The Shadows of Totalization, Part XLIX

I want to look at and criticize various ways, techniques, methods, and means of intervening (applying an active force) on the Dead Polemic, (DP1)--the primary species of inertia, of inertial motion, I am considering.

The first means of intervening to be examined, and I believe it is the most important for the historical enlightenment, is knowledge.

An intervention of knowledge on the DP1 might look like this,

A: “Yes, it is.”
B: “No, it is not.”

A: “Yes it is because under the most favorable distribution model, we can say at the 95% confidence level that this first generation of gravitational wave detectors could register a neutron star merger every one to ten years.”

B: “No, it is not because Two binary stars (m1 and m2) orbit each other around their center of mass. They orbit in circles of radii r1 and r2. I am to show that the period is given by T2=4pi2(r1+r2)3/(G(m1+m2)) The mutual force between m1 and m2 is F=Gm1m2/(r1+r2)2 Considering m1, the acceleration of m1 is given by a1=Gm2/(r1+r2)2=v12/r1 Solving for v and using T1=2(pi)r1/v1=T2, I get T2=4pi2r1(r1+r2)2/(Gm2).”

Does the intervention of knowledge, the application of knowledge-force, here or elsewhere,create a motion, an untying of the knot of the DP1?

Statement of the Problem, Part II

A: “Yes, it is.”
B. “No, it is not.”

A: “Yes, it is.”
B. “No, it is not.”

A: “Yes, it is.”
B. “No, it is not.”
…. ∞

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XLVIII

"Why do I date the Enlightenment, as a historical phenomenon, as beginning in 1648 and ending in 1789? 1648 marked the end of the Thirty Year's War and the Peace of Westphalia. This was the beginning of the secularization of the political; from this point onwards, religious claims were progressively withdrawn from the political and public spheres of society. This made possible the freethinking attitude of Thomas Jefferson, who said, ‘It does me no harm for my neighbor to say that there are many gods or that there are none.’”--Carlos, The Importance of History.

If I deny secularization as an activation of thought, I take a period of history commonly regarded as philosophically active and reframe it,

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Macbeth Quote (Act V, Scene V).

The Peace of Westphalia was an idiot’s gasp for breath, taken between long hate-filled rants. The idiots’ lives are but shifting shadows cast by the bars of the cage the idiots created for themselves, having mistaken this creative project of self-imprisonment for one of movement and emancipation.

We won’t hear noise or music if we must know our freedom and our knowledge derives from practices of confinement or control, processes of totalization, a will to fixation.

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XLVII

"Why do I date the Enlightenment, as a historical phenomenon, as beginning in 1648 and ending in 1789? 1648 marked the end of the Thirty Year's War and the Peace of Westphalia. This was the beginning of the secularization of the political; from this point onwards, religious claims were progressively withdrawn from the political and public spheres of society. This made possible the freethinking attitude of Thomas Jefferson, who said, ‘It does me no harm for my neighbor to say that there are many gods or that there are none.’”--Carlos, The Importance of History.

Carlos’ presentation of the Enlightenment gives us the first great secular European war as the last great European religious war.

If a secular war were any the less nasty or horrific than a religious war, if the character of the battle changed in accordance with what men believed they were fighting about, perhaps this change in European war would mark a kind of progress…A kind of progressive Enlightenment of men and mind.

If the secular wars happened to be bigger, faster, more brutal and increasingly empty and absurd--because no one but no one wants to pretend they are fought with meaning, passion, or even a serious political objective in mind-- what we are observing is not the unfettering of the mind from dogma, but the mind's abnegation.

I am not concerned with deciding what constitutes progress…I have the much more modest goal of determining when there is or has been change (or in other words, a motion.) Carlos, in the above-mentioned quote, may have wished to designate a historical period, but what I wish to know is whether the period Carlos designates can be said to correspond to philosophical activation.

If after the Thirty Year's War we see the mind's abnegation, we are probably wrong to associate this with philosophical activation.

I know that the Thirty Year’s War manifested as a struggle between Protestants and Catholics. The Pope, the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs and the Catholic princes of Germany rallied to the Catholic Church against the Protestant countries--Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden, the Dutch Republic, and a number of Protestant, reformation-influenced German states. However, I don’t know that the war was about the differences of belief between Protestants and Catholics—in fact, I doubt it very much. I would ask—which beliefs and then I would like to see how these were changed at the resolution of the war.

What I would especially like to know is why resolving whatever these beliefs were required so altering the political map of Europe—is it a funny thing about Christian beliefs in particular?

If the war was a dispute about beliefs between Protestants and Catholics, a progressive withdrawal of religious claims from the political and public spheres of society could plausibly have helped to end it and to prevent other wars about religious beliefs. But what if the Thirty Year’s War was about other antagonisms than the religious ones? These antagonisms would then not be diminished by the secularization of the political.

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XLVI

I want to look at this a little more closely,

"Why do I date the Enlightenment, as a historical phenomenon, as beginning in 1648 and ending in 1789? 1648 marked the end of the Thirty Year's War and the Peace of Westphalia. This was the beginning of the secularization of the political; from this point onwards, religious claims were progressively withdrawn from the political and public spheres of society. This made possible the freethinking attitude of Thomas Jefferson, who said, ‘It does me no harm for my neighbor to say that there are many gods or that there are none.’”--Carlos, The Importance of History.

I interpret Carlos to say that the Peace of Westphalia ends psychic, social, political and philosophical gridlock-inertia and allows motion (a motion which Carlos calls “the secularization of the political”), which eventually grinds or winds down by 1789. During the time of its activity, the motion is or is indicated by a new thinking—a thinking unthinkable prior—which is a reconfiguration of social relations, values, the borders and boundaries between the political and religious—and much more which I can’t think of and don’t care to discuss right now.

Whatever was accomplished by the Peace of Westphalia seems very positive, very progressive, very forward—very “motional” (my new word for these things)—but the Thirty Year’s War was the first of Europe’s great wars, not the last, and if the Peace of Westphalia did break apart psychic, social, political and philosophical gridlocks and antagonism, could it also be it engendered yet others, perhaps worse? If so, we might shy away from regarding secularization as detotalization, enlightenment, liberation. Could it be secularization is not a process (i.e., is an apparent but not a real process, an apparent but not a real motion? Is secularization a material process? Is it demystification? What if secularization was imaginary? Is secularization to be equated with philosophical activation, or to what extent?

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XLV

Christoffer’s very thought-provoking question:

“Isnt action just another (but seemingly different from the view of orientation of the first) expression of inertia? Action is that which resists the pull of inertia, and inertia is that which resist the pull of action .. How are they different?”

Is this a symmetrical or an asymmetrical question?

In terms of understanding it as a question about motion, I have been concerned with something resembling symmetry in the way this question has been posed.

We could say, following Christoffer’s question, that we have action (which I will symbolize as A), and we have something else, which is not action, inertia, (which I will symbolize as not-A.)

Conceptually then, we have something which strikes me as symmetrical with regard to what is motion: A== not-A. (“==” is not an equal sign and exactly what kind of sign or relationship it implies is entirely unspecified…This lack of specification is entirely to the point of my meditation.)

Obviously A and not-A are not the same but how they are different isn’t at all obvious and that’s precisely the question Christoffer asked: “how are they different?”

Actually, I find this combination of the obvious difference of A==not-A and the complete obscurity of how they are different to be riveting, significant, enthralling, and deserving of a great deal of attention.

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XLIV

Continuing to examine Fido the Yak’s recent post, Asymmetries of the Question:

What I assume is that if faced with Totalization there are thought-moves I can make to weaken the stranglehold and hopefully get myself out of there.

The thought-moves I assume I can make are these,

1. Openness.
2. Possibility.
3. Question.
4. Extroversion (a very strange and startlingly inaccurate concept both philosophically and psychologically—but nevertheless important.)
5. Experiment.
6. Problem-posing.

(Or combinations of these.)

I assume these are motion-making and therefore Totalization overcoming. Maybe so—in some cases, certainly so. However, in general the assumption is too bland—sometimes a question works to make a motion, and other times a question will do nothing at all. Until I can find a way to distinguish the cases when motion is produced from those doing nothing, I will refer to the above list as atropic-tropic. The goal is to be able to predict how to produce a motion.

In Fido’s comment,

“Taking a cue from Morris, who posits a deep connection between asymmetrical postures, openness and extroversion (Sense, pp. 164 ff.), let's provisionally categorize questions as either being symmetrical or asymmetrical.”-Fido, from above.

I appreciate the effort to distinguish between questions. It appears to me Fido considers the questions he categorizes as asymmetrical to be those I consider motion-producing. If so, if Fido can accurately categorize questions as asymmetrical, Fido will be able to predict which questions will be motion-producing. I will examine this further.

The Shadows of Totalization, Part XLIII

I am going to examine Fido the Yak’s recent post, Asymmetries of the Question.

The purpose of this is to better delineate what I am trying to do--regarding motion—in order to subject what I am trying to do--regarding thought-motion-- to criticism.

“Taking a cue from Morris, who posits a deep connection between asymmetrical postures, openness and extroversion (Sense, pp. 164 ff.), let's provisionally categorize questions as either being symmetrical or asymmetrical.”-Fido, from above.

A connection is made between something provisionally called "asymmetrical postures", and openness, extroversion, and questions. Immediately, we're led into very deep waters, but what I get out of it on a first pass is this:

There are six tropes philosophers use to indicate thought-motion. These are,

1. Openness.
2. Possibility.
3. Question.
4. Extroversion (a very strange and startlingly inaccurate concept both philosophically and psychologically—but nevertheless important.)
5. Experiment.
6. Problem.

Are there other tropes? If so, please remind me.

What we need to ask: do these six necessarily indicate motion? If they do not, in which cases do they not?