On The Viscerality of Nothing - Part 2

Now With Added Nothing

Who Will Believe? – Can you believe it? This point has already been! And what difference will it make? For what difference did it make then?

In the Philosophic rather than Artistic Sense. – If metaphysics is to be vanquished, it will be by philosophy’s atrophy not its perfection.

A Modern Idiocy. – We give too much credit to our enemies when we believe ourselves incapable of their evils.

On the Return of the Soul. – How can I not now believe in the soul? I have felt mine dying these several years.

Without Matter. – Like matter, the human dissolves under scrutiny.

Without Meaning. – Be of good cheer, comrades! Braver than your forebears and sturdier still, for you belong to a higher time, for that you lived one godless day, so you may bear a thousand.

The Essence of a System. – I am always returned to that overwhelming idea: that reason destroys reason, that art destroys art, science the scientific, society the social, civilization the civilized, politics the political, that the destruction of all things is inherent within itself: then what of man?

Re-structuralism. – Metaphysics is merely the choice of that one thing outside the structure of reality that gives it order but is not beholden to it. A strange presumption that begs the question why has metaphysics flourished for so long? Well, for so we hope ourselves in our heart of hearts: outside the order of our lives but ultimately giving it meaning.

Marx’s Mistake. – To become a ghost, to haunt your own life, to not have to ask why, and die in shallow pleasure: for all the evidence suggests we desire our alienation.

How Ugly. – I am devoted to ugliness for it never shall deceive me.

Present Gods. – Is it not a greatness to sacrifice oneself to an idea? an ideology? For one cannot but admire the zealots of the past who casts themselves to the flames, or even those who mutilated themselves with some grandiose vision in mind. But what then of us? Presently? Are we not far greater, bolder, more heroic? For do we not sacrifice ourselves, make our lives into one long outrage, succumb to a torture more fatuous, give our souls over to our devices - that is knowingly suffer a niggling despair - and all for what? But only the tatters and fragments of an idea, of a half glimpsed and forever promised pleasure? Of something knowingly never to come because to believe such a coming would be an imposition on ourselves? What martyr of old could bear such? There are reasons God will not return to us: we have not the grandiose implements of execution to make a life mean something, to give it any semblance of something more than bestial and burdensome. The greatest heroes? Of those not even for themselves…

On the Unending Delight. – In realms of pure pleasure, of pleasure so great, that its perversion is its exhaustion: i.e. the promise that pleasure will never come again, that it cannot come again – such as we all desire, such though we cannot reach for the belief that pleasure means something, that is, that pleasure is meaning itself.

On the Unending Unending Delight. – To desire release from desire and so to go on desiring in the unknowing fiction of our despair.

Neither Message nor Medium. – Presently, information suffers from that most imposing of indignities: of having to convince us of its importance. In the past, the sheer expense of disseminating any information naturally ensured its import—its very existence bore witness to its importance, that is the value of a message was equal to its cost. But now, the embarrassing ease of distribution has shattered that distinction: messages of direst warning rub shoulders with casual imbecilities. For the exhausted and dis-educated masses (that is to say, nearly everyone), all distinctions of import have been utterly lost. Content merely—a sea to swim in and drown. --- In order to compensate for this, all information is now presented in the most excessive of manners: indeed, every term, every image, is framed in hyperbolic extremes with each piece striving to outdo the last—only for they to be eventually outdone in turn. Both medium and message have been annulled in this, now only the import matters, that is only the import is important. That is; to make it utterly clear, the show overwhelms the substance. Indeed, substance has vanished entirely. ---------- There should be no surprise, then, at our present collapse in consensus when facts themselves have been subsumed by spectacle. But there is worse (there is always worse): such ideas of show and importance have been mapped onto humanity in general – almost point for point. Previously, by a person’s very existence they found their importance, that humanity existed it was important. Now—under the delighted gaze of capitalism—each person must rather prove their importance by any means necessary (both to others and themselves). Thus, the proliferation of dangerous idiocy, of desperate mutilation, and more and more unhinged actions and reactions. Hyperbole abounds with the face of a clown – politicians being especially guilty of this. But here the metaphor ends; information cannot join us in our destiny—for though information with its masks and manipulation now goes untrusted and even ignored: it is man who, through his ridiculous attempts, has become a source of scorn and mockery. Now none are important: all sense of respect for humanity has been lost and it is all through our attempts to try to prove our importance.

Pleasure Again. – Our greatest pleasures—or so we believe—are those stolen from the systems in which we dwell, those thieved from the very structures that, we imagine, seek to deny us the pleasures we so cling to, especially for this perceived denial. In this theft, we gain both the titillation of rebellion and the pride of profit, and can thus find a kind of imagined retirement—and revenge—upon those same systems. There is great relief in this. ------- However, it could very well be the case that there is a purposeful winking by the systems toward these pleasures: that certain avenues of enjoyment are deliberately left open for our debasement; that any belief in their taboo is fanciful—worse, expected, even channeled, even welcomed. It is as though one were to leave a ring at the bottom of the drawer to prevent a thief from tearing up the walls. --------- What a truly revolutionary pleasure might look like is perhaps impossible to imagine—for the easy taboos forever before us delude us to the true depths we might yet plunge (both profound and prurient) were the systems more stringent in their interdictions. Thus arises the paradox: that tyranny may give birth to a greater freedom, in the same way that the strict iambic pentameter gave us the greatest and most free flowing of all poetry.

On the Obscenity of Human Rights. – What is often misunderstood about the past—and the slaughters that took place there—is that people were often killed because they were people. And thus, their deaths meant something. There was no need for “human rights,” for otherwise murder would mean nothing, losing its honor, its glory. After all, the farmer does not boast when slaughtering cattle. So too, the Nazis did not boast about the Holocaust, nor did the Southern slaveholder claim dignity from his slaves—for to them, those victims were not human. Our current obsession with “human rights” is merely a continuation of these two original obscenities. That we must be constantly reminded of someone’s humanity, must build elaborate systems to insist on it, only proves that the value of human to human remains at its nadir. Thus, we out barbarize the barbarian through our most sophisticated forms of legislation.