Hunting

Fear has different manifestation in the hunter and in the prey...

Gasset wrote:

"...while fear makes man slow of mind and movement, it carries the faculties of the beast to their greatest performance. Animal life culminates in fear. Skillfully the stag eludes the obstacle; with millimetric precision he threads swiftly through the gap between two tree trunks. Nose to the wind, neck arched, he lets swing free the regal antlery which balances his acrobatics, as the pole does for the tightrope walker. He gains distance with the speed of a meteor. His hoofs hardly touch the ground; rather, as Nietzsche says of the dancer, he limits himself to acknowledging it with the point of his foot; acknowledging it in order to eliminate it, in order to leave it behind.

Suddenly, on the spine of a low ridge the stag appears to the hunter; he sees him cut across the sky with the elegant grace of a constellation, launched there by the springs of his slender extremities. The leap of roe deer or stag-and even more of certain antelopes- is perhaps the most beautiful event that occurs in Nature. He lands again at a distance and accelerates his flight, because the snorting dogs are close on his heelsthe dogs, abettors of all this vertigo, that have transmitted their delightful frenzy to the mountain and now, in pursuit of the game, tongues hanging out, bodies stretched to their full length, gallop obsessed-hound, mastiff, beagle, greyhound.

The dog enters domesticity toward the end of the Paleolithic Age, in the later Capsian culture, contemporaneous with the SolutreanMagdalenian.
Its first documented appearance is found in Spain, in the Cave of the Old Woman of Alpera. It seems that it was not yet used in hunting. This happens a little later, at the beginning of the Neolithic Age, in the period called Maglemosian. The dog was, then, the first domestic animal. It is not even ce1tain that man domesticated it; certain evidence suggests that the dog spontaneously approached man.

Doubtless the leavings of food attracted him. Perhaps, even more than food, the dog found something else attractive in being close to man: warmth. It is enough to see the happiness of today's dog when he is beside a fire. The coals intoxicate him, and do not forget that man is, first and foremost, the animal with fire in his fist. The manipulation of fire, the success of having it at his disposal, was man's first physical discovery and the root of all the others. Before anything else he dominated flame; he arises in Nature as the flammiferous beast." [Meditations on Hunting]

From the howl to the bark... domestication of speech occurs...

Gasset wrote:

"From the zoological point of view, the domesticated animal is a degenerate one, as is man himself. In the artificial existence which man offers, the beast loses not a few of his instincts, even though he refines others which man needs and tries to select in breeding. The space left in the animal's life by the loss of these instincts is filled by teaching and training. But generally this is something that is only trivially and superficially understood. Through training man introduces certain forms of human conduct in the animal. That is, domestication partially de-animalizes and partially humanizes the beast. This is to say that the domestic animal is an intermediate reality between the pure animal and man, which, in tum, is to say that something like reason operates in the domestic animal.

The difference between the howl and the bark is a radical one. The howl is comparable to man's cry of pain, an expressive "gesture."

Through it, as through the other spontaneous gestures, the subject's emotiona! state is manifested. The word, on the other hand, in so far as it is strictly a word, expresses nothing; rather it has meaning, it signifies something.* Comparably, it happens that the howl and the scream are involuntary, and when not involuntary, they are feigned, imitated. One cannot want to give an authentic "scream of fright"; one can only wish to repress it. Words, on the other hand, are not emitted except voluntarily.

That is why howling and screaming are not speech. Well then, barking is an elementary form of speech. When a stranger passes by a farmhouse, the dog barks, not because anything hurts him, but because "he wishes to tell" his master that a stranger is near. And the master, if he is acquainted with his dog's "dictionary" can learn more details: the passerby's disposition; whether he is passing nearby or far away; if he is alone or in a group, and something I find frightful, whether the traveler is rich or poor.

Through domestication, therefore, the dog has acquired in his bark a quasi-language, and this implies that a quasi-reason has begun to germinate in him.

Notice how admirably well informed is the old saying that the Spanish mountain people use to describe the barking of the pack. They call it "talking." The veteran hunter finally learns perfectly the rich vocabulary and the subtle grammar of this canine quasi-language.

Man and dog have articulated in each other their own styles of hunting, and this represents the height of hunting. Cynegetics-hunting with dogs-has become the perfect example of the art, so much so that the proper meaning of the term cynegetics has finally been applied to the entire art of the hunt, whatever its forms may be.** The qualification of the dog for hunting, once achieved, was an invitation to generalize the procedure, and, in fact, man tried to involve other animals in his hunting.

Cynegetics has its counterpart in falconry or hunting with hawks.
The bird of prey is also a great hunter on his own. Of course, his style is very different from that of the dog. These heraldic birds are au'stere, ill-tempered gentlemen who maintain themselves at a distance like marquises of old, so that it is not possible to become intimate with them.

Their domestication was always precarious. They continued to be beasts.
The bird, in general, is not intelligent enough and does not have enough plasticity. To know this one has only to notice the rigidity of its corporeal form, which makes the bird an inexpressive, geometric, hieratic animal.
This does not take away from the fact that, up close, birds of prey are perhaps the most imposing figures in all zoology. The flat and well-combed head of the eagle, just a lever for the inexorable beak, has always been the emblem of empire. The eye of the falcon, all pupil, is the hunting eye par excellence, the alert eye. The bird of preygoshawk, falcon gentle, gerfalcon-is, as authentic aristocrats usually are, somber, hard, and a hunter.

But before man hunted with the real bird of flesh and blood, he had already invented the mechanical bird. It would fit well into the intellectual scheme of early man, if, as is not unlikely, the arrow represented a materialized metaphor. When the hunter saw the animal gallop off out of his reach he thought that a bird with its light wings might be able to catch up to it. Since he was not a bird and did not have one handy-it is surprising how little attention primitive man paid to birds-he put a beak on one end of a stick and feathers on the other; that is, he created the artificial bird, the arrow, which flies swiftly through the air toward the flanks of the fleeing great stag." [Meditations on Hunting]

Stuart wrote:

Throwing likely came before the arrow. There's a theory that human precursors had a technique of tossing large rocks into the middle of huddled groups of prey that led to the development of our genetic/memetic ability to throw precisely.

I'm sure that's the case.


As far as I'm aware the I.E. semantic complex between the arrow and the bird, esp. the eagle and the horse in terms of swiftness, to the sun which was symbolic of the soul, is a strong one; and it was meant to convey the more poetic spirituality of the the Doer and the Deed becoming one in the swiftness of the mind...


The Hunter [mind], the Arrow [self], and the Aim [self-possibility] all becoming one; the ouroboros 'almost' catching its tail, a near self-absolute:

Quote :

""A late IE traditional epithet -

In one of the few fragments of pre-Christian Armenian oral epic poetry... we find in a simile the phrase arcui srat'ew 'sharp-winged eagle'.

...The Armenian word for 'eagle', arcui (from *arciui), gen. arcuoy, goes back to *hrgi-pio-, identical to Vedic rjipya-, an epithet of both the eagle (syena-) and the mythological stallion Dadhikra (RV 4.39.2, 7; 27.4). The Vedic word is substantialized as 'eagle' in 2.34.4, of the bird who robbed the soma and brought it to man. Its Avestan cognate is 'having eagle feathers' (epithet of the arrow), and alone as the name of a mountain range.
Greek 'vulture' has been reasonably explained as a folk-etymology...

...The epithet srat'ew 'sharp-winged'is semantically identical to Latin acci-piter 'hawk <*haku-petr-, with first member more clearly seen in the old word acupedius 'sharp-footed' (Paul. Fest. 9.25 L.) In both of these the 'sharp' word *haku- shares some of the semantic range and distribution of the 'swift' word *hoku-.

Just as rjipya- in Vedic is an epithet of both large birds of prey and horses, so in Greek, the adjective... 'swift-flying' is used both of horses (Iliad) and hawks (Hesiod), as well as... 'swift-winged' of the latter and... 'swift-footed' of the former. The hawk is also in Homer... 'swiftest of flying creatures'.

...compare also Avestan... 'eagle-feathered (arrow)'. Rigvedic rjipya-is itself used substantially as an epithet for 'arrow' in the kenning-like line 6.67.11c... 'When the cow (gut bowstring)s send whizzing the swift-flying (arrow)'. In Homeric Greek arrows... are 'swift'... and 'feathered'...

We may recall finally the old comparison for IE poetic language made first by Schulze 1933:124: the Vedic name rjisvan- 'having swift dogs' beside 'swift-footed dogs' (Il. 24.211)...

The younger compound type... either in the sense 'swiftfoot' or 'whitefoot' is the name of both Hector's and Menelaus' horse; it is there already in Mycenean times as podako / podargos /, probably in the latter sense, as the name of an ox at Knossus. Note also Odysseus' dog "Argos (with regularly retracted accent) Od. 17.292.

We find thus a nexus in poetic language of semantically similar and partially overlapping epithet systems for horses, dogs, large birds of prey, and arrows, all compounds or noun phrases with phonetically similar and partially overlapping lexemes as first member:

*hrgi-

*hoku-

*haku-." [Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon]

Quote :

"Om is the bow, the self is the arrow, brahman is its aim. It is to be hit by a man whose mind is not distraught; and then, as the arrow [becomes one with the target], he will become one with brahman." [Mundaka Upanishad, 2.1.4]

Stuart wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

The Hunter [mind], the Arrow [self], and the Aim [self-possibility] all becoming one; the ouroboros 'almost' catching its tail, a near self-absolute:

We are the result of our ancestors. To know ourselves, therefore to know our mind, we must know them. That analogy clearly designates that we have a path, one which is highly focused and yet easily led astray.

Yes; why Plato and the Upanishads both feared the wavering mind the most. Only instead of the eagle/arrow, their tropes were that of the chariot, the charioteer, the horse [arrow], and the reins, esp. given, knowledge is a Re-membering, a recollection.

In the Meditations on hunting, Gasset makes one other good point drawing in Plato and the Philosopher-King;

Gasset wrote:

"There is one of the hunter's senses which must work indefatigably at all times. That is the sense of sight. Look, look, and look again; at all times, in all directions, and in all circumstances.

Look as you go along; look while you are resting; look while you are eating or lighting a cigar; up, down, back over the ground you have just covered, at the hill crests, at the ledges and dells, with binoculars and the naked eye, and always be aware that if you know how to look, the beast that you have not found in eight hours of backbreaking work can appear within a hundred meters, when just at sunset, worn out and cursing your interest, you are taking off your shoes and caring for your aching feet in the door of a shelter or a tent. It's good advice.

The hunter's look and attention are completely opposite to this. He does not believe that he knows where the critical moment is going to occur. He does not look tranquilly in one determined direction, sure beforehand that the game will pass in front of him. The hunter knows that he does not know what is going to happen, and this is one of the greatest attractions of his occupation. Thus he needs to prepare an attention of a different and superior style - an attention which does not consist in riveting itself on the presumed but consists precisely in not presuming anything and in avoiding inattentiveness. It is a "universal" attention, which does not inscribe itself on any point and tries to be on all points.

There is a magnificent term for this, one that still conserves all its zest of vivacity and imminence: alertness. The hunter is the alert man.

But this itself- life as complete alertness-is the attitude in which the animal exists in the jungle. Because of it he lives from within his environment.
The farmer attends only to what is good or bad for the growth of his grain or the maturation of his fruit; the rest remains outside his vision and, in consequence, he remains outside the completeness that is the countryside. The tourist sees broadly the great spaces, but his gaze glides, it seizes nothing, it does not perceive the role of each ingredient in the dynamic architecture of the countryside. Only the hunter, imitating the perpetual alertness of the wild animal, for whom everything is danger, and sees each thing functioning as facility or difficulty, as risk or protection.

And this is how we can understand the extraordinary fact that, with maximum frequency, when a philosopher wanted to name the attitude in which he operated when musing, he compared himself with the hunter. "Thereutes," Plato says over and over again.

Notice, for example, how Plato in the Republic (432 B), trying to define justice-and for him defining is always like capturing the thing embarks in depth and with delectatio nervosa [a thrill of delight] on the metaphor of the hunt:


SOCRATES: Now then, Glaucon, we must post ourselves (we philosophers) like a ring of huntsmen around the thicket, with very
alert minds, so that justice does not escape us by evaporating before us. It is evident that it must be there somewhere. Look out
then and do your best to get a glimpse of it before me and drive it toward me.

GLAUCON: I only wish I could! It will be enough if I can see what you point out as _vou guide me.


SOCRATES: Come on, then, I'll encourage you!


GLAUCON: That I will, provided that you lead me.


SOCRATES: Very well, but, by heaven! Look how obstructed and overgrown the woods are. What a dark and hard-to-see place! But there's nothing to do but go forward.


GLAUCON: Let's go then!


SOCRATES: By the devil! I think we have a track, and I don't think it will escape us now.


This is, by the way, authentic proof that Plato himself had hunted. That passage could not have been written by a man who had not often been out in the woods obsessed with detecting prey. To translate this section exactly I had to use the most forceful terms of hunting slang, for example, "drive the game toward me"-literally, "press it against me." Note, furthermore, how often Socrates, pedagogue-hunter, tells Glaucon to look, look, look, and to be alert. In fact, the only man who truly thinks is the one who, when faced with a problem, instead of looking only straight ahead, toward what habit, tradition, the commonplace, and mental inertia would make one assume,keeps himself alert, ready to accept the fact that the solution might springfrom the least foreseeable spot on the great rotundity of the horizon. Like the hunter in the absolute outside of the countryside, the philosopher is the alert man in the absolute inside of ideas, which are also an unconquerable and dangerous."

Satyr recently had written this too;

Satyr wrote:

"Every creative act is a creation and a destruction...all bubbling out of my excesses, which are the byproduct of my lack, which has appropriated them for a time.
I need to rid myself of their pressure.
I need to express my essence, to connect with otherness, to take and to give.
I am interaction - interaction is not something I do, it is what I am.
There is no "I" which just happens to act...the act is the "I", and is nothing if not that.

I am lack, movement, seeking, wanting...directing, seeking a fulfillment, a finality, a teleos.
I am Becoming wanting to Be."

I-Am-My-Action.

Buddha wrote:

"My action is my possession, my action is my inheritance, my action is the womb that bears me, my action is the family to which I am related, my action is my refuge."

To Look at the prey is to be unwavering, is to stop your mind no-where, and keep that continuity Hunter-Arrow-Aim as a singular flame, or to put it another way, if you become Obsessed with your prey, if you let your mind 'to stop' somewhere, 'rest' it on the prey, you've become the prey and the hunted;

Castaneda wrote:

"A hunter knows he will lure game into his traps over and over, so he doesn't worry. To worry is to become accessible. And once you worry you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to." [Don Juan]

Satyr wrote:

And that quote is the basis of all misunderstandings when dealing with moderns.
For them to care, and/or to need, is something one experiences, as if there is Self which 'just happens to care and need' at some point in time/space.
The actor is not other than the act.

Value is a temporal judgment, made by a temporal becoming.

Yea...

Nietzsche wrote:

"For just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was free to express strength or not to do so. But there is no such substratum; there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.

The popular mind in fact doubles the deed; when it sees the lightning flash, it is the deed of a deed: it posits the same event first as cause and then a second time as its effect.

Scientists do no better when they say "force moves," "force causes," and the like—all its coolness, its freedom from emotion notwithstanding, our entire science still lies under the misleading influence of language and has not disposed of that little changeling, the "subject" (the atom, for example, is such a changeling, as is the Kantian "thing-in-itself"); no wonder if the submerged, darkly glowering emotions of vengefulness and hatred exploit this belief for their own ends and in fact maintain no belief more ardently than the belief that the strong man is free to be weak and the bird of prey to be a lamb—for thus they gain the right to make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey.

When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence: "let us be different from the evil, namely good!

To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength." [GM, 13]

Lyssa wrote:

Satyr wrote:

Heraclitus said....


I went in search of myself.

The wise is one, knowing the plan by which it steers all things
through all.

Satyr wrote:

Man hunting his soul... "I went in search of myself"...

And is this not part of hunting otherness?

I know the world by knowing myself

Because....I AM the world.
How do I know rabbits?
By knowing one rabbit.
How do I know this one rabbit?
By seeing myself in it.

Yes....to know self is to know your nature...essence.

Nietzsche wrote:

"The human being knows the world to the degree that he knows himself, i.e. its depths unveil themselves to him to the degree that he is astounded by himself and by his own complexity." [Notes]

Quote :

"Let men worship him [the self] as Self, for in the Self all these are one. This Self is the footstep of everything, for through it one knows everything. And as one can find again by footsteps what was lost, thus he who knows this finds glory and praise." [Brihadaranyaka Up., 1.4.7 ]

The Self is the footstep of everything, for through it one knows everything...

Man as the hunter, is a drawing closer and closer to his ego,... while the female is the unconscious that has a longer range, more fluid, flowing away from an ego... more dis/personal... while man is most personal.

Nietzsche wrote:

"Consciousness-beginning quite externally, as coordination and becoming conscious of "impressions" - at first at the furthest distance from the biological center of the individual; but a process that deepens and intensifies itself, and continually draws nearer to that center." [WTP, 504]

Satyr wrote:

"Order is a short-term affair.

To harness time-space man must simplify it to a singularity. This singularity might be called an absolute....the most immediate.

Simplification/generalization is the reduction of time/space to an abstraction, a here, now, thing....a model

Philosopher is a hybrid:
Male/Female must be strong in a philosopher, with the masculine dominating so as to focus on the abstraction, as a model here/now.
The right balance between masculine/feminine must be present."

Camouflage and the two kinds of Hunters:

Detienne-Vernant wrote:

"The octopus is renowned for its mêtis. Oppian compares it to a burglar who emerges under cover of night to catch his prey by surprise. The octopus is elusive: its mechane enables it to merge with the stone to which it clings. Not only is it able to take the shape of the bodies to which it clings perfectly, but it can also imitate the colour of the creatures and things which it approaches. The elusive octopus is a being of the night. Like Hermes, called nuchios, it too knows how to disappear into the night, but it is a night which it can itself secrete, as can other creatures of its kind and, in particular, the cuttle-fish or sepia. The cuttle-fish, which is dolometis and dolophron, is reputed to be the most cunning of all the molluscs. It possesses one infallible weapon to deceive its enemy and to fool its victim, namely its ink which is a kind of cloud (tholos). This dark liquid, a viscous cloud, enables it both to elude its enemies and to capture its adversaries, which become its victims, as if in a net. It is this ink, this dark cloud, this impenetrable night which defines one of the essential features of the octopus and of the cuttle-fish.

Like the fox, the octopus defines a type of human behaviour: ‘Present a different aspect of yourself (epistrephe poikilon ethos) to each of our friends .... Follow the example of the octopus with its many coils (poluplokos) which assumes the appearance of the stone to which it is going to cling. Attach yourself to one on one day and, another day, change colour. Cleverness (sophie) is more valuable than inflexibility (atropie)’. Atropie is strictly opposed to polytropie, as immobility and rigidity to the constant movement of whoever can reveal a new face on every different occasion. The suggested ideal is the polutroposone, the man of a thousand tricks, the epistrophos anthropon who can turn a different face to each person.

But the octopus is not simply characteristic of a particular type of human behaviour; it is also the model for a form of intelligence: the poluplokon noema, intelligence ‘with many coils’. This octopus—like intelligence is to be found in two types of men in particular—the sophist and the politician, whose qualities and functions in Greek society stand in opposition and yet are complementary just as are the separate spheres of speech and action. For it is in his shifting speeches, his poikiloi logoi that the sophist deploys his words of ‘many coils’, periplokai: strings of words which unfold like the coils of the snake, speeches which enmesh their enemies like the supple arms of the octopus. For the politician taking on the appearance of the octopus, making himself poluplokos, involves not only possessing the logos of the octopus but also proving himself capable of adapting to the most baffling of situations, of assuming as many faces as there are social categories and types of men in the city, of inventing the thousand ploys which will make his actions effective in the most varied of circumstances.

From some points of view the polutropos man, as a type, is hard to distinguish from the man whom the Lyric poets call the ephemerosone. He is a man of the moment, a man of change: now one thing, now another; he shifts and slides from one extreme to the other. The ephemeros man is characterised by his mobility just as is the polutropos. However, although both are mobile creatures, on one essential point they are radically different. One is passive, the other active. The ephemeros one is an inconstant man who at every moment feels himself changing; he is aware of his state of flux and veers at the slightest puff of wind. One expression used by Pindar to describe him is ‘the prey of crafty time’ (dolios aion), time which can make a life alter course. The polutropos one, on the other hand, is distinguished by the control he possesses: supple and shifting as he is, he is always master of himself and is only unstable in appearance. His volte-faces are a trap—the net in which his adversary becomes entangled. He is not the plaything of movement but its master. He manipulates it and other people and does so all the more easily in that he gives the appearance of being ephemeros. The distance separating the polutropos and the ephemeros man corresponds exactly to that between the octopus and the chamaeleon: while the metamorphoses of the latter are produced by fear, those of the octopus are the result of its guile. Its changes, Plutarch observes, are ‘a manoeuvre (mechane) not a purely physical effect ... this is a way of eluding its enemies and seizing the fish upon which it feeds’. It is this ability of the octopus and the polutropos one, the man of a thousand tricks, to assume every form without becoming imprisoned within any, that characterises supple mêtis which appears to bow before circumstances only so that it can dominate them more surely."

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Camouflage and Erotic Dissimulation

Quote :

"In order to escape the aggressor, Plutarch contends, cuttlefish spreads its ink in the water and makes it opaque, in the same way in which the Homeric gods would turn the visibility of the air into the invisibility of mist in order to save some humans from their enemies in the battlefield.

According to Plutarch, then, the animal’s camouflage imitates that of the Homeric gods. However, the opposite direction of imitation is more likely to have taken place: it was by observing and imitating the way in which animals escape their aggressors through camouflage that the ancient Greeks ‘invented’ the camouflage adopted by the Homeric gods.
Some animals’ capacity to create a perfect dissimulation of their body in the environment (that is, a perfect resemblance between their body and the environment) has been imitated by the semiotic strategies the ancient Greeks devised in order to obtain the same communicative (negative) effect.

Camouflage is a modality of the invisible, a modality of perfect resemblance with the environment, often modelled after the ‘invisibility’ of other natural elements.

In both cases the divine intervention — through mist — creates a spatial-temporal breach in the chaotic scene of the battle, delays the pleasure of killing. Hence, the camouflage of the body of the victim enables the eroticism... The erotic connotation springs from the fact that the body of the victim is subtracted from its aggressor when violence is about to reach its apex, like when an object of erotic desire is offered and then absconded in a striptease." [Massimo Leone, Resemblance and Camouflage in Greco-Roman Antiquity]

The hunter-gamer is a gambler, and the gambler's camouflage is to keep that ace up his sleeve...

Quote :

"Easily seen is the fault of others,
But one's own it is hard to see.
The faults of others
One winnows like chaff,
But conceals one's own
As a cunning gambler, the defeating throw" [Dhammapada, 252]

Verbal Camouflage.


As Orwell pointed out in 'Politics and the English Language',
"political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."

Orwell wrote:

"It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its Vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’, since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped ‘false gods’.

The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness.

We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull." [1984]

Orwell wrote:

"You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words–scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone.
what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take “good”, for instance. If you have a word like “good”, what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well–better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of “good”, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning; or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words–in reality, only one word.

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.
The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’" [1984]

Semantic Camouflage and the emptying of meaning:

Baudrillard wrote:

“Smile and others will smile back. Smile to show how transparent, how candid you are. Smile if you have nothing to say. Most of all, do not hide the fact you have nothing to say nor your total indifference to others. Let this emptiness, this profound indifference shine out spontaneously in your smile."

Baudrillard wrote:

“This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion” [The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures]

Baudrillard wrote:

“The neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.” [Simulacra and Simulation]

Baudrillard wrote:

“Hell of simulation, which is no longer one of torture, but of subtle, maleficent, elusive twisting of meaning...” [Simulacra and Simulation]

Camouflage and Memetic Dissimulation:

Baudrillard wrote:

'Reality has been so obscured by the ‘ecstasy of communication’ of our culture of hyperreality...'

Quote :

"Camouflage operates through the medium of representation itself – through art, dance, music, poetry, architecture, and so on. Camouflage does not entail the cloaking of the self, so much as the relating of the self to the world through the medium of representation. Aesthetic expressions of all kinds, from high art to popular music, from jewelry to urban planning, operate as a form of mediation between the self and the world.

Camouflage, then, is understood here as a mechanism for inscribing an individual within a given cultural setting.

Camouflage is not restricted to the visual domain. It can be enacted within the domains of the other senses, especially smell and hearing. Perfume is precisely part of the masquerade of self-representation that defines the operations of camouflage. So too is music which is often used to provide an ambient setting. Indeed, it is precisely the example of walking into a space and hearing music that makes us feel ‘connected’ that illustrates the true potential of camouflage. Yet camouflage is primarily visual, at least within the realm of human behaviour.

Camouflage always involves a process of ‘becoming other’ and seeing the self in the other. This urge to become other is a deeply strategic one. It concerns a broadening of horizons and an opening up to the world. It amounts to an overcoming of a condition of melancholic introspection that might otherwise isolate an individual. It establishes connections. It serves to counter the horror vacui of a depersonalised, atomised self in a society of increasing alienation. Camouflage may therefore provide a sense of belonging in a society where the hegemony of traditional structures of belonging has begun to break down. This aesthetic sense of belonging can be compared to other modes of attachment, such as religious devotion or romantic attachment.

Camouflage in this sense involves a form of ‘surrender’ – a becoming one with the other – and a subsequent ‘overcoming’ – a differentiation of the self from the other. It involves a form of ‘dying’ – of taking a step backwards – and a subsequent form of ‘living’ – a reinforcement of our élan vital, and a consolidation of our sense of self. It is precisely through a tactic of feigned death that life is secured. The principle behind this strategy is that of the ‘sacrifice’, whereby life folds into death, and vice versa. Maggots thrive off the dead, whilst all vital energies are premised on their own extinction, like fireworks fading in the night sky. Just as life is born of death, so death is the end product of life. The desire for life or death is ultimately grounded in its opposite.

Camouflage therefore operates within a double moment from a temporal perspective. It involves a primary operation which appears wasteful and nihilistic, but which ultimately prepares the ground for a secondary operation that is productive and beneficial. In economic terms it is a form of ‘investment’ – an initial ‘loss’ offset against an long-term ‘gain’.

Camouflage also operates at different levels, a manifest level and a latent level. It involves a play between the two, where the manifest level becomes a decoy for the latent level. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the latent level may be disguised by the manifest level. The latent level may, of course, never be revealed – just as a spy may never be detected – but it remains the primary horizon of operations.

Camouflage is therefore a form of masquerade, and yet the structure of its operations appears more complex when we grasp the subtleties of the masquerade. For the simple perception of a decoy manifest level concealing a ‘true’ latent level is disrupted once we accept the ways in which the manifest level might influence the latent level. The masquerade itself may come to be constitutive of an identity. In other words, far from merely concealing a ‘true’ identity, a decoy identity might begin to influence that identity. Representations of the self, and the consequent responses to those representations will have some bearing on the nature of the self. For, if we accept that identity is constituted to some extent by a form of ‘specularity’ – reflection of the self in the other – interaction with the world will influence possible modes of behaviour.

Camouflage can therefore be read as an interface with the world. It operates as a masquerade that re-presents the self, just as self representation through make-up, dress, hair style etc., is a form of self re-presentation. But this need not be a temporary condition. The surface masquerade may have a lasting impact on questions of identity. Far from denying any true sense of self beneath, it may actually contribute to a sense of self. Camouflage should therefore be seen as a mechanism for constituting human identity through the medium of representation."

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Camouflage, Modern Existence...

Quote :

"Camouflash – is a free combination of the word camouflage, which means concealment, disguise, and the word flash which means a spark, moment, short message. The combination of these two words determines the subject of the exhibition, which is the condition of the contemporary man in the context of camouflaging oneself, and concurrently wishing to become known, to shine. This specific schizophrenia is by no means marginal, as proved, e.g. by the various reality shows, some of which attract artists, too.

Rationale: The contemporary culture is rather pictorial in nature, idea has been marginalised. The plethora of pictures in our lives induces a sense of being lost, or immunises us against them by creating and augmenting trite reception of such pictures, which, consequently, makes them neutral (e.g. another murder). Obviously, such trite and superficial reception is also true of religion, art and its products.

On the other hand, noticeable social behaviours indicate an urge to appear in the media in a short flash of an advertisement or reality show. This urge replaces the essential question: “what idea do I want to pass across?” or “what is my principal message?” People appear to participate in the social and cultural life, but on the level of entertainment, rather than inclusion or reflection on human existence. The present-day society seems to be complex, however, following the thought of Jean Baudrillard, it is rather a mass that is “an opaque nebula whose growing density absorbs all the surrounding energy (...), to collapse finally under its own weight. A black hole which engulfs the social.”

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Camouflage of the prey... "Indifference" as a great Tactic.

Quote :

"Many caterpillars defend themselves not by striking fear in the hearts of their predators, but rather indifference. The large maple spanworm looks like a twig; the viceroy caterpillar looks like a bird dropping. This is not as exciting as looking like an anaconda, but when you are very small, and wingless, one of your main goals in life is to not be exciting. And speaking of unexciting—I think it is safe to say that woolly bears have one of the least advanced defense mechanisms among insects, although theirs is the reaction with which I most strongly identify: when distressed, the woolly bear rolls up into a ball." [Amy Leach, Things That Are]

Lyssa wrote:

From the howl to the bark... domestication of speech occurs...

Gasset wrote:

"From the zoological point of view, the domesticated animal is a degenerate one, as is man himself. In the artificial existence which man offers, the beast loses not a few of his instincts, even though he refines others which man needs and tries to select in breeding. The space left in the animal's life by the loss of these instincts is filled by teaching and training. But generally this is something that is only trivially and superficially understood. Through training man introduces certain forms of human conduct in the animal. That is, domestication partially de-animalizes and partially humanizes the beast. This is to say that the domestic animal is an intermediate reality between the pure animal and man, which, in tum, is to say that something like reason operates in the domestic animal.

The difference between the howl and the bark is a radical one. The howl is comparable to man's cry of pain, an expressive "gesture."

Through it, as through the other spontaneous gestures, the subject's emotiona! state is manifested. The word, on the other hand, in so far as it is strictly a word, expresses nothing; rather it has meaning, it signifies something.* Comparably, it happens that the howl and the scream are involuntary, and when not involuntary, they are feigned, imitated. One cannot want to give an authentic "scream of fright"; one can only wish to repress it. Words, on the other hand, are not emitted except voluntarily.

That is why howling and screaming are not speech. Well then, barking is an elementary form of speech. When a stranger passes by a farmhouse, the dog barks, not because anything hurts him, but because "he wishes to tell" his master that a stranger is near. And the master, if he is acquainted with his dog's "dictionary" can learn more details: the passerby's disposition; whether he is passing nearby or far away; if he is alone or in a group, and something I find frightful, whether the traveler is rich or poor.

Through domestication, therefore, the dog has acquired in his bark a quasi-language, and this implies that a quasi-reason has begun to germinate in him.

Notice how admirably well informed is the old saying that the Spanish mountain people use to describe the barking of the pack. They call it "talking." The veteran hunter finally learns perfectly the rich vocabulary and the subtle grammar of this canine quasi-language.

Man and dog have articulated in each other their own styles of hunting, and this represents the height of hunting. Cynegetics-hunting with dogs-has become the perfect example of the art, so much so that the proper meaning of the term cynegetics has finally been applied to the entire art of the hunt, whatever its forms may be.** The qualification of the dog for hunting, once achieved, was an invitation to generalize the procedure, and, in fact, man tried to involve other animals in his hunting.

Cynegetics has its counterpart in falconry or hunting with hawks.
The bird of prey is also a great hunter on his own. Of course, his style is very different from that of the dog. These heraldic birds are au'stere, ill-tempered gentlemen who maintain themselves at a distance like marquises of old, so that it is not possible to become intimate with them.

Their domestication was always precarious. They continued to be beasts.
The bird, in general, is not intelligent enough and does not have enough plasticity. To know this one has only to notice the rigidity of its corporeal form, which makes the bird an inexpressive, geometric, hieratic animal.
This does not take away from the fact that, up close, birds of prey are perhaps the most imposing figures in all zoology. The flat and well-combed head of the eagle, just a lever for the inexorable beak, has always been the emblem of empire. The eye of the falcon, all pupil, is the hunting eye par excellence, the alert eye. The bird of preygoshawk, falcon gentle, gerfalcon-is, as authentic aristocrats usually are, somber, hard, and a hunter.

But before man hunted with the real bird of flesh and blood, he had already invented the mechanical bird. It would fit well into the intellectual scheme of early man, if, as is not unlikely, the arrow represented a materialized metaphor. When the hunter saw the animal gallop off out of his reach he thought that a bird with its light wings might be able to catch up to it. Since he was not a bird and did not have one handy-it is surprising how little attention primitive man paid to birds-he put a beak on one end of a stick and feathers on the other; that is, he created the artificial bird, the arrow, which flies swiftly through the air toward the flanks of the fleeing great stag." [Meditations on Hunting]

Women generally would best keep a dog around so as to enable an authentication of a potential mate.
Personally, I've never needed to rely on a dog to sniff out an asshole.

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Quote :

"On most nights under the winter moon when we have made our camp, around us echo faint sounds of that other hidden world—the one of meadow and forest in the night. The melody of whip-poor-will, the cry of hunting owl, the scurrying rush of vole and chasing fox. This night, the land is empty. The silence is deep in stark and open heath. It is as if some great razor scraped the life from this sheet of white-edged vellum, leaving only blank." [sinfulfolk.com]

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Arcas hunting

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Vasili perov, Hunter and Artist

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Quote :

"One effect of this interest in the generative powers of rhetoric has been to reaccentuate the distinction between invention and discovery. In both Latin and Greek, the verbs for "invent" (heuriskein, invenire) ambiguously include what are now two senses: that of coming upon what already exists (discovery) and that of contriving something that never existed before (invention). The English verb once included both senses as well, but the former is largely obsolete, and the latter is, according to the OED, the "chief current sense": to create, produce, devise, originate. Invention, especially outside the domain of rhetoric, has come to concern novelty.

In rhetoric, however, the former sense has traditionally been assumed: The rhetor examines a  preexisting inventory of "stock arguments" and "commonplaces" to select those that are most appropriate to the situation at hand. The dissociation between invention and discovery developed during the sixteenth century and hardened with the modernist rise of science, industry, and nationalism, and it is a sign of rhetoric's long obsolescence that it has adhered to the older meaning of invention as discovery. The dissociation was further complicated by Francis Bacon, who declared that "Invention is of two kinds much differing: the one of arts and sciences, and the other of speech and arguments." He went on to explain the difference in memorable terms:

"The invention of speech or argument is not properly an invention: for to invent is to discover that [which] we know not, and not to recover or resummon that which we already know.... Nevertheless, because we do account it a chase as well of deer in an inclosed park as in a forest at large, and that it hath already obtained the name, let it be called invention: so as it be perceived and discerned, that the scope and end of this invention is readiness and present use of our knowledge, and not addition or amplification thereof" (Bacon, 1952 [1605], 13.1.6).

In this view, rhetoric neither discovers nor invents; it can only rediscover or recover. It is not generative or epistemic but "managerial," to use the term Douglas Ehninger applied to eighteenth-century rhetorics, because it selects and deploys proofs already created or discovered by means other than rhetoric. As a managerial art, rhetoric has been concerned primarily with accommodation to situation and audience, that is, with decorum; in contrast, the arts of science, technics, and poetics concern novelty, both that which is discovered and that which is invented.
Recent interest in the generative potential of rhetoric thus challenges a long tradition but also promises much for the revival of rhetoric as a cultural enterprise in an age that reveres technical invention and scientific discovery.

Aristotle uses the metaphor of place in both rhetoric and dialectic to suggest how probable reasoning proceeds in open-ended, contingent situations about matters that do not admit of certainty. Although Aristotle never defines topos (according to Kennedy's editorial note to Rhetoric 1.2.21), it functions rhetorically as a conceptual place to which an arguer may mentally go to find arguments, like Bacon's hunter in the forest. Aristotle's statement that rhetoric is the "ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion" (Rhet. 1.2.1) does not suggest that he necessarily understands rhetoric as generative, but he does intimate in the Topics that reasoning leads to novelty, or at least to something we didn't begin with: "Reasoning is a discussion in which, certain things having been laid down, something other than these things necessarily results through them" (Top. 100a).

The problem that Aristotle was trying to solve in the Physics, according to Henry Mendell, was the relationship of matter (hyle) to form, extension, and change (Mendell, 1987). Place is important to Aristotle here because it is through change of place that we understand motion.

Returning to the context in which Aristotle brought the term topos to bear on both physics and rhetoric, the issue that was central to much of Greek philosophy at the time was the problem of change, or "becoming" genesis (Peters, 1967, 69). After Parmenides, change was understood as paradoxical, and the Platonic commitment to an ontology of unchanging Forms, a metaphysics of Being, was one response to this problem.' Aristotle criticizes Plato's view as too narrow, and in his treatise On Coming-to-Be and Passing-Away (genesis and phthora) he distinguishes several kinds of change. There are three kinds of ordinary change, or metabole: alteration (change of quality), growth (change of size), and locomotion (change of place). In addition, there is change of substance (GC 318b-320a), genesis (orphthora) (his examples include the seed being converted to blood and water coming-to-be or passing-away into air)." This is the only kind of change that can involve the creation of something new. Heavenly bodies are in another realm, a realm of Being, beyond all kinds of change: Unalterable and indestructible, they consist of unchanging "primary substance"-there are no novelties in the heavens, as generations of Aristotle's followers maintained.''- But for Aristotle, both physics and rhetoric belong to the sublunary realm of change, a world of Becoming."

This brief glimpse at the philosophical context suggests how differently Plato and Aristotle must have thought about rhetoric and how each could have conceived invention. In the Platonic world of Being, invention can only be discovery, but in the Aristotelian world of Becoming, it can also be creation; novelty and innovation are possible. And further, only in a world of Becoming can decorum be important, for only in such a world could it be violated; and only in a world of change can kairos be a useful notion, for only there does one moment offer different possibilities from the next. In a world without change, on the other hand, representation is the only rhetorical challenge.

I want to suggest that these virtues for the world of change are elaborations and refinements of an older, less respectable set of intellectual skills, those concerned with finding means to a given end, regardless of whether Aristotle would find that end noble or not. He mentions deinotes, the faculty of "cleverness," which is related tophronesis, but lacks moral scruple (NE 1144a). Cleverness, moreover, is related to the older metis, a quality frequently attributed to Odysseus, the polymetic, or many-skilled, the paragon of craftiness and cunning. Metis is needed by the navigator, the physician, the hunter, the warrior, the weaver, the politician, the sophist; it is the arete of the banausic, not of the aristocrat. In their study of the role of metis in Greek culture, Detienne and Uernant note that although it is essential in a world of Becoming and central to the Greek system of values, operating in a wide and important domain, metis was submerged by the subsequent tradition that emphasized the world of Being, both in the philosophy of the Greeks themselves and in that of their successors. They suggest particularly that Aristotle's discussion ofphronesis retains the spirit of metis and that the sophists occupy a "crucial position in the area where traditional metis and the new intelligence of the philosophers meet" (Detienne and Uernant, 1978, 4).

The earlier mode of thinking that features metis has recently been characterized as a "paradigm" distinct from the philosophical, Platonic, scientific, or Galilean worldview in Western thought. It has been called by several authors the "venatic" paradigm, because it relies on the "epistemology of the hunt" (Eamon, 1994, 281- 285; Ginzburg, 1989, 117).

The venatic, or conjectural, worldview concerns the individual case rather than universal knowledge, probability rather than certainty, qualitative rather than cumulative or quantifiable information, and inferential rather than deductive thought, since it depends upon the reading of signs. As Carlo Ginzberg puts it, behind the conjectural paradigm "we perceive what may be the oldest act in the intellectual history of the human race: the hunter squatting on the ground, studying the tracks of his quarry'. He notes that medicine became the most important conjectural enterprise, with the physician reading symptoms in the individual patient (this semiotic model of medicine is challenged, later, by the scientific, anatomical model). But the politician is an equally instructive exemplar, as shown byThucydides' description of Themistocles, the early fifthcentury Athenian leader who defeated the Persians at Salamis and brought Athens to prominence in the Aegean:

In immediate problems he excelled in forming the best opinion, thanks to the most rapid reflection, and where the future was concerned he also knew how to come to the most correct conclusion on the most distant perspectives. When dealing with any matter he also knew how to explain it clearly; even if he was not familiar with it he nevertheless formed a valuable opinion about it. Finally, even if the advantages and disadvantages were still indiscernible he was capable of foreseeing them as accurately as possible. In short, through his natural resources and facility this man was without equal when it came to improvising whatever was necessary. (Qtd. in Detienne and Uernant, 1978, 313-14)

The context provided by the conjectural worldview casts several features of Greek rhetoric in new relief. For example, the frequent comparisons, especially in Plato, between rhetoric (or sophistry) and medicine, hunting, navigation, and other crafts suggest the continuing presence of the venatic tradition. Aristotle's term ethos also has a venatic source, its early sense being "haunts" or "the places where animals are usually found," according to Charles Chamberlain; Homer, for example, used it to refer to the wild pastureland of horses. By transference to humans, the term came to mean "the arena where someone is most truly at home" and then an essence that resists the influences of others, always with the strong implication of habituation (Chamberlain, 1984, 99). Chamberlain points out that these older senses of the term ethos were still quite present in the fourth century, noting such uses in the Aristotelian corpus and in Isocrates and arguing that Aristotle exploits the historical implications of the term in both his works on ethics.

Aristotle's discussion of arguing from signs also has some roots in this tradition. He draws upon medical examples: "There is a sign that someone is sick, for he has a fever"; "it is a sign of fever that someone breathes rapidly' (Rhet. 1.2.18). His term for necessary sign, tekmerion (1.2.17), is related to the root term tekmar, which Detienne and Vernant associate with the conjectural worldview, particularly as it applies to navigation and divination: A tekmar can be a journey's destination or a celestial sign by which one steers (148).19 The verb tekmairesthai commonly meant to judge from signs, to estimate or conjecture. Even this most certain of Aristotle's sign-terms, then, is closely connected with the world of the hunter and the sailor, in which one lives by one's wits in the midst of uncertainty and change. And the term topos itself, of course, has a strongly geographic primary sense. While I can't support the claim that Aristotle consciously chose his rhetorical terms to make these connections to the world of the hunter, he does show a continuous awareness of and interest in the etymology of his conceptual vocabulary and so is likely to have been aware of the implications I point out.

Venatic imagery persists in Latin and humanist descriptions of invention. It is present in Cicero in a constrained form, in words like odorari, (per)vestigare, and venari, which essentially compare the rhetor to a hound, tracking down proofs or smelling out the situation, as in this example from Antonius's discussion of invention in De Oratore: "In art, in observation, and in practice alike, it is everything to be familiar with the ground over which you are to chase and track down your quarry' (2.147). A more common set of images compares the topoi to the sources or fountainhead of a stream, and a long passage in Quintilian's description of topical invention combines these two images:

"Let us now turn to consider the `places' (locos) ... in the sense of the secret places (sedes) where arguments reside, and from which they must be drawn forth. For just as all kinds of produce are not provided (generantur) by every country, and as you will not succeed in finding a particular bird or beast, if you are ignorant of the localities where it has its usual haunts or birthplace, as even the various kinds of fish flourish in different surroundings, some preferring a smooth and oth ers a rocky bottom, and are found on different shores and in divers regions (you will for instance never catch a sturgeon or wrasse in Italian waters), so not every kind of argument can be derived from every circumstance." (Quintilian, 5.10.20-22)

Walter Ong has shown that hunting imagery was common in Renaissance treatments of topical invention, notably in Agricola and Thomas Wilson. The passage in Wilson is especially vivid:

"A place is, the restyng corner of an argumente, or els a marke whiche geveth warning to our memorie.... Those that bee good harefinders will soone finde the hare by her fourme. For when thei see the ground beaten flatte round about, and faire to the sighte: thei have a narrowe gesse by al likelihode that the hare was there a litle before. Likewise the Huntesman in huntyng the foxe, wil Boone espie when he seeth a hole, whether it be a Foxe borough, or not. So he that will take profeicte in this parte of Logique, must bee like a hunter, and learne by labour to knowe the boroughes. For these places bee nothing elles, but covertes or boroughes, wherein if any one searche diligently, he maie finde game at pleasure." (Qtd. in Ong, 1983, 120)

Ong attributes the Renaissance use of hunting imagery to the secondary use of the Latin term sylva (forest) to mean an abundance or collection of material and of the Greek cognate hyle to mean material or matter as well as its primary sense of felled trees or timber. Thus, Ben Jonson called his commonplace book Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter, and Bacon titled his collected observations on natural history Sylva sylvarum (Ong, 1983 [1958], 118-19).

These Renaissance uses of venatic imagery provided a vocabulary of invention for subsequent discussions of science and technology. As Paolo Rossi notes, in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinking about the mechanical arts, "there was continuous discussion, with an insistence that bordered on monotony, about a logic of invention conceived as a venatio, a hunt-as an attempt to penetrate territories never known or explored before" (Rossi, 1970, 42). Likewise, according to William Eamon, the same image appears "repeatedly in the scientific literature" of the same period, with science portrayed as a hunt for the secrets of nature. Eamon notes particularly that the hunt is a central figure for Bacon, appearing throughout his works as an emblem of his new scientific method, most prominently as Pan's hunt, after the god of hunting. Nevertheless, even as science and technology borrowed this rhetorical imagery and used it to characterize discovery and invention, rhetoric declined, in part because of its inability to account systematically for novelty.  The imagery lost its cultural authority quickly, and accounts of technical-scientific invention turned methodological and philosophical in the later seventeenth century.

Modernist science and technology have a radical understanding of novelty that owes something to Plato's conception in the Meno:

"But how will you look for something when you don't in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don't know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn't know?" (Meno 80d).

Novelty under the Platonic worldview must be absolute, revolutionary, even unrecognizable; it must violate the expectations of decorum. The venatic worldview does not represent such radical novelty satisfactorily, since the imagery of both hunting and navigation presupposes the existence and recognition of that which is sought: Hunters may know what they track or may unexpectedly discover new game, but they do not, presumably, create their quarry.

What novelty might be within the conjectural or venatic worldview has never been fully thought out, but topical invention may be the best working model we have to start with. Unlike philosophical or scientific (or Romantic) models, topical invention relativizes novelty by situating it. Scott Consigny's discussion is instructive here. He suggests that in an inventional art of rhetoric the topos must serve both as an instrument with its own capacities that apply in any situation and as a realm, a specific place where the rhetor thinks and acts (Consigny, 1974, 182). He connects the latter sense of topos to Bitzer's notion of the rhetorical situation (and we might also adduce the Burkean term scene) As a realm, a topos implicates not only subject-matter but also rhetor and audience, reminding us that it is, after all, a rhetorical instrument.

To be rhetorically useful, then, as well as comprehensible, novelty must be situated. Rather than offering the radically new, it must occupy the border between the known and the unknown. It will be just that which cannot be defined or specified beforehand but which can be recognized and understood afterward. The metaphor of the topos captures this requirement by specifying a region of general conception without specifying its exact contents or connections. The Aristotelian topos of degree, or of ways and means, suggests a conceptual shape or realm where one may find-or create-a detail, a connection, a pattern that was not anticipated deductively by the topos itself. The topos is conceptual space without fully specified or specifiable contents; it is a region of productive uncertainty. It is a "problem space," but rather than circumscribing or delimiting the problem, rather than being a closed space or container within which one searches, it is a space, or a located perspective, from which one searches." [Alan Gross, Rereading Aristotle's Rhetoric]

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Aryans are space-creators. The Hunter's landscape, his Topo-graphy emerges with his Metis. His perception for the Kairos, to be able to SEE [theo-rize] the 'right' topography, and seizing that Topos is what gives him his edge.

The Noble Hunter does not just hunt the animal, the prey, but he Creates and Reveals and makes Emerge a whole landscape.

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The Noble Hunter re-unites Invention and Discovery - Art and Science in his art of hunting; he is the seizer of the light - the Ceasar of the Light. His creating a whole world uncovers strata/gems of truth, layers and layers unfolding...
The Roman Temple was a place of such intellectual con-Templa-tion, intellectual hunting... Greek temple columns were such stratas upholding unshakeable layers. Worringer ['Empathy and Abstraction'] refers to the organic movement of their structures trying not to "imitate nature", but representing the fund-ament of organic life itself, the weal of nature, its will-to-growth, to life as its fundament - which is why the sight of such ancient classicism fills us with delight, its austerity of those temples breathes inspiration into us - the mind of the hunter inventing&discovering together, playing with life, the artist and scientist in him hunting each other and weaving a Fabric of thought.

Quote :

"The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours, The sentimentalist himself; while art  Is but a vision of reality.
The study of how to uncover deceptions is also by and large the study of how to build up fabrications . . . one can learn how one's sense of ordinary reality is produced by examining something that is easier to become conscious of, namely, how reality is mimicked and/or how it is faked." [Hesk, Deception and Democracy in Ancient Greece]

Cf. from the Brahman thread - the Vedic Poets as "Hunters" and Pro-methe-an Fashioners/Fabricators of Truth weaving a space, a topography that runs along like the Greek Meander and situating its own destiny, in the relation between vedic Rta and Aletheia;

Quote :

"In view of the attention recently given to the concept of 'text' by literary theorists and philosophers, it may not be out of place to mention, the very notion of 'text' is for the first time mentioned by the seer­poets who composed the hymns. Etymologically, a text is a piece of cloth: textus, from which the word derives, means 'woven', the Latin verb ‘texo,—ere’ meaning weaving of cloth, intertwining or interlocking of any kind of material.
As Roland Barthes said, 'Text means tissue; but whereas hitherto we have always taken this tissue as a product, a ready­made veil, behind which lies, more or less hidden, meaning (truth), we are now emphasizing, in the tissue, the generative idea that the text is made, is worked out in a perpetual interweaving'.

The Vedic poets, while composing their mantras, were aware not only that they were weaving together a fabric but also what was involved in such activity. Addressing this fire within men, the rsi * says, 'I do not know how to stretch the thread and weave the cloth; he, Fire, is the one who knows how to stretch the thread and weave the cloth; we will speak the right words, for he is the immortal light within mortals, the light in the hearts of men, the one source of all thought.'

Another rsi* prays to Varuna* 'May we attain the fountainhead of the Truth that you guard. Do not let the thread break while I am still weaving this thought, nor let the measuring­stick of the workman shatter before its time'.

The ritual offering of this fabric of words to the gods is the sacrifice and this, too, is conceived by these poets as a text 'woven out of seven threads'. A hymn describing the primordial creation of sacrifice by the Cosmic Purusa* says, 'The sacrifice that is spread out with threads on all sides, drawn tight with a hundred and one divine acts, is woven by the fathers as they come near: 'weave forward, weave backward', they say as they sit by the loom that is stretched tight. The Cosmic Man stretches the warp and draws the weft; the Man has spread it out upon the dome of the sky. These are the pegs that are fastened in place; they made the melodies into the shuttles for weaving. That was the model for the human sages, our fathers, when the primeval sacrifice was born.

The verb taksa* is used to describe the poetic activity of making, fashioning or forming; both a poem and a sacrifice are 'made', with heart and mind, as a carpenter works with a chisel." [J.L.Mehta, Reading the Rig Veda]

Quote :

"The Rgvedic verb taks is of particular significance in this regard. Taks means "to fashion, give form to, cut" in the sense that a carpenter (taksaka) fashions a form out of wood. The carpenter does not create the wood; he simply gives shape to a material that already exists. In the same way, the rsi, in saying that he "fashions" the hymn, does not claim that he is "creating" it but rather that he is giving shape to the hymn out of the ''substance" of his divinely inspired cognition. A number of passages compare the rsi's fashioning of a hymn to an inspired (dhira) artisan's fashioning of a chariot. Having fashioned the hymn out of his cognition, the rsi sends the hymn forth through the agency of his own speech, like an artisan sending forth his newly fashioned chariot." [Holdrege, Veda and Torah]

Heidegger wrote:

"The Greek for ‘to bring forth or to produce’ is tikto. The word techne, technique, belongs to the verb’s root tec. To the Greeks techne means neither art nor handicraft but rather: to make something appear, within what is present, as this or that, in this way or that way. The Greeks conceive of techne producing, in terms of letting appear. Techne thus conceived has been concealed in the tectonics of architecture since ancient times. We think of creation as a bringing forth. But the making of equipment, too, is a bringing forth. Handicraft.

The word techne denotes rather a mode of knowing. To know means to have seen, in the widest sense of seeing, which means to apprehend what is present, as such. For Greek thought the nature of knowing consists in aletheia, that is, in the uncovering of beings. It supports and guides all comportment toward beings. Techne, as knowledge experienced in the Greek manner, is a bringing forth of beings in that it brings forth present beings as such beings out of concealedness and specifically into the unconcealedness of their appearance; techne never signifies the action of making."

Heidegger wrote:

"A building, a Greek temple, portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of the rock-cleft valley. The building encloses the figure of the god, and in this concealment lets it stand out into the holy precinct through the open portico. By means of the temple, the god is present in the temple. This presence of the god is in itself the extension and delimitation of the precinct as a holy precinct. The temple and its precinct, however, do not fade away into the indefinite. It is the temple-work that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being. The all-governing expanse of this open relational context is the world of this historical people. Only from and in this expanse does the nation first return to itself for the fulfilment of its vocation.

Standing there, the building rests on the rocky ground. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the mystery of that rock’s clumsy yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence. The lustre and gleam of the stone, though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun, yet first brings to light the light of the day, the breadth of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm towering makes visible the invisible space of air.

The steadfastness of the work contrasts with the surge of the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging of the sea. Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are. The Greeks early called this emerging and rising in itself and in all things phusis. It clears and illuminates, also, that on which and in which man bases his dwelling. We call this ground the earth. What this word says is not to be associated with the idea of a mass of matter deposited somewhere, or with the merely astronomical idea of a planet. Earth is that whence the arising brings back and shelters everything that arises without violation. In the things that arise, earth is present as the sheltering agent.

The temple-work, standing there, opens up a world and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground. But men and animals, plants and things, are never present and familiar as unchangeable objects, only to represent incidentally also a fitting environment for the temple, which one fine day is added to what is already there. The temple, in its standing there, first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves. This view remains open as long as the work is a work, as long as the god has not fled from it. It is the same with the sculpture of the god, votive offering of the victor in the athletic games. It is not a portrait whose purpose is to make it easier to realize how the god looks; rather, it is a work that lets the god himself be present and thus is the god himself..."

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In ancient Indian architecture, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] was meant to symbolize a Meditative Penetration into the inner sanctum - the "Adyton", and emergence/exit into the light - a way out. Meditation is a kind of metis - an overcoming of an a-poria.


Against the master-slave Hegelian 'Dialectic', the Noble Hunter does not operate within a domain, but is Essentially a space-creator.

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Light of Apollo

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The Noble Hunter does not just select the Prey, the Animal in his "theoria", in his "seeing", but he selects a whole Landscape, and this as I've quoted elsewhere:

Lyssa wrote:

Quote :

"At ecosystem level, biodiversity is the library for the ecological systems of cor- respondences, which are involved in the development and organisation of ecosystems. If we destroy the information, i.e., if we interrupt networks, we destroy the regeneration capacity of the ecosystem. Conversely, if we disable ecosystem-func- tion, the information loses its sense; there will be no context for its interpretation. These two metasystems of correspondences, the genome and biodiversity, are in correspondence with each other. So besides a taxonomy of species, we should be developing a taxonomy of circuits.

It is not the unit of selection that we should be worrying about, but the unit of survival. The minimal unit of survival is not the gene, nor the breeding individual, the family line, the population, the sub-species or some similar homogeneous set of conspecifics. The minimal unit of survival is the organism plus its environment (Bateson, 1972, 1979), including organisms of the same or different species and the communication networks that they constitute.

What evolves and develops in the living world are systems of correspondences.

5th Idea

“It is the context which evolves.” (Bateson, 1972: 155)
What survives are “systems of ideas in circuit” (Bateson, 1972: 461)." [Hoffemeyer, Bateson: Living Systems]

That line of thought could perhaps be used to develop the idea of a tight structure between genes and memes; 'paideia' was the name of breeding not just individuals but whole environments along with them - what distinguishes noble individuality [his "nature as the sum of all past nurturing"] from modern stirnerite atomic individuality.
The individual and the environment selecting each other returns to the natural flow.

WLNO [war-like-no-other] is a call for a selection of a whole environment.

The Noble Hunter's Techne does not break the continuity of his Topography.

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Lastly, its interesting that the word Demeanour is related in Greek to the word Schema;

Quote :

"Neither should the appearances which this man fashions as he walks with a sullen face along the walls be properly considered as signs of self-control, but rather as signs of misanthropy. In my opinion, a man whom no misfortune has befallen, and who is in no lack of the necessaries of life, but who none the less habitually maintains this demeanour, has reviewed the matter and reached the conclusion in his own mind, that to those who walk in a simple and natural way and wear a cheerful countenance, men draw near unhesitatingly with requests and proposals, whereas they shrink from drawing near in the ®rst place to a ̈ected and sullen characters. This demeanour (schema), then, is nothing but a cover for his real character, and he shows therein the wildness and bitterness of his disposition." (Demosthenes)

Apollodorus believes that the demeanour (schema) of his opponent in public life is relevant to the case in question. The term schema is a fundamental expression in Athens' agonistic culture of rhetoric, performance and surveillance, not least because it develops technical senses which connote the learning and composition of `postures' and `figures'.

Apollodorus makes it clear from the outset that he believes Stephanus' appearance to be manufactured or affected. Stephanus is described as walking by the city walls with a sullen facial expression and he fashions appearances (ha peplastai). Apollodorus assumes (perhaps deliberately and falsely) that this spectacle is familiar to the audience. The ascription of the adjectives to a subject or subject-group seems to connote a range of emotions manifested in a frowning facial expression; solemnity, sadness, sullenness and anger. It is hard to determine exactly what sort of expression Apollodorus is seeking to convey. However, it is clear that Stephanus is represented as having some kind of fixed countenance of gravity. Apollodorus thinks that the audience would be likely to interpret this expression and other unspecified airs and graces as `signs of self- control' (semeia sophrosunes). Stephanus gives the appearance of being self-controlled, moderate and modest; his body-language is easily correlated with a moral and political disposition which was greatly valo- rised by Athenian culture.

According to Apollodorus, everybody is likely to infer from a person's facial and bodily signs to an internal character or disposition. Of course, this is a rhetorical move on Apollodorus' part and can give us only partial insight into the extent to which Athenians deployed a `folk' physiognomics as an embedded social practice." [Hesk, Deception and democracy in Ancient greece]

Consider what Satyr says in the Armour thread;

Satyr wrote:

"Arrows are metaphors for karma, directed by words.
Your fate, your reputation, your destiny, now determined by gossip, distant hidden voices whispering (shaping arrow heads, finding rocks), and flinging them to injure from a safe distance.

The armor protected the wearer from these words.
A karmic wall.
The metal shell was a detachment, a barrier, a discriminating possibility.
It kept the rabble out.

The warrior did not have to be a good fighter...because he was a walking talk; a Frankenstein, shuffling towards the other, untouched by arrows, by the masses throwing rocks from the shadows.
Like Frankenstein he was made up of many different parts, all connected artificially, creating a monstrosity.
The quality of the technique was judged by how well it emulated the human form, how it made the observer forget that there was an intervention artifice between the eye and the moving spirit.
Against words a linguistic defense; an iron clad rhetoric - rigid, detached, artistic but unaesthetic, anesthetic.

Two types of modern warfare emerges - dialectics.
One was used by the commoner, who found stones, or could artificially manufacture multiple arrow-heads to fling at the other from the safety of a detached distance, amplifying his weakness into a arrow-pointed force.  
The other used a more refined from of distancing: the outer shell, detaching himself from words, creating an alternative space within space/time.

Both compensate for a lack of artistry.
Both types of "fighters" compensate for an absence of fighting talent.
Both uses distance, when warrior approach and engage, using the weapon, the artifice, the word, as an extension of their arm: a surgical instrument."

In the beginning was the Action.

Our Karma is our Fabric - our threads of Action; the Schema we "wear" shows us who we are.
Our Demeanour sets us apart.

The Fabric-ation of the Modern Schemers, the Armour they wear dis-continuing body and act, inner and outer Topos sets them apart.

Our Topography has metaphorical continuity as seen in our I.E. history - the outer and inner topos was a continuous hunting meditation on the chariot, for example - outer warfare as well as inner mind. The temple itself was imagined as a winged chariot meant to transport the hunter to the highest regions of the light, a sun-winner [cf. Indra Kagis' 'Socrates Ancestor'];

Quote :

"The term cakra is a well known Indo-European word: it is related to Greek kuklos from which comes English cycle, Latin circus, Anglo-Saxon hveohl and English wheel. It is combined not only with numerals but with words such as kāla ‘time’ in kālacakra, a powerful ritual; with Viṣṇu in Viṣṇucakra, referring to the god’s wheel or disk; with dharma in dharmacakra, the wheel of dharma, etc. It is often combined with forms of the verbal root vṛt-‘turn’, ‘revolve’, ‘set into motion’. Compare Kikkuli’s vartana and Latin vertere, German werden, English—ward in ‘toward’, ‘outward’, etc. Vedic has related nouns such as pravartana and parivartana, ‘turning’ and ‘setting into motion,’ dharmacakra ‘the wheel of dharma’ and cakravartin ‘turner of the wheel’ = ‘ruler’.

The Rigveda derives from the terminology of chariots and spokes some of its most sublime puzzles: RV 1.164, in which verse 11 declares: ‘The wheel of time (cakraṃ ṛtasya) with its twelve spokes turns around and around [in] the sky and never ages.

In Rigveda (RV 7.64.4),

after invoking Mitra and Varuṇa, the poet describes himself as ‘he who constructs the high seat of the chariot in his mind’ (manasā).

The power of the mind is applicable to the charioteer himself. RV 6.75.6 says:
‘Standing on his chariot, the excellent charioteer leads the horses wherever he wishes.
Praise the power of reins: the ropes follow his mind.’

Verse 8 refers to a cart called rathavāhana, a movable platform on which the much lighter chariot (ratha) is transported. It could not be done across a mountain pass, but would be useful in the plains, an idea also transported by mind.

Buddhism made use of Vedic terms and concepts not only because it was part of the current language. It also inherited and made judicious use of the spoked wheel (cakra) of early Indo-Aryans and Indo-Europeans. It accounts for the name of the Buddha’s first exposition of his doctrine as Dharma-cakra-pravartana, ‘the setting into motion of the wheel of Dharma’. Pravartana is derived from vartana which comes from the verbal root vṛt—and was used around 1380 BCE in Kikkuli’s Mitanni treatise to refer to the ‘turns’ that horses are taught to take in the course of their domestication.

The cakra occurs in Vedic not only as a wheel but also as a weapon. Rigveda 2.11.20 says of Indra:
avartayat sūryo na cakram, ‘he hurled forth his cakra like the sun.’
The avartayat of ‘hurled forth’ is again derived from the verbal root vṛ- of pravartana. In English, such a cakra is called a discus. It has a disk-like shape and refers to the disk of primordial resplendence which is the sun." [Staal, Discovering the Vedas]

Quote :

"Man-tra [mind-Armour]

1. First harnessing the mind, Savitā, Creating thoughts and perceiving light, Brought Agni from the earth.

2. Harnessing the gods with mind, They who go with thought to the sky, to heaven, Savitā instigates those who will make great light.

3. With the mind harnessed, we are instigated by god Savitā For strength to go to heaven.

4. Priests of the lofty wise priest harness their mind, harness their thoughts. He who alone is possessed of knowledge distributed the priestly duties: Great be the praise of god Savitā.

5. I harness with honour your ancient hymn. The verse go like Sūras on their way. All the sons of immortality who have ascended to divine abodes are listening.

6. Whose journey the other gods follow, praising the power of the god, Who measured the radiant regions of the earth, He is the great god Savitā.

7. God Savitā, impel the ritual! Impel for good fortune the lord of ritual! Divine Gandharva, purifier of thought, purify our thoughts! Today may the lord of speech make our words sweet!

8. God Savitā, impel for us this ritual, Honouring the gods, gaining friends, Always victorious, winning wealth, winning heaven!  (Taittirīya Saṃhitā 4.1.1) [Staal, ib.]

Speech and Space were continuous co-relations,

Quote :

"The immortal Goddess has pervaded wide space, depths and heights." [Staal, ib.]

Perhaps why, the ancient Roman Temple was the sacred space of the Orator;

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Following excerpt uses a passage by Seneca to link melancholy and acedia from the displacement and transformation of Hunting to Gladiatorial games.

Interesting is how the spectators are Feminized to the level of the beasts, hungry with blood-lust, when deprived of their hunting instincts.

Modern spectatorship of "reality TV", etc. or the culture of Spectatorship per se can be seen a down-grading from warrior to pacifist culture, from Hunters to pure Consumers. Baudrillard called this age the culture of Obscenity, of the Spectacle, where de-thymotization aggravates the hunger for thymotic release in violent games, sports, life-styles that therefore become hyper-Eroticized, and to see and being seen;

Baudrillard wrote:

"In reality there no longer is any identifiable pornography, because the essence of the pornographic has passed into things, into images, into all the techniques of the visual and the virtual -- all of which, in a way, deliver us from that collective phantasmagoria. We are doubtless merely play-acting obscenity, play-acting sexuality, as other societies play-act ideology, as Italian society, for example (though it is not the only one), play-acts power. Thus, in advertising, it is merely the comedy of the bared female body that is being played out. Hence the error of feminist recriminations: if this perpetual striptease and sexual blackmail were real, that would be unacceptable. Not morally unacceptable, but unacceptable because we would be exposed to pure obscenity, that is to say, the naked truth, the mad pretension of things to express their truth (this is the nauseous secret of TV `reality shows'). Fortunately, we have not reached that point. The hyperreality of everything in our culture and the High Definition which underlines its obscenity are too glaring to be true. And so they protect us by their very excess." [The Perfect Crime]

The Spectator is a modern melancholic feeling the absence, the void in his being; his need for gore replacing the vitality of the Hunter.

Passive seeing takes over from the Hunter's Vigilance inducing the modern stupor and Lethargy towards self, towards life...

Quote :

"Xenophon (Cynegeticus 7) asserts the educational value of hunting and claims that “hunting brings bodily health, improves sight and hearing, is an antidote to senility, and excellent training in the art of war.” Plato, in the Laws, provides an echo of Xenophon’s utilitarian explanation when he praises hunting “of four-footed beasts” with horses and with hounds and with “men’s own bodies.” Plato admires the chase and the shooting and believes that “those who hunt in this way have their thoughts fixed on god-like manhood..." [Tooher, Melancholy, Love and Time]

Quote :

"Here is Seneca’s description of events in the arena, of the “hunting,” in a public space, of criminals (Epistles 7.2–6).

"But nothing is more damaging to good character as the habit of lounging at the games; for then it is that vice (vitia) steals subtly upon one through the avenue of pleasure (per voluptatem). What do you think I mean? I mean that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman—because I have been among human beings. By chance I attended the mid-day exhibition, expecting some fun, wit, and relaxation,— an exhibition at which men’s eyes have respite from the slaughter of their fellow-men. But it was quite the reverse. The previous combats were the essence of compassion; but now all the trifling is put aside and it is pure murder. The men have no defensive armor. They are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain. Many persons prefer this programme to the usual pairs and to the bouts “by request.” Of course they do; there is no helmet or shield to deflect the weapon. What is the need of defensive armour or of skill? All these mean delaying death. In the morning they throw men to the lions and the bears; at noon, they throw them to the spectators. The spectators demand that the slayer shall face the man who is to slay him in his turn; and they always reserve the latest conqueror for another butchering. The outcome of every fight is death, and the means are fire and sword. This sort of thing goes on while the arena is empty. You may retort: “But he was a highway robber; he killed a man!” And what of it? Granted that, as a murderer, he deserved this punishment, what crime have you committed, poor fellow, that you should deserve to sit and see this show? In the morning they cried: “Kill him! Lash him! Burn him! Why does he meet the sword in so cowardly a way? Why does he strike so feebly? Why doesn’t he die game? Whip him to meet his wounds! Let them receive blow for blow, with chests bare and ex- posed to the stroke!” And when the games stop for intermission, they an- nounce, “A little throat-cutting in the meantime, so that there may still be something going on!”"

Seneca’s vision of free time is conditioned by an abhorrence of gladiatorial combat, and this passage, to be sure, is as much a confirmation of that as it is of anything else. Yet the focus is preeminently on the spectator and, at that, on the deleterious way that these spectators have chosen to occupy their free time (and thus on how they have forced Seneca to ruin his).

Seneca’s spectators, by contrast, are driven by a corrupt pleasure (voluptas), which he judges as little more than a perversion. Along with this lack of pleasure goes an absence of play: the closest thing to play in this vignette is the contest between the combatants. But, as it is to the death, it can hardly be termed play. Most alarmingly, the “games” viewed here are not self-sufficient—they do have a purposeful end. That is death, which is desired by the spectator and suffered, invariably it seems, by the combatants. The spectators, as I say, become awful and passive hunters.

The free-time experience of these spectators is markedly different to that of Achilles and Ajax in other ways. The intense concentration that Achilles and Ajax exhibit as they play their game is not apparent in the game’s spectators. The Romans, so Seneca accuses, lounge about as they watch others perform. This occupation of free time also does not entail the mild social interaction afforded by the board game. The focus of the spectator is above all on the combatants, as Seneca describes it. Other spectators are irrelevant to the game. The complicity of Exekias’s contestants, which brings with it a personal involvement in the game (through competition with the other contestant) and even a mild physical involvement with the game, is absent from the experience of the leisure seekers in Seneca’s evocation.

Seneca’s Romans watch; Exekias’s Greeks participate. Furthermore, the Roman spectators are denied, as Seneca states, even relaxation of the form that could flow from their game. The best that one could say of the Roman spectacles, as Seneca depicts them, is that they provide a form of escape through their being utterly different to the forms of quotidian experience that constitute the basis of the spectators’ lives.

The stress on eyes and on watching in Seneca’s passage is striking. It demonstrates, on the part of the spectators, a remarkable estrangement or alienation from their chosen form of leisure. The occupation of free time for these spectators, because it ceases to be participatory, because it is characterized by the eyes, becomes a passive experience, one of watching and of mere entertainment.At the Roman games the emphasis shifts from spectacle to spectator. Rather than providing an alternative to the stresses of daily life, this, we assume, becomes a real escape.

One other important link between Seneca’s passage and the works of Grattius, Martial, Oppian, and Nemesianus exists in the problematization of power. Consider Seneca first. His leisure seekers attempt to exercise considerable power. The combatants are “thrown” to the spectators, who “demand” the mode that the fight is to follow. They insist, in the morning sessions at least, on high and murderous standards from their combatants (“Kill him! Lash him! Burn him! Why does he meet the sword in so cowardly a way? . . . Whip him to meet his wounds!”). In the lunchtime sessions, they demand “a little throat cutting.” Thus their power is, even if vicariously, of the highest order, for they control life and death. No doubt their lives outside the game place had no such privilege.

This desire to exercise power and control within their free-time activity places a remarkable slant on leisure, for, despite the violence in the arena, the experience of the spectators is utterly passive. Our spectators seek passively in the arena that which they are denied in daily life. Grattius, Martial, Oppian, and Nemesianus exhibit this absence of control as well. The stark contrast, then, between the passivity of these powerful, hunting spectators and the terrible activity of the powerless, hunted contestants highlights the twin notions of power and control. In life outside the arena the majority of these spectators exercise no such prerogatives. The arena, it seems, offers an alternative, an escape from the arbitrary powerlessness of their own lives. (The arena, we could guess, provides an affirmation for fragile senses of the self.) In this they can, vicariously, play out the puzzles and inequities forced on them by real life. It is hard, once again, not to compare the didactic poet Nemesianus (or even Martial in 1.49). The chaos and violence of an everyday life to which he felt victim drove him to a surrogate form of leisure violence, hunting. Can it have been so different for these spectators?

The implied concomitants of the form of free time described by Seneca—and by Grattius, Martial, Oppian, and Nemesianus—are of a type with those that we have observed repeatedly when surveying such conditions as melancholia, boredom, eros, suicide, and the experience of time ’s passing. The qualities of which I am thinking are passivity, yielding, withdrawal, isolation, and estrangement. These qualities could be said to characterize the relationship of Seneca’s spectators to the contestants..."[Toohey, Melancholy, Love and Time]

What's that third one?

Uh, hold on. I'd have to think for a second.

Looks like a Mughal...

Mughal moustache hangs downward or top to bottom.
Could be a perspective depiction from Mahabharata.

I've been told that the language on the top center ornament is "nonsense" and it was probably by some "noob."

"Sylva" would be a good name for a girl.


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