We are becoming ++infantile into older ages.
Might as well monetize it for myself.
The best sort of investments, are the ones intimately
tied into society continuing. Because if it doesn't continue,
all the investments are worthless. -- TKT
QUESTION: As a society, are we understanding
human nature better, so as to be better able to address
the concerns and issues one faces as a human via
the agency of persons in various expert-knowledge
domains, or are we suffering from certain increasing
agonies that are particular to the modern age, included,
but not limited to, alienation brought about by
hyperspecialization? -- Olli and Joe
ANSWER: (1) "If the three ages of the concept are
the encyclopedia, pedagogy, and commercial
professional training, only the second can save
us from falling from the heights of the first into
the disaster of the third -- an absolute disaster
for thought, whatever its benefits may be, of
course, from the viewpoint of universal
capitalism." -- Deleuze and Guattari, "What
is Philosophy?"
(2) Que tan mal me porte mi corazón
que me tiene tanto rencor
y me ve muriendo por culpa de tu amor.
[...]
Donde vayas mi amor
te guiaré porque no guardo rencor
en mi corazón en mi corazón.
-- Raulin Rodriguez, "Medicina de Amor"
(3) You know that little clock, the one on your
VCR, the one that's always blinking twelve
noon 'cause you never figured out how to get
in there and change it?"
-- Laurie Anderson, "Same Time Tomorrow"
THE QUESTION AGAIN?:
I suspect that I too am caught in tight loops,
for one thing, the loop that undermines my
own best efforts at "self-salvation", "self-liberation",
or "escape artistry". But these loops feed
back across the entire field of my experience.
It's like any sickness: the symptoms are
evidence of the body fighting the malady.
I think the question doesn't necessarily have
a whole lot to do with society. Yes, society
exists, but society is made up of individuals,
individual relationships, and relationships
between relationships. (This reductive
model that turns fields of experience
into pairwise relationships, or, in other
words, which narrates, would, of course,
be a problem worse than any cure if
we did not also consider maps that
go in the opposite direction, from
narration/language to experience,
e.g. "spells".) More to the point, "society"
(such as "the society of women") is
experienced in the body, or even
more to the point, by creative
subjectivities who are inclined to
make more of it than what they found
there in the first place.
And yet, there's no doubt that there is
something called human knowledge,
and folks can draw on it within and
even formatively-for their experiences.
Introducing the whipping boy of
"intellectuals", "specialists", "experts",
or even "celebrities" seems likely to
go along with the fancy psychological
move of introjection -- "a process wherein
the subject replicates in itself behaviors,
attributes or other fragments of the
surrounding world, especially of other
subjects" -- in other words, it seems
to be a move that will result in
self-castigation, or blaming oneself
for trying to solve the problem,
especially trying to solve the problem
by thinking about it.
It seems that among the various
imperatives (bodily, psychic, and
uncanny) the bodily is most likely
to dominate the others, to shove
them around, as it were. "Investing
in society" probably means finding
ways to build psychic and uncanny
counter-balances to the imperious
body. This does indeed seem
to imply "generating economic
traction/leverage" as one of several
approaches (it's important that
you said "monetize it FOR MYSELF"),
but it also seems like there are
other ways to think about things.
Ultimately, since we mostly create or
are complicit in, implicated in, or
even in some sense redeemed
by, the creation of our problems --
after all, that's what it means to be
"adults" -- we should look carefully
at the value of having, and maintaining,
problems.
This is the question, restated:
how are problems to be valued?
ACCORDINGLY, in order to establish
a process whereby we can effectively
answer this question:
Whether we see things as getting
better or worse in society or in
our lives, whether we harbor resentment
or do not harbor resentment, and
however we go about dealing with
them once we've sort of kind of
figured out what they are, we should
be vigilant about learning how our
problems are valued, by ourselves, by
others, by society; whether positively,
negatively, or from some other range
of values altogether ("Lady Sings
the Blues")....
<fade out to Tori Amos' cover of
"Strange Fruit">
http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=166877&song=Strange+Fruit
