First Meditation on Time

Published on 20 October 2009 ago in Philosophy. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Time is chaotic. It is always the same yet never itself. Every instant of time is a repetition of the infinite possibilities of every moment. Take, for instance, an overflowing cup of water. It is always a cup of water, yet the water is never itself. Any particular molecule of water is of an indeterminate location, never the same sequentially and never the same sequence in any given repetition of time. In the infiniteness of chaotic time, we are everything; we have already become everything. We are always the same, never ourselves.

Going further, the excess of this repetition is the pure motion of fate. Yes, we are always the same. In every repetition–is this the tenth? Thousandth? First?–in every repetition, we become the same, we choose the same. That is our fate; to always return the same yet different, us but never ourselves.

Ideological Delusions

Published on 19 October 2009 ago in Philosophy and Politics. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Nietzsche writes in one of his better-known fragments, On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, that the concept of ‘truth’ is an illusion which we have forgotten as such. This forgetting of the illusion is driven by the desire for knowledge; in other words, it is the desire for truth that transforms illusions into knowledge and masks them further by calling them ‘truths’. The power of desire turns against all possible opposition by declaring that lies are deceptions of the real that utilise real words to fabricate a false image. Nietzsche’s larger focus here isn’t an attack on epistemological frameworks but on the language that already validates those frameworks:

In a similarly limited way man wants the truth: he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths. And, moreover, what about these conventions of language? Are they really the products of knowledge, of the sense of truth? Do the designations and the things coincide? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?

Our language formulates arbitrary abstractions that rarely (if ever) ‘really’ exist. Take for instance, the concept of ‘leaf’: it exists as an abstract class that is always instantiated differently. The qualities of ‘leafness’ are made so that one can say a lettuce leaf is a leaf just as much as a maple leaf even though the two have different qualities as well. Another example would be that of ‘worm’ in which its definition is slippery enough that it could be twisted to also designate the concept ’snake.’ In other words, the language of ‘truth’ is at best metaphors. The cynic in Nietzsche sees in that language something a bit more sinister, that which will become the Will to Power breaking through language. Correct perception can only be an aesthetic relation; that is, perception is art. It follows from this that powerful speakers will be able to paint perceptions and to mask them as something more than perceptions–as ‘truth’. It is in this vein that I wish to turn to the primary focus of this article: concepts we (Americans and possibly the West in general) have deluded ourselves in believing.

Free Propaganda

Three concepts which the US has consumed wholeheartedly are the illusions of freedom, its cousin democracy, and capitalism. These began to be consumed en masse after WW2 during the beginnings of the Cold War, but it must be kept in mind that these are strictly arbitrary and their influence can be found much earlier. In order to paint America and the West as being radically different from the USSR and communism, we began to market to ourselves these differences. It is during this time that the phrase ‘under God’ was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in order to differentiate America from atheist Russia. However, all of this was a marketing ploy, much like the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ for the actions in Iraq. We’ve been able to see the fruits of this marketing in the last 20 years once the Cold War ended. We’ve deluded ourselves further into thinking that our military actions in various places (post-collapse Russia, Yugoslavia, Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) as spreading freedom and democracy (oh, and capitalism, of course). Ironically, we have never been a free nation. Our freedom has always had qualifications, some quite reasonable (e.g. restricting murder) and some less reasonable (e.g. restricting ‘free speech’ obscenities). The way the marketing works is that our ‘freedom’ is only a relative measure typically used in comparison to what is perceived as the most oppressive nations (e.g. USSR, mainland China, East Germany, etc). We’ve then taken this relative comparison and made it an absolute statement: not only are we more ‘free’ than (insert oppressive nation) but we are truly ‘free’ and all that the concept contains. What this rhetoric produces is not only the belief that ‘we’ are ‘free’ but that there cannot be anyone more ‘free’ because we ourselves are already ‘free’. By utilising this language and forgetting the relative nature of the original claims, we have created a situation in which one cannot think of ‘freedom’ outside of the restricted concept we’ve been marketed. While the US is not as overtly oppressive as Oceania from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, we’ve created the paradigm of the perversion of fascism it utilised.

The same also goes for the concept of ‘democratic.’ There are countless occasions in which we’ve elected one president under the guise of repairing the problems of a previous president (e.g. Obama’s election), but what we’ve failed to notice collectively is that the executive branch uses this in order to further abuse its privileges and abridge ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ in order to give us a ‘better’ place (e.g. the original PATRIOT act). As long as people continue to vote reactively, we will continue to see the restriction of ‘freedom’ under the guise of a ‘good-natured’ president that is trying to restore ‘freedom.’ In contradistinction to this, the ‘restoration of freedom’ is a re-interpretation of the concept of ‘freedom’ in light of the new, limited ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. Another useful example is the American Civil War in which we quickly discovered that a state cannot peacefully leave the union (further echoed in Texas v White). We may begin to see this issue rise again in cases like Montana and Georgia. The US Constitution names the government as a republic (and only a ‘democracy’ with qualifications) and requires/guarantees all states within to have the same kind of government.  In other words, we’ve created our own definition of ‘democratic’ so that we ourselves are the epitome of such and there can never be another who is more ‘democratic’. We have forgotten how we became ‘democratic’ and refuse to allow others that same path.

Our last illusion is that of ‘free market capitalism’. In some ways, we can never have a ‘free market’ society because we are only human and it will be abused however which way possible. We have also been able to paint the West as the only source of ‘free market’ capitalism even though mainland China (which is still ‘communist’) has allowed ‘capitalist’ growth beyond what the US could imagine. In a ‘free market’ system, there are no absolutes except the abstract concept of value. Everything has a value and this is always in flux and depends on the production of desire (through marketing techniques). Capitalism is the believing machine that believes in humans who, in turn, provide for its very survival. Yet we have forgotten that even capitalism is an illusion created in the past few centuries. Capitalism subsists in the world by managing the production of desires through marketing and advertisement; ‘You need that $50,000 car to feel happy‘ which then leads to ‘you need that $75,000 car to really feel happy.’ This process of a never satisfied desire is very familiar to psychoanalysis, as it is a manifestation of the unchecked ego. It is by its very nature never satisfied for the satisfaction of its desires implies the end of its existence. The unchecked ego transforms its process of desire by desiring desire itself; this provides the vehicle for it to exist indefinitely as the desire of desire is one that can never be satisfied. Capitalism is able to survive by tapping into this process and equating objects (e.g. cars, food, phones, computers, etc) with that desire–but only temporarily. The team of capitalism and ego have wreaked havoc on the individual and, by extension, society by reducing the individual to a set of desires and an illusion of freedom. You are free to do what you desire, as long as you are happy in doing it! Fortunately for capitalism, the means to enjoy desire also includes the proliferation of capitalism.

Escaping Freedom

In short, we are slaves to our own desires. Capitalism abuses this enslavement and has helped us delude ourselves into thinking we are free. We have never been free; but we willingly delude ourselves into thinking such and ignoring it by buying things to satisfy our displaced desires. And it is this distinct lack of freedom that we find in Paul’s letter to the Romans:

Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual – but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin. For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate. But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good. But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want! Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me. So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Paul’s escape from this ‘freedom’ is servitude, slavery by choice. It is a wonderful working of rhetoric of Paul here in that he short circuits the concepts of freedom and slavery by arguing to be free is to be enslaved and to be enslaved is to be free. Because of ideology, mankind is never free…and because of this, whichever ideology is the most prevalent will always be the most corrupt and it will always delude us into thinking we are free.

Returning now to Nietzsche, who sees the rhetoric in Paul; Nietzsche also sees in Paul the very reactive nature that continues the cycle of ideology (cf The Antichrist). For Nietzsche, the real escape isn’t choosing another ideology (e.g. religion) but moving past ideology altogether and returning to active thinking. In other words, freedom is to actively shape one’s own reality by taking controlling of one’s own ideology. That is the true power of the overman in Nietzsche (cf Thus Spoke Zarathustra). It is with this purpose in mind that the mad man in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science proclaims the death of God. It is not because some entity known as God is killed by Nietzsche (for that already happened 2000 years ago at the hands of Jewish ressentiment according to Nietzsche) but that the ideological Master that was erected in place of that God is now dethroned and revealed to be the powerless creature of ressentiment. Freedom is the power to create values, something which mankind has long since forgotten. This is the same power that capitalism wields over us now and the revolution isn’t finding a better ideology (e.g. socialism, communism, etc) but the radical revaluation of ideology itself to show the chains that always bind us.

Notes on Techno-Religion

Published on 17 October 2009 ago in Religion and Theology. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I was involved in an ESF-sponsored workshop on technology and religion this past week. While the discussion focused on communicative technologies and media, we did drift at times beyond that. Here are some scribbles and notes of mine from the various sessions.

Mediation

Our first session started with Birgit Meyer and Bengt Kristensson Uggla. Conceiving of media as something external to religion makes questions regarding the intersection of the two unanswerable. However, if media is seen as being embedded within religion, these issues are transformed into understandable practices. Media, then, is able to mediate religious thoughts and beliefs. In this way, media become sacralised so that mediation is made immanent and the gap between and believer and the transcendent is significantly reduced. This immediacy, mitigated through semiotic ideology, denies media as media and leads to its being externalised. It may be a good idea to think of theology as a theory of mediation. Lastly, technology makes globalisation immediately local (again, mediation).

Identity

The second session was led by Siegfried Zielinski and Jan-Olav Henriksen (sorry, this one is in Norwegian). One important thing to keep in mind is that media as a generalised concept did not arise until the mid-20th century (i.e. the last 50-60 years). Communicative technologies existed prior to that (obviously), but these were particulars. Today’s globalisation is seeing the harmonisation and unification of media so that the different technologies appear seamless. Electricity has become the ’soul’ of ‘new media’, animating it as a machine. Machines always reduce complexity and mediate between two objects. It used to be that we humans had to believe in machines in order for them to work (i.e. by turning a switch, etc); but now machines have returned the favour by believing in us to animate them (e.g. interactive games, television, etc). On the other hand, religion provides a chain of memory–however fragmented and disjointed it may be. This is mediated by technology. However, technology can create a sensory excess that creates a feeling of divine presence without that chain of memory. In other words, technology has made it possible for one to participate in a religious community without ‘really’ participating in that community (e.g. Yoga videos in YouTube that provide simple instruction without the ‘full Yoga experience’). As Zielinski noted,  one is ‘always the same, never myself’ (his own reversal of the Calvin Klein tag line ‘Always myself, never the same’).

Secularisation

The third session was presented by Ola Sigurdson, Jayne Svenungsson, and Lieven Boeve. It is quite clear that religion isn’t ‘returning’ because it never left in the first place. The ‘privatisation’ of religion has led to a loss of body and particularity as religion loses its institutional form (c.f. Olivier Roy’s Globalised Islam). This ‘private religion’ turns religion into a fetish. In fact, this new ‘personalised’ religion has transformed religious pilgrimages such that the relics now go to the people instead of the people going to the relics. Technology isn’t showing us a ‘post-secular’ world (as in a ‘return of religion’) but rather a transformation of religion in the public space, particularly in the cases of extremist religious groups which have found new solidarity and strength in the techno-globalised world.

Revolutions

The fourth session was led by Caroline Vander Stichele, Ward Blanton, and Edmund Arens. Echoing the sentiment of the first session of technology being closely tied to religion, this session dealt with looking at religious revolutions based on technological revolutions. One example is that of Yoga in the West as a practice originally separated from its Hindu roots. However, it has become its own consumer-driven religion in which one can get meditative tranquility instantly. Another example, is Augustine’s discussion of the divine postal network (e.g. messenger angels, etc) in relation to his understanding of the Roman Empire’s postal network. Religion needs to be addressed as a communicative practice of memory and narrative. The danger of a consumer-driven religion is, as I mentioned above, the kind of (private) participation without (public) participation. Religion must occur in both the public and the private sphere.

Subjectivity

The final session was led by Arne Grøn and Anne Kull. Subjectivity is the key notion to formulate the problems above (between religion and society) as it gets directly at the concept of identity construction both in relation to the world and the self. In expressing oneself, one exteriorises oneself and bridges the divide between the public and private spheres. Public life is only possibile if it acknowledges a private life as well. Religion, as a public activity, is a meta-sphere of visibility of publicised figures (i.e. private individuals). However, one should be wary to use the term ‘virtual’ in describing religion in the new media (e.g. online churches) because in one very real sense, all churches are ‘virtual’ as they represent the ‘real’ church in a locality. There must be a hermeneutics of subjectivity as it is implied by a phenomenological ontology (a la Heidegger).

Paradoxa

Published on 8 October 2009 ago in Philosophy and Theology. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Hopefully, this is not against my better judgment, but I want to throw a little piece of something I’m working out at the moment.

Deleuze’s theory of meaning and sense is best described as ‘a series of paradoxes’, partly because ’sense is a nonexisting entity, and, in fact, maintains very special relations with nonsense’ (Logic of Sense, xiii). Paradoxes are produced from the relationship between sense and nonsense; it is the very excess of that relationship. I suggest that this can also be interpreted through Tillich’s definition of paradox as the ‘logical form in which the perfectly concrete and the perfectly absolute are united’ (Systematic Theology 1, 167). While the word choice is different, the content is strikingly similar. Tillich’s ‘perfectly concrete’ speaks of a particular instance within the finite–in other words an understandable revelation. This is very much in agreement with Deleuze’s usage of ’sense’. For both, this is not a final entity but a result, dependent upon the subject’s own context. The difficulty in equating Tillich’s and Deleuze’s definitions of ‘paradox’ comes with the second part of the ‘perfectly absolute’ and nonsense, respectively. For Deleuze, nonsense is can be compared to Tillich’s ‘perfectly absolute’ only as the infinite abyss beneath the surface. For Tillich, this abyss is the nonexisting God, the ground of Being.(ST1, 264) For Deleuze, however, this abyss is an empty signifier, a position without meaning; and this non-thing bears no relation to Being. With these differences aside, paradoxes are produced from the relationship between ’sense’ and something else (the absolute or ‘nonsense’). Deleuze paints the two (sense and nonsense, that is) using the image of a Möbius strip; the two form the two halves of the the hermeneutical cycle that plays in the figuring of sense; it is the ‘coexistence of two sides without thickness’ as a flat, endless plane of meaning(LS, 22). For Deleuze, a symbol’s meaning is an infinite regress of signification where a symbol always and only points to other symbols. He has reduced this regress to a process of four steps which repeat infinitely:

There is [1] the name of what the song really is; [2] the name denoting this reality, which thus denotes the song or represents what the song is called; [3] the sense of this name, which forms a new name or a new reality; and [4] the name which denotes this reality, which this denotes the sense of the name of the song, or represents what the name of the song is called. (LS, 30)

The meaning of this process, that is the sense of the symbol, occurs twice because both events are ‘two simultaneous faces of one and the same surface, whose inside and outside, their “insistence” and “extra-being”, past and future, are in an always reversible continuity’ (LS, 34). In other words, meaning occurs both when an object of sense is seen as being formed from other symbols and as constituting the formation of other symbols. In semiotic terms, sense occurs as the synthesis of two different series: one as signifier and one as signified. At the point of this synthesis, a singularity of sense is created in both series: as an empty place within the series of signifier and a supernumerary object within the signified series. The relation of these series at their convergence forms the dual meaning of an object as a paradox between sense and nonsense. Nonsense should not be understood as the absence of sense but as that which produces sense; likewise sense produces nonsense as the two form a paradox of meaning throughout both series of signification. Meaning is the excess of these productions such that it occurs in both directions, simultaneously. In other words, the meaning of an object is only understood when it is placed within the context of its own text. A short example here would be one’s understanding of a sentence. A particular sentence has no meaning until every word and expression within that sentence is understood within the context of the language (i.e. within the context of its general usage) and within the context of the sentence (i.e. as the particular usage). While a phrase may have a metaphorical meaning (e.g. ‘kick the bucket’), that particular usage can only be understood within the context of a particular sentence as it also has a non-metaphorical meaning; this cannot be realised until the phrase’s context is realised. At that moment of realisation, the event of meaning finally occurs. In summary, meaning as the ultimate regression is what Deleuze terms the ‘excess’ of signification; it is the redundancy that arises when a signifier is realised to signify its own self (A Thousand Plateaus, 114). To clarify this one more time: a symbol’s meaning is understood only when the entirety of the semiotic relations that develop out of and into that symbol are understood—the symbol as a singularity.

Returning to Tillich, now, we can cast new light on Tillich’s usage of symbols. Symbols point beyond themselves like signs, however they must also ‘participate in the reality of that for which they stand’ (ST1, 265). This participation, in Deleuzian terms, is the duality of cause and effect which must coexist for the event of sense to occur. A symbol that does not participate in such a reality lacks the cause that gives it meaning; a symbol is meaningless without a creative relationship with its reference. A cross has no meaning in Buddhism itself because it, as a symbol, does not participate in the Buddhist reality. It is the duality of cause and effect which provides a reciprocal relation for a symbol and its reference in that the reference itself (e.g. the death and resurrection of Christ) becomes an occupant without a place within the signification of the symbol (e.g. the cross) and the symbol becomes an empty place within the signification of the reference. It is in this reciprocity that symbol and reference participate in one another; and this is the singularity that produces meaning. Tied with this is something implied in Tillich which Deleuze makes explicit: symbols always produce meaning, regardless of what that meaning is: ‘Your wife looked at you with a funny expression. And this morning the mailman handed you a letter from the IRS and crossed his fingers….It doesn’t matter what it means, it’s still signifying’ (ATP, 112). This is the reason why Tillich argues that symbols are irreplaceable; they are always producing meaning such that replacing them changes everything.

For Tillich, symbols hint at a paradox of participation. Taken through Deleuze’s’s concept of paradox of the production of sense and nonsense, we can anticipate Tillich’s understanding of paradox as a ‘concrete event which on the level of rationality must be expressed in contradictory terms’ (ST1, 149). With God participating in humanity and humanity participating in God through the christological symbols, these symbols produce the same excess as the series of signification do. The christological symbols can only be understood in both directions simultaneously: without one, we have a Jesus without Christ; without the other, a Christ without Jesus. It is also here that Tillich’s christological paradox becomes clear: God does not exist (ST1, 227). Tillich does this by de-ontologizing God; God cannot exist because God is not a being that can exist. The ontology of God becomes in Deleuzian terms, the empty space in the series of signification; God becomes the supernumerary object in the second series such that God can never be found along the Möbius strip of theology. God is always immanent but never present. Perhaps this gives new meaning to Christ’s proclamation that the Kingdom of God is at hand; for Christ himself is the Kingdom of God, immanent and transcendent. Yet it is always both simultaneously. These two terms–immanence and transcendence–should not be confused with a concept of presence (which is, sadly, another post another day).

Difference and Pluralism

Published on 7 October 2009 ago in Religion and Theology. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

This is a followup of sorts to a previous post, Against Exclusivism.

In David Tracy’s On Naming the Present, he follows Ricœur in arguing for a ’second naiveté allied to a genuine openness to otherness and difference’. This is a call to pluralism with the alternative leading to a ‘Hobbesian state of war of all against all’.  Naiveté is exactly what it is, as this pluralism subjugates difference to identity so that difference itself is lost. Difference does not just exist; it exists outright and on its own (conceptual) merit. Deleuze argues early on (in Difference and Repetition) that being is difference. Tracy’s argument (and presumably Ricœur’s as well) rests on the philosophical framework that unites the concept of difference with the concept of distinction. In other words, it is a comparison of two different entities; in short, a comparison of identities. Deleuze’s philosophy of difference conceives of difference as something that exists prior to comparison and distinction (c.f. Levi Bryant). A call to pluralism must first conceive of difference in itself, as something intrinsic to an entity’s act of self-identification, as an ontological concept. Pluralism must be open to both simple distinction as well as difference as the ‘prior ground of distinction‘.

However, when this occurs, inter-religious dialogue (i.e. pluralism) itself becomes problematic. This is because openness to such dialogue requires a level of understanding that is not easily possible. Such level of understanding is based on the ability to relate distinctions to known concepts and identities. In other words, communicative understanding takes place within analogies at the contextual level, not within the words expressed at the textual/discursive level. Here is where the problematic of pluralism emerges. If other religious traditions are truly other, that is different, the comprehension at the contextual level is always flawed because it ultimately rests on a conceptual identification where difference is reduced to distinction. Historically, we can see this in the colonial period of religious studies where examples such as Western influences in India created Hinduism as a consolidated tradition, including the ‘trinitarian’ concept of Trimurti.* In the 1970s, Edward Said published Orientalism in which he argues that the Western representation and understanding of other cultures is flawed for reasons similar to what I have noted above. While many pluralists seem confident that we are able to move past these flaws, I take a more critical approach. Even contemporary postcolonial religious studies have kept these flaws. As Ian Almond recently wrote, ‘we have seen how the use [a religious tradition] is going to be put to automatically creates the identity it is going to have…The “otherness” control of [that tradition], like the volume control of any stereo or radio, can be turned up or down according to the required context’ (The New Orientalists, 195).

While pluralism may be possible, it seems clear that we have not yet been able to see other traditions as different. I believe this may be in part because inter-religious dialogue can only treat otherness as objects of apprehension. As an object of apprehension, difference is readily replaced with distinction as we attempt to relate to another tradition through our own identity. It is an implicit action that changes the dialogue into an excercise of relations (i.e. comparison and distinction). Perhaps a better avenue for such discourse is not to relate to other traditions but to discourse with them without apprehension. In other words, by following Blanchot’s remarks about reading and writing*, we can (re-)discover that comprehension occurs after the dialogue, after the discourse—not during. Understanding occurs after the event of communication.

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NB 1: cf. Susan Bayly, Caste, Society, and Politics in India: From the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age and David Smith, Hinduism and Modernity

NB 2: Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster