fragilekeys

There’s a fundamental difference between one whose identity exists as a formation against something, and one whose identity exists as an overflowing expression of something.

What seems stereotypical of most present political movements is that they are iterations of the first. Their identity forms in juxtaposition to another identity, and so they begin in a kind of struggle for recognition and legitimacy. They are always begging for their voices to be heard, their cause to be validated. They seek adherents because, without collective agglomeration of more bodies and minds to ‘their side’, that side wavers precariously and seems always ready to fall back into non-existence. Put more strenuously, such identities form against whatever is deemed Evil, Unjust, Cruel, Unequal, and so on. Much attentive critique is poured upon the enemies and evil-doers. The positive program, if there is one, largely comes in the form of “We reject that, we do not want to be that.” This tends to blind it to many dubious aspects of its own self and, at worst, gives it an incentive to overlook unfavorable facts (like, for example, any goodness, reason, or redeeming quality in the ‘evil’ other). At that point, identity is quickly becoming an ideology and, moreover, a pawn in the mediastic game.

The second form of identity is on a much surer, yes truer ground. Not being dependent on any ‘contradistinction’ to another, it is able to let itself go, forget itself, laugh at itself, spend itself out. It knows silence, solitude, and the long wait of time, the long abidance in pregnant and total invisibility. It says, “We are this, we want to be this”—not to negate something bad or undesirable but to express (exuberate!) a desirable. It may be wrong about what it is and wants, but still it is not formed in the mirror of hatred, blame, resentment, grievance, animosity and revenge. No doubt it will have foes and may experience these sentiments; it may even vent its excess energy on opponents. But, at the core, its freedom or joy (in the act of love they are identical) is axiomatic and un-self-consciously powerful—it reigns. This power is not won from another or posited abstractly but is inherent to the very self-motivation and discipline of its being—it is known, a secure possession of self, a following that cannot be deterred. It leads itself, and knows how and who alone to obey…… And so, in reality, it has no ‘enemies’; to credence them so, to pay attention to them, is even a kind of generosity. There is no “Evil” here at all—rather only the “Good” of the self-flowing and -overflowing movement whose first and only order of business is to be and become itself, by continually overcoming itself, by conserving itself and giving itself away, without needing to return upon itself or project itself into some future accomplishment, for indeed: in its very identity it has already grasped the richness and splendor of its future wholeness, of its ripened composure, of its perfect success.—This means, very simply: it has itself…

—May 12, 2024

In his essay “Robert Frost”, Auden begins by discussing the tension or rivalry between Ariel and Prospero, which he believes denote two opposing tendencies or magnetic poles in poetry.

Although “every poem shows some sign of [both]”, and although “every poem involves some degree of collaboration between Ariel and Prospero”, nonetheless “the role of each varies in importance from one poem to another.” Hence, despite their being mixed together in different ratios in different works, “it is usually possible to say of a poem and, sometimes, of the whole output of a poet, that it is Ariel-dominated or Prospero-dominated.” What distinguishes these two?

Ariel is represented (critically, Auden notes) by Keats’ line, “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty!” This magical spirit stands for the priority of beauty over truth or the supposition of their simple identity. In Ariel-dominated poetry, we want to be taken away from the intractable problems of life, we want “a verbal earthly paradise, a timeless world of pure play.” This is the domain of the artificial, das Künstliche, in the strongest sense. Any consequence other than beautiful play is subordinate to it or ignored. Lack of utility, even lack of sense, is relished, and we take pleasure in being transported to realms of imagination that need not touch base anywhere, zones of fancy and flight.

But, Auden notes the crucial if obvious point: “Art arises out of our desire for both beauty and truth and our knowledge that they are not identical.” As much as we enjoy the remove of Ariel-dominated poetry, we also know we cannot be fooled forever by the paradise of play: we demand to hear about the truth.

DISTINCTIONS OF “THE NOTHING”
Notes on the immanence/transcendence code and religion after Luhmann

I

It can plausibly be argued that “Nothing” is a product of human imagination, produced through a negation that need not know the result. This speculative voiding of the All heads in the direction of a trans-empirical X for which there is no evidence (as one must admit, lest one be speaking of something rather than nothing).

Now the irony is that the Nothing, as deriving from a negation and itself indeterminate, is capable of receiving many determinations. As many determinations as can be creatively juxtaposed to that which it negates. If one negates Everything, one could say that resulting “other side” is Nothing. But one could negate the “whole of beings” and get “Being as such” as a result, since Being (esse, the verb to-be) is also not any “thing” and is reached by abstracting away from beings.

Many have played on this paradoxical interchangeability of Be-ing and No-thing. In doing so they have produced richly suggestive communications. The void (where representations go to die) is a uniquely invariable resource for creative thought. It retunes thinking to a signifyingness beyond the signifiers: a desire to mean that no extant meaning can match. This introduces us to the idea of a meaning that cannot be observed. A meaning on the other side of all the meanings we can conceive. This meaning, elusive as it is by definition, can take on seemingly opposed aspects: now the source of all meaning, now the antithesis of all meaning. This meaning that is on or from the “other side” has been called “God”, among other names, and in general it is the function of religion to observe the world “from” this other side — rather than from the inner side, which is what all other social systems do.

Void-antics, religion: our deployment in the Nowhere for meaning, when all meaning on the inner side of society proves nugatory or, at least, needs a grounding Elsewhere.

At its pinnacle, it produces statements like Meher Baba’s: “God alone is Real and all else that you see and feel is nothing but a series of nothings.” The opposite of Everything seems to be nothing, but it is interpreted as God, the Real Everything. What seems Everything, is Nothing in comparison. The inner side is but a speck of sand in the ocean of the Godhead.  Whatever is approachable by cognition, language, perception, time, is nothing (“All impressions are of nothing”); only what lies on the ‘outer side’ is Real… (Notice that nihilism and positive religion appear, in this light, as two possible attitudes toward the same relativization or devaluation, only the one doubts there is any unobservable meaning at all, while the other undertakes to substantiate its form of belief in that claim.) Continue reading →