{"id":10883,"date":"2013-04-22T16:10:44","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T21:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=10883"},"modified":"2013-04-23T12:27:14","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T17:27:14","slug":"belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/04\/22\/belief\/","title":{"rendered":"belief materialism subjectivity neighbour no big Other"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon Critchley on love and self-loss<\/a><\/p>\n

spiritual daring that attempts to eviserate and excoriate the old self, love dares the self to leave the self behind, to hue and hack to make a space large enough for love to enter love is an enrichment through impoverisment.<\/p>\n

Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Tilton Gallery, New York City, 19 Nov. 2006<\/strong><\/p>\n

Belief<\/a><\/p>\n

Steve Martin in Leap Of Faith: He really produced a miracle and breaks down
\nAtheism is secret inner conviction of believers. Internal doubt, but believe in external rituals.
\nEither we are alone in universe or there are aliens\/God. Both situations are toally unbearable. WE would break down if aliens visited us, but we can’t stand that nobody is there too.
\nEcology<\/a> We can’t be sure or its the big multinationals. No we know but we are not ready to believe, you know global warming, but you look outside and see the sun and flowers. WE are wired, we can’t accept because our BEING itself disappears.
\nFree is a true human who is ready to make this step. One guy did it Mao in 1955. Why chinese people should not be afraid of American Atom Bomb. “But eve in atom bombs so powerful, they would blow the earth up, it would just be a minor event for the solar system.” This totally crazy position where you are ready to put everything at risk is the true radical position.<\/p>\n

In order to truly confront global warming, we must cut our organic embeddedness. Gap between poetic universe and scientific results. Even if we know something to be NOT true, our poetry is naive. WE know there is no sunset, the earth rotation which moves, not sun, not sunset. The true tasks of poetry today is to make poetry at level of results. Oh my darling let’s meet a last quarter turn of earth.<\/p>\n

Only in Christianity God himself for a moment becomes an atheist.<\/a>
\nThis idea of imperfect God. Wait a minute let’s call God. Wait a minute this is a old stupid man who screwed up creation. God accepts, yes you are right … What is the underlying message?
\nWhat is materialism<\/a>
\nA particle position\/velocity. REALITY IS IN-ITSELF UNDETERMINED. THINGS GET FUZZY as if they disappear into nothingness.\u00a0 Here he uses the famous video game analogy but doesn’t mention or credit that guy Nicholas somebody’s book.<\/p>\n

We should read reality like this computer game?\u00a0 What if God underestimated us.\u00a0 God thought when he programmed the universe, a don’t have to program all the way down, I ‘ll go so far as atoms.\u00a0 God was too lazy to program further.\u00a0 He cheated a bit.<\/p>\n

Materialism at its purest<\/a><\/p>\n

The movie 13th floor.\u00a0 You reach the end, earth is no longer earth, it slowly moves into digital coordinates.\u00a0 Now this would be the true materialism.\u00a0 To think the unfinished character of reality, we don’t need God to imagine it.\u00a0 Reality is in-itself unfinished.<\/p>\n

When you approach too close an image, all you see are stains<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Modernism is an event, postmodernism is NOT.<\/p>\n

Badiou and Multiplicity<\/a>
\nHis ontology of multiplicity, this dispersal multiplicity is fundamental of ontology, but it is not a multiplicity of ONES, his ontology is an ontology the oppositie of zero is not ONE, the primoridal fact is multiple in a void and then comes ONE.<\/p>\n

What are the consequences for subjectivity, what kind of subjectivity fits this universe?<\/a>
\nIt is an EMPTY SUBJECTIVITY.\u00a0 Recently a publisher asked me to do what I hate.\u00a0 Books have on the back cover, personal idiosyncracies, John Irving is a wrestler and gardens in his spare time … \u017d wanted to test them: in his free time \u017d surfs internet for child porn and teaches his son to pull the legs off of spiders.\u00a0 This supplement is a FUNDAMENTAL LIE.
\nThe core of the subject is the THING and that’s the neighbour.<\/p>\n

Neighbour is a THING. THING is the Impenetrable abyss of the Other’s desire. Everything else like gardening is to cover it up.<\/p>\n

Here is the famous phone call on the plane about to crash<\/a>
\nYou call your beloved and say “I love you.” when the whole world is falling apart, what remains is love.\u00a0 No, I am more a pessimist.\u00a0 I claim that in that totally desperate scary position, you lie to yourself, you want to die with a clear account in good memory, at that point you lie.<\/p>\n

A truly atheist crazy thing: imagine somebody who, the plane is falling down you are married, Honey just so that it is clear, the marriage was hell I want to divorce you. Bye.\u00a0 That would be an act.
\nDecentrement of subjectivity<\/a>
\nWhen you are at your innermost yourself, you are NOT yourself, you are LYING. You are at a distance from TRUTH.
\nWoman is a SYMPTOM OF MAN. It means for Lacan the symptom pre-exists what it is a symptom of. If woman is a symptom, imagine a woman walking around, do you want me to be your symptom. TO be an empty pure symptom, a NUN, A truly AUTHENTIC position, it could be a radical feminine position, I will remain a pure symptom. Woman can do it, man can’t do it. Man needs a symptom.
\nDaVINCI Code the movie<\/a>
\nX-files of Darian Leader.\u00a0 Why do some many things happen OUT THERE. To cover up the fact that nothing happens here.\u00a0 Nothing happens here, no sex between the characters.
\nAbyss of subjectivity<\/a>
\nOpenness, our elementary reaction is FEAR, especially today the inexistence of the big OTHER is more marked than ever.\u00a0 Not just symbolic, but what is truly horrifying, in ecology, that nature itself as ultimate big Other is disappearing.\u00a0 NATURE is impenetrable density of our background, but the moment through genome and bio-genetic manipulations, NATURE itself turns into something else, it is no longer nature in terms of dense impenetrability.
\nPredominant mode of politics<\/a> FEAR
\nExpert administration, to go a little bit up, to mobilize people, is to mobilize them with some kind of a fear, fear of immigrants\/state\/crime\/terrorists
\nPReviously science nonetheless wanted to understand reproduce, now it can reproduce new forms of monsters. Cows with 2 heads, freaks of nature. Things will explode out of control. YET Behind all this is FEAR OF THE NEIGHBOUR<\/a>
\nControl the explosive dimension of the neighbour.<\/p>\n

Sam Harris the End of Belief; justifies torture.\u00a0 Truth Pill, a de-caffeinated torture.\u00a0 Subjectively the person who takes the pill would suffer incredibly, but outwardly it looks like he just took a nap.\u00a0 Fat-free cakes, alcohol without beer.<\/p>\n

Why is this reasoning wrong.\u00a0 When Sam Harris talks about this proximity, is the Other too close to us or not.\u00a0 He’s too short there. This proximity is not physical proximity. It’s the proximity precisely of the neighbour who can be too close even if he is far away.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s the definition of the neighbour.\u00a0 The neighbour INTRUDES.<\/span>\u00a0 So I claim that this argument only works if the Other human beings are no longer treated as neighbours, they simply become objectivized in this field of calculation where you can say Ok I can torture you here to prevent a greater number of suffering …\u00a0 The dimension of the neighbour gets lost.<\/span>\u00a0 For Sam Harris the dimension of the neighbour gets lost.<\/p>\n

All our outbursts of violence<\/a> are ultimately outbursts against the neighbour. The neighbour being not simply the other person in front of us but the ABYSS of the OTHER which can be detected from our fantasmatic symbolic space.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s easy to praise today’s global capitalism, oh a big village, but we are still Neighbours, with our own symbolic universe, our own way of enjoying, what we need today is not more communication, but more distance, we need a NEW CODE OF DISCRETION. We need to ignore others more. This is the great art today.<\/p>\n

SOLUTIONS to proximity of neighbour is TOLERANCE. \u017d criticizes new book by Wendy Brown.<\/a> Tolerance as a solution to the neighbour is a problem.<\/p>\n

Culturalization of politics, politics is culturalized.\u00a0 Fukuyama and Huntington, Clash of Civilizations is not opposed to End of History.\u00a0 Politics as rational administration, the only true conflicts are ones of culture.<\/p>\n

Part 8 is a good discussion by \u017di\u017eek<\/strong>
\nGood discussion of Amish and subjectivity<\/a>
\nThe moment you change them substantially, the whole attitude to community changes, you undermine communal identity and change into liberal subject, he made have freedom of choice but its no longer Amish culture.<\/p>\n

Problem with Wendy Brown<\/a>: They remain caught in pseudo-Marxist denouncing false universality, it goes like this, what appears to be a neutral universality really privleges a certain strata. Human rights not really universal human rights, the privlege male white of certain property, human rights are natural to every man, insofar as they are resonable human man, woman nope to passionate, workers have no time, criminals are out, savages are out …<\/p>\n

I claim two things should be opposed<\/a>, of course there is a GAP between universal human rights and how they truly function.\u00a0 Nonetheless this very GAP has its positive aspects<\/p>\n

It allows for a re-writing of it.\u00a0 Mary Wollstencraft, Haiti revolution.<\/p>\n

if you read closely the great idealist tradition of Hegel, its that this is only one side of the story, this denouncing universality as false universality<\/a>.\u00a0 We also have the opposite mystification which is much more interesting: your particular interests is already the tool for the actualization of universality.<\/p>\n

Its not that formal universality masks you particular interests, its the opposite, your particularity you are not aware of the universal dimension of what you are doing, you think you are following particular interests, but you don’t see the universal nature of you acts.<\/p>\n

So it is totally wrong to play the game capitalism is Eurocentric<\/a><\/p>\n

As a capitalist subject, in your OWN INDIVIDUAL SELF-EXPERIENCE, you relate yourself to yourself as UNIVERSAL.<\/p>\n

I am in myself an abstract universal, what I am in my particular identity, a teacher is something contingent, not part of my nature.\u00a0 You experience yourself in the core of your being as universal.\u00a0<\/span> Capitalist is universal in this way, it undermines the culture from within.<\/p>\n

Example TIBETAN CULTURE and the Chinese onslaught<\/a>
\nDescartes<\/a> At first foreign cultures appeared strange, but then I asked myself, what if I’m viewed from foreign gaze, I must appear to them stupid idiosyncratic. Core of modernity, when you see your core of your identity as something as ultimately something contingent.
\nFeminism outside of modernity as Ying-Yang, we should reassert the feminine aspect etc.<\/p>\n

The Neighbour<\/strong>
\nThe way to break out this eternal Levinasian problematic, oh neighbour, abyss, otherness, should we respect\/tolerate the other or not, This is a false problem
\nWe should embrace this RADICAL UNIVERSALITY, Not i’m difference, we share common concerns
\nWhat interests me is my culture<\/a> has some fights in it, your culture has some fights, what I want to share with you is the universality of our struggles.<\/p>\n

Cultural solipsism: how can I be sure I’m not imposing, I am not fully myself, and can I share it with you
\nI am not myself, there is in the very core of myself a universality that surpasses me.<\/p>\n

Ethics<\/a><\/p>\n

Lacan: Have you acted in conformity with your desire, do not compromise\/betray your desire.\u00a0 THIS IS AMBIGUOUS.
\nPsychoanalysis can justify anything.\u00a0 Stupid psychoanalysts, oh end oppression, liberate it and everything will be ok.
\nIsrael Defense Forces: main theoretical references is Deleuze Guttari.\u00a0 Strange things are happening.<\/p>\n

Immoral Ethics: Nietzschean ethics<\/a>
\nIt doesn’t matter what you do, be authentic, be engaged.<\/p>\n

Kantian Ethics: you not only responsible to do you duty<\/a>, but you are responsible to determine what is your duty<\/p>\n

There is no big Other, you can’t put on the big Other to tell you what is your duty, you have to be fully responsible for it.\u00a0 Hannah Arendt is wrong, Eichmann said I just did my duty.\u00a0 No you can’t do this.\u00a0 YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED to use duty as an excuse to do my duty.\u00a0 You have to FULLY STAND BEHIND your duty. No Guarantee behind the big Other.<\/p>\n

Questions<\/a>
\nViolent imposition of a universal will<\/a>
\nNative Americans and white stupidity<\/a><\/p>\n

Abandon that which you are afraid to lose<\/a> Accept the loss, become universal<\/strong>. You are afraid to lose you particular identity, my solution is NOT identity politics. What if what you are so passionately protecting is in itself worthless, abandon that.<\/span> As an attitude, I refer to Mao, “So what, a minor disturbance in the solar system.”
\nI think that again, the solution is don’t fear, be calm enjoy your life.\u00a0 No the solution is more radical, accept that the big Other does NOT exist.<\/p>\n

Nature, there is no balanced nature<\/a>
\nThere is no way to return.
\n We need to re-assert BIG COLLECTIVE decisions. without this we are lost<\/a><\/p>\n

We have a struggle you have a struggle, let’s see how we can join our struggles.<\/strong>\u00a0Universality is the universality of struggle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chinese Model of Capitalism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon Critchley on love and self-loss spiritual daring that attempts to eviserate and excoriate the old self, love dares the self to leave the self behind, to hue and hack to make a space large enough for love to enter love is an enrichment through impoverisment. Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Tilton Gallery, New York City, 19 Nov. … Continue reading “belief materialism subjectivity neighbour no big Other”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,38,76,15,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concrete_universal","category-ethics","category-sub-destitute","category-subjectivity","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10883"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10885,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10883\/revisions\/10885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}