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The Annihilation Fountain Issue 04
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THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN
A JOURNAL OF CULTURE ON THE EDGE...
TEXT ONLY - ISSUE #4
The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-99 Neil MacKay
ISSN 1480-9206
http://www.capnasty.org/taf/
the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com
CONTENTS:
---------
*THE DEAD MEDIA PROJECT
*EXURPTS FROM THE CIA TOURTURE MANUAL
*INTERVIEW WITH TERENCE MCKENNA
*AN EMAIL DEBATE BETWEEN NICOLAS PATEE & PAUL lAURENDEAU
*CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE
************************************************************************
THE DEAD MEDIA PROJECT:
I) A MODEST PROPOSAL AND A PUBLIC APPEAL
II) PUBLIC ADDRESS ON DEAD MEDIA PROJECT
III) THE MASTER-LIST OF DEAD MEDIA
by Bruce Sterling & Richard Kadrey
************************************************************************
I) A Modest Proposal and a Public Appeal
by Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com
Ever notice how many books there are about the Internet these
days? About 13,493 so far, right? And how about "multimedia?"
There are 8,784 books on this topic, even though no one has ever
successfully defined the term. CD-ROM -- is there a single
marketable topic left that hasn't been shovelwared into the vast
digital mire that is CD-ROM? And how about the "Information
Superhighway" and "Virtual Reality"? Every magazine on the planet
has done awestruck vaporware cover stories on these two
consensus-hallucinations.
Our culture is experiencing a profound radiation of new species
of media. The centralized, dinosaurian one-to-many media that
roared and trampled through the 20th century are poorly adapted
to the postmodern technological environment. The new media
environment is aswarm with lumbering toothy digital mammals. It's
all lynxes here, and gophers there, plus big fat venomous
webcrawlers, appearing in Pleistocene profusion.
This is all well and good, and it's lovely that so many people
are paying attention to this. Nothing gives me greater pleasure
as a professional garage futurist than to ponder some weird new
mutant medium and wonder how this squawking little monster is
going to wriggle its way into the interstices between human
beings. Still, there's a difference between this pleasurable
contemplation of the technological sublime and an actual coherent
understanding of the life and death of media. We have no idea in
hell what we are doing to ourselves with these new media
technologies, and no consistent way even to discuss the subject.
Something constructive ought to be done about this situation.
I can't do much about it, personally, because I'm booked up to
the eyeballs until the end of the millennium. So is my good
friend Richard Kadrey, author of the COVERT CULTURE SOURCEBOOK.
Both Kadrey and myself, however, recently came to a joint
understanding that what we'd really like to see at this cultural
conjunction is an entirely new kind of book on media. A media
book of the dead.
Plenty of wild wired promises are already being made for all the
infant media. What we need is a somber, thoughtful, thorough,
hype-free, even lugubrious book that honors the dead and
resuscitates the spiritual ancestors of today's mediated frenzy.
A book to give its readership a deeper, paleontological
perspective right in the dizzy midst of the digital revolution.
We need a book about the failures of media, the collapses of
media, the supercessions of media, the strangulations of media, a
book detailing all the freakish and hideous media mistakes that
we should know enough now not to repeat, a book about media that
have died on the barbed wire of technological advance, media that
didn't make it, martyred media, dead media. THE HANDBOOK OF DEAD
MEDIA. A naturalist's field guide for the communications
paleontologist.
Neither Richard Kadrey nor myself are currently in any position
to write this proposed handbook. However, we both feel that our
culture truly requires this book: this rich, witty, insightful,
profusely illustrated, perfectbound, acid-free-paper coffee-table
book, which is to be brought out, theoretically, eventually, by
some really with-it, cutting- edge early-21st century publisher.
The kind of book that will appear in seventeen different sections
of your local chainstore: Political Affairs, Postmodern Theory,
Computer Science, Popular Mechanics, Design Studies, the
coffeetable artbook section, the remainder table -- you know,
whatever.
It's a rather rare phenomenon for an established medium to die.
If media make it past their Golden Vaporware stage, they usually
expand wildly in their early days and then shrink back to some
protective niche as they are challenged by later and more highly
evolved competitors. Radio didn't kill newspapers, TV didn't kill
radio or movies, video and cable didn't kill broadcast network
TV; they just all jostled around seeking a more perfect app.
But some media do, in fact, perish. Such as: the phenakistoscope.
The teleharmonium. The Edison wax cylinder. The stereopticon. The
Panorama. Early 20th century electric searchlight spectacles.
Morton Heilig's early virtual reality. Telefon Hirmondo. The
various species of magic lantern. The pneumatic transfer tubes
that once riddled the underground of Chicago. Was the Antikythera
Device a medium? How about the Big Character Poster Democracy
Wall in Peking in the early 80s?
Never heard of any of these? Well, that's the problem. Both
Kadrey and I happen to be vague aficionados of this field of
study, and yet we both suspect that there must be hundreds of
dead media, known to few if any. It would take the combined and
formidable scholarly talents of, say, Carolyn "When Old
Technologies Were New" Marvin and Ricky "Learned Pigs and
Fireproof Women" Jay to do this ambitious project genuine
justice. Though we haven't asked, we kinda suspect that these two
distinguished scholars are even busier than me and Kadrey, who,
after all, are just science fiction writers who spend most of our
time watching Chinese videos, reading fanzines and making up
weird crap.
However. We do have one, possibly crucial, advantage. We have
Internet access. If we can somehow convince the current digital
media community-at-large that DEAD MEDIA is a worthwhile project,
we believe that we may be able to compile a useful public-access
net archive on this subject. We plan to begin with the DEAD MEDIA
World Wide Web Page, on a site to-be-announced. Move on, perhaps,
to alt.dead.media. Compile the Dead Media FAQ. We hope to exploit
the considerable strengths of today's cutting-edge media to
create a general public-domain homage to the media pioneers of
the past.
Here's the deal. Kadrey and I are going to start pooling our
notes. We're gonna make those notes freely available to anybody
on the Net. If we can get enough net.parties to express interest
and pitch in reports, stories, and documentation about dead
media, we're willing to take on the hideous burdens of editing
and system administration -- no small deal when it comes to this
supposedly "free" information.
We both know that authors are supposed to jealously guard really
swell ideas like this, but we strongly feel that that just ain't
the way to do a project of this sort. A project of this sort is a
spiritual quest and an act in the general community interest. Our
net heritage belongs to all netkind. If you yourself want to
exploit these notes to write the DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK -- sure,
it's our "idea," our "intellectual property," but hey, we're
cyberpunks, we write for magazines like BOING BOING, we can't be
bothered with that crap in this situation. Write the book. Use
our notes and everybody's else's. We won't sue you, we promise.
Do it. Knock yourself out.
I'll go farther, ladies and gentlemen. To prove the profound
commercial potential of this tilt at the windmill, I'll
personally offer a CRISP FIFTY-DOLLAR BILL for the first guy,
gal, or combination thereof to write and publish THE DEAD MEDIA
HANDBOOK. You can even have the title if you want it. Just keep
in mind that me and Kadrey (or any combination thereof) reserve
the right to do a book of our own on the same topic if you fail
to sufficiently scratch our itch. The prospect of "competition"
frightens us not at all. It never has, frankly. If there's room
for 19,785 "Guide to the Internet" books, there has got to be
room for a few useful tomes on dead media.
Think of it this way. How long will it be before the much-touted
World Wide Web interface is itself a dead medium? And what will
become of all those billions of thoughts, words, images and
expressions poured onto the Internet? Won't they vanish just like
the vile lacquered smoke from a burning pile of junked Victrolas?
As a net.person, doesn't this stark realization fill you with a
certain deep misgiving, a peculiarly postmodern remorse, an
almost Heian Japanese sense of the pathos of lost things? If it
doesn't, why doesn't it? It ought to.
Speaking of dead media and mono no aware -- what about those
little poems that Lady Murasaki used to write and stick inside
cleft sticks? To be carried by foot-messager to the
bamboo-shrouded estate of some lucky admirer after a night's
erotic tryst? That was a medium. That medium was very alive once,
a mainstay of one of the most artistically advanced cultures on
earth. And isn't it dead? What are we doing today that is the
functional equivalent of the cleft sticks of Murasaki Shikibu,
the world's first novelist? If we ignore her historical
experience, how will we learn from our own?
Listen to the following, all you digital hipsters. This is
Jaqueline Goddard speaking in January 1995. Jacqueline was born
in 1911, and she was one of the 20th century's great icons of
bohemian femininity. Man Ray photographed her in Paris in 1930,
and if we can manage it without being sued by the Juliet Man Ray
Trust, we're gonna put brother Man Ray's knock-
you-down-and-stomp-you-gorgeous image of Jacqueline up on our
vaporware Website someday. She may be the patron saint of this
effort.
Jacqueline testifies: "After a day of work, the artists wanted to
get away from their studios, and get away from what they were
creating. They all met in the cafes to argue about this and that,
to discuss their work, politics and philosophy.... We went to the
bar of La Coupole. Bob, the barman, was a terrible nice chap...
As there was no telephone in those days everybody used him to
leave messages. At the Dome we also had a little place behind the
door for messages. The telephone was the death of Montparnasse."
"*The telephone was the death of Montparnasse.*" Mull that
Surrealist testimony over a little while, all you cafe-society
modemites. Jacqueline may not grok TCP/IP, but she has been there
and done that. I haven't stopped thinking about that remark since
I first read it. For whom does the telephone bell toll? It tolls
for me and thee -- sooner or later.
Can you help us? We wish you would, and think you ought to.
Bruce Sterling -- bruces@well.com
Richard Kadrey -- kadrey@well.sf.ca.us
~~~~~
II)Public Address on Dead Media Project
by Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com
Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use
"The Life and Death of Media"
Speech at Sixth International Symposium on Electronic Art
ISEA '95
Montreal Sept 19 1995
Hello, my name's Bruce Sterling, I'm a science fiction writer
from Austin, Texas. It's very pleasant to be here in Montreal at
an event like ISEA. It's professionally pleasant. As a science
fiction writer, I have a deep and abiding interest in electronic
arts. In multimedia. In computer networks. In CD-ROM. In virtual
reality. In the Internet. In the Information Superhighway. In
cyberspace. Basically, the less likely it sounds, the better I
like it.
These are topics that I dare not ignore. It would mean ignoring
the nervous system of the information society. The laboratory of
information science. The battlefield of information warfare. The
marketplace of the information economy. As well as one of the
strangest areas of the art world.
When Jules Verne invented science fiction, Jules Verne was a
stockbroker. Almost by accident, Jules Verne discovered that
nineteenth century France had a large market for
techno-thrillers. Jules Verne discovered and fed the tremendous
19th-century cultural appetite for romantic, futuristic
technologies like the hot-air- balloon, the electric submarine,
the airborne battleship, the moon cannon.
Today, at the close of the twentieth century, I feel a great
sense of solidarity with my spiritual ancestor Jules Verne when
it comes to topics such as virtual reality, and telepresence, and
direct links between brain and computer. Even as I stand here
before you, I can scarcely restrain my natural urge to inflate
some of these big shiny high- tech balloons with the hot air of
the imagination.
But ladies and gentlemen, I have seen this done for so long now,
and for *so many times,* and to so many different technologies,
that I can no longer do it myself with any sense of existential
authenticity. I must confess to you quite openly and frankly that
I am having a crisis of conscience.
In the year 1995, do information technologies really *need* any
more hot-breathing promotion from science fiction writers? I
would suggest otherwise. Take AT&T's famous "You Will" campaign.
AT&T's public relations campaign has reached millions of people
-- even though AT&T have just announced plans to fire ten
thousand of their own computer people.
Have you ever wondered if AT&T has any real idea what they're
doing? Do you think that AT&T has any real idea what they'll do
to us, once they arrive in that future that they are selling to
us? Did you ever wonder what AT&T really wants? You Will!
But at least AT&T makes nice looking science fiction commercials
with great set design. Let's consider Canada Bell. Canada Bell is
making an incredibly arrogant attempt to trademark the term "The
Net" -- a term which has been common parlance worldwide since at
least 1988. Canada Bell should be sued for that kind of hubris,
and in fact they *are* being sued, or at least opposed in court.
Symptoms like this make it clear that the good old techno-booster
role of science fiction writers has been taken over by a new
professional class of public relations hucksters and intellectual
property attorneys. Science fiction writers are no longer needed
to serve as handmaidens for these blundering colossi.
Nowadays, science fiction writers should fulfill another role.
Science fiction writers should be examining aspects of media that
cannot be promoted and sold. Aspects of media that corporate
public relations people are *afraid to look at* and deeply afraid
to tell us about. We should be attempting to achieve a coherent
understanding of media.
I'm not saying, mind you, that we're actually going to do this
fine and noble thing. I'm merely saying that's what's needed.
Given that tremendous challenge, science fiction writing is a
rather meager response at best. At our best, maybe we science
fiction writers can act as harbingers or catalysts, but what is
really needed at this historical juncture is a serious general
global assessment of our technosocial condition. Before we
install the latest hot-off-the-disk-drive version of Windows For
Civilization 2.0, we ought to look around ourselves very
seriously. Probably, before leaping in postmodern ecstasy into
the black hole of virtuality, we ought to make and store some
back-ups of the system first. Our society would do this if we had
a momentary attack of common sense. But never mind, that's just a
passing suggestion.
Rather than dwelling on that, let me tell you how I reached this
artistic crisis of mine. Two months ago, I finished a new science
fiction novel. It's a novel about virtual reality artists in
Europe in the late twenty-first century. I think people in
today's digital art community will recognize this novel as my
little valentine for them. This is a novel set a hundred years
from today, in which I pretend that digital arts people like the
people from ISEA have become the planet's art establishment. I
know this is a very far-fetched notion, but you can get away with
that sort of thing in science fiction novels.
The novel was a lot of fun to write. I thought it was very
inventive and clever and it left me absurdly pleased with myself.
Unfortunately, I got to thinking seriously about digital art
while I was writing this book, and this forced me confront some
of my own limits.
I'm not thinking hard enough about media. The approaches I have
been using are too shallow, too glittery, too facile. I have to
get a better grip.
Media is a commodity. Media is something that is sold to us.
Media can be something that we are sold to, even. Media is an
everyday thing. You can buy bandwidth in job lots. You can watch
television, buy books, videos, records, CDs, but that's not it.
That's not what's interesting.
* Media is an extension of the senses.
* Media is a mode of consciousness.
* Media is extra-somatic memory. It's a crystallization of human
thought that survives the death of the individual.
* Media generates simulacra. The mechanical reproduction of images
is media.
* Media is a means of social interaction.
* Media is a means of command and control.
* Media is statistics, knowledge that is gathered and
generated by the state. Media is economics, transactions,
records, contracts, money and the records of money.
* Media is the means of civil society and public opinion. Media is a
means of debate and decision and agitpropaganda.
None of these are a full working definition of the term "media,"
but they are a list of the qualities of this phenomenon that I
find really relevant and compelling.
To treat this matter seriously, I need a far better understanding
than I have. We're getting in really deep now, ladies and
gentlemen; we can't trifle with this thing any more. As a
society, we have bet the farm on the digital imperative. I need
to speculate from new principles and new assumptions. I want a
new synthesis, I want to really know and understand how media
live and die.
Maybe I'll get my heartfelt little wish, and maybe I won't. But
now I want to tell you how I plan to go about attempting this.
First, I want to destroy the Whig version of technological
history. In the Whig version of history, all events in the past
have benevolently conspired to produce the crown of creation,
ourselves. In the Whig version of media history, all
technological developments have marched in progressive lockstep,
from height to height, to produce the current exalted media
landscape. This is a very simple story. It's convenient and it
flatters our self-esteem. It's very cheering to supporters of the
media status quo (if there are any supporters left, or even any
status quo left), but it can be proven untrue.
It can be proven untrue by disinterring and dissecting dead
media. One understands evolution by studying the fossil record.
The arcane, the offbeat, the forgotten. The failures, the lost
and the buried, the media-maudit. The dead precursors of later
successes. Some forms of media are rendered obsolescent, but
others are murdered. Some innovations are pushed very hard by
clever and powerful people with lots of money, and yet they still
fail. I find that aspect particularly interesting.
I'm not alone in my interest in this topic. My friend and
colleague Richard Kadrey is also a science fiction writer, and
together we have launched an effort called the Dead Media
Project. We're using the Internet to bring people together to
catalog and study extinct forms of human communication. We're in
the media autopsy business. We're into media forensics.
At the moment our scholarly efforts are very modest. We are
currently engaged in a simple roll-call of the dead --
disinterring and listing dead media.
My interest in dead media doesn't mean I've lost interest in
forms of media that are struggling to be born. I spend a lot of
time on the Internet these days. For instance, I made an entire
book of mine available on the Internet -- a book called THE
HACKER CRACKDOWN. In the past, I've used the Internet as a vanity
press -- to publish and spread articles and speeches and
critique. The Dead Media Project is my attempt to involve the
Internet community in a new and different aspect of book
production -- the beginning of a book, the raw research, the
conceptual stages. This time I want the public in on the book
*before I've written it.*
In fact, I don't even *want* to write this book -- The Dead Media
Handbook, a field guide for the communications paleontologist.
Someone else should write this book, quite possibly someone in
this audience. I don't particularly want to create it -- I just
want to read it, absorb its useful lessons, and then go on to my
normal business, which is writing science fiction novels.
I believe that the DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK will in fact be written,
even if I have to break down and actually write it myself. But
there will be a price to be paid for the production of this book,
and that price will be the necessity of abandoning intellectual
property.
I think this is a fine idea for a book, but rather than hiding
it, I plan to publicize it widely. It's not a trade secret; I
don't care how many people know I'm working on it. I have nothing
to gain by poring over this in secrecy. All the notes and
research in the Dead Media Project will be available to anyone
who joins the research effort. It will be a public-domain source
of knowledge contributed by independent scholars working pro
bono. This information will be free.
If this scheme works, it will work in the way the Internet works:
through prestige, netiquette and acts of intellectual generosity.
I think that books can and even should be constructed in the same
way that the Internet is constructed. I'm going to give it a try.
I know that many people are working in media studies from a
variety of different scholarly approaches, and I respect those
efforts. I plan to spend a lot of time reading a lot more of
them. But they're not yet scratching my visionary itch. I don't
think that overarching syntheses or ideological summations are in
order yet -- I think what is needed now is *fieldwork.*
Commentaries, coming in from all corners of the compass, from all
over the world, via modem. Maybe the central mystery of media can
be paste-bombed into submission -- nibbled to death bit by bit.
I strongly suspect that people of your backgrounds and
accomplishments can help me in this project, so I'm frankly
begging you to help me.
The Dead Media Project has only been public for about a month and
a half, but I want to share with you some of my preliminary
discoveries. I rather suspect that they may have some modest
relevance for people in ISEA.
Let's consider cinema. Cinema is not a dead medium -- cinema is a
hundred years old, and obviously alive, and more or less well. At
least, it's still generating plenty of revenue in those squinchy
little multiplex theaters. But cinema killed quite a few other
media. The magic lantern, the phenakistiscope, the
phantasmagoria, the praxinoscope, the zoetrope, the mutoscope,
the fantascope. If you look closely at the evolution of cinema
you can see that cinema is not a monolith, it's a radiation of
species. E J Marey's "chambre chronophotographique." The Edison
kinetoscope. Anschutz's tachyscope. The vitagraph, the
cinematographe, the theatrograph, the animatograph, the Urbanora.
Cinema as a medium did not make a sudden triumphant leap from
silent movies to sound. People were attempting to jam sound into
cinema from almost the beginning. We remember the much-publicized
triumphs like THE JAZZ SINGER, but we have been taught to
disregard the numerous experiments that died on the barbed wire
of technological advance. The Edison kinetophone. Gaumont's
Chronophone. The synchronoscope. The movietone. Phonofilm. The
graphophonoscope. The vitaphone.
These mutant forms of talking and singing cinema weren't ignored
because they failed to work. In a lot of cases they worked just
fine. Nobody who invented these devices ever set out to build a
failure. The truly failed experiments never even made it out of
the lab. These dead species of cinema were always imagined and
proclaimed to be the cutting edge, the state of the art, and they
were generally unveiled in a state of wild enthusiasm and a
furious drumbeat from the press. They died because of
contingency, not destiny.
Take Gaumont's Chronophone, for instance. The name sounds rather
arcane and silly, but that is not a technical judgement.
Cinevision, Cinerama, Odorama -- do these names really sound any
less silly? How about Apple QuickTime, or CU-SeeMe, or Yahoo? But
hey, those can't be silly -- those are modern! "I hope you're not
trying to suggest that someday people will laugh at *us.* Hey
man, we're cyberculture -- we'll never be obsolete."
Some media shed a few dead species, but the genus goes on living.
Other media are murdered.
Have you ever heard of the quipu of preColumbian Peru? If you
have, it's a minor miracle. The archives of Incan quipu were
burned by the Spanish conquerors, after the Council of Lima in
the year 1583. There are about 400 authentic quipus left in the
entire world. Every last one of the quipus we possess nowadays
was dug out of a human grave.
Well, not quite every last one. I happen to have a brand-new
quipu here in my pocket. I was doing quite a bit of reading about
quipu, so I decided I'd make one.
The word quipu means 'account' in the Quechua language, so the
quipu was basically a kind of accounting device and calculator.
This is a fabric network to carry data. This was the only
recording medium that the Incas had. It served all the recording
functions of their society.
No one today seems to have any real idea how these quipu worked.
They all looked more or less like this one -- they had a thick
fabric backbone, with a series of dependent fringes. But the
fringes could also have fringes. Sometimes there were as many as
six subdirectories coming off the backbone of the network. They
had a variety of different knots. They had quite a wide variety
of colors. People have only the vaguest ideas what the colors may
have signified.
This is a very small quipu. The largest remaining quipu weighs
about forty pounds and has well over two thousand dependent
cords. No one has any idea what this device signifies or what
message it carries. It was buried with a Peruvian gentleman who
was modestly well to do, but he doesn't appear to have been
particularly prominent.
The Incas had no idea that the planet harbored any civilization
other than their own. As far as they were concerned, these quipu
were the absolute apex of human intellectual accomplishment. And
one must admit they have a lot to offer. They're very light --
wool and cotton -- they're portable and durable. Crush-proof. No
problem with power surges or headcrashes. A good thing they were
portable too, because one of their primary functions was the
census.
It appears that everyone without exception in the Inca realm
existed as a knot in a quipu somewhere. The Incas were great
masters of ethnic cleansing. They thought nothing of ordering
thousands of people out of their homes to distant realms as
pioneers and settlers. Everyone simply loaded all their
possessions onto their backs and left immediately. Thanks to the
quipu, there was simply no way they would ever be missed by the
authorities.
The Inca economic system was a centralized command economy. A
third of the nation's economic output was stored in vast ranks of
stone cells. Everything down to the last sandal was recorded on
quipu.
I don't think there was ever an alphabet in quipu. I don't think
that the Inca were literate in that fashion, because their empire
was only a hundred years old. There was nothing to pronounce that
you could find on a piece of string. But there may have been
geneologies in string -- hierarchies, maybe family trees. Maps,
even -- three days' journey, they forded a blue river, they
fought a red battle -- you can imagine how usefully suggestive
this might have been. Maybe you could attack language even more
directly with a quipu: meter, stress, quantity, pitch, length of
the poem -- why should this be hard to believe? In English we
sometimes call telling a story "spinning a yarn."
These Incas were fine textile makers. They had a lot of wool and
cotton. The government made them grow it, and their women spun
yarn every day of their lives. When a quipucamayoc read one of
these recording devices, I don't think his lips moved. There was
nothing crude or halting or primitive or painful about the
experience -- a quipu is certainly a more tactile and sensual and
three- dimensional experience than a book.
The quipu was a medium. It was a way to cast the world into an
entire new form of order. It was a medium invented by and for a
very careful and methodical people, people who liked to fit huge
boulders together so snugly that you couldn't slip a knife-blade
between them. For the Incas, this was the Net -- a net that
caught their population in a sieve that dominated the whole
material world, a sieve that no one could escape.
You know, in today's ultramediated world, I think it's quite a
good idea to go into a quiet room with a quipu. Go to a room and
shut off the electricity. Don't look at the quipu with scorn or
condescension. Just hold it in your hands and try to pretend that
this the only possible abstract relationship, besides speech,
that you have with the world. Really try to imagine what you are
*missing* by not comprehending all economics, all governmental
business, all nonverbal communication, as a network of colored
yarn. Think of this as a discipline, as an act of imaginative
concentration, as a human engagement with a profoundly alien
media alternative.
It's truly pitiful how little is known or remembered about the
quipu, a dead medium which was once the nervous system of a major
civilization. And yet that is by no means the only form of knot
record. There's the Tlascaltec nepohualtzitzin, the Okinawan
warazan, the Bolivian chimpu. Samoan, Egyptian, Hawaiian,
Tibetan, Bengali, Formosan knot records. So far, I know almost
nothing about these beyond their names. I'd like to learn more.
If I learn more and you're on my list, I'll tell you about it.
Before I began the Dead Media Project I had no idea that native
North American wampum could be historical records. I always
thought that wampum were a kind of currency. Maybe, like the
quipu, wampum were both currency and record at the same time.
Imagine if *our* currency were a medium. Maybe our currency
*should* be a medium. If you're an experimental media artist, why
don't you start writing poetry on twenty-dollar bills and see
what happens? Maybe you should just write the address of your
favorite web site on money, and see what happens then as the bill
travels from hand to hand. Peculiar notion, isn't it --
communicating *with* money? Maybe we've just been *trained* to
find that notion peculiar.
I'm eager to learn more about wampum. I hope someone can tell me
about them, and share that information with likeminded people. My
email address is bruces@well.com. That's bruces, with an s at the
end. Go ahead and write me, don't be shy. We're all in this
together -- our net heritage belongs to all netkind! We can
distribute all the data we like nowadays, there's nothing
stopping us except for the RCMP, the FBI, the SPA and the Church
of Scientology. Maybe these DISKS will help you! (((begins
flinging Dead Media Project floppy disks into the audience))).
These are just harmless text files, ladies and gentlemen.
Probably Virus Free! I use electronic text these days, because
the typewriter is dying now.
In the early days of typewriters, what wonderful names they had:
Xavier Progin's "Machine Kryptographique" (1833), Guiseppe
Ravizza's "Cembalo-Scrivano" (1837), Charles Thurber's
"Chirographer" (1843), J B. Fairbanks' "Phonetic Writer and
Calico Printer," and so forth. A minor horde of typing machines,
many of them scarcely recognizable as such to the modern eye.
Soon they'll all be gone. Swept away by the computer.
The computer. Its tide is so inexorable. Its power is so immense.
Its triumph is so complete. What do we mean exactly when we say:
"I've modernized. I own a computer"? Are we really in possession
of a machine less mortal than Guiseppe Ravizza's
Cembalo-Scrivano?
This computer is a Macintosh Powerbook 180. An impressive
machine, isn't it? I dote on it, personally. I admire that name
-- PowerBook. It says a lot about the kind of rhetoric our
culture cherishes in the 1990s. The name "PowerBook" somehow
suggests that this device can *last* as long as a book, though
even the cheapest paperback will outlive this machine quite
easily.
PowerBook is a good name, but not a really pretty name. Personal
computers have had much prettier names. Like the Intertek
Superbrain II. It must have been extremely difficult not to buy
an Intertek Superbrain II, even though that machine is absolutely
as dead as mutton.
Forgive me while I indulge in a brief sentimental roll-call of
vanished glories. The vast and every- growing legion of dead
personal computers. The Altair 8800. The Amstrad. The Apple Lisa.
The Apricot. The Canon Cat. The CompuPro "Big 16." The Exidy
Sorcerer. How can a sorcerer end up dead on the junkheap? That's
not supposed to happen, we're not even supposed to *think* about
that. A computer is a sorcerer with a superbrain, it's not
supposed to be lying in a landfill with great-grandma's victrola.
The Hyperion, the Mattel Aquarius. The NorthStar Horizon and the
Osborne Executive. The Xerox Alto and the Yamaha CX5M.
But wait! There's more! Dead mainframes! Dozens and dozens of
fantastically complex and expensive dead mainframes. Dead
supercomputers. Dead operating systems. We all know that
yesterday's operating systems are far inferior to today's Windows
95. Windows 95 is an operating system which is refreshingly
honest, because it has an expiration date written right on it. We
know that operating systems are of absolutely critical importance
in computing, but how often do we honestly recognize that?
Suppose you compose an electronic artwork for an operating system
that subsequently dies. It doesn't matter how much creative
effort you invested it that program. It does not matter how
cleverly you wrote the code. The number of manhours invested is
of no relevance. Your artistic theories and your sense of
conviction are profoundly beside the point. If you chose to
include a political message, that message will never again reach
a human ear. Your chance to influence the artists who come after
you is reduced drastically, almost to nil. You are inside a dead
operating system. Unless someone deliberately translates you into
a new one -- with heaven only knows what liberties of translation
-- you are nailed and sealed inside a glamorous sarcophagus. You
have become dead media. Almost as dead as the quipu.
This is, of course, the dirty little secret of the electronics
industry, and therefore it is the mark of Cain for electronic
art. When we are surfing the web in 1995, we are surfing on a
vast dark sea of dead computers. We have to surf, you see --
because we are just a white scrim of foam up on the surface. The
waves of machines rolling in beneath us are moving in with the
hideous relentlessness of Moore's Law, doubling in power every
eighteen months, one order of magnitude a decade. If you are
working on a cutting-edge computer today you are working on one
percent of the cutting-edge computer you will have twenty years
from now.
And beyond that -- the awe-inspiring prospect of teraflops,
gigaflops, petaflops. Here's the latest issue of SCIENCE magazine
(((Vol 269, 8 Sept 1995, p 1363))), with a truly hair-raising
article called "Computer Scientists Re-Think Their Discipline's
Foundations." I recommend this article highly. This isn't
something I made up, mind you -- this is stuff that people at
Princeton and Argonne National Laboratory are making up. Quantum
Dot computers, ten thousand times faster that today's fastest
microchips. Optical computers, one hundred thousand times faster.
Holographic data storage, one hundred thousand times faster.
Sometimes you think that computation has to slow down -- that it
has to bureaucratize -- become more like a normal industry. But
then you're confronted with yet another awesome vista of absolute
possibility!
You see ladies and gentleman, we live in the Golden Age of Dead
Media. What we brightly call "multimedia" provides an a whole
galaxy of mutant recombinant media, most of them with the working
lifespan of a pack of Twinkies. Mastering a typical CD-ROM is
like mastering an entire new medium by using a frozen
watch-cursor. And then the machine dies. And then the operating
system dies. And then the computer language supporting that
operating system because as dead as the Hittite language. And in
the meantime, our entire culture has been sucked into the black
hole of computation, an utterly frenetic process of virtual
planned obsolescence.
But you know -- that process needn't be unexamined or frenetic.
We can examine that process whenever we like, and the frantic
pace is entirely our own fault. What's our big hurry anyway? When
you look at it from another angle, there's an unexpected
delicious thrill in the thought that individual human beings can
now survive whole generations of media. It's like outliving the
Soviet Union once every week! That was never possible before, but
for us, that is media reality.
It puts machines into a category where machines probably properly
belong -- colorful, buzzing, cuddly things with the lifespan of
hamsters. This PowerBook has the lifespan of a hamster. Exactly
how attached can I become to this machine? Just how much of an
emotional investment can I make in my beloved three thousand
dollar hamster?
I suspect that the proper attitude -- one that more and more
people will share in the coming millennium -- is a kind of
Olympian pity. We are as gods to our mere mortal media -- we kill
them for our sport.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me implore your pity and understanding
for dead media. If you're really electronic frontier people, then
in all justice, you ought to eat what you are killing. Let's try
to see the greater sense of tragedy and majesty in this whirlwind
we're creating. Perhaps this realization will free us from the
hypnotism of our own PR. I dare not suggest that it will make us
better artists -- but at least it may help establish where we are
and what is coming. Somehow, it might help us survive. It might
even help us prevail.
You've been very kind to hear me out for so long. Thanks very
much for listening.
~~~~~
III)THE MASTER-LIST OF DEAD MEDIA
Dead medium: All of them now known
From: Bruce Sterling circa 1/18/1997
DEAD PRELITERATE MEDIA
Prehistoric etched-bone mnemonic devices and lunar
calendars.
Preliterate clay tokens of Fertile Crescent area.
The Luba Lukasa mnemonic bead-tablet.
The Inuit Inuksuit.
Inuit carved maps.
String and yarn-based mnemonic knot systems: Incan
quipu, Tlascaltec nepohualtzitzin, Okinawan warazan,
Bolivian chimpu, Samoan, Egyptian, Hawaiian, Tibetan,
Bengali, Formosan; American wampum, Zulu beadwork.
DEAD SOUND-TRANSFER NETWORKS
Drumming, stentor shouting networks, alpenhorns, whistling
networks, town criers.
SMOKE DISPLAYS AND NETWORKS
Signal fires, smoke signals (still in use by Vatican),
fire beacons.
Skywriting.
DEAD PHYSICAL TRANSFER NETWORKS
Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Mongol, Roman and
Chinese imperial horse posts.
Extinct mail and postal systems: Thurn and Taxis (1550
AD), Renaissance Italian banking networks, early
espionage networks, German butcher's-post, Chinese hongs,
Incan runners, US Pony Express, etc etc.
Balloon post (France 1870-1871)
American guided missile mail (1959),
Styrian, Tongan, German, Dutch, American,
Indian, Australian, Cuban and Mexican rocket mail.
Russian rocket mail (1992).
Pneumatic transfer tubes:
Josiah Latimer Clark stock exchange pneumatic system
London (1853); R.S. Culler/R. Sabine radial pneumatic
telegraph/mail system London (1859); Paris pneumatic
mail system (1868)
Norwegian mountainside transport wires.
Pigeon post: Egyptian Caliphate 1100s, Mameluke Empire
1250's, military sieges of: Acre (11--?), Candia 1204,
Haarlem 1572, Leyden 1575, Antwerp 1832, Paris 1870-1871;
Reuter's pigeon stock-price network 1849, military
pigeoneers of World War 1.
Chinese kite messages, 1232 AD
DEAD OPTICAL NETWORKS
Roman light telegraph;
Polybius's torch telegraph ca 150 BC
Moundbuilder Indian signal mounds
Babylonian fire beacons
Fire signals on the Great Wall of China
Amontons' windmill signals (1690)
OPTICAL TELEGRAPHY:
Johannes Trithemius's Steganographia (ca 1500?)
Dupuis-Fortin optical telegraph (France 1788)
Chappe's "Synchronized System" and "Panel Telegraph"
(France 1793)
Claude Chappe's French Optical Telegraph (France 1793)
The Vigigraph (France 1794)
Edelcrantz's Swedish Optical Telegraph (1795)
British Admiralty Optical Telegraph (1795)
Bergstrasser's German Optical Telegraph (1786)
Chudy's Czech Optical Telegraph (the Fernschreibmaschine)
(1796)
Van Woensel's Dutch system (1798)
Fisker's Danish Optical Telegraph (1801)
Grout's American Optical Telegraph (1801)
Olsen's Norwegian Optical Telegraph (1808)
Abraham Chappe's Mobile Optical Telegraph (1812)
Parker's American Optical Telegraph (ca 1820)
Curacao Optical Telegraph (1825-1917)
Watson's British Optical Telegraph (1827)
Australian Optical Telegraph (Watson system) (1827)
Lipken's Dutch system (1831)
O'Etzel's German Optical Telegraph (1835)
Schmidt's German Optical Telegraph (1837)
Ferrier's optical telegraph (1831)
Russian Optical Telegraph (1839, Chappe system)
Spanish Optical Telegraph (ca 1846)
San Francisco Optical Telegraph (1849)
Ramstedt's Finnish Optical Telegraph (1854)
Heliography:
The Mance Heliograph (Britain 1860s)
The heliostat, the heliotrope, the helioscope.
The Babbage Occulting Telegraph (never built)
Semaphore and flag signals:
Byzantine naval code (Byzantium AD 900), Admiralty Black
Book code (England 1337), de la Bourdonnais code (France
1738), de Bigot code (France 1763), Howe code (Britain
1790), Popham code aka Trafalgar Code (Britain 1803, 1813)
US Army Myer Code semaphore (USA 1860).
Military balloon semaphore (France 1790s).
Early 20th Century electric searchlight spectacles.
DEAD ELECTRICAL TRANSFER NETWORKS
ELECTRICAL CURRENT TRANSFER
George Louis Lesage / Charles Morrison electric telegraph
(1774)
Francisco Salva's Madrid-Aranjuez electric telegraph
(1796)
Soemmering's electrolytic bubble-letter telegraph (1812)
Henry's electromagnetic telegraph (1831)
Baron Schilling's Russian magnetized needle telegraph
(1832)
Gauss/Weber mirror galvanometer telegraph (1833)
CODED ELECTRICAL TRANSFER
Samuel Morse telegraph (patented 1837)
Karl August Steinhill paper ribbon telegraph (1837)
Charles Wheatstone / William Fothergill Cooke Five-Needle
Telegraph (1837)
The Alphabetical Telegraph
Foy-Breguet Chappe-code Electrical Telegraph
The Bain Chemical Telegraph (1848)
Alexander Bain automatic perforated-tape transmitters
(1864).
Telex.
CODED ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF IMAGES
Elisha Gray's telautograph (1886); the telescriber.
The Vail telegraphic printer (1837), the House telegraphic
printer (1846)
Frederick Bakewell's shellac conducting roller (1848)
Giovanni Caselli's fascimile pantelegraph (Paris-Lyon
1865-1870); Arthur Korn's telephotography (1907), Edouard
Belin's Belinograph (1913), Alexander Muirhead's 1947
fax.
ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF SOUND
Unorthodox telephony networks and devices:
The Bliss toy telephone (1886), Telefon Hirmondo,
Cahill's Telharmonium (1895), Bell's photophone,
the Telephone Herald of Newark, Electrophone Ltd. wire
broadcast
Telephonic Jukeboxes: The Shyvers Multiphone,
the Phonette Melody Lane, the AMI Automatic
Hostess, the Rock-Ola Mystic Music System
ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF SOUND AND IMAGE
(Dead Telephony)
The AT&T Nipkow disk picturephone (1927),
Gunter Krawinkel's video telephone booth
(Germany 1929), Reichspost picturephone (Germany 1936),
AT&T Picturephone, AT&T Videophone 2500, etc
(Dead Mechanical Television)
Baird Television; Baird Noctovision; Baird Telelogoscopy;
The General Electric Octagon; the Daven Tri-Standard
Scanning Disc; the Jenkins W1IM Radiovisor Kit,
the Jenkins Model 202 Radiovisor, Jenkins Radio Movies;
the Baird Televisor Plessey Model, the Baird Televisor
Kit; the Western Television Corporation Visionette
(Dead Color Television Formats):
Baird Telechrome, HDTV, PALplus letterbox format, etc
(Dead Interactive Television)
Zenith Phonevision, the first pay-per-view TV service
(1951).
AT&T wirephoto (1925)
DEAD DIGITAL NETWORKS
Teletext, Viewtron, Viewdata, Prestel, The Source, Qube,
Alex (Quebec), Telidon (Canada), Viatel and Discovery 40
(Australia), the ICL One-Per-Desk, etc.
TRANSFERS BY ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
(Dead Television)
Nipkow disk (1884), Zworykin
iconoscope (1923), Farnsworth Dissector.
Hugo Gernsback's Nipkow television broadcasts (1928)
(Microwaves)
Microwave relay drone aircraft (Canada 1990s)
(Radio)
RCA radiophoto (1926)
DEAD INK-BASED MEDIA
(dead text production devices and systems)
Typewriters: Henry Mill's device (1714)
Pingeron's machine for the blind (1780),
Burt's Family Letter Press (1829), Xavier Progin's
"Machine Kryptographique" (1833), Guiseppe Ravizza's
"Cembalo-Scrivano" (1837), Charles Thurber's
"Chirographer" (1843), Sir Charles Wheatstone's
telegraphic printers (1850s), J B. Fairbanks'
"Phonetic Writer and Calico Printer,"
Giuseppe Devincenzi's electric writing machine (1855)
Edison electric typewriter (1872),
Bartholomew's Stenograph (1879)
Schulz Auto-typist punch-paper copier typewriter (1927)
Weir's pneumatic typewriter (1891),
Juan Gualberto Holguin's 'Burbra' pneumatic typewriter
(1914), The IBM Selectric, etc.
Dead copying devices:
James Watt's ink copier (1780)
The aniline dye copy press
The hektograph
Edison's Electric Pen stencil (1876), the Edison pneumatic
pen stencil, the Edison foot-powered pen stencil, the
Music Ruling pen stencil, the Reed pen stencil
Zuccato's Trypograph (1877)
Gestetner's Cyclostyle (1881)
The Edison Mimeograph (1887)
The Gammeter, aka Multigraph (circa 1900)
The Vari-Typer
Chinese imperial court printed newspaper (circa 618 AD);
Beijing city printed newspaper (748 AD)
Bi Sheng's clay movable type (1041 AD)
DEAD SOUND-CAPTURE TECHNOLOGIES
Extinct forms of dictation machine.
Poulsen's telegraphon wire recorder (1893)
The Wilcox-Gay Coin Recordio (1950?)
DEAD SOUND ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES
Extinct phonographic formats: Leon Scott de Martinville
phono-autograph, Edison tinfoil cylinder, Edison wax
cylinder,
the Bettini Micro-Phonograph, the telegraphone,
Bell's graphophone, The Columbia Graphophone Grand, the
Edison Concert Grand Phonograph, the Pathe' Salon
cylinder, the Edison Blue Amberol cylinder, the Edison
vertical-groove disc phonograph, the Michaelis Neophone,
wire recorders, 78s, 8-track tape, 2-track Playtape,
the Elcaset, Soviet "bone music," aluminum transcription
disks, etc.
DEAD SOUND REPRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES:
The AT&T Voder (1939)
The Bell Labs Vocoder
Talking dolls and cassette dolls
(von Kempelen's "talking" doll (1778), Robertson's
talking waxwork (1815), Faber's talking automaton (1853),
Teddy Ruxpin, dolls linked to television programs,
realistic sound-producing squeeze toys, etc).
DEAD STILL-IMAGE CAPTURE TECHNOLOGIES
Extinct photographic techniques: Niepce's asphalt
photograph (1826), daguerrotype, talbotype, calotype,
collodion, fluorotype, cyanotype, Pellet process, ferro-
gallic and ferro-tannic papers, albumen process,
argenotype, kalliotype, palladiotype, platinotype, uranium
printing, powder processes, pigment printing, Artigue
proces, oil printing, chromotype, Herschel's breath
printing, diazotype, pinatype, wothlytype, etc.
DEAD STILL-IMAGE TO TACTILE IMAGE TECHNOLOGY
Naumburg's printing visagraph and automatic visagraph.
DEAD STILL-IMAGE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES
The stereopticon, the Protean View, the Zogroscope, the
Polyorama Panoptique, Frith's Cosmoscope, Knight's
Cosmorama, Ponti's Megalethoscope (1862), Rousell's
Graphoscope (1864), Wheatstone's stereoscope (1832), dead
Viewmaster knockoffs.
Medieval and renaissance magic-glass conjuring.
Alhazen's camera obscura (1000 AD),
Wollaston's camera lucida (1807).
Magic lantern, dissolving views
Phantasmagoria: Robertson's Fantasmagorie,
Seraphin's Ombres Chinoises, Guyot's smoke apparitions,
Philipstal's phantasmagoria, Lonsdale's
Spectrographia, Meeson's phantasmagoria, the optical
eidothaumata, the Capnophoric Phantoms, Moritz's
phantasmagoria, Jack Bologna's Phantoscopia, Schirmer and
Scholl's Ergascopia, De Berar's Optikali Illusio,
Brewster's catadioptrical phantasmagoria,
Pepper's Ghost, Messter's Kinoplastikon.
Biddall's Phantospectraghostodrama and similar
"fairground bogeys."
Riviere's Theatre d'Ombres.
DEAD STILL-IMAGE "3-D" WITH SOUND
The Talking View-Master.
DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION TECHNOLOGIES
Joseph Plateau's phenakistiscope (1832), Emile Reynaud's
praxinoscope, Ayrton's thaumatrope or "magic disks"
(1825), Stampfer's stroboscope, William George Horner's
zoetrope or "wheel-of-life" (1834), L. S. Beale's
choreutoscope (1866), the viviscope, Short's Filoscope,
Herman Casler's mutoscope and the "picture parlor" (1895),
the Lumiere Kinora viewer and Kinora camera, the
fantascope, etc.
Dead cinematic devices, including but not limited to:
Muybridge's zoogyroscope, E J Marey's chronophotographe
and fusil photographique, George Demeny's Phonoscope,
Edison kinetoscope, Anschutz's Electro-Tachyscope,
Armat's vitascope, Rudge's biophantascope, Skladanowsky's
Bioscope, Acre's kineopticon, the counterfivoscope, the
klondikoscope, Paul's theatrograph, Reynaud's Theatre
Optique, Reynaud's Musee Grevin Cabinet Fantastique,
Lumiere cinematographe, Kobelkoff's Giant Cinematographe,
Lumiere Cinematographe Geant (1900), the vitagraph,
Paul's animatograph, the vitamotograph, the Kinesetograph,
Proszynski's Oko, the Urbanora, the Prague Laterna Magika.
DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND
TECHNOLOGIES
the Photo-Cinema-Theatre sound film system (1900),
Gaumont's Chronophone (1910), Messter's Biophon (1904),
The Mendel-Walturdaw cinematophone (1911), The Jeapes-
Barker Cinephone (1908), Hepworth's Vivaphone (1911),
Edison kinetophone (1913), Ruhmer's Photographon optical
sound recorder (1901), the synchronoscope, the
cameraphone, phonofilm, the graphophonoscope,
the chronophotographoscope, the biophonograph,
DeForest Phonofilm (1923), Warner Bros/ Western Electric
Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927), Vocafilm,
Firnatone, Bristolphone, Titanifrone, Disney's Cinephone,
Hoxie / RCA Photophone (1928), General Electric
Kinegraphone (1925), Cinerama (1951), CinemaScope (1952),
Natural Vision (1952), etc.
The Scopitone.
DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, IMMERSIVE
Raoul Grimoin-Sanson's Ballon-Cineorama ten-projector
circular screen (1900)
DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND, SMELL
Odorama, Smell-O-Vision (1960), Aromarama (1959) etc.
DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND, SMELL,
IMMERSIVE
Morton Heilig's early virtual reality.
DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, "3-D"
Devignes's stereoscopic zoetrope (1860)
Stereoscopic phenakistoscopes: Seller's Kinematoscope
(1861), Shaw's stereoscopic phenakistiscope (1860)
Bonelli and Cook's microphotograph stereo-phenakistiscope
(1863), Wheatstone's stereoscopic viewer (c. 1870)
3-D projection systems: d'Almeida's projected 3-D magic
lantern slides (1856), Heyl's Phasmatrope (1870),
Grivolas's stereoscopic moving pictures (1897),
the Fairall anaglyph process (1922),
Kelly's Plasticon (1922), Ives and Leventhall's
Plastigram, aka Pathe Stereoscopiks, aka Audioscopiks, aka
Metroscopix (1923,1925, 1935, 1953), Teleview (New York
1922), polarized light stereoscopic movies (1936),
Ivanov's parallax stereogram projector (Moscow 1941),
Savoy's Cyclostereoscope (Paris 1949), the Telekinema
(London 1951), Space Vision (Chicago 1966).
DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND,
ARCHIVAL
Dead video: Baird Phonovisor wax videodisk
(1927), Ives/Bell Labs Half-Tone Television (1930s)
Eidophor video projector (1945), PixelVision,
Polavision, Philips Laservision videodisk, Panasonic HDTV
(1974), McDonnell Douglas Laserfilm Videodisc (1984),
analog HDTV (1989), RCA SelectaVision CED videodisk,
Telefunken Teldec Decca TeD videodisk, TEAC system
videodisk, Philips JVC VHD/AHD videodisk
Dead videotapes: Ampex Signature I (1963),
Sony CV B/W (1965), Akai 1/4 inch B/W & Colour (1969),
Cartivision/Sears (1972)
Sony U-Matic (197?), Sony-Matic 1/2" B/W (197?)
EIAJ-1 1/2" (197?), RCA Selectavision Magtape (1973)
Akai VT-100 1/4 inch portable (1974),
Panasonic Omnivision I (1975),
Philips "VCR" (197?), Sanyo V-Cord, V-Cord II (197?)
Akai VT-120 (1976), Matsushita/Quasar VX (1976)
Philips & Grundig Video 2000 (1979),
Funai/Technicolor CVC (1984)
Sony Betamax
DEAD VIRTUALITIES
Physical display environments (non-immersive):
Dioramas (no sound), de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon
(sound and lighting) (1781), the Stereorama, the
Cosmoramic Stereoscope,
Mechanical drama:
Japanese karakuri puppet theatre
Heron's Nauplius.
Dead thrill rides.
Immersive physical display environments
Panoramas, Poole's Myriorama, the Octorama, the
Diaphorama, Cycloramas, the Paris Mareorama (1900).
Defunct digital VR systems.
DEAD DATA-RETRIEVAL DEVICES AND SYSTEMS
accountant tally sticks
Card catalogs: The Indecks Information Retrieval System,
Diebold Cardineer rotary files, etc.
Vannevar Bush's Comparator and Rapid Selector
Scott's Electronium music composition system
DEAD COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (ANALOG)
Extinct computational platforms:
abacus (circa 500BC Egypt, still in wide use)
saun-pan computing tray (200 AD China)
soroban computing tray (200 AD Japan)
Napier's bones (1617 Scotland),
William Oughtred's slide rule (1622 England)
and other slide rules,
Wilhelm Schickard's calculator (1623 ?)
Blaise Pascal's calculating machine (1642 France)
Schott's Organum Mathematicum (1666)
Gottfried Liebniz's calculating machine (1673)
Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (built 1990s) (1822
England)
Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine (never built) (1833
England)
Scheutz mechanical calculator (1855 Sweden)
The Thomas Arithmometer
Hollerith tabulating machine (1890)
Vannevar Bush differential analyzer (1925 USA)
DEAD COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (DIGITAL)
The Cauzin Strip Reader (archival)
Extinct game platforms:
Actionmax Video System, Adam Computer System,
Aquarius Computer System, Atari: 2600/5200/7800,
Colecovision, GCE Vectrex Arcade System,
Intellivision I/II/III, Odyssey, Commodore, APF, Bally
Astrocade, Emerson Arcadia, Fairchild "Channel F,"
Microvision, RCA Studio II, Spectravision, Tomy Tutor,
etc.
DEAD BINARY DIGITAL COMPUTERS
Konrad Zuse's Z1 computer (1931 Germany)
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (1939 USA)
Turing's Colossus Mark 1 (1941 England)
Zuse's Z3 computer (1941 Germany)
Colossus Mark II (1944 England)
IBM ASCC Mark I (1944 USA)
BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer) (1946-1949 USA)
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
(1946 USA)
Dead mainframes.
Dead personal computers:
Altair 8800, Amiga 500, Amiga 1000, Amstrad
Apple I, II, II+, IIc, IIe, IIGS, III
Apple Lisa, Apple Lisa MacXL, Apricot
Atari 400 and 800 XL, XE, ST,
Atari 800XL, Atari 1200XL, Atari XE
Basis 190, BBC Micro, Bondwell 2, Cambridge Z-88
Canon Cat, Columbia Portable
Commodore C64, Commodore Vic-20, Commodore Plus 4
Commodore Pet, Commodore 128 CompuPro "Big 16,"
Cromemco Z-2D, Cromemco Dazzler,
Cromemco System 3, DOT Portable, Eagle II
Epson QX-10, Epson HX-20, Epson PX-8 Geneva
Exidy Sorcerer, Franklin Ace 500, Franklin Ace 1200
Gavilan, Grid Compass, Heath/Zenith, Hitachi Peach
Hyperion, IBM PC 640K, IBM XT, IBM Portable
IBM PCjr, IMSAI 8080, Intertek Superbrain II
Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1, Kaypro 2x
Linus WriteTop, Mac 128, 512, 512KE
Mattel Aquarius, Micro-Professor MPF-II
Morrow MicroDecision 3, Morrow Portable
NEC PC-8081, NEC Starlet 8401-LS,
NEC 8201A Portable, NEC 8401A,
NorthStar Advantage, NorthStar Horizon
Ohio Scientific, Oric, Osborne 1, Osborne Executive
Panasonic, Sanyo 1255, Sanyo PC 1250
Sinclair ZX-80, Sinclair ZX-81
Sol Model 20, Sony SMC-70, Spectravideo SV-328
Tandy 1000, Tandy 1000SL, Tandy Coco 1, Tandy Coco 2
Tandy Coco 3, TRS-80 models I, II, III, IV, 100,
Tano Dragon, TI 99/4, Timex/Sinclair 1000
Timex/Sinclair color computer, Vector 4
Victor 9000, Workslate
Xerox 820 II, Xerox Alto, Xerox Dorado, Xerox 1108
Yamaha CX5M
etc. etc. etc.
Dead computer languages.
Fortran I, II and III, ALGOL 58 and 60, Lisp 1 and 1.5
COBOL, APT, JOVIAL, SIMULA I and 67
JOSS, PL/1, SNOBOL, APL
Dead operating systems.
Dead Internet techniques.
We are actively hunting data in all these categories.
We are also searching for new taxonomical methods and
alternative categorization schemes. Send email if
you (a) are personally willing to re-format this list along some
specific taxonomical scheme or (b) you have a novel idea for
a taxonomical approach.
Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) Jan 18, 1997
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EXURPTS FROM THE CIA TOUTURE MANUAL
As reprinted in Harper's Magazine, April 1997 issue.
************************************************************************
NOTE: Harper's states that "in 1985, the CIA renounced the use
of coercive interrogation techniques,"...yeah, sure....
Psychological Torture, CIA-Style
>From the "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual--1983,"
a handbook written by the Central Intelligence Agency and used
during the early 80's to teach Latin American security forces how
to extract information from prisoners. The manual was obtained in
January through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the
Baltimore Sun as part of an investigation of the CIA's involvement
in Honduras. In 1985, the CIA renounced the use of coercive
interrogation techniques and amended the manual accordingly; in
the copy obtained by the Sun, the original 1983 text is legible
beneath the agency's handwritten revisions and deletion marks.
THEORY OF COERCION
The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological
regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to
bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of
autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject
regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse
chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the
highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to
cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated
frustrations.
COERCIVE TECHNIQUES
Arrest
The manner and timing of the subjects arrest should be planned to
achieve surprise and the maximum amount of mental discomfort. He
should therefore be arrested at a moment when he least expects it and
when his mental and physical resistance are at their lowest--ideally,
in the early hours of the morning. When arrested at this time, most
subjects experience intense feelings of shock, insecurity, and
psychological stress, and have great difficulty adjusting to the
situation.
Detention
A person's sense of identity depends upon the continuity in his
surroundings, habits, appearance, relations with others, etc.
Detention permits the questioner to cut through these links and throw
the subject back upon his own unaided internal resources. Detention
should be planned to enhance the subject's feelings of being cut off
from anything known and reassuring.
Deprivation of Sensory Stimuli
Solitary confinement acts on most persons as a powerful stress. The
symptoms most commonly produced by solitary confinement are
superstition, intense love of any other living thing, perceiving
inanimate objects as alive, hallucinations, and delusions.
Threats and Fear
The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more
effectively than coercion itself. For example, the threat to inflict
pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of
pain.
The threat of death has been found to be worse than useless. The
principal reason [for this] is that it often induces sheer
hopelessness; the subject feels that he is as likely to be condemned
after compliance as before. Some subjects recognize that the threat
is a bluff and that silencing them forever would defeat the
questioner's purpose.
If a subject refuses to comply after a threat has been made, it must
be carried out. Otherwise, subsequent threats will also prove
ineffective.
Pain
The torture situation is a contest between the subject and his
tormentor. Pain that is being inflicted upon the subject from outside
himself may actually intensify his will to resist. On the other hand,
pain that he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to
sap his resistance. For example, if he is required to maintain a
rigid position such as standing at attention or sitting on a stool
for long periods of time, the immediate source of discomfort is not
the questioner but the subject himself. After a while, the subject is
likely to exhaust his internal motivational strength.
Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, fabricated
to avoid additional punishment. This results in a time-consuming
delay while an investigation is conducted and the admissions are
proven untrue. During this respite, the subject can pull himself
together and may even use the time to devise a more complex
confession that takes still longer to disprove.
Hypnosis and Heightened Suggestibility
Answers obtained from the subject under the influence of hypnotism
are highly suspect,
as they are often based upon the suggestions of
the questioner and are distorted or fabricated. However, the
subject's strong desire to escape the stress of the situation can
create a state of mind called "heightened suggestibility." The
questioner can take advantage of this state of mind by creating a
situation in which the subject will cooperate because he believes he
has been hypnotized. This hypnotic situation can be created using the
"magic room" technique.
For example, the subject is given a hypnotic suggestion that his hand
is growing warm. However, his hand actually does become warm with
the aid of a concealed diathermy machine. He may be given a
suggestion that a cigarette will taste bitter and could be given a
cigarette prepared to have a slight but noticeably bitter taste.
Narcosis
There is no drug that can force every subject to divulge all the
information he has, but it is possible to create a mistaken belief
that a subject has been drugged by using the "placebo" technique.
The subject is given a placebo (a harmless sugar pill) and later is
told he was given a truth serum that will make him want to talk and
that will also prevent his lying. His desire to find to find an
excuse for compliance, which is his only avenue of escape from his
depressing situation, may make him want to believe that he has
been drugged and that no one could blame him for telling his story
now. This provides him with the rationalization that he needs for
cooperating.
REGRESSION
As mentioned earlier, the purpose of all coercive techniques is to
induce regression. A few noncoercive techniques can also be used to
induce regression, but to a lesser degree than can be obtained with
coercive techniques:
*Persistent manipulation of time
*Retarding and advancing clocks
*Serving meals at odd times
*Disrupting sleep schedules
*Disorientation regarding day and night
*Unpatterned questioning sessions
*Nonsensical questioning
*Ignoring halfhearted attempts to cooperate
*Rewarding noncooperation
Whether regression occurs spontaneously under detention or is induced
by the questioner, it should not be allowed to continue beyond the
point necessary to obtain compliance. A psychiatrist should be
present if severe techniques are to be employed, to ensure full
reversal later. As soon as possible, the questioner should provide
the subject with the rationalization that he needs for giving in and
cooperating. This rationalization is likely to be elementary, an
adult version of a childhood excuse such as:
1. "They made you do it."
2. "All the other boys are doing it."
3. "You're really a good boy at heart."
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INTERVIEW WITH TERENCE MCKENNA - ICA, London, 11/10/96
by Gyrus & John Eden
************************************************************************
Trivial background information:
It can be quite fun where I work. The people are great and I regularly get
these weird post-it notes saying things like "what does it all mean?!!!"
and "I have stolen your journal and you will never get it back! Ner de ner
ner!!!". Today's note read "Gyrus called and said that if you want to help
him interview Terence McKenna then you'd better get your ass down to the
ICA by 3 o'clock." Uh?
The connections started to flicker together. Gyrus is the groovy editor of
the essential Towards 2012 magazine. The ICA is a rather corporate "cool"
(in the sense of unemotional and unforgiving) establishment that brings in
great ideas..... and then strangles them in the name of
whatever-it-is-this-week.
And Terence McKenna? Well, I dunno about him. I'm always wary of the stars
that the counter culture tends to throw up. From what I've read (which is
very little) he's got a few interesting ideas. I went to a salon with him
organized by Fraser Clarke which I enjoyed. He was funny and intelligent
and was asking SOME of the questions I thought were important at the time.
I saw a little dogma creeping in there along the "drugs are GRRREAT and
everyone should take LOTS" line. When Paul Eden asked him about gnosis
through drumming and dancing he was kind of dismissive.
But, y'know, not being one to miss an opportunity, I deftly left work 3
hours early and went on down to the CIA, er, the ICA. And it was fun.
Monsieur McKenna came across as someone who was coherent, interested in
what we had to say, and open to criticism. He didn't seem to be playing the
fame game to me and I found myself re-appraising a lot of his ideas when
Gyrus asked him to expand on them. It was a dogma-free-zone. Check it out
and see what you think.
The Interview:
Gyrus: Firstly, have you seen Independence Day, and what did you
make of it?
I didn't see it, because I saw enough of it in shorts to realize
it's The Day The Earth Stood Still with worse actors and more
money.
G: Fair enough. Now, do you see a contradiction in the desire to
leave the planet and the desire to save it? Is it merely a case
of delaying global catastrophe so that we're here long enough to
leave?
I don't really see a contradiction. We probably saved the Earth
the first time in 6000BC, when we decided to move into cities.
That gave the Earth enormous breathing room - up until the
present moment, in fact. At what cost to ourselves is hard to
assess. Certainly, we've become different creatures than we would
have been otherwise. Probably the Earth and the human segment of
the biosphere must be parted, not only to save the Earth, but in
a sense to save ourselves. Our thing is to unfold the
imagination, and that's all very well when the best trick you can
do is a Gothic cathedral. But we're capable of things far, far
beyond that, and if we were to try to unfold these dreams on the
surface of the planet, we would probably wreck it and toxify
ourselves. On the other hand, outer space is almost like mental
space. Where we're headed, whether we leave the planet behind or
not, is into the imagination. And either it will be a
three-dimensional space colonizing, a kind of Buck Rogers deal;
or the more contempo-vision I think is of a nanotech immigration
into some kind of virtual or cybernetically maintained space.
The whole question revolves around the body. What is it? Where
are you going to put it? What role should it have? Is the body
the defining quintessence of humanness, or is it the ball and
chain that holds us from forever realizing what humanness is?
That's an ideological cat-fight that I'd like to sit in the front
row and watch, but I don't think I want to get down on the mat.
It'll sort itself out.
G: I was interested in this because the in plot of Independence
Day, the aliens were basically seen as going from planet to
planet, using all the resources, going to another planet, and so
on... This seemed to be some sort of projection of ourselves - if
we leave the planet, still with this potential for destroying
resources, that's what we would be.
All projections of aliens are statements about the human
condition.
And I think you're quite right. I mean, this horrific
vision of alien triage and waste-making is precisely how
we would conduct ourselves if we were to ever make it out there.
The point being that it may be possible that you can't organize a
global society for starflight without stripping out some of its
more savage and brutal tendencies. For example, how long has it
been? Thirty years since the landing on the moon? And our
humanness has made it impossible to go beyond that. It was
essentially a stunt, staged for political and ideological
purposes. It wasn't an evolutionary thrust, unstoppable and
leading to starflight. It was a political stunt. Now, there may
come a time when we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and
spread out into the galaxy, but I think we have to do a lot of
dirty laundry here before that's possible to contemplate. A
friend of mine, somebody worth quoting - Howard Reingold, who's a
hot VR guy... I was with him once on a psychedelic trip, and in
the middle of it, he stood up and said, "My God! I've understood
what virtual reality is for!" [laughter] And I said, "What is it
for, Howard? You invented the term 'teledildonics', I thought
you'd already figured out what it was for." He said, "No, no,
virtual reality will keep us from ever leaving the planet." So he
saw it as a cheap shot, a second prize. No, you can't conquer the
galaxy, but here's a simulacrum of Madonna that you can screw
forever. Real colonization of the galaxy is quite a technological
leap from anything that we're capable of now. Clearly, virtual
reality, indistinguishable from reality as we know it, will
arrive long before anyone sets foot on Zeta Reticuli Prime.
That's way out in the future, if possible at all.
G: In your writings, you've really aligned yourself with Huxley
rather than Leary in the psychedelic propaganda argument. I was
interested in why you worked with such an overground band like
The Shamen. I know you appeared with them at the Birmingham NEC.
How does that stand with your statements...
...I think when I worked with The Shamen, they weren't so above
ground. Time is a curious thing. We did all that stuff... four
years ago? Something like that. So they were respectably
underground at that point. Nothing ruins you for the underground
like success. So when Boss Drum went double platinum, they were
obviously 'establishment'.
G: So you were on the cross-over...
That's right. I worked with bands like Spiral Tribe and Zuvuya -
truly, authentically impossible to project into the commercial
domain type bands. I'm much more comfortable with that. I've
talked to Colin about this, and he agrees. It would have been
wonderful to hit it big at 23. At 35 it becomes a pain in the
ass, and you just have to manage the money and the image.
John Eden: Are you still interested in working with popular
cultural things like music?
I'm interested, but I have no interest in giving advice to the
young. I don't want to become a grandfather figure. I would like
to follow. I'd like to be accepted as the oldest and
longest-toothed in the pack. But I have no illusions that my
generation has great wisdom to impart. We impart a strong
example; but that isn't to say that those that went through it
understand the kind of example they've become.
My hope is that the present youth culture will be a bit more
resistant to co-option than the youth culture of the sixties,
because those people just turned into the unbearable yuppies of
the seventies and the eighties. The thing that keeps the youth
culture vital in the UK is that there's no social escape into
respectability. A very small percentage may go on to nice houses
in Hampstead, but the English social system has condemned most
people to marginal positions vis-a-vis the official culture...
G: And they've made it worse with the Criminal Justice Act,
they've just marginalized people and politicized loads of people
like ravers... who may have just been into going out. And then
when government say, "You're not having free parties in the
countryside", they think... "Let's get ourselves together."
Well I think good art arises from a certain state of
discomfiture. If you were to be totally embraced, what would be
the point?
G: You've mentioned a few times the production of
dimethyltryptamine in the human brain, and all the statements
I've found in which you mentioned it have been up to ten years
ago. I was wondering have there been any new developments in
this, new research, especially in relation to dream activity?
Well the only research that's been done since ten years ago is
work done by Rick Strassman at the University of New Mexico. And
it was very interesting. It certainly showed that DMT can be
safely used. Although the fate of that research is very
interesting. He was, he is, a Mahayana Buddhist, and at some
point the Lamas came to him and asked him to stop that research,
because they said it was "messing with peoples' deaths." And,
without a lot of debate, he folded. I respect Rick, but I would
have asked, "Based on what published papers and in what journal
of religious studies can we find this data?" [laughter] I think
the most terrifying thing about DMT is it's utter harmlessness.
So there is no rational argument against it. And yet here it is,
so much more powerful than any other psychedelic that it barely
is in the same category.
G: You've made statements condemning the view that mathematical
equations can bring us closer to a view of reality because they
don't come into our immediate experience of life. How does
Timewave Zero fit into that? With it you're trying to describe
our felt experience of time, and yet it itself is a mathematical
equation.
My gripe with mathematics is not that it's remote from human
experience, but that it uses a language that's excruciatingly
remote. You've referred to it as mathematical equations. What you
see when you use Timewave Zero is not mathematical equations, but
an easily understood picture like a stock market graph. The great
revolution in mathematics, that's going to make every one of us a
mathematician, involves the fact that you no longer need numbers
to do it. It all can be seen with computers. So I could cover
this wall with equations and you wouldn't know what I was talking
about. But I can show you a ten second video clip of a certain
object rotating in space - and you've got it. And that's the same
thing as all those equations. So what's happening is mathematics
is being taken out of the hands of an elite priesthood who speak
a special secret language, and being put into the common language
of visual appearances, by people like Ralph Abraham, and so forth
and so on. This is very exciting stuff. So it isn't mathematics
per se that my argument is with, but the style of doing
mathematics that was imposed upon it by the limitations of
technology, pre-computer.
G: Most of the questions I came up with going through your work
were all about paradox. There's so many paradoxes in your work.
But it seemed to me that the biggest one was the actual practice
of Timewave Zero, which is about setting a date for the end of
time - at least in one of its interpretations. But you've stated
that you see the run-up to 2012 as a time of ever increasing
paradox. What are your thoughts on this?
Well, who was it? Oscar Wilde, or somebody said, "Consistency is
the hobgoblin of small minds." Reality is inherently paradoxical.
And the beginning of intellectual maturity is to be able
to simultaneously hold two contradictory ideas in your
mind at the same time. People ask me if I believe in the 2012
prediction. I don't believe in anything. My anti-ideological
stance makes it very important to believe nothing. I regard
Timewave Zero as a fascinating model of a previously unmodelled
system - which is human history. The fact that it seems to
deliver interesting data... for instance, I predicted a very deep
plunge into novelty this past summer. Just as it was at its
deepest, the Martian meteorite chock full of fossils arrived -
along with a lot of email demanding to know where was the miracle
I had predicted. [laughter] I like the word models. What we're
trying to do is build models. By saying the word 'models', we
make it very clear that this is not 'Truth', and that there will
be a better model, and we'll swap the old for the new. So at the
moment Timewave Zero is simply a better model of history than the
idea that there is no model at all, which is what's taught in the
Academy. The definition of history, if you study history in the
Academy, is: it's a trendlessly fluctuating process. If true,
it's the only trendlessly fluctuating process ever to be observed
in this universe. So obviously it's not true, it's just that we
lack a model. So people say... like, Toynbee's model was that
'God is waiting', somebody else had a 'Great Man' model, Marx
believed it was all driven by class struggle, and Freud that it
was all libido. Well, these are just opinions. Those aren't
theories, those are opinions. A theory has an ability to make
predictions, and refine itself, so that's what I offer with
Timewave Zero.
It arises out of my relationship to the psychedelic experience.
Because I believe that when we finally understand what a
psychedelic trip is, we'll realize that during the experience
consciousness unfolds into a higher dimension. Not
metaphorically, but literally a higher dimension. And that that's
how the shaman can tell where the game has gone, that's how the
shaman predicts the weather, that's how the shaman knows more
than the people he serves - because they're all caught in a
lower-dimensional slice of reality, and he's looking down from a
place that becomes accessible to him when cultural boundaries are
dissolved. This is a key concept in my thinking: dissolution, and
maintenance, of cultural boundaries. This is what psychedelics
do. Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, what they do is dissolve
boundaries. And this is of course closer to the way reality is.
The boundary-riven reality is always the creation of a local
language - English, French, Witoto - they create synthetic
boundaries at the convenience of local syntax. What the
psychedelic state shows you is that beyond that localism which is
historically finite is the wisdom of the body, and the wisdom of
the body is higher-dimensional.
And I mean these things very precisely. I'm not at war with the
New Age, it's the only category they have to put me in, but I
really believe the New Age is a flight from authentic experience.
That's why the New Age is so uncomfortable with the psychedelic
experience - they would rather have you drinking wheatgrass juice
and staring at your navel. You could almost say of the New Age
that they will accept anything as long as they can be assured of
its lack of effectiveness. [laughter] That's an assurance you
don't get with psychedelics. Even the critics of psychedelics
grudgingly admit, "It works." But... you don't work hard enough,
or it doesn't last long enough, or some other gripe. No gripe
with its effectiveness.
G: You've said quite often that the world is made of language,
and this seems to have caused quite a bit of confusion, myself
included. Could you clarify what you mean by the word 'world' and
what you mean by the word 'language' in that context?
Well, for example (the example I always use), the child lying in
a crib with an open window - a pre-verbal or nearly pre-verbal
child - and a hummingbird flies through the room. It's a
psychedelic miracle, it's absolutely stunning. The boundaries of
that experience are completely undefined. But then the mother or
the nanny walks into the room and says, "Oh! It's a bird, baby.
Bird." The miracle immediately collapses down into a hard little
tile, and by the time a person is six years old, reality has been
entirely replaced by a mosaic of defined and very non-numinous
meaning. And so people are then imprisoned in this language. And
they will remain so imprisoned until the yawning grave, unless
they are put in touch with the transhistorical wisdom of the
body. And that means psychedelics. By the way, this idea that
reality is made of language is actually the standard position in
structural linguistics. This is not a radical position, this is
dull-as-dog-shit orthodoxy for those people.
G: I was talking with a magickian the other week and he was in
complete agreement. You said once that the true secret of magick
is that the world is made of words, and if you know what words
the world is made of, you can do with it as you wish, and yeah,
he was...
Yes, and energy follows attention. So, what we care about is what
we take to be real. And there are all kinds of realities
around us that we don't even see. And then when these
realities intrude into our vision, we become very upset. And
often the urge is to suppress, because it presents itself as
somehow threatening. This is why, in my opinion, psychedelics,
though they do very little social harm, and don't promote
criminal syndicalism, we don't have people overdosing in
doorways, and so forth and so on; nevertheless, they are at the
top of the agenda for suppression. Because, whether you're a
fascist state, and industrial democracy, a monarchy or whatever,
the one thing you're not interested in is having people question
first premises. And psychedelics will force you back to do that.
All social systems are to some degree con-games, because they're
always inconvenient for individuals, and they're always extremely
convenient for institutions. Psychedelics are hideously
unfriendly to all forms of institutional thinking, and
tremendously supportive of what I call the felt presence of
immediate experience. That's what ideology, and propaganda, and
government, social programming, they all make war on the felt
presence of immediate experience, and try to get you to deny the
obvious wisdom of the body - and replace it with Christianity,
Islam, the work ethic, whatever they're pedalling at the moment.
J: Is that one of the reasons you backed off from an academic
approach to all this?
Oh, I could never fit myself into an organization like that. I
live in Hawaii, I'm virtually a hermit, I organize my own
speaking, I say what I want. My fortunes ebb and flow with forces
mysterious even to me. I can't imagine committing myself to any
kind of institutional structure. It's tremendously disempowering.
I mean, there's nothing more contradictory than a radical in an
organization. That's why - let's whisper it low - the ICA is an
entire contradiction. The very idea of institutionalizing the
avant-garde means that you don't understand what the avant-garde
is.
G: I'm interested your theories about the Stropharia cubensis
mushroom evolving extra-terrestrially. Is this entirely due to
information imparted in the trance that it induces? I was curious
because there's so many other species of mushroom, and other
plants, that access these same dimensions, why is Stropharia
cubensis this 'special case'?
Well, it's a complicated argument. There are a number of things
you could say about Stropharia cubensis. First of all, an
organism that wastes energy is slated for extinction. Thousands
of mushrooms exist on this planet that don't make psilocybin.
Stropharia cubensis channels approximately fifteen percent of its
metabolic energy into making psilocybin. Why, if mushroom
existence doesn't require that for any important purpose? It
begins to look to me as though the mushroom may be a kind of
technological artefact.
The other thing to notice is that, and this is true of all fungi,
they're what is known as primary decomposers.They exist only on
dead matter. That's the only karmaless place in the food
chain. Vegetarianism compared to that is an orgy of mass
slaughter. I guess I have a slight Buddhist bias here. But it
seems to me that we've only known about DNA since about 1950, and
we're already talking about completely redesigning ourselves
based on reprogramming the human genome. So it may be that this
is a stage that any intelligent being, species, organism,
anywhere in the universe passes through, a phase where it takes
control of its own design process. And Stropharia cubensis looks
to me like it's been designed for immortality, information
storage, low-speed space flight, an ability to adapt to an
incredible variety of environments. So I'm willing to at least
entertain the possibility, based on the fact that it talks to you
and fills you with alien information, that it may in fact be an
artefact of extra-terrestrial origin.
This is how real aliens would do it. They don't arrive in the
middle of the night with an interest in your asshole like the
stories we're given, that's preposterous. Still less do they have
an interest in the electrical grid, or the Gross National
Product, or any of that. The problem with an extraterrestrial is
to know when you're looking at one. I once visited the world's
largest radio telescope in Araceibo, Puerto Rico, and they search
for extra- terrestrial life with this thing. It's so large a
telescope it's basically a dish suspended in round valley. And
underneath the dish there's pasture land, and white cattle, and
Stropharia cubensis... It's like this amazing image of this
instrument studying the centre of NGC-3622?, and yet a hundred
feet from the main control booth is probably what they're looking
for. [laughter]
G: This is probably a peripheral question, but a lot of your
descriptive, poetic language that you've used to describe the
psychedelic experience has very industrial connotations. There's
been a lot of digital metaphors about the DMT trance, but you
use... "machines elves", and "the green vegetable engine of
nature"...
...That's a steal from Dylan Thomas...
G: ...Right - so that's where it comes from?
"The greeny engine that drives the flower." Yeah. So what about
that?
G: It's interesting that this very thing that you seem to be
railing against a lot of the time... well, not railing against,
but putting a lot of environmental destruction down to the
industrial revolution - and these adjectives are seeping into
your description of this state...
Well, I don't think the problem is with machines per se, I think
it's that we're in a very early and primitive stage with
machines. Nanotechnology holds out the possibility of building as
nature builds, atom by atom. I think that the machines that we
possess today are to the machines of the future what the chipped
flint of the palaeolithic is to our machines. The key concept is
prosthesis - in other words, the extension of human understanding
and feeling by mechanical means. That's tremendously exciting to
me. I mean, given the human body, that's hardware enough to
integrate into a group of seventy hunting-gathering nomads. But a
city like London - you need the tube system, you need the black
cabs, you need radio and all of it, and these things are all
prosthesis. And if we're really talking about going to the next
level, a global collectivity, a global telepathic state of mind,
this can only be done at this stage by prosthesis. At some point,
perhaps, one could reprogram human beings to be able to talk to
each other on the other side of the planet. On the other hand, we
see no animals who do that. There simply may be some things that
lie beyond the capacity of mere unassisted flesh to achieve. But
assisted flesh, flesh in marriage to prosthesis, can do anything.
I think the whole curious fascination with piercing, and the
mechanization of human body parts, and so forth and so on, that
informs art at the moment is actually art performing the function
it's always performed - of anticipating where we're headed.
G: As far as that concept of prosthesis goes, you've talked about
machines and cultural artefacts as an extension of humanity, and
you condemn laboratory-manufactured psychedelics to a large
extent. Why would they not fall into the...
Well, I don't condemn them out of some kind of purist 'Plants are
good, chemicals are bad'... No, I condemn them for very practical
reasons. First of all, a white powder drug. You have no idea what
it is. You can be fairly sure it was manufactured in an
atmosphere of criminal syndicalism where the major goal was to
make money. That's not a very reassuring statement of drug purity
and chemical attention to detail. And the other thing is, the
vegetable psychedelics, we have our human data - five thousand
years of mushroom use in Mexico, and so forth and so on. With a
new drug, since it's illegal to do research on it, we have no
human data. And sometimes it takes a generation or two to see
what the consequences of exposure to a compound are. So I don't
have an absolutist position against laboratory drugs, it's simply
that if we're trying to get to a certain place - which is the
dissolution of the ego, and the entry into psychedelic space - at
this stage, the vegetable psychedelics are just simply more
effective, better track record... they work.
G: So your argument is bound by the context of human society now?
Sure. If someone can produce a drug that meets all these
requirements... And DMT occurs in nature, but when actually
smoked, it's usually coming out of a laboratory.
G: You've said that you don't consider yourself a shaman
just because shamans cure and you don't cure anyone. Also
you write a lot about the re-emergence of the shamanic
institution. What do you think of its re-emergence in the modern
world - how can it's integrity be preserved, if at all, and how
must it evolve?
The music. And the trance-dance drug-taking situation is the
establishment of a ritual space outside the conventions of
ordinary society, that is the new shamanism. And that's again
what makes it so suspect in the eyes of the establishment. They
sense that this is something they can't get a handle on and
control, or that it takes them some time to get a handle on -
they have to figure out how to co-opt each generation in a new
way. My generation was co-opted in a very crude way, with money.
Your generation... The Establishment's not interested in that,
they'd rather keep the money for themselves. I'm hoping that the
new trance-dance culture has enough integrity to resist being
folded into commercialism and ordinary mass cultural
entertainment. But we shall see.
G: Could you outline the influence of Teilhard de Chardin on your
work?
Yes. Essentially, he's me without drugs or immediacy. [laughter]
My rap would be much more palatable if I said it was all gonna
happen fifty thousand years in the future, a million years in the
future... The only difference between me and a lot of
apocalyptarian thinkers is that I see this curve of increasing
novelty and approach toward the transcendental as happening at a
much faster rate. But I base my estimate of its acceleration by
looking at how fast it's accelerated in the past. I don't see how
anyone can speak in rational terms of a thousand years in the
future, or five hundred years in the future. The twentieth
century is ten times weirder than the nineteenth, and the
twenty-first will be a thousand times weirder than the twentieth.
Well then how can anyone extrapolate any institution or idea or
style that far into the future?
It's perfectly clear that we sought transcendence from the very
first moment of consciousness. It takes about fifty thousand
years to go from the "Gee, wouldn't it be nice?" to the "My God,
it now stands at the door...", and it now stands at the door.
We've been planning and plotting this since the Pyramids and
Stonehenge - it's all been about this, apparently, moving
ourselves, positioning ourselves for an evolutionary leap off the
planet.
Nature is not interested in sustainability. Ninety-five percent
of all life that ever existed on this planet is now extinct.
J: I've got one last question. You said that you don't see
yourself as a shaman, and I guess you don't see yourself as a
guru either - so what do you see yourself as?
A troublemaker. A messenger, and somewhat of a troublemaker.
Gurus... the mushroom said to me once, it said, "For one human
being to seek enlightenment from another is like one grain of
sand on a beach to seek enlightenment from another." The point
being, the holiest, highest person you've ever met, Dalai Lama,
Shree Bhagwan, you pick your guy, is no different from you. It's
an illusion that anybody is smarter than you are. People love to
give away their power, and follow Christ, or Hitler, or Shree
Bhagwan... They don't understand that no one is smarter than you,
no one understands the situation better than you, and no one is
in a position to act for you more clearly than you are yourself.
But people endlessly give away this opportunity, and subvert
their identity to ideology. It's the most perverse thing about
human beings.
G: Where do you think this comes from?
Well, I had a professor once who said if you think of human
beings as angels, it's a shit of a scene. If you think of people
as apes - it's the most astonishing accomplishment you've ever
laid eyes on. [laughter] And this is where we are, with one foot
in a carnivorous, cannibalistic ape, and the other reaching out
for deity. You talk about a coincidentia oppositorum, a union of
opposites, a living contradiction - human beings are that. Every
one of us individually and then the entire enterprise as a
collectivity. We're in the process of changing - from an animal,
into a god. It takes thirty thousand years. That's a very
uncomfortable moment. But in the life of a species, it's the
blink of an eye. We just happen to, because we live seventy
years, it takes what? Five hundred generations to stumble through
that zone of uncertainty that we call human history. Now, I think
we're close to the jackpot. I can feel the heat of the thing. And
a lot of people fear it, because they cling to the old order. But
there's no room for clinging at this point. I mean, hang on, do
not attempt to stand up, do not attempt to leave the carriage,
we're going over the top! [laughter] Scream if you must, but stay
seated please!
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************************************************************************
AN EMAIL DEBATE BETWEEN NICOLAS PATTEE & PAUL LAURENDEAU
************************************************************************
Upon checking the TAF mailbox one morning I came across an
email from Nicolas Pattee about Paul Laurendeau's article "The
Doom of Religion" (TAF issue#2). The letter was written in French
(which I embarrassingly admit to having very little understanding
of) so I forwarded it to Paul (who's first language is French)
and asked for a translation. He gave me the translation and then
asked for the sender's email address so he could reply. He cc'd
me on his reply (as did Nicolas Pattee) and the email debate you
will read below ensued. Both writers knew of my intentions to
publish their words. What follows is, what I found to be, a very
interesting exchange between two very well written individuals,
freely expressing their beliefs in a forum that is not very well
suited to the traditional notions one has of a debate,
philosophical or otherwise. Note that Mr. Laurendeau's comment's
that are in capital letters are not indicative of him 'shouting'
as 'netiquette' would dictate, but rather he was just trying to
separate his words from those of Mr. Pattee's in a visual sense
(as well as philosophical). Read and enjoy.
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 00:10:00 -0400
From: Nicolas Pattee
Subject: Doom of religion
Beau blabla plein d'hormones et d'une certaine aigreur envers la
religion qui mitige grandement l'intrt qu'aurait pu avoir cette
recherche. C-
Translation: A beautiful babbling filled of hormone and of a certain
bitterness about religion that strongly discredits the interesting research
it could have been.
Translated by Paul Laurenedeau
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 17:08:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Laurendeau
Subject: A PROPOS D'UN CERTAIN "BEAU BLABLA" UN PEU SCABREUX
Bonjour Nicolas,
Merci de votre commentaire, dont l'editeur de la FONTAINE ANNIHILATRICE a
deja obtenu traduction anglaise et qui sera publie dans le numero 3 du
site (texte original et traduction). La FONTAINE a un ton et, comme toutes
publications, implique ce que l'on appelle les "lois du genre". On n'ecrit
pas dans LE CANARD ENCHAINE ou dans CROC comme on ecrirait dans la REVUE
DE PHILOSOPHIE ET DE MORALE. Je me conforme a ces lois du genre avec
jubilation et plaisir mais aussi par conviction: je crois que le ton
mordant et scabreux et les developpements de contenus ne sont nullement
incompatibles et, qu'au contraire, ils s'eclairent l'un l'autre avec une
nettete tres utile a la reflexion. Sans pretendre arriver a la cheville
d'un tel titan litteraire, je vous renvoie a l'article EZECHIEL du
DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE de VOLTAIRE, ou la totalite de la problematique
tourne autour de l'ordre donne au prophete par son Dieu de manger sa
propre merde, situation servant a l'auteur d'occasion de discuter la
question du libre arbitre en matiere de soumission religieuse! Juge tres
choquant a son epoque, cet article est un pur delice humoristique pour
nos contemporains. On pourrait citer bien d'autres exemples de ce
compagnonnage licencieux mais fructueux entre ton virulent et contenu
rationnel. Pour ce qui est de l'eventuel discredit de l'un par l'autres,
je suis pres a vivre avec, tout en restant convaincu qu'un argument solide
ne perd rien de son impact qu'il sorte d'un beau ratelier aseptise et
Palmolive ou d'une gueule edentee et lepreuse qui pue la fiente et le
souvenir recent de fellations suspectes. Encore merci d'exprimer vos vues
dans ce forum de la libre expression qu'est la FONTAINE ANNIHITATRICE.
Elle sont hautement appreciees de Monsieur Neil McKAY, l'editeur du site,
et de moi meme.
Respectueusement
Paul LAURENDEAU
Translation: REGARDING A CERTAIN RATHER SHOCKING "BEAUTIFUL RAMBLING"
Hello Nicolas,
Thank you for your comments, the English translation of which the editor
of THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN has already obtained and will be published
in issue no. 4 of the site (in both its original and translated
versions). THE FOUNTAIN has a certain tone and, like all publications, it
implies what is called the "laws of the genre." You don't write in LE
CANARD ENCHAINE or in CROC in the same way you would write in the REVUE
DE PHILOSOPHIE ET DE MORALE. I abide by these laws with jubilation and
with pleasure, but also with conviction: I believe that a biting,
shocking tone in a piece and the development of its content are not at
all incompatible; on the contrary, I believe that they clarify one
another with a sharpness that is very useful upon reflection. Not that
I'm claiming to even hold a candle to such a literary giant, but I refer
you to Voltaire's article EZECHIEL in his DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE
(Philosophical Dictionary), wherein the entire problem revolves around
the order given the prophet by his God to eat his own shit. This gives
the author the opportunity to discuss the issue of free will as regards
religious submission! Deemed very shocking at the time, this article is
pure humourous delight to our contemporaries. Many other examples could
be cited of this licentious yet fruitful association between harsh tone
and rational content. With regard to the eventual discredit of one in
favour of the others, I'm prepared to live with that, steadfast in my
conviction that a strong argument loses nothing of its impact whether it
comes from a beautiful scrubbed and sterilized set of false teeth, or a
leprous, toothless cakehole that reeks of birdshit and the recent memory
of suspected blow-jobs. Thanks again for expressing your views in the
forum of free expression that is THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN. They are
very much appreciated by the editor of the site, Mr. Neil MacKay, and
myself.
Respectfully,
Paul Laurendeau
Translated by the ultra cool Angie Cornack (thank's Angie! -Ed.)
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 19:31:45 -0400
From: Nicolas Pattee
Subject: Answer to an answer
A word of praise!
My compliments on your answer, it gave me quite a laugh! It is a kind of
humor I respond to. I used French in my reply because of your last name.
I was not aware that the article was part of something greater because I
stumbled upon it while searching something very different. Nevertheless
I could not help but read and enjoy that typical specimen of atheistic
propaganda.
I majored in religious studies (the faithless version, i.e. not
theology) so I am familiar with the speech construction of religious
persons and, of course, of anti-religious persons. What ticked me off,
but then again, it always does, was the way quotations were used to back
up an evidently subjective reasoning. My main question is what is the
difference in thought structuration between that piece of work and that
of a Jehovah Witness? It seems to me both are using a most partial
selection of quotations to maintain a position, which to me revolves
around a false problem. Religion as an institution is shit like any
other institution. But then the real object of critique should be its
exercise of power and its motivations to do it so. The rest is only a
matter of cultural relativism and personal beliefs. Truth and fact are
false problems when it comes to religion because its object is beyond in
its essence and it does not matter whether that object exists or not.
>From where I stand I feel we are religious creatures like it or not
because religion is a matter of belief and belief is what we have built
our world upon. Knowledge in its true form is scarce and gained only
through personal experience. Knowledge is related with truth but if
knowledge is gained through experience and experience is not
exchangeable between human beings in its numenal dimension, therefore
truth is not exchangeable. What then do we trade between each other if
not beliefs (very strictly speaking because, functionally there is
little difference between belief and knowledge unless we stretch their
meaning to such extremes and even then...)I have never experienced Tokyo
so I must refer to the experience of others in order to draw some sort
of conviction, a logical process called sophism, if I am correct. But
until I experience Tokyo I will only have a belief functioning as
knowledge with little incidence, if any, on how I run my life. But lets
say I cook myself up a mystical experience in which I feel one with the
universe, the level of certainty attained through such an experience
will be way higher in its impact upon my life than any so-called
knowledge I have about Tokyo, but to others it will forever remain
belief because that truth can not be shared... But "knowledge" and truth
are so filling to oneself that one is compelled to share the bliss of
revelation (haha) so there is inevitably a problem because one cannot
possibly transmit every determining factor in personal experience.
Therefore, imperfect accounts arise to feed the venom of enlightened
people like you. The point of the whole big picture being, from a
religious point of view or not, requiescant in pace!!!
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 14:23:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Laurendeau
Subject: Re: A PROPOS D'UN CERTAIN "BEAU BLABLA" UN PEU SCABREUX (fwd)
> A word of praise! My compliments on your answer, it gave me quite a laugh!
> It is a kind of humor I respond to. I used French in my reply because of
> your last name. I was not aware that the article was part of something
> greater because I stumbled upon it while searching something very
> different. Nevertheless I could not help but read and enjoy that typical
> specimen of atheistic propaganda.
WHAT YOU CALL "TYPICAL SPECIMEN" IS IN MY SENSE AN ORIGINAL ANALYSIS.
COULD YOU QUOTE THE SOURCES WHERE YOU SAW THE PROBLEM ADRESSED THE SAME
WAY AS I DO? "ATHEISTIC PROPAGANDA' IS TOTALLY ACCURATE. MY TEXT WAS
DEFINITELY NOT AN HAGIOGRAPHY!
> I majored in religious studies (the faithless version, i.e. not
> theology) so I am familiar with the speech construction of religious
> persons and, of course, of anti-religious persons. What ticked me off,
> but then again, it always does, was the way quotations were used to back
> up an evidently subjective reasoning. My main question is what is the
> difference in thought structuration between that piece of work and that
> of a Jehovah Witness? It seems to me both are using a most partial
> selection of quotations to maintain a position, which to me revolves
> around a false problem.
ON THE USE OF QUOTATIONS I COULD ACCUSE YOU OF "CALLING ME NAMES" BY
COMPARING MY PROCEDURE TO THE ONE OF THE JEHOVAH WITNESSES. I PREFER TO
STICK TO THE THESIS PROPOSED BY THAT IRONIC COMPARAISON, ITSELF RELYING
EXCESSIVELY ON THE USUAL GIMMICK OF ACCUSING THE IRRELIGIOUS OF BEING
RELIGIOUS!. TO QUOTE A LA JEHOVAH WITNESS IS SOMETHING VERY SPECIFIC. IT
IS, ROUGHLY, TO TRY TO REPORT A DOGMATIC SOURCE, ALLOWING YOURSELF ONLY
SUBSIDIARY COMMENTS. THERE IS A SMALL DIFFERENCE HOWEVER. A "SPECIALIST"
LIKE YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF THAT. THE JEHOVAH BUNCH QUOTES AD NAUSEAM A
UNIQUE BOOK THAT YOU CAN FIND IN ANY MOTEL WHERE YOU GO OR DONT GO FOR A
HEALTHY FUCK, A BOOK THAT THEY ASSUME BEING KNOWN AND TAKEN FOR GRANTED
AS AN OBJECT OF FAITH BY THE PERSON THEY SPEAK TO. IT IS PREACHING, AND
PREACHING IS REITERATING FOR MEMORY OR REFLEXION THE TEXT OF A COMMONLY
AGREED UPON SACRED BOOK. I QUOTE A SERIES OF MATERIALIST THINKERS WHOSE
THOUGHT IS OCCULTATED AND UNKNOWN, DISREGARDED AND REJECTED IN OUR
CONTEMPORARY CULTURE. MY QUOTING IS FLAT DIFFUSION, PURE SHIT PITCHING IN
THE FACE OF BELIEVERS AND CRYPTO-BELIEVERS. THERE IS NO EXPECTATION OF
THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF ANY FORM WHATSOEVER OF COMMUNITY TEXT IN MY
ACTIVITY OF REFERENCE. CONSEQUENTLY, I AM NOT ATTEMPTING TO "GUIDE" YOU IN
THE UNDERSTANDING OF OUR COLLECTIVE SACRALITY. I AM USING MY BROTHERS AND
SISTERS ATHEISTS AND MATERIALISTS OF THE PAST AS SIMPLE PROPAGANDA
COMPANIONS. IT IS VERY DIFFERENT AS A PROCEDURE.
> Religion as an institution is shit like any other institution. But then
> the real object of critique should be its exercise of power and its
> motivations to do it so.
IN THE VIEWS OF THE BELIEVERS WHO POSTULATE IT YES. THEY OPPOSE NOT TO
RELIGION BUT ITS ABUSES. FOR THE PHILOSOPHICAL ATHEIST THE INNACURACY OF
RELIGION IS SOMETHING ABOUT WHICH A DEMONSTRATION IS TO BE DONE, LIKE ANY
OTHER SPECULATIVE MATTER. THE POWER OF THE CLERICS HAS BEEN DESTROYED
PRACTICALLY SINCE CENTURIES, NOW. YOU ARE LATE! AS I SAID AT THE END OF
MY TEXT, I AM INDULGING MYSELF IN A PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT WHERE THE
HISTORICAL MATERIAL GAME IS ALREADY PLAYED.
> The rest is only a matter of cultural relativism and personal beliefs.
> Truth and fact are false problems when it comes to religion because its
> object is beyond in its essence and it does not matter whether that object
> exists or not.
AGAIN THIS IS THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE BELIEVER AND OF THE IDEALIST
PHILOSOPHER. FOR MATERIALIST PHILOSOPHY THERE IS NO INTELLECTAL "BEYOND".
> From where I stand I feel we are religious creatures like it or not
> because religion is a matter of belief and belief is what we have built
> our world upon. Knowledge in its true form is scarce and gained only
> through personal experience. Knowledge is related with truth but if
> knowledge is gained through experience and experience is not
> exchangeable between human beings in its numenal dimension, therefore
> truth is not exchangeable. What then do we trade between each other if
> not beliefs (very strictly speaking because, functionally there is
> little difference between belief and knowledge unless we stretch their
> meaning to such extremes and even then...)I have never experienced Tokyo
> so I must refer to the experience of others in order to draw some sort
> of conviction, a logical process called sophism, if I am correct. But
> until I experience Tokyo I will only have a belief functioning as
> knowledge with little incidence, if any, on how I run my life.
THAT IS AN OLD PREACHER TRICK WHICH WAS ALREADY MAKING ME FEELING SLEEPY
WHEN USED BY THE OLD FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE PRIEST OF MY CHILDHOOD. THE
FALSE EQUATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND BELIEF. RELIGION IS NOT "BELIEF" AT
LARGE, BUT RATHER A SUB-SET OF IT. IT IS THE BELIEF IN THE OBJECTIVE
EXISTENCE OF ONE OR SEVERAL SUPREME BEINGS CREATORS AMD "MODERATORS' OF
THE UNIVERSE, PERPETUATORS OF ITS COHESION, ETC. I CURRENTLY "BELIEVE"
THAT MY PASSPORT IS IN THE DRAWER OF MY DESK. THAT IS A STRONG "BELIEF" I
HAVE, BUT THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO RELIGIOSITY INVOLVED IN IT. I SIMPLY
CONSIDER TRUE AN UNVERIFIED FACT, WITH NO REFERENCE WHATSOEVER TO ANY
SUPRANATURAL FORCE. IT IS THE SAME CASE FOR YOUR TOKYO GIG. ATHEISTS ALSO
HAVE GOOD REASONS TO CONSIDER THE EXISTENCE OF TOKYO A FACT! SINCE A
WHILE, IN ITS DECLINE, RELIGION TRIES TO SWALLOW THE TOTALITY OF
WHAT-IT-IS-TO-BELIEVE IN ORDER TO TRY TO KEEP ITSELF FLOATING. DOING SO,
IT SIMPLY AND BLATANTLY DISTORT THE UNAVOIDABLE FACT THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE
TO KNOW EVERYTHING FROM DIRECT EMPIRICAL EXPERIENCE. TYPICAL.
> But let say I cook myself up a mystical experience in which I feel one
> with the universe, the level of certainty attained through such an
> experience will be way higher in its impact upon my life than any
> so-called knowledge I have about Tokyo, but to others it will forever
> remain belief because that truth can not be shared... But "knowledge" and
> truth are so filling to oneself that one is compelled to share the bliss
> of revelation (haha) so there is inevitably a problem because one cannot
> possibly transmit every determining factor in personal experience.
> Therefore, imperfect accounts arise to feed the venom of enlightened
> people like you. The point of the whole big picture being, from a
> religious point of view or not, requiescant in pace!!!
THAT FRAGMENT OF THE REASONIMG POSTULATES THE ACCURACY OF THE MYSTICAL
EXPERIENCE. I KNOW ITS CURENT EXISTENCE. I DENY ITS GNOSEOLOGICAL
ACCURACY. THANK YOU FOR THE GOOD WISHES. I WILL CONTINUE TO SLEEP WELL. I
WILL DIE WHEN MY DAY COMES, AND I WILL ROT IN ALL SIMPLICITY!
Paul LAURENDEAU
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 21:34:40 -0400
From: Nicolas Pattee
Subject: And going...
Well met, Paul,
I am thoroughly enjoying this debate! Let me clarify some of the points
I was trying to make and also allow me to establish the position from
which I speak in order to legitimize my right to speak and reason in the
way I do.
Your piece of work, whose academic rigor I can approve, is typical of
atheistic propaganda even though you say you addressed the problem
originally. You asked for quotes· Well, that is one thing you won't
obtain from me. Should you seek info on some religious topic, I'll
manage to find references but, when it comes to reasoning and debating I
am a most firm believer of independent thought. That in itself is an
epistemological debate we could address on an separate basis.
What I was wondering was what experience do you have with religions
besides bookworming through a subjective though vast selection of works?
A part of my formation is anthropology and from that point of view I
very strongly believe in participating observation. My quotes come from
my field experimentation. Remember something first: I am faithless,
creedless and to some extent godless.
To me god's relevancy come from its signifying position as a cognition
because there is absolutely nothing for or against it that can be said
safely besides the fact that when you examine the concept from a
semiotical point of view, it falls into a category of cognition which
will potentially allow any other cognition to continue the string of
thought, (though not in the same mind). I call the concept allowing me
to categorize it in such a way "density of signification". That density
is manifested in the relation between object and sign: a table is a
table, a picture of you isn't really you but represents you nonetheless,
the sun is the sun but can also mean truth (Pierce and Eco for the
relationship between sign and object but not for the density concept
which I have not found anywhere but to say frankly never saw the point
of looking for it. Suffice it to say it appears operational to me,
personal epistemological point of view again). That density determines
also the potential quality and abstraction of the thought patterns it
will produce. When I said typical, I meant that whenever I speak to a
confirmed atheist (I become very religious at such times) the same
behavior patterns almost always come forward and that would be fool
proof coherency and crystallization of conviction in such a way that
contradiction cannot possibly be left without answer. Typical because
such strong bearings on a particular topic subjects the human mind
potential cognitive dissonance (psychological concept: two contradictory
cognitions happening at the same time in the same mind, and the
processes used to resolve the dilemma). This comes as a consequence of
the endeavor and the only way to avoid it is not to give a damn. Though
the contents of your analysis may be original, its container (motivation
and deployment pattern) is typical.
Quoting· Let us admit after Durkheim (I cannot avoid them all it seems!)
that religion is a coherent system of beliefs and practices· the rest of
the definition isn't worth any shit but that of tearing it down. But
that first part gives religion something in common with many other
institutions not to say all of them. Bearing that in mind, you were
mislead when you thought I was using a gimmick of accusing the
irreligious of being religious. Again I use the nuance between content
and container, between objects and the way they are organized. Now, tell
me seriously that you do not speak from the position of a coherent
system of beliefs and practices. You referred to brother atheists and
certainly are using the admitted academical protocol· The Jehovah
Witness banging on your door comes to you straight to the point:
fundamentalist application of the contents of the Bible. He knows he has
about 2 minutes before you kick him out, he's been there before but
he'll try and hammer the word of god into your mind in one mighty blow.
He knows he does not have time for interminable developments and that
most probably the person he is addressing has not the mind for it.
Because don't delude yourself, it takes a hell of a lot more imagination
to maintain coherency in such a thought system because it hinges on the
most abstract of concept, god, than it takes to maintain coherency in
appeasing one's furious routine· Consequently, I have indeed found
closed minds in religious people (and in many others), but certainly
never downright morons. Of course, most of the faithful can be called
foolish, but never can you say the same of the person that has taken the
time to write on the topic of went out of his way to tell you about it.
And that is to me empirical certainty.
As for your disregarded thinkers, I know most of them though I have not
read all of them and it so happens you will find some of the same
arguments in the texts of many mystics over the world (the sufi, the
upanishads, our own mystics and even the prophets of the old testament
hold the same grudges toward religion)
The power of the clerics· Again you simplify· "Power of the clerics" as
a sentence is a mistake. A part of the power belongs to the institution
and is distributed to its enactors in the form of authority. When the
role of the institution becomes pointless so becomes the authority it
conferred to its enactors. What power the cleric personally has remains
his own. For most people, in my country, religion is pointless.
Nevertheless, there remains statistically a permanent 10% of the
population for which it still signifies something. This goes true for
most parts of the world where death is not the penalty of faithfulness
and even then. But curiously enough, when you speak (have you ever done
so?) with clerics some of them contradict that fact because they are
faced with a greater participation percentage· There are many factors
coming into play, of course, education, average age, but also, the
personal charisma of the cleric which is a power he would have even if
he were a politician or a salesman. Sorry to shatter your dreams but
religion is not dead and won't die because that 10% is comprised of the
grown up faithful and they live on and change the world in much the same
manner than the 10 % of the academical riff-raff that makes it to
emitting positions· The question is: even though the fight against
religion seems won and over does that mean it is a consequence of
"evolution" (one of the deadliest concepts man has ever created)? I
doubt that anything but a sophism can come to that conclusion· What
conclusion can be drawn on the accuracy of religion I cannot begin to
fathom? You may address the problem all you want, what can you hope to
achieve? Considering the fact that there are 3000 religions in the USA
and about 900 in my home province (to say nothing of the rest of the
world) you'd better get started right away if you wish to demonstrate
their inaccuracy by discrediting them by their faith content. If you
want to discredit them as containers of signification you'll have do the
same with every other coherent thought system·
I am sorry to say this but what kind of argument is that: "the point of
view of the idealist philo vs the materialist" Does that mean something
akin to: I am so sorry sir but us protestant don't give credit to what
the pope is saying. They have tried to feed me such notions through the
nose but I fail to see the relevancy of name tags appointed to groups
who were not even necessarily aware they were groups to begin with.
Could it be that your are trying to derive some sort of authority by
claiming kinship with post mortemly institutionalized philosophical
churches?
> THAT IS AN OLD PREACHER TRICK WHICH WAS ALREADY MAKING ME FEELING
> SLEEPYWHEN USED BY THE OLD FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE PRIEST OF MY
> CHILDHOOD. THE FALSE EQUATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND BELIEF.
> RELIGION IS NOT "BELIEF" AT LARGE, BUT RATHER A SUB-SET OF IT. IT IS THE
> BELIEF IN THE OBJECTIVE EXISTENCE OF ONE OR SEVERAL SUPREME BEINGS
> CREATORS AMD "MODERATORS' OF THE UNIVERSE, PERPETUATORS OF ITS COHESION,
You missed the real equation hidden in the supposed equation between
religion and belief. The real equation was between man and belief.
Remember I do not believe there is any other knowledge than what is
obtained through experience, ALL the rest is belief. What we are doing
right now would be an exercise in futility should we think any
"knowledge" is to be derived from it. I am stating beliefs and you are
too except you back them up with the beliefs of others. As for your
definition of religion there are a few problems with it stricto sensu
for the whole wide world provides quite a few counter examples but it
bring an interesting question to mind: "what are the other sub-sets of
belief?"
As for the gnoseological accuracy of experience, damn not necessarily
mystic, of course you cannot admit it, fuck, you have not experienced it
but you cannot deny the simple fact that putting your hand into fire
will give you some pretty gnoseological certainty that it burns and that
afterwards no amount of arguments will ever make you believe the
contrary because then you KNOW it burns. Of course that experience
cannot be equated in contents with a mystical experience but it
nonetheless functions in the same way. Put that in relation with, say,
Berger's Social construction of reality·
You seem also to forget that we are not on different sides of the fence.
My own motivations for studying religion are exactly the same as
Voltaire's bewilderment with Ezechiel eating shit out of a plate. I am
also a French Canadian and I have suffered from the stupidity of our
parish priests nuns in private schools etc etc etc. Simply, instead of
rallying myself to a philosophical atheist church, I took upon myself to
see from inside, to try to witness that strange experience which will
forever elude me as enacted in others. Do not quotation mark my
"specialist" until you have stopped being a prophet in your own country.
I can say truthfully that if you had been a convinced believer I would
have been as wordy· Could you?
Farewell,
Nick
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 19:55:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Laurendeau
Subject: Re: And going...
NOT YELLING AS USUAL...
> Well met, Paul,
>
> I am thoroughly enjoying this debate! Let me clarify some of the points
> I was trying to make and also allow me to establish the position from
> which I speak in order to legitimize my right to speak and reason in the
> way I do.
IT MIGHT CERTAINLY PROVIDE USEFUL DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENTS ABOUT YOU, BUT IT
WILL NOT "LEGITIMIZE" YOU. YOU MAY BE EITHER HEGEL OR THE LAST RAILROAD
HOBOE, THE LEGITIMITY OF YOUR INTERVENTION IS ALREADY INTEGRAL AND
COMPLETE IN A FORUM DEVOTED TO FREE-SPEECH...
> Your piece of work, whose academic rigor I can approve, is typical of
> atheistic propaganda even though you say you addressed the problem
> originally. You asked for quotes· Well, that is one thing you won't
> obtain from me. Should you seek info on some religious topic, I'll
> manage to find references but, when it comes to reasoning and debating I
> am a most firm believer of independent thought. That in itself is an
> epistemological debate we could address on an separate basis.
THERE IS NO SUCH THINGS AS "INDEPENDENT THOUGHT". OUR FRAME OF REFERENCE
IS EITHER IMPLICIT OR EXPLICIT. WHEN IT STAYS IMPLICIT IT CERTAINLY
CULTIVATES AN ILLUSION OF INDEPENDENCE REASSURING FOR THE SELF, BUT
SURPRISING DISCOVERIES ARE OFTEN AT THE CORNER OF THE STREET, LIKE OUR
"OPINION" WRITTEN ALMOST WORD FOR WORD (IF NOT IN A BETTER FORMULATION!)
IN SOME FREAK PHILOSOPHER OF TWO OR THREE CENTURIES AGO... A FAIR LESSON
OF MODESTY, GENERALLY. ON THESE MATTERS I AM DEFENITELY A SPINOZIST:
"FREEDOM" AND "INDEPENDENCE" OF THOUGHT OR ACTION IS JUST THE
MANIFESTATION OF THE IGNORANCE OF OUR DETERMINATIONS. FOR THE MOMENT ALL
THAT I SEE IS THAT YOU PROCLAIM MY LACK OF ORIGINALITY WITHOUT
CORROBORATING IT.
> What I was wondering was what experience do you have with religions
> besides bookworming through a subjective though vast selection of works?
> A part of my formation is anthropology and from that point of view I
> very strongly believe in participating observation. My quotes come from
> my field experimentation. Remember something first: I am faithless,
> creedless and to some extent godless.
IF YOU ARE FAITHLESS AND GODLESS, IT WILL HAVE TO SHOW UP NOT ONLY THROUGH
YOUR EXPLICIT LIP SERVICE BUT ALSO IN THE INNER ECONOMY OF YOUR
ARGUMENTATION. IF YOU SAY "I AM FAITHLESS" BUT YOU ARGUE AS A CHURCHY, AS
A CHURCHY YOU WILL BE DELT WITH. I RELY ON WHAT YOU DO, NOT ON WHAT
YOU CLAIM OR BELIEVE OF YOURSELF. NOW, FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A ROW YOU
QUALIFY MY ARGUMENTS AS "SUBJECTIVE", WHEN I CLAIM I MADE A DESCRIPTION
OF THE OBJECTIVE MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. ONE CAN AGREE OR DISAGREE
WITH THE MOVEMENT ANIMISM-THEISM-DEISM-ATHEISM, BUT IT IS DIFFICULT TO
CALL IT A SUBJECTIVE HYPOTHESIS ON A SET OF SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS... THE
FACT THAT I BELIEVE IN IT PERSONNALLY DOES NOT MAKE OF MY ANALYSIS A
SUBJECTIVE APPROACH. A SUBJECTIVE WAY TO ARGUE
CONSISTS RATHER IN
FOCUSSING ON THE SUBJECT, OR THE SELF ,RATHER THAN ON OBJECTIVE REALITY,
OR THE HYPOTHESIS ATTEMPTING TO DESCRIBE IT. ACTUALLY, YOU PROVIDE AN
HONEST EXAMPLE OF A SUBJECTIVE APPROACH BY YOUR CURRENT FOCUS ON YOUR
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CREDENCIALS... AND YOUR QUASI-COMPULSIVE CLAIM FOR MINE.
TO THAT EFFECT YOU CAN READ MY BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY IN THE FOUNTAIN. WHY
ASK FOR MORE? MAYBE BECAUSE YOU HYPERTROPHY YOUR ATTENTION ON THE ARGUING
SUBJECT MORE THAN ON THE OBJECTIVE REALITY OF HIS ARGUMENTATION! FOR THE
MOMENT YOU TALK ABOUT YOURSELF (AND QUESTION ABOUT MYSELF, MY PERSONNAL
SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES, ETC) INSTEAD OF TALKING ABOUT YOUR OBJECT. THAT IS
A SUBJECTIVE APPROACH, IN THE TRUE SENSE OF THE WORD. IT IS MY CLAIM THAT
YOU CALL ME "SUBJECTIVE' WITHOUT PROVIDING ANY DEMONSTRATION WHATSOEVER
OF MY SUBJECTIVISM...
> To me god's relevancy come from its signifying position as a cognition
> because there is absolutely nothing for or against it that can be said
> safely besides the fact that when you examine the concept from a
> semiotical point of view, it falls into a category of cognition which
> will potentially allow any other cognition to continue the string of
> thought, (though not in the same mind). I call the concept allowing me
> to categorize it in such a way "density of signification". That density
> is manifested in the relation between object and sign: a table is a
> table, a picture of you isn't really you but represents you nonetheless,
> the sun is the sun but can also mean truth (Pierce and Eco for the
> relationship between sign and object but not for the density concept
> which I have not found anywhere but to say frankly never saw the point
> of looking for it. Suffice it to say it appears operational to me,
> personal epistemological point of view again).
THE OPERATIONAL APPEARANCE AND THE REFERENCE TO PIERCE (THANK YOU FOR IT!)
RINGS TO ME THE OLD BELL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAGMATISM. WILLIAM JAMES
KEPT GOD IN HIS SYSTEM BECAUSE IT WAS USEFUL AS A SOCIAL COHESIVE
SUBSTANCE. YOU CALL YOURSELF GODLESS. I CALL YOUR POSITION THE ONE OF
DEISM. GOD DOES NOT ACT OBJECTIVELY, BUT WE KEEP IT AS A HANDY
"SEMIOLOGICAL" HYPOTHESIS FOR ITS VALUABLE THERAPEUTICAL AND SOPORIFIC
("OPERATIONAL" IN YOUR FLASHY TERMINOLOGY) QUALITIES.
> That density determines also the potential quality and abstraction of the
> thought patterns it will produce. When I said typical, I meant that whenever
> I speak to a confirmed atheist (I become very religious at such times) the
> same behavior patterns almost always come forward and that would be fool
> proof coherency and crystallization of conviction in such a way that
> contradiction cannot possibly be left without answer. Typical because
> such strong bearings on a particular topic subjects the human mind
> potential cognitive dissonance (psychological concept: two contradictory
> cognitions happening at the same time in the same mind, and the
> processes used to resolve the dilemma). This comes as a consequence of
> the endeavor and the only way to avoid it is not to give a damn. Though
> the contents of your analysis may be original, its container (motivation
> and deployment pattern) is typical.
AN ATHEIST BEHAVES LIKE AN ATHEIST AND ITS TENDENCIES TO BEHAVE LIKE
ANOTHER ATHEIST ARE VERY HIGH. THANK YOU FOR THAT CRUCIAL INFORMATION! I
COULD SAY THE SAME THING OF A POODLE OR OF AN ELVIS IMPERSONATOR, BUT YOU
HAVE A POINT: I CANNOT DENY SUCH A MERCILESS TRUISM.
> Quoting· Let us admit after Durkheim (I cannot avoid them all it seems
(SPINOZA, SPINOZA HA, HA, HA! - P.L.)
> that religion is a coherent system of beliefs and practices· the rest of
> the definition isn't worth any shit but that of tearing it down. But
> that first part gives religion something in common with many other
> institutions not to say all of them. Bearing that in mind, you were
> mislead when you thought I was using a gimmick of accusing the
> irreligious of being religious. Again I use the nuance between content
> and container, between objects and the way they are organized. Now, tell
> me seriously that you do not speak from the position of a coherent
> system of beliefs and practices. You referred to brother atheists and
> certainly are using the admitted academical protocol· The Jehovah
> Witness banging on your door comes to you straight to the point:
> fundamentalist application of the contents of the Bible. He knows he has
> about 2 minutes before you kick him out, he's been there before but
> he'll try and hammer the word of god into your mind in one mighty blow.
> He knows he does not have time for interminable developments and that
> most probably the person he is addressing has not the mind for it.
> Because don't delude yourself, it takes a hell of a lot more imagination
> to maintain coherency in such a thought system because it hinges on the
> most abstract of concept, god, than it takes to maintain coherency in
> appeasing one's furious routine· Consequently, I have indeed found
> closed minds in religious people (and in many others), but certainly
> never downright morons. Of course, most of the faithful can be called
> foolish, but never can you say the same of the person that has taken the
> time to write on the topic of went out of his way to tell you about it.
> And that is to me empirical certainty.
THE HIGH COHERENCE OF CERTAIN DELIRIUS (PARANOIAC DELIRIUS, FOR EXAMPLE)
IS NO WARRANT OF THEIR VERACITY. A CONCEPTUAL BODY CAN EASILY BE COHERENT
AND FALSE: THE GEOCENTRIC SYSTEM OF ARISTOTLE, THE TOURBILLON THEORY OF
DESCARTES, SO ON SO FORTH...
> As for your disregarded thinkers, I know most of them though I have not
> read all of them and it so happens you will find some of the same
> arguments in the texts of many mystics over the world (the sufi, the
> upanishads, our own mystics and even the prophets of the old testament
> hold the same grudges toward religion)
MATERIALISM CAN BE SEEN IN SACRED TEXT. I NEVER DENIED THAT. THE BOOK
OF SOLOMON, AS AN EXAMPLE, IS A FULL AND EXPLICIT PRESENTATION
OF THE DOCTRINE OF EPICURUS. I NEVER OBJECTED TO THAT POSSIBILITY. WHO ARE
YOU ARGUING WITH?
> The power of the clerics· Again you simplify· "Power of the clerics" as
> a sentence is a mistake. A part of the power belongs to the institution
> and is distributed to its enactors in the form of authority. When the
> role of the institution becomes pointless so becomes the authority it
> conferred to its enactors. What power the cleric personally has remains
> his own. For most people, in my country, religion is pointless.
> Nevertheless, there remains statistically a permanent 10% of the
> population for which it still signifies something. This goes true for
> most parts of the world where death is not the penalty of faithfulness
> and even then. But curiously enough, when you speak (have you ever done
> so?) with clerics some of them contradict that fact because they are
> faced with a greater participation percentage· There are many factors
> coming into play, of course, education, average age, but also, the
> personal charisma of the cleric which is a power he would have even if
> he were a politician or a salesman. Sorry to shatter your dreams but
> religion is not dead and won't die because that 10% is comprised of the
> grown up faithful and they live on and change the world in much the same
> manner than the 10 % of the academical riff-raff that makes it to
> emitting positions· The question is: even though the fight against
> religion seems won and over does that mean it is a consequence of
> "evolution" (one of the deadliest concepts man has ever created)? I
> doubt that anything but a sophism can come to that conclusion· What
> conclusion can be drawn on the accuracy of religion I cannot begin to
> fathom? You may address the problem all you want, what can you hope to
> achieve? Considering the fact that there are 3000 religions in the USA
> and about 900 in my home province (to say nothing of the rest of the
> world) you'd better get started right away if you wish to demonstrate
> their inaccuracy by discrediting them by their faith content. If you
> want to discredit them as containers of signification you'll have do the
> same with every other coherent thought system·
THE ARGUMENT OF THE GREAT NUMBER OF RELIGIONS! YOU SPOKE TOO MUCH WITH
CLERICS, OBVIOUSLY. HOW MANY CASTLES IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. THOUSANDS. BUT
FEODALITY IS OVER ANYWAYS! THESE CONSTRUCTIONS ARE ALL MUSEUMS! THE SOCIAL
ORDER THAT CONSTITUTED THEM IS GONE WITH THE HISTORICAL WIND. THE
"MULTIPLICITY OF RELIGION" (ANY BOZO PUTTING A RADISH ON A PEDESTAL IS
CALLED A RELIGIOUS LEADER!) IS A BLATANT INDICATION OF THE FRAGMENTATION,
THE DWINDLING OF THE RELIGIOUS PARADIGM, A CLEAR SYMPTOM OF DECLINE.
> I am sorry to say this but what kind of argument is that: "the point of
> view of the idealist philo vs the materialist" Does that mean something
> akin to: I am so sorry sir but us protestant don't give credit to what
> the pope is saying. They have tried to feed me such notions through the
> nose but I fail to see the relevancy of name tags appointed to groups
> who were not even necessarily aware they were groups to begin with.
> Could it be that your are trying to derive some sort of authority by
> claiming kinship with post mortemly institutionalized philosophical
> churches?
THERE ARE TWO FUNDAMENTAL PHILOSOPHICAL STREAM. YOU ARE WITH ONE OR WITH
THE OTHER. THIS IS NOT A TAG, BUT A DEMONSTRABLE INTELLECTUAL FACT.
> THAT IS AN OLD PREACHER TRICK WHICH WAS ALREADY MAKING ME FEELING
> SLEEPYWHEN USED BY THE OLD FRENCH CANADIAN VILLAGE PRIEST OF MY
> CHILDHOOD. THE FALSE EQUATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND BELIEF.
> RELIGION IS NOT "BELIEF" AT LARGE, BUT RATHER A SUB-SET OF IT. IT IS THE
> BELIEF IN THE OBJECTIVE EXISTENCE OF ONE OR SEVERAL SUPREME BEINGS
> CREATORS AMD "MODERATORS' OF THE UNIVERSE, PERPETUATORS OF ITS COHESION,
>
> You missed the real equation hidden in the supposed equation between
> religion and belief. The real equation was between man and belief.
> Remember I do not believe there is any other knowledge than what is
> obtained through experience, ALL the rest is belief. What we are doing
> right now would be an exercise in futility should we think any
> "knowledge" is to be derived from it. I am stating beliefs and you are
> too except you back them up with the beliefs of others. As for your
> definition of religion there are a few problems with it stricto sensu
> for the whole wide world provides quite a few counter examples but it
> bring an interesting question to mind: "what are the other sub-sets of
> belief?"
NOW YOU APPEAR AS AN EMPIRICIST, DAVID HUME WOULD PLEASE YOU: NO
KNOWLEDGE, ONLY BELIEF. THAT COULD BE ARGUED AGAINST THOROUGHLY.
I MIGHT DO IT LATER. LET JUST SAY FOR THE MOMENT THAT EMPIRICISM AND
PRAGMATISM ARE TWO IDEOLOGICAL BROTHERS. PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM IS THEIR
NURISHING MAID. YOU ARE PHILOSOPHICALY COHERENT, MY FRIEND!.
> As for the gnoseological accuracy of experience, damn not necessarily
> mystic, of course you cannot admit it, fuck, you have not experienced it
> but you cannot deny the simple fact that putting your hand into fire
> will give you some pretty gnoseological certainty that it burns and that
> afterwards no amount of arguments will ever make you believe the
> contrary because then you KNOW it burns.
THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING MY ANSWER:
> Of course
(THAT OF COURSE DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM THE NECESSITY TO ANSWER
TO THAT ARGUMENT:)
> that experience cannot be equated in contents with a mystical
> experience but it nonetheless functions in the same way
(NO, NO, NO. I DO NOT TAKE THAT VERBAL NON DEMONSTRATIVE TRICK).
> You seem also to forget that we are not on different sides of the fence.
> My own motivations for studying religion are exactly the same as
> Voltaire's bewilderment with Ezechiel eating shit out of a plate. I am
> also a French Canadian and I have suffered from the stupidity of our
> parish priests nuns in private schools etc etc etc. Simply, instead of
> rallying myself to a philosophical atheist church, I took upon myself to
> see from inside, to try to witness that strange experience which will
> forever elude me as enacted in others. Do not quotation mark my
> "specialist" until you have stopped being a prophet in your own country.
> I can say truthfully that if you had been a convinced believer I would
> have been as wordy· Could you?
WHEN I WROTE THE DOOM OF RELIGION I WAS NOT A FRENCH CANADIAN. I WAS A
HUMAN BEING. I AM NOT FIGHTING YOU AS A SUBJECT OR AS A PERSON, MY FRENCH
CANADIAN BROTHER IN ETHNO-CULTURAL OPPRESSION. I AM RATHER CONTRIBUTING TO
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE OBJECTIVE SYSTEMS OF REPRESENTATIONS THAT OPERATE
THROUGH YOU AS I SAW THEM IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR ARGUMENTATION. DONT
BE SO SUBJECTIVIST, NICOLAS, MA BONNE GANACHE!
> Farewell,
SEE YOU SOON, AS YOU SAY. I AM STILL WAITING FOR A REFUTATION OF THE
CONTENT OF THE DOOM OF RELIGION ITSELF...
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 15:16:08 -0400
From: Nicolas Pattee
Subject: (demande de prcisions
You asked for a refutation of your objective account of the evolution of
the god and religion concepts into atheism. Reportedly, the game has
already been played out and the conclusion imposes itself on our
reality. The modern mind, freed from the manacles of irrationality,
embraces more and more the ideology of atheism, that being that there is
no such thing as God.
Such state of enlightenment has been painfully reached through
successive stages, which proceed from one another by modifying the space
man is allowed to occupy in the world and by reducing progressively the
space the god concept is allowed to occupy in collective representation.
Nowadays, there remains mainly the dwindling theist position while most
god addicts are now hooked on to deism and the forerunners are atheists
driven onward by the tentative examples of a few visionary predecessors.
These atheists form the true yolk of intellectual rigor and are bound to
sweep away the last remnants of the churchy heresy as they shed light on
the uselessness of religion and god as organizing factors of human
consciousness and social cohesion.
Is this synthesis correct? If not complete it.
Also, I am not that much a fan of yours yet to wish to undertake yet
another of your tedious reading. So, please explain in palatable words
your distinction between ontology and gnoseology. I fucked off and
enjoyed it very much thank you.
Once I have the necessary precisions, I shall proceed with the
refutation of your text. Though as I said, it is not entirely untrue but
demands, screams and supplicates for nuances and subtle readjustment
before it can properly cum out of your ivory tower with any hope of
fertilizing anyone or anything but your own flock of pews!
See ya!
P.S.
Also, should you find yourself idle while I prepare the final assault,
try to answer that question you so deftly avoided: What experience do
you have with religions ans religious persons?
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 20:52:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Laurendeau
Subject: Re: (demande de prcisions
> You asked for a refutation of your objective account of the evolution of
> the god and religion concepts into atheism. Reportedly, the game has
> already been played out and the conclusion imposes itself on our
> reality. The modern mind, freed from the manacles of irrationality,
> embraces more and more the ideology of atheism, that being that there is
> no such thing as God.
I CERTAINLY DID NOT ADOPT THAT FLASHY POSITIVISTIC VISION. I DESCRIBED THE
STEPS OF THE DECLINE OF RELIGION AND RELIGIOSITY WITHOUT TAKING ANY STAND
ON THE "FREEDOM FROM IRRATIONALITY" IT MAY OR MAY NOT INVOLVE (THERE CAN
BE NON-RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF IRRATIONALITY - I DID NOT ADRESS THAT
MATTER). YOU PRESENT ATHEISM AS A POSITIVE IDEOLOGY THAT ONE MIGHT EMBRACE
OR ADHERE TO. THAT IS VERY WRONG. ATHEISM IS A NEGATIVE FRAME OF MIND. A-
IN ATHEISM IS PRIVATIVE. WE ARE DESCRIBING A FADE OUT, A DECLINE, A BLURR
AWAY! THE HEADS ARE EMPTYING THEMSELVES OF THEOLOGICAL REFERENCES AND
CULT-LIKE PERSPECTIVES. THE PHENOMENON IS NOT DUE TO ANY POSITIVE
REVELATION WHATSOEVER BUT TO A DECOMPOSITION OF A CERTAIN VISION OF THE
WORLD WHERE THE DIVINE USE TO HAVE A ROLE. FLAT DERELICTION IS WHAT IS
DESCRIBED HERE. YOU CONTINUE TO THINK ATHEISM AS SOME PECULAR TYPE OF
FAITH IN SOMETHING, WHEREAS IT IS A NO-SOMETHING (YOUR DEFINITION OF IT
CATCHES EXACTLY WHAT THAT THING IS).
> Such state of enlightenment has been painfully reached through
> successive stages, which proceed from one another by modifying the space
> man is allowed to occupy in the world and by reducing progressively the
> space the god concept is allowed to occupy in collective representation.
> Nowadays, there remains mainly the dwindling theist position while most
> god addicts are now hooked on to deism and the forerunners are atheists
> driven onward by the tentative examples of a few visionary predecessors.
> These atheists form the true yolk of intellectual rigor and are bound to
> sweep away the last remnants of the churchy heresy as they shed light on
> the uselessness of religion and god as organizing factors of human
> consciousness and social cohesion.
ONCE AGAIN I DOUBT THAT SUCH A POSITIVISTIC READING IS TO BE DEDUCTED FROM
MY TEXT. AT THE END OF YOUR LAST EXCHANGE YOU SPOKE OF AN "ATHEIST
CHURCH", YOU NOW GIVE ME THE "CHURCHY HERESY" AND THE "VISIONNARY
PREDECESSORS". YOU CONTINUE TO USE THE OLD GIMMICK OF PROJECTING RELIGIOUS
CATEGORIES ON A NON RELIGIOUS ANALYSIS. THESE THREE PLAY-ON-WORDS ARE
RIDICULOUS ATTEMPTS TO HAM INSTEAD OF ARGUYING. "ATHEIST CHURCH" MEANS
NOTHING, IT IS AN OXYMORON, JUST AS "SQUARE CIRCLE". NOWHERE IN MY TEXT
DID I, AS YOU PATHETICALY TRY TO MAKE ME DO HERE, PRESENT ATHEISTS AS
PROPHETS OF A NEW TRUTH, SO YOU CAN KEEP YOUR "VISIONNARY PREDECESSORS"
FOR YOURSELF. "CHURCHY HERESY" IS RIDICULOUS. AN HERESY IS THE ADOPTION
OF A VARIANTE OF AN INITIAL RELIGIOUS SYSTEM AS SEEN FROM THE STRICTLY
REACTIONNARY POINT OF VIEW OF THE TENNANTS OF THE OLD ONE FROM WHICH IT
EMERGES. IF THE REACTIONNARY OPTION REMAINS STRONGER WE SAY "HERESY" TO
DESCRIBE THE FAILED ATTEMPT OF REDEFENITION CARRIED BY THE VARIANTE. IF
THE "HERESY" IS STRONGER, THE WORD CEASES TO BE USED AND WE END UP WITH A
RELIGIOUS SCHISM. YOU KNOW THAT PERFECTLY, BUT YOU ARE STILL TRYING TO
MAKE PHILOSOPHY WITH THEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS. THE FUNDAMENTAL GIMMICK BEING
TO TRY TO RE-RELIGIONIZE AN INTELLECTUAL AND MATERIAL MOVEMENT EXTERNAL TO
ANY RELIGIOUS REPRESENTATION, AND CONSEQUENTLY THE ONLY ONE APT TO
DESCRIBED ITS DOOM
> Is this synthesis correct? If not complete it.
IT IS VERY POOR. WHERE ARE MY ARGUMENTS? SO, CF ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN
#2.
> Also, I am not that much a fan of yours yet to wish to undertake yet
> another of your tedious reading. So, please explain in palatable words
> your distinction between ontology and gnoseology. I fucked off and
> enjoyed it very much thank you.
BEING MORE AND MORE CERTAIN THAT YOU ARE AN EMPIRICIST, I UNDERSTAND YOUR
HESITATIONS TOWARD THESE ONE. ONTOLOGY: DOCTRINE OF BEING. GNOSEOLOGY:
DOCTRINE OF KNOWLEDGE. EXAMPLE. YOU TAKE A NOTION: SAY THE IDEA OF
JUSTICE. QUESTION: IS JUSTICE AN ONTOLOGICAL OR A GNOSEOLOGICAL CONCEPT.
IF YOU CONSIDER THE NOTION OF JUSTICE AS ONTOLOGICAL, YOU CLAIM THAT
JUSTICE IS A CATEGORY OF EXISTENCE, THAT SOME FORM OF IMMANENT JUSTICE
EXISTS IN THE WORLD INDEPENDENTLY FROM OUR CONSCIOUSNESS. YOU BELIEVE THAT
WE EVENTUALLY PAY OR GET REWARDED FOR EVERYTHING DE FACTO. IF YOU CONSIDER
THE NOTION OF JUSTICE AS GNOSEOLOGICAL, YOU CLAIM THAT JUSTICE IS A
CATEGORY OF KNOWLEDGE, AN INTELLECTUAL NOTION SUCEPTIBLE TO VARY WITH THE
CHANGES OF HISTORY AND TOTALLY DETERMINATED BY THE EXISTENCE AND
CONFIGURATION OF HUMAN SOCIETIES. AN IDEA SUBORDINATED TO THE SET OF
BELIEF OR KNOWLEDGE WE HAVE OF THE WORLD. IS THAT SO COMPLICATED? IF SO CF
MY PART IN THE FOUNTAIN #1.
> Once I have the necessary precisions, I shall proceed with the
> refutation of your text. Though as I said, it is not entirely untrue but
> demands, screams and supplicates for nuances and subtle readjustment
> before it can properly cum out of your ivory tower with any hope of
> fertilizing anyone or anything but your own flock of pews!
SO ARE YOU GOING TO PRODUCE A GENUINE OPPOSITIVE REFUTATION OR A SIMPLE
AMPLIFICATION OR REFINEMENT OF MY ARGUMENTATION??? AND WHAT IS YOUR OWN
TOWER MADE OF: GOLD, PLATINUM, OR SIMPLY IVORY TOO (SINCE WE ARE INDULGING
OURSELVES TO INTERACT IN THE SAME SPHERES)?
> See ya!
>
> P.S.
> Also, should you find yourself idle while I prepare the final assault,
> try to answer that question you so deftly avoided: What experience do
> you have with religions ans religious persons?
THE STANDARD EXPERIENCE OF AN ORDINARY CITIZEN OF THE WESTERN WORLD AT THE
END OF THE MILLENIUM. I MET BELIEVERS, I MET ATHEISTS. I INTERACTED WITH
CATHOLICS, PROTESTANTS, MUSLIMS, SIKHS, AND BUDDHIST. WHAT ELSE DO YOU
WANT TO KNOW? BE MORE SPECIFIC?
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 19:43:37 -0500
From: Nicolas Pattee
Subject: Final
Being a very busy person, I seem to have lost interest in the debate.
The main reasons for this are that it seems to me you have failed to
adress the most important parts of my argumentation to focus on rather
insignificant parts. Is also seems to me you were in no way paying it
the attention I gave it myself.
Though you may not wish to be religionnized, you nevertheless evolve in
the field of belief. I CANNOT see what argument you can bring on that
save the old myth of objectivity or that ludicrous notion of knowledge.
I claim your subjectivism because there is absolutely no way it can be
avoided for anyone unless they are delusionnal and believe themselves
objective. If you read our texts again, you will notice you contradict
youself on that point, "ignorance of our own deterninism" "I wrote as a
human being" Seems to me I would have to undertake the tedious task of
teaching you that objectivity is a myth...
As for the dwindling of religion, I would rather adress the current
phenomenon as a category translation. My own definition of religion is
apparently less restrictive than yours and I doubt you could so easily
maintain your position should you be prepared to accept my definition.
but then again, that would take too long to be spilled on someone as set
in their beliefs as you are.
Open your TV on Much Music. Though I doubt you have the eye for it, try
and notice the multitude of religious inputs you`ll find there... I am
sorry to say but from my point of view, even though you can call it
marketing, I call wall-mart morning pep-talks W-A-L-L tadidaa! M-A-R-T
ritual behavior whose purpose is intensification of belief. Though you
may call it a uniform, I call a judges regalia the means by which he or
she imposes respect and fear and that my friend are both proprieties of
an object called sacred. the example of category transferal are...
Legion haha! I see fragmentation as the survival of religion not as its
dwindling, much like stepping on mercury. Religion as a mass uniting
factor is truly dwindling but look hard and you will notice that ALL
mass uniting institutions are dwindling. Isn't that called
postmodernity? Surely you have heard that trendish word?
I adress the mechanics. I believe you just don't like the word religion
to be applied to anything else than your own conception because it
becomes suddenly harder to deflate. I said it was reductionnist and I
maintain that position though I will not try to expand your horizons.
BECAUSE, MY FRIEND, IT HAS BECOME APPARENT THAT NEITHER OF US ARE GOING
TO CHANGE POSITION OR HAVE ANY INTENTION TO DO SO. Also, from the point
of view of cognitive dissonance, the easy parry that no valid argument
was given does not hold because in essence, there will always be a way
to circumvent it and that, my friend, is religious behavior... Like it
or not...
See ya!
P.S.
As for your personnal experience, I just wanted to know if you had ever
bothered to step out of your way and go see inside... It appears not.
You are right, I am probably an empiricist, and from that position, I
believe we cannot relate for all my experience tell me the contrary and
it appears it would be necessary for you to have at least some prolonged
contact with a religion in order to understand my position. This refers
to my own incapacity of transmission. Having been there, a lot and in
many places, I say you don't even begin to understand the phenomenon you
adress with your classy definitions. All I see there is yet again an
evolutionnist theory whose hidden purpose is to glorify us occidentals
to pole position ( I just cannot admit that Indians who remain
polytheists and are nevertheless authorities in computer dynamics,
thanks to very old Panini`s sanskrit grammar, are less evolved than we
are). And to use one of your own gimmicks, don't even try to say the
contrary cause you'll be ignoring your own determinisms
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 13:20:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Laurendeau
Subject: THE FINAL DUD OF SAINT NICOLAS
NOT YELLING (NOT IMPRESSED ENOUGH FOR THAT)
> Being a very busy person, I seem to have lost interest in the debate.
> The main reasons for this are that it seems to me you have failed to
> adress the most important parts of my argumentation to focus on rather
> insignificant parts. Is also seems to me you were in no way paying it
> the attention I gave it myself.
THIS SUDDEN LACK OF INTEREST HAPPENS AT AN INTERESTING MOMENT IN THE
EXCHANGE: EXACTLY WHEN THE "FINAL" ASSAULT OF YOUR REFUTATION WAS SUPPOSED
TO STORM OVER. YOU COULD HAVE WASTED LESS ENERGY WITH YOUR
MAMBO-JAMBOISH PERORAISONS ABOUT PIERCE AND SO ON EARLIER. BUT THAT IS
OKAY, IT WAS ENTERTAINING TO READ... LET NOW INQUIRY INTO YOUR FINAL DUD.
> Though you may not wish to be religionnized, you nevertheless evolve in
> the field of belief. I CANNOT see what argument you can bring on that
> save the old myth of objectivity or that ludicrous notion of knowledge.
> I claim your subjectivism because there is absolutely no way it can be
> avoided for anyone unless they are delusionnal and believe themselves
> objective. If you read our texts again, you will notice you contradict
> youself on that point, "ignorance of our own deterninism" "I wrote as a
> human being" Seems to me I would have to undertake the tedious task of
> teaching you that objectivity is a myth...
RIGHT. THE STANDARD EMPIRICIST ATTACKS AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY TO
STABILIZE AN OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. BISHOP BERKELEY IN PERSON (I WILL
POSSIBLY WRITE SOMETHING LATER IN THE FOUNTAIN ON THIS...). HEAR CAREFULLY
THE ANSWER. IF OBJECTIVITY IS A MYTH IT MEANS THAT IT IS EITHER TOTALLY OR
PARTIALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO STABILIZE AN OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. IF YOU ENTERTAIN
THE HYPOTHESIS THAT IT IS TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO STABILIZE ANY OBJECTIVE
KNOWLEDGE YOU ENCOUNTER SEVERAL PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES. WHAT MAKES YOU
OPEN YOUR UMBRELLA AT THE RIGHT MOMENT WHEN IT RAINS, WHAT PERMITS YOU TO
DISTINGUISH A GLASS OF COKE FROM A GLASS OF 7UP, OR EVEN WHAT PERMITS YOU
TO OBSERVE THAT I DIRSREGARD WHAT YOU CONSIDER IMPORTANT. INFORMATIONS
GRASPED ABOUT THE OBJECTIVE WORLD, COMING FLATLY THROUGH YOUR SENSES OR
THROUGH A CONGLOMERATE OF PERCEPTION AND REASONNING. HELVETIUS USED TO SAY
THAT EVERYBODY IS SEEING THE MILK WHITE NOT RED, SOME CAN SEE IT LIGHTER,
DARKER, OFF OR BRIGHT, THERE IS A CERTAIN FLUCTUATION BUT THERE IS A
STABILIZED ELEMENT. BACON, VERY MISTAKENLY CONSIDERED AS THE FATHER OF
EMPIRICISM, USED TO SAY THAT SENSES ARE AN UNEVEN MIRROR. AH, AH, AH!
"UNEVEN" WILL YOU SAY... BUT STILL "A MIRROR", WILL I ANSWER. ADD ALSO THE
IMPACT OF THE COLLECTIVE. IF EVERYBODY SEES THE AIRPLANE IN THE SKY BUT
YOU, YOU WILL PEACEFULLY CONCLUDE THAT YOU MISSED THAT PERCEPTION OF A
REAL OBJECT WHEN EVERYBODY WAS SCREAMING "THERE OVER THE BARN!", AND NOT
THAT YOUR GROUP OF PEERS IS A BUNCH OF MYTHOCRATIC OBJECTIVISTS. THE
TOTALLY SHIZOPHRENIC UNIVERSE WHERE WE HAVE NO PERCEPTION WHATSOEVER OF
OBJECTIVE REALITY IS TO BE TOSS ASIDE. THEN, LET ENTERTAIN THE SECOND
HYPOTHESIS. OBJECTIVITY IS A MYTH BECAUSE IT IS PARTIALLY, OR EVEN MAINLY,
IMPOSSIBLE TO STABILIZE AN OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. FAR MORE ACCURATE, AND
MORE IN CONFORMITY WITH THE GENUINE NOTION OF MYTH: NOT AN INTEGRAL
FALSITY BUT A DISTORTED LORE MIXING THE HISTORICAL AND THE LEGENDARY. BUT
YOUR CLAIM IS NOW IN JEOPARDY DUE TO ONE OF ITS FLATLY DIRECT
CONSEQUENCES. IF OBJECTIVITY IS PARTIALLY, OR EVEN MAINLY, DISTORTED, IT
HAS TO BE PARTIALLY, EVEN MINIMALLY, ACCURATE AT THE SAME TIME. 'COURSE!
THAT IS WHAT PARTIAL AND IMCOMPLETE IS ALL ABOUT, SWEETIE! TO DENY THE
INTEGRALITY OF OBJECTIVITY IS TO ACKNOWLEDGE ITS LOCAL EXISTENCE, THE
CATEGORY YOU WERE TRYING TO REJECT FROM THE SYSTEM IS BOUNCING BACK ON
YOU. A FLAWED MACHINE IS STILL A MACHINE. IT IS A WRECK, BUT THE STRAIGHT
FACT THAT IT DOES NOT WORK WELL CONFIRMS THAT IT WORKS. AND THE MINUT WE
CAN KNOW OBJECTIVELY EVEN A LITTLE BIT AND IN A DISTORTED WAY, THAT BIT
CAN BE BIGGER OR SMALLER, IMPROVED OR DETERIORATED. THE POSSIBILITY OF THE
PROGRESS OF OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE, WHATEVER YOUR IRRATIONALIST HYSTERIA CAN
BE ABOUT IT, IS UNAVOIDABLE. IN OTHER TERMS, THE MINUT YOU CANNOT LIVE
WITH THE CERTAINLY THAT WE ARE INTEGRAL AND COMPLETE IGNORANTS OF THE
OBJECTIVE WORLD, ROUND AND INERT PEBBLES ON THE BEACH OF EXISTENCE, YOU
HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE OBJECTIVITY AND YOUR COLLAPSE IS UNAVOIDABLE.
> As for the dwindling of religion, I would rather adress the current
> phenomenon as a category translation. My own definition of religion is
> apparently less restrictive than yours and I doubt you could so easily
> maintain your position should you be prepared to accept my definition.
> but then again, that would take too long to be spilled on someone as set
> in their beliefs as you are.
THAT IS CALLED THE CONVENTIONNALIST ARGUMENT. IT GOES AS FOLLOWS. IN MY
TERMINOLOGICAL CONVENTION "IDIOT" HAS A DIFFERENT MEANING. IT MEANS
"PERSON". THEREFORE, DUE TO MY "APPARENTLY LESS RESTRICTIVE" NOTION OF
IDIOCY, I AM SIMPLY REFERRING TO YOUR EXISTENCE AS A PERSON WHEN I CALL
YOU AN "IDIOT". IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO FLIP ENGLISH LANGUAGE UP SIDE
DOWN TO ACCOMDATE MY LITTLE CONCEPTIONS, IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE "TOO SET IN
YOUR BELIEFS"
> Open your TV on Much Music. Though I doubt you have the eye for it, try
> and notice the multitude of religious inputs you`ll find there... I am
> sorry to say but from my point of view, even though you can call it
> marketing, I call wall-mart morning pep-talks W-A-L-L tadidaa! M-A-R-T
> ritual behavior whose purpose is intensification of belief. Though you
> may call it a uniform, I call a judges regalia the means by which he or
> she imposes respect and fear and that my friend are both proprieties of
> an object called sacred. the example of category transferal are...
> Legion haha! I see fragmentation as the survival of religion not as its
> dwindling, much like stepping on mercury. Religion as a mass uniting
> factor is truly dwindling but look hard and you will notice that ALL
> mass uniting institutions are dwindling. Isn't that called
> postmodernity? Surely you have heard that trendish word?
THE DISTINCTION IS TO BE MADE HERE BETWEEN RELIGION AND RELIGIOSITY.
APPLYING IT STRICTLY TO RELIGIOSITY AS A SPECIFIC TYPE OF GNOSEOLOGICAL
SENSITIVITY, I AM READY TO FOLLOW YOU PARTLY HERE (WITH SEVERAL
RESERVATIONS: WHAT YOU SAY HERE IS TOO GROSS AND SIMPLISTIC). BUT THAT
CONFIRMS MAGISTRALLY MY VIEWS. RELIGIOSITY, OR RELIGIOUS SENSITIVITY,
SHOWS A CERTAIN TENDENCY (OVERESTIMATED BY YOU, BUT TO EXIST PARTIALLY IS
TO EXIT, AS I SAID. SO, FINE...) TO MANIFEST ITSELF OUTSIDE OF THE CULT
EXPLICITELY DELIVERED TO A GOD, AND IN INTEGRALLY SECULARIAN SECTORS
(WALL-MART!). THAT IS A BLATANT AND FLAMBOYANT SYMPTOM OF THE DOOM
OF ITS ORIGINAL TRADITIONNAL CHANNEL OF MANIFESTATION: RELIGION(S).
> I adress the mechanics. I believe you just don't like the word religion
> to be applied to anything else than your own conception because it
> becomes suddenly harder to deflate. I said it was reductionnist and I
> maintain that position though I will not try to expand your horizons.
DO YOU LIKE THE WORD "IDIOT" APPLIED TO A "PERSON". TO PLAY MONOPOLY WITH
THE TERMINOLOGY BY SPECULATING AT THE STOCK EXCHANGE OF TERMINOLOGICAL
CONVENTIONS WILL NOT PROTECT YOUR ARGUMENTATION FROM ITS BANKRUPCY...
> BECAUSE, MY FRIEND, IT HAS BECOME APPARENT THAT NEITHER OF US ARE GOING
> TO CHANGE POSITION OR HAVE ANY INTENTION TO DO SO (YOUR TEXT - P.L.).
THANK YOU FOR REVEALING AT LAST YOUR DOGMATIC FOUNDATIONS. AS FAR AS I AM
CONCERNED, I CHANGE MY MIND THE VERY MINUT I AM CONVINCED. I DO NOT PLAY
"DEVILS ADVOCATE" JUST FOR THE PLEASURE OF ARGUYING, WITHOUT RISQUING THE
TOTALITY OF MY CONCEPTIONS IN THE EXCHANGE. YOU DO.
> Also, from the point
> of view of cognitive dissonance, the easy parry that no valid argument
> was given does not hold because in essence, there will always be a way
> to circumvent it and that, my friend, is religious behavior... Like it
> or not...
TERMINOLOGICAL DISTORTION.
> See ya!
THANK YOU FOR BEING GENUINE AND EXPLICIT.
> P.S.
> As for your personnal experience, I just wanted to know if you had ever
> bothered to step out of your way and go see inside... It appears not.
> You are right, I am probably an empiricist, and from that position, I
> believe we cannot relate for all my experience tell me the contrary and
> it appears it would be necessary for you to have at least some prolonged
> contact with a religion in order to understand my position. This refers
> to my own incapacity of transmission. Having been there, a lot and in
> many places, I say you don't even begin to understand the phenomenon you
> adress with your classy definitions. All I see there is yet again an
> evolutionnist theory whose hidden purpose is to glorify us occidentals
> to pole position ( I just cannot admit that Indians who remain
> polytheists and are nevertheless authorities in computer dynamics,
> thanks to very old Panini`s sanskrit grammar, are less evolved than we
> are). And to use one of your own gimmicks, don't even try to say the
> contrary cause you'll be ignoring your own determinisms
I REJECT AND DISREGARD THE ACCUSATIONS OF ETHNOCENTRISM. YOU SPEAK FOR THE
INDIANS AND DECLARE THEM POLYTHEISTS. YOU CONFUSE INDIAN AND HINDUIST.
STOP PLAYING THE CHEAP 19TH CENTURY ETHNOLOGIST AND LISTEN FIRST DEGREE
TO WHAT THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY. THE INDIAN MUSLIMS WOULD SIMPLY LAUGH
AT YOU. EVEN THE HINDUISTS WOULD PROVIDE YOU WITH A PANTHEON COVERED UNDER
THE DEIST VISION OF A SUPREME BEING. BUT WHAT CAN I SAY TO A BOZO WHO
EVEN USES PANINI AS A INSTRUMENT OF THEOLOGICAL GARBAGE.
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 21:49:03 -0500
From: Nicolas Pattee
Subject: Re: THE FINAL DUD OF SAINT NICOLAS
Just read your reply...
Well... Seems to me that your refusal to acknowledge possible
discrepancy between our reciprocal definitions of religion and its
import on our debate closes it efficiently. So be it.
I do not feel that the relation between extra-institutionnal religious
behavior and secularization as a sign of religion dwindling has been
demonstrated properly. I call it survival you call it dwindling... I
fail to see...
Though I may well have underestimated you, I must say that you final
reply about hinduism is also an underestimation of me... Do you really
think I don't know these facts? Come on... That is as cheap as any
Jehovic exegetical brainless shortcut...
Sad...
See ya
Nick
~~~~~
And here ends the debate. Is there a clear winner or loser? Is it
a draw? Does it matter? I guess it's up to the individual reader
to come to their own conclusions...
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************************************************************************
CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE...
************************************************************************
RICHARD KADREY is the author of the COVERT CULTURE SOURCEBOOK.
BRUCE STERLING is the author of numerous science fiction books.
Both Mr. Kadrey & Mr. Sterling envisioned the idea of the Dead
Media Project as an attempt to create entirely new kind of book
on media. A media book of the dead which they inviting a user(s)
of the Internet to go ahead and write.
JOHN EDEN is active on-line and off via connections to A.I.N.,
TURBULENCE & RAIDO AAA (BM Box 3641, London WC1N 3XX, England -
U.K.). He can reached via various sites on-line including: Chaos
& Uncarved.
GYRUS is the groovy editor of the essential Towards 2012
magazine.
PAUL LAURENDEAU is an associate professor in linguistics at the
department of French Studies, York University. Influenced by the
thought of Spinoza, Diderot, and Marx, he is currently working on
a book titled MATERIALISM AND RATIONALITY (PHILOSOPHY FOR THE
SOCIAL ACTIVIST). Describing himself as a materialist rationalist
atheist, Laurendeau formulates the religious debate in
philosophical terms in the tradition of the progressive struggle
against the mystical and irrationalist tendencies of
philosophical idealism. His previous contributions to TAF enclude
On a Philosophical Implication of the Astronomical Big Bang
Theory, from TAF issue #1, The Doom Of Religion, from TAF issue
#2 and I Stink, Therefore I Am from TAF issue #3.
NICOLAS PATTEE majored in religious studies (the faithless
version, i.e. not theology). He stumbled across the article that
was the catalyst for the email debate in this issue by accident
while searching for something else but, as he put it, "could not
help but read and enjoy that typical specimen of atheistic
propaganda." He is "interested in pursuing the deconstruction of
the truth concept according to my own special blend of skills and
thought systems."
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The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-99 Neil MacKay
http://www.capnasty.org/taf/
the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com
