hwithumalut

creative writing

The poppies blow, in form of god on high. Huzzah! It’s a gala day, for sincere performance, in fields, in veils, and drowned in tears. Mere puppets they must one day vanish away All over that motley drama, a toss of death’s dice. We shall not sleep within the lonesome latter years Yes everything is vain, even the scenic silence. Vanity was the good cause on that fateful day. Bunches of damp flowers and makeup by a con artist. Corpse with the isolated arm of the painted angels, all pale and weak. A funeral pall over a once many faced form We lived, felt friendship, and saw when the loss or gain is cast upon their judgment day.

Have you ever been reading a book, not understanding what was going on, then you come up with what you think is a correct interpretation, then it turns out to be wrong anyways? I have done this more times than I have read books in my life. I have also on many occasions not realized that my interpretation was wrong. I misinterpreted the book, without knowing it. This happens all of the time in philosophy, and despite what it seems, is not a problem. Misinterpretation is most likely a good thing for you, especially if you know how to use it well. It is a hammer or a wrench in an aesthetic toolbox.

Imagine you are trying to read a difficult work of philosophy filled with long uninterpretable unsmooth snakelike sentences that crawl at a snail’s pace. You are getting nowhere, but are energized and enthusiastic to learn the mysterious ways of the old philosophers. Suddenly you discover the truth in a eureka moment, and all of the meaning of life briefly connects with your life. You see what the philosopher is saying. The philosopher is putting an idea into words and you received the idea through the fog! You can see how the idea must be difficult to talk about, or maybe you think that the philosopher should have been clearer.

Later on reading the same book, the philosopher in clearer prose contradicts your mad moment of meaning. Now, you have no idea what they said. You feel hopeless and lost, because suddenly the wonderful idea you thought the philosopher said is contradicted. Your posthumous parasocial relationship with said dead philosopher forces you to abandon the interpretation, because you respect the philosopher’s genius.

Don’t feel woe! This philosopher is an idiot, or maybe they are actually genius, but anyways, they don’t matter at all! You were reading a book and you came up with an idea on your own inspired by projecting your feelings onto some writing. Maybe interpreting the philosopher has value in its own right, but you are not doing that. Therefore, you are an original creative thinker. You are a philosopher in your own right, and you have created a new concept, which is like a collage of ideas.

There is a fantastic essay by Eve Tuck called Breaking Up With Deleuze. In it she talks about her relationship with the dead French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. She describes her issue of attributing her own original thoughts to Deleuze’s writings. She describes how Deleuze’s idiosyncratic language, which is simultaneously both literal and figurative, took over her use of language and thinking for a while. She uses the metaphor of breaking a relationship with Deleuze. This is an example of this sort of useful misinterpretation, or philosophical clinamen.

The human brain is not meant to simply interpret information accurately like a computer, it also creates new information, and sorts out bad information.

Famous Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek says in numerous places that all great philosophy is a series of misinterpretations and misreadings. He even admits to misinterpreting Jacques Lacan in one discussion with Graham Harman. This is because the human mind is capable of creation beyond old ideas. Reading old ideas can be inspiring because it allows for reflection and comparison. It can be easy to find a new philosophy in the midst of an old one, by clearing some wild path of thinking that the old master had not explored in the hiking-forest of concepts. Maybe the old fool was blinded by their own pretty prosaic ponderings or the lack of time and memory to see revolutionary thought’s potential. Besides, a book that took every tangent imaginable would be a worse read, though these old philosophers often take tangents to satisfy their whims and fancies.

This whole phenomenon of good misinterpretation is common, because philosophy is an artform, not a social science.

Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead says that there are two forms of philosophy. There is critical philosophy, which attempts to find certain knowledge, and is afraid of being wrong. Then there is creative philosophy which risks being wrong giving it the ability to find new ideas that could be right. Both Whitehead and myself prefer the second sort.

Creative philosophy is better, because critical philosophy is going nowhere. Almost everyone in philosophy today agrees that Rene Decartes’s plan to base knowledge in absolutely certain foundations was over ambitious, impossible, and unnecessary. But many philosophers want certainty anyways, they just wish to be arbitrary with where they put their certainty. Critical philosophers tend to be obsessed with certainty, and tend to give up on the task of philosophy as a whole. So many philosophers are willing to hand the entirety of metaphysics, or philosophy of mind, over to physicists and neuroscientists who don’t know what they're getting into. A philosophical treatment of the human mind would not say “there is no mind” but would instead defend the existence of the mind, while admitting to not understanding the mind’s true nature. Philosopher’s can never pull away the curtain to reveal the wizard, only scientists and religions do that. Philosophers are doing something else, something more general, and aesthetically oriented.

Whitehead believes that philosophy is a creative exercise in general principles. I would also add concept creation as a central focus of philosophy. Historically many new sciences have emerged initially as branches of philosophy. Physics, psychology, economics, social sciences, ect. Philosophers create concepts in an attempt to be general, and this failing generality results in a specialized field of study that can be further developed. These failed philosophies are thus not failures elsewhere.

Philosophical ideas are often extreme and wildly speculative. This is not a scandal. This is the natural order of things, because philosophy is made to explore concepts without regard for knowledge. Graham Harman says that “philosophy is not a form of knowledge” which is in line with Plato’s famous “Philosophy is the love of wisdom” a quote that admits a relationship to knowledge without being knowledge.

Philosophers generate concepts that have never been articulated before, but still feel like they are a part of everyday experience in a deja vu sort of way. This is because philosophical concepts have to do with descriptions of all that exists, and naturally are based in the essentials of experience. In a similar way someone may find a phrase in a book which inspires an idea which was not originally in the author’s mind. This is creativity at work, not misreading.

Graham Harman suggests that philosophy is more akin to art than science, this is a cautious position that does not fully make philosophy art. I would go even further and say that philosophy is an artform that concerns the creation of general concepts, or concepts that can be used to explain all experience. There are problems with this definition of philosophy, namely that philosophical concepts are evaluated based on whether or not they are true, whereas paintings and novels can be fantastical. My rebuttal is that philosophy is in fact not entirely based on truth value. In the same sense that some art speaks deep truths of the soul, some philosophies are good at explaining experience. But some philosophies are studied because they are novel and exciting.

Think of Parmenides’s deceptively clever denial of motion, and of the daring Idealism of Berkeley. Berkeley’s famous “Esse est percipi” could not be true, most people reject it on the basis that they feel like reality is real, even if they can’t explain why. When I first encountered philosophy I was drawn to any philosophy which could find a way to deny the existence of something supposedly universal. All of these positions are discussed to a certain extent, even though they are probably inaccurate to generalizations of experience.

In general daring thinking is better in philosophy, so I seek to stretch philosophy to be more daring. An artistic creative philosophy which lacks connection to reality can still have a positive impact, in the sense that other thinkers will need to be able to explain why it is wrong.

Philosophers should be more free to abandon their philosophical projects. Many philosophers think of their system of philosophy as if it was a child in need of perfection. Philosophers ought to be more like Spartans and abandon their kids in the woods. Most of them are flawed anyways, so a long standing defense of a poor system is a mistake. If you abandon the perfect idea someone else will pick it up, maybe a century, or millennia later.

Often philosophers will phrase original discoveries as being readings of older philosophers, or will make clear declarations of concepts long ago thought up in esoteric tomes of forgotten metaphysics and claim them as their own. Both of these are fine in moderation, but I would recommend that philosophers lean towards the self-proclamation of originality. If someone regards themselves as merely a reader of old men’s books then they are condemning themselves to tired chilly scholarship and endless cultish history. This would be demoralizing. Originality is valued in other artforms as a chief virtue, so why not philosophy?

I want to be a lobster with huge boobies but they’re penises. With the end of time we will come to find snakes without entrails Instantly they’re licking at my table, but pause when I demand loyalty. And their lightning sounds as subtle as a boulder without clothes Intimacy envelopes us in a basement below the balcony’s bolstering beams. Changing seasons, wreathes, rotting, you bring pudding forth. Together we investigate the donners of our holy place.

(poem made in collaboration with burntramen and liv)

literally my last post

should you give up things you love for the betterment of hunaity.

Person 1: Yes, because humanity is at risk

Person 2: No, because I don't want to

Pro: Yes. Love is a desire, and is not inherently justified in any way. Think of Mammon in the most recent episode of Helluva boss, episode 7 season 2? Fizzarolli is obsessed with competing in Mammon’s clowning pageant despite the fact the obsession is bad for him. By the end he learns his lesson. Give up what you think you love to be better for yourself and the world.

Con: No. Love and passion are the basis for morality, it would be ridiculous to give up something you love for a false idol. If you love something you’ll live for it. The whole basis of most morality is love because you love humanity. So you should always choose what you want most.

Pro: Maybe that is the case, but generally you can escape your love for something small. If I give up watching YouTube then I may miss it deeply, and feel nostalgic for YouTube, but ultimately I will gain more from leaving it behind. This is because nostalgia is misleading and rose tinted. Love isn't actually that good. You could gain a new love. But if something gets in the way of your love for humanity than you must always choose humanity, otherwise is suicide, because you are a human. Imagine if everyone did what they loved, instead of what was good for humanity. We would all die.

Con: What if it is too hard to give up what you love?

Pro: Come on. That’s a horrible argument. You have to at least try to give up what you love.

Con: What if I hate humanity and I want to let everything burn for my passion, and then die with it. Let’s follow the inevitable death drive to the end of time!

Pro: I don’t think you actually want that. You probably would miss humanity more than you would miss the object of your affection.

Con: No, I do want it. I’m not an idiot or a child, but you dismiss me as if I was one. People need to love the idea of their own destruction, and we as a human populace do as well. We have so little time on earth, why not throw ourselves to the fire, to die like a colorful firework, rather than a pathetic coal at the bottom of a campfire.

Pro: I do not think you are an idiot or a child, but you are a teenager without direction. Your skepticism of morality is because of your lack of experience. If you had lived life for as long as I had, then you would know why we need to love humanity. It’s impractical to kill ourselves, which is the alternative to love of humanity. Adults make better long term decisions, because we have experience living. Morality, order, and long term decisions go along with each other, whereas short term thinking is amoral and wild.

Con: I know my purpose and it is to love my object of love (YouTube) moment to moment. Children have more passion and creativity, so we are more moral than adults. Because love is the basis for morality.

Pro: We are going in circles now. But you don’t know your purpose yet. How could you? You learn by doing things, by living. In the video Frameworthlessness*, the father points out to the son, how you don’t marry the first framework, or worldview you meet. You typically hop from worldview to worldview for a while.

Con: Well. I’m unconvinced. I don’t understand what you are saying. I don’t think you get me either, I’m a little bit complicated. That video also argues that you should avoid worldview hopping too much, which does not help your point. Also it’s just as amoral and cliche as I am? So I’m going to stick to what I love! What do you love anyways that makes you so great? Loving humanity, such an abstract statement? How could you possibly love and care for all of humanity at once? Each and every person on the planet? Loving humanity is like loving god, you’re in love with an idea, not an actual thing. Maybe your argument is right, but I haven’t seen evidence yet. I’ll live my life with short term decisions until I learn why I ought to make long term ones, otherwise I’m just listening to you unscientific adults.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYhhUcYN4mw

(no explicit content warning necessary, though there is suggestive language)

We often regard philosophy as dry, useless, abstract, and most of all removed from everyday life, but this could not be more wrong. Philosophy is quite moist and gushy. The scratchiness of a sound. The feeling when your body sticks to your shirt because of sweat. The textures of different candies, and the feeling on your teeth when you eat so many of those sweets you can practically feel them rotting out, are experiences most of us have encountered. Though you have likely not considered their relevance to ontology, that is the area of philosophy that deals with how things exist.

Let's take an example from a modern day living philosopher, rather than a dead famous one with a beard.

American Philosopher Graham Harman has a refreshing spin on some ideas that go all the way back to Ancient Greece. He does not agree with either of the modern day philosophical trends of idealism, or materialism. He thinks objects are real, and are not just accidents of human imagination, or amalgamations of tiny pieces.

Harman says that his philosophy (called Object Oriented Ontology) is not really about objects but really about the tensions between objects and their qualities. He is literally telling the truth, but it is harder to explain his ideas that way, so let’s start in an easier place.

Object Oriented Ontology (OOO, pronounced triple oh) is about the withdrawn nature of objects. When I stare at a soda can I only see its metaphorical surface, or appearance. I am not experiencing its full range of abilities and possibilities. Just by looking at the soda can, I cannot feel the bubbles on my tongue, and I cannot feel the satisfaction of crushing the can underfoot. Therefore, you can never fully do away with this withdrawn potential of the object. The withdrawn real depth is all the parts of an object you are not seeing, even if you know they are there.

This is not a human centered philosophy, because objects and animals have hidden potentials and wild experiences too. Harman uses the example of fire and cotton to explain how even objects can never exhaust eachothers withdrawn depth. If fire burns cotton, then the fire is only accessing the flammability of cotton, not the smell, or the sight of cotton. Think of how a baseball thrown through your neighbor’s window shattering it experiences the fragility of the glass, but not the transparency, because baseballs can’t see.

OOO is about the relationship between appearances and hidden realities. Which are called sensual objects, and real objects respectively. Not to say that sensual objects don’t exist, but that real objects have an internal mystery that sensual ones lack.

The relationship, called a tension, can involve how there is a disconnect between appearance and reality. Yet at the same time as this disconnect occurs, sensual and real objects are necessarily linked to each other. This relationship is the key to seduction, and intimacy. Because seduction relies on something that has not happened yet, or some hidden potential, despite seduction relying on appearances.

The sensual object is the part of the object that is intimately close with the observer. Imagine yourself watching a good movie, totally immersed. actually imagine inside your head yourself immersed in a movie. You are intimately acquainted with your own experience of the movie, and nothing is closer to you than your experience, because you are in the appearance of the movie. You feel each moment of the movie as if it was something that was happening to you. You are touching the sensual object directly, unlike the real object which is removed from experience.

Or think of your intimate relationship with a friend or partner. You can hear them speak, and you can see them. Nothing is more intimate than appearances, because appearances are direct. You cannot connect with something hidden real and deep, without knowledge about it. Appearances are literally close to you on a metaphysical level. Think of the example of the rock thrown through the window, and how the baseball is not close to the transparency of the glass.

Seduction is the second step after the intimacy of appearance. Once you know all about someone, you start to have inside jokes. You know how they act, and you can tell about social cues (which are quite similar to jokes, only they are serious). You become aware of potentials that are not on the surface (appearance), and the intimacy of the surface becomes a hint at potential activity.

For example, your partner is lying on their bed making eye contact with you. What does this appearance signify? Something not totally on the surface. This particular tension, which is a connection between the sensual object and real qualities, is called Eidos by OOO.

If Harman’s philosophy is to be taken seriously then the intimate sensual side of existence is basically half of it. Harman takes art criticism, such as often mocked wine criticism, very seriously. This is because art criticism is concerned with the sensual details of objects. Art does not function without sensuality because art without an observer is not art.

Moreover, the seductive aspect of art has been the most interesting and controversial historically. Art is very powerful and draws people in. Think of each time your favorite TV show has distracted you from your work. Plato believed that art was too seductive and would ruin the rational part of people’s minds. He even believed it ought to be banned.

Seduction (which requires sensual intimacy or our closeness to our own experience or immersion in our own experience), or attraction, is highly important to philosophy, because of how much human beings deal with it.

Human beings are the entities that ethics is concerned with the most. Seduction is relevant to ethics (an area of philosophy), because the whole process of persuasion relies on it. The idea of someone being a good person relies on them not being seduced over to the dark side, like Anakin in Star Wars.

Corruption (which is a type of seduction) is an intimate meaningful experience. When you have your entire worldview changed because of how powerful, sweet, and important to you the temptation is, then you are being changed by an experience.

Imagine a politician being corrupted by money. For the politician everything makes sense at the moment. Chances are the politician starts with small bribes, but moves to greater and greater sums. Eventually they are changed, and seduced. They felt much pleasure from their money, to the point where their original aim is not there (if it ever was). This seduction was a very close and powerful experience, almost close to the point of being blindingly blurry like how when you’re close enough to kiss you cannot see your partner's eyes well. Intimacy with an experience is blinding in comparison to the subtlety of potential.

Philosophy is all about seduction, and experiencing things. Although its writing is admittedly often written by nerds like myself who speak in terms like experience in a dry abstract way, rather than one filled with green life and muddy passion. Anyone interested in philosophy can think of a time when they had become drawn to a specific thinker or an idea without the ability to stop learning. The seductive force is present in dry words also. There is a creative philosophical essay called Breaking Up With Deleuze, in which Eve Tuck talks about her experience reading the dead man’s (French philosopher Gilles Deleuze) books in the way someone would talk about ending a relationship. It is humorous and talks about the anxiety of being influenced by older renowned philosophers.

Whether or not academic philosophers have succeeded at making philosophy seductive, it is still the case that that philosophy has that potential. Often this potential is abused by poorly researched self-help videos, and related effortless articles, but it can also be used for the good. Philosophy is ultimately closer to arts criticism than to physics or mathematics, despite the fact that so many materialists want it to be physics. So it would not be inappropriate for more philosophy to take into account literary value, to prevent the dryness of pages.

It was not wider than ten feet. Her room was strewn with clothing, coins, open makeup containers including eyeliner pens, orange sticky notes used and unused, coffee grinds, old 3DS cartridges, abandoned books, and sneezed in crumbled tissue/napkins dumped from her purse or backpack onto the floor.

One faulty light bulb was on, giving a dim orange hue to the windowless brick walls that she had tried paint many times, each attempt left as a fuming failure.

Her phone was present after a long days work, giving the professionally dressed women a color changing halo.

She was doing what she would call “nothing” but she was still sitting on the edge of her bed with tense muscles. She was out of breath from living her whole day, but had drunk too much coffee to sleep, so she was alone and stuck in a restless nightmare between two dreams, one of which was her hard-won internship and was becoming harder to do.

Her makeup had slid, making the once bold armor become a beard. She was arched over, so she looked wound up like a spring coil in a children's cheap metal toy.

Her phone’s faces looked up at her as she into it. Her eyes' focus did not falter.

Despite her close attention, she couldn't care less about anything she was looking at. Fliping down and down and away, her finger in the perfect position to move. She had enjoyed a few of them, even laughing. One video involved two men toss large pieces of metal on screen and she fliped away and a sketch involving the same person acting out each role with text over there forehead and she flipped before the punchline and “the latest marvel movie is good because...“and she flipped away and a highlights of a ridiculous reddit story that could not have happened and she fliped away and a video of wild animals jumping onto the deck of a boat and she watched its full three seconds and she realized she had to go to bed because she had a meeting the next morning and she flipped away to another video maybe try to check out Instagram next? Maybe she'd watch the latest documentary on YouTube but important educational politics stuff popped up. She'd watch the documentary after this last one. Maybe this next one is the last one?

There are three types of magic.

  1. Magic that Gandalf does when his staff glows.
  2. Magic that I do when I amaze and inspire you with my awesome blog posts.
  3. Magic that rocket scientists do. I HATE STEM.

So let's talk about the first and the second. Not the third because I HATE STEM

(and because it's probably just a really convoluted version of the second one).

part one: The first type of magic: Magic

Gandalf is a fictional character despite how many Gandalf/reader fics you degenerate scum are reading. Sure fictional characters are real, but that's because concepts are real. A a concept Gandalf is real, but Istari wizards are not flesh and bones touching and having sex with you. Get a grip kiddo, Magic is not real.

But like in that last paragraph I was being really mean and cruel to you. Infact I was deliberately imitating the style of youtuber CJ the X who is copying/satirizing the old dad mean man archetype who tells you what to do. I was being really mean to you, my reader, right there.

I should be nicer. Magic with a big M could be real. Like I mean I have no idea if it is real, or not.

Living French philosopher (not many of those) Quentin Meillassoux thinks that literally anything is possible to happen at any moment. His entire philosophy is based on it. For him everything exists in hyper chaos, apparently. I have not actually read his book. So Magic could just pop into existence, even though currently we cannot see any Magic. He might be wrong though.

part two: The second type of magic: magic

magic is real. When I am watching a video by CJ the X I paying full attention whether I like it or not. I tried doing homework while watching CJ, but CJ is just too powerful and attention grabbing. They are literally controlling my mind.

magic is real, and it can be conjured through rhetoric, shiny pretty lights, and the allure of a deeper mystery. This is because art is magical, because it has something non-physical that controls behavior.

Money is very magical. People melt when they see money, and they become like Odysseus's men turned to pigs by Circe.

Goodness, like most vices, is very magical. You want to be good, don't you? You probably want sleep at night instead of dying over your sins and guilty feelings. You want Jordan Peterson to tell you that you are a good person or something like that.

A movie is like a ritual that draws you very close to it's beautiful metaphysical surface. This is because magic is an effect, or relationship. It's what draws you into something, or banishes you out with a circle of protection.

Anything can be magical though.

part three: The state of super nature

In days of yore, people ran free in the state of nature. The state of nature was when everyone was free, and killed each other. It's an idea some old British men conceived of to justify the existence of the monarchy. it's a bad tyrannical idea that misunderstands human nature.

There was/is also a state of super nature, as in supernatural power from the second magic.

In days of yore, the people and the spirits of the wilds ran free. People bent like the reeds under the feet of mighty lions. Demons ruled over our willpower like opium over 18th century nobility. These events are accurately depicted in The Legend of Korra, sequel to Avatar: the Last Airbender. In the past people lived in fear of magic's power and were squashed constantly. Eventually magic was exiled and banned, reserved for the church, and the academy only.

Should this ban be the case, or should we return to the state of super-nature? Or are we already in the state of super nature? Have we ever left? Does it still exist because bodies of propaganda rule over us? Are we in a state of super nature. Is this story even coherent?

The shimmering ghost haze is almost unseen in the starless skies. But it has to be there! Because the street signs brightly glow. Different car’s headlight beams fight for my tired eyes. A wonderful sight of natural machine magic, or a real life cinematic color show!

I grip my wheel loosely and I drive slowly. I stop at the red octagons from habit and memory. I watch the glowing beauty and I read other signs infrequently Distracted by the power of that nocturnal piece from the world's gallery.

High-beams bouncing into the street turning it white. The glowing patterns inside are a faint billion hues. You can see each lamppost beam scraping the night. Why can’t I explain to you why this is my muse?

But let's try anyway, despite the impossible challenge. The red, yellow, and green lights are always so dull by day. The sun’s sinister grip even blights traffic cones that are tangy orange. But by nightfall, and mistwake, the dryness is sent away.

Dazzle returns to the world, with eerie light expanding in the road’s colorful billowing mist cloak. So, The details of the colors and sign-words are blurring Because my windshield is Impressionist. Blurry, but crystalline in the roke.

My friend in the passenger seat and I bicker over what we’re seeing. “It’s like your looking a Van Gogh and saying it’s ugly” “No, it’s more like your giving divine meaning to a wall’s painting” But I’m happy and content to disagree with my friend freely.

The night is a nostalgic vision of a slowed down movie scene Each frame of the drive taken, piece by piece, one at a time My sleepiness transforms my sight into a museum of the serene I wade toward the unknown visual siren’s voice, a soft chime.

I look out across the lake who shines brighter than the mist

Blurred images like cities in the night In the neon images of a cyberpunk setting Are the beauty that lies before me in the light. The crickets' hum was hiding the noise of driving.

I am distracted by this foggy beauty, making others bored. “But it’s endless refraction and dreamy pale qualities!” are unlike the unremarkable guardrails, which I drift toward. “Money makes all art worse, produced in higher and higher qua-”

I have been an envious sower of anger and correction When I have perused the views and birthrights of others I have started to attack and send malediction There is no sound, except for breathy wuthers Reason’s fury boils without the final effortful battlecry of a lobster Only inaudible moans, and bitching, slowly sickening in jealous pain. Forming criticisms instead of winning deeds, I, a leech-blooded spinster prick my finger with my needle each time I scold “shame”