The face of God…

 

The infinite complexity of the Mandelbrot set perhaps gives us a glimpse of God? The simplicity of  z = z² + c  is a hint of immortality, the merest fingerprint of divinity…

More advice from Rilke…

So you mustn’t be frightened…if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. In you…so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And that is what you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now do, more than anything else.

Don’t observe yourself too closely. Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share in everything that now meets you. But whatever errors, wishes, and yearnings of your boyhood are operating in you now are not what you remember and condemn. The extraordinary circumstances of a solitary and helpless childhood are so difficult, so complicated, surrendered to so many influences and at the same time so cut off from all real connection with life that, where a vice enters it, one may not simply call it a vice. One must be so careful with names anyway; it is so often the name of an offense that a life shatters upon, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a quite definite necessity of that life and could have been absorbed by it without any trouble. And the expenditure of energy seems to you so great only because you overvalue victory; it is not the “great thing” that you think you have achieved, although you are right about your feeling; the great thing is that there was already something there which you could replace that deception with, something true and real. Without this even your victory would have been just a moral reaction of no great significance; but in fact it has become a part of your life. Your life…which I think of with so many good wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of childhood toward the “great thing”? I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.

And if there is one more thing that I must say to you, it is this: Don’t think that the person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes give you much pleasure. His life has much trouble and sadness, and remains far behind yours. If it were otherwise, he would never have been able to find those words.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Thought for the day

“Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze.”

Aime Cesaire

Scum

Valerie Solanas perhaps best remembered for her attempt to murder Andy Warhol, wrote that memorable play UP YOUR ASS about a man hating hustler (female), went on to write SCUM – MANIFESTO a plan for the creation of an all female society. Solanas once described as “a hotwater bottle with tits” said:

“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”

“A true community consists of individuals – not mere species members, not couples – respecting each other’s individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally – free spirits in free relation to each other and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of “society” is the family; “hippies” say the tribe; no-one says the individual.”

“After the elimination of money there will be no further need to kill men; they will be stripped of the only power they have over psychologically independent females. They will be able to impose themselves only on the doormats, who like to be imposed on. The rest of the women will be busy solving the few remaining unsolved problems before planning their agenda for eternity and Utopia — completely revamping educational programs so that millions of women can be trained within a few months for high level intellectual work that now requires years of training (this can be done very easily once our educational goal is to educate and not perpetuate an academic and intellectual elite); solving the problems of disease and old age and death and completely redesigning our cities and living quarters. Many women will for a while continue to think they dig men, but as they become accustomed to female society and as they become absorbed in their projects, they will eventually come to see the utter uselessness and banality of the male.”

Laughter

Laugh and laugh
at the sun
at the nettles
at the stones
at the ducks

at the rain
at the pee-pee of the pope
at mummy
at a coffin full of shit

Georges Bataille

This poem introduces three of the most crucial themes traversing Bataille’s writing – laughter, excrement, and death.

His texts obsessively reiterate that the decomposed body is excremental, and that the only sufficient response to death is laughter. The corpse not only dissolves into a noxious base matter analogous to excrement, it is also in fact defecated as waste by the life of the species. For the corpse is the truth of the biological individual, its consummate superfluity. It is only through the passage into irredeemable waste that the individual is marked by the trace of its excess.

It is because life is pure surplus that the child of ‘Rire’ (Laughter)—standing by the side of his quietly weeping mother and transfixed by the stinking ruins of his father—is gripped by convulsions of horror that explode into peals of mirth, as uncompromising as orgasm. ‘Rire’ is, in part, a contribution to the theory of mourning. Laughter is a communion with the dead, since death is not the object of laughter: it is death itself that finds a voice when we laugh. Laughter is that which is lost to discourse, the haemorrhaging of pragmatics into excitation and filth…

Shrike by Quentin S. Crisp

Here you might catch fleeting glimpses of Haruki Murakami, Kafū Nagai – or other influences, like unexpected but subtle spills from Monkey Brain Sushi, or perhaps the haunting and emotive verse of Izumi Shikibu:

“There is not even a moment of calmness…
In the heart that loves the blossoms,
the wind is already blowing…”

Blowing in deed for Brett Stokes as he meditates on life, death and literature: convinced that a Shrike inhabits the garden of the recently widowed Mrs. Kunisada; and the Shrike, as we all know, loves to impale its prey upon thorns – thus enabling it to tear the flesh in nice beak-size potions for its immediate consumption; when suitably replete, the bird will simply leave uneaten flesh on its thorny larder and return for a fresh peck at a later time…not for nothing is it nicknamed the “butcher bird”.

It is late Autumn, a time when Fujiwara no Tameie tells us:

“I let go the autumn
at the edge of the broad sky,
among the fleeting clouds”

But Stokes in that garden finds the spectacular colours of the Autumn leaves quite fascinating; in the soft Autumnal light it is quite apparent that soon this splendor will fade to arboreal nakedness; but for now the colours working upon his imagination blur the edges of reality; and just as the morning dew drips from the tips of branches to the shaded roots, so his existence is like a simple delay between birth and death; where the central relationship between Stokes and the widow develops, and his obsession with the Shrike grows…

A fascinating, quite unique work blending motifs from Japanese and English literature in a wholly original way. Quentin S. Crisp, the man who told us: “Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.” And “Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.” Has produced a startling novella, which Peedeel recommends to one and all of you – Quentin’s is certainly a unique voice in this world of plastic pap, and one that should be more widely recognised.

Go purchase his book NOW. Hardcover HERE. Jacketed Hardcover HERE.

End of the World News: Nishitani Keiji and Nihilism

Nishitani Keiji recognised nihilism as the central philosophical problem of the twentieth century.

One of the major contributing factors to this nihilism, Nishitani saw as contemporary science. He believed this because our modern science is based on faulty epistemology, linked to a fundamental rift in human consciousness.

What did he mean by that, exactly?

In 1961 he published “Shukyo to wa Nanika” (what is religion?), later translated as “Religion and Nothingness”, in which he looked at nihilism, relating it in part to “modern” science, which “objectifies” not only the natural world but also the human subject; this results in the “depersonalisation” of the human being and the “denaturalisation” of nature. Deep alienation follows.

For as long as I can remember, I have believed “industrialised man” to be alienated from the world surrounding him; likewise the society we’ve created has adopted or assumed values based on this same alienation. Nishitani early on confronted his own nihilism. It was his struggle as a young man with despair and nihilism that led him to philosophy in the first place. He studied Nietzsche, Max Stirner, Heidegger and decided their thinking was “positive nihilism” (almost a creative nihilism!) as opposed to the “nihilism of despair” which he saw as something that bled from Europe to contaminate the whole modern industrialised world, including Japan.

He claimed the deep depersonalisation of human beings was exacerbated by our almost worship-like attitude to science, a stance equivalent to societal atheism; this “scientism” had grown from the classic (although faulty) epistemology separating subject and object, which in turn creates the illusion of the subject – I, Me, Mine – as an independent “entity” divorced from the rest of the world, apart from its environment.

I find Nishitani Keiji arguments very robust as an explanation of where the world is right now. His “cure” for the problem Śūnyatā (“the standpoint of emptiness” – developed from the teachings of the Buddha) is equally robust and very persuasive – but runs counter to the motivational basis of any capitalist society (western or eastern), and therefore would prove unacceptable to the majority of individuals comprising that society. It seems a truism that even when confronted by its own destruction, the human race will bicker, prevaricate, display incredible greed and self-interest – but never, NEVER, act in unison to prevent its own annihilation.

That is mankind’s tragedy.

Nevertheless, Nishitani Keiji was one of the world’s great thinkers. Over the years more and more philosophers (in the west especially) have taken up his thought, considered its challenges and the implication of its key ideas on the fundamental issues facing the world today. Ultimately Nishitani Keiji believed there was hope.

And I in my turn believe where there’s hope, there’s possibility…

De Sade and God – one created the other in his own image!

Donatien Alphonse François de Sade should have been christened Louis Donatien Aldonse but his mama, Marie-Eléonore de Maillé de Carman was otherwise engaged after her long confinement, so sent the newborn with a pair of servants, who at the critical moment failed to remember the list of names she had told them (they could neither read nor write so there was no point in her writing them down). Hence, due to faulty memory, was our good hero christened with a list of names, which he wore with pride through his eventful, if somewhat confined life…a life greatly misunderstood, and misrepresentated by a largely uncaring posterity!

de Sade’s daddy, the Comte de Sade, Seigneur de Saumane et de la Coste, Lieutenant-Général of the provinces of Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and Gex, marechal de camp des armées du roi (he had, you may note, almost as many titles as our own Peter Mandelson), apparently “swung both ways” and was a stereotypical grand seigneur, cold, restrained, formal – a very lazy and extravagant aristocrat, his laziness matched by his wife’s incredible indolence. She, bless her, got shot of little Donatien (de Sade was, despite the cock-up at his christening, always known as Louis) to his Grandmother, to a convent, to his Uncle, passing him from pillar-to-post, out of sight and out of mind.

Little Donatien was spoiled rotten by granny who loved to indulge the aristocratic little twerp. At age five, we find our hero with his Uncle (daddy’s six brothers and sisters were, with one exception, all ecclesiastics), the Abbe Francois de Sade whose sexual life was notoriously irregular (for example he lived with two mistresses, a mother and her daughter), and who ultimately provided the model for all those lustful ecclesiastics so conspicuous by their presence in so many of de Sade’s novels.

Despite the controversy surrounding de Sade, it is not widely realised that he was extremely devout – throughout his life he was obsessed with God! Those who denigrate him by suggesting he was mad, would be more justified if they suggested his mania was religious not sexual, after all not one of his writings fails to demonstrate his preoccupation with religion, while quite a number mention sex not at all.

In his youth he speaks of religion with piety, attaching huge importance to the sacrament and demonstrating great faith in God. By 1782, however, this had changed. In this year (the third of his almost continuous imprisonment without charge) he wrote “Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man”. Here de Sade is concerned with the inadequacy of the orthodox Christian description of the Universe. It is a well reasoned piece of dialectic. And from this moment on he cannot leave God alone – God and the Catholic Church! His knowledge was encyclopedic. He appears to have the Bible off by heart. He quoted extensively from Christian apologists from the early Church Fathers via Scott, Fenelon, Pascal and contemporary theologians. All this learning he used to attack God and the Church.

The intensity of de Sade’s attacks have seldom been equaled. He used reason, ridicule, blasphemy – highlighting the Bible’s inconsistencies, the history of the Papacy (especially its corruption and abuse of power), the pre-Christian foundations of the Eucharist and the dogma of Hell. Like one demented, at every opportunity, he demonstrated his passionate idealism – he would never forgive a God who permitted such evil and misery in the world! Nor a Church whose explanations offended all reason, and whose greed knew no bounds! Time after time he returns to the inconsistency between Christian profession and practice – Religion is dangerous, he claimed, as a base on which to build morality, “for if the falseness of the foundations is recognized, the entire edifice will tumble down.”

“God is either impotent or cruel. Man has made him in his own image. Give us a God worthy of respect.” His hatred for this God (de Sade hardly mentions Protestantism)who has deceived him is rabid. In his place de Sade positions “nature”, a sort of malevolent Goddess entirely occupied in harming mankind: “nature’s” object in creation is to have the pleasure of destroying that which she created. This ogress nature proceeds by destruction and corruption. “When the seed germinates in the earth, when it fertilizes and reproduces itself is it otherwise than by corruption, and is not corruption the first of the laws of generation?”

For de Sade, man (the creation of “nature”) knows only two necessities: hunger and lust.

“Is man the master of his tastes? One should be sorry for those who have strange ones, but never insult them; their wrong is Nature’s; they were no more capable of coming into the world with different tastes than we are of being born plain or beautiful.”

With such an argument de Sade removed responsibility from man for his criminal behavior – yet more than this was the implicit and explicit criticism of the backward-looking optimism of Rousseau, Condorcet and Babeuf. It completely banished the concept of the “Noble Savage” to the cemetery of failed ideas where it belonged.

What can we learn from de Sade today in Britain? Most importantly that the detention of individuals without charge can profoundly change those individuals – transform them into radicals and revolutionaries, an obvious response when confronted by the State and its many injustices (real or imagined). The devout de Sade was transformed – by war (joined the army aged fourteen at the outbreak of the seven years war), by incarceration in a variety of bleak goals, either without charge or on the “evidence” of his personal enemies (“evidence” that has irreparably damaged his reputation for all time) – into an irreligious advocate of libertarianism and social revolution.

Relevant, too, are de Sade’s comments on war: “War is simply public and authorized murder in which hired men slaughter each other in the interests of tyrants. It proves nothing except the ambition of the people promoting it.” And “The sword is the weapon of him who is in the wrong, the commonest resource of ignorance and stupidity.” For de Sade war was “merely imperial brigandage.”

“As long as a State’s riches is counted in wealth taken from the bowels of the world…the ongoing subjugation of foreign peoples is necessary and inevitable.”

One cannot help but think of Iraq and Afganistan – one with its huge oil resources the other with its ever important oil and gas pipelines.

Ultimately, we are left with a solitary question: did de Sade make God in his own likeness? Or did God create de Sade in his own image?

The all important answer has proven to be very elusive indeed.

Thought for the day

“I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.”

Oscar Wilde

Thought for the day

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

Philip K Dick