Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 16:16:35 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: sclerosis, social inertia, money, etc.


Cologne 07-Dec-2003

Henry Sholar <henry-AT-agenceglobal.com> schrieb  Sat, 06 Dec 2003 09:27:15 -0500:

> >ME:
> > I was thinking of the paradigm of exchange in a broader sense as human
> > intercourse.
> HS:
> I think human intercourse works just as well as the other.
>
> Under the sway of Gestell, there are pre-arrangements of exchange 'grounded'
> on a representation of history that pre-determines social relations. This
> from the "social relations" content that can be pulled out of Heidegger
> texts, and this specifically from a reading of "...World Picture." For
> example:
>
>    [Only because and insofar as man actually and essentially has become
> subject is it necessary for him, as a consequence, to confront the explicit
> question: Is it an "I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its
> own arbitrary choosing or as the "we" of society; is it as an individual or
> as a community; is it as a personality within the community or as a mere
> group member in the corporate body; is it as a state and nation and as a
> people or as the common humanity of modern man, that man will and ought to
> be subject that in is modern essence he ALREADY IS? Only where man is
> essentially already subject does there exist the possibiltiy of his slipping
> into the aberration of subjectivism in the sense of individualism. But also,
> only where man REMAINS subject does the positive struggle against
> individualism and for the community as the sphere of those goals that govern
> all achievement and usefulness have any meaning. (TQCT, "Age..." pp132-133)]

('Die Zeit des Weltbildes' (1938) _Holzwege_ 1st. ed. S.85 6th ed. S.90)

My question here and with the other passages you cite is whether "the 'social
relations' content ... can be pulled out of Heidegger texts" or whether it has to be
put in. See below.

> The representation of history, short for the objectifying practices of the
> social sciences, gives an account of the nature of human intercourse. The
> work of representation is a key symptom of the setup. It is key both as to
> things and human being. It is completely alien to the Greeks, the
> medievalists, it is uniquely our own.
>
> [The fundamental even of the modern age is the conquest of the world as
> picture. The word "picture" -Bild- now means the structured image -Gebild-
> that is the creature of man's producing which represents and sets before. In
> such producing, man contends for the position in which he can be that
> particular being who gives the measure and draws up the guidelines for
> everything. (TQCT, "Age... " p134)]

(ibid. S.87/92)

> HS:
> The paradigm of exchange as human intercourse, (and pointedly in your own
> interpretation, viz. Auseinandersetzung) tends to be one of power relations,
> i.e., a struggle of world views. And, I think, that is the point of
> Weltbilder, lifestyles, Weltanschauungen, and the like: there is this
> pseudo-flexibility accessible in the setup, itself the disciplinary leveling
> down under the sway of representation, that sets the stage for the battle of
> worldviews as the tendency to remain within that primary leveling down and
> level down further.

Your interpretation here has more a Foucaultian flavour. How is the theme of
(social) power relations present in the passages you cite and in the entire
Weltbild-Aufsatz? To my ear, it is striking that Heidegger speaks uniformly of "der
Mensch" in laying out the subjectivity in which humankind has been metaphyiscally
positioned in the modern age. "Der Mensch", literally translated, is "the human",
but that makes poor English. This usage of "der Mensch" in the singular in German
means in English "the human in general", i.e. "humankind". Even where Heidegger
explicitly refers to "der Mensch" as "I and you, as we and you" (S.102/108 Addendum
9), it is done only to clarify that the subjectivity of humankind must not be
confused with "subjektiver Egoismus" (S.102/109). And in the passage you cite above,
Heidegger refers to the "we of society" and the "Unwesen des Subjektivismus im Sinne
des Individualismus" ("the perverted essence of subjectivism in the sense of
individualism"). In other words, Heidegger is making sure that the reader
understands his meaning, viz., that subjectivism denotes a "basic position"
(Grundstellung) of (Western-cum-planetary?) humankind as a whole in the metaphysical
history of being.

Does he unfold what the phenomena of "we as society" or "I and you, we and you" look
like in any more detail? No, he doesn't. For him, it's all "der Mensch", connoted to
include whatever plurality he wants to. If one looks through Heidegger's texts on I,
you and we from the twenties on, one finds the most extensive discussion in GA26,
the Leibniz lectures SS 1928, a discussion stimulated by the Auseinandersetzung with
Scheler. But even this most extensive elaboration does not go very far. Heidegger
only repeats several times over the years that Dasein and the Self are the basis for
I and you and we and also for the two genders. But that is only a negative
determination that never becomes positively elaborated.

The same thing holds true also for Heidegger's mention of other social relations
such as economic social relations. In "Wozu Dichter?" he even cites Rilke's
"vibration of money" (_Holzwege_ op. cit. S.269/287 u. S.289/310) and amplifies:

"In the place of what the once granted world-content of things gave out of itself
pushes ever faster, more ruthlessly and more completely the objective character of
the technical domination of the earth. It not only sets up (stellt auf) all beings a
producible (Herstellbares) in the process of production, but it delivers (stellt zu)
the products of production via the market. The human character of humans and the
thingly character of things dissolves within the self-asserting producing
(Herstellen) into the calculated market value of a market that not only encompasses
the earth as world market, but also as the will to will markets (marktet ! ) in the
essence of being and thus brings all beings into the practical action (Handeln) of a
calculating (Rechnen) that rules most tenaciously where it does not require
numbers." (S.270/288)

Notice the words based on 'stellen' and the explicit incorporation of the will to
will which is der Wille zum Herstellen. The Herstellen that asserts itself ever more
has to do so through the dimension of "the calculated market value of a market",
i.e. through things emanating "the vibration of money" and thus "developing a kind
of spirituality which now already exceeds their tangible reality". Here at the
latest one is reminded of the famous Section 4 of the first chapter of _Das Kapital_
on commodity fetishism, where things develop "theological crotchets".

What is this "vibration of money", this peculiar "spiritual" emanation of things as
commodities? Heidegger employs Rilke's turn of poetic phrase and proceeds to subsume
money and the markets it enables under the all-encompassing scope of the Her-stellen
of the Gestell EVEN THOUGH the self-assertion of Herstellen has to rely on the
medium of money and markets in order to "deliver" (zustellen). With this, the
question of money and markets is already taken care of for Heidegger's thinking. As
far as I know and have read, there is nothing further to be found in his one hundred
volumes of Gesamtausgabe. Compare this with the thorough-going analyses of the being
of commodites and money and markets to be found in Marx's _Kapital_, _Grundrisse_,
_Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie_, _Theorien des Mehrwerts_, etc. Even a
superficial acquaintance with Marx's thinking on money will persuade the reader that
Heidegger's treatment of money is rather glib and rather lacking in
unconcealing-power as a philosophical questioning of the phenomenon of money. The
word of the poet, Rilke; is no match for a philosopher's thinking-through of the
phenomenon of money, but Heidegger is content to make do with it. (From the other
side, Marxists get impatient with Marx's subtle depths and accuse those who take on
the philosophical Auseinandersetzung with Marx's thinking on money of being mere
"Marxologists", i.e. Marxists are even more narrow-minded and incapable in their
thinking than loyal adherents to Heidegger.)

What I therefore propose is that the dimension of social market relations has to be
INTERPOSED TRANSVERSELY between Mensch and beings in the relation of Herstellen
(producing, bringing forth into presence). Considering the following diagram:


                             Beings as such
                                   l
                          Vor-  l Her-
                       stellen l stellen
                                   l
                                   l
Mensch ------------ Money ------------- Mensch
                                   l
                                   l
                                   l
                                   l
                                   l
                             Mensch

There is an interlocking of Gestell and Gewinnst, with the latter signifying here
the manifold of social relations enabling gain, and the former signifying the
manifold of possibilities of Her-stellen enabled by technological know-how
(Vor-stellen). Only by interposing a cross-bar in the vertical dimension of
Herstellen is it possible to genuinely consider the social relations of the market
and allow them to come to light as phenomena in their own right. Only through the
mediation of the medium of money, a reified social relation, is capitalist
Herstellen at all possible, both ontically and ontologically. "Money" is not simply
"Herstellen", nor is it simply "Vorstellen"; it is a phenomenon sui generis.

The horizontal social relations among human beings unfold in a multiplicity for
which the use of the singular term, "der Mensch", no longer suffices. "Menschen" now
have to be considered and their social relations. It will not do simply to mention
"I and you, we and you" and subsume these phenomena under the one dimension of
Herstellen.

Heidegger says that the Mensch of subjectivism, of the will to will, is without
protection ("schutzlos" Rilke _Pilgerfahrt_ V.13). "Als der Vor- und Herstellende
steht er [der Mensch] vor dem verstellten Offenen." (S.270/289). Notice that here
there are no less than three 'stellen'-words in a single short sentence. It
translates poorly as "As the being who imagines and produces, the human stands
before the obstucted open."
Vorstellen is how human beings bring beings before themselves in consciousness in a
representing image through "cogitation".
Herstellen is how human beings bring beings forth into presence through making them
(Gk. _poiaesis_).
This Vorstellen and Herstellen as a metaphysical "basic position" of modern
humankind in subjectivism "verstellt" (obstructs) the view of the open, i.e. the
view of the open truth of being as granted by propriation.

But then what about the horizontal relations between and among Mensch und Mensch?
Don't these relations, too, obstruct the view of the open? To get these social
relations explicitly into view, one has to be prepared to twist Heidegger's thinking
away from its exclusive focus on the vertical relation of Mensch und Sein.


> > ME: But okay, the exchange of goods, economic trading, too, is a simple paradigm
>
> > for human intercourse.
> > If "the paradigm of exchange flows in and out of Gestell" for you, then they
> > at
> > least have to be kept distinct in thought (in their respective simple
> > ontological
> > structures). It is the distinctive amalgam of the paradigms of _technae_ and
> > _allagae_ that results in what we experience today as global capitalism.
> HS:
> The history of social capital and technology are so involved with one
> another and so informing of each other's essence that I have to see social
> relations weaving in and out of Gestell.

And this seeing has to be explicit, unfolded.

> The in-piece is our unthought, das Man, going thru the motions,
> free-floating, modern lifestyles. Falling-in-with an Auseinandersetzung as
> competition, that is enframed outside of further considerations than
> "winning."
>
> The out-piece is mostly the "shadow" that Heidegger speaks of in "The Age of
> the World Picture," which is also a sense of denial, and Nothing... and what
> I call "Empty Protest."

With "shadow" you are presumably referring to:
"Ein fluechtiger Wolkenschatten ueber einem verborgenen Land, das ist die
Verduesterung, die jene von der Heilsgewissheit des Christentums vorbereitete
Wahrheit als die Gewissheit der Subjektivitaet ueber ein Ereignis legt, das zu
erfahren ihr verweigert bleibt." (Addendum 9 S.103/109)
"The fleeting shadow of a cloud over a hidden land, that is the darkening which that
truth prepared by the Christian certainty of salvation, as the certainty of
subjectivity, lays over an event (Ereignis) of which it is denied [any] experience."

That's okay for the vertical dimension.

> >ME: Other
> > historical imperialisms and colonialisms (and there have been many over the
> > past two
> > or three millennia) did not lead to such a result. This shows the power
> > (_dynamis_)
> > of the Greek beginning (_archae_) which not only still has its hold on us
> > Westerners
> > after two and a half millennia, but has infiltrated almost every single part
> > of the world.
> HS:
> I keep thinking that what you call "Greek beginning" is what I call
> "European history." There really isn't any capability on our part to do more
> than construct a version of what Plato "means" or Aristotle "means." You, on
> the other hand, have developed an extremely disciplined archaeology from the
> Greeks. Following Heidegger in this way, you bring in the reminders, the
> traces of a pathway that appears to me to be almost a requirement for "the
> step back." But what, besides the denial, the Nothing, the empty protest
> results in the step back, I am not sure.

I don't think we can be sure. We can only inkle, for we do not know where
putting-into-question will lead.

> > ME: The question is where the limit is to be found and drawn in all this
> > limitlessness.
> >
> > Aristotle already posed the question of the limit to money-making
> > (_chraematistikae_), Plato the question of the limit to desire.
> >
> >ME:
> > Would you say that these "cultivations" are "usages" in the sense of:
> > "habitual use,
> > established custom or practice, customary mode of action, on the part of a
> > number of
> > persons; long-continued use or procedure; custom, habit." (OED)?
> >
> > In German the word is 'Brauch' (custom), which is related to 'Gebrauch' (use).
> >
> > Civil society itself is a complex web of usages including the custom that the
> > individual is left a private space in a way not granted in other, more
> > tradition-tied kinds of society. So the choice among given usages is left more
> > open.
> > In the place of tradition and custom step more abstract, more flexible
> > relations of trading.
> HS:
> I am saying that, for example, if for the last 100 years, Swiss school girls
> come home from school and have a snack of bread and chocolate, the "civil
> society" of Suisse will take into account "bread" "chocolate" and "school
> girls" in what would be considered by others to be an idiosyncratic way...
> and, this will create anomalies that affect politics (social/liberal demo
> society) and trade (characteristics of exchange).

Money has the peculiarity that it can buy turkish delight and pistachios in Istanbul
or chocolate and bread in Zuerich. Its very abstractness as a social relation
enables adapability.

In the political realm, by contrast, a law governing the quality of turkish delight
or chocolate in different countries has to be more concrete, that is, it has to be
literally spelt out in the medium of the _logos_, and in differents ways in
different parts of the world.

> >ME:
> > That's the dilemma: the modern age was initiated as a struggle and movement
> > away
> > from the oppressive authority of the Christian world-order. The battle cry of
> > the
> > Enlightenment was "Have the courage to think for yourself!", a call I would
> > still
> > subscribe to today. But then, the individual thus liberated from the bonds of
> > religion is left without orientation and is caught up in the limitless
> > movement of striving-for...
> HS:
> I am more than ambivalent with regard to the Enlightenment: the king aint
> dead, just translated implicitly into the disciplinary society.

We still have social power relations. We still have government. And we also have a
thinking that thinks through and legitimizes certain kinds of social power relations
which are then justified within the thinking of subjectivism.

Heidegger certainly does not want to abolish vertical relations of social power. He
speaks, with echoes of Herakleitean _polemos_ of that Kampf (struggle) in which the
issue of social ranking and rule is decided.

> >ME:
> > The whole issue of Man-sein, of conformity to the others and the a priori loss
> > of
> > selfhood that can only be gained in freeing one's self from the others. This
> > is the
> > deeper dilemma of selfhood, the paradox of the impossible possibility of the
> > inner strength of an individual.
> HS:
> Lately I have been wondering about the 'unity' of Dasein. I take away form
> SuZ a concept of Dasein as nothing but cultural roles played out through the
> skills and practices.
>
> And that's just assuming that their is only one individual "living" within
> the "Self."  What if their are a dozen parts to a Self? or a dozen Selves? I
> expect something like this could prove helpful (the parts of the Self, not
> the 12 selves).

Each existence is its very own, jemeinig, and holds together throughout its own
timespace its own experiences which belong to it as its identity. Identity is to be
understood as Zusammengehoerigkeit, as belonging-together.

> >ME:
> > The mass media give the masses what they want, I'm afraid. People in general
> > cannot
> > stand anything that is too strenuous. The shocking thing is that the ongoing
> > dumbing-down is not imposed just from above. They meet halfway.
> >
> > At least the internet with its millions of nodes offers some kind of
> > alternative,
> > although it too by and large reflects 'mass culture' in its ugliest and
> > crudest
> > form. Still, there are individual niches where a grain of intelligence gets
> > through.
> HS:
> Perhaps as ten years of Aristotle prepares one for Nietzsche, ten years of
> grad research libraries prepares one for the internet and the search
> engines. I experience the same joys of discovery posing searches to the
> engines on this thing as I did roaming the libraries and finding that which
> was opposite ( or that which was slightly more or slightly less) standing
> adjacent to that which I thought I was searching. It is a small example of
> what can take place in bringing language nearer, and slowing down in
> language, which is the way (to language) I take your expositions on the
> Greek words.
>
> >ME:
> > I think it cuts both ways: the opening of world as Gewinnst casts the
> > possibilities
> > inherent in Gestell in its own light. That is the reason why capital and
> > technology
> > are so intimately interrelated. When read ontologically, _Das Kapital_ Band I
> > is
> > very good on showing how the striving to increase monetary gain goes hand in
> > hand with technology-enabled productivity gains.
> >
> > The 'carrying along' you refer to is an ontic movement which can be
> > interpreted as
> > the intermeshing of two ontological structures. This presupposes that thinking
> > works
> > out the ontology of each structure in its own right. Each face or facet of
> > being
> > must be brought out into the open without confusing the one with the other.
> HS:
> Can you say what you are meaning by this multiplicity of ontological
> structures? I know you have three, I know they relate  by way of "person."
> but what is the meta-ontological nature of multiple ontological structures?
>
> I suspect it is given by the Greeks, particularly Aristotle's highly
> sophisticated experiential thinking.

Aristotle's _pollachos legetai to on_ "being is said in many ways" is a hint at the
multiplicity, literally, the many-foldedness of being. Aristotle himself has a
fourfold that is further folded into sub-folds. The four folds are:
i) the categories as ways of addressing beings qua beings (ten or more)
ii) according to _dynamis_/_energeia_/_entelecheia_ (power/power-at-work/having an
end in consummate presence)
iii) according the _alaethes_/_pseudos_, i.e. truth and falsity
iv) according to _kath' auto_/_kata symbebaekos_, i.e. that which presences of
itself and that which 'go along with' (_symbainein_) in presencing with something
else (what is contingent, incidental, coincidental)

Both Plato and Aristotle also explore social relations, i.e. relations of the first
and second person, but neither work out an explicit metaphysics for these social
relations. The question of who-being or whoness (as opposed to whatness, essentia)
arises is asking how I am present and how I bring myself into presence for myself,
and how I present myself to others in a self-showing-off of myself.

Thus, in a certain way, the question of whoness is the 'same' as the question of how
beings come into presence in the third person, but now reflected back and tied back
to the human being as self, which opens up the further question of how we present
our selves to each other (you-and-I, freindship, constitution of a unity as we,
etc.).

What unifies this multiplicity of folds is presence itself -- Anwesen:Anwesendes --
presence:what/who-presence. Presence encompasses all kinds of absence, the
withdrawal of what and who has been, the refusal of what and who is to come, the
presence of what is missing in its absence, etc. etc.

> >ME:
> > This would be the other side of whoness that is released from the striving for
> > measurement against the who-stand and who-status of the other. The self as a
> > genuine who is recovered from the other.
> >
> > There is something analogous already in Aristotle where he sees that _timae_
> > (esteem, regard, honour) and the striving for it (_philotimia_) cannot
> > constitute
> > the good life because _timae_ depends on the other. Therefore he opts for
> > _aretae_,
> > i.e. individual excellence and merit and ability. True friendship, for
> > Aristotle, is
> > the mutual enjoyment and appreciation of each other's excellences.
> >
> > I try to follow up the phenomenon of you-and-I as that scarce presence of
> > worldsharing that takes place in rare moments in the interstices.
> >
> HS:
> This who-status of striving in relation to the who-status of the other is
> called in the US:  "Keeping up with the Joneses." It is a cultural myth dear
> to the hearts of capitalists as the driving force for gain by way of
> inducing envy and covetousness as market value.
>
> The question of who-ness, who-status, and in particular your lessons from
> Aristotle slam into the formidable obstacles of the setup and the opening of
> Weltbild. How do we gain a surety that one's worldsharing of excellences is
> not simply a mutuality in representation, in powered perspective over and
> against other conflicting lifestyles, in the ordered setup?

Probably we cannot gain any surety. All phenomena are ambivalent (cf. the section on
Zweideutigkeit in SuZ), they all have at least two faces.

I call this "Keeping up with the Joneses" in my book "vermessenes Messen der
Werstandskraefte" ("presumptuous measuring of the powers to stand as who"), and
"mutuality in representation" "bestaetigende Bespiegelung" ("confirming/reassuring
mirroring") At first and for the most part, we mirror each other's who-stands
reassuringly whilst at the same time and hiddenly being in competition with the
other's stand as who. To be caught in such a competition of who-stands is to be set
up.

Nevertheless, there is the existential-ontological possibility of
Selbst-Staendigkeit, a standing of one's self that stands in and by itself and is
not lured by the flattery of the others, and maintains an ironic distance from the
games of mutual measuring of who-stands. This is self-irony thought ontologically.

But we can never be sure. What appears to be matter-of-factness may turn out to be
flattery, and what seems to be a genuine appreciation of the other's excellence may
secretly be the most subtle form of flattery. Thus do we live in ambivalence with
each other.

> >ME:
> > Sounds rather masochistic and mea culpa to my ear.
> HS:
> It occasions such ontic manifestations, but I generally refer to it as our
> situatedness. Granting the perspectives of others, in as possible a way as
> one can (standing for, or leaping in front of, I think Heid mentions in SuZ)
> gives  some kind of meaning to the denial.

Yes, the distinction between caring for that leaps in for the other and caring for
that leaps ahead of the other and gives the other back the care for his/her own
existence is crucial.

A caring-for that leaps ahead may only give the other a challenge to stand on
his/her own feet, it may only stimulate and provoke the other's powers of
who-standing in a genuine way.

If I were an entrepreneur who wanted to do some good in the world, I would do
something to encourage small capitalist enterprises in Africa.

> >ME:
> > The individual _archae_ is nimble if it can be aroused.
> HS:
> An excellent point. Arousal is a wonderful work, and the worker always gains
> more than those who are aroused.
>
> >ME:
> > We have to see our own complicity with the phenomenon of productivity
> > increases
> > achieved through giganticism only exemplified by Wal-Mart in the US. Wal-Mart
> > caters
> > to, panders to consumer desire. Consumers want cheap goods, and China is at
> > present
> > the place to have goods manufactured cheaply, just as it was Japan in the
> > sixties, or Mexico five years ago.
> HS:
> Agreed. 'WalMart' is just an interesting trope for what we are grappling
> with, an ontic structure, a cultural Dasein, that plays its role so well in
> the setup. I have only been paying attention to WalMart since I brought it
> up on this list, as more a slur than an example, and yet the more I look at
> WalMart the better it appears an example of how the setup works.
>
> > So Wal-Mart sells cheap textiles, and U.S. consumers are happy. The textiles
> > themselves are shit, but who cares? The people wearing the cheap textiles look
> > like
> > shit, but who cares? One is 'tolerant'. That's what I mean about individual
> > choice.
> > One can refuse shitty consumer goods and insist on spending one's money on
> > selected
> > top-quality, hand-made goods, as far as one can afford it. It doesn't matter
> > in what
> > area one cultivates one's taste for what is genuinely good. It can be Italian
> > fabrics with a fantastic colour, texture and complexity which are very
> > labour-intensive to make, or something completely different. Even when I was a
> > poor
> > student and wore only cheap jeans and t-shirts, and looked a dag, I scraped
> > together
> > enough money to buy bibliophile editions which still grace my bookshelves. In
> > appreciating and esteeming each other's top quality labour we enrich our own
> > lives
> > and enrich the possibilities of labour and, in so doing, may even lessen the
> > exploitative pressure on the earth.
> HS:
> I've not seen many dogs dressed in tee shirts and jeans, that look here runs
> up and down the class structure, well it runs further up only on fridays,
> now designated almost nationwide as "casual" for professional and service
> workers. I am interested in the regimentation of clothes and how clothing is
> a disciplinary form designated according to cultural roles.

I like wearing (selected) neck-ties because it goes so much against today's
regimentation of dress in a 'casual look'.  Apart from that, the European neck-tie
is a fantastically practical invention. Nothing better than a well-tied knot of silk
around one's throat to keep one warm in cold weather. The same applies to the high
arts of the European brimmed hat (e.g. Borsalino) and European (Italian and English)
leather shoes. They are wonderfully suited to the European climate. It's only poor
bankers who suffer the regimentation of having to wear suit and tie.

Is "dag" a word in colloquial American English? I didn't mean "dog".
OED "dag":
4. A ‘character’, an extraordinary person, a ‘tough’ but amusing person (see also
quot. 1941). Austral. and N.Z. slang.
1916 Anzac Book 47 Yes; ’Enessy was a dag if ever there was one!
1931 V. Palmer Separate Lives 222 Chook chuckled suddenly... ‘Ain’t he a dag?’
1940 F. Sargeson Man & Wife (1944) 64 Struth he was a dag, Bill was.
1941 Baker Dict. Austral. Slang 22 Dag, an amusing or eccentric person. Whence, dag
adj., good, excellent: a dag at, expert at.
1945 N.Z. Geographer I. 35 He was a tough old dag, and no mistake.

> >ME:
> > By appreciating the useful things of ordinary daily life rather than treating
> > them
> > with contempt as merely useful things, we can also honour the earth that helps
> > provide them. We can learn a lot about the appreciation of everyday, useful
> > things
> > from the Japanese and the Koreans, for instance. Back in the seventies I used
> > to
> > regularly bake bread in Sydney from the Tassajara Bread Book, a Californian,
> > Buddhist-flavoured publication that splendidly shows you how to lovingly make
> > bread.
> > It's nothing to sneer about, doing simple things like cooking with care.
> HS:
> I have that book, or had it. It is clear to me that a kind of mindfulness
> (even as it is taken as a buzzword in New Age circles) a conscientious
> thoughtfulness in regard to things and one's surroundings is exactly the
> "step back" necessary to transform one's activity from "harried" to
> "nimble."

There is such an incredible lot of New Agey nonsense about. What I do approve of is
some of the very simple insights of Buddhism that stay on an everyday level (without
the esoteric explanations of cosmic energies, powers, and all that other bullshit).

> > ME: That's part of what I mean by niches. In the interstices of massification
> > there is
> > still space for niches. Markets have always been a good place for those quick
> > and
> > inventive ones who can see an opportunity. To be out for gain on a market is
> > not per
> > se reprehensible, even though it seems to be so for apostles of the left and
> > the new left.
> HS:
> I think Michael Staples may have brought up the term "cultural creatives" at
> some point in the past. That designation appears to encompass the kind of
> niche-filling in the market as well as elsewhere in everydayness. I think it
> is an offering of a pro-active resistance to the setup, implicitly, but very
> often gives in to the setup or gets submerged beneath it.
>
> > ME: The individual is a starting-point that has to be cultivated to care for its
>
> > own existence. Not even the Gestell is a match for that.
> >
>
> >ME:
> > An aside: I will never go along with that barbarism of English language that
> > has defaced "media" (and "data") into a singular noun.
> HS:
> Well thank you.  When I was immersed in language and academia, such errors
> as mine above would make my ears (or eyes) bleed as well, but now the
> sloppiness of language and everydayness in the streets has to a certain
> extent blinded and deafened me.
>
> >
> > The flip-side is that the people get the media they deserve. By definition,
> > the mass
> > media are lowest common denominator in their conception. Nonetheless, the
> > quality
> > press is not yet dead, neither in Europe nor in North America. The very medium
> > of
> > TV, based as it is on the image captured by a camera, tendentially degrades
> > language
> > and understanding.
> >
> > In providing images of the world, TV contributes to its audience's easy
> > worldview.
> > If this medium attempts criticism it soon gets too strenuous and the audience
> > switches off. A couple of days ago I heard on national German radio in a
> > program on
> > the media a journalist say, "people want to be entertained and not continually
> > confronted with problems". Spot on!
> >
> > It's only the unlucky rare ones who are exposed to the pain of a question and
> > who
> > therefore do not have a firm ground of Weltanschauung to stand on. That's the
> > kind of elite I would like to see cultivated.
> HS:
> And those are the kinds of "elite moments" I would that we could all
> experience.  Arousal, nimbility, and discovery of the undeserved gift of
> Being are markers on the way through the nihilism, perhaps.
>
> >ME:
> > The acceleration of time through the unrelenting unfolding of the power of
> > technology overwhelms us.
> > Now we've got the Chinese coming on-line in the global capitalist economy.
> > Watch
> > out! The Chinese are ruthless in the pursuit of wealth (they are very good at
> > it),
> > and the neighbouring countries in south-east Asia are pretty scared of the
> > enormous,
> > ever more powerful country to their north. The perturbations in the world
> > economy
> > caused by the entry of China to the world markets (deflationary dangers,
> > industries
> > in trouble in countries with higher labour costs -- even Mexico) have arisen
> > very
> > quickly. There are even thousands of small workshops in China making copies of
> > Mercedes cars and selling them cheaply to the up-and-coming middle class.
> > That's the
> > kind of imitatory thing the Japanese were doing back in the sixties.
> >
> HS:
> The question of the Chinese acceleration, for me, is only added pressure to
> the question of the coming crisis. The global Auseinandersetzung to
> calculate, divvy up, and exploit the inventory of the planet in the current
> setting of the setup is leading to this crisis. I don't think Heidegger
> foresaw this destitute time in terms of depletion, material depletion, but
> his thinking on the challenging-forth of the setup anticipated the
> possibility. How incredible that our prediction and control so
> carefully/carelessly predicts the efficient decline!

Yes, the emergence of China is located within the co-ordinates of Gestell/Gewinnst.

Perhaps we could learn to twist Gestell/Gewinnst into serving each other?

> >ME:
> > No doubt there are hints of Gestell in the Zeuganalyse, even though SuZ
> > focuses on
> > the practical use of useful things and not on their production. Nevertheless,
> > the
> > Zeuganalyse reveals a simple truth that we as human beings are endowed with
> > understanding that can take in how beings offer themselves to us in their
> > usefulness. If we can appreciate these mundane useful things, perhaps we could
> > also
> > be thankful for the opening of being that enables these useful things to be,
> > i.e. to
> > open up as, what they are. That could be one meaning of the care-structure of
> > Dasein.
> >
> > You want to do without the myriad useful things that you use in your daily
> > life? The best course is to practise appreciating them instead.
> HS:
> Oh, I try to appreciate my things and surroundings. It is the one way I can
> practice (and understand) the pagan concept that "everything is alive."
>
> peace,
> henry

For me, that "everything is alive" is a Buddhist precept. It is quite uncanny that
the oldest of all the so-called world religions is the Buddhist insight into
nothing. This nihilist insight soon became religious and deistic, as if people
needed more to hold on to.

Greetings and thanks from Cologne,
Michael
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