Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 16:04:42 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: New Year, Same Old Crap (fwd)





On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, John Appleby wrote:

> 
> Alright, lets push this a bit further:
> 
> Two people examine a third individual who acts 'eccentrically'. One says
> that this person is a schizo out for a stroll and so should be celebrated
> and left to her own devices, the other agrees with the definition but
> claims that she is a danger to herself and so should be institutionalized
> as there is a high risk that otherwise she will walk under a car or
> something. Are you still going to say that they are both right? Please
> don't go into your 'institutionalized psychiatry' diatribe, as this is not
> the issue here; The issue is how can you tell what is the most positive
> ethical act under the circumstances when you think that everyone's
> interpretation of experience is equally valid?
> 
> Regards
> 
> John

Your being in dialogue at all will have negated the possibility of the
total relativism you indicate, although the other can ggo ahead and
maintain that anyhow (which itself marks a situation of difference that
has many of the same political consequences as the one you bring up).  
There is no way to think of intervention in such a circumstance without
some reference to institutions of various sorts. The danger of walking
under a car seems less likely, but the general condition of the
possibility of danger is adequate for the problematic as you lay it out.
There are various answers to "how can you tell the most positive ethical
act", and yes, the person you address does not think that all
interpretation of experience is equally valid. The "schizo out for a
stroll" is a bit contrived, as has been repeatedly pointed out. The
situation of action "on another", with others, instantiates (as if it were
ex nihilo) a certain politics. The crucial question then becomes whether
nonviolence as such has been *taken up* as an ongoing,
thematic/substantive engagment. A general distinction can be drawn between
those politics which have nonviolence as thematic/substantive and those
which do not. This requires some understanding of/reference to the effects
of the thematic/substantive.

"Ethics", invoked without further ado, generally tends to refer to a
double morass of either the imperative prescription and legal rule, or
else the impossibility of prescription, both of which are themselves
founded on the status of the (non)opening of nonviolence as such.
Nonviolence as a topic will be resisted strongly in thsi context (this
post), at least probably, and yet clearly (non)violence and the precious
is an issue here, which you wish to bring to crisis, or which you want to
indicate is already a matter of crisis (with which I would agree).

Given somee basis in an opening of nonviolence, one is still left with the
problem of action. This is best addressed (IMO) by asking *how any
decision is made*: for example, how is it decided which restuarnat to go
to? (How this simple example of decision making gets covered over is
itself something that should be taken up topically.) A various play of
forces, sharing information, experience, weighing according to desire,
hunger, taste, preference, strength of preference, etc., ensues. Sometimes
it's hard to decide, sometimes it's easy. The relativism shtick is usually
coming out of a reaction against rule-imposition, which is itself the
falling of nonviolence into "ethics". This is a general syndrome, marked
by a variety of chracteristics which have to be reinterpreted according to
nonviolence and antipolemos in order to get out of the morass. You are
right to question the authenticity of the interloctutor, since he is
probably not being genuine about his own relation ot the precious (the
woman, and what he would do, were it his sister, for example), favoring a
casting of circumstances founded on a polemical reaction against coups in
which people force other people to do things. An ideal of anarchic
relativism is put forward, even when this is clearly not going to be the
case in situations of actual danger, as you rightly point out. (Here we
get a glimpse of just how much of the "left anarchist" thinkings may
operate as let-off valves.) But then, an ideal of the "schizo" is also put
forward, which, again, you rightly characterize in terms of at least the
possibility of genuine danger and a need for protective action. The schizo
herself may, in fact, be reeling from precisely the regime concerning
action and ethics, coups, decision and so forth. This would entail
entering into some encounter/dialogue with the "schizo" (which may or may
not be possible, and may be more or less possible than you may suggest).
Or she may be elsewise situated, in various modes of experience unrelated
to general matters concerning how people act on others either in the name
of (protecting) or in a falling from (abusing/violence) the precious. The
former condition may not be too off the mark. The matter of decision you
point to involves an entire opening of world and experinece, and in
particular, a general conflict between what may reduce the business of
action and what may not. Many "schizos" are often wracked with guilt,
which emerges out of the general regime of ethics in question.

You question ethics according to the business of taking action. You
suspend any question of the institutional, but this is entirely
impossible. The general conflict becomes whether the business of the
weight of action, its gravity of the precious, is to be *finished off* or
*opened up*, given a secondary status or a primary one. Recognizing this
conflict entails at least two things: understanding the matter of
*organizing principles* and understanding the matter of *gravity of the
precious*. If the usual thought concerning what is *action* and what is
not is maintained, things will head in the direction of "finishing off"
and various concomitant institutional and personal solutions. If not, then
a certain kind of thinking and action must obtain a different status than
it currently "enjoys", or rather, suffers. Such thinking is instantiated
in this post and is marked by a definite turn in which the business of the
conflict and/or differrence between "finsihing off" and "opening up" is
itself opened up and not finsihed off; the very topic of "opening
up/finishing off" is part of that instantiation; it is its substance. This
must happen in conjunction with the opening of some thematic/substantive
thinking concerning nonviolation *as such* and/or protection of the
precious and is not reducible to terms like: open/close/gravity.

If these things are clarified, the morass breaks apart, and action, along
the lines provisionally indicated in the simple restaurant example, is
opened up in a manner other than the usual. This action also includes,
intrinsicialy, the idea that the *development of understanding* is itself
actional. This is absolutely intrinsic in this progression of
understanding and one has to take a stand precisely in favor of this. In
any event, action can then be projected and considered according to many
general lines, including but not limited to:

physically apprehending the woman 
considering whether she really is going to go under a car 
considering various knowledges of interlocutors for other possibilities of
   action
addressing institutions more honestly (she is probably in a program of
   some kind)
admitting that apprehending and forcing the woman may involve the police
   and court system
talking to the woman (if she is accessible)
including the woman in your decision making process
offering therapy (which is the development of understanding) to the woman
finding a therapist or yourself becoming a therapist
various varieties of mixed and partial decisions based on testing,
   experiment, experience, referrence to others (outside help)
etc.

I think I haven't at all addressed some aspects of the basics of the
relation to *her* in this. 

TMB