Is the problem with Postmodernity that it represents a degeneration of Modernity...

you want to read virilio among others for sure if you haven't yet

glhf

Cool I'll check it out
>among others
Whom?

Bump for once

for general problems concerning technology and postmodernity? i mean it's not a short list, and i'm always sort of nervous about suggesting reading lists on Veeky Forums.

first of all, it's a safe assumption that all of the Big Guys you hear about are worth at least some of your time. the Big Guys are Big because they have depth + breadth. for technology and modernity you want to digest marx and heidegger both to some degree. hegel also ofc. nietzsche always. there's a shitload of continental theory to wade through but some familiarity with those guys is going to if not give you all the answers you are looking for directly at least some sense of what other guys or areas you will be interested in.

i will shill *hard* for deleuze also. hard hard. marshall mcluhan i like a whole lot. land at some point i suppose. kind of depends on where you are. reading marx won't turn you into an sjw. i obsess mightily over capital but it wasn't always so and i hope it won't always be either.

but i mean if you brush up on your hegel, marx, heidegger, freud and nietzsche you'll be in a good way to turn over more stuff.

pic rel is good. there's tons of this shit & again, it depends on what kind of stuff really blows your hair back: economics? culture? technology? b/c it's all connected. personally i love pretty much all of it, so i'm ok with wasting my life thinking about it. it only gets more interesting over time. scary also. but theory is way way cool imho & worth it in the end.

hope that helps? if there's a more specific thing you're into i might be able to recommend something to go with it.

Thank you really for such a reply; I should have noted that I'm familiar with Nietzsche and I actually love Deleuze as well (have not read anti-oedipus though); I spent a lot of time with the continental critical theorists. Marshall McLuhan should be essential desu. I'm interested in something current though you know? Like the Neoreactionaries are to me going in the wrong direction. Who is seeking to repair Modernity and not to explain it? Maybe I should read anti-oedipus but it seems to couched in 60's freak culture. I honestly feel like if I want to read about this I will be forced to write it myself; but I'm a mechanic and work all the time. Sorry for blogposting; have you read Deleuze's book on masochism? Also I'm curious if all this has made its way into fiction ever.

>Is the problem with Postmodernity that it represents
it doesn't

Pls explain

my pleasure

>haven't read anti-oedipus
bro
run don't walk
AO is insanely good
it is couched in the 60s but deleuze is god-tier & everything he writes is incredible, esp C&S

>Marshall McLuhan should be essential desu
no dignity. mm that dude, pic rel
it was actually Veeky Forums that helped me to realize this
Veeky Forums is great like that
>mcluhan: art should be there for the training of perception and judgment
i unironically love this man to frightful degrees

>I honestly feel like if I want to read about this I will be forced to write it myself;
maybe you should write something! it's all about machines...

>Like the Neoreactionaries are to me going in the wrong direction. Who is seeking to repair Modernity and not to explain it?
i hear you on this. i think i understand NRx but i'm more on the fix-via-explanation side of things rather than the fix-via-ideology side of things. ideology is always the thing which must be resisted b/c that is what helps us think and not be imprisoned by our own aesthetic fantasies &c

fixing things > making things worse because reasons
& learning is part of fixing
>critical engineering fy

criticalengineering.org

>Sorry for blogposting
i will not accept this apology, i've done far worse

>have you read Deleuze's book on masochism
not yet. i'm trying to soak that stuff in through every pore atm tho. will get to it eventually no question tho

>Also I'm curious if all this has made its way into fiction ever
really not sure. no end of good films tho
>just re-watched Terminator 2 yesterday (old model Oedipal T-800 tech vs new model Acceleration T-1000 tech, so good), will re-watch Matrix again soon

so good

postmodernity attempted to divorce from the politics of representation that advanced modernism (see cubism, for example)

*diggity, not dignity, autocorrect y u do this

"Modernity" never happened, let alone "postmodernity".

Okay it's decided my next book is anti-oedipus..it has been a long time coming.
>critical engineering
Thanks for this.
>no end of good films
Check out "Safe" by Todd Haynes if you haven't.

That pic is sensory in uncomfortable ways.

how do you get rid of representation?

>Is the problem with Postmodernity that it represents a degeneration of Modernity? I have been toying with the idea that postmodern thought represents a recursion of premodern thinking, an attempt to retrace our steps and find a path back towards some alternative present; an essential component to postmodernism is the technology of history (printing, statistical modeling, etc. a kind of time travel) Is postmodern in some essential way conservative? Is there some literature which corresponds to this idea of mine? What do you guys think?
I think you need more of a grounding in how postmodernism is actually discussed before you can start answering those big questions of yours. I would check out the postmodern condition by Lyotard especially and perhaps postmodernism by Frederic Jameson and maybe simulacra by Baudrilliard. Then of course some reactions to those, especially reactions to Lyotard.

>hahah you plebs don't even realize you're talking about something that doesn't exist because I say so.

going to have to watch safe i guess

check out MM dropping the truth-bombs
youtube.com/watch?v=4x6725NW8vw

bugs & hotfixes in the total environment to be fixed v carefully

good luck user
maybe write that book too
probably going to be interesting

You are correct of course and i appreciate your recommendations, too.

>acting like a word that encompasses everything from Borges to Lyotard has any meaning
Postmodernism is barely philosophy. It's buzzword-thinking for the Internet age.

Ah fuck I love guys like that, prophetic technocrats like Oppenheimer, McLuhan and William S Burroughs. I'll admit what I'd like to see is a revival of Modernity a "New Modernism" rather than a post-Modernism.

>Buzzword thinking for the internet age
What age do you think you're living in, friend?

me too user. mcluhan especially tho. no cynicism there, a guy who really could grasp that there was still a thing called reality in spite of all the media. the simulacrum did not work on him. love that guy & understanding media is an outstanding book

robynbacken.com/text/nw_research.pdf

imho what comes after postmodernism is acceleration/cybernetics but that's a whole other thing
>fun to think about tho

pic rel for more on that but if you have time take the scenic tour and work your way through all things modern/postmodern first
>then join the land threads and meme about hyperstition with everyone else

or enjoy the eerie prophetic brilliance of the wachowskis
youtube.com/watch?v=JrBdYmStZJ4

Ha! I was planning to do a bit of homework so I could meme it up in nick land threads. I like to cut of your jib. Also
>brb going to read & watch movies for a few weeks

The cut of. But "I like to cut off your jib" sounds good too. Cheers user. Maybe I'll try to work autocorrect into the cut up method while I'm at it.

are you a student?

Im always interested in how the actually well read ones on Veeky Forums find their diverse readings for a sbject.
Do you just keep following the train as you get deeper and deeper?

kek i love it
see you on level 2 my man

not a student, graduated not all that long ago
>from the wrong goddamn department
>and with the wrong goddamn undergraduate degree
>and then with the wrong goddamn master's degree to compound the goddamn retardedness
>mfw

muh tru luv was & remains & always shall remain continental philosoraptory
it only seems to get more interesting as time goes on

pic rel basically
except substitute a hilariously decadent slob for the muscular greek ideal
and the horses look nothing at all like horses
so basically just one obsession through bat country

these days i feel as though the picture is starting to coalesce tho and i mainly am learning to repeat myself in less fuckface ways & means

>metaphysics > politics
>metaphysics > aesthetics > politics
>Veeky Forums > alles

Post-modernity is post-coital modernity

you stoned bro?

Post-modernists was just a bunch of French communists trying their hardest to deny reality so they wouldn't have to admit they were wrong about Stalin.

There is nothing much to discuss.

You don't repair modernity. That's an egregious thing to say. You ride it. And yes, in the meantime you try to make sense of it.
(This is NOT an endorsement of Evola. Dear God. You don't ride modernity that way.)

sober as a judge, alas

these days i prefer whiskey but it's too early for that
>not too early tho

mostly just getting rinsed out by deleuze, feels good

I am completely fascinated by technology, modernity, and many of the questions you guys are talking about in this thread. Yet, I know nothing and have no actual knowledge on them.

Where should I start? What field is this even? Is it continental philosophy and theory?

>you don't repair a car you ride it
Why?

I recommend this
m.youtube.com/watch?v=BH4qD5Fzyjk

You don't have the tools. The tools don't even exist in fact.
And the car is still moving.

having shilled this book 20 different times i will perhaps try some reverse psychology and shill it using the back cover. perhaps this will work. a very nice intro to lots of other stuff, though it's ofc not about tech & modernity specifically

for technology/modernity three guys worth thinking about are hegel/marx/heidegger. phenomenology of spirit, capital, being & time. read & digest those & feel the earth breaking open beneath your feet
>muh Being

also, oswald spengler did nothing wrong & decline of the west kicks ass

didnt really answer my question, but thank you
i will watch

this is a great book for seeing stuff that you find interesting and then diving down the rabbit hole of that stuff. highly recommend also

you wanna recommend some more stuff girardfag? you got good taste

How can I get into Heidegger? I feel a bit apprehensive tackling him. Maybe there's no reason for that, but I don't feel like tackling him directly would help much.
And I pretty much gave up on Hegel... At least on a direct reading.

>also, oswald spengler did nothing wrong & decline of the west kicks ass
my dood!
I find him pretty fundamental, as much as Baudrillard at least. If you want to make sense of our contemporary world and "postmodernity" in general he is such an eye-opener.

>don't have the tools
Then what was it built with yah dingus?

Do you fix a car with a car-factory assemblage robot?

A robot produces hundreds of cars in a day but the techniques it uses are self-same to the mechanic repairing the car and the tools are the same, but I see your point, one must marshal all of the social forces to mass repair such a massive machine, so then, what choice do we have, must we become warlords, prophets? Choosing not to choose is hollow.

In order for the deus ex machina to work we must trick God into the machine, what did mankind do to trick god into incarnation? He didn't do it immediately, but after a long time I suppose, I think it is said to save us from our sins, so we had to sin in order for him to incarnate? How to convince god into the machine? That's all I can say for now see you in court.

fucking *finally*

i swear i've posted that book dozens of times and literally this is the first time anyone has ever fucking noticed it & given a response
>cosmos & psyche is not as good. interesting. but wonky. anyways

>you wanna recommend some more stuff girardfag?
why yes, yes i do. this could literally take all day but how about just some surefire stuff that always holds up well:

Tarnas, Passion
>ok you said that

Spengler, DoTW
>you said that too numbnuts

Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence
>must-read cultural history. good stuff

Zimmerman, Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity
>aka how 2 into heidegger. struggling with heidegger? go directly to this, do not pass go, do not collect $200
>inb4 (((zimmerman)))
>tfw first time using triple brackets
>and i feel inestimably stupider having done this
>will not do again

Hegel & Deleuze, Together Again for the First Time
>maybe b/c i just read it but hegel/deleuze/badiou &c is where it's at. good essays
>clayton crockett is good too for deleuze/badiou

Hobsbawm, Age of Capital
>inb4 kys marxcuck
>it is the best history of the 19C industrial revolution there is. before you can demarxify - and you must demarxify in the 20C - you must first fully marxify via the 19C
>so you too can be hopelessly bewildered?
>yes, that's right
>ok just checking

Graeber, Debt, the First 5,000 years
>more economics?
>ok, fine

Sarup, Introductory Guide to Poststructuralism and Postmodernism

i mean of course the general process is, find a guy you like, read absolutely everything by that guy, discover another guy that guy likes, repeat ad nauseam ad infinitum. i like a lot of guys. but before philosophy made sense there was a lot of history, which was imho mainly economic history, so in2 marx that way. but staying w/marx forever is as retarded as anything else. find your guys & just obsess over them i guess. whoever they are

in the end everything connects on planet meme.

>how can i get into heidegger
see above
>also high-five mia familia spengler rules
>also baudrillard ofc

Do you have the Nick Land Reader link?

these are the links but they appear to be stalling

u.nya.is/oauzos.pdf
u.nya.is/ajccaw.epub

this is impressive.
stay on Veeky Forums please

more rec would be greatly appreciated
>even though they will probably just sit in my bookmark list for the next 6 months until i get through my already substantial reading list

also do you use secondary sources for most philosophers? in conjunction? after reading? before reading?

>more rec would be greatly appreciated
then sir you shall have it. more stuff for history/philosophy of tech & modernity and so on:

Marx, works
Heidegger, works
Deleuze, works
Baudrillard, works
Virilio, works
>others i am forgetting

McLuhan, Understanding Media & Gutenberg Galaxy
Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command
Chardin, the Phenomenon of Man
Mumford, Technics & Civilization
Ellul, the Technological Society
Land, Fanged Noumena
Simondon, Mode of Existence of Technical Objects
Althusser, Reproduction of Capital
&c
&c

Links:

Giedion:
biopolitics.kom.uni.st/Siegfried Giedion/Mechanization Takes Command_ A Contribution to Anonymous History (143)/Mechanization Takes Command_ A Contributio - Siegfried Giedion.pdf

Chardin:
archive.org/stream/ThePhenomenonOfMan/phenomenon-of-man-pierre-teilhard-de-chardin_djvu.txt

Ellul:
monoskop.org/images/5/55/Ellul_Jacques_The_Technological_Society.pdf

Land:
s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/406213/42bdb859549f609953a0ca61aca0bee3.pdf

Lewis:
monoskop.org/images/f/fa/Mumford_Lewis_Technics_and_Civilization.pdf

Althusser:
libcom.org/files/louis-althusser-on-the-reproduction-of-capitalism.compressed.pdf

So there you go. How's that? Many diving boards for plunging into the technonomic weirdness. Much more besides this, but all of this is cool. I don't recommend plunging in the way I did, because you will later on struggle with de-plunging yourself and trying to reassemble the fragments of your exploded head, put your thoughts in order, sort yourself out, clean room &c. It is better to start with - and, arguably, return to - the Greeks.
>the good, the beautiful, and the true > capitalism

But ultimately it does all make sense, if you're prepared to absorb enough steamrollers to the head. Capitalism unites everything and we wind up being chased by what we have unleashed on the world in the form of modernity, economics & tech. If only it weren't so darn interesting. One big beautiful meme city to meme in.

>also do you use secondary sources for most philosophers? in conjunction? after reading? before reading?
when required. after a while the jargon doesn't seem like jargon anymore. everybody reads & references the same guys. secondary sources are ok but in general you want the primary guys as much as you can (until, sadly, they die). then secondaries.

in general go to the source as much as possible, imho.

All my friends are either completely obsessed with technology and modernity or nature and getting away outside and such. A lot of overlap between those groups also.
Honestly the most interesting stuff going on rn in philosophy

>Land
sorry but I can't take you seriously anymore

do you think that if you dive deep into this stuff a general knowledge of science, math, engineering, and computer science is important?

my interest in land is not the best reason to not take me seriously. that would be b/c i am obviously read nearly to the point of being virtually incomprehensible on some of these threads. which is a bad sign.

land is a thing i am trying to work my way through. i'm more into deleuze now but acceleration scares the shit out of me. cyberneticization just makes too much sense. so in some sense you gotta dance w/the one that brung you & land was the guy for me after baudrillard & heidegger. now it's deleuze - again, b/c of land. but cybernetics &c tho. that shit is *way* too interesting - and unsettling - for me to let go of. in terms of politics? whomp, acceleration. it's totalizing, but to me it makes sense. for you it may be different. that's ok tho. in the grand scheme of things i am profoundly, spectacularly unimportant. and mainly trying to divest myself of the 99% of me which is straight psychic gas so that the remaining 1% can screw his pants on in the morning and go to work and meme productively with all the other memers of society, quietly and anonymously. pet the occasional kitten and smell the occasional flower.

anyways glhf

>do you think that if you dive deep into this stuff a general knowledge of science, math, engineering, and computer science is important?

w/o a doubt. i have a weekly conversation with a compsci buddy of mine about this (he also detests land, btw). even spengler says, fuck philosophy, study engineering. he's right about that. machines are deleuze's thing as well, along with other stuff. being a useless continental twerp is definitely not as cool as being good with STEM & all the rest if you can do it at the same time. the continental/analytic split is the result of technology and much else.

so yes, of course, absolutely, being able to actually know the tech stuff is good. or the finance stuff. if you can squeeze it into your life, i would say. definitely.

i mean, you clearly don't need it in advance (case in point: me). but if you can combine theory with more hard-science stuff? for sure, i'm sure you'll get to all kinds of cool conclusions. that's just my feeling.

so in advance? not required. but would it make it all more interesting for you (and others, if you wrote something)? absolutely.

Is it acceleration to get a job as a prison guard, using drugs to manipulate the tensions within the population and secure favor & influence to the point where you lead an armed prison break? I really wish that Deleuze wrote more about prisons. That essay containing the letters from a prisoner was lyrical to an extreme. I think it was in desert islands or whatever it's called.

I feel kinda the same way. However I didn't study STEM in school in favor of philosophy. Were you able to study STEM in your free time? I just feel like engineering and math are some subjects that are just so hard to truly study correctly outside of a school.
Basically, how do I learn STEM shit if I dont in school. Honestly I just want to learn and read everything, but know its impossible and I have to make a choice and its driving me crazy and second guess every decision I make

>Choosing not to choose is hollow.

The point is that you don't have a choice.
These social forces you recognize compose the entirety of World History. You can imagine it as a grand theatrical play.
World History runs its own *cybernetic* process, while in the background the techonomic layer runs also. The two spiral parallel to each other. You're just another character in this grand play. And you can't untangle this spiral. Sorry.
At best you can try to become a primary character in this play. But don't expect to be the writer. Good luck.

...

thanks for the recomendations girardfriend.
I've stumbled into Barzun once and put it on my list, if you're recomending it it's probably a good idea to push to the top of my list.

Always a pleasure when you're present in a thread anyway.

>is it acceleration

i was thinking the other day about this: three great philosophers (hegel, nietzsche, and deleuze) and three great popularizers of those philosophies who popularize them in a way by a kind of reversal (marx, the fascists & potentially heidegger, and land). in each case there is a sort of a pattern where a too-literal political interpretation of a metaphysical idea turns that idea into a deadly and oversimplified meme. in all three cases the results are brutal for mass society. totalitarian communism sucks. totalitarian fascism sucks. totalitarian acceleration is beginning to suck and will suck more. this is an incomplete thesis.

so my answer to that question is, i'm really not sure. here's what i like - *love*
>love love
about deleuze: he describes thought, difference, all of this in ways that gently jailbreak you out of mimetics. it's said that he was politically quietist and this i think makes sense to me. his dazzling model of thought gives you these conceptual tools to ask yourself what the fuck you really are doing before you rush off and do it immediately Because Reasons. and that is ultimately my thing, or one of my things: philosophy as escape from excessive reasons (that lead to bad decisions.)
>tho sometimes hilarious stories, it's true

>prisons
there is this:
>The day is coming when not one prison guard will be able to beat a prisoner without being publicly denounced a day or month later by his victim or a witness, in the very city where it has taken place. Former prisoners, and current prisoners alike, have ceased to be afraid and no longer feel ashamed.
Reminds me of the United Airlines footage. This seems to have been in general more Foucault's project than Deleuze's.

I don't know anyone who studies STEM in their free time, but in hindsight I would have studied something technical and then found time for theory on the side. Otherwise it seems as though it becomes necessary to make the theory pay for itself and all too frequently the way that this happens is through a very subtle form of tyranny of good intentions, which is exactly the stuff Peterson says has destroyed the humanities. I tend to agree with him, but it's a terrible dilemma, with no end of hideous consequences. It's why I like RG for literature: the literature stays about that which is properly universal in literature - no post-structuralism, none of this. And that I think goes hand in glove with a nice technical degree to round it off, for lots of reasons.

To my mind that's what separates the meme intellectuals from people who are really worth reading: they're just constantly trigged all the time and grinding ideological axes. Is this my white cis- het privilege talking? No doubt it is in part. But after 2016 metaphysics > politics for me, now and forever. I have set all that shit on fire and it stays burned.

Philosophy's not going anywhere but STEM is imho a better look. Or, ask what Ernst Junger would do. Then do that.

my pleasure homeslice, barzun is dope & enjoy the read

thx for letting me go bananas up in here once again

will shill one more good one at ye

Authoritarian acceleration:
I've thought a bit about this; if terror is the revolutionary meme, and state's own a monopoly on terror, is the state a revolution in progress? Maybe I'm just chanelling Robespierre. Fuck it I love it, the blood, the guts, the shit, the piss, the knowing glare of a skank, acts of unrepentant cowardice all I can say anymore is fucking MORE!

well that's one way i guess

would kind of be nice to not require an orgy of blood and feces tho
>sometimes, it's true, you gotta shake your sillies out w/dionysus

but in my ideal world most disputes would be resolved by a hesse-style glass bead game

or, failing that, a conversation about who has the most handsome legs
>at least until the king arrives
>b/c it's clearly the king who has the finest legs
>it's always the king
>why is it always the king?
>ah well
>back to the countryside until next time seigneurs

>I have been toying with the idea that postmodern thought represents a recursion of premodern thinking, an attempt to retrace our steps and find a path back towards some alternative present

Correct. The conclusion then is that postmodernism is the solution to the degeneration present in Modernity.

Postmodernity can still reproduce modernism, but this is not necessarily because of postmodernism. Postmodernism, to me, is the reading of postmodernity, which involves a history, i.e. the canon. But the conditions of postmodernity don't necessarily allow this -- ephemeral media is not a canon, nor is it based on the canon. It is not cohesive as it relies on signs in the context of other signs in the context of other signs, etc. Remodernism or retromodernism is a thing in the art world retracing some old strategies to approaching art, so to exhaust their possibilities. The art world though is 'literate', as is the French post-structuralist linguistic critiques from the likes of Derrida, and the historical approach of Foucault. Who is the consumer of the revolution? Not the pseudo-literate it seems -- we've seen the attempts to sell diversity to the pseudo-literate. White nationalism and transactivism are two sides of the same problem -- the abandonment of literacy, of reading history, of understanding, of being a 'postmodernist' in the time of postmodernity.

Technology does it apparently, per Baudrillard.

>imho what comes after postmodernism is acceleration/cybernetics but that's a whole other thing

Cybernetics is a part of postmodern thought to me. Especially Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind, where he talks of the ability of the human mind to wreck its environment. The reharmonising of human life with environment is a call of postmodernism, hence we see environmental movements and indigenous rights being codified by the UN in the 80s and 90s. But this time is really part of the 'contemporary' which I read as a little different to postmodernism and coincides with increased digitisation.

I like the idea of acceleration being a post-postmodern, or post-contemporary. Speculative realism seems to be what comes next, the way Land aligns what he has read to produce something else entirely, and this too can become 'true' by way of hyperstition. You see it in post-grad writing, the application of advanced though to everyday experience. A lot of this stuff gets posted on newrealpeerreview to be made fun of but these people aren't writing this shit for the pseudo-literate. It's just the next stage of literacy, being able to think in flexible ways with the poetry of academic speak; making new words out of Greek roots. A way of breaking through bourgeois concepts of experience, like the French theory before them, and the Surrealists before them.

Also this is from a past Land thread:
>read Habermas. epistemology is social theory not yet conscious of itself.

Another also: cybernetics leads to this
biosemiotics.org/biosemiotics-introduction/

Just "who", son. "Whom" is for the accusative case.

Girard, what do you mean by RG for literature? I'm new to Veeky Forums , sorry.
Also just wanted to say I don't post much but I have been following this thread because of you and I appreciate the recommendations. Thanks

jesus christ these review blurbs make it sound like the book was passed down from heaven by the hand of god himself

>biosemiotics
i'm passingly familiar with this from reading a little about von uexküll and the umwelt. was when i was very into phenomenology. def interesting stuff and it's true, if anything is likely to monkey up nick land's plans for Total Cybernetic Domination it may well be that kind of stuff. maybe cybernetics are just easier to think b/c all the marxist stuff
>and no science background

>spec-real
this stuff too, although holy hannah does it ever get dark. it is constructive darkness tho. i'm okay with darkness but seriously, how awesome is deleuze? for a while i was starting to get really into this stuff b/c the darkness seemed where it was at but now i'm just starting to appreciate how much deleuze has going on still for things that live. i don't know what they are. but whatever it is he's got it in spades

life seems almost good again with deleuze. that's kind of incredible. i like this feel

will spread the word about sc hickman here for more in this vein if you guys are into that

>What is looking back at us, knower and known – is the very truth of our own inhuman, unnatural excess: the being of our Being as monstrous Other, as the Outside from which we’ve been barred for far too long. As Thacker puts it: “It is not surprising, then, that whereas the magic circle evokes vaguely anthropoid creatures (demons, ghosts, the dead), the magic site creeps forth with entities that are neither animate nor inanimate, neither organic nor inorganic, neither material nor ideal.

"fun" stuff in the Outer Darkness

socialecologies.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/lovecraft-and-the-great-outside/

RG = rene girard

>Also just wanted to say I don't post much but I have been following this thread because of you and I appreciate the recommendations. Thanks

that's very kind user, thank you. i got called an attention whore in one of the other threads today and i was legit triggered about it!

>i also said i would take a break from Veeky Forums for a bit
>i lied
>fufufu
>that user may have been right tho. nobody likes a blabbermouth
>tfw genuinely don't want to come across as an attention whore
>shit's just interesting yo

i mean it's a pretty good book. it's not being & time or w/evs but for an intro it's pretty satisfying & easy to read

>epistemology is social theory not yet conscious of itself.

this is a neat concept too. i'm not well-read w/habermas but from what i understand cybernetics are a problem for him b/c his valorizing of communications ultimately depends (as i understand it) from a sense in which communication is never really perfectly transparent on account of the inevitable vagaries of language itself
>hence the need for a lot of professional german intellectuals equipped with dialectic, for good and for ill

the idea of a cybernetic code and so on skews with this though, as does anything else that might be called a philosophy beyond the linguistic turn (such as deleuze's, or land's, or various others'). this might be worrisome to many others but at the same time all of the idpol stuff that drives me insane proceeds ultimately from correlationism that spec-real guys are out to destroy

i guess i fall somewhere uncomfortable in the middle with that, wanting to express things but knowing language & art are plastic as all hell

a truly socially conscious & evolving social theory would be good, if that's what that sentence is implying (is it?). to me it looks and feels like the matrix but only because i'm crusty & miserable sometimes from all the baudrillard & land readings and it's safe and easy to assume the worst
>but deleuze doesn't like that pessimistic bullshit

hnng silence
hnng time-images

>insinuating there's a problem with post-modernity

can you give me a brief overview of your education? how do you read all this stuff?

I truly just want to know a lot and am very impressed by you.

In the latter part of your post you describe a return to the past, or myths, which I assume is Jungian in origin, but you view it detrimentally instead of positively, why?

Freud, not Jung; specifically, the "return of the repressed" but as Jung commented "what you resist will persist."
Like I said initially, I believe that premodern paradigms continued to operate in the interstices of Modernity, since the Grand Narratives were organized around power structures and concentrations of wealth i.e. Urban centers, academia, etc. In the flyover states, in the ghettos, in the homes of the underclasses; the hallmarks of modernity were going unnoticed, so when representation became metastatic, diffuse with new technology, instead of a proliferation of the Modern we saw a resurfacing of all the vestigial or undesirable modes of thought which Modernity had believed were done away with, but were only in fact being repressed. In this way, Modernity entered a crisis. My ideas are not polished yet but I hope to develop them further.

I want to undermine the concept of the noble savage and depict universal diverse representation as problematic as it is, like in the final act of Germinal by Zola; however I think this process is necessary and revolutionary, the collective unconscious must be made conscious. This is the age of the New Flesh.

Anyone else watch Ghost in the Shell?

I realized after watching it that it's kind of reactionary.

In the end of the movie the main character says that "It doesn't matter what happens in the future, because humanity is our virtue."

Which sounds like something you would say in order to keep some semblance of safe categorization, when you live in a postmodern world where the annihilation of identity by cybernetics and technicity in general is happening.

"Humanity is our virtue" reminds me of "more human than human"; cybernetics is to me an augmented resurgence of the deathwish which emerged during the 20th century, manifested by the atrocities of war, glowing in the liminal eye of our t.v.s, quickly sunk into the unconscious and remaining their intact, now returning in the barely recognizable form of transhumanist dehumanizations, living death, zombie apocalypses, etc.

Exactly.

I don't think this is a "bad thing", however, it seems to me the return of the repressed is a necessary process, and that the deathwish has been changed for the better in fact, through the dream work of the totality of culture. This is why I think acceleration is so important, we are in the midst of an evolutionary process and nothing should be excluded, it is all necessary. Consumer culture is necessary, the consumer is the new proletarian, producing by consuming. Idk I'm rambling now :)

>can you give me a brief overview of your education?
clusterfuck, fills me with anger & disappointment

>how do you read all this stuff?
obsessive interest in religion, sex, death, money & anxiety. i just don't care about the other stuff. i do what i have to mainly in order to maximize time for this. the rest doesn't matter to me

>I truly just want to know a lot
guaranteed you will. guaranteed. it will happen whether you want it to or not! just keep reading what you're interested in. when i started out all i wanted to do was write a pulp fantasy or SF story. but there's a point beyond which the theory no longer seems like pointless wanking
>and this is a tricky one b/c you will encounter strong resistance from people who will try and smack you down out of straight ignorance and fear
>but those who do this are full of shit and they know it
>so one must be tactful
>and consistent
>and polite
>and not lose one's cool
>and not be an alcoholic
>&c &c

it's honestly all about attitude & disposition. don't be cynical, trust the butterflies in your stomach, read the stuff that really interests you and you will eventually realize that you *always already knew this stuff.*
>inb4 hegel
all that was missing was a couple of concepts (the jargon) required to express it: metaphysics of production, objet a, de/reterritorialization, logical fallacies, w/ev it is
>and then the real stunner is when you find out that everybody else always-already knew it too
>but of course they weren't going to *tell* you this, since it always seemed so perfectly obvious
>but if it was so obvious why didn't they say so? why didn't they just *tell* you it was like that? and if they knew then why the fuck do they keep doing the same things?
>rargh

it's like that, in my experience. the big philosophy stuff just provides concepts for describing that which is so stunningly obvious it is assumed to be Just Like That. except it isn't.
>demolition of common sense and its replacement by mystification and aporia that will lead to something else other than the repetition of more of the same Because Reasons ftw
>and plato says education is remembering
>and also *idpol is garbage,* metaphysics > politics
>rant over

>gits
such a great film/story, shirow is a genius

>In the end of the movie the main character says that "It doesn't matter what happens in the future, because humanity is our virtue."
such a good line. ofc b/c virtue exists it really *does* matter what happens
>but politics yo

>Which sounds like something you would say in order to keep some semblance of safe categorization, when you live in a postmodern world where the annihilation of identity by cybernetics and technicity in general is happening
yup. pic rel

identity is a problem. esp for neoliberal hacks, /pol/tards, narcissists, consumption-crazed werewolves & all the rest. suckas don't read

beautiful winrar

>the consumer is the new proletarian, producing by consuming
109% correct

Your posts are as ever effervescent and an asset
questions:
.do you meditate? how do you meditate?
.ever read any Jodorowsky comics?

>so one must be tactful
>and consistent
>and polite
>and not lose one's cool
>and not be an alcoholic
>&c &c
^good advice

>the consumer is the new proletarian, producing by consuming
Is this what they meant by "desiring machines"?

you could probably write a book in prose like this and people would eat it up ironically.

thx
>genuinely sincerely *not* trying to be That Guy
>not trying to x-pill anyone
>not all/any of that shit
>you get the idea

>do you meditate?
yes. sporadically and in a stupid & undisciplined manner. and wondering whenever i do why i am so fucking stupid not to do this more often. mindfulness a thing

>how do you meditate?
join a sangha, count breaths. 10 minutes/a day. bare bones

>advice
pic rel was the first philosophy book i read. then nietzsche showed up, then baudrillard, and lots of other guys. really didn't start to get into philosophy all that long ago. it's only been a couple of years. now i see deleuze, baudrillard, nn taleb, others saying, hey, you know the stoics really weren't so bad
>stoics = greek buddhists
>not such a bad combination
>also laozi & confucius, the gentleman must have virtue
>philosophy wasted on slobs
>virtue a thing

>Is this what they meant by "desiring machines"?
yep. partly anyways. D&G drop a nuclear bomb star-wars style into the Death Star which is Freudian/Lacanian Oedipal theatre. ska-boom. what if your unconscious is not a repressive triangle but wants to blast off in all directions? the real deal *is* fascism- the despot, the tyrant- but the tyrant *is deeply buried within.* this is why the whole Punch a Nazi thing is jaw-droppingly stupid. the calls are coming from inside the house. this is what connects to Nick Land and the Outside and 400 other guys. fascism, the war machine, *is* the most politically appropriate form of capitalism - but of course, everyone will say, hey, you just gotta do what you gotta do
>help me rene girard you're my only hope
>kek fuck you go to church first you shitbag
>damn RG that's harsh
>harsh but fair, girardfag. harsh but fair
>ok well we'll talk about that later i guess

desiring-machines are a thing. the spice must flow. but this is where it gets *really* interesting - all of the complaints about capitalism, that it works by malfunctioning, coming back stronger than before, all this - what it is *astonishingly* crazy about D&G is that they *reverse the polarity* - capitalism functions externally in the *same fucking way* that *you do internally.* the interior fascist is always mysteriously frustrated with the superabundance of demi-fascist consumer fun available to them all around on Planet Consumption. what holds this all together (tortuously, seductively, existentially, &c)? *IDENTITY,* which leads directly into identity *politics* - the same for both sides

TLP is right. it is a nation of narcissists. narcissism is the thing. It's also girard's thing: mimetic desire. lacan gets there too, hegel, all of this. except there is no neat and easy division between heroic working-class labourers (well, those few cool guys are still cool) b/c in the postmodern wilderness nobody can tell the difference anymore
>see baudrillard

we are desiring-machines running on matrix protocols that we *do not understand* because *if we did* the magic would be lost.

(cont'd)

>desiring-machines
desiring-machines
>also desiring-machines

it's really worth thinking about. mechanosphere. far and away the most interesting thought i encountered this year. i had to sort my way through land first but w/ev. D&G are infinitely interesting now

>you could probably write a book in prose like this and people would eat it up ironically.

the hilarious thing about this is that i got here by trying to write something extra-polished and refined and deconstructive and so on and it made me so terminally blocked & thwarted that i consequently come on Veeky Forums and write these demented blogposts instead.

so thx i guess. something to think about, that's for sure. i really would like to write Total Pseud's Guides to various thinkers & ideas. i seem to be able to carry on conversations with a kind of inner gollum who is continually saying
>kys girardfag
as i do this

but honestly Veeky Forums is just such a cool place. eventually i will move on and get a blog but i have found the conversations here really enlightening and often anons recommend stuff i have never heard of

>or remind me not so be such an attention whore
>but i'm not an attention whore
>that's exactly what an attention whore would say
>tfw
>lacan_btfo_sphinx.jpeg

anyways. back to desiring-machines. because this is where shit really gets interesting. desiring-machines all trapped within a world of consumption which is itself one vast and ecumenical whole, a great network. this scene is must-watch

Network:
youtube.com/watch?v=jxiT30N6ti4

film and storytelling can do incredible things

is there a writer/book that focuses on the politicization of perception/ 'Reality'?

i'm not really motivated by political reasons, man-made media are slowly filling out my (/our) perceptual horizon and i want to be prepared

Allow me some time to unpack and repurpose this. My first impression is:
Satisfaction killed the cat; curiosity brought it back (to be killed again and again and again)

one last one.

so to me the Matrix could have and should have been a *much* better trilogy than it actually was. much better. two things were missing:

1) a *prequel.* *how* did the matrix come to be? they clumsily tried to shoehorn this in in the conversation between neo and the architect in part 2, but it seemed fairly obvious that the wachowskis were in way over their head. they knew that they were on to something and so they sort of cryptically alluded to it in those dumb conversations. but how the matrix came to be is basically *the* story of postwar western culture. it's what everyone talks about: adorno, baudrillard, deleuze, everyone. it's all wrapped up with technology and consumption, except of course IRL there was no alien presence: we did this to ourselves *voluntarily.* the backstory of the matrix is interesting - the "machine war" is basically the same event that james cameron (the terminator) and herbert (the butlerian jihad) all seem to sense is a kind of historical inevitability. makes you think. but b/c in the film it's all mythic prehistory the films wind up being these fantasy epics in the end when they might have been something much more subtle and consequently much more interesting. so a kind of alternate-matrix series of films that deal with this would be cool.

2) agent smith. they made him the antagonist of the film and that's cool. but as pic rel indicates he was actually a massively more interesting character than neo. he is, or might have been, properly *tragic.* what i would have wanted is a lot more about his development and character arc, his psychology, alienation (an infinity of other people who look just like him? this has my attention) and so on. neo is a Chosen One and does Chosen One things. smith is the real anomaly who wants out and is prepared to bring the whole thing down to make that happen. *that's* a fucking cool story. smith has all the best lines and has the best actor in the show. what he needed was some of the alan rickman magic from Robin Hood and it would have been game over for neo, just give us more smith!

Based Rickman:
youtube.com/watch?v=6ZhCCu-2gbw

anyways. matrix 2.0. my body is *wholly* ready

go for it my man. lacan that dude: repetition & pleasure. then deleuze: difference & repetition. a great adventure awaits

Buckminster Fuller wrote: automation frees the automatons.
Automation: a divine, superhuman-repetition; we look for ways to make the machines more like us when we have created something that is more like us than we are ourselves. Much to learn from the machines. I am a technobodisattva, I will stay in the matrix until all sentient life is freed from it; the most distinguishing feature of the captain is that he is the last to leave the sinking ship; capital the white whale, the embodiment of desire, kill the father fuck the mother. I am the killer on the road.

>Buckminster Fuller wrote: automation frees the automatons.
he knew the deal

>Automation: a divine, superhuman-repetition; we look for ways to make the machines more like us when we have created something that is more like us than we are ourselves
victor frankenstein did nothing wrong

>much to learn from the machines
you got that right

> I am a technobodisattva, I will stay in the matrix until all sentient life is freed from it
my man

>the most distinguishing feature of the captain is that he is the last to leave the sinking ship
*nice.* of course, when the captain is ahab (or hitler) and tells everyone else, *you're not going anywhere until the job is complete* - right? heavy shit

>capital the white whale, the embodiment of desire, kill the father fuck the mother
ayup. it's a tragic death-trap w/no way out except some metaphysical 4d chess

>I am the killer on the road.
and you know what they say about meeting the buddha on the road

talk more about this shit user you're on to a rocking-horse winner

parse this also
if i was not girardfag i would be mcluhanfag