radical feminism & the uber-frau

Nature leans on women more heavily than on men. Whether in a "state of nature" or in a competitive capitalist society, a solitary pregnant woman has a harder time racing for resources. Pregnancy and child birth also threaten women's lives, they're very dangerous. Mother Nature does not cut womankind a bonus check for being tasked with doing the physical work of reproducing humanity. At its core, feminism must at some point be the tragic adventure of seeking---per impossible---reparations from the universe itself. We might call it 'the tragic pursuit of ontological reparations'. Radical feminism must be informed by this "wrestling with an angel". Anything less is just an incrementalist Political Action Group.

Put another way: testosterone is stupid---an intelligently designed universe would not be motivated by this muti-tasking chemical with so many undesirable side-effects. Testosterone is stupid, therefore sexual reproduction is stupid . . . therefore the dialectic itself is stupid! Feminism must rescue the dialectic from this farce. Feminism's job is nothing less than to somehow save Being itself. 

It takes an Uber-Frau, or no? 

get the "air mattress"

heard a story today about very old woman who died bc her guts basically ruptured everywhere inside. she might have lived but she didn't want to live with a colostomy bag. she was at least 85. she fell bad. bones were fine but her insides were mush. she was in the hospital for months but then finally the hospice. she was very uncomfortable at the hospital. she was in a lot of pain, even though she took a lot of narcotics. still a lot of pain at the hospice, but felt much improved bc she used an "air mattress". it's a thing. get the air mattress. I can't believe there isn't a run on them. 

http://www.medicalairmattress.com/mdt24supradps.htm

quick thought on Hegel's dialectic as ontological machinery, the lastman & Nietzsche

Hegel's dialectics are written into the heart of being itself and matter/"substance", the result is a universe that thrums---the ubiquitous, eternal back and forth of the dialectic in theory and in practice. Dialectics is ontological machinery. Hegel's ontology is just as 'mechanical' as Newton's physics. It is love of technology that leads Hegel here. Hegel is a Last Man.

So, maybe Nietzsche ought to have the last word here, as an advocate for chaos?---If you don't admit chaos into the mix, then you're left with a dull, dialectically/mechanically churning universe.  

As an admirer of Hegel's Logic & Phenom. this is a tough choice. But then again, how can Hegel guarantee that the negative proceeds so smoothly? Why isn't the negative wild?---How do we know it isn't? 

notes on the left's traumatic origin of the self; thrown vs. smeared; & glimpse of a creator that isn't a hater

I'm not sure what I mean by "the left". What I intend to point to is not a homogenous theory, but rather all that thinking that involves bringing together Marx, Hegel, Freud, Nietzsche, et al. I might point to Sartre or Zizek as famous examples----but then I'm not trying to describe only Zizek's theory of the self, object...etc. 

I'm an atheist, but what I'll get to is the best possible (to my mind) argument in favor of a not so horrible god or gods, or whatever---just there is a creator and it doesn't completely hate us.

The left often teaches that self-awareness is originated in a kind of ontological/psychological/developmental trauma at some point in infancy. At birth we are not aware of ourselves, but later we are aware of ourselves. That change is traumatic. In the transition we find ourselves but we also find the other, "the other" being the correlative of the self. The object is also originated here, the object as such being just anything that is not-me.

Before I come to self-awareness my desires and their fulfillment are one and the same. My non-self, my self before it is aware of itself, does not, cannot, distinguish between a desire and its fulfillment. It is hard to flesh-out the experience of a non-self-aware human, but that is what is required. Julia Kristeva calls it the "chora" (eg http://goo.gl/ygTjZb , 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810844). Within the chora desires and their fulfillment are seamless, which is very very nice for me. A warm OM. No 'me', no other, no questions, no answers, no work, no drama. 

However, eventually I arrive at myself. There is an experience of difference, a gulf between my self and all things (that gulf is grounded in the fact that there is now a gulf between myself and myself---see Hegel's notion of "self-othering" in the Phenom., et al). Suddenly there is an other out there who delivers the fulfillment of my desires (think mouth to breast), I am dependent on them. Desire and its fulfillment are divorced when I become aware of my self. They might be cobbled together again . . . but it all depends. This new element of dependency and difference, a space, a void, a presence of an absence, between my self and the fulfillment of my desires is a shock---an ontological/psychological shock. It's a shock, some might say, we are never done working through. Even if one is of 'perfect' health psychologically, there is still the problem of selfhood to work through. The origin of the self then is necessarily at the very same time the self's introduction to the negative, to nothingness. Me, the negative, the other, the object---they are conjoined twins born at the same time.

Our "tarrying with the negative" does not begin within some exquisite existential event, it begins with you at the very moment you become self-aware. My very own self is the embodiment of the shock of the negative. There is no happy place at the core of my being. 

Now the problem with the left's shock theory described above is this: we are not *thrown* into the world; or rather, I'm not thrown into my self-awareness. Empirically speaking, the development of my self-awareness is so very extremely, ridiculously slow it makes the precise location of the origin of self-awareness impossible. And that's it! The benevolence, the god part. We aren't thrown, we're smeared---verrrrry sloooowly smeared. Smeared with love. Smeared into the world so slowly that the trauma that ordinarily attends the introduction of difference is avoided.

I'm still an atheist, and in the end I actually think we're thrown. Thrown because one can actually recover the shock of the introduction of difference (see Sartre's Nausea, for instance). Though, it sure looks like we're smeared. Like I said at the beginning, I don't find the smear theory persuasive, it's just the "best possible" argument 

the Last Man needs an apologist

contemporary humanity is invested in the belief that the world necessarily progresses over time. looking for progress, technological progress stands out because that kind of progress is so easy for us to discern---it's easy to measure the ever increasing speed of CPUs over time, less so something like the amount of justice in the world. So, the contemporary pursuit of progress leads to the pursuit of technological progress. Perceived progress turns our worldview into a virtue and renders it legitimate and realized. Being wed to technological progress in this way is to be a Last Man. Our condition is inescapable. The point then is not (per impossible) to resist; rather, the Last Man needs an apologist. 

the good life: consume media, respond, consume other's responses, repeat

the point is not to reduce my emotional response to media in favor of something more worthy of my emotional responses but rather to increase my emotional response to media, share that experience on social media, then consume social media about media. repeat. 

let the Net feel for you

the Net's infrastructure carries your emotions to you. submit and feel!

http://www.newsy.com/videos/your-facebook-friends-are-affecting-your-mood/

Margaret's special white gloves---they got dirty, and before the show even started.

Margaret is a virgin, yet she's still dirty and in-the-world just like everyone/thing else. We might even say: whether or not she's a virgin, she's still a sinner.

Margaret never gets a chance to show off her white gloves, why?

http://books.google ...

submit to information technology

the technology we use to experience media is more meaningful than the media itself. all things considered, isn't an iPhone more interesting than my tweet? media technology lends our media meaning. 

that one person knows or doesn't know something, even everything, is unimportant. knowledge only happens communally---it is stored on the internet. it exists digitally/electronically, no different than the status of knowledge in a human brain, except the knowledge on the net can actually be physically examined and located ('this content at this IP address', for instance) whereas the human brain will likely always be a mystery. 

my message to you is LESS meaningful than the infrastructure used to transmit it. that has yet to sink in anywhere. submission to the the internet's infrastructure is a philosophic touchstone. we must directly observe this eclipse of meaning. everything opposed to it is regress and retrograde because the material basis of the internet and the net's activity is the highest and newest form of life.

an email to no one might be lots of things----an email written but never sent, or maybe it was sent but never made it to its target. email to no one breaks my heart :(.... https://twitter.com/ecodeathmarch/st...

a tweet's fidelity to brevity always excuses its content. #media #philosophy @twitter