Ramble Awn, Gramble Tamble

What would happen if you didn't set any expectations?

My goal here is just to monologue at you, discussing whatever comes into my mind. There’s no expectation to live up to a title.

My radio show was originally called Speaking Broadly. It rhymes with “my name,” Wadley, and it also accurately reflects the fact that there is not really one topic that I discuss.

In that vein, consider the topic of the lack of unitariness of any concept. Concepts are not discrete.

At this point, it’s important to vary expression. “Concept” is doing a lot of work. We could discuss “cognitive mappings,” which seem to have to do with verificationist ideas of truth. Basically, we have an inner picture somehow of how things are in the world. Then, that picture can either be accurate or inaccurate.

The things we’re mapping can be of seemingly different kinds. For example, I could be mistaken about where I left my coffee cup. On the other hand, I could be mistaken about the rules of logic, and whether a certain conclusion necessarily follows from given premises.

The second mistake is still somehow of a kind of being incorrect about a state of affairs in the world, but it’s an abstract process. This is as opposed to a plain sort of fact where it would seem that discovering “the truth” would be theoretically possible just by investigating the world with full access and no thought necessary other than to understand and achieve that objective.

When we use a concept—now I’ll appeal to that hopeless victim of the Woke Mind Virus, Friedrich Nietzsche—we are treating different things like they are the same.

To pick one of my favorite bug-a-bears, “capitalism” implies that in some way everything you label “capitalism” is in some way the same. Meanwhile, there are obviously huge differences in the last hundreds of years, and between countries etc. These are obviously theorized, but again according to measures developed in the 19th century, with rigid definitions.

Of course, no definition is really all that rigid. Everything requires interpretation.

So there’s constantly this stiff atmosphere because everyone’s a conservative in their own way, which is to say cognitively rigid. Stuck in their ways, stubborn counter-productively.

At the same time, all this stuckness is busy dissimulating—that is, making it seem like the following is not occurring:—how everything is in flux. There is no “status quo” because things are changing, and how people think of things is actually constantly changing.

Dr. Zweibelson talks about “reconceptualizing” war. A few things.

My immediate point above is that there is no stable conceptualization of war. We can apply the non-unitariness of concepts in general to the concept of concepts in particular. Which is to say, our cognitive mapping or mental idea of what these mental ideas are in the first place.

I advocate what I call a transconceptual perspective built off Baudrillard’s “trans-” prefix, which denotes something like Nagarjuna’s tetralemma categories of “everything is A and nothing is A.”

I am also thinking immediately of Percy Shelley’s denial of a distinction between poetry and prose in A Defense of Poetry, and the stirring passages about poetry at the end of Baudrillard’s The Mirror of Production. The point is that some logician might indict me for questioning whether concepts “really mean anything at all, man” while still using concepts. This would be a reductio ad absurdam.

First of all, why does it have to be a reduction? Second of all, the position behind this is perfectly coherent, even if it can’t be advanced propositionally: so much the worse for propositions! The overall point here is to politely question “reconceptualization” as a goal because it reifies the notion that there is a certain conceptualization which is stuck and which needs to be addressed.

Firstly, conceptual stuckness should reflect non-conceptual stuckness, AKA affective non-conceptualized processes. That’s where poetry in Shelley’s sense of picking out “the before unapprehended” nature of things and giving a name which allows awareness to be reliably accessed. Secondly, this disconnect between determinate thought and “reality” (think of everything as made of sand, concepts constantly trying to snag it and it runs out of your fingers the tighter you try to hold it; that’s what getting super serial about concepts and trying to rigidly define anything is like) means that in some real sense the issue at hand is not conceptualization at all.

Conceptualization is the tip of an iceberg that extends into the holistically integrated social-historical totality of social networks and experiences.

Concretely, we are alive because people do things for us. And if not other people, there are other sentient beings around without whom our existence doesn’t make sense. As for the first organisms according to official physicalism, you’ll find of course this one of the Faustian Mysteries. Now, why do people do things for us? Some things have to do with concepts, but don’t others operate more instinctually?

This also speaks to another polite constructive criticism for the idea of “reconceptualizing war,” namely that the project is framed as a continuation of the problem, in a sense. We are stuck in concepts, so we are going to move into new concepts?

It is actually a major issue as you try to implement non-normativity systematically. You are precisely trying to communicate as broadly as possible, and so all involved understand that others understand, that determinate categories don’t obtain and always conceal and reveal transconceptual cognitive-affective rifts and patterns among discursive communities and those they influence and who influence them.

So for example you are busy making everyone aware of complexity, and postmodernism, and so on. It is a powerful thing, I would love to experience a community of 30 people who “get it.” In fact, my aspirations are to achieve something far smaller, hopefully soon.

Anyway, as soon as you are laying down the idea of complexity to overcome simplistic dogma, you are busy making more dogma.

At the same time, there come impasses where, for political or seeming symbolic obligation reasons, it seems necessary to stay steadfast in insisting upon some foundational distinction, because to do otherwise would seem to be “nihilism,” or at least the betrayal of some “core value.” In other words, something you are trying to live up to. Some expectation you have for yourself or the world, or some expectations you think others, in general or in particular, expect from you.

It’s important to note how we regulate ourselves based on the feedback we get from others, and then to note that everyone is basically incompetent when it comes to evaluation.

When we consider the feedback scenario, obviously the person who is evaluating another has some vested interest in articulating a social enframing which is favorable to themselves. So, when I give you advice, I choose an area where I seemingly have some expertise. In our innerly uneven & combined development, this is an area where I would presume that you would agree that I am more knowledgeable and will thus submit to my counsel.

Note the causation here: it’s not that I give you advice because I think you need it, and I notice when that would happen due to this competence asymmetry: rather, it is that I am looking to put myself in a position to give you advice to establish the relation whereby you do what I say. In fact, the imposition of this situation through social pressure could be used to establish and reinforce this supposed competence asymmetry in the first place.

Especially when we get meta and apply this question to the competency to pressure people into doing what you want. Then each attempt is a learning experience in the game.

At the same time, this is inherently tied to what Sartre says about anti-semites, which for me is a way of trying to localize an issue which is more general.

Similar to how Camus wrote that the holocaust was a stain on the nihilism of the whole world, basically, and not just Germany, we can say that it’s not just anti-semites who don’t take concepts seriously.

Any bully does the same. It’s called shifting goalposts. When someone already knows they’re going to betray, and the other person will be upset, they can gird their internal loins (the really important ones) for the encounter.

Meanwhile, the one who is surprised (remember that you can’t be surprised unless you set expectations) must react to this scripted scene as if it were improvised, because for them it is.

I’m getting somewhere near the end of this. What’s the point?

I was saying that I’m not really on about one thing in particular. I just spent a lot of time talking about conceptual thought and then went into some power politics at the end.

So the topics that interest me are those which are of pressing interest. Everything is, in a way, of pressing interest.

We might distinguish two shadows of spheres: the geopolitical and the interpersonal.

We have first of all the totality of social exchange which grounds our existence. This is the physical processes according to Official Ontology (AKA I’m just saying this so I don’t get fined labeled a psychotic), and we could also imagine some social exchange among ethereal beings according to whatever Completed Physics or Absolute Knowledge would say.

Secondly we have our personal affairs. People usually start here, but we don’t live by bread alone. I’m thinking of occasionalism and the idea that God causes everything. You think that’s air you’re breathing now? And, you’re God. I’m God. I’m doing it to myself.

Stop neglecting yourself. Stop neglecting yourself. Stop neglecting yourself.

For me nothing is more important than seeing that the geopolitical and interpersonal are the exact same problem. “Little people” can’t band together and do anything because their interpersonal relations are mediated by unrealistic expectations (antiquated conceptualizations/associated cognitive-affective investments). They are really losing investments people cling to because of sunk cost and because no one wants to buy them.

It’s kind of like having a bunch of something you bought because you thought it was going to the moon but it’s really not. Some antique watch.

Now, it turns out that actually that particular kind of watch has a special component which it turns out later is worth more than we thought. Some science invention.

So at that point, you were stuck holding it and acting like it was a good investment because you were embarrassed, but now it’s fine, as long as you can understand what is valuable about your investment. If not, maybe you will even get scammed by giving it away below value because you don’t understand what you have.

Compare to a nation concept. The nation as commonly understood is not a discourse of a high enough logical type to do anything. Therefore it requires augmentation with DLC packs, similar to Christianity.

Yet, there could be something valuable within the sphere of what is called the nation, but which a simple-minded patriot wouldn’t appreciate because they’re busy valuing the big bells and whistles.

Just the same, in any moment you can not think about all the ways the moment is lacking, the obvious ways it could be better—the room I’m in is pretty cold, for example—but you can think of how things are half-full. I’m incarnated at all and able to do stuff, that’s pretty neat.

This whole historical timeline and official story of history is nice material to work with, even if most people seem to be pretty out of touch with what’s going on. Back to verificationism. After all, what do I know about how you think? That’s more to learn about. That feelings exist is a fact (don’t tell Budhadasa I said that).

At the same time, a large part of what vexes me are interpersonal relations. The basic thing is that I want to sweep people into my story, but it seems to be an imposition. The problem is that other people’s purposes are not at the proper logical type, so it’s unclear what I can do with them. I must be some architect, abstracting over it all. Yet that seems in some way unethical.

Then I must confront people with my thought until they become helpful companions in confronting these questions. This is still an imposition, the imposition of influence. Not in a particular direction (just sprays and sprays), but changing the course of people.

I think it’s also an internalized sense from being discouraged about expressing myself for literally my entire life. Blah blah sad white boy me all you want, but seriously people have no idea what the emotional experience of someone like me is like, and it’s so sad because I’m so brilliant and charismatic and have such good energy and am so humble and such a team player. True asset.

And at the same time, I don’t want to go from being too passive to being an asshole and domineering. It’s very much having to be my own kind of person, and accepting that we are all always imposing on each other. I am aware of what this means in certain ways because this what male whatever thing has been part of my experience. Others I sense have few qualms about all this, not even really noticing that we are emotionally raping each other all the time. In the midst of this rape orgy, where I know that even looking is a violation, I can only take a breath thick with voluptuous coercive pain and say my piece.

After all, what else did we all get together for?