File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_2002/nietzsche.0205, message 8


Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 16:32:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lewis Vella <lewisvella-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: THE EXISTENTIAL TIMES - v.1, #11 (May/15/02)


 
               THE EXISTENTIAL TIMES

        'A Philosophical(?)View from Scratch'
                   Volume 1, #11
 
_________________________________________________
MUSIC PICK OF THE WEEK: Abysis Projects 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheExistentialTimes/message/404
__________________________________________________
AND ONWARD TO THE BIGGER PICTURE:
In the previous Special McNugget Issue I featured an
excerpt from Andre Gorz's 'Ecology as Politics'. What
should be reiterated about his view, I believe, is
that any eco-political stance, however good its
intentions, cannot in itself solve our most serious
problems if it does not address the leading culprit,
that being a growth-oriented economy, be it based in
either a capitalistic or socialistic structure. Until
this type of economy stops dominating modern society
as a whole, no amount of repair or replenishment of
the environment will suffice. Simply put, expansion
cannot go on forever. Whether imposed by man's own
decision or by nature's limitations, a growth-oriented
economy must eventually come to an end, and if we wait
for the latter, more than likely, we shall end with
it. What is needed now is a fundamental change in
ideology, an understanding which will foster the
making of self-contained societies that can subsist
with neither the exploitation of man nor that of the
earth. Mere political battles fought over whether a
certain rainforest should be torn down or not, is not
going to do much in terms of solving the overall
dilemma. In fact, by over-emphasizing any particular
ecological issue, at the expense of failing to derive
a workable synthesis of our existence, the prevailing
understanding of society will remain so biased that it
will continue ceaselessly to accept and promote the
unethical practices inherent in growth-oriented
economies, instead of working together to overcome
them, which we, as rational humans, should be capable
of doing.

What is most important nowadays, I think, is that we
do not lose our individual selves to any of the
various specialized sectors that are required of
modern society, but rather that we maintain our
individual freedom within the infrastructure, that is
by continuously questioning our place in it, and how
the status quo affects not only our present individual
and collective liberties but our future ones as well.
This means when surveying a growth-oriented economy,
we must not only consider its ecological issues, but
also the more immediate affects on human nature
itself. For man is not only a creature of reason, he
also has a transcendent element which he needs to
remain in touch with. If he loses that, the resulting
intrinsic harm done to his faculties will outweigh any
of the good he derives by reason alone. To recall Karl
Jaspers in 'Way to Wisdom': "Man as an empirical
existent in the world is a knowable object. For
example: ethnology apprehends him in diverse racial
types, psychoanalysis apprehends him in his
unconscious and its workings, Marxism as a living
creature producing by his labour, who by production
dominates nature and achieves social progress, and who
can ostensibly achieve perfection in both these
respects." 
(Note: should you delete the word 'Marxism' from the
passage which was written by Jaspers in '51, you can
almost use these same ideals and apply them to what
the 'Global Capitalism' and its powers that be would
like the rest of the world to believe in now, that
being that the technocratic state, with all its
departments of knowledge, shall forever improve the
ecological relationship with our means of production,
thereby allowing us more and more social progress. For
such believe brushes aside the most important question
of how this stabilization is to be achieved, when this
growth-oriented economy of ours is dependent on many
of the earth's dwindling resources which, presently,
are being irreparably damaged, drained, or permanently
destroyed, never ever to be regained. Rather
conveniently, too, it seems this contrived onus of
placing long-term responsibility on the established
other -- the technocratic state whose dominating
concerns favors immediate profits first -- relieves
the common man of his burden, allowing his daily life
to go on hardly disturbed, though not simply because
the problem is not his immediate concern, but rather
because it is to be left virtually out of his reach.)
"Yet," to continue with Jaspers, "all such departments
of knowledge apprehend something about man, some
process which actually takes place, but never man as a
whole. When these methods of inquiry lay claim to to
absolute knowledge of the whole man -- and this they
have all done -- they lose sight of the real man and
go far toward extinguishing their proponent's
consciousness of man and even their own humanity, the
humanity which is freedom and relation to God."

This neglect of the whole, I think, is the world's
biggest problem today, and it seems to only get worse
in our pluralistic society, wherein anything goes as
long as it remains within the restraints of secular
law and order -- a tendency which now seems to serve
more the interests of the growth-oriented economy than
the individual, leaving the problem of personal
identity to oneself or some private institutions. The
net result of this lack of free independent
development integrating with society, is that people
divest themselves of their uniqueness, preferring,
instead, to  conform to the seemingly proven standard
ways to success. However, because these are strictly
quantifiable, goal-oriented successes, they again will
lack the adequate synthesis required to fulfill most
people, leaving us with the kind of empty 'success
stories' I described in the previous TIMES.

An interesting discussion of how the marketplace
presently shapes and possibly alienates our everyday
life-world is presently in progress on the Sartre
list: 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sartre/message/4181
___________________________________________________
HUMOR IN THE SPONTANEOUS AND ABSURD
I should like to clarify that in my lambaste of
stand-up comedy, I was reflecting on the making of the
current popular commercial genre by yet another
service industry gone to excess. The result being a
packaged product dished out to the masses in greater
and greater variety, but less and less substantial
content. All of which no longer makes me laugh or even
engages my interest, basically because even if
something remotely funny should be conceived in it, it
is at once lost in the overly-staged delivery and
reception. In no way were my comments intended to be
taken as an attack on anything genuinely funny, as C.
Bobo obviously took them, that is to have stated that
I reminded him of a fictional character who, as a
result of some mal-adjusted rationality, would rather
destroy the world than to accept the idea that wisdom
presupposes the ability to appreciate humor:  
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheExistentialTimes/message/392

Indeed, when we observe the mundane and ordinary we
find a lot more there that is funny, and in such a
greater way, than most anything intended to make us
laugh. For instance, to watch the wind blow away
someone's hat from within the owner's reach,
repeatedly and without mercy, this, to me, outweighs
comically any possible contrived punch line. To tap
into this type of eternal humor, and present it with
some kind of original, authentic twist, however,
requires a level of genius which may even be
impossible to retain once it has been reached.
Arguably, we find this in the art of Charlie Chaplin,
some of the great comedy teams that followed him, and,
more recently, perhaps in the early films of Woody
Allan, who, incidentally, I've been told, names
Schopenhauer as one of his influences.

Of course, there is also the tragic element in comedy,
which, in the last century, made a definitive entrance
in the theater of the absurd, such as in the works of
Ionesco and Beckett -- an excellent essay on 'Waiting
for Godot', by Michael Sinclair, can be read at the
link below:
http://home.sprintmail.com/~lifeform/godot.txt
Yet, as art and life at a certain level always crosses
over each other, we need only, at any time, take a
closer look amongst us, to dare witness the
tragic-comic side of humanity:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheExistentialTimes/message/402

The sometimes-irksome, sometimes-welcomed hoot, snort,
chuckle, chortle, guffaw, or burst into hysterics
leads  us to the question: Why laughter? To relieve
the pain, maybe? Perhaps. But that, ultimately,
carries us to the more serious proposition: To Laugh
or Not to Laugh?:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheExistentialTimes/message/403
____________________________________________________
McTHOUGHTS ON CENSORSHIP AND PHENOMENOLOGY
My so-called "trip to the porn house", or, at least,
the previous TIMES issue that featured it, might have
since spawned two thoughtful threads. First, from the
Nietzsche List at the Spoon Collective:
"IS THERE ANY WAY WE CAN EXPEL THIS NIEMAN-MARXIST?":
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheExistentialTimes/message/410
Second, from the CreativeGarh list owner, Arun, and 
myself, after the TIMES was not approved for
distribution on the alleged "SEX-FREE FORUM", which
lists 963 members and claims to provide a platform for
creative people to inform of, display, discuss, and
sell ideas and creative services/talent to each other:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheExistentialTimes/message/411

Copyright: 2002 Lewis Vella

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