Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 11:56:35 -0600
From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: libidinal ethics


fuller wrote:
 
It is not that someone is/not right/wrong, but that there are those that
hold *certain* the belief that they are/not right or wrong. Certainty is
the belief each party held in his/her view, the point I was going to
make previously was that this certainty normally operates as an absolute
(like a flower bending towards the sun, ie people fly planes into
buildings).

 Which is why I see certainty as the mother of all dead ends. Also when
you speak of libidinal ethics I think it is dangerous, for some people
could think they are partaking in a Badiou-ethical-Truth, when all they
are doing is remaining certain, like certain in the desire for glory in
the eyes of God.

Glen,

Pesonally, I confess to not being very certain about much of anything,
but I recognise there are blind spots; some can last a decade, others a
lifetime.  To a certain extent, I believe our ability to see the other
helps us to see ourselves, but it is more a hall of mirrors that the
house of language.

Aside from this, it is the true believers and fundamentalists who scare
me a lot more than the skeptics and agnostics.  I think of a line from
the movie "Legally Blonde":  "People who work out are high on
endorphines and not likely to kill anyone."

That is my hope, I guess.  More than people with certainty, I want to
see people who are alive. Less husks and empty shells; less remote
control puppets.

That is why I will never make my peace with the world. There will always
be a differend between it and I. I carry within me too many alien
desires that simply stand ajar. This world will never be my home. Too
much of what we call our humanity is simply a form of extraction. A
theft of the soul. 

Does this make me human or inhuman? There is the paradox.

The inhuman/human make strange bedfellows. They have made me who I am
today, ambivalent and uncertain, but naked and alive. In me the green
sap rises towards an ignorant sun. That is a kind of bliss in that.

eric