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Ode to Man
Tho’ many are the terrors,
not one more terrible than man goes.
This one beyond the grizzled sea
in winter storming to the south
He crosses, all-engulfed,
cutting through, up from under swells.
& of the gods She the Eldest, Earth
un-withering, un-toiling, is worn down,
As the Twisting Plough’s year
into Twisting Plough’s year,
Through the breeding of horse, he turns.
& the lighthearted race of birds
all-snaring he drives them
& savage beasts, their clan, & of the sea,
marine in kind
With tightly-wound meshes spun
from all-seeing is Man.
Yet too, he masters by means of pastoral
beast, mountain-trodding,
The unruly-maned horse holding fast,
‘round the neck yoked,
& the mountain’s
ceaseless bull.
& the voice & wind-fast thought
& the passion for civic ways
He has taught, so from crag’s poor court
from under the ether’s hard-tossed arrows
To flee, this all-crossing one. Blocked, he comes
upon nothing so fated.
From Hades alone escape he’ll not bring.
Tho’ from sickness impossible
Flight he has pondered.
A skilled one, devising of arts beyond hope,
Holding at times an evil,
But then to the noble he crawls,
honoring the laws of the Earth, &
Of gods the oath so just,
high-citied.
Citiless is the one who with the un-beautiful
dwells, boldly in grace.
Never for me a hearth-mate
may he have been, never equal in mind
He who offers this.
Ode to Man
A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has nothing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to
the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent
of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities. The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it
changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or position, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere,... rectums open, defecate and close, . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments." The tantric egg. After all, is not Spinoza's Ethics the great book of the BwO?
Ode to Man
But human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.
You make a great point, but the picture is also an example of why the philosophes sought to sideline the argumentative trickery of image in favor of the more directable and closable discourse of text, as Barbara Stafford shows. Are your readings of the image plausible? Yes, sure. Are they essential? No. It’s a kind of optional rhetorical demonization. There are plenty of teabaggers around who will tell you in all seriousness that Obama is a godless socialist bent on destroying the country by growing Big Government and subordinating personal freedom to the State, exactly the opposite of W.
Point being that the profundity of the image’s precognitive effect may be the worst thing about it.
Carl: “There are plenty of teabaggers around who will tell you in all seriousness that Obama is a godless socialist bent on destroying the country by growing Big Government and subordinating personal freedom to the State, exactly the opposite of W.”
Kvond: This is my point. What would such teabaggers SEE in the photo. (I was not making my interpretation essential. I know my relative audience, so I can ideologically extract the powerful references, but there requires working knowledges and assumptions to extract arguments from text as well.) My point is that aesthetic convictions can pervade with remarkable speed, and they ARE convincing, or perhaps cohering effects.
If you mean that textual arguments should be used to FIGHT aesthetic means of conviction, sure. But as well, I’m not sure that once you SEE the meaning of a picture it is so easily erased.
Perhaps Teabaggers would see the incipient creep of blackness into White normativity. The wolf in sheep’s clothing. It doesn’t so much matter.
“(I was not making my interpretation essential. I know my relative audience, so I can ideologically extract the powerful references, but there requires working knowledges and assumptions to extract arguments from text as well.) My point is that aesthetic convictions can pervade with remarkable speed, and they ARE convincing, or perhaps cohering effects.”
[nods appreciatively]
I was wondering if such an average would produce the “perfect president” for current america, given how many people who hate Obama still love Bush, or whether such a blurring in practice would destroy all that was liked by either. In other words, whether there is a point of compromise between the political forces in america, or whether the only unity they will find is in transformation of both “sides”.
How was the picture made? I wonder whether there are analogies between the creation of a recognisable hybrid and a working compromise.
I don’t know how the picture was made, but perhaps there are interesting comparisons as you suggest. This is the curious thing about the image. When I actually saw it in a flash in the corner of my eye, what crossed my mind was “Goodness, the presidency is really aging Obama fast.” (as presidencies are known to do). Then, in the next instance it was “there is something wrong with this picture”. Then it was “ah, ha”. The odd thing is that the image is both reassuring and disturbing (at least to me). It ossilates between a recognition of the facial characteristics that were meant to reassure in both men, and the perverse synthesis of the two. Perhaps compromise is like this. It continually risks falling into sterile monstrosity or hybridization, and hopes for “baby bear” just-right-ism. Personally of course, when a partner realizes that compromise is a major goal, you can come to see that “I think that cake should be cut in half, 50% for each of us” is not a good negotiating position against “I think I should have all the cake”. The resulting 25/75 split, well, is the compromise between “compromise” itself and “incompromise”. Is this what has happened? Only history would tell. I suspect that Obama is trying to save up all his political karma points for a big grand slam, society changing chance on certain (second term) issues, but this is likely a bedtime story.
I recognise that cake analogy all too well… There’s a paradox of compromising with all or nothing people, do you take considering their welfare to be a bad negotiating position? Or the only serious offer of peace? Unfortunately sometimes the only way a haggler will stop is if the compromiser walks out, but that’s not a perfect analogy for a lot of the applications. A relationship for example is more than a series of trade-offs.
There’s also the difference between aversion and love; the latter approves of what little is there, and so perhaps can cope with diffusions like this, whereas aversion would be happier with no picture than a mixed picture!
Perhaps those looking for a “solid break” will be satisfied only by total destruction, if the old is always preserved slightly in the new stuff.