Subject: RE: Boomerang Bill and the Silly Old Fart.
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 16:21:27 +0200
From: "Bakker, R.B.M. de" <R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl>




-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
[mailto:owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU]Namens
GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Verzonden: maandag 7 juni 2004 14:45
Aan: heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
CC: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Onderwerp: Boomerang Bill and the Silly Old Fart.


message dated 07/06/2004 10:58:27 GMT Standard Time, _m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au_ 
(mailto:m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au)  writes:
 
On Monday, June 7, 2004, at 07:30 AM, _GEVANS613-AT-aol.com_ 
(mailto:GEVANS613-AT-aol.com)  wrote:
 
So you want to mount your white horse and attempt to change human nature do  
you?
 
Malcolm:
No, the question is what should the term 'human nature' mean? You could  just 
as easily say that it is in our nature to care for others and safeguard the  
natural world we dwell in for future generations and that self-destruction is 
a  perversion of our nature. 'Human nature' is nothing other than the ability 
to  look to the future and argue about how we should be doing things in the 
present  based on the lessons of the past. Any assertion that our 'nature' is a 
fixed  quality like predation is just that, a bare assertion, not a 
transcendental  absolute. All bare assertions require the power to make them true. 
 
Jud: You are way off beam. The question is what is human nature in the  
context of will to will, and how the concept of their own human nature, and the  
human nature of other humans is perceived. There is a consensus that human  
beings are [and this is a generalisation] greedy, self-centred and not  
particularly concerned with the problems of others. OK. Yes, there are countless  
exceptions to this modus vivendi., there are people genuinely concerned for the  
welfare of others, there are saints as well as sinners, but the negative aspect  
of human nature is born out by the fact that in America the majority of the  
population backed the attack on Eyerack and the VAST MAJORITY of human beings 
in  the developed and third world don't give two damns about the animals that  
suffered and the factory farms and cruelty in transportation between one 
animal  concentration camp and the other.… As you say lower down: 'The evolutionary 
 pinnacle of predation is a mum reaching over to inspect a plastic wrapped 
chunk  of dead flesh with a price tag and bar code attached to it" So who is to 
blame?  The human factory farmers or the farm buildings and the modern 
technological  farm equipment? The Abattoir workers who fire the stun-gun bolts or 
the guns and  bolts? The trucks that haul the dead carcasses from the abattoir 
or the  truck-drivers who drive them? The good old mum who reaches for the dead 
flesh or  the refrigerator in which it displayed? All of the persons involved 
in rearing  the animals and everyone concerned in the chain from farm to 
dinner-plate is  complicit in these crimes. Why? - Because it's 'human nature' to 
put all those  thoughts to the back of the mind and those teeth stuck into the 
dead veins and  tissue on the plate before you. I am not suggesting that 
'human nature' is an  unchanging absolute — but then neither is the will to will a 
permanent fixity of  thought and purpose, which is just another name for 
human nature in its fixed  and persistent intent or purpose mode as I pointed to 
at the outset. 


Rene:  Hi Jud, excellent descriptions of modern technology/busines.
  Right! Will to will  - the self-assured reign of meaninglessness  - is indeed
  nothing unalterable. That's a key for Heidegger! We should 'thank God on our knees'
  that we have technology and meaninglessness as what has developed in *our* history.
  Where would we be else? In unalterable meaninglessness, total in a Nietzschean sense.
  But without being Nietzsche, and that means: we would be nowhere. Very unpleasant
  thought... 

  


What we CAN  talk about though are the strands of persistent and 
reoccurring attitudes which  manifest themselves as part of our animal 
[human] nature — and the surprising  behavioural predictability that can be employed 
in the study of human social  behaviour conduct. But as Husserl correctly 
pointed out — this is sociology —  not philosophy.
 
The will to will, or in plain English - 'an ongoing fixity and persistent  
intent of thought or purpose,' is only metaphysical as part of the cognitive  
rigidity of metaphysicalists
 
Malcolm:
Your 'plain English' is never plain to me but rather a mixed bag of  
nominalist contortions salted with psychologism and peppered with rhetorical  
ejaculations. Generally a gobbledegook, at least that's how it reads to  me.
 
Jud: 
Pray inform me what is difficult for you to understand in the sentence: 'an  
ongoing fixity and persistent intent of thought or purpose, ' is only  
metaphysical as part of the cognitive rigidity of metaphysicalists? I know you  
treasure your chthonic connection with the eternal father buried in Messkirch  
churchyard, but try to understand that for a non-metaphysician like me it is  
possible to talk of the human beings involved in [say] the production of animals  
for the plate without being lumbered like you with an ongoing metaphysical  
fixity and persistent intent of thought or purpose which entails the  
introduction of fanciful 'ontological' analysis aimed at blaming the fat  producing 
technology of the cattle feed instead of the cattle feeder, the  technology of 
killing to be found in the abattoirs instead of the killers, the  technology of 
the distribution networks instead of the distributors, the  technology of the 
retail outlet rather than the retailers, and the consumer  goods rather than 
the consumer. Watch my lips - It's the human beings' fault —  not the 
technology. 



 
The question posed was: 'What is so different with Iraq? Both Nietzsche and  
Heidegger urged subjugation by action by the strong over the weak.
 
 
Malcolm:
No, subjugation was a problem according to Heidegger, and its origin is the  
metaphysics of subjectness but as you refuse to read him and only want to mine 
 bits and pieces of his text for your rhetorical anti-Hun writing I don't 
imagine  that will make any sense to you either.
 
Jud: 
I read him a lot  in order to combat him as you well know. My writing  is not 
anti-Hun — it's Anti-Heidegger and anti-hypocrisy. Pray explain then why,  
[if he had 'problems' with the subjection of others he treated his colleagues as 
 if they had just crawled from beneath a rock during his Rectorate? Why if  
conquest of others was a problem did Heidegger exhort the young cannon-fodder  
from the Heimat in his audience to serve the fatherland, if only that the  
fatherland might successful subjugate those that they triumphed over? Why, in  
the full knowledge of what Hitler had spelt out concerning what he intended to  
do with the Jews i. e., eliminate them — is that not subjugation for Christ's  
sake? Where was the 'problem' in that for Heidegger? The only 'problem' it 
seems  to me is that it wasn't happening quick enough for him, and his 
tear-arsing  around the country attending Nazi meetings and giving up his spare time in 
 organising quasi-military weekend camps [if you had a uniform you had to 
wear  it] bears testimony to his complete immersion in the sort of activity 
calculated  to get the 'subjugation-show' on the road. Perhaps you are in the 
possession of  something nobody else knows — that Heidegger was a pacifist or 
something? If so  you've certainly hit the research jackpot and it'll make you 
famous overnight?  Where diid you find this piece of arcanum? Metaphysics of 
subjectness? There is  nothing METAPHYSICAL about subjecting someone, or being 
subjected to being  herded, or herding someone into a gas chamber — what was the 
silly old Nazi  prick talking about?
 
Malcolm in the bowels of Christ THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 'GLOBAL POWER'  and 
'it' certainly doesn't have a 'brain' which is capable of exercising an  
ongoing fixity of purpose.
 
Malcolm:
Your quasi nominalism constantly reduces you to absurdity and I understand  
you can only read everyone else through your absurd AIT lens which leads you to 
 conclude that it is everyone else that is absurd. From the other side of 
this  dialogue however I can assure you that I find you as ludicrously pointless 
as  you must do me.
 
Jud: 
Your quasi Heideggerianism constantly reduces you to absurdity and I  
understand you can only read everyone else through your absurd transcendentalist  
lens which leads you to conclude that it is everyone else that is absurd. From  
the other side of this dialogue however I can assure you that I find you as  
ludicrously pointless as you must do me.
 
Jud:
the problem facing humanity is humanity not technology ... It is the way  
that humanity uses technology that counts — you can either use a boomerang to  
scratch your back or you can throw it and kill people.
 
Malcolm: 
Boomerangs were used for killing game and for ceremonial purposes, they  were 
part of the tool set of traditional Aboriginal peoples who generally lived  
in a very stable complementary relationship with their lands. 
 
Jud: Interesting stuff indeed but nevertheless it was a remarkable piece of  
TECHNOLOGY which could be used to kill or be used for peaceful purposes [sport 
,  etc.]


Rene: Here could be seen in a flash: it all depends on what techne and logos are.
   In the QCT is shown a way from causality, as the essence of technological
   thinking - to another way things (and man) might belong together. With the Greeks,
   things and men were thought not primarily as causes and effects, but they OWED
   what they were to more encompassing happenings. See the silver plate: when it
   has its function, its essence, in a lastly in a relation of earth and sky, 
   that is not stated, but given shape, hervorgebracht, produced as in Pindaros,
   or any local cult, it can never ever become a Campbell soupcan. But when it gets 
   isolated from its context, because this is itself a finite one, then also the 
   producing and use of it become isolated, an isolation that cannot but increase 
   and demand an isolated, un-conscious, 'human' partaker. I think one cannot hold
   the porn actors responsible, they are as irresponsible as the obesive. 
   But sure the malice is there.

   It is his *opinion*, said H, that our constellation (Gestell) still now has sthing to 
   do with the Greek constellation, esp. on account of the enormity of its destructive 
   power (which is incomparable to anything before; it also does not lead to real mastery).
   By taking BOTH into view at the same time, a possible way can be gone that envisions
   the special meaninglessness of our history, gone global. This he thought possible,
   but not more than that, in 1933. The coincidence of his discovery of the origin of
   European nihilism, together with a revolution in Germany, the country of metaphysics,
   was just too great for him, not to succumb to the temptation to take part. Surely after
   his passivity in the Great War. Mein Kampf just belonged to the gigantic heap of 
   political propaganda, that he did (and could) not pay attention to. He better could
   have spent half an hour reading Mein Kampf though, and 
    
   Socrates admired the hands of Alcibiades, without thinking, of what they
   could do. 
   If we cannot grant this, Heidegger has also nothing to grant us, punctum. 
   
   cheers
   rene







 The ancestor of the boomerang is the Killing-stick and the 
aboriginals  knew the Killing-sticks well before the boomerang. But these killing 
machines  were known elsewhere. Indeed some have been excavations in Florida and 
north  Europe, in the tomb of the Pharaohs, some have find some have been dated 
to more  than 3000-years old. Curved sticks being used for the hunting of 
birds are  frequently represented on the frescos of old Egypt and rupestral 
engravings in  the Sahara. Thus, it is with the Killing-sticks that the aboriginals 
drove out  their enemies and not with the boomerang. The Killing-stick is 
larger and  heavier than the boomerang, moreover it is unable to return. The point 
remains  that it is a piece of technology that can be used to kill or for 
play. You can't  blame the boomerang or the killing-stick if it used for evil 
purposes — its the  guy who throws it — the ONTIC human being who throws the 
ONTIC boomerang or  ONTIC killing stick.
 
Malcolm:
Nowadays the boomerang equivalent for us moderns is a shopping trolley in  
the meat section of a supermarket tied into local and international distribution 
 channels to industrial abattoirs, meat farms, the industrial cereal 
agriculture  that feeds the meat, logistical transport systems, the energy 
infrastructure  that powers it all and provides the fertilizers, a biochemical industry 
to  provide antibiotics, a banking and corporate system to finance the whole  
shebang, a government legislature to regulate it and armies of workers and  
managers to keep the meat moving onto the shelves day in day out.
 
Jud: 
Interesting stuff and I agree with every word.
 
Malcolm: 
The evolutionary pinnacle of predation is a mum reaching over to inspect a  
plastic wrapped chunk of dead flesh with a price tag and bar code attached to  
it. This act requires a very complex global network of technological 
innovation  to support it, it requires a whole way of life as an 'equipmental totality 
of  relations'. Jud: This act requires a very complex humanly directed global  
network of humanly created technological innovation to support it, it 
requires a  whole way of human life as an 'human/equipmental totality of relations'. 
 
Malcolm: Part of Heidegger's question about technology is that it has  become 
so complex and interwoven that the old notion that humans merely use  
technology to shape a chaotic world in their image overlooks the possibility  that it 
is the technological setup itself that forms how we already understand  the 
world within which we use technology.
 
Jud: 
Heidegger was speaking rubbish as usual. The communication that we enjoy at  
the touch of a key, the films that we view from our cinema seats, the 
transport  we use to move around, whether we bike-it to the corner shop or fly to 
Timbuktu,  the supermarket we wander through packed with a myriad of goods from 
all corners  of the earth, are just a more sophisticated versions of the markets 
of the Greek  agora, of the passing-on of messages by word of mouth, the 
reading of papyri  with their hand-drawn illustrations, and the horse-drawn carts 
and  donkey-carriages and ships that were used to travel about in the ancient 
world.  Why should the technological setup of the ancient world affect people  
differently in any age? Humankind adjusts to its environment as history  
flows on. People are better informed now because of technology, in less pain,  
healthier, live longer, travel further, have more security [unless you have a  
brown face and there is oil underfoot] The old arch-conservative and reactionary 
 Heidegger was simply a peasant from the sticks — he wasn't used to all the  
noise of the big city, but grew up in a milieu where lads and maids danced  
around the maypole, and  horses and carts clip-clopped by with their cargo  of 
mangel-wurzels, their drivers asleep at the reins.  He reacted  against the 
urban frenzy of the university towns and the apparent chaos.  Physically he was 
an ailing runt from the sticks overwhelmed by the noise of the  traffic — the 
fumes and the clatter of typewriters. He would have been happier  if he had 
stayed in Messkirch and had taken over his dad's job of yanking on  church bells 
and pulled the ropes and pulled his wire in the quietude of  the cool dark 
interior of the belltower.
 
Malcolm: 
Your assertion that 'it is the way that humanity uses technology that  
counts' doesn't take this possibility of a 'technological understanding' into  
account and merely subscribes reason and/or instinct as the arbiter of our use  of 
technology. Your analogies are far too simplistic for me and I find  
Heidegger's problem concerning technology infinitely more philosophical.
 
Jud: 
What are we supposed to do?  Go around smashing the looms and putting  
hammers through monitor screens?  Rip up railway tracks and throw dentist  chairs on 
the rubbish heap — pull all the plugs that feed the stock exchange and  burn 
the moguls at the stake?  The man was a headbanging looney!   There will be 
reason and unreasoned use of technology in any age [Greek fire,  siege engines, 
beaked Triremes, etc.]. Why? Because some HUMANS are reasonable  and others 
aren't. You can't blame the technology all the time, in spite of the  fact that 
it cannot answer back, because technology DOESN'T REASON - HUMANS  DO. It 
there is any unreason to discuss it is Heidegger's lack of it in relation  to 
technology. Maybe he thought the shoah could be blamed on the chambers and  the 
ovens rather than the people [the ONTIC NAZI PEOPLE] who organised and  operated 
them? 
Henry's: 'narrative which weaves itself into the popular consciousness' is  a 
HUMAN narrative - not a 'technological' one - you cannot blame the  
technological medium for the human message. 
 
Cheers,
 
Jud
 
Nullius in Verba

_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_ 
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm) 
JUD  EVANS - XVANS XPERIENTIALISM



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