From: "John Foster" <borealis-AT-mercuryspeed.com>
Subject: Re: [fyi] What is Realism in Iraq?
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 10:36:50 -0800


Malcolm,

what about my alpaca hand knit socks and sweaters and hats which I put on in
the winter, which were purchased in small shops and at bus stops in the
Sierras?

Denoted by the 'set up' and enframing is that shopping is not much fun at
the Walmarts: too few choices, low quality, and long boring walks to get
that cheap disposable good.

TV, after a while, even CBC, is the same barrage of to much reality in the
form of war lately, now that we have a tougher more invincible dictator on
earth, Bush, who is capable of even using nuclear war heads on civilians in
Iraq.

I went to Penny Pinchers last weekend and wanted to buy some Videos but the
line ups were too long, perhaps 1 or more  hours. Everything in the store
was 50% off, and some things in the store are absolutely new, if not new to
U.

There was some nice solid wood furniture, but I was too late. A lot of stuff
ends up being throw into the dump, and is very good quality. I have an array
of antiques and solid wood furniture from Penny Pinchers which I have
restored and repaired. Some of it is from the 1930's solid wood and veneer
(walnut, mahoganny). I rebuilt this white dresser. I discovered it was thick
knotty pine below, removed that and put a fir panelled top on it. It took 2
years to find one handle for it, but it is complete, and I call it a pine
high boy.

The gestell to me is like  this 'ordered' calculative rationality 'only'
minimizing the 'art work' within, or any 'secondary illusions' arising from
something worked out by hand and meaningful in different
contexts....suggesting of course that particle board furniture is what makes
Walmart profitable (using Medium Density Fiberboard saturated in
Ureaformaldehyde is really good for the sinuses and the environment). In
fact there is no art in it.

It is the same 'calculative rationality' that is used to bomb innocent
people in Bhagdad. Making MDF furniture, swathing down ancient rainforests
with feller bunchers, shipping the fibers to Asia, smacking it together with
formaldehyde resins, and boxing it cartons, shipping it to the districts
where the universitie are located so engineers can get their degrees, and
make more dirty bombs and bullets laced with U-238, and Cruise missiles
(afterall this is the largest single industry in some parts of the US).

It is all the same: destroying rainforests, and bombing Bhagdad three times
since 1990. It all adds up to ecocide and genocide for profits.

chao

John Foster

A conservation worker



----- Original Message -----
From: "Malcolm Riddoch" <m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au>
To: <heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 8:09 AM
Subject: Re: [fyi] What is Realism in Iraq?


>
> On Wednesday, November 19, 2003, at 09:54  PM, Anthony Crifasi wrote:
>
> > Shedding light on Gestell also entails distinguishing it from what it
> > is not.
>
> Gestell is you getting up in the morning and putting on your Gucci
> sunwear, traveling to your paid work using public transport on a
> Mercedes bus burning diesel distilled from Saudi oil, then sitting in
> front of a South Korean manufactured computer all day on the internet
> mailing lists, collecting pay from a teller machine, buying a frozen
> dinner from Wal Mart then watching a satellite tv broadcast on your
> Sony widescreen about the latest casualties in Iraq and willfully
> trying to make sense of the whole business of everydayness by thinking
> 'Gestell means the physical rather than behavioural sciences' before
> slipping into your cheap Chinese made pyjamas, now subject to a tariff,
> setting the digital alarm to CST and getting a few Z's before the whole
> work cycle starts again in the morning. Over and over again.
>
> Gestell is the historically constituted dynamic globalised framework of
> the will to will that constantly sets up everything you do and think
> about, it sets the stage for your own historical world understanding
> and its modern relation to truth. On the perceptual level it sets up
> your historically constituted understanding of material phenomena as
> something 'objectively real' standing over against your merely
> subjective perception. It sets up your self-consciousness as such, as
> the constant repetition of a willed objectification of the earth and
> its calculative thinking that belongs to the nihilistic essence of
> technology. Gestell is a problem of the will to will and scientific
> thinking is just one of its myriad consequences, whether that's
> physical or behavioural science. Everything you do and think about in
> your everyday life is already a part of the 'armament mechanism' of the
> globalised planning calculation of beings as a whole which gives
> historical form to your modernised everyday being in the world. It's
> the totalising cybernetic framework of our current and future global
> reality.
>
> At least that's my reading of it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Malcolm
>
>
>
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>



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