Francis Raven

AUDIO

 

Willed Determinism

 

 

“The stronghold of the deterministic sentiment is the antipathy to the idea of chance.  What is it, they ask, but barefaced crazy unreason, the negation of intelligibility and law? And if the slightest particle of it exists anywhere, what is to prevent the whole fabric from falling together, the stars from going out, and chaos from recommencing her topsy-turvy reign?”

—William James

We structure to begin (repetitive and unconscious):

a wolf mimics what it cannot see

          (empires unite

their stones

threaten

to divide).

*****

We explain from within;

our actions are within (reappropriation’s absent formalism).

What allows their expression?

          Some principle, we are probing for that principle

                                        of human action.

We thought it was unusual: “the example was already set.”

To know freedom is forced:

camera’s leash: evidence

                              meant chain

                              from perpetrator to purpose:

cheek’s glistening impervious excuses

from a crowded room

emotions are reduced to mere words

like sauce desiccating.

We have to find the words.

A million photographs are too many words

          but not one, not the only one.

A million words are never enough to erase just one.

You need money for that, money to kill the ants

the black ferocious ants that won’t stop at your enemy’s arm.

*****

As photographs are scrutinized

within the possibility of explosion

for war

is forlorn

for photographs will tell you

that   what is needed

is       a magnifying glass hinged

on His superego paradox:

the demand to fulfill the other

in so far as the other demands the subject to enjoy:

pure oppression.

“We don’t improvise when it comes to war.”

—Karen Greenberg

This revolution in military affairs (RMA) consists primarily of a minutely targeted media system, which includes a biometrically accessible storage disk.  The main advantage of the system is that after successful completion of the background check you will no longer be forced to have your luggage scanned for bombs (therefore, opening the window).  The media organization file includes at least two media-selection parameters and associations from your past so that all who are psychically connected with you are able to become your allies in an all-out no-holds-barred cultural war.  The system is configured and operated using software to provide passenger entertainment services including audio and video on-demand, information dissemination, product and service order processing, video teleconferencing and data communication services.  The method comprises procedures for storing viewer preferences and subsequently characterizing media programs selected by a first user’s memory and transmitting (at least!) a portion of these preferences to a second user for storage in a memory for later nostalgia and anxiety concerning other minds.  In the preferred embodiment, the media system further includes a means for playing the plurality of suitable entertainment clips, which, of course, can then be used to bomb targets and later apologized for at the suitable (and required) press conferences.

Hence, the paradox:

the war is caused

to prevent

what it causes.

Cost effectiveness can also be measured

By simply calculating

The ratio of  

DESTROYING HOW MUCH OF WHAT THEY DO

Or, more accurately,

HOW MUCH WHAT WE DO IS

                    But that’s very difficult to read.

The world from the bottom up, from the oppressed to the state’s elite

following the rebel

seeking to sever

the nexus between law and violence

and Benjamin’s seeking violence outside of law:

Who is to say that they would not use it for the public sphere too? 

Is there a pure violence as a means within itself without addressing an external teleology?

The problem with random violence

is that it is of

no useXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXin a world of matches

anger burns

the lids of their eyes

meaning the sun repeating:

                                        It’s always

The anniversary

Of something

Terrible

(Agamben’s iustitium where actors can be judged afterward but never in the moment).

It was a battle for symbols, but the symbols were real;

you could pick them up;

you could break things with them

because they weren’t just symbols

as if a forced agreement

to not agree

counted

as an ideology:

our own false breath

appears as truth;

our own skepticism

does not make us

gulp for air:

we point at others

when asked about

our own beliefs.*

* Belief is the way you hold a spoon, the way you dig into a heart, not what you say, what you mumble.

We are given structures         

and we do our own things

with them.

Filthy Dilthey:

our life is our structure

we study

an active construction zone;

this old boat is being built

while attempting to sail:

its force against the water

is embedded ruddily in our skin.

The sad thing

is that

that’s the best we can hope for:

Often Borders

        are

Off In Borders

as     

invasions

become

section 1, ahh, the first part where we prevent people from coming in

forcedexodusofpeopledonotbelong

because we need to use three references.

So I’m going to point to a great wall of patriotic guard towers

do you like our ideas

no, a half mile is good, you can shoot anyone

volunteer snipers are a great idea

you should be able to spy on people.

Why are these extreme ideas more fun than what we actually believe?

1-800-ILL-EGAL

Well are we allowing visitors at all?

I don’t think so, we need to put GPS monitors on all people.

Approved

registered travelers

will be directed

to a designated

checkpoint lane

where they will

provide their

Registered Traveler Smart Card

containing biometric information

for identity confirmation.

And thus, we dive for the leader (cleaving in both senses):

My philosophy is that ambition should be rewarded, by which I mean my own ambition.  You see, I took over the world.  I was singing you can’t always get what you want but he said I could if I would only be a wanted criminal.  It seemed like a fair trade, a trade that would not leak down to the bottom of my soul.

I just have this need to be at the center of everything.  I don’t know if it’ll ever be cured except by actually being at the center of everything.  Now I am at the center of it all.  I am the state, I am the world and the world revolves around me, but this little attempt that follows is my attempt at being the world’s supreme dictator, endless talker.

Agreeing to a rule, at least before decision;

To use or lose our own judgment, scattered across campaigning:

(a) more information

(b) missiles

(c) diplomacy

(d) embargo.

He is too young to feel the pierce, the air rushing from his lungs…

The nail, conforming less adequately to expectation, causes the one who wields the hammer

          great pain; we only care about him.

These tools are not us.

When you have two you often discard one.

Hope clings to possibility at least as much as despair.

Plato uses ‘freedom’ in Books 1, 3, 8, and 9 of Benjamin Jowett’s translation of The Republic for a grand total of 17 times.  For one of the longer treatises on how societies should be arranged this is an astoundingly small number.  11 of those instances are contained in Book 8.

In Book 3, Socrates asserts that the proper role of the guardians in the republic should be to “dedicate themselves wholly to the maintenance of freedom in the State.”  ‘Freedom’ here indicates ‘the ability of everyone to fulfill their various social roles” and would require a lack of social turmoil.

Whereas,

in Samuel Moore’s translation of Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, the word ‘freedom’ is used 12 times.  The word only arises in three of the six sections of the book and 9 of those instances are contained in the section entitled “Proletarians and Communists”

, he suggests that if the only expression of freedom in a capitalist society is through owning property then there must be something wrong with that system, but each system has its  own concomitant freedoms that we must attend to, give thanks for, and finally shun.

Shouldn't we know where our ideas are coming from?

The split into two

because all that we are is invisible

from Planned Parenthood v. Casey:

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”

which means that

we don’t understand you:

we have to get below the crimes

we can see

to the criminals

we know

public accusations never encompasses the

guilty minds we wish to prosecute

there is always more in the heart

than in the hand; a divide that houses much abuse:

Juries. Testimony.  Self.  Six

emotions : gender.

You think

there is a wall

between information and freedom

but you can always lie

                    anyone  can           :

the only thing I got was this receipt

you’ll get it back unless he jumps bail

faced with a jail cell I might

the awful roommates he’s had

vile all of them

if you go into the state prison

system you go into the worst of the worst

well I got the former district attorney

to represent him

I think he might appeal

I don’t know how you appeal

leaving the scene of an accident, drunken driving

but I hear he’s pretty decent, shakes that is

the idea of a human being is

                              survival

and a mutually reinforcing social order

implies influence THE SEQUEL>

Gadamer: to understand the objective determinants of subjective experience

that way, it’s objective

Like bulls-eyes

The stakes of stares splinter

Off into your calloused hands

Before an explanation

For the legitimacy of the current state

Can be offered.  Thus,

We know what we must do:

A backflip against the current order

Wherein the big toe flicks the left nostril

Cutting it such that it unpleasantly flaps

With every breath.  On the inhale

All is closed.  Thus,

The administration asphyxiates itself

And is nailed into humid ground.

Two  Possibilities for Unification Diverged in the Political Collective Unconscious

(a)

The model of the Postmodern Prince is Octavio Ocampo’s portrait of Cesar Chavez.  The painting portrays Chavez as being made up of all the individuals in the movement.  For John Sanbonmatsu this portrait brings together many of the themes that he writes about.  First, the unity of the Postmodern Prince is based upon the experience of the individuals involved, that is, their experiences in the struggle culture of the United Farm Workers.  Second, it portrays “unity in diversity only within a single movement” that we might extend metonymically “to stand in as a figure for the unity of multiple movements in a common utopian project.”  That is to say, there can be no Postmodern Prince absent (1) the experiences of the people gathered by it and (2) a common and perhaps utopian vision of the future.  “On the one hand, the diverse elements would shine light on a normative ‘whole’ that is to become postmodern prince.  At the same time, however, the postmodern prince in its own … unfolding, would reveal the erstwhile ‘different’ elements of the same larger whole.”  The differences within the unified movement would cause the Postmodern Prince to move with empathy toward an ethic of metahumanism.  It would show that no oppression is privileged and that all are interlocking power struggles, which must be fought not with the mere spectacle of a protest but with a full-on perceptual change both of its participants and of the world at large.

(b)

Hamilton argues in The Political Philosophy of Needs that “a coercive authority” is necessary if his evaluative goals involving needs are to obtain.  He writes, “This is the case not only because there is always the possibility that some groups might vehemently defend the criticized institutions and roles, but also because there is a need for an ultimate evaluator of possible trajectories of need.  In other words, there is a practical imperative for there to be a single agent that can use its authority to decide when to act upon the outcome of the proposed method of need evaluation and what action to take in light of that outcome.”  However, he hedges, “[I]n order for the modern state to become the kind of need-disclosing authority envisaged here it would have to become a radically new kind of political authority.  I call this radically new kind of authority the state of needs.”  This state of needs would “be a constant participant in the disclosure and evaluation of needs, interests, institutions, and need trajectories and simultaneously the agency that ultimately decides when and how to act on the extant information in order to transform institutions and role matrices, choose trajectories, prioritize needs, and allocate resources in line with these choices and priorities.” 

_____________________________

Malpractice

Henry MacIntire made mistakes, many but by no means all of them were medical. He was successful, but that was largely due to his reputation, which was founded upon really not that much, really thin evidence. It’s lucky that our hospital doesn’t practice evidence-based medicine. The doctors here mainly proceed via hunches, hunches and tradition. Unfortunately, in medicine, our best hunches often cause us to make mistakes. A doctor’s hunches, it is true, often lead to better results than a layperson’s would, but not nearly the results that a sound scientist would reach with her expensive devices and centrifuges. That is, the biases that helped us survive in the jungle often cause us to allow our patients to die (notice the unconscious shift away from the more active to kill as in “The doctor killed his patients.”). This is especially true if the doctor in question is particularly accustomed to three martini lunches and if he does most of his doctoring after lunch. (Timing truly is everything.) Of course, I still haven’t gotten around to what the doctor actually does, why you should be angry. Well, Dr. MacIntire routinely uses the wrong sperm when trying to get women pregnant. He doesn’t know how to draw blood so there are often bruises, but bruises heal. More serious is his inability to tell left from right, which has led to not a few cases of amputating the wrong limb. He routinely leaves medical instruments in his patients as unintentional souvenirs from surgery. Their bodies often deal with the metal just fine, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they die. He also had a really hard time remembering names and as an added quirk he thinks that Jim and John are really the same name. I can’t tell you how many misplaced kidneys we’ve had in our wing. The worst mistake he’s made, I think, though, was when he was supposed to transplant a heart and lungs into a sweet life-loving 12-year-old girl. Of course, he put the wrong organs into her little cage, the wrong blood type, and they were, of course, rejected. She died. Before that she suffered.  

Of course, all of this drives up Henry’s malpractice insurance premiums, but he doesn’t care, he owns the hospital, which only proves the point that money makes all the difference in the world. If only each of us could vertically and horizontally integrate the world as Dr. MacIntire has we would not have to deal with the negative consequences (intentional or accidental) of our actions.  Money shields us from these negative consequences. It’s not so much that they evaporate, because the patients really are dead, but that it doesn’t matter to the doctor. It shouldn’t really, for that’s the function of a good shield: to keep the blood away. I just wish each of us was rich so we could all do what we truly wanted. Heave ho for freedom! Throw caution into the wind! Actually, throw cash into the wind!