Biohermeneutics

the mother’s body

liefthetowncrier — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:05:07 +0000

The acknowledgement that my mother has buttocks, now. My psyche continued to resist — and what were the loci of this resistance? I would have to give up:
–my native egoism
–my sense of victimization
–masturbatory pleasure in tales and visions of women’s buttocks
Masturbation was to be replaced by universal love, based on universal buttocks. The incredible truth was that pornographic content reflected not only women’s buttocks but everyone’s buttocks, including my own.

So pornographic pleasure would have to be relinquished and transformed and diffused, into general and universal love.

In return for giving up illusion, I would gain:
–effectiveness in life
–reconciliation with my mother (now with buttocks!)
–truthiness to the universe

Pornographic pleasure involved an included, precursor or predicate belief in the existence of the objects being described, viz. women’s buttocks. It is impossible to take pleasure in porn without at least provisionally believing in the woman’s body. Masturbation skips over this belief — because if one did truly believe in woman’s carnality, likely one’s mother’s carnality, one would probably not need to masturbate. Truthfulness must cling to the positing of the woman’s body in the first place, and must root that body in one’s beliefs, rather than hurrying on to pleasure. Pornography’s positing may run directly counter to neurotic/psychotic belief. An explicit collision between porn and psychosis might effectively destroy both.

***

Fortitude. If an ax should fall, I have learned my lesson, have learned many lessons.

***

Once upon a time, I assumed my intuitions were right, and sought to accommodate incoming data to them. Nowadays I often assume that my feelings or intuitions are wrong, and I seek to accommodate myself to the world, and to apply the world against my mental habits.

sex as bifurcation of the social whole

liefthetowncrier — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:30:20 +0000

If Stage 2 is a response to the social whole rather than to individuals, then the sexuality of Stage 4 does not involve a sudden overlay of differential sexual features upon hitherto undifferentiated individuals. Rather, sexuality is a bifurcation of the social whole itself, into male and female. The individual does not truly exist, it would seem, prior to Stage 4. Stage 3 does seem to inflect individuals: plants can die, for instance. But perhaps this is a mistaken impression. Perhaps plants, like Elves, do not ordinarily die. Perhaps plants are closer to bacteria in devoting themselves to the single-minded advance of the species, without even encountering the necessity of individual subsuming. Plants reflect a segregation of reproductive apparatus from the main body of the organism — and this does involve a certain evolution into a form of individuality. But in fact the plant is narcissistically focused on generating more of itself. So should we really see plants as non-individuated, as somehow vague in their immortality. Certainly we don’t consider the plucking of a flower or the cutting down of a tree, as “killing” in the same way as we regard the killing of a insect.

technology and social organization

liefthetowncrier — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 23:43:11 +0000

Query whether technology is undermining social structures such as corporations and governments. That is, the web plus mobile technology may be rendering old social arrangements obsolete. Corporations are increasingly relying on contractors hired for particular projects: the former concept of the employee is under some threat. Contracting must depend partly on the ease of communicating with contractors. Rather than having all corporate employees in the same locale at the same time, contractors can be told to come and go, or need not be in a single location, or not at the same time. All of this is facilitated by communication systems. In the past, coordination was accomplisehed by getting everyone in the same place. Noe, such coordination can be effected remotely and in real time; people have cell phones rather than answering machines.

Der Gesetz

liefthetowncrier — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 19:01:11 +0000

What is the law? An effort to bring order to the world, to social relations, as mediated by things; a perception of the world as ordered by invisible bonds and boundaries. The science of the social. Surely there is such a science…The law is highly practical, embodied, historical. It has to do with what is done, the shapes of social relations as the latter actually occur, in contrast to the question of how they “should” or “must” occur. The law is full of contingent phenomena, things which need not exist in the abstract, in a universe without agents, but which do exist in light of the phenomenon of society. So the law is about the existence of other people, and presumably about maximization. Other people – independent agents – are a good thing. The law demands acknowledging the existence of these agents – with desires, wishes, actions of their own. Their existence gives rise to certain possibilities, certain shapes of relations. These things are good and…fun. Their existence is not mortally serious. They exist upon the great pre-existent substrate of morality. The law cannot defy morality, but neither is it defined by it. Therefore there is flexibility and even jocularity about legal concepts. There is a certain social chattiness about legal precedent. The law deals with a populous universe.

Of course the law is about things, too – the material world; but the law treats physical things as surrounded by a penumbra of social utility. And bizarrely enough, the law gives rise to a certain layer of concepts, interpretive generalizations which have meaning apart from an immediate physical referent, while also not partaking of the full freedom of thought. Legal concepts are like conversational memes: contextually dependent, hazy around the edges, products of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “experience.” The law extends infinitely out into the actual dealings of society. It is pragmatic, not abstract; concerned with patterns, but only as the latter emerge from actual social practice. A lawyer is an expert in the actual. It’s good that society does have some sort of codifiable knowledge connected with it.

A lawyer loves the collisions and deals and investments of society. The lawyer exists to facilitate the interface between two parties; the contingencies which happen when the world is populous. A certain amount of chaos is inevitable; no one can predict exactly what independent agents will do in relation to each other. Independence and freedom are always to be kept in mind, are always the backdrop of legal reasoning. People must deal with each other, they do deal with each other, and indeed they want to deal with each other; the law knows the shapes of the ways in which this is possible.

The law therefore demands a certain social, sociable outlook. One does not stand upon the firm ground of isolated individualism but rather within a flexible social space. The existence of others is not inimical but welcome. Things can be done with these others. One can hire them, be hired by them, exchange goods, transact, marry. Social life does demand a grounding in e.g. morality, sexual identity, good feeling, hard work; but once these things are attained, social bonding is…fun. Various good things are made possible by it. Fun is had.

stages of language

liefthetowncrier — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:08:23 +0000

New comment on the notion that words are tools – i.e. are used for social effect – prior to a purely referential awareness. Stage 4 is a world of rhetoric and propaganda; words are weapons – which might rely on some referential awareness, but certainly not one that the utterer takes seriously. The referentialism of the philosophers relies heavily on Stage 5; there is a true intent to mean, and to stick with one’s meaning. Whereas in Stage 7 words can take on personal meaning, and in Stage 8 words can attach to new referents; Stage 9 sees a quotational use of words from another’s point of view. But what is going on in e.g. Stage 2? Words have to be primitive tools, on that level; in essence, words are objects in their own right, flung about for effect. This utilitarian-ism is unlike the social flux of Stage 6, which appears to be the object of the philosophers’ wrath…Stage 6 sees words used for a pragmatic, wink-wink-nudge-nudge effect, a generally agreed-upon social meaning. But words do not have a glorious referentialist past. The Stage 2 child cannot distinguish between words and the objects they refer to; words do not yet mean.

Stage 3 might witness words being used for the coolness of their sounds; here the child’s joy in auralism and utterance – and poet’s joy in the same.

***

Asian languages are porous to affect, they are a direct derivation from the fluidity of affective utterance. Whereas Indo-European languages seem based on the disjunctive boundaries of syllables. Certain affective utterance does seem disjunctive – e.g. laughter. Possibly East and West diverged via the particular affects giving rise to language…

defecation, reproduction, metabolism

liefthetowncrier — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:42:19 +0000

Accession to Stage 2 has nothing to do with action, but only pertains to the sheer existence of one’s body. There was something to do with defecation — which represented an opening and then closing of one’s body to the world. Likely defecation needs to be included in the range of fundamental processes, along with e.g. reproduction. And it would need to appear early — probably earlier than eating/orality — rather than being tacked on later. Now a cell overrun by viruses explodes and releases the latter into the environment — but defecation is a controlled emission of “waste.”. Meanwhile, “eating” is like unto the voluntary absorbtion — Jesus-like — of otherwise dangerous material. The first instance of orality may not have been for purposes of organismic metabolism per se, but instead may have represented an effort to neutralize a dangerous thing. It appears that the consumed thing is entropically reduced by the consum-er — by contrast with reproduction, in which the viral status is essentially preserved and accomodated. Are reproduction and metabolism joint spinoffs from viral infection: the host cell somehow utilizes the “coat” for metabolism while incorporating the “genetic” material into a nucleus?

Cf. the Norman invasion of England: the incorporation/absorbtion of an intruding force, which becomes the “leadership” of the unified entity but is essentially neutralized by it, by comparison with e.g. the Vikings.

In general, biology lags way behind physics in raw theory — the ability to cast old certainty to the winds and interrogate basic phenomena. Einstein broke down the old fixities of matter and energy, saw that they were both artifacts. Now biology needs to break down the distinction between organism and process.

Vietnam

liefthetowncrier — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:18:20 +0000

Classic Freudian methodology says that you have to expunge old demons before you can be free to live in the present. America’s classic demon is Vietnam, that is where we first failed as a nation — and accordingly entered a prolonged malaise. Nation-building in Iraq and particularly in Afghanistan is essentially a chance to “go back” and try again.

novelty

liefthetowncrier — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:19:20 +0000

Novelty in reproduction may not be a matter of species-utility — e.g. the need to stay ahead of viruses or enhance variation or some such — so much as of individual utility: the parent-individual may need to isolate genes or somatic elements which threaten the parent’s own survival. The novelty of the proto-”child” may threaten the parent’s integrity, so the parent segregates the “new” or different portion of itself, and then spins it off into a new individual. A certain rationale is, the parent does not have outright hostility to the “new” elements, indeed it is impossible to designate which “side” of the self is newer and older; and there is no longer of expelling one element into the void – but it is clear that the two sides cannot live together, and ought to separate for mutual survival.

More generally, evolutionary theory would do well to avoid discussions of “purpose” or utility — at least species-utility — in the early stages. Purpose does not emerge until at least Stage 5. Earlier developments were mechanical, they simply happened, as it were. The paradox of determinism and freedom exists — but it is solve-able by historical means: purpose did emerge from determinism, under certain conditions.

normalcy and sexual selection

liefthetowncrier — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:32:51 +0000

Sexual selection favors extreme traits — but natural selection itself must hew close to the norm: presumably natural selection favors the absolute average. The individual who is the precise middle of the pack is likely to have the greatest survivability vis-a-vis the environment. Certainly Stage 2 witnesses a striving toward the center. Presumably the range of genetic variation represents the range of possibilities of exploiting the environment — but the sweet spot is likely the center: that is where the greatest availability of resources exists (though of course there is a greater number of individuals competing for them), and/or, the tendency of the world to be one way rather than another — that is, the relative immutability of the external environment — means that a species adapted to exploit that environment will also be one way rather than another; and it is possible to be the best at being that (normal) way.

If this is the case, then there is some tension between the concept of normalcy and sexual selection. Sexual selection apparently likes extremes; and there is also the notion of “fitness indicators” which are performative proofs of a genetic fitness which would not otherwise be apparent. Now sexual traits depend on a certain energetic surplus: the idea is that the fittest individuals generate a “profit margin” above and beyond what they need for individual survival, and are able to expend this surplus in sexual indicators. At least this is one possible account. Sexual selection theory tends to presume that sexually attractive individuals are preexistently “fit” and that they simply show forth this underlying fitness with sexual traits. But really it is a two-part process. Fitness must consist in fitness vis-a-vis the environment; and individuals who have fitness “left over” — that is, whose genetics enable them to accomplish the tasks of survival with one hand tied behind their back, as it were — express this surplus in sexual features. Perhaps my point is that the visible fitness of sexual traits is a product of the interaction of the individual’s genes with the environment. Sex characteristics reflect the history of the individual’s development — qua a successful exploitation of the environment, or not; thus a given individual’s fitness is not exactly preordained or knowable at birth. The environment changes, even over short periods of time; and different genotypes may be able to exploit that environment in variable ways, even across single generations. Sexual selection may be able to respond to these local variations. An individual seeking a mate may not be able to “know” what genetic traits have enabled a prospective mate to be more than usually successful, but the individual’s sexual display serves to prove that whatever the trait is, it is successful vis-a-vis the local environment.

Is this an answer then to the “lek paradox”? And the phenomenon of high-school jocks and beauty queens not thriving in later environments?

Arabs and the wind

liefthetowncrier — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:15:11 +0000

The first thing one encounters in going out into the world is not its physicality, but its condition, namely the weather. The physicality of the world is actually a step up from the unreality and chaos which is the weather. One accesses physicality by working on the world – even by moving within it – instead of merely suffering – or enjoying – the sheer randomness of the weather.

As Jared Diamond may have been trying to say, the weather is the beginning of culture. Arab culture is passionate and uncontrollable and violent and excessive – and also blissful and pleasant and generous – presumably because of the prevalence of wind – random uncontrollable gusts which come from nowhere and go nowhere, with nary a tree around to impart a measure of determinacy. The only thing to be done in a windstorm is to wait for it to stop – or go somewhere else. We should not blame the Arabs for their lack of a work ethic. The Saharan winds trap them in Stage 1. The achievements of the pyramids – or at the other end of the chronological spectrum, the skyscrapers of Abu Dhabi – is that they are set against a backdrop of endless wind.