which war? mine!

atRifF

what is war? "a condition of active antagonism."

antagonism? the "condition of being an opposing principle, force, or factor."

as opposed to what? which force? to be is to continually wage a battle with opposing instincts within oneself. a dynamic conflict of domination and subordination. to be means taking sides against oneself.

with this premise of "internal opposition" i'd like to probe an ancient taoist text, the art of war.
let's backtrack to philosopher f. nietzsche, who speaks a constant "wrestling of opposite forces." reality for nietzsche, is a flux of contradictions. an authentic individual must not only acknowledge this fact, but seek to promote similar oppositions within himself:

(...) a given quality contends against itself and separates into opposites; everlastingly these opposites seek to reunite. odinary people fancy they see something rigid, complete and permanent. in truth, however, light and dark, bitter and sweet are attached to each other and interlocked at any given moment like wrestlers of whom sometimes the one, sometimes the other is on top. (PTAG, 5)

a wrestling act. here's another one: "one is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions; one remains young only on condition the soul does not relax, does not long for peace." (TI, morality as antinature, 3)

this nietszchean auto-poesis (the making of oneself) is fundamental to overcome the stagnation posed by self-satisfaction, which paradoxically is something we all seek.  change means (inner) conflict engendered by opposites (friend, enemy, self). authentic self is he/she who is determined by this intensity of self-oppositions.

let's not beat around the bush. we can now entertain the opening words in the art of war:

1. military action is important. it's the ground of death and life... so it is imperative to examine it.

how can there be a "military" of oneself?

military relates to armed forces. soldiers! what's a soldier? one who actively serves a cause. which?

one, any, whether event or condition in which one is responsible for an action or result. 

i can see myself as a soldier on my way to battle with myself in an unforeseen event. any situation is in principle a pure beginning. here we must accept the uncertainty principle: everything begins in confusion and obscurity. the emergence of clarity is the result of this internal wrestling which leads to never-ending clarification. am i not responsible for this most significant cause? is is not mine? is it not my duty to fight? (think of the literal? non- literal? meaning of the b. gita).  

is this the end?

(...) he who has overcome his passions has entered into possession of the most fertile ground … to sow the seeds of good spiritual works in the soil of the subdued passions is then the immediate urgent task. the overcoming itself is only a means, not a goal; if it is not so viewed, all kinds of weeds and devilish nonsense will quickly spring up in this rich soil now unoccupied, and soon there will be more rank confusion than there ever was before. (WS, 53)

a new battle will have to be fought. and why not? 

enough said.

i'm closing this post next wednesday at 11pm.   

The Chuang Tzu

Excerpts from The Chuang Tzu.

until we have an answer

we had a discussion last class (11am, MWF). rather it was a moment in the discussion when imane made a point about trying to understand that some good can come out of history's horrors, i.e., this grasping can make us understand & build character, that besides the absurd horror, there's something redeemable.

i can see imane's point & agree with her up to a point, but i need to make very clear why i still have a problem with this argument.

this is not just suffering we're talking about, but unnecessary, undeserved, unfair, suffering that for ever destroys a life. worst yet, nonredeemable in the sense that it is anonymous & forgotten. we feel for those that we have loved and pass on. they are gone but are part of our memories. how about this interminable legion of nobodies throughout history? women, children, young men, elderly: talented, hopeful, bright, with full lives ahead of them. sentenced by being-there, in the wrong time & place. victims of ignorance, backwardness, hatred, hypocrisy, victims no one ever cared for. an interminable choir of ghosts with no past to claim for justice. where are they? can we see their faces, can we fathom their harrowing fate?

until we have an answer, it's better to just be quiet and silent. to keep silence, deliberately, not to try anything other than to honor their forgotten memory.

red meat, cancer, heart disease

heed the advice while there's time:

People who ate more red meat were less physically active and more likely to smoke and had a higher body mass index, researchers found. Still, after controlling for those and other variables, they found that each daily increase of three ounces of red meat was associated with a 12 percent greater risk of dying over all, including a 16 percent greater risk of cardiovascular death and a 10 percent greater risk of cancer death.

Tao Te Ching

for the sake of simplicity, i found this translation by s mitchell.

phallocentric power twice

this late 19th century poster illustrates phallocentric power @ the height of the struggle for women's suffrage in the U.S. take a look at the role of "men." a policeman hold the woman down, he reddish nose a sign of having been "attacked" by a "masculine woman" (epithet used against the suffragettes at the time).

 
a dapper mustached man vexingly steps on the woman's chest while force-feeding her through a funnel. "men" resent women's claim for political equality (in so doing, they are betrayed by their own representation). the "victims" are now the torturers who deprive  women of their freedom to go on a huger strike for being arbitrarily detained (for protesting men's political inequality?) this is how men protect their right not to be infringed upon by women.

and why not -all the while- have a little fun?

but meanings multiply with contexts: a little more than a century later water-boarding becomes a policy of state. the phallocentric method remains, now with different subjects. instead of women, now we got terrorists. both suffrage and terror are subversive acts.

who is the well-dressed man?

Confucius' Analects

The Analects.

length of our final paper

our final paper should be around 1,200 words. that's about 4 pages, double spaced.

i want to see some paper outlines!

don't forget to vote!

i don't think there's a more important ritual right now.

when the absolutist, the subjectivist, the relativist and the skeptic discuss truth

we cannot stop making inferences. but inferences are tricky. here's an example from our last class. if i recall correctly (and a lot was said back-and-forth and my memory may betray me), jonathan made the point that my saying: religious pluralism is better than religious fundamentalism is an absolutist statement.

please, read my chicken soup dilemma. 

why make a purported-to-be-true statement the sole property of the absolutist?

as my chicken-soup-dilemma suggests, diverse and opposite positions can converge on particular statements. the problem is not a statement, but what backs it up.

truth (well, except truths of math) has to be dependent of time, space & milieu. here i part with the idealist. why bragging an "evermore" when life is just a breathing cosmic/second? truth is no less decisive when it aims for the now --but i'll let the future settle the matter.  

take this statement:

i believe truth is a marriage between 1. thought & 2. a time-bounded state-of-affairs. 

let's examine possible justifications:

absolutists would accept 1. & 2. as long as both are infallible and transcendent.
subjectivists do exactly the opposite of the absolutist.
relativists take 1. while doubting the necessity of 2. 
skeptics suspend the value of 1. & 2.
nihilists care for neither.

i heard that i could also be a "subjectivist." when you add the two: subjectivist + absolutist, you get a bizarre stew of infallibility (the absolutist part) & solipsism (the subjectivist part).

i wish them both away from me & my shadow.*  

so, where are we? i don't know exactly -but hope- in a better place than before. :)
______________
* a line from cristopher marlowe's dr. faustus.

your vote is crucial!

all this week is early vote in florida

you believe the system is crooked. it is.
you believe our politicians are not up to the test. they aren't.
you believe we need an overhaul. we do.
 
as students, we have vital interests to protect. 
as women, we have important rights to defend. 
as citizens, we have achievements to uphold. 
as humans, we have an environment to preserve. 
as partners, we have prejudices to fight. 

don't let social anomie and indifference get the best of you.
time is running out.
let's vote!