we think we want to deal with fact using ideas as tools but most of what we do is about feelings, the ideas are like makeup, the facts only impinge or compel.
participant-observer event types:
1. solo - i observe myself
2. dual - i observe another thing
a. single observer
b. plural observer (different dynamic, participant # gradient to be discussed later)
3. one can hypothesize interactions in more dimensions but they are difficult to notice, having to do among other things with relatively longer passages of time. the essential element of multiparty events is complexity.
people can change. i became an athlete. solo. per above scheme "athletics" is not about teamwork or theatre, rather a change in an individual's conformation (body, lifestyle) that brings personal benefits. for me to do my athletic stuff for any reason other than purest "i want to" would be caving in to the peremptory conditional imperatives of others. awards, recognition, social advancement, etc. pah. if it doesn't feel good i don't want to have to do it. it has been the development of a craving for a feeling that makes me want to sweat every day, run through a session, makes me feel good. that's why.
sleep schedule got regular. bowel behavior too.
in school we learned a bunch of right answers, not how to figure out if an answer is correct. math, the only subject in which how to find the right answer is the point of the thing, is taught so badly that most of us hate it & refuse to do it in life & that's why we have money problems.
beyond the hidden & untaught process of how to find out if an answer is right there is the extremely fertile and even more hidden & untaught process of figuring out why and how something is wrong. this disinclination to intensively investigate failure stems i think from the behavior of our most primitive animal ancestors, whose method of proceeding through the world was to worm through the bacterial mat eating from the front, pooping from the back, unable to turn around. leaving the poop behind is the most basic animal adventure. only wierdo worms would go to the trouble of backing up to investigate its droppings. normal worms would not understand.
but the wierdo worm would perhaps find out that the bacterial mat fills in the left behind tunnel with more robust & tasty bacteria, or maybe even that something growing in the poop comes chasing after them down the tube & gets into them, grows inside, itches, some of the worms die. only wierdo worms might have a chance of finding these things out. most of the worms are straight ahead normal worms, no interest in stuff on the side, or in back.
so - try to perfect the ever-onward quest function or go for the peeloff into unknown territory?
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
not what i started out thinking
the act of eating can be seen as lazily evoking pain & death in other life so as not to have to feed oneself like a platonic plant (platonic because plants make war too). the platonic plant gives up mobility for a strategy of unreserved submission to fate. its going to sit there where it is and whatever happens will happen (and watch that idea dissolve off into examples of plant volition). If animals don't like the situation they try to get up and leave. plants will secrete chemicals, grow out strangler roots, etc. but they sit right there where god put them. animals will use mobility to try to produce what they want by going and taking. here come the animals. good luck.
predator animals like us have a history of big exciting athletic efforts preceding feeding. we go boom then we go yum, the corpse of the victim twitching red before us, growl, roar. we know what the victim is feeling, its destruction elevates us, we survive because it dies. it can go ahead and surrender if it wants to, we're going to eat it anyway. growl. maybe lions have moral qualms about their food like some of us do, but those second "thoughts" don't get in the way of keeping the organism alive. just go ahead and die, i'm hungry. or don't, i don't care, stay alive, i'll eat you anyway.
not all animals are predators of course and not all non-predators are helpless: depends on the situation. they are all helpless against the top predator here: us. we have no enemies other than our own stupidities. the least they can do, we think, is surrender gracefully to our hunger, and some of them do, we call them "domesticated."
just trying to figure this stuff out.
predator animals like us have a history of big exciting athletic efforts preceding feeding. we go boom then we go yum, the corpse of the victim twitching red before us, growl, roar. we know what the victim is feeling, its destruction elevates us, we survive because it dies. it can go ahead and surrender if it wants to, we're going to eat it anyway. growl. maybe lions have moral qualms about their food like some of us do, but those second "thoughts" don't get in the way of keeping the organism alive. just go ahead and die, i'm hungry. or don't, i don't care, stay alive, i'll eat you anyway.
not all animals are predators of course and not all non-predators are helpless: depends on the situation. they are all helpless against the top predator here: us. we have no enemies other than our own stupidities. the least they can do, we think, is surrender gracefully to our hunger, and some of them do, we call them "domesticated."
just trying to figure this stuff out.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
annoyance
cat distracted in process of torturing still live mouse. perhaps even distracted by iself: its dreams of immediate future: skull crunching, juices squirting, lost in dream, mouse stops playing dead, runs away. cat flicks tail, annoyed. dream dashed, nothing but more work to do. no fun anywhere.
ants mob their enemies. humans mostly run away, occasionally a mob forms, historically mobs often get stupid & violent, authorities typically don't like them except when they can control them, but mostly what we do is run away to try to preserve the "me" or its immediate relatives etc. selfless types are relatively rare. moral idealists of various kinds would like to create an infectiously transmissable selflessness to make "perfect" citizens who will organically defend the group but training is only partially and occasionally effective.
gunperson walks into crowded restaurant, starts shooting. mob behavior, entire room converging on the shooter, guaranteed to produce casualties but gunner overcome & disarmed. normal course of events is everyone gets under table or just sits there, gunner pics them off until cops come & shoot the gunner. the 3 people out of 100 who would want to do something can count on not having any help from the unformed mob. humans do not spontaneously mob carriers of danger.
usually they have to be worked up with speeches & rhythmic stuff into a "state" then the organizers show them the door & they walk through. otherwise they'll just sit there doing nothing until the cat comes. social self organization is not a genetic human trait. it is done by hand, so to speak, through culture.
the normal mob is an audience. its main activity is focused observation on performers. is it true that there is no history of defensive mobs? that's what civilians are all about, right? people who do not defend themselves? even in citizen soldier countries some fight & some stay home with the kids, telling them not to fight.
ants mob their enemies. humans mostly run away, occasionally a mob forms, historically mobs often get stupid & violent, authorities typically don't like them except when they can control them, but mostly what we do is run away to try to preserve the "me" or its immediate relatives etc. selfless types are relatively rare. moral idealists of various kinds would like to create an infectiously transmissable selflessness to make "perfect" citizens who will organically defend the group but training is only partially and occasionally effective.
gunperson walks into crowded restaurant, starts shooting. mob behavior, entire room converging on the shooter, guaranteed to produce casualties but gunner overcome & disarmed. normal course of events is everyone gets under table or just sits there, gunner pics them off until cops come & shoot the gunner. the 3 people out of 100 who would want to do something can count on not having any help from the unformed mob. humans do not spontaneously mob carriers of danger.
usually they have to be worked up with speeches & rhythmic stuff into a "state" then the organizers show them the door & they walk through. otherwise they'll just sit there doing nothing until the cat comes. social self organization is not a genetic human trait. it is done by hand, so to speak, through culture.
the normal mob is an audience. its main activity is focused observation on performers. is it true that there is no history of defensive mobs? that's what civilians are all about, right? people who do not defend themselves? even in citizen soldier countries some fight & some stay home with the kids, telling them not to fight.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
squeamish
when fun is being had & instant violent disaster intrudes one does not say "hang on wait a minute i'll be right with you on that. lemme just finish my fun. one drops the fun & responds to the violence in some way.
there is a unique & self-defined esthetic in any genre of artistic expression. certain sympathetic associations are evoked, favored flavors of experience. predeliction.
some things we decide to train ourselves to like for various reasons. i had to learn to like bitter things, like beer. some things we decide we like them and train ourselves to call that thing something we like to do. not drinking so much for example, learning to think of that hot burny feeling of a muscle stretch as pleasure, the inner me shrinking away from the intensity of the sensation, swooning somewhere inside, that thing, giving up to the pain of the universe, so long its been good to know you.
especially if part of the training involves fatigue to build endurance. the reward is the conquering of sloth in any given moment. on to the next challenge. in a given discipline, in which the terms of success are self-defined.
back to feeding. there is a utilitarian pleasure factor built into the act of killing things because in the course of vertebrate history it has mostly been if you kill it you get to eat it. saliva's going to flow. enough of that kind of luck maybe you get to reproduce.
it is possible to get inordinately fond of killing things, known cases of animals killing things for the fun of it. rogue dogs, part of hyena culture perhaps, something humans can interpret as sin. kids at shallow pond, catching pollywogs and throwing them up on a rock to die, many as they can catch. someone thought up the idea, some are going along, some are competing with each other to catch the most, one likes to squish them in his fist, some other kid is watching them die on the rock. over there is another kid looked and walked away, another crying in a corner wishing it was not happening, maybe someone tried to break it up and failed, out there no one is noticing any of that. things humans do.
anticipatory digestive juices with the deer in the sight. delicious falling down in darkness go boom as the thing is hit and events proceed. if i got it i go boom inside, the pride balloon swells, i did it. deliciousness awaits. it can get to be a favorite thing to try to do. in the ordinary way of it of course it is mostly quietly waiting, but the successful climax can become a favorite thing to do.
and humans can monetize and purify the desire away from its original function, the killing separated from the eating. the wierdo cutting up animals, the rich person going to a resort to kill birds dumped out of a box with a shotgun, spanish style bull fighting. just to see them die. makes them feel good about themselves. special. uniquely in touch with their roots.
at that level the discomfort, pain, fear, death around the predator are part of the mix that is the joy of eating. a glutton would seek a surfeit of those violent emotional condiments. an esthete would seek their refinement.
what about in primate cultures where individuation has allowed the emergence of individuals who do not like to kill? they make their way in society by other gainful activity, someone else gives them meat. how did that happen, they emotionally turn away from the basic kill-eat sequence, the social system finds ways to keep them alive & reproducing. why?
they provide different kinds of fun. processes that satisfy and do not involve killing and eating.
that basic element of pleasure though: its ok that you die because i'll live because i'll eat you. every kind of pleasure element is some harmonic of that.
there is a unique & self-defined esthetic in any genre of artistic expression. certain sympathetic associations are evoked, favored flavors of experience. predeliction.
some things we decide to train ourselves to like for various reasons. i had to learn to like bitter things, like beer. some things we decide we like them and train ourselves to call that thing something we like to do. not drinking so much for example, learning to think of that hot burny feeling of a muscle stretch as pleasure, the inner me shrinking away from the intensity of the sensation, swooning somewhere inside, that thing, giving up to the pain of the universe, so long its been good to know you.
especially if part of the training involves fatigue to build endurance. the reward is the conquering of sloth in any given moment. on to the next challenge. in a given discipline, in which the terms of success are self-defined.
back to feeding. there is a utilitarian pleasure factor built into the act of killing things because in the course of vertebrate history it has mostly been if you kill it you get to eat it. saliva's going to flow. enough of that kind of luck maybe you get to reproduce.
it is possible to get inordinately fond of killing things, known cases of animals killing things for the fun of it. rogue dogs, part of hyena culture perhaps, something humans can interpret as sin. kids at shallow pond, catching pollywogs and throwing them up on a rock to die, many as they can catch. someone thought up the idea, some are going along, some are competing with each other to catch the most, one likes to squish them in his fist, some other kid is watching them die on the rock. over there is another kid looked and walked away, another crying in a corner wishing it was not happening, maybe someone tried to break it up and failed, out there no one is noticing any of that. things humans do.
anticipatory digestive juices with the deer in the sight. delicious falling down in darkness go boom as the thing is hit and events proceed. if i got it i go boom inside, the pride balloon swells, i did it. deliciousness awaits. it can get to be a favorite thing to try to do. in the ordinary way of it of course it is mostly quietly waiting, but the successful climax can become a favorite thing to do.
and humans can monetize and purify the desire away from its original function, the killing separated from the eating. the wierdo cutting up animals, the rich person going to a resort to kill birds dumped out of a box with a shotgun, spanish style bull fighting. just to see them die. makes them feel good about themselves. special. uniquely in touch with their roots.
at that level the discomfort, pain, fear, death around the predator are part of the mix that is the joy of eating. a glutton would seek a surfeit of those violent emotional condiments. an esthete would seek their refinement.
what about in primate cultures where individuation has allowed the emergence of individuals who do not like to kill? they make their way in society by other gainful activity, someone else gives them meat. how did that happen, they emotionally turn away from the basic kill-eat sequence, the social system finds ways to keep them alive & reproducing. why?
they provide different kinds of fun. processes that satisfy and do not involve killing and eating.
that basic element of pleasure though: its ok that you die because i'll live because i'll eat you. every kind of pleasure element is some harmonic of that.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
can't you have the decency to do that stuff where i can't see it
proper. the way i want it to be whatever that is. i want everybody else to do it my way, that's the way i like best. nobody else does it quite right, only i do, some people almost get it right, some are just hopeless, can't deal with them when they're that way, when they're doing that thing that they do that isn't proper.
for example it isn't proper behavior to become possessed of the holy spirit in the midst of an orgy or a massacre. or really to be disagreable to the flow of things in any way.
back to violence. the thing struggles, perhaps valiantly, perhaps fearfully, then dies. stuff comes out during and after the death. if i'm eating it eventually everything comes out including inhabitants (95% bacteria they say) of large intestine, there is gooey wet stuff everywhere, everything is a mess. but i'm eating it, its delicious, who cares. the thing tried to get away, i didn't let it. i held it down and hurt it and broke stuff and it tried to get away and it leaked red stuff all over everything & i killed it and i'm eating it & its delicious.
i've killed a few small animals for various culturally sanctioned reasons, mice lately. there was a time in another place i thought i had a deal with a family of mice, they stay in that room, we get this one. it seemed to work through a winter, i left peanuts for them on their side, they didn't visit. not lately, sorry about that. anyway, but i think back to the big juicy pieces of meat i ate when i was a kid, chew, chew, chew, the meat juice, a different kind of gush in the mouth, animal chemicals. something different happens. growl.
when they get torn its very colorful inside, various pinks & reds. there it is, twitching trying to get away but its legs are broken, red stuff, tasty, struggle, all in one fulfilment experience for the lion, hyena, fox, hominid. fear evoked in victim->rapid athletic sequence->presence of redness, bodily fluids->feeding. the essential satisfaction loop.
each element of the routine evokes & echoes the rest of the elements including the satisfaction of the successful end point. red, for example, or athletic activity.
that is the eater part. it makes no apologies, none are necessary. there's a body, what are we gonna do, starve? we have to work on that draw our chemicals directly from the environment & not to have to eat life. who's working on that? there is also that curious part that "feels" for the other side, flinches in sympathy when the thing is struck, falls. feels sense of loss for the thing that is dead even as it is eating eat. every now and then an organism exhibits that compassion thing, not only humans either. but still we all take part, even if we're strict vegans. plants, animals, what's the difference? we continue our organismic personal existence & protect our gene line by ending the potential of all these other organisms. that is what they call original sin in some offices.
i want to hear from some hunters and butchers on this. what's it like inside your heads, doing what you do?
for example it isn't proper behavior to become possessed of the holy spirit in the midst of an orgy or a massacre. or really to be disagreable to the flow of things in any way.
back to violence. the thing struggles, perhaps valiantly, perhaps fearfully, then dies. stuff comes out during and after the death. if i'm eating it eventually everything comes out including inhabitants (95% bacteria they say) of large intestine, there is gooey wet stuff everywhere, everything is a mess. but i'm eating it, its delicious, who cares. the thing tried to get away, i didn't let it. i held it down and hurt it and broke stuff and it tried to get away and it leaked red stuff all over everything & i killed it and i'm eating it & its delicious.
i've killed a few small animals for various culturally sanctioned reasons, mice lately. there was a time in another place i thought i had a deal with a family of mice, they stay in that room, we get this one. it seemed to work through a winter, i left peanuts for them on their side, they didn't visit. not lately, sorry about that. anyway, but i think back to the big juicy pieces of meat i ate when i was a kid, chew, chew, chew, the meat juice, a different kind of gush in the mouth, animal chemicals. something different happens. growl.
when they get torn its very colorful inside, various pinks & reds. there it is, twitching trying to get away but its legs are broken, red stuff, tasty, struggle, all in one fulfilment experience for the lion, hyena, fox, hominid. fear evoked in victim->rapid athletic sequence->presence of redness, bodily fluids->feeding. the essential satisfaction loop.
each element of the routine evokes & echoes the rest of the elements including the satisfaction of the successful end point. red, for example, or athletic activity.
that is the eater part. it makes no apologies, none are necessary. there's a body, what are we gonna do, starve? we have to work on that draw our chemicals directly from the environment & not to have to eat life. who's working on that? there is also that curious part that "feels" for the other side, flinches in sympathy when the thing is struck, falls. feels sense of loss for the thing that is dead even as it is eating eat. every now and then an organism exhibits that compassion thing, not only humans either. but still we all take part, even if we're strict vegans. plants, animals, what's the difference? we continue our organismic personal existence & protect our gene line by ending the potential of all these other organisms. that is what they call original sin in some offices.
i want to hear from some hunters and butchers on this. what's it like inside your heads, doing what you do?
Monday, July 25, 2011
social etiquette
heard on radio: look at the person's face at a point in the center of the forehead about an inch above the eyebrows, occasionally looking at one or both eyes, never look at anything below the neck. so the clothing has to be appropriate, the body in whatever condition and conformation it happens to be and we are not "supposed" to look at or mention it ever. in a "business-social" setting. like damn church. this is so 1950s. but never mind, the chinese will tell us how to do business etiquette properly.
not supposed to notice: pain, pleasure, distress, beauty, disharmony, danger. Chemical signals, discomfort.
nose to grindstone. stick to business.
so i guess i'll look at violence first because it seems more basic, related more or less to food. then things-that-smell-bad, the results of the violence that we must perform if we want to live. then sex: the optional activity. then money, the quantification of sin.
not supposed to notice: pain, pleasure, distress, beauty, disharmony, danger. Chemical signals, discomfort.
nose to grindstone. stick to business.
so i guess i'll look at violence first because it seems more basic, related more or less to food. then things-that-smell-bad, the results of the violence that we must perform if we want to live. then sex: the optional activity. then money, the quantification of sin.
today is the day after the right wing crazy attack in norway, cruelly validating my decision to look at violence before sex. sex "positive" people do not force people to do things. violence people that is exactly what they do. a coherent approach to violence takes precedence over liberties of license because the violence demands a response. we may try to live our lives in ignorance but in the end that is not possible and attempts to do that are stupid. stupid people can get smarter however.
the condition of creating deadness brings us all the way to the ultimate factor of our existence. we kill to live, only the plants don't do that.
as an aside: the thought that males who have problems with female visuals might consider plucking out their eyes as mentioned in the christian bible instead of demanding modesty from them. whose fault is it that they have that problem anyway?
**
2 days later the issue begins to clarify somewhat in the world out there. in the general human population we have groups of people who like to do different things. among the things they like to do are violence and accompanying crimes. "most" people are not into violence as a thing they like to do, but the ones who do like it make trouble unless their culture has something to do with them, which is usually hopefully in the army of the democratic country rather than the local warlord but that's just my taste in things.
i think perhaps to go back of the mechanics of violence to the food level then maybe to evolve out of simple catching & eating to the development of meanness, maybe to get to something that can be attempted to be done about the increasing stupid violence and thoughts of same that is spreading in the world.
you know how it goes. fun people like to have fun. the violence people go do a war, drag in all the fun people, put em to work, sorry guys, got a war to fight, you can have fun again when we win.
so, the animals that my ancestors kept and killed and ate, before that they hunted them and killed and ate them, before that they killed and ate them raw, smashing them with rocks, licking out the brains, all of the organs including large intestine and contents, where the salt is, condimental, yum.
saw some movie stills. a chimp troop & a baboon troop cohabiting a zone. toddler chimp is playing with toddler baboon. adult chimp comes up & eats the baboon toddler from the legs up, it tries to get away until its dead.
the old way of slaughter is to go get the animal that you know and that knows you, you immobilize it for convenience then you kill it then you cut it up. then you eat it. it is delicious. zuck it is said kills his own meat. he does not want to deprive himself of the total food experience, which is to kill it yourself. the being dies, usually with some resistance & distress. some allow themselves that normal human experience, some that is their base condition, many these days get queasy about it, stomach knotty grossout feelings, killing animals, cutting them up. they pay other people to do it for them. Some other people turn out to really like to kill things, to make them die. there should be a place for them in the meat trade. all the little pre-serial killers, train them in butcher technique, that doesn't work, put em in the army.
hunger trumps charity for most of us, we will kill it and eat it if we can. somehow the human cultures seem to be mostly designed that people will often voluntarily die rather than kill & eat each other, but that's certainly not universal practice, & past performance is no guarantee of future results.
the basic violent act is either agressive or reactive. the agressive involves a preparation followed by a lunge and a series of strikes. either can of course be done with or without skill & luck. there are low-skilled animal predators who still manage to survive, demonstrating an acceptable range of skill in living.
in hunting the perfect strike kills the thing "instantly" it goes limp immediately, the eyes go out so to speak, some spasms, its gone. eat it. or more usually the victim (see "victual") is only caught, injured, has to be worked for a while to get it dead. chew & choke & break bones, poke, stab, tire out, thing is scared, trying to get away, maybe it kicks, hurts, injures the hunter. hunter gets really mad, starts to tear, dig into soft parts, if the hunter has hands reach inside and pull stuff out. make it dead. then it can be eaten in peace up in the tree. with sweetie and the baby.
what do we miss and/or gain by outsourcing that life function, hire people to do that as a job, through live animals at them all day long, they kill them quick, throw them on the line, make it punitively bad work insultingly badly paid. hunter running in the jungle, farmer praying before slaughtering the pig.
heightened senses of observers in the presence of death apparent only if the death is of an organism of certain size. probably every dying organism releases some class of pheromone that throws organisms nearby into some alteration of attitude. introducing a new class of type: watchers. the crowd around the schoolyard fight. plenty of them around. they'd rather watch than do. at a certain decorticated level they don't fight for themselves and they don't survive if their parents don't take care of them. corticated animals tend to try to keep them around, maybe they'll be good for something, occasionally to force them to do stuff because they like to let stuff happen. call them betas if you want. there can be power but it isn't used. betas.
are there gammas? in the social interactions of corticated animals are there like professional losers whose purpose is to be used as practice for the aggressive skills of the hunters? i guess so. i remember them from when i was in school. i was low but i would fight if i absolutely had to so i was left alone to my peaceful wierd self a lot, there were easier kids for the bullies to pick on, they'd only try me if there was no weaker one around, if they were in the mood.
then there are victims. the position of the victim is that it is ultimately unable to avoid being killed & eaten. it fights or it gives up, then it dies. it is eaten, then it is gone.
lot of meat in this topic. juicy.
the condition of creating deadness brings us all the way to the ultimate factor of our existence. we kill to live, only the plants don't do that.
as an aside: the thought that males who have problems with female visuals might consider plucking out their eyes as mentioned in the christian bible instead of demanding modesty from them. whose fault is it that they have that problem anyway?
**
2 days later the issue begins to clarify somewhat in the world out there. in the general human population we have groups of people who like to do different things. among the things they like to do are violence and accompanying crimes. "most" people are not into violence as a thing they like to do, but the ones who do like it make trouble unless their culture has something to do with them, which is usually hopefully in the army of the democratic country rather than the local warlord but that's just my taste in things.
i think perhaps to go back of the mechanics of violence to the food level then maybe to evolve out of simple catching & eating to the development of meanness, maybe to get to something that can be attempted to be done about the increasing stupid violence and thoughts of same that is spreading in the world.
you know how it goes. fun people like to have fun. the violence people go do a war, drag in all the fun people, put em to work, sorry guys, got a war to fight, you can have fun again when we win.
so, the animals that my ancestors kept and killed and ate, before that they hunted them and killed and ate them, before that they killed and ate them raw, smashing them with rocks, licking out the brains, all of the organs including large intestine and contents, where the salt is, condimental, yum.
saw some movie stills. a chimp troop & a baboon troop cohabiting a zone. toddler chimp is playing with toddler baboon. adult chimp comes up & eats the baboon toddler from the legs up, it tries to get away until its dead.
the old way of slaughter is to go get the animal that you know and that knows you, you immobilize it for convenience then you kill it then you cut it up. then you eat it. it is delicious. zuck it is said kills his own meat. he does not want to deprive himself of the total food experience, which is to kill it yourself. the being dies, usually with some resistance & distress. some allow themselves that normal human experience, some that is their base condition, many these days get queasy about it, stomach knotty grossout feelings, killing animals, cutting them up. they pay other people to do it for them. Some other people turn out to really like to kill things, to make them die. there should be a place for them in the meat trade. all the little pre-serial killers, train them in butcher technique, that doesn't work, put em in the army.
hunger trumps charity for most of us, we will kill it and eat it if we can. somehow the human cultures seem to be mostly designed that people will often voluntarily die rather than kill & eat each other, but that's certainly not universal practice, & past performance is no guarantee of future results.
the basic violent act is either agressive or reactive. the agressive involves a preparation followed by a lunge and a series of strikes. either can of course be done with or without skill & luck. there are low-skilled animal predators who still manage to survive, demonstrating an acceptable range of skill in living.
in hunting the perfect strike kills the thing "instantly" it goes limp immediately, the eyes go out so to speak, some spasms, its gone. eat it. or more usually the victim (see "victual") is only caught, injured, has to be worked for a while to get it dead. chew & choke & break bones, poke, stab, tire out, thing is scared, trying to get away, maybe it kicks, hurts, injures the hunter. hunter gets really mad, starts to tear, dig into soft parts, if the hunter has hands reach inside and pull stuff out. make it dead. then it can be eaten in peace up in the tree. with sweetie and the baby.
what do we miss and/or gain by outsourcing that life function, hire people to do that as a job, through live animals at them all day long, they kill them quick, throw them on the line, make it punitively bad work insultingly badly paid. hunter running in the jungle, farmer praying before slaughtering the pig.
heightened senses of observers in the presence of death apparent only if the death is of an organism of certain size. probably every dying organism releases some class of pheromone that throws organisms nearby into some alteration of attitude. introducing a new class of type: watchers. the crowd around the schoolyard fight. plenty of them around. they'd rather watch than do. at a certain decorticated level they don't fight for themselves and they don't survive if their parents don't take care of them. corticated animals tend to try to keep them around, maybe they'll be good for something, occasionally to force them to do stuff because they like to let stuff happen. call them betas if you want. there can be power but it isn't used. betas.
are there gammas? in the social interactions of corticated animals are there like professional losers whose purpose is to be used as practice for the aggressive skills of the hunters? i guess so. i remember them from when i was in school. i was low but i would fight if i absolutely had to so i was left alone to my peaceful wierd self a lot, there were easier kids for the bullies to pick on, they'd only try me if there was no weaker one around, if they were in the mood.
then there are victims. the position of the victim is that it is ultimately unable to avoid being killed & eaten. it fights or it gives up, then it dies. it is eaten, then it is gone.
lot of meat in this topic. juicy.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
hiding in plain sight
all deviants must do this. indeed, every individual is their own person so that everyone deviates. the norm is platonic.
the various requirements of the evolved agreements of allowable ways to behave are meant to substitute for the application of force by personal whim. some rigor is required by participants in such violence-reducing schemes in order to restrain and forestall the violence. The hard edge of the inwardly peace-enforcing culture has to adequately deal with the potential for violence at its territorial & conceptual edges. The required rigor is difficult to calibrate, easy to abuse, easy to do wrong.
it is necessary to have this acknowledgement of an edge to a culture by its participants. it is necessary that there be agreement at some level by the participants of a culture on how things are done. the alternative is personalized violence on whatever scale the warlords happen to be operating on. who are the warlords? they are the people who like to make war. either the peaceful people hire them or they go into business for themselves. there are plenty of them around: people who like to fight, enough of them to force their way of life on the rest of us pretty much constantly during human history. culture is an ongoing varied attempt to bottle the violent people and keep them within something otherwise they would take over the world and fight forever because that is what they like to do.
the peaceful people have to talk the fighters into not fighting. the fighters would rather fight. sometimes the peaceful people have to make up stuff to tell the fighters, other times they have to threaten to do something they declare to be "bad" that is or isn't violent itself, or they have to give the fighters something to do: give them some trouble to keep them out of trouble, maybe even make something up. it doesn't always work. fighters regularly take over governing systems, go to war, make messes and debts. all sorts of problems emerge when one is working in an emergency.
we could kill all the fighters but that probably wouldn't work. it seems to be a thing that comes out in the male gender. would have to kill all the males.
predeliction to violence:
step on the bug. bug dies. half step on the bug. bug half dies. front half tries to get away from squashed back half. maybe it does, front half goes crawling off oozing goo from behind. collapses, wiggles legs, twitches, dies.
chop worms into pieces, wriggling pieces of worm pain as they try to get away from the monster who smears the pieces into the ground then picks up unsmeared wiggly pieces and shows them to a girl. If the girl is a bird or maybe even a monkey she's going to eat the pieces, if she's a human maybe she's going to go "yuk" and maybe the 10 year old torture boy will take them and rub them into the hair of a convenient peripheral male or maybe he's so deep into pain creation that he tries it on the girl and trouble can emerge because maybe that's kind of over the line for that culture maybe (or maybe the peripheral male or the girl had training in the ways of war, it is not impossible that 10 year olds can have that training.
public torture and execution wildly popular spectacles throughout human history. public eating (of dead things) one of greatest human funs. public sex (as opposite of violence, more on that later), very rare. public pooping and peeing (as opposite of eating) essentially does not happen in human culture, when it does it is described as social failure.
violence: some people that is what they live for.
megalomania: many of us have experienced that. in 1979 i used an accellerant during the iran hostage crisis, right at the beginning. i was as the facebook group "new to islam" was toying with the possibility of a muslim identity to wear. the crisis brand new, that night a bunch of notables at sunni al-azhar univ in cairo issued a statement calling on the shi'a (dogs) in iran to release the embassy staff, one of the charges was that the embassy was a nest of spies, the azharis announced of course its a nest of spies, that's what embassies are. and i thought in my accellerant modified state (annoying to people in the apartment who had to go to school/work tomorrow but i didn't care, accellerated was what i was) you know, maybe something can be done. i was in nyc, i imagined going to the un to pray, people would ask me, i'd tell them i was there to pray for hostage release, come join me, it would spread, the whole world would stop & pray, the game players in iran would be melted gandhi-style & the world would be saved.
next day i have enough oomph in "me" to sell that crazy vision on my girlfriend, we subwayed up to the un & did a couple of hours of prayer out on the sidewalk. some people stopped to talk, some took pictures, none joined us. we gave up & went on with our lives. do you suppose if we had stayed there for 40 days & 40 nights it would have worked? 40 years?
the various requirements of the evolved agreements of allowable ways to behave are meant to substitute for the application of force by personal whim. some rigor is required by participants in such violence-reducing schemes in order to restrain and forestall the violence. The hard edge of the inwardly peace-enforcing culture has to adequately deal with the potential for violence at its territorial & conceptual edges. The required rigor is difficult to calibrate, easy to abuse, easy to do wrong.
it is necessary to have this acknowledgement of an edge to a culture by its participants. it is necessary that there be agreement at some level by the participants of a culture on how things are done. the alternative is personalized violence on whatever scale the warlords happen to be operating on. who are the warlords? they are the people who like to make war. either the peaceful people hire them or they go into business for themselves. there are plenty of them around: people who like to fight, enough of them to force their way of life on the rest of us pretty much constantly during human history. culture is an ongoing varied attempt to bottle the violent people and keep them within something otherwise they would take over the world and fight forever because that is what they like to do.
the peaceful people have to talk the fighters into not fighting. the fighters would rather fight. sometimes the peaceful people have to make up stuff to tell the fighters, other times they have to threaten to do something they declare to be "bad" that is or isn't violent itself, or they have to give the fighters something to do: give them some trouble to keep them out of trouble, maybe even make something up. it doesn't always work. fighters regularly take over governing systems, go to war, make messes and debts. all sorts of problems emerge when one is working in an emergency.
we could kill all the fighters but that probably wouldn't work. it seems to be a thing that comes out in the male gender. would have to kill all the males.
predeliction to violence:
step on the bug. bug dies. half step on the bug. bug half dies. front half tries to get away from squashed back half. maybe it does, front half goes crawling off oozing goo from behind. collapses, wiggles legs, twitches, dies.
chop worms into pieces, wriggling pieces of worm pain as they try to get away from the monster who smears the pieces into the ground then picks up unsmeared wiggly pieces and shows them to a girl. If the girl is a bird or maybe even a monkey she's going to eat the pieces, if she's a human maybe she's going to go "yuk" and maybe the 10 year old torture boy will take them and rub them into the hair of a convenient peripheral male or maybe he's so deep into pain creation that he tries it on the girl and trouble can emerge because maybe that's kind of over the line for that culture maybe (or maybe the peripheral male or the girl had training in the ways of war, it is not impossible that 10 year olds can have that training.
public torture and execution wildly popular spectacles throughout human history. public eating (of dead things) one of greatest human funs. public sex (as opposite of violence, more on that later), very rare. public pooping and peeing (as opposite of eating) essentially does not happen in human culture, when it does it is described as social failure.
violence: some people that is what they live for.
megalomania: many of us have experienced that. in 1979 i used an accellerant during the iran hostage crisis, right at the beginning. i was as the facebook group "new to islam" was toying with the possibility of a muslim identity to wear. the crisis brand new, that night a bunch of notables at sunni al-azhar univ in cairo issued a statement calling on the shi'a (dogs) in iran to release the embassy staff, one of the charges was that the embassy was a nest of spies, the azharis announced of course its a nest of spies, that's what embassies are. and i thought in my accellerant modified state (annoying to people in the apartment who had to go to school/work tomorrow but i didn't care, accellerated was what i was) you know, maybe something can be done. i was in nyc, i imagined going to the un to pray, people would ask me, i'd tell them i was there to pray for hostage release, come join me, it would spread, the whole world would stop & pray, the game players in iran would be melted gandhi-style & the world would be saved.
next day i have enough oomph in "me" to sell that crazy vision on my girlfriend, we subwayed up to the un & did a couple of hours of prayer out on the sidewalk. some people stopped to talk, some took pictures, none joined us. we gave up & went on with our lives. do you suppose if we had stayed there for 40 days & 40 nights it would have worked? 40 years?
Thursday, July 21, 2011
avocations, experts
predelictions may, if the owner of that predeliction is curious and adventurous, lead to study, which may lead to expertise. you want to know something you go to the expert. the movie maker, the geek, the prostitute, the drug user, the money maker, the cook, the mercenary, anything. the vast store of human expertise.
but really i must examine the yuk factor because that is where the trouble is. that and greed. we develop expertise in things other people find regretable. people who don't share our minority predeliction can be induced perhaps to ignore us in our practice, if we refuse to let them ignore us there can get to be trouble.
but really i must examine the yuk factor because that is where the trouble is. that and greed. we develop expertise in things other people find regretable. people who don't share our minority predeliction can be induced perhaps to ignore us in our practice, if we refuse to let them ignore us there can get to be trouble.
shapes of desire
really all that is necessary is that rich people stop hoarding. the "good" ones all say "soon as i get things where i want them for the family i'll go into philanthropy bigtime." the "bad" ones just say "you can never have too much stuff." the rest of "us" don't do that. we tolerate these megahoarders in our midst because we are peaceful and they are militant about getting and keeping their stuff. there are not more of "them" than there are of "us," the opposite. but "we" do not have that fire in the belly about "stuff." so we do not wipe them out. "we" are passive. most of us. we let stuff happen.
most of us like to reference higher authority to justify whatever it is we do. doesn't matter what it is, the habit is to allow someone else to take the responsibility: the boss, the staff, the saviour, whatever.
predelictions: i found myself drawn to things. small shiny objects, snakes, turtles, comics, ancient history, pictures of naked female humans, french fries. i found myself not interested in: guns, cars, sports, meat on the bone, fighting. first i didn't like horror movies because they were scary, later because they were stupid. i was a beta child, picked next to last for the team, would fight but only if i had to, maybe i'd do ok, sometimes i'd definitively lose.
predelictions: things that make the heart go pitterpat, the senses become more alert, the body elevated into a higher gear of one sort or another. that state of enhanced experience can be obtained by many widely varying methods, basic athletic activity is probably the easiest and most commonly used method. problems can develop with any of them if recklessly engaged in. food enjoyment perhaps the worst at this planetary human moment. the thought of the delectibility of dinner bringing the sympathetic saliva, the enjoyable pulse surge, the slight flush of the cutaneous capillaries, increased secretions, turning into an arrow of desire: i want that thing. want it again. want again. again.
most of us like to reference higher authority to justify whatever it is we do. doesn't matter what it is, the habit is to allow someone else to take the responsibility: the boss, the staff, the saviour, whatever.
predelictions: i found myself drawn to things. small shiny objects, snakes, turtles, comics, ancient history, pictures of naked female humans, french fries. i found myself not interested in: guns, cars, sports, meat on the bone, fighting. first i didn't like horror movies because they were scary, later because they were stupid. i was a beta child, picked next to last for the team, would fight but only if i had to, maybe i'd do ok, sometimes i'd definitively lose.
predelictions: things that make the heart go pitterpat, the senses become more alert, the body elevated into a higher gear of one sort or another. that state of enhanced experience can be obtained by many widely varying methods, basic athletic activity is probably the easiest and most commonly used method. problems can develop with any of them if recklessly engaged in. food enjoyment perhaps the worst at this planetary human moment. the thought of the delectibility of dinner bringing the sympathetic saliva, the enjoyable pulse surge, the slight flush of the cutaneous capillaries, increased secretions, turning into an arrow of desire: i want that thing. want it again. want again. again.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
catchers
people want what they want & thats all there is to it. first desire then the explanation.
so there is pitching and catching. it is possible to get real good at either position.
in sports it is mostly the pitcher that gets the worship. the catcher job is to fend off the heat mostly, except in baseball where the catcher job is to catch. imagine a game where the skill of the catcher would be to elegantly catch, you know, everything that was thrown at it. balls, sticks, rhymes, machines, people, nature. what would it be like if the catcher was the hero of the game? like in, say, porn. celebration/worship of catching. exotically athletic catching.
an olympic sport consisting of people punching their way out of specially constructed paper bags.
we like to talk about what weve accomplished. legendary feats of catching celebrated only over in corners of shared understanding, the rest of them concerned with pointy objects projected.
which makes sense because pointy objects can be dangerous but catchers do not damage except if they engulf & drown but thats food, where the two directions of flow come together. later for food. i want to start with outer layers: relations between membranes.
catcher worship as the catcher accepts everything and transmutes it by that acceptance into a heartthrob echo of higher places.
so there is pitching and catching. it is possible to get real good at either position.
in sports it is mostly the pitcher that gets the worship. the catcher job is to fend off the heat mostly, except in baseball where the catcher job is to catch. imagine a game where the skill of the catcher would be to elegantly catch, you know, everything that was thrown at it. balls, sticks, rhymes, machines, people, nature. what would it be like if the catcher was the hero of the game? like in, say, porn. celebration/worship of catching. exotically athletic catching.
an olympic sport consisting of people punching their way out of specially constructed paper bags.
we like to talk about what weve accomplished. legendary feats of catching celebrated only over in corners of shared understanding, the rest of them concerned with pointy objects projected.
which makes sense because pointy objects can be dangerous but catchers do not damage except if they engulf & drown but thats food, where the two directions of flow come together. later for food. i want to start with outer layers: relations between membranes.
catcher worship as the catcher accepts everything and transmutes it by that acceptance into a heartthrob echo of higher places.
Monday, July 18, 2011
why its better
secret ingredient.
it is not necessary to employ secret ingredients. the tunnel through the darkness to the light can be dug by bleeding and torn hands with a broken heart but that is not required. tools can be used, can be invented, can be found. no sin inherent in use of tools. always possible to abuse. so what then, do nothing?
proper tool for particular job. right size, right shape, right chemical composition. carefully applied in proper circumstance, an enhanced result obtained.
because we are allowed in human culture to discuss only certain things and not others it is essentially not happening that users of certain tools are not able to speak in favor of their as it were responsible way of doing things. the things they do or make that cannot be freely mentioned or even perhaps freely engaged in for whatever reason. such usages perhaps riling to the neighbors. working on a bunch of cars in the yard maybe, bottle cap collecting, certain controlled substances used in certain ways. edge activity.
so: discussions of pleasure, crime, law.
it is not necessary to employ secret ingredients. the tunnel through the darkness to the light can be dug by bleeding and torn hands with a broken heart but that is not required. tools can be used, can be invented, can be found. no sin inherent in use of tools. always possible to abuse. so what then, do nothing?
proper tool for particular job. right size, right shape, right chemical composition. carefully applied in proper circumstance, an enhanced result obtained.
because we are allowed in human culture to discuss only certain things and not others it is essentially not happening that users of certain tools are not able to speak in favor of their as it were responsible way of doing things. the things they do or make that cannot be freely mentioned or even perhaps freely engaged in for whatever reason. such usages perhaps riling to the neighbors. working on a bunch of cars in the yard maybe, bottle cap collecting, certain controlled substances used in certain ways. edge activity.
so: discussions of pleasure, crime, law.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
handshake
they know we dont know the difference between right and left. they know that we use paper. they think that were dirty. like the dogs we like to have as pets. we wipe and maybe we wash our hands but still we wiped rather than washed and we probably used our right hand because we dont know the difference. eew, and then we always want to shake hands. its just gross all around. they cant wait until we fall and they dont have to ape our manners anymore with that bs handshaking hugging air kissing public touching stuff. ug. they think.
but i dream bonobo dreams.
national geographic of course. lions are mating. the camera is to the side and below them, we see mostly their faces. hes snarling ears back just exactly like hes going to kill something and shes all smug and full of it. we took a goat to get serviced and he jumped and jabbed twice and she got that look on her face: filled up. i watched her skin tone change on the way home in the back of the truck. skin got more turgid, lips puffed up. body melted and reset. smell of billygoat drifting off her body.
snarling lion. the shared pathways of violence and sex.
the 7 deadly sins:
but i dream bonobo dreams.
national geographic of course. lions are mating. the camera is to the side and below them, we see mostly their faces. hes snarling ears back just exactly like hes going to kill something and shes all smug and full of it. we took a goat to get serviced and he jumped and jabbed twice and she got that look on her face: filled up. i watched her skin tone change on the way home in the back of the truck. skin got more turgid, lips puffed up. body melted and reset. smell of billygoat drifting off her body.
snarling lion. the shared pathways of violence and sex.
the 7 deadly sins:
- one might imagine that they are listed in some kind of rank order but that cant be right, can it.
and must deal with this silly multiincidence of "rightness" referring to a direction, an angle, the opposite of wrongness, and a political philosophy. in my world thats all it is, so when i use the word i can use it any of those ways and itll be "right." in context. and its worse than that. write, rite. stupid language. like chang chang chang.
conditional imperative
must write. must write. dont want to write. sloth. fear of effort. all for naught. drag seared bleeding body through rocky desert to reach the end all for naught. burning light from above. me to create the only shadow.
coolness in the shadow. cant see in the shadow. dark in the dark. if its my dark i can be comfortable in here.
i crawl on, creating my darkness below me, the only inside, where i can be me. i stand between me and my shadow. crawling i stand.
dont want to write. a life devised to avoid things. culture built so that all things can be operated on out of the space between hand and eye. come here all you things over here where i can get you hands on you.
worms in puddle after rain. stupid worms. in the freedom of nature a boy is playing with them, mashing them with his shoed foot, another boy watches, asks first boy why, :cause i want to: and the snarl and clenched fist like hes prepared to fight for his right to kill worms.
second boys son, younger than boy one, him too, with the worms. pulls them until they are broken inside, then pulls them apart. you know, i said, when you do that they get dead. :i want them to be dead: he seems to have become a fine young man he does.
i curl up into my shadow. i expand my shadow. my hole. my refuge from the burning light, the rocks, the thorns, the wild dogs. the more i curl the smaller it gets. only i stand between the burning light and my shadow. the light & the heat, sharp rocks, etc. compell action. one moves and dies or one is still and dies.
the trick was that the shadow turned out not to be empty. away from the necessities displayed in the light. darkness, where the ghosts of possibility live.
coolness in the shadow. cant see in the shadow. dark in the dark. if its my dark i can be comfortable in here.
i crawl on, creating my darkness below me, the only inside, where i can be me. i stand between me and my shadow. crawling i stand.
dont want to write. a life devised to avoid things. culture built so that all things can be operated on out of the space between hand and eye. come here all you things over here where i can get you hands on you.
worms in puddle after rain. stupid worms. in the freedom of nature a boy is playing with them, mashing them with his shoed foot, another boy watches, asks first boy why, :cause i want to: and the snarl and clenched fist like hes prepared to fight for his right to kill worms.
second boys son, younger than boy one, him too, with the worms. pulls them until they are broken inside, then pulls them apart. you know, i said, when you do that they get dead. :i want them to be dead: he seems to have become a fine young man he does.
i curl up into my shadow. i expand my shadow. my hole. my refuge from the burning light, the rocks, the thorns, the wild dogs. the more i curl the smaller it gets. only i stand between the burning light and my shadow. the light & the heat, sharp rocks, etc. compell action. one moves and dies or one is still and dies.
the trick was that the shadow turned out not to be empty. away from the necessities displayed in the light. darkness, where the ghosts of possibility live.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)