IM TALKING ABOUT SEX, GET IT, IM AN ADULT

Anyway, so I was watching "Inside the Medieval Mind: SEX" and now im going to write about it. The whole series is pretty good, you should torrent it or you can watch it on youtube or if you are really clever you can probably spoof your ip and watch it on the bbc website like a real briton!

The medieval concept of sexuality condemned sex. Every aspect of human sexuality was incredibly powerful and it took the most powerful institutions of the time to even attempt to contain it. God himself came down and smote sodomites. The holy roman church was more powerful than even the state and the true origin of the power of kings. All sex was condemned as a sin in every guise, the nocturnal emissions of the clergy not withstanding. Only "necessary" sex was "allowed", sex for the purpose of procreation. The position was codified, clothes on (as much as possible), no enjoyment, though truely everyone knows the tactile sense cannot be "turned off" or denied. Any sex that did not result in reproduction, or a stern attempt at it, was suspect and vilified if not out right grounds for execution. No allowance for love (a thoroughly modern concept) or a sense of conviviality or connectedness.

This notion of denying nature and the self of course never worked and sex then was as varied as it is today, just as common. Nature and evolutionary pressure being what it is it would be pure literary invention to believe that you could turn the creature against itself and stop it from engaging in sex. The semantic game of the church, drawing a line between sex and procreation was another folly. Procreation is the accident of sex, in as much as sleeping involves waking always at some point.

Look now, and for me, sublimated in our time, this is the really profound twist, look now at our concepts of sexuality and sexual sin. Choose any television portrayal you like, any movie plot, sex without reproduction is holy, codified in its emotional range and positions. The mood entirely strict in its fantasy. The modern depiction of sex is just as bizarre (though it assuages our spiritual and natural concerns in a way simple "reproduction" never could) hollywood sex, the way sex should look, the sex you want to have not the sex you have, no strange smells, no sweat, no lingering memories of yesterdays argument. The visual is coded deeply within its aesthetic. The curve of a breast or the crumpled sheet does not suggest the breast or sheet at all but the tactile sense of the thing itself. The breast is an enigma and a fleeting horror if it is not touched and then, the fourth wall broken, the visual trick vanishes, the curtain is pulled back, this is part of a human being, it smells like a human being, it feels like a human being, it pulls you tight like a human being. Real sex has nothing of the aesthetic of film. If you could watch yourself "doing it" you would be disgusted (or should) "If I knew sex looked like that I never would of done it!" Sex is not of the visual, no matter what so called experts claim, most of us still have sex in the dark or at least are blind during the act by provocation of the act itself.

So our modern sex is still swallowed in the obscene semantic/visual game, the tricks of wearing clothes or turning the lights out while "doing it". Surely the real of sex remains the same but, what of our notions of sin and sexuality? This is where we see true penetration, the truly obscene act, yet another ignorant negation of the self, the violence of this self loathing and defeat no longer involves burnings or such medieval pageantry but we have our own pageants and solutions in the guise again of  popular media.

Now, now we have twisted the medieval ideal on its head (completely by chance I dont mean to imply we actually have any knowledge or concept of medieval sexuality, or that anyone but perverts really care) It is no longer reproduction that is applauded as the core of true sexuality and tactile pleasure that is condemned. No, noww it is reproduction that is condemned, and the sin of our modern sexuality is not engaging in tactile or visual pleasure. Instead of physically flogging in public our sexual deviants we flog them on television, on jerry springer or oprah, in our sitcoms and popular films. "You didnt use "protection"!?" they say. Protection from what we might ask? From your mate? From nature? The hostility implied in this phrase "use protection" the most tender act something that must be defended against. Defense against the vaginal, defense against the phallic invasion. But the true sin, the true threat for our modern notion of sexuality is from that of procreation. Imagine the horror on the faces! "you are the father!" (shock! dismay!) "umm we need to talk about something, im pregnant" (existential horror! pee on a stick, primitive divination!) Now the sin, now the threat, it is not from god or all his holy angels, not from the church or purgatory, now the threat is the prison of parenthood. The stock of our modern age, the baby carriage. Procreation in our time is the sole providence of imbeciles, the irresponsible, uneducated foreigners, stupid teenagers and the behavior of strange religious sects. Procreation has become a burden, the pregnancy of a women, her cross to bear for 9 months, "child" support the cross for men, lasting approx 18 years. Not quite purgatory but it might seem it at times.

And I guess now, I would like to make my point succinctly, so there is no confusion about it: Sex is a normal adult activity, get over it.

CHARLIE BROWN IS ON HULU

http://www.hulu.com/watch/188640/its-the-great-pumpkin-charlie-brown

p.s. I love you internet <3<3<3

NOSTALGIA IS A HUNGRY GHOST

"welcome to the 20th century!"

I am watching "Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". I cant quite put my finger on why I love this stuff so much. There is just something about the audio in these old charlie brown cartoon, like it was a bootleg tape recorded off the radio in someones basement. And all the animations are so completely sparse, all these big flat areas of empty color. Arrg shit someone is at the door. GOOD GRIEF

ITS A VIDEO WITH STEPHEN FRY WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT

Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language from Matthew Rogers on Vimeo.

I DONT ACTUALLY LIKE PICASSO BUT YOU TAKE MY POINT?

   Disney land is not an analogy for america, it IS america, a magnificent fantasy land where dreams do in fact indisputably come true. Dreams are our post-modern landscape, the art of the surrealist was just a shadow, unrecognizable. Dreams are the true home of mythology, of which all fiction is but a parody sublimated in iconography and idolatry, psychological horror and wet dream all at once. In such a society the tables all turn. The real becomes the myth, unattainable and unknown legend. Endless layers, a mirror into a mirror. Sport, once the analogy of the hunt has become the hunt "sportsman" hunt, ball players "kill" the competition. A constant message of the mind back to itself, the endless internal monologue. The feedback loop the perfect analogy for modern reality, a remake of a remake, the post-modern, the aftermath of the modern, forever like waking up from a dream. Men become gods and gods men, all mortality capable of transcendence, rags to riches stories, like a greek legend or the fall of satan. Eve bites the apple as a natural progress of the plot arc, without which she could not exercise the existential demons of her mind which she is incapable of leaving. Trapped in this labyrinth, a black void of rectilinear confusion, forever pursued by the minotaur, half man half beast. But then, the subtle turn of phrase, the minotaur does not exist, he was improbable at best even to the most naive. We are the minotaur, we are the stalking beast, the labyrinth is in our minds.

   The joke, what really makes the labyrinth a perfect analogy for the mind and the reality of our lives (dreams?) is that as improbable as it may seem, as impossible as the myth seemed for centuries, archaeologists have unearthed a labyrinth on the island of crete complete with evidence pointing to actual human sacrifice by a cult of bull headed priests. The myth made real by the people of crete, made myth again by the greeks and centuries of repetitions,and then made real once more by modern archaeology. Perhaps there is hope for the resurrection of jesus yet. Im sure you have seen the documentaries, mosses did in fact part the red sea. Jericos walls where in fact destroyed by atonal cacophony. Mohammad in fact stepped off a rock and rose to heaven. No modern man would believe it even if they saw it of course. The shitty cellphone video footage would be proven fake almost immediately. And it would be that very "proof" of improbability that would goad on the true believers further and further into their faith. Again, a negative reality defining the "real". All ethical transgressions become permissible in the surreal reality of dreams. Who can draw a line in the sand? Who can point to a line of demarcation? We now prove the line by its absence. "Prove me wrong!" we say to the minotaur.

TAYLOR SWIFT, NUFF SAID.

   "It is from the death of the social that socialism will emerge." 

 -Jean Baudrillard

   Socialism humiliates us. Strips bare and bares witness to our own inhumanity. The fact that a social institution must exist in order to protect the elderly and infirm from having their health care cut off by an insurance company? What could be more inhumane than this kind of bureaucratic death sentence? They dont even have the common courtesy to hate you or dislike you, it is just a mathematical function, nothing personal, what a horror. And yet it follows all natural laws and exists as part of our social "system" and culture. We are humiliated by these facts. By the inhumanity of our culture, by the inhumanity of nature, the inhumanity of the collective to the individual, of the social to the individual. Recoiling with horror from our own true form we seek to rectify our own humiliation and inhumanity with social-ism. Surely if ford can mass produce inexpensive automobiles, if science and technology can put a man on the moon, we can use similar systems to solve our social ills, shield ourselves, "use protection", against the "system", against nature, against inequity and selfishness. So then you have public schools and everyone is literate. So then you have social security and the elderly have (some) health care, they live a few years longer, nature is put on hold.

   The same systems of organization that are mobilized in times of war are waged in times of peace. LBJs "war" on poverty as an example. And yet it is these very systems of organization, by their core character, that destroy the social and render us inhumane. Antisemitism had existed for centuries and surely xenophobia is within our genes, but it was modernity that made the "final solution" possible. These same systems, bureaucracies of automation and order, rigid institutional efficiencies (inefficiencies?), completely outside of human scale, are harnessed to provide what families and villages once did. Yet it is these same institutions that destroy the family and explode the village. We ask, or imagine, that the thing can invert itself, somehow blindly going about fooling ourselves, as if a foster family is a family and not some sort of horror perpetrated on children by society (though it may be the lesser of evils at times, it is still unfortunate). The old social order is replaced with the order of social-ism, which further subverts and obliterates whatever was left of the social by cruel parody. And yet this accelerated change, these cruel twists, are not events in isolation, as they are all a product of the accumulation of knowledge and technological innovation. As innovation multiplies so does the social landscape. Moores law applies to society as well. Cultural homogeneity exploded courtesy of your television. An uncomfortable image. The natives are unclothed and primitive. An erotic image. The pornography is unclothed and primitive. If society changes it is a product, an end result, not an event in isolation. We are humiliated by this social shift, caught unaware, like a fashion victim in a paparazzi photograph, unable to change with "the times."

AN UNAPOLOGETICALLY DECLARATIVE STATMENT

   Technological innovation and scientific understanding have been the principle means of changing the course of human history, and such problems as those arising out of patriotism, religion,and culture are only "ideological veils" to obscure the fundamental importance of technology and science to the evolution of humanity. The history of all former cultures has been that of technological and scientific advancement. We must become "technology and science conscious" and recognize that these are the true underlying causes of all social ills and social progressions. We must recognize these underlying realities if we ever hope to have any control over our own future and that of humanity as a whole. Actively innovating and understanding rather than being blind to the notion of "discovery" or "exploration". We must harness progress and recognize its power to shape the lives of peoples all over the world. Nature has pointed the way we will inexorably go, the amelioration of the human condition, progress, etc. and indeed we will go. Even if we do not accept the notion, technological innovation and scientific understanding will drag us through, kicking and screaming, to the other side. We can not predict the way clearly but we may see a little down the road of progress, occasionally out to the horizon. Continuing on in blindness is foolish but refusing to go on is quite literally inhumane.

THIS IS MY JOB

 

   What an absurd phrase "sell yourself". The complete comodification of society and humanity and human beings in particular. Yes you think, "I will market myself" like a product in an advertisement on TV or perhaps a call girl on craigslist. Completely dehumanizing. Further subverting the notion of the self. The self for sale, the self as sales abstraction and target audience marketing. Worse than the sexual abstraction of pornography as here it is not a biological/sexual function the "product" provides but only an emotionless market function. The abstraction playing to the whim of the abstraction. Completely obliterating honesty or integrity. Employees no longer judged by merit, it was once dreamed we might live in a meritocracy where all men rose or fell by the dint of their own labor, the sweat of their brow, but no more. Now careers, nay whole lives, even whole economies, are predicated on the sale of a non-existent product. Its a complete sham and both sides know it. The best resume, the best "selling yourself" at any interview and invariably the employee, newly hired, will be found at any given moment sitting on facebook or sexting or whatever else employs do while in their cubicles. No one believes the hard selling specifically because it is so universal. Its like crying wolf but everyone is doing it 24/7 and in doing it they guarantee the wolf, in fact, does not exist.

   Or, this also reminds me, of this idea slavoj zizek was talking about in some youtube video I saw (cant be arsed to find it right now). He was describing the strange proliferation of the myth of santa claus. So for example, if you ask the parents (separate of the children) if they believe in santa claus they will of course say "no nobody really believes in santa claus thats an absurd notion but the children enjoy the idea of him bringing them presents" and if you ask the children (independent of the parents) "do you believe in santa claus?" they will say "no of course not but if I dont tell my parents I believe in santa claus then maybe they wont give me presents. And then if you ask the children, in the company of the parents, or the parents in company of the children "do you believe in santa claus?" both parties will emphatically say "yes he is real! He comes every christmas" and so on.

   So the employee recognizes the resume and all this crap about "self motivated go getter! im the best brown noser ever blah blah blah" the employee fully knows this is crap and even the employer him/her self recognizes this is absolute crap but for that moment sitting in the room with one another or discussing the issue over a phone for instance, at this point they both suspend disbelief and profess complete belief in the lie they both know to be a lie. As if the one was professing belief for the sake of the other. Also of course they have to profess belief for themselves. The employee needs to pretend he cares about this shit job and the employer needs to believe that this employee cares to assuage his/her conscience. A sort of plausible deny-ability. So that an employer might say to a superior (without a chink in the lie showing) "oh yes I have picked the best candidate I could find". And on paper or in an interview an employee may in fact have created the proper environment for the employer to sufficiently suspend his/her disbelief and then knowingly believe a lie created by a prospective employee, in a kind of,  "I love lucy" way in which one side is letting the other side be fooled by the one while the other winks at the fourth wall letting the audience in on the joke. "Oh yeah he is totally buying it!" "Oh my god I cant believe he thinks im buying it!" and the cacophony of laughter just grows louder and louder all the while.

Im not sure who is the parent or child and who is santa claus in this example but, ok, homework, you figure that one out I just stopped caring.

JESTIN'

the 8:45 mark is specifically what im referring to in this post.

David Foster Wallace (here-to-fore known as "dfw") makes reference to something, I dont even know what to call it but ill steal a name and call it the "autonomous individual". Why are we motivated or encouraged to be autonomous individuals in society? Isnt this selfishness counter to the notion of the "social". Isnt autonomy counter to a notion of society? Isnt the inherent quality of the social "un-autonomous"?

Ill go ahead and do an example from my own life:

I remember a few years back talking to a girl, fixing the flat tire on her bike for her. She did not know how to fix flat tiers on bikes and I encouraged her to watch what I was doing so she could figure it out for herself next time she had a flat. She protested saying something to the effect of "Id rather have a man fix it". This notion struck me as wholly selfish and repugnant. It smacked of inequality and inequity and seemed just out and out wrong. I was insisting on her autonomy. On her isolation from everyone else (men in particular). I was reinforcing the xenophobic behavior and rhetoric of my society.

It seems to me we have had a precipitous slide to autonomy over the centuries. Previously, if we take for example the generic nuclear family of the 1950s, we see a system of people, husband, wife, child, completely leveraged against one another. No one is autonomous in the nuclear family, everyone has a place and specific duties, specific territories they must "keep up" and defend not just for their own good but for the good of the nuclear family as a whole. You might even extend this sort of structure out further into society, society was literally segregated. Black men doing some jobs the white man needed to get by. White men doing jobs black men needed to get by. A caste system almost like in india, or rome, or any one of many pre-"modern"(?) societies.

But then at some point, during the cultural revolution(?) (really a technological and scientific revolution but that aside) at some point this family and class and social system starts to (continues) to change. The father is separated from the child, the autonomous father. The husband is separated from wife. The wife takes on territories of the husband. The child takes on territories of the mother. The races intermingle. All the previous symbols or icons of society become changeable. Now the child is raised by the television, the single mother has a career, the white man works for a black woman and so on, you get the idea. All parts in this puzzle go from being leveraged upon one another, dependent on one another to autonomous. Our "autonomous individuals". You are a woman but this confers no special value and so if your tire is flat, fix it yourself, you are a autonomous individual, I am a autonomous individual, why would we interact?

I am struck by how horribly anti-social this is. Its an absurd notion, mono-social social behavior, bystander apathy, "oh I saw this guy get mugged" "what happened" "I dont know I just kept walking". All of the previous notions of personal responsibility, thrown out the window decades ago. What is the meaning of a society that does not interact socially?

This is turning into a rant though. We do interact socially, just not in ways that we once did, because, obviously, technology has changed the way we interact. Now you do not meet your friends at work or at clubs, you meet them on the internet. Your mom doesnt set you up with the woman you will marry (not that you talk to her anyway) facebook or maybe okcupid sets you up. Friendship is no longer this unexamined accident of being, its a social network, a software function, an accident of hardware or statistical error. Friendships are highly scrutinized and examined, studied and "focus group"ed. As if it where a physical property of the otherwise inert molecule known as "society".

And if technology redirects our semi-autonomous social behavior it should be no surprise. It was the thing that made the autonomy possible in the first place. Who needs suzy home-maker when you have microwave dinner and the latest copy of Final Fantasy. Some of us, old people mostly and those prone to nostalgia like myself, may decry this sort of behavior (at times), this sort of effect of technology and yet we know nothing can be done about it. Its progress and deep down we love it. It completely denatures and reconfigures the social landscape but the human mind is infinitely changeable and this progress, the cellular phones, the internet, the facebooks, they fascinate us endlessly, and this fascination supersedes the "damage" or social effect.

THIS IS HERE

"Seductive because denuded of meaning" 

   Seduction then is almost like the opposite of information. Seduction is the mystery and the revelation, not knowing and seeing, or having know and seen. If information is entropy and information is some form of meaning(?) then a surplus of seduction is a surplus of non-meaning, seduction is a counter-part to entropy. The one fills the void of the other. Reality burns seduction away. Seduction works only as the symbol and/or in the mind. Perhaps this has some connection to the love of the self, the self of which we are always ignorant and seduced by. Seduced by ourselves. The selves we can never know. The self with an always changing meaning. The subconscious and so on. The animal within our own minds we can never invest with meaning. A place we are completely incapable (as of yet) of introducing even the slightest bit of objectivity or empiricism. It strikes me however that if we ever are capable of investing with meaning and knowing our own minds (you and your mind specifically) we would loose the seduction of the self. The entropy would accumulate. A total loss of the aura. This seems at once horrible, "ruining the moment", shining the light of meaning into our minds. But considering it im struck by the similarity to religion. Science ruining the consolations of religions with its uncomfortable truths. Yet as uncomfortable as they may be I (we) must realize the incorruptibility of this objectivity. No more seduction then when science comes a-round, all things rendered to be "just" objects. The light of objectivity. Obliterating all previous seductions.

   However, taking a step back a moment, this dichotomy is too simple. Too sophomoric. A staged fight. Science, knowledge, meaning on the one hand, and seduction, religion or (perhaps) sex on the other. I wish the line of demarcation was this blatant, but its not. This medieval dichotomy collapsed centuries ago. The scientific rhetoric, calculations and percentages etc., provide no "value added" meaning. Science is seduction now, the totality of all knowledge is seduction, meaning and even entropy itself is seduction. Absolute zero, the empty space between stars, the potential of an empty cup, total control of all variables, all are terribly seductive. Science seduces us with its abstractions, science cannot quantify reality anymore than trompe l'oeil paining can reproduce the experience of looking down an ally or gazing upon a temple in the distance. Even in our rush to invest reality with meaning, to find the bedrock to build this foundation upon, we invariably reach out for that seductress, our night nurse, abstraction, hoping she will point a way back to reason for us, a way home.. She fails of course, seduction is not a game of fulfillment but of fleeting mysteries. We are left with graphs and colorful EKGs but what does it mean? Meaning destroys this seduction but, critically, meaning gives us some hope of finality. "you do not have cancer! HORRAY!" or, dolefully "we have some things we need to talk about .  .  .". The meaning is finality. Im not at all ready to call entropy finality however.

   Seduction however is not just about pleasure fantasy but also fear. The loss of meaning, the inability to understand behavior or circumstance invokes a fear. The seduction of fear, the rise of adrenalin, the anxiety, the trepidation, "what will I do?" "what would happen if?" Seduction of terror. Seduction of horror. The abject horror, recoiling, casting the gaze away, covering the eyes, running away. Away from meaning and back into the seduction. Or paralyzed in a stasis of fear simply allowing the seduction to wash over you, to be seduced by it, incapable of reacting. Paralyzed by something almost like apathy, removed from the self, incapable of communicating with the self. Recoiling from the self, running away from the self. Tension, but not fracturing or bending, an indefinite, inexorable, limitless tension.