The Turk has small white fists- soft like the wings of a swan
Her kisses peck like a parrot- tho' her eyes dim the Morn
Vyasa's tear ripened fruit- yours from the start
Break my Hindu rib cage- rage, black, in my heart.
Monday, 18 July 2016
Sunday, 10 July 2016
Logic & Dialogic
Eliezer, univocity in the Sanhedrin's ratio grants it a Skolem normal form
Why not just ask the Shekinah for fellatio, at the Golems' formal prom?
How prefer bat kol to that which stirs the hosed to a son's conception?
Elijah's own goal- for 'all gates are closed save those of deception'
Envoi-
Prince! In re. the case of Solomon v. Asmodeus
Ecclesiastes alone claims a debt truly odious.
Sunday, 3 July 2016
Ajay Skaria's Gandhi- apres moi le Deleuze
In 2014 Narendra Modi became Prime Minister. Now, a mere two years later, we are beginning to witness the terrible consequences for our proud tradition of Secular thought.
Ajay Skaria has published a book about Gandhi. 'Nothing unusual in that', you might say. 'He's a Professor in Upsala or Minnihaha or somewhere equally progressive and hygienic. What else are Professors at such places supposed to do? Raghavan Iyer started writing books about Gandhi once he became a Professor at the Uni of Barbaracartland. Fuck you're getting your knickers in a twist for? Get over it.'
My answer will shock you to your core. This Skaria dude, tho' a perfectly worthwhile Professor on an entirely virtuous campus, isn't just writing about Gandhi, he's fucking reading him in Gujerati!
What's next? When will this madness end? If Modi is re-elected, will Skaria go on to read stuff Gandhi had to mug up to get through his bar exams?
In that case, he'd end up cognizant of the actual genealogy of 'Liberalism'- thus disqualifying himself from whatever Po Co Catskill shtick he entertains the cows with at Minnesota.
Perhaps I'm overestimating him. A dude who actually reads stuff in Gujerati- and thus ought to be precluded from the Olympian heights of Raghavan Iyer style contentless catachresis- oughtn't to say shite like
'Gandhi is deeply disturbed by this ('modern civilisation's) liberal equality, describing it as an ‘equality of sword’
because he'd know Gandhi had never experienced liberal equality, no Gujerati had- Gujeratis were Colonial subjects of an Imperial autocracy not equal citizens in a liberal democracy.
Still, as a thought experiment, suppose
1) Gandhi was too stupid to notice he was black not white
2) Skaria had read the lecture notes Gandhi crammed for his Bar exam
then it would also the case that 'equality of the sword' would have the dhvani echo, or equitable collocational context, of 'Vi et armis'- i.e. the legal fiction that action regarding a tort arose out of a violent trespass with 'bow and arrow'.
This raises the question, could Skaria then go on to say this?
'As that phrase ('equality of the sword') indicates, he senses that liberal equality is based on domination.'
No, because torts are blind to intention and consequential merely. Domination can't be relevant because it can be mindless whereas actions Vi et armis or for 'trespass on the case' point to a sort of Universal Mindfulness and Cognisance which is Natural simply and thus not yet subsumed by the 'artificial reason' of blindfold Law.
For Gandhi and his fellow pupils, all this was part of the chthonic Platonism, or Bacchanalian lore, of those notorious Inns where they ate their otherwise dull and dutiful dinners.
Skaria says- ' It became increasingly clear to me that Gandhi’s writing was doing something quite different from what he may have intended it to do.'
Yet, this and nothing else, was the point of those lectures which we know Gandhi actually audited coz he passed the fucking exam. Briefly, there had been an interregnum between regimes, such that intentionality and rules of construction lay on one side of an abyss on the other side of which was Cokean 'artificial reason' and the 'rule of law'.
Indian barristers were very much aware that they practiced in this interregnum. That was what was rubbed in their faces at Temple dinners.
Skaria however is more ignorant than God made him which is why he is a Professor. Thus Skaria can make great play with Deleuze & Guatarri's notion of major (or molar) and minor saying things like- 'His religion thus requires him to ask: how might a subaltern politics not only refuse subordination, but do so by relinquishing autonomy and even sovereignty –which is to say, by becoming minor?
'Such a religion must strive for an equality of and with the minor – an equality that does not make the minor into a major, that remains minor.'
Deleuze, it must be said, relished the sort of 'embedded', rather than critical, texts which preserve intellectual genealogy as opposed to invent it wholesale with a Cokean or coked up reckless disregard.
Thus, if his method to be correctly applied to Gandhi, Skaria would need to identify the underground rhizome French and English share and which finds expressions in things like what Gandhi would have known as the hilarious 'Rule in Shelley's Case' whereby the dialectic of Major and Minor- i.e. the business of tax avoidance- was ludicrously extended to include the Major's enfeoffment of kin contingent on his successive marriage to seven matrons of the parish whom he knew to be already wedded and thus incapable of siring the heirs to whom he had placed himself in a subaltern Minorship fraught with faux yet piteous protestations of Agamben type 'bare existence'.
As Deleuze & Guatarri said-
and thus, under feudalism, a landowner could only 'farm' his own land- i.e. manage it to best advantage- by ensuring that his untimely demise didn't burden it with feudal dues in a manner destructive of what was commercially required. Thus the enfeoffed nobleman became the trembling tenant 'farmer' of his own wee and incompossible heirs so as to emerge from the condition of a 'Nobody', an Odysseus who must protect himself, to that of a 'somebody' piteously seeking protection from mindless Vi et armis trespass, or, by an action in assumpsit, like a deflowered Galatea, seeking honourable amends from a faithless fountain of honour whose streams foresworn Falstaffian 'knights of the post' have already rendered arid.
Equity, after all, as Shiner says, from Aristotle onward is 'epanorthoma nomou, hei elleipei dia to katholou," a correction of law, where law falls short because of its universality."
Moreover, 'The Rhetoric describes the equitable as to para to gegrammenon nomon dikaion," that justice which lies beyond the written law."
In other words, it is a coddling of the Minor only if the Major has thus and very piteously disguised itself to escape that feudal tax by which a Species sustains itself- viz. a surplus of self-assertion arising out of a pooling equilibrium.
To be clear- the 'Majority' are guys who fuck you up if you fuck with them rather than go running to the Polis. This is because Policing is costly. Sure, if you are real wealthy you can devote some income to making out you are actually a neotenous minor or raped maiden or God struck moon-calf or whatever else best protects your assets from the depradations of the Stationary bandit to whom is ludicrously ascribed a universal, or written, law
There is another way, in this context, to read Deleuze- a Sufi, or woolly minded, way- the way delineated in Mehdi Bazargan's thermodynamic theory of Love.
What was it? Well, to put in Hindu terms, 'Anu' can mean atom. 'Anuvrata' can mean a small vow but also the sort of thing that might successfully oppose the Atom bomb.
The 'Anushasana parvana' of the Mahabharata is about the thermodynamics of the 'atomic' Major- not the Maxwell's Demon of Deleuze's Minor.
In the former we see no Laws are Universalizable save as a Red Queen dialogic- in other words, relational merely till baby supervenes.
In the latter, the pretense of Law as 'artificial reason' is kept up so as to excuse hefty Serjeants-at-Law or Knights-at-arms any fucking social duty or fiscal liability other than to pretend to be the wee and helpless bairns of their own wholly incompossible heirs by, not the ten wise virgins, but seven stout matrons of the parish already married to different men.
Ajay Skaria has published a book about Gandhi. 'Nothing unusual in that', you might say. 'He's a Professor in Upsala or Minnihaha or somewhere equally progressive and hygienic. What else are Professors at such places supposed to do? Raghavan Iyer started writing books about Gandhi once he became a Professor at the Uni of Barbaracartland. Fuck you're getting your knickers in a twist for? Get over it.'
My answer will shock you to your core. This Skaria dude, tho' a perfectly worthwhile Professor on an entirely virtuous campus, isn't just writing about Gandhi, he's fucking reading him in Gujerati!
This is Hindutva gone mad!
What's next? When will this madness end? If Modi is re-elected, will Skaria go on to read stuff Gandhi had to mug up to get through his bar exams?
In that case, he'd end up cognizant of the actual genealogy of 'Liberalism'- thus disqualifying himself from whatever Po Co Catskill shtick he entertains the cows with at Minnesota.
Perhaps I'm overestimating him. A dude who actually reads stuff in Gujerati- and thus ought to be precluded from the Olympian heights of Raghavan Iyer style contentless catachresis- oughtn't to say shite like
'Gandhi is deeply disturbed by this ('modern civilisation's) liberal equality, describing it as an ‘equality of sword’
because he'd know Gandhi had never experienced liberal equality, no Gujerati had- Gujeratis were Colonial subjects of an Imperial autocracy not equal citizens in a liberal democracy.
Still, as a thought experiment, suppose
1) Gandhi was too stupid to notice he was black not white
2) Skaria had read the lecture notes Gandhi crammed for his Bar exam
then it would also the case that 'equality of the sword' would have the dhvani echo, or equitable collocational context, of 'Vi et armis'- i.e. the legal fiction that action regarding a tort arose out of a violent trespass with 'bow and arrow'.
This raises the question, could Skaria then go on to say this?
'As that phrase ('equality of the sword') indicates, he senses that liberal equality is based on domination.'
No, because torts are blind to intention and consequential merely. Domination can't be relevant because it can be mindless whereas actions Vi et armis or for 'trespass on the case' point to a sort of Universal Mindfulness and Cognisance which is Natural simply and thus not yet subsumed by the 'artificial reason' of blindfold Law.
For Gandhi and his fellow pupils, all this was part of the chthonic Platonism, or Bacchanalian lore, of those notorious Inns where they ate their otherwise dull and dutiful dinners.
Skaria says- ' It became increasingly clear to me that Gandhi’s writing was doing something quite different from what he may have intended it to do.'
Yet, this and nothing else, was the point of those lectures which we know Gandhi actually audited coz he passed the fucking exam. Briefly, there had been an interregnum between regimes, such that intentionality and rules of construction lay on one side of an abyss on the other side of which was Cokean 'artificial reason' and the 'rule of law'.
Indian barristers were very much aware that they practiced in this interregnum. That was what was rubbed in their faces at Temple dinners.
Skaria however is more ignorant than God made him which is why he is a Professor. Thus Skaria can make great play with Deleuze & Guatarri's notion of major (or molar) and minor saying things like- 'His religion thus requires him to ask: how might a subaltern politics not only refuse subordination, but do so by relinquishing autonomy and even sovereignty –which is to say, by becoming minor?
'Such a religion must strive for an equality of and with the minor – an equality that does not make the minor into a major, that remains minor.'
Deleuze, it must be said, relished the sort of 'embedded', rather than critical, texts which preserve intellectual genealogy as opposed to invent it wholesale with a Cokean or coked up reckless disregard.
Thus, if his method to be correctly applied to Gandhi, Skaria would need to identify the underground rhizome French and English share and which finds expressions in things like what Gandhi would have known as the hilarious 'Rule in Shelley's Case' whereby the dialectic of Major and Minor- i.e. the business of tax avoidance- was ludicrously extended to include the Major's enfeoffment of kin contingent on his successive marriage to seven matrons of the parish whom he knew to be already wedded and thus incapable of siring the heirs to whom he had placed himself in a subaltern Minorship fraught with faux yet piteous protestations of Agamben type 'bare existence'.
As Deleuze & Guatarri said-
Equity, after all, as Shiner says, from Aristotle onward is 'epanorthoma nomou, hei elleipei dia to katholou," a correction of law, where law falls short because of its universality."
Moreover, 'The Rhetoric describes the equitable as to para to gegrammenon nomon dikaion," that justice which lies beyond the written law."
In other words, it is a coddling of the Minor only if the Major has thus and very piteously disguised itself to escape that feudal tax by which a Species sustains itself- viz. a surplus of self-assertion arising out of a pooling equilibrium.
To be clear- the 'Majority' are guys who fuck you up if you fuck with them rather than go running to the Polis. This is because Policing is costly. Sure, if you are real wealthy you can devote some income to making out you are actually a neotenous minor or raped maiden or God struck moon-calf or whatever else best protects your assets from the depradations of the Stationary bandit to whom is ludicrously ascribed a universal, or written, law
There is another way, in this context, to read Deleuze- a Sufi, or woolly minded, way- the way delineated in Mehdi Bazargan's thermodynamic theory of Love.
What was it? Well, to put in Hindu terms, 'Anu' can mean atom. 'Anuvrata' can mean a small vow but also the sort of thing that might successfully oppose the Atom bomb.
The 'Anushasana parvana' of the Mahabharata is about the thermodynamics of the 'atomic' Major- not the Maxwell's Demon of Deleuze's Minor.
In the former we see no Laws are Universalizable save as a Red Queen dialogic- in other words, relational merely till baby supervenes.
In the latter, the pretense of Law as 'artificial reason' is kept up so as to excuse hefty Serjeants-at-Law or Knights-at-arms any fucking social duty or fiscal liability other than to pretend to be the wee and helpless bairns of their own wholly incompossible heirs by, not the ten wise virgins, but seven stout matrons of the parish already married to different men.
Fuck it. What am I trying to say?
D'uh! You iz doing a Deleuzian mimesis of a particular thousand plateau rhizome of schizophrenia.
Sure.
Captain Obvious.
But what was I trying to say?
Love is in the acts of Love, not in some imaginary ipseity seeking its incompossible Levinasian alterity for Netflix & Chill or shit & giggles.
I'm now going to quote Skaria with my comments in bold.
This is to mock my own eagerness to see something positive in a guy who can read Gujerati but, as will now become evident, says stupider things than the maddest Madrasi or most boring Bong.
IN Hind Swaraj, the Editor famously questions the Reader’s nationalist vision of swaraj, describing it as ‘English rule without the Englishman.’
This was because the British Raj forbade discrimination on the basis of color or creed. Nationalists weren't miffed that they got beaten up by White people and thrown out of railway carriages for which they had paid the full price. That sort of shit didn't go down at all.
The truth is, chauvinistic brown people wanted to get rid of these wonderful White people who turned India into a Kantian Utopia for no good reason. They just wanted Brown people to preside over the same truly Liberal and Egalitarian regime because they had some aesthetic objection to White skin.
That remark is symptomatic of Gandhi’s questioning of liberal conceptions of freedom and equality.
Which Brown and Black people enjoyed to the hilt in South Africa and Champaran and Fiji and every where else them nice Whiteys were in charge. Liberal traditions usually conceive freedom in terms of autonomy – as the everyday sovereignty that a rational being exercises by authoring universal law, or law that any rational being would and must freely submit to.Quite false. That's a post-War Kantian availability cascade. During Gandhi's life, Kantian political philosophy justified keeping subject, 'for their own good', large sections of the Human Race on the basis that they were genetically predisposed to heteronomy. The Jews were 'heteronomous' - as was proved by their lack of true creativity in Music, Mathematics, Physics etc- which is why no great concentration of Jews in any locality was desirable. From time to time they needed to be exterminated or else they would end up poisoning the Public with essentially meretricious Music- like that of Mendelsohn or Mahler- and primitive Mathematical ideas like those of Cantor and Einstein. As for the wogs, niggers, spics, chinkies and so on- the kindest thing was to engage them in unremitting and ill rewarded coolie work rather than seek to burden their tiny brains with education. Women, on the other hand, should be beaten tenderly and cherished with your dick.
Autonomous beings are also equal, and modern republican democracies enshrine this equality in the rights of citizens. Heteronomous citizens have the same rights as Autonomous ones. There is no way to tell which are which. In any case, Gandhi didn't live in a modern republican democracy. He lived in a racist Empire where brown people were subjects not citizens.
Autonomy is accompanied moreover by a distinction between the public and the private, with the presence of religion in the public sphere being regarded as undesirable – as heteronomy and unfreedom. Really? Sez who? Some guy who started writing long after Gandhi died? Why bring this shite up in connection with the Mahatma? He was a subject of an Empire which had an Established Church. Even two decades down the line, Lord Sinha's son couldn't inherit his title because the House of Lords decided that Hindu marriages are concubinage merely.
Autonomous beings are also equal, and modern republican democracies enshrine this equality in the rights of citizens. Heteronomous citizens have the same rights as Autonomous ones. There is no way to tell which are which. In any case, Gandhi didn't live in a modern republican democracy. He lived in a racist Empire where brown people were subjects not citizens.
Autonomy is accompanied moreover by a distinction between the public and the private, with the presence of religion in the public sphere being regarded as undesirable – as heteronomy and unfreedom. Really? Sez who? Some guy who started writing long after Gandhi died? Why bring this shite up in connection with the Mahatma? He was a subject of an Empire which had an Established Church. Even two decades down the line, Lord Sinha's son couldn't inherit his title because the House of Lords decided that Hindu marriages are concubinage merely.
The Reader in Hind Swaraj could well be working within this problematic that affirms the rights of man and citizen. No he could not. Nobody in England did so at that time. Skaria is channeling an availability cascade which simply didn't exist for Morley or Minto or Mukherjee or Momin or any body else the 'Reader in Hind Swaraj' could know about.
He wants an Indian parliament, and says: ‘What they have done in their own country has not been done in any other country. It is, therefore, proper for us to import their institutions.’
The Reader is saying- Britain is powerful, let us imitate their institutions so as to become powerful. As a matter of fact, some Indian 'Readers' in South Africa at the time had studied law in England. They were aware that the Japanese had mimicked the Europeans, even down to wearing frock coats and top hats in their Diet, and scored a triumph over Tzarist Russia which lacked a similar Parliament.
Gandhi by contrast is critical of both sovereignty and autonomy. No. Gandhi is loyal to the Crown- though it grants him only subject-hood not citizenship. He ridicules the idea that Indians can become strong because they are demonstrably shit. Even if they aren't, they better pretend to be otherwise they might lose their property or get transported to the Andamans.
In his writing, sovereignty is not exemplified only in the state. Hind Swaraj says there can't be an Indian State because Indians are shite. Sovereignty for Indians can't mean what it does for Whitey coz Indians are shit colored. Sure they can pretend to be Mahatmas or Parmathmas or Magical Mermaids or whatever. But that's not the only thing Whitey wants. Indians should fucking spin cotton and grow crops and give up on competing with Whitey in the learned professions. Village autarky and Village self-government is what Westminster wants Indians to affirm and pretend to achieve because then the Viceroy can never be guilty of causing or neglecting to ameliorate a famine. The 'home charge' can keep growing though millions of Indians die of starvation. Rather, every self is deeply fissured, and sovereignty is ubiquitous, always to begin with exercised everyday by the self – for example, in the act of eating – in order to persist in its ipseity, to master the other and return to itself. There! Told you so! Viceroy Lytton was right! Millions of Indians hadn't starved to death because the Brits were bleeding the country dry. No. Their 'self' or 'jivatman' had gotten 'deeply fissured' because, in Ind's magically self-regulating villages, 'sovereignty is ubiquitous' and thus some Indians refrained from 'the act of eating', embracing inedia instead, in order to 'persist in...ipseity, to master the other other and return to itself'
Fuck off Skaria. This ipseity/alterity bullshit is a late Twentieth Century availability cascade. It is worthless. Levinas denied Palestinians getting bombed could be Israel's alterity. To carry on talking this shite shows you are a provincial little turd of a pedagogue with no sense of reality.
For this everyday sovereignty, his writing has several names, including ‘force of arms’ and asakti (‘attachment’). Gandhi didn't have the concept you ascribe to him and so his writing can't reference it under any rubric whatsoever. In any case, it is a shite concept- not canonical at all- and only had a brief, late Twentieth Century, Rothbardian half-life.
Autonomy becomes here one kind of everyday sovereignty – that exercised over the self through measure and calculation. Gandhi didn't say that. You did. It's a foolish thing to say. Why not speak of the sovereignty exercised by the TV over the digital channel it is displaying? And when autonomy is institutionalized as a social order, as with parliamentary democracy, the violence of sovereignty is intensified in two ways. Gandhi condemned Parliamentary Democracy because he considered it a House of Prostitution. Every few years Parliament gives itself to a new Master- i.e P.M. This is the conduct of a whore. Gandhi thought the fact that hundreds of thousands of British women had got jobs meant they had all become street walking prostitutes. He condemned the Suffragettes for clamoring to participate in the Whoredom of Westminster.
This isn't violence- i.e rape- but bending over and spreading your legs for money- i.e. selling your anal cherry.
First, this order grants equality only to those beings presumed to possess the power to reason and measure, and in this way systematizes domination over all other beings (such as animals or the colonized). You are just making this up out of whole cloth. Unfortunately it is whole cloth on which you were wiping your bum when you got buggered. It doesn't cohere. It is full of holes. No logical argument arises. An order which grants equality to a set of agents who possess a particular property does not 'systematize domination' over another set of agents.
When I was 19, I joined a leading Accountancy firm. Me and my colleagues possessed the 'power to reason and measure'. However no fucking 'order' systematized our domination over heavily muscled football hooligans or Lions in the Zoo or the good folks who reside in the Falkland Islands.
How fucking stupid are you Skaria?
Second, autonomous beings inflict a massive violence on themselves, for they lose the power to love,
which in Gandhi’s writings requires the surrender of autonomy and even sovereignty. Gandhi told his wife that she was inflicting a massive violence on Maulana Azad by not cooking mutton chops for him coz the Maulana really liked mutton chops and Gandhi wanted to get in good with this crazy wannabe 'Imam ul Hind'. However, because Kantian shite wasn't availability cascaded back then, he never spoke of 'autonomous subjects' or, indeed, the power to love as opposed to its reality- like the battered housewife finally accepting she really was asking for it and black eyes help her see this reality better.
(It is because of this loss that for the Editor the English deserve‘pity’.) Their women are prostitutes. Everybody is a prostitute. As Mohammad al Fayed said to Ali G- all dem posh Brits be bum boys. We gotta pity them coz they aint slaves and thus don't got no proper jobs.
In both these ways, autonomy institutes a rule of the major.
Nonsense. Autonomy means the right of exit. Why fucking stick around to be fucked over by the 'rule of the major', if you can arbitrage a better deal by faking being a minor? It's all there in Chudleigh's case and Shelley's rule and every subsequent tax avoidance scheme barristers grow fat on.
Here, freedom and equality is possible only through domination over the minor. Rubbish. Though by no means an impressive figure of manhood, I easily dominated both the itty baby and the little kitty. So what? When wifey came home, she beat seven bells out of me if either appears ill cared for. What fucking 'freedom and equality' are you blathering about? Hierarchies are where one is at home.
What is lost is the possibility of an exit from subalternity that does not participate in domination or majority. Why should this be lost? Instead of being a voiceless coolie, I could discover myself to be Arabella Vere de Vere, only daughter of Lord Greystokes, sired upon a particularly hairy orangutan. My exit from subalternity- i.e. writing shite about Gandhi- need not participate in domination or majority coz Tarzan went to Mars. That's where I'm headed. I suggest Skaria come with me. The fucker is 51. He lives in Minnesota. His book is fantasy. It has less nomological accessibility to Ind than the Lord of the Apes enjoying a spot of Dangal mein Mangal on the Red Planet.
Saturday, 2 July 2016
Karl Polanyi's Pollyanna World
Karl Polanyi, writing towards the end of the Second World War, thought Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions- those favored by Pollyanna cheerleaders for a prosopic Nixon's perennial Third Term.
1) 'The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. '
China had a Civilization in the Nineteenth Century. No 'balance of power' system was relevant to its trajectory. Indian Civilization, similarly, was entirely unaffected by any such consideration. Africa, between 1880 and 1914 might appear to have been affected but no lasting effect is discernible.
However, it may be argued that Asia and Africa don't have real 'Civilization' for some Hegelian reason. It is certainly true that Asian and African Civilizations declined relative to European Civilization over the course of the Nineteenth Century. Further, it must be conceded that Ottoman Turkey probably gained some respite from Russian aggression thanks to 'Balance of Power' considerations. However, its own Civilization did not rest upon the 'balance of power system' but had a trajectory similar to that of China and India.
Ultimately, though Turkish withdrawal from the Balkans did light the touch paper of general conflagration, it wasn't because the 'Balance of Power' was endangered but because, as Prince Otto Von Bismark said to the Sanjak of Novibazar- niggah pleeze, bitches be krazeee.
What about the White population of North America? They had a rapidly growing Civilization in the Nineteenth Century. Lord Canning said- ' I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old.' Does that mean North American Civilization rested on the 'balance of power system'? Nope. Canning was just indulging in grandiloquent Parliamentary piffle in the context of some inconsequential dispute between Spain and Portugal long forgotten by History.
The fact is, during the course of the Nineteenth Century, the U.S., untrammeled by any 'Balance of Power' consideration, developed so markedly superior a technological Civilization that it ultimately was able to intervene on the European Continent to such good effect that European Chancelleries gave up any pretense of geopolitical salience.
What about Europe itself between the Treaty of Vienna and the assassination of the Archduke? Surely, its Civilization did rest on the 'Balance of Power'? After all, but for Metternich and Talleyrand and other such clever diplomatists, surely Europe would have had another hundred years war?
The answer is no. Talleyrand's cleverness caused the British to let Napoleon loose. Second time round, the Allies garrisoned France and only left after collecting huge reparations. There could be no doubt that a third occupation would have resulted in the decimation and enslavement of the population. This was because there was a 'Concert of Europe' consensus that 'Balance of Power' considerations had no place in dealing with Civilizations that had gone utterly bonkers.
'Balance of Power' systems are chaotic. They break down. No Civilization has rested on such a basis. The Etruscans and the Romans aren't holding each other in check on the banks of the Tiber. The Etruscans went under. Their language disappeared though, no doubt, their Civilization contributed something to that which spread to distant lands under the name of Rome.
Why did Europe experience two devastating world wars in the Twentieth Century? The answer is simple. Diplomats did not understand Military Strategy and the Generals were as stupid as shit. France didn't have an offensive doctrine in either war but its Diplomats acted as though it did. Thus its system of alliances were worse than worthless. They meant that Germany could always make short term gains for which it would pay a long term price.
In other words, there was no actual 'Balance of Power' in the sense that a small perturbation set off reactions quickly restoring equilibrium. Polyani thought there was a 'Balance of Power' because he was writing in 1944 and thought that by 1964 Germany would once again be a Great Power, though perhaps with a different set of allies.
Polyani was wrong. The 'Balance of Power' balanced nothing but bombast till bombast turned into bombardment and truth could at last go naked wreathed in the fogs of war.
2) The second (institution upon which Nineteenth Century Civilization rested) was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy.
Was there really an 'international gold standard' in the Nineteenth Century? If you went from London to Peking in the year 1830 or 1880, could you pay your hotel bill with a gold sovereign? Nope. Imperial China was a silver based economy. So, for the most part, was India. Cowrie shells had currency in some upcountry market towns.
There was no 'international monetary standard' in the Nineteenth Century. When Germany got a lot of gold out of France after the War of 1870, it was able to introduce a gold backed currency. Similarly, Japan went on to gold after beating the Chinese and extorting reparations. Going on to Gold, enabled both Japan and Germany to attract investment. However, both countries took a militaristic path in the foolish belief that Wars could turn a profit for their countries. This meant everyone went off Gold during the Great War.
An Economic network, or series of linked markets, may indeed feature a particular form of liquidity. However, a change in the type of liquidity does not destroy that network or those markets. Indeed, liquidity can be endogenously determined on the basis of mutual trust and common knowledge.
If this is the case for purely economic networks, in which agents may not speak each others' languages or even never actually personally interact, how much more must it be the case that a Civilization does not rest on a particular convention re. liquidity.
3) The third (institution upon which Nineteenth Century Civilization rested) was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare.
Markets are not self-regulating. The price mechanism is said to be 'self-regulating' iff markets clear- i.e. no willing buyer or seller is unable to transact at the closing price. But, this can be by means of a correlated equilibrium rather than a Walrasian tatonnement. A set of interconnected Markets which always clear can be called 'self-regulating' under certain highly artificial assumptions.
However, Economists recognize that if there is 'Knightian Uncertainty'- i.e. some things can't be even stochastically predicted- then there will be 'hedging effects' such that any general equilibrium is 'anything goes'- we don't know if if the aggregate outcome is good or bad and thus if some collective reparative action is required.
Polyani might think that Indian or Chinese Civilization, at least those portions of each characterized by 'self-regulating' (i.e. not regulated at all) markets 'produced unheard-of material welfare'. There is no evidence for this. On the contrary, as current Economic theory would predict, the presence of Knightian uncertainty in rain-fed agricultural areas led to highly perverse hedging effects which reduced material welfare all round.
4) The fourth (institution upon which Nineteenth Century Civilization rested) was the liberal state.
It is certainly the case that some Civilizations, experiencing rapid economic growth, develop some liberal (i.e. non coercive) institutions or enclaves which in turn might be said to 'capture the State'. However, that very same Civilization, on the basis of exigent circumstances, might reverse course either tactically or strategically.
It has never been the case that a decision by the State to re-christen itself as 'Liberal', or to import or fabricate non-coercive Institutions towards that end, has, by itself, had any impact on a Civilization.
This was well known in the Nineteenth Century. King Joseph in Spain did not cause some great convulsion in the mores or mode of production of the country he briefly ruled. Nobody really believed that the Iberian peninsula would turn into a Liberal paradise if the Infanta prevailed over the Carlists anymore than anyone was foolish enough to think that a Tzar who had read Rousseau could change the character of his Empire.
Why can't the State change the nature of the Civilization over which it presides by assuming a 'Liberal' coloring? Why couldn't the British Raj change the nature of Hindu Civilization? My parents generation drank tea, played cricket and pursued middle class English professions- lawyers, accountants, civil servants- not because they were ruled by the British but because people like Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi- who considered tea to be a declasse poison, cricket to be unmanly folly, and white collar professions to be the vilest treachery- had mobilized the masses to chuck out the White Man.
The answer has to do with, not 'embeddedness' (which only applies to people who have grown up in a particular culture and is quickly defeated by mimetic effects featuring quite small exit and entry) but 'incentive compatibility' (which applies equally to all agents with elastic response- and this includes customary mimetic leaders absent an alien countervailing power).
As India gained, first dyarchy, and then 'swaraja'; tea was increasingly marketed by Indians for Indians, cricket was played by Indians for Indians, worthless white-collar drones serviced a Queen Indira not Elizabeth.
States are Stationary Bandits. They can change their complexion but nothing changes unless they alter the way the finance themselves. If this creates new incentive compatible 'riskless assets' then there is a transmission mechanism to the determinants of the underlying Civilization. Otherwise nothing changes.
Polyani thought otherwise-
Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization. Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe. By the time it failed, most of the other institutions had been sacrificed in a vain effort to save it. But the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. It was this innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization. The gold standard was merely an attempt to extend the domestic market system to the international field; the balance-of-power system was a superstructure erected upon and, partly, worked through the gold standard; the liberal state was itself a creation of the self-regulating market. The key to the institutional system of the nineteenth century lay in the laws governing market economy.
We now know that Polyani was hopelessly wrong. The gold standard has no importance at all. What matters is that international Capital markets clear. For this to happen, it is sufficient that some agents have access to a Futures market in at least one currency or commodity. China isn't on the gold standard. Nor is India. Indo-Chinese commerce has grown hugely because there is always an arbitrageur willing to assume any relevant risk.
The fall of the gold standard did not cause wars. In so far as Germany and Japan were able to use the reparations gained from Wars to go on to Gold, it may be said that the Gold Standard helped cause Europe's two Great Wars because German and Japanese Generals thought winning new Wars would cause the inflow of yet more Gold and that would be a good thing because....urm...that worked out real well for Imperial Spain didn't it? If didn't? Fuck. Why didn't the War College get the memo?
The Gold Standard was not 'an attempt to extend the domestic market system to the international field'. England didn't go on Gold to trade with other countries. It did so because bimetallism is stupid- it increases uncertainty, exogenous monetary shocks, and thus drives up transaction costs. It also fucks up Fiscal Policy. Gold aint magic. It's a solution to a coordination problem. A primitive one. That's why the 'goldbug' on any comments column is bound to be a fucking retard or a senile loonytoons.
Still, I suppose, this explains Polyani's lasting popularity. Goldbugs and paranoid retards and senile loonytoons we will always have with us.
Much reading enstoopidifies. Books written on the basis of much reading enstoopidify so egregiously we end up quoting them- like Emily Dickenson who went ass to mouth on her first date and thus died a spinster with unkissed lips .
I think that's what Plato was really getting at when he spoke of kalokagathia. Incidentally, his 'Parmenides' is but the most spectacular example of the grand tradition of Revenge Porn which stretches back to the Cave paintings of Lascaux.
See what I did just now? It could be called pulling a Polanyi- except there was a Michael Polanyi who was nothing like his idiot brother Karl.
1) 'The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. '
China had a Civilization in the Nineteenth Century. No 'balance of power' system was relevant to its trajectory. Indian Civilization, similarly, was entirely unaffected by any such consideration. Africa, between 1880 and 1914 might appear to have been affected but no lasting effect is discernible.
However, it may be argued that Asia and Africa don't have real 'Civilization' for some Hegelian reason. It is certainly true that Asian and African Civilizations declined relative to European Civilization over the course of the Nineteenth Century. Further, it must be conceded that Ottoman Turkey probably gained some respite from Russian aggression thanks to 'Balance of Power' considerations. However, its own Civilization did not rest upon the 'balance of power system' but had a trajectory similar to that of China and India.
Ultimately, though Turkish withdrawal from the Balkans did light the touch paper of general conflagration, it wasn't because the 'Balance of Power' was endangered but because, as Prince Otto Von Bismark said to the Sanjak of Novibazar- niggah pleeze, bitches be krazeee.
What about the White population of North America? They had a rapidly growing Civilization in the Nineteenth Century. Lord Canning said- ' I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old.' Does that mean North American Civilization rested on the 'balance of power system'? Nope. Canning was just indulging in grandiloquent Parliamentary piffle in the context of some inconsequential dispute between Spain and Portugal long forgotten by History.
The fact is, during the course of the Nineteenth Century, the U.S., untrammeled by any 'Balance of Power' consideration, developed so markedly superior a technological Civilization that it ultimately was able to intervene on the European Continent to such good effect that European Chancelleries gave up any pretense of geopolitical salience.
What about Europe itself between the Treaty of Vienna and the assassination of the Archduke? Surely, its Civilization did rest on the 'Balance of Power'? After all, but for Metternich and Talleyrand and other such clever diplomatists, surely Europe would have had another hundred years war?
The answer is no. Talleyrand's cleverness caused the British to let Napoleon loose. Second time round, the Allies garrisoned France and only left after collecting huge reparations. There could be no doubt that a third occupation would have resulted in the decimation and enslavement of the population. This was because there was a 'Concert of Europe' consensus that 'Balance of Power' considerations had no place in dealing with Civilizations that had gone utterly bonkers.
'Balance of Power' systems are chaotic. They break down. No Civilization has rested on such a basis. The Etruscans and the Romans aren't holding each other in check on the banks of the Tiber. The Etruscans went under. Their language disappeared though, no doubt, their Civilization contributed something to that which spread to distant lands under the name of Rome.
Why did Europe experience two devastating world wars in the Twentieth Century? The answer is simple. Diplomats did not understand Military Strategy and the Generals were as stupid as shit. France didn't have an offensive doctrine in either war but its Diplomats acted as though it did. Thus its system of alliances were worse than worthless. They meant that Germany could always make short term gains for which it would pay a long term price.
In other words, there was no actual 'Balance of Power' in the sense that a small perturbation set off reactions quickly restoring equilibrium. Polyani thought there was a 'Balance of Power' because he was writing in 1944 and thought that by 1964 Germany would once again be a Great Power, though perhaps with a different set of allies.
Polyani was wrong. The 'Balance of Power' balanced nothing but bombast till bombast turned into bombardment and truth could at last go naked wreathed in the fogs of war.
2) The second (institution upon which Nineteenth Century Civilization rested) was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy.
Was there really an 'international gold standard' in the Nineteenth Century? If you went from London to Peking in the year 1830 or 1880, could you pay your hotel bill with a gold sovereign? Nope. Imperial China was a silver based economy. So, for the most part, was India. Cowrie shells had currency in some upcountry market towns.
There was no 'international monetary standard' in the Nineteenth Century. When Germany got a lot of gold out of France after the War of 1870, it was able to introduce a gold backed currency. Similarly, Japan went on to gold after beating the Chinese and extorting reparations. Going on to Gold, enabled both Japan and Germany to attract investment. However, both countries took a militaristic path in the foolish belief that Wars could turn a profit for their countries. This meant everyone went off Gold during the Great War.
An Economic network, or series of linked markets, may indeed feature a particular form of liquidity. However, a change in the type of liquidity does not destroy that network or those markets. Indeed, liquidity can be endogenously determined on the basis of mutual trust and common knowledge.
If this is the case for purely economic networks, in which agents may not speak each others' languages or even never actually personally interact, how much more must it be the case that a Civilization does not rest on a particular convention re. liquidity.
3) The third (institution upon which Nineteenth Century Civilization rested) was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare.
Markets are not self-regulating. The price mechanism is said to be 'self-regulating' iff markets clear- i.e. no willing buyer or seller is unable to transact at the closing price. But, this can be by means of a correlated equilibrium rather than a Walrasian tatonnement. A set of interconnected Markets which always clear can be called 'self-regulating' under certain highly artificial assumptions.
However, Economists recognize that if there is 'Knightian Uncertainty'- i.e. some things can't be even stochastically predicted- then there will be 'hedging effects' such that any general equilibrium is 'anything goes'- we don't know if if the aggregate outcome is good or bad and thus if some collective reparative action is required.
Polyani might think that Indian or Chinese Civilization, at least those portions of each characterized by 'self-regulating' (i.e. not regulated at all) markets 'produced unheard-of material welfare'. There is no evidence for this. On the contrary, as current Economic theory would predict, the presence of Knightian uncertainty in rain-fed agricultural areas led to highly perverse hedging effects which reduced material welfare all round.
4) The fourth (institution upon which Nineteenth Century Civilization rested) was the liberal state.
It is certainly the case that some Civilizations, experiencing rapid economic growth, develop some liberal (i.e. non coercive) institutions or enclaves which in turn might be said to 'capture the State'. However, that very same Civilization, on the basis of exigent circumstances, might reverse course either tactically or strategically.
It has never been the case that a decision by the State to re-christen itself as 'Liberal', or to import or fabricate non-coercive Institutions towards that end, has, by itself, had any impact on a Civilization.
This was well known in the Nineteenth Century. King Joseph in Spain did not cause some great convulsion in the mores or mode of production of the country he briefly ruled. Nobody really believed that the Iberian peninsula would turn into a Liberal paradise if the Infanta prevailed over the Carlists anymore than anyone was foolish enough to think that a Tzar who had read Rousseau could change the character of his Empire.
Why can't the State change the nature of the Civilization over which it presides by assuming a 'Liberal' coloring? Why couldn't the British Raj change the nature of Hindu Civilization? My parents generation drank tea, played cricket and pursued middle class English professions- lawyers, accountants, civil servants- not because they were ruled by the British but because people like Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi- who considered tea to be a declasse poison, cricket to be unmanly folly, and white collar professions to be the vilest treachery- had mobilized the masses to chuck out the White Man.
The answer has to do with, not 'embeddedness' (which only applies to people who have grown up in a particular culture and is quickly defeated by mimetic effects featuring quite small exit and entry) but 'incentive compatibility' (which applies equally to all agents with elastic response- and this includes customary mimetic leaders absent an alien countervailing power).
As India gained, first dyarchy, and then 'swaraja'; tea was increasingly marketed by Indians for Indians, cricket was played by Indians for Indians, worthless white-collar drones serviced a Queen Indira not Elizabeth.
States are Stationary Bandits. They can change their complexion but nothing changes unless they alter the way the finance themselves. If this creates new incentive compatible 'riskless assets' then there is a transmission mechanism to the determinants of the underlying Civilization. Otherwise nothing changes.
Polyani thought otherwise-
Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization. Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe. By the time it failed, most of the other institutions had been sacrificed in a vain effort to save it. But the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. It was this innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization. The gold standard was merely an attempt to extend the domestic market system to the international field; the balance-of-power system was a superstructure erected upon and, partly, worked through the gold standard; the liberal state was itself a creation of the self-regulating market. The key to the institutional system of the nineteenth century lay in the laws governing market economy.
We now know that Polyani was hopelessly wrong. The gold standard has no importance at all. What matters is that international Capital markets clear. For this to happen, it is sufficient that some agents have access to a Futures market in at least one currency or commodity. China isn't on the gold standard. Nor is India. Indo-Chinese commerce has grown hugely because there is always an arbitrageur willing to assume any relevant risk.
The fall of the gold standard did not cause wars. In so far as Germany and Japan were able to use the reparations gained from Wars to go on to Gold, it may be said that the Gold Standard helped cause Europe's two Great Wars because German and Japanese Generals thought winning new Wars would cause the inflow of yet more Gold and that would be a good thing because....urm...that worked out real well for Imperial Spain didn't it? If didn't? Fuck. Why didn't the War College get the memo?
The Gold Standard was not 'an attempt to extend the domestic market system to the international field'. England didn't go on Gold to trade with other countries. It did so because bimetallism is stupid- it increases uncertainty, exogenous monetary shocks, and thus drives up transaction costs. It also fucks up Fiscal Policy. Gold aint magic. It's a solution to a coordination problem. A primitive one. That's why the 'goldbug' on any comments column is bound to be a fucking retard or a senile loonytoons.
Still, I suppose, this explains Polyani's lasting popularity. Goldbugs and paranoid retards and senile loonytoons we will always have with us.
Much reading enstoopidifies. Books written on the basis of much reading enstoopidify so egregiously we end up quoting them- like Emily Dickenson who went ass to mouth on her first date and thus died a spinster with unkissed lips .
I think that's what Plato was really getting at when he spoke of kalokagathia. Incidentally, his 'Parmenides' is but the most spectacular example of the grand tradition of Revenge Porn which stretches back to the Cave paintings of Lascaux.
See what I did just now? It could be called pulling a Polanyi- except there was a Michael Polanyi who was nothing like his idiot brother Karl.
Friday, 1 July 2016
Geoffrey Hill- an obit.
Still to commemorate Poetry's Referee's Tuath De under the barrow
Let our ashes cremate the Geoffrey Hill in our marrow
His cataphoric Cernunnos menorah of Christ's Moses Horned
& Tenebrae's Strepitus by sullen Nirvana suborned
Envoi-
Prince! Be thou timid in Hawk/Dove or perpetuate Timocracy.
Love is simple, not 'difficult' nor 'preserves democracy'.
Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Mitchell Heisman and Bibliolatry's biathanatos.
Mtichell Heisman was a 35 year old auto-didact who published a long pseudo-philosophical suicide-note on the Web before blowing his brains out. The blog 'never yet melted' singled out the following extract which, given its Schopenauerian genealogy, throws a not altogether aleatory light upon a novel feature of Hindu Ethics.
The most rigorous objectivity implies indifference to the consequence of objectivity- i.e. whether the consequences of objectivity yield life or death for the observer. In other words, the elimination of subjectivity demands indifference to self-preservation when self-preservation conflicts with objectivity. The attempt at rigorous objectivity could potentially counter the interests of self-preservation or even amount to rational self-destruction. The most total objectivity appears to lead to the most total self-negation. Objectivity towards biological factors is objectivity towards life factors. Indifference to life factors leads to indifference between the choices of life and death. To approach objectivity with respect to self-interest ultimately leads to indifference to whether one is alive or dead.
The dead are most indifferent; the least interested; the least biased; the least prejudiced one way or the other. What is closest to total indifference is to be dead. If an observer hypothesizes death then, from that perspective, the observer has no vested interests in life and thus possible grounds for the most objective view. The more an observer is reduced to nothing, the more the observer is no longer a factor, the more the observer might set the conditions for the most rigorous objectivity.
Hindus will recognise that the view of objectivity championed here is that of the Chandala who argues against Rishi Vishvamitra's decision to steal a haunch of dog-meat to sustain his life. Objectively, there can be no doubt that the pariah is right- Vishvamitra is violating the rules of Brahminhood. Subjectively, however, Vishvamitra is justified- he is famished and the dog-meat suddenly looks very appetizing. This is a case of 'Apadh Dharma'- a catastrophic circumstance breeding a Schmittian 'State of Exception'. The fact that Vishvamitra provides no real objective argument and then, to compound his offense, offers the dog-meat in a Brahminical sacrifice from which he himself benefits, appears to be nothing but an exercise in hypocrisy.
However, this is a superficial view. The fact is, this episode- like every other in the Mahabharata- has a dual somewhere else where the opposite happens. Specifically, a cow argues with the Sage Kapila urging him to eat of its properly sacrificed flesh so as to fulfil a Brahminical duty. Ved Vyasa, the editor of the Vedas and author of the Mahabharata, is pointing to a symmetry between Vishvamitra and Nahusha- both have been translated from the sphere into which they were born into another which might appear 'higher'. Vishvamitra was a Baron who became a Brahmin. Nahusha was a mortal who became the King of the Gods- till by an act of hubris he overstepped the mark. His fall was brought about by his denial that cows could be properly sacrificed according to Vedic rites. Subjectively, Hindus feel Nahusha did the right thing and Vishvamitra did the wrong thing- we have a horror of eating both beef and dog-flesh. We might wink at both as 'Apadh Dharma' but then expect to witness some costly act of expiation or dramatic performance of 'prayaschitham' penance to settle karmic accounts.
Philosophically, it may appear, there is an easy way to reconcile our Subjective feelings and the necessarily Objective, for materialist, nature of Vedic ritual. We can say- 'All happens by the Will of the Lord alone. Vishvamitra did not steal the dog-flesh. The Lord caused him to do it. Indeed, it is the Lord alone who determines whether it is pure 'payasam' or noxious dog-flesh which we put into our mouths. Every substance, at every moment, is endowed with properties by His Will alone.
'Subjectively, we live in a World of 'Maya'- Illusion- believing that we act whereas in fact the Lord is the only Actor. That Objective, Noumenal, World is far beyond our ken save in so far as, by His Grace, our feet become firmly planted in Yoga and we attain the cessation of all subjective conceptual activity- i.e. 'nirvikalpa samadhi-' and taste the bliss of 'satchitanandam.' Our bodies may remain on earth but they now perform only those actions pleasing or required by the Lord in a manner wholly independent of subjective cognition.'
'Subjectively, we live in a World of 'Maya'- Illusion- believing that we act whereas in fact the Lord is the only Actor. That Objective, Noumenal, World is far beyond our ken save in so far as, by His Grace, our feet become firmly planted in Yoga and we attain the cessation of all subjective conceptual activity- i.e. 'nirvikalpa samadhi-' and taste the bliss of 'satchitanandam.' Our bodies may remain on earth but they now perform only those actions pleasing or required by the Lord in a manner wholly independent of subjective cognition.'
However, this facile philosophy makes for a bad hermeneutic. Why did Ved Vyasa bother to bring an over-educated Chandala out-caste into the text? The answer is that the Mahabharata is built up out of rigorous symmetries for a reason I've explained elsewhere. In this case, the Chandala is echoing the arguments of a Vedic Rishi who entered the cow which discoursed with Kapila. The 'siddhanta'- i.e. principle- thus revealed is that Objective deontology is dialogic in nature and thus radically defeasible in a sense H.L.A Hart- himself the descendant of that Ellenbogen Rabbi declared titular King of Poland- would recognize. Indeed, the Rabbinic notion of 'halachah vein morin kein'- that injunction which, if known, forbids its own performance- as well as the Sanhedrin's rejection of univocal judgements points to Obvectivism's foundation in a dialogic it can never itself depass or transcend.
Kant, of course, had a different view. He thought Relationism- including dialogic- can't answer some puzzling features about the world - e.g. the problem of 'incongruent counterparts'- and thus there must be some lurking substantivist truth which can be arrived at by a transcendental argument. However, the Wu experiment showed empirically that Relationism, or indeed Perspectivism, suffers no such flaw or aporia. There is a dialogic- one that requires training in the exact sciences- within which Objective truth remains defeasible and displays an anthropic tropism such that human life is conserved.
Kant, of course, had a different view. He thought Relationism- including dialogic- can't answer some puzzling features about the world - e.g. the problem of 'incongruent counterparts'- and thus there must be some lurking substantivist truth which can be arrived at by a transcendental argument. However, the Wu experiment showed empirically that Relationism, or indeed Perspectivism, suffers no such flaw or aporia. There is a dialogic- one that requires training in the exact sciences- within which Objective truth remains defeasible and displays an anthropic tropism such that human life is conserved.
Where dialogic is interrupted or loses salience, no doubt, the reverse may appear to be the case.
To illustrate what I mean, let us look at a contemporary parallel to Kapila's dialogue with the cow.
In the 'Restaurant at the End of the Universe' Douglas Adams introduces a talking cow which has been specifically genetically engineered to entice patrons to eat it. Subjectively, the reader identifies with Arthur Dent- a beef eater in ordinary life- who rejects the cow's entreaties. We feel there is something 'monstrous'- in the Kantian sense- something too big for its intended purpose- about the cow and if the dialogue were prolonged, it is likely that we would decline to partake of its flesh.
In the 'Restaurant at the End of the Universe' Douglas Adams introduces a talking cow which has been specifically genetically engineered to entice patrons to eat it. Subjectively, the reader identifies with Arthur Dent- a beef eater in ordinary life- who rejects the cow's entreaties. We feel there is something 'monstrous'- in the Kantian sense- something too big for its intended purpose- about the cow and if the dialogue were prolonged, it is likely that we would decline to partake of its flesh.
By contrast, Doestoevsky's ultimate nihilist- Kirillov the Man-God who parodies Orthodox theosis- is pathetic rather than monstrous. His suicide is instrumentalized by his interlocutors in a manner that shows that the logical consequence of 'taking one's own Will as the only reality' is that, objectively, it can serve only a merely statistical or meretriciously sociological purpose. Otto Weininger's suicide was similarly instrumentalized- Dieter Eckhart told Hitler he was the one good Jew, because he was beforehand in doing away with himself according to the best 'sociobiological' principles- yet both Kirillov and Weininger escape these instrumentalizations and endure only within pathos's passionate pragmatics.
Heisman's own magnum opus- which he believed would be suppressed- similarly, now seems pathetic rather than monstrous. It is not that it is far too long to be an effective suicide-note, or internet meme for self-murder, but that its further prolongation would inevitably have involved a dialogic destructive of its thesis. Like Adams's cow- whose defect is it hasn't been bred to persuade us Arthur Dents to eat it, because there has been no process of co-evolution towards that end- yet which pops off to kill itself 'humanely'- because the diners are in a hurry and the Universe is about to end- Heisman's cheerful arguments rapidly recede from view leaving Objectivity and Subjectivity's Red Queen Race precisely where he found them and we, alas, remain
Heisman continues thus-
It is likely that most people will not even consider the veracity of this correlation between death and objectivity even if they understand it intellectually because most will consciously or unconsciously choose to place the interests of self-preservation over the interests of objectivity. In other words, to even consider the validity of this view assumes that one is willing and able to even consider prioritizing objectivity over one’s own self-preservation. Since it not safe to simply assume this on an individual level, let alone a social level, relatively few are willing and able to seriously address this issue (and majority consensus can be expected to dismiss the issue). In short, for most people, including most “scientists”, overcoming self-preservation is not ultimately a subject for rational debate and objective discussion.
The problem here is that, as an empirical matter, we know that most reasonable people, not pathological in their psychology, recognize objective circumstances where they must sacrifice their own lives- even commit suicide- but, at the macro level, since this happens in accordance with the predictions of Hamilton's rule, rational debate and objective discussion remain highly salient.
Maximizing objectivity can be incompatible with maximizing subjective interests.
This is the crux of the matter. Heisman has been misled by a Utilitarianism which focused on constrained optimization of a Social Welfare Function over a zero-sum game. Thus he speaks of 'maximization' of one thing as involving the 'minimizing' of something else- i.e. 'duality' in the mathematical, Linear Programming sense. This sort of duality is all very well and good in a one-period universe (e.g. Buddhism where it liberates intentionality from hysteresis) or one where no Uncertainty obtains (e.g the univocal 'block universes' of Descartes, Liebniz, Laplace type 'Enlightenment') . However, we now know that, under Knightian Uncertainty, 'Regret minimization', not 'Utility maximization', is the Muth rational choice. In this case, 'Objective truth' has an interest in preserving 'Subjective' diversity. This is a case of 'co-evolution'. Capacitance diversity is dammed up and released upon a shifting fitness landscape. Duality as a meta-functor is nothing but dialogic climbing locally focal saliences upon a fractally fractious fitness landscape.
In some situations, anything less than death is compromise. The choice between objectivity and self-preservation may lead one to a Stoic’s choice between life and death.
The problem here is that 'objectivity' is not anchored in any actual object. If it were, it would be protocol bound, hyper mechanistic and hypo mentalist, and would possess an inbuilt principle of demarcation between ipseity and alterity or else have, as noumenon, but noise. At one pole- that of, the Materialist, Dawkins' Extended Phenotype- it dissolves back into what Heisman might call the viviosphere; at the other, that of, a Tegmarkian Computationalist, it loses all access to a principle of Individuation.Stoicism has a 'regret minimizing' strategy whose aim is to conserve 'ataraxia'. Thus, even if it recognizes the 'sorites' problem described above; it has no interest in resolving it.
Whereas the humanities cannot be what they are without human subjectivities, the inhumanities, or hard sciences, require the subjective element be removed as much as possible as sources of error.
The 'Humanities'- are a solution to a coordination problem for not liberative paideia- the project of a dialogic characteristica universalis- but a literalist, Euthyphro's dilemma type, stalemated pedagogy.
No doubt, there is a lot of hysteresis involved in the specification of its canon but, surely, this is of diminishing concern because the hard sciences have greatly improved our means of communication such that pedagogy is playing catch up rather than setting the agenda.
The greatest beneficiary has been the hard sciences. Subjects previously paralyzed by 'Methodenstreit' or the overweening influence of a celebrated savant, can now burgeon thanks to on-line publishing.
'Sources of error', no doubt, are less carefully guarded against but- Aristotle's solution- equitable remedies are better and more freely applied to compensate for what might otherwise be a fatal lack of 'Quality Control'. Thus, a guy who gets an equation wrong or gives a false citation isn't punished for one mistake. Other people spontaneously help him 'patch' his work. An equitable remedy is spontaneously and collectively applied because the underlying subject-matter is alethic and advances others' Research, or even independent Research Programs.
The larger problem of 'noise' is actually a boon, not a curse. It drives research in signal extraction which in turn disrupts paradigms. The hard sciences thus have an 'oikonomia mysterion'- i.e. a black box coordination mechanism. 'Critical reason' does not. It is a chrematistic project merely and suffers Credentialist collapse.
Objectivity leads towards the elimination of subjectivity, i.e. the elimination of one’s “humanity”. A value free science has no basis on which to value human things over non-human things and thus no basis to value life over death or vice versa. Social science will become equal to the standards of physical science when social scientists overcome the subjective preference for the life of humanity over the death of humanity.
We can imagine an omniscient Benthamite computer which chooses to put the whole of humanity into a 'Matrix' like coma so as to 'maximize Utility'. We can even imagine a sentient Computer deciding Mankind should be wiped out because, on balance, existence is more painful than pleasurable. However, since Knightian Uncertainty actually obtains, 'Regret Minimization' is the correct strategy for the Computer to use and it can't counsel death over life or the reduction of 'subjective' diversity for no good reason.To attempt to resolve the contradiction of myself as a scientist and a human being on the side of science leads towards viewing myself as a material object. While this contradiction may be impossible to resolve, the closest approximation of reconciliation may consist of the state of death. In death, the teleologically-inclining biases of human subjectivity that hinder one from viewing one’s self as a material object are eliminated.
Once again we have a false view of dialectic as involving 'resolutions' such that one thing is 'eliminated' so that another can burgeon.
Evolution under uncertainty can't afford to proceed like that- or rather it terminates very quickly when this happens. Rather, there is a process of co-evolution- a burgeoning branching dialogic, not a once and for all 'reconciliation'- something we might term a topos-free yet, but therefore because, teleological 'Red Queen race', not a once-and-for-all Thanatotic Checkmate.
Evolution under uncertainty can't afford to proceed like that- or rather it terminates very quickly when this happens. Rather, there is a process of co-evolution- a burgeoning branching dialogic, not a once and for all 'reconciliation'- something we might term a topos-free yet, but therefore because, teleological 'Red Queen race', not a once-and-for-all Thanatotic Checkmate.
I cannot fully reconcile my understanding of the world with my existence in it. There is a conflict between the value of objectivity and the facts of my life. This experiment is designed to demonstrate a point of incompatibility between “truth” and “life”. In this experiment I hypothesize that the private separation of facts and values, when disclosed to the wider social world, creates a conflict of interest between the value of sociobiological objectivity and the “facts” of my sociobiological existence such that it leads to a voluntary and rational completion of this work in an act of self-destruction. …
This is by no means a sophomoric argument. Heisman is positing a Liberalism that developed ab ovo without Aristotelian, or Ciceronian, or Anglo-Norman Equity- and drawing a conclusion by no means unreasonable.We might point to Francis Bacon as the last intellectual Colossus, in our Anglo Saxon tradition, to straddle both shores- that of the Law and that of the Natural Sciences- and bemoan his fate- 'a coward conquest of a wretch's knife'- the wretch being in question being Sir Edward Coke, upon whose magisterial Institutes America's founding fathers whetted their mother wit. Yet to do so is also to grant the necessity of 'closing the doors of Equity'- i.e. curbing the Crown's issuance of novel writs- because the Law's dialogic could not otherwise have burgeoned in a manner disruptive of Leviathan and constitutive of Civil Society.
Heisman, in coming with clean hands to the 'truth' of Objective Law, denies himself such blessed equitable estoppel as the discordant 'facts' of his life might warrant because his 'separation of facts and values' remains wholly private.
Elsewhere I have argued that the fact value dichotomy is only inter-subjectively established. Following Putnam, some might deny that it can ever be disentangled but, at least for positive Economics this is not the case.
How far would one be willing to go in pursuit of scientific objectivity? Objectivity and survival are least compatible when objectivity becomes a means of life, subordinate to life as opposed to life subordinated to objectivity.
We can certainly understand a scientist who decides he must destroy himself to save our species from some terrible disease of which he is the only carrier. Equally, a scientist who decides that our entire species must be wiped out to save the biosphere is intelligible to us. However, in both cases, a superior alternative exists. In the one case, it is better to quarantine the disease carrier so that an antibody can be found. In the other, we can beat the fucker to death while saying snide things about his pee-pee.
Clearly, Heisman isn't talking about cases like the above at all. He is channeling Hegel on the Master-Slave dialectic about which he has curious views.
He thinks the English were enslaved by the Normans and thus,'objectively', are a slave race though the 'facts of their lives' admit no such acceptation. The Southern planter was a Norman and thus a 'Master'. The Northern manufacturer was an Anglo Saxon 'Slave'. Thus the North waged war on the South in the name of a Slavery that was their own 'objective' truth . Furthermore, they went and elected 'Supernigger' Obama because
'While the proud Northern victory in the Civil War freed
both Anglo-Saxons and blacks from the shadow of their
historic oppressors, admitting the Norman Yoke would also
be admitting a past of Anglo-Saxon slavery. Anglo-Saxon
racial pride itself demanded that the victory be sublimated
in universal terms. Why, then, is America the exceptional
and paradoxical country where a black man can become
president? The answer is Anglo-Saxon racial pride.'
If the greatest objectivity implicates confronting the most subjective biases, this implicates confronting those truths that most conflict with the subjective will to live. By simply changing my values from life values to death values, and setting my trajectory for rational biological self-destruction, I am able to liberate myself from many of the biases that dominate the horizons of most people’s lives. By valuing certain scientific observations because they are destructive to my life, I am removing self-preservation factors that hinder objectivity. This is how I am in a position to hypothesize my own death.
Heisman's suicide turns him into Jesus because ...urm... well just read Borges on Donne's Biathantos why don't you?
So if objectivity is not justified as end, then objectivity can be a means of rational self-destruction through the overcoming of the bias towards life. Rational self-destruction through the overcoming of the bias towards life, in turn, can be a means of achieving objectivity. And this means: To will death as a means of willing truth and to will truth as a means of willing death. …
Why am I doing this? Ah, yes, now I remember the punchline: I’ll try anything once!
There is nothing to take seriously!
Indeed not. Did people take Huntingdon and Fukuyama and Alan Bloom and so on seriously? I was there, but I can no longer recall.The truth is reading books enstoopidifies a man. Writing a blog, however, is merely a sanitary exercise.
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