The Celluloid Fetish of Whiteness
Antonio Garcia
Indiana University
Entering the celluloid 3rd world
Popular culture has provided entertainment and insight into the overt and covert practices and desires of society. The cryptic celluloid captivates us and allows us to enter a third space, or world, of neither illusion nor reality but reality in the illusion (Žižek, The Perverts Guide to Cinema). As we become trapped in the illusion of a celebrated “unreality” in the form of cinematic indulgence we are confronted with a delight in the pleasure of our own disavowing fetishes. Movies like Crash (2005) resonate deeply and stir emotions while providing the needed, but easily forgettable, shock of the racial tensions that exists across all racial divides. After becoming emotionally enchanted by the films cinematography and musical score, we depart from the captivity of the celluloid world with only a brief residue of how that cinematic universe is not an illusion masking reality, but a very true reality that we have masked as an illusion in our own subconscious. One poignant example can be found in a scene from Hotel Rwanda (2005) that illustrates the disavowing fetish. The news cameraman (Joaquin Phoenix) returns with video footage of the machete butchering taking place on the streets of Kigali and replies to Raul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) who believes the footage will show the world of the terror: “people will see it say that’s horrible and then go back to their dinners.” The advent of cinematography and the celluloid have allowed for a 3rd world to become the illusion of reality while actually creating a reality out of our illusion. Within these celluloid 3rd worlds we can analyze the human, social, phenomenological, and psychological without harm to human subjects. Thus, the celluloid becomes the pop culture sociologist’s fantasy of interplay between the real and the illusory real.
In grappling with the notion of whiteness, we can return to a similar disavowing fetish among whites. Žižek (2008) provides an example of the disavowing fetish as “I know, but I don’t want to know that I know, so I don’t know…I know it, but I refuse to fully assume the consequences of this knowledge, so that I can continue acting as if I don’t know” (p.52). Whiteness operates among whites in a similar way. Whether it is acknowledged or not whites participate in a world that they know, but do not have to acknowledge it because they are provided the hegemonic luxury of assuming an ignorant state of unknowing. In short, whites know that there is racial tension, but they don’t want to know so they pretend to not know and therefore it exist as some type of fantasy or illusion rather than a reality masked as fantasy. Perhaps this is why the issue of whiteness has been so difficult to captivate. Whiteness is seen as a fantasy to those who have the choice to make it a fantasy, but for those that are non-white whiteness is far any assumed illusory fantasy. In order to significantly stake a claim as to whether whiteness is or is not we must first understand that it is something by its very proposal of existence. As a subject and object, it is a discourse and discursive practice that crosses multiple disciplines and interests. I find that there is often an autoerotic language game that takes place in the conversations on whiteness in which people are more concerned with fantasizing about the correct semantic styling rather than pursuing an engagement of activism and reconstruction of whiteness as anti-racist. What becomes problematic is how to situate whiteness so that we do not try to trap it and confine to an operational discourse but rather allow a discourse to be just as adaptable and revolutionary in being able to reconstruct itself and its beliefs, theoretical presuppositions, and assumptions in order to maintain a critical perspective of the evolutionary and elusive nature of whiteness?
Whiteness is often talked about as an invisible social phenomenon, yet the term phenomenon alludes to the idea that whiteness can be observed. I propose one step further in my own theoretical discourse in implicating whiteness as a social phenomenological enigma. By proposing whiteness as a phenomenological enigma we can capture in a broad sense its observability while contemplating its mystery. If we maintain that whiteness is not static but always in the process of transformation based on social, historical, and cultural dimensions then we can formulate our lens in accordance with such contextualization. Whiteness as a phenomenological project implies a certain measure of consistency. But again how do we measure a social construct that is oxymoronically absently present?
Though the idea of whiteness being an observable mystery makes it difficult and complicated, we must understand that making whiteness evident as a visible social construct that is not easily identified by an objective marker, i.e. skin color or physical characteristic, is just as possible as describing the wind. We cannot see the wind or the air we breathe, yet we feel and see its affect on the trees as they sway to and fro. Whiteness is a clever phenomenological enigma that has created a reality masked in illusion by the hegemonic proprietors who created it for the purpose of their own social superiority and systemic privilege.
In order to examine whiteness in context we must provide a prospective lens through which to view it or make it theoretically evident. For the purpose of this paper, I have chosen to focus on the critical pedagogy of whiteness as it penetrates the celluloid enigmatically through religious allocation in the movie Saved (2004). This concept, the critical pedagogy of whiteness, is described by Kincheloe (1999) as follows:
In the multicultural context a critical pedagogy of whiteness theoretically grounds a form of teaching that engages students in an examination of the social, political, and psychological dimensions of membership in a racial group. The critical imperative demands that such an examination be considered in relation to power and the ideological dynamics of white supremacy. A critical pedagogy of whiteness is possible only if we understand in great specificity the multiple meanings of whiteness and their effects on the way white consciousness is historically structured and socially inscribed. Without such appreciations and the meta-consciousness they ground, awareness of the privilege and dominance of white Northern European vantage points are buried in the cemetery of power evasion. Neither our understanding that race is not biological but social or that racial classifications have inflicted pain and suffering on non-Whites should move us to reject the necessity of new forms of racial analysis.
Whiteness is not a biological organism, but a socially constructed enigma. It is not the same as the racial category of “white” although the two share a historical kinship. Whiteness is the subjectively interpreted, covert, elusive, invisible, non-questioned, and pervasive phenomenological enigma. The racial category “white” is an objective visible marker; however, this racial category often goes unquestioned as a constitutive culture, being questioned as a group, or falling into tokenism due to the act of an individual. This phantasm of society that has become a significant hegemonic marker has been difficult to capture within a full operational and definitive ideal. It moves and transforms according to its social, historical, and cultural context. Regardless of how we attempt to examine it, many critical pedagogues approach the issue of whiteness as they would any other social phenomenon by intimately engaging and exploring “issues of power and power differences between white and non-white people” (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 162). Power itself must be contextualized further within issues of ideology, epistemology, and hegemonic reproduction (Apple, Foucault, Gramsci).
lovephilosophyWhen all is lost hope is found, love is abound, and we rekindle rejuvenation of the soul. It is the depth of our mind that resonates as much as out heart in improving matters of la vie naturelle. It is a delicate operation to seek both contentment and stillness in moments of such abrupt disruption of peace and existence. Still, I sit contemplating the life I had and the life I have. Nothing can be resolved by wallowing in the past reeking with resentment and pain. Such occupation only soils the possibility of now and the love that waits to be discovered. It is this project of love that I have focused intently on developing as a project within myself and my work.
Love is something of an enigma. We name it in terms of a sappy interaction stimulated by the chemical nexus of the firing synapses located in the brain. This love is the superficial kind. It is conditioned. It is done so by its very nature of needing stimuli in order to survive rather than being the very existence of stimuli itself. This love is an unconditional one that is manifested as a presence or state of being. It is perpetual in its motion and devotion to the heart and soul. It is an elated purity of willingness to become selfless and see the world for something beautiful. Within this world there are the beautiful people who deserve such love and devotion.
This project of love is simple, yet difficult to achieve as it is not an end but a means. We do not stop with this love, but continue to seek ways in which we can share this love with the world. It is the simple mysterium that is one of the essential elements of true humanity. Such a project must have hope and a dream that what we put forth as a communicative and transcendental act of love is one selflessness.
With all the rage, angst, disdain, and pain that I could endure while creating an anomaly of hate and resentment inside myself I regress to the meditation of love. As I am pained I love in return with the hope that this will be the next action I receive.
As my thoughts swirl and my emotions are broken and replaced I am reminded that there exists love in the world which is unconditional. There is no need to search for something that must find you. I myself may be the love that another awaits. But in every moment that we interact we should always bear love as our foremost mantra of consciousness and path.
The world changes before our eyes, but it is us who have participated in that change. How will you participate?
I've come to the realization that things like love, friendship, etc… are
nothing to look for because they will find me. Everything in the universe is intimately engaged in the process of balancing and renegotiation. In my personal life I have been through so much. I have had to reconstruct myself after dying and experiencing a spiritual and enlightened rebirth like a phoenix. I've changed so much about myself and my life that it’s hard when people don't see that. Prior to death and enlightenment, I was being eaten away with the pain I held in side. The pain was not the presence of unloving, but the presence of hate and desire to hurt. But now I realize that there is a different kind of love to be found and practiced. When I woke up yesterday I had thoughts running through my head and I reflected the whole day on love and unlove. Unlove is the absence of
love not this dialectical binary to love, which is hate. I think this was an interesting reflection for me. You can resist people who hate you, but it will not show the love you hope for a world replete with unlove. To illuminate the world, small gestures of love like making a CD for someone, commending a student on how unique they are, or just telling
someone how nice they look are the acts of love and selflessness I try to practice. It is a selfless act that attempts to show vulnerability of self and being. In loving someone, one must let go and be the ideal they seek in that moment.
Zach de la Rocha is back with One Day as A Lion. I like this song and makes for an interesting lesson in critical literacy.
If You Fear Dying
the bastard son I spit non fiction
in exile for a while now with raw friction
never be a pawn boomerang be upon you
I'm like fela with my heart in venezuela its a world favela so fuck the novela
I'm out of the cellar with a blade and some cheddar
for the whole new world order you to bow down to the now sound of slavery
the era be terrible terror filled terrified
why would we ever let a few white christian fictions shape our tomorrow
following them cause tomorrow got a gun to its head
time is coming
rising like the dawn of the red sun
if you fear dying then you're already dead
I'm in with the spirit of Ali Toure
as I target more heads than a priest on ash wednesday
paid and hanging you pigs on gold ropes
have the mic or the heater but you cant hold both
you could snatch one and catch the blast of the other
I'm chicano soprano high off my pitch
and I'm a put a crack in your diamond pimp cup so vest up
I'm your cross turned right side up
I'm the press leak that downed you aide
I'm the orange jumpsuit thats tailor made
I'm the crescent the sickle so sharp the blade
I'm the flick of the shank that opened your veins
I'm the dust I'm the frightening calm
I'm a whole in the pipeline
I'm a roadside bomb
time is coming
rising like the dawn of the red sun
if you fear dying then you're already dead.
Something in the air and something in the way as we sway from side to side. Dream with your eyes wide open for it is the only way to see the world in which you love to smile and speak with such vociferous silence in tranquility. It really is nothing but everything that such a spec of time would grace you and illuminate your heart for a moment. Such pleasure is torment in knowing it will not last. So bask in the schism of sentiment adrift and waken only to find yourself not there but being in a sense of elation. Warming the soul is a warming of the sense and fiery virulence of such naturalité. Still with wonderment and intoxication we let ourselves go and fall into a trance of nothingness. We lose our self to a moment that serves only to let us know that we feel and heal. Despite the vagrancy of such tumultuous interlude that we must endure in our lives between one and the other, the other being significant. It is in solitude that we find comfort and sadness. A state so enjoyable that is becomes an excess of pleasure and idles us into the pain of loneliness. Our shifting of sorrow to wonderment predicates a life of truly being human in the very sense. Compellation and desire become only something that we understand in the most erotic of chemical instincts, but fail to know truly through our senses and faculties. A moment is all we need to teeter between bliss and fatalism. One moment that will expire without notice can approach and extend the chemical resuscitation that we seek in our hearts and our minds.
It is the dialectical ecstasy of sweet and sour, passion and disdain that make us human in a complete sense of always being able to understand one with the other, not without. If we were to eliminate pain and suffering we would never be able to understand the joy and love felt in a moment and a lifetime. There would be no effectual contrast by which to understand what is and is not. The world is contingent on contrasting binary elements. Mankind is not exempt from this.
What complicates and clouds our senses the most is trying to resist and embody one static state of being. Again, such an attempt is no more valid than the drunkard who has not seen the world straight in nearly ten years. Electing a state of being and sensation is not for us. The static emotional elect is left to those that are utterly drunk with their one dimensional idealism of life, mentality, and self. So to the drunkard, try coffee and to the Joyous individual, cry in utter pain of the heart. Rest assured that the equilibrium set forth to guide us as individuals has been devised in such a way to never be achieved but to be understood as a constant project of becoming or trying to arrive. We come close and just as we seem to approach such a mark an obstacle regresses our state. We cherish what wee have lost and rarely understand what we have gained until we know it may be lost again. Through the process of exchange of people and emotions we become human in a pure essentialist state. Our becoming is an emotional emancipation and maturity of the soul.
So as we contemplate solitude and loneliness we must understand that such a state can be elected as static or it can be understood as temporal just as the elated emotional effect of your first kiss. Becoming and being are essential to life and understand life need not be as pertinent to ourselves than our conscious exploration of being and becoming in mind, body, and soul.
As I have said, love comes and goes. It is recognized in brief moments and neglected in the most evident. It is not the fairy tale romance portrayed by popular culture. It is exist rather as something within ourselves that we illuminate and become intoxicated with when we find the moment of sustained stimuli. It is the smile of a new born baby. The polite smile to a stranger on the street. Simple exchanges let us know that we are not a lone but very much surrounded by people all becoming just as we are.
Take a moment to see what you do with your eyes closed and let go to the unknown semblance your “self”………..
The following are the beginning ideas of my dissertation. I have provided excerpted parts for reading and feedback. Please do not reproduce without explicit permission from the author.
Sincerely,
Antonio Garcia
Indiana University
Wrong again, what to do?
I have had many experiences negotiating what multicultural education is that I have come to understand that it is fundamental to begin a conversation of what it isn’t. This can be exemplified in an interaction I had with a lady recently. She asked me what I was studying in school and I told her “education, more specifically multicultural education.” Her immediate response was “so you want to teach in urban schools.” Before I countered her stereotypical response I asked her “why do you say that?” She replied with “well those schools are the ones that are multicultural.” This friendly exchange held deep underlying assumptions and misconceptions of not only what multicultural education is but also more specifically “who” it was for. This is only one of many similar perceptions of multicultural education. The underlying idea becomes understood by many as “cultural” being contingent on racial representations. So when there are only white students many people often say that there isn’t much multiculturalness or “other” cultures present. My goal is to counter that assumption by interviewing white teachers in predominantly white rural areas in southern Indiana.
Defining Multicultural Education
When people speak of diversity, multiculturalism, or pluralism they are often speaking in black and white terms. The general notion of diversity and culture has become relegated to a misconceived categorical realm of racial visibility. Such perception predicating race as the definitive factor on which one perceives culture to be visible is reductionist when considering the grand narrative of multicultural education seeks to manifest an egalitarian society that is just and transformative (Banks, Bennett, Gay). Due to the historical legacy of slavery in the U.S. much of what has been considered diversity has often been racially portrayed. Despite the fact that racism has been a central struggle in U.S. history we must also considered the struggles that have not been predicated on the color of one’s skin, i.e. class, sexuality, language, religion, politics, etc... In looking beyond strictly racialized notions we can begin to identify the true complexity of what scholars (James Banks, Christine Bennett, Geneva Gay, Henry Giroux, Gloria Ladson-Billings, SoniaNieto, Christine Sleeter) assert to be multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism has been perceived as a racial epidemic in a sense that it poses a threat to unified national identity and monolithic culture (D’Souza, Schlessinger). The 1960’s was not only an era of Civil Rights contestation, but also a time period of poorly defined political policies surrounding immigration, urban development and education, and addressing the politics of representation (Giroux, Mclaren). In the decades following the civil rights the U.S. became more than a melting pot, it became a new terrain of struggle for identity, representation, and confrontation of old world ideals that othered or marginalized individuals and groups(Apple, Giroux). Although at the forefront the struggle was waged on racism (primarily black racism) and unequal practices among a majority white society, there was much more that preceded this violent upheaval. To reduce issues of inequality solely to a matter of race in a supposed egalitarian society is to reduce the complex nature of struggle itself. The recognition of struggle comes through conscientização, critical consciousness (Freire, 1974).
Having consciousness is not enough to see the world and penetrate the blindness of struggle. We must also develop a “critical” theory with our consciousness in order to participate in “the nature of self-conscious critique… develop a discourse of social transformation and emancipation that does not cling dogmatically to its own doctrinal assumptions…the necessity of ongoing critique, one in which the claims of any theory must be confronted with the distinction between the world it examines and portrays, and the world as it actually exist” (Giroux, 1983, p.8). Critical theory as outlined by the Frankfurt school of sociology was an influential entity in the development of Paolo Freire’s ideals of critical consciousness. I will later elaborate on the notions of critical theory as laid out by Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer.
The consciousness of culture and defining culture is the central tenet of examination in this work. My assertion is that the idea “culture” in multiculturalism is reductionist and antithetical to the true goals of multicultural education. In order to overcome such an obstacle in revealing a broader campaign for social justice, equality, and equity in education and society scholars must work to formulate and approach multicultural education through novel means that attempt to redefine culture as it is defined by scholars. Moreover, it is not just culture that needs to be centralized as problematic but also the lack of considerable attention to building a critical consciousness to locate struggle and inequality in the most hegemonic and supposed monolithic cultural settings.
Defining culture
[…] everything in education relates to culture-to its acquisition, its transmission, and its invention. Culture is in us and all around us, just as is the air we breathe. It is personal, familial, communal, societal, and global in its scope and distribution (Banks & Banks, 2004, p.31)
For the purpose of analyzing teachers perceptions of culture I have categorized six conceptions of cultures: Anthropological, Ideological, humanistic, Semiotic, Critical, and Null. The conceptions, which may overlap or draw from one another in such a way that one may not be purely one or another categorically, allow for me to analyze how culture is conceptualized by teacher in order to addressing themes and patterns. I am still working on developing and articulating these categories, but I will share a few here.
Anthropological
Ang’s (2005) perspectives of culture are drawn from the conceptualization and problematizing of defining culture in cultural studies. In the general notion “culture” becomes significant of art or other people(Ang, 2005). It becomes an ideal or abstractness removed from out life, yet “Culture is integral to and constitutive of social life, not something outside of or a mere addition to it (Ang, 2005, p.477).” Everything, practice, habit, and even intellectualism can be considered “culture.” So why is it that some people see culture as something outside of their own life? One speculation is that white people in the US do not believe they have a culture.
HumanisticA differing dimension of culture stems from the malconjoined idea of culture and civilization. Postmodern critique calls into question the notions of civilization which is predicated on industrialization and economic variance. Culture is often misrepresented as being synonymous with civilization, yet the two are independent of one another. If we were to look at third world countries, more politically correct called “underdeveloped nations”, we would see a huge economic disparity among the rich and poor; however, culture is very much present according to the anthropological definition of daily practices and habits practiced by the people. Marcuse, a neo-marxist sociological critique, proposes culture as something more than rote daily practice.
[C]ulture is more than a mere ideology. Looking at the professed goals of Western civilization and at the claims of their civilization, we should define culture as a process of humanization, characterized by the collective effort to protect human life, to pacify the struggle for existence by keeping it within manageable bounds, to stablilize a productive organization of society to develop the intellectual faculties of man, to reduce and sublimate aggressions, violence, and misery” (Feenberg & Leiss, 2007, p.14-15).
Critical Cultural theory
Struggle, inequality, and exploitation become naturalized and neutralized as cultural difference. These becomes divisional “ ‘ways of life’ which are something given, something that cannot be overcome(Zizek, VIOLENCE, 140). Such neglect to engage our human intellectual faculties to challenge and seek transformation, as well as a solidarity in humanity, relegates culture, according to Zizek, as the ultimate source of barbarism as “one’s direct identification with a particular culture, which renders one intolerant towards other cultures (141). In this sense, culture becomes almost a mystification practice for a pedagogy of isolationism and preservation of one culture over another. This disregard for cultural adherence and solidarity as something shared and practiced among multiple people is one argument of why multicultural education has reached a plateau of achievement in predominantly white conservative areas.
MORE TO COME....
“Transitions of life”
Antonio Garcia
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
-Anais Nin
Transitions are not really transitions but the consequences of following life as is. The weight of the world and all that encompasses through seeming disparity and uncertainty can be heard in the voice. Sometimes the silence of a voice speaks louder than any functional linguistics could comprehend in illuminating the state and thoughts of an individual. Language is the quantifiable tool we use to express ourselves, but what if there are times when language can not suffice in explaining what we say in silence? Our contemplation and thoughts of ourselves and the world join at the crossroads of life. We participate in a world we don’t understand while comically shouting that the world doesn’t understand us. Perhaps we are living in the wrong world or the world that we know has been created outside of our desires. The transitions in life are the hardest to understand. Many sink into depression or anger as they try to see what there life is to be. What we forget is that life is because we can only live in the moment. What we desire life to be is a fantasy fetish produced by popular culture and promises created by groups who ignore the individual and seek only themselves. Our refuge in such uncertainty should lie in the certainty of ourselves. We can only take charge of the present and reflect on the past. We can’t relive the past just as we can’t project what we will be in the future. Such contemplation is not only vain, but useless. All of us “dream” of what would like to be. We set goals because we believe that certain things we obtain or do make us accomplished. Yet, with all the accomplishments we forget to ask ourselves are we great people? I mean great in the sense of being great to ourselves and those we love.
“An intellectual is a person whose mind watches itself”
- Albert Camus
Graduate school is the most complicated of times for many people. We transition and pursue intellectual levels not experienced by most people. We are privileged in this way to be able to take advantage of such knowledge. But are we really at more of an advantage than the high school graduate who has a family? It is subjective and very dependent on the individual in understanding what constitutes happiness, accomplishment, and sense of self in the world.
I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all.
-Joni Mitchell
The world has constructed a formatted plan for everyone. It is a simple plan that outlines who will be what by projecting a hierarchy of worthiness, value, and success. More so, the world has given freedom to all to criticize the lives, identities, and sense of self determined by each individual. We are therefore placed in constant fear of being judged. We may, with such cliché sensibility, say that we are the hardest judges of ourselves, but is it really true? Everyday we judge our self in comparison/contrast to someone else. We want to be as smart as…, as great as…, as good looking as…, and so on. When we look truly at ourselves and neglect to see ourselves for who we are; the greatness we bring the world through being ourselves.
The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ''social worker'' -judge.”
-Michel Foucault
A deep sigh and release of air from the pit of our lungs signals the desperation we feel in wanting to see ourselves everyday but can’t. We are restrained by the judgments and critiques of others and lastly of ourselves. We stress about the things that have no real value on who we are, but who we think we would be with them. We need a release to be ourselves and become blind and deaf to the world. Most often I see this in alcohol or some other mind altering substance. The brief escape and numbness will numb the world, but it numbs our ability to feel ourselves too. The negotiation becomes a very complex matter of how we feel we are in the world and who we feel we are in the world.
“Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind.”
-Eckhart Tolle
Until we come to the realization of ourselves we will strive for a fantastical utopian vision of ourselves while ignoring and neglecting who we are. Our sense of who we are becomes diluted by obligations and responsibility and the ubiquitous “what if” mantra. What if we did what we felt rather than what we think we should do. The conflict really becomes a matter of emotion versus what we feel is our logic. The balance of the two is hard to maintain. Too much feeling will lead to a dulling of the senses to guard one’s self and the over indulgence of thought will only serve to isolate one’s self from the experiences which breed emotional landscapes.
“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve. “
- Erich Fromm
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
- Eckhart Tolle
We are by nature emotional creatures and thoughtful animals. We are cursed by the gift of the two. We turn to our logic to guard against insensible emotional responses. We attempt to remove ourselves from an emotional encounter of experience through thought, yet the truth is that all that we do is emotional. Every experience creates emotion and every thought we have creates an emotional landscape of negotiation. Our world becomes not the one we see with our eyes but the one that we wrestle with as a created pathology within ourselves. It can be restrictive and tormenting or emancipatory and rewarding.
Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.
-Erich Fromm
I feel the more we think and believe that thought should override the stupidity of the chemical romance of the nervous system and synapses triggering, we fall into delusion of believing we can experience life without emotion and purely by thought. At times, I believe that we even use our thought to create emotion. We think we are in love and allow our thoughts to rationalize such a response, yet guard against any apprehension of mistrust as well. So which do we subscribe to?
The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.
- Erich Fromm
It is a matter of understanding that the world is an objective reality made subjective by the individual, and more so when that individual understands his/her own being. We find ourselves in the things of the world, but can we find ourselves as a thing of the world?
THE LIFE AS THE PROCEEDS OF LIFE – A man may stretch himself out even so far with his knowledge; he may seem to himself ever so objective, but eventually he realizes nothing therefrom but his own biography. Nietzsche, Human All too human.
Our life is an experience. It is emotional regardless of our logic, but it is nonetheless always ours...
In all of man's wisdom and majestic reasoning there is but one antagonistic to his brilliance and that is love, woman, and the love for a woman. I'm not sure why such things perplex man, but they are of importance to not only man, but woman as well. if this were not so then Cosmo would have to review its quizzes titled "what he wants" or shows like sex and the city contemplating and negotiating the difficult, and often irrational, world of relationships and love. Men in all their accomplishments as males erecting buildings in their name and relegating all gods or spiritual enlighteners can not make sense of the woman and rarely understands love. I believe that this is so because love is an internal struggle within man and woman is an external struggle to redeem the internal substance of "love." Love should not be too broadly conceived of as the tickling sensation after or before the first kiss. No, rather love is a complicated schizophrenia of euphoric pleasure that we crave after the first drop. Love is the feeling of knowing someone is looking at you possibly with the same tickle and how will you both succumb to the satisfaction of such feelings while making it present to one another? I find great enjoyment and vivacity in the simple pleasures often taken for granted by those who are appropriately (whatever standard that is) titled "in love." Those presumed to be in love and married are often the must banal and dispirited people. That have overdosed and gorwn tolerant to one supplier and such tolerance reveals problems of novelty and sparkle that was once part of such a story years ago, or perhaps even weeks ago. Is it possible to loom and bask in the tantalizing appeal and fetish of love? I believe it is possible in the smallest things as well as possible to always find it in one thing. This some may call the soul mate. A person so designed and in tune with you that explanation of such coincidence becomes lost in the fantasy spectacle of attributing it to divineness rather than humanness. In the several billion people in the world how different can you really be form one another until you find someone who shares with you and in you a multitude of things? But its ore than sharing its an appeal, an appeal of attraction of the physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and intellectual. It’s hard to match completely and so perfectly with another on these ideals, but it happens. Often they happen briefly and we accept them as they know that this was the moment we shared and that time has expired. In rare occasions, we figure out how to prolong such engagement so that we can partake in a perpetual and rejuvenated sense of love with someone. How to do this is not possible to discuss here or anywhere for that matter. It is only possible to understand that love is a small satisfaction of giving one's self to another.
We treat love as a grand spectacle and parade it around like something that can be understood in the same manner as an (in)animate object. It is a sense of being. It is abstract, but connected to the real. It is an authentic emotion and a manufactured one driven by the commodity exchange of corporate irrealities like Hallmark. To make sense of love in the manner that I am referring to is to remove all sense of conditioning and experience one’s self without the centralization of the self in the process. Simply, participate with someone else in a manner that aggrandizes them and expresses a true love for them as a person who is beautiful and fulfilling in your life. This maybe misunderstood as some type of liberal erotic philosophical flirtation, but it is not so. We should find beauty in another and come to understand that that beauty is a mark of our love for that person.
In those we hate we cannot find beauty. Beauty is a sense of the physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and intellectual. Our societal conditioned selves are attracted to the standard of society and our environment. So what beauty is pure in the sense of what we see as a true to the self of that person? That which we cannot see we attempt to feel. What we feel in emotional, spiritual, psychological, and intellectual extensionism becomes the threshold of seeing the beauty and thus the love. The beauty is merely the first stage to becoming loving to someone. Love is the extension of yourself to another in the rejection of want and desire for your “self,” but rather the want, desire, and pleasure of the person to whom your are extending yourself.
What I call extensionism is the connection we feel with others and to varying degrees. The epitome extension and the quintessential appraisal is our discovery of the person who can perpetually extend themselves to us and we to them. This is what I think the soul mate is. Suppose we could use a type of “scope” to see the energy of people. Suppose even more so that we could see that energy represented in various colors reflecting the attitudes, beliefs, emotional, intellectual, and so on characteristics of a person. If this were a reality we could see that those who are so called soul mates may indeed share a bond, like the atom, in which such energy is constantly in transferal motin for one person to another creating a ring, which is a perpetual never ending cycle, between those people. Of course, when people get married the ring is supposed to represent a similar type of attribute to the couple relationship characteristic, but do we really understand ourselves and the beauty of others which becomes our love when we keep our eyes open only to the physical and neglect to understand the others?
Matters of the heart do not exist in the sense that it is of anything remotely attached to the heart. As an abstract and metaphorical comforting we utilize such expression, but we must understand that our mind has more decree and sovereignty than the physical apparatus of the heart. Perhaps, because we so fondly refer to our heart in many expressions and sentiments of love and affection because it is the organ that sustains life in the body. In a romantic sense of the organ it is an expression of extension that someone becomes an apparatus suited to sustain our being.
I have come to know many people, but not all of them I love. I have spent hours with people who I do not hate, but I do not love either. And then I reflect on the moments when I have shared love with another. Sometimes in passing without any vocalization, but rather a simple gesture of affirmation. Sitting on a bench chatting with a student and feeling a sense of love in that I am concerned only with the concerns of the student. Sitting on a couch and feeling the irrespirable moment of uncertainty in wanting to give up myself to know another. Such conversations are internal desires to extend one’s self to another while losing one’s self to another. It becomes a euphoria of a purgatory realm of neither nor. You are neither fully engaged in loving nor completely removed from loving. It is a realm of negotiation that cannot be understood in logical terms of reasoning but only in the exploration of being and knowing of one’s self in order to give that self to another.
If you wonder how such extensionism takes place it most often occurs in dreams. Though in dreams it is not always love that is projected but the wanting desire to extend the malignancy of one’s self on to another so that they suffer in the same way. True to the dialectic of love is the hate or more so anything that is of intention is not of love. For love in its truest sense connected to the self is a selfless understanding of wanting nothing and desiring only for the other person’s contentment. When we desire to extend a part of our self that is in struggle, conflict, or most often pain to another person we are not desiring fir that person but succumbing to our own desire to make ourselves feel love. Can love be such a reflective act or is it meant only as an exchange?
People talk about loving yourself but what does this really mean? How do we love ourselves if we do not know love with another as reference? I think when people discuss the notion of loving one’s self it is not true in the literal sense, but implicit of an exploration of the self needed to understand the selfless extension that surpasses the egoistic desire for one’s own want in order to selfless give to another’s want. Loving one’s self is merely understanding how to love which in turn results in understanding the small moments of love given by others. It is a process of opening another dimension of seeing by feeling. As if we could see the world for what it is that is what it means to love yourself. You embark on a self exploration of understanding in order to understand others who are understanding you, or at least attempting to.
It becomes difficult to understand one’s self and even more difficult to understand another. The more we try the more perplexed we are in understanding the dimension of a person. It is hard to accept that man and woman are so uniquely conditioned and “lived” that they are as unique and varied as snow flake, each one representative of a unique life, shape, and experience. People are in need of love, but more willing to extend hate before love. The unique beauty of each person reveals that the world is not lost but found every day in individuals with illustrious stories and glimmers in their eyes. It is in these small exchanges that we come to understand life, love, and beauty as something uniquely connected to our inner being and then a transmittance (or extension) of our self. Sometimes we sit on park benches watching children play and small and do not realize the love we have for them even though we do not know them. At other times we sit hopeless searching for something that already exist in hallways because we’re uncertain of what arouses us on the inside. We ignore that tickling feeling because we have been told it is the danger of life. The tickle is the treachery of sanity and certainty because it is the unknowing cognitive reflex of energy interacting in an extensionist way of loving.
So we sit and we sit in silence with thoughts dancing in our heads and sensations running through our body. This moment is the euphoric hit we long for and become addicted to. How can we simply state what we feel through emotional action and loving embrace? Should not such natural awakening be a prompt for action? We say things like “I know deep in my heart” or “I just felt something,” yet we ignore and watch the moment in which we could have loved drift away. Such timidity should not interfere with the uncertain chance of acting on the tickling sensation. We should boldly move and smile to the pretty girl with book, randomly admire a person’s feature, and more often than any tell someone that they are beautiful with our eyes shut. Such would be love unconditional. Such unconditional love would be the comfort and serenity that we seek once we close our eyes forever to the world.
Coffee shop kids and the reality of space and time
In the decadent decors illuminating a fantastic illustration of aesthetic and hidden curriculum of pretentious names and capitalist symbolism, there are those who enter into a space of being different than when than enter and taking on a form of identify seeped within a distinct, yet different composition and conception of time. These I have come to regard as the coffee shop kids. The use of “kids” is somewhat misleading, but it is a playful usage of language that I will explain later.
My first thoughts came to me as I sat in the corner of a starbucks and felt a shift and uneasiness of the time and space in which I was situated. Inside there was an attitude and an allure of the other world. The other world in this case is one of intellectualism and proposed elitism. The names are foreign to the traditional convention of small medium, and large and in place we find tall grande and venti. The complication of ordering is only a brief complication of nervousness like the first intravenous experience of heroine, a trickling burn of cocaine in the nasal cavity, or the sting of a sucker punch. Those that have become addicts, narrators, and navigators of this space and time know its intoxicating aroma and effectual bliss of hypersensitivity and loss of the world which they left to enter such a space.
The experience of the coffee shop kids is one that cannot be proposed or summarized in some tyope of universalism or generalization. I feel that everyone experience a temporal loss of the self and floats in uncertainty to find one’s self that is a compatible self to such a space. There can be such rejections and utter forced excretion of the incompatible beings that try to retain a sense of self that has not been organically stimulated in this space. The resistance to flowing into a space and allowing a sense of being and self, and such a possible identity, is thus the result of temporal disengagement and organic stimulus of the core desire. Perhaps the desire is one of chameleon adaptation, but this would be a bad example. The chameleon changes to not be seen. The coffee shop kids partake in a voluntary involuntary paradigm of self negotiation negation and transformation. Their consciousness turns from that of external concern to one of internal concern that stimulates and informs the outward. As such, the transformation and space is one that can be describe as the of the old tv show “The twilight zone.”
Is it required that something strange should happen to analogously refer to the twilight zone, if so why? Here it is assumed that the space and time must be different to a degree of horror and psychological asphyxiation, but this is not necessary. Such vile interpretation of space and time different form that that we believe exist as normal is falsely assuming the deviance of another space. Such is the fetish of many to assume the there can be a “normal” space and time. Moreover, the ability for us to truly become of aware of such transformation of our self and the space in which we occupy is questionable. How do we know it exist or occurs if we cannot place any type of absolute framing into its descriptions? The answer is not one that can be simply provided in any degree of objectivity in observation. Observation itself is subjective and thus we arrive at understanding of a personal experience. The observation and mere pondering of transformation from one space to another could be considered experience, but is it really experiential? If one does not cognitively recognize and gain the ability to articulate, or at least attempt to articulate, such experience can it be called experience? How can we make distinction between experiences as something of an occurrence situated in the objective in contrast with transformation which is situated with in the subjective. It is a matter of theoretical view and philosophical inquiry.
By observing and proposing a theory of transformation I am proposing that the transformation is somehow standard or at least measurable. This, however, is not what I mean to discuss here. Rather, what becomes more consuming and contemplative is the subjective referential of self reflection upon the self in the self and of the self while consciously assuming no cognizance, perhaps acknowledgement, of such transformation. In this sense the transformation can never be described nor attributed to anyone except the self and conscious undertaking of that self to attempt to understanding the transformation and subjugation of a new space and temporal allowance. We can simply posit that people enter the coffee shop unaware and incredulous to any such change in their being, identity, or self. But this matter does not concern nor does it matter if its generalizable to others. The only one who can provide a settling understanding of what is is the one who is being at the time of such transformation.
We could call upon the pop culture reference to the movie The Matrix in which people participated in a world they believed to be true but in fact existed as a sub-world to the “real world.” The issue of real and reality are also complicated and can only be explained as much as they are contemplatively experienced. Dreams provide an example of such space in which we believe things to be real for an amount of time and only when we gain consciousness in our unconscious state(i.e. lucid dreaming) do we come to understand that real and reality are not objective claims but very subjective to the understanding and transformation, conceptually of the self in such a space and time.
I have been thinking about the this and that. The direction of this way and that way. This way you that with you. In all such direction there is inevitable understanding, lust, pain, and possibly the chemical euphoria of love. Such divide leaves me with myself and myself with one. So to fight such complicating matters of the mind and heart I result to pertaining to the mind. For logic and reason are the most profound and sensible, but vulnerable to the deafening wake of emotion. Falling prey to such wake opf emotion would leave one as a refugee. An emotional refugee. Our lives are guided by a very dualistic pathology situated within the mind or the second, the heart. Even though we speak of the heart and engage it as a symbol of the centrifuge of life, it is nothing more than an organ. The secretions of chemicals that flow in to the mind, naturally or artificially, are the emotional euphoria and feeling of love and happiness. To understand the power of the mind is simply to close one’s eyes and dream. In a state of sub consciousness we can move in and out of various states of emotional appeal and dilapidation. Torment and fear haunt us as we envision as stranger chasing us or an animal, often a snake, attacking us. Yet the dreams in which we have a continuous stream of erogenous and euphoric pleasure are those guided by feelings of lust, sex, and appetite for the other. It is the ego that leads us to fear and to embrace such appetite for carnage. This same ego is what causes us to bring communities together or destroy them depending on how they affect the ego. Quite simply to have neither fear nor appetite would result in the death of a consciousness of being. A realization of what is and what is possible within the possibility of others is what creates a bridge to the collective.
Education cannot be nor ever be so simple as reading books, learning phonics, learning about history, and partaking in science experiments. Education is education, but to the educated man, one with profound intellect and curiosity of the world, if is it guided by the ego to maintain an appetite for seeking what is and never be satisfied, then man has fallen prey and cursed to the sickness of the educated man.
More to come…...
Such thoughts will begin to evolve and provide a more coherent understanding of education as an endeavor into the understanding of the psyche of man and his innate behavior. Such change and transformation in education is futile without some understanding of why things and ideas exist. Moreover, it is not a hegemonic quest, but a quest to expose hegemony as a cover corrosive enigma in the world quietly devouring our youth, culture, and the sanctity of humanity as a cohesive collective of individuals acting as collective
