Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The doctrine of 'meaninglessness' is a prevalent one, a pervasive one.

But it seems not just a doctrine or some localised error. Once it's seen as an aspect of the age, of modernity itself, more of the culture can be understood, this age of making sense, finding truth and attempts to re-connect somehow with something lost, an age, a bloodline or some new source of energy.

But, in general terms, this 'meaninglessness' is used by various people, who I think are not really thinking things through, or use limited terms, as a means to give expression to essential nihilism: the operative, deep-seated and 'painful' nihilism.

Are you suggesting meaning, or your own comfortable wood fire perhaps, is achieved by just thinking things really through and use more clever and rich terms? Perhaps you're just preaching your own romanticism, your own protection against Gmork and his Master Void in the Never Ending Story.

As we 'come into it' (I believe) we 'join' with the consciousness of other conscious beings, perhaps those who have achieved vast levels of consciousness unimagined by us. We enter into a distinct and special 'world' that is not tied to the physical and biological world, which is 'meaningless' insofar as it is just processes operating in mathematical relationships (to put it that way).

Such world is highly symbolic - and always was. It's also the place where meanings live, breed and are embodied in some sense. But it's not a true world - either. Home is where our joins are the most plenty; it's our real.

To me, what is generally termed 'philosophy' is utterly inadequate as a tool to undertake such analysis-interrogation.

Philosophy is not a tool, it is that analysis-interrogation in action.

The problem is the problem of our modernity. We are completely unable to get ahold of what it means to have life, to be alive. We are in a kind of 'living death' with no way to resurrect that is full and meaningful. So, we smolder...we achingly smolder never quite bursting into flame but never quite dying.

Of course you also could mean to say you are not able to resurrect the fullness and meaningfulness you once knew, or thought you had?

The living dead are just the ones who don't know they have died yet, refusing to lie down and give way

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert wrote: "But it seems not just a doctrine or some localised error. Once it's seen as an aspect of the age, of modernity itself, more of the culture can be understood, this age of making sense, finding truth and attempts to re-connect somehow with something lost, an age, a bloodline or some new source of energy."

My impression of GF, with its particular emphasis, is that it discerns and attempts to locate a 'real real', a more real real, and wishes to affix itself to that more real real. The object, I gather, is to live more truthfully, more authentically, and to exist in a current of life (or what would you call it?) that is more down to earth, more honest, less destructive and unconscious than the consumer society, headed up by 'Woman'. If I have read David correctly, there are promises attached to the sacrifices required to know that more real real, and he uses basically Eastern terms: to have an authentic experience os Self is to receive well-being. Not different from the yogic concept: Self-contact (dimishment of contact with false self) produces 'bliss' (ananda). Very many times I have heard him make such promises to aspirants of this Buddhist praxis.

So, this 'attempts to re-connect somehow with something lost' (the original and vital self) and possibly a 'new source of energy' (however one would describe it).

The person who does this, the person who moves in this direction, is an individual who has been significantly crushed under the wheel of mechanized society (a society that has disconnected from authentic, alive roots). It is both an act of rebellion (to rebel against modern trends) and one of ultra-conservatism (to radically decide to live only in The Real, no matter what the cost).

'Sense' is there, it simply has to be. Otherwise it would make no sense to take any opposing actions; to take a stand against, to seek a more real real.

So, I do not think 'you' are in any way on the outside of these questions. It seems to me that you have come to recognize a kind of bankruptcy within your own cultural traditions and that you turn away from them with a look of disgust on your faces: a rather typical manouvre. In this Modernity we refer to loosely, that radical denial of one's own matrix is a real thing and to one degree or another we have all participated in it. We grew dissatisfied with our own sources and so we hiked over the mountain to some other source that did not produce that bitter face, and then we try to 'take up residence' there. Doesn't that seem a little suspect to you?

Diebert writes: "Are you suggesting meaning, or your own comfortable wood fire perhaps, is achieved by just thinking things really through and use more clever and rich terms? Perhaps you're just preaching your own romanticism, your own protection against Gmork and his Master Void in the Never Ending Story."

When I said 'thinking through' I mean perhaps 'thinking holistically'. GF generally presents and insists on a praxis of radical cutting away of parts of self. It has located 'delusion' in aspects of self and seeks to cut them off. What this allows for is a fragmented self to dominate perspectives, viewpoints, suggested activities, etc. The 'richer terms' would be the totality of persons.

Diebert writes: "Philosophy is not a tool, it is that analysis-interrogation in action."

In our culture, it seems to me, philosophy is a partial effort, a predominantly mental effort. It is the activity of part of a person but not the whole person. One of the criticisms I have of philosophy as it is conducted here is that it is obviously lopsided. There IS a whole person there, somewhere, but that whole person is not doing the speaking. What speaks is a partial person, a 'Spock' as it has recently come up. How does one conduct philosophy in such a way that it is also religion? (the ideal of religion: action in regard to a profound appreciation of 'the way things are', the orientation of the individual toward sacred living).

Diebert writes: "Of course you also could mean to say you are not able to resurrect the fullness and meaningfulness you once knew, or thought you had?"

The fragmentation of self is something I and all of us have had to live with and deal with. We are the outcomes of that fragmentation. We are all attempting to work this out, I think. Attempting to discover and reorient ourselves to the more real real. The question seems to be what elements we include or exclude.

Diebert writes: "The living dead are just the ones who don't know they have died yet, refusing to lie down and give way."

So, what is this 'lying down and giving way' in your view? There are two kinds of death: one is to die because you can't get to proper nourishment which is wasting away. The other is something 'authentic' and part of a greater process: the turning away from unreal nourishment and dying to the false. To die to the false presages, doesn't it, being reborn in the Real.

I think that everyone wants this, everyone recognizes they suffer without it (they die or starve). The whole conversation that takes place on GF is about this!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

My impression of GF, with its particular emphasis, is that it discerns and attempts to locate a 'real real', a more real real, and wishes to affix itself to that more real real.

And never doubt your impressions! Ever! :-)

The object, I gather, is to live more truthfully, more authentically, and to exist in a current of life (or what would you call it?) that is more down to earth, more honest, less destructive and unconscious than the consumer society, headed up by 'Woman'.

To some, the result will certainly appear that way. But the terms used here are wholly relative and can become easily deceiving.

If I have read David correctly, there are promises attached to the sacrifices required to know that more real real, and he uses basically Eastern terms: to have an authentic experience os Self is to receive well-being.

It's possible to call the seeing of how anything real is being conceived: the "more real real". But that's merely a logical concoction though. Authentic experiences as opposed to unauthentic experiences, or reception of well-being or unwell-being, one should not be too concerned about in this context.

So, this 'attempts to re-connect somehow with something lost' (the original and vital self) and possibly a 'new source of energy' (however one would describe it).

I don't think those are Eastern terms or concepts at all. There's nothing "lost" or "original self" .

The person who does this, the person who moves in this direction, is an individual who has been significantly crushed under the wheel of mechanized society (a society that has disconnected from authentic, alive roots). It is both an act of rebellion (to rebel against modern trends) and one of ultra-conservatism (to radically decide to live only in The Real, no matter what the cost).

Philosophy could be said to have grown out of the disconnection, somewhat tragically, as a cumulation of severance, from the philosophical viewpoint at least. Again it's implied by you, without any backup, that there's an "original" connection to authentic living roots somewhere, deep down, in our past, in our soul to retrieve somehow.

to take a stand against, to seek a more real real.

The problem of the modern age is having too much real. And the desire for even more. It's really a contemporary thing as far as I can tell.

We grew dissatisfied with our own sources and so we hiked over the mountain to some other source that did not produce that bitter face, and then we try to 'take up residence' there. Doesn't that seem a little suspect to you?

No, it sounds like what people always have been doing. But philosophizing humans do something entirely different! They forfeit any place to rest. By all means, do point out any resting places you perceive in any wannabe philosopher around here. You would be doing them a favour.

GF generally presents and insists on a praxis of radical cutting away of parts of self. It has located 'delusion' in aspects of self and seeks to cut them off. What this allows for is a fragmented self to dominate perspectives, viewpoints, suggested activities, etc. The 'richer terms' would be the totality of persons.

The self is fractured by definition and it only desires and generates more division: the "selfish" act. The "totality" of a person is a fiction. But I almost forget: you're so much into fiction of course!

There IS a whole person there, somewhere, but that whole person is not doing the speaking. What speaks is a partial person, a 'Spock' as it has recently come up.

You're chasing the wind, a whole wind! It's actually great, these disembodied philosophising teletypes posting away. How else to ever approach the formless in the conversation? How else to challenge distraction and mindlessness?

Attempting to discover and reorient ourselves to the more real real. The question seems to be what elements we include or exclude.

No, the question is how something becomes real in the first place, and not the content or location, or how to deepen, lighten, lower, include or exclude anything.

So, what is this 'lying down and giving way' in your view? T

Knowing how dead you are already! The pretence, the vanity: astounding!

[Kelly Jones]

The earth cracks up with laughter.

[Kelly Jones]

Another of women's vices:

State of Mind

The delight which women in particular, and especially the less enlightened, have in terrifying children with all sorts of imaginary notions about a man who comes and takes them, etc. (as today, May 5, out in the neighbourhood of Hirschholm, I heard a girl tell a little child that it must not go too near the water, that there was a man in the water who would take it, that merely looking down into the water was enough to be taken — basically a profound observation) hangs together (disregarding that it is a means for getting children to be quiet) with the selfishness which rejoices or is stimulated at the sight of a child anxious about something which one is himself not anxious about, whose nothingness one knows himself.

When a man does something like this, you will see that he is likely to give the whole thing a comic touch. But woman has a secret rapport with anxiety, and she is stimulated by seeing the child's actual anxiety.

— Kierkegaard