Dear Diary Moments:

Dear Diary Moment 9/5/2021:

Reading Joe Hughes’ reader guide to Difference and Repetition, I’m starting to get clearer sense of a line of development that started in D & R and reached a deeper and more evolved expression in Anti-Oedipus. But first we have to backtrack through Husserl’s understanding of Kant’s Doctrine of the Faculties: that which describes the synthetic process by which we move from immediate experience to understanding. Using the terminology I lifted from it all:

It starts with the sensible which is the data input that comes through the senses.

We then move on to what Kant called Reproduction through which imagination and memory process the incoming data in order that the mind might achieve:

Understanding which is the active domain of thought as compared to the passive nature of the previous two.

And this is a two way street. While there is a synthetic process that works from the sensible to understanding and the conceptual, there is a “double adventure” in which the conceptual is imposed back on the sensible: the schematism. In Kant this was the modes that allowed the mind to organize the chaotic input of reality. And much of Deleuze’s D & R is about his attempt to revamp the model in the context of Kant’s later book: Critique of Judgement. Furthermore, it helps to recognize that Deleuze, unlike Kant, saw this process as failed and therefore aleatory in nature: a roll of the dice.

And jumping to Anti-Oedipus, we start to see a lot of overlaps w/ the D & R model and D & G’s 3 syntheses of the unconscious (a clear result of Guatarri’s psychiatric background and influence:

The connective in which the mind takes in data and forms connections.

The disjunctive in which conflicts and dichotomies emerge.

And the conjunctive in which an uneasy and volatile (therefore tentative (understanding is reached that is destined for collapse.

And I use the term “understanding” as a purposeful reference to the previous synthetic process. This is because this, as D & G describe it, is the point at which an active self emerges (an I (then collapses back into the passive process: the barbarian hordes of the unconscious. And in this process, we see how the concept of schematism emerges in new form in the overcoding D & G attribute to Freud’s Oedipus complex.

PS: could go on; but this shit is straining my brain.

Dear Diary Moment 9/6/21:

Reading Joe Hughes’ reader guide to Difference and Repetition, in my study point at the “library”, I came across a point on which I may have to depart from Deleuze. It describes the idea of univocal being (all things that are are in the same way (as ending in a Metaphysics of Power: the notion that if all things are in the same way, the only way to distinguish them is in terms of the power they have to affect other things. For myself, I tend to think of univocal being as a democritizing force as described by Rorty who talked about the pointlessness of talking about ontological status.

Of course, the main reason this is problematic for me is that I stand by what I call a Metaphysic of Efficiency: that focused on the distribution of resources in relationship to the expectations involved. And it seems to me that Deleuze’s ubiquitous difference serves that metaphysic in ways that I have yet to define.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just misunderstanding Deleuze’s point. Still, it feels like he is stuck in the Metaphysics of Power that we have to get beyond if we are to survive as a species, that is by moving on to a Metaphysics of Efficiency.

But then maybe I’m reading him wrong.

Dear Diary Moment 9/12/2021:

As I start on this immersion in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition starting w/ Joe Hughes’ reader’s guide then on to James Williams’ and on to the original text (I’m thinking about adding Levi R. Bryant’s Difference and Givenness due to a comment by Hughes), after all this scratching at the surface of it, I’m starting to worry that I may be reaching that ineffable (asphasic even: new word I learned today (depth at which I can no longer actually comment, in which all I can do is name-drop as I have shamelessly done here.

PS: has anyone noticed how the how most commentators on Deleuze’s books (w/ and w/out Guatarri (are always conditioned by the network of other books they have read by, about, and influential to him? Doesn’t it seem like the rhizomatic network of other books, other texts (the Derridaian diffe̕rrance ( is what purposely determines the interpretation? It’s as if the text itself doesn’t matter as much as the path by which you arrive at it.

As Deleuze suggested: multiply differences.

Dear Diary Moment 9/13/2021:

Today I want to break down and elaborate on a passage in Joe Hughes’ reader guide to Difference and Repetition and hopefully get at the profound experience it was. But as I have said before: philosophy (especially of the continental kind (is a little like someone on LSD trying to explain their high. There is every reason to expect that my points will fall short of their intended goal. Okay:

“Deleuze directly adopts this notion from Husserl in his terse definition of passive synthesis as one which ‘is not carried out by the mind, but occurs in the mind’.”

In this, we get a deeper and more subtle understanding of how it is the unconscious works. And we get at it by understanding the distinction between something that the mind carries out (as if the mind is an independent agent manipulating the content of the unconscious (and note how this must of contributed to Freud’s literary description of dreams that made it seem as if the unconscious was consciously creating these symbolic narratives: that which resulted in the silliness of dream dictionaries (as compared to the unconscious working in the same way mechanical rooms do in a building. This, of course, is influenced by my own experience as a maintenance tech. But the description of ‘occurring in the mind’ does delegate the unconscious to the role of supporting the activities of the mind without actually fixing them in any way. This is because as Hughes further points out:

“The fact that these syntheses is not at all what is most interesting about them for either Deleuze or Husserl. What is far more interesting is that they are not rule -governed syntheses. They are essentially transgressive.”

This is the dice roll and aleatory point that Deleuze refers to throughout his process. The unconscious (the passive syntheses), not having the kind of controlling mechanisms that the mind has (the active synthesis), tend to be chance in nature. And here we can see the roots of desiring production that Deleuze (in collusion with Guatarri (would evolve to. In the Anti-Oedipus, these barbarian hordes are shaped into acceptable thoughts through social production.

Or did I fuck this up?

Dear Diary Moment 9/19/2021:

Watching Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ the other night, I saw, yet again, how a lot of our more secular heroes (or how we see them (can be rooted in Christian mythology: the very archetype (Lewis? (of the Christ-like figure. This can be really seen with Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guatarri (and his insistence on personal revolution as compared to the revolutionary action of groups. This, of course, can also be seen pervasively throughout philosophical history which may well be why Spinoza is considered “the Christ of philosophers”.

In fact, if we think about it, philosophy is primarily about a personal revolution.
*
“Revolution moves beyond the dichotomies of historical determination or human freedom, and physical determination or dumb systemic luck. The catalyst is neither individual or group freedom, nor blind chance. Instead, every event is revolutionary due to an interaction of signs, acts and structures through the whole event. Events are distinguished in terms of the intensity of this revolution, rather than types of freedom or chance. Intensity is itself only decided, and then only temporarily, by a further counter-actualisation.” -Williams, James. Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide . Edinburgh University Press. Kindle Edition.

Nowhere was this more relevant than in the two US festivals put on by Steve Wozniak of Apple fame. The idea, of course, was to recreate the glory of Woodstock. And in the second, this criterion was approached on heavy metal day when the audience was numbered at the crucial goal of around 500,000 people.

Still, it was no Woodstock. What Woz (for all his investment (and we failed to recognize was that Woodstock was the result of a lot of chance elements that made it as important as it was, most notably that rock and roll as manifest in the 60’s was still seeking legitimate status as an art form as well as the whole hippy/counter culture. That wasn’t the case in the early 80’s primarily (and ironically (because of Woodstock.

Dear Diary Moment 9/20/2021:

I’ve come to realize, in my immersion in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, a couple of things about his concept of the actual and the virtual. I’ve come to make a couple of connections:

To begin, his inclusion of the virtual may well be why he insists on univocal Being: that which accepts that all things which exist must be said to exist in the same way. And this can be said of our reactions to actual things: the becomings as Deleuze would describe it. And note the pragmatic overlap with Rorty who often showed his disdain for any attempts at establishing “ontological status”. And we have to lend some credibility to this sensibility, and the existence of the virtual, given how important a role that ineffable (non-actual (factors play in the various events we find ourselves negotiating. We begin to see (from an evolutionary perspective (that our capacity to adapt to a given but changing environment may well depend on our capacity to employ the virtual.

This, of course, can easily be interpreted as a dismissal of science from a continental perspective -that is since the actual is what science primarily focuses on. This hostility can be seen in the Sokal hoax which many took as a condemnation of post-structuralism and Postmodernism. But all it really exposed is what we already knew: that philosophers are not scientists and, therefore, have to depend on the authority of scientists when it comes to scientific matters.

All Deleuze was trying to establish (as many of his continental peers were (was that we have to keep the authority of science in perspective. That we have to recognize that science is limited by its focus on the actual (and indifference to the virtual (while being perfectly useful in that capacity. All the continentals were trying to do is assert the role of the virtual in our evolutionary adaption.

Dear Diary Moment 9/26/2021:

This week on Real Time, Bill Maher talked to Tristan Harris who is apparently part of some kind of watchdog group as concerns social media. Harris revealed that Facebook had flagrantly utilized an algorithm that pushed posts that managed to generate more conflict because they happened to generate more revenue. And no doubt, this is a questionable thing to do on Zuckenberg’s part (once again: his techno-libertarianism), and this is why we need watchdog groups like that of Harris’. It was also brought up how Facebook users are more statistically likely to experience depression and body image issues.

Maher, of course, was all over this and railing against the evils of social media. He does as much with non-vegetarian diets and religion. It’s as if he doesn’t do it, no one else should either. And as much as I love Maher and religiously follow everything he does, it can come off as a little sanctimonious at times.

The problem with the argument is that while it does establish a correlation between social media and mental health issues (including hostility), it might actually be reversing the A & B of causality. Tristan and Maher’s argument makes it seem as if Facebook is creating hostile and depressed people when, in fact, in it may actually be attracting them due to their lack of social skills, that is when mentally healthy people can simply use it as one tool among others –including going in to real world social situations- and come out of it still mentally healthy.

And, once again: the thing everyone neglects to mention is the Facebook block which is complete (you don’t see them and they don’t see you (as compared to the block you got on old social media such as MySpace.

And let me be very clear on this: I do not give a flying fuck about Zuckerberg (he’s just a rich guy to me (or Facebook. I am not out to defend their honor. I am simply making the argument that, like a lot of other things in life, they are mixed packages that require something more subtle than outright negativity.

Dear Diary Moment 10/1/2021:

I’ve been dealing with, for some time now, Deleuze’s conceptual dyad of common and good sense -both of which he is clearly critical of. Now common sense seemed pretty easy to get a grip on in that the word “common” suggests that it is about a way of thinking (that which comes with common assumptions (that is common among most people. And we can see why Deleuze might be critical of it to the extent that it can lead to doxa: generally accepted responses to generally accepted cues.

Good sense was a little more elusive to me. But now I’m starting to see that it may have to do with what it is practical to accept as true. And I can see where this might be problematic for Deleuze to the extent that it can succumb to what I refer to as “the tyranny of the functional”.

At the same time, this could also prove problematic for the pragmatic overlap I see between Deleuze and Rorty. But it’s not surprising given Deleuze’s French propensity for radical critique. And in my defense, where I see the overlap is in their method: that of democratically letting people think what they think free of dogmatic criteria and just letting everything come out in the wash.

Dear Diary Moment 10/9/2021:

Am presently reading the latest edition of New Philosopher. And today I came across Patrick Stokes’ “To Boldly Go and Not Come back”. It basically brought me back to the Philosophy 101 conundrum of the teleportation problem: that once you are disassembled for sake of transport to somewhere else, you more or less die even if the person that arrives at the other point is an exact replica of you with all the memories you have up until then.

Reading it, I suddenly realized there may be a more realistic, practical, and less sinister way to approach this technology. And I bring this up for any aspiring ScyFy writers out there as an old ScyFy fan myself. It seems to me that the best way to avoid the teleportation conundrum is for the body of the original subject to remain in place in a sleep state while the technology creates an exact replica of it with all its memories (an avatar (up until then that, in turn, creates other memories that are transmitted back to original subject.

But then this creates another problem. What happens if that replica/avatar recognizes that they’re being used by the original subject and that their existence is short term? What happens if the replica/avatar rebels against the original self?

Dear Diary Moment 11/11/2021:

I have, throughout my process, pimped what I call the nihilistic perspective that recognizes that there is no solid criteria by which to judge action. And today, while reading the latest issue of Philosophy Now, I came up against the one argument that presents a legit counterpoint to my position: that the criterion of not killing or robbing or raping (etc., etc. (anyone seems solid enough. And it does seem solid. But the term “seem” or “seems” is an important qualifier here. It just all came to me today.

The problem with presenting the prohibition on killing, robbing, rape, or even torture as anything more than a human construct is that it tries to present such moral assertions as if they had the same objective status as the laws of physics. The problem, with this, of course, is that while we can easily violate a social norm or moral criteria, what we can’t violate are the laws of physics.

Dear Diary Moment 11/14/2021:

Just started today on my second immersion in Levi R. Bryant’s Difference and Givenness: Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence. And already it has proven a real walk down memory lane in that, it having been years since the first run, this immersion has brought back a couple of understandings that I latched onto, but have either forgotten the source of or completely forgotten due to disuse.

For one, there is Deleuze’s recognition of aesthetics as not being just about the nature of beauty, but a study of the sensible (how the mind commandeers raw reality (as well. This one stayed with me. But I had forgotten the source of it.

The other is the three means by which we analyze any given proposition: the syntactic, the semantic, and the existential. And these are important to understand. And I, in my excitement, use to cite the model all the time. Unfortunately, I got distracted along the way and it got buried –which is what makes it such a pleasure to see it resurrected.

But it is important to the extent that we utilize all three. The syntactic is the domain of symbolic logic in which the only thing that matters is if one argument follows the other. The semantic is the domain of the analytic in which the only reality that matters lies in an exact understanding of the terms we are using to define reality. The existential, finally, is pretty much what most of us are utilizing day to day as we deal with the day to day.

And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that the existential is the only approach that matters. None of us are beyond utilizing the semantic or syntactic to make an argument, regardless of their limitations.

Dear Diary Moment 11/19/2021:

Reading Fredric Jameson’s foreword to Layotard’s The Postmodern Condition, something crystallized for me today as concerns the continental tradition that centers around its Marxist roots: that it has been haunted by a dialectic between French based radical self creation (think Deleuze and Guatarri’s schizo-process (and Hegelian totality: Žižek’s ‘the truth is out there’. Radical self-creation succumbs to the apparent futility of trying to beat the Capitalistic system from the outside (while trying attack it from the inside (while Hegelian totality attempts to beat it from the outside through transcendent de-ontic assertions that seem to be right, even to the point of seeming perfectly founded.

Then you have a pragmatic like Rorty who recognizes the potential for radical self-creation in a writer like Derrida while recognizing a seemingly transcendent/founded criterion for truth: the question of if it works to further social justice. In a sense, even though Rorty is part of the Anglo-American tradition, he does seem to work as a kind of synthesis in the dialectic of the continental tradition.

hello d63:

We talked briefly a few years ago, so I may not need to introduce myself.

You bring on an interesting concept.
If I may indulge you for a moment, a few related questions:

Through deintological perspectives or, the de-ontic.
'Self created one(french) versus the Heglelian-dialectically transcend ones, does Derrida through Forty imply some sort of synthesis, which could effect Anglo-American -French-German agreements through some kind of 'continental divide?

It would befit a diplomatic tour-de-force, if such transcendence were deminstrateable.

Yet, the variability of shifting alliances world wide, has demonstrated more of the effectance through broken agreements.

Does the political rivers transcend that of ideologically provoked disagreements, or, are we heading to more understanding through progressive media and diplomatic communication?

Thanks …for any feedback even better a series of comments on a continuum of associations.

It could augment the pre WW 2 view held that the scepter of potential conflict has not been solved
by WWI, .
This is Mr Hitler talking , in his famous opus 'Me in Kampf.

This observation is to denote the much larger conflict between two widely divergent views between pragmatic and idealistic/ ideologies, namely those that would rest on dialectical foundations.

So Dewey’s pragmatism can forge an ideologycal synthesis with conti dental nationalistic ideology, in postmodern thought, meaning, the wars, harboring conflicts that never were substantiated , but by misrepresented ideological strategic thinking, prove only that the hystory of ideology was really based on rationalized revisions, which philosophy used as adaptive, defensive tools, and such nominal misuse can only result in a repetition of lessons that could not be learned.

Let me get back to you, Meno.

I apologize for my negligence.

Dear Diary Moment 11/25/2021:

On this particular broach of Deleuze’s Difference & Repetition (original text I mean), I came across something that I hadn’t noticed before that I thought might have been a conscientious aesthetic move. I could be reading myself into this. But then hopefully some of my fellow and more advanced Deleuzians might either confirm me or break my heart –especially those who write books about this kind of thing with extensive bibliographies: Ian? Claire?

What I had noticed was that Deleuze had titled his introduction ‘Repetition and Difference’, the mirror opposite of Difference and Repetition. And the effect this had while reading the intro was to be able to look to the top of the page (of both pages (and see both phrases mirroring each other like some ongoing repetition. And to me, it seemed to suggest the intertwined nature difference and repetition in the way Deleuze seemed to understand them.

Now once again: I may be reading myself into this. First of all, I have always argued that the creative act never seems that far from Deleuze’s mind. But then, as I have also pointed out before, this is coming from a guy who worked his way to Deleuze from a young man who thought it his manifest destiny to be rock star. Secondly, it looks exactly like the kind of clever avant garde move I would try to make, especially if I were working w/ my personal editor Mary Jane.

And of course, I have no way of knowing how the original French version was formatted. Still……

Dear Diary Moment 12/4/2021:

I’ve recently come to realize that a real world example of Deleuze’s “image of thought” in Difference and Repetition are the trolls we tend to encounter on these boards. This particular conceptual model was meant to confront various false presuppositions we tend to accept without really thinking about them. The main one was this assumption that philosophy is, by obligation, committed only to the pursuit of the true. But that is not what philosophy is made to do. What philosophy is about (as Deleuze would later articulate w/ Guatarri in What is Philosophy (is conceptual play for the sake of creating yet more concepts. It’s a kind of brainstorming activity: a creative act. Beyond that, it is a matter of of playing those concepts and conceptual models against reality until we are either forced to drop them, revise them, or accept them as a workable description of how reality works. And we see, once again, the pragmatic overlap between Deleuze and Rorty on this matter.

The troll is a slave to the Image of Thought. This is why they hide in the shadows and wait for any one of us to make one statement that we haven’t fully backed so that they can pounce on us with their gotcha moments in order to stroke their own egos: their guru complexes. This is because their mediocrity prohibits them from participating in the creative process philosophy is actually about. And they always rationalize it through a false criteria based on the standards of science, not philosophy.

understood, …no worries

Dear Diary Moment 1/23/2022:

Went, in my study point (yet again), through Joe Hughes’ section on Deleuze’s embrace of the univocity of Being. (Just can’t seem to back away from the hope of breaking through this particular creative hymen.) And while it didn’t give me quite the brain strain it did yesterday, I remain, for the most part, aloof. However, I did come to a couple of realizations.

For one, Deleuze’s embrace of univocal being (that which sees being as being said in the same way of all things (makes perfect sense given that he is treating difference and repetition as actually existing things –that is as compared to thinking of them as mere abstractions: the relationships that emerge between the “actual” things that can be empirically observed as hard objects.

(And note the overlap here with Rorty’s disdain for any talk about “ontological status”.)

For another, I’m starting to better appreciate Deleuze’s concern with Aristotle’s breakdown from a given genus to a given species: that any given difference that emerges is always the product of a pre-determined form.

It’s not much. But it could be a stepping stone towards shifting my mind through the chaos of lines and shapes on the poster to the 3D seascape within.

Dear Diary Moment 3/17/2022:

One of the things I got from my immersion in Buchanan’s book on Jameson is the distinction between philosophy and theory –that is even though theory can be considered an extension of philosophy. While philosophy tends to focus on the basic issues concerning human existence (free will vs. determinism, subjectivity vs. objectivity, ethical relativity vs. ethical absolutism, etc., etc.), theory tends more towards the political in its advancement and its (or not so much) embrace of Marxism.

My having recognized that my primary embrace has been theory (I’m not as read in more classical philosophers such as Plato or Aristotle or Descartes as I am the continentals), I now see why I have always felt a kind of disconnect to what I read in magazines like Philosophy Now and New Philosopher. They always feel kind of Philosophy 101 to me with writers that have a better understanding of it than I do. This is why more and more I find myself reading articles and finding nothing to respond to.

And don’t get me wrong: I respect what both magazines are doing and will continue to support both. Still, I’m haunted by that disconnect that I feel as concerns their more topical approaches. I sometimes feel like I’ve outgrown it. Although, other times I feel like I’m just burnt out.

Dear Diary Moment 4/7/2022:

I recently subscribed (via Philosophy Now (to The New Humanist. And one of the extras I got out of it was Roy Speckhardt’s book Creating Change Through Humanism. And reading it, it clearly feels like a manifesto –most of which (if not all of which (I agree with. At the same time, I can see why many rightwing Christians might have read secular humanism as just another religion, as they tried to argue to the Supreme Court back in about the 80’s or 90’s, that is as it applies to what was and is taught in public schools.

But as secular humanists (most of which are either committed Democratic progressives or who feel the Bern of Social Democratic principles), we know better. Our mission (should we choose to accept it (is to keep articulating the distinction between secular humanism and religion proper until everyone is clear that they are two completely different things; until everyone is clear that while religion proper is based on intuitions, secular humanism is based on things as they actually are. And we have to do it without succumbing to the Libertarian claim that the market (given its resources (has exclusive claim to the reality we all share.