From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 19:05:45 EDT
Subject: Re: Boomerang Bill and the Silly Old Fart.


In a message dated 07/06/2004 20:48:15 GMT Standard Time,  
m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au writes:


On  Monday, June 7, 2004, at 08:44  PM, GEVANS613-AT-aol.com wrote:

>  Malcolm:
> 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.

Malcolm:
Yes, and it is precisely in the context of the will to will that all  
bare assertions require the power to make them true.
 
Jud:
Obsequiously speaking,  I do really enjoy your writing and your  clarity.  I 
don't mind the odd bit of banter,
and I wish you to know just  in case you weren't already aware, that  
anything I say is only in fun and is 
NEVER to be taken seriously, and is certainly not meant to be hurtful.  I 
don't know if you have met many scousers in your time
[lots have emigrated to Aussieland] this is the way we are — just a fact of  
life like the nose on your face.
No amount of money or 'book larnin' changes us, we always remain  scoffing 
bastards until just before they hammer down the lid.
Don't be surprised if after my death you discover that my last words were:  
'Heidegger was a bastard!'  ;-)
 
And now to business...

Jud:
Surely you mean: 'acquire the power' here? 
I'll drop the nominalist thing for a moment and say that it is  possible to 
'make things happen.'
I' m not sure though that by making things happen one makes things  true?
If when young I devote all my energies to becoming a train-driver, and by  
dint of dedication and perseverance [a collation of WtP and WtW]
I eventually achieve my objective — what does that make true?  My  youthful 
dreams? Have my dreams come true?
There may when be a miss-match between my youthful dreams and the reality  of 
adult life on the footplate? The boiler may explode and scald my pretty face  
someone might be having an affair with my wife whilst I am away on the 
Edinburgh  run? The job might affect my lungs and do terrible damage to me 
physically? 



> 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.


Malcolm:
A consensus of belief in the truth of a bare assertion would be  
compelling for me depending on whose consensus it is and the reasoning  
behind it.
 
Jud:
I'm talking PITS-talk here [people on the street] The number of  times the 
phrase: 'he's only after his own good,' 
and similar talk is legion, and the fact that people may be Christians or  
Shintoists or whatever doesn't seem to make any difference.
My experience has been that most folks look after number one first, family  
and loved ones next ...and then whatever..
 
Malcolm:
There are lots of beliefs backed by consensus, such as the 
belief in  the rather pagan Christian god for instance, or in the still 
amazingly  persistent US belief that Hussein had WMD. Your 
generalisation that human  nature is founded on greed and self-interest 
is nothing other than a bare  faced belief, a dogma. There are a 
multitude of motivations in constant flux  for every peoples all over 
this world, from greed, grief, hatred and anger  to happiness, 
generosity, kindness and love. In a sense human history is  this 
constant play of feeling or mood and their associated actions, a  
consensus of mood is what Nietzsche calls the herd. So far in our  
historical struggles greed seems to be predominant but that does not  
make it a principle of human nature, on the contrary, I'd say it's a  
symptom of our utter collective ignorance.
 
Jud:
Yeah - I suppose your right now you put it that way — its a very  subjective 
business anyway I guess.


> 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.

Depends really on what you mean by  'human nature' and 'attitude.' 
Humanity has traditionally been conceived as  not merely beastly but 
also rational, the animal rationale, a thinking  beast. You can go and 
do some polls and get back to the list on your  sociological research, 
and I'd definitely find that interesting, or we can  talk 
philosophically about what defining humanity as the 'thinking beast'  
actually means, how moods are a form of fundamental understanding, and  
how will to power functions as the form of historical relations between  
peoples. The latter is a phenomenological way of talking about our  
current situation, it's certainly a mode of philosophy as I understand  
it.
 
Jud:
I was thinking of the way that psychologists and psychiatrists can slot  
patients into various categories
[I'm still sitting on my nominalist hat here] and can more or less predict  
certain behaviour extrapolated from 
formulaic categories based upon precedent, experience and statistical  data.  
Humans DO tend to behave in similar ways
and DO tend to conform to societal mores and rules. It is possible to make  
intelligent guesses as to the future behaviour of people if you biff them on 
the  nose, call them a moron or slag off their wife.  Human behaviour in the  
workplace is fairly predictable too — competition for promotion, tittle-tattle  
about colleagues, sly digs concerning competitors to gain advantage, etc. 
Freud  claimed that human nature was all about sex - I don't believe that — 
although I  believe sex plays a major role. Kudos is important — particularly in 
young  males.
Perhaps we could say that the will to will is reflected in varying types of  
human behaviour [a plethora of motivations] but that EVERY human
being manifests some sort variable of the will to will?  I can't  conceive of 
anybody not believing in SOMETHING or not CARING about something  enough can 
you?
I mean even HABIT is a kind of will to will, like putting the cat out  every 
night or voting labour year after year.

> 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?

Malcolm:
Ok, I can't read it for one ... your use of the language is a bit  
stilted for me, and I don't really have any specific idea of what you  
mean by 'cognitive rigidity' 
 
Jud:
Analyse the two words then stick it together
'Cognitive' means: Of or being or relating to or involving cognition, which  
is the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning.
And rigidity means: the quality of being rigid and rigorously severe.
 
So cognitive rigidity' means: thinking in a severe unbending way. Sticking  
to one's opinion, 
 
So the complete sentence becomes: 'an


'An ongoing fixity and persistent intent of thought or purpose, ' is only  
'metaphysical' as part of the thinking in a severe and unbending way   of 
metaphysicalists?'
 
Now slot this back into its context and we get:
 
 
 
'An ongoing fixity and persistent intent of thought or purpose, ' is only  
'metaphysical' as part of the thinking in a severe and unbending way   of 
metaphysicalists?'  ...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... '

 



Malcolm:
or how you're using the term 
'metaphysical' in relation to will as 'an  ongoing fixity and persistent 
intent of thought or purpose'. As to the  latter phrase why not simply 
use 'will'? The will to will would then be 'an  ongoing fixity and 
persistent intent of thought or purpose' whose purpose  would be to 
intend 'an ongoing fixity and persistent intent of thought or  purpose'. 
For me the self-sufficient purposelessness of the 'will to will'  is a 
much more succinct way of formulating this dynamic notion of  willing.

Then you would have: The will to will 'is only metaphysical as  part of 
the cognitive rigidity of metaphysicalists'. I guess you're saying  
something like 'will' is unproblematic except when it is artificially  
thematised by deluded academics? 
 
Jud:
No, I am not saying that - I am saying that  'will' is only  metaphysical   
when it is artificially 
thematised  by metaphysicalist academics — not deluded ones —  for though 
all  metaphysicalist academics are deluded — some deluded academics are not  
metaphysicians. ;-)
 
 
 Malcolm:
I find you difficult to translate Jud, 
but I think your notion that  'will' is something self-evidently 
unproblematic is rather  problematic.
 
Jud:
I am not saying that will is 'unproblematic' I am saying that 'will' does  
not exist and that only the willer exists.
Just like 'Global Power,'  'will'  doesn't exist —  its the  guys that wield 
the Global Power, and the guy or gal that wills that exists NOT  THE WILL 
ITSELF..
 
Malcolm:
In Heidegger's terms the will to 
will is metaphysical in that it  provides its own grounds for being true 
and truth becomes something willed,  truth becomes self assertion. 
Actually your own assertions are a good  example of the self assertive 
metaphysical will to will and its truths, as  are mine.
 
Jud:
Then Heidegger is speaking a load of nonsense — there is NO SUCH THING as  
'metaphysicality' or 'the metaphysical.'
All is physical — the physical willer wills, and the Globally dispersed  
power brokers broke.
The whole business of 'Metaphysics' is the biggest con-trick perpetrated by  
so few on so many in the history of human thinking.

> The  ancestor of the boomerang is the Killing-stick and the
> aboriginals knew  the Killing-sticks well before the boomerang.

Depends really, there are a  number of 'boomerang' styles used by 
various language groups over a long  period of time, they all generally 
refer to the killing or throwing stick as  far as I know. The returning 
boomerang is/was a specialised ceremonial  throwing stick, it wasn't 
traditionally widely in use outside the northern  regions if I remember 
correctly.
 
Jud:
That reminds me [seriously] someone who used to be on this list went to  
deliver a lecture in Australia and brought me back a present of a purse made  out
of a kangaroo's scrotum. You being an Aussie and all, and the only one I  
know,  I always think of you when I'm rooting for small change.   ;-)

> 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:
Sure, but the killing stick is one implement that itself is  only 
meaningfully useful in relation to the whole toolset and way of life of  
traditional Aboriginal peoples. Take it out of that lived context and  
you've got a couple of Wodgellas babbling about museum pieces or banana  
shaped nylon frisbees. I guess you'll insist that your utilitarian  
interpretation of the killing stick is the most relevant one, but what  
I'm interested in is how this notion of 'utilitarianism' already frames  
how you understand an everyday implement like the boomerang. That's a  
philosophical question by the way, straight out of 'Being and Time'.
 
Jud:
My relationship with objects comports with my nominalistic  phenomenology.
Because I hold that they are the only things that actually exist in the  
world - I generally 
have a very close relationship with them and can become easily emotionally  
attached to them.
I loved my yacht [now gone] [see my webpage - 'Living on a Boat, 
 
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/florry019.htm_ 
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/florry019.htm) 
 
I am very attached to my car.
As well as old books, I see familiar objects as old friends - I'm a hoarder  
of items of memorabilia.
I have a respect for tools [I do a lot of DIY] and look after them and  
prefer to fix them if they break rather than replace them.
The pen I use [an old Parker] I've had for over 50-years.  Apart from  
paintings and a few other works of art [sculptures, ceramics etc., I don't  have 
many things
of beauty in my home.  The walls are all painted white [in every room]  and 
the objects and artefacts I value are all things that can be utilised  for a 
purpose.
My walls groan with the weight of books and I am sure that one day the  
ceilings will collapse and the contents of the loft will come crashing down [all  
books].

> 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?


Malcolm:
The notion that technology sets up the meaningful context  within which 
we live and use technological things to manipulate nature  doesn't 
require that we all become Luddites. It's a misreading of Heidegger  to 
suggest that he was anti-technology. The problem concerning technology  
is all about trying to understand how modern globalising technological  
civilisation is founded on a modern understanding of the world that is  
not simply rational and utilitarian. It's Heidegger's contention that  
our modern understanding is itself framed by the world disclosed 
through  technology and its complex networks, what later Heidegger 
called the  cybernetic order.'
 
Jud:
The technological world in which we find ourselves is TWTWI [the way the  
world is]
The world is not rational and utilitarian because PEOPLE are not rational  
and utilitarian.
There IS NO  'modern understanding of the world that is not simply  rational 
and utilitarian'
THERE ARE ONLY human beings who abide in the world who are simply  not 
rational and utilitarian in their understanding of the world.
Heidegger turns everything wrong way up like it was Alice in Wonderland or  
something?
The world doesn't make us — we make [shape] the world. In the last 69  years 
that I've been around,  the world has changed tremendously
but it not THE WORLD that has done the changing - IT is me [to a  minuscule 
extent] and the billions of my generational human  contemporaries all over the 
globe.  'America' didn't attack Iraq - it was  THE AMERICANS.

> 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.].


Malcolm:
Neither is this a question of the reasonable or unreasonable  use of 
technology, especially given that 'unreason' is merely another form  of 
reason, just as irrationality presumes rationality. It's about that  
understanding of the world that sets up the non-rational meaningful  
context within which we can make reasonable use of technological  things.
 
Jud:
Now you are talking sense by identifying that it is the way that  HUMANS  
understand/misunderstand the world
that sets up the non-rational meaningful context within which we can make  
reasonable/unreasonable use of technological things.
All this Global Power and will to will business is a load of old malarkey —  
it's all down to the way that humans think and act.
Britain didn't drop a bomb on Baghdad - British human pilots did, and if  
there were any unmanned technological flying bombs that
killed the Iraqi citizens, they were ordered, manufactured, and guided to  
their targets by Britons - not by Britain.


> 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.

Malcolm:
Well done, and I agree so long as we don't reduce the notion of reason  
down to pure calculation and the algorithms used in AI and robotics  
research. Things don't think, humans do, and we also feel, and these  
feelings and thoughts are always meaningful in one sense or another  
depending on the lived context. It's that lived context that's  
interesting though don't you think? This material world of 
technological  things and ways of doing business within which we live 
out our busy lives.  What would reason be without this lived world that 
makes one reasoned  response more or less meaningful than another?


Jud:
I totally agree.
 

> 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.


Malcolm:
Maybe we live in a technological medium that frames the meaning  of the 
messages we send to one another? 
 
 
Jud:
No, speaking for myself my content and modus operandi hasn't changed much  
from my snail-mail days, I had an d still have many correspondents all over the  
world, though most have now got computers.  I still prefer a solid bit of  
paper in my hand though and the thought that the person licked the stamps and  
sealed the envelope endows the letter with a more human dimension, a certain  
tactility that is missing from the cybermail. There are certain 'conventions'  
concerning net behaviour — and the anonymity does impart a certain security  
which sometimes results in laxity of gentlemanly behaviour and basic human  
politeness. [Yes, I am guilty too.]
 
Malcolm:
That's an open ended question again, 
no doubt for you we're just using  this internet to communicate about a 
world that is self evidently just a  bunch of stuff being kicked around 
by masses of thinking animals, us manic  predator apes. And you'd be 
right of course, I'm just interested in what  that objectively 
self-evident world view actually means.
 
Jud:
Constant reassurance, confirmation and substantiation that my nominalistic  
stance is the only correct one. ;-)

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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