knots, circles

the basic problem of governance whether social or unitary is to get the subject to do what it doesn't want to do.  for the unitary "self" the untrained "desire body" will do exactly what it wants to do without recourse to planning.  the restraint of the desire body is what makes possible activities other than the basic breathe, eat, seek fun, reproduce sequences.  otherwise the desire body will express in the normal organismic way, nothing will be built, we would only intend out of those basic needs, no civilization.

the objective conditions of the universe require that the basic needs be satisfied, it is correct that the body wants to keep itself alive, it is at this time necessary that the units eat other units, we attempt to deal with the basics and heroically try to make more of it than it is by romanticizing whatever it is that we romanticize, every one of us an artist in our particular field.

all day long for example, there is a small piece of the me that calls out from a childish bed of lassitude: hey, you just accomplished something, go take a nap.  me, if i lie down, i'm going to nod off.  i'll nod off in the chair it i'm not doing anything.  i'd rather do my sleeping at night, all at once.  so i avoid lying down mostly.

the various ways that an individual gets itself to do what it doesn't want to do, probably all opposed by the desire body which wants to do what it wants to do immediately and completely over the edge and into the mud puddle at full speed like a dog or a 2 year old.  as grownups we are lucky if we got us a paying gig that nicely engages the particularistic (; flavors of our desire bodies, but even then, where work is a delight, the desire body can only be allowed to express hemmed in by social ritual otherwise everything completely falls apart and we devolve to mostly helpless monads surrounded by enemies.  sub-primate at least, maybe sub-vertebrate, back in the worm brain.

i practice various ways of figuring out what i want to do, perhaps the expression of those desires can be more usefully/pleasurably turned in some different direction than had been previously the case, so the "will" can perhaps turn the desire just a little bit and everything works a little better in a slightly different social situation.

but i really need to talk about crime.  the desire bodies unrestrained by any social or personal "will," that motivating element of the basic needs undirected, the will bent to the satisfaction of the desires in all cases, the social machinery bent too, that asocial me-firstness brought past utility to propaganda so that body parts are used to "send a message."  that seems to happen everywhere in every culture: there is a violent element somewhere in it, certain various activities are "not tolerated."

so i need to talk about toleration and limits thereof.  later.  the next thing i'm going to write about will be things-that-are-yucky.  when i finish with food & death & aggression. 

now i have a question.  these libyan kids & grownups who were able to drive out their crazy dictator (with sufficient air cover by the capitalist overlords), there was all that horrible dying going on but a lot of them were having the time of their lives, now they've won, almost, they're war heroes, hope they can keep it together.  war - best thing that ever happened to the winners, sometimes, they think.  and us, here, on tv, we just lap it up, just like the romans did.  violence.  want to participate.  hungry.  want to eat.  hunt, kill, eat.

that's interesting too.  the romans had public spectacles of violence and death (and food).  they did not have public spectacles of sex, there were spectacles for rich pervs but not public.  outside of that cultural line there are some places that had high rituals involving sex, that's what they did for theatre back then, but there is essentially no human tradition i know that has its sex out in public, plenty where violence and death were and are.

well, might say scalia, there is this long history of us humans appreciating violence and death and repressing and making fun of sex, a conservative person would naturally want to continue along that path.  who's to say that's incorrect?

but the answers to the remaining questions is out there in the areas not yet charted, some will bend their will toward exploration because they are such slaves to their desire that they will go forward no matter what, can't help themselves, they have bent their will to their purpose, their desire has no choice but to follow.