Man as a system

I cannot recommend his books without hesitation, but he has helped me to understand some Philosophy and I must count him as amongst my teachers. I thought since we talked about will and autopoiesis on here, this might be another addition to that. Sloterdijk employs the term "anthropotechnics" for his new book. An indication to handle him carefully is that I found this review on a humanist website, it's by Jonathan Rée

The article is slandering or at least confusing in the part about Sloterdijks credentials (he is to this day a professor of Philosophy at a University, I believe, in Karlsruhe) and THE most famous living German philosopher:

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You must change your life by Peter Sloterdijk (Polity Press)

Peter Sloterdijk does not conform to the stereotype of a German professor of philosophy. His prose may be stodgy and long-winded, but he can also be funny and unconventional, and no one could accuse him of being predictable. He first came to public attention in the early 1980s, with an exuberant Critique of Cynical Reason in which he attacked the dreary pieties of know-it-all neo-Marxist theorising, and argued that the true cynic is the one who knows how to laugh rather than merely to sneer. Since then he has kept himself conscientiously at the margin of conventional academic life, while making a living as a broadcaster and TV presenter, and a prolific best-selling author and journalist.

Sloterdijk’s attacks on leftism have always been more neo-radical than neo-conservative, but he does not seem to mind if people get him wrong. He takes pleasure in teasing the many-headed demons that still haunt the German national psyche, and has never shrunk from presenting himself as a disciple of Nietzsche and Heidegger, who, in Germany at least, seem incapable of shaking off the taint of Nazism. A decade ago, Sloterdijk published a pamphlet called Rules for the Human Zoo, in which he argued that traditional methods of securing a future for humanity were losing their power. He claimed that we were moving from an epoch of careful reading to an epoch of careful breeding, or, as he put it, from Lektion to Selektion.

You might think that this was a fair comment on an age where machines can read our DNA more readily than many of us will read a book; but anything that sounds like eugenics is taboo in Germany, and if there can be such a thing as a wicked word, then Selektion – remembered for its use in Nazi death camps – is as guilty as hell. At the high court of German public opinion, Sloterdijk was condemned as either a crypto-Nazi or an infantile attention-seeker, and in any case an exponent of the most shocking bad taste: the Lady Gaga of philosophy.

But Sloterdijk is both seriously learned and brilliantly creative, and he has a talent for wit, if not brevity. He no longer speaks so freely of selective breeding, but in his mountainous new book, translated as You Must Change Your Life, he takes up his old theme under the heading of anthropotechnics, meaning the project of treating human nature as an object of deliberate manipulation. The term originated in the early euphoria of the Russian revolution, but as far as Sloterdijk is concerned it refers not just to modern biological eugenics, but to techniques of individual and collective self-transformation that date back several thousand years, to the earliest beginnings of any kind of social existence that we would recognise as resembling our own. Sloterdijk follows Michel Foucault in seeing human life not in terms of a struggle between those who wield power and those who are subject to it (he dismisses this version of history as leftist kitsch), but in terms of the networks of “discipline” through which we live our lives and construct our world. Human beings are self-forming animals, he says, and the history of human society is the history of anthropotechnics.

Rather like his intellectual role-models – Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault – Sloterdijk sets himself the task of challenging the stories we like to tell ourselves about how the obfuscations of the past have at last given way to our own self-evident good sense. In particular he wants to overthrow the popular myth of enlightenment humanism: the idea that, in or around the 18th century, philosophers realised that the old ideas of God were no more than projections of human dreams, and thus restored humanity to its proper place at the centre of the cosmos. For Sloterdijk, the very idea of religion is a myth, and so is the humanist idea of humanity: both of them depend on an over-valuation of metaphysical opinions (about such topics as God, truth and the soul) and a refusal to face up to the fundamental fact of human existence, namely that all of us are condemned to lead a “practising life”, in an interminable labour of self-fashioning.

The practising life always involves an attempt to break away from the flatlands of inherited habit, and a yearning for what Sloterdijk calls “verticality” – a desire to climb the highest moral mountain peak, or to dance with effortless abandon on the high wire of ethical perfection. At root, the practising life is essentially “ascetic”, but asceticism can take two very different forms: not only the despicable floor-gymnastics of those who have lost their nerve – servile, resentful, moralistic sub-humans of the kind lampooned by Nietzsche – but also the dramatic self-elevation of the classical super-hero. After two or three thousand years, the old ascetic world gave way to the modern one, but the transition had nothing to do with old sociological chestnuts about secularisation: it was about the rise of the modern state, which, with its overweening interest in the health and education of its citizens, required the focus of asceticism to shift from reform of the individual to the “mass rebuilding of the human condition”.

By the end of the 19th century, however, the light of asceticism was beginning to fade, and the practising life began to lose its old spiritual content. This process of “de-spiritualisation” proceeded in two different directions, one political, the other athletic. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin created the October Revolution in order to allow his followers to dissolve their bad old selves in the unspeakable ecstasy of communist revolution; and his contemporary Pierre de Coubertin created the Olympic Games to allow his followers to lose themselves in the struggle to become the greatest athletes in history of the world. In the wake of these parallel movements, Sloterdijk identifies a valiant uprising of “cripples” (Krüppel, as he insists on calling them), with a virtuosic digression about the 20th-century ascetic Carl Unthan, a plucky musician born without arms, who achieved celebrity by playing the violin, very beautifully, with his feet.

I am sure I have not grasped all the ins and outs of Sloterdijk’s global history of anthropotechnics, despite my best efforts; and I suspect that his copious prose was sometimes too much for Wieland Hoban, his gifted translator. But if Sloterdijk sometimes nods and slips, he never flags, and he certainly deserves some shelf-space alongside Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault. Like them, he reminds us that our fond notions of our place in history are not necessarily true: that alternatives are always available, and that what seems perfectly obvious to us may well turn out to be false.

From the book description:

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In his major investigation into the nature of humans, Peter Sloterdijk presents a critique of myth - the myth of the return of religion. For it is not religion that is returning; rather, there is something else quite profound that is taking on increasing significance in the present: the human as a practising, training being, one that creates itself through exercises and thereby transcends itself. Rainer Maria Rilke formulated the drive towards such self-training in the early twentieth century in the imperative 'You must change your life'.

In making his case for the expansion of the practice zone for individuals and for society as a whole, Sloterdijk develops a fundamental and fundamentally new anthropology. The core of his science of the human being is an insight into the self-formation of all things human. The activity of both individuals and collectives constantly comes back to affect them: work affects the worker, communication the communicator, feelings the feeler.

It is those humans who engage expressly in practice that embody this mode of existence most clearly: farmers, workers, warriors, writers, yogis, rhetoricians, musicians or models. By examining their training plans and peak performances, this book offers a panorama of exercises that are necessary to be, and remain, a human being.

Picking up on the discussion in the other topic ("Theory of Social Systems") about Autopoiesis (Self Creation) vs. Becoming (Heidegger). You noted that "self creation", could imply that we have an end product. A "created" that is solid and set. And you critized that correctly, because of course there is never such a thing as a being, offering the term "Becoming" instead.

Again I am no native english speaker. But to me "Becoming" sounds more passive, not willful. As in: "I am becoming old, tired" and so on... . Wheras "Self-Creation" or in the above text "Anthropotechnics" describes a willful action. So we have two different concepts here. In the case of systems theory, the term "Becoming" wouldn't fit. Since if there is no (conscious) will behind the "becoming", the described system wouldn't exist. Like I explained in the case of politics and economics in the other topic. "If we don't vote. Politics ceases to exist. If we don't buy. Economy ceases to exist." It ceases to become, it ceases to self-create itself as a system and vanishes.

So you can use both terms. But to draw attention to a willful process of the system itself, I'd prefer the term: "autopoiesis" or "anthropotechnics" (for man), instead of a (more descriptive): "becoming". Again, I focus on the willful dynamic. I am not a mere spectator, like Heidegger. I ask for reasons, why something is becoming? And that's in the described cases, because of (willful) autopoieses, and not because it just happens to become, by accident or nature.

I would, for myself, drop Heideggers "becoming". For myself as a system. Or apply it as in: if I don't exercise, I become obese. If I don't pay attention to what I eat, I become obese. So for a neglect. Whereas for every willful, deliberate act: I use the other two terms (Autopoiesis or Anthropotechnics).

The organics body is an emerging unity.
It has a rudimentary form of Will, when it simply seeks out nutrients.

The Will is nothing more than a ‘giving direction’ to an emergent unity’s aggregate energies: synergy exhibiting a towards…as in Will to Live….or Will to Power.
To be conscious begins with a primitive perception, a simple awareness, even if it in the form of a plant being aware of sunlight and turning its leaves towards it.

Later, this evolves into a more sophisticated form where a consciousness is conscious of its own awareness: self-consciousness.

The randomness (chaos) of the Flux is rejected with an ordering. This is what a Will offers: choice.
When a plant’s root dig deep into the soil seeking moisture or nutrients it is ordering itself, it is imposing its will and displaying a choice.

Satyr wrote:

When a plant’s root dig deep into the soil seeking moisture or nutrients it is ordering itself, it is imposing its will and displaying a choice.

Yes. Yet in modern consumer society choice is only a passive selection between alternative commodities - those created by other wills - and this is considered to be the ultimate act of free will, defining an individual and his or her nature, when in fact these people are acting less like willful beings and more like aphids being exploited on an ant farm.

These slaver-wills exist within the simulacrum, a fabricated reality, less aware than some of our distant ancestors, even perhaps than some animals alive today, the levels of their self-awareness is something artificially determined and programmed into them, depending upon the needs of the simulacrum's architects.

Will to life, yes. Will to self improvement. Very much like the youtube shamans teach. Keeping the myth of an Übermensch alive. The myth to be able to self-improve. Sloterdijk talks about the affronts to the homo-sapiens in our days of the Enlightenment era. One of them being, that man can now be described as a machine, with the DNA technology, that we have. So a machine has the capability to learn and to excel. With all being said about elites and who's pulling the strings and so on, we being rats in a cage ecetera. We still have potential to develop and this knowledge is what is new. Nietzsche himself still saw more limitations than we do today. He had to fight off Christianity. Today Science takes care of that. Much better, than he did. So: no, not anyone can become anything he wants, but I share in Sloterdijks progressivst view, when it comes to the potential that lies un-used within probably most of us. Striving for that ideal, becoming better everyday in a very mechanistic sense. Being more fit, knowing more, getting more experienced, engaging in more meaningful conversations, outcompeting others in the workplace, making more money, attracting hotter females, eating healthier foods... Sounds superficial? It's programmed within the artificial matrix by some Masters? I don't care too much. I see this as the other pole to traditionalism. And a very valuable one. Modernity is just when this ship becomes one-sided just towards this sort of unemotional, materialistic progressivism. And forgetting about traditionalism. The old philosophers describe life, as if it wasn't threatened. Darwin introduced the idea of survival. And it is becoming harder every day just to survive, for all of us. So self-improvement may turn out to be just the basic necessary engagement, to survive. Reaching high, to achieve the necessary minimum to stay in this madness for some more time. And being able to influence it in some kind of ordering way. So one has to aim high, to even stay in the game. That's how I see it. No time for self-pity. And no time for too much realism, in the sense that we focus only on nature and neglect nurture. Just because the herds deny nature completely. Time to stop being reactionary and getting into a balanced view.

I'm afraid I do not share your optimism regarding what is euphemistically termed human nature.

After a century in which self-improvement and self-fulfillment have been the goal of civilization humans are more like sheep today than they ever were before, more like animals bred to eat, shit and fuck.

Self-knowledge is not a commodity that can be bought and sold. Quality of being is largely innate, perhaps society can choose to ignore it or polish it up (although social programs aimed at doing either should be viewed with suspicion) but the raw material is already present in the world, independent of human motivations. The failure to realize ones potential is simply a failure of the whole organism and its evolutionary history. Nobodies fault.

Whatever gains one makes physically or psychologically in life are not passed on to the next generation.

What does that tell you about the brute nature of our existence?

Recidivist wrote:

The failure to realize ones potential is simply a failure of the whole organism and its evolutionary history. Nobodies fault.

I don't want to blame anyone. I just want to point out, that even if nature sets certain limits to the indivuals development, there is still a lot of potential lying around unused today. And I do not exclude myself from this. On the contrary, I'm glad there is all this potential there. I don't consider this an optimistic view, but a realistic view.

But as I pointed out, any fulfilled or unfulfilled potential is not carried on to the next generation. It makes no difference to the physical basis of the organism.

In short, it doesn't matter.

It matters to me and my well-being, for the time I get to spent on earth: if I do well or if I don't. If I have to go hungry and beg for food, have to sleep in the cold ... or if I can live a life without such difficulties and maybe some comforts. That to me is a huge difference.

Sloterdijk in his book has a chapter on L.Ron Hubbard. There is even an early ancient greek philosopher who had had the maxime: "you must practice." ( I will look up his name. )

Sigmund Fraud said: Man is an animal.

Hubbard said: you can improve yourself. And here are the tools.
The problem is: the only way you can self improve is within the limits of modernity. You can become successful and rich, if you follow these rules. Then of course the organisation also profits, because you can pay more. A win-win situation.

Fraud said: stay an animal.

In modernity there is no sense for Carpe Diem any more. The apollonian viewpoint to live in the here and now. This is not modern! Not faustian. Faustianism is modern, in it's unfulfilled sense. In it's constant perception of an unknown but deeply felt LACK. Lack of something one isn't even sure about, what it exactly is.

The lack is the lack of a cosmos, a center, a meaning of his life in faustian times. The modern lacks a thinking from the eyes, what one can see. Rather we think from our brains. From our inner void. We call looks superficial. The ancients knew that the present was the sum of all past nurturing, therefor they didn't need to remember the past. Everything was always still there. Manifested in the present moment.
Me typing this is my lineage. All my ancestor's, my heritage is typing this right now. I am completely the present expression of this past lineage.

We moderns on the other hand live in the past. "Those better days." We glorify it in a form of nostalgia. Our childhood but also just the past decades. And of course fear of the future. It's unknownness.

Thereby we lose the present moment. The Faustian correctly points out (from his scientific time model) that there indeed isn't even a present moment. There is only past and future. Thereby he justifies his depression. His captivity in "the" system. And he comes up with clever ways to describe this "system": Matrix, Hyperreal and so on. Big words. On that latest book backcover of Sloterdijk somebody jerked the phrase: "what beautiful language" or some bullshit like that. So today this is what it takes.

A human organism is a towards godliness.
not to escape the past, or one's won feminine/masculine attributes, but to combine them and assimilate them into a singular self.

The state is a Superorganism, doing the same thing...and the organism is what it has to assimilate, and harmonize by reducing it down to a uniform identity.
The parts must identity with that which is outside of them....jsut as the cells in the body cannot identity, but if they could they would have to identify with the mind's Will.
This would be problematic.

And so A Superorganism has to level down humans, all organisms, into a uniform paste....with no sexual or racial or natural identifiers.

Freud was not a fraud...he was a worthy representative of his mimetic race.

Satyr wrote:

Freud was not a fraud...he was a worthy representative of his mimetic race.

He advertised sexuality. Man as an animal. 19th Century materialism. Darwin-Freud-Nietzsche.

Laconian wrote:

Satyr wrote:

Freud was not a fraud...he was a worthy representative of his mimetic race.

He advertised sexuality. Man as an animal. 19th Century materialism. Darwin-Freud-Nietzsche.

Humans are animals, you pathetic degenerate.

Transhumanist, yes you are.

apaosha wrote:

Laconian wrote:

Satyr wrote:

Freud was not a fraud...he was a worthy representative of his mimetic race.

He advertised sexuality. Man as an animal. 19th Century materialism. Darwin-Freud-Nietzsche.

Humans are animals, you pathetic degenerate.

Transhumanist, yes you are.

Yes, we are animals. But aren't we also capabile to something more than just f-cking, hunting, eating, sleeping, shiting, drinking, pissing, as the other animals?

I would like to think so.

Laconian wrote:

Yes, we are animals. But aren't we also capable to something more than just f-cking, hunting, eating, sleeping, shitting, drinking, pissing, as the other animals?

I would like to think so.

Then imagine yourself as this robot, this spirit, and this Cosmic Emperor has taken you away from this earthly prison, as Hubbard promised the idiots under his spell:
No shitting, no eating, no drinking, no fucking...nothing but...

Give us what you want to be like.
Tell us about your alternative reality.
I'm listening.

Can't you imagine reading Hubbard without being a scientologist? You can get all materials free online basically. Well I am not a scientologist. Hubbard is not my cult leader. I read Osho. He too was a cult leader. Fraud developed a big cult. Not to speak of Nietzsche.

Faustianism (our culture since 1000 years in the west according to my current favorite guru: Oswald Spengler) is about exploring. I am a cultist without a cult. I like all cultist. This cult here too. Cultism is a model that is outside of the state, outside of the totalitarian system. It's no paradise. But cults (like the Satyrcult on here) are to me small islands in the totalitarian sea. Most cults lead directly back into that sea of course. Better prepared, whatever. With that smirk on a face, like the new agers, with their wellness seminars in om chanting.

Laconian wrote:

Yes, we are animals. But aren't we also capabile to something more than just f-cking, hunting, eating, sleeping, shiting, drinking, pissing, as the other animals?

I would like to think so.

Then you hate your own humanity.

Just fucking, hunting, eating, sleeping, shiting, drinking, pissing. That is what it is to be a human being, to be alive.

The premise that there is "more" that is accessible to an organism... the transcendent, the spiritual, the beyond..... displays ones own hatred for life, ones willing denial of and turning away from reality.

You despise humanity, perhaps your own humanity, and so you hope for super-worlds and paradises, to cure you of, or free you from, the worldly.
This is the Christian Nihilism. Positive Nihilism, as Satyr put it. Denial of the actual in preference to the Ideal.

There is no oddity in that Nietzsche declared the Borgias of all people as being personifications of the Ubermensch. The Borgias, and not any Mahatma Gandhi, St Francis of Assisi or other ascetic recluse.

We here do not want to become as little girls and ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven. We are men. We want the Kingdom of the Earth.

As a buddhist, you were taught to do all you could to escape Samsara. It is your blindness that cannot conceive of the willing embrace of Samsara.

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I am a cultist without a cult.

You are a mess of dozens of bits and pieces of faiths, ideologies and philosophies... adopting whatever you like as the whim takes you. You are fractured as an identity. Schizophrenic.

You are a cultist following 20 different cults, being pulled hither and thither, not knowing where you will end up. A rag in the breeze.

apaosha wrote:

Laconian wrote:

Yes, we are animals. But aren't we also capabile to something more than just f-cking, hunting, eating, sleeping, shiting, drinking, pissing, as the other animals?

I would like to think so.

Then you hate your own humanity.

Just fucking, hunting, eating, sleeping, shiting, drinking, pissing. That is what it is to be a human being, to be alive.

I like to have interesting converstations about philosophy. Read a book. Watch a movie. Maybe other animals do that too. I don't identify with humanity.

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The premise that there is "more" that is accessible to an organism... the transcendent, the spiritual, the beyond..... displays ones own hatred for life, ones willing denial of and turning away from reality.

You despise humanity, perhaps your own humanity, and so you hope for super-worlds and paradises, to cure you of, or free you from, the worldly.
This is the Christian Nihilism. Positive Nihilism, as Satyr put it. Denial of the actual in preference to the Ideal.

It is Satyr who promotes his ideal woman and man all the time. His ideal masculine and feminine. I am not so fixed on an ideal. I think we haven't found the ideal yet. The ancient greeks had a flat worldview (no depth, just height and width), also no sense for time. They lived in a cosmos. So yes, they had nice ideals. It was much easier for them to project ideals than for us in our time, with our vastly greater (scientific) knowledge. But I am willing to try.

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There is no oddity in that Nietzsche declared the Borgias of all people as being personifications of the Ubermensch. The Borgias, and not any Mahatma Gandhi, St Francis of Assisi or other ascetic recluse.

We here do not want to become as little girls and ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven. We are men. We want the Kingdom of the Earth.

So do I.

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As a buddhist, you were taught to do all you could to escape Samsara. It is your blindness that cannot conceive of the willing embrace of Samsara.

In Vajrayana the way out is the way through.

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You are a mess of dozens of bits and pieces of faiths, ideologies and philosophies... adopting whatever you like as the whim takes you. You are fractured as an identity. Schizophrenic.

You are a cultist following 20 different cults, being pulled hither and thither, not knowing where you will end up. A rag in the breeze.

You said that before. I am pisces. Read a book on Astrology.

Laconian wrote:

It is Satyr who promotes his ideal woman and man all the time. His ideal masculine and feminine.

Can you quote me promoting an ideal when I deny ideals as being anything more than signposts?

A cult is a highly organized group dedicated to a single object/objective...demanding total obedience.
Can you provide evidence as to where I pushed my own agenda upon others, demanded anything or claimed to hold a truth?

If watching a movie and reading a book is your alternative definition of a "human," then can you provide a reason for doing so....or is reading a book one of this "for its own sake", self-referential, solipsistic, ideals?
Who does not read books or watch movies?

Satyr wrote:

Laconian wrote:

It is Satyr who promotes his ideal woman and man all the time. His ideal masculine and feminine.

Can you quote me promoting an ideal when I deny ideals as being anything more than signposts?

What do you mean by signposts? And what is your masculine ideal as a signpost? And the female one?

I am reminded of the Tyler Durden quote: "Let's evolve". I don't know what will happen. But I am not glorifying a past either that is unattainable to return back to.

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A cult is a highly organized group dedicated to a single object/objective...demanding total obedience.
Can you provide evidence as to where I pushed my own agenda upon others, demanded anything or claimed to hold a truth?

I am glad if this is not the case. However I also know the dynamics of power.

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If watching a movie and reading a book is your alternative definition of a "human," then can you provide a reason for doing so....or is reading a book one of this "for its own sake", self-referential, solipsistic, ideals?
Who does not read books or watch movies?

Other animals. Only the human animal from what I know does that.

Laconian wrote:

Satyr wrote:

Laconian wrote:

It is Satyr who promotes his ideal woman and man all the time. His ideal masculine and feminine.

Can you quote me promoting an ideal when I deny ideals as being anything more than signposts?

What do you mean by signposts? And what is your masculine ideal as a signpost? And the female one?

I am reminded of the Tyler Durden quote: "Let's evolve". I don't know what will happen. But I am not glorifying a past either that is unattainable to return back to.

And what should we evolve into?
That is the projected Idea(l).

If we leave it up to nature, then we have no say in it...but if we wish to be the keepers of our faith, then what kind of man do you wish to be?
Male/Female are natural roles, with a particular reason for evolving.
We judge them as fit or unfit, within the premises they evolved.
What is a male?
A challenger of authority, a breaker of hierarchies, a questioner, a restless spirit, a shit-disturber, a reasoned thinker, loyal and loving for rational reasons...the one who wants to dominate...nature.
What is a female?
A nurturer, a tolerant, social creature, totally dependent on others because only within this protection can she have value - her sexual choice enhanced - and can she be successful. she does not question authority, she analyzes it to give into its constructs more efficiently and effectively.

This is a description...not an idealization.


A signpost is what I call a projected abstraction.
A mind gather data, sensual info. Constructs abstractions, simplifications/generalizations, of reality. It then places them wihtin mentla models....the more complex the mind the more cohesive and detailed these models are....the more discriminating the mind is.
these abstractions are then projected towards a world that lacks absolutes, as directions: objects/objectives.
This is why imagination is so crucial.

These projected, simplified/generalized, objects/objectives, are not in existence outside the mind, but constructs helping the mind orient itself in a world that lacks absolutes.
They are mental grids to make sense, categorize, direct the Will, within a fluid environment: Flux.

The object/objective can also be called an idea(l)...and it is not meant to be attained, but only to direct.
The ideal, if attained, is an end...Nihilism. If it is a tool for directing the Will, then it is not its attainment that defines an individual, but the direction taken...his intent, intention, motive.

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I like to have interesting converstations about philosophy. Read a book. Watch a movie. Maybe other animals do that too. I don't identify with humanity.

Intellectual discourse then becomes less an exploration, more an entertainment. Here, you masturbate. Publicly and in excess.

The thing about knowledge, particularly about ones own condition, is that it demystifies. Mystery makes an activity seem more profound and ominous then it is. For example, to a theist, life is a test before a monumental final judgement, reality the creation of the divine, man in His image. The knowledge of what life, reality and man are then become profoundly dissatisfying. Life is "only" an organism temporarily sustaining itself in the face of dissolution, reality is "only" aimless chaos and man is "only" the effect of this chaos, his past.

Knowledge makes the subject small in this way. The mythology, the mystery, is so much more significant that the reality must pale in comparison. Herein the dissatisfaction with reality makes itself felt.

A nihilist is often an ex-theist. His devaluation of life came from the demystification of reality.

The search for knowledge is a will to to dominate ones environment. Such a will extends from our mortality; our need to find sustenance and reproduce. To suppose that our greater capability to communicate and understand our reality compared to other animals is anything other than a relative relationship along the same spectrum is to indulge in romantic idealism.

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It is Satyr who promotes his ideal woman and man all the time.

Satyr describes reality as he sees it. He does not posit ideals to conform to.

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His ideal masculine and feminine. I am not so fixed on an ideal. I think we haven't found the ideal yet. The ancient greeks had a flat worldview (no depth, just height and width), also no sense for time. They lived in a cosmos. So yes, they had nice ideals. It was much easier for them to project ideals than for us in our time, with our vastly greater (scientific) knowledge. But I am willing to try.

See? This is you masturbating.

I think that the "ideals" you refer to may be descriptions of a reality you resent. Therefore dismissing them as "ideal" and perhaps unattainable, unrealistic, offers you an emotional reward.
Still don't see what ideals Satyr is supposed to be talking about.

But then on the other hand there's the implication that The ideal has not yet been found... and is out there somewhere, waiting for the right kind of mind, the receptive soul to become it's vessel and herald. You, maybe.
Now I understand your fascination with Hubbard.

Ideals must be founded upon reality and posit a goal attainable realistically, else they must be made clear to be the archetype of an abstraction of some subject (eg the perfect man, or the perfect woman).
In this case, you confuse a description with an ideal.

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We here do not want to become as little girls and ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven. We are men. We want the Kingdom of the Earth.

So do I.

You? No way.
You're too feminine, too passive aggressive. Too preoccupied with superstition.

You should stick with trying to transcend the worldly. Not all truths are suitable for all ears.

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In Vajrayana the way out is the way through.

A -way out-. Why escape from life if you love it?

Unless...?

Come on, this is simple stuff.

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You said that before. I am pisces. Read a book on Astrology.

Superstition, you tard?

Your aimless grasping at everything and anything, coupled with your bad taste in such, warns me to be wary.

Satyr wrote:

what kind of man do you wish to be?

I don't see in myself that power to decide such matters (nor in anyone else). I am capable to perceive problems. The feminization of mankind is a problem. I am able to let a problem take space within me and I am able to express it. That's it. I am re-actionary. Reason>Passion>Will would be my personal ordering. I don't know what a will is. What can anybody want on his/her own? Survival, harmony, comfort, pleasure, wisdom, truth? Do we have a choice to want this? Can we NOT want this, if we want it? What wants within us? What is it that wants in us?



A man is the one who leaves (Platon's) cave.


A female is the one who stays within (Platon's) cave.

apaosha wrote:

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His ideal masculine and feminine. I am not so fixed on an ideal. I think we haven't found the ideal yet. The ancient greeks had a flat worldview (no depth, just height and width), also no sense for time. They lived in a cosmos. So yes, they had nice ideals. It was much easier for them to project ideals than for us in our time, with our vastly greater (scientific) knowledge. But I am willing to try.

See? This is you masturbating.

What don't you understand about this quote?

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But then on the other hand there's the implication that The ideal has not yet been found... and is out there somewhere, waiting for the right kind of mind, the receptive soul to become it's vessel and herald. You, maybe.

No, I see a greater connectedness. There is an emerging within memetic spaces. It is more a group effort (with all sorts of counter currents from different angles). Or an effort by couples, families, close relations. I very much agree with Sloterdijk's perception, that we are foremost understood from a spatial perspective. What spaces do we occupy? Where do we seek refuge (Platon's cave) and where do we leave the cave? Where are we forced to step out on the glade (clearing) and where do we do it by our own free choice? What is revealed there about us? And more importantly: about man as such? That to me is the interesting stage to look at. Certain individuals play a more significant part than others. But we've all become messengers, in an Era where God is dead and we don't have a king and queen either. The one producing "content" is always suspected to "just masturbate". That's why a viewer/lurker position is much more comfortable.

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What don't you understand about this quote?

Is there something to understand in that quote? Perhaps you can explain it for me.

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But then on the other hand there's the implication that The ideal has not yet been found... and is out there somewhere, waiting for the right kind of mind, the receptive soul to become it's vessel and herald. You, maybe.

No, I see a greater connectedness. There is an emerging within memetic spaces. It is more a group effort (with all sorts of counter currents from different angles). Or an effort by couples, families, close relations. I very much agree with Sloterdijk's perception, that we are foremost understood from a spatial perspective. What spaces do we occupy? Where do we seek refuge (Platon's cave) and where do we leave the cave? Where are we forced to step out on the glade (clearing) and where do we do it by our own free choice? What is revealed there about us? And more importantly: about man as such? That to me is the interesting stage to look at. Certain individuals play a more significant part than others. But we've all become messengers, in an Era where God is dead and we don't have a king and queen either. The one producing "content" is always suspected to "just masturbate". That's why a viewer/lurker position is much more comfortable.

What course should humanity take if there is no God to command it? What course, given the warning that the Feminization of Mankind represents?

Would you consider all, universally to be human?
Would you possess a criteria that the other must meet before they would be considered worthy of the privileged designation: human?
Would you possess an even stricter criteria that the other must meet before they could be honoured with the designation: my people?
Would you, could you, love yourself enough to see that designation as an honour?
Would you, could you, be sufficiently a man to redeem the woman in woman?
Would you champion inequality, redeem hatred, speak the truth even when it wounds, even when it wounds you?
Would you invite the worlds hatred and repugnance in pursuit of your own sense of justice?
Would you, could you, be rapaciously selfish (for your self or for your people) and take only what you want from the world and give nothing back?
Would you ever see the world as not something to be saved or cured - but enjoyed?
Would you ever admire greatness rather than resenting it?
Would you ever hate weakness rather than sympathizing with it?
Would you ever persecute a victim because he deserved it - for allowing himself to be a victim?
Would you ever pursue greatness for the simple reason that you cannot bear that there are others who are greater than you?
Would you ever burn and flay the herd because you are a wolf and you eat only lamb's flesh?
Would you willingly court danger and violence - and thrive to spite them?

You are too simplistic with your Allegory of the Cave. Inside is ignorance, outside is enlightenment. But all perspectives are not created equally... and the simulacrum is not as simple as a cave. Many paths that appear to lead out only lead further in. What is ignorance and what is enlightenment? Surely you are not simplistic enough to realize these are relative terms in need of a qualifier.
A rejection of modernity is not sufficient: walking out of the cave is not so easy.
Truth is the measure of a premise when compared to it's standard, reality. All can create value or offer a perspective but this does not mean that what each messenger offers will be of any worth.
Many offer only delusion. Condolences for their own inadequacies.

Condolences are seductive because weakness is common, if not universal. Degree of weakness, or as Mo prefers (because it flatters him), degree of strength is important here. But it is the same spectrum.
If reality is such that we often need to be consoled with respect to it, then it follows that an individuals relative weakness is relevant in his choice or production of value. You can offer only yourself.

All such productions of humanity also carry with them their pasts, including value systems. They are the products of their pasts in that a weakling seeking to escape or rationalize his weakness will value with that need in mind. Other weaklings, sharing his discomfort, will flock to his side.
This is Christianity. This is Hubbard. Only the first was a sophisticated weapon used to destroy the Roman Empire and the second is a capitalist venture created to exploit modern retardation like your own.

Have I covered all the angles yet? Let's try one more:

Our minds often refuse to swallow bullshit. We innately have a sense for self-preservation, a suspicion that can detect deceit.
But this is suspended sometimes when an idea becomes popular. Quantity gives weight; a persuasive power of it's own.

For that reason people like you can perhaps be forgiven for thinking that something like a Scientologist E-meter works in any way advertised or should be treated with any sort of respect.

But then, you believe in astrology and probably tarot cards, ouija boards and dousing so who cares? You are a retard who will be used and abused. That is all you can be.

Your nature is important. Remember, Prometheus molded man from clay; but when molding men, the quality of the clay is crucial.

Wouldn’t you ever burn and flay the herd because you are a wolf, and apparently wolves burn and flay what they eat? Wouldn’t you hate weakness, as though weakness were worth enough to hate? Wouldn’t you ever persecute a victim, because of course it is an injustice to have been persecuted? Let’s champion inequality!, as though the stronger need to be championed to be stronger than what’s weaker.

Want to know what gives you away as a bad actor and a sickly creature?

It’s that you are doing above just what little ressentiment-overridden lambs do to wolves. --And you seem to think that doing it to a lamb makes you more like a wolf.
“Look at those birds, they’re not like us, they’re bad for us---therefore we hate them!”
“Let’s suppose we can separate the bird from its expression of strength, and condemn the bird!”

And then you come along, faker that you are, and do the same thing.
“Look at those sheep, they’re not like us, they’re bad for us---therefore let’s hate what they are!” Burn and flay them and whatever else. “Let’s condemn the weak for being what they are!”

You like Fritz’s metaphor, but apparently you’ve never read or understood it. Do me a favor, in keeping with the metaphor: Ask yourself why a wolf or a bird of prey would bemoan the fact either that sheep are like sheep, or that there are too many of them? I know why you do, but why would someone who wasn’t secretly a coward? Stepping out of the metaphor, the same question: Why hate what you think is inferior to you? Is it because you're not sure it's inferior, or you feel weakened, and thus scared... is it ressentiment? Are you a little lamb?

apaosha wrote:

Perhaps you can explain it for me.

Okay. So the ancient greeks had an ideal masculine and an ideal feminine. Those are signposts I also agree with. Apollo and Helena.

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Weininger translated those ancient Greek male/female ideals into a more four dimensional system. They gave this concept depth and a dynamic (time) even. The ancient Greeks had only height and width in their world perception. See Spengler on that.

I think there may be an ideal or something close to it. Something that the ancient Greeks had a vision of and also these more recent authors, I mentioned above.

So I take the ancient Greek ideal and the ideal those writers proposed and build on it. Therefor I go further towards the present moment. Spengler and Heidegger built on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Sloterdijk built on all of them.

The earlier authors are verified classics. Their value is "proven" by numerous secondary literature on them. The further we go towards the present, the harder it is to distinguish what will be a classic in 100 years from now. I think that Sloterdijk will be a classic then (like Nietzsche and Goethe are today). And Spengler and Heidegger will gain much more importance than even Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. At least this is what I hope, because I see more value in them. There are many mistakes in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. I can't see any in Heidegger and Spengler so far.

This is also my answer to your question:

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What course should humanity take if there is no God to command it? What course, given the warning that the Feminization of Mankind represents?

Read Sloterdijk, Heidegger and Spengler, (instead of Nietzsche, Weininger and Schopenhauer).

Aposha
You are a mess of dozens of bits and pieces of faiths, ideologies and philosophies... adopting whatever you like as the whim takes you. You are fractured as an identity. Schizophrenic.

You are a cultist following 20 different cults, being pulled hither and thither, not knowing where you will end up. A rag in the breeze.

sounds very much like what was written below

Satyr
What is a male?
A challenger of authority, a breaker of hierarchies, a questioner, a restless spirit, a shit-disturber, a reasoned thinker, loyal and loving for rational reasons...the one who wants to dominate...nature.

Seems you are right on track Laconian, with the extra schizophrenic touch. LOL


I am a Scorpio.

And what is a male to you?

Mo wrote:

Want to know what gives you away as a bad actor and a sickly creature?

Am I a bully? Maybe I'm just envious. Your kind has so much to be envious of after all.... But I want to hear all your psychobabble. Tell me about your insecurities.

I guess I must have drawn your attention with that remark.... but the motivations here are clear after all.

How often do you feel weak.... that you must believe we are all relatively strong?

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It’s that you are doing above just what little ressentiment-overridden lambs do to wolves. --And you seem to think that doing it to a lamb makes you more like a wolf.
“Look at those birds, they’re not like us, they’re bad for us---therefore we hate them!”
“Let’s suppose we can separate the bird from its expression of strength, and condemn the bird!”

And then you come along, faker that you are, and do the same thing.
“Look at those sheep, they’re not like us, they’re bad for us---therefore let’s hate what they are!” Burn and flay them and whatever else. “Let’s condemn the weak for being what they are!”

We define ourselves by what we are not. Identity, individuality, is a turning away from the other, or a specific sense of otherness. To assert the Self, is to assert one's own sense of self, in opposition to an otherness. How can there be the concept of Identity without the concept of an Other, which is not?
With respect to sheep(le), the otherness takes the form of a different character in the individual. A difference in perception and reaction to the world and a consequent difference in the production of value towards the world.

A preference for hierarchy, as it extends from the recognition of and deference towards the realities of inequality, is my own.

The rest is just emotional appeals. Am I too cruel? Or do you think I am just posing? I left out other things in that list which were not appropriate outside the Adyton. But I mean it all.

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You like Fritz’s metaphor, but apparently you’ve never read or understood it. Do me a favor, in keeping with the metaphor: Ask yourself why a wolf or a bird of prey would bemoan the fact either that sheep are like sheep, or that there are too many of them?

Perhaps the wolf is concerned that when all is universal green pastures and chomping of the cud.... there will be no dark forests for his pack. There is a reason wolves and sheep do not live side-by-side.

The implication is that since I am apparently presenting myself as an immortal invincible warrior that I should find sheep unthreatening. Am I invincible or immortal? Is this not a war and is the other side not the deadliest imaginable - for the simple reason that ease and comfort and ignorance are so seductive?

Have I said that there is not power in the herd, a collective power, a group power wherein the individual is almost worthless - the power of quantity? Have I said that the safety and anonymity offered by the masses is not comfortable in it's own way to a particular character? Have I said that the emotional support offered by others of one's kind is not rewarding when one feels lonely and threatened (as is here displayed)?

Have I not acknowledged the fundamental differences and placed myself definitely in a position of for and against, as it suits me and my own nature? What more can I do?

Metaphor aside, this is nothing but a preference for quality over quantity. I propose only that one great man is more valuable than a million of the average... that sympathy for weakness and identification with victimhood, has done more to destroy potential in mankind than any other factor. Weakness is universal but quality is rare.

It is through competition and danger that man flourishes and excels. Danger is an impetus. It strains the self, forces it to grow, forces it to endure hardship, to build up resistances. The expression of the Self is a resistance, an overcoming and overflowing.

When I have risked myself I have always gained more than I ever could have playing it safe. That will towards danger, it's cause and it's consequences, are things to be honoured and revered.

Through competition, quality is selected for. Where there is no competition, where all are equal, where all have a voice, quality is drowned in the masses of the average.

You're from ILP, aren't you? Then you already know what I'm talking about.

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I know why you do, but why would someone who wasn’t secretly a coward? Stepping out of the metaphor, the same question: Why hate what you think is inferior to you? Is it because you're not sure it's inferior, or you feel weakened, and thus scared... is it ressentiment? Are you a little lamb?

Turning the tables, Mo? Do better.

Why hate weakness? Why persecute a victim? Why burn and flay the herd?
Because I live in the modern age, where weakness is protected and indulged, where the victim is always sympathized with, where the green pastures are becoming universal.
My concern is the present and the future. Not for myself, because I will be who I am, I cannot be anything else. But for others like me; I am narrowly altruistic. That narrowness is the heart of the issue here. To further the interests of my kind before all else is all that matters to me. I am no universalist, or even a humanist.

Indeed, I love mankind. Because I love it I expect so much from it. Because I know it can still deliver on it's promise. For the moment.

Inverting the inverters, you could say. Turning the table of the table-turners. A negation of a negation. Re-evaluating the re-evaluators.