Iris Murdoch, Under The Net (Penguin Books, 1960) p. 244
24 Nov 2012
Events stream past us like these crowds and the face of each is seen only for a minute. What is urgent is not urgent for ever but only ephemerally. All work and all love, the search for wealth and fame, the search for truth, like itself, are made up of moments which pass and become nothing. Yet through this shaft of nothings we drive onward with that miraculous vitality that creates our precarious habitations in the past and the future. So we live; a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came.
TAMARUS: But ideas are like money. There must be an accepted coin which circulates. Concepts which are used for communication are justified by success.
ANNANDINE: That's near to saying that a story is true if enough people believe it.
TAMARUS: Of course I don't mean that. If I use an analogy or invent a concept part of what must be tested when the success is tested is whether by this means I can draw attention to real things in the world. Any concept can be misused. Any sentence can state a falsehood. But words themselves don't tell lies. A concept may have limitations but these won't mislead if I expose them in my use of it.
ANNANDINE: Yes, that's the grand style of lying. Put down your best half truth and call it a lie, but let it stand all the same. It will survive when your qualifications have been forgotten, even by yourself.
TAMARUS: But life has to be lived, and to be lived it has to be understood. This process is called civilization. What you say goes against our very nature. We are rational animals in the sense of theory-making animals.
ANNANDINE: When you've been most warmly involved in life, when you've most felt yourself to be a man, has a theory ever helped you? Is it not then that you meet with things themselves naked? Has a theory helped you when you were in doubt about what to do? Are not these very simple moments when theories are shilly-shallying? And don't you realize this very clearly at such moments?
TAMARUS: My answer is twofold. Firstly that I may not reflect upon theories, but I may be expressing one all the same. Secondly that there are theories abroad in the world, political ones for instance, and so we have to deal with them in our thoughts, and that at moments of decision too.
ANNANDINE: If by expressing a theory you mean that someone else could make a theory of what you do, of course that is true and uninteresting. What I speak of is the real decision as we experience it; and here the movement away from theory and generality is the movement towards truth. All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself and this is unutterably particular. Indeed it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to crawl under the net.
TAMARUS: That may be. But what about my other point?
ANNANDINE: It is true that theories may often be part of a situation that one has to contend with. But then all sorts of obvious lies and fantasies may be a part of such a situation; and you would say that one must be good at detecting and shunning lies, and not that one must be good at lying.
TAMARUS: So you would cut all speech, except the very simplest out of human life altogether. To do this would be to take away our very means of understanding ourselves and making life endurable.
ANNANDINE: Why should life be made endurable? I know that nothing consoles and nothing justifies except a story – but that doesn't stop all stories from being lies. Only the greatest men can speak and still be truthful. Any artist knows this obscurely; he knows that a theory is death, and that all expression is weighted with theory. Only the strongest can rise against that weight. For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence.
ANNANDINE: That's near to saying that a story is true if enough people believe it.
TAMARUS: Of course I don't mean that. If I use an analogy or invent a concept part of what must be tested when the success is tested is whether by this means I can draw attention to real things in the world. Any concept can be misused. Any sentence can state a falsehood. But words themselves don't tell lies. A concept may have limitations but these won't mislead if I expose them in my use of it.
ANNANDINE: Yes, that's the grand style of lying. Put down your best half truth and call it a lie, but let it stand all the same. It will survive when your qualifications have been forgotten, even by yourself.
TAMARUS: But life has to be lived, and to be lived it has to be understood. This process is called civilization. What you say goes against our very nature. We are rational animals in the sense of theory-making animals.
ANNANDINE: When you've been most warmly involved in life, when you've most felt yourself to be a man, has a theory ever helped you? Is it not then that you meet with things themselves naked? Has a theory helped you when you were in doubt about what to do? Are not these very simple moments when theories are shilly-shallying? And don't you realize this very clearly at such moments?
TAMARUS: My answer is twofold. Firstly that I may not reflect upon theories, but I may be expressing one all the same. Secondly that there are theories abroad in the world, political ones for instance, and so we have to deal with them in our thoughts, and that at moments of decision too.
ANNANDINE: If by expressing a theory you mean that someone else could make a theory of what you do, of course that is true and uninteresting. What I speak of is the real decision as we experience it; and here the movement away from theory and generality is the movement towards truth. All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself and this is unutterably particular. Indeed it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to crawl under the net.
TAMARUS: That may be. But what about my other point?
ANNANDINE: It is true that theories may often be part of a situation that one has to contend with. But then all sorts of obvious lies and fantasies may be a part of such a situation; and you would say that one must be good at detecting and shunning lies, and not that one must be good at lying.
TAMARUS: So you would cut all speech, except the very simplest out of human life altogether. To do this would be to take away our very means of understanding ourselves and making life endurable.
ANNANDINE: Why should life be made endurable? I know that nothing consoles and nothing justifies except a story – but that doesn't stop all stories from being lies. Only the greatest men can speak and still be truthful. Any artist knows this obscurely; he knows that a theory is death, and that all expression is weighted with theory. Only the strongest can rise against that weight. For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence.
Iris Murdoch, Under The Net (Penguin Books, 1960) pp. 80-81
'[...] As soon as I start to describe, I'm done for. Try describing anything, our conversation for instance, and see how absolutely instinctively you...'
'Touch it up?' I suggested.
'It's deeper than that,' said Hugo. 'The language just won't let you present it as it really was.'
'Suppose then,' I said, 'that one were offering the description at the time.'
'But don't you see,' said Hugo, 'that just gives the thing away. One couldn't give such a description at the time without seeing that it was untrue. All one could say at the time would be perhaps something about one's heart beating. But if one said one was apprehensive this could only be to try to make an impression – it would be for effect, it would be a lie.'
I was puzzled by this myself. I felt that there was something wrong in what Hugo said, and yet I couldn't see what it was. We discussed the matter a bit further, and then I told him, 'But at this rate almost everything one says, except things like "Pass the marmalade" or "There's a cat on the roof", turns out to be a sort of lie.'
Hugo pondered this. 'I think it is so,' he said with seriousness.
'In that case one oughtn't to talk,' I said.
'I think perhaps one oughtn't to,' said Hugo, and he was deadly serious. Then I caught his eye, and we both laughed enormously, thinking of how we had been doing nothing else for days on end.
'That's colossal!' said Hugo. 'Of course one does talk. But,' and he was grave again, 'one does make far too many concessions to the need to communicate.'
'What do you mean?'
'All the time when I speak to you, even now, I'm saying not precisely what I think, but what will impress you and make you respond. That's so even between us – and how much more it's so where there are stronger motives for deception. In fact, one's so used to this one hardly sees it. The whole language is a machine for making falsehoods.'
'Touch it up?' I suggested.
'It's deeper than that,' said Hugo. 'The language just won't let you present it as it really was.'
'Suppose then,' I said, 'that one were offering the description at the time.'
'But don't you see,' said Hugo, 'that just gives the thing away. One couldn't give such a description at the time without seeing that it was untrue. All one could say at the time would be perhaps something about one's heart beating. But if one said one was apprehensive this could only be to try to make an impression – it would be for effect, it would be a lie.'
I was puzzled by this myself. I felt that there was something wrong in what Hugo said, and yet I couldn't see what it was. We discussed the matter a bit further, and then I told him, 'But at this rate almost everything one says, except things like "Pass the marmalade" or "There's a cat on the roof", turns out to be a sort of lie.'
Hugo pondered this. 'I think it is so,' he said with seriousness.
'In that case one oughtn't to talk,' I said.
'I think perhaps one oughtn't to,' said Hugo, and he was deadly serious. Then I caught his eye, and we both laughed enormously, thinking of how we had been doing nothing else for days on end.
'That's colossal!' said Hugo. 'Of course one does talk. But,' and he was grave again, 'one does make far too many concessions to the need to communicate.'
'What do you mean?'
'All the time when I speak to you, even now, I'm saying not precisely what I think, but what will impress you and make you respond. That's so even between us – and how much more it's so where there are stronger motives for deception. In fact, one's so used to this one hardly sees it. The whole language is a machine for making falsehoods.'
Iris Murdoch, Under The Net (Penguin Books, 1960) pp. 59-60
'This talk of love means very little. Love is not a feeling. It can be tested. Love is action, it is silence. It's not the emotional straining and scheming for possession that you used to think it was.'
This seemed to me very foolish talk. 'But love is concerned with possession,' I said. 'If you knew anything about unsatisfied love, you'd know this.'
'No,' said Anna strangely. 'Unsatisfied love is concerned with understanding. Only if it is all, all understanding, can it remain love while being unsatisfied.'
This seemed to me very foolish talk. 'But love is concerned with possession,' I said. 'If you knew anything about unsatisfied love, you'd know this.'
'No,' said Anna strangely. 'Unsatisfied love is concerned with understanding. Only if it is all, all understanding, can it remain love while being unsatisfied.'
Iris Murdoch, Under The Net (Penguin Books, 1960) p. 40
The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a café will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.
Iris Murdoch, Under The Net (Penguin Books, 1960) p. 31
28 Oct 2012
Människan måste tolkas, det måste inte Gud. Gud är harmoni genom sig själv, människan kan endast nå harmoni genom en kamp (mellan ljus och mörker, samt massa andra dimensioner). För det andra, Gud frammanar Skapelsen, människan är blott ett subjekt som skapar. För det tredje, människan skapar endast territorier (länder, städer, taggtrådsstängsel), inte jorden (Earth, die Welt). Trots allt detta utgör människan “hjälten” i romantiken, som vi ändå måste primärt tänka som tysk. Tyskt territorium, grekiskt jordklot. Denna spänning skapar romantikens imperialism, hanfågeln som markerar sitt revir genom kvitter. Imperiet som kodar toner mot distinktionen territorium – jord. Vår enda väg är “protestantisk” kritik.
Christopher Kullenberg, 'Barocken och romantiken, mot en teori om den musikaliska fromheten.' at http://christopherkullenberg.se/ (29/10/2012)
25 Oct 2012
Livet som allt överordnad ideologi, livet som idolbild på flickrumsväggen, livet som mekanisk koreografi. Samtidigt den pockande frågan om livets mening, en fråga vars blotta formulering vittnar om en förlorad känsla av meningsfullhet.
Döden drivs undan till periferin, foliepaketeras, kläs i desinficerande terminologi, förträngs.
Döden drivs undan till periferin, foliepaketeras, kläs i desinficerande terminologi, förträngs.
Helena Granström, Alltings Mått (Ruin, 2008) p. 60
En likartad motstridighet präglar den civiliserade individens tillvaro: självtillräcklig, fri, autonom och kapabel att fatta sitt livs centrala beslut. Samtidigt oförmögen att på egen hand garantera sin överlevnad, utlämnad till en industriell infrastruktur för fyllandet av sina kroppsliga behov, förväntad att sälja större delen av sin vakna tid till högstbjudande, fråntagen möjligheten att dricka friskt vatten, andas ren luft. Valfriheten som en fullständig frånvaro av frihet.
Helena Granström, Alltings Mått (Ruin, 2008) p. 59
23 Oct 2012
Kvantmekanikens och tillvarons paradoxer bottnar i en föreställning om möjligheten till betraktande utan interaktion, i en motvilja att lämna en trygg begreppsvärld av egenskaper, partiklar, objektivitet. I själva verket innebär varje mätprocess, varje interaktion, etablerandet av en relation med omvärlden och, tautologiskt, är det om karaktären hos denna relation som teoretisk och experimentell praktik kan producera utsagor: vad vi får reda på då vi utför mätningar på ett system är just hur systemet beter sig då vi utför mätningar på det. Ett erkännande av kontextens betydelse är alltså inte liktydigt med ontologisk relativism: med världen får det vara som det vill; till vår upplevelse av världen är vi ofrånkomligen bundna.
Helena Granström, Alltings Mått (Ruin, 2008) p. 34
Var i vår omgivning finner vi en modell för den mänskliga organismens komplexitet, för levande varelsers samspel? Vad lär oss att vara människor på samma vis som havet är hav? Mänsklig förändring, mänsklig tillblivelse, söker sin analogi i knoppande träd, lövens fall vid höstningen, dagsmeja över snö, smältande is och frysande vattendrag. I frånvaro av detta ersätts växandet med tillväxt, mallen för formation av mänsklig vuxenhet blir ekonomins cancerartade expansion: ett ego i ständig utvidgning, växande inte genom förening utan genom övertagande. Barnet klarmrar sig fast vid kramdjuret, vid det uppstoppade djuret, vid husdjuret. Där han förväntar sig frändskap och ömsesidighet möter han en slät projektionsyta, en friktionsfri icke-relation att förfoga över efter eget tycke. Spegeln är krossad; mänsklighetens innebörd förblir oklar i ett kugghjulsuniversum av atomiska objekt med funktion som enda essens.
Helena Granström, Alltings Mått (Ruin, 2008) pp. 24-25
21 Oct 2012
Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes.
What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.
What precipitates acts? Belief.
Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the wind's mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?
Why? because of this: – one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
Is this the entropy written in our nature?
What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.
What precipitates acts? Belief.
Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the wind's mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?
Why? because of this: – one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
Is this the entropy written in our nature?
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (Sceptre, 2004) pp. 527-528
20 Oct 2012
14 Oct 2012
Once it's lost, innocence can't be found again. Paradise is a place with many exits, but no entrance. There's no way back from knowledge. When you fall from grace, that's it.
I wonder, to find it again, whether we shouldn't do just the opposite of what we've done. If we shouldn't take another bite out of the apple...
I wonder, to find it again, whether we shouldn't do just the opposite of what we've done. If we shouldn't take another bite out of the apple...
Paul Gégauff/Barbet Schroeder, La Vallée, 1972
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