Wang Wei's Sarnath divyadhvani

Wingless the lonely mountain affords not a soul to sight

Just human voices homing through gloaming light

Slanting sun-beams, as green moss, are remade

& of Hou Yi's loss- Dreams' deer palisade. 

Hannah Kim & the Psilosophy of Fiction

We don't understand reality but we do understand fiction. Why? The latter is about wish fulfilment. The former is about how to survive and reproduce under conditions of scarcity and intense competition. Thus, European populations could displace indigenous people in America because they had a superior understanding of some material aspects of reality. But those who are currently Americans may be demographically replaced if some other power or set of people gains a superior understanding of certain natural or economic aspects of reality. 

Oblivious to this obvious truth, Hannah H Kim writes in Aeon- 

what distinguishes fiction from nonfiction?

The Law has a notion of 'legal fiction'- i.e. something deemed to be true even though everybody knows it was made up. Law courts can also adjudicate cases where the claim is made that a fictional work is actually non-fiction and defamatory in certain respects. Equally, a non-fiction work may be sought to be reclassified as fiction in order to suggest that it has little alethic content. Once again, this may be a justiciable matter. 

Speaking generally, to assert what you have written is fiction is to disavow factual inferences concerning things or persons who exist or have existed in the real world. However, a court may find that what you claim to be fiction is actually a claim of fact.

Equally an assertion of fact, whether or not it is true, may be categorized as fictional if it arises out of the working of the imagination rather than alethic research. What is fictional is 'made up'. What is non-fiction, whether it is true or false, is alethic in nature. 

These are justiciable matters. There is no scope for 'philosophy' here. 

What is fiction in the first place? Despite common usage, philosophers agree that we can’t equate ‘fiction’ with ‘false content’.

Fuck common usage. What is the usage of the Courts? That is what determines if something is fiction or, despite any assertion to the contrary by the author, non-fiction. Thus we may think a book by a person acquitted of a crime which says it is a fictional representation of how she actually committed the crime is 'non-fiction'. If a Judge agrees, this may become the basis of a civil action against the author. 

Non-fiction is bound to contain some 'false content'. Indeed, Court judgments, too, suffer this infirmity. What may reasonably be asserted is not the same thing as what is irrefragable truth.  

On the one hand, the inclusion of falsity isn’t enough to render a work fiction.

Non-fiction is bound to include some falsity. Human beings are fallible. In any case, as more information is acquired, authors of non-fiction are likely to revise or edit their work. On the other hand, a fictional work may correspond exactly to the facts of the case. The author may have, purely by the exercise of imagination and reason unaided by observation, have correctly reconstructed a particular chain of events or predicted exactly what would happen.  

Books with false statements – old science textbooks with disproven theories, history books with mistakes, memoirs with contradictory events – don’t change their status from nonfiction to fiction when false content is identified.

Nonsense! We may consider them to be great works of non-fiction which, however, have been superseded in certain respects. Thus Gibbon is great & even, the highly partisan, Macaulay, is great whereas some minor author's work on numismatics or some other such field, which has not been superseded, would not be considered either good or bad but merely workmanlike and accurate enough given its limited scope.  

Instead, we judge them to be bad nonfiction. On the other hand, not all fictions include false content since there are fictions that include only actual events, such as Helen Garner’s The Spare Room (2008), a factual account of the author’s experience of nursing a dying friend.

This book is a memoir in the shape of a novel. The 'novelization' of 'true life' accounts may have no fictional component. We say the thing is a novel if it looks like and reads like a novel though we understand it is no such thing. Similarly a scientist may chose to publish a synopsis of his work in the shape of a poem, or a Socratic dialogue, rather than follow the conventions of the 'popular science' genre. 

And the fact that historical fiction exists – that a fictional work can be consistent with all known facts, yet still be considered fiction – shows that fiction doesn’t need to include (known) falsity.

We would say 'this is a historical novel'. Novels use techniques developed by writers of fiction. A fiction writer could turn material gathered for a historical novel into a work of historical scholarship replete with quotations from other learned authorities, refutations of other scholars and an elaborate critical apparatus. 

What matters for nonfiction is that its content is believed to be true.

No. What matters is if it makes claims about actual people or events. We may not believe a word of it and are welcome to assemble evidence in support of our view. 

A creative writing friend of mine told me that writing what one sincerely believes to be true after due diligence in research and introspection is enough to render some content ‘nonfiction’.

Any one can write non-fiction. It just may not be accepted as such. My own highly circumstantial account of how my marriage to Mary Poppins, in the Sixties, broke down- because my work as a secret agent with a license to kill brought me into too close a proximity to Arsulla Undress- was destroyed by my wife who refused to concede that it was an important historical document. 

This means that, strictly speaking, nonfiction can be false but remain ‘nonfiction’ as long as we think it’s true.

No. Darwin's 'Origins' is non-fiction even to people who think God created the world on  October 23, 4004 BC

Furthermore, to say that ‘nonfiction’ tracks ‘truth’ is

to show you studied and teach worthless shite. Nozick's 'truth tracking' is about beliefs but whether a thing is x or non-x is not a function of belief though, no doubt, one could have beliefs about the matter. What this cretin means is 'beliefs regarding the fictional or non-fictional status of a text may be determined by what is known to be true. Discovering a character or event is wholly imaginary in what otherwise appears a non-fictional account, may cause us to believe it is fictional. However, there may be a stipulation that the character or event has been added for purposes of exposition or as a placeholder for some as yet unknown person or event whose existence we have good reason to suspect. Here, we may say that there is a 'working hypothesis' which relies more on our imaginative and ratiocinative power than incontrovertible evidence. 

misleading because we don’t have an unconditional and overarching interest in truth per se

we may do.  

that grounds our protectiveness over what gets called ‘nonfiction’.

There is no such 'protectiveness'. It is a different matter that greater latitude may be granted to works which claim to be wholly fictitious or, indeed, fantastic. Thus, Sir Salman Rushdie could claim that 'Satanic Verses' had nothing to do with the Prophet Muhammad. It was actually about some other dude entirely. Sadly, the Ayatollahs were not convinced. 

In ‘The Disinterested Search for Truth’ (1988), Jane Heal shows – convincingly, in my opinion – that one’s seeming pursuit of truth can always be better described

by smart peeps, not people who study or teach shit. Nobody 'pursues truth'. They may pursue, in some narrow domain, admissible facts about the case or structural causal models which fit available evidence or have predictive value. 

as a project that does not involve mention of truth. That is, ‘truth by itself has no motivating power at all.’

Nonsense! Truth is a word like Beauty or Justice. We have a higher opinion of those who pursue them than we do of people who bark loudly and run after cars or lorries in the hope of biting or eating them.  

We don’t say true things just because they’re true. There are always other considerations.

Not if we are required by law, or a code of professional conduct, to disclose everything relevant which is true.  

Kim began her essay by referring to a children's book by Linda Coombs about how White settlers disrupted the life of indigenous people. An attempt was made to shift it to the fiction section though it wasn't fiction. It may have been wholly wrong, but it wasn't a nice adventure story which kids might actually want to read. 

They targeted a book whose claim to truth practically interfered with their understandings of themselves and the country

They failed. They were welcome to challenge the book on factual grounds or simply suggest that the author was a transgender Lesbian who practiced Wicca, supported ISIS, and denied the Divinity of Christ, not to mention the Super Awesomeness of the Donald.  

When I was a newcomer to philosophy

but already too stupid to study anything worthwhile 

and enamoured with

getting a Credential in stupid shit.  

the kind of questions it asked, I thought I was after the Truth – with a capital ‘T’ – and went to grad school in philosophy because I wanted to know what’s True and what’s Really Real. But a single question from a friend dissolved that illusion: do you care about how many stars there are in the Universe right now?

Astro-physicists do care. Their estimate of the total mass of the stars (which involves estimating the number and type of stars) points to gaps in the Standard Model to do with things like Dark Matter & Negative Time or stuff weirder yet.  

I had to admit that I didn’t care, and that alone was enough to show me that perhaps I’m not committed to the True in itself.

Because you committed to studying useless nonsense.  Truth is an 'intension'. Its extension is different in different cases. This is the case for any epistemic intension. What this silly bint is indulging in is a cascade of intensional fallacies. 

If truth were valuable ‘in itself’,

The truth of any particular thing is the set of its interactions. If that set is empty, that is interesting in itself. If it isn't, then it is a data point of interest to relevant Structural Causal Models. For categorical theories, Yoneda lemma can be thought of as saying that knowing all the interactions of a things is to know everything about it. However, because of entanglement or epistemic impredicativity, this may mean knowing everything about everything. 

then any truth, merely by virtue of being true, would be worth knowing

If there was even one thing which was true 'in itself', and we knew what it was we would have a punctum Archemides.  We would probably also have a Godelian 'absolute proof'. Indeed, even finding a natural proof would be a great advance. 

– but this clearly isn’t the case: for instance, someone who keeps a meticulous daily record of the number of cars parked in the nearest lot with no use for the knowledge would strike us as odd.

You say odd, I say autistic but the truth is a hobby is just a hobby. Perhaps it arises from 'funktionzlust'- i.e. the pleasure in exercising a faculty one is endowed with though no present benefit flows from it. 

So, that something is true doesn’t justify our interest or commitment.

We don't know of anything which is necessarily true. If some such beastie were ever found, every branch of science would be affected. 

Instead, we care about truths that inform specific enquiries or projects.

No. We have a reason to care but may have a superior reason not to. 

What grounds the nonfiction/fiction distinction is

is the distinction between what is imagined and what is observed 

not that the former is based on truth or facticity per se,

the Imagination may be based on what is. 

but that the former contributes to how we see the world insofar as it organises the kinds of truths that we care enough about to read and write about.

World is very mean. It is incessantly organizing truths such that peeps think I'm stupid because I studied useless shite. 

The Montgomery County Commission

wants to please voters 

didn’t initiate a systematic audit of all nonfiction books that might include false or misleading information.

More worryingly, it didn't cut off its own dick even though dicks cause RAPE! 

Rather, they targeted a book whose claim to truth practically interfered with their understandings of themselves and the country.

Fuck that! They just didn't want their kids to be brainwashed into demanding the de-colonization of 'Turtle Island' and the expulsion of all those of European or African or Asian descent.  

Our thoughts about reality and our thoughts about fiction go hand in hand.

They could go hand in hand with anything they like. Mine prefer to dance cheek to cheek.  

Of course, sometimes we care about fiction because it lets us entertain a world that is different from ours.

We can entertain it with cocktails and dancing cheek to cheek.  

But even when it is fiction’s departure from the real world that makes it worthwhile, the departure is measured against the background of the real world.

Nope. Fiction is measured against other fiction. 

In fact, not only the content of fiction – what we’re able or willing to call ‘fiction’ – but also the nature of fiction – what fiction is – depends on how we think about the real world.

No. We may think the real world is the fart of an intergalactic giraffe but this doesn't change how the Library of Congress decides whether a book is fiction or non-fiction.  

A comparative study of the way ‘fiction’ as a concept develops across cultures shows that,

cultures differ. But they differ less than those who do 'comparative studies' would have us believe.  

whenever a group of people think of reality differently,

they don't really. 

the nature and function of fiction is understood differently as well. We can observe this by contrasting analytic philosophy of fiction

which is shit 

with classical Chinese conceptions of fiction.

which is the same as ours.  

In early 20th-century analytic philosophy, fiction crops up as a test case for general theories for meaning, reference and existence.

All of which were shit.  

Theories that explain how names refer, or whether ‘existence’ and ‘being’ are the same, had to contend with fictional characters that seemed, in the words of Amie Thomasson, like ‘odd, freakish entities, quite unlike common or garden objects’.

No such objects existed- at least none which could become the basis of an 'atomic proposition'.  

Note, for example, that Alexius Meinong’s separation in 1904 of ‘being’ and ‘existence’ explains how Pegasus is a nonexistent object,

though Parmenides said they weren't. Everything exists but only some things take the predicate 'imaginary' while many others can't take the predicate 'takes the predicate ' 

and that Gottlob Frege’s distinction in 1892 between ‘sense’ and ‘reference’

was a distinction with a difference. There is a sense in which a word refers to something and everything which makes sense refers to something cognizable. Sadly, that sense was 'naive' and based on unrestricted comprehension. In other words, the thing was childish.

explains why fictional names seem meaningful even though they’re empty of referent; the name ‘Odysseus’ lacks reference (there is no object in the world that the name refers to)

Nonsense! Boris Johnson has a son with that name. That's why there has to be 'disambiguation'. As for whether there was a historical Odysseus, that is a matter for scholars.  

but it has sense (a mode of presentation, a way of being understood).

What is the sense of  X Æ A-12? It gained one when Musk gave his son that name though, to comply with California law it had to be changed to X Æ A-Xii. 

The trend

of talking stupid bollocks 

has continued into the 21st century, and nearly all attempts to define ‘fiction’

are a waste of fucking time 

involve tools developed from metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.

but those 'tools' are shit.  

For example, Richard Ohmann appeals to speech act theory to define fiction as discourse that pretends to assert;

Uncle Tom's Cabin is fiction and it asserts a great deal. There is no pretence about it.  

David Lewis applies the possible world framework to fiction;

Though fiction often deals with incompossible worlds.  

Kendall Walton utilises notions of imagination and make-believe to claim fictions are ‘props’ that prescribe certain imaginings;

to whom? Only those who already wanted them.  

Gregory Currie and Kathleen Stock appeal to intention and imagination, arguing that fiction is a product of a fiction-maker’s intention for the audience to imagine its content.

But fiction, like mine, is written even by those who know they won't have any fucking audience.  

(The exception is Stacie Friend who appeals to the concept of genre to explain what fiction is.

Why not appeal to the concept of a fart to explain what assholes are?  

It’s interesting to note that the only account that doesn’t draw from ‘core’ areas of philosophy is the one that also denies fiction having any essential or necessary characteristics.)

Nothing we know off has either. Thus it is not interesting at all to note this stupid shit.  

What the methodological trend shows is that the way analytic philosophers have been trying to understand fiction has closely relied on

stupid shit spouted by utterly useless shitheads 

the way we understand existence, language, modality and meaning.

These cunts don't understand shit. 

We extend theories developed in metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind to try to understand fiction and fictional entities.

you can't use shit to understand shit- save in a shitty sense.  

Why are we tempted to investigate the ontological status of fictional characters?

Because that is a better temptation to yield to than eating your own shit. But only marginally.  

It’s because we’re convinced that, whatever they are, they are not like us; they don’t exist in the same way we do.

This is also true of an Eiffel Tower constructed entirely out of your own shit.  

We want to know whether their names function like our names

they do 

because fictional names seem to pick out something that’s not like objects, places and people in the real world.

Realistic fiction is realistic. Objects and places and people in realistic fiction may seem more real than in non-fiction. 

Analytic philosophy came to ask the questions it asks because it inherited the ancient Greek idea that some things are less ‘real’ than others.

Nonsense! It inherited the nominalism of Aristotle. Universals aren't real at all. 

In Anglo-European philosophy, ‘fiction’ is closely connected to what’s imagined – that is, what isn’t taken to be real –

an imagined thing may be real. Equally the account of a law suit featuring John Doe & Richard Roe requires us to take the parties to the suit to be real.

because the tradition inherited the appearance/reality distinction from Plato.

Who inherited it from the first humans who learnt to talk. 

Fiction occupies the ‘appearance’ side of things,

it may concern itself wholly with things which can't appear- e.g. a dialogue between the Spirit of Beauty and the Spirit of Justice.  

whereas nonfiction occupies the ‘reality’ side.

Books about UFOs or Ghosts or Poltergeists or shape shifting lizard creatures from Planet X are still non-fiction.

Platonic metaphysics is concerned with unchanging Being, and knowledge pertains only to what’s timelessly true and therefore knowable in a reliable fashion.

For Plato, the 'Forms' or Universals are really real. What exists is but as a pale shadow of the Forms which alone are truly real.  

In Book X of Plato’s Republic, artists and storytelling poets are criticised for creating misleading copies of the physical world, which is already an imperfect copy of the Forms.

Socrates did try his hand at poetry. His acolytes don't seem to have thought it worth preserving. Still, the point here is that Plato's books were more imperfect than Socrates's stupid shite from the point of view of 'mimesis'. But they may have been better from the point of view of 'methexis' or 'participation' in the ideal Form of that stupid shite. 

In Poetics, Aristotle argues that humans possess a natural inclination to imitate nature.

Aristotle often imitated potted plants. What he didn't understand is that people have a strong mimetic drive to imitate those smarter or more successful than themselves. If guys 'imitating nature' are making good money, that's what everybody tries to do till the fashion changes.  

Mimesis, or imitation, is at the heart of the Anglo-European understanding of the representational arts, including fiction

Nonsense! Verisimilitude is what we look for. It isn't the case that the best painting of a dog was made by a guy who spent a lot of time barking and biting and chasing his own tail.  

– and, as a result, concepts that help to adjudicate the relationship between the copy and the real

those concepts are known to guys who authenticate art works. They have nothing to do with 

(pretence, imagination and make-believe)

which aren't about copying but parodying or having fun with 

become the foundational concepts in analytic philosophy of fiction.

Because shit is a good foundation for shit.  

In cultures that don’t take on board a strong reality/appearance distinction,

all do. This is why there is no country in the world which accepts that I am Beyonce. My imitating her twerking, evidently, is not enough. I'd need to look beautiful like her and have great talent.   

however, ‘fiction’ isn’t understood alongside ‘pretence’ and ‘imagination’ in contrast to ‘the real’.

It is understood in terms of imagination. It may or may not feature pretence.  

Just like their ancient Greek counterparts, Chinese metaphysicians sought to understand what the world is like and what explains the way the world is.

Though that Grail is only attained when the Quest for it is abandoned.  

But while the ancient Greeks posited an unchanging ultimate reality that transcends mere phenomena,

not Heraclitus.  

the ancient Chinese believed that what is ultimate is immanent in the world, and that the Dao (道), the source of all things in the world, is itself constantly changing. This change-forward metaphysics led to a theory of fiction that didn’t contrast fiction against a stable, ‘real’ counterpart.

For Parmenides anything which can be thought or spoken of must be. One can find anything in Greek thought also in Chinese or Indian thought.  

Recall how Plato relies on the appearance vs reality distinction to argue that what’s ‘really real’ (the unchanging Forms) are beyond our sense perceptions.

Which is why, though we sense he is talking bollocks, what he is really saying is not accessible to us. But it does participate in the Form of Nonsense.  

Humans were meant to use the intellect, and not their senses, since sense data mislead us,

stuff like the Earth appearing flat or the Sun appearing to circle around it.  

while philosophising gives us a chance to grasp what’s beyond phenomena. In contrast, Chinese metaphysicians didn’t think ultimate reality is unchanging.

They didn't think anything was ultimate or penultimate 

Instead, the dominant view was that reality, including nature, follows consistent patterns (the Dao).

Which is like Indo-Iranian Rta or Greek Logos.  

What is ‘empty’ or ‘unreal’ was seen as the generator of all things,

In Hesiod's Theogony it is Chaos. Out of Nothingness or Formlessness or Chaos comes Substance and Form and Order.  

and all things were considered equal in significance since they are all manifestations of changing patterns.

 Nonsense! Some manifestations are significant- e.g. when a dude draws  a sword and tries to chop your head off- while others are not- e.g. when a dude passes you on the street whistling a merry tune. The Chinese weren't stupid. This is because they were denied education in anal-tickle philosophy probably on the grounds of race. 

The Chinese word for ‘fiction’ (xiaoshuo, 小說) literally means ‘small talk’ or ‘small sayings’.

Because kids are small and Mummy tells them bed-time stories. But, some such stories are illuminating and may profitably be included in a work dealing with serious matters.  

Chinese literary culture had a rigid hierarchy of discourses,

All literary culture had such a hierarchy with Revealed Scripture at the top. This may incorporate ancient poetry and the proclamations of Kings and Law-givers. The Confucian Analects were initially seen as a commentary on the Five Classics before themselves gaining canonical status. Something similar happened elsewhere.  

with Confucian classics and official histories at the top of the pyramid, while imaginative narrative texts like xiaoshuo were placed at the bottom.

More particularly if they were written in a demotic style and appealed to children or wore the guise of story-telling for the purpose of entertainment. But this is the case everywhere. 

However, it would be misleading to say that xiaoshuo was denigrated because it was imaginative, whereas philosophical texts and histories were elevated because they were ‘real’.

People think the Bible is higher than a Spiderman comic even if they don't believe Moses had super-powers. What differentiates them is that comic books seek to entertain, not instruct.  

Since Chinese metaphysics didn’t posit a fixed, transcendent reality, reality was understood to be an ever-changing process, and so the categories themselves couldn’t be based on inherent, necessary or fixed essences

which don't exist. Anal-tickle philosophy pretends otherwise even though, with the appearance of non-Euclidean geometries,  the scandal that no 'necessary' truths are identifiable was obvious by about 1870. 

but on functions and behavioural tendencies. The difference between discourses labelled ‘xiaoshuo’ and ‘great learning’ (Confucian classics and histories) wasn’t that one is unreal or imagined while the other is real.

This is also true of Plato's oeuvre compared to the Bible or the Quran- at least for some Christian and Muslim theologians.  

All discourse was understood as an account of the world, and the difference between ‘small talk’ and ‘great learning’ was the extent to which it was adopted to organise how people lived.

Which is why the US Constitution is considered to be more important than a Spiderman comic.  

Xiaoshuo wasn’t understood in contrast to reality,

Yes it was. People didn't really think that a beautiful woman was actually a fox spirit though foxy chicks we will always have with us. 

and it wasn’t metaphysically second class.

Because Physics is first class. Metaphysics is for second class, credential craving, pedants.  

It was at the bottom of the discourse hierarchy because its function wasn’t as grand as the classics’.

Entertainment mustn't put on airs for fear of losing custom. If you make a good living doing penis puppetry, don't pretend you are the successor of Martin Heidegger even though we all suspect that Heidi only turned to philosophy after failing at penis puppetry.  

Discourse that posed trouble for social and political interpretation was considered ‘xiao’ (small)

No. Such discourse was considered worth persecuting. Nobody bothered with the literary equivalent of penis puppetry.  

Because the Confucian classics were considered canon, there was little room for textual scholarship in philosophy (beyond commenting).

Nonsense! The Chinese imported Buddhism which was plenty philosophical. We have recovered the 'mondadology' of the Avatamsakasutra, or the  'field theory' of the Vimalakirti, from the Chinese. Indeed, the Chinese purged Buddhism of untouchability- which didn't happen in Korea and Japan- precisely because they were more philosophical. 

But history had to be continually produced, so history and historiography became the most revered genre, and eventually the paradigm of all culture discourse.

No. Moh Tzu, Shang Yang & Mencius put political philosophy at the top. Sima Quian had inherited the position of Court Historian but was castrated because he backed the wrong political horse. He was able to complete his father's mission to create a comprehensive history only because he wasn't important enough to kill.  

Again, a Western-minded explanation for the xiaoshuo/history distinction would appeal to the former being fake or imagined, and the latter being real.

No. The West, following Aristotle, would say Tragedy is more philosophic than History because the former deals with the possible whereas the latter is constrained to the actual. The Chinese, more particularly because of their poetic genius, when celebrating their great writers, generally preferred the legend to dry biographical details.  Thus Li Po drowned diving to rescue the Moon though scholars were aware that he probably died of thoracic suppuration or something equally tedious. 

But to do so would be to attribute inappropriate metaphysical commitments to the Chinese framework.

Metaphysical commitments don't fucking exist. Anal-tickle philosophy just made that shite up.  

Besides, the xiaoshuo/imaginary, history/actual, pairings aren’t exemplified in the categorised works themselves.

Sure they are. Along with alethic genealogical information, we are given charming, but obviously fantastic, anecdotes e.g. that the very tall and studious Lu Zhi fathered a son on a comely female ghost.  

Early forms of fiction included reports of what occurred, and official histories made room for invention and fabrication. Instead, I believe that xiaoshuo’s separation from history and historiography, and the resulting denigration, had to do with xiaoshuo material’s interpretive difficulties rather than the fact that fabrication was involved.

Nobody has metaphysical commitments or interpretive difficulties or suffers post traumatic stress disorder because of incessant epistemic self-abuse- which is all Anal-tickle philosophy actually is.  

Xiaoshuo’s weakness wasn’t tied to its being imagined or untrue, but to it being ‘unsuitable’ as a vehicle for meaning.

The weakness of what is entertaining is that if it finds no market it has no meaning. Credential craving or mindlessly bureaucratic turds have to pretend that they are doing something very serious and important.  

History was prioritised as a literary genre

because it fed patriotism and implanted a horror of the evil effects of foreign invasion, civil war, corruption at Court etc. What is unique about China is that the literary culture of an aristocratic governing caste gained currency among merchants who found it worthwhile in investing in Confucian scholarship so at least one son from the clan might get an official position by passing the Imperial exams. This meant that China was united not by Religion, as had happened in India, but by a political philosophy of a synoecist type.  

not because it talked about true things, but because it provided the stable basis for literary activity,

Religion does that for Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam or Christianity. China's uniqueness is that the spirit of Moh Tzu pervades its political philosophy even against the Confucian grain.  

a continual process of meaning-making through writing, reading and interpreting.

Which is also what auditors do for all Companies listed on the Stock Exchange.  

And history was interpretable, and therefore a suitable means for signification, because the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ posited that the unfolding of events reflected the ruler’s political legitimacy (or lack thereof).

Actually, that Mandate was linked to periodic droughts and floods which were predictable enough. The State had taken on food distribution and famine relief work across a vast area by the Second Century BC. But corruption and factionalism could cause state capacity to fall. Equally, at times, there were localized Malthusian food availability deficits on too large a scale to be remedied. The advantage of the 'Mandate of Heaven' theory was that if State failure and a circulation of elites was inevitable, then one might as well legitimize the Imperium  of whoever emerged from a period of crisis as the winner who takes all. This was more particularly the case when the ancient Aristocracy was able to reproduce itself within the Mandarin class. 

But xiaoshuo didn’t have such interpretive weight because much of its early examples were report-like narratives that involved the supernatural (ghosts, abnormalities, miracles, etc). It’s interesting to note that while categorised as xiaoshuo, these ‘records of the strange’ (zhiguai) were considered ‘leftover history’,

No. The term originates in the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi. Taoism was the indigenous, scholarly, syncretic, religion which was uniting local cults and thus serving at a 'grass-roots' level, a similar National purpose to Confucianism. Meanwhile, there was an official historiography as exemplified by Sima Qian. 

understood not as fabricated stories but as an offshoot of historical writing that was worth preserving due to their contribution to knowledge but not suitable for inclusion in official history given its weirdness.

No. There was an official historiography which, for prudential reasons, steered clear of religion. After all, Taoists and Buddhists and votaries of the Imperial cultus could clash. A rebellion might be Taoist. The Confucian bureaucracy may turn against the Buddhist monasteries. There were great political perils which the historian would be prudent to stay away from. Better be considered dull than end up being castrated or beheaded because you are seen as politically partisan.  

So, my suggestion is that discourse that posed trouble for meaningful social and political interpretation was considered insignificant, therefore ‘xiao’ (small).

This is silly. A fairy tale about a wicked King who raises taxes and thus is cursed by a wizard to turn into a frog has a very meaningful social and political interpretation. But such a tale would not be considered a great literary classic. It is the type of thing kids and the common folk might relish but, because they themselves were frightened of ghosts who spied on them (Moh Tzu said this is what kept the peasants honest) and because they thought that powerful wizards were likely to be employed by the Emperor, their impulse to rebel was effectively crushed. 

Scholars were unsure what, if anything, we can take as a larger message from these reports, therefore they were separated from history.

No. Chinese scholars weren't stupid. Moreover, they lived in China. They knew there were Shamans and Toaists and Buddhist and Nestorian monks wandering around who claimed all sorts of super-natural powers. Even if they themselves believed that shite, it was in their class interest to write in a manner which suggested otherwise.  

The important consideration wasn’t that they weren’t real; it was just that their points were unclear.

They were abundantly clear. If some people have super-natural powers, it is they you need to placate. Sucking up to the boss or praising the Emperor won't help you. The safer course was to say one thing and do another.  

The distinction between xiaoshuo and history wasn’t about inviting imagination but about whether the discourse belonged to a stable, communal interpretive framework.

Toaism and Buddhism and Nestorianism and other indigenous traditions were 'communal interpretive frameworks'. Genghis Khan and his people certainly had one. Under their High God, Tengri, they created a vast Eurasian Empire.  

Since there is no unchanging reality that fiction is contrasted to, xiaoshuo doesn’t invite mimesis as an operative concept.

Yet most of it is imitative. Fiction, always and everywhere, is about seeing what sells in the market and producing a similar product. Greater verisimilitude can give an author a competitive edge. Thus Cervantes's Don Quixote sold better than other novels of chivalry. Interestingly, it also propounds the laissez faire doctrine of the Salamanca School.  

And since fiction isn’t assumed to be a copy of reality, there is no theoretical apparatus aimed to clearly distinguish what’s real from what’s fictional.

Yes there is. The roman-à-clef or other allegorical work is deciphered by a 'theoretical apparatus' known as 'literary scholarship'. Consider Swift's 'Tale of a Tub'. Almost immediately 'keys' to it were supplied by Edmund Curll- a book-seller- but, the truth is, Swift's readership, then and now, didn't greatly care who or what was being satirised. 

To understand the importance of how a culture’s metaphysical commitments affect its view of fiction, imagine how two different communities might come to create a wooden duck.

Guys creating wooden ducks are called wood whittlers. They have no metaphysical commitments. They just like whittling wood. If they make some money by it, well and good.  

A community that hunts ducks

because they are metaphysically committed to killing the Donald- who has a duck incarnation. 

will use the wooden duck as a decoy that lures real ducks to a particular location.

Actually, an elaborate duck decoy can be constructed. Tame ducks are used to lure wild ones. A dog is used to ensure the wild ducks enter the trap set for them. This way, their flesh is free of shotgun pellets and thus commands a higher price. The metaphysical commitment underlying this is the desire to earn money by selling delicious duck meat for a higher price.  

For them, the wooden duck’s ‘point’ is determined in response to its similarities and differences to a real duck: it must be similar enough to trick other ducks into thinking it’s a real duck, but it must be different enough for humans to know not to shoot it.

This is the main reason wooden ducks are not endowed with life by their creators. Also there is the risk that the wooden duck might fuck real ducks with the result that future generations of duck will become unpalatable by reason of having turned to cardboard. I may mention, anal-tickle philosophers make a metaphysical commitment not to fuck ducks lest they get splinters in their dicks or vaginas or assholes. Never say getting a PhD in that shite is a waste of money.  

Its nature is understood in relation to a ‘real’ organic duck; a wooden duck is a mere decoy since it contrasts with the living version. The point of asking about the nature of the duck is to ask what one is meant to do with the object.

The point of saying shit like this is to prove you are a fucking shithead. Still, it is a good thing that Kim has been taught to ask about the nature of the Tesla Cybertruck. Once she learns it is a motor vehicle which you are meant to drive, she will cease thinking it a suppository which she must cram up her rectum.  This sort of metaphysical commitment on her part will be appreciated by owners of Cybertrucks around the world. 

Now, contrast the hunting community with another community that approaches the wooden duck as an aesthetic object.

It is possible to do both. We might say this wooden duck is so well made that it would be a shame to use it in the ordinary way. Let us rather make it an object of display.  Consider the master decoy carver, A.E Crowell. Two of his pieced have sold recently for over a million dollars. Interestingly, he himself favoured live decoys but some change in the law forced him into the decoy carving business. 

The wooden duck’s ‘point’ is determined in relation to the shape and colour that constitute the duck,

Actually, black is better. I suppose amateur duck hunters will pay for something pretty because their primary purpose is not to turn a profit on duck flesh or feathers.  

and different views might form depending on their reactions to the duck: it must be beautiful, or interesting, or compelling in some way to merit attention. Whatever we say about the object’s nature responds mostly to how people understand and react to the duck, and not some independent standard against which the duck might be compared.

Fuck off! Decoy ducks are about making money or getting nice duck flesh to feast on. This is economics not meta-fucking-physics.  

So here, too, asking about the wooden duck’s nature presupposes,

the asker is either mentally fucking retarded or studied anal-tickle philosophy at Grad Skool.  

or at least develops in tandem with, what we’re meant to do with the object.

Don't shove it up your bum. That's all we ask of you. Make a metaphysical commitment in this regard and we will concede that your expensive education wasn't wholly wasted.  

What the wooden ducks show is that the kinds of questions we ask of the same object (or concept) can differ depending on the background practices and commitments that we bring to it.

For example, asking how far up the rectum the thing should be shoved is predicated on background practices and commitments to Queer Theory. Much much more research needs to be done to illumine the manner in which shoving things up your Vagina, or 'prison purse', impacts metaphysical commitments of a Feminist kind.  

Each culture’s understanding of fiction arises from their pre-existing commitments about what the world is like.

None are. That's why fiction moves easily across borders whereas historiography or political theory does not. Everybody now knows the story of Mulan. Few have heard of Moh Tzu. The Indian Hitopadesha, or the Arabian 'Thousand and one Nights' had wide currency because everybody likes fables and adventure stories. They were relished by people of all nations who had no truck with Manu-smriti or the Sahih Bukhari. 

‘Fiction’ is difficult to define

Why define it? It is a 'Tarskian primitive'. For any practical purpose, there is a buck-stopped, juristic or administrative procedure to determine what is or isn't fiction.  

because fiction is not a standalone concept with its own intrinsic properties, but a concept that responds to a given metaphysical system.

Fuck off! Nobody has a 'metaphysical system' though some do have a lot of shit in their brain.  

Comparing Anglo-European and Chinese thoughts on fiction show how metaphysical assumptions affect the way we theorise fiction.

It shows the reverse. Once Chinese fiction became available to Europeans, they lapped the thing up. Goethe's remark on Universal Literature was motivated by his reading of a Chinese novel. He realized that the Chinese had plenty of such things. But the Chinese and Mongolians and so forth lapped up Western fiction. Apparently, by about 1896, Sherlock Holmes stories were translated into Chinese almost immediately after they appeared in the Strand magazine. Why? They sold well and soon had indigenous imitators. But then, Ernst Bramah's 'wallet of Kai-lung' came out in 1900. 

Metaphysics begins from our observations about the world

No. Metaphysics is what is beyond physics and therefore outside the scope of observation.  

and is sustained by the desire to make sense of the world.

Or the desire to talk nonsense.  

The metaphysical concepts we devise in turn affect the way we represent the world,

only if that is our intention- i.e. we want to write a metaphysical novel, like Sartre's Nausea.  

so it is no surprise that fiction develops in response to the metaphysical frameworks we begin with.

Some fiction may do so but it tends to be shit. Everybody likes Robinson Crusoe. Nobody, not even Sufis, likes Hayy ibn Yaqzan.

There isn’t a single definition of ‘fiction’ that can be applied transculturally

Yes there is. It is that relied upon by a court under the doctrine of the comity of nations. However, this is a justiciable matter. 

Fiction is part of a rich and varied cultural practice, so theorising fiction ought to be

done by people who aren't as stupid as shit 

sensitive not only to the metaphysical frameworks, but also to the sociohistorical frameworks in which fiction is conceived, produced and consumed.

Readers are already sensitive to such things- if they like the work in question.  

But perhaps more importantly, being clear-eyed about the dependent, contextual and even reactive development of fiction allows our philosophising about the nature of fiction to be conducted from a more informed place that is aware of why we ask the questions we ask.

Sadly, even if a shithead is transported to an 'informed place', they will still babble stupid shit.  

We can be clearer on what the stakes are in our fiction theorising, and this in part lets us see how fiction can – and has been – put to work in theory and practice.

Why work so hard to see what anybody wot didn't go to Collidge can see well enough?  

The Montgomery County Commission’s attention was on works whose content challenged their favourable picture of American history.

A 'citizens committee' ordered a book to be placed in the fiction section of the children's library. The County Commission reversed this because of a national outcry. I suppose, now the Donald is back in power, that reversal may itself be reversed.  

Attempting to recategorise a book from ‘nonfiction’ to ‘fiction’ on the basis of its unwelcome content shows that ‘fiction’ had been used as a practical tool for image management.

It shows that it is a completely useless and impractical tool. Kids would prefer to read fiction than non-fiction. Adults are content with internet porn.  

Noting the variety of ways in which works of fiction had been put to aesthetic, social, political and moral uses shows that the Texan committee’s use of fiction is more blatant than usual, but not extraordinary.

It shows the reverse. Texan library book banning, however, is effective and has already had a chilling effect on publishers. That is why my YA graphic novel describing the imaginative manner in which Anne Frank used Hitler as an anal dildo while vigorously fisting herself was rejected by the OUP. 

Current and historical practices, and the theories that propped them up,

did not and do not exist. There is merely what sells and what fails to sell.  

point towards the conclusion that there is no universal concept of fiction.

Also, there is no universal concept of a vagina. Who is to say that men don't have plenty of such orifices? It is unfair to exclude them from female athletic competitions. Also, I should be allowed to enter the Miss Teen Tamil Nadu Beauty pageant.  

It might be true that all human cultures tell inventive stories, but that isn’t enough to claim that there is a single definition of ‘fiction’ that can be applied transculturally.

Anyone at all can make any sort of claim. I might say Kim does not have sufficient reasons to make the claim given above but everybody would tell me to shut up. Why argue with a fucking cretin? Be glad she isn't trying to cram Cybertrucks up her fanny.  

‘Fiction’ is necessarily a thick term insofar as it presupposes some metaphysical framework that separates fiction from other genres of writing.

It doesn't. It is a Shelling focal solution to a coordination or discoordination game- i.e. the thing is utilitarian, not metaphysical. I suppose, nutters like Kim think that when I ask the bar tender the way to the Gents, I have committed to a metaphysical framework which has inflicted epistemic violence on Women, Transgender people and Socially Excluded and Tribal populations who reject the false binary of gender by sporting multiple penises and vaginas on their person. Hopefully, the Donald, in his second term, will kill off this stupid academic availability cascade. 

So, instead of asking how fiction might be defined (ahistorically, logically), we should ask what work we want fiction to do.

Also we should ask ourselves what work we want the door and the window to do. After that, we can discuss the floor and the ceiling.  

Our questions about fiction come from identifiable metaphysical starting points.

Which only partly explains why those questions were as stupid as shit. Still, telling the roof you want it to work harder at keeping rain out of the house does have a salutary effect.  

If we find ourselves continuing to crave a definition of fiction,

We might be better off becoming a bona fide drug addict. This is because there are highly effective Rehab techniques.  

we should also ask what need it will meet: what theory of fiction do we require to solve current problems?

Very true. What theory of fiction does Zelensky need to solve the big problem currently facing the Ukrainian people?  

In 21st-century Anglophone media, invoking fiction allows speakers to dismiss claims without incurring social cost.

Very true. Many serial killers have been acquitted by Courts simply because they said the prosecutor was actually a skilled writer of fiction. Indeed, no big company has had to pay punitive damages for pollution because, in order to be exonerated of all charges, they just had to say 'the case against us is fiction. It was penned in its entirety by Jane Austen. She did not have a dick. Ergo, she was as stupid as shit.' 

To get ahead of potential defamation lawsuits, movies and TV shows remind their viewers of the fictional status of the work

This is not a sufficient defence in law.  

but, outside of those contexts, fiction is often invoked to mean something like ‘hearsay’, ie, a claim that cannot be substantiated and therefore ought to be dismissed.

Fictio in Latin means 'invented statement'. But there are 'legal fictions'. The Court may deem an event to have occurred or they may 'read in' a clause into a contract such that, though the thing is invented, it is nevertheless deemed to be alethic.  

If we’re asking about the nature of fiction, then we should do so with an eye towards producing an understanding of fiction that wouldn’t allow bad actors to lie and successfully evade punishment by insisting they were ‘only making fiction’, or dismiss unfavourable claims as ‘fiction’ as if they can be the final arbiter, or as if fiction can be peddled as fact without ramifications.

Courts already do that. Anal-tickle philosophy comes late to the party. I have a theory that Shaw's 'unsocial Socialist'- a work of fiction- implanted in the shitty brain of Bertrand Russell's elder brother the notion that an American divorce held good in the UK. It didn't and so the Second Earl was sent to jail for three months.  

One of the most interesting – and promising – features of fiction is that it creates a space between the ‘true’ and the ‘false’, between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’.

Not to mention a space between the fist up Anne Frank's fanny and Hitler, whom she is using as an anal dildo so as to challenge the metaphysical commitments of the Third Reich. Had Kamala won, I bet my children's book on the subject would have been compulsory reading in Public Schools by Executive order.  

Good fiction tends to destabilise such dichotomous ways of approaching the world through thoughtful content, innovative form, or self-referentiality.

Nope. What destabilises 'dichotomous' shite (e.g. banging on about fiction as opposed to non-fiction) is the fact that though initially only done by stupid and useless people, the field is soon invaded by crazy nutters who insist that no progress in overturning Patriarchy and Neo-liberalism can be made till private schools are banned and every five year old is required, by the Public School she attends, to give a detailed account of the various techniques used by Anne Frank in pleasuring herself with Hilter as an anal dildo,  

Is there some special work we can expect of fiction, such that we can rethink its nature and function towards that end?

Fiction should engage in a wide-ranging colloquy with Kim so as to undermine her metaphysical commitment to shoving Cybertrucks up her fanny. I fully expect my own fiction to have that effect on her. Sadly, there is no feasible method of getting her, or anybody else, to read my novels.  

The fiction/nonfiction distinction is one worth keeping,

up your fanny because that gives you an excuse not to stuff Cybertrucks up there 

and philosophers of fiction continue to have their work cut out for themselves.

This is not nice work even if you can get tenure for it. It is stupid and useless. Meanwhile, the Chinese ensure their kids study STEM subjects at Uni. That's why they will eat our lunch- unless the Donald can turn things around. 

Basho's old pond or 古墨 Koboku kabuki

In Basho's famous haiku-

古池や　蛙飛び込む　水の音

Furuike ya/ Kawazu tobikomu/ Mizu no oto

(Old pond/ Frog jumping/ Water's sound)

it should be noted that Kawazu (frog) was the kigo (季語, "season word") supplied for the occasion.

From the Buddhist point of view (and since Japs are hella smart, it is safest for me- an ignorant and stupid Tambram- to attribute the highest cognizable Buddhist perspective to those charming and convivial sake drinkers) it is perhaps the case that the poetic word 'kawazu'- which means both frog and the Noh mask used to depict a drowned person- has the following, quite haunting, aesthetic echoes or 'reverberations'- which us guys term 'dhvani' and, I believe, the Japanese term 'yojo'

1) RG Veda 7.103. Manduka (frog) is the Deity though the hymn is to Parjanya (Rain God) who however is also pictured as a rain-cow or rain-bull which can bellow. In other words, there is a sort of 'Prayer & Response' relation between the little creature and the great Monsoonal Rain Clouds which determine the 'Cycle of Heaven' and the fate of Imperial Dynasties. 

I believe Japan has a rainy season like India but the frog is more associated with rivers. Indeed, in Japanese, the word for frog is likely to be metonymically derived from that of river- or the onomatopoeic word for the sound water makes. 

In other words, if the 'kigo' for a renga or haiku is 'kawazu', you already have the sound of water in the poem. But the sound of a frog is croaking not the splash it might want to create when jumping into a pool of water though, obviously, that species can dive noiselessly enough. 

For the Indian Buddhists, the croaking of the frogs symbolises a literally self-defeating prayer for Salvation's rain. Samsara is Nirvana. There is a danger in the Frogs' funktionslust, because as the Vaishnavas tells us low IQ Hindus, the cry of the frogs invites snakes to eat them.

Once a worthless cunt like me see this, Katechon becomes the most apocalyptic and unforgiving of possible Eschatons. Krishna, the plump infant hiding in plain sight and giggling audibly, is always already irretrievably lost. God's Lila is our Kala- his pastimes, our continuing pain for so tied to a Past whose Time never passes.

 Low IQ descendants of the one low IQ udgatr who features in the Chandogya, may see things differently. The crescendo of the frogs' croaking is always polyphony not cacophony. That is Soma- if we could but see it- except the whole point of the exercise is to forever be, as I'd have you picture me, blind drunk. 

Basho turning from such harmonious sabi as overwrought wabi aesthetics could no longer turn to 'lightness' and 'the common speech' (karumi), gives us, at one and the same time, a stoned-Hippy, Allen Ginsberg-type 'kerplunk' as well as an 'Aryan', Tocharian, 'Tuirgen' or, at the very least, the more modest & miscegenated Bihari or merely Scholastic and Nalandan, Shantideva's 'paratman parivartana' solution whereby the Boddisattva diving into Hell to rescue us is also merely going 'kerplunk' somewhere, that is everywhere, along the rain-chain of our exchange of identities or Indra's net of pearls.

But that's not the point. There's an old pond. It is stagnant. There is no sound of water. But, by a decision of the frog, it is turned back to 'wa' that is water. This is all the more the case because there was no fucking old pond around at the time and place where Basho composed this haiku. Indeed, 'old pond' was, not an after-thought, but the only way the thought could be completed in such a manner as to cease to be a thought- just as the old pond became water to cease to be water. The frog who, perhaps, like Rihaku, was drunkenly trying to rescue the Moon, has meanwhile gone to Hell. That's what should happen to any kigo in any haiku. All things, if only in the irreality of each other, harrow Hell as Boddhisattvas. 

2) Them Japs weren't just better at Sanskrit and Buddhism than us lame ass Babus, they were also great scholars of Chinese. The fact is- 

In Mandarin Chinese the word for frog, 蛙 (wā), sounds similar to the sound made by a baby (娃 wā),

 But, to the question, 'due to why, does baby cry?', the Rg Vedic answer is 'Ka' which is also the question mark at the end of a Japanese sentence. Us udgatrs think Ka and Kha are connected- coz us guys know 'Space' and 'Bliss' and 'God' just mean 'Daddy was good looking and Mummy, due to the excellence that Beauty endows, looked after him and had his baby'. True, there wasn't much money and we've had to move around a lot BUT no bar or board room cacophony aint a more perfect polyphony, no drink aint Soma- nor Love not, on itself, blind drunk.

Obviously, guys who know Japanese and Chinese and esoteric phonology and shit would get a lot more out of this haiku than me. But, so long as they don't inflict their erudition on me, I too will desist from ignorantly expounding a tedious theme. 

Fuck that. Just returned from the offie. I'll now tell you my own 'reception' of 

古 as what has passed away

&

池 as an object used for storage but more particularly the water well in a calligrapher's ink-stone

Scription isn't Song.  Calligraphy may have been kissed on the mouth by Calliope but, to capture aught that is fugitive, or lyric, its feet are as of lead.

Basho, uttering a haiku, infold's every appetency's self-annealing aperçu of... but the squid's ink it can not itself escape. 

&

や as intensionality which defeats every intentional extensionality. 

Fuck me! This is Yoneda lemma as Basho's octopus traps.

I truly am shit, I am. 

古墨

Learning that Pratyek think well 

Of the neglected ink-well

For Pralay agog,

Jump Frog!

 Note- the 'Frog' must actually jump out of the typography in some manner. 

Did I mention I'm shit? Oh. I did. Okay then. 

Mercedes Valmisa & Chinese banality

Are we 'interwoven beings'? Or is Darwin's theory of evolution correct? If it is, then an uncertain fitness landscape would militate against any deep interconnection between the members of the most successful species. 

Arguing otherwise and appealing to ancient Chinese philosophy, Mercedes Valmisa writes in Aeon-

What if I told you that there’s no such thing as an individual action?

In which case, you, as an individual, can't tell me shit.  

That every time you eat, walk up the stairs or read a book, you are not the sole agent behind what you are doing, but are engaged in a process of co-creation – as much acted-upon as acting?

So what? The motive for action is to experience some change in circumstances. But this isn't 'co-creation'. We don't say that the cook co-creates the turd we proudly expel.  

To grasp what I mean here, imagine riding a horse. While I can effortlessly distinguish between myself and a horse, I’m aware that neither I nor the horse alone can produce the action of riding.

Nor can we produce it together unless the horse has been broken and I have received some training in horse-riding and a saddle has been provided.  

Riding emerges as a kind of co-action between myself and others,

Nope. Riding emerges as an action of the rider. The horse can't actually train people to ride it. Similarly, raping is the action of the rapist. It isn't a 'co-action' in which the victim plays an equal part and therefore bears equal responsibility.  

and these others are not limited to the horse: they extend towards the particularities of the terrain, the open space that affords movement,

fuck you Space and Time! You are contributing to RAPE! 

the training that the horse and I have undertaken together, the bridle and saddle, and even the food we have ingested to give us energy. All these agencies and many more collaborate to produce the event of riding.

There is only one agency- that of the rider. The horse is acted upon. The saddle is wholly inert and can't do shit on its own. As for the food- it no longer exists or is in the process of being digested and turned to shit.  

I’m going to suggest that, just like riding, all actions are collective.

In which case, you aren't suggesting shit. Either there is no action- we live in a block universe which either evolves or merely appears to evolve- or else in any action, there is a distinction between actor and acted upon. In the process of riding, it is true, the horse may do things the rider does not want- e.g. throw him off and trample him under its hooves. There may also be 'co-actions'- the polo pony may contribute, by its own agency and initiative, to the rider scoring a goal. Alternatively, the horse may know which way to go when the rider does not. Many a drunkard has been brought home by his sagacious horse.  

While this would be close to common sense for a Chinese philosopher of the ‘classical period’ (roughly 6th to 2nd century BCE), it might seem counterintuitive to those of us raised in Western contexts.

Or, it might seem bullshit to the vast majority of ancient Chinese or modern Western people. Philosophers have shit for brains.  

There’s currently a dominant tendency in what we call ‘the West’ (the Anglosphere and some parts of Europe) to buy into the myth of individualism: the notion that individuals alone are responsible for their failure or success, that we are self-reliant and independent from each other and the natural world.

Which is why we get up and go to the toilet rather than just shit the bed and then expect the office to come to us rather than catching a train to get to work.  

Basically, that we can do things by ourselves.

As opposed to letting the dog and the homework do each other.  

A prominent manifestation of individualism is the American Dream – which in her book Cruel Optimism (2011) Lauren Berlant

an American who dreamt of gaining money and fame by writing stupid shite 

called a desire that becomes ‘an obstacle to your own flourishing’.

the obstacle to Berlant's flourishing was all the stupid shit in 'their' brain.  

Individualism promises prosperity and success

not to those who do stupid shit 

based on individual effort and merit,

as opposed to expecting the dog to write your book for you in collaboration with the furniture

but it delivers ideas and conditions that make those things unattainable for all but a privileged few.

whose privilege consists in not doing stupid shit- or expecting the dog and the furniture to do it for them.  

Under this ideology, drug addicts are blamed for their weakness,

it was the dog and the furniture which stole Mummy's money to buy the heroin which the potted plants injected into sonny boy's veins. 

pregnant women who choose not to become mothers are shamed for their recklessness,

by the co-action of the dog, the furniture and the potted plants- right? If addicts and sluts aint to blame for their predicament it follows that nobody can be blamed for blaming them for their predicament. The pusher who sold the drugs, or the rapist who got the slut preggers, are not responsible for their supposed actions. If you have to blame somebody, blame the universe.  

and the unemployed are condemned for their laziness.

but being condemned by the dog and the furniture and the potted plants is no big deal. 

Yet in a world where corporations manipulate doctors to overprescribe drugs,

no corporate executive is guilty of anything because everything is the co-action of the dog and the furniture and the potted plants and so forth.  

where reproductive rights are in retreat,

because of the dog and the furniture and so on- no fucking Republicans are to blame.  

and where jobs are often humiliating, exhausting and poorly paid,

there are no jobs. Why hire a guy and pay him a wage when he is incapable of doing anything on his own?  

individualism has become a cover for those very entities responsible for these grave injustices and inequalities.

But nobody is responsible for injustices because they are incapable of doing anything on their own. 

The performance of an ideology that supposedly benefits the person but brings about the opposite of what was intended – that’s the notion of cruel optimism.

No. That's the product of stupidity. These guys have some sort of ideology and political agenda. But their stupidity makes that ideology and that agenda hated and reviled by everybody else.  

What happens, though, if we dispense with the individualistic way of framing reality?

This silly lady can't keep her story straight. How can we have an 'individualistic way of framing reality'? Everything is a co-action- right?  

In parts of contemporary academia,

the stupid parts 

the countervailing notion of relationality has become a prism to rethink both the humanities and the sciences.

if by 'rethinking' you mean writing paranoid nonsense- then, sure.  

There are Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s assemblages;

Guattari was madder than his psychiatric patients. Deleuze was ignorant of contemporary developments in mathematical logic. Neither understood that Marxism is shit.  

Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory;

Callon was actually quite witty. But guys who write about Science are still shit compared to those smart enough to actually do it. 

Donna Haraway’s posthumanism; and Karen Barad’s entanglement,

Barad was supposed to be smart. Then they went mad and started writing nonsense.  

among many others.

to be found in lunatic asylums.  

And this is just in the West. Asia has more resources to think through relationality simply because it’s been doing it for a longer time.

I knew a bloke from Asia once. I asked him if he knew Bruce Lee. He pretended to be Tamil but I persisted and till he confessed that Bruce Lee was his Uncle. All them Asians are related to each other you know. They also all manage to squeeze into the same pair of underpants. True fact.  

   

Along with classical Chinese philosophers,

who died long ago 

I support a form of relational and process metaphysics, which favours flowing interrelations, interconnectedness and interdependence.

Very kind of it, I'm sure. Sadly, it is related and interconnected with its co-actor- the Universe- which is guilty of RAPE,  not to mention scratching its bollocks incessantly.  

These concepts can help us think differently

but only with the cooperation of the dog and the furniture and the potted plants and the Universe- which is constantly scratching its bollocks.  

about issues that affect our daily lives, reframing agency in terms of our relations and dependencies with others.

Don't blame me for the dirty dishes piled up in the sink. The dog and the furniture and the potted plants refused to co-act with me which is why the washing up didn't get done.  

Much as we can’t ride a horse by ourselves,

unless we actually have a horse and know how to ride 

there’s nothing in our social and political life that’s entirely up to us as individuals.

Which is why we can't be arsed to vote.  

We are co-constituted, co-acted and co-dependent on others – from the air we breathe

but we don't breathe. Respiration involves a co-action in which doggie and the furniture and the potted plants all have an important role to play.  

to the ground that affords our walking. If we start seeing the world like this, it has the potential to make things much better for the many life forms that inhabit this planet.

Especially the worms that will eat us when we starve to death while waiting for the Universe to deliver us a pizza.  

According to an influential strand of thought within Chinese philosophy,

philosophers don't get paid enough. This is also an influential strand of thought within Indian philosophy which is why Indians set up Tandoori restaurants, or qualify as Cost and Management Accountants, any chance they get.  

humans and other animals are not the only entities with the capacity to act.

Ghosts and fox spirits get pretty frisky. 

We are in turn acted upon by everything around us: objects, ideas, laws, genes, food, rules.

ghosts, fox spirits, genies etc. 

The claim that these things can act subverts our conventional understanding of agency.

especially if we've been drinking 

Traditionally, in the West, agency is linked to intentionality: we have agency – the capacity to act – only insofar as we can represent our intentions and goals.

Nonsense! There is such a thing as subconscious or unconscious intention.  

But in classical Chinese philosophy, things like drinking vessels and dress attires, while not animate, have tendencies to behave in certain ways,

My drinking vessels tend to fill up with booze which is strange coz I'm a teetotaler. On the other hand, my tie tries to strangle me. 

and such behaviour affords certain possibilities for action.

You could marry your vacuum cleaner. 

The Daodejing – a work attributed to Laozi, written around the 4th century BCE – notes that the emptiness of a house allows room for lodging.

Which is why Laozi's neighbors, very kindly, kept stealing all his furniture.  

And in the Zhuangzi, a compilation of philosophical writings from the same era, the tree is said to afford shade in which to lie down.

because your neighbor's have stolen your bed. Also they are keeping pigs in your house.  

Such affordances can affect, inspire, encourage, invite, forbid, prevent and enable us to do certain actions.

Unless one's drinking vessels show a tendency to fill up with booze in which case, why bother? 

Whatever is entangled or related to an agent in a certain situation becomes a co-actor and participant in what is happening.

But this could void your warranty from Dyson.  

In classical China, these ideas are the bedrock of what I call the co-action paradigm.

Which tended to yield to the opium smoking paradigm. 

If we unpack it more carefully, it contains three claims. The first is that all actions are collective rather than individual (hence ‘co-actions’).

Since perception too is an action, and all actions are co-actions this means there can be no certainty that any action is perceived. But this also means co-actions can't be distinguished. So this is a claim that claims it can't ever be verified. Why not just claim that all 2w2cwe are garbb223u89v? 

Also called distributive agency and intra-action by Jane Bennett and Karen Barad, respectively, the idea is that no single subject is the root cause of any event; rather, agency is the result of a dynamism of forces distributed across a diverse field of actors, both human and nonhuman.

So, there's just one 'slingshot' such that all true, and false, statements refer to the same one big fact. But the same could be said of goats bleating. 

The second claim, related to the first, is that things also have agency.

My sofa is actually a Talent Agent. I'm waiting for it to get me my break in Hollywood.  

A thing is something without awareness and intentions.

Like Rahul Gandhi.  

How should we understand this non-subjective and non-intentional form of agency?

We should understand it by co-acting with the dog and the furniture.  

I understand this agency – the agency of laws and books and landscapes – in terms of efficacy and propensity.

Ever feel the Universe is out to get you? It actually is! Also cats are surveilling you for the Illuminati.  

When applied to actors with intentions, efficacy is about the way we use certain tendencies and affordances to achieve a goal: say, training, saddling and collaborating with our horse in order to ride it.

marrying it, however, is frowned upon- unless you are a member of the Royal Family.  

But when it comes to inanimate objects or non-intentional agents, efficacy can also be the power to effect change, to make things happen, to generate a stimulus that calls for a response (ganying 感應: ‘resonance’).

It means 'induction' or 'influence' or to impart a vibration 

Propensity becomes a collective capacity to self-organise by harmonising with others

by joining a choir along with your dog and furniture and a tasteful selection of potted plants. 

I believe that things have efficacy in the sense that they can make things happen.

Why not stare at the fridge till it fills up with beer?

We might think, in line with Confucian moral theory, about how different types of music excite different moods,

We don't need no Confucian moral theory to know what mood  will be excited by putting Barry White on the stereo which is why we keep trying to get Mum to switch to listening to M.S Subbalaxmi. 

some inviting peaceful reflection, others instigating rebellion and violence.

 listening to MS singing Bhaja Govinda does have that effect on Mum. The only thing which can calm her down is Tom Jones singing 'What's new Pussycat?' 

Or, based on the political philosophy of Shen Dao and Han Feizi, how it’s the position of a ruler – rather than his personality, achievements, or virtue

or skill at ping-pong 

– that allows him to effectively exercise power, authority and influence.

By contrast, Russian political philosophers thought Stalin effectively exercised power thanks only to his cute moustache and the charming way he threw up his skirt while dancing the can-can. 

Propensity, in turn, is a tendency to behave in certain ways that can be anticipated: like the way we can expect fire to burn.

Which is why you don't invite a bonfire to dinner unless you want your house to burn down. 

But when we think about things in assemblies rather than in isolation, propensity becomes a collective capacity to self-organise by harmonising with others,

which is why its not your fault if your house burned down just coz you invited your friendly neighbourhood bonfire to dinner 

in ways that generate new configurations and emerging processes and events

which is how come you end up in ER at 3 AM on a Saturday night with your duck stuck up a vacuum cleaner nozzle.  

(he 和: ‘harmonisation’; shi 勢: ‘propensity’; the emergent collective power of an assembly of things).

My furniture got to chatting about me when I was at work. They decided I wasn't meeting their emotional needs. I've had to move out while they see other people.  

In the Huainanzi, a 2nd-century BCE collection of philosophical and political essays, natural entities such as trees, birds, fish, rocks, gorges, wind and rain all collaborate to nourish and provide each other with the conditions to thrive – and all this without a plan or desire to do so.

Then a tiger turns up and eats you which is odd because it was actually only planning to pop down the pub for a drink after which it might have gone for a doner kebab. Still, a nice Chinese takeaway always hits the spot. 

In these accounts, neither efficacy nor propensity need an intentional subject.

  like wanking- right? 

Yet, when humans participate in co-acting along with things,

they end up in ER at 3 AM on a Saturday with a mobile phone up their butt 

there is more than resonance and harmonisation at play, because intentions are introduced into the equation. This leads us to the third claim embedded in the co-action paradigm: that humans should design their actions so as to take into account all the others participating along with them.

Also, they should remember to breathe in and then breathe out and keep doing so if they want to stay alive.  

In classical Chinese philosophy, the principle of acting along with others is called adapting (yin 因).

 But classical Chinese philosophers are called worse things by guys they owe money to. 

Adaptive actions are effective because they make good use of the available affordances and the agency of things to accomplish a goal.

Only so long as people remember to breathe in and then breathe out. Failure to do so could lead to your getting behind with your Student Loan repayments.  

A metaphor that I particularly enjoy speaks of ‘riding’ the power of things,

get the Universe between your legs and ride it ragged.  

like the Chinese wingless dragon rides on clouds to fly, according to Chinese culture.

unless Cathay Pacific is running a Black Friday promotion 

Adaptive actions start,

quickly otherwise they aint adaptive. Tiger eats you.  

first, from understanding the interdependence of all entities in a given situation;

by which time Tiger is chomping down on your head 

second, from acknowledging the agency of things in terms of both efficacy and propensity;

Honourable sofa, I acknowledge your Talent Agency but it is totally inefficacious and is showing no propensity to secure me my big break in Hollywood.  

and finally, in consequence, from being able to put the power of things to good use.

i.e. selling them on Ebay 

In short, the idea is that humans must adapt ourselves to the agentive power of the things we are co-acting with.

But it is a shit idea. Why not adapt things to us? Shit. That would involve doing the washing up. Agentive power of the dishes, kindly form a propensity to clean yourselves. After that you could fill yourselves up with tasty things for me to eat.  

In the Zhuangzi, Butcher Ding adapts to the particular piece of ox he’s cutting up.

He carves up the meat along its joints. Then his kids buy him an electric carving knife. He totally loses his shit.  

In the story, he’s said not to see with his eyes nor listen with his ears,

same thing happens to me when I've drunk too much. But I can still fart mightily with my asshole.  

since these perceptual processes are understood to posit things as dead and passive,

Ding was chopping up dead animals. Live ones would have tried to bite him.  

upon which we exert effort and violence. Instead, the butcher resonates with the piece he’s working on, allowing himself to respond to its tendencies, efficacy and propensity; that’s how he can collaborate with it in raising new events in a more effective way.

Or he could just toss the thing in the mixer.  

Examples of the agency of nonsubjective entities also abound in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (c5th century BCE).

But a soldier whose spear kept getting stuck up his ass was still sacked.  

Here, we see that individual actors are not the source of effective actions;

like Rahul Gandhi 

instead, their agency relies on coordinated efforts with others.

but they can still be totally ineffective- like Rahul Gandhi 

These others include mountain ranges and fire, and changing weather and terrain conditions, all of which can trump a commander’s strategy unless this is created in adaptation to them.

Also, don't try to cross the ocean on foot. You will get very wet. The Red Sea, on the other hand, might part for you if your name is Moses.  

These collectives or assemblages of things display emergent efficacy and propensity in their own right. In The Art of War, the skilled commander is like water:

In a fight, I am like water- in the sense that I piss myself.  

fluidly shaping his strategies according to changing conditions in the configuration of collective power.

The US Air Force just bombs the shit out of everything.  Sometimes, nothing else will do.

But how can we perform the final claim in the co-action paradigm, the praxis of adapting in order to harness the agency of things around us?

Wicca. Invest in a broomstick and a big bubbling cauldron. Then find some suckers who will buy your love potion which- btw- Amazon now delivers.  

First, we must displace our sense of self as a privileged source of values,

by carefully cracking open our skulls and removing our brains 

preferences and reasons. Instead, the self becomes just one more interconnected element in a larger situation; it’s not the only standard (not even the main one) by which to decide a course of action.

Though maybe it should be as you ruefully realize after your insurer refuses to pay for having your phone removed from your butt.  

Chinese philosophers called this approach forgetting and emptying the heart-mind.

Which is how come Chine ended up being ruled by Mongols or Manchus. 

The rationale is that, when our sense of individual self is too strong, it’s hard to invite others in.

Which is also why some people end up on a Saturday Night with their mobile phone up their butt.  

We can even become blind to the efficacy and propensity of things around us; we tend to act forcefully, arbitrarily imposing our will without taking others and their context into account.

Your mobile phone doesn't really want to be up your butt. It had dreams of making it big in the fast moving world of competitive fly fishing.  

What made Butcher Ding the best at his trade was

that it didn't really attract the finest minds in the world 

how he adapted to the particular configuration of flesh, bones and tendons he was facing each time.

But everybody does that- unless they have a really kick ass electric saw.  

After many years, his knife would still look like new, because

he didn't let his wife use it.  

he avoided the hard parts

His wife complains that he has no hard parts 

and moved freely in the open space between them.

Which is what he replies.  

The unskilled butchers, on the other hand, would either follow preset guidelines on how to cut an ox or do it forcefully, with the result that they constantly bumped into bones and tendons, and their knives deteriorated quickly.

Which may have been a big deal when knives were expensive.  

Classical Chinese philosophers don’t agree on much, but they agree that holding individualistic, forceful and self-centred attitudes inevitably leads to clumsiness, conflict, harm and failure.

unless it leads to tremendous success and you and your descendants getting to be Em-fuckin-peror.  

Philosophers interested in adapting also claim that the success of a plan of action lies in its being an ad hoc response to unique, impermanent circumstances.

or in circumstances being too crap to prevent the plan from working- even if there is no fucking plan.  

That is, truly adaptive agents should also avoid following inflexible scripts or preset responses for behaviour, and should instead

drop acid or just go on holiday 

adapt to the tendencies of things available at a given moment. 

or else, you could call in a plumber coz an overflowing toilet has a tendency to just go on overflowing.  

The states of emptiness and readiness to tailor a response to ever-changing situations are

quite useless if you brought a samurai sword to a gun-fight. Mankind has prevailed over the tiger and the wolf by changing situations such that we can slaughter our enemies while talking about the Great British Bake off.  

illustrated in the Zhuangzi and other texts with the metaphor of the mirror, which perfectly reflects any and all forms it encounters without preconception or judgment.

Tell that to my shaving mirror. The thing wants me to bleed.  

But it doesn’t store or retain those forms.

Because it is as dumb as shit- unless it belongs to Snow White's Evil Stepmother.  

The mirror ‘forgets’ those forms as soon as they are gone,

unless they use lipstick to trace their outline on it.  

so there aren’t expectations to make us rigid and inflexible

which is what mirrors tend to be 

in our future responses to the world.

Very true. You should get a surgeon to remove your skeleton.  

The parable of the hare in the Han Feizi, attributed to the political philosopher Han Fei, 3rd century BCE, offers a sarcastic illustration of this point. A man witnesses a hare bumping into a tree and breaking its neck,

there's something wrong with that hare. Don't eat it or your brains, too, might turn to shit. 

and then he patiently waits for another hare to break its neck against the same tree (it happened once, why shouldn’t it happen again?). The man is presented as an absurd and ridiculous figure that we can all laugh at comfortably.

If paid to do- sure. Otherwise we'd tell the dude to fuck off coz he's as stupid as shit.  

Yet, as much as we may want to laugh at his silliness, we can also recognise ourselves in it.

If we are studying or teaching worthless shite- maybe.  

We often hope for things to go in the same way that they’ve unfolded in the past, and we make plans accordingly.

Which is why we are the dominant species on the planet.  

We also tend to jump to hasty generalisations based on insufficient evidence.

See above. Enough of us jumping to conclusions is a great way to explore the fitness landscape. On the other hand, if you aint getting paid to jump, don't.  

And we look for reliable standards to guide our actions: for example, we might commit to certain fundamental values,

or skip this step coz we aint in College nor are we teaching stupid shite 

and let them serve as unmovable universal standards against which we measure different courses of action.

Till folk tell us to go measure stuff somewhere else if we don't want our heads kicked in.  

In contrast to the flaws and foibles of the man in the Han Feizi, the figure of Confucius is an embodiment of variability and inconstancy.

Nope. He is an embodiment of wisdom and public spirit. His boo on the other hand was an utter slut which is why he took up philosophy. 

In the Analects we learn that, in seeking to do what is right, there’s nothing that Confucius invariably accepts or rejects, affirms or denies.

Don't fuck your Guru's wife. That is the one thing all great teachers are agreed upon.  

What’s right for Confucius necessarily changes along with situations, contexts, actors and their tendencies. Confucius claims to have no preconceptions about what is or isn’t valid and legitimate, and that his lack of preconceptions is precisely what separates him from all other influential moral and political figures.

He didn't get to be Emperor. Still, his descendants did well for themselves. Sometimes its safer not to have the top job.  

In one memorable example, Confucius gives radically opposing advice on the same issue to two different students: one is urged to move forward with what he’s learned because he’s naturally withdrawn, while the other is encouraged to hold back before he acts, because he’s too eager.

Premature ejaculation isn't that common. It doesn't happen to everybody and, yes, it is a big deal! 

Confucius stands out among aspiring sages precisely due to his inconstancy.

He was pragmatic and focused on training not future Kings but those who would serve them. That way, if a Confucian achieved nothing, the blame could always go to the King or his Court.  On the other hand, it must be admitted that Confucius was a great improvement on Xan Shi, the previous Great Sage of the Warring States period whose one great insight was 'I am not a gerbil'. 

This isn’t something we typically value; we don’t usually admire people for lacking reliable standards,

unless they happen to be likeable.  

nor do we praise them for being noncommittal

unless we happen to be chatterboxes 

and inconstant in their actions.

unless what they were constantly farting and we want to encourage their taking a break from that activity.  

But that’s precisely what made Confucius the greatest sage of his time: his variability, his self-contradiction, and his capacity to waver.

He said 'Maybe I am a gerbil. Not one of those fancy-shmancy Hollywood gerbils but a proud, blue-collar, Coors drinking, gerbil who fought in Nam- well I would have done if I hadn't been having it off with Jane Fonda'.  

Of course, this inconstancy is neither arbitrary nor individualistic; his variable positions were a result of his adaptability, his ability to act along with things, according to the needs of the situation before him.

The guy was a regular MacGyver.  One time there was this dragon which was out riding a cloud and his Missus realized he'd forgotten to take his packed lunch. So, she gave Confucius a bell and the guy quickly improvised a functioning jet-pack out of a bottle of Mou Tai and a pair of chopsticks, so as to  deliver the dragon his cheese sarnie. 

Adapting, then, is an open process that allows agents to be temporarily guided and filled with a plurality of possible courses of action.

Unless they are Mormons or their wives take a dim view of that sort of thing. 

What shapes an adaptive action is not its content (what is done) nor its goal (why it is done). Rather, it is the procedure (the how, or the means by which it’s planned – suoyi 所以).

This just means 'cause and effect'. If you have a good Structural Causal Model and the money for the tech, you don't need to bother with adaptation.  

This implies that all sorts of actions can be adaptive as long as they are planned ad hoc along with the agency of things.

No. It implies nothing at all. When it comes to adaptation, only the fitness landscape matters.  

For example, in the military classic the Sima Fa (4th century BCE), we see kings and strategists who publicly engage in divination, prayers and sacrifices in order to persuade the people and the soldiers that Heaven and the spirits are favourable to the battle.

Back then, Kings who kept getting defeated didn't remain Kings.  

Ritual and prescriptive-looking actions, then, can actually be adaptive if they are responding to people’s psychological or emotional needs, and are not the result of pure conformity.

The reverse is equally possible. Rumours of a defeat could be taken as an omen that the Will of Heaven had changed and so the Empire collapses without a fight. Why is this silly women pretending that 'divination and prayers' are adaptive? China is doing fine without either.  

This also means that adapting is not a model of action per se,

unless turning into a gerbil gets you a modelling contract and then your sofa gets you your big break with Disney and suddenly there's action figures of gerbil-secret-agent-you selling like hotcakes and you find yourself very rich and married to a Kardashian. 

but a method, or meta-model; it’s a kind of flexible structure for producing an endless number of adaptive co-actions. Some texts refer to this meta-model of action as wufang 無方, a method without a (fixed) method – embracing all available courses of action as possible, and using them as needed. Not having a method (wufang, where wu means ‘absence’, and fang also means ‘place’ or ‘location’) implies not being tied to nor getting stuck in any fixed position, rooted to a place and unable to shift and wander (you 遊).

This is what happens when you go for a walk. 

The adaptive agent can take unambiguous and distinct positions each time without fully committing to any of them;

unless that is required of him to get paid his salary. 

they do not define her as an agent, and she can let go of them as soon as the situation is over.

Or she gets the sack.  

Like water,

which is famously low I.Q. Fire is always saying to Water 'you are one dumb bitch, you know that?' and Water just giggles and carries on pissing on him. 

which can adapt to any sort of terrain while none of its shifting shapes ever becomes definitive.

Till I pour it into my ice- tray.  

I’ve become fascinated with a silk manuscript discovered at Mawangdui, a burial site from the Han dynasty, titled ‘Entities Necessarily Have Forms Chart’ (Wu ze you xing tu 物則有形圖; thereafter WZYX).

Tangible things are tangible. Intangible things aren't. But tangibility is not itself a thing. There really isn't much more that can be usefully said on the subject. The plain fact is, if you are doing something which you wouldn't get paid for doing, don't do it. Adaptability is only worthwhile if it involves quitting low paid work for something more remunerative.  

The WZYX is a performative text

It is decorative in the manner of a cultic object

that not only tells us something about the co-action paradigm, but performs its message. It affords readers the experience of adaptive co-acting as they manipulate the silk manuscript in their hands. The standard way to read a manuscript in classical China, whether on bamboo slips or silk, was from right to left and top to bottom.

But people had been twisting vases around to read their inscriptions for centuries before that! 

But not so for readers of the WZYX. As Luke Waring has shown, to decipher the round design on the piece of silk, we must rotate the physical manuscript in a clockwise direction and read the text from the inside outwards.

This sort of spiral text is associated with incantations inscribed on votive bowls, wine-cups etc.  

That’s a unique way to read a text,

unless you are used to reading inscriptions on vases, drinking bowls etc.  

both for us and for classical Chinese readers. Precisely because it’s unfamiliar and requires an effort,

not very much of one 

it allows us to see the praxis of adaptive co-action very clearly in the event of reading the WZYX.

but we can see that praxis in walking or taking a shit 

As the text itself notes, the action doesn’t come fully from the outside (the manuscript doesn’t force me to read or rotate it);

unless that is what you are paid to do.  

and it doesn’t come fully from the inside either (since I’m not independently deciding to read the manuscript through a rotational operation).

Because you may be independently deciding to wipe your ass with it. 

The successful reading of this silk text

as with the successful reading of any text 

is the result of a co-action: a cooperation between a person and other agencies,

because my sofa really is a talent agent and is gonna get my break Hollywood break any decade now.

where the human, an intentional agent, must adapt to the tendencies of things to effectively accomplish a goal.

Fuck that. Use things in ways they'd find morally repugnant. You think toilet paper really wants to wipe your ass?  

Notice that this would happen with any successful event of reading (if we hold a book upside down, we’re also co-acting, but in quite an ineffective manner!).

The same is true if we shove it up our ass. That's the sort of thing you only learn in a very expensive Collidge.  

What the manuscript does, and where its pedagogical force lies, is to nudge the reader to realise the extent to which the ‘outside’ world constitutes what she conceives to be ‘her own’ individual actions, by offering an unusual kind of reading experience.

Not that unusual. We aren't speaking of some really kinky type of porn.  

As the contemporary philosopher C Thi Nguyen argues, games demand we temporarily suspend our ordinary goals, values and means.

certain sorts of video games- sure. Some people play poker for a living. 

We must flex our agency to fit the game designer’s art (who has created its environment, aims, rules and the limited means by which to achieve the goal). For example, putting a ball through an elevated basket is not an ordinary goal of mine, and if it were I’d probably raise myself to the height of the basket by using some steps, which is sure to enhance my efficacy. Nevertheless, I can easily adopt the game of basketball’s goals and the available means to achieve those goals (like putting a ball through an elevated basket by aiming at it from the court).a

Similarly, operating a cash till is not an ordinary goal people have, yet if that's what they are paid to do, that's what they do. Thi Nguyen was talking about immersive role playing video games.  

Using the co-action framework, we see that games force us to jump into an adaptive-agency mode where we adapt our actions to different tendencies in our environment –

but this is also true of walking or operating a cash till.  

even in ways that wouldn’t be reasonable in ordinary, non-ludic states.

Some ludic activities involve rules- e.g. playing Ludo- some don't.  Most games are stylized versions of some utilitarian activity. They are a substitute for 'real-time' experience of a useful type. 

Much like the WZYX manuscript invites us to rotate it clockwise,

No. The author of the manuscript had that intention. The thing itself can't invite shit.  

games invite us to adapt to their unique or unusual rules;

The game designer had that intention. But the game itself has no such ability. On the other hand, maybe this lady thinks Jumanji is a real thing.  

they afford some possibilities of action while prohibiting others. 

Gravity does the same thing. Fuck you, gravity! 

that enable our possibilities to act and to become who we want to be, both personally and as a society.

Cool. Soon we will be able to fly around shitting on the heads of statues.  

The way individualism makes us see social reality is the heart of its efficacy

Individualism has no efficacy. Some individuals do but most are useless. As for social reality- we have no means of knowing it- though having a better picture of aspects of it would make us very rich. 

The efficacy of relationality, and co-action in particular, is how it lets us see the extended network of co-actors that participate in our actions.

We have no means of seeing that extended network.  

It brings to light the structures that enable some to succeed, such as growing up in a safe neighbourhood

That explains nothing. Having parents who take care to live in a safe neighbourhood and good school district makes a difference. But a criminal family living in a safe neighbourhood are likely to get sloppy and end up being bullied by their cousins from the 'hood.  

or having access to high-quality education,

in which case, the vast majority of kids are fucked.  

as well as those that hinder success, such as being unable to secure a safe and legal abortion when you can’t care for more children.

Why not give them up for adoption? 

Another pressing example is the climate crisis – I’m currently writing from Seville in southern Spain, where we have been experiencing Zoe: the world’s first named heat wave, involving constant extreme temperatures of above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) for the past two weeks. More than 1,000 people have died across the country as a result. We must finally acknowledge that our planet, with all its tendencies and affordances, is a co-agent in all of our actions,

which is why it is equally responsible for getting incessantly raped by big corporations.  

and that we can’t act forcefully and individualistically as if we were independent from the natural world.

Thus we can't end global warming till the globe takes grows up a little some fucking responsibility for its actions. You don't hear of the Home Counties getting raped. It's always the fucking Amazon. Obviously, the Environment got high on ayahuasca and then Big Meat porked the fuck out of it. Rain forests are notorious for that sort of thing. Meanwhile, the Cotswolds went to Secretarial College, joined the Young Conservatives, and is now happily married to a rising young Fund Manager. That aint individualistic behaviour. It takes discipline and a will to conform. 

We’re learning this the hard way, by means of death and destruction of everything we love.

Unless we act forcefully to prevent that death and destruction.  

Yet we don’t seem capable of effectively changing our lifestyles to adapt to the tendencies of things, and so to survive.

Some members of our species will adapt and survive. If not, some other species will get to be top dog.  

Classical Chinese philosophers emphasised that thinking of human agency as an individual and independent activity is misguided.

Then, it turned out Classical Chinese philosophy was misguided. Study STEM subjects.  

At best, individualism leads to clumsy and ineffective courses of action

if the individual is clumsy and ineffective- sure.  

and, at worst, to conflict, chaos and harm.

Which may happen anyway if a militarily superior force finds it worthwhile to take your territory and enslave you.  

Yet nothing in this theory of co-action intends to take power and control away from humans.

Which is why humans haven't slapped it silly.  

Counterintuitively, it’s in the act of acknowledging that we aren’t in full control of our actions that we gain more control over their outcomes,

coz that's how magic works- right?  

and greater imaginative scope to create more harmonious and effective social structures.

Which Philosophy Department could be considered an 'effective social structure'?  Where in the world would you find a place less harmonious? 

In order to more justly attribute responsibility, guilt and merit across the field of entangled actors,

one would need to be a better judge of such matters.  

and to design social systems that offer more equitable and nurturing paths for the future,

we'd need to understand 'Mechanism Design' as well as the prevailing economic conditions- in particular, what resource constraints obtain.  

we must look to the others around us who participate in our agency.

No. Just get the incentive mechanism right and find cheap screening and signalling devices.  

Casting human agency in a more distributive and collective mode will help us to become more genuinely autonomous – as interwoven, interdependent, relational beings.

No it won't. The thing is a waste of time. On the other hand, Chinese philosophy enriches your appreciation of Chinese literature which, in turn, has substantially influenced English and other literature. Anyway, Chinese is worth learning purely for the beauty of the thing. It may be that a lot of their literature really is fortune-cookie level banal- as this author suggests- but, my guess is, there is something consummate in the way that banality is expressed.