Category Archives: riptides

November 24, 2013

A Geography of Scars

By DP

At first glance, the idea for a memorial to mountains seems peculiar; mountains need not be remembered in that way, for mountains will always be there, beyond the need for puny human memorials. Not so, however, in the deadly anthropocene, where mountaintops are routinely sacrificed for the extraction of fossil fuel. How can one think like a mountain when the mountain itself has been decapitated, or even obliterated?

The National Memorial for the Mountains offers a powerful online resource that documents the massive scale of destruction occurring in Appalachia, carving more than five hundred mountains into a vast geography of scars. We borrow that last phrase from the third section of Wendell Berry’s extraordinary prose poem, “Damage”:

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APPALACHIAN MINDMARK: NOTATION FOR A LIMIT

The phrase “ghostly paradigm of things” descends from Yeats:

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We note that “the taws” refers to a leather whip divided into two strands at the end, so as to leave a more complex signature upon the flesh.

KING COAL PLAYED THE TAWS UPON THIS MOUNTAIN

KING COAL PLAYED THE TAWS HERE

Returning to Berry:

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EVIDENCE OF A PESTILENCE

We recall Günther Anders’ “philosophy of discrepancy”, and his inverted utopians, unable to imagine the things they make. They are also, it seems, unable to conceive the implications of the things they unmake. Nonetheless, those who shake more than they can hold arrive for their last supper immaculately groomed. What fate becomes such a civilization? From the poet and DP correspondent Jon Swan, we receive the following answer:

urbanity

Leave a comment | tags: Desperado Philosophy, geography of scars, inverted utopia, jon swan urbanity, mountaintop removal coal, national memorial for mountains, philosophy of discrepancy, wendell berry damage | posted in bearings, DP, riptides

November 15, 2013

Philosopher In A Space Suit

By DP

TWOMBLY PEONIES FOR A DANTO MOON WALK

Belatedly, we mark the death (October 25) of the remarkable American philosopher, Arthur C. Danto (1924-2013).While tracking references online, we came across an autobiographical statement, in which Danto describes his decision to shelve his career as an artist in favor of philosophy, which for him represented a continuity of thought by different means:

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DANTO’S “HEAD”: STOWED ON A HIGH SHELF

When we first encountered Danto in college, his open, humorous and generous voice offered welcome counterpoint to contemporaries like Rorty (b. 1931) and Rawls (b. 1921). His deep roots in analytic thought did not confine him to any one planet within the philosophical universe; in sentence after sentence, digression after digression, and book after book, Danto displays a wonderfully unrestrained spirit of adventure into the dark. Indeed, in a 2010 interview he referred to his mastery of the analytic idiom as his “space suit”:

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ART-PHILOSOPHY-ART

In the same interview, Danto discusses the uneasy and even unruly relationship between beauty and meaning:

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EMBODIED MEANING

Leave a comment | tags: analytic philosophy as danto's space suit, art as philosophy, arthur danto dead, danto woodcut head epiphany, gregory whitehead desperado philosophy, philosophy as art | posted in bearings, buoys, DP, riptides

November 14, 2013

Learn How to Die

By DP

A faithful correspondent has alerted us to an interesting essay published by the Stone blog at the New York Times, and authored by Iraq war veteran and writer Roy Scranton. Below, we offer several excerpts, with images and counterpoint added by DP:

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BARREL OF THE FUTURE

MIRROR IMAGE

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Tracking the citations, we provide the full context from the mother text, Hagakure:

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MAP OF THE WAY

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SUBJECT FOR MEDITATION

Returning to Scranton:

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Here, we pause to recall a well-known passage (italics added for emphasis) from J.R. McNeill’s Something New Under the Sun:

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SIGNATURE EXPERIMENT OF THE ANTHROPOCENE

And finally, the last three paragraphs from Scranton, in which he underscores the crucial philosophical crisis:

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Leave a comment | tags: anthropocene, desperado philosophy gregory whitehead, learning how to die, roy scranton, stone blog, uncontrolled experiment humanity, way of samurai | posted in bearings, DP, riptides

November 11, 2013

Hooligans

By DP

We note, courtesy of the Guardian, the publication of a letter from a member of the Greenpeace Arctic 30, the honorable Phil Ball:

PORTRAIT OF A HOOLIGAN?

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Transcription:

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For documentary evidence confirming the non-violent and peaceful disposition of the Arctic 30:

And for further video-epistolary communications from the incarcerated Greenpeace Hooligans:

Of course, this is not the first time that Russian authorities have criminalized dissent by classifying legitimate public protest as an act of hooliganism. Meanwhile, the precise whereabouts of the anti-Putin activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova remain unknown: an experiment in transit-disappearance, an apparent innovation in the repertoire of psy-op punishments favored by tyrants, to crush the will of those who dares raise their voices against the proclamations of the Supreme Leader.

THE FACE OF HOOLIGANISM?

In the USA, the will for absolute supremacy expresses itself not through the bodies of individuals – here, the political leadership are Hollow Men dancing in the Cave of Shadows – but rather through the inverted totalitarianism of the corporatist/surveillance state. In this regime, even chalk drawings threaten the projected illusion of absolute compliance and consent.

Truth threatens national security whenever such security relies upon the deft suppression of all uncomfortable facts.Those who speak the truth in a world that survives only through fraud and deceit must be criminalized and condemned, while rapacious sociopaths are celebrated and rewarded. As Phil Ball writes: “Hooligans doesn’t even come close to what they are guilty of.”

CLICK TO SIGN PETITION DEMANDING THE RELEASE OF THE ARCTIC 30: DRAWING BY PHIL BALL

Leave a comment | tags: arctic 30, hooligans, phil ball letter, pussy riot disappearance, thought crimes, truth crimes | posted in bearings, buoys, DP, riptides

July 1, 2013

Genocidal Direction

By DP

WHAT SORT OF LIFE DOES THIS ENSURE?

Now comes Navy Captain Robert Durand, who reports that efforts to convince medical professionals to cease all assistance in the force feeding of hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay have failed to gain ethical traction. “They signed up to carry out lawful orders,” said Capt. Durand, adding “This is a lawful order.” He then went on to say, “We do it to preserve life.”

One hardly knows where to start with such twisted declarations. Did these medical professionals not also “sign up” to a professional ethos generally understood to mandate that they do no harm to any individual who comes under their care? Also, on what basis is Capt. Durand claiming legality for the order? Military chain of command? Finally, if “life” is understood to center around the conscious volition of the subject, and that subject explicitly wishes to cease eating, then does not forced feeding actually subtract from or even terminate– the life of the subject?

HEALING HANDS?

In any event, the notion that national law (as embodied, say, in certain imperatives of an invented or manipulated national security) cancels professional ethics has a long history to which we doubt Capt. Durand would like to find himself attached. To refresh our understanding of the psychology behind such thinking, we pulled out a well-worn copy of Robert Jay Lifton’s extraordinary study of Nazi doctors, above all his final chapter on the psychology of genocide (slightly re-formatted below, for readability):

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As an alternative to the “genocidal direction”, Lifton goes on to discuss the “prophylaxis” of the “embodied self”:

Screen Shot 2013-07-01 at 4.44.40 PM Protections against the “machine” of “national security” requires a clear ethical detachment that supports the embodied self, while also supporting an individual capacity for empathy, a quality that appears to be totally absent within the regime of Guantanamo indefinite detention.

We close with a poem written in 2007 by Adnan Latif, found dead in his cell in 2012, purportedly from a drug overdose attributed to a “procedural error” :

Leave a comment | tags: captain durand, forced feeding, gershom scholem, hunger strike, medical ethics, nazi doctors, robert jay lifton nazi doctors | posted in bearings, riptides

June 12, 2013

Boundless Informant

By DP

DATA MINE SCHEMATIC

Recent revelations of extensive online data mining by the National Security Agency should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention for the past decade or so, during which the surveillance dream of Total Information Awareness has become densely interwoven with the media dream of Total Connectivity. Whereas in previous media regimes, state surveillance required that citizens inform against each other, the internet makes it possible for each individual to serve as their very own snitch.

For intelligence analysts, the seductive appeal of a comprehensive map of the “social brain” (we know what you think as you think it) becomes too difficult to resist, just as the appeal of instant and universal connectivity drives individuals into social media.

A society that requires the extraction of information from one neighbor against another will inevitably experience stress:

THE SWEAT MINE IS A DIRTY BUSINESS

When every user of the network serves as their own informant, the scenario becomes far more tidy – no need to store stinky seat pads inside laboratory bottles when the same behavioral tendencies and affiliations can be revealed through elegant algorithms. Subjects become willing, and even eager to contribute their resources to the data mine, anxious to prove their innocence through stripping down and bending over, whatever it takes to confirm total obedience.

IF YOU ARE NOT A TERRORIST YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE

Those who wish to restore some degree of privacy and anonymity must be willing to modify their relationship to the network, whether that means erasing social media profiles or withdrawing from the use of commercial air travel. Most are unwilling to take such action; networks create their own dependencies, even to the point of addiction. Withdrawal becomes painful and even unthinkable. In this way, subjection becomes voluntary, just as all forms of dissent become criminalized.

In time, severance from the network will become illegal; all citizens will be expected to contribute to the mine. The age of the Delta Depository will be upon us, soon enough.

BOUNDLESS SUBMISSION

Leave a comment | tags: boundless informant, data mine, lives of others, naked crowd, neural network, prism, social brain, surveillance media regime | posted in bearings, riptides

June 4, 2013

Shades of Night

By DP

THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

In recent days, we have been mulling over a famous passage from the preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:

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The standard translation, as provided by the diligent S. W. Dyde, reads:

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Little is known about how the goddess Athena came to be associated with Athene Noctua; yet we do know that Athena explodes from the head of Zeus, cracked open by an axe wielded by the smithy Haephaestos. Athena enters the world with eyes blazing and in full armor, born not from Eros but from violence; Zeus raped and impregnated her mother, Metis, and then he ate her, fearful of an avenging son.

We also know that the owl’s nocturnal vision is not intended for wise contemplation, but for predation and survival; and that the goddess of wisdom is also the goddess of war strategy, hence her abiding affiliation with wily Odysseus. With a nod to her devoured mother Metis, herself born from Oceanus and Tethys, Athena also becomes the goddess of navigation.

THE RAPIST’S HEADACHE

A lengthy list of post-Hegelian commentators have labored over interpretations of the “grey in grey”; the Eule only flies after the semi-colon, before which the grey was heavily painted, und so weiter und so fort. This particular shade of grey descends from Goethe….

FAUST

… yet we know that Mephisto is hardly known for transparency of thought. Grey theory cannot rejuvenate the decadent form of life; yet is not theory, when painted only in grey, the most telling sign of that decadence?

Let us follow the thread further back to the Phaedo:

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Ah, but such citations are deceptive. In context, could one not interpret Socrates as poking fun at Simmias, as Mephisto would later poke fun at Faust?

Grey theory and the green of life may share more than three letters; and when the grey owl of philosophy flies into the green meadow of life, her talons are soon enough painted red.

GREY + GREEN = RED

Leave a comment | tags: athena wisdom strategy, athene noctua, hegel grey in grey, mephisto grey theory, owl of minerva, zeus rape metis | posted in bearings, buoys, riptides

June 2, 2013

The General’s Labyrinth

By DP

CASA RIOS MONTT 2013

On May 10, it appeared that former Guatemalan strongman Efraín Ríos Montt would spend the rest of his days in a prison cell, convicted of genocide and a lengthy list of war crimes. On May 17, the court released a 718 page sentencing document summarizing the evidence, and providing detailed legal arguments supporting the conviction.

For a moment or two, it seemed likely that the largely Mayan victims of Ríos Montt’s savage, murderous abuse would finally receive justice, and that the world would witness the first conviction for genocide ever adjudicated through a national legal system. Now it appears far more likely that the former general will escape into a vast legal labyrinth.

THE GENERAL IMAGINES LIFE INSIDE THE LABYRINTH

First, the Constitutional Court ruled that the trial lost legal standing due to a technicality, and must be rolled back to April 19, recommencing only when the technical issues have been resolved. Yet that is just the first turn in the labyrinth. As described by the Open Society Justice Initiative:

Further, Ríos Montt’s legal team contends that he should be covered under a 1986 amnesty issued by a successor strongman, despite the revocation of that amnesty , and the passage of a National Reconcilaition Law which granted limited amnesty, explicitly excluding genocide, torture and other crimes against humanity, as defined by international law.

With a Constitutional Court that appears deeply split and possibly compromised, resolution of these issues, followed by undoubted appeals and challenges to those resolutions, could assure that the labyrinth will provide comfortable cover to Ríos Montt for many years into the future.

The truth has been established through brave testimony and meticulous documentation, yet justice remains elusive. Beneath the surface, intimidation, erasure and forced forgetfulness will undoubtedly be deployed against those who dared to speak truth to power; the angel of memory flayed from the walls in the public square.

TRUTH TO POWER ; THEN POWER TO TRUTH

Leave a comment | tags: angel of memory erased, guatemalan genocide, justice initiative, justice truth power, rios montt | posted in bearings, riptides

May 23, 2013

Remote Horrors

By DP

gitmo-behavioral-sign630

Forced feeding of hunger striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay, many of whom have been officially cleared for release, continues despite widespread condemnation.

While researching international law regarding hunger strikes, we came across a detailed 1991 declaration from the World Medical Association that discusses ethical considerations regarding the participation of medical professionals in the forced feeding of hunger strikers. The declaration is very clear on the issue of respect for the autonomy of any individual who chooses to refuse food:

2. Respect for autonomy. Physicians should respect individuals’ autonomy. This can involve difficult assessments as hunger strikers’ true wishes may not be as clear as they appear. Any decisions lack moral force if made involuntarily by use of threats, peer pressure or coercion. Hunger strikers should not be forcibly given treatment they refuse. Forced feeding contrary to an informed and voluntary refusal is unjustifiable.

Authorities attempt to portray tube feeding as a benign administrative procedure applied for humanitarian reasons, yet the reality is a violent and painful assault. Consider the vivid description given by Djuna Barnes in 1914:

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