Performance Ontology

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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Quick side note, in the comment I made above I said you didn’t explain VO which wasn’t exactly correct because you referred me to some links which I did read and I’ve been looking into the site regularly since. I just don’t really feel comfortable saying I understand what you mean by VO, and I usually feel it best to have my thoughts tested on their own terms. Anyway, that is just an aside.

I did feel an influence from the way you spoke of values. (Another aside, I’m not reading Sterne by the way…, focus is very important, the object under focus becomes “all” for us insofar as Being is encapsulated in temporal incidents.) The way Lys brought up Baudrillard’s theory of the production and commercialization of values puts a spin on Nietzsche’s “most spiritual will to power”. It’s like a system staffing a factory with philosophical laborers to imbue objects, expressions, acts, and situations with new values, then public relations associates, social scientists and engineers go to work to set up a structure which guides people into both actions and ways of perceiving those actions…

Today I was out for a walk and, this is a common thought of mine, I thinking how every last bit of space is designated, and it is either impossible or else seems like madness to use any of the space in a manner that it was not designated for… I also considered what was said in this thread about the power of words, and how we’ve created rules and laws and “set them in stone”, so to speak… it just struck me that this situation might be irreversible, because even in the case that all thumos is unleashed, the vying for power will continue until an equalibrium is met, and it is very likely that those in the position of power will impose new ‘law’ to consolidate their rule. It would seem that the only thing that might counter this trend is a mass aristocracy, which is really just a figment of the imagination.

I sometimes wonder if the second best scenario would be becoming an outlaw, but I do not think there will ever be a system that did not constrain power or “greatness”, all those figures were outlaws in one sense or another.

This sounds like nearly the entire modern world to me. I’ve recently taken a few trips through Europe and even though the history here is so powerful it seems like very few people care for it besides as a facebook photo, or a way to sell cheap trinkets. I always found myself trying to wander off the beaten track, but mostly I would spend my time in empty places. It was still majestic, but it is strange to see that majesty becoming something like a ghost town. I can’t help but think it was also the culture that was alive, the life itself which really gave these places their majesty which we look back on today. I am ashamed to admit it but I even felt myself becoming disgusted with some cultural relics the way they have become tourist traps, but worse than just being tourist traps is that you can tell the show that is being put on isn’t really felt anymore. It would be one thing for people to flock to see the work of spirit on fire, and it is another thing to see what was once the work of spirit degraded by cynicism and profiteering.

(On a side note, the lord-vassal relationship you speak of between Netherlands and the US brings to mind the book Nomos of the Earth by Carl Schmitt where he describes the rise of the “New World” (“discovered” in the Atlantic) rising to global hegemony, the new world order, as he calls it. I think H.G. Wells might have coined the term first, he also worked to lay the foundations for the League of Nations which later became the United Nations…)

The way you describe the Netherlands reminds me of Canada, or at least Toronto where I moved away from to come and experience the culture here in Europe. I am not sure if I noticed fear in the people. I think that, as far as multiculturalism goes, it has possibly been most “successful” in Toronto. It is definitely a farcry from the cultures being “alive” the way they would once have been in their natural states, I just mean that the blending has taken place to a degree that all of the cultures interact and feed off of each other with very few obstructions. I found the people mostly shallow, perhaps friendly but mainly self-interested.

Another thing that interested me about this thread was that it seemed to desire to point to a philosophy of deeds. I feel like this is what existentialism should have been but was not, almost like a story, but one that is not yet told but is waiting to be written by action.

Do you think there is a place where you will find humans you can value? You know about the mal de siècle? Chateaubriand? I think we are trapped in a state that is the same ever since the Romantic era, where the nature of deeds seem to be changing.

Above there was the quote from Zizek about Bill Gates, and that really exemplifies it well, except the quote focused on him being a potentially devious nerd, whereas I think the reality is his deeds, his posture (not the way he sits or comports himself, although that too).

I have another idea which I call habitual education. The way we are educated, in chairs (mainly) taking in information, it is a habitual preparation for a way of life, and when we are educated to institutional life we are habituated to the modes and behaviors of the institutions. Yes, it is an act of strength to break through our old habits and create new ones, but education is significant. Some here elevate genetics to the highest, but I don’t think that is true because even the strong and the brilliant act in the institutions, and that is our education — it is more than that too, because as material factors determine “effectiveness” it might suddenly become more evolutionarily stable to be lazy and operate a drone than to endure intense physical training and reject all institutions…

This is why I am interested in a philosophy of the deed, or performance. I think at the bottom we seek the same thing, perhaps we are separated by our vision, and even sometimes misled by rhetorical choices (?)

Thanks for putting it succinctly in that way, I had a feeling you were describing an epistemology as well, it was actually how I was seeing it which also made me a little unsure if I was missing something.

When you say

you mean something like the perciever incorporates the ‘other’ (and the other’s values) into his relational pattern of knowledge by a web spun in the pattern of the self-valuing, that would be what you call the explicit function (I mean the relational positioning of the unit of knowledge within the greater “web” of knowledge?)

The way I am understanding “self-valuing” is that self valuing is something we cannot help but do, but it is expressed in diverse, sometimes indirect ways. Above I said people in Torono were self-interested, that is a form of self-valuing, but as I am understanding your meaning, it is not the epitome of self-valuing, it is merely one expression. By the same measure, one might express curiosity towards others or new things, even selflessness, but it is part of the web of knowledge-meaning the individual has created by their implicit-/-explicit functioning, which subsequently is translated into deed.

(I am a bit sleepy, but what is this translating of the deed, not merely of the value-to-deed transfer, but simply what we call thought to deed, because not all thought becomes deed. What is it that makes a particular thought or impulse become deeds and not others?)

One may seek to know the objective reality, and perhaps come to know it by greater or lesser degrees of success, but the valuing engenders a certain formation of meanings (from interacting with the world and interpolating the data into the web of knowledge) which is taken by the mind (unconscious -/- conscious) to form the basis of further judgement.

Am I on the right track? In any case, as an epistemology or ontology of valuing it is potentially vital for a philosophy of the deed.

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Let me get some coffee and go into your comments AP. I think you’re on the right track.

Yes indeed, the one who signifies the new law must be ouside of the old law. In the end aristocracy of some form will be the only way in whcih this planet is kept stable. My trust in ‘normal people’ has evaporated in as far as it was ever there. ot my faith in their capacity to run their ownlives when given a chance, but their willingness to think and to act on thought. This is non existent in the vast majority and this will ot change. Humans are not a thinking species, in general. They need to be led. But the mistake has been to let them lead themselves. Democracy has fallen into the hands of those who understood first the true nature of the ‘voting subject’ - a lazy, sensationalist no thinking person whose onl;y goal; is to be seduced by the most voluptuous promise. Representative democracy is a sham, has nohing to do with Greek democracy, which was simply a civil agreement amongst the aristocracy.

On the other hand we are the masses under a forming monetary aristocracy - the proper aim would be to usurp that proto-aristocracy by means of philosophy. Not to level the way for the masses to set down some form of anarchist utopia - that would end up much like the practices of Pol Pot.

Sloterdijk makes a good point about the economy of rage that spawns these resentful masses, which is in turn the effect of an economy of privilege, whcih is an inescapable fact of life.
We’ve got to come to terms with the fact that life is never equally distributed, without seeing that as an excuse for the most degenerate criminal type to usurp all riches. Inequality and ethics. Christ and then Marx have made this quite a difficult concept to work with. Which is their good right.

That is how I fee as well - visiting the Notre Dame or even the Île de la Cité in general is like visiting a very monotonous zoo with only one type of animal - a specific very boring ape. The same goes for any museumor artifact in Europe. The oly exception I know is the old Forum Romanum - somehow these ruins are so unworldly beautiful and have been central to so much conquest and bloodshed that they arent quite touched by the rabble and the exploiters as much - Possibly ethics behind them are jst too far removed from what can be grasped or even perceived now. The temple of Jupiter stays somehow clean of the rabble’s gaze.

Ive heard that about Toronto before. That would be like Amsterdam in the 90’s somewhat. Before the muslim population grew to be about half the city. There is no real diversity here, only a division into two groups and some smaller groups that get stuck between the rotestant-dutch and the muslim-dutch. Often thesesmaller groups, Indonesians, Surinamers, some latin groups - are the most authentic. The indigenous dutch population has been more or less ruined as a producer of culture. It went quite fast. Within 20 years.

That has to become the central point.

Interesting suggestion.
I do think there is such a place - more to the East and South of Europe - and also within America, in it’s most hedonistic parts, where there is at least no hypocrisy about it - and where it is at least done right.
That true sickness is the will to be hedonist but not having the wealth or power or quality of culture and civilization to make life interesting for a hedonist. Amsterdam in decay is hardly Rome in decay. It is still protestant, twitchy, self-suspicious, mistrustful of every excess - and this while living only for that excess. I dont doubt this goes on in other places as well - Id recently visited Madrid, it seemed to be in the earlier stages of this process, I could almost smell the ten years they had ahead of them. I wont be visiting there any time soon.

London on the other hand was a relief. It’s ahead of Amsterdam, much more interestig to begin with, and actually has a class of wealth that officially runs the central district of the city - a class that also benefits from keeping the city in some ways classical. In Holland the upper class is still petit-bourgeoise, still essentially rabble in taste.

It speaks volumes that Holland has the relative lowest amount of foreign students of European nations. No sensible being has an interest to come study here for more than a semester. Intellect is scorned, very explicitly.
So it’s not hopeless for me - there are plenty of places that I know to be better.

Yes, I agree to this direction. That is the only ‘way out’ or ‘way in’. The act is the only true attribute of selfvaluing; itdeparts from the selfvaluing and if successful feedsback into to it. Ifnotsuccessful, it alters the selfvaluing, sometimes disintegrating it.

It does not have to be knowledge, it can simply be experience or even just ‘appropriation’ or even ‘response pattern’ - but other than that, yes. His relational pattern appropriates whatever presents itself in order that he may relate to it - as, in terms of his interactions, he is nothing but such a pattern. He must stick to his pattern or cease to exist - as such.

Breaking such a patrern can result in rebirth as a new type ofperson, itcan alsolead to insanityand easily to death.
I think that the tribal use of ayahuasca and drugslike that is aimed at breakingdowenthis pattern and re-establishing a greater one. Thi obviously has to be done underguidance of someonw who already ahs that larger pattern ready. Many people go down the drain by using psychedelic drugs and not havinganythingto replace their shatteredrelational patterns.

We are making a revaluation of values one ofat the most fundamental layers of consciousness. The crucial thing to keep in mind is thatself-valuing is not a ptroduct of a specifictype of consciousness or ofconsciousness at all – to give, and to relate to much that is ‘out there’ is just as much selfvaluing as sitting in a house withthe blinds closed is -in effect it is a more powerful selfvaluing that appropriates more worlds. I think it is in this sense that we should understand “What doesnt kill me makes me stronger”.

I am in agreement here - I’ll charge it a bit for the sake of the argument - valuing is a deed - we can not perceive without acting- we can not be neutral. All our interpretingis acting.
From this we see that being equals acting- and here we can also observe how conscious acting and being are being exterminated by objectifying and universalizing value judgments. Consciousness itself is being eliminated from/by means of modernity - as soon as within a group ofhumans a typoe of judgment prevails absolutely, these humans cease to conscious beings.

I wonder in what way we can relate the act to consciousess - or in what way we can separate it.
I feel this is where a philosophy of the act should make its terrain - consciousness in the act, of the act, by the act -

self-valuing through conscious action is surely the only way to define such a self-valuing, to define being - ‘to imprint being on becoming’ - to alue consciousness itself in terms of ones self-valuing, ‘ontological action’ - thus perhaps to draw conasciousness into the act, rather than to act from a gathered consciousness. Thisis a reversal typical for what happens when you employ VO. It alters the relations within our grammar, it alters grammar itself - it alters the relation of perspective, action and object. It is therefore that it is such a uniquely practical ontology - it breaks through much of the limits we’ve set by the particular organization of our language.

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I’d like to see the scholar get a potato off the ground.

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[dp]

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Would that arouse you in some peculiar way?

But philosophy has less to do with scholarship than with action. It is validated/falsified by the latter, not by the former.

As we can see thoughout this board and KTS, VO is already an action, a self perpetuating action that now captures the minds of increasing numbers. Some it captures in understanding, others in a kind of negative idolatry, in any case it is acting upon these minds, I am acting upon them, shaping them.

In 2006 Ive acomplished a pivot in societal ethics through mass media, but quickly found out that actions there do not have lasting recognizable consequences. Clearly defined efforts lead to alienating results. I withdrew, focused on music and then got drawn back into philosophy. Philosophy and science are the only ‘acting solids’.

Scholarship and philosophy

The only aspect of scholarship that really matters to philosophy is developed taste. This is how it has its impact. Scholarschip is of course a type of valuing, a filtering - it takes the consequences of creative actions into itself in a selective manner and shapes new images of it. Scholars are image creators, even if often the images turn out vague and dusty - every now and then a scholar manages to put together a remarkably crisp picture of the work of scientists or philosophers - and compels a fresh thought process. Lamperts work on Nietzsche is impressive in this regard - though still hard to access for me, I prefer to read philosophers, not about them. I think Leo Strauss might be something different from a scholar - he seems to be more a strategist, someone who causes men to act.

Scholars of science need to be far more modest than scholars of philosophy - Im talking about philosophy in general. The scholar who approaches value ontology needs to be as dilligent as the one who approaches Relativity - absolute exactitude is required. This is why statistical and generalizing analysis does not apply.

It is still very new for the human to approach himself with a logical exactitude without relinquishing any of his human, unfathomable quality. Man has always or at least since Socrates believed these two to be contradictory; that knowledge would tame instinct - but we now know that the two ultimately harness each other.

This, AP, is the main aspect of our case for action from philosophy - to resolve the dichotomy between instinct and knowledge, between ‘beast’ and ‘god’ -
Therefore taste must count as the fundamental aspect of political self-valuing, as action from principle.

The fundamental nature of this aspect has been largely disgregarded by philosophers until Nietzsche. It is perhaps Nietzsche’s most courageous and important ‘find’, and the golden thread throughout his work. And it is precisely concerning this aspect that I have been struggling for a common ground, and why a number of my VO based collaborations have turned sour. Differences in taste are irreconcilable, as they should be - if we disregard taste we disregard the value our life has to us, we directly negate our selfvaluing.

“Right action” - the enjoyment of expelling the tasteless from the garden.

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I have tried to respond to Jakob as well as Phoneutria here. Hoh hoh.

I am going to assume this comment is to us. While I understand you’re being satirical and your comment is something like the “counting angels on pin heads” comment, what you’re implying is what I am getting at as well, and I am pretty sure it is Jakob’s concern as well (though we have to ask him). And I don’t mean how to answer that question…

But I don’t see your implication was reason to throw the project out the window and “get out and act” by any means, for many reasons, one I tried to point to above about how when space becomes designated and institutionalized, one can only act within preprescribed rules or else become an outlaw.

I don’t think either Jakob or I have abanadoned the ‘eternal search for the good’, this is part of philosophical preparation, but ultimately all action is a leap of faith, because the future cannot be perfectly discerned and even the best laid plans can be laid to waste.

As Jakob also alluded to with his comment about the tribal use of ayahuasca, the role of philosophy is opening the mind and helping it to see more clearly, particularly into undefined areas. That is of particular importance to me, finding wiggle room. I think I wouldn’t even be so aesthetically disturbed even with brutalist architecture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture) if I knew it wasn’t set in stone.

This is also what Jakob is getting at when he writes

then in light of this other comment

A philosophical question arises, because what is being spoken of is laying down a judgement and codifying a law, but, as stated in the first comment, if the judgement prevails absolutely people cease to become conscious, they no longer create… laws have a way of becoming rigid.

As it is, lawyers and judges interpret the law and in that process of interpretation there is wiggle room. I think what Jakob might be implying is that the aristocracy will interpret the laws, form them and so forth. I’ll be honest and say as it strikes me (if I am here correct) this may be a point of disagreement between us — like I said above, I think our goal is the same, to make room for new action, but our visions and the mechanics behind them may differ. I’m perhaps being a little presumptuous here but it’s mainly for illustration.

The reason that is significant for the discussion is because very few acts are made in total isolation, great or small. Because society has designated codes (laws, social norms, even just definitions, job descriptions and duties, etc.) there are few people who desire to speak outside of that code — to a great degree that is what we are doing on this forum.

I am pretty sure that both Jakob and I, and it seemed like even Lys was agreed on this from her comment about motivation, the content of action will be different for differing individuals, in other words, we do not seek a homogenous judgement, particularly not one written in stone, but if I am gathering correctly, that is not a reason to reject an attempt to come to a consensus for the sake of an action, as we agree in the state of Becoming, such action is not binding.

The “space between” when it comes to things like ontology and epistemology is for the sake of establishing ways of seeing, a helpful epistemology would be akin to a pair of goggles, and ontology might, for example, be a defining of the contours of a thing, and in the particular case I am talking about now, the better to see the crevices in which to crawl through, or even to spot a good place to set up camp.

The relation of act to consciousness is like what Heidegger calls thrownness, it is the arrival of the conscious perceiver. As a baby, in our first instants of thrownness, our self-valuing is innate and its expression instinctual. This is a lead in to what I referred to as habitual education. In
‘common understanding’ as we grow up we are introduced to the world, to language, to customs, etc. We don’t need to consider, for example, that ‘food is food’, we are habituated to the knowledge of food: the particular forms, the sign used to designate the category.

This is, I think, why what we are doing might be perceived as counting the number of angels on a pin. The thing is that our interaction with the world is not so simple as being given our nutritious food which we eat and be done with it, and this is particularly the case when it comes to customs, which are subject to change, because they are merely customary, do not even need to be followed, like a law for example. If we imagine a case that we all agree on it, and all agree that it is good, it is still no guarentee that it will be followed.

The main enterprise of a philosophy of the act has been historically encompassed in something called by the Greek phronesis, practical intelligence. It is for the most part considered something impossible to theorize, in fact it is the place of action beyond all theory, it is the part of action in the world which theory can never know, it is action’s meeting with contingency, and also the expression of the action, in a sense it is the grace of a graceful movement, the cleverness of a clever phrase, the care of a stealthful movement. It is also related to what is called emergence, and emergence is another attempt to locate the root of phronesis, but also to track feedback loops of the sort Jakob referred to earlier, I can’t find the quote at the moment, but he spoke about value-action remaking and remoulding itself by existing, testing the world and in that sense being tested.

(Side note, at times this test does not result in a development of the value — what is the cause of value rigidity in instances where the value has proven misplaced? Is this the rank of values. Such a value might not wish to be relinquished and will continue to test itself against new scenarios or conceive of new modes to express itself, this I think is the reason for the philosophy of the deed, because of what I mentioned earlier about the mal de siècle and the changing nature of deeds. This is also, by the way, an inner conflict of realist idealism, the realist stance must know and accept the reality while the idealism seeks to create something which was not yet there, and at the moment of ideal conception does not know whether it is compatible with contingency. — it is also this reason why I find Jakobs conception of VO important, the self-valuation wishes to know itself, it wishes to know when and why it values, this is humanity’s eternal “search for meaning”.)

Anyway, to wrap up, self-valuing, as I am seeing it, is already inherent in our being, it is what is referred to as an instinctual drive, or more precisely, it is the natural way the drive operates, but being a drive it is blind to the world, it is us, but as sensing beings we are also the vehicle. We never know the world all at once, we uncover it. We uncover our fallacies and we uncover our limitations, and at times it is revealed to us that our will is refuted.

So, while I might say I am ready to undergo my habitual training program to phronesis, which would also be called “trial and error”, I would like to work on the program first, because possessing intelligence I am cautious enough to avoid trying situations of extreme danger and I still would like to get a better look at those “spaces between” before I begin a mad dash.

I will add though that a large part of my thought is the recording and trasmission of history, namely “our” history, history of deeds of acts of course, but also thoughts and creation.

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Caution: Serious philosophers at work. Much ado about…something.

Just poking some fun at you. Carry on.

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Lol. This is what you get on a philosophy site nowadays. When you practice philosophy, you are ridiculed. I even got PM’s from mr reasonable about how I should just be hedonist and not try to take my intellect too seriously or something to that extent. I thanked him, for most folks that’s good advice. It is for him, no doubt.

In the meantime, in the shadows all these self-proclaimed Forest Gump type folks are discussing self-valuing amongst each other. Some people even migrated to other forums to discuss it in my absence, as they had tried to humiliate me and ended up realizing VO is unassailable.

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I’m glad you said this because this is exactly what I was thinking, particularly “And it is precisely concerning this aspect that I have been struggling for a common ground, and why a number of my VO based collaborations have turned sour. Differences in taste are irreconcilable, as they should be - if we disregard taste we disregard the value our life has to us, we directly negate our selfvaluing.”

This is a great lead in to something else I wanted to bring forward. Action Phoneutria’s post alluded to (sort of like, just pick the up the potato already) is, beyond an incredibly simple action, also action of an individual. We are working with meaning because our intentions are of a social-political nature, we wish to develop and share meaning.

What you said about taste is a large reason that I try to be political with my speech, I avoid the conflict not because I think conflict is bad but because in an order of rank I sense our agreement is for something higher, that is what I was getting at in the post immediately above when I brought up my disagreement as an illustration, and when I said that acting in concert is non-binding, that after we have come together, discussed and acted we will remain individuals, and our “irreconcilable differences” are not socially damaging, at least not on the surface :laughing: . This is part of sovereignty.

Another thing I was thinking of, is that we agree on action, which is broad and “open”, and we agree that motivations and valuations of people individuals differ and conflict (regardless of their relative foolishness, etc.) In the current social makeup, money is one (perhaps the main) way that this is looked after. One can do anything with money, it is wizardry, and it allows action to remain sovereign while differences abound, but, as Lys was pointing out in a great part of this thread, money is part of a web of signs that have come to usurp reality and render our entry into the simulacra (the network of conventional designations) fluid.

So the strategy seems to be a ‘regrounding in nature’, including valuing from nature. The tricky fact is that creating conventions is natural for humans, and is a result of designating and sharing meaning, repetition and habituation.

Because social action and exchange is often either architectonic, or action within the bounds of the constructed realm (that we agree or disagree on meaning, we are separated or brought together, we act in concert or in opposition) these will be issues to deal with.

P.S. Anyone read Habermas? I’m actually beginning to read a book by him now and it struck me that his writing is very relevant to the discussion and deals with the communicative aspect of action.

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To be honest, the most reliable mechanics I have come across is the propagation of value ontology. Only an organized adherence to this philosophy is what I would consider a viable aristocracy at this point. That has less to do with my fierce pride in my work and more with the perfect absence of other viable ideas for organizing humanity in a non-degenerative way.

Not that VO explicitly commands a type of politics - again it does so implicitly.
It is a work of binding peoples souls together - and in this way binding peoples souls to themselves – as per what I explained yesterday.

It is. And I keep coming back here after I decide again that it’s not worth it - it is worth it. I just have to be extremely selective and sharp in terms of - indeed taste, in this case intellectual standards. It is evident that modernity scorns the intellect, but the intellect is unassailable and its masterful employment breeds great resentment amongst those who’d rather that everyone just drinks beer, gets himself laid and eats a grilled cheese sandwich and nothing beyond that.

This is part of the fun though. I keep forgetting it’s nice to stir up some shit in these muddy pits, these paralyzed minds that might one day become active springs.
A bit of a metaphor mesh there, granted.

Well it is definitely the most paralyzing attitude to take on to think that one must a priori agree on the course of action even if that course has not even been set out yet. I’ve fallen out with different types of people who kept demanding that I make VO action-ready before they even understood what it is. As soon as they do understand they realize that everything has always been action ready but they were asleep. This is a first step. Waking up. Most who clamor for action have not the faintest clue what they would like to do, or even accomplish.

I know quite well what sort of things I want to accomplish, but there is no straight line from here to there. There is only the option of increasing the circumference of this central thought, to increase the field wherein selfvaluing is understood as ‘sacred’ - wherein the will is retrieved, man is retrieved, the zombie is overcome.

At this stage we are battling zombies, where possible turning them back into men. I need to learn to enjoy that, as ugly as the sight of a zombie is.

The central merit to me is it allowing for contours to be drawn without violating the integrity of what is outlined. This means to allow for the emerging of natural order, proper, dynamic, fluxing ad intertwining order - a ‘body’ - where things are subservient to one another because that is how they best self-value. The idea of the happy servant must return. In this sense the philosopher is always the example - the tireless working without material or social recompense - in fact to the effect of alienation and sometimes to the point of starvation - but all in perfect happiness. “The be able to command one has to know how to serve” - and one has to glimpse perhaps that to provide valuable service is the most excellent position for command. The army is perhaps the only institution that still holds to this principle. This shows us the length of the road we have to travel yet. In many cases the role of the army is precisely the problem. And the army is omnipotent as the principle of service has fallen away - also due to Bernays ideological hedonism and self-servingness - and thus power has fallen away - there is no way to organize without people who are happy to serve.

But there is never an objective good, there is never a full agreement across the board - all such attempts ultimately end up in violent disagreement. What is necessary first of all is that all agree to disagree. My self-valuing ethics gives an indication of how I see this.

From the given of difference, alliances can be forged. But all fertile alliances are formed directly from consciously and deeply shared values - no fertile alliances are formed from predicated values to which everyone is supposed to agree.

We can not forge the world into our desired form - we can only evoke a whole new world, consisting of many vigorous worlds of happy instinct, to arise and push out the old world ‘over the edges of the Earth’ as it were. I believe the much lamented present world order is highly corrosive, over time the effort of sustaining it will become less attractive than the work of weaving the new snakes skin. This present skin will be shed - there can be no doubt about it. But only when a new skin has been made ready. This is the work I perceive myself as doing - and being successful at - and this is why I have such immutable peace even in my aggressive nature.

This is indeed exactly what I was talking about. Can you give some more information on this term, for example where and by whom it was used?

The pure realist is always wrong because the world as he knows it has receded into history; the pure idealist is always wrong because the world he sees does not exist - what is required is a speculative ethics, as Parodites calls it. Both to ‘craftily expect what is yet unseen’ - in this sense to dig it up out of mere possibility - and to know what is knowable, so as to know also what is yet unknown - and uncertain - and can thus be influenced.

To disclose rather than to chase.
Realism never stands by itself - it is always a function of a goal, very often of an ideal. Take Mohammed, who was a realist and in this way established his ideal - but also Hitler - and very many others.

But as you can see from these examples I give - idealism is just not viable to me, unless it is strictly oriented on disclosing and making available very tangible values.
the only ideal I have is an increase of conscious action on the planet. This life will never be amidst perfect ideals, it will be a constant struggle, contest, ‘agon’ - and this is why it is good. What is being killed by modernity is precisely this struggle - or mans capacity ‘might/right’ to engage in it as himself.

In the past this was called a military education. And I think it still best starts with ‘martial arts’ - in the broad sense. Strategy, tactics, techniques, practice them, engage those who practice them as well, and seek experienced teachers in these fields. It is a matter of acquiring suppleness, flexibility, alertness.

I expect our greatest difference is related to my focus on martiality. But I urge you to take it in the broadest sense, as simply appropriating action. On the other hand I can surely be taught some very different angles.

The bottom line regarding my individual tastes is that I like only strong willed humans. This is my ‘vice’, my prejudice, my ideology. This is why I trust in the propagation of VO as a means to further my own values; it is impossible to understand VO for a weak willed human. It requires the total affirmation of ones own will (not tied to martiality) - to be a conscious self-valuing is not yet to be conscious of being a self-valuing. It is this ‘species’ which I seek to ‘create’, dig up, bring together out of the mass of humanity - it is thus what I mean with Humanarchy (and in this sense Humanarchy could be identified as ideological) - the exalted power that resides in humanity is like the gold that resides in stone. And this exalted power has no requirement of ideals - it sets goals precisely according to its strength, it has no dishonesty here, requires no dishonesty to itself about itself. It can simply spend itself, which is what I admire - overflowing. This is the aristocracy I would like to see arise - a ruling class guided principally by the drive to bring forth, to create, to ennoble and to enrich. I think this is a perfectly realistic aim, as only in this scheme the wretched will be content to be lowly and not in power - as soon as the notion of scarcity in and poorliness of the Earthly human spirit was invented (perhaps by Socrates? In any case propagated in Christianity) and the imperial masses ceased to believe in Earthly nobility, the way was free for the wretched and poor of spirit to command the proceedings on Earth.

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Yes - but the approach is very different from a classical culture. We are basically inhabiting the internet - our species excepting dramatic changes will continue to cultivate it as its habitat, and education has not yet entered the frame except as demagoguery - as it always does at first.

The principle of selfvaling comes in handy as a contextualizing clarifier. It refers the individual to his interpretative faculties, helps him set up an awareness of this interpretorship as a proper, flesh and blood identity. It thus protects him from base egomaniac bias and searches aimed strictly as validation - - it is already validated, and it perceives its choosing. This is the mark of culture. Listening to oneself with a sense of critical aesthetics. This is growth, as in a thread of pressure being refined and sharpened so that it can rise quick and swift through society and arise at the top where its contents are spilled across the surface and seep down into the depths via the eyes, ears and noses of those who are ‘worthy of it’ - who can value it in their terms without undoing the integrity of either the gift or themselves. Selecting of type not by extracting the type but by reaching it in a thereby forged isolation, a moment of singularity, a flattening of the ancient context to an extra dimension - freedom taken by those who know to spend it well, disregarded by those to whom it is revealed as a burden.

My working view is that would aspire to the higher quite naturally, if some errors are resolved in the heads of the great human family. Some errors concerning equality, but also regarding objectivity, but also regarding whim. The three pertain to politics, science and economics respectively.

Yes… money is the first derivative of value.
Value is not physical (it is attribution, a web, threads to enclose what is encountered in the space of self-valuing), and neither is money.
Money is the manifestation of value-as-such, and its form is arbitrary as long as the web is spun and for the spider to encounter the Real in terms of its values.
The spider queen in the money web is a subject for other, uglier threads.

Interest is the second derivative of value. This can not even be made physical - it is wholly arbitrary, and has no direct connection to self-value except in a completely new type of being, a being conditional to capital as as the money type is conditional to trade - and here is where it gets supercharged with danger, as the type that can afford and desire this type of self-valuing (growing by borrowing) is rare. The story of Venice and the beginning of the regrouping of the Jewish culture is of course tied to this, but it is mainly the story of a certain opportune type, that can not be disregarded as it is evolutions next step. It is what politics still has to come to terms with, what still has to come to terms with itself, what has to derive a politics from its actions. And its actions have been plenty, it is now for the politics to be formulated. A limit must be posited to the things from which such increase can be expected that interest rates on investments are a valid gamble. To truly mater the market and use it ass a tool, man must abandon speculation on loss. Insurance companies need to disappear. The state must provide insurance by the natural profitability of its voluntary human resources. Hospitals need to be payed for by the government entirely. In this way all disease industries will die out. Etcetera.

If the roots can be called the strategy of the tree - then yes, I like this. Rooting as strategy - this applies much to what I deleted from my earlier post, “Cheng Hsin” - coming to terms with gravity as the source of power, force. Relaxation and gravity - these two could be said to apply well to VO. Nothing is fixed, except that basic consequentiality. Where Will to Power was still more of an ascending Helios who also has to go down, self-valuings is the Earth itself from which all good spawns because all bad falls. Until the bad was artificially elevated to the status of good. The possibility of this was already planted with aristocracies of blood - it only became deliberate with the aristocracy of the weak.

It must die out, the question is only how much of us dies out with it. Therefore I refuse to identify with the failure of mankind and focus entirely on that which must come to prevail - to begin with, a self-valuing Europe. The EU is almost the antithesis of this - forged in fear - but it can be reforged from the same opposing elements (Germany and France) in another way. The way in which this works is the same way along which Paris was left standing after Hitler was defeated. There is a mutual awe between the two nations, a supreme form of valuing only available to the truly great. Europe must rest on its greatest nations - Gaul, Germania, Rome, -

But from which nature?
This remains the question all the way up to the above said - as we do live in a global value-zone - our communication proves this – and this needs to be included in the apprehension of ‘nature’ - what are we? I say we are at the tip of an arrow shot across an abyss to which no end was in sight - and we begin to apprehend that we might actually strike a solid object, ‘make a kill’ - is this not always the aim? What I am saying is that to be grounded, to be able to root into ancient nature and to value from it as a natural being, ‘the gods must be with us’ - i.e. we must feel worthy of festivals and celebrations and real, individual an group-war against barbary. This must be forged, created - the Artist Tyrant -

Much to do, much to conceive. Of course nature will run her course and I can only say what I can say. I can do a lot of other things. Europe is not alone, and it has border and neighbor nations. These are very interesting, chemistry wise. But I wander … such great political goals, so little to do with hard principle - so much with taste and thus - all too much said.

I could have simply agreed to the following:

I haven’t, that sounds interesting.

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AP, Jakob,

Though your reactions to my humorous little sentence did generate very interesting posts, you did miss the intended meaning.

I absolutely do not think that philosophy and scholarship are worthless endeavors. On the very contrary, I work to feed it.
Us workers, servants, whatever you chose to name us, are steady at the production lines to ensure that those with the ability to formulate courses of action for all of us are able to dedicate their time to it.
It is only when the very system that sustains philosophers and scholars is so crudely criticized that my urge to jest acts up.

Think for a second about, for example, on suggesting a little controlled suffering. What is it that allows someone to turn suffering on and shut it off at your own desire to begin with? Do you think that without the potatoes I’ve pulled, you’d have another option than to suffer? And do you think that if you were out in a field pulling potatoes off the ground all day, you’d come home, wash off, and be a scholar?

So yes I’ve asked before and I ask again, how do you get rid of the bath water, while still keeping the baby?

And this is to me a critical difference between the writings of lyssa and jakob. While lyssa is quick to bite the hand that feeds her and ring the bells with all the propriety of a prophet of doom, what she leaves us with at the end are lovely theories, which I find hilariously idealistic and completely disconnected from any hint of a direction.
Whereas jakob’s writings offer a concept that sounds workable in the real world, not to mention a air of hope.
Call it a matter of taste :wink:

And yes, I can’t control myself when I see a nice pair of perfectly shaped tubers.

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double post

Carleas, you should enable a “do not allow a post within 3 seconds of another” rule so I can stop getting double click posts… do it for the children. THE CHILDREN CARLEAS.

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I am going to return to Jakob’s posts soon. I’m a little short for time so hopefully even my response to this one won’t be entirely unsatisfactory.

Thanks for correcting me.

What is being criticized is the danger posed by the system to philosophers, this is the whole issue of the “philosophy of the act” as we are here calling it. It is, as I see it, a system with a tight logic and a rigid structure of rules which renders philosophy increasingly irrelevant as, as Jakob pointed out, people unanimously accept the logic of the system. This does not mean there isn’t discontent or change, but all change is for a certain direction, freedom of action is limited, and thus possibility is limited, and so philosophy is limited.

And for this reason it’s important to distinguish scholars from philosophers, scholars can be more like technicians, all they need to do is keep to the logic and produce new ways of doing things, or continue to record the history which tells the story of the system. For example, consider the state of journalism today. Also keep in mind this particular system is not the only system that philosophy has ever flourished in (and, without critique of the system, with total adherence, it isn’t really philosophy at all is it, it’s more like trumpeting the party line).

I am interested in opening the system up, I will write about this further in response to Jakob’s comments above.

As I understood the comment about suffering (maybe I’m not thinking of the ones you are), in the context of the worker, it would be the work itself which is the suffering, which is necessary to reap the fruits of labor. The suffering would be the unpleasantness that must be lived through and even acclimatized to so that good can be extracted.

You’re asking a few things as I see it. Does every worker wish to be a philosopher or a scholar?
Workers provide an integral role to society, I don’t deny that, it is actually another reason that I want to bring philosophy to the act (which will have to be explained in its time). Part of this issue has to do with the question, what is the purpose of philosophers/.

I can forsee disagreement with Jakob on this because of a conversation we already had about education. Philosophy as I see it is at the bottom useful. Philosophy is in danger from science and scholarship because they are becoming the main resources for intellectual use value in our society, but they can only be geared towards specific goals, whereas philosophy creates the goals. What I mentioned about looking beyond and seeing the spaces between, and opening up the system, it is something only philosophy can do, because it is not entirely objective, it is motivated by values, it makes use of a logic that arises prior to reason but creates reason (by valuing somethng, by being drawn towards something), and (if I’m not mistaken) this is what Jakob is getting at with VO (maybe I’m wrong in which case correct me).

Besides this there are of course issues of power relations, so not just what something will be useful for, but who it will be useful to.

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I will respond to your second comment above at a later period, this is a hideously long post.

You have explained VO more to me, and so far I consider it sound. It need not be said that you will continue to unveil it as discussion continues.

As for my comment “this may be a point of disagreement between us” the operative word was may, mainly because the discussion touched law. I saw a law thread while I was browsing Humanarchy, and as can be imagined there is much to be said on the subject, but again " perhaps [I’m] being a little presumptuous here but it’s mainly for illustration." More to say about this later in this post.

I hope you will find it so because I find you very worthwhile to discuss with. Mainly for me the forum is a place to put my ideas out to be tested. I will not lie that sometimes I get defensive and have acted like a turd even on this forum before, I think it is even an aspect of the mind that as it has to erase and revise an old idea there is a feeling of pain and it initiates the defense instinct. (In other words this is again related to your advice about learning to fall.)

I would like to talk a little about this, this relates for me to what I am saying about opening the system, and which I in the comment to Phoneutria I would expand on in the response to you.

The whole thought of “what would one like to accomplish” is very multifaceted I think, because on one hand I feel like I am very sure of what I would like to accomplish, including even particulars, but on the other hand I see all particulars as historically ephemeral, the accomplishment in what I am talking about here is not any one specific deed, work of art, or anything else in the sense of a stable artifact, I may have those aspirations too but in any case it is not what I’m getting at here. That might be a little misleading because certain artifacts point to something beyond its historical contingency, in other words paradoxically I am talking about artifacts, for example architecture, which is socially important, is manifest in artifacts but, mainly I am talking about the idea (which architecture? architecture of what? for what?).

But ultimately, because history is movement in time, my goal is to aid human movement in time, by opening manifold possibility. Removing limits, I should say up front, unleashes potential. For this reason it is potentially dangerous (I say that because I am not out to mislead) but I think it is very compatible with what you wrote:

Skipping ahead before returning, because it is important to the discussion, but not by any means “the last word on the subject”:

Just to clarify what I was referring to. I intended valuing from nature to mean the valuing of a priory Being and in the sense of natural right (as James said in another thread on natural right, “the law which it is impossible to break” — it is uncovered after the fact). This is a large part, as I see it, of what Nietzsche was after. As Sauwelios put it in another thread, nature is opposed to nature (so here we have what you asked, which nature?) but the valuing of nature in this sense would mean that, nature opposes nature, because that is its nature, but one aspect of nature may either decimate or subdue the other, and so the valuing of nature generally entails what is called the order of rank, that the higher is valued as higher. If it is easier, instead of understanding one thing as higher or lower, I believe it was in Leo Strauss, he defined justice as “giving things their proper due”, which if I’m not mistaken he got from Plato, another way of saying this is “calling things by their proper name”, which Marcus Aurelius said in the Meditations. It is really the impetus for Nietzsche’s ressentiment, it is a rejection of, let’s say, a victor in a battle, wherein a revenge is taken against that victor and the victor is called “bad” rather than “good”.

This is also something I was mentioning before related to realist idealism, the one nature does not know a priory which nature is the “best” (in this “naturalistic” sense), it is only by engaging in the test (trial and error) that such can be determined. I think I also mentioned this, it was in brackets, but the valuer may not want to accept the defeat of a value right away because it may be highly valued, so often that thing will be retested, perhaps under new circumstances. The question then becomes, when does a value shift into a delusion, or, in other words, at what point must a value be abandoned to avoid delusion? Perhaps never so long as things are “given their proper due”. (Strauss might not have said in those exact terms but that’s how I remember it.)

The way you used that quote put that in a deeper perspective for me, I don’t know why it was hard for me to contextualize it before, thank you.

This is really what the whole discussion is about, what is being attempted.

I agree with that, I suppose what remains to be seen is in which way the counters might be drawn. The contours cannot negate themselves. In what I propose as open, the contours cannot be drawn with closed ends. I don’t think there is a way of properly safeguarding an open system against being closed. James S made a post called the communal particle in which he outlines something like this, it is like natural trajectory. Because an open system opens means to power which are taken for the sake of something higher, the thing which becomes the highest often closes the system because as the highest in rank attains and maintains power, they become distracted by the benefits of that power from what helped them attain it, and so as one aspect of their power decreases they seek to close the system which allowed for their own ascent. In the Republic, Plato talks about the way that political regimes change into each other… For example as an aristocratic maintains a degree of wealth which allows a decadent lifestyle it facilitates their fall to other rising powers, but still desiring the power they once had the individual seeks out the masses to reinstall him to his place of power, that was how Plato described the birth of democracy.

By saying that VO provides a means to “organiz[e] humanity in a non-degenerative way”, persumably you think it would be a permanent counterbalance to that effect?

That was what I was trying to get at, I said it poorly though so my mistake. I meant to point out how individuals might “agree” to something as “the good” while not truly holding that thing to be the good, in other words I was referring to deception, it was a criticism of morality. I will read from the link you provided.

In terms of a tool to facilitate conversation in which there is strong disagreement, this is good. I might also add it is necessary to try to understand the other as the other has understood himself, in that way the grounds for disagreement is truly understood, sometimes there is no real disagreement and what has gotten in the way is a rhetorical strategy.

I see this whole subject as extremely important. Pragmatically, this is good for facilitating alliances, as you pointed out, but as we both have noticed people are often very divisive, and “divide and conquer” is very much a strategy alive in the society today, even beyond our own “irreconcilable differences”.

So the issue I pose is this, if I want to accomplish something I employ the most effective means to accomplishing that thing in the way that befits my vision of the thing.

In the case of conversing and forming an alliance, there are two wills geared towards their individual goals (and often it is not merely the goal being the same, but the vision of the goal — for example, all else being equal, we might agree we both want a big house, but I want a big house whose living room is set up as a bar, whereas you might want it set up as a library — can we find a big enough house or do we seek out our common goal separately? For the sake of that example I said all else being equal, which is only an idealised situation, things are not in reality equal and so reality is immensely more complicated than that, for example not only do the two people want a big house with different living rooms but one person has more to bring to the table, in which case in the order of rank we might say that it is the one who brings more that decides the living room else it would be more in his favor to find another arrangement for the house? I guess the problem might then arise wherein, if that person who has more to bring to the table, yet not enough to bring to the table so that they can accomplish the obtainment of the big house alone, and cannot otherwise find the resources for the house, should that individual continue to maintain the partnership, or else settle for a smaller house alone? And still, real life contingent scenarios are altogether more complicated than this — this is generally why phronesis is introduced, but it is really just a sort of “smart trial and error” in which all is risked. A gamble, in other words. This is actually the issue that Machiavelli was dealing with, and one of the impetuses of modern science.)

The reason I think the issue is important here is that collective action is the most tricky of all, and the institutional arrangement of modern capitalism provides easy means to a way of life, there is greater reluctance to giving it up so every individual is more determined to maintain their own interpretation of the good and not settle, not take the gamble in other words, or at least take the smallest gamble (which is the precreated institutional arrangements).

Yes, it is often when the current situation becomes unbearably corrosive that people are willing to take the gamble on something new (else perhaps if that other thing seems to infinitely more desirable, which almost amounts to the same thing because if a different situation is to that extent more desirable the first would probably seem like rat shit in comparison), which otherwise seems dangerous.

And we must keep in mind that a “new skin” is being prepared institutionally and backed by an enormous budget and resources… That was a danger of Nietzsche revealing the work of philosophy in the courageous way that he did, unless, of course, you plan to enter the mainstream institutions with your “skin”?

As I first came across the term, it was Aristotle who uses it in the Nichomachean Ethics, Plato also uses the term “euboulia” which means the same thing, and Machiavelli’s “prudence” is again the same thing (The Prince, The Discourses). This is another reason why I like Machiavelli so much. Stanley Rosen also engages in a discussion about in in his analysis of Plato’s Statesman.

It remains to be seen I suppose where all our preferences lie and how they would be manifest. I will put it this way, I desire more than I think is possible (cue the discussion above about ideal becoming a delusion) and though I know that what I desire may never be possible, I have no doubt it will influence my action of what I do think is possible. That being said, I have no reason to oppose the inevitable unless I wish to live wretchedly, and it is the living wretchedly that I fear, not dying.

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A very crude yet necessary overciew here, in my opinion. The closest which comes to the existentialism which has slid into the so called post modern or post structural social system, (systemic as Lys would have it) is looking for a way out of the
suspence-(eidectic) which it has left the world, after
Sartre’s disillusionment with Communism. It is not coincidental that it is within the most symbolic of all cultures, the French, where socialism still, gathered
momentum, because, it had to sustain the ideas
engendered within their own social structure. the closest affinity is the positivist movement, where the reduction resulted in a cognitive shift towards
meaning within the literal theory of meaning. This
shift was significant, and still is, as can be seen from the strength that the socialists have over such issues as socialized medicine.

Pure utalization of empirical concepts abide here, in
the United States, and they don’t give a hoot about whether ideology consumes it’s self or not,or whether the objectives of production-consumer machines prioritize the conceptual frameworks of VO, as
perceived, or proved, by reference to individual
contexts of definition, or are merely become agents of interrelational and variable meaning in a structurally manipulative social field or not. That is
what empiricism has evolved to, the aristocracy of
ideal symbols has been upstaged by their secondary derivative, the symbol within the symbol, the manipulation of capital…For Marx, the ideology has
not been consumed by its convertibility into labor,
now, labor has been eclipsed by consumption, because of the need to approximate demand.
What is the result? The French, only critiqued this
state of affairs, the de realization of the values of labor into the priority value of consumption based on need, as easily manipulated by currency manipulation, price control, de regulating
monopolies, etc, caused ontologies to loose the
ground that Sartre saw as a hopeful sign until his realization of the fact that differance(versus difference) is also loosing ground.

The structural decompensation, namely entropy, had
had to shift the de realization from Freud’s reality principle to that of the pleasure principle. No if’s or but’s. It happens in the dynamic sense of a de-focus bearing materialism, caused by the political shifts occurring, as the outcome of the politico-ecenomic
facts post WW2. Therefore, as the near collapse of the Capitalistic system induced the ultimate question of 'can the world live without an ideological
framework based on the dialectical opposition
between ideological/Capitalistic systems, the answer here has became obvious. The only way to put brakes on total collapse, is to create a virtual, de-realized world, (Badrillard- interpreting this cleverly,along with Saussure),((but still mindful of Marx’s famous statement-of having to change , rather than intepret the world)). But the French existential despair is just that, they can only interpret
a materially consumed objects of awareness, a virtual intersubjectivity, resulting in gross and subtle inversions. The ontological recreation is strictly
based on anti interpretation, since within a
democratic setting, the ontology is inaccessible on a social scale, but not without sacraficing the Hermenautic middle, to misinterpretation. Therefore,
Nihilist’s denial of the anti socialism of the illusive
and often seeming delusional ideal, and relegate to the pleasure principle a pseudo reality, by necessity, in order not to fade away into an oblivious change of
blaming those elusive academic zealots, who would
rather live by a pen, which is not at all mightier then any imaginable sword. They feel secure in their well insulated towers of deferring to a future time, when
things may work themselves out.

But will they? What if, in say a hundred years, everything will be consumed, hystory, assets , ideas, and lol hystory it’s self? When progressive approach unto undefinable ‘goals’ will reach their epitome of criticality, where, goals will become synanomous with hope? This is why thre is a great need to find a cure for AIDS, the ultimate high of erotic fiulfillment will become the last bastion against the dispair ofthe vanishing ideal.

Why? Because even the ideal will have to be sustained in it’s ultimate fom of self identification, an escpe from which toward the other, the next step, by necessity, to avoid shifting the ‘normative’ boundary, ever left-ward. But there is a boundary which is absolute, just like when the expression-‘go westward young man’ was the leading prime motivator, in the early days of naive Capitalism, until the geographic end became limited by the Pacific Ocean.

The New World Order, is the necessary extension to this limitation, sine here, the ocean need not limit aspiration, it can keep on moving toward the still available of relatively young social systems, especially ones not steeped in the Protestant ethic.

Against this very strung urge, or trend, no ieological revival cn stand up to, and it is sad that this road is littered with such ohenomena as the notions of de-terrotprialization, production machines, and systemic revisions such as subjective misinterpretations of this process, resulting myraids of so called self inflicted wounds of cognive imbalance, due to the splits in nw defunct opinions. Is this view futile?

Futility is a function, finally, not of religious, or even moral signification, but pointed out above, matters oa aesthetic rules to regain some kind of balance, these being, perpspective, variable bounderies,- aesthetic distance, blow up existentially induced errands, relatively measured tolerance-restriction towards using education, as a framwork, rather than as a byproduct of a misguided content from which to evolve a reasonable continuum between ‘needs’ and ‘expectations’.

Even a performance ontology , maybe offer hints as to how to proceed to interpret the increasingly growing number of variables, and brackets as limits placed on the useless content, holding them at bay, until use for them may occur. Preformances are just that, but if their intent is to show that it constructed and fine tuned for a beneficial aim, a sort of tacit understanding arise, as to why simply doing away with a predicated VO, would offer slim hope of gaining benifit, at this point, and probably do more harm, or even devastation.

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I think life, libraries and the internet are the only reliable platforms at this point, universities have become a dead weight, a distraction and in the worst case a massive censorship. Obviously I support the internet as a system. My intention is to systemize it further as an educational platform, centered around this down to earth and decipherable truth of self-valuing, which is more advanced but can also be grasped with more practical yield than the philosophical ideas of the past. Philosophy was meant for intellectual elites - this philosophy works to create a philosophical elite out of capable minds, regardless of their status, economic, educational, etc. I come from a family with high educations, doctorates and much status, and myself I have tried university, a study in Greek and Latin, and it became clear to me what an utter disregard the curriculum has for classical ethics and tastes. The whole period is treated as a luxurious curiosity for decadent yuppies. It was shameful to come face to face with Achilles in that company. Later I attended lectures in Vienna, where he undeniably brilliant Elisabeth von Samsonow focussed on the erotic undercurrents of specific Roman Triumph-parades. I think this sort of deal is the high point of contemporary humanities - hedonist philosophy done with vigor and genius. As far as the ethics of the early Romans and presocratic Greeks go, all that is acknowledged again is the erotic nature of their societies and the curiosity of its men and their pathologies, as classical ethics are invariably interpreted.

What comes to mind is uncovering the meaning of relativity and the absolute nature of light on cleaning duty in a shower-room full of old people with skin conditions - I was leaning over my mop - and talking to a fellow worker and I had this brilliant flash of insight that nearly caused my knees to fail - I do not need to be clean to think, thinking is not like prayer, it is much more akin to the heavy work I’ve done and felt good with. Last summer I was helping Spaniards build a house and move their furniture in 95 degree weather, during the uninterrupted hours of heaving and carrying I hardly broke a sweat and felt much more relaxed than when I am sitting over dinner with them later on. It’s the nature of general dinner conversation that is killing me - I can not sit idle or listen to idle talk except when brilliant humorist is present. But then the talk is not truly idle. The most fatiguing work I’ve ever done was dusting a yoga temple. There was no dust to be found, I absolutely hated it, the seconds crept by. I preferred doing laundry for 600 people or cleaning layers of sediment from an out back toilet floor with a pickaxe and getting electrocuted by spiderwebs hanging from an open socket. At least it felt like I was doing something. Where I worked then, apple picking was considered the job of kings. You had to earn that. Other than killing fish with a stick, the only butchery I’ve ever done, I do not mind crude and heavy work. When I’m home I used to pick up a writing pad and write, as a form of rest for the body and activity for the mind which had the opportunity to rest during the physical strain.

Then I am making myself useful here. It’s always been frustrating to me how hope and realism are being categorically separated by the peoples ‘common sense’ or that same condition in scholars, which is infinitely more stupid. The world is nowhere near as simple and poor as a deductive mind will present it. The world is not deductive, but extremely radically inductive - it is conditional, contingent, opportune, alchemical - always unfathomable and far ahead of what it is expected to become. You can only work with it - and this is the radical secret of technology - kept secret simply by the selective nature of the laboratory - technological power is never built, it is always extracted. It is always an ingenious means of relating already operative processes. Now that we have a scientifically hard principle of behavior that binds the animate to the inanimate, i.e. that explains the living in the terms of the non living and vice versa, we can also extract processes and relate them to each other in the human world - this must be our architecture. And this is incidentally how the ancients built, how the Pyramids were put together - ingenuity with basic principles - gravity and wheels in this case. These two will serve as good symbols to meditate on concerning a human -erm - pyramid. To extract quality and to raise it, and to exist as a pyramid-building, - perhaps the pyramids are to be seen most accurately as the sediment of the Egyptian society - what they were really building was ‘life’ - but they used these projects to guide it.

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And yet Socialism is failing even France very hard now. It always had much in common with the French Revolution, which was solidified into a new political culture by Napoleon, and from this French Socialism was able to derive some nobility - some of that symbolic Statism that it has always carried so brilliantly.

How do you see this link?

A capitalist profit-extracting corporation is evidently a self-valuing of strong structural integrity. VO offers nothing in terms of preference, it describes.
We can see how human selfvaluings are related to overarching trans-human self-valuings and make ethical judgments and propose technical and administrative solutions with the help of the principle, but not because the principle itself commands that.

The American economy involves the most intense self-valuing dynamics on the planet, it is the central reference point of the human world. America is a self-valuing whose like the world has never seen. It has managed to literally bring the whole world under its terms. The coca cola bottle as representing objet petit a - the universal value creating a whole new universalist self-valuing; the moderner.

The difference between French workers and general proletariat is that the French workers are more akin to medieval nobles than to modern workers. It is their nobility that makes demands of the state, not their wretchedness.

A very partial assertion and with countless counterexamples - but I stand by it nonetheless - even simply because the notion of working class person means something far less Earthly than the notion of Frenchman.

The French are the most symbolic - nicely said - but thereby also the most Earthly. As our human relating to the Earth is in language and the only proper language is direct symbolization. Mans relation to Earth is at its most effective when it is purely symbolic; the Olympian world is pure Earthliness. We need to consider these things in rebuilding Europe.

The whole point is to realize that interpreting is active, It is creating and/or destroying. From there on all despair is futile, all reflection leading to despair is simply error.

Yes. The non futile is moving no longer in breadth, but in depth. The frontier is not visible, it is refined intellectual experience - philosophy. The intellect as humanity’s prime mover. Ideology is antithetical to VO, thus VO once ‘installed’ cures the mind of ideology, and allows it to form its own value hierarchy.

“Profit” is just as much an ideology as “Christ”. It is a contextual virtue that is objectified into an impotent idea of virtue.
The only noble Christians have been those who were not weak enough to be fully overcome by the Christian spirit - who interpreted the faith in terms of worldly values, just as the only noble Capitalists have been those who were not weak enough to be fully overcome by the spirit of profit - who interpreted their profit in terms of worldly values - of itself ‘profit’ is wholly unworldly. It is like “the Good”. It can mean power, but in what circumstance? Is being the last man standing really power? Of course it is not - when all are dead there is no one to serve you.

The effort of doing away with it is probably just the effort of trying to understand it. VO presents a problem to certain minds, but this problem has the nature of the beliefs that resist VO - the still lingering faith in the uniform God, essentially.

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Can you elaborate on this please? I am not sure I get what you’re saying about “the good”.

“It can mean power, but in what circumstance? Is being the last man standing really power? Of course it is not - when all are dead there is no one to serve you.”

Isn’t this example just an example of an instance stripped of the good? Like, what is the good in power if you can’t use it?

So you would not say that value is grounded in good? Isn’t value an estimation of worth, and worth determined by its relative intrinsic good?

Could you define value in context of VO?

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Value is subjective, contextual, it has no moral quality. Note that I did not say “goodness” but “the good”. I am referring to the objectified moral quality, which can never apply universally. “A value” can be phrased as “a good”. Never “the good”. The article is instrumental to my intended meaning.

Is self-valuing seen as “the good”? Then the good contradicts itself, because self-valuings constantly devour each other - to wit: self valuing ethics.
The meaning of Humanarchy is to set, or orient so as to be able to conceive, a human self-valuing type; in one sense of the term a type that does not devour and deprave itself. In its partiality it abandons pure philosophy and moves toward philosophy of action. But I am vey cautious, am not tempted to go to fast here at all, as I do not perceive any obvious justice that can be swiftly done - I see only the cultivation of a certain human type, one that is wholesome to itself. In this sense VO is a medicine, something that kills a long lingering virus, which has as one of its most powerful symptoms the idea of “the good” which has always resulted from and amounted in rulers of bad health commanding the most whimsical and unspeakable repressions and slaughters.