File spoon-archives/bataille.archive/bataille_1999/bataille.9908, message 51


Date: Sun, 08 Aug 1999 00:09:26 -0700
From: "J. Foster" <borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net>
Subject: Re: silence



Faizi:

>The world of the academic is a failure. It is an artificial world that
>is built upon an artificial world. One needs only to read the introduction
>written by a college professor to "Ecce Homo to know this.
>What could this plain professor understand of Nietzsche's madness?
>How could one who has chosen his life low to the ground understand
>the heights?

So you are an admirer of Fred are you? I find him a hopeless wheezing wind
bag but very good at the shallowest of aphorisms. His best and perhaps his
only great work was the "Birth of Tragedy" wherein he contrasts  the
Apollonian with the Dionysian mind/tradition in Greek culture. He should
have stuck to philology, and ceased his constant moralizing. I think he
raised a lot of the 'rabble' to war later in Germany with his sick theories,
not his healthy theories though. He would have been able to play away in
acedemia had he not had congenital syphilis. He reminds me of a great big
bullfrog sitting on the railroad tracks, croaking, not knowing where the
duce his butt is, or a cicada that cannot shut up in the rainforest.  

I like cicadas but sometimes they test me with their constant singing.  

Well perhaps you could post the evidence for your observations on academia?
I agree that there are a lot sad cases in academia, caged up animals in
fact. Are those the specimens you refer to? I am not one of them. I work for
a living. I would love to engage in the parapatetic [pacing back and forth]
mode and encourage young souls to do the same. Those who fill up a seat in
academia are really just playing around, you know. Some of them get out in
the summer and go to work though. 

I am curious. How do you make the inference that respect must be demanded?
It would appear to me that 'respect', as you define it, is another name for
love, or at least one attribute of love. That is what Eric Fromm claims in
"The Art of Loving". What about reciprocating love and respect? Are you also
implying that you would be willing to reciprocate respect in return if it
was offered to you? 

Is it not true  that you cannot receive respect from someone if you demand
it in the first place? To demand respect from someone is to well put the
cart before the horse, so to speak? I would argue that no one deserves
respect unless they earn it and able to give it in the first place. How can
you demand something that was not there in the first place? Can you force
someone to have respect when they don't have respect? 

There is of course the usual natural respect that we have for strangers,
people in the streets and others we meet on a casual basis, but to actually
demand respect from someone ...that is a hard thing to demand. 

I think it was Walter Kaufman that said that Nietzsche was forced to write
aphorism because he was subject to terrible headaches that prevented him
from concentrating on writing long sentences and connecting them together
into long paragraphs; and assembling them all into long treatises...I want
to get to the point. You can turn on the radio and record all the static,
and record everything else in the room, even your own theories on everything
so that you have accumulated a roomful of helpful theories on everything
from A to Z and from n-dimensions, to z-dimensions, and then offer it to a
publisher, but in the end there is no way that you can monitor if the
results were successful or not &  changing for the better the world, or even
if anyone took real notice. 

That is what F. Nietsche represents to me. A roomful of helpful theories.
And we have more than one room of helpful theories, we have cities of
apartments with roomfuls of published & helpful theories, and outside the
cities there are still buried piles of cunieform tablets with helpful
theories, and in araimic as well, notably authorized by Darius himself, who
insisted that God was completely nameless - I am not sure if he put to death
any who attempted to name God - he was an early devotee of Ahura mazda, the
nameless one, and was probably converted to the nameless by Zoroaster, and
this is also only a theory because some speculate that Zoroaster lived 6000
years ago not during the time of Darius who tried to conquer ancient Greece
but was stopped in Philleponnes [sic]. 

What a contradiction. What are we going to do with all these academics in
university? Maybe we can be like the Tupac Amaru, put them to work digging
spuds? and milking goats or spinning wool? Maybe we should stop buying their
books and make a statement. Maybe we should start buying books from those
who flunk entrance exams, or the autodidacts? Maybe we can ask them to teach
a child to read or plant a tree in Haiti or Bolivia on during their
sabbaticals to recover all those - ahem - lost funds spent on keeping the
lights in those halls of academia. Now they are genetically engineering new
species some of those helpful and positive theories before they even hire
more academics to study the effects of GE organisms on human health and the
health of diverse ecosystems. Geez. It goes from bad to worst each and every
day. There are many books now being published on the ethics of the very
thing I bring up. You would not be able to read them all in one year let
alone in 10 years. It is absurd to say the least. One academic trying to
grow more food and while another  is trying to prevent the worst
consequences possible that result from the new applied theoretical molecular
genetics to the growing of corn. Can you imagine. Corn that has genetically
been altered to produce a pesticide made by a bacteria only known from the
soil, a corn that is resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, and a corn that
cannot produce seed. Each advance in Science here creates new controversy
and risk. Like what is going to happen now in the corn belt when the monarch
butterflies migrate north. They are all going to be poisoned eating the
pollen off the corn tassels. There will be no food for the insectivorous
birds that migrate north. 

Of course the academic has failed. There is no consensus, just a jostling
sound coming out universities, research centers, and the sound of a lot of
paper shuffling and clearing of throats. There is disagreement,  confusion,
babbling and quibbling over mere details. I have read so much commentary on
Hiedegger that I have come to the conclusion that no one can make any sense
of what Martin is actually saying: like I said there are now roomfuls of
helpful theories on how to interpret Heidegger; there is an entire room of
helpful theories devoted to his involvement with the Nazi's. What what good
is that? Why be concerned about only one man that was probably crapping his
pants in his academic setting. Of course he was scared. The smart ones left:
Einstein, Jung, etc., long before. 

But really your point is a very good one. How many ancient rainforest trees
are going to be sacrificed for more theories? I like Socrates a lot. He
never published a word in his life. Plato was a wierdo [with some -well
helpful theories of his own to boot] , and I agree with Nietzsche on that. 

soft fluffy cloud








 





><P>He hates me because I can override him.  He hates me because I
>can master what he cannot.  He hates me because I will not worship
>as he worships.  I do not recognize his gods.
>
><P>He hates me because I am personally forceful while he is cowardly and
>weak.  He hates me because I refuse to don the mask.  He hates
>me because I will spoil his happy party and I will, again, smash his cake.
>
><P>It pisses him off because, once again, I will take the lead.  It
>needles him because I can dominate where he fears to tread.
>
><P>He hates me because I am his conscience that he has forsaken. 
>He hates me because I am the voice that he does not have.
><BR> 
><BR>There was a time when the relation between myself and Ariosto was one
>of a kind of love/hate.  I loved him for his weakness and I hated
>him for his refusal to acknowledge his weakness.  He loved me for
>my strength and he hated me for what my strength could do to him.
>
><P>In this way, it is still a love/hate friendship.  He hates me for
>coming here and, yet, he knows that my presence is stimulating and provocative
>and will draw others as it, again, drew him here.  Yet, he would happily
>cast me out if he thought that he could do it and keep interest. 
>But he can't.  I know that and he knows that.  He tried once
>to do that and, without me, his attempt failed.  It is the tension
>between us that draws the crowd.
>
><P>It is the dance of the ape and the virgin that keeps the interest keen.
>
><P>Ariosto is a fuckhead.  He may pretend otherwise with his intellectual
>musings but he is a fuckhead.  If he could ever come to accept himself
>for himself, such a title could, possibly, be withdrawn.  However,
>I do not see that time coming soon.
><BR> 
><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>
>
><P>"You move the air that pleases me...Rosi, it snowed last night a bit.
>It
><BR>felt cold last night. In the dark, it was just you and me, I am talking
>to
><BR>my cat. There wasn't a sound, I am slowly becoming blue. Nina Simone
>sings
><BR>"he presses his fingers to my lips, keep still in the dark, soon he
>will be
><BR>gone, and to be missed. Born in the dark"
>
><P>My understanding is confirmed in the first person declaration. You Rosita
><BR>move the air that pleases....Now if I were to observe this in myself,
>then
><BR>what would stop me from observing this in something, someone elsewhere?
>
><P>Perhaps what I am saying is that perhaps you move the air that pleases
><BR>someone else...and you make them blue. Where there is strife there
>is love,
><BR>where there is strife there is possible friendship. Like only knows
>like, it
><BR>recognizes it-self in everything.
><BR> </BLOCKQUOTE>
>Ariosto and I have a friendship.  In the end, it never matters whether
>such a thing is born from love or hate because, between love and hate,
>is only a very fine line.  He rejects me because I laugh at his idiotic
>pretenses.  Despite my chiding, I have never rejected him.  He
>is a child who has not grown, yet, to manhood.  He is given to romance
>and he is easily swayed by college girls.  Eventually, he will probably
>marry a college girl because he thinks that such a marriage will legitimize
>his own academic leanings.  It may do that for him but I doubt it. 
>He is a college girl's ideal college romance.  But he has no money
>so it is doubtful that he can be a college girl's final dream.
>
><P>What has become of Stacey?
><BR> 
><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>That which is alike cannot
><BR>be gathered together since it is already one. Take heed...
><BR> </BLOCKQUOTE>
>I am his conscience.  He cannot reside here without me.
>
><P>He despises me for my arrogance but, without me, he is most dull.
>
><P>Faizi
><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>john
><BR> </BLOCKQUOTE>
> 
><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> </BLOCKQUOTE>
> </HTML>
>
>
>
>


   

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