "getting it"

>>8825662
The idea of life being about happiness goes back to Aristotle, bub. Just the definition of happiness changed

>>8825623

You ask a question in general form, see >>8825566

Be more specific. I can't follow your retarded Asian logic.

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>>8826746

I am kind of okay with sitting in the dark, if only because any concept of what I think it used to mean to be happy now is completely shot to hell because I am now so utterly suspicious of my own moods all the time (and a sexy and patrician look this is not). But it comes with the territory. And what I would like to do is get over this. I think perhaps the body is the thing...

This is why I find the brain-off/Just Do The Right Thing Fucker aspects of Eastern philosophy attractive. Thought is overrated, action is much better, and actionless action best of all. In short, Avoid Paralysis is what it comes down to.

Nietzsche actually makes a similar case about Socrates somewhere: that Socrates would stand still and just stare up at things and think. Nietzsche thought this was a totally un-Greek thing to do.

but

what does it mean,
"getting it"
how do i into this

In the long run I think I can feel myself just slowly becoming a kind of a monk, tbqh. 9 times out of 10 doing nothing is usually the right answer, and I usually regret the things I did do/say more than the things that I didn't. In the main silence and just calm purposeful activity, even if it's not heroic or remarkable (or, god help you, 'creative'). So basically Heidegger without the hang-up on authenticity. Just trying to find that busted end of your hammer and screw it back on again. And, you know, without being a Nazi.

>tfw this triggers the Heideggerian
>tfw there are no Heideggerians here to trigger
>tfw

>>8825727
There are several conversations in this book about the main character's big white cock. Definitely a self-insert character.

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>>8826790

Fair enough. I'm not known for my specificity. And seek ye in vain for logic here. I'm a psychoanalysis/contintental guy, so talking about being sexually aroused by the green M&M or a Chicken McNugget is basically what I do.


Anyways...

My original aim was to talk about violence. Desire is a thing in psychoanalysis, and violence is usually what you get when something goes wrong. Now I think that violence in Eastern societies is maybe understood differently, and that the Tao in particular maybe has something interesting to do with this. I don't really have a specific question in mind, just a lot of scattered ideas. Hence the text-walls. Once the thread devolves into total shitposting I'll stop.

Got some pretty awesome Engrlsh fashion tho.

>>8826830
resorting to inscrutable aphorisms that don't say anything doesn't seem like the best way to advance the thesis that there are many things we can't say

getting it would be something like being careful, minding the limits of philosophy, working within them, because they're ample, and trying to delineate them a la Bernard Williams, if you have the stuff

if you don't have the stuff, that's okay, read things because you like them, do things because you think they're good things to do, but don't entertain the thought that have some knowledge or widsom because you know that ultimate knowledge or wisdom is unattainable and maybe not useful -- there's plenty of space between you and Isaiah Berlin or whatever (ie, getting it), and reading things that are inscrutable isn't gong to help you traverse it

>>8826883
*the thought that you have

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>>8826883

Is this a debate? I feel like this is becoming a debate. Oh god please not debate. Just take my money. Take everything.

anyways

Wu-Wei isn't an aphorism, tho, if that's what you're getting at. It's more like the Holy Grail of Taoist thought, the sagely mode. It's really not inscrutable, or deliberately opaque (at least, I've never found it that way). What it involves is perhaps a kind of a priori suspicion about language and representation that I've always found very much in accord with my own feelings. Like pic related. I find this stuff completely agreeable to me.

Bernard Williams is indeed a boss, but I can't say I enjoy his books. I like listening to him speak, but the books...not so much. Not a knock on him, of course. He's fucking brilliant. Big Nietzsche fan too, which I also like.

So minding the limits has also never been my strong suit. But even my beloved Great Learning says that one ought to come to rest at the limit of the good. And it is why I do like metaphysics, to some degree; because really super-duper metaphysicians actually describe things that I was largely convinced could only be intuited with one's stomach.

>because i'm a filthy casual

Still tho this is very thoughtful and considerate advice, so thank you, anon, for sharing.

Could there be a phenomenology of violence already embedded within the theoretical landscape of the mind? A kind of imperialism of ontology as was charged against Heidegger? Or a Deleuzian thoughscape as tresspass and violence? Yeah, violence is perhaps pervasive across every aspect of philosophy. And even more so along the continental tradition. Identity or the social attribution of this camp necessarily provokes violence in the problems it attempts to fix. To capture violence we must differentiate the models it displays across the conceptual framework of philosophical thought without lapsing into ideology.

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>>8826995

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>>8825623
How do we define violence?

Let's go to the more obvious: damage. First, damage of the body. It's not hard to give examples of "damage" as we usually think of it that aren't violent. Medicine is the most obvious. Things like hair and nail cutting, piercing or tattooing also aren't necessarily violent. Now these things can be less or more painful, but even if we were to measure violence based on pain there are also conflicting examples: birth and growth are also typically painful. Pain can also be used sexually.

If we go on to damage of the mind or psyche it becomes even more complicated. Emotional abuse can be considered violence, but then what is and isn't abuse? Is an insult violent to someone that isn't bothered by it?

Let me give another example. Is castration violent? The normal answer is to say yes. However, does castration affect the individual in the present moment? Mostly it doesn't; regardless of the hormonal changes he may suffer, the main object of castration is to render a man incapable of bearing children. Is that violent to the man as an individual? No. Is it violent to the man as a social person? Perhaps. Is it violent to the man that aims to have children? Very. Is it violent to the man that, to give an example from Chinese history, aims to further himself in society from a bad standing and might even acquiere a family name from it? On the contrary. Is it violent to a man who finds his possible responsibility as a father burdersome? No.

So violence as we have it isn't a matter of damage. If that were the case then natural catastrophes of themselves would be considered violent, but they are only so when they affect living beings and cull them before time. Appropriation might be violent even if the object isn't important to someone's wellbeing. Violence is to begin with a matter of prospect, interest, planning, hope and the future. Killing a baby for no reason is the ultimate act of violence because it's a being of pure potentiality*--an ironic position for a newborn, it actually carries all the expectations in the world. It's not that violence impedes what's desired--it is the impeding itself.

So the "violence" of a monk, a sportsman or a martial artist isn't really violence because they are artistic endeavours: they aim to shape their physical body in a certain way and so it can do certain tasks. It is a creative endeavour in the sense that it put a thing together, despite being often destructive--this sense of fitting and joining is the primigenal meaning of Latin "ars" (art, craft, power) as related to "arma" (weapon, equipment). So they aren't violent because they aim to use destruction in a way which doesn't contradict a desire.

* Vulnerability might also be factored-in in this example; however vulnerability exists only as a derivate of violence, as a likelihood of violence.

>>8825554

You do know that the vast majority of Chinese never read a single philosophy book?

They are raised on counter strike, math homework, porn, korean dramas, etc

Their success is due to their large population willing to work for very little. They are a human beehive.

source: lived there for years, and my wife is Chinese

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>>8825798
Why do you want to get to the last treat? I think the whole problem is based on not pondering that. Why get rid of desire?

The whole revolution narrative is predicated on this. We're going to kill all the "parasites" and then we're going to do all those things we supposedly want or need. It just puts another level on the philosophy of "making it". We all wanna make "it" for some reason. We presuppose that there must be this great orgasm in our lives or otherwise they are wasted, that we can measure our lives correctly to do this and if we don't then there's trouble.

But isn't precisely the Great Deed the same as dying? After it's done, and let us suppose there won't be more problems after that, what's there to do? Brag about it? You've gotten rid of your hunger, now what? Sickness, ignorance, confìct, and so on? Then what? And then? See all you can think of is getting rid of things. You get more things to get rid of things and then you get rid of things to make space for more things. This isn't something bad necessarily, but it's simply what you're doing.

You like being troubled. We all do.

https://youtu.be/mAsso6R2YbE

>>8826920
I find "inaction" to be kind of a mistranslation of wúwéi. I find it to be closer in meaning to deedlessness. It isn't talking about action in the physical sense (although it overlaps), but about the need for mental and discursive reiteration.

By saying action is better than thought you're setting up a dichotomy between them. This isn't really the point. The point is that when your job is done correctly it doesn't create more problems. This is why austerity is in some sense venerated--it isn't that being poor is cool and you're a badass because you can ignore you're hungry, it's that if fame exists at all it means there's a lack of something, mental or not. Whenever you say "this man is great" you follow with "the world would be a better place with more like him"--then he's not all that great, is he? Your praise carries an admitance of his insufficiency. Of course the same applies to yourself, and the same thing applies to saying you or others are lacking. That's why there's a reiteration. Whether this is a bad habit or there's an actual need is another thing.

http://sacred-texts.com/tao/ycgp/ycgp02.htm

>>8826920
As for the unspeakable: it's not meant in the sense of eternally being unspeakable. To think like that would imply some sort of Unchangeable Way or Name. It would bring something to relie on which isn't the point.

The first thing to note is that something always escapes analysis. We're partial creatures by design and as the Book goes "we prophesy in part ".

The second thing is that the solutions of those great metaphysicians come with their problems. The problem implies the solution. Don't beat yourself over it if you don't know something because that's just letting the problems seize your life. If you get tired of the philosophical McNuggets then do something else. Otherwise carry on.

Are you the weirdo Land anon I was trying to get some sense out of last night?

>>8825554
>get it

get what? anyone saying that doesnt get shit.

>>8827369
agreed

live in aus, infested with diaspora, go into city center pub to watch ufc, heaps of chinese shops selling aus souvenirs on same street, pub is super loud cause of fight, go outside and see chinese shop owners all on street wondering wtf is going on

point of story = chinese live for commerce and have no interest in anything else

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Girard is overrated.

>>8827369
>>8828008
Who gives a damn about the modern plebs, the thread is about old philosophy.

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Guess what, you weebs?
Western philsophy is superior.
That's right. You heard it. Western philosophy reaches conclusions based on logic, not new age tier intuition.
Meditation makes me laugh. I'm laughing right now. Sitting still? How about using the intellectual faculties nature bestowed upon you. Oh wait, you don't have any.

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>>8828046
>superior

sure you can have that. but what matters is its usefulness as part of a larger whole, its integration as part of a larger system that grounds a way of life in harmony with the universe.

western philosophy is like having a bike with state of the art technology but with no wheels.
eastern philosophy is a normal bike.
who manages to ride?

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>>8828046
>Western philosophy reaches conclusions

>>8828062
tfw this anon thinks he made a strong argument

>>8828099
>argument

>implying and argument was attempted

On a personal level I've always struggled with East vs West. I've spent years studying the West much more than the East, but when I read the Eastern philosophies, it comforts and interests me more at times on a personal level. It's probably because I'm an anxious person, and I like the focus on simplicity and enjoying the small things.

>>8828046
Pasta?

>>8827489
>Why get rid of desire?
because it is not controllable and trying to fulfill a desire does not even make you happy, since the satisfaction you get never last and the desire itself comes back. Relying on desire to live is the most retarded decision you can take.

>>8828205
>remove desire because it is undesirable

>>8825554
eastern philosophy has way more practical value than western philosophy. but that's mainly because all of western philosophy is not really philosophy, it's more like religious text in light of materialism.

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sutrabump

I'm OP and I just wanted to express my gratitude to the following anon(s)

>>8827281

and

>>8827489

for some absolutely weapons-grade stuff. I will return later tonight and respond to this in greater detail. But this is absolutely fucking terrific so cheers guys until then.

>>8828011

How dare you. Nobody talks shit about my boy RG. Nobody!

>tfw jk when i actually haven't read clastres yet, plz teach me senpai this could be important & thanks for bringing it up. explain further

>>8827909

Come on. Be charitable. I know there's nothing to "get", it's a figure of speech. More specifically: they understand full well a potentially interesting response to a recursive pattern of trying to bust out of postmodern deadlocks that only serve to raise the invisible walls ever-higher. There's obv no "it" to "get" but it's tempting to think there is.

>>8828046

That's a spicy meata-ball. Served with pasta. Yum yum.

>>8828287

>>8828205

Yessir. And unconscious desires go first. But we assume - God is Dead! We should enjoy ourselves/we should reform the state/we should kill ourselves/we should change our genders/we should X/etc - that all is lost. But you know all this already. Just saying I agree.

>>8828287

I agree, and this is exactly Girard's point. Everything is done in the shadow of literary criticism, but for RG the Gospels are the text that have to be looked at that nobody wants to look at because they're hard to "deconstruct."

Okay lads that's all for now. Back later-ish with more textwall. Cheers & thanks again to all.

>>8828345
>so much agreeing. why so much agreeing, anon? why u no remove dick from mouth?

A very interesting person once said that discoveries in philosophy are not made by proving anyone wrong, they're made by proving everyone *right.*

It's why I don't go for debate or ad hominem or crispy meme-kungfu. I hate debate because you get two+ people trying to overhear themselves being right rather than a collective investigation of a massively larger and more interesting process.

I loathe deconstruction and postmodernity for this reason, and I am becoming a relentless monist also, which is why I like the Chinese so much. I think in a certain sense that there is only One Big Thing going on and that humans are often not as original as they think they are. Only *some* humans are, but we can't all be the Neetch - or the philosopher of your choice.

Felt that warranted mentioning. Anyways carry on lads.

>>8827503

Also maybe. In the Moldbug thread? Could have been me.

is musashi a good book? Not really interested in eastern philosophy

>>8828440

Yes. It's totally great.

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Who /Lao Yang/ here?

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Thoughts on Lin Yutang? Worth Checking?

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>>8829038

Oh my fuck yes. This guy? I'd say he's germane to the conversation. I have a copy of this that I've been meaning to get around to, thanks for reminding me, anon.

'Leaving things undone' - if that isn't the endgame of psychoanalysis in a nutshell I'll eat my straw hat.

>>8828440
Musashi wasn't even prominent in the era he lived in. He rose to prominence after the Imperial Government used him for propaganda. Here is a really interesting article that mentions him, mainly talking about Bushido though :

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/

>>8826532
This stuff is really fascinating. I can totally see how Li developped as a response to the Laozi and some of the problems in it, namely its pretty asocial nature. So basically Confucius developped a type of "social Taoism" based around a formalism of manners. Wherein Laozi first concentrates on nature and then in human society as contained in it, Confucius lessens the scope and focuses on what would make relations between people harmonious. So when one acts in accordance to Li one doesn't act as an individual nor as an avatar of society (which are the two options present in Western thought) but rather as an indistinct and organic whole, not unlike how the Taoist sage acts frictionlessly in accordance to nature; the monarch's simple act of being positioned correctly is like this because it isn't a matter of cause-and-effect but instead a single movement with the rest of society--it's a "magical" action because it isn't affective, it's based on one thing and the other being part of the same thing beyond the surface, so changing X is changing Y because X=Y.

I can also see how this would bring about its own problems which are adressed by Zhuangzi and Yangzi. The focus on propriety ends up being used as yet another way in which people want to put themselves above others.

But to compare it to Western ideas: this conception of morality completely brings down Nietzsche's ressentiment narrative. Punishment isn't used as a way of "evening out" the play field anymore, it's not based on debt but instead on ignorance--this might be why Lacan says psychoanalysis doesn't work in Japan: without the concept an "original sin" that separates man from God/Nature/Mother then a libidinal desire to return to this "uncoscious" state has no ground.

This raises the question of where did we get our conception that men are born or should be equal? Christianity, the Platonic Form, an extrapolation of Athenian citizenship or man as political animal? Why do we concider that men *should* be completely equal to the law aside from their crimes?

It's also interesting to note that both original great poles of social theory in the West, Hobbes and Rousseau, as well as others like Marx and in more recent times Jordan Peterson, *all* consider that society in humans derives out of fallability or limitation. Human are lacking in some way therefore they bad together. But is this really the case? If we ponder on the first division of labor in humans, the fact that pregnancy is a great spenditure for women, even more so than in other species, one could take this as proof; but really this is the opposite: this kind of deficiency could *not* have arised without a society to support it. It seems to me that for Confucius social relation wasn't a patch but was instead a purely positive aspect of existence--that, like in Xunzi, it was a type of illusion or hypocrisy, a maya or magic.

>Eastern/Asian philosophy general
>90% of posts are discussing religion
Every time.

>>8830173

that's the point my man. god is fucking us up and we're packing up ship for the south china seas

asking whether or not confucianism is a religion is part of the fun, but the real thing to ask is if this doesn't give us an interesting new perspective on the old DoG that is making us lose our minds for capitalism

join the fun

>>8830173
What's your point? What do you propose?

>>8830173

At least for myself, *religion* - how it is understood, how it is not understood - is absolutely the central fucking question.

>>8830099

And *this* glorious motherfucker gets exactly what is going on here. The problem is how it is that we understand guilt, morality, religion, all of this stuff.

For myself I would say that most of civilization is now running around like headless fucking chickens trying to interpret Nietzsche, or the legion of philosophers who came after him. Personally I think the answer lies in the East - not because they're just natural born sages, but because, as that anon has pointed out (and I plan also to post more of Fingarette's essay in this thread in a bit) there are at least *two* different ways of thinking about guilt, ressentiment, and all the rest. And desire.

It warrants mentioning: the Chinese love capitalism too. No doubt. But there are things that Fingarette will say about Confucian epistemology that at least for me flip everything on its head, and it comes down to these notions of knowledge, choice, and decision-making.

You can read about this in books like The Geography of Thought: Westerners and Easterners think differently. They're all about the family; I think we are peculiarly hung up on stuff that Freud, Lacan, Nietzsche, and others identified: the father, the individual, the transgression, the law, guilt, morality, punishment, and Old Testament stuff.

But none of that *happened* in China. Not in the same way. For them, as HF will explain, decision-making has much more to do with the *discrimination of possibilities*, rather than the singular, fateful, representative *Choice* - and this to me changes everything.

Difference, relativity, all of this - it's tragic and fateful in the West, but from a Taoist perspective negativity comes *first.* If there never was a God, then there's no need to agonize over a God being dead.

I think China has a lot of answers to the West's existential problems, just as much as I think Western values - innovation, the rage for differentiation, and so on - are probably unimaginable within a strictly Confucian system. And that is why I think both sides need each other in order to get each out of the conceptual logjams their cultures subsequently produce.

Violence is what happens, I would claim, when things go wrong, when individuals are set at cross-purposes by society (or by the gods, as so often happens in Greek tragedy). But the Chinese don't *do* tragedy, and if Nietzsche concludes - as I think he is correct to do (and bearing in mind that I think Rene Girard is the guy to read on this subject) - that the tragic mode of existence is what we are about, then barring a return to the Gospels Confucian/Taoist sensibility is twelve million times more attractive to me than ever-increasingly opaque postmodern tail-chasing.

I have more to say about this stuff, but happily there are one or two stone-cold brilliant anons in this thread who have said most.

>>8830193
I often find myself believing that no serious discussion or study of Asian philosophy can take place unless academia and authors stamp out the belief that Buddhism, Daoism or Confucianism aren't religions, and in particular with the last two that they can be separated from Chinese folk religion.

>>8830173

Consider this: we discriminate, for lots of reasons, between philosophy and religion. Maybe we need to do this. Maybe we need to go back and start looking at where they overlap.

We have secular religions. We have religion religions. Everything can be a religion. From a certain perspective *nothing* can be called a religion. And so on.

This is what Rene Girard taught me: we are fucking *horrified* of religion now. Does that mean it's because we are too aware of it? Not aware enough? Afraid to admit that we still haven't found a reasonable alternative? Or that we should all commit ourselves to the next STEM program and just drop everything?

Well, I don't fucking know, and it's ruining my life, because I want to know. And I think Eastern philosophy is super-de-duper interesting because it resists being *separated* into two components: a philosophical aspect and a theological aspect. In the Tao, and in Confucius, the whole point is *not* to take things apart, but to *keep them together* - and that is everything. To be coherent. And to be flexible.

Now I am all on board with that. My own life sucks and I hate living on this fucking planet most of the time, because *all* I see, everywhere, anywhere, is goddamn capitalism. Ask Zizek: everywhere you go, it's the compulsion to Enjoy.

Well what the fuck? What if you can't enjoy? What if you want some *space* from your neverending desires?

I'm not so self-disciplined that I can just *will* this to happen. I'm not interested anymore in creating new values, Nietzsche style. The world already has too many fucking values and I can't discriminate between them anymore. I'm mediocre anyways, a complete and total cuck. And I really don't care.

What I would like is not to contribute to a total shitshow that already has too many desires. It's like an Elvis Impersonator festival out there with people doing impressions of Nietzsche. I think it's ridiculous. And it's making religion look very attractive. Especially gentle nondual stuff like the Tao, which doesn't need to go on crusade or put hijabs on the women or protest abortion clinics or whatever the fuck. I think it's a good look.

Not one of my better rants, but w/evs.

>>8830332
>Maybe we need to go back and start looking at where they overlap.
I legitimately can't tell if this is sarcasm or just plain old ignorance.

>>8830302

Yes. Agreed. And I would probably say that Confucianism *is* a religion, but that this comes with the qualifier, that we understand that our definition of what constitutes a religion is going to be Western.

I am anti-postmodern, by and large, and I am anti-deconstructionist also. But in this case I think it makes sense only so that we actually are able to look at the phenomenon of what makes Eastern religion/philosophy unique and distinctive so that we are able to get the message that I think it is sending.

>>8825554
you would be interested in sun and steel by yukio mishima i think.
http://wildnessliesinwait.tumblr.com/post/56143770722/yukio-mishima-sun-and-steel

>>8830338

Where religion and philosophy overlap? It might be ignorance, but it's not sarcasm. But it would help me enormously if you were more explicit in your criticism.

Full disclosure: I'm a filthy casual. Not a scholar, not an academic, nothing. I am a primitive fuckwit with hang-ups about religion and my own unhinged libido. I have no professional qualifications or anything, and I have no problem at all being made to look like a gigantic idiot. It's how I learn things.

So go for it, is what I'm saying. Speak your mind. I can't possibly be made to look any more ridiculous than I have already made myself look. I'm here to learn things. Teach me something.

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>>8830358
Philosophy grew out of religion and stayed tied to its hip until around the early 20st century.

>>8830406

Sure. But then *psychoanalysis* came along. And capitalism. And lots of other stuff.

In Robinson's history of psychology, the first 350 pages (of something like 400) are all the history of philosophy. Then we get Nietzsche, Freud, and everything else.

I'm not saying we should go back to offering cattle bones to Zeus. I'm saying that the world we live in today - the world of capital and globalization - is one that runs on desire. And that within that society there is nothing whatsoever that places checks on those desires, because the more humans desire, the more the system pumps and works. As Frank Herbert says, The Spice Must Flow. And I think that's a similar, but different, to exactly what Zizek will say about the compulsion to Enjoy.

I should say this: I am not a Marxist. I think the world is doing just fine, and my own opinions on it are 100% meaningless. I get that. Completely. I am not trying to change anything, revolutionize the state, Spread the Word, nothing. All I want is to think about desire and ask what it means - for instance, if there aren't ways of thinking about human psychology that don't ultimately depend or derive from a tragic mode of existence.

It's why I talk about Girard, because he draws the conclusion: violence. Taken to its extremes, unbridled desire leads to war, because there is nothing in our thought that prevents the escalation to extremes in this way. The logic of the duel - the need to have the last word, the final say, the ultimate weapon, whatever - runs on this platform. And what you wind up with is a freight-train of militarism, consumption, alchemical casino finance that snowballs until it explodes.

Now I think also that in the main the wealthy are insulated from this. And also that people by surrendering to their desires have no right to complain when shit gets out of hand. Libidinal economy is not there by accident: everybody contributes to it.

Me? I'd like to reduce my libidinal carbon footprint. Even if it's only to help somebody else fulfil theirs, so that I stop thinking about myself all the time like a selfish jackass talking about the paradoxes of capitalism on an iPhone with a Starbucks in my hand like a cunt. Maybe religion will help with that. That's what I'm saying.

>>8830457
*and i know capitalism existed before the 20C, obv, etc, etc

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https://youtu.be/kvvUiXc6m7U
https://youtu.be/L5XeDQ6sb2g
https://youtu.be/dCKZQphDyLY
https://youtu.be/6H0BfNAp8rA
https://youtu.be/QyUfJ4_8hZ8

Inb4
>anime

These are a couple short essays about anime and how Japanese culture is reflected on it. The first three are a series that looks at Apocalypse as a theme dealing with social change and how this interpretation has changed as the social landscape has developped in Japan due to economic and political changes. The fourth is a short interview with an assistant professor from the University of Pennsylvania on religious practice and belief on Japan. The last one compares two deconstuctions of the superhero (Watch Men and One Punch Man) genre and how each sees the role of a superhero in light of different conceptions of society.

>>8830289
Does Fingarette's book happen to be available online in complete form? I'm very interested in reading what else he has to say.

>>8830789

I'm a total weeb and I am absolutely going to watch these.

Sadly, I can't the full book anywhere, and I'm not able to spring for the full copy on Amazon right now. Nor it is on libgen, which has 12m other things and not *this*, of all books. Le deep sigh. But honestly there's so much in those two chapters that are available that I'm kind of okay with this. Probably. I tell myself this.

It's just the stuff about epistemology that slays me, 'the way without a crossroads.' It's almost as if they don't think about the concept of the future the way we do - either via Hegel or Nietzsche/eternal recurrence. Or via Kant. And for me, as I've said, it's a total game-changer. In Freud (or in Kafka) there is always this obsession with the law, with the transgression; but for Confucius, of course, the Way is the *default* position. There is no need for prohibition, no deifying of Prometheus, none of this. It's eminently *sensible,* although patently unheroic.

And then, of course, there is everything about *ritual* - which, if you think about it, has a lot in common with Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, except that unlike with Neetch this is not a private existential phenomena to be walked alone...

Oy.

I've read Nietzsche pretty deeply and I do think that he really is 6000 miles about sea level compared to everyone else. But beyond a certain horizon I feel that all the authenticity or art in the world isn't a substitute for a kind of steady sense of inner progression. Very personal stuff and probably not ultra-sexy and nihilistic in the way that perhaps /lit/ likes (although this may just be uncharitable.) At some point you kind of want to just leave things be more than to go back to the well again in search of more continental fun. At least that's where I am for now.

And I know there's no need to romanticize the Japanese or Chinese either. Nobody's perfect; the Last Man can be anywhere. But once you get to Nick Land et al life just looks so fucking horrible that the sound of traditional music or a reed flute or whatever sounds really, really, really fucking good.

Anyways...

Thanks kindly for the links. Make sure to save yourself a copy of that HF book from the link in case that guy takes it down. Although it's been there for a while.

I would also recommend if you like Japanese culture Inoue's book Evanescence and Form (which *is* available on libgen). Bretty good stuff. Mono no aware - the pathos of things - man. It is most definitely A Thing.

Maybe that's what it comes down to, in the end: sympathy for the world, attention to the evanescence of the *world*, rather than ourselves. Sounds like new age horseshit, and maybe it is. But that's the nice thing about not giving a fuck anymore.

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>>8830850
What fascinates me about Japanese media, and is likely related to how East Asia is capable of adapting to capitalism without serious cultural loss as Žižek notices, is this sort of pedestrian approach to culture they have. There seems to be no hard distinction between high and low brow. Like in our culture this kind of stuff is pretty clear. All the supposed social advancements on great art have been done with a contrarian attitude, so you end up getting ugly things for the sake of not being like the things that are praised. Just look at the pop music industry, it's abyssmal. It's only on the fringes that you get stuff that really dares to mix things up: it's unimaginable to think a Madonna would think of referencing high culture, but you have things like Death Grips starting their first EP with a Biblical rendition of psychopathy. In literature we have the horribly artifical term "genre fiction" which is pretty much encapsulates everything that isn't pathological pseudo-realism. But inside that you have anything from Lovecraft to Asimov, Borges or Tolkien. And what some of them talk about is a lot more revolutionary than whatever weeping about capitalism you can get. I mentioned Flaubert in one of these threads precisely because he did both sides of this but in the long run he actually sides more with the "genre" people. But our market can't seem to be capable of promoting things unless it's a completely serious stuggle or absolutely banal, impulsive entertainment.

Japan isn't like that. They have no problem introducing philosophical ideas into games or anime, or even things like porn. I think this is one of the reasons why their media has been so influencial in the West, because children which were underestimated by their parents were given what looked like cartoons and got a lot more than they were accustomed to. Here was stuff that didn't shy away from drama or discussing issues.

In the West this kind of thing would have been approached in an ironic or politically motivated way (or both as in Žižek), but it would always be accompanied by a certain scoff of the subject. There's so much presupposed in our supposedly liberal world. I'm not saying you can work without some presuppositions, but some honesty would be appreciated. For a self-centered society we sure aren't self-aware. Irony is sort of a blight to me, it feels so frustrated when it comes out of people's mouths. I'm not sure a character like Diogenes would even be possible in the East Asian scene for example.

cont.

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>>8830850
>>8831165
As for that Nietzschean atittude to Man. I think it peaked with Rimbaud. Rimbaud showed once and for all that you can be as genius and ambitious as you want, you can search the darkness of your soul all you want and live with your heart on your sleeve, but if all you're going to do with that is be entitled and make trouble for everyone around you then you'll only end up alone and frustrated. If you don't try to communicate with people on some common ground then even if you are the greatest prophet of all your words will fall on deaf ears. At some point you'll have to stop or you'll burn out.

I'd expressed my like for Stirner in one of these threads before and it was precisely because he doesn't give a hoot about forcing people to participate. If your projects fail it's because they just couldn't succeed. Perhaps you didn't sell them well enough but that has nothing to do with fairness or guilt. He treats people as beings who make plans and have projects instead of automatons that you need to find a way to coherce. If you can't convince them to do something then there's no blame on either side, it doesn't have to be a matter of morals. But if you're not going to commerce with them, and you're not obligated to, then you that's your business. You can discrimitare between options but like in Fingarette's thesis, it's not a matter of right or wrong. But Stirner also doesn't suppose there's One way, other than the way of the One--and that way isn't one where you're measuring yourself all day long to see if you've improved an inch or whatever in comparison to someone else or your past self out of obligation. It's an interesting middle ground between self-centeredness and autonomous monism. The conclusion is that anything can be justified, as in Žižek, but because of that putting the thing above yourself is insensible, hypocritical and likely dangerous--as in Zhuangzi only the one that isn't in need of the realm is fit to manage it. If you think you're not capable of doing something or want to do something else then leave it undone, don't throw away everything because you can't get the one thing. This of course fucks tremendously with both capitalists and Marxist because there's no mandate to accumulate or utilize everything that comes your way.

Here's some more weeaboo music for you:
https://youtu.be/szao8_g0ACg
https://youtu.be/V4ko6NBmxrU
https://youtu.be/lyzQL5EjKhM
https://youtu.be/4l69nu-uFnU
https://youtu.be/RUWidy7Yg88
https://youtu.be/mAH7CLUmvhE
https://youtu.be/W5ZIZ6v7egU
https://youtu.be/AeboaR0g69g

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>>8831165
>>8831167

Fucking hell, anon.

>only the one that isn't in need of the realm is fit to manage it. If you think you're not capable of doing something or want to do something else then leave it undone, don't throw away everything because you can't get the one thing. This of course fucks tremendously with both capitalists and Marxist because there's no mandate to accumulate or utilize everything that comes your way

No shit. *This.* Incidentally, this is precisely what *I* do. Because I want things and I obsess about them. But I've been thinking about this, and once again, the Taoists have it going on. We romanticize obsession and self-destruction in the West, and it leads to some great literature...and maybe because we also fetishize suffering, too. So taking a *break* from suffering feels like a cop-out...but probably just me.

>Japan isn't like that. They have no problem introducing philosophical ideas into games or anime

True. Made me think of pic related. Sometimes we crush it too. D&D basically made me who I am, obsessed-with-aesthetics guy. But it's good though to sit back sometimes and realize that there's often a lot more going on today in our modern pomo culture than in the Baroque or whatever. It's one of the problems of reading too much Adorno or Baudrillard; they tend to overlook the seriously interesting stuff that mass culture produces. A lot of is shit, but some of it is not. Knowing, for example, that this is a piece of art from a video game changes it, somehow; but maybe that too is just something to be overcome. Because games are made for *consumption* and not classical/Schopenhaurian *contemplation*, we tend to shit on what's going on there...

And the thing is, Tolkien is a kajillion times more interesting to me than just about anybody else in the Modern Library. Of course, they all have to be read. But given the choice between Frank Herbert and Thomas Hardy? It's not even close. I used to think SF and fantasy were just genre trash. Now I think the crappy stuff is, but the really exceptional stuff is better than Literature-literature. But there's no accounting for taste. Or, to put it another way -

>In the West this kind of thing would have been approached in an ironic or politically motivated way (or both as in Žižek), but it would always be accompanied by a certain scoff of the subject. There's so much presupposed in our supposedly liberal world. I'm not saying you can work without some presuppositions, but some honesty would be appreciated. For a self-centered society we sure aren't self-aware.

So obviously you understand, and I don't need to belabor the point. It is indeed the lack of self-awareness that is the issue. And, of course, the more philosophy one reads, the more intractable one becomes...

Finally some theme-related music in return.

High-ish culture!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nROJcoQUyRc

Mass culture!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihL6n9s-PzM

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>>8827489

>But isn't precisely the Great Deed the same as dying? After it's done, and let us suppose there won't be more problems after that, what's there to do? Brag about it? You've gotten rid of your hunger, now what? Sickness, ignorance, confìct, and so on? Then what? And then? See all you can think of is getting rid of things. You get more things to get rid of things and then you get rid of things to make space for more things. This isn't something bad necessarily, but it's simply what you're doing. You like being troubled. We all do.

This is so fucking smart. 100% true.

>>8827281

>So the "violence" of a monk, a sportsman or a martial artist isn't really violence because they are artistic endeavours: they aim to shape their physical body in a certain way and so it can do certain tasks. It is a creative endeavour in the sense that it put a thing together, despite being often destructive--this sense of fitting and joining is the primigenal meaning of Latin "ars" (art, craft, power) as related to "arma" (weapon, equipment). So they aren't violent because they aim to use destruction in a way which doesn't contradict a desire.

And this. So if you take apart "violence" and inquire into it's *creative* aspects...? Not always look at it from the perspective of the one being acted-upon, but the one acting?

pic not really related but it's one my faves, and these really are some seriously good insights.

>>8831496
*fuck that it's totally related

>>8831346
>Because games are made for *consumption* and not classical/Schopenhaurian *contemplation*, we tend to shit on what's going on there...
You mentioning it has made me notice there's an interest opposition in the metaphors employed there. One consumes to get things inside yourself, one contemplates to be inside things: subjects vs. is subject to. I think this is one particular area where videogames mess with classical definitions, because they can bring about a type of experience which isn't either of those. Something like an open exploration game is pretty hard to reproduce in other artforms or even in different types of games, because one gets to be "in" a world without disappearing into it like one would in contemplation. I think this is actually closer to how art used to be seen in its beginnings, ironically. Music would accompany dance or work and the listener would move along uncosciously to the rhythm, not unlike with Li; likewise imagery would be a part of furniture, used in ceremony, and so on, rather than be isolated in pictures, and would represent figures or symbols rather than specific points of view; narration would be a lot more socially integrated and ritualized. A far cry from the isolated, thing-in-itself style of art consumption/contemplation which requires well specified artforms for there to be a market. I mean, it's practically impossible to listen to Beethoven while doing almost anything; it's commendable that he's that entrancing, but if the mean of great art is that it must hold you down... there's a point when it makes me want to tell them to go away. I think music that takes something from you, that needs you to want to pay attention rather than forces you to, isn't a bad thing to have.

cont.

>>8831346
>It's one of the problems of reading too much Adorno or Baudrillard; they tend to overlook the seriously interesting stuff that mass culture produces.
If you actually take the time to follow where the elements of pop culture actually come from and what they respond to you get some pretty interesting stuff. I like Jung and Peterson because of this. People aren't stupid, they like things for a reason. Nobody forces them to like this or that thing more than they force them to eat. That intellectual circles are incapable of gaining traction in an era of mass information exchange is a failure on their part to me, as much as the low quality of mass culture is a failure. Commenrical creators aren't mercenaries, they're thinking and feeling human beings, under the right conditions they will take their craft earnestly and try to do as good a job as they can. I mean go watch Jurassic Park and tell me that film is stupid or thinks its audience is stupid. It's a movie that works on so many levels it'd be wrong if it didn't do well. Likewise there are novels which are instant classics because they aren't but don't pretend the reader should have a working knowledge of Ancient Greek if they want to get something out of it. Lolita and L'Etranger come to mind. At some point being sensitive and intelligent ends up being just as indulgent as being banal and impulsive. People don't check the big books because they know they're going to feel stupid and feel that in the end they've wasted their time. Of course it's also a fault in their character that they're so easily intimidated by what they don't know, but it comes down to both sides lacking tact. One side has a myopic idea of what entertainment is, and the other can't take art to ever be entertainment.

That's why guys like Borges and Nabokov are so cool. They fuck with those definitions in the best of ways. Borges is just about one of the most well read men there ever were but his fiction is purely centered on concepts and content. Nabokov is the opposite and he can turn the most pedestrian thing into a blast through pure skill. They're not really concerned with pushing arts or agendas forward but they don't dumb things down because of it. They have an aim, know how to do it, then do it.

>>8831496
>So if you take apart "violence" and inquire into it's *creative* aspects...? Not always look at it from the perspective of the one being acted-upon, but the one acting?
Could you be more specific?

>One consumes to get things inside yourself, one contemplates to be inside things: subjects vs. is subject to.

De Botton has a remark about this: that when one contemplates a piece of art one hopes, inwardly, that in some ways one will internally come to resemble that which one is looking at. I think that this is interesting and says something about aesthetics: that we are *concerned* by beautiful things in deeply personal ways.

"Escapism" is usually found near the top of the words-I-hate list. Not because it doesn't have a meaning, but because I always hear it from people with wretched taste. "Overthinking" is another one, for similar reasons...

>People aren't stupid, they like things for a reason.
>Commercial creators aren't mercenaries, they're thinking and feeling human beings, under the right conditions they will take their craft earnestly and try to do as good a job as they can.

I love reading stuff like this because it reminds me of what, in a way, my own issue is: it's contempt. Obviously I am a failed creator myself, which is why I am so vexed with these questions, but *contempt for the audience* is the cardinal sin. It's easy to be reconfirmed in it by too much highbrow criticism, but I think there is a rich tradition of intellectuals and filthy casuals being curiously upset about the state of low art precisely because *they cannot figure out how to make it.* If people are so simple, why can't the intellectuals make art themselves? Or why, when they do, does it suck?
Because of *arrogance...*

Artistic creation is, as you have said, a craft and a skill. Criticism is also - but criticism, for me, always place second fiddle to art. As another anon elsewhere said, 'go full bard or go home.'

>>8831817

In a certain sense it's boilerplate Neetch, but what I'm really getting at is this concept of violence as being something *beyond* cruelty, transgression, violation of the Law, scandal, etc. It might be the DNA of romance itself. But it is also pointless, dissipative, and banal in the end.

Because this I think is what holds people in a kind of a thrall: metaphysics. And nihilism. But if we understand the concept of violence as simply pointing towards motion, as being a mechanics of motion that break up our sense of ourselves as being these glacial and autonomous beings, then maybe we can *move* again, we can think, we can interact, and not be so horrified of the crisis, things breaking down, etc.

Violence is always going to be related to desire, and desire gets us right in the places where we cannot help but be profoundly concerned: the libido. But my point is to ask if this is not in fact the meaning of kungfu (or the Taoist sensibility behind it): the point of martial arts is to remain *beyond* transgression. It's self-defense, not other-offense. The point of being a kickass Shaolin monk in 6C China is to *be able to be left alone* and unmolested by brigands - so that one can contemplate the Buddha.

cont'd

>>8825554
Read the Diamond Sutra, it's more or less a TLDR of phenomenology.

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>>8831817

Gadamer has a comment about this also: that the great existential burden is the burden of going first.

Look at the state of modern nihilism today, the antinatalist movement: life itself is not only suffering, it is also the causation of suffering. In a sense this is what we find doubly offensive about most violence: not only the physical consequences (bodily damage) but the hypocrisy of the moral injection behind it - Because Reasons, and then finally if you want the truly libidinal horror which underwrites it: that is, it's all blocked and frustrated sexual desire. Put the Girardian cherry on top that in the end it leads both to and from crowned anarchy, and the only way past it is through collective scapegoating, and we have good reasons to fear and abhor violence. The act of sui generis rude violence is that act of going first, and it flaunts all of this existential stuff by doing so.

But I suppose what the comment I was responding to was raising was this notion of taking a kind of impersonal view of what constitutes "violence" - that is, it would be a phenomenon better understood as a kind of a *technical* process rather than a *phenomenological* one. Perhaps even as a process which requires as much "creativity" as the poetic arts we prize so highly because they valorize peace and serenity, in general a kind of *motionlessness.*

We dislike - I dislike - anarchy and chaos. The ubiquity of universal violence, the never-ending rock-scissors-paper game of human desire and seduction, makes me find existence to be a rather odious and tiring game of trying to hold on to the high ground, pass the hot potato, scramble for money, etc. It makes me hate and feel disgusted with being alive at all. But violence always remains sexy to think about, literally or figuratively: combat and violent video games, violent movies, all of it - it's weird that I'm tempted to escape into aestheticized version of that which I hate to encounter in the real world.

So this is why I do what I do, think about these kinds of things, try to figure out how to life in the world without chasing after beauty and being disappointed, or maybe trying to surrender the need for beauty altogether. Some of this is Nietzschean stuff, but I also think that his programme for post-nihilistic being is too exacting and probably impossible. I don't think people can be works of art, but they might be able to be craftsmen, in a way. And that is probably enough.

I think the Chinese and the Japanese get this, in some deep-down way: see pic related. Beauty comes from out of brokenness.

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>>8832660
*re Gadamer: as Z will say, even the most selfish people in the world are beholden to inner laws. So the thing to consider here related to violence is this idea that this phenomenon of violence isn't just a Me-You caveman phenomenon, but a sort of clash of inflexible rules that are arguably driving human beings to act in ways that are beyond their control.

Indeed it would be possible to say that this is what frightens us: the loss of control of things. It's why I have issues with the glorification of violence (and why I am fascinated with aestheticized or stylized violence) - because it speaks these issues of control and intelligence.

Violence *works,* although in this weird and contentious meaning. Violence always "gets the job done," even though it may not be a job that you wanted to get done in the first place, or that it was even you who did it, if you surrender to a mood or a temper. The horrible thing about violence is always its potency.

But this I guess is why I like what that anon (you?) said about looking at violence as a craftsmanlike operation, a thing that doesn't run like a miracle or a magic automaton, but a constructed, shaped, controlled, or directed thing.

And this takes me back to thinking more highly of martial arts, because again the purpose of martial arts is not in the final analysis to destroy the other but to preserve oneself, though in an ultimately defensive and even sociable way. People are better off, as you wisely indicated by referring to Zhuangzhi, leaving alone from that which they need too much. That was a really good line to include in this conversation.

Because violence and desire are all about needs, and the question here to ask is how, if not to surrender these needs, then to at least to control or management. Once upon a time, arguably, a more powerful religious sensibility might have helped with this. Today not so much. This is perhaps a more difficult challenge - freedom is always a responsibility, and we are more free in many ways than we were before - but it's also fucking overwhelming sometimes, and especially in the absence of anything that feels like a collective social project, human good, planetary sensibility, Confucian moral consciousness, or whatever. It's the tyranny of choice, and maybe this is why we love seeing movies about zombie apocalypses destroying all of this stuff and bringing it all to an end.

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>>8832641

True. It's also interesting to think about why it was that Heidegger always had such a good reception in China and Japan; his whole thing was to flip cause-effect ontology on its head. He's all about poetry and artisanal craft, rather then technology and science. It was Heidegger, rather than Lacan (who loves him some Kant) who seemed to get the gist of what was happening, perhaps, over in the Far East.

I love Heidegger, and I think this stuff is interesting and germane: in many ways, he's trying to be this ultimate Western (post)metaphysician, but what he succeeds in doing is articulating a lot of what is happening in the East. And he does this, of course, by basically skipping all of what could be called modern, and going directly from the Greeks to Holderlin, Nietzsche, etc.

The East I think has all the lockpicks and crowbars to bust Western thought out of its own recursive conceptual logjams. And Jameson was more popular in China, arguably, than he in the West, because the Chinese went bananas when he explained postmodernity to them back when. They're still wrestling with it now, I think, because postmodernism really fucks with the notion of the Tao, which permits of no ironic interpretation.

Although who knows, it could be exactly what they want, too. For sure my fetishization of Confucius won't be shared by those who actually *live* there, as anons have pointed out...

>>8825623
>hyper capitalist Western civ today is just 114% libidinal economy to me and headed for one disaster after another
So what you're saying is you're an actual idiotic weeb/fedora lord who doesn't understand economics or Asian culture in general? Confucianism is generally abhorred by the more open minded Asian individual because they realize how restrictive it is and how it was essentially formed to hold certain groups of people down both socially and politically and nothing more.

>>8831805
>>8831807

forgot your (You)
see
>>8832634 et al

>>8825687
Please stop trying to sound smarter than you are by adding so much superfluous language to your posts. It's very annoying.

>>8832826

I welcome the criticism, but you could at least read the thread before you take the ball and go on offense. There's more than my own ignorance going on here. And there are some other pretty intelligent anons who have contributed also.

True, my own complaints and ressentiment are mainly what this thread has on tap. I make no defense for charges of my own idiocy, weebishness, or fedora. But you can do better than this.

>>8832836

This is honestly how I think and write. I'm genuinely not trying to sound smarter than I am. I'm trying, if this makes any sense, to *stop* thinking in this way by working through it, in the hopes that I will come up with some simpler answers.

>>8827281
>>8827489

>>8831165
>>8831167

>>8831805
>>8831807

None of these anons are me. These are other people who have some pretty interesting things to say. They don't seem to have a problem with it. And I'm learning stuff from them.

I'm not trying to score any cool points. I'm just working shit out. This is how the sausage gets made. But if you have some stuff to contribute to the process, I'd be more than happy to read it.

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You people are misusing intellect.

"When there is argument, there is something the argument does not reach. The sages embrace all things, while men in general argue about them in order to convince each other. Great Tao does not admit of being spoken."

>>8832874

Now here's someone who gets it.

So, wise anon: what would it mean to correctly use intellect? Am genuinely curious to know. The correct answer might well be: you already know the answer, shut yer pie-hole ye prattling jackass. But for what it's worth I figured I would ask anyways. And all /lit/ likes a (You).

>>8832902
Not that guy but he's right.
If you don't know you will probably never know.

>>8832925

Know what? Don't be cryptic. Share something about the knowing of not-knowing. I love that stuff.

I'm not trying to bait you or be childish. I know how recursive this stuff can be. I have read the TTC, and no small amount of Chinese philosophy. I like hearing other people talk about that stuff too because I have a chance to learn something from another person's perspective.

I'll repeat: I cannot make myself look more ridiculous than I have already made myself look. I'm not really all that smart. I'm a random goofball like any other goofball.

But if you have something interesting to contribute, why not share it? Unless I'm missing something there's not much in the way of cool points to be scored at my expense. Knocking someone off their perch is only fun when that person actually has a perch to be on.

Me? I'm lying on the floor like an idiot.

>>8832902
well thats your intellect asking for an intellectual answer. even if an answer can be forced it wont do a thing cause... well let me just give you a little story that will talk to your imagination instead of your intellect:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/knowledge-wandered-north-chuang-tzu-%E8%8E%8A%E5%AD%90-great-story-nandini-goel?redirectFromSplash=true

>>8832925
i wouldnt say he'll never know. in fact we all know, only that we dont know that we know cause that 2nd-order knowledge is not necessary for that original 'knowledge' it to be effective. prose is too clumsy for these issues, the art are the only way.

>>8832949
It's more to do with feeling than with intellect.
Observe your friends/random people in real life arguing as dispassionately as you can. A lot of it has to do with silent observation and recognizing the flow of life. Read the Tao te ching maybe.

>>8832966
>>8832968

>prose is too clumsy for these issues, the art are the only way

Couldn't agree more. Totally.

>Observe your friends/random people in real life arguing as dispassionately as you can. A lot of it has to do with silent observation and recognizing the flow of life

I will try this, but I wanted to say that this is really interesting advice: I actually find it *really hard* to do this, because I always want to *intervene*...hmm.

These are great insights anon(s), thank you.

>>8833041
Just turn your brain off and don't slip into the "I'm now a Chinese philosopher" mode. Things always reveal themselves without you doing a single thing.

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>>8833070

So I turned it off. And you're right. That is indeed the thing to do. It really does work.

>tfw you turn it back on again

Here then is a question I have been thinking about. Is it too much to say that

a) the West invents laissez-faire capitalism, which is a system that really does *work;*

and

b) the East produces the best possible system of thought - laissez-faire Taoism - for living with/among it?

Suppose whatever we call 'philosophy' might be described as this: the preferred tautology of the moment, and that whether or not that moment persists or changes is up to you. Which is why formless nondualism is the jam: it fundamentally provides you with the freedom to *change your mind,* rather than bear on infinitely towards self-destruction. And leaving aside for the moment notions of sacrifice, Dionysian self-destruction, the categorical imperative, etc. Because reasons.

Is Eastern thought essentially just the best possible way to remain free and flexible and in a state or more or less constant readiness for adaptation, given that Planet Capitalism is always going to be restlessly in motion, whether things are going well (market share) or badly (war)?

Just things to consider.

Pic maybe related. Kojima doesn't like war, but he's fascinated by it. I always thought what was interesting about MGS is the emphasis on *stealth* - the idea is to *not get seen.* Violence is an option, but stealth is always better...

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>>8833334
*consider also what the whole notion of stealth and invisibility does to Lacan, wherein the gaze is everything. The gaze is desire, command, everything. But maybe this is the idea, the attraction of ninjas, thieves, etc: Don't Get Seen.

Because even Tolkien knew what happens then. It's not always pleasant to be looked at. Sauron is one of the most perfect examples of modernist anxiety imaginable.

Better by far to be stealthy and elusive.

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>>8833363
*See also pic related for another reference to this.

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>>8833363

And really, if you think about it, the idea of the One Ring would be interesting to hear Z explain: the commodity that everyone wants is also the commodity that destroys them.

The One Ring might be one of the most perfect object a-examples that exist. Getting what you actually want is the worst thing of all. It even destroys Sauron when he is reunited with it, when Gollum and Frodo get it into Mount Doom. Everybody *covets* the ring, but nobody in the end actually can stand possessing it. Not even Sauron himself.

It really does seem to be about letting go of, or resisting, desires. Or just sort of going with the flow of things, rather than trying to punch through to the centre.

>>8833334
You're on the right path.
The thing is that western materialism views things in black and white, which is why socio-political issues are such a clusterfuck right now. Both sides have points but because in the western scientific model you have to be an absolutist or you get instantly cast out or accused of being on the other team, you have to care about some issues more than others.
That's not to say Eastern thought doesn't have it's flaws. I mean China isn't exactly the most stalwart example of a society I would want to live in.
But in terms of personal day-to-day living and also depending where you're living Eastern philosophy is definitely the way to go. Just don't take it too seriously because you have to consider the context it was written in, adaptation is everything.

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>>8833440

Thank ye sir.

I might continue my Zizekian take on Tolkien just a little longer here. We privilege the inspired truth-seeking madman, but maybe only because we find the Eye of Sauron so objectionable, and we know - or fear - that we are no elves. And possibly not even humans.

But the Eye of Sauron is also us, I think; I think it is that Freudian superego. Sauron is not something other than us, Sauron is the part of us that makes us feel bad. Sauron *sees* us whenever we put on the ring; we're invisible to everyone else, but totally visible to this horrible part of ourselves. And the gaze is sheer trauma, as much as covetousness of the One Ring turns one in the end into a wraith. There is no escape from it except by...well, all that is implied in the dialogues between Frodo and Sam, Gandalf, Aragon, and so on. Catholicism, in a word.

I've already shared my thoughts about Dune above, but I think they hold up to the psychoanalytic/Zizekian reading pretty well: Herbert's problem is that the gods are not there, and nothing in the universe can resist the lure of the Spice. Which isn't a bad thing; there is no Sauron on Arrakis. What bothers Paul Atreides (and Herbert, I think) is that the only way to rule Arrakis is to become a kind of Sauron himself, which is why he has those nightmares of the infinite crusade. And also why Herbert himself could never really finish that saga. It was unfinishable, as these things perhaps are.

Rene Girard is a Catholic, and he makes me want to be one as well. But I find the Tao more appealing, I suppose. That may change, at some point. I know the point is not to reach the ending, but to be both oriented towards the goal but able to understand what else happens along the way.

I'll post another fine quote here to contemplate also. Girard, man. He was for realsies.

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/thread

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>>8833377

And yet another: the Annihilaser from Planetary Annihilation: a gigantic eyeball-laser that stares holes through planets. The Staring Eye of Death seems to be a pretty appealing trope. Nothing satisfies quite like a doomsday weapon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFDmdlpn4F4

And apparently there's some other cult movie that involves this. It's got a bunch of space hippies and a mystical Eastern version of Oscar the Grouch and one or two shots that lift directly out of John Ford and much else from Akira Kurosawa. The name escapes me.

>>8833795

Never!

>tfw the onion speaks the truth so maybe tho

I think there are some fundamental misconceptions in this thread that need clearing up...

To begin with, you appear to have overdosed on Nietzsche. No surprise really, given his importance to psychoanalytic/continental thought. Nevertheless, this can be misleading for one who didn't go through the Greeks properly. Not to mention, classical archhaeology has gone through revolutions since he first penned his musings (and let us not downplay the importance of archaeology to philology).

Philosophy is often divided into opposing camps. West versus east, analytical versus continental, empirical versus rational, etc. But all these dichtomoties tend to collapse under more careful scrutiny... that said, a distinction that might be helpful for you to reconsider, however, would be ancient versus modern. Ancient western (greek) philosophy has more in common with what you have exoticized and "other"-ized as oriental wisdom than the theoretical frenzies of modern (particularly, continental) western philosophy.

Perhaps I am being oblique though. I would recommend looking into more religious studies as well. Philosophy cannot be disentangled from religion. Only a STEM autist would believe such a thing possible.

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>>8834289

>you appear to have overdosed on Nietzsche

yes

>this can be misleading for one who didn't go through the Greeks properly

yes

>all these dichotomies tend to collapse under more careful scrutiny

also yes

>philosophy cannot be disentangled from religion. only a STEM autist would believe such a thing possible

my man

>what you have exoticized and "other"-ized as oriental wisdom

Could be. But lord ha' mercy, "The Other." The bane of my existence. I'm actually starting to wonder if The Other is a thing at all. I have doubts.

I mean it surely is, don't get me wrong. It's not like Marxist theory is any less interesting because a dingus like me loves kungfu films. But it does seem to me like a baked-in concept that actually reproduces the thought it's supposed to criticize. Excessive concern for the other can lead to just as much totalitarianism as disregard. Witness Jordan Peterson and his current situation, being basically stoned to death in the square by the forces of tolerance.

This kind of stuff is admittedly dark, but that's what makes it interesting. I guess I'm just a product of too much suspicion of critical reason, an intuition confirmed equally well by positivist STEMfags as well as by the vapidity of the continental left. However compromised - or in many cases, simply intellectually bankrupt - it's why religion seems so good to me these days.

And I don't think this skepticism is even rare. I think everybody feels it these days. Witness antinatalism, SJW hysteria, nu-atheist positivism, whatever. Philosophy looks pretty washed out these days. The verdict is in: humanity is horrible. Whether that is true or not it's not a good state of affairs.

Zizek aside, there are a couple of other living guys I like: Sloterdijk, Agamben, Paul Virilio. Badiou sometimes. Harris I admire but he's not in the same category. Chomsky is Chomsky. Spivak is interesting. And Girard only died last year.

So I find religion interesting because clearly it's alive and well, though in frequently weird and thwarted ways. And Asian religion most of all, I think, because it's more about how to *live* in not such an explicitly holy way: there's a sort of dignity for thought there that actually inflects their epistemology (ctrl + f Herbert Fingarette for more). Maybe because it accords well with nomadic life in capitalist disneyland without hope of escape or genuine fulfilment.

Religion, yo. Once upon a time I thought it would be the *last* think I'd think about. Now it's all I think about.

Anyways, rambly post.

>>8834813
*Nick Land too, of course, but I've diverged far enough from Asian stuff to go down that rabbit hole.

And if Molyneux just stuck to film criticism the world would be much the cooler. The alt-right is total silliness.

>>8834813
>Zizek aside, there are a couple of other living guys I like: Sloterdijk, Agamben, Paul Virilio. Badiou sometimes. Harris I admire but he's not in the same category. Chomsky is Chomsky. Spivak is interesting. And Girard only died last year.
Those guys are good. Sloterdjik in particular can be insightful. But you might wanna diversify your infosphere some.

Have you read Kingsley, Hadot, and Uzdavinys? All three are excellent in regard to comparative ancient greek and near/far eastern philosophy. Latter two are recently deceased but the formermost is still alive. Does a lot to dispell certain post-enlightenment delusions. You should also check out Strauss and Rosen and Lampert.

Sorry if my posts are kinda snippy. I have no computer. Only a phone.

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>>8834882

Sloterdijk is no joke. He's one of the very guys I read and think, okay, well, I'm good. That's it. Anthropotechnics and that's that. I've read just about everything of his translated into English. Still waiting on vol. III to arrive. He convinces me every time tho. His chapter on Marx in PT is ridiculously good. Going to post the fireworks here for anyone too inclined to shit on Marx (like me). Read this shit and weep:

>Without a doubt, Marx’s future theoretical fame will be linked to his achievements as the conjurer of dead labor. The core of his critique of political economy is necromancy: as the hero who descends to the realm of the dead to contend with the shadows of values, Marx remains uncannily relevant also for the present. The undead—which walks among humans as the value of money and which, as a laughing communicator, strips the living of time and souls—rules today almost without any pretexts over the advanced societies. Work, communication, art, and love belong here entirely to the endgame of money. These form the substance of contemporary media and experiential time. And because money requires time for its utilization, so-called great history is also continuing in some eerie way; it is a game that is always played for extra time.

>Yet such history is no longer the conversation of the living with the dead about the goodness of the world, but the ever more thorough pervasion of the living by the economized specter. The money soul peers ever more undisguised out of the human subjectivity of our time: a society of bought buyers and of prostituted prostitutes is making a place for itself in globalized market conditions. Classic liberal laissez-faire is becoming explicit as the postmodern sucking and letting oneself be sucked. Telecommunication is increasingly difficult to distinguish from tele-vampirism. Tele-viewers and tele-suckers draw from a liquefied world which hardly still knows what a resistant or autonomous life might be.

>Is it not possible that a time is coming when those who do not wish to speak of vampirism should also be silent about philosophy? If that is the case, it would most definitely be the time of Marx’s second chance.

Anyways...

Hadot I know from my Stoicism days, the other two guys I don't know. If that Strauss is Leo Strauss, I've read a bunch of his stuff. He's undeniably brilliant. And Jay Lampert was teaching at a university I was planning on going to for some postgrad work and then he split for the US. He's a Deleuze guy but I haven't read his books yet. I almost got a chance to meet him.

No worries about the posts. Quality over quantity, always.

>>8834864
Nick Land is good too. Nearly helped me achieve the BwO. I'm >>8834289 and >>8834882 by the way. I can do an effort-post in a bit when I get home if you're down for a chat. In the meantime, I suggest googling some of the names if you're not acquainted. Kingsley can be a bit silly. Got pop-philosophy with his later books. Hadot is great for understanding the Greek mindset. Uzdavinys goes deeper, speculative, noetic archaeology. Strauss is essential to politics. Rosen and Lampert for Straussian Plato and Nietzsche re-casting.

>>8834936

Nick Land is indeed a cool guy. I've read FM, his DE essays, and checking his blog & twitter is part of my daily routine. And I'm very glad that this is on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJMlaupGHTM

He's an important and frequently misunderstood contrarian, and I seem to have a fondness for those types.

Anyways, cool man. I'll check out those guys you recced too, my thanks. I have to head out for a bit myself but I'll be continuing to monitor this thread for as long as there's interest in it. Effort-post to your heart's content if the mood strikes you, I'll be looking forward to reading it.

>>8834914

What do you think of his critique of dialectics in the CCR? I found his call for universally friendly polemics noxiously Habermasian—not to mention the fact that the critique of dialectics itself is not exactly damaging to the use it is put to in Marx's hands:

>The dialectical stimulus indeed begins only where we try to speak of the dispute and contradiction of “things” in reality and as reality. The ground under our feet gets hot when dialectics is understood not as dialogics but as ontology.

the marxist response would simply be that the ground under our feet is already hot with the molten, flowing slag of capital. but i suppose in that case the response would be the critique of vampirism you quoted. but then if dialectics is, as he also says in the same chapter of the CCR, "a dialectician is someone skilled in the art of being in the right," then i suppose he has crafted a pretty unanswerable, and hence dialectical, critique.

but as marxists know this circularity is nothing but the containment strategies deployed by ideology to keep thought away from thinking dangerous to it.

--i don't actually believe sloterdijk is that naive, only being a little "universally polemical" to get this dialectic churning.

>>8834983

I can only really respond to this in the sort of scattershot way that I do, but it's a cool question indeed.

The Critique of Cynical Reason is absolutely one of the milestone books that I've read. Completely convinced me that the issue today was cynicism. Cannot unsee. But I think Rules for the Human Zoo more or less confirmed where S is vis-a-vis dialectics: that Nietzsche is the way forward, not Marx (or Hegel). I'm inclined to agree, if only insofar as Nietzsche himself is the real guy to struggle with today. People trumpeting Nietzsche as having the answers to all questions is starting to seem pretty long in the tooth (or worse: banal). It's not that he doesn't have the answers, it's just that I don't think anyone is supposed to stop with him.

But of course here we wind up in this unusual space: should we ("we?", etc) just focus on ourselves, or carry on with the social project? And this is where I am presently stuck myself. Because if capital *is* the only game in town, then maybe Land's brand of acceleration - however one chooses to pursue it - is indeed the thing to do. Except that there is no accelerating past that which itself is always going to be a step ahead: the old time-twisting cosmo-dollar itself. And this was what drove NL insane to think about.

I think my own intuitions point to something like: stop trying to complain about capital, because you will *always* fail, and it makes philosophy itself look ridiculous and completely anemic. We're all floating now in capitalist zero-G, to some degree, and I'm highly skeptical about mobilizing anyone, anywhere. I think the Freud-Marx/Zizek thesis that all of this ideology is based on repression and failed desire, rather than achieved desire, which is important. The 'libidinal economy' that I think runs the world is really one of an actually *blocked* libido, which is what allows for commodity fetishism and the rest.

But as for dialectics? I think you've made the point:

>[if] a dialectician is someone skilled in the art of being in the right," then i suppose he has crafted a pretty unanswerable, and hence dialectical, critique

My feeling today is that criticism itself becomes domesticated and institutionalized, and thereby negates the potency of that criticism while reifying the prestige of the institution which grants the funding. This is exactly what Peterson is struggling with: The Spice Must Flow, and he's monkeying up the works.

Sloterdijk is good with talking about capital, as Globes and World Interior show. He also has a lot of love for Heidegger, who occupies his own space vis-a-vis critique of capital. He likes Deleuze too, and all this makes him interesting.

I'm reading Spivak at the moment, mainly to see if there actually is any criticism of Deleuze I believe in. But my own feeling is that philosophy lacks teeth and cannot realistically expected to be able to give itself any given the state of the world today. Thus my own feeling: follow the Tao.

cont'd

Great "Eastern philosophy" thread you guys have here ;^)

>>8835095

So I'm more or less in despair, in other words. But this is mainly from a combination of ignorance and suspicion about institutions. I'm glad academics are out there writing, but I wonder about this kind of stuff. Funding for humanities stuff seems to decline year by year, and capital seems only to look ever more like the machine that really does work, really does give people what they want. So I'm wondering if maybe the thing to do is just to find a way to get on board and stay on board that ship.

To be sure, this could be called a deeply cynical position in its own right. Surely it is in some sense. But I'm skeptical about politics, and indeed this is one of things I have started to feel more and more, particularly since the election: politics doesn't need to be be the ultimate horizon of meaning. Especially after this election, which was won by magic red hats and promises of mythical walls.

Deconstruction permanently fucked up our ability to understand and think about capital-G capital-L Great Literature, and Girard really sold me hard on that. And of course there is for him no greater literature than sacred and religious texts.

So I don't know. Maybe it's a cop-out. Could be. But I think going back to great books and not reading them for phallogocentrism or whatever else is a cheerful thought. I'm almost always to be found beating up on Derrida, but inwardly I don't really dislike him as much as my posts would indicate. It's just that in a certain sense he took apart that which I think is now important. Even if it means we just get to repeat the mistakes of the past all over again.

But that's just me being wistful and melancholy, which isn't a very interesting look.

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>>8835110

Yeah, sorry. That's 100% my fault. I should have called this Aaaaaaaaaahhhh Fuckface General.

I mean, it's possible that we *might* get back to that topic, and I've sort of tried to work Eastern religious stuff in there...but only after a scenic tour through capitalist wonderland.

Anyways, I cannot lie. You may now commence the pelting with vegetables. I will gird my loins manfully.

Odd to offer eastern philosophy as a solution to hypercapitalism when urban China is more capitalist than the west and Japan/SK revolve around corporations. If it isn't working for the slants why would it work for anyone else?

>>8835285
Oh, and it's worth mentioning that even the Chinese are turning away from their own philosophies and towards christianity, since at the end of the day all Taoism and Confucianism really do is encourage subservience to the state.

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>>8835285
>>8835313

This is a good point, and I'm glad you made it, because it's part of my own sentiment.

The Chinese are all about capitalism, it's true. At least I think so. But that's also what makes them interesting. They get that capital is the thing, they make peace with this - and then they move on to other things.

The West - if I can make this ridiculous generalization once again - privileges individuality, rebellion, difference, et al to degrees that become ultimately *systematized* and made to function within that system itself. The more we privilege niche and individuality, the more we wind up looking like an undifferentiated mob. And - I agree with Baudrillard here - it eventually all becomes completely simulacral to the point where not only is there no difference between reality and illusion, but the illusion itself takes hold of the whole thing. Imagination becomes more powerful than the real. This is what Trump, at least in part, campaigned on: pure nostalgia. And it worked. Not only for this reason, of course, there was a sea change in the air...but it's all connected (at least, in my fallout shelter).

Capitalism works for everyone, but we go crazy in the West - which is now really a globalized phenomenon, that being a whole other thing - trying to think around it, or through it, or by resorting to a higher criticism, but we always wind up spinning our wheels.

The really interesting alternative to all of this, I think, is a very close reading of religious literature - that is to say, literature that really goes for the universal perspective. Radical Islam is not what I mean, although obviously the West is having problems with Islam for a reason - although that is /pol/ talk and I won't belabour that further here.

Anyways. The picture more or less communicates what I am trying to say. Everything gets commodified, and in the long run I think the desire for *novelty* triumphs over *revolution.* No less an authority than Ted Kaczynski argued this.

>tfw you namedrop the unabomber

You get the idea. We're already subservient to capital, all I'm saying is let's recognize it and call a spade a spade. Work from there.

I'm mildly embarrassed to speak so animatedly about this stuff (anyone saying "we should X" deserves what they get), because 4chan is not my blog and I really don't want to sound like I'm on a soapbox. But I find all this stuff pretty interesting.

>tfw doing pretty good impression of jackass on a soapbox

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>>8835179
No anon you're a thoughtful poster and I could never condemn that, I just don't share your enthusiasm for schematics. Theory is important and I'm not one to post a Tao Te Ching quote and hide behind it without further elaboration, even if there is some legitimacy behind that within an East Asian or even Buddhist framework (I think the hermeneutic predicament calls for a bit more work on our part in the West).

Wish I could engage more with the conversation playing out but I'm not as steeped in the literature as you seem. I'm not a complete dilettante though so I can follow well enough, but I wonder what the fruit will be of a conversation which appears fundamentally tinged with - for poor imagination on my part -"the political." Maybe I'm wrong; and I'm thinking now of the scene in Persona where the images of the Vietnam War are being shown on the television in the hospital. I can't help the feeling of futility at the prospect of discussing CAPITAL and VIOLENCE, at the discursive nature of this project. Its a big part of the reason I started reading more about Buddhism and Daoism.

I'm not an oriental fetishest or anything, and I don't balk at intellectual rigor like many who gravitate to Eastern thought. I think there's a lot of merit to what you're doing, it just feels kind of wanky to me.

If you're interested in any recs, and I'm not taking you for my pupil and I'm ot condescending, I'd say you should check out Jay Garfield's translation and commentary of Nagarjuna's Foundation of the Middle Way, and Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy; C.W. Huntington's The Emptiness of Emptiness which has a translation of Candrakirti's Entry Into the Middle Way; and Roger Ames and David Hall's co-authored translation of the Daodejing. All these books are rigorous and academic, and dripping with tie-ins to Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Hume, Sextus Empiricus, Derrida, Whitehead, Gadamer, Hegel, Kant, and more.

>>8835414
>and then they move on to other things.
what does that even mean... oh, that's right-nothing
so basically like all of that landian sophistry shit

>>8835414

So the tl;dr is, I can imagine a cool kind of hybridization of Western innovation with the Eastern mysticism that may help us (and let's face it, there really is no "us") to survive in this crazy mixed-up world without our heads exploding.

That is assuming

a) Marxism is more or less finished, having morphed into cultural Marxism

and

b) we don't want to become the Amish.

So that's all. Capital rewards desire (granted, it's an ultimately failed desire) and I think mysticism reels it back again without the need for guilt and ressentiment...and arguably even psychoanalysis.

Anyways. That's more than enough from me, and I've shit this thread up way more than I planned to with my own weird hang-ups. I really don't want to do social engineering, and I don't really think any of what I have said is really all that serious. Reformation of the state is less interesting than Confucian epistemology, Taoist wu-wei stuff, Musashi, etc. Or just unironic readings of great books...my thanks to any brave souls who have read this far and indulged this anon's deplorable thirst for attention.

>>8835414
I would argue that both the chinese and the west are just pursuing capital for the sake of the subjective experience of "success". You say that the Chinese are getting capital simply for the sake of capital, but western magnates like Soros or Trump have described money as being like points or score in the game of life too. In other words capitalism is just an extension of the human competitive instinct and isn't going away ever unless you alter humans and human society to a huge extent. This might happen soonish through some sort of apocalypse, widespread gene therapy, automation, more capable than people AI, who knows?

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>>8835480

Not at all. Not at all. That 'nothingness' isn't just an absence. It's much more than that.

And the thing is, what you've raised really *is* what this thread should have been about, and not my own insane rants about capital.

You're perfectly within your rights to look at Eastern mysticism and find that it's not for you. No problem. But the whole idea of emptiness is a big, big deal in the East. It's there in Buddhism, it's there in the Vedanta, it's there in the Tao, all of it.

In the West Heidegger nailed this: he called our obsession with the metaphysics of production. We're always bringing something forward, always producing, always saying - and this is the technological mode of understanding that basically turns the entire world into an alchemical process without beginning or end.

What the East wants you to do - or, rather, what I am trying to learn to do - is to relax and appreciate doing nothing. As >>8831167 says, this is there in Zhuangzhi as well.

It sounds like solipsism. Totally. But at least in my opinion there's a lot more going on there than that.

Basically this is what I'm saying: what comes after the thirst for money, or fame, or desire, or whatever? Not nothing, but maybe something like a kind of enlightenment. At least, that would be my hope.

It's not easy, and I'm definitely not there myself. But I think there's definitely something going on with Laozi. I'm sure I've done an absolutely fucking terrible job in this post communicating what that is, though.

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Intellectual Wankery: The Thread

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>>8835471

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh this is brilliant. I love book recommendations. Thank you anon.

And anyways, you've nailed it: this is exactly what I am trying to do, which is overcome this tendency to see everything as violence, capitalism, and politics. Marxism - and Nietzsche - sort of slowly comes to inflect every aspect of criticism from the 19C on, and *all* of it is done in the shadow of a departing God. It *is* wanky. 100%. I'm not even mad! That's why I want off the ship.

I'm writing all of this stuff because I'm sincerely trying to find another way to look at this stuff. As Hideo Kojima says: to let the world be. Kojima is my boy. I have a lot of boys but he's one of them.

You know what I like about this conversation, though? About religion? People aren't *cynical.* X generations of continental philosophy have basically primed people to write incredible preambles about how disaffected they are, how alienated, how little they care for their interlocutors, how much everyone has missed topic Y, etc.

Start talking about great literature - and yes, for what it's worth, the gods - and people seem inclined to lose their edge and actually admit that the world is a fucked up place and nobody has the answer and this is troubling. It's pretty amazing, really. And it's also why Peterson is important these days. Because he's no Marxist. He's on that sexy vulnerability ticket. And it's a good look.

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>>8835525

None wankier on /lit/ tonight I'll reckon. That's got to be some kind of accomplishment.

>steam achievement unlocked: Wank Star

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>>8835503

That's it. In terms of mass culture, people don't really pursue capital purely for the sake of capital: we do it for pleasure and what it allows. Hedge funds are different, but in the main it's desire that drives everything: libidinal economy.

>In other words capitalism is just an extension of the human competitive instinct and isn't going away ever unless you alter humans and human society to a huge extent. This might happen soonish through some sort of apocalypse, widespread gene therapy, automation, more capable than people AI, who knows?

Yessir. 100%. And in a certain sense, we don't really *want* it to go away: it gives us the internet, video games, twinkles, gerbils, all of it. And this is what we're coming to understand, that the whole world - well, a large portion of it - is increasingly finding itself in this one big leaky boat together. Which is what makes things uncomfortable, but potentially also allows for things we haven't seen before. We want to be able to live *with* it. Because unfortunately it seems to be able to live without us...

I could talk about Kickstarter, for example, all day, the minor miracle of asking for $2m to make a game and receiving $40m. That kind of stuff is surely worth thinking about.

So there's reasons to be optimistic. It's mostly just about maintaining the balance, I think.

>>8835095
>>8835164

thanks for replying so thoughtfully. I've seen you before, I think, and we've broken a lance or two over Marx on more than one occasion. I recognize your writing style, your range of reference (of which I am jealous, haha), and your verbal tick of initializing philosophers.

as for going back to great lit, I think speculative realism holds the answer to taking these things seriously on their own terms again, in a totally cockamamie way that i am still working out. but to drop only the most elliptical of hints (bc i want to publish this): ever read Roy Bhaskar?

>>8835491
>a) Marxism is more or less finished, having morphed into cultural Marxism

lol

>>8835564
>>8835525

Illiteracy: The Posts

>>8835584

are you pulling libidinal economy from Lyotard? because you know he argues 19th century laborers across the board actually enjoyed the factory system? i find that the metaphysics of desire leads to this kind of thinking precisely because it has difficulty defining necessity. i'm not saying the thesis is totally bunk, but that it requires way more mental gymnastics than (what would by comparison be called) "orthodox" marxism does when you get down to the nuts and bolts of capitalism, namely, to the proletariat, class struggle, and relations/forces of production. for a more superstructural analysis of consumerist/postmodern cultural and ideology it's probably a useful working hypothesis, and one that furnishes a strong vocabulary—what's not to love about Deleuze and Guattari + Marx with none of the schizocelebratory frill and all of the aberrant nihilism?—but probably no more than this; and the case remains to be made that we still purely superstructural analyses themselves remain at all pertinent, at a time when even the most devastating critiques of capitalism as such barely register any impact outside of the ever-narrowing circle of self-identifying academic marxists.

>>8836185
scratch "we" in that second to last clause

>>8835512
>>Basically this is what I'm saying: what comes after the thirst for money, or fame, or desire, or whatever? Not nothing, but maybe something like a kind of enlightenment. At least, that would be my hope.
no
you have these levels of existence

>faith in hedonism+hedonism through the 5 senses and thoughts
anybody born on earth is like this
>faith in hedonism+hedonism through what people call meditation
a few people get good at mediation and those people still have faith in hedonism, they think that the deep states in mediation connect them some god, some devas, some universal love, some cosmic spirit
this state is the fantasy of liberals, who try to make people happy, by giving the means to people to fulfill their libido (like food, shelter, travel...) hoping that people will be nice to each other if they have the secure, assured means of the realization of their fantasy of '''primal'' libido (liberals love to talk about needs, instead of libido, so that it does not responsibilize them) and will be happy if they fulfill their higher desires (hedonists love to grade their desires). Liberals fundamentally misunderstand hedonism.
>no faith in hedonism+hedonism through the 5 senses and thoughts
this is the the sotapana level, you see that hedonism does not make you happy, but you still care about pleasures through the five senses, you still have fantasies about the five senses and you have pride about the success of what you care (= the five senses) even though you know there is no point in caring about this in order to be happy
>no faith in hedonism+hedonism through the meditation
this the anagami level, you no longer care about sensual pleasures, but you live through meditation (even though you know that it wont make you happy) like you lived through the sensual pleasure when you were a normal animal or a sotapana
>no faith in hedonism+no hedonism
this is the aharant

"I met a woman long ago
her hair the black that black can go,
Are you a teacher of the heart?
Soft she answered no.
I met a girl across the sea,
her hair the gold that gold can be,
Are you a teacher of the heart?
Yes, but not for thee.

I met a man who lost his mind
in some lost place I had to find,
follow me the wise man said,
but he walked behind.

I walked into a hospital
where none was sick and none was well,
when at night the nurses left
I could not walk at all.

Morning came and then came noon,
dinner time a scalpel blade
lay beside my silver spoon.

Some girls wander by mistake
into the mess that scalpels make.
Are you the teachers of my heart?
We teach old hearts to break.

One morning I woke up alone,
the hospital and the nurses gone.
Have I carved enough my Lord?
Child, you are a bone.

I ate and ate and ate,
no I did not miss a plate, well
How much do these suppers cost?
We'll take it out in hate.

I spent my hatred everyplace,
on every work on every face,
someone gave me wishes
and I wished for an embrace.

Several girls embraced me, then
I was embraced by men,
Is my passion perfect?
No, do it once again.

I was handsome I was strong,
I knew the words of every song.
Did my singing please you?
No, the words you sang were wrong.

Who is it whom I address,
who takes down what I confess?
Are you the teachers of my heart?
We teach old hearts to rest.

Oh teachers are my lessons done?
I cannot do another one.
They laughed and laughed and said, Well child,
are your lessons done?
are your lessons done?
are your lessons done?"

>>8836161
schizotechnihilbuhhizzatva!

you came to save us! a much needed injection of east!

i am at sotapana level... how do i become an arahant?

also is there a category for: faith in hedonism+no hedonism?

>>8836253
Meant for >>8836218

All knowledge is initiatic in nature. The circular nature of the cosmic joke. Knowledge is corruption. Perfection is a matter of sculpting. Our wounds and imperfections create our transhuman bodies. The future is now. The past is present. What makes your desiring machine capable of that which all other have failed to do? Or have they failed at all? If philosophy is easy then become a philosopher. But if it's impossible then forget what I said and forget all about it.

True knowledge and the "right" way of thought will never be known. Never. Such things don't even exist. If you could zoom out of the earth further and further until this planet is a speck of dust then you'll see how meaningless anything is.

So what's stopping all of you from just killing yourselves?

>>8832634
>when one contemplates a piece of art one hopes, inwardly, that in some ways one will internally come to resemble that which one is looking at.
I've had similar thoughts and in light of this conversation it's interesting to see there's a dialectic, interactive, self-shaping process going there. You look at either what you like of yourself or would like to be.

>"Escapism" is usually found near the top of the words-I-hate list.
Yeah, it's a dreadful term. First because denies a whole part of experience: having fantasies. It's probably coming from a realist attitude that has to force people to messianically see the truth. It's pure ressentiment. Second because "escapism" rarely occurs in the works themselves and it's more to do with the conditions of the audience. I abhorr hugpillows and waifu wars, but they have little to do with the actual content and all to do with the culture surrounding it.

>Criticism is also - but criticism, for me, always place second fiddle to art.
I don't think you can do one without the other. As an artist criticism is as important to me as reading or writing.

>It's self-defense, not other-offense. The point of being a kickass Shaolin monk in 6C China is to *be able to be left alone* and unmolested by brigands - so that one can contemplate the Buddha.
Deterrence has always been a pretty nebulous topic for my sense of morals. I think that on one side, we shouldn't promote physical force, but on the other, people should be capable of defending themselves if worse comes to worse. I guess it's one of those areas where we can't usually talk about things calmly, and that might even be more dangerous than either option.

>We dislike - I dislike - anarchy and chaos.
But is chaos inherently violent or destructive? Take a disordered room, is it violent? Couldn't be violent to put it in order too? Slaughterhouses are typically ordered; are they not violent or destructive? One of the greatest fears the 20th century was the systematic, mechanical violence of the state and WWII. I think these considerations are the heart of the matter in a lot of social issues.

Take vegetarianism for example. It's done in an attempt to disociate one self from institutional violence. But the problem is that that "violence" is a necessary part of being alive. You have to kill other creatures to live. Even if you kill plants it doesn't change that fact. Even if you start eating dirt you'll end up thinking you've violated mother earth, or you'll face issues like with oilfuels. Moving away from the issue doesn't solve it. The real problem is that they find the treatment animals go through degrading and unethical. Fair enough, but is an ethical and dignified treatment necessarily exclusive with serving as food? Would the proletariat still be resentful if we lived in a Tolkienian world and the three states weren't more than a joke?

>>8832660
>Perhaps even as a process which requires as much "creativity" as the poetic arts we prize so highly because they valorize peace and serenity, in general a kind of *motionlessness.*
Is that really what we look for in them? In bright colors and beautiful sounds?

>But violence always remains sexy to think about, literally or figuratively
I have to bring Flaubert up again. Part of his poetics was based on the grotesque as that which is formed by two dissimilar things. But really that's more or less how sex works. A type of Dionysian creative mixture.

>But this I guess is why I like what that anon (you?) said about looking at violence as a craftsmanlike operation,
I think. I wanted to draw a distinction between violence and destruction. Violence can be creative, see for example rape. Destruction isn't of itself violent. If that were the case then time itself would be violent. Perhaps the plastic surgery industry does think it is.

Jordan Peterson also makes an interesting observation: that, when young adult males are put in a game where they cannot win, they immediately resort to anger. So violence from the perpetrators view is all about frustration.

>Violence *works,* although in this weird and contentious meaning. Violence always "gets the job done," even though it may not be a job that you wanted to get done in the first place, or that it was even you who did it, if you surrender to a mood or a temper. The horrible thing about violence is always its potency.
I think this has a lot to do with our fiction. I mean, in some ways our narratives haven't progressed much from the stone age. Aside from some examples, they always follow the same structure to hook the audience. Things either come to worse or there is a threat they will. So narratively, we have no resources to deals with *lots* of issues. So the only way of thinking we have is "kill the monster, it'll be alright after".

>It's the tyranny of choice, and maybe this is why we love seeing movies about zombie apocalypses destroying all of this stuff and bringing it all to an end.
I have a problem with Evangelion precisely because of this. It's my favorite anime, but it falls short. You've reached the orgasm, now what? Oh, the movie ends. We're never shown what to do after we've managed to love ourselves. All the pain to come, how to not fall into the same holes, nothing of that is addressed. We're just left with the knowledge of what we are but not even a suggestion of how to change it. Perhaps the creators themselves don't know. But so often in stories character development suddenly... stops. The arc is over but how do we know that something has changed other than empathy? Nothing is really put into action because the focus has always been on getting rid of something or getting something. To talk about what happens in paradise you would need to know what paradise is like. But how could you, knowing this world can't be good, even at times?

https://youtu.be/Z2cbvHdrYOg

>>8831807
I feel like this guy goes into some detail on modern mass culture that has the effect of simply being popular while also containing a lot more underneath it's look

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xzzQVk5IfE

I'm pretty sure DFW tried to teach his students this by going into great detail about some genre and pulp stories

>>8835525
more like: intellectual toilet

>>8825554
Hey OP, do you have Skype?

>>8836218
So how does an arahant act or think? What is not being an hedonist like?

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I'm OP and I don't have time today to respond to some of the stuff in as much detail as I want/need/oh god how i thirst for the precious precious (yous). But, briefly:

>>8836139
haven't read him but he came up last year for me, i think in connection to the spec-real guys. i love cockamamie theories, plz share cryptic bits, we don't want to spoil a publication

>>8836157
>lol
icycalm is that you

>>8836185
not so much from lyotard but he's there. more from deleuze and zizek. except that planet desire reproduces a far greater trap: the misguided and perpetual allure of fascism

>>8836218
i'm glad this anon is here

>>8836239
whoa

>>8836284
>What makes your desiring machine capable of that which all other have failed to do?
this is diabolically brilliant anon and you are most welcome to continue this line of thought anytime

>>8836742
>so what's stopping all of you from just killing yourselves?
not a whole lot famalam. although maybe seeing the end of game of thrones

>>8836918
>Is that really what we look for in [art]? In bright colors and beautiful sounds?
you're right about this. i will need to explain more later but you are 100% right

>Would the proletariat still be resentful if we lived in a Tolkienian world and the three states weren't more than a joke?
>To talk about what happens in paradise you would need to know what paradise is like. But how could you, knowing this world can't be good, even at times?
also these. you are wise anon. i may have some questions for you

>>8837077
>more like: intellectual toilet
>tfw struggling for a response
>tfw can't
>tfw boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past

>hey op do you have Skype
yes but i'm basically quasimodo animorphed into a slug. skype is a possibility but for now let's leave some room for jesus

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>>8836742
>True knowledge and the "right" way of thought will never be known. Never. Such things don't even exist.
Is that true knowledge?

>If you could zoom out of the earth further and further until this planet is a speck of dust then you'll see how meaningless anything is.
I have and not really.

>So what's stopping all of you from just killing yourselves?
It's pointless to hurry to what's certain.

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>>8837667

One other thought I'd like to leave here for now, for anyone who wants to get into the tangles of political/libidinal economy, representation, spectacle: the WWE (and maybe later on we can talk about competitive Street Fighter also...fufufu)

https://libcom.org/library/political-economy-professional-wrestling-capital-unions-spandex

Because if there is a more fascinating phenomenon than professional wrestling I'd like to see it. Plainly here is violence; but good luck in coming to a final understanding of whether or not this is real or fake. And the Japanese love this stuff just as much as we do. Interestingly the Chinese not so much...any thoughts on that?

Also the best essay ever written on the subject, the criminally slept-on-by-/lit/-monsieur roland gerard barthes

god-author(s) bless ye wise and gentle-anons. back later for more continental hijinx hopefully soonish

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>>8837823

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Barthes-Mythologies-Wrestling-1957.pdf

>>8837667
>i may have some questions for you
Shoot whenever you have the time.

>>8837823
>>8837832
https://youtu.be/mCqoVN5d1V4?list=PL38IiaZaCeNiHkrYImIaqq6iVBp8gPUCN

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>>8837823

And one other thing to think about. What is the difference between a wrestling match and a football game? The *ball.* In a wrestling match you have two people directly in a contest; in the football game, there are rules and referees (and the referees are not there to serve a purely ornamental purpose, the *appearance* of legitimacy).

We think football is *real;* we think wrestling is *entertainment* - but the lines between them are very, very thin. If I wanted to get really out there I might be inclined to say that the absence or presence of a *ball* as a metaphysical object and its position as the centrepiece of the drama - or its absence - is interesting: the presence of the rule or of the a priori *law.*

The whammy: we are describing metaphysically structured displays of violence. A wrestling match is a narrative spectacle; a football game is something else. I think there's something going on in that. And we live mainly in the society of the spectacle today.

>inb4 wankery!
>tfw p much

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>>8837909

This will bring us back to video games, and icycalm - bless his demented head - intuited this. He knew that, contra Schopenhauer, there was no way to simply *look* at a video game: you had to *play* it. Immersion changes everything.

You don't *look* at Call of Duty, you're literally in there. A spectator at a movie sits in the audience, but the player of a video game is simultaneously actor, director (after all, you move the camera with your controller) *and* spectator, all at once.

And then, just to make this even more interesting, you now have a pro tour for Street Fighter, where virtual prowess leads to actual money. This is nothing new; but Street Fighter, even though it is a video game, is I would say closer to football than to wrestling, because *the rules are the rules.* You can improvise in Street Fighter, but you can't *invent new moves on the fly.* Ryu's moveset is limited by the designers of the game, and has to be, because he is designed relative to the other fighters...

Violence is so interesting.

>>8837864

All right. Well, here's a question for you: what do you think about all this claptrap?

>>8837909
>>8837982
>>8837823

Total horseshit? Marginally interesting? What's your sense of the relationship between aesthetics, violence, and virtuality? Do video games and movies fundamentally fuck with Schopenhauer's take on art once we become virtual beings playing video games, rooting for our favourite wrestlers, or gambling on football games?

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Paging >>8836139 for thoughts on this (>>8838045) also. Bring some of the spec-real death rays to bear virtuality & aesthetics, that should be interesting. Assuming, of course, these are in fact two different people...

Ah, the fun of philosophy time on 4chan. Conversation in zero-G.

>What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?

>>8825623
>but is martial-arts violence Musashi-style really the same thing as political violence?

The martial arts of Musahi's day came with the implicit understanding that they would be practiced an used by a warrior elite to uphold their social status

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>>8838711

True. But we should also look closely at the significance of *unarmed* combat as well. According to legend - and you know how faithful ancient Chinese legends are to reality! - the founder of Wing Chun was a Buddhist nun.

http://hypermartialarts.com/2013/07/respect-tradition-ng-mui-wing-chun/

Just makes me think, is all. To be sure. institutionalized religion has historically been right there in helping to prop up and maintain power structures. No question. But I like the Buddhists, and *unarmed* combat is I think something different from armed combat.

Just my two cents. Of course, I've also read that Ng Mui was a revolutionary herself. So we take all of these stories with a grain of salt. But still. It's interesting to think about.

>tfw best legends are dubious chinese legends

Out of so many themes you people choose the most boring one - violence.

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>>8839123
>out of so many themes you people choose the most interesting one

ftfy

Okay, I'm being a dick. But you could at least tell us why you think we're wasting our time thinking about it.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to stare into the never-ending car wreck of violence, desire and capital forever. But basically what I want to know is what the fuck I'm supposed to look at afterwards, and why.

>especially when it looks like this
>and no gf

Ufff, that was a long long read, but it was a worthy read, i think.

It's marvelous to see, even with our limited understanding of things, the differences between the two great regions in philosophy, Western vs Eastern. I believe that thanks to their certain independent development, both have essentially different traits that can be used to compare both of them and find the common places were we could be speaking of a "human" nature, if there's something we could find about that.

BTW, any thought on the other "independent" philosophical thought that originated in Africa or Native America? (I mean most developed tribes as Mayans and Aztecs).

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>>8839285

Heh. I'm glad you asked. I tried to post this before but I fucked up and accidentally posted it on /n/ instead. Maybe this is my chance for redemption.

It's an Aztec creation story as told by Georges Bataille (and then re-told by Girard). The full story is in The Accursed Share somewhere but I've already transcribed Girard's version from whichever book he put it in.

Anyways. Here it is:

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>>8839588

1/4
They say that before there was day in the world, the gods came together in that place which is named Teotihuacan. They said to one another: "O gods, who will have the burden of lighting the world?" Then to these words answered a god Tecuciztecatl, and he said: "I shall take the burden of lighting the world.” Once more the gods spoke, and they said: "Who will be another?" Then looked at one another, and deliberated on who the other should be. And none ofthem dared offer himself for that office.

All were afraid and declined. One of the gods, to whom no one was paying any attention, and who was covered with pustules, did not speak but listened to what the other gods were saying. And the others spoke to him and said to him: "You be the one who is to give light, little pustule-covered one.” And right willingly he obeyed what they commanded, and he answered: "Thankfully I accept what you have commanded me to do. Let it be as you say:” And then both began to perform penances for four days…

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>>8839596

2/4
And midnight having come, all the gods placed themselves about the hearth, called Teotexcalli. In this place the fire blazed four days. The aforementioned gods arranged themselves in two rows, some at one side of the fire, some at the other side. And then the two gods above mentioned placed themselves before the fire, between the two rows of gods, all of whom were standing. And then the gods spoke, and said to Tecuciztecatl: "How now, Tecuciztecatl! Go into the fire!” And then he braced himself to cast himself into the fire.

And since the fire was large and blazed high, as he felt the great heat of the fire, he became frightened and dared not cast himself into the fire. He turned back. Once more he turned to throw himself into the fire, making an effort and drawing nearer, to cast himself into the flames. But, feeling the great heat, he held back and dared not cast himself into it. Four times he tried, but never let himself go. Since he had tried four times, the gods then spoke to Nanauatzin, and said to him: "How now, Nanauatzin! You try!” And when the gods had addressed him, he exerted himself and with closed eyes undertook the ordeal and cast himself into the flames. And then he began to crackle and pop in the fire like one who is roasted.

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>>8839600

3/4
And when Tecuciztecatl saw that Nanauatzin had cast himself into the flames, and was burning, he gathered himself and threw himself into the fire. And it is said that an eagle entered the blaze and also burned itself; and for that reason it has dark brown or blackened feathers. Finally a tiger entered; it did not burn itself, but singed itself; and for that reason remained stained black and white...

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>>8839607

4/4
And they say that after this the gods knelt down to wait to see where Nanauatzin, become sun, would rise...

And when the sun came to rise, he looked very red. He appeared to waddle from one side to the other. No one could look at him, because he snatched sight from the eyes. He shone and cast rays of light from him in grand style. His light and his rays he poured forth in all directions. And thereafter the moon rose on the horizon. Having hesitated, Tecuciztecatl was less brilliant...later the gods all had to die. The wind Kwetzalcoatl killed them all; it tore out their hearts and gave life to the newborn stars.

>>8839588
>>8839596
>>8839600
>>8839607
>>8839614

Yeah, i remember the creation myths from my old school. It's been a while since i re-read them. Now all that means something else for me, yet i couldn't pick a symbolic understanding of it, because the meaning of a lot of common religious symbols with the Old World are completely different.

If you have read the Aztec peregrination myth, that says how the Mexicas were the tribe picked from god, it's basically the same as Judaism.

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>>8839706

I haven't, but I'll look into that.

Exceptionalism is an interesting concept, and I suspect it may even be related to post/modern psychology/ideology later on, the horrible feeling of being unable to let go of a responsibility. Z says this, about the problem not being that the gods are too far away, but rather that they are much too close. Or about object a being something we perceive as missing from the world when in fact is something missing from ourselves, and which we cannot stop thinking about.

I think it's virtually impossible to relinquish, or even think about relinquishing, desire, without some consideration of serious (read: sacred) literature. Look at revolutions (or crusades): in order to fulfil the holy order the streets are made to run red with blood. This is there in de Maistre, it's in Jefferson, it's there in the Crusades, it's there in the Koran, it's all over the place. It's why people fear religions, and justifiably so. Secular revolutions are just as bloody as religious crusades, if not moreso, but it's *political romanticism* that is really what joins them together: immanentizing the eschaton, as Voegelin says. Gnostic warfare indeed. He's a wise guy.

Girard - my fella - will say, of course, that Christianity actually contains within itself this esoteric reading: *yes,* it is this way, but *no,* you don't have to do it anymore. As Girard says, religion *dismantles* tragedy the way that *tragedy dismantles myth.* At each stage you have a kind of evolution of consciousness. Or so he thinks.

Now it's possible that this is going on in Hegel as well. I'm not very strong with Hegel, so I won't go any further here. But revolution obviously can be historically read as a continuation of this.

So today, if you're skeptical about that stuff, as I am, and taking a different perspective, then Eastern stuff looks good to me: Just Leave That Shit Alone. As that anon wrote earlier, the one who is best fit to rule the state is the one who does not need it. Taoism is all about this line of thought.

I tried being a Stoic, but I really just found it didn't work for me. Things were just too interesting, there were too many flowers - and other things - to smell along the way. But there is no rest for decadent aesthetes like me. And now I'm feeling, unsurprisingly, rather burned out...

>>8838672

ok, well I sort of have sketches of an answer for two of your terms, namely aesthetics and "virtuality" as you're defining it. the perpetual backlash against "theory" in lit crit has recently turned into a paean for descriptivism, being the latest of the anti-interpretive strain that found its strongest expression in american deconstruction, without the theoretical impulse. i think that this is tied up at a certain level of the political unconscious with whatever impulses have lead to speculative realism catching on in philosophy—impulses that have to do with accelerationism, finance capital, and globalization, but which i frankly am only just beginning to research—but i also think that they have gone in the wrong direction. descriptive criticism takes aim at the "surface" of the text, conducting "distant" readings which really just amount to formalism. speculative realism provides tools for much more radically weird criticism than this. insofar as the aim of speculative realism is to sort of polemically commit itself to object-orientation, to ontology without subjects, then what we need to do, i think, is start asking the transcendental question of the narratives surrounding us: what, in other words, must be the case in the "world" in which this narrative unfolds for that narrative to be possible? what structures has the author imagined in place ungirding the events of his text? this is where video games come in, but also science fiction films, fantasies of all genres, plays, art installations, mechanical sculptures, and other more speculative art forms. i think the traditionally literary novel is basically caput because it lacks this kind of imagination. but think about, like, final fantasy, with its elaborate magic systems and such. what can we say about the sphere grid in FFX? what can we say about summoning aeons? about the difference between summoning them in battle versus how it unfolds in the narrative? about the existence of a "battle system?" this is basically how i see object-oriented ontology breaking into aesthetics. violence is a pretty important object in the is inventory, so it factors in insofar as these deep structures do. this is criticism turned into philosophy "within" its object. sorry this post is disorganized, suggestive, and poorly written; I'm on the run.

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>>8838045
I think the article you linked succinctly puts up what really is that distinguished spectacle from sport:
>[Wrestling] simply embraces as its soul what most other sports seek develop through accident: drama.

It's this sense of personal stake that characterizes the world as will, against the world as representation. This need, urge, lack and fight. Sport in its pure form doesn't have this. In a competition you're to leave behind personal motives and be "fair". Now it's interesting to think what the purpose of this fairness is. If it were a through equality then the whole endeavour would be pointless and amount to nothing but gambling--as the article details, it's precisely this luck element that fomented wrestling over boxing. So really luck isn't "fair". Without luck and without any inequality, then, sport is pointless. What then, is its point? Sports care for *specific* characteristics. This is best seen in the Olympics:
https://youtu.be/PE-vSJh0N_A

So what happens in sports is non-retributive. It's not supposed to be "fair" in the sense that everyone gets gold, but "fair" in the sense that both sides get to play a part necessary for there to be any achievement. The winners win, but they can't win without the loser. They have both contributed to the development or purification of their discipline. There's no apocalytic narrative in which the bad guys are eliminated and the score is settled. It's very close to Confucian amorality. It's about learning, dicovering and disciplining oneself into a Form.

Of course that this is often used by fans or states to measure each other. But this is beside the point.

Now if we're dealing with videogames we have what appears like something between sport and spectacle. Can we regard videogames as art in the classical sense? Well, what videogames are we talking about? Videogames are vastly different from one one another. Are videogame performances art? There's nothing much to distinguish them from theater acting. Things like tool assisted let's-plays are even more "static" than the stage: they're completely predisposed routes which follow the most efficient path in a game; theoritically they exist in their present form from the moment the game hits the market. But then, theoretically, this could also be said about the whole of existence.

I think where Schopenhauer's take on art presents a problem is that Art is non-participatory. It presupposes the attitude of the world as representation to be inherently non-participatory. But in sport, as well as artistry, taking the world as will is impossible--there simply is no time to do it, one has to, of necessity, forget about one's history and focus on the goal. So the only one's that are ever encouraged to take it as that are the spectators. It's a whole reversal. Activity becomes representation and contemplation, will. So there's no reason why we can't take the world as representation at all times. I think it was the whole point Laozi was trying to make.

>>8837823
As a longtime wrestling fan, I think the best way to describe it is physical theater for the working man. The role of violence in it is to tell the classic story of hero vs. villain in a language that can be understood by anyone ranging from a kid still learning how to read to a wizened old man.

In America, wrestling's traditional audience has been blue collar workers. This is reflected in rich guys, sneaky foreigners, and authority figures all being staple roles assumed by villain wrestlers against good guys who often embody traditional values. Donald Trump is a longtime friend of the McMahon family, and his rallying cries against shady immigrants and the corrupt establishment was ripped straight from the wrestling.

In Japan, wrestling is grounded more in real sports, but there's still a strong nationalist component. It became popular there in the years following World War II, when American workers flew in to get beat by Japanese stars as a way of boosting Japan's morale after the war. Even today, it's common to see matches laid out in a way to highlight the Japanese fighting spirit and monster foreigners are a common villain archetype.

Good video on early Japanese wrestling

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J54Eoh6bxTU

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this thread is like an open-to-view public toilet.

have some decency and please cover up your waste.

>>8841417
I'm a 3rd party observer unfamiliar with either Schopenhauer or Laozi, but I'd like to step in on this discussion a bit as the intersection between videogames and sports is of interest to me.

I don't really think you can make a hard and fast distinction between sports and art. Sure in sports guys generally try to win, but, at least in boxing and MMA, it's pretty common to see guys to give priority to entertaining the fans and give rewarded for it by promoters. There's also a precedent of the rules in sports being changed to make things more entertaining for the fans; compare the amateur wrestling matches in the early 20th century to the ones of today for an example of that. Furthermore, ice skating and gymnastics are essentially artistic displays treated as a sport. So, while sports might be based around performance, I don't think that stops them from being judged as one would a work of art.

On the subject of videogames, I see them as works of art which are explored through the player's performance. I would say videogames absolutely are a participatory medium both with multiplayer games and in the recent phenomenon of developers listening to fans for patch ideas. Things like speedruns and tournament matches are instances of performance as art akin to sports as I've described above. At a high level, seem quite comparable to sports and I see no issue in the term "esports" to describe such play.

I'm not a guy who thinks icycalm was right about everything (he hated esports gaming, but I'm pretty big into it), yet I still think he was onto something with his aesthetics. Art is about immersion, craftsmanship, and giving enjoyment to its audience, and videogames are the king of the real. Performance is about physical exertion and pushing human skill to the limits, and real sports are the king of the realm. Neither of these concepts contradict each other, so it's completely possible to have videogames as performance or real sports as art.

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>>8841417

The Taoists always have such intelligent things to say about this.

It's what I like about Laozi: you could almost call it a radical conformism, a radical centrism. For me, someone like Bataille gets what's going on with art way more than Schopenhauer. Somebody said this about Schopenhauer, that he thought he was being much more pessimistic than he really was. But Bataille will argue that art is always a process of *excess:* that's how the accursed share works. It's the thing that has to be ritualistically, artistically, orgiastically squandered precisely because it cannot conform to a rational equilibrium. This is what art is, a spectacle.

Now we live today in the society of the spectacle. I think that this is a real thing to consider: that passivity *with a ticket* is not the same as passivity. To be a spectator is not really to be a passive or detached observer. Crowd-being, audience-being, is already to be engaged so much in the world of libidinal economy that one is able to forget that one is there. All of our attention is concentrated on the spectacle. And

It's one of the things I've always wondered about professional wrestlers: that the persona of a wrestler is more than an act, it's an act that you believe in so well that you become a kind of an icon, an icon of yourself, hyperreal.

Only snobs turn up their noses at what is going on with wrestling. That's mass tragedy at work, but it is pure cynicism to think that the massiveness detracts from the meaning. It may not be Aeschylus, but we know we aren't the Greeks, either.

>it's very close to confucian amorality

I agree. And it reminds me of something Lacan says, that even in a sexual relationship there really is no other. You are alone even then. It is the gaze of the spectator that creates the universal perspective, maybe even the dialectic itself. I am talking only about a thoroughly massivized urban population here, Das Man. With the caveat that within that setting anything like authenticity is vanity.

>So the only one's that are ever encouraged to take it as that are the spectators. It's a whole reversal.

That's it. This. Immersion and virtuality - the work of technics on aesthetics - collapse the distance between the viewer and the spectacle. They feed our primary desire for presence, haecceity. They make us feel like We Are Really Being There, This Time. We get seduced. We fall for it. It's a palliative.

cont'd

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>>8841928
>I don't really think you can make a hard and fast distinction between sports and art

No doubt you can't. And this is the thing: spectacle. And maybe how we subsequently look at this stuff - interestedly, disinterestedly, libidinally, analytically, and so on.

Barthes had a good for this: the myth. Every advertisement was for him a *mythology,* there was something not only magical but *just* in the way a cleaning product goes into the fibers of your clothing and beats the hell out of dirt. Now your clothing is purified and cleaned. What sells you on buying the product is this very mythology, the sense that somehow this is really working. We're *marginally* savvier than this today, but the point remains: commodity fetishism always restores the balance of the universe. All you have to do is buy it.

And this of course is something different from an immersive videogame, which allows you this experience to be someone other than yourself.

>>8841417 is right: we do need to distinguish between video games. But since we're talking about icycalm now, I think he had an interesting, though polemical, point to make about this: No Art Games. And I found that argument pretty appealing. I think what he meant to say was, if you want Meaning, go to a gallery and stare at some difficult art and get floored by it. But asking for Meaning in videogames is total decadence: the meaning is not to get your ship blown up. Or you can just contemplate the awesome box art or whatever.

The other thing that is interesting is how the demands of commercialism come into this stuff. I mean, I'm glad Starcraft 2 is as popular as it is in the e-sports community. It allows for Blizzard to make cooler and better updates to it. Ask a guy who lived in Korea for a fair amount of time, it didn't take anything off the table for me to watch competitive games on TV - or go into bars where people would be playing Tekken instead of watching golf. I have *no* problems with this.

The fact is, my own real problem is a kind of ressentiment. I want to own beauty, and I have a hard problem just leaving it alone. Criticism I think is a way of trying to hide the elephant in the room: that life really is beautiful, so long as you can control your appetites to own or personalize things. And that really good art is hard to make because it requires patience and craftsmanship rather than romantic sentiment. Personally, I think we're OD'd on romance in the West, and what would be a good look would be a return to classicism. Of course, these are things that cultures do, perhaps, organically and by themselves. And maybe it's the way As Zhuangzhi says: leave it alone and everything happens the way it should.

I have a hard time leaving things alone, but I know that this is the correct answer.

>>8841928
>>8841962

sorry gents these posts are full of stupid typos and errors. will edit more thoroughly next time

>>8837469
first, it is not a good question, because the phenomenology is not not what matters (meditation is more about phenomenology) and language is not convenient .
the most integral answer is the canonical one: you no longer have aversion, lust towards the material world (because you know that the 5 senses + intellection are shit to be happy and, if you want pleasure (it is natural to get it), you have the higher/safe pleasures from meditation) and you have no delusion regarding the ''self''.

if you wish to know, you must wait for some buddha to tell you or you must become one, ie just meditate and reflect on the four noble truths, or at least meditate like http://www.leighb.com/jhana3.htm


It is a lot about not being like before, and in the following, I use ''you'' for ''there is (the experience of)''

you have no boredom, you have no mental suffering by being alone, you do not fear, nor love, death nor existence.

emotionally, you are indifferent towards what you experience about the material world. You have no lust, no aversion towards what you hear, smell, touch, taste.
For instance, even if they are not under stress, not super tired, plenty people are triggered, in the stomach (like when you are anxious) not in the head, when they hear a word, like an insult or any piece of news and then go on twitter. That no longer happens. Same thing with what would be a sadness from the death of people that you liked before, for instance.
you no longer love people, like loving a gf, but you just acknowledge the existence of people and you are glad that they stop behaving badly.

You have no mental fermentation, no fantasies (always fed by fantasies or whatever you experience from the material world), because you are good at concentration, like any good meditator, which gives you mental pleasure through mental relief, people call this ''the true nature of the mind/ of being human/the ultimate reality''.
thanks to the concentration, you also have enhanced perception, so you can taste plenty of flavors in what you usually taste only one flavor which would make you a super hedonist, too bad that you do not care about pleasure, pain, nopain/nopleasure. You do not sleep like you slept before.

there is no clinging to the ''not clinging''

now about the subject-object (=the self]. The whole subject disappear and you are left with just objects; you have such object, then such object appears, then it disappears, then an object appears; meaning ''things happen by themselves'' but there is no generation of sadness, since there is no clinging to the disappearing objects. All this stuff about (whether there is) consciousness, pleasures-pain-nonpleasure&nonpain, emotion, perception , contact and all is really from a realist, subjective-objective stance (the only way that people know to talk). Also, You are not a ''being'', because ''being/non-being'' means precisely to identify with what is experienced and trying to pursue this experience or to stop it.

>>8842097
>if you wish to know, you must wait for some buddha to tell you

What do you mean by this?

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>>8841962

Going to get wanky with this one lads.

There is other words no *risk* involved in going to a gallery. And only a kind of sublimated one in seeing your favourite hyperreal wrestler get tombstoned (or F-5'd) at Wrestlemania.

The infinite circulation of a championship belt and its perennial desirability - and this is no illusion, because *we ourselves determine the champion* via fandom, since even disgust or revulsion feeds the system. The difference however is that if the belt serves as a Lacanian objet a the difference here is that all of the action takes place on a *stage*, remote from us, which is what makes wrestling a spectacle. We project. And in so projecting the thing becomes real. The fact that wrestling fans are so alert to their own power nowadays confirms the phenomenon rather than negates it. The real elephant in the room becomes how to maintain interest in the thing. You need an incandescently charismatic superstar to do this, somebody who takes an even more ironic - or serious - attitude towards the whole thing. What I like about Girard is that he understood this: there is always a third desirer - there is the subject, the object, and the rival.

But to go back to economics I think the problem is that capitalism bespeaks a risk-taking economic system, and this is why aesthetics are so important in it: beauty itself requires risk. Any detached contemplation of art only leads back to Schopenhauer, time and again (and an excessively interested perception leads to Nietzsche). We can neither *be* art nor *leave art alone.* Something like a higher-order awareness is required, something that itself understands semiology, evanescence, mono no aware/the pathos of things, the charm of brokenness and asymmetry, and so on. These are I think the essentials of the Chinese and Japanese aesthetic understanding. It's not that they reject violence, but rather that they seem to take a less existential attitude towards it. Beauty inheres in remoteness and fragility, rather than in prestige and power. The latter only reminds us of what we lack; the former, maybe, inclines towards something different, that which the world independently of us has in such abundance.

The Chinese and the Japanese both like gambling: the Dragon Quest guy, for example, is a big fan. Certainly the Neetch does. And a world ruled by casino finance is frightening. But maybe that's the thing, you just have to make some peace with an essentially risk-taking universe. Art is seductive in suggesting an escape from this. But maybe that's something that has to be let go of.

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>>8842546

We have an obsession for symmetry, perhaps, that is upended by the tragic mode of perception, and in which we flounder. The East has I think more of a disposition towards the charm of asymmetry, the road through the broken path, and so on.

The Way of Confucius or the Tao isn't *opposed* to anything; disorder and chaos aren't rebellious, they're just not order, the ongoing road through things, which is a journey without beginning or end. There's no future there, and no past, in the same way we think there is. There's only this one perpetual and elliptical moment one navigates through.

Even something like gambling is interesting to think about in this regard, the notion of chance or fate against luck. Small wonder gambling is prohibited in strongly Western/Abrahamic theological cultures: if the throw of the dice can change anything, good luck getting people to take wisdom seriously.

But if there is an acceptance that the throw of the dice changes everything from the beginning - and, by extension, that it changes *nothing* - then you will get a different perspective on things: a much more easy-come easy-go sensibility. But also, given what we know about the workings of culture (if not the universe) this is also a profoundly wise one.

Combat, gambling, violence, risk. Capital and desire. It's just a smorgasbord of interesting stuff to think about. It makes me think that the problem of criticism is that it simply isn't lyrical enough to keep up with it. We know it drove Nick Land insane. But it also made guys like Barthes and Baudrillard the most interesting writers ever.

Casino world...it's super-fatalistic, but what else can you do?

>get a job you fucking asshole that's what

>>8842563
>gambling is prohibited in strongly Western/Abrahamic theological cultures

Don't shit on me too much for this obvious generalization, you know what I mean.

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>>8842563

And if we wanted to connect this back to the original theme of this, I might say that that is to some degree what is going on in that picture. Training essentially involves the preparation for risk, and there is no greater risk involved than the risk of death. But that being the case - if you take into account this Samurai-Stoic warrior ideal, that death is death - then you get Musashi. And what's interesting about him is that the victory isn't really so important as

a) the avoidance of death, and
b) the continuation of practice.

Jiro Ono channels this, I think: a culture of *practice.* This is there in Sloterdijk, too, everything he says about anthropotechnics: you just do something over and over until you become an acrobat at it. And that's the point.

Even Chael Sonnen made a good point about this, about the impossibility of judges determining what does and does not count as effective striking: everything hurts, but they basically decide who won a round by seeing whose face was more smashed up. But this worked against leg-kick guys like Chuck Liddell. Fight scoring is kind of interesting to think about.

Anyways, this film was very interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1UDS2kgqY8

>not my blog, etc, etc

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Also, this book is really fucking good. For anyone who wants more recommendations related to the topic and not my own infinite screed about capital and violence.

>>8842603
You should start a blog. Maybe a twitter too. Brand yourself. Your philosophical insights are good enough to profit off of.

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>>8843705

That's very kind, anon. And I'm glad to think that you've found something insightful in all this. I'm aware of the fact that some of this is a bit longform for /lit/. So it's good for filthy casuals like me, but you're right.

I like /lit/ a lot because it helps me work some of this stuff out. This thread is a good example of that, since there's been some very sharp cookies here and that really is what makes the difference, because it's really other people who prompt stuff. The single and solitary art critic is really just the next step removed from the single and solitary art-*maker.* It's why I think these things are best done collectively. Like that African proverb says: go fast alone, go far together.

Pic not related but there's something I relate to in it that I can't quite describe. It more or less describes where I'm at. If I had a blog this would probably be my avatar.

I'll give it some thought.

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anyone read pic related? or his other works?

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>>8844027

That's the Lone Wolf and Cub guy! I read the rather more plebtier and Americanized version of those way back when, but it was still very cool. But the original stuff is always better. I should get on that, I think.

It is almost impossible to make samurai stuff that is not interesting. It may not be possible.

This tumblr has lots of concept art/girls & swords stuff. A very fun browse.
https://sekigan.tumblr.com/

>>8843108
the nei-yeh is better. and actually the three major taoist texts are better too. that one is q bit cheap compared to them, even if it is not valueless.

>>8844333

The Wenzi is def not as well-known as the others, but I find it helps to clarify and develop those parts of the TTC that are really gnomic.

>>8844404
>clarify and develop those parts of the TTC that are really gnomic

thats exactly its downside. the value of the lao-tse is the fact that it allows many readings, each adapted to what the reader needs/looks for. trying to develop such kind of texts makes them lose their value at the extent of 'clarity'. these texts actually are trying to teach, or rather point to, the value of the dark side, the value of the empty, the value of the useless.

the 'mysteries' are not to be 'understood' by the intellect but rather grasped by the whole being. that being said, the wenzi is a good addition to the other texts, but too concrete to be a starter.

>>8841568
Yeah, and this isn't even getting into Dance. It's funny how Hesse's whole point in Steppenwolf pretty much comes down to: "you're so great and everything but you can't dance?" It raises the question of what all the great knowlegde and pondering is for if you're never going to become a player. At some point it just becomes aversion to pain, because pleasure eventually gives way to it. In a way it's worse than being a meatheaded sportsfan--at least those guys are willing to suffer along.

>It's the thing that has to be ritualistically, artistically, orgiastically squandered precisely because it cannot conform to a rational equilibrium.
My question here is whether a "rational equilibrium" is opposite to ritual and art. I mean, it's pretty clear it makes sense to people. Things like wrestling might be excessive but they certainly have their codes. And if we're to think the audience lives vicariously through them, and in the catharsis of being a spectator they've avoided doing things themselves having the actors as a symbol, then in the end it's actually *less* excess than we would have otherwise. I think this is what Peterson and Jung, and even Barthes, often get at: it's patronizing to think that something not expressed in equations is less efficient or downright unintelligible. It makes for a myopic view of most of the world. Alan Watts presents the same point perfectly: that we're presented with a world in which, save for a tiny portion of our brain, everything is stupid. So we end up with a bunch of mysticism when we have to deal with our effects on the environment for example.

>Now we live today in the society of the spectacle.
That term's always rubbed me wrong. Especially when it comes to politics it seems to imply this one-way-track relationship between the media and the audience. It also stops looking completely at most of human life. It seems so sensationalist.

>commodity fetishism always restores the balance of the universe. All you have to do is buy it.
This is hilariously true. Recently there was this Coke commercial on the tube: a kid gets bullied, a bigger kid comes and saves him, they're rough friends--Coca-Cola. That was it. Now that is Pure Ideology. You're not even shown the "refreshing" aspects of the product or whatever. This is even more true with perfumes and the like. They're always selling you a dream life.

>And this of course is something different from an immersive videogame, which allows you this experience to be someone other than yourself.
An idea comes to mind: Where does the prejudice against pretending you're someone else come from? Why is D&D the nerd thing to do?

cont.

>But asking for Meaning in videogames is total decadence: the meaning is not to get your ship blown up.
I'm wondering again: What's "meaning"? Often it seems like a synonym of "importance". "That is meaningful (important) to me." But then why is it that we have to derive meaning in museum in such an unegaging way?

I ultimately agree with Watts in this again: going to a museum is no different than any other activity. Everyone is playing their game in some way, or being an actor on their stage. So the talk about meaning has a lot more to do with how much you can communicate or seem like than your enjoyment of the thing.

>that life really is beautiful, so long as you can control your appetites to own or personalize things.
Being in control and letting things be are opposite. At some point you have to let go and let those things flourish on their own. Otherwise you're just creating dependances.

>And that really good art is hard to make because it requires patience and craftsmanship rather than romantic sentiment.
There's no reason why you can't have both. Passion itself is a skill. Don't you think desire is largely mimetic, after all?

>I have a hard time leaving things alone, but I know that this is the correct answer.
I think what you want is to remove yourself, because of some guilt or other. You think you doing anything will bring up more problems, which in the ends makes you so nervous it's inevitable. Try letting yourself be.

http://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu78.html

>>8842603
>Training essentially involves the preparation for risk
I have to refer to Watts yet again here. His points on non-participation in our education are great. And if you really think about it, it's a pretty hellish position to be in, being in school for 20, 25 years if risk is what's trying to be avoided with preparation. The event horizon keeps getting larger and larger, and you only end up with more things to do when you hit the streets.

>>8832836

you're a fucking moron, his posts are fine. if you get this assblasted about "vis-a-vis" you should kill yourself.

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>>8844639
>It raises the question of what all the great knowledge and pondering is for if you're never going to become a player. At some point it just becomes aversion to pain, because pleasure eventually gives way to it. In a way it's worse than being a meatheaded sportsfan--at least those guys are willing to suffer along.
So. Much. This. And I think this it: desire and seduction promise escape. But there is no escape. You just chase desire more and more exotically, for fear of what lies beyond it.

That is solid gold, anon.

>Things like wrestling might be excessive but they certainly have their codes.
The unconscious is structured like a language - or maybe like a *grammar* - but here it is again. It's one of the most interesting parts of Baudrillard's thought, his reference to a *code* - and it's there in Bordieu as well, in habitus. Consumption is *predictable,* even scientific. This is what consumption does, it *evacuates the unconscious.* It's why existentialism dies with irony, because the world outside knows you better than you know yourself. It puts us in a new place: consumer world, the society of the spectacle.

>That term's always rubbed me wrong. Especially when it comes to politics it seems to imply this one-way-track relationship between the media and the audience. It also stops looking completely at most of human life. It seems so sensationalist.
Me too, but this is my feeling: that we have to look at the products of the unconscious to learn more about ourselves, rather than at ourselves as producers of desire, simply because beyond a certain horizon *we can't trust ourselves* as discrete and autonomous beings any more. We have to look at the culture that we have produced and which "alienates" us - except that the form of this alienation is entirely, if unconsciously, produced. This is why I am averse to higher criticism, postmodernity, and so on. Criticism feeds that which criticism is intended to escape from. It was my great issue with the Matrix: the Matrix isn't produced by robots, it's produced by us. How would you feel about "society of the spectator?" That's what's going on here. We are just watching our own desires become autonomous and speak back to us. This is NL's thesis as well.

Put another way, it's more like Frankenstein's monster survives the death of Victor Frankenstein, and recovers his notes and tries to build a human being again. But it produces a robot.

>Where does the prejudice against pretending you're someone else come from?
Good question. My own answer would be guilt (or fear). Simply put, I don't think we can *trust* fear or desire any longer. I think that's all a kind of extenuated Victorianism. The authentic cannot be the unspeakable, or arguably even poetry. If there is no longer any distinction between the real and the illusory, then all we are left with is desire, fear, alienation, and the only terra firma is capital itself. It's why I like Laozi on this: one has to let go.

(cont'd)

MODS MODS MODS
DELETE THIS THREAD
IT BELONGS ON /his/
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH /lit/

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>>8845305
>What's "meaning"? Often it seems like a synonym of "importance". "That is meaningful (important) to me." But then why is it that we have to derive meaning in museum in such an unegaging way?

Part of me wants to say: sheer narcissism, together with the fear of death. Victor Frankenstein crossed with Ebenezer Scrooge. Modernity, in on other words. Or postmodernity, which is a kind of demotic modernity. Postmodernism is modernism in which ironic consumption rather than detached criticism takes the lead. Modernism itself proceeds out of romanticism (and that, arguably, from Protestantism) - maybe *everything* proceeds out of this. It's certainly what reactionaries will argue, that the thing is to go back to the classics, Build a Bridge to the 17th Century. Double down on precisely that which people tend to shit on, when the West was in its full glory: the Enlightenment. It's certainly attractive but I don't think it's going to work. Especially the part about monarchy. And that may not be a bad thing.

I like NRx, but even I know my attraction derives from a combination of nostalgia and fetish.

>Being in control and letting things be are opposite. At some point you have to let go and let those things flourish on their own. Otherwise you're just creating dependancies.

Tao-anon is wise anon. I find this *incredibly* difficult, but it doesn't mean it's not true.

>There's no reason why you can't have both. Passion itself is a skill. Don't you think desire is largely mimetic, after all?

As you know, I *do* believe that desire is mimetic. And what a fucking point this is - "Passion itself is a skill" - wow. That's the problem with romance: it's narcissistic. You're right - passion might be a skill. So what would *this* mean? Worth thinking about.

>I think what you want is to remove yourself, because of some guilt or other. You think you doing anything will bring up more problems, which in the ends makes you so nervous it's inevitable. Try letting yourself be.

This is...completely true. So either I've made myself very transparent, or you are very good at reading people, or both.

>I have to refer to Watts yet again here. His points on non-participation in our education are great. And if you really think about it, it's a pretty hellish position to be in, being in school for 20, 25 years if risk is what's trying to be avoided with preparation. The event horizon gets larger and larger, and you only end up with more things to do when you hit the streets.

I have a family member who is a construction worker, and she's been doing some work for a cardiologist. He's just beginning his career now, and of course he's building a nice house. He's 40.
I'm jealous of the house (and in some ways of the life). But this is only to confirm your point.

cont'd

>>8825554
>Could be an interesting thread
>Filled with psuedo pinko weebs
Welp...

>>8841962
Icycalm's point about meaning is a bit more nuanced than you give him credit for. He wasn't saying that videogames are a worse medium to look for meaning in than other mediums, but that it's bad to place the focus on the meaning of any work of art. The purpose of art is, first and foremost, to give enjoyment to the audience, and it should be judged on that basis. If you want to send a message, the best way to do that is to make a speech or an essay. This doesn't mean it's bad to have messages in art, especially when any work of entertainment ever made has some sort of message even if it boils down to "defeat the bad guys." What it does mean is that art should prioritize a message over its immersion and craftsmanship. Ergo, Duchamp's urinal is not art no matter how much the art establishment argues otherwise, and neither are "artgames."

Next, you also seem to be working with a different definition of "immersion" than icycalm had in mind. When he used the term, he wasn't talking about the interactive aspects of a videogame, but its ability to emotionally engage an audience into its fictional world. The ability it immerse an audience is not exclusive to videogames, but he did use the interactive aspect of videogames to argue videogames were the best artform because it gave them a superior ability to immerse people.

That said, icycalm's aesthetic system still seems somewhat incomplete to me for how it treats videogames as the lone interactive art medium without accounting for comparable interactive aspects in live art mediums. Before videogames, you had live concerts, theater, and pro wrestling as popular artforms that all emphasized audience interaction in some way. One could go as far as describing pro wrestling as a "choose your own adventure" story written in real time for the role the fans play in deciding who promotors push as a star. Not to mention the old structuralist argument that any work of art is indirectly interactive for how the audience is free to come up with their own interpretation. It would be good to note the different degrees of interactivity presented in videogames at this point, ranging from choose your own adventure visual novels games to esports.

>>8845411
The intersection between art and politics through something like mimetic theory is of interest to me. I haven’t read Girard and I would be interested if he wrote about this, but, from what I understand, his mimetic theory boils down to the idea that someone watching someone else do something fosters a desire in the observer to do it themselves. My take on that theory is that interactive mediums present the ability to satisfy that desire by giving the audience the ability to live vicariously through the performers. The Romans knew this when they held battles at the colosseum to let the raucous crowds get out all their rowdiness there instead of in public.

The application of this principal on a grand scale has created the consumerist society as one where that satisfaction of desire vicariously takes precedence over satisfaction of desire physically. People define themselves by their favorite stories told on TV shows rather than by the stories they come up with themselves. Modern WWE is, in a way, the quintessential entertainment product of the postmodern world. A monopoly that rose to its current position in the late 90’s by giving the blue-collar working class the opportunity to vicariously live out their desire to topple the upper class, all the while being run by a ruthless billionaire who takes joy in presenting himself as such on TV.

In a lot of ways, the barriers between art and politics and between interactive art and non-interactive art have collapsed as we progress in a society oriented more towards observance than action. I am not familiar with the Chinese texts mentioned in this thread and most of my knowledge of Eastern philosophy comes from the Indian side of things, but I think there is merit to the idea that ancient Eastern wisdom is far more useful today than recent Western philosophers. Baudrillard made a career writing about the consumerist society, yet I can’t help but think about how he cultivated a consumerist following of his own. Blatant obscurantism, needless coining of buzzwords, tons repetition in the latter half of his oeuvre, and he never actually endorsed any course of action.

I do think he had a few good insights, but I bring him up as representative of how I feel universities have corrupted Western philosophy, making it more about publishing papers and namedropping than insight that betters the lives of the common man. It’s not hard to see why more people are going to yoga studios than reading philosophy books. The usage of meditation and the asanas to cultivate mental clarity, self-satisfaction, and a healthy body holds far more merit in breaking out of consumerism than bemoaning “hyperreality.”

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>>8845315

>MODS MODS MODS
DELETE THIS THREAD
IT BELONGS ON /his/
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH /lit/

[thinking]

...
...
...

[still thinking]

...
...
...

[thank you for waiting]

[please take your rejoinder]

>wew lad

>>8845361

Pseud no doubt, and weeb for sure, but not as pink as you'd think. I'm actually trying to get *around* Marx, not stay with him. But I think the way out is through.

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>>8845411

>mfw we talk about icycalm

This is some really really good stuff anon. I have to head out for a bit but I'll be back to talk more about some of what you've brought up later. I *do* think he had some unparalleled insight, but I also have some doubts also (whatever that means). In brief I think his angle was too reductionistic, and that he was caught between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. And also that he shit on Baudrillard way too much. He disagreed with Baudrillard's pessimism - we all do - but I don't think he was charitable enough to what Baudrillard was thinking. I'll have more on that later.

But obviously you've put a lot of thought into these posts and they warrant a more careful response than that. In the interim thank ye kindly for bringing more wood to the fire, good sir.

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>>8845496

>tfw

This is going to be long. After this I will probably have to consider leaving the thread, because I really am pushing things too far at this point, and if the mods decide this is getting absurd then okay. But might as well go out with a bang.

1/4
So the situation with icy is the same one we face with Nietzsche: remoteness. What’s interesting about icy is that he will be aware of the fact that *power is giving* - it’s not having. And that the Japanese (‘alone among the subhuman races’) are good at *copying* things. He knew there was something going on here. The problem I would say is with his feeling that *power is zero-sum,* and yet that the point of power is to *give* it. This is why he writes that power supplies the sole and true hierarchy, the infinite ladder on which every person is on one step. This is not to say that it is not in the final analysis true - only that I have grave doubts about it.

Power - and in particular the *giving* of power - confirms difference. In icy’s world one gets skyrocketed upwards by the gift of giving. The problem I have is that however remote the ubermensch might become, however toweringly aloof and independent, wreathed in glory, the fact remains that even the lowliest subhuman in his system still desires the same beauty, and in the same way, and for the same reasons.

>he did use the interactive aspect of videogames to argue videogames were the best artform because it gave them a superior ability to immerse people.

I think he was overrating the fundamentally more important and primordial desire of people to immerse themselves. He should have looked at it bottom-up rather than top-down. Desire is mimetic: *we feed the system,* and it gives us what we want. Challenging games thwart us, and they are difficult. What icy did was take this blessedly sadomasochistic view of desires: that the real meaning of desire lay in challenge and overcoming - and he was 100% right. Gratified desires only reproduce themselves; mastered desires lead to something far more significant.

>Not to mention the old structuralist argument that any work of art is indirectly interactive for how the audience is free to come up with their own interpretation

And this is a huge problem. I totally don’t believe in this. I think the real magic happens when people *feel* or *believe* that they are free, but really they are most satisfyingly *boxed-in.* This can lead to total passivity (bad: watching shit-rate cinema garbage like a slug) or something very different (good: Ketsui on hard mode). The audience is *not* free to come up with their own interpretation, because *desire comes first.* You are either *satisfied* or you are *not satisfied* - and telling yourself you are when you aren’t is ressentiment.

(cont'd)

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>>8845662

2/4
>He wasn't saying that videogames are a worse medium to look for meaning in than other mediums, but that it's bad to place the focus on the meaning of any work of art. The purpose of art is, first and foremost, to give enjoyment to the audience, and it should be judged on that basis.

And he was right to do so. However, this is also what makes Zizek important: the injunction to *Enjoy.* Icy’s program, in other words, was 100% correct: if you are ordered to enjoy and you know that this is impossible, then the most logical form possible is the *challenging videogame* - the game that satisfies through *punishment.* You enjoy Far Cry 2 more as you overcome its challenges. And of course he was right. This is true. This is what happens. Icy was a legit genius for intuiting this.

>mimetic theory boils down to the idea that someone watching someone else do something fosters a desire in the observer to do it themselves

Close. Desire, Girard says, always includes a third party: the *rival.* This is what absolutely cannot be overlooked. It’s not all about *you*, it’s about *you* and the *other* who is also desiring. What we like in escapist fiction is precisely the ways in which we enter private universes that actually feel like real ones: in a word, immersion. There’s a reason why icy stayed with videogames on this. Within the simulacrum you can be allowed to forget that there is another person. What icy would call *immersion* works, but only by omitting the fact that desire is mimetic by virtue of having it become well and truly virtual. In a videogame you can be allowed to forget that desire is essentially mimetic because you are in wonderland. Understandable, but “reality” - however debased - still remains.

>The application of this principal on a grand scale has created the consumerist society as one where that satisfaction of desire vicariously takes precedence over satisfaction of desire physically.

This is why we have to talk about the *libido*, the *libidinal* economy: because in a *perverse* sense you can be satisifed physically while still being perfectly lazy: mere arousal. And this is how seductive art really works on you. As the consumer you get the best of both worlds, but I think it’s a bad deal in the long run.

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>>8845668

3/4
>Baudrillard made a career writing about the consumerist society, yet I can’t help but think about how he cultivated a consumerist following of his own. Blatant obscurantism, needless coining of buzzwords, tons repetition in the latter half of his oeuvre, and he never actually endorsed any course of action.

Absolutely not. The enormous and terrible irony about Jean Baudrillard is that he is held up as the poster-boy for obscurantist rhetoric when he was - I will say this until I am blue in the face - its most tortured and prescient observer. He wound up becoming a *scapegoat* for the system that nobody - *nobody* - had a sharper critical eye for. There are no buzzwords going on there, and he was *mortified* by what he was witness to. As for course of action: this is to be super-unfair. It’s totally impossible to privilege Nietzsche’s response (in a word: tragedy) and then criticize Baudrillard for recognizing this *without endorsing it*. It wasn’t that he *couldn’t* prescribe a course of action, he knew that *prescribing programmatic courses of action for the masses would be *hypocritical.* He knew this all too well, which is why he *refrained from doing so* - but rather than accept what that meant, he tried to leave the door open for people to follow him down the rabbit hole and find answers of their own. He knew all too well the problem was offering a platform for mass action. There isn’t one. And it’s why it makes no sense at all that he is basically excoriated for refusing to do what he absolutely knew was wrong: propose an ideology. Nietzsche didn’t, but Baudrillard in his heart never agreed all the way with Nietzsche. And neither do I.

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>>8845681

4/4
And this is why I think if *modernism* could be called the one-two punch of Freud and Marx, that *postmodernism* is the one-two punch of Marx and *Nietzsche* - and this is what made Baudrilliard the guy who he was, the Marxist-turned-Nietzschean. This is why it uncharitable to accuse Baudrillard of not having a platform or programme for the rest of us, because *that was what he left behind* to go in the direction of Nietzsche as he did. And he didn't know the answer, but it's ridiculous to say that he *should* have.

Anyways. Now today Zizek is here to talk about this stuff, and he’s going *back* to Marx and Freud (or, rather, Lacan), but obv we know that it’s too late for this now. He gives the best criticism possible because the phenomenon has so clearly manifested itself: that it is what people want, that they *know* it is perverse, but they *do not want it to change.* Not really. This is why Z says he is afraid of ‘Capitalism with Asian Characteristics’ - and it is also why *my* response is to say, let’s not be afraid of this, let’s *get right in there.* It is, in other words, accelerationism.

But it is a kind of *psychological* accelerationism rather than an economic or political form. And that is why the thinker here is Laozi. Accept the fact that capital is for real, as though the flood was in and we were all fish in the water. Don’t try to tell yourself, I’m a fish now, but someday I’ll be back on land again: wrong. Desire is everywhere. We are looking for terra firma, but in doing so we have created terra aqua. And that is where we are today. To be sure, there is high and dry land up there somewhere for the 1%. I believe this is so. And it’s not going to go away. But for the rest of us? I think the Tao, or the Book of Five Rings, is the way to go. Not capital. Or maybe somebody a little more *forgiving* of our mistakes.

Dostoevsky is right: the worst part about Christianity is the guilt we feel for being forgiven. So maybe we need something more like pic related in thinking through the paradoxes of our flaws and desires. And without needing, perhaps, to reform the state.

The answers, I think, are simpler. The commandment to Enjoy is unfulfilable. What we have to learn to enjoy is something like practice, but a kind of a practice that can be said to involve perhaps a spiritual element. And this is what the East has going on in spades.

And now, a little epilogue.

>>8845315
>MODS MODS MODS

Okay, fuckhead. I know. It's a lot to think about. But I can't think of this shit in a vacuum. Other people, such as

>>8845411
>>8845415

and

>>8844639
>>8844642

raise very interesting questions. They seem to like thinking. I certainly do. I am *grateful* to them for this. And my brain simply refuses to stay within the lines. All I can do is try and make the journey interesting. This is what it looks like.

And it will probably be over sooner than you think.

>240 replies
>56 posters
heh... nice work opie

>>8845768

Yeah, I know. Whoever

>>8845411
>>8845415

is they are a complete hero, because the above 4/4 was probably what I was really intending to get at when I started this thread. More or less everything I was hoping to...excavate? I've been wank-obsessional af in some of these posts but I think it's been worth the ride. I've enjoyed it, anyways. And there have been some wicked-smart anons too who have contributed muchly.

I'd be happier if I could have done this in fewer words, but it is what it is. It has taught me tho that what I need is a blog, b/c this really is pushing /lit/ the envelope.

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>>8845662
>>8845668
>>8845681
>>8845705

tl;dr in the end it comes down to whether you prefer tragedy, difference and disjunctive time or “deedlessness”, mimetics and cyclical time. You're talking about Nature either way - a Nature that always includes you, no matter how far you try to abstract things. I *prefer* the latter, but this is an aesthetic distinction and can be criticized but not I think be disproven.

It's a question of preferred suffering.

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Also, for:
>>8834983

This basically describes how Sloterdijk feels about capital and dialectics. I think he's ultimately on the side of capital if it furthers the anthropotechnic project, which is what he gets from Nietzsche.

And the interesting thing about anthropotechnics is that that is in many ways identical to the martial-practicing ideal you see in kung fu, or with samurai. Strip away the social dimensions and what you get with martial arts is the praxis of anthropotechnics: practice. As uncle Jiro says,

>you must dedicate your life to mastering your skill

I thought this was important. In terms of finding places where East and West meet, it would be harder to find a place where they *disagree* on this, rather than where they agree.

An essentially martial discipline - such as, I would say, Nietzsche would sign off on - can ultimately become something peaceful, which is the real miracle of it all. Jiro winds up making sushi rather than storming a castle, and we're all the better off for it.

Anyways, I thought that was worth sharing relative to that point. Capital is only really bad when it serves *as an end in itself.* When understood as an accelerator of cultural processes, and in which we understand the best form of these to be the products of human culture, if not humans themselves, then it's just neat to think that we have something like a planetary ethos. It seems to me at least that way, anyways.

>tfw this is a thinly-veiled self-bump

>>8828011
Just read the wiki for this dude. No way in hell I'm reading that.
De maistre pre-empted him.

>>8845432
Why would you need to 'get around' Marx. He was a NEET whose ideas are completely infeasible. Only retards take him seriously.

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>>8848068

I used to be a retard. Now I'm only a retard for about half the day. I'm trying to get it down even lower.

Because you're completely correct. I want to stop the retardation. Basically what I've been doing is trying to get over my obsession with 'capital' as this all-encompassing metaphysical phenomenon. I'm pretty much sick of Marxism myself but basically all the theory I read connects back to it. It's almost an inescapable thing and basically obsessing over it is ruining my life. I'm sick to death of capital and talking about it for days on end is how I get rid of it. Forcible disenchantment via theory. But only if it leads to conclusions that, however obscure, feel as though they make sense.

So Nietzsche and health - or what Sloterdijk will interestingly call *anthropotechnics* (basically, the regime of the ubermensch) is what I think is the thing to do. And what I'm fascinated by is the ways in which this is kind of confirmed by Taoism and in general Eastern mysticism. If there's one thing that the West and the East agree on it's *practice,* the need to become an acrobat. It's there in Nietzsche, it's there in Sloterdijk, and it's confirmed I think in a lot of nondual stuff. It's interesting to think that this might be a planetary thing.

Interesting fact: Sloterdijk actually studied with Osho in the 1970s. I think Osho is interesting too but I'm highly suspicious of gurus. Basically they're psychoanalysts run wild, and that winds up being a disaster for everyone. But Sloterdijk is down with the East.

So Osho is kind of a mixed bag, but if anyone wants to see a truly exquisite example of failed gurudom, check out Adi Da. He had a legit cult and it was fucked up as the day is long. He could have been a wise guy, and no doubt he was in the early days. But then he went off the deep end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Da

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Question for >>8844642, who seems to know more about the Tao than I do:

Was Lao Tzu one person or something more like Homer*, the voice of a whole culture whose writings are attributed to one person?

*assuming this theory is true and that Homer wasn't one person

>>8825554
Studying abroad in Taiwan. Anything worthwhile on the island in relation to eastern philosophy?

>>8828062
>western philosophy is like having a bike with state of the art technology but with no wheels.
>state of the art technology
>no wheels

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>>8825554
>no India
O Pārtha, how can a person who knows that the soul is indestructible, eternal, unborn and immutable kill anyone or cause anyone to kill?

>>8848239
I wish I had something for you there anon. Taiwanese philosophy is pretty much terra incognita for me. I know some people tho who have enjoyed life there. Thought about going there myself for a bit.

>>8848406
Indeed...

>>8848109

do you ever wonder about the fact that the only theorists who have managed to get around Marx are Nietzsche, who was largely ignorant of his work, and Sloterdijk, who develops Nietzsche?

I have been thinking that the best way out of Marx is to just take Hegel at face value. Reject the materialist critique, keep the dialectic standing head-wise, and hold out for your absorption into the Absolute.

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>>8849409

This is a *super* interesting question and honestly I'm not sure. I have, as the Terminator says, detailed files.

So I can go into greater detail if you like (and I'd be very happy too). But essentially I think my issue with all things dialectic is that it is a form of secular gnosticism and I think gnosticism, rather than religion, is the real elephant in the room and the source of many, if not all, social woes.

It's doing the Lord's work on earth, just as Voegelin intuited (>>8839793). I actually think this is why *ritual* matters, because it makes *present* that which is dangerous to be allowed to run amok intellectually - or in that super-interesting area, politicized aesthetics/aestheticized politics.

I think it's why I think kungfu is so interesting, both as a practice and as a visual or cinematic spectacle. In kungfu you are actually seeing an argument rendered *physical* and not *metaphysical.* Confucius loves ritual, of course, because it is basically the inaugurated practice of a metaphysics made present and earthly.

When our imaginations run wild I think they in the end return to a desire for beauty and order that very seductively draws us back towards politics without our realizing it. And ethics will not suffice. I think in the end ethics require either punishment or sacrifice and both of these are to me basically untenable acts.

I can talk about this stuff all day if you want to get into it. And I'm delighted by the question, obv. So thanks for bringing this to the thread.

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>>8849409

The other thing to ask about the dialectic is to what degree it requires senses of dyads (or secretly hidden triads). Subject-object is I think just an outdated way of looking at things. Triangulation makes more sense for considering desire - it's one subject, and another subject, concentrated on an object.

What is so irritating about deconstruction or the fetishization of The Other is that it takes this into account, but to my mind only in a supremely ressentiment-loaded way. It is to admit desire and then immediately to surrender the game, only then to come back and comment on that game in an ironic or detached way. To be sure, battling on towards it like Ahab - or like Cesare Borgia - comes with its ups and downs.

But if desires work more like rock-scissors-paper than like subject-object - that is, in a more Einsteinian than Newtonian form - then I think this puts us in a more sober *stance* vis-a-vis all of this. The idea is not to surrender desire, I think, but also not to commit ourselves to Dionysian self-destruction. I think it makes sense within a modernist paradigm, or in a debased way in a postmodernist one, but postmodernism is, I think, going to have to yield the floor eventually and I think the way through that, or in part of it, lies through something that incorporates religion, mysticism, nondualism, anthropotechnics, and more.

There are interesting, and entirely *sensible*, ways in which the West and East already agree on this.

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>>8849409

It's why most of my own ideas derive from Girard - specifically, the shift from Lacan to Girard. A Girardian perspective changes a lot of things, mainly because it's about a greater cognizance of monism over dualism, which is just something that the butterflies in my stomach also seem to like.

Because if everything is ideology, then nothing is.