metonymy4u

What students these days loose by not studying authors like Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, is an experience of reading texts in which the supposition is that the language of science and rationality could lead us back to god. The assumption was the opposite of what I think we see these days, that science and spirituality were not just compatible, but in some way made for one another. More tragically, they loose the chance to grapple with the implications of these assumptions, and see their own in a new light.

Read Full Post »

Writing thinking reading speaking dancing photographing living and breathing are one functional class for me. When I attribute, I think the activity bleeds over to another locale. I believe now that to attribute is to speak an object of thought, a thingified concept, a wish beyond. To speak is to dance. I could say, “if at every moment in time the arrow does not move, this must be impossible!” But this, for me this is delusion. Confusion, of signs and events. A predication of nothing. A word in the wind.

Read Full Post »

There are, I think, things that can only be in-scribed, as well as things better off de-scribed.

Read Full Post »

I do not personally believe that the truth will set us free. I think we can only behave our way into freedom from cruelty. I don’t believe we can think our way there. Try this experiment: the next time you find yourself hating or loving strongly, try thinking to yourself over and over again, “I don’t [hate or love] this,” and see if it changes the experience. Or, alternatively, just walk down the street saying over and over again, “I can’t walk, I can’t walk.” One of our most enduring delusions, I believe, is the necessity of speech.

Read Full Post »

…One topic which seems relevant to the subject of conflict, is the question of author-ity and speaking. I have participated in several online communities in which speech appears to be regulated (shaped) by a small subset of the community. Certainly the powers of censorship have been put to dubious use in the past, as in the execution of Socrates for questioning the piety of the state and influencing the morals of the youth. And plenty of other times when entire classes of citizens at home and abroad were designated, because of their distinctive physiognomy, a clear and present danger. The dialectic between private irony and public hope has been a difficult one for millennia. The romans, during their republican years, solved the dilemma by providing for the appointment of a dict-ator in times that required seditionis sedandae et rei gerundae causa. And yet I wonder, in the time of online conversation over thousands of miles of planetary distance, what would constitute such a time of sedition or extreme need? And what advantages are won, by the amplification of homogeneity, that are offset by the dangers of cruelty and the loss of creativity often found in variation?

Read Full Post »

During the first half of the 20th century we were pre-occupied with the efficient destruction of 100 million of our dear brothers and sisters. War was at least a useful specifier of the events, if nothing else. Now of course, we no longer have wars. Instead of fighting in war zones, we are entertained by operations that take place in theaters. Surgical dramas, in which the patient is anesthetized and the pathology excised, painlessly. Or so we keep telling ourselves. War, when we had it, was at least good for some level of clarity: Speakings that had some faint connection to happenings. Now I fear we live solely in linguistic delusion.

Read Full Post »

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the issue of attributions in thinking and speaking. I wonder these days if we make attributions in the course of speaking, as a way of bolstering some allusive social authority. Also, in my case anyway, I often feel guilty about presenting ideas “as my own” when I clearly believe they are “someone else’s.” For example, I might point out to my students the category error of worrying about the “structure of the self,” which confuses an organizing concept with a reified substance. Clearly to view the “self problem” in such a manner (here comes the attribution) could be traced to the vocabularies of authors like Rorty, Skinner, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Nietzsche, Hume and Kant. But why make the attribution? Why not just think my thoughts and speak my speeches, and take responsibility for them “myself?” Does the attribution add anything to my speech? Or is it just an anxiety crutch I can learn to do without? Like a ladder one throws away after climbing it?

Read Full Post »

Can we truly say that we value freedom of expression in this country? Separation of church and state? when Fox news- the infomercial branch of the fundamentalist Christian party (aka the GOP)- publicly attacks a scholar-not for the substance of his work-but for daring to speak about “their” prophet?

Read Full Post »

Emotional vulnerability is a series of experiences that involve having more emotions than the average person. It’s not just that we are more sensitive, but that our emotions are actually incredibly painful and last a really long time! On top of that, the world, because it often doesn’t understand the nature of emotional pain, tries to tell us that our emotions aren’t real, aren’t realistic, and shouldn’t be the way they are. So we spend much of our lives trying to live down our emotional experiences, shut them off, ignore them or banish them from existence. This of course just makes the situation worse. The good news is that one smart, brave, kind and generous woman, Dr. Marsha Linehan, figured out what was happening to her and all of us with similar experiences, and found a path to recovery. As for a severely burned child, the road is long and difficult. But long before the end is reached, a new way of life is discovered– involving the understanding, and the cessation, of suffering. Also like a severe burn, at times there is just too much damage to the body for some people to ultimately recover from. Even with all her skill, Marsha herself has met people who were not ultimately able to recover, despite their best efforts. And we know they were doing their best at all times! What this means is that, in addition to helping those who have been burned, we also need to work twice as hard to prevent the injuries in the first place. And thankfully, in extending this work to teens and families, clinicians have already seen courses diverted that most certainly would have ended in needless pain. There is no doubt whatsoever that what we have learned in the past 20 years has changed the official view of severe emotional suffering, and thereby changed the world. Can you just imagine what the next 20 years will bring?

Read Full Post »