Zizek

Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on Zizek's ontology, who I consider probably the preeminent philosopher of feminine becoming and Loss today.

Basic ideas:

the impossibility of the Void to simply remain the Void is the cause of the fundamentally tragic nature of existence: the deluezian pure/formal difference of x =/= y

everything is minimally differentiated from itself in such a way that this difference is constitutive of it. what I am not is the precondition of everything I am

there is no pre-discursive reality. I am always-already adopting some position of enunciation when I speak of reality. every field of discourse is as much constituted by its boundaries as it is thwarted by them

desire circulates around an infinite lack that is the very effect of that circulation itself. the unnameable lost Object of longing is correlative of myself, any name I happen to give it is only a temporary positivization of this lack

existence is the self-mediation of the Void. Mediation: to mediate, come between. Life exists to continue to exist, until it dies, because it exists. Life is what "comes between" the Void. Life, in this sense then, is simply not-nothing: a negation of the (primordial) negation, and not a substantiative Something

existence emerged from a primordial Void of eternal yearning that can "desire" only its own negativity (in/through life) because there is nothing else to desire

masculine ordering is an effect of this deadlock and by no means its resolution: it is the very effect of the negativity it tries to order, precisely because it tries to negate it. At the heart of the masculine consciousness is an inrecupable kernel of madness/irrationality that is its very precondition.

the universe is flat, meaningless, contingent. the human being must project some fantasmic frame onto this monotony to make it intelligible/tolerable. the process of psychoanalysis involves the recognition of the insufficiency of all narrativizations of reality, while at the same time accepting their indispensability for life as we know it

Life is addicted to itself, it cannot get away from itself, the human being is a creature of a lack not relieved by death. the subject is nothing but the self-registration of the Void.

Hegelian absolute knowledge is not some pretense to divine omniscience but that knowledge, as such, must always be the closed, self-mediated circle of self with Other, of self with the non-thematizable Otherness at its core

there is no universal necessity undergirding history. history is the progressive realization of the truth that there is no Truth. the development of subjectivity is continuous as long as there is subjectivity simply because subjectivity must always transpire in time, and thus flow

Eh, sounds like exactly the kind of vomit-inducing, nonsensical/vague/pretentious leftist crap they force people to swallow in universities.

Not particularly interesting and more importantly, not very representative of reality.

Sounds like the mind-farts of a confused, possibly degenerate and mentally ill, but intelligent and well-read person.

Never read Zizek...seen a few of his interviews.
I have no time to waste no idiots.
I figure, if he has something important to say it'll come at me through one of his pupils.

No absolutes.

life begets life....life is selfish.
This is not a groundbreaking insight.
Only a naive imbecile born and raised in Abrahamic morality, and then infected by Marxism would consider life's selfishness something of a revelation.
Like MRA's waking up to female hypergamy, or the nature of female as a genetic and memetic filter - female cruelty.

No void.
Existence is dynamic.
That which exists interacts.
Void is what we call the incomprehensible-
Chaos defined as complexity - hidden order.
Chaos, properly defined as absence of order - randomness.

The mind interprets what ti cannot process as 'darkness', void...blackness...

No absolutes.
All is process, therefore all is measured in degrees.
Higher/Lower....more probable less probable.
Each interpretation if it remains an abstraction, a theory, only affects the organism minimally.
If it is reconverts to action then the organism faces the consequences as costs/benefits.

High cost leads to injury....severe cost to death.
Life appropriates life to continue living....again nothing groundbreaking outside men-children circles.
The naive awakening to reality seems fantastic, magical, supernatural.....from one extreme to the other.
Degrees....means more or less probable.
Each interpretation, subjective judgments has a degree of accuracy.

World is dynamic....meaning it is interactive, it is flux.
life is ordering within this flux. The relationship is antagonistic and dependent.
Consciousness attempts to bridge the gulf between a changing cosmos and the ordering of itself - its seeks to harmonize the two. Which is impossible.
One can only approach never realize.
This is the tragic/comedy of existence, or of awakening to the condition of living, of emerging within an indifferent, unconscious, fluctuating state of interactivity.

Never read Zizek...seen a few of his interviews.
I have no time to waste on neurotic idiots.
I figure, if he has something important to say it'll come at me through one of his pupils.

No absolutes.

Life begets life....life is selfish.
This is not a groundbreaking insight.
Only a naive imbecile, born and raised in Abrahamic morality, and then infected by Marxism would consider life's selfishness something of a revelation.
Like MRA's waking-up to female hypergamy, or the nature of female as a genetic and memetic filter - female cruelty.

No void.
Existence is dynamic.
That which exists interacts.
Void is what we call the incomprehensible.
Chaos defined as complexity - hidden order.
Chaos, properly defined as absence of order - randomness.

The mind interprets what it cannot process as 'darkness', void...blackness...

No absolutes.
All is process, therefore all is measured in degrees.
Higher/Lower....more probable/less probable. Superior/Inferior...sensible/nonsense
Each interpretation, if it remains an abstraction, a theory, only affects the organism esoterically - psychologically.
If it is reconverted to action then the organism faces the consequences as costs/benefits.
It faces the exoteric consequences of this application of theory. It tests the theory in the real world, against reality.

High cost leads to injury....severe cost to death.
Life appropriates life to continue living....again nothing groundbreaking outside manimal circles.
The naive awakening to reality seems fantastic, magical, supernatural to an infantile naive mind.....from one extreme to the other.  
Degrees....means more or less probable.
Each interpretation, subjective judgments, has a degree of accuracy.

World is dynamic....meaning it is interactive, it is flux.
Life is ordering within this flux. The relationship is antagonistic and dependent.
Consciousness attempts to bridge the gulf between a changing cosmos and the ordering of itself - its seeks to harmonize the two. Which is impossible.
One can only approach never realize - completion perfection is impossible.
But you can use words to baptize anything. You can call a cat a cow....so what.
You can call cosmos a one....bob....God.
Doesn't affect anything but you.
This is the tragic/comedy of existence, or of awakening to the condition of living, of emerging within an indifferent, unconscious, fluctuating state of interactivity.

Quote button's missing so bear with me. I consider Zizek one of the more brilliant thinkers out there today, but I am not his fanboy or think his ontology is be-all end-all. He is a philosopher of pathology, of despair and the Lost Object, he is THE philosopher of the Problem (reality is an agonic non-all), but not one much for praxis.

Autsider: I don't think so, his ideas are very rigorously argued, though there's no denying the influence of his own personal psychology on his thought. Whether reality is thematized as an emptiness vs. a fullness is something that can only really come down to a condition of the self and not argumentation.

Satyr: a number of your positions are not as far removed from his. as you say, they're groundbreaking for soyboys, though your emphasis on the masculine ordering power is something Zizek has no faith in.

Just to clarify a few points:

You're right, no void, any idea of some edenic state forever lost to time is only ever retroactive projection. Eden is only properly Eden from the perspective of "fallen" beings, while "in" Eden we are simply immersed in the natural immediacy of our environment. We have to fall to know what we lost, but to be in a position to know it means it is lost forever, irretrievably. Hence the tragedy.

Yes, no absolutes, only perspective. Zizek compares the Absolute to something like a chaotic strange attractor, that virtual space towards which all points tend, and so exists only as their hypothetical point of convergence. Another way to put it: there are only perspectives which can never access the Real, because the Real is not "behind" perspectives, it is only the empty gap between perspectives that allows for them as such.

The perspectival nature of consciousness is possible only by the very impossibility of reconciliation between perspectives. Like you say, tragi-comedy.

Existence "hangs in the air", as it were, the closed solipsistic flux of bodies and forces. Anything beyond that is a projection of consciousness. Consciousness is what the self-mediation of an indifferent void looks like. That's where you and Zizek diverge though, you see only flux, Zizek says that flux as eternal generation - preservation - destruction represents the true nature of reality, not just as becoming but the eternally insatiable negativity that is its motor.

For Zizek, the only answer is agapeic love. I don't know your views on Love very well but I'd wager you think struggle takes precedence over love? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Bardhë wrote:

Satyr: a number of your positions are not as far removed from his. as you say, they're groundbreaking for soyboys, though your emphasis on the masculine ordering power is something Zizek has no faith in.

What does the faith of a Marxist matter?  

Just to clarify a few points:

Bardhë wrote:

You're right, no void, any idea of some edenic state forever lost to time is only ever retroactive projection. Eden is only properly Eden from the perspective of "fallen" beings, while "in" Eden we are simply immersed in the natural immediacy of our environment. We have to fall to know what we lost, but to be in a position to know it means it is lost forever, irretrievably. Hence the tragedy.

There is no 'falling'. these abrahamic images only a Marxist living in the clouds of his own naive ideology can adopt....because Marxism simply replaces Paradise with an earthly Utopia.
Man is not a fallen angel, a warped perfection, an evil that has rejected or has been rejected by goodness.

Bardhë wrote:

Yes, no absolutes, only perspective. Zizek compares the Absolute to something like a chaotic strange attractor, that virtual space towards which all points tend, and so exists only as their hypothetical point of convergence. Another way to put it: there are only perspectives which can never access the Real, because the Real is not "behind" perspectives, it is only the empty gap between perspectives that allows for them as such.

Wrong...you go from absolute gnosis to absolute ignorance.
You, like all nihilists need absolutes to validate you hatred for life.  

The word 'absolute' refers to the abstraction....the noetic construct.
Like all abstractions it is a simplification/generalization of fluid time/space.
But that ti is an abstraction, an interpretation, does not make it meaningless.....it makes it an inferior or a superior interpretation of the real.

Judgment evolves because or trial and error...only in the human species can it remain theoretical and the individual wax poetic about nonsense....like a Utopia, and a description of world as 'negative' because it is missing presumptuous abstractions.....absurdities we've been debating for centuries.

The very concept of absolute has been renamed....because that's what men-children do to escape and to pretend they are the holders of a secret....it has been renamed as 'god'.
Men-Children are, as we speak, debating a nonsensical construct, as if it were so, as if it did exist outside the mind.
The presume the abrahamic god and then spend decades debating the validity of their own fabrication.
This is what has become of philosophy, the noblest of all the human arts. Equalled only by music.

Bardhë wrote:

The perspectival nature of consciousness is allowable only by the very impossibility of reconciliation between perspectives in the first place. Like you say, tragi-comedy.

Reconciliation already assumed a concession to idiocy.

Survival of the fittest has no reconciliation...but neither does it demand, as a right, for intervention, so that the idiot born with poor judgments would survive, or not face the costs.  

Bardhë wrote:

Existence "hangs in the air", as it were, the closed solipsistic flux of bodies and forces.

Existence is not solipsistic....the human mind trapped in linguistic contrivances wants to entrap itself....because it fears what this means....it fears the alternative.
it prefers to cocoon itself in a a paradox, in linguistic self-referential bullshit than face an indifferent open-ended, uncertain existence.

No absolutes means no wholes....no one....no uni-verse.
Kosmos!!!!
All it meant to the Greeks was jewel....

Bardhë wrote:

Anything beyond that is a projection of consciousness. Consciousness is what the self-mediation of an indifferent void looks like. That's where you and Zizek diverge though, you see only flux, Zizek says that flux as eternal generation - preservation - destruction represents the true nature of reality, not just as becoming but the eternally insatiable negativity that is its motor.

I see only flux?
How did I define flux?
InterAction....what does this mean?
Attraction/Repulsion.....destruction/repulsion....
Preservation places survival as the motive, the telos.
It is a womanly ideal...and so Marxism is very womanly. Born of a Abrahamic, Jewish mind. Like Christianity.
Existence is indifferent to survival.
Existence cares not about consciousness....consciousness is the state of care (Heidegger)....and it cares about existence.
Only life cares and strives and struggles to survive.  
It has memory.

Bardhë wrote:

For Zizek, the only answer is agapeic love. I don't know your views on Love very well but I'd wager you think struggle takes precedence over love? Correct me if I'm wrong.

As I've analyzed many times before....Marxism is secularized Abrahamism.
It has only changed the words, the symbols.
Love is the cry of the romantic....the feminine.....love me, hold me, save me, want me, appreciate me....help....me....help ...you.....

The desperate heed the call - the infantile, the womanly...the stunted, the retarded...the needy.

Emotions are only the expression of attraction between conscious beings.
Love is what the Christians call their absolute one-god.
If you need lies to cope then do not try to make it a metaphysical truth.
There is no love between particles to make them attract, and no hate repulses them.
There is only degree of harmony.
Love is a survival mechanism. A way to overcome the already evolved flight/fight mechanism so as to enable the possibility of heterosexual reproduction and later cooperative survival strategies.

Okay, quote button is still nowhere to be seen so bear with me.

The Fall: no religious narrativization necessary, the point was precisely there is nowhere we could have fallen from in the first place, we're just here and retroactively project a fantasy of how this 'here' is even 'here' in the first place.

I would also say that, relative to our needs and desires, yes, the existence of a flux that blindly eats its own children qualifies as a "fallen" state. No recourse to religion has to be made to acknowledge our existential predicament is less than ideal, even if that ideal is only found in consciousness. Our fallen state just is the fact we are subjectivities equipped to create and hunger for meaning in a universe fundamentally void of it.

Zizek never says abstractions are meaningless. Of course they refer to reality with varying degrees of accuracy.

Also I'm not a nihilist. Please don't put words into my mouth.

Existence is solipsistic, according to Zizek, because it self-referential, because there is no perspective on which we can take on the universe AS the universe. There is no metalanguage, no meta-subjectivity, no transcendental qualification of existence that does not always-already entail an intelligibility proper to existence.

The uncertain, open-ended reality you speak of is what Zizek refers to as the "feminine non-all". Think of it as an "open closure": being is infinite, infinitely qualifiable, but not in any way that exhausts it or allows us to assume some external perspective on being. The same way one can walk this earth for a billion years, see something new every day, and yet never actually get off it, never actually see it as it is from space.

Hmm, I don't know if agapeic love is necessarily an expression of need, more like plenitude.

Bardhë wrote:

Okay, quote button is still nowhere to be seen so bear with me.

No quote button on the top right side?

Bardhë wrote:

The Fall: no religious narrativization necessary, the point was precisely there is nowhere we could have fallen from in the first place, we're just here and retroactively project a fantasy of how this 'here' is even 'here' in the first place.

Galaxies moving away from each other....so 'hate' would be more appropriate.  
Instead of loving itself, or masturbating, existence seems to hate itself.

Bardhë wrote:

I would also say that, relative to our needs and desires, yes, the existence of a flux that blindly eats its own children qualifies as a "fallen" state. No recourse to religion has to be made to acknowledge our existential predicament is less than ideal, even if that ideal is only found in consciousness. Our fallen state just is the fact we are subjectivities equipped to create and hunger for meaning in a universe fundamentally void of it.

Not so.
Existence has no children. Organisms have children. Anthropomorphic imagery only triggers emotions because it lacks reasoning.
You must adopt the emotional judgment, and adopt the imagery of Abrahamism to call it a 'fallen' state...alluding to a 'risen state'....as if life never consumed itself, or should not consume itself.
Your imagery alludes to a 'better' which you have no way to justify....other than by taking the given, and then inverting it.
This is exactly how I've defined [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]: the inversion, negation of the experienced, the real.
You fabricate your Utopia, like Abrahamics fabricate their one-god, and Christians their Paradise. They take the real, and flip it on its head.
How can they do this?
Well, they do this by detaching words from their references and make them 'divine', or pure abstractions, pure ideas/ideals.
Once they've dealt with the shame the absence of integrity, if they have any, there is no barrier, nothing left to stop them from inverting the word to mean anything and everything.  
So gender, race become social constructs, love become divine, mystical, mysterious, as do females (feminine mystique is a idealization of the feminine - its purification), and god becomes a singularity, and truth becomes an absolute, and universe becomes whole and perfect, an orgy of fornicating nothings/somethings.....good/evil, love/hate....and other emotionally justified words.  
All words lose their meaning....and this the Moderns call liberty, free-will. Then words can be used to justify everything we like.

Bardhë wrote:

Zizek never says abstractions are meaningless. Of course they refer to reality with varying degrees of accuracy.

Then he will also agree with me that life is benefited by competition...by the superior rising and the inferior dying...by the sickly being consumed by the healthy.

Bardhë wrote:

Also I'm not a nihilist. Please don't put words into my mouth.  

Are you not a Marxist?

There is no 'self' outside living organisms and no alone, as there is no whole, no one. Universe is a human fabrication - an abstraction.
The world and other minds do exist.
We interact with them. Otherwise you are claiming a singular mind (one consciousness) and we its playthings...so existence is a joke, a Mind playing with itself - masturbating.  
That's a very extreme declaration to make, when you have nothing to prove it with but a theory, other than denying what you experience.

I can fabricate all kinds of scenarios that do not require any external validation but only self-referential validation.
I can claim that the fabric of reality is made of pixies....not love.....pixies playing games.
Instead of 'love' I can say the universe envies itself. It's jealous of itself being jealous...or it hates itself for hating itself.
I can declare myself god and you a non-existent figment of my imagination.

Bardhë wrote:

As being within existence, emerging from existence, we must keep in mind not to use words solipsistically and the assume they refer to a truth outside of ourselves.

When I awoke I awoke to world, and then discovered myself in it.

Bardhë wrote:

The uncertain, open-ended reality you speak of is what Zizek refers to as the "feminine non-all". Think of it as an "open closure": being is infinite, infinitely qualifiable, but not in any way that exhausts it or allows us to assume some external perspective on being. The same way one can walk this earth for a billion years, see something new every day, and yet never actually get off it, never actually see it as it is from space.

And?
We build probabilities and discount improbabilities.  

Bardhë wrote:

Hmm, I don't know if agapeic love is necessarily an expression of need, more like plenitude.

Plenty is a human construct.
Organisms need....because they lack = and because they lack fullness becomes an ideal concept....absolute satiation.
Plenty refers to abundance in relation to a goal.
Cosmos is dynamic...if we call this dynamic plenitude, in reference to our needs, or overflowing, in reference to a noetic whole, a bounded space/time that over-flows does not matter much......but it does if we then construct metaphors on these metaphors that evoke an emotionally desirable outcome.
The words we use may corrupt the metaphors we integrate them into.
If I call God 'love' and not use 'love' to refer to a survival strategy only cooperative species display, then later I will combine it with other romantically defined terms to construct a delusion that satisfies me psychological needs.

Absolutes do not exist...and in this regard the cosmos lacks - finality, telos, a one, a nil, boundaries, gratification, an end to suffering, and on and on.
If we define plenitude as dynamism, which I consider more appropriate, then we insert a nuance which may be used, by us, at a later time, to construct a delusion.
Plenty for what?
Plenty alludes to a goal, a motive...an end.
I have plenty in relation to a goal.  
That kind of use of words leads to romantic idealism....the Abrahamic god....and other self-serving abstractions.

Poetic licence becomes delusion in a needy mind. It makes the girls swoon, and the children jump with joy.

I've heard the use of the word 'pathos' to describe the same....but pathos is a Greek word that means passion. We often use Greek and Latin to pretend depth of thinking, or to make the concepts we are fabricating seem more intellectual, more rational.  
Pathos means passion.
You can use that instead of plenty.
Try the christian term - love. Existence is love.
Passion of the Christ...and so on.  
When you do not care for precision, clarity, but only to comfort yourself or to support an ideology then there is no limit to how you can corrupt language.
And you can find fools that will buy your rhetoric.
There are 'plenty' of fools around.

Someone may ask...What is the correct use of a word? How do I know if it is correct?

First, I must look in the dictionary to see the conventional definitions. Those that facilitate communication.
This points to a past - a genetic/memetic past. You can call it culture/civilization.

Second, I connect this definition to an observable phenomenon, outside my brain.
If I can do so.
Love, for example. What do I call love and then where to I see love, outside my feelings?
I see it in other organisms, as a behaviour. I can relate to this behaviour.
The word 'love' refers to a behaviour I can experience as feeling in myself, or I can witness in my own behaviour.
That's called empathy....and it is not sympathy as it is not antipathy.

I can do the same with the words male & female.
I can also do the reverse and mystify any word.

Nihilists, can take the same [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and mystify it, detach it from observable phenomena, and behaviours, purify it from its earthly references and then redefine the word in any way that feels good, or that makes it pleasing, or to support an ideology.

Agape is a Greek term.
Αγαπη....ερωτας....
Agape contrasts to eros in that it is not blind and directly linked to procreation - it is rational love. the love of a mother to her child, or one shared between friends, or one felt towards an abstraction
We may love god, or a nation.
It denotes an attraction.
In agape's case a lucid attraction.
Friends love each other because they share interests, ideals, motives and so on.
A mother loves her child because it shares 50% of her genes, or because ti gives her hope and comfort.....pr because she projects herself in it and becomes her own mother. She identifies with the other.
Only life can do so. Equating this attraction to that of unconscious matter, like magnets attracting metal, is absurd.
A metaphor that can become ridiculous in the mind of a womanly soul.

This is also not groundbreaking.

This might be...
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Overflowing, plenitude, is an organic reference. As is 'will', and 'love', and 'self', and 'ego', and 'one'....and many other words referring to organic processes.
But they can be used poetically or metaphorically. Then we must be careful not to forget that we did so, because if we do then we will add more metaphors and then lose track of what we did.
Cosmos is neither full nor empty ... neither good or bad ... neither pleasing or displeasing .... neither positive or negative ... neither one nor nil ...it is only process, dynamic, inter-active.
Energetic.
Organisms relate to it in the above ways.

Bardhë wrote:

Okay, quote button is still nowhere to be seen so bear with me.

It's one of the little red icons on the top right hand corner of the post.

apaosha wrote:

Bardhë wrote:

Okay, quote button is still nowhere to be seen so bear with me.

It's one of the little red icons on the top right hand corner of the post.

Not on mobile.

I had a longer post but it got deleted. so I'll just summarize my points:

First, I am not a Marxist. Marxism is a joke.

man is the creature of the ought, I don't think any statement about how the universe "should" be is necessarily nihilist whinging, since man as ordering principle is precisely what actualizes how things "ought" to be in the first place

the tragedy is that there are creatures of ought in a universe that just "is". of course the universe is pure, faceless becoming, however for that reason the imperative to Love and overcome, to shine through matter as Western esotericists put it, becomes all the more pressing for it. these ideals become self-justified precisely because they have no ground in the Real - like I said, they hang "in the air", they refer to nothing than their own inexplicable givenness - however that is not to say they haven't been profaned by today's globalist slugs to mean nothing and everything. See, this is the thing about Nietzsche: he's right, stupendously right, about everything he says about religion and spirituality, but it only applies to spirituality's "bottom half" (or honestly, bottom 80% give or take). There are lines in Zarathustra that could be ripped straight out of the Corpus Hermeticum, or Buddhist scripture ("The Self, the unknown lord" is Buddhist anatta, for example). I just want to make my point very clear here.

honestly we're getting away from the thread topic and since my points are more quibbles than outright disagreements with your philosophy I think I'll just leave it at that

Bardhë wrote:

Okay, quote button is still nowhere to be seen so bear with me.

I had a longer post but it got deleted. so I'll just summarize my points:

First, I am not a Marxist. Marxism is a joke.

Then Zizek's effect on you is suspect.

Bardhë wrote:

man is the creature of the ought, I don't think any statement about how the universe "should" be is necessarily nihilist whinging, since man as ordering principle is precisely what actualizes how things "ought" to be in the first place

There are ideas that are in harmony with reality and those that contradict it.

There are "oughts" that are anti nature, anti-life, and impossible.
This is the tragedy. Such creatures are stuck in a fabricated idealism that cannot be fulfilled because it is disconnected from reality.
What is left is to feel ashamed, for failing to achieve one's own unrealistic ambitions, or to blame the world that denied him this pleasure.

Bardhë wrote:

the tragedy is that there are creatures of ought in a universe that just "is". of course the universe is pure, faceless becoming, however for that reason the imperative to Love and overcome, to shine through matter as Western esotericists put it, becomes all the more pressing for it. these ideals become self-justified precisely because they have no ground in the Real - like I said, they hang "in the air", they refer to nothing than their own inexplicable givenness - however that is not to say they haven't been profaned by today's globalist slugs to mean nothing and everything.

Like I've said....a 'love' you uoght to give to everyone, and that everyone automatically deserves is a whore's 'love'. It's love of the reward.
Love, like all things conscious, is discriminating. It separates and discriminates.

Bardhë wrote:

See, this is the thing about Nietzsche: he's right, stupendously right, about everything he says about religion and spirituality, but it only applies to spirituality's "bottom half" (or honestly, bottom 80% give or take). There are lines in Zarathustra that could be ripped straight out of the Corpus Hermeticum, or Buddhist scripture ("The Self, the unknown lord" is Buddhist anatta, for example). I just want to make my point very clear here.

I'm a fan of Nietzsche, and he is in fashion, but his only insights that impressed me were psychological. His philosophy was derivative.
His 'eternal return' for example was Hindu in origin and nothing more than a psychological test of 'if you are living a desirable life'.
Philosophically he gave me nothing new....psychologically he was brilliant. He diagnosed the psychosis underlying Christianity, and Abrahamism in general.  

Bardhë wrote:

honestly we're getting away from the thread topic and since my points are more quibbles than outright disagreements with your philosophy I think I'll just leave it at that

Yeah, but what exactly do you disagree with?
You mentioned Zizek and then say that my philosophy is like his.

My own philosophy is also psychological.
I've also diagnosed nihilism and went further. I've tried to explore its many variants, and its source.
I found it in language.
It goes all the way back to Scripture.....'first was the word'....that encapsulates the entire mistake.....and its psychological manipulation.

My philosophy is Heraclitean, and as much as others were influenced by this pre-Socratic way of thinking they are like me.
I've made the artistic, poetic language more precise, more Apollonian.
I say all is pattered and non-patterned energies.
This agrees with String Theory....all is dynamic means all is vibrating, oscillating at a consistent rhythm (pattern) or with an inconsistent rhythm (chaos).

My contributions start from psychological effects, and what nihilism is, and how does it influence the organism, leading it to naive idealism and word-based absurdities.

Don't disagree with much in that post. I'd tell you, though, that Zizek's agape is not unconditional love for every bum off the street. He says truly radical Love is to elevate only one person as worthy of it, and to love them in spite of their imperfections. Or, to be more precise, to love their "Void", to love them even if there is no such thing as some mystified soul essence r whatever to love, since I am nothing but a contingent aggregate of properties, nothing else besides.

My only disagreements with you are that the language of spirituality co-opted by life deniers does not necessarily mean these ideas are worthless in themselves. However, I've noticed you have great respect for Evola so perhaps it's a moot point.

Last thing: truths are strata, not mutually exclusive language games (real truths, of the mind and body, not the pseudo-truths of academia's swamp creatures). Philosophy's like a relay race: I consider Zizek THE philosopher of the longing, trauma, and psychic emptiness that so afflicts modernity, but once digested, the baton has to be passed to a more solar philosophy, like Evola's. I'd urge you to read Zizek, if only to beat him at his own game. I like reading nihilists to see what makes them tick (though Zizek is technically a dialectical materialist). Real nihilists anyways, not dopamine-fried bugboys.

Bardhë wrote:

Don't disagree with much in that post. I'd tell you, though, that Zizek's agape is not unconditional love for every bum off the street. He says truly radical Love is to elevate only one person as worthy of it, and to love them in spite of their imperfections. Or, to be more precise, to love their "Void", to love them even if there is no such thing as some mystified soul essence r whatever to love, since I am nothing but a contingent aggregate of properties, nothing else besides.

The only interesting thing I've seen from Zizek, other than his neurosis, was his movie analysis.

I don't believe in loving the void.
Everyone loves what he appreciates as a possibility in the other.
For nihilists the possibility can be the void, and so I cannot relate.

Bardhë wrote:

My only disagreements with you are that the language of spirituality co-opted by life deniers does not necessarily mean these ideas are worthless in themselves. However, I've noticed you have great respect for Evola so perhaps it's a moot point.

Prose and poetry can affect me....but I know how and why.
Because I know how and why, the magicians trick, I cannot abandon myself to the performance.
I can, of course, inebriate myself enough to become part of the magic of the magic trick. But when I am sober and lucid there's no way top pretend that what I am experiencing is anything but sleight of hand...even if I cannot detect it.

Bardhë wrote:

Last thing: truths are strata, not mutually exclusive language games (real truths, of the mind and body, not the pseudo-truths of academia's swamp creatures).

The body's honesty is rarely acknowledged by the mind. The mind that only wants to cover it up, or direct it to a rational, pragmatic,. idealistic motive.
Marriages break up when the mind can no longer pretend to itself, and can no longer put up a convincing, to the other, front.

Bardhë wrote:

Philosophy's like a relay race: I consider Zizek THE philosopher of the longing, trauma, and psychic emptiness that so afflicts modernity, but once digested, the baton has to be passed to a more solar philosophy, like Evola's. I'd urge you to read Zizek, if only to beat him at his own game.

He is no threat to me. I do not occupy my self with what is insignificant.
Your relationship to Zizek comes from your particular sense of emptiness.....and he, in your mind, expresses it.
I feel no emptiness...the opposite. I am "brimming", as a good friend once said of me.
I have to contain myself from overflowing and doing myself damage by drowning others.

Bardhë wrote:

I like reading nihilists to see what makes them tick (though Zizek is technically a dialectical materialist). Real nihilists anyways, not dopamine-fried bugboys.

My definition of 'nihilism' is given....and it is the opposite of how the common defines it, or has been taught to think of the word.

My definition does not require the other's acquiescence, no more than my definition of a canine requires the dog's agreement.
I do not need the moron to agree that he is one.
My definitions are empirical.
My definitions are testable....observable.....they can be experienced by each individual independently.
My presence is not needed.

But I pride myself that all my words and my philosophy in general, is independent from my presence.
I show....that's all I ever do.
I say to others...'look...see that? This is what I think of that. Now you go off and decide for yourself'.
I free minds from their delusions, and from cultist thinking and from socialization.

We don't need to read every author or authority.
Those minds that have and have absorbed the theory will eventually find us and confront us with their 'truths'.
We are all representatives of every writer we've ever read and liked.

Their ideas become our ideas, not precisely but by how we've understood them.

This is the danger of having others become our representatives.

Every writer loses control over his own writings. They become public domain.
The abstraction, created over years of experiencing and integrating thee experiences into models, when externalized in the form of language, cease to belong to us.
What meaning we intended will not be important. The other's intentions will take over.

Quote :

He is no threat to me. I do not occupy my self with what is insignificant.
Your relationship to Zizek comes from your particular sense of emptiness.....and he, in your mind, expresses it.

Not wrong, but more a frustrated fullness than a hungering emptiness. A fullness that could not be itself in the environment that it found itself in. I'm half your age so I still have a lot of the road to walk. One day I will be able to express it without compunction.

Environment always inhibits self.
Creativity is the ability to find alternate ways to expunge energies in a way that will not have negative consequences in the particular environment.

Self-control....it is the Hellenic ascetic principle.
It's in my signature.

For philosophical discussion on love I recommend Sloterdejiks Spheres, one acknowledges the reality of love and its dynamics as they are and then one can move with it conceptually and expand onto broader philosophical planes of analysis of that same concept interacting with others. The problem is the lack of discipline in using words as they relate to reality and your systems ergo you get love(as in the hormonal reaction in the brain)>>>loving(an act steming from the love as defined prior with many potential applications)>>>void loving(mystification of the term loving by injecting the known and observable phenomenom of love with unexplained and unrelated to it essence without drawing lines both in theory and language) instead of love>>>loving>>>spheres(where the concept is clearly defined with relation to the phenomenom it claims its origin from and expands on its functions without flying off into mysticism and purposeful confusion). Zizeks seems to want to sell as much as think and wants to be strikingly original with an audience that wouldn't accept reality so he goes for linguistical realities instead.

Hes not wrong many times but hes unethical and unproffesional with his use of language, he doesnt uncover and discover but creates space for you to make your own discoveries at free will under his authority and guidance.

1:18 - Virtual is that which is artificially produced.
Artificial is defined, by me, as any environment, intervened upon, where the intervening and its consequences affect the organism that intervened more than the environment it intervened upon.
Man intervenes upon natural processes and the repercussions of his intervention affect him more than the processes he intervened upon, forcing him to intervene again, and again.
Artificial, I define as what cannot have existed, nor persisted without a continuing wilful intervention.
This can include the machinery that we then must maintain to fabricate an artificial environment, or, in the case of movies, an artificial event, or artificial circumstances.
I define techniques/technologies as the externalization of man's understanding of his own or natural processes.
The mind assimilates data from world it then reacts to them, one reaction being action in world, another being the externalization of his reactions via a medium...such as art, and language and machinery that imitate what he understands of his own reactions.
Virtual reality is the automated externalization of man's conception of an ideal or alternate reality, as a reaction to the actual.

1:36 - 'imaginary, symbolic and real' is what I call the noumenon, the symbol/word, and the phenomenon.

2:15 - he seems to have used 'virtual' in the way I use noumenon, or abstract.
He now goes into how we relate to others in the immediate, not as a continuum.
More complex minds can see deeper than the immediate, but primal simpler minds are always in the 'present', in the moment, as they call it.
This is the 'real'...but an interpretations. The interpretation is of the real. It's sophistication is determined by the sophistication of the mind.
More perceptive mind see more details, or incorporate into their understanding of other more data: pigmentation, hair, clothing, nails, shoes, socks, gestures, subtle blemishes, marks, looks etc.
All this is an interpretation of the real, not virtual....an abstraction - simplification/generalization of the actual.
This I not the same as a virtual person, who is an amalgamation of different data.

3:26 - absolute knowledge of other is impossible and undesirable....by all except hose who do not care for themselves and wish they can disappear in other. Intimacy is one of those romantic myths we throw around to express our desire to be loved for who and what we think we are.
A bit is mystery is essential for romance...more so for females.

4:40 - no authority does not remain virtual but remains implied.
A probability.

4:55 - no....it is not impotent if it is actualized. It forces a reaction, whereas when it remains a lingering probability it can enable a willing submission.
A physical expression of the probable, its actualization is not impotence, but it, again, forces an equal and opposite reaction.

6:40 - now you goes into my conception of nihilistic beliefs, or noumenon with no external phenomena.
ideas with no real reference.
Like I've said....nihilism is a shared lie, perpetuated with hypocrisy and pretenses. Ironically, like Marxism.
Exposing the lie can have the reaction of anger, and violence. The liar feels exposed, his life based no a lie, he may react, as they did in Marxists Stats, with violence.

10:30 - this is circularity producing the illusion of wholeness, of a conclusion. it is self-referential.

11:12 - he now goes into how the traumatic, the threatening cannot be dismissed as virtual, after he's assimilates reality into a virtual circularity.
The real is the indifferent, threatening.
The imaginary real is set-up to deal wit the real....because ti can be manipulated and dealt with, using imagination, whereas the real only has imagination to react with uncertain outcomes.
The monster is a fabricated, synthesis, of different threatening interpretations of the real. It is converted to a form that can be confronted, or ignored if the mind cannot cope. it can turn away or turn off the TV.

12:08 - what resists symbolization is the fluid.
It is counter-intuitive....because intuition needs static, and it wholes, it fabricates them.
The question is from what source and how do we test the validity?

12:34 - quantum physics is confusing because it incorporates fluidity into its models and also randomness.
How is the wave converted to a particle/
When the observer perceive the point of interaction as a fixed point in space/time.

13:06 - Our 'ordinary notion of reality' is linear...towards increasing randomness, and uses static abstractions to represent fluid space/time.

13:26 - meaning is making the connections and constructing a mental map that adheres to an external landscape. Quantum physics deals with multi-dimensional space/time....it cannot fully be mapped using four-dimensional mental grids.

17:50 - at this point he goes into his anti-fascist propaganda.
He calls reality vulgar.

20:26 - now we explores how language can be manipulated to pretend it is saying something when it is saying nothing.
He is particularly interested in exposing the rhetoric of violence...or the vulgar.
I wonder if he can see the nonsense in left-leaning Abrahamic propaganda.
For instance, the very fantasy of a Marxist utopia.
He is trapped in the nihilistic paradigm....he perceives the right, as being outside the paradigm in relation to his left - bipolar nihilism.

26:33 - Matter/energy is space, understood as possibility....matter/energy is a vibrating/oscillation portion of space with a rhythms, an order the mind can interpret. It is probability.
trauma has to do with established order, such as an organism. An external force, matter/energy but also chaos, can interact with the established order throwing ti off-balance, or damaging its order.
The organism feels this as need, when it is subtle and gradual, and as pain, suffering when it has reached a level it cannot ignore.

28:00 - A child is not yet matured - its order has not been finalized.
It therefore cannot comprehend things that impose themselves into what has yet to take form.
trauma can also be stored away to protect the organism. The child can recall the event and refuse to acknowledge it until it has also developed a solution that can protect itself from its impact.
The use of the metaphor is problematic...space is possibility, an organism, like a child, is order, probability, stored as genes that have yet to unfold their data completely.
Space is not traumatized by mass, it has no memory, no will to be anything...it is shaped by mass.

29:30 - now we get into the underlying political motive of this analysis.
Trauma is not virtual....it is an interpretation of the actual.

31:27 - because Capitalism is a system that is closest to natural order....natural selection is integrated into the capitalist model, imprecisely but it is closer to what is natural, than Marxism, which is unreal.
The best alternative to Modern Capitalism is Timocracy.
The problem with capitalism is that it is too successful and ti unbalances the ecosystem, by imposing rules that deal with culling. Power and status are inherited, which is not part of natural selection.

32:15 - Modernity means what is the most current....the need to be current and always on the forefront of trends. This, then, becomes the final Modernity....remaining the same, in its methods and ideals, as it shifts its symbolism. The Last Man.
It is why I no longer differentiate it from post-modernity. post-Modernity is the final Modernity.

40:00 - Right/Left are poles of an antagonism towards the real. Each offering a solution, a correction to what confronts man, as agon, as mortality, as need/suffering.
Man intervenes upon natural processes, to one degree or another, to create what only exists as abstraction, as theory, in his mind. He must then continuously intrude to maintain what is contrary to natural order.

49:00 - it is sameness that attempts to 'correct' the real which is multiplicity of difference. The inhuman s exactly that element of the primordial that merged into a cooperative process and developed similarities.
Calling someone inhuman is a verbal exorcism, a threat of being expelled from sameness back into diversity - chaos.
The 'monster' is the alien other. The incomprehensible otherness.

52:00 - the left wants to build a uniformity of diversity, where the physical differences are assimilated into a noetic uniformity. An external superficial diversity, recognized as superficial, but under a ideological umbrella, such as the mainframe in The Matrix that interconnected a multiplicity of pods each living in its own reality, but all contributing to what integrates them into a shared structure escaping the real.

55:00- now he exposes his nihilistic message.
Abrahamism is his model for a secular version of the collective. All uniformly sinners saved by a singular idea they called God, but can be replaced by State.
The 'universal is partially' understood by each individual...so that he can integrate within its absoluteness.

57:00 - the product is a moderation of individuality, and of perceiving sameness and divergence.
A moderation of ideologies and of perceptions.

59:00 - tolerance means I will repress my antipathy for your proximity, and your difference.
It's the promotion of the kid of tolerance that had evolved to facilitate a female's acceptance of a male's penetration.

That's an eye opener.

To me its not even such a big deal(I myself have always noted notes down on each paragraph of a book I red and then on every 5 pages then every 1/4 of a book so it actually starts looking like a quasi counterfit version of the original) in itself but it betrays the much more important fact that he doesn't bother with veryfing the truths himself and stating them in a way that he himself precisly finds accurate and truthful but is much more concerned(and happy to rid himself of former)with 'power-games' so he ends up copying the review(pure practicality in the 'economical' sense) and only changing the moral judgment of it being 'x'(besides few bits out of practical necessesity) that he fully stand behind himself and onto which he throws his academic weight and rips the benefits.

*I'm not entirely clear on what kind of Marxism Zizek ascribes to, but he does offer insightful analysis of capitalist pop-culture.
I think he's decided to remain a critic, and not an antagonist.
Perhaps he's come to terms with the common ground between Capitalism and Marxism, at least within Americanism., exploring how the synthesis emerges within this post-modern, liberal hegemony, promoted as a salvation mythos - New World Order, or Globalism.
A title that defined itself in ways that inhibits the development resistance, because all ordering that assimilates and negations the nation-state is automatically defined as 'globalism' allowing Globalism, as Americanism, to proceed in its eradication of the ethno-state, along with the nation-state.
Another example of how nihilism's linguistic corruptions permits the evolution of synthesis and antithesis within the confusion of obscurantism.
Once concepts have been 'purified' by converting them - rebirth and re-baptised, shedding their previous names and identities - as pure ideologies, then their theoretical vagueness permits the convolution of conceptual contradictions and their sublimation within a uniformity of subjective interpretations.
For example, if you can detach the concept of male/female, adult/child, mature/immature, from their biological anchoring they are converted to an idea which can then merge with other ideas which may be contradictory if they remains tangible and biological, but become a matter of creative licence and subjectivity, in their ideological, theoretical form - their obscurity in theory making them more malleable to the conscious will - lucid consciousness, as opposed with subconsciousness or the pre-consciousness of the body.

*An undercurrent of master/slave dynamics is hidden under Marxist critique. Male female equated to the exploiter exploited socio-economic classes, due to the female's higher investment in the product of offspring.

*Pornography is a masculine - hyper-masculine - reaction to the romanticising, and idealizing of the sexual act.

* We see here the anti-male aspects of feminization of man, expressed as nihilism - including the secular versions of Abrahamism.
Within the Marxist paradigm we can read biological relationships - as they independently evolved over time - as a relationship of an exploiter with the exploited.
The male attains or gains the right to exploit the females in his environment, or under his care, essentially intruding into them, and forcing them to carry his 'load' to term - a reflection of the proletariat's exploitation by Capitalist domination.
This "injustice" must be corrected by Marxists - in essence nature must be rearranged to be more egalitarian - distributing the costs and the benefits, with no consideration to the factor of risks undertaken and endured.

*Females, having submitted to an intrusion, regain their power by being in control of who has more chances to inseminate her, and by seducing the male, from a distance.
The male's need for her - his desire, is his own admission of weakness. Indifference is an indication of power.
For females attracting many males is an affirmation of her genetic value, even if this places her in the position of surrendering herself to another.

*Modernity feminizes by making technologies accessible to the masses - technologies that produce an imbalance between male/female roles. i.e., selectively adjusting the risks, and the costs/benefits to both specialized reproductive roles.
It's preference for the feminine - as more malleable and easily dominated - makes the system the alpha-male forcing all biological males to positions of subordination or emasculating them.

*Zizek critiques capitalism's reduction of human relationships into products or services rendered which is inferior to his own implied infantilization of mankind, under the parental care of the State. A condition of perpetual adolescence.
An attractive prospect to psychologies that have lost confidence in their won judgements, or desire a life of endless childhood irresponsibility, or crave an idealized fantasy of the parent, i.e., a faceless, abstract parent that imposes rules, and tells them what to do and how to do it. A zero risk world where judgements are uniformly distributed, along with the consequences.
A no-free-will world.

*The male's need for her - his desire, is his own admission of weakness. Indifference is an indication of power.
For females attracting many males is an affirmation of her genetic value, even if this places her in the position of surrendering herself to another.

*Modernity feminizes by making technologies accessible to the masses - technologies that produce an imbalance between male/female roles. i.e., selectively adjusting the risks, and the costs/benefits to both specialized reproductive roles.
It's preference for the feminine - as more malleable and easily dominated - makes the system the alpha-male forcing all biological males to positions of subordination or emasculating them.

*Hollywood promotes this "commandeering" of male fantasies, continuously emphasizing 'love' and 'romantic idealism', training males, and females, to think of sexuality in idealistic terms; defining it 'out of existence' or as a 'supernatural' experience, few, if any, will actually experience. it 'internalizes' the fault or the failure.
No man, or woman, can live-up to the ideal, so one settles or engages sex as a product - one year this, the next another; a process of recycling and surrendering to trends, constantly upgrading and updating expectations and demands.

*Fetishizing female orgasms - equating it to witnessing the 'Christ on the cross' - is a way of reforming the salvation myth, through hedonism.
The woman's pleasure becomes the male's affirmation of his quality, making him a slave to her pleasuring as a way of affirming his own masculinity.
Extreme, obsessive care for otherness is a negation of what indifference implies.

It makes me think of this which I watched a long time ago:



Ive never read Zizek, but I've read Baudrillard and have listened to many of Zizek's lectures. The pattern ive noticed in the thinking of these "post-modern" Marxist philosophers, is their shared preoccupation with the "simulation" of the capitalist lifestyle, which it is in many physical and metaphysical ways. They incorporate deconstructionist leanings in thier Marxist views.

* "Signifiers with no signified"...noumenon with no reference to an externally perceived and experienced phenomenon - pure ideology.
Faith based inter-subjectivity.
The foundation of nihilism.

Symbols with no reference outside other minds - matrices of minds collectively believing in an idea that is unreal, i.e., non-existent.
Obscurantism is what compensates for this absence - absent absolute.
Reasoning replaced by emotion, sensation, i.e., pleasure principle - hedonism.
The unreal idea becomes 'real' if it triggers positive sensations, emotions - the negative is made positive.
Inversion.


* When the object of desire is idealized - defined out of existence - its pursuit becomes a process of un-gratified expectations , perpetual anxiety.
Similar to the conception of free-will as an unattainable absolute, rather than an attainable degree of sovereignty, or wilful agency. The individual is disheartened by its own absolutist expectations and so settles for the absolute negative as a certainty.
Power of the nil.
When the concept is defined out of space/time experienced existence, it becomes a totalitarian abstraction damning all who worship it to a lifetime of unsatisfied submissiveness.
Its only relief in the accusation of another for its condition - victimhood.
The other becomes the excuse as to why the individual can never attain the idealized objective - a comforting process because its failure becomes a universal failure - all is reduced to nil.
The ideal is defined out of existence converting the existent to a uniformity of nil.