zeitgeist and play

I think that there might be a sort of ‘structure, sign, and play’ at work with any artistic aspect, or perhaps cultural item—even something such as a wristwatch has a certain structure, an expectation which it must  conform to less it become unrecognizable as a wristwatch and might instead become a bracelet, so the challenge for the experimental artist or designer is to challenge and ‘play’ with the expectation, to test the structural limits of the ‘wristwatch’ from whatever influences seem to be most provocative or revealing about a given moment in the zeitgeist

Security

Ah, what a relief to finally live in an objective universe where our occurrences can be safely calculated— where choice, courage, and faith are only impersonal probabilities and meaning is in a measurement.

Nietzsche Quote

"My judgement is my judgement: no one else is entitled to it." ~ Nietzsche...

This quote rather succinctly draws a distinction between 'modern' philosophers and science (as with the old Idealist philosophers as well). It is not a relativist stance. Rather, philosophy  tends to aim at 'appropriation' of truth and how it serves us, and what a truth model says about us and our values...those are the more important questions that matter to philosophy while science seeks the repeatable and dependable results.

To anyone who benefits from those 'discoveries', may they aid them in their theories and inventions...but, what does it actually mean to you? Does the answer change your life in the slightest?

Love 'n Science

"No matter what you've heard, you don't love anything with all of your heart. You love from the depths of your ventral tegmental area, your hypothalamus, your nucleus accumbens, and other vital areas of the brain."
(http://neurology.about.com/od/NervousSystem/a/The-Brain-In-Love.htm)

More and more the common reductionist view about love held by science is becoming normalized and accepted as cause and case. It is a biological process. Chemicals of the brain
(dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin), hormones, the firing of neurons: a bond that can be broken down into areas of the brain that experience pleasure when two people are near physically or mentally. This is love, it is well accepted.

Generally, those who parrot these sentiments and discoveries have not offered much to the intellectual-cause itself. They have seen images of brains lighting up or read reports that this hormone or chemical is found at elevated levels when two lovers are in proximity, thus love is nothing more than a body state. Ah good, let’s put a nail in Aphrodite’s coffin and move on.

This view fully objectifies reality as observable, measurable phenomenon and denies the transcendence of personal experience—as well as narrowly defining love to an extraordinarily narrow and contemporary view, ignoring past attached connotations of fealty, loyalty, kinship, admiration, and respect. The notion of ‘love thy neighbor’, for example, is a rather difficult one to reduce to body states, as is the idea of ‘love of wisdom’ (philosophy). The science of love pretends that love is fully concrete and not having its origins and experiential power as an abstraction that describes a drive beyond what is attainable—a commitment that needs continuous re-kindling of passion.

The contemporary satisfaction that we seem to experience as a society in being able to ‘locate love’ in the body speaks volumes, however it tells us more about our societal values than it does about love.  We have become too easily pacified by the merely quantitative, observable, testable world of science.  The narrative powers and explanatory mysticism of published scientific language and discoveries has authority over the value of experience itself—the ‘what it is like to be in love’ aspect of love, which in everyday experience should seem to be the part that holds more value.

 What becomes of the place holder for ‘love’ as the ideal of personal commitment and perpetual striving? Love is instead a highly personal affair in the most literal sense imaginable: it is an individual’s body state in a certain circumstance or proximity—at its very best it is viewed here as a historically poeticized and healthy addiction.

For most, that is, those not doing the hard work of the scientist, the scientific answer offers us the simple ‘Aha’ answer that we can catalog and put to rest the question. In the words of Nietzsche, I must protest that, "it is not more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance." What part of our lives does not rely upon the charms and security of appearance? Indeed, reading the reports of studies pushes us no closer to the truth of love than ever we were; it only re-brands the experience under the grounds of reductionism and materialism and removes the value of the non-scientific input.

In experience, the concept of love does not contain a single morsel of what the biologist or neuroscientist defines love to be—but rather it contains a whole world of doubts, worries, desires, expectations, and striving that exceed any measurable analysis that nullifies the subject / object relationship in any observable field, thus alluding measurable analysis. Any objective, explanatory language might point toward some definite world event but the simplification leads only to an objective falsification.

Life: An Outline

 

Life preserving –

Asceticism to will to power

The idea was neither to live nor die.

Can you make bricks out of ideas?

We build idols but we worship the idea.

Even churches require bricks.

At some point we discovered the more beautiful we make our art, the more hideous we become.

It was the body’s frustration of never achieving the ideal that broke the spirit and exhausted the limbs.

“The spirit is in the bone,” ~ someone else said it.

Martyrs are more convincing unnamed.

 

Life enhancing –

Suffering to happiness

                Pleasure or longing?

                Fulfillment or striving?

                Full or hungry?

                Drive or reward?

 

Life enchanting –

Science to wizardry

                The world is infused with images of atoms.

                An age obsessed with the senses.

                The transcendence of language is silenced.

                Essences and causes are magically returned.

                The world gains luster and believability.

                Connections remain in the minutest corner of the largest inventions.

                A world is explained therefore it is.