A Day in the Life of Misery

The day went by, completely, as days go by--except, for most people there is contentment. There are objectives, routines, roles, duties, responsibilities, projects, hobbies, chores, etc.
For me, there is nothing. And by nothing I don't mean that there are not things that I could be working on. However... life is shit!
When there is nothing to commit one's day to (not even simply relaxing and not doing anything), that is, when one has Borderline Personality Disorder and is trapped in this daily sluggishness pervaded by emptiness, there is nothing! Nothing but anguish! No amount of pills can make it go away. There is no effort to be found to attempt to engender to salvage one's day.
One's internal state dictates that everything be in vain, that everything be meaningless, that everything drive one to the point of waiting (perhaps even praying) for death... Suicidal ideation is the brainstorm of this eternal misery.
And... it continues. Every little thing wears on one's nerves. The smallest of daily monotonous phenomenon gyrate on the extreme sensitivity of the senses - of the nerve endings - to the point that one is about to snap... or does snap. The inevitably annoying quirks of a toddler. Dogs barking. The lack of motivation, or perceiving any point in motivation. Sheer utter emptiness, boredom, restlessness.
How is one to "survive" such days?
-I don't know!...

The Philosophy of the Macabre, or Morbid, or Horror...

• The philosophy of the macabre is an analysis (deconstruction?) of, precisely, the “absence” of death, the macabre, morbid, horror, (in the sense of such terms as taken from/applied to related ideas found in the work of Georges Bataille) etc., from the “instrumentally rationalized” everydayness of (post-Enlightenment) post-industrial, culture/society, which is to say the dimension of Objectification/production/utility, etc...
• What is meant by “absence” of death, especially given the prevailing notion of “if it bleeds, it leads,” is (at least for starters) that the field of representations under such an umbrella is a “trace” rather than a “presence.” (Derrida) – For example, we might cognize or rationalize that we know/understand the presence of death in war, in capital punishment, in the production of a commodity of “meat” in the food industry, etc., but all that we really know/understand are signs/signifiers/symbols/codes/representations of death (Baudrillard, et al.), not the experience of confrontation with (Bataille), or the showing of, death/macabre (Kristeva, Powers of Horror, p. 3-4) 

• Certainly, one could argue that we can never really have direct/immediate access to “real-world” death/horror, etc., without being in a given situation (e.g. a soldier in combat), and even more so that one cannot really experience death (Heidegger/Derrida), thus it seems that the analysis comes back in some way, but perhaps only to a certain extent, to “representation.” More precisely, the concern is with the absence of the “reality” of death/horror in the dominant socio-cultural fields of representation, perhaps most particularly with mass media…
• The order of things (system…) marginalizes, and keeps absent, the “truth” of death/horror, in order to maintain/reproduce itself (status quo).
• If confrontation with the reality, the “presence,” of death generates an affect that cracks open subjectivity and engenders “communication” (“community” – Bataille, Nancy) – then such affect in/on the societal level would/could cause a disruption of the system.
• A disruption (break) of the system (“Event?” – Badiou/Žižek) would/could radically transform the social order.
• However, this raises the question of the “conditions of possibility” that are needed to frame such an experience in order to lead to a revolutionary break (Kant?, Foucault?, Bataille – on the recognition of the subject in the “object”)…
• The conditions of possibility must frame the phenomenological “experience” in order for the affect to emerge. – Here too, the conditions of possibility themselves are bound up in/by the order of things that produces the very framework that excludes/precludes/occludes the “reality” of death/horror in the first place, as said, with the intent/purpose of reproducing/perpetuating instrumental rationality. (Butler, Frames of War)
• If, as Derrida suggests, at the presupposed “center” of any system is an “absence,” then, in that death is the absence in question, the presupposed center is the prefabricated/prevaricated construct of individuality within our system built on the notions of production, preservation of discontinuity, appeal to the future, etc

Fear Itself - A Double Entendre - The Culture of Fear

"The only thing we have to fear is... fear itself." - But, does this not seem on the one hand to be contradictory, but at a more fundamental level an illogical problematic? If the only thing that is to be feared is the very feeling of fear, then fear is fearing itself. Inevitably, one has not rid oneself of fear... it may even be the case that one has, rather, exemplified fear in such a case.
...perhaps even a promotion of fear through a false-exoneration of fear. For, if there are no objects (or subjects) to be feared save for fear itself, this only leaves the trope of reflexive fear... perpetual fear. 
I dare to suggest that the "culture of fear" was born Saturday, March 4, 1933.


TBC...

Intro to my Philosophy of the Macabre & Morbid, II

I'm currently trying to cram in a reading of Steven King's Dans Macabre in which he embarks on a history and description of horror fiction and film. I have quite a ways to go in the book, but thus far he has suggested that many of us may go to horror movies, etc., in order to (psychologically) deal with real-world horrors. In short, I think this, if you'll excuse my language, is B.S. - So, I think perhaps I should attempt to work on an argument for the way in which the affect in the subject of horror and revulsion is precisely one that requires a trope of concentration toward those real-world horrors. To put it in a "catch phrase" of sorts, if we get horrified by representations in print or film why is it we are not as directly and immediately horrified by those real-world horrors? -- One dilemma of course is that our immediate access to the real-world horrors remains in print and visual media....

Introduction to my Philosophy of the Macabre 'and' Morbid

"The Horror!" --

It would seem that at first 'glance' when I inform someone that my research interests are in the subject area that I have termed "the philosophy of the macabre and morbid" (sometimes just "the philosophy of the morbid, or macabre" - the exact word choice is still developmental) that the typical assumption is that my primary concern is in the direction of the "representations" of the macabre, the morbid, horror, terror, etc. However, this is not precisely the case. Although I must indeed find these elements compelling and fascinating, my concern, or at least my attempted philosophical direction, is more fundamentally in the aspect, or experience, of horror, the macabre, morbidity, itself.... Perhaps this too needs its own terminology. I feel safe in describing such a pursuit as "the phenomenology of horror."

This concern spawns from several divergent arche-points, but just to try to shed light on one, take for instance the, perhaps, over-analyzed problem of the subjective and/or culturally encoded responses (and interpretations of those responses) to the various representations of death, horror, suffering, dread, loss, etc. - In short, there are plenty of arguments to suggest the representations in-themselves do little to nothing... i.e. the actual, physical, psychological, and emotional experiences, and responses, of horror rest in the subject. But, that subjects can and do appeal to the parallelism of an experience called "horror," one cannot throw off the experience wholeheartedly, or outright. Something of primary importance remains in the experience, the "phenomenology," of horror itself....

Marxist(s)???

This is a response to the increasing ignorance of, and increased appeal to the ad hominem misappropriation of the terms: Marxist and Marxism which has become the new fallacy of contemporary United Statesian politics and social life. Although there are countless examples, the most recent demonstration of this problem (involving Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons) can be found here: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/odonnell-calls-coons-a-marxist-during-senate-debate/?hp
Not only can Republicans (and I'd say Democrats too) not define Marxism, I'd bet half the people who also point this fact out, yet do not claim themselves to be Marxist, cannot do it either.

1. Marxism as a blanket term used to describe all socio-politico-economic and cultural philosophies is, even when restricted to the work of Marx alone, a highly complex theory. So much so, that it remains extraordinarily insurmountable a task to criticize it in any way without giving it serious study which hardly anyone (perhaps except scholars of Marxism) actually do.

2. There isn't just "one" so-called "Marxism." - And to use the term "socialism," well, the same goes for that, of which Marxism is one form... (PS- Fascism and Nazism can only hold a thin margin of a "socialist" label in that the economic theory on which that which they (mis)appropriated was Syndicalism.

3. Throwing out the "M-word" is purely a scare-tactic because, in the majority of uneducated United Statesian minds, Marxism = Stalinism = Totalitarianism = Authoritarianism = no "freedom" (whatever that is) = no "liberty" (whatever that is) = some loaded BS notion of "the government taking care of everyone," etc. Yet, the whole catawampus mud-bog of incredulity rests on a general intellectual laziness that refuses to challenge all socio-political categories and systems of structuration.

4. This whole smoke-cloud which is absent of intellectual sincerity or accuracy, but full of the misappropriation of terms and categories, as well as ad hominem attacks, exists in a vacuum despairingly vacant of actual Marxists. This point simply goes to demonstrate the multiplicity of fallaciousness. How bad of a Red Herring must there be when the most direct object of ridicule (Marxists) is nowhere ever present. Hell, even in the current world of philosophy, it is most difficult to find a Marxist—the closest we might have to one being Slavoj Zizek, and even this is sketchy.

5. Finally, and not to berate the proverbial catchphrase so quintessential of laissez-faire, the “bottom-line” is that this is (to use the Marxist term) ideology in its purest and most culturally detrimental form – that no one is doing anything about anything. This, like practically every other facet of our world, is merely a distraction! We are distracted from asking important philosophical questions about society, about the economic structure, about politics, about theoretical categories such as “freedom,” “liberty,” etc., that we take at face value and inevitably take for granted because we are always-already lead by a condition of presupposition. We aren’t working forward or backward, we are a cultural stalemate bent solely on reproducing the same nightmarish simulacrum ad infinitum.

What's your justification for ethics other than hegemony?

Consider this: for sake of the question or argument, let's assume that there is no God (I'm not sure who believes and who doesn't). Let's also assume that logic is inherently limited, i.e. that ultimately logic can only provide a structure of rules by which we judge certain sets of propositions as either true or false, deductive or inductive, valid or invalid, etc. But systems of logic (one of the reasons logic is plural and not singular) are not only limited, but they formulate the objects, questions, and rules of their very inquiries. In other words, any statement can be justified or countered depending on the argumentation. We might even suggest, as Wittgenstein, that ethical statements are nonsense. Next we might go the route with moral responsibility. One question that would emerge is: where does the notion of responsibility come from? Another: in that moral responsibility presupposes a "transcendent" i.e. pre-social/pre-linguistic, and non-determined agency (which is another problem in-itself) but assume the position for the moment, from whence does the "moral agent" derive her/his choices? How/where does she/he get the idea of duty, responsibility; and how does she/he make decisions as to what behavior constitutes a moral choice, and fulfills the obligations? -- If we've suspended religious systems as our original guiding principle, then perhaps one might appeal to the society in which one lives. But the next question would then shift to the issue of moral relativism (not to be confused with nihilism which will the concluding problematic in this line of questioning). We might agree that "our," e.g. United Statesian, or Western notions of ethics are suitable for us, and in that ethical standards and practices vary from time to time and place to place, that no one system is better or worse than another (who are we to judge?). The bottom line being that all societies have some conception of ethics.
To this I would add, and conclude, with the question of how any given society orchestrates its system of ethics? How are the standards, practices, rules, obligations, etc., encoded and enforced? - In other words, is it not that the mechanisms of power in each and every society are the sites of the emergence of any of the ethical standards and practices in question? - We might say we would not kill another human being for whatever reason, but what if a reason arrived? We tend to have a form of relativism ourselves in that it's moral acceptable (even obligatory) to send soldiers to kill and/or be killed, it's moral acceptable  (even obligatory) to execute those deemed according to a level of criminality to be deserving of just punishment. Yet, if the social structure at work denies certain benefits, basic  needs, etc., to those of the lowest classes, etc., we are still living according to a deontological paradigm. - Even beyond those presumed "common" grounds of morality such as prohibitions against killing, raping, stealing, etc., what about all the so-called "minor" morals? For example, what determines the moral certitude of all of our social justice issues, etc? - Is it not statutory institutions, policy-makers, juridical, religious, educational, bureaucratic, and other authorities? - Thus we arrive at the site of where my questioning begins: The 5th CEN BCE Sophist philosopher Thrasymachus is noted as saying, “Listen—I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.” (i.e. "might makes right") Or, in my language, ethics and morality is decided by the deployment of the various mechanisms of power and those discourses associated with power. (I used the term "hegemony" less in the Gramscian sense than just a term to denote power and domination in general). So my philosophical problem rests on arriving at nihilism -- that there simply is no ultimate meaning, purpose, or justification for ethics (or anything else for that matter). But in that I, like most of us, am constituted as a moral subject, (perhaps for no other reason - who knows?) find this conclusion a bit unsettling, although simultaneously the most liberating of all possibilities. -- Here's a thought experiment from the recent movie Shudder Island: the warden in the film asks the main character, "If I bite into your eye right now, what would you do to stop me before you went blind?" - To say it another way (without appealing to a Hobbesian universe), when all the societal categories and proclivities are stripped away and, again as the warden in the movie asks, there's nothing standing between you or I and a meal but another being, where is any absolute ethics, or any justification for such?