An interesting idea

Sovereignty and World Organizations

Someone once asked if the UN had any power over the US, or any other countries. While it is a governing body of a sort, it only has as much power as the individual nations within it allow.

As a sovereign nation, the US, or any country for that matter, has its own laws to abide by (even if it doesn’t always do that). The UN is comprised of members from select countries. They have votes and help to regulate world politics, but why does it seem like they never truly do a whole lot? It’s certainly a method for communication, and keeping peace between countries, but overall it doesn’t get much of a say in how the US does things.

This is because the US is its own country, like the UK, France, Iran, Argentina, Australia, Russia, etc… Because of that, our country wants to run things on its own terms, without the influence of other nations telling us what to do. Letting the UN help dictate world policies, however good its intentions might be, simply will not work until countries can allow such outside influence within the governing practices.

If the world was made of five countries, and three of them voted to end the killing of cows, the other two can shrug and do their own thing because, unless one is set up, there is no agreement to live by the majority decisions of other nations. As a tool, world organizations are a powerful method that can bring the world together to talk. However, it’s only the disapproval of other nations that has any real influence in them, because no country wants to give up a piece of their sovereignty to other nations.

A philosophical turn of mind (By David at Popehat)

A philosophical turn of mind

In a closed facebook group on analytic philosophy, someone asked a question along these lines: “How do you primarily criticize other people’s reasoning?”

Here’s the reply I gave. What are some other ways you approach the task of evaluating another’s reasoning?

There’s no definitive checklist or prescription for identifying an issue and diagnosing someone’s treatment of that issue. One reason such an endeavor cannot be reduced to an algorithm is that the complexity of any single issue can be daunting, and the product of interactions among such issues is of an order of complexity too high for even the best merely human mind to address synchronously or sequentially.

Instead, we have to use various troubleshooting heuristics until we’ve isolated a matter of interest that fits our capacity for analysis. At that juncture, we can go to town on it, and perhaps make (micro-)progress toward clearing away the underbrush of human cognition and laying out defensible assertions about how and why things are.

Typical questions in the area of fuzzy diagnostics applied to person P include (but are not limited to):

• What is the general domain that P is addressing, and what general domain does P seem to believe P is addressing? Do these match?
• What are the purposes of P’s discourse? To identify an assertion and rebut it? To identify a confusion and clarify it? To rant gracefully against a disfavored ideology? To note an oversimplification and introduce remedial complexity? Other?
• What does P assume? Does P acknowledge that P assumes that?
• When fluff and qualifications and mods and idiosyncratic terminology and other debris have been swept away, what is P’s argument? What conclusion does P claim to reach? Which premises does P offer as an avenue to reach it? What evidence does P adduce in support of them?
• What kinds of evidence are actually relevant to P’s argument? What kinds of evidence does P employ? What kinds does P ignore? What kinds does P dismiss? What is the effect of this particular configuration of employment, ignorance, and dismissal on P’s endeavor?
• Which alternatives to P’s affirmations and inferences does P explicitly consider? What does P prefer to them? Which explicit judgments account for P’s preference? Which unacknowledged factors constrain it?
• Does P’s argument, taken as facially acceptable, pass the “So what” test?
• If you find fault with P’s argument in its given context for reasons such as those suggested above, is there something about your own approach, your own assumptions, your own preferences, or your own commitments that prompt or guide you to object in that way?
• Is P right?
• What would you have to know or reliably believe in order to evaluate P’s discourse in each way listed above? Are you suitably positioned to evaluate it?

Note: this is not an exhaustive list– not even close. It’s also given not in a chronological or diagnostically relevant order; it’s given in the order in which I improvised the list while eating a bagel and superficially weighing your question.

The broad point is that there’s no formula for doing philosophy. Instead, there’s a set of habits of mind intermixed with some balance of generosity, skepticism, curiosity, and hope.

The Etymological Soul

For those who don’t know, Etymology is the study of words, their meanings, and their roots. I’m going to attempt to use it to define the soul. The earliest English version of the word “soul” shows up as early as the 8th century. Its roots are similar to the Germanic, Norse, and Lithuanian words of similar meaning. The oldest form of “The Soul” that I can find is in Greek, and goes back to Plato’s philosophy, and the word Psyche.

• ψυχή (psūkhē), or Psyche as we would say it, is the Greek word for soul, translating to breath, or to cool/to blow.
  • Psyche in the English sense is the mind and personality of someone.
• Hebrew has the word Nephesh, referring to aspects of human life, but is most commonly referring to “life” or the “vital breath”
  • However, the English translations of Nephesh encompass “soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion” (wikipedia)
• Psyche (the Greek variant) was later translated to Anima in Latin
  • Latin’s Anima translates (similarly to Greek and Hebrew) as “a current of air, wind, air, breath, the vital principle, life, soul”
    • Anima became the etymological root for several words including: (wikipedia)
      • Animal – “Of or relating to animals”, “Raw, base, unhindered by social codes”, and “Pertaining to the spirit or soul; relating to sensation or innervation“.
      • Animatus (Animate) – “to fill with breath, quicken, encourage, animate”
      • Animus – “the mind: the rational soul in man, intellect, consciousness, will, intention, courage, spirit, sensibility, feeling, passion, pride, vehemence, wrath, etc., the breath, life, soul”
        • English Animus has 2 definitions worth noting.
          • The basic impulses and instincts which govern one’s actions;
          • and A feeling of enmity, animosity or ill will.

After looking it over and comparing a few examples, while noting the common points, the oldest form of the soul seems to be Breath, the Air, the Mind, and Personality. However, I’d like to take it a step further. Later versions, the Hebrew, and English, and Latin derivations all seem to suggest something else. The soul isn’t just the self, but emotion. The idea of Animus (Latin and English) could be more spot on, but there is conflict.

Animus in Latin means the Rational part of man, but later becomes basic impulses and instincts in English, similar to Animal (Latin). However, if we were to consider the Rational side of man as a survival instinct related to preserving oneself in situations (versus doing what they want), then we can understand the idea of soul as being basic instinct and emotion, raw and without hindrance. Another way to explain it might be with the Taoist concept of wu wei (a simplified understanding)

Wu wei (Chinese: 無爲; a variant and derivatives: traditional Chinese: 無為; simplified Chinese: 无为;English, lit. non-doing) is an important concept in Taoism that literally means non-action or non-doing. In the Tao te Ching, Laozi explains that beings (or phenomena) that are wholly in harmony with the Tao behave in a completely natural, uncontrived way. As the planets revolve around the sun, they “do” this revolving, but without “doing” it. As trees grow, they simply grow without trying to grow. Thus knowing how and when to act is not knowledge in the sense that one would think, “now I should do this,” but rather just doing it, doing the natural thing. The goal of spiritual practice for the human being is, according to Laozi, the attainment of this natural way of behaving. (wikipedia)

With that in mind, I would say that etymologically, the soul is not what makes us who we are, but is actually the most primal form of human life, uncontrolled except by the desire for survival which we cultivate with societies. To risk my point and branch out, it could then be inferred that our passions are directed by the way society has forms around us, and thus we see people studying music, art, medicine, literature, culture, etc., as a means of survival, directing those passions to find a better place in the world around us. We are social creatures, because with those we find the idea appealing that we can band together. Friends can make us stronger, or at least out number the other guy.

However, we consider this innate desire for survival to be another instinct, and thus it makes it as wild as any emotion. What does that mean for my definition of the soul? It means it needs to be redefined of course. My new definition is that the soul is only the primal form of human life, acting and reacting with regards to our survival.

What a strange world.

*Image The Coming Darkness, by Noah Bradley

Just a quick look at the news as of late.

• 4-Year-Old Re-Elected ‘Mayor’ Of Minnesota Town (NPR.org)
• Hipsters are Killing American Razor Sales (MSN Money)
• Election officials catch dead man donating $100,000 to Sen. Mitch McConnell (The Raw Story)
• Luxury Toilet Users Warned of Hardware Flaw (bbc.co.uk)
• USDA Requires Magician to Create “Disaster Plan” for His Rabbit (Lowering The Bar)

Every day I look at the world, and suddenly Wonderland is beginning to make more sense.

All good things must come to an end

It was a cold day to be working the beat this October. But this case was anything but pleasant for police chief grimace. This town was dying, slowly and painfully. It’s inhabitants bleeding out and leaving and this case had hit an artery it seemed. Four bodies found. Each mangled and twisted apart, left for dead on the concrete. We had an artist on our streets but police chief grimace never liked the arts. To subjective, no real depth to any of it. In short he just didn’t understand a bunch of bugs playing the system, but this, this he knew. The hamburger was back in town and to tonight’s victim only reinforced this. A fine young cheese burger left for bear. Her cheese pulled out and 20ft away laid a small box with a twisted smile painted on it. His calling card. Inside was a note “HOLD THE ONIONS I SAID” and below that laid the poor girls onions. “It’s like some kind of sick joke sir” said deputy McDonald. A young rookie who grimace was positive moonlight and the local tranny bar ‘mcnugget’, why else would he be wearing lipstick at a time like this. “I told the mayor this wouldn’t happen again. He’s gonna have my balls.” Grimace was up for retirement and mayor burger was running for senate. Both didn’t need this shit

I Will Never Finish Your Book

you will never make sense even to yourself

Notes on ‘The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology’

• Parmenides
  • Q: ‘what  presents itself is essentially multiple; what presents itself is essentially one
  • Leibniz: ‘What is not a being is not a being’
  • Problem: if being is one then what is not one (multiple) is not
    • Unacceptable conclusion: obviously what is presented to the senses is a multiple (I see trees and dogs and dirt and semen and shit and they all appear distinct; the confusion is in that all these things taken together ‘seem’ to be part of ‘one’ thing (i.e. ‘the world’))
      • In thought, we analyze particulars: things part of the multiple
  • For Badiou, presentation is multiple, and to accept ‘oneness’ as a conclusion here is to eradicate presentation which would then give us no access to being (how do we access being without the presentation of sense experience?)
  • ‘on the other hand…’ if we grant presentation (what a thing to grant!) then the multiple necessarily is (‘presentation’ as a technical term needs elaboration)
  • One as operation
    • ‘there is no one, only the count-as-one’
    • ‘one’ is a number (1); ‘one’ is not a presentation
      • ‘being’ is what presents itself
      • Situation = any presented multiplicity
        • What is ‘taking-place’ in a situation is the multiplicity
        • Structure = (general definition) when the ‘count-as-one’ operates on a situation
          • Thus, structure allows numbers to occur within the situation
          • To Badiou, every situation is structured (this remains to be seen)
          • Argument: (1) structure instantiates the count-as-one; (2) ‘being’ is the multiple; (3) ‘being’ is prior to structures (as they are not-yet); (C) the multiple is anterior to the one
            • Question: how does the ‘count-as-one’ occur from an unstructured, indeterminate (that of ‘being)? Answer: ‘one’ is an operator, a subject  uses the concept of ‘one’ and operates on the multiplicity in her picking out of a particular multiple, thus starts the ‘count’ and the structuring
              • Question: how does structure occur from the ‘count’? Answer: once we begin to count, we’ve begun to put things in an order (at first, simply, in a list of items).  Structure emerges when we further organize this list by criteria (categories, types, disciplines, subjects, object, etc.) thus the ‘counts’ instantiation of structure
              • We retroactively perceive the multiple because we know that the ‘count’ is a result of something
                • Result: the domain of the operation is not ‘one’ (in the sense of ‘the world’, or some ‘thing’), it is ‘multiple’ (operators work on the multiple) and it never generates in any presented structure a ‘one’.  Why? Because in presentation what is not one is necessarily multiple
                • In other words – when we start to ponder on the world, we immediately notice particulars and as part of our investigation, we attempt an organization of them in a veridical way. In noticing a particular, we’ve begun to ‘count’, and numbers appear (consider trying to make sense of your hand). When the count-as-one starts, we supposedly have indicated a ‘one’, or X, and we say of that ‘one’/X, “that is ‘one’/an (X)”.  Notice however, that we have predicated this ‘one’ with ‘that is-’ or ‘this is-”.  Now, notice how we were only able to recognize this after the fact (indicated by the “notice… that…”).  That we can only demonstrate this retrospectively indicates the ‘blindness’ of the ‘count-as-one’ or, rather, logico-mathematical investigation, towards what it is emerges from and how it was inaugurated.  It also indicates that of the ‘count’ there is no prior ‘oneness’ that makes the concept ‘one’ a referent to something essential (by virtue of the count-as-one bringing one to the scene not in ‘being’ but afterwards, in an operation).  Remember now, that the ‘count’ operates on (any) presentation and that presentation is structured in this way; also, what is not ‘one’ is necessarily ‘multiple’.  Therefore, presentation and its structure (a structure can notice several ‘ones’) are multiple.
• Two different ‘multiple’
  • (1) ‘pure’ presentation or ‘that-predicate-multiple’ (in its being apprehended as such retrospectively) – ‘the multiplicity of inertia’ (we’ll have to unpack ‘inertia’)
  • (2) multiple as ‘several-ones’ counted by the action of the structure (that action being the ‘count-as-one’) or composition which is that of number and structures’ effect – ‘the multiplicity of composition’
  • Technical terminology:
    • (1) = ‘inconsistent multiplicity’
    • (2) = ‘consistent multiplicity’
    • Situation = structured multiplicity (there are only ever situations)
      • Relative to (1) and (2); How?
      • “(the count-as-one)structure is both what obliges us to consider, via retroaction, that presentation is a multiple (inconsistent) and what authorizes us, via anticipation, to compose the terms of the presentation as units of a multiple (consistent)”
        • Obligation and authorization: bare minimum of a law
  • The Law of the Multiple = (is not) one
    • How one is-not – is it an operator (see above) and therefore, not a-thing
    • How one “is” – it “is” in the sense of it being a law: the law of the multiple
      • In one’s ‘not-being-there’ (in its being an operator), it is the law of any structured presentation in that it is the bare minimum for any structure/axiom/law/etc. – (note: the idea of ‘void’ and the ‘void set’ that clarifies its operating despite ‘not-being-there’)
      • Discourse on being qua being (Ontology)
        • (1) there is nothing apart from situations
        • (2) Ontology is a situation
        • (3) a situation is a presentation
        • (4) ‘being’ is included in what any presentation presents
        • (C1) ‘being qua being’ cannot be presented
        • (5) if (2) then it must admit a mode of the count-as-one, a structure (see above)
        • (6) if the one is not then being is not one
        • (C2) if (6) then being is subtracted from the count (i.e. is not operated on by the count-as-one)
        • (7) if (C2) then being is heterogeneous to the opposition of the one and the multiple
        • (C3) if (7) then, there is not structure to being
          • Question, if a situations are structured, then is it not the case that (2) is incorrect? Either this or, (2) and not(1)
          • Refutation of ‘Ontology is not a situation’
            • If ontology is not a situation then being is impossible to signified within a structured multiple
              •  …this is why I never finished your book…
      • fcuk logic, titzz

Related articles

• Alain Badiou: The Three Fundamental Logics of Negation (Hyper-Transcription) (dingpolitik.wordpress.com)
• TrOn: An Anatomical Ontology for the Beetle Tribolium castaneum (plosone.org)

This Man Was Right

I have never once thought of carrying a weapon in Wal-Mart….

I have never once thought of carrying a weapon in Wal-Mart….

I have maybe once thought of carrying a weapon in Wal-Mart….

I have maybe once thought of carrying a weapon in Wal-Mart but I wasn’t gonna do anything with it….

I have maybe once thought of carrying a a weapon in Wal-Mart however there was no ill intent….

I have maybe once thought of carrying a weapon in Wal-Mart however there was no ill intent and I certainly wouldn’t have done anything bad…

I have maybe once thought of carrying a weapon in Wal-Mart but I’m not crazy….

I have maybe once thought of carrying a a weapon in Wal-Mart however there was no ill intent and i certainly wouldn’t have done anything bad and I respect our rights and stuff….

I have maybe once thought of carrying a weapon in Wal-Mart but I’m not crazy….

I have maybe once thought of carrying a a weapon in Wal-Mart however there was no ill intent and i certainly wouldn’t have done anything bad and I respect our rights and stuff but I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt….

I have maybe once thought of carrying a weapon in Wal-Mart but I’m not crazy….

…I am not a violent person….

POSITIVE AFFIRMATION TECHNIQUE A1:

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I am not a violent person

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

I have butterflies in my head

My heart sings the joys of God

My heart sings the joys of God

My heart sings the joys of God

My heart sings the joys of God

My heart sings the joys of God

My heart sings the joys of God

My heart sings the joys of God

My heart sings the joys of God

My heart sings the joys of God

I am one with happiness….

Related articles

• Refrigerated truck bought with grant from Wal-Mart (republicanherald.com)
• Wal-Mart Employee Assaulted over Garbage (1011now.com)

Fish Head Stew Recipe

this is the way to land

Fish Head Stew:

Fish Head
– Brine: water, pickled ginger brine,
soy sauce, cilantro, salt, sake
– Cut fish head into quarters and
brine, 4hrs
– pat dry, lightly coat in flour and baking soda and fry, shallow oil in skillet

Pickled Mustard Greens
– chop mustard greens and pack loosley
into jar
– heat white and rice vinegar, water,
a splash of sake, salt, and a thai chili
– cool and pour over greens; ferment 3 days — remove mold

Soup
– stir-fry bok choy, pickled mustard
greens, radishes, pickled ginger,
thai chili chopped with soy sauce,
and sake
– add fish stock and noodles and simmer
till noodles are done

Serve
– plate soup with fish head on top
– garnish with fresh cilantro, green
onions, and fresh squeezed lime juice

eAT

CoNSuME By Tearing At tHe FlESH aNd brEking THe bOnE SnAD CaTAleGE iN TH eHed.

GooD mEat in the Cin sTrap, NeckC BEHEInd In TheGIDLs — EyEs aNd toNgue Inedible — Access ChEEK BY BrEaking OdFF carTaledge abOVe tEEth

diPP in sOUp and WaSh wIth saKe and the KnowWLefe thaTA tYOU HAVE KnOW S A SISngle JOY

jkhkklollj

this aggression will not stand

Slow Starts

It takes time to get together a good collection of minds. Will we ever get a collection of good minds?

Apologies for the cryptic post. This is taking longer to get off the ground than I’d hoped.