It was only when I prompted you that you did a Google search on the phrase “immaculate perception”, of which you had “no idea” what it meant. But between my writing that passage and my prompting you to address it, a week elapsed in which you made four more posts. So in those four posts, you’ve accused me of things while not even understanding what I’d said.
The “100% certain” part is your addition. I never put it in such absolute terms.
If you say so.
Amen to all this.
This may all very well be the case. It remains to be seen, however, if it applies to me.
If I wouldn’t do that, “reality” would just be an empty word. Note that I’m not contending that reality is logical; what I’m contending is that all reality logicises. Compare:
[size=95]“[Q]uestions, what things ‘in-themselves’ may be like, apart from our sense receptivity and the activity of our understanding, must be rebutted with the question: how could we know that things exist? ‘Thingness’ was first created by us. The question is whether there could not be many other ways of creating such an apparent world–and whether this creating, logicizing, adapting, falsifying is not itself the best-guaranteed reality: in short, whether that which ‘posits things’ is not the sole reality; and whether the ‘effect of the external world upon us’ is not also only the result of such active [wollenden] subjects… The other ‘entities’ act upon us; our adapted apparent world is an adaptation and overpowering of their actions: a kind of defensive measure. The subject alone is demonstrable: hypothesis that only subjects exist–that ‘object’ is only a kind of effect produced by a subject upon a subject… a modus of the subject.” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 569 (Spring-Fall 1887), Kaufmann translation, with the original punctuation and emphasis restored.)[/size]
I was responding to your earlier posts. Moreoever, I was at the same time, without any intention and knowledge, responding to your “immaculate perception” post. I don’t understand this need to hold my lack of understanding of the concept of “immaculate perception” against me. If I misunderstood you in one way or another, you should show it to me, instead of simply saying that I misunderstood you, or even less than that, that I said that I did not understand what you said lol!
Sure. But absolutes should never be understood absolutely.
If you demand from me certain preconditions before I can interact with you, then this is an attempt to ban me from interaction, no? Instead of directly addressing what I’m saying, you’re simply going for a “stab in the back”. Sure, I might be misunderstanding you, but what are you going to achieve if you simply state that I misunderstand you? or even less than that, that I say that I misunderstand what you say?
I have nothing against you or Fixed or anyone else associated with Humanarchy . . . Based on what I’ve read, I’d say you’re a hedonist/nihilist, but I have no reason to cling onto it, to refuse the possibility of being wrong. This is why I am interacting with you after all, to strengthen or weaken my opinion.
I’ll address the rest of your post, and some of your other posts, at a later time.
Well, if I use a certain phrase, and you have no idea what it means, then surely you cannot understand what I’m saying with it. You say you were responding to my earlier posts, but the post in which I used that phrase was a response on my part to your response to my earlier posts and the accusations you made in it. This is why, when you kept making new posts apparently without addressing the paragraph in which I used that phrase, I promped you to address it.
I was just pointing out to you that I thought it strange that you’d imply that you didn’t understand me while at the same time accusing me. You may call my response a stab in the back, but I’m just questioning the foundations of your attacks. If I were to address your attacks directly, I would thereby imply that I accepted those foundations, which I don’t.
Please do. In the meantime, I’ll address the notion of my “association” with Humanarchy. Humanarchy was the idea of the ILP member SIATD, to which he was in part inspired by my list of correspondences between “archies” and “theisms”–mon(o)-archy ≈ mono-theism, etc. He is still the owner of the site, for all I know, though he has left most of the administrating to Fixed Cross. I associated myself with it because Fixed Cross, who is my best friend, presented it as the political counterpart of Before The Light–the forum dedicated to Value Ontology–, and because he gave me moderatorship over my own subforum–“Philosophical Supremacism”. I’ve always said that “humanarchy” for me meant the rule of the only genuinely human beings–the genuine philosophers–, and that the only kind of anarchism I might be interested in would be an anarchism of the right.
How degenerates pervert the concept of energy. Energy, for them, means being overwhelmed by emotions/instincts. Euphemisms they use are “excess”, “passion” and “overflowing”. The state which reduces, or should reduce, humans to animals because overwhelming emotions turn an otherwise healthy act of willing (will-ful self-control) into a self-dectrustive act of denial (will-ful loss of control as a consequence of incapacity for will-less self-control) is what they term “energy”.
Energy for me means the opposite. It means calm, absence of emotions/instincts, that allows one to will anything whatsoever without being easily overwhelmed.
When overwhelmed by emotions, power manifests as will-less self-control. This is because willing increases activity, and since being emotional indicates that the mental activity has reached the limit, willing makes things worse and should be avoided.
When not overwhelmed by emotions, on the other hand, when in a state of calm, power manifests as will-ful self-control.
Weakness manifests as will-ful self-control in the midst of overwhelming emotions (thus exceeding the limits of the individual.) If overwhelmed by negative emotions, we speak of depression/masochism. If overwhelmed by positive emotions, we speak of mania/hedonism.
How hedonists think: if overwhelmed by negative emotions, you are ressentimental; if overwhelmed by positive emotions, you are overflowing.
They confuse will with instincts, what is willed with what is automated.
Here’s an example:
I like the “Be honest!” part, especially the exclamation mark! He uses language as a proof for impossibility to will nothing. The entire mental process is unfolding in my mind as I write this. First, he considers the possibility of willing nothing, but then, he stumbles upon contradiction produced by the way we speak. He does not bother to understand the contradiction, but simply goes “Eureka!”, thinking it’s done deal, that willing nothing is indeed impossible. Then he assumes the other is dishonest, that he’s denying this contradiction . . .
As I like to say: what is confusing for one is clear to another. People who stop with confusion thinking confusion means impossibility are retards. Not talking about Fixed, but in general.
Anyways, back on point. Our reactions can vary in their intensity, and depending on how intense they are, we can say that they exist or that they do not exist. So we can say that in certain situations man can be free of desire, if by desire we mean reaction, what is automated. Willing isn’t the same as desiring. Will controls desires, but it isn’t desiring itself. Will can desire, thus increasing activity, or not desire, thus leaving the level of activity to fluctuate according to its natural (i.e. automatic) course.
So one can will nothing, it is true. It is animalistic behavior where one completely surrenders to one’s instincts (Nietzsche calls it “Russian fatalism”) which, though light, is very difficult to maintain. Willing nothing, it should be noted, does not mean willing the calm of your body, it does not mean your body being calm, it means your WILL not doing anything, leaving the body (including the brain) to its natural course, whatever that may be. It’s a very useful thing when out brains overheat, especially for those of us who think a lot and find it difficult to control our thoughts (who are oh so pregnant with thoughts.)
Restraining desires, on the other hand, is will-ful self-control. As I said earlier, will-ful self-control works only under peaceful conditions. Otherwise, it creates mess instead of cleaning it up. Willing is dangerous because it can be used against the body. Will can disintegrate the body by weakening the relations between its various parts, heterogenizing it through selective homogenization or through will-ful diversification, instead of integrating it, connecting its pieces into a whole, homogenizing it. Will can be used to exaggerate instincts or deny them. It is what nihilism is, it is will abusing its body by imposing artificial order upon it (which can be created by other or created by the individual himself, through selective ordering.) So restraining desires is good, but you must do it properly, lest you become a masochist.
Yeah, if just done out of ordinary methods of control such as repression. But what of conversion? Would me merely guessing what that it entails, it can run the gamut, of simple denial, all the way to the great transforming events, such as the Transvaluation, the
trans substantiation,the conversion o by religious fiat, death and transfiguration,the metamorphosis of Narcissus,which delineates the masochistic tendencies into floral arrangements, so one man’s desire is another man’s pain.
What degenerates lack is will-less self-control. One must sense and feel before one can understand, and one has to understand before one can will. Degenerates attempt to understand before they sense and feel, and so they will with incomplete understanding or no understanding at all. Or they do not will at all because they know their understanding is incomplete (without ever bothering to unleash the denied feelings.)
Will-less self-control does not mean no will, it simply means will not intervening at all, minimizing its activity. Will-less self-control means will detaching from the body and the environment, observing the mess that they are. It does not even mean observation – observation is activity. It means falling unconscious, literally. Ask anyone who suffers from panic attacks what they experience (what they risk) when they surrender to their fears. Their consciousness reduces to semi-consciousness, and if the situation is too overwhelming, to unconsciousness. It’s pure indifference.
Yes, but here is another catch. The great transformations occur because of the slow realization of that the will has submerged, somehow. Once required, transformed, the issue is no longer viable, because it is widely understood. Understood in the
sense of having been transformed. The change becomes manifest , and it’s manifestation no longer produces flowers, objective displays of fleaur the mal. The difference, becomes changed within its self.
It transcends itself, therefore the justification to know the difference becomes obscured. This obscurity
need not cater to the premise that the will has to
subjugate the passions as a matter of understanding, since the Will and it’s representation have been basically flat lined. It becomes, part of its own myth,
And once the cat is out of the bag, Pandora is unwilling to put it back. The myth justifies the ends
With an aim toward the leap of an aesthetization of its intent.
The ends do not necessarily justifie the means by
which the will can realize its own folly, and this is
why other means are often realized without the use of pure reason. This is begging for the categorical transcended, in fact it is a prayer for it. I disagree
with those, who proclaim that a willful transcend of
the standard God has set for us, is a sin , in spite of the Redemption.
Not arguing for a traditional conception here, only
the possibility of higher learning of the meaning of
the co join between the will and control of the aesthetic value assigned to it. I do believe, that those who aspire to it, will, in fact be informed as
such, through untraditional learning. Those who do
not, are only condemned to the mediocre, as a choice. I know where the reply is coming here,in that after a while the will looses its power to choose.
Even then, within the point of least strength and understanding, there still can retain a choice,between
the ultimate disintegration, or its upward journey.
In rehabilitating totally morally deprived persons,
when they have hit their so called bottoms, there is
still hope, and at that point, the visual hallucinations may even then be ingrained with visions of salvation.
This degression into total deconstruction, has been
the only way that the great transformers were able to
change the absolute gradients of repressive outcries.
Some ones must go there and redeem them still in the cave, otherwise, even the difference can’t ever be
fathomed.
So you’re saying that, when overwhelmed by emotions, one cannot overcome this state and achieve self-control by an act of the will? By what is one then supposed to control one’s emotions, if not by one’s will?
But how do you know Fixed meant the same thing by “desire”?
Well, I follow Nietzsche, who basically says will = desire + the affect of commanding. In my view, this “affect of commanding” is what he means when he says this world is the will to power and nothing besides. Instinct and desire then also consists of nothing but affects of commanding. However, for an organism, the question is whether it is conscious of such an affect. If it is, it feels it is in command; if it isn’t, it feels it’s “commanded” (compelled, impelled) by its desires or instincts.
But is it then not the will holding itself suspended, as it were?
Yeah. But Blake did not necessarily mean the same thing by “desire”. In any case, I meant it in a much more general sense, in which will is simply a specific instance of desire (namely, a desire with a conscious affect of commanding).
By nothing, you do not control them, you just wait for them to cool down. You are weaker than the situation, so you do not want to intervene. All you want to do is make sure you do not make the situation worse by intervening. If you remain alive, things will eventually calm down and you will be able to start willing again.
We can speak of commanding/willed desires and obeying/automated desires. Amounts to the same thing. Still, one can will nothing. And one can desire nothing. One can will restraint, and one can desire restraint.
You can reduce everything to desire, but that says nothing about reality. Reducing everything to one thing, something, says nothing about reality. Atoms are a projection of our own limits onto reality. It is nihilistic because one mistakes one’s own limits for the limits of reality.