Twilight of the Idols partial reading notes on the "Maxims and Arrows".

Twilight of the Idols

Reading Notes

Preface

His project: to sound out the hollow idols of “eternal idols” in which people have the most faith. To show that they are trumped up and unreal. He speaks of the “question mark” of the revaluation of all values: a stepping back from values as they are and a distancing from them. “Every means is proper for this,” he says, “especially war.” War is a “great wisdom”; “even in a wound there is power to heal.” So this distancing is in a sense a wounding out of which a healing takes place. For N's own view, he states that there are more “idols in the world than realities”--that he sees them is his “evil eye.” He wishes to pose questions with a metaphorical hammer, to touch these hollow entities and hear their hollowness. He says this is a “delight for one who has ears even behind his ears, for me...before whom just that which would remain silent must become outspoken.” Hearing behind one's ears: to engage one's own hearing in a questioning stance. A habit of repetition is here in the writing: ears behind ears, the revaluation of values. I believe this is indicative of a certain way of interrogating the subjects at hand. Listening itself is listened to; values themselves are evaluated. To declare war means to destroy, to wound—and to let heal. To heal means first to initiate this stance of questioning, a double movement. First a disengagement (destruction, an uprooting of values) and then an engagement (a new beginning, a new formulation). Eternal idols are the target of this engagement—maybe even a triple engagement? First we see the idols, and N emphasizes that we don't always even see these idols; second we sound them out, hearing them speak to us; third we hear ourselves hearing them (ears behind ears), allowing us to speak this third relationship (to label an idol as an idol). As we can see, there is already an indictment of the inquirer implied. The inquirer himself becomes problematic; how we question things is open to determination, and how we question defines our relationship to what is questioned.

Maxims and Arrows

Idleness is the beginning of psychology (1): is there a reference to Aristotle's Metaphysics here? Wonder, for Aristotle, is the beginning of philosophy. “Even when we are not doing anything, we begin to wonder—through sight,” Aristotle says. Wonder is a perfect instance of the initiating of this questioning engagement/disengagement. [The history of wonder is the history of a war?] To sit still and not do anything is to do nothing, but naturally, according to Aristotle, we begin to wonder; to begin to wonder is to engage in a disengagement to the world. N specifically says psychology begins with idleness. To follow this reading, we would say that psychology begins with such a disengagement, a questioning. Idleness is an act as well, so we can say that the psychologist first has to act in a certain way, and take a certain stance. Also, in comparison with A, N is placing an emphasis on hearing rather than sight. To make a rather large leap: we can't see ourselves seeing, though sight can initiate a disengagement from the world. However, hearing the sound our idols make when struck, that which normally remains silent, brings language into our discussion. Our idols can speak, they are sounded out as idols. To say “idol”--to label an idol as an idol—is not simply to recognize or see an idol but also to speak it as it is. Only after and idol is struck and heard can we step back from our own hearing. This stepping back from our own hearing allows us to label an idol as an idol. In doing so, as we showed in the preface, we implicate the inquirer—and a psychology of this inquiry is what we've started.

We really know more than we can admit; most of us are not usually courageous enough for what we really know (2). What do we really know that we are afraid to admit? In following with our reading of disengagement and engagement, knowledge might be construed as a type of disengagement/engagement itself, itself a stance, a certain way of doing things. What we really know—what is perhaps closest to us at all times—is precisely this way of doing things. However, to allow this to become an object of knowledge (perhaps in a psychological sense), would mean to inflict upon ourselves precisely the wound that N mentions. To know how we relate to our own idols, our own way of doing things, would mean to disrupt them and allow this stable “idolatry” to become unstable. So, courage is needed. We do not willingly inflict wounds upon ourselves. Also, he states “only rarely do we have the courage for what we really know”--this means that only sometimes do we approach that state where we can be truthful, honest—

To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out a third case: one must be both—a philosopher (3). Why? Without claiming to understand exactly why this is here, other than to say something about N's own experience with writing this book—something that goes beyond what we're trying to do here, though perhaps it's an aura surrounds everything we do, we can say the following. A philosopher is both a beast—wild, untamed, a questioner, a disruptor—but also a law-giver, a god, or a commander. I suppose this is as good an interpretation as I'm capable of, right now. What does this have to do with living alone? Perhaps we can elaborate, add a bit more context, maybe arbitrarily—but all in the hopes of coming to our own reading of the text. To disrupt or to command would both mean being alone—both involve a disruption. A synthesis of both would mean being what we would call a “philosopher”--but whatever label we use, the opposition between beast and god dissolves/synthesizes. We could even call that a “person”: what a person does is disrupt and then command; to do both is actually one and the same, part of the same process. This is embedded within the concept of individuality itself, perhaps: to know individuality we must synthesize both the shepherd and the wayward sheep.

“All truth is simple.” Is that not doubly a lie (4)? Well. Doubly? Why? All truth may not be simple: some of it might be complex. Where is the double? First, a truth may in fact be complex. This would be a literal reading. Second, the double—perhaps the quotes? The saying of it is a lie: a lie because the speaker knows the sentence is untrue but still speaks it. There are two senses of “lie” at play here. The first is a performative sense: the liar states what he or she knows to be untrue (perhaps with a reference to maxim 2, that what we really know needs courage: perhaps lying is easier). But there is also the sense of “lie” in the very sense of the statement. It is at odds with a more general truth, which is that truth is not simple. This second sense incorporates the first sense because it is a statement, but here we are concerned with the content of the statement itself. If all truth is simple, then the statement itself must be simple in itself, which it is not.  [i have no idea what any of this means and i dont know what N is referencing so whatever.]

I want, once and for all, not to know many things. Wisdom sets limits to knowledge too (5). Wisdom here is contrasted with knowledge. (What is wisdom? Perhaps knowing the right thing to do at a given point? An incorporation of experience into judgment?) But the negation emphasized in the maxim is interesting. Insofar as I do not want to know many things, how far do I have to go in knowing them first? Is this an absence of oblivion, where I would rather be in complete ignorance? Or is this a more tempered ignorance? More of a groping around in the dark, realizing that what you just touched—you don't want to touch again. How can a limit be set without first seeing what is beyond that limit, especially if the limit is relative to wisdom? This is the question. Does wisdom draw a line, saying “here, no more,” or does it take a step beyond that line and say “go back, no more.” I believe that with the tenor of the maxim we must assume the latter. The desire for not knowing implies that knowing is possible but that the limits enforced on knowledge, because of their origin in desire, must be considered relative (to wisdom—to experience). Compare this with maxim 2. In fact, both maxims 4 and 5 seem to give opposition to maxim 2. Maxim 2 encourages us to have courage for the truth, while saying that we only sometimes have this courage. Maxim four implies that the performance of lying can be the flip side of courage; maxim five implies that wisdom itself can limit our knowledge. Is this a submission? Maxim two: “Only rarely...” This only seems to imply that difficulty is involved in reaching knowledge, even that which we already know. It turns out that we even have a desire not to know many things. Perhaps these are the reasons why we “only rarely” have “the courage for that which [we] really know.” Are these examples? Desire for not-wanting-to-know, and lying?

In our own wild nature we find the best recreation from our un-nature, from our spirituality (6). I believe this is a statement on the fact that we are first and foremost spiritual. The declaration of war on idols that N insists upon would not be possible without our subjugation to idols in the first place. We would not be able to question these idols, to “hear them as hollow,” unless they were first there to begin with. We live with idols; they surround us. Our wild nature, on the other hand, is a “recreation.” What is our wild nature? In a sense, a negation of a negation. Our spirituality, which is a worldly-otherworldly, negates our real lives; by negating this, we affirm our real lives. Our “wild nature” must be then of this world, and it must disrupt our spirituality, our relationship to idols. This is what it does, not what it is. I believe we should refrain from saying what “our own wild nature” is and focus instead on its oppositional relationship to “un-nature.” N does not define “our own wild nature”--in fact, to say “our own wild nature” implies quite a lot. “Our own” implies both a group and a self; it implies a sharing but also a individuality. “Wild nature” implies the unconstrained, the opposition to the constrained. Why should the unconstrained nature be opposed to the “un-nature”? Is it more real? Or is this merely a corrective? In the opposition there is also a synthesis: we are both constrained and unconstrained; the unconstrained merely provides the best “recreation” from the constrained. But why call the constrained “un-nature” when the maxim itself, by using the term “recreation,” implies that we are usually constrained? Is it possible that we are usually not-ourselves? We should also note something else. A certain playfulness with concepts; we have only scratched the surface of this book but already we face a certain wildness with concepts, a deployment of ideas without discussion. In a sense, irreverence provides us with a recreation from our normal beliefs (from our normal lives?), whatever those happen to be. The term “recreation,” though, must again be emphasized: we are not talking destruction of our un-nature, but merely a break. Whether such a break could or should be permanent is a different question. Also, in the preface, he states that the whole essay is a “recreation.”

What? Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's (7)? Here we have a deployment of the irreverence in maxim above. Questions. Why would man be a mistake of God? But here we should take note of the reversal: the irreverence takes the form of a question. The “what?” makes it appear as if it follows as a conclusion. Well, in a sense it does—from maxim 6. An example of the wild-nature taking over and being allowed to ask the reversal of our spirituality.

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger (8). Interesting to compare to maxim 5. “Life's school of war” I take as a type of wisdom learned through experience—but how to understand that with maxim 5, which states that we do not want to know many things. Would not wanting to know many things be an absence of courage mentioned in maxim 2? Understanding the maxim singularly is easy enough. He has already declared war, and through war, healing (see preface). This is in service of the revaluation of all values. What makes me stronger is knowledge; but there are limits to knowledge, for example, those that are self-imposed (maxims 4 and 5). Here perhaps we have a type of re-conceptualization of knowledge as something performed, something that I am bound up with in some way. If knowledge can wound me and thereby make possible my healing, then the focus should be on its performative aspects, in both the limiting case of destruction and the case of lessons learned. Framed in this way, the other maxims take on a new light. The point towards a dichotomy between protection and destruction: not wanting to know many things (wisdom) is protective against total destruction, while recreation, a break from our own normal spirituality (construed broadly as our normal relations with the world), is constructive precisely because of its non-lethal destructiveness.

Help yourself, then everyone will help you. Principle of neighbor-love (9). Again, the irreverence. Anti-Christian. A reversal of “do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Or perhaps, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” I think this as simple as it appears: a psychological re-statement on what “really” happens. Or at least an alternative. But this principle is interesting in another way. Both are imperatives. The emphasis is on self-interest in N's formulation. Go further: he is critiquing the principle of neighbor-love, as if he is uncovering the psychological underpinnings of the Christian formulation. On the one hand he is stating a new principle; on the other he is implicitly saying that his idea of neighbor-love is the one really supporting the Christian conception. A subversion.

...and theres like however many million more maxims.

All these people are dead, and they all smoked!

Derrida looks like a crazed fool too.  A little like Charlie Sheen in profile, actually...

But they're all dead! D-E-A-D

In the Cat Box

Beldo sees a box.

Gets in.

 Gets out.

Thank GOD for HEIDEGGER

At least he wasn't a fool.  At least he had a viewpoint about history, about the role of the Greeks and the thinking-through of them.  It's not enough just to know about history.  You have to think it.  Too much recitation breeds contempt.

Too much rule following breeds contempt.  Break them, fake them.

Don't we all wish stamps cost this much?

Time for my Language Lessons

Here come the French verbs.

Or the warm jets

The only way I could get my old stereo to work

I had to pile books on top of it until it stopped making this awful sound.  The lighting was because I was very young. I was a little more bohemian in those days. If I'm correct I spy a Being and Nothingness a couple books up.  I miss that apartment.  It was huge and was ridiculously cheap because it was a crap-hole...and rent prices used to be way cheaper.  I really lucked into that sucker.  I bet it costs 650$ a month now, AT LEAST.  I paid under 600, which isn't that bad considering what a decent studio costs these days.  I would gladly pay an extra 50 dollars (more than my studio) for a huge kitchen, a full bedroom, a huge living room, 3 huge closets and a great tub.

And it was on a corner with great windows, had some beautiful sunsets there.  I remember doing a lot of homework during the sounds of spring and some glittering-orangegreen speckled sunsets. nostalgia.

Tree

Ladybug

Unemployment

Being unemployed for a certain amount of time one gets lots of advice. Most of it is simply supportive. Some of it is more than supportive, with offers of job opportunities and leads. These leads are sometimes useful, sometimes not; regardless, they still require initiative on the part of the unemployed. We have to work at these things.

Then there's another type of advice, which is an annoying type of advice because it's so nagging. These advice-givers operate under the idea that if you're unemployed you have to spend all your time looking for work. Every second has to be productive; any type of break or free-time to pursue non-employment goals gets pushed aside as frivolous. Particularly punishing, because being unemployed is never easy. Anyone unemployed pressures himself or herself just as the critical other does. And hearing it twice only makes it feel like a punishment added on after the guilt we already assume.

I suspect a large part of this critical attitude that people place on the unemployed has to do with their vision of time. Time is a commodity that needs to be maximized at all costs: free-time is really getting-things-done-time, a way to pad a resume, a time to clean the stove, a time to be constructive. But this “free-time-construction” has nothing at all to do with true construction but rather with a separation between “life” and “work.” What we do when not making money becomes equated with “real life”; what we do in work becomes falsified. When we work—for most of us—we simply make money, spend time doing whatever-we-do, and then equate our off-hours with our real lives. This separation is what makes possible a critical attitude towards the unemployed. Without the separation, they technically don't fit into either category: they are neither supporting themselves nor living real lives. Once the binary dissolves, the meaning of both categories dissolves as well. Free time only exists in opposition to non-free time.

And so the unemployed become somehow other, but not totally. The unemployed are still contained within broader borders: even as the work-life binary that usually defines us dissolves them, they still live within the structure of those categories that persist even into the physical realm. We have rent and mortgages to pay, after all, and without this work-life binary we could not afford rent (as we would have no source of income), and we could not have a place to live our not-working lives. So, the economic structure of how we spend and think about our time actually is mirrored in the physical manifestation of our surroundings. Or, conversely, the physical manifestation of our surroundings is mirrored in the organization of conception of work and life. The relationship is dialectical.

Because of the dialectical nature between the work-life binary and the physical things that surround us (commodities, really), we can look down upon the unemployed as those who simply can't live in the world—who can't play the game, who failed at it for one reason or another. And so the criticism starts because there's no escape. Even the chronically homeless and unemployed, the drifters, the beats, the rebels, gutterpunks, all fall under this rubric. By definition it's impossible for them to exist outside the broader world (which is as physical as it is ideological). Like ghosts, the unemployed haunt the remains of a capitalist conception of time, existing solely in reaction.

In general, this is correct. Anyone who has been unemployed or who has lived differently within the work-life dichotomy can feel this. Vacations take on a real-life (and yet surreal) quality; but a vacation from what? From work. From preparing for work, from the act of going to work, from being at work, from leaving work, from eating after work, from going to sleep at a time determined by work. This is not a judgment: hopefully it's merely true. Whether we like our work or not, or whether we can get lost in our jobs, is irrelevant to any accurate description of the organization of time and work.  

The question of alternative organizations comes up. These are fine: for example, there are differences from the self-employed vs. the wage-laborer. Or between farming and city life. The heaviness or lightness of time moves differently depending on the organization of one's day. But these alternatives always exist in opposition to a dominant organizational pattern. Some people work the evening shift, which is a small difference in the organization of life; but it's enough to feel the difference inherent in working such a shift. Likewise working the night shift. The dominant organization always exists. Those who live separately always exist in a connection of difference to this dominant organization, whether they acknowledge it or not. What this results in is a feeling of constant disruption, an aimlessness punctuated by feelings of inadequacy and criticism.

Everything above was written more as a result of feeling than of doctrine. It's not supposed to be some theoretical exposition on the organization of time in modern life. Rather, it's a description of an experience—which may, or may not, correspond to reality.

Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls

Coming into Sioux Falls on I-90 is a boring affair. Driving over a never ending wasteland of prairie—there's nothing really to offer the eye, or the imagination. You turn the music up. You blast it until you can't think anymore. And you're okay. Everything's fine. You've made it.

Coming into Sioux Falls: lots of little lights spread out over a great flat space. If your destination is Sioux Falls itself, you feel a certain twinge of anticipation. No matter how far you are away your destination is from the interstates it's never more than ten minutes. No real neighborhoods exist in Sioux Falls. Rather there's the “west side,” the “east side,” etc. And none of these have any clear borders or interesting demographic demarcations. Some people who live there might disagree and might even bring median incomes and certain ethnic groups to bear on the argument that there are indeed different parts of the cities. Poor parts and rich parts. Suburban and otherwise. But it's nonsense: never forget it. Everything's so close (and yet so spread out) that it doesn't matter. City planners have renovated downtown to look and feel like a suburb and the suburbs to look and feel like downtown. Whatever superficial differences exist evaporate upon closer inspection.

Driving is required. You can't really ride a bike in Sioux Falls, though you can try. For a smaller city it's remarkably spread out, and it would make no sense to ride you bike ten miles to a baseball game. Or fifteen miles to go to work downtown. Even in larger cities like Minneapolis, the furthest suburbs like Eden Prairie are only just beyond biking range. Whereas everything of worth in Sioux Falls is beyond biking range. From my parent's house in Southwest Sioux Falls you can't bike downtown—it's too far. Whereas from my apartment in Minneapolis I can get to virtually any place in Minneapolis, or really even St. Paul, with little trouble.

And so everybody drives. Every building has large spaces between it and the next. The houses have large yards with fences. The chain stores sit far back from the street. Nobody walks or uses crosswalks, and in fact a dominant feeling you may have if you decide to walk is an intense scrutiny bearing down on you from every passing car. When I was in high school I decided not to pay for parking in the school parking lot—again, everybody drove. No buses. But I refused to pay for the “privilege” of parking in the lot and so I spent the first part of my senior year dodging some large woman driving a golf cart around, yelling at those without tags. Finally she caught me and I gave up, which meant I had to park across the street. As if this would matter to anyone with an ethical sense of parking, a real ethical sense of parking would go a long way in Sioux Falls high schools—but again, we're talking about an automobile city and nothing is going to change this. People love cars there. But regardless, I parked across the street. What this meant was that I had to cross the street in order to go to school, leave school, go to lunch, etc. And I would get honked at by other students who parked in the lot—as if I were some weirdo for not forking over sixty dollars for the privilege of parking in the school lot.

Luckily, in high school, I was a weird little vegan, money-hating environmentalist oddball. So I took it as a backwards-complement. Having losers make fun of you is actually a self-esteem boost. I'm definitely exaggerating here, but I'm still accurately describing the structure of the general situation. All of this for simply parking across a street.

In Sioux Falls, there's now a Planned Parenthood next to my high school. Protesters regularly stand outside and hold pictures of aborted fetuses. Just recently they enacted a law requiring a three day way and anti-abortion counseling for any woman seeking an abortion. You should hate the people supporting these measures. South Dakota is very right-wing in spirit, though the people themselves are friendly enough.

Rather than a web linking the whole community together, the community is linked first through a common core. The political structure is located far away from the populated areas of the state; perhaps this explains part of the right-wing anti-federal stance of the population. The people of Sioux Falls are governed by Pierre, a faraway place; and Pierre, in turn, connects to Washington, an even farther away dreamworld. Add to this the utter ineffectual nature of all politics in South Dakota—which is on nobody's radar for any election. Indeed, the people of South Dakota have an uncanny ability to shoot themselves in the foot: for example, taking Tom Daschle out of office and replacing him with whomever. Daschle, of course, was one of the most powerful people in the Senate. And South Dakota would never want such an advocate for their state: they'd rather have John Thune, a junior senator with a bad haircut. It's rather sad.

Sioux Falls, however, is not a wasteland. Downtown was renovated. Even the Falls—the actual waterfalls—were renovated. Everything has a certain Disney feel. Even the Statue of David was turned around so as not to offend. Now he faces the park and the river, not some road where a family “might catch a glimpse.” I suppose real art is a buffalo sculpture that you can climb on. In a way, that's exactly right. A bronze buffalo you can climb on is indeed genuine South Dakota art. Why import one of the most famous statues in existence when you can get a 1970's prairie artist to make a bronze buffalo?

Since I left Sioux Falls I have been back many times. The longest I have ever been back is one month—Christmas break during my freshman year of college. I've been back for a week or two at other times but never as long as that. And I've always gotten bored. I've always had a sad sense of alienation there: I don't have any friends there anymore, just my parents. Which is fine. Perhaps that has influenced me: why else would I focus on the distance between houses? Or why would feel that a representative memory is being honked at while crossing a street, as if that were some embarrassment?

My dislike of Sioux Falls is a fear of being alone. Sioux Falls is a lonely city. The people have a certain feel to them that doesn't exist in any Twin Cities neighborhood. They have that certain feel that makes one think that nothing is happening—that life has stalled, that hope is dead. It's a certain slimy-stillness. Even those with better jobs—with real lives, insofar as that's possible in Sioux Falls—are infected by it. I would call it provincialism but I don't think it's accurate. Sioux Falls is indeed connected to the outside world. And indeed, it wants to be. It's just bad at it.