Dec 19, 2023·edited Dec 19, 2023Liked by NEVERMORE MEDIA
The problem with Zerzan is not that he doesn't understand metaphysics. It's that he has no sense of humor. I'm talkin deep humor as in realizing the validity of the experience, not the concept, of the COSMIC JOKE being played on us humans as fellow denizens of an unknowable universe. The Greek gods warned about us humans that whenever we presume to know more than half about anything we are trespassing on their realm and will be punished for our arrogance. Check out Alain Danielou's indispensable book Shiva and Dionysus (capitalistically re-titled by its American publisher as Gods of Love and Ecstasy) to see what we have lost. Because actually we "moderns" are living in the darkest, most poverty-stricken era of all time, one where we actually believe that our intellectual ponderings and pretensions mean anything aside from allowing us to get into arguments with a select few. In fact, we are in worse shape than that. Because a rationalist logical-positivism cooptation of our minds has spun out of control over the past four centuries to the point that technocracy coupled with the profit motive rules. We are poised at the edge of becoming real life victims of a worldwide surveillance state the likes of which will make previous tyrannies look like child's play. Will that happen? Our only chance of it not happening is by regaining our senses in time to rejoin in whatever way possible the pre-Vedic Shivaite or pre-Aryan Dionysian sense of unrestrained play. Of dancing on the beach with the Goddess in charge once again (and no, I don't mean "feminism"). Of regaining a real connection to the spirits of nature. Of capitalism being no more than a distant bitter memory. Until then for me someone like Raoul Vaneigem is to be treasured because of what he managed to write in the midst of all this puritanical noise in which we are drowning -- namely The Movement of the Free Spirit. With great scholarship and humanity he tells the story of free lovers and communalists who almost overran Europe until they were erased by the Church. Read about Margaret Porete, who refused to disown her little book The Mirror of Simple Souls, saying in court that "the free soul does not respond to anyone if it does not want to." She was executed on June 1, 1310 in Paris. According to a witness, "Her noble attitude and her devotion moved the watching crowd to tears." For me, the real heroes are not Zerzan or Graeber and etcetera with their endless tomes, the real heroes are not those of us calling ourselves anarchists or indeed calling ourselves anything else while we sit on our butts in front of little screens writing screeds a sliver of humanity will ever hear about because they are too hypnotized by consumerist distraction. The real hero is someone like Rosa Luxemburg who SACRIFICED HER LIFE for what she believe in -- freeing her fellow humans from their chains. Meanwhile, to sum this up, here is Killing Joke's I AM THE VIRUS. Talk about truth-telling! It was released in 2015, four years before the Covid scam was born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4wdbibV3IM
Glad to hear I'm not alone in believing this. If you can't find the humor in this whole experience you're basically dead and blind. Those cosmic -comical revelations are what keep me going.
I dont have a quote handy but Ive lost track of the number of times I've seen something like "Officer Slip reported icy conditions on the highway this morning..."
Symbolic language is both a vehicle and a prison. I found a really enlightening story about some men from a small N African place which had become a suspicious focus of certain academia types because it was being identified as one of the last people's on earth with no known written language. These suspicions grew and seemed justified when I learned that powers like the Gates Foundation took it up on themselves to compel two men from this place to come to America and develop a written (and specifically computer readable) language for their people, to save them from their poverty of course.
The thing is, the more I studied these notions and considered how they have impacted humans across time and space I couldn't help but see that symbolic language has been deployed extensively to actually LIMIT human expression.
A great example is the current agenda in China to eradicate all traces of ancient hieroglyphic type language and replace it with "simplified Mandarin". If you look at them side by side you will probably notice that the older language is incredibly complex, detailed, and aesthetically interesting while the new version is stripped down, empty, plain - Romanized.
I believe this is one of the main strategies of cultural and historical destruction, limit expression, erase reminders of history etc
Yep. It really is insane to imagine that something ceases to exist if nobody is looking at it. It somehow reminds me of my little sister playing hide-and-seek for the first time, who, instead of going away to hide, just stayed put with her eyes closed, imagining that this meant nobody could see her either!
The problem with Zerzan is not that he doesn't understand metaphysics. It's that he has no sense of humor. I'm talkin deep humor as in realizing the validity of the experience, not the concept, of the COSMIC JOKE being played on us humans as fellow denizens of an unknowable universe. The Greek gods warned about us humans that whenever we presume to know more than half about anything we are trespassing on their realm and will be punished for our arrogance. Check out Alain Danielou's indispensable book Shiva and Dionysus (capitalistically re-titled by its American publisher as Gods of Love and Ecstasy) to see what we have lost. Because actually we "moderns" are living in the darkest, most poverty-stricken era of all time, one where we actually believe that our intellectual ponderings and pretensions mean anything aside from allowing us to get into arguments with a select few. In fact, we are in worse shape than that. Because a rationalist logical-positivism cooptation of our minds has spun out of control over the past four centuries to the point that technocracy coupled with the profit motive rules. We are poised at the edge of becoming real life victims of a worldwide surveillance state the likes of which will make previous tyrannies look like child's play. Will that happen? Our only chance of it not happening is by regaining our senses in time to rejoin in whatever way possible the pre-Vedic Shivaite or pre-Aryan Dionysian sense of unrestrained play. Of dancing on the beach with the Goddess in charge once again (and no, I don't mean "feminism"). Of regaining a real connection to the spirits of nature. Of capitalism being no more than a distant bitter memory. Until then for me someone like Raoul Vaneigem is to be treasured because of what he managed to write in the midst of all this puritanical noise in which we are drowning -- namely The Movement of the Free Spirit. With great scholarship and humanity he tells the story of free lovers and communalists who almost overran Europe until they were erased by the Church. Read about Margaret Porete, who refused to disown her little book The Mirror of Simple Souls, saying in court that "the free soul does not respond to anyone if it does not want to." She was executed on June 1, 1310 in Paris. According to a witness, "Her noble attitude and her devotion moved the watching crowd to tears." For me, the real heroes are not Zerzan or Graeber and etcetera with their endless tomes, the real heroes are not those of us calling ourselves anarchists or indeed calling ourselves anything else while we sit on our butts in front of little screens writing screeds a sliver of humanity will ever hear about because they are too hypnotized by consumerist distraction. The real hero is someone like Rosa Luxemburg who SACRIFICED HER LIFE for what she believe in -- freeing her fellow humans from their chains. Meanwhile, to sum this up, here is Killing Joke's I AM THE VIRUS. Talk about truth-telling! It was released in 2015, four years before the Covid scam was born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4wdbibV3IM
Glad to hear I'm not alone in believing this. If you can't find the humor in this whole experience you're basically dead and blind. Those cosmic -comical revelations are what keep me going.
I dont have a quote handy but Ive lost track of the number of times I've seen something like "Officer Slip reported icy conditions on the highway this morning..."
Symbolic language is both a vehicle and a prison. I found a really enlightening story about some men from a small N African place which had become a suspicious focus of certain academia types because it was being identified as one of the last people's on earth with no known written language. These suspicions grew and seemed justified when I learned that powers like the Gates Foundation took it up on themselves to compel two men from this place to come to America and develop a written (and specifically computer readable) language for their people, to save them from their poverty of course.
The thing is, the more I studied these notions and considered how they have impacted humans across time and space I couldn't help but see that symbolic language has been deployed extensively to actually LIMIT human expression.
A great example is the current agenda in China to eradicate all traces of ancient hieroglyphic type language and replace it with "simplified Mandarin". If you look at them side by side you will probably notice that the older language is incredibly complex, detailed, and aesthetically interesting while the new version is stripped down, empty, plain - Romanized.
I believe this is one of the main strategies of cultural and historical destruction, limit expression, erase reminders of history etc
Something that Ive been thinking about lately is the refinement of the
logical faculty over the course of the development of a human being's
mind. I think that a baby starts from the point of view of every
possible conceivable thing being possible. The field of what is possible
than narrows as the mind develops object permanence. To say that an
object possesses the quality of permanence is to negate the possibility
that that object might stop existing one minute and start existing the
next. It is a reduction of the field of possibility that existed before
a definite object was determined to definitely exist, and to exhibit
certain properties (i.e. existing). In that sense, to define is to
reduce. But to represent is also to reduce. But it is also to create -
for representation is never truly conducted with the distinterested
aloofness of a scientist. We are a part of what we are representing. If
it is a bleak view we see, it is because we have a bleak view of
ourselves. If what we see is beautiful and glorious and good, it is
because we love ourselves.. But my point is this - that the act of
perceiving the universe can never be neutral. But this does not mean
there is no such thing as objective reality. It means that we can only
approach true understanding if we first learn about the instrument we
are using to perceive, and that is of course the mind. But this is not
to say that there are no actually existing independent forces (conscious
or physical) with whom the individual interacts. It would solipsism to
think otherewise. Yet this is quite literally where we are at in the
quantum mechanics of our age. Post Copenhagen interpretation, there is a
lively debate about whether the moon exists when no one is looking at
it. Many physicists seem unwillingly to acknowledge that there is such a
thing as object permanence. And this is a pre-linguistic level of
cognitive development! What in the actual fuck? People wonder why I
won't shut up about metaphysics, and this is the kind of debate our best
and brightest are engaged in? Blows my mind.
Yep. It really is insane to imagine that something ceases to exist if nobody is looking at it. It somehow reminds me of my little sister playing hide-and-seek for the first time, who, instead of going away to hide, just stayed put with her eyes closed, imagining that this meant nobody could see her either!
Have you read The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist? Puts modern madness into perspective. Enjoying your writing, thanks!
No, I haven't. What's it about?
It's about how the mind has evolved to be, and how modernism sees the world through only half of it, with symptoms very like autism and scizophrenia.