RE: [-empyre-] "what is to be done?" Lenin's words--forward from Claudia Reiche

["Dirk Vekemans" <dv@vilt.net>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [mailto:empyre-
> bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Saul Ostrow
> Sent: vrijdag 12 januari 2007 17:25
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] "what is to be done?" Lenin's words--forward
> from Claudia Reiche
> 
> 
> seemingly the problem (and this holds true for Lenin) is that when we
> are critical of
> others we tend not to judge ourselves or our solutions by the same
> terms -- the failure
> to be self reflexive leaves us running in place
> 
[dv:---] 

Excuse me getting wordy here but you seem to presuppose levels where there
are non, i think, and then proceed to a negative conclusion where perhaps an
affirmative incitement would be better.

A _failure_ to be self-reflexive would imply a possible extraction or at
least abstraction of a judicial instance (your 'same terms': let's suppose
that would be a kind of measuring standard or device) that could be ported
from one instance of the judging machine (e.g. us judging Lenin) to another
(in that case: us judging us). In my view any judging taking place is always
a process that cannot that easily be anatomized into conceptually distinct
levels. Judging is always local, aggressive, destructive etc out of
necessity because at some point in the judging process the implied scales of
judging criteria lose their differentiating power, the event of a choice
takes place, an event that has largely been steered by those judging
criteria and their circumscription, their auto-describing area of validness.
You follow the code because the code is all you have to base your judgment
on, but then the code gets running and you need to follow the code again,
but you will have become the code.

The failure to be self-reflexive shouldn't be conceived as a failure, it is
a prohibition from the given set of rules, requiring an absence (The Thing
to be Done), an area or undefined multiplicity that does the
searching/judging and a distinct area/undefined multiplicity that creates
the field of possible actions. 
Our problem thus is the human condition of these things taking time, and
changing essentially while doing so. Once the Lenin statue is down the robes
needed to bring him down have turned into an elaborate cobweb of threaded
instances of misplaced concreteness.


If you can't judge a book by its cover (we all need to, for lack of time)
you most certainly can't tear off the cover of one to smack the other in the
face with.

This doesn't mean we are left running in place. The running in place feeling
is a gentle but not altogether harmless nostalgia of the Romantic DeathWish
called Progress. The Charles Bronson Grin of Frustration in the Face of the
Bad and equally Ugly. What we do  acquire is what is required by the
changing condition. We acquire the knowledge of a phase-shifting ritournelle
of judging habits and aptitudes. We acquire the means to communicate rhythms
to recognize and memorize the rhythms of ourselves the educators in our
education-candidates performing our tricks. We can make audible what we
bring about in others, what is left there- vestiges -tracings of our own
efforts. But, should you be inclined to pursue the programming paradigm
further here, attempt to encapsulate the sought-after human quality of
educational process, you will only cut a portion off it dry from its one and
only source and unity. That's a wisdom already acquired by Giordano Bruno
before he got burned in Rome.

The evolutionary shift some folks want to read into exponential growth of
data-processing that are equaled only by an exponential deterioration of our
global resources seems to be a bit longer in the making for me. I do believe
we are in a genuine crisis but such speculations are, i presume, not allowed
in this time of immediate urgency. They make me want to get ugly, very
impolite so I get sarcastic instead. Like we are experiencing a slight
crashing incident, the crew is supposed to stick to getting the plane
horizontal again. I'll join everyone gladly in talking shop on Singularities
and other Divinities ex machina  when some of these approaching things no
longer scare the living daylight out of me. Deviate, then divinate.

Perhaps, getting back to education, that was the something our esteemed
director Buergel was looking for: a making together (confession) of the
rhythms detected in his own longings, just like we all are looking to shake
hands together, praise to be praised, raise to be part of the elevated.
Shake rattle and roll, by all means do let us act as if we're under current,
electrified bodies strung together in a weird and seemingly pointless dance.
But collaboration is never a collaboration in the sense of one knowledge
plus another one will make us two knowledges being less stupid then one. We
need to acknowledge that a human doing intricate things is a monadic machine
bent on survival and procreation. Basically it hates your guts. We are all
pretentious bitches and dickheads wanting to be winners sub specie
aeternitatis. So? 

We dance and pass on the dance we dance too. This is what we do, while
living, as running code. We can only escape the infamous double bind of
capitalism bent on self-destruction if we positively embrace our human need
to be human and allow the non-human to check us where needed. The
escape-hatch logic of reward on the next-level is really quite illegal in
any system wanting to survive public scrutiny. You can fool a lot of people
sometimes but you can't...

Sure nothing will come of it, except, in the distance perhaps, the sound of
one hand, clapping, performing a whole new roaratorio of its own.