Against Patriarchy, Anti-Oppression, and especially Liberal Anarchism.

We have a hard time figuring out how we are to respond to patriarchy for ourselves because we find the very idea repulsive. We have no shortages of ways to respond for others; but for ourselves, we find the problem to be not really ours. Some dudes behave in certain ways; many perhaps; but we do not wish to be bros; we do not think that we have access to womyn's bodies. We find the entire apparatus to be predicated on false joy. And this is not because we have failed at being bros, as though we were turned off because we couldn't receive the power purported to be already allotted to ourselves. It is that we are less interested in the macro than the micro. We do not wish for power; shared or otherwise. We want to accept privilege that we have earned through fighting and defending ourselves. The meaning of 'privilege' makes sense only in that register. Otherwise it is confusing.

Many will say that we could have power if we wished it to be so; but this in general fails to address the fact of the matter. We despise the entire definition of what they say it means to be privileged, and we wish for none to have any of it because we are not liberal anarchists. But more importantly, we wish for none to have any of it because such would mean that others would then have power over us, which is repulsive. Therefore, our non-organizational activism is to destroy all of it; not so that power might assemble, privileging men; but so that none but ourselves will gain purchase over our own desires. In short, we are unapologetic individualists.

Our main argument against anti-oppression is that we are not structuralists. We do not feel power, and we are not allured by it because this would mean power over others whom should, by definition, have the capacity to go it alone. We do not will to enslave others because such would mean that we need others to have power, which is false. Besides, depending on others is foolish given that they have the freedom to dissociate; and only potential police would will it otherwise. And we hate pigs, and do not wish to hate ourselves.

We do not care for anti-oppression because we are not foolish enough to think that our views and the world we might design is good enough for free spirits. We think iconoclasm is valuable and we wish to see utopias turned into dystopias only until whatever-being is established, without positivity.

A friend of mine recently spoke on the topic of feminism and suggested that if you do not accept the terms of social organizing--which doesn't mean organic becoming, but rather, becoming an organ and so fixed and domesticated--you have to accept the consequences. But shouldn't we relish at the opportunity to test our capacity? So someone comes at you! Joyous! And what of the consequences? If one is attacked under the banner of anti-oppression, whatever the reasons, one has the opportunity to wage war against liberals, which is a genuine privilege! And finally we would be then in a position to say that we are privileged because our desires actually line up with what we are! Nihilists do not give a shit about social blocks, social analysis, and especially because they do not care for its telos. I desire enemies because it makes life worth living; and only those that do not cower are worthy of Anarchy. Everything else is a boring liberal program.

I wish to be very clear. The world is composed of individuals. We fit ourselves into social forms with attendant structural nomos, or we are so fit by others that wish to gain power over us. But prior to doing so we are wild bodies somewhere along the line of domestication, which is clearly ontologically disadvantageous, but evidently not clear enough as such for liberals. If we set our marks to the Outside (Cf. review of Hello), we will be in a position to say that the entire thing is ridiculous. Like. Sitting. Ducks.

I'm at 'my' limit.

In the debates over transhumanism there are a few terms that require clarity. The first is post-humyn. One definition of this term suggests that we are no longer modern in the sense of being nondualistic. Dualism, if you’ll recall, was a metaphysical thesis concerning the mind-body problem that was invented by Descartes, of course, not without medieval trajectories. In general, dualism was not present in the minds of medievals because theirs was an Aristotleanism. There is a relation between mind and body, well, to be precise, for Aristotle, there was the active intellect which could become identical with the being of a given form when it thinks that which it perceives. In De Anima we read that the active intellect could become the form of anything impressed upon the passive intellect. Epistemologies in the middle ages would take us way off course, but I want to briefly mention Duns Scotus on the formal distinction. Ockham’s question, inter alia, was how something could both be universal and particular; if particular, then not universal; if universal then not particular. According to Ockham, this was basic to the idea of ontological distinction: the proposition that Socrates is a man simply indexes Socrates, noting, nearly trivially, that the set of men includes the individual Socrates. What then was the mind? Surely not something distinct from the persyn that is Socrates. We could say that Scotus posited a flooded ontology whereby anything necessary was supposited, to use Ockham’s term. In a very precise (and brilliant) argument, Scotus says that humyn substances are <formally distinct formalities>. (If anyone wants to read up on this stuff, I would recommend Peter King, from PIMS). This means that minds do not occur outside of bodies, while Ockham argued that the interior distinction is not necessary. Well, for Scotus, the real (formally distinct, not really distinct) posit was necessary, in the very least to save our intuitions concerning the correspondence theory of truth.

The question of immortality, uploading minds into computers, et cetera, has already been critiqued by the Critical Art Ensemble (Flesh Machine); and there is a really good stab taken by N. Katherine Hayles (How We Became Posthuman), which I will trace later. And this latter text brings me to the discussion that I want to have concerning the fuzziness of Scotus on the mind-body problem (if there is one). For Halyes, and Pickering, for instance, the idea that there is a distinct mind from the body is already confused. The various capacities of mind, as Aquinas would say, are not separable from the body, the least not by any fallible humyn actor, to say nothing of the miraculous agency of Divine Being. Most Aristotleans get this; and so, the question of immortality instantly becomes interesting in the medieval (largely Christian) framework. In Descartes, and it’s tricky, the idea is that humyn substance, a severely disenchanted posit, is already trapped in the body. This Platonic claim boils to the claim, again, a claim, that the mind doesn’t necessary rely on a body. For it is conceivable that the mind could be distinguished from the body: everything can be doubted, he said, except the idea that we are doubting, when we are. Therefore, there is something necessary at root; at least one constitutive predicate that doesn’t belong to world. This, he says, is the non-extended point, the mind. If consciousness can somehow fall into this point, that is to say, constitute it, whatever it might be—and if we could somehow hold it—the transfer into a material robot body, or a series of networks in a computer system, is possible (as in Transcendence or LawnMower Man) and as such, Descartes flesh machine body is replaceable. Here, the counter-argument that immortality, or living in any sense, is not a matter of immateriality is beside the point. Being trapped in a material body of some kind is not the issue for some transhumanists; the issue might be construed simply as the problem that our bodies are aging, that certain material functions require fresh reality, or will so, necessarily, at some point. Whether this living duration can carry on indefinitely, for some transhumanists is irrelevant, to say nothing of the foolish prediction that affirms that such could happen. With Kant we might say that countability or numerable infinity, is a process, an adding programme that never returns actual infinity, grasped once and for all. As LaTorra notes: “No one can know with certainty how long he or she will live”.[1] Hence to say that one can live more than 90 is dubitable; to say that one could, if the appropriate transference has been carried out, doesn’t seem impossible; to say, however, that one could then live forever, making transfers into new cyborgs seems ridiculous.

But it seems that there is still a problem, despite LaTorra’s insistence that what is reproduced in the next state, given transhumanist hope, is not consciousness but brain emulation (207). LaTorra glosses over this trouble by “maintain[ing] that a self pattern could even manifest in a sufficiently complex body  (or machine) that is not human at all” (209). Then we could say that continuity is purchased by maintaining a high degree of similarity, presumably a self-referential similarity, at best, and certainly one that would be sufficiently indistinguishable by third parties.

Some formalists like thinking about the term ‘continuous’ in this way:

1. At time1 we can say ‘here is a humyn, mind body and all’

2. After uploading we might say that something of the humyn at t1 is present in the materiality at time2.

But what?

To ascribe de dicto states to the same thought process is necessary at both times because consciousness is purported to be continuous between t1 and t2. What is discontinuous is this or that body. Hence, de re states ought to be ascribable to this or that, in the exclusive sense of ‘or’. In other words, there is an overlapping relationship between body1 and body2; but ex hypothesis it is nonmaterial. In How We Became Posthuman, we might say that Hayles (redescribed), hit the nail on the head at this philosophical issue. That which is immaterial is a ruse because nothing is outside of the material. Moreover, there need not be a distinction. We are not even yet fully embodied. 

What would it mean for something to be immaterial? 
How could I rule out that it isn’t plainly fully dependent on this brain state? The true mysteries of the universe are closer than we think! And how can I pretend to suppose that if brain is severed, or if we somehow catch consciousness, such would still function? If there are no parts of materiality that belong both to b1 and b2, transhumanism can be dismissed as ridiculous.

A response from a ‘transhumanist’ to this point might be that these are extreme thought experiments that are unlikely in practice. Such is a philosophers’ test: irrelevant. What is not being discussed, they might insist (perhaps) is whether we can isolate an entire body at one time and say nothing of its material belongs to another body while maintaining conscious continuity between them. Like the ship of Thesus, the program is “simply” a matter of addition, with the eventual overcoming of quantitative existence as defining qualitative humyn life. If I have everything replaced, ad infinitum, I’m still out living my fleshy body. So the liminal immortality issue may be a strawman. Or is it??

Against Pickering, LaTorra is arguing that what makes one humyn is not the body but some sufficient patterning process over t1 and t2. But a clone of me, while self-aware, is not keyed to my life-story. Or is it? And if we branch out at that point ‘separately’, like a forked road, it seems there would be two of me because two materialities would be exemplifying my patterning, at least in the initial stages. Which one would then be not me? Presumably, the one that has a lesser capacity to cohere with my previous states, prior to forking. But what if such processes of synthesis and repetition were simply built into the emulation? Well this doesn’t seem impossible. After the fork, would the clone then be more like me than I am? What a nightmare!!

Make no mistake, while prosthetic life, a claimed union between nature and culture, is the rhetoric of LaTorra’s transhumanism, it is also assumed that brain emulation and pattern similarity—so long as we cannot differentiate these two—is what is in play for psychological continuity. So if it is assumed that LaTorra would propose that my existence in a material other than humyn is just as good as those experiences in a humyn body, we might miss his point; his at least is that the two might be indistinguishable. In Transcendence Johnny Depp’s character plays this ‘continuity’ brilliantly, showing technological transcendence in a positive light (ultimately) rather than its opposite. And the main characters are not certain that he is Johnny, precisely because the emulation seems suspect. (Of course, to critique Transcendence, that technology may be good presupposes that technology is neutral; and without acknowledging the continuous displacement of community and autonomy (its origin as a racist raping), evidently by way of a thin consequence based analysis, this claim mixes truth with falsity, if there is any truth present at all. Technology is not rejected in this story; it is left open; optional; a completely concealed origin, sort of like the way in which Johnny is disclosed). So then what of emulation? Is it as good as continuity?

I have two propositions.

1. Possible, viz., that one could be uploaded must be considered in the trivial light that houses it. That it doesn’t imply a contradiction is all that we have. Its practical applications are, as Critical Art Ensemble pointed out long ago, a product of military  capitalism. Only a liberal without a class analysis would be foolish enough to suppose that this is good for anyone but those that seek to extract surplus.

2. Emulation implies that we are simulated. Is this the real deal? Perhaps our loved ones couldn’t tell the difference between characteristics housed by a cyborg and those that were once mine; but isn’t all of this irrelevant? What we want is the capacity to feel, think, reason, and be aware, which is importantly, to be self-referential. Not in the sense of having any perceptions of memories that may be mine; but memories that were actually once mine. Given (1), there is a high degree of reasonable skepticism, that our memories would be doctored according to space saving platforms, to start. But the idea here is that machine-functioning could emulate our present, qualitative, brain functioning. Again: how? And, indeed: ‘does not imply a contradiction’, doesn’t mean ‘highly likely’.  This is the stuff of technological nightmares.

Progress depends on the capacity to transfer wild beings into technological structures. Technological progress, then, reaches its limit when there is no nature present left to shift. But only if we suppose that nature is of a certain sort, say pristine “virgin” wilderness, are we stuck thinking that technology can reach this limit. It is not trivial therefore to make a point of showing, perhaps not conclusively, how far we are away from living like raccoons, or pigeons, hawks, ravens, or wolves; and in particular, those domesticates that live almost as far as we can away from technology.

When consciousness has been uploaded into machines, progress implies mere efficiency, the solution of problems, glitches. It has been pointed out on numerous occasions that this position is completely naïve. In giving up the capacity to be wild one is giving up the capacity to resist in an uncompromising way. To resist in a compromising way implies that one doesn’t control the capacity to completely ‘close’ oneself; one thereby remains open to the workings of something external. And hopefully here trust with oneself as controlled by another is warranted. But obviously we ought to be skeptical: why should it be? Critical Art Ensemble made this critique a while ago. Whose Second Self? What sort of movement do others make possible? And is this freedom?—If the means cannot be claimed (only) for oneself, how less the ends?

---

[1] LaTorra, Michael. ‘Transhumanism: Threat or Menace? A response to Andrew Pickering” in Transhumanism & Its Critics edited by Hansell, Gregoy R. and William Grassie. (USA: Metanexus), 2012. p. 208.

Pessimism!

A healthy dose of pessimism implies that one is rational concerning possibility; that one is sufficiently nondelusional concerning what could be. Anarchic utopias tend to imply not only that a better world is possible, but that a very specific world could be;--and while all this is not impossible, it surely depends on what it means to "improve" something. As domestication continues to weaken our capacities to be autonomous, we move further from the target lined up by the Anarchic Utopians; so to pull back on the bow-string and take aim at this utopic end seems foolish from a pessimistic point of view: it fails to address just how fucked we are. ITS sees this; but their nihilism is not debilitating, pace Zerzan: it is not suicidal at base like fools after virgins; rather, it is liminal, a dance on the edge of possibility without delusion.

To argue that humyns tend to be moral is ridiculous, especially considering the extent to which we rely upon a large nurturing apparatus for ourselves and out little familial islands of indifference. How many centuries have we been set up to fail at the exchange without remainder? To give? To share? This is a difficult process; and its difficulty is captured in the phrase: Destroy What You Love before It destroys You. In general, the statement can be read as suggesting that the felt need to have things that have been imprinted with our very being (how we identify ourselves) is false. I am not that; I am not that or that or that.—I am this; and I don’t need that. Here we are parsing the statement to envision an atomistic persyn independent of what is desired. I like this sentiment for all the obvious reasons; but a deeper hermeneutic implies that even beautiful things themselves ought to be destroyed. Now, I’m all for destroying that which we cannot appreciate, most of culture--if not everything given that all must be negated by the Outside. But I want to live in a world with others that give gifts and that accept gift-giving as natural; a process that should not necessarily produce the felt need to give back. In other words, Not so that I can stockpile, but so that we might demonstrate our love for each other. What destroys us on this reading? The felt need to give back! Yet, here the specter of absurdity is still Present, and presumably so until there is nothing left.--Until I am not. Just this, we might say, is suicidal and completely disregards our rootedness in the earth and the desire to live ataraxia (without pain). Gift giving should hurt, of course—otherwise it’s not a gift; but once one has become indifferent, destroying what destroys you, following the first reading, one is open to the wellsprings of life. One might then pass through the eye of a needle.--Just barely nothing. 

Here there is a bit of difference between those that pass energy in order to receive to give (A) and those that will death on the promise of a number of virgins (B). But these two intersect. Those that are like A and B are those that give to receive to store; while those in A are those that destroy themselves until they merely give to receive to give. Here I am saying that an empty vessel makes one ready to receive qualitative value; and this may be in the form of another quantitative gift, but not so that it is for oneself. Both A and B are similar in the sense that possessions no longer possess us; but only in the former, not the intersection, there is a lust for earthen living generated through negation. Both the intersection and B are at fault for doing X because doing so promises reward. Perhaps then giving in order to receive quantitative value is the terrorist form of life.  

We have no Hope because

1] Others love things, they love their stuff and they love privilege; consequently, at best, given the perception of kindness, these would feel the need to repay, thereby putting the gift into economic terms, which we hate.

2] Our vision is completely non-liberal, anti-liberal in every possible respect; and we see compromise on this point to be suicidal for anarchy.

3] Given 2, it would seem unlikely that liberal anarchists (the vast majority—fuck ‘em) would accept the end point for our pointed bows, mostly because these are too ignorant to understand the health/value of (wilder)ness, if they even have ears to hear Destroy What Destroys You. These fucks build privilege with a complete misunderstanding of addiction.

4] As anti-authoritarians in every possible respect we think the rule of ideology is reactionary. There is no What We Need; there is only what You need; and only You can take it. If this happens everywhere, mass-fascism would not be possible.

Given 1-4 we think it is wise to be pessimistic of what We (humyns) are capable; we have no Hope that the conditions for social freedom could be established. Too much weighs against it; and we are not stupid blind gamblers, light years from a target. However, this doesn’t mean we do not have hope for ourselves. Obviously we'll "gamble" so far as we can see that we are not too far off target. 

Love is a Battlefield.

Individualism is marked by rational self interest; and in this sense it seems poised for capitalism. I've argued against this analogy by suggesting that individualism against everything, or autonomy, never arrives in capitalism because obviously the bosses depend so much on productivity, while autonomy merely depends on one's own productivity for oneself. Individual autonomy is hardly on all fours with anarcho-capitalism--if this term even makes sense.

Yet there is a deeper critique that must be considered; and that's the question of whether one can really be in control of anything, whether there really is an agent outside the body, floating, as it were, directing consciousness and awareness. Rather than suppose that one is above the body directing it, like a conductor directing the orchestra, many have suggested negotiation. And this point is easy to see. Consider some of the basic operations of the body. Of course I can will mine to reach for a glass of water; but for the overwhelming majority of what bodies do, we are hardly in control, and very much watch the performance, if we even notice it. In this relationship, which is better read as a hylomorphism, there is nothing in control; there just is negotiation, muddling through. Hylomorphism suggests that bodies cannot operate without souls; and souls without bodies; and we would do well to recall this Aristotelian view, which is prior to religious appropriation. The soul is the original principle of activation; the Breath from God, following Aquinas; and once set in the body, the first cause (since always receding behind myriad second causes) can hardly be determined, as originary, or even as interceding.

The body lays out into the future as a site of possibility; and while the body as formed is actual, its being as such (its identity, or its that which never alters) is never quite present because it lays out into potential presence, like an arrow yet in a non-linear way. The body is unique; and the character within the "unified" totality is also unique; yet this redundancy is reduced materially, not to presence, but to possibility, multiplicity, actual potentiality. The question is whether this leaky body "unity", perhaps unified like a puddle, has the capacity to will, to resist; whether its being hard, solitary, indivisible, is necessary.

On this point I don't think it is necessary to arrive at a conclusion. Being stubborn and full of will doesn't make one more likely to be a capitalist douche; yet it might make one insufficiently social, "insufficiently" open to solidarity. And, importantly, these two are not identical despite what identity politicians might say because clearly there is wiggle room on what sufficiency means. Metaphysically, being liquid, and so, without containment is illusory because we are within bodies; rock hard bodies that can be hurt. Yet, as always, being closed is less preferable than being open. The point above is that we are really metaphysically open, stretched out to potentiality; and that closing, or domestication, is carried out by masters that cut into bodies. Hence when we master ourselves, or maintain an ideology, and in the extreme: when we acquire property and store our very being into our items; in all of that, what are we doing?--Are we domesticating ourselves against Wild indifference? the vast underbelly of the civ-ilege apparatus?

I think we need to negotiate how we close ourselves, given that we are metaphysically open to potentiality, to deconstruction.


Conclusions?


1. I am uniquely detached from being closed because it is trivial that there is no other like "me". Trivially: there is no other assemblage of (philosopher's) atoms that occupy this liquid 'place', and that "assemble" as this 'whatever' being.

2. I am uniquely open to the wild "unfettered" carnival that this body will negotiate, influence, negate, test, and destroy.

On Religion

Anarchists are typically opposed to religions of various kinds. I don't think it is very useful to talk about religion as distinct from ideology; as distinct from the general procedure of applying a form of ideology as a tool to conceive the way things are.

I have spent most of this blog undermining, simultaneously, the idea that there is a way that things are, as well as the complete conclusion that the way things are is that there isn't a way things are. Following Kant, one can only be agnostic about the way things are. We test to see if the way we think things are, follows; whether it requires appending, modification.

Having faith in the unseen has always been the kid brother of hope. To listen to the remark of faith is to either suppose that one doesn't know, that such is a matter of faith; or that faith is a different kind of knowing, similarly certitudinal. I know that I am writing a blog presently (June 22, 2014, 10:06 est); and I cannot be trapped by a demon in my own mind of unknowing on this indexical score because, as Davidson argued, the demon still has to convince me that I do not know, so that what the demon says must be true, etc., In any event, if the demon also doesn't know, then the worry is lost. Peirce said that scientific modes of inquiry do not apply wholesale doubt, and for this reason, Descartes' epistemological ground up apparatus, was just irrelevant. Davidson glosses the point by saying that the demon can only cause us to doubt some things, if so, because language must be used, and language is a truth speaking medium. In any event, it isn't clear what kind of knowing is present in articles of faith. It usually has something to do with fear. And it might have something to do with fear for a good reason, say because the consequences would be unwelcome. But faith is better construed as non-knowing. Is it then a matter of ignorance?

It would be ignorant to think that we can live without ignorance. This is also Peirce's point. We do take our theories of the way the world is as given; we do not doubt them; precisely the opposite; we hold to them, tentatively, come what may. One might argue that there is a better way of conceiving the world according to an ideology. But the construct is always a matter of faith. I do not have faith in science for all of the obvious reasons. I have faith in what has proven itself; and science has either black-boxed its conclusions, which is merely pragmatic, or tested every theory, turning it to rubble, which implies, not the progress of knowledge, but an approach to underdetermination. Importantly, Popper's method of falsification is not a species of science per se; any content can be tested; even those rejected by positivistic ignorance. Empiricism only goes so far.

William James has a theory of truth that flies in the face of rationalist discourse. He suggests that we supposed that something is true because it is useful to believe. Now, to repeat, science does this all the time. The concept of the black box is essential to the faith of these new unquestioned masters; a black box is that which has been parceled and made true via selection and 'reasonable' testing. In order to get anything done, the scientist supposes the method is rational, and helps build the progress myth. All that I'm saying is that mystical experiences and bizarre occurrences are events that may be useful to believe too; for these may help us get by.

So I am not saying that there is a way the world is, following the rational scientists that seek this ignorantly; and I'm not saying that there is not a way the world is, in a manner that would still be keeping with the first horn of the dilemma like a pure nihilist; I'm carving a middle ground, rupturing both, on the grounds that I get to decide how I live my life; that I get to decide what is useful to believe, according to what I mean by works.

So I take what I please, and I long for the event. If something happens, I am interested in testing out how it hangs together for me. I am not saying that I can conceive of this clearly, in a manner of knowledge. I am merely following the concept of usefulness so that I can get by with constructing a series of events in my life under the heading of a story, a myth. Science creates myths that help us get by. Religion creates myth too. Neither Science, nor religion then: let us open ourselves to the mystical, to the concept of truth as usefulness for living well, and simply see what happens. If it works, so be it; if not, so be it. It makes no difference. Our hope is not certitudinal. Our hope is that we do not become burdened with ideology, that we are continuously opened to our own exploding desires.

Being open to anything goes makes one eventually select things in a coherent fashion. Being told by others that one should only start with a method that has worked for them, and then listening to them as well, makes one pretty clearly not capable of free thought. One might then deserve the chains of ideology. Being light on one's feet is to accept non-knowing in the arena of faith; and the faith that we have is that we will overcome our lack of lusting for life, for fruit.

In the garden of eden, it is purported that the blinders were taken off. So let's aim to put the blinders back on, to dance ignorantly, without the burden of ideology. Let us travel where we don't know; and leave the realm of knowing entirely. Protected in this place of faith without knowing, because such is mine and therefore my right to dance without ideology, might be sufficient to be opened to an interesting life, in confrontational opposition to the everyday predictability of scientific thinking. Such may be useful to believe to create a life worth living.

  

On Hope

There is a time in human history where the idea of hope for a better future is taken to be evident. It still exists and connecting it to more concrete histories will always be possible, no matter the distinctions we desire to make. For instance: heaven, as an eventual resting place, is similar but of course not identical with the idea of a syndicalist utopia. The goal in both situations is to have a certain problem (sin, fascism, et cetera) overcome; only in the latter, there is always the potential problem of difference; in the former, qualitative difference has already been occluded.

People are saturated with hope because they carry within themselves a series of unassailable beliefs, to which no healthy application of reason or pessimism has affect. We want things to turn out the way we want them to, and we keep our eyes on this prize no matter the counter-proof. If we deserve our dis-ease, perhaps a life without expectation is our darker redemption.

I can speak from personal experience on the topic of hope, coupled with an extremely unhealthy obsession. The desire for communion with a partner that may return the desire, may cause one to seek out some kind of proof. Perhaps that text message indicates something. Do they like me? Are they into me? Is it going to happen? But how would anyone know? The future doesn’t exist yet.

In Christian theology the term we are turning over is Providence. It was assumed that God, as perfect necessary referent, could be represented by a set of propositions. These have been referred to as divine attributes; and the classic problem of evil dissects this set by way of denying its consistency by the light of reason. And the trouble is that reason is also true; and truth doesn’t admit disunity. So, there is a set of true propositions; and truth generates a method--the use of reason; and consistency is a property of truth. In any event, such is the way the matter is conceived by those working out their theodicy.

There are higher orders of truth, if there are, but the way that consistency works is that the higher orders translate or illuminate the meaning of the lower order truths. So consider classic theodicy. It was primarily philosophers that argued that

1. God is Omniscient,

2. God is Omnipresent, and

3. God is Benevolent.

The classic problem of evil, a view from below by way of reason, provides an interpretation, arguing against the consistency of 1-3: if God is all knowing (1), how could He generate the reality of hell (an accepted truth) without doing something about it (2)? If God is all powerful, and hell exists, God must not be Benevolent.  Hell exists, a place where people from the beginning of time have been fated, if God is all knowing (1); therefore, God is not Benevolent.

There are many ways out. I'm only really interested in one, advocated by Leibniz: (1) is false because we have free will. God knows what we could do, but not what we will do; God therefore knows potential futures, not actual ones that will be the case. But we know potential futures too. The difference for Leibniz? We don’t know all the potential futures as well as God does, if God does. In any event, demanding God to be what we expect on our terms strikes me as the height of arrogance. And that’s why a negative theology currently has purchase in our nihilist times. We think it is impossible to suppose that Mind transcends space-time; and yet, we keep the baby.

Of course this is difficult. Saying that God influences the way the world is becoming seems possible only if God is outside the world; and since we are suggesting that God is not--because God is not all knowing, that is, following Leibniz--we have a problem with God’s extension. If God is watching the show too, and influencing it to some degree, the difference is a matter of capacity to influence. We become lesser co-creators, or in some profane versions of Self-transcendence, we become God. In the production of political-aesthetics, beautiful writing, the claim might be here that various musical movements are generated by something larger than ourselves. Politics might be a matter of actively nihilist religious experience, something akin to William James. 
Perhaps this is trivial: isn't everything about experience also about something larger than the boundaries of our bodies? Aren't bodies porous? To deny that external forces move through us co-generating our acts fails to address materiality for what it is. 'Something larger than us', then, requires specificity. Minimally, I am saying that orienting yourself towards this open-ness is better in the sense of more fruitful for the goals that we may desire. 

In the story of the Fall, Eve was purportedly tempted by the Serpent to eat of the tree, to eat the poison apple, to gain knowledge of the difference between good and evil, to be like God. But the very definition of God is that of the best, whereby better is limited. Here we capture the intuition that there is nothing better than the best. So then what could it mean to be like God? The temptation to have (or hold) knowledge sounds like the capacity to carry wisdom. Presumably, the more you know, the better off you are at laying down morality, the right thing to do in a moment. So God presumably has wisdom; and if we follow Leibniz, God’s wisdom is the best there could be, given a situation, given a partial understanding of likelihoods. Having full knowledge of what will happen is therefore not in Leibniz’ theodicy; it is therefore not ours to have, should we desire to be God. The right thing to do in a situation from every perspective is partial; and the only way that what we should have done could be contradicted is in the difference between perspectives, a difference ultimately predicated on contingency and necessity.

One way to think this difference of metaphysics is to consider whether it is conceivable to suppose that X doesn’t exist. Beings exist because there is a prior Being (Being Itself) that exists, and in which, all others exist. For Derrida, this is a matter of that upon which Becoming writes. Hence, we could say that the difference between God and us, on this account anyways, is that God has greater extension, and therefore, the capacity to perceive more clearly that which we see darkly. Yet, this writing, this becoming, is never quite certain, from any perspective on Leibniz’ rationalist reading. And this seems obvious given that tomorrow cannot exist (here) yet. There is only the Now; and the fullest possible grasping of this Now (God’s knowing in Leibniz), precedes a perpetual incomplete knowing.

I don’t pretend to know the answers to these questions. But I want to argue that a life of ignorance is better than a life of knowledge. Imagine that you know what will happen. That you just wait and wait and wait until it does; and then as it does, you knew it. Whence the variety? Whence the zest? Now suppose that you could change it all, that you could control everything according to your plans; that you don’t listen, that you run the network. I’ve met people like this. Since everyone sees darkly, these people tend to live ugly lives; they think they know what is best, and often they are simply repulsive; they claim control, but everything about them is loose in the sense of mismanaged. A management model that seems much better is one that is decentralized, predicated on equality of some kind, if persons can be deceived to give a shit about an others’ plans. And that’s the point. We have the capacity to say no; we have the capacity to will otherwise. And that is the bugbear of the one that desires omniscience. Not only is the future not yet written from any position, it is that, even if it was, it would suck, because it would be boring, and because one would become ugly. A universe of surprises is much preferable, perhaps too from God's perspective. Nothing is fixed; everything is open ended. Hence, there is no point in trying to close it down with claims.

Against Solomon I say that wisdom is not fickle because it is a womyn, but because it is fickle, and because one can never have a non-perspective, because there are always other people fucking up our plans. (Hence, the less to fuck up, the better for oneself). It is wise therefore to simply focus on being surprised, or, in the words of William James, to know what to overlook, which means, in this argument, overlooking knowing itself by way of developing humility and non-knowledge. But this doesn’t make us weak. On the contrary, weakness stems from hope for a return that is never fully given. Even if it were given, how would one know? For in the garden when the serpent tempted Eve, what was given wasn’t knowledge, but the desire to know. But without content, without a downloaded understanding, all that was given was the capacity, which can never be separated from doubt. In our world, everything nontrivial can be doubted, all of the important things that we hold dear can be doubted; hence, what was given to Eve and Adam was the desire or thirst for knowing without the capacity to know if one is growing in knowledge. The implied argument here is that knowing one is growing requires an external view. And as we saw, God may not even have this capacity because it is rational to prefer excitement and surprises.
How do we know that we have been given knowledge of the future? How do we know that we can make a world better for ourselves? I know that I can make my own better; I do not know if you will join me in my desires--and well you shouldn't, since you are strong. 
What was gifted in the garden? The capacity to discern good from evil, or merely the capacity to search oneself for answers, ad infinitum, ad nausea, without any guardrails? Given these two, how is one to discern? What seems clear enough is that one has been opened to make distinctions where one didn't have to make them before. If we forget the whole thing, are we back in the garden before the fall? If we take this seriously, what external thing makes it clear that we are selecting the good? How does Being write us into beauty?

Deflating Hope in something that just knows in this way permits us to be free from the burden of expectation. And this point goes both ways. No one just knows. Life would be better for us if we see that both hope and hopelessness should grow some wings and fuck right off.

On Veganism

Besides being a generally liberal point of view, predicated on harm reduction--which is optional from a strictly individualist point of view--veganism is often challenged as a consumerist program that is evidently not anti-capitalist in any sense of the word. We have seen efforts to undermine this ideology in this vein through local farming, in that such is oppositional to the reality of acceleration and its simultaneous collapse of place-based space-time. But this localized point of view ruptures any sense of a non-anthropological machine via the whiny mouthpiece of Derrick Jensen. For those that have read A Language Older Than Words, the question of the domesticated animal gifting itself to the man with a knife makes certain forms of predation permissible within domestication. This romanticized version of weakness is pretty off-putting; yet the general question about animals is always what do they desire? And how can we determine this? Anthropomorphisms abound here.

In any event, ataraxia seems to provide a better way of interpreting eudaimonia, given that freedom from pain is a little more clear than flourishing in general. And yet, we still want, nay desire to define eudaimonia: more often than not, we pinpoint the purposes of animals in general as reproduction, or better, that there is a prior purpose working through us: the genetic desire for genes to reproduce themselves. I wonder if there is a genetic fallacy here caught up in the purported purposeful work of genes, so to speak.

I want to consider a proposition that I have been testing out for quite some time. It is an internal critique in the sense that it focuses in on an issue within the practicality of animal rights. It's simple: If all the animals were to be free tomorrow, which is an insane projection but no less a "natural" vegan desire, where the fuck would we put them? Rather than flood a welfare class, rather than supposing that all existing beings deserve to live, no matter how much it costs the collective that (re)sources sources and maximize outputs (without considering consequences), I propose that the best thing to do for domesticated animals is to advocate their deaths; to have a world wide slaughter of everything domesticated. And why do I make this argument? So that Wild might bring forth; so that domestication, perhaps on all fours with Hope, might grow some wings and fuck right off, or better, so that we might rip our wings and practice wild downgoing. On this reading, mink liberation is far more primitive in its trajectories than the liberation and consequent necessary containment of a factory farm chicken, pig, cow, or whatever.

There are a few ways of mitigating this proposition. On the one hand there is the view that even if one animal is housed and sheltered, and even if we continue to work so that these might receive the fruits of our labor, such is worth it for that animal. It is of course granted that one doesn't save the world in this instance; but I wonder if that's because the very idea cannot be maximized given the above assertion. There are just too many animals, and not enough space for companionship. It might very well be that the impossibility of total animal liberation casts doubt on its liberal framework. We, on the other hand, take what we like, articulating that releasing beings to (nature) being is all that one can do; always first for oneself, and then always afterwards for others. Yet it might be, of course, that these sorts of liberations provide a trajectory, a dream, a desire that defines us as bringing us forth and out of the city.

A better way of thinking this proposal is Singer's view that stipulates the best is to maximize satisfaction, as far as possible--and it can always be extended--without presupposing the value of any (sentient) kind over another. We primmies would suggest this to be foul smelling if only because sentience depends on provability; whereas the wild makes no such differences, and Singer is raising an anthropological machine. Singer is therefore on the way to Agamben, and requires Agamben to get out from colonizing sentience.

'As far as possible' pushes the individual saving mechanism to its limits; to push it beyond practicality into genuine possibility is our desire. To take apart the city is to destroy all anthropological machines. It is to release ourselves to nature, and to see if we can cut it outside the city walls, as many animals do already; outside the city, outside capital, where we cannot invent a meaning of strength, where strength is simply the ability to weather the storm.

I do not wish to house dependents. I do not wish to become weak through codependency.