reading time: between simulacrumand literary legacy

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Monday, 3/29

The simulacral condition of hyperNetted textuality has become vertiginous, though still a kind of lowland (and very “noisy,” in the info sense). “Literary” textuality is very different, involving complex appreciation, giving time to reading, solitude.

memo from the library

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If you publish something, you want it read. You want to be influential.

There is so much published, and they all sought to be influential. Some lasted. Indeed, so much lasted, one might think that nearly everything that can be said about life, world, humanity, is said, waiting to be influential again, to be brought into another centripetal appreciation of legacies; or more, advancing what might last beyond our bones.

philosophy pre- and post-quake

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Long back in this posting trek, I quoted philosopher Philippa Foot quoting philosopher Normal Malcolm quoting his mentor Ludwig Wittgenstein on the latter’s deathbed, Ludwig saying he’d had a “good life”— not difficult when one comes from a wealthy family and has
the leisure to wander Cambridge, go away into the heights to write Philosophical Investigations, come back when he pleases.

a topologist in flatland

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The day can feel defined by a sense of living in two separate worlds
at once, where others, in casual relations, have apparently no idea of
the possibility, so we interact in common sense, with common sense, as if that’s everything. The other’s comfort may depend (I feel) on an unrealized common-sense attitude that wouldn’t know what that is as such (it seems to me), because there’s just “the” day, the world
in common. The notion of common-sense attitude only makes sense
(as such) relative to there being a different way of understanding
that becomes, relatively speaking, an “uncommon” attitude (the issue
of eccentricity again).

individuational writing on individuation

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Well, finally, the “individuation” section of the “conceptuality...” project is done. It’s intended to be read as is, without some background explanation. But I can’t let well enough alone, I guess. I’ve posted a background explanation.

inFlowering

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Self-reflectivity ultimately becomes a play of the world, the way that being in the world or inWorldness happens, worlds (verb), Self worlding, self-worlding in the play of things in reflection. The horizoning child is ultimately phenomenological. The artist plays, improvises, sketches, stands back to see whom she is now, changes his mind, plays more.

Self-reflectivity proximally may seem withdrawing, abstractive,
yet flowers into its self-horizoning.

So it goes—will go—beyond my discussion of individuation
for the “conceptuality...” project in its ending sense of flourishing.

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holding time in being held

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Persons make their own way by way of actualizing potential based within herself/himself, inasmuch as s/he’s true to his/her own venturing.

Unsightly slashes for a language lacking gender-neutral indicators.

Why not coin some neologisms: ‘hiers’ for “her/his”; ‘hiermself’ for “her/himself”? Is etymogeny malleable or what?

If individuation seeks gender balance—which was the Jungian-archetypal idea of Anima/Animus Shadowing on the way to one’s ownmost humanity in “the second half of life”—how are we to denote that female and male may each embody a balance of feminine and masculine?

At least, one may need the question for intimacies feeling all those so-gendered complementarities of Literature and psychology as ours, recountable in some singular way, as if in one name.

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December 10, 2019

OK, so ‘they’ gets to be Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Year” as non-gendered option. One can get used to that.

“Persons make their own way by way of actualizing potential based within themself, inasmuch as they are true to their own venturing.”

But my point above had been about gynandry (or androgyny): acknowledging gender balance in oneself, not washing away gender.
I wouldn’t say of you that I love them.

Of course, it’s very odd to highlight your gynandry by saying of you that I love hierm.

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wondering a way

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Friday, 3/19 — 6:41 am

Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Day”: wanderlust

My way into spring will be magniloquent.

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Friday / Saturday

Idealism is good. But it doesn’t presume actuality of the ideal.
It’s not a given by which others are evaluated. My idealism is
aspirational for myself, so I don’t regard myself as some exemplar
of ideality actualized. I want to be influential, but I don’t expect it.

value of individuation

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I don’t regularly go back in my blogs’ recent archives looking for threads, though I know I’ll find some when I do.

empathy through individuation

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This complements last month’s posting on genuineness in learning from the experience of others, as well as briefly addressing—one could argue (as I would)—the basis of caring about and desiring to care for others,
in parenting, teaching, and ethical life.

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