integer on Sat, 4 Mar 2000 15:01:49 +0100 (CET)


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>Mark,
>
>I was merely making the point that Zizek makes about how the symbolic order
>(not to be confused with the "electric media environment") becomes
>oppressively closed through being at the same time radically open to
>manipulation - a paradox in true Zizekian style. He gives the example of
>filling out the unspoken silences in canonical texts: Jane Eyre (see Jean
>Rhys' Wide Sergasso Sea), Star Trek hacking and so on. Electric media
>environments accelerate the potential of filling out the gaps, the lacks,
>the silences which the symbolic order depends upon in order to structure
>reality. (The virtual symbolic castration threat which controls the real
>penis). In this circumstance of having 'infinite choice', the function of
>desire on which choice depends is foreclosed. How can you want something
>when having something amounts to clicking one button for yes and another
>for no, seemingly without conflict or consequence. Zizek quotes Lacan's
>reversal of Dostoyevsky's famous statement, which becomes "If there is no
>God, nothing is permitted."


http://www.m9ndfukc.com/botz/solaris.html

!t = takez 0+1 !nf!n!t amount ov pakag!ng 2 ztore `noth!ng`
!f 0+1 god = ecz!ztz 0+1 != ud knou 0+1 knouz 0+1 god = ecz!ztz.
!f 0+1 knouz 0+1 != knou 0+1 god = ecz!ztz 0+1 = prevntz 0+1 4rom
poztulat!ng 0+1 god = ecz!ztz


   1     2     3      4      5      6
  / \   / \   / \    / \    / \    / \
 1  2   3  4  5  6   7 8   9  10  11 12

each universe is constructed of 2 universes.
may notice
1 = splits into 1 and 2
2 = splits into 3 and 4
3 = splits into 5 and 6
4 = splits into 7 and 8
n = splits into 2n-1 and 2n.

one may continue splitting any given universe indefinitely
thus obtaining one infinite number of components in
any bit of matter

http://www.m9ndfukc.com/botz/bit_revolution_0+1.html



>I think the question is somehow where the radical potential lies - if at
>all - in a frictionless symbolic order. Does it have to signal a psychotic
>collapse or should we read it as a transitional moment of symbolic
>transformation? In a sense, is it possible that the symbolic order could
>ever cease to function and to resist if we are to remain being human?
>
>Dunno.
>
>J



>>
>>Is nettime itself "timeless"?
>>


nettime = !tzelv = simple equal-temperd tuning utensil






>
>of the death of the Master (text/signifier) that occurs in cyberspace;
>
>>Josephine:
>>
>>Maybe this isn't such a new situation.
>>
>>What you refer to as the "symbolic order" is really just the "electric media
>>environment", isn't it?  And, this has been going on for, oh, 150+ years or
>>so.  Ever since the introduction of the telegraph and its spawn . . . the
>>newspaper.
>>
>>Afterall, the "Symbolists" are hardly a new idea . . . are they?
>>
>>Pit Schultz posted a longish essay on some of this a while back.  "The
>>Whatever Intellectual."  Or, whatever.
>>
>>In PoMo language this essay merely repeated what has been said a thousand
>>times (better and shorter, much of the time) about the decline of the
>>capacity for anyone to think and for anyone to speak and for anyone to create
>>art and for anyone to . . . simply be a human being.  For, oh, 150+ years or
>>so.
>>
>>It's interesting that you identify the "symbolic order" with a "tart."  I
>>presume that you mean the "prostitute" meaning and not the "sweat-cake"
>>meaning of the term . . . right?
>>
>>How about exploring the connotations of "SELLING-OUT" as "tarts" are fond of
>>doing?  Is that a reasonable translation?  When did the problem of
>>selling-out -- in particular selling one's own mortal soul -- become a widely
>>noticed problem?
>>
>>Could Goethe have anything to inform us about all this?  Is "Faust" at all
>>relevant?
>>
>>And, what are we to make of the fact that Thomas Mann's "Faust" is all about
>>the characters of the Frankfurt School?  With Adorno as "Faust" himself!
>>Hmmmm . . .
>>
>>Wyndham Lewis' 1926 extended-"pamphlet" titled "The Art of Being Ruled" is
>>very informative on all these matters.  So is his 1934 "Men Without Art."  In
>>fact, all of Lewis' work could be brought to bear upon these problems.
>>
>>And, more expansively, the problems of nettime itself.
>>
>>In "The Art of Being Ruled", Lewis mentions:
>>
>>"Everything in our life today conspires to thrust most people into prescribed
>>tracks, in what can be called a sort of TRANCE OF ACTION.  Hurrying, without
>>any significant reason, from spot to spot at the maximum speed obtainable . .
>>. how is the typical individual at this epoch to do some detached thinking
>>for himself?"
>>
>>Could this possibly relate to the need to get your information in "motion."
>>Or, to the need to DO SOMETHING, about which so many of us appear to be
>>deeply hypnotized.
>>
>>McLuhan (in an essay first published in 1944) describes what Lewis was up to
>>when he says:
>>
>>"The particular means by which Lewis has extricated himself from the
>>ideological machine of our epoch with its inevitable labelling process --
>>'liberal,' 'socialist,' 'reactionary,' 'fascist,' 'individualist,' 'realist,'
>>'romantic,' 'extrovert,' etc. -- is that of the painter's eye."
>>
>>Ah, yes, ART.  As in "The ART of Being Ruled"?
>>
>>Could it be that participating in the "ideological machine" is itself a form
>>of SELLING-OUT?  Selling out one's own mortal soul?  For "winning" the
>>certainty of one's own personal ideology . . . what is the price that you
>>have to pay?
>>
>>And, what is the relationship between wanting to move our information and
>>earlier rituals of the worshipping of the machines?
>>
>>Are we, once again, "Futurists" in search for our Mussolini?
>>
>>If we can't think anymore, if we can't speak anymore . . . are we still
>>human?  Are we to blame all this on the "symbolic order"
>>
>>McLuhan (in his 1944 essay on Lewis) uses the old-fashioned term "Zeitgeist"
>>and he offers:
>>
>>"This sort of revolutionary simpleton, this beaming child of the 'Zeitgeist'
>>is precisely the sort of ruler the modern world cannot afford to have at the
>>head of is enormous machinery.  Lewis presents a massive documentation and
>>analysis of the art and science and philosophy which manufacture the
>>'Zeitgeist' -- the 'Zeitgeist' being the force which manipulates the puppets
>>who "'govern'" us . . . As a preparation for intelligent action. Lewis
>>advocates self-extraction from the ideological machine by an arduous course
>>of detachment, -- the scrutiny of the philosophy of the past four centuries
>>as well as of the art and science which that philosophy has engendered.  For
>>success in this task very few are well equipped today . . . So with the
>>ordinary artist and politician -- they are immersed in matter, in their
>>'Zeitgeist', and they call it "'timelessness,'" or they appeal to the
>>relativity notion of all human action as an excuse for sinking deeper into
>>the brainlessness of matter."
>>
>>Are we not ourselves to blame for the "symbolic order," for the "Zeitgeist,"
>>for being "revolutionary simpletons."
>>
>>Is nettime itself "timeless"?
>>


nettime = !tzelv = simple equal-temperd tuning utensil


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