1. A culture can only be as healthy as its mothers. And, from the teat at which he sucks, mixed in with the mother's milk: faith or faithlessness.
9.23.2010
9.18.2010
Aphorisms for Michel
"The turbulence of a river flowing around the supporting pillars of a bridge is stucturally unpredictable, but no one would think to describe it as being free."
--Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles
122. His is a life in pursuit of comfort and pleasure, and a turning away from what is painful. His body has a particular feeling about his environment and he will act to avoid what hurts him and makes him insecure. The life of most men is little more than a quest for comfort and pleasure in an unpredictable world. How adventurous this life will be will depend upon the predictability of the environment in which he lives and the particular genetic demands of his body.
123. What then could the philosophers have possibly meant by freedom?
149. If we can say anything at all about it, we may say that consciousness is a reflecting upon an action that has happened or is about to happen. It is an awareness that has the effect of separating one's body from the world. The moment of consciousness objectifies the body and leads one to think he is not his body, that it is something foreign to him--a sort of container that consciousness is trapped inside. It may lead him to wrongly conclude that consciousness is the primary director of the body, or the seat of a man's essence.
151. Consciousness appears and through rationalization and justification of some action it effects a realignment of the body with the world. Consciousness often appears when a gap emerges between how a man wishes to act and what other men expect of him. Consciousness proceeds to justify a man's action in a world that he worries will find it disagreeable.
155. Consciousness appears as the separation of body, world, and action. It appears as an interruption of life. With rationalization and justification his body, his environment and the action he has taken, or will take, is reunited. He regains the confidence to act. He can live again. He need no more question his body and the world. And with that consciousness again disappears.
158. Consciousness is subject to the body, a tool in the body's pursuit of comfort and pleasure.
160. When an action cannot be justified consciousness lingers. His body, his environment and his action remain strangely suspended. He does not feel of the world. His body is a sort of familiar object, immediate yet strangely distant. He is bewildered.
161. How curious that some philosophers would see in this moment of confusion a deep truth about man and declare consciousness to be what is essential, what is most meaningful about him.
179. A man with desires that fit neatly with his environment has little use for reflection. He does not need to rationalize conduct that his environment can easily satisfy or that men around him consider acceptable. It follows that he has little need for or experience of consciousness.
184. The less a man experiences moments of consciousness the healthier and happier he is.
Initial Aphorisms On Overcoming
21. Where your body is and what it is doing is what is meaningful. The activity called “transcendence” is for he who lacks the courage to act and to physically change the world; a mental exercise for the physically weak, the decadent, the degenerate: a denial of the body and the world. It is a trick men play on themselves to get through the day.
44. If your project is strong enough you will sleep alone. Even when she sleeps beside you.
76. One is 50% one’s father, 50% one’s mother. In the absence of dramatic environmental factors (the breakdown of society, for example) or life-changing accidents (i.e. a choice that improbably changes your life--the outlier), it is likely that you will trend toward the average of your parents. By your mid-30s your life will have narrowed to an approximation of who they were.
77. Research on adopted children shows that by their mid-30s their lives are significantly more similar to their genetic parents than their adoptive ones. Additionally, studies of identical twins separated at birth show them by their mid-30s living very similar lives in terms of education level, occupation, number of children, and lifestyle. Should one choose to do what feels comfortable, one should expect to become his parents.
83. One’s development, as guided by genetic and environmental triggers, is mostly complete by the age of the 30. The genes involved in physical development have gone dormant and his hormone production begins to slow. He settles into life as his parents. He acts and responds to the world as they did. He is human, wonderfully human. And he lives without any knowledge or experience of what it is to overcome.
87. He who overcomes acts outside the society he was born into (his environment)--he does what other men do not and do not consider. He who overcomes acts beyond his parents (his genetics), doing as they never did. He who overcomes becomes alone, without other men and without parents.
89. To overcome other men is to exchange nothing with them and ask nothing from them in return--it is to act beyond economics. One becomes a gift to men, a sort of saint or messiah, and just as likely an outlaw.
95. But only he will know if he has overcome his parents. This overcoming will not be apparent to other men. Perhaps it will not be clear to him either?
44. If your project is strong enough you will sleep alone. Even when she sleeps beside you.
76. One is 50% one’s father, 50% one’s mother. In the absence of dramatic environmental factors (the breakdown of society, for example) or life-changing accidents (i.e. a choice that improbably changes your life--the outlier), it is likely that you will trend toward the average of your parents. By your mid-30s your life will have narrowed to an approximation of who they were.
77. Research on adopted children shows that by their mid-30s their lives are significantly more similar to their genetic parents than their adoptive ones. Additionally, studies of identical twins separated at birth show them by their mid-30s living very similar lives in terms of education level, occupation, number of children, and lifestyle. Should one choose to do what feels comfortable, one should expect to become his parents.
83. One’s development, as guided by genetic and environmental triggers, is mostly complete by the age of the 30. The genes involved in physical development have gone dormant and his hormone production begins to slow. He settles into life as his parents. He acts and responds to the world as they did. He is human, wonderfully human. And he lives without any knowledge or experience of what it is to overcome.
87. He who overcomes acts outside the society he was born into (his environment)--he does what other men do not and do not consider. He who overcomes acts beyond his parents (his genetics), doing as they never did. He who overcomes becomes alone, without other men and without parents.
89. To overcome other men is to exchange nothing with them and ask nothing from them in return--it is to act beyond economics. One becomes a gift to men, a sort of saint or messiah, and just as likely an outlaw.
95. But only he will know if he has overcome his parents. This overcoming will not be apparent to other men. Perhaps it will not be clear to him either?
9.16.2010
On the Equality of Minds (Prolegomena Fragment)
The West views the body as the cause of inequality among men: discrimination based upon strength, age, ethnicity, sex and physical dexterity. To correct these inequalities the following steps were taken:
1. Abortions: Women can now enjoy the pleasure of sex without the responsibilities of pregnancy, and can thereby act as promiscuously as any man.
2. Debt financing:
a. Which made conspicuous consumption available to everyone regardless of work ethic, ability, or income.
b. Which moved manufacturing jobs to poorer countries and replaced them with knowledge worker jobs. Such jobs leveled the career and economic playing field between men and women as physical strength and coordination are not necessary for success. (One might even argue that women are better equipped than men for the work of management, communication, and organization.)
3. Government subsidies and legal protections to assist underperforming or underrepresented groups: ethnic minorities, the handicapped, etc.
4. Language purged of physically identifying adjectives: Politically correct speech. It became derogatory, immoral, even illegal, to identify a person by his physical characteristics. (The body is not considered to be the person.)
5. Science created ways to extend the lives of the sick and decrepit, to keep their minds alive inside their dying bodies.
In these ways the mind was thought to be finally separated from the body--a great triumph of Cartesian philosophy. Disembodied minds can be equals.
Supplementary Note: Abortion is justified on the grounds that the unborn baby is not yet a person. Said differently, the unborn child is a body that does not yet have a mind. It is in no way the equal of a child who has just emerged from the vagina and been granted legal protection as a person. The mind appears to be defined as a pool of memories and demonstrated intentionality in the world, excluding one's experience inside the uterus. (The idea that women carry a ‘world-less place’ inside them called the uterus is a puzzling one.)
At the other extreme, a tremendous effort and expenditure is made to keep alive the aging and the sick. Certainly the fear of death and desire for immortality guide the expenditure of resources in this regard, but the argument is also made that the elderly and infirm are equals of the healthy and that they (their minds) have a right to carry on. Yet there is little outrage that the West has chosen to accept the destruction of unborn children, while expending countless resources to extend the lives of the dying. This is perhaps one of the greater ironies of the hegemony of Cartesian thinking.
1. Abortions: Women can now enjoy the pleasure of sex without the responsibilities of pregnancy, and can thereby act as promiscuously as any man.
2. Debt financing:
a. Which made conspicuous consumption available to everyone regardless of work ethic, ability, or income.
b. Which moved manufacturing jobs to poorer countries and replaced them with knowledge worker jobs. Such jobs leveled the career and economic playing field between men and women as physical strength and coordination are not necessary for success. (One might even argue that women are better equipped than men for the work of management, communication, and organization.)
3. Government subsidies and legal protections to assist underperforming or underrepresented groups: ethnic minorities, the handicapped, etc.
4. Language purged of physically identifying adjectives: Politically correct speech. It became derogatory, immoral, even illegal, to identify a person by his physical characteristics. (The body is not considered to be the person.)
5. Science created ways to extend the lives of the sick and decrepit, to keep their minds alive inside their dying bodies.
In these ways the mind was thought to be finally separated from the body--a great triumph of Cartesian philosophy. Disembodied minds can be equals.
Supplementary Note: Abortion is justified on the grounds that the unborn baby is not yet a person. Said differently, the unborn child is a body that does not yet have a mind. It is in no way the equal of a child who has just emerged from the vagina and been granted legal protection as a person. The mind appears to be defined as a pool of memories and demonstrated intentionality in the world, excluding one's experience inside the uterus. (The idea that women carry a ‘world-less place’ inside them called the uterus is a puzzling one.)
At the other extreme, a tremendous effort and expenditure is made to keep alive the aging and the sick. Certainly the fear of death and desire for immortality guide the expenditure of resources in this regard, but the argument is also made that the elderly and infirm are equals of the healthy and that they (their minds) have a right to carry on. Yet there is little outrage that the West has chosen to accept the destruction of unborn children, while expending countless resources to extend the lives of the dying. This is perhaps one of the greater ironies of the hegemony of Cartesian thinking.
9.11.2010
Ted 2
Ted was telling us about his previous employment as a secret government agent. He had been at every major conflict of the last 20 years: the first Iraq war, the Yugoslav wars, Kosovo--he was there when the Blackhawk helicopters went down in Somalia. He knew those Delta guys. He was there gathering intel. He was once in Africa on safari and got lost from his guide. Follow the river is what you are supposed to do and that is what he did. Clans of bushmen attacked Ted and he repelled their attacks. He followed the river for days and back to civilization. Did we know that he laid 100 girls during spring break 1992? No, we did not. A young blond with a huge ass walked by us and Ted stopped talking. I laid her when I was in high school, he whispered. But Ted, she's in her twenties and you’re almost 40? What does that got to do with anything, he replied.
9.08.2010
9.07.2010
Aphorisms at a 6:11 Pace
108. The tragedy of the American woman: It wasn’t enough to be the gatekeeper of the species. She wanted also to be a man.
167. We might say the world is wonderful, and mean something by it, if only there was less to say about it. But what then would we do about it?
171. The man who sits and has a word for everything: the liar.
192. My concern is with what is invisible--with what cannot be bought and sold. My hope is to understand it through action--to sweat out what the philosophers have said.
199. The longer a man sits the larger his vocabulary.
222. No physical training will harden the body like silence. Nothing will weaken it more than talking about a woman.
167. We might say the world is wonderful, and mean something by it, if only there was less to say about it. But what then would we do about it?
171. The man who sits and has a word for everything: the liar.
192. My concern is with what is invisible--with what cannot be bought and sold. My hope is to understand it through action--to sweat out what the philosophers have said.
199. The longer a man sits the larger his vocabulary.
222. No physical training will harden the body like silence. Nothing will weaken it more than talking about a woman.
9.04.2010
What You Learned On Lookout Mountain
Only the greatest project will replace the child.Have children and families.
Obey the body.
Amazing
The view from Lookout Mountain is amazing.
The descent is amazing too.
The Chatfield Loop is certainly amazing. It amazed me.
Even without color the Chatfield Loop amazes.
This is Glenwood Canyon and it is amazing. It was here that stupid fuck caused me to crash and break my elbow.
Another amazing image from Glenwood Canyon.
Amazing video from Deer Creek Canyon
Amazing video from Lookout Mountain
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