Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 16:01:12 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: silence/self



Don/All,

Comments at **

Don wrote Eric,:

> Thanks for supplying the relevant passages, Eric.
>
> Sometimes I find myself choosing R.D. Laing over Lacan if
> only because the latter presupposes the fragmentation of self
> as irreparable, or that selfhood is itself fragmentation, and
> because what he sees as a fact of human nature, I prefer to
> consider a consequence of our conflicted social relations.
** IMHO, social relations ":are" human nature.  Without care of children the
species would cease to exist.

> In Lacan's view, we are all bound to lose in our struggle for
> wholeness, and analysis is used for little other than to show
> us how and why.
>
> While this may be an accurate theory, it appears to leave us
> with too little recourse.
>
> There is, I think, a utopian hope implicit in language
> itself, the promise of a community of speech open and
> meaningful to everyone.
**Some persons may find this hope, others may not.  True, language,  in a
sense has a "life" of its own irrespective of individuals who speak -  is
more or less immortal as artifact.  but is lifeless unless learned and
practiced by human beings..

> Does this mean that we are compelled to either share a
> universal Reason or to hold no reasoning in common at all;
> either to decipher from where another might be coming or
> headed, or to deny the uniqueness of a position by subsuming
> it within our own jargon; either to enlist others in the
> service of our private ends or to regard them with some kind
> of detachment as anonymous shells who offer little more than
> irrelevant commitments?
**If others are anonymous shells to our "selves", we must be anonymous
shelll
to them.  Perhaps universal Reason is an ephemeral vapor or wave.  If not
part of language there would be no access to it. If part of language it may
be meaningful to curious humans.

>
> Is the issue simply black and white?  Do we stand either with
> others or on the outside?  Eventually, we can learn to read
> Finnegans Wake, or we can remain on the outside, reliant or
> even interested in nothing so much as our own language game.
> Are these our only choices?
** The smallest community is mother and child.  Mammals are born helpless
and dependent on others.  Read the labels on the clothes you wear, the foods
you eat to see how we depend on others.  Read and view the media to see how
believers
are betrayed by priests, how stockholders are betrayed by CEO's and
accountants, how giant corporations break laws and suffer only trivial
penalties.  Or, on a more personal basis, review broken marriages or
intimate relationships of persons you know best...were there other choices?
"Do we stand either with  others or on the outside?"  Yes.  Can we endure
without others? No.

>
> This points to the problem I have with Pragmatists such as
> Rorty, for example, they seem too ready to turn away, I
> think, from the possibility of creating new and more
> inclusive language games, or even tentative connections where
> none existed before.
>
> And this performs a certain violence on the utopian hope of
> language itself.
>
> Yet there is a similar connection to be made, however, with
> questions about what may or may not be at the heart of what
> Lacan, Derrida, or even Jung get at, as if once we attain
> that understanding, their words can be kicked away like no
> longer needed ladders.  And perhaps this is especially true
> or imperative with regard to any presumed limits one might
> find mytho/muthological thinking restricted to.
**Yes, who knows what all the above were trying to get at, and how it
compares with the ten commandments of other mytho-theological concepts?
These ruminations suggest the question:  What is an intelligence.  Religion
gave us the intelligence of God.  Did God create Nature or did Nature, via
humans, create God?.  Ever human since Adam and Eve was God's creation,  or
Nature's intelligence applied through the genes to produce human
intelligence.
>

> What if, instead, we learned to somehow encourage one another
> to work at overturning prevailing wisdoms, if only on the
> basis of our own experience, to be somehow less afraid to
> make categorical mistakes, confusing what we read in one
> language game with what we have read in another--confusing
> contexts sustained by our buddies with those sustained by
> recognized 'heavy weight' thinkers.
** Specifically........ ??
>
> Perhaps, this is but idle dreaming.  We all have to learn to
> cope, don't we?  Sometimes our experience, our voice is
> deemed irrelevant.  So what do we do?  Must we always,
> inevitably, extract what may be a more real self, even a
> version of self to which we have made our deepest
> commitments, from a more useful if only because merely
> strategic persona?
**How could one's self be more "real"?  Every day a self  is more
experienced.than yesterday.  Yes, there are multiple versions of each self,
we live with
self-contradictions.  Sometimes we learn to cope, sometimes not, sometimes
we change the deepest commitments for good or ill.

>
> To what extent have how many of us here, for an immediate
> example, willingly conflated if not lost distinctions between
> role and self under the impact of institutional authority?
**Sure - giving one's life for one's country.   Killing fellow-humans (with
God's blessings) for one's country.

> At any rate, I see the internalization of an oppressive
> public role as capable of fostering something like
> schizophrenia, or R.D. Laing's "divided self," leaving us
> looking down from a growing distance upon our own lives,
> which as a result become, in a way, "other," the creation and
> property of others.
**War is only one public role.  The Spectacle, the endless propaganda of the
media to capture consumer dollars is oppressive.  It destroyed charitable
hospitals
and medical care, is ruining schools, buying sports stadia with taxpayer
dollars, relieving the wealthy of tax burdens, etc, etc.

regards,
Hugh
>
> --Don
>