"Where the liar has lied to himself".Monsieur Guy Debord wrote:The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.
Very good stuff, BTW. I just ordered my own copy. I especially relate to the rather horrible *fact* of (the) 'autonomous movement of the non-living'. Still, to have this *fact* in front of us, if we could really take it in, would I think really sober us up. Beyond all the imagery, beyond all the fase fantasy, the absurdity, the trickery, there is only the 'you' and the 'me'. Maybe there will come a day when only the Great Man (ubermench) will have the strength of soul to look directly into the eyes of another, to allow that person to *really be*, and through seeing to help that person seen to become *really real*. It is a minor, local thing I suppose, but I have distinctly noticed in situations of contact with people (functionaries, extensions of the robots whom they serve: cash machines, chiming computer systems, strange articulating arms holding computer screens) that we conduct our business while avoiding actually looking at each other. Words are said, yes, even friendly words (while the plastic or the bills change hands) but ever more there is a disinclination to look into the eyes of the other person. So, is this a 'nihilism' of the present? in which we have become blind to seeing (in any meaningful way) the 'other'? If we are not seeing the Other, if we are not in substantial, meaningful relationship with the Other, what possible value and meaning does anything have? One would eventually desire to 'check out' from such a non-existence: life in the autonomous movement of the non-living. Although it is certainly not a new idea---a new, radical alternative---I am now more than ever convinced that the hardest and yet most rewarding act is to come face to face with another person, and concurrent with that is the will to weild a knife in which the unreal imago is sliced through. I am actually specifically dealing with a situation in which many of the persons seem terrified of *real contact* except one unique being who shines through this atmosphere of non-present persons lost on their mental spectral horizons 'in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished'.
I believe I feel and see what Nietzsche is speaking of (as he looks upon the horizon within his own person at whatever he is talking about), but I would also approach the tone of it with some caution. He is speaking in explorer's tones, those who venture beyond the confines of walls, to cross oceans, or even to leave the confines of our own earth-atmosphere. But is that really what he means? Is that really what he would have wanted? What if the most difficult act of man right now is just to be present with himself and with other persons as I have described above? What if many, many activities, goals, aspirations (those ambitions that drive whole incarnations) is a missing of the point?Nietzsche wrote:...although the horizon is not clear, it seems clear enough for our ships to set sail again and venture out towards new perils: the sea of knowledge is re-opening itself to new pioneers; maybe the open sea has never offered so many new promises.
It is true that the Christian focus was always in a 'to-come' event, the radical overturning of the present. But it is also true that a large part even of the Pauline message has to do with being present with other people. Deciding, choosing to make people (those converts like oneself and those who could become converts) REAL, considerable, valuable. There is a strange polarity-duality in operation in Christian praxis. One part is this sense (which movingalways expresses and which I riffed on in my post, above) that there is a 'more real real' that hovers over us, encapsulates us, into which we will emerge (when?). And the compelling mission of coming into substantial and meaningful contact and relationship with others. To be 'saved' seems to me, now, to be willing to be present! This Nietzsche quote, if stripped a wee bit of its 'there-on-another-shore' tone, is another means to express 'salvation'. It is not at all an unreal goal or a fantasy goal, but seems the hardest act to carry off in life. Is it not, in truth, a kind of Grace? I mean, can we actually set our own will to it? Is it given to us or do we strive for it and achieve it? (That would be the essence of the 'spiritual' question about it).Diebert wrote:While the main Christian horizon was always centered around the after-life and the finality of redemption and forgiveness ("now) and being saved ("soon enough"), while helping ones neighbors "in sight", there's a deeper human functioning behind this though: one being in need of a future, a hope, a seductive, deceptive type of expectation to power the engines of heart and mind. It's the real secret of youth of course...
While it is true that we are ever more compelled to substitute the unreal for the real and that we become blind to the fact of our present, the Heralds still function: something that communicates to us from a long way off, something shrouded, something mysterious, some luminous thing which is to say some flickering of life itself. But even that, at least how I see things, must be made real through the choice of simply becoming present for another.Diebert wrote:Only remains of faith, in progress, change, angels or Christ, like conceptual toys, keep drawing us in, becoming less convincing by the minute. Cynicism and atheism are the necessary worms to finish this trembling mirage.
First, the attempt at preaching and missionary-work must, at least I think so, be considered as the creative attempt of the severely threatened individual to maintain aliveness. It is, as I have expressed, the act of a desperate individual in desperate times. You seem to feel any activity of this sort is futile, and that the *problem* is something fundamental to the self itself: we are the problem and cannot ourselves be the cure for the problem. I am not convinced that *everything* is merely a preaching that is only 'clinging to some old shadow', or, even if it is, we have yet to make that shadow (of possibility) real, by becoming real. The question, again, is in interpretation. You seem to give a illusory power to this 'nihilism', a supernatural strength it may not in fact have. For you, it seems, all is just 'drifting while clinging to shadow-substance', and I would suppose THAT is where you would fall into the attractive whirlpool of a neo-Zen Buddhism? There is nothing, no center, nothing 'real', no value: just the swirl of some unknowable stuff in an eternal (but meaningless) Tao? Is this not another octave of nihilism? (That is, if the words I've written in my summation of your philosophy are on the mark...and they may not be.)Diebert wrote:Of course we still have the "spectacle" in the sense of Guy Debord, and even he appears to see possibilities to counter this "spectacular" alienation, to regain autonomy and sovereignty somehow, which seems to be also the mission of many preachers around these premises. But the prophet of nihilism will, no, has to point out this hope is passé , nothing more than a clinging to some old shadow. Nihilism has now changed fundamentally time itself: the horizon for real and imaginary events. And by changing that base line, everything attached has to shift with it. That way nihilism enables the decline of meaning, the decline of the ability to signify outside ones private boundaries ("idiocy") unless one grabs and drifts with some of the remains around us. For a short while.
An interesting Guy Debord 'idea', which looks like a surrealist-magical activity: Dérive.
And Détournement (or 'Culture Jamming').