Picture this: Two dogs face each other. On the floor between them is a bowl on which is printed the word "Skippy." Dog One says, "I insisted on the quotation marks."
Skippy is the "dog" who knows the ontological instability of his status, the arbitrariness of the name imposed on him by his "masters."
The Cynics were a small but influential school of "philosophers" in ancient Athens) Current dictionary definitions are:
1) an advocate or adherent of the view that virtue is the only good, & that its essence lies in self-control and independence. (whether this is related to existentialism is a good question.)
2) one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest.
Just as one thought precedes another, then returns again later to close the parenthesis, itself parenthesized by other thoughts, and well as by the thoughts of others (until you die); and the mind may be "parenthetical" to the brain; and so on; so Cynical Thought is parenthetical thought, elaborated in the cracks and crevasses, gaps and lapses, at the points of juncture or transition, of the main stream of (dominant, hegemonic) thought. The concept of "margins" and marginality in relations to issues of power and self-articulation and representation has been used quite a bit in recent years. This made sense within the discourse of de-colonialization as that discourse developed from strictly political and economic problems into the realm of the "creative arts" and culture in general. But maybe it's time we lay it aside. For one thing, the use of "marginalized" (to describe the condition of oppositional or oppressed groups, for instance) depends upon a spatial metaphor; it is a move away from the corporeal and toward the abstract;
THE FISH DISCOVERS THE OCEAN. Hubris & Debris:
For years, I've been publishing chapbooks of my writing and distributing them mostly myself, at readings and to interested persons. This was the method by which that small, privileged and elite minority -- the literati or intelligentsia of 18th century western Europe -- circulated stimulating, possibly controversial ideas. Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream by Diderot, and the Confessions of Rousseau convey some of the flavor and fervor of that scene. But that was 18th century Europe. So we must make adjustments, invent, adopt and adapt. Self-sufficiency and knowledge play a crucial role. [see Hard Times by Charles Dickens.]
These two seem to contradict one another, don't they? A paradox. There seems to be some chain (however tenuous) linking a system of 4th century b.c.e. thought, from Socrates -- Antisthenes -- Diogenes of Sinope -- Crates of Thebes and of course Zeno, to the Stoicism that later infiltrated Rome and eventually has far-reaching import in medieval and modern ethics.
And what has any of it to do with dogs? Their "lowliness" in relation to humans? Their needy gregariousness? Their (potential) ferocity? Or the hierarchical nature of their social organization (the pack)? Who knows.
Question: Can any intelligent person be anything but cynical at the perverse self-destructiveness of the human race?
Observation: Just as a fanatical atheist is a religious fanatic (the inversion factor) Lurking just beneath the skin of a cynic is a lapsed ... what, idealist, romantic?
It's my party and I can cry if I want to. The question is: Do I want to?
Another question: What are the limits of cynicism?
Some bins:
-- Cogitus Interruptus: on media distractions/distortions, info-phobia / info-mania: everything being mediated [...] documented, engulfed... / Noam Chomsky in Turning the Tide suggests that the average person's databank and opinions on celebrities or sports far outpaces what they are willing to retain about world or even local affairs.
-- Colonization "consumption" and the appropriation of human activity, meaning, value, etc. by the Spectacle and selling it back to you (e.g. "reach out & touch someone" by using telephone equipment; buy "home made" soup in a can ..) [see The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff for an exhaustive critique and analysis of he current version of this.]
reading list: Herb Schiller, Jerry Mander etc.
If all culture is colonized
1) where can we find/make space for "play", areas of resistance, antidotes?
-- the gift economy as an antidote
2) how do we recognize such "windows of opportunity"?
-- is that what the internet is/has been?
-- when did/will it cease to be so?
-- what will be the next window?
-- The Immune System: on food, the body, health, environment
The reality or "fact" of the immune system (a relatively recent discovery-invention in western medicine) opens out into research that could potentially cure cancer, AIDS, so much human suffering. The metaphor of the immune system opens into the whole subject of Self and Other
that has occupied a large sleeping-car on the philosophical train of thought.
Self/other not only in biological but also social, cognitive, psychological, and historical terms.
Being, myself, one of the "post-immunes", a post-immunity individual -- no, not AIDS or even HIV+ what I had for forty years was a low-level, non-fatal, difficult to diagnose, chronic, sometimes debilitating, basically invisible disability called Fibromyalgia Syndrome.
It might be called "low screening capacity." Being equally maladapted to the physical environment of late 20th century material civilization, which is in many ways toxic, voracious and wasteful, and to the mental environment, which is intrusive, fragmented, distracting and narcissistically-oriented. I have a low screening capacity not only for petrochemical molecules for radio, tv, music, words; other people's emotions and expectations often feel like weather to me, palpable. Assaulted daily by the contradictory/coercive messages of corporate consumer fascination, I respond with this demi-coherent multi-logue. As they used to say, "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."
It begins (or ends) here, with a membrane (hypothetical, at best)
The I-Thee divorce.
The I / Not-I conundrum.
The line drawn in the sand.
Therefore I, Marina LaPalma, do recount to you the following story:
"The old queen went to the bedroom, removed all the bedding and put a pea on the bed. She then piled up 20 mattresses on top of the pea and added 20 eiderdowns over those. The priness now had to spend the night on this bed. The next day, when the queen asked how she had slept, the astonishing princess replied, "Oh, I hardly slept a wink! There was some hard thing in my bed and I tossed and turned all night and now I'm all black and blue." So the old queen at last believed that the girl was a real princess and allowed her son the prince to marry her."
This is from The Man of Jasmine and Other Texts (Atlas Press, London, 1994) by Unica Zurn! (could I have invented such an improbable and wonderful name?) A gifted artist, schizophrenic, bi-polar flyer, lover of Hans Bellmer, friend of other surrealists such as Henri Michaux. Zurn) concludes this passage with, "One needs incredible resources to be the princess on pea." "And that is my shortcoming, that is my flaw."
Note: Lunch served on a flight from Denver to San Francisco in June, 1995, the meal includes:
1) Tropicana apple juice from concentrate. Ingredients: filtered water, concentrated apple juice, 1/20th % potassium sorbate (a preservative) and ... get this ... "contains concentrates from Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Argentina" ... one wonders what global conglomerate put together such a blend? how can this be feasible: or just physically possible let alone economically viable???
2) Ken's Steak House (salad) Dressing contains: vegetable oil (soybean and canola( [at least it's not "may! contain one or more of the following..."], vinegar, water, parmesan cheese, corn syrup, buttermilk, sour cream, egg yolks, salt, spice, onion, garlic, phosphoric acid, natural flavor (whatever that is), polysorbate 80, vegetable gums (uh, which vegetables?), potassium sorbate, and sodium benzoate. This is called "Parmesan and Peppercorn" dressing. Why not call it buttermilk dressing or spice dressing or any of the other ingredients, why highlight those two?
the sheet pasted in a library book with a return date stamped on it is a piece of ephemera worth saving? I always look at these a some point while reading a library book, to see how often it has been checked out previously.
Nicholson Baker's "The Trashing of America's Great Libraries" (The New Yorker, 4/4/94.) Baker writes
and here is the quotation:
“Again, lest we become confused and forgetful, the function of a great library is to store obscure books. This is above all the task that we want libraries to perform: to hold onto books that we don’t want enough to own, books of very limited appeal, unshielded by racks of Cliff Notes or ubiquitous citations or simple notoriety. A book whose presence you crave at your bedside or whose referential or snob value you think you will need throughout life, you buy. Libraries are repositories for the out of print and the less desired, and we value them inestimably for that. The fact that most library books seldom circulate is part f the mystery and power of libraries. the books are there, waiting from age to age until their moment comes. And in the case of any given book, its moment may never come -- but we have no way of predicting that, since we are unable to know what a future time will find of interest.”
To conclude with an a la carte amuse bouche:
"A plain fact cleanly spoken by a woman's tongue is not infrequently perceived as a cutting blade directed at a man's genitals." [Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. NY: W.W. Norton, 1976. p.213]