Torpedo the Ark Means: Everything's Funny (5th Anniversary Reflections on the Death of a Parakeet)

Sorry about your bird ...

The phrase torpedo the ark - borrowed from Ibsen - is polysemic. That is to say, it has multiple meanings within a semantic field and thus invites fluid interpretation, rather than fixed definition.

Having said that, when originally conceiving the blog, I wanted a title that would first and foremost sloganise the idea of having done with the judgement of God. This, for me at least, remains the core meaning of the phrase that underlies all others. Understand this, and you understand that torpedo the ark is opposed to all forms of coordinating authority and does not mean destroy all species of life.

Those who like to read it in the latter sense are welcome to do so, but it's mistaken to describe this blog as ecocidal, even if it is often anti-vitalist in its nihilism and ultimately regards the epiphenomenal occurrence of life as a very rare and unusual way of being dead. What's being negated here isn't bios in all its evolutionary variety, but the lie of salvation.

Crucially, torpedo the ark also means having the freedom to criticise everything under the sun - even if this risks offending others. Nothing is sacrosanct or off limits; everything can be targeted and everything can be ridiculed, mocked, or scorned because, as Larry David rightly informs his friend Richard Lewis, everything's funny - even the death of a beloved parakeet ...  

Note: I am referring to a scene in the first episode of the ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'Foisted!', dir. Jeff Schaffer, written by Larry David and Jeff Schaffer (2017): click here to watch on YouTube.  

On Nietzsche's Epicureanism

Edvard Munch: Friedrich Nietzsche 

(oil on canvas, 1906)

Whenever there's a lovely day like today - sunny and frost-bright, with blue skies and trees aflame with autumnal reds and golds - I think of Nietzsche in his cheerful mid-period writings gaily affirming the world and its eternal recurrence exactly as is.

That is to say, the Nietzsche who attempts to construct an ethos in the heroic-idyllic manner of Epicurus, delighting in modest pleasures and the cultivation of philosophical serenity [ἀταραξία].

As Keith Ansell-Pearson points out, Nietzsche's interest in Epicurus is, on the face of it, rather curious considering the plebeian aspects of the latter's thinking. And Nietzsche's relation to Epicurus is certainly ambiguous - increasingly so in his later work.

However, it's undeniably the case that during the late-1870s and early-1880s, Nietzsche was full of praise for this pleasure-loving ancient Greek and this is something that should be remembered by those who would portray Nietzsche as an austere philosopher who scorns all forms of hedonism as self-indulgence, or decadence. 

Ultimately, I agree with Ansell-Pearson that the essential thing is that, for Nietzsche, Epicurus's teaching demonstrates how best "to quieten our being and so help temper a human mind that is prone to neurosis". He helps us, as Larry David would say, curb our enthusiasm and not to care so much about great events, focusing instead on the little things that matter most (such as flowers, fresh figs, and friendship, for example).

There is an asceticism involved here. But it's an insouciant asceticism, or what one commentator describes as a eudaemonic asceticism, which is antithetical to those later Christian-moral practices of self-denial and world-negation.

When you add this together with the fact that Epicurus was one of the first Greek philosophers to reject superstitious worship of the gods based on fear, affirm the fact of life's mortality, and deny "any cosmic exceptionalism on the part of the human", and you begin to see why Nietzsche found him so attractive (and why, in turn, I find Nietzsche so congenial).


See: Keith Ansell-Pearson, 'Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing: Nietzsche and the Epicurean Tradition', Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Vol. 74, (July 2014), pp. 237-63. This essay can be read online via The Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP): click here.

Note: Ansell-Pearson's new book, Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy - which aims to provide a novel and thought-provoking examination of the mid-period writings - is published by Bloomsbury on 22 Feb 2018 and is available for pre-order on Amazon now: click here.

Shit Bow: Larry David and Roland Barthes on the Art of Japanese Etiquette

Larry David and a Japanese restaurant manager discuss 

bow techniques in Curb Your Enthusiasm [S8/E7]

When is a bow not a bow? Or, more precisely, when is a bow a disguised insult, rather than a sincere form of apology? The answer, according to Curb Your Enthusiasm, is when it's a shit bow ...

Having had his takeaway order messed up by his favourite Japanese restaurant due to insecure packaging, Larry seeks an apology from the manager (brilliantly played by Andrew Pang) - something which he duly receives, along with an accompanying bow much to his great delight: "We could learn a lot of things from Japan."  

However, although initially excited by the bow and expressly stating that it was not something with which he could possibly quibble, he later starts to worry that it was perfunctory, rather than invested with genuine feeling. Seeking to confirm his suspicions, Larry accosts a group of Japanese tourists in the park and asks to be enlightened on the finer points of bowing.

He is told that a sincere apology requires a deep bow and that the bow he received - which was not much more than an exaggerated nod in his direction - not only fails to express sorrow or regret, but is insulting and dismissive. In fact, Larry is told he has been given a shit bow and that no bow would be better than that bow. 

Armed with this new information, Larry returns to the restaurant in order to confront the manager. The latter, however, is uninterested in either apologising further, or discussing Japanese etiquette. Hoping that he might be able to quickly resolve the issue and get on with his job, he repeatedly tells Larry that a bow is a bow.

Of course, Larry being Larry, he's not going to let it go: "Is it possible", he asks, "you don't know the bow rules?" This naturally irritates the manager, who insists that he understands the bow rules perfectly and has done so since a young age: "I was raised by bow rules.'"

He's understandably not too pleased either to hear his bow described as a shit bow. But, if only to get Mr David to go away, he finally gives him the deep bow that the latter felt entitled to. A satisfied Larry finally leaves, but not without declaring his intention to research the matter further online.

It's a great series of scenes and one can't help wondering what it is that Larry thinks we might learn from Japan - or, rather, what he calls Japan. For like Barthes's Japan in Empire of Signs, Larry's Japan is essentially an imaginative space; somewhere faraway providing a reserve of features whose manipulation and invented interplay affords amusement and allows for the fantasy of a symbolic system that is entirely alien to that found in the West.

Indeed, as with most other things, people and places, Larry is essentially indifferent to the real Japan, living, as he does, almost exclusively in a comedic world of his own invention. What excites him is not so much "another metaphysics, another wisdom (though the latter might appear thoroughly desirable); it is the possibility of a difference, of a mutation, of a revolution in the propriety of symbolic systems".

In other words, Larry is excited by the possibility of previously unheard of rules and new forms of social minutiae. Unlike most Westerners, Larry doesn't regard formal displays of politeness, for example, as suspicious or as signs of hypocrisy. He genuinely loves the bow as he does all forms of coded behaviour - it's modern informality and inconsiderate behaviour (such as wearing shorts on an airplane, or pig-parking) that drive him nuts.

Larry doesn't buy into what Barthes terms the Occidental mythology of the person that allows for - and encourages - the free expression of one's natural feelings or authentic inner self. For this ultimately results in impolite and selfish behaviour. Larry wants society with all its complexity and artifice; for it's these things that provide him with his comic material. And, indeed, his ethics ...

See: 

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 8, Episode 7: 'The Bi-Sexual', dir. David Mandel, written by Larry David, Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer (2011). Click here to watch a clip on YouTube of the scene in the park; or here to watch the later scene in the restaurant.     

Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard, (Hill and Wang / Noonday Press, 1989), pp. 3-4. 

The Wisdom of Solomon 2: On the Grain of the Voice and Further Remarks on Lunacy

Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas)

simonsolomon.ink 

Dublin-based poet, critic and translator, Simon Solomon, has been kind enough to leave several lengthy comments on recent posts and I would like here to respond to some of his points, hopefully demonstrating the same intelligence, humour, and breadth of reading as this rather shadowy figure ...

I: On the Grain of the Voice [See: Bootylicious]

As a matter of fact - and I'm not entirely convinced I said anything in the Bootylicious post that implied otherwise - I'm not affirming "the beauty of male Welsh choirs for their proximity to the coal pits and the dust of Mother Earth". Barthes may love what he terms the grain of the voice, but I don't want to hear the blackness of the lungs, or the phlegm in the back of the throat, thank you very much.

In short, I don't like earthiness: but nor do I like those big, booming voices which tremble with powerful emotion and technical brilliance, or have what people like to think of as soul. If people absolutely must break into song, I prefer they do so quietly in a non-expressive, non-showoffy, slightly hesitant, slightly shy manner (perhaps not always hitting the right notes).

I don't care whether someone has a talent for singing because, ultimately, like Larry David, I can't stand the sound of the human voice; a trick of the larynx that, as you rightly point out Simon, is no longer so impressive in a predominantly visual culture.  

II: Further Remarks on Lunacy [See: On Lunacy]

I'm perfectly happy for you to number yourself amongst the lunatic fringe, Simon. And it's clear from some of your - shall we say more poetic - comments made in response to my post on the Moon and it's supposed effect upon human biology and behaviour, this is where you belong ...

So whilst, obviously, I'd rather be beneath the stars with Sylvia Plath than Roger Scruton, I'm not sure I'd want to attend a dinner party made up of "myth-making mavericks". Nor would I choose to consult with the latter if I wanted to learn something factual about the Moon (i.e., about the real body orbiting the Earth and not the spooky object that some think is made of cheese).

Can you not at least concede the possibility that one might discover something more amazing about the Moon from astronomers and physicists, than from artists and poets? Or do you really believe that even William McGonagall has more to offer us than, for example, Brian Cox?

Actually, despite the two studies you cite, there really is scant evidence for any significant lunar effect on either surgical or criminal activity and the thirty-three-year old article by C. P. Thakur and Dilip Sharma is - I would have thought - clearly nonsense. See Eric Chuder, Bad Moon Rising: The Myth of the Full Moon (2014), which explains why this is so.

As I indicated in the post, there are many people - including politicians, doctors, and police officers - who believe in the lunar effect; just as there are many otherwise perfectly respectable and perfectly reasonable individuals advocating alternative therapies, including homeopathy.

Your argument from intuition that because the Moon's gravity "can move something as vast as an ocean" it must be able to affect "our small and frangible human bodies", is the exact opposite of how things actually work - a kind of pataphysical denial of reality or, at the very least, a misconception regarding the laws of physics in relation to scale.

(Just so you know, the gravitational pull of the moon on a human body is less than that exercised by a mosquito on your arm; measurable, but bordering on the infinitesimal. Or, to put it another way, when a mother holds her new born baby in her arms, she exerts approximately twelve millions times more tidal force on the infant than the moon overhead.)  

Finally, yes, of course, the human body is an open system; otherwise, as you rightly say, we'd "all be living like autists, psychotics and sad, solitary sacks" (in fact we'd not be living at all, as we obviously need to eat, breathe, and excrete waste materials to sustain our existence and these activities require openness and exchange).

But it's quite a leap to then say there are "no such things as individual bodies" and humanity is "one collective cosmic contagion"... This may be true at a philosophical-libidinal-psychic level, but it's certainly not the only truth. For there's also the truth of singular being; that I am I, you are you, and I am not you, you are not me, and that the Universal Oneness of Humanity is a lie (and a dangerous one).

Every man and every woman is a star, wrote Aleister Crowley. Which means, according to Lawrentian protagonist Rupert Birkin:

"'At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude ourselves that love is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does not meet and mingle, and never can.'"

- D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love

In other words, if you want to live a cosmic life, burning like a tiny sun or as cold and mysterious as the Moon, then you must become starkly inhuman; beyond speech and feeling, beyond responsibility and obligation, beyond understanding ...

We don't need to open ourselves up to others, Simon, or serenade them by the light of the silvery moon; we need, rather, to come into a strange conjunction or equilibrium with them as singular beings. Or something like that ...

Note: readers interested in part one of this post - On Sincerity, Authenticity, Black Sheep and Scapegoats - should click here.

Identity is the Crisis Can't You See

Cover of the English translation by David Schreiber 

(Arktos, London, 2013) 

Markus Willinger's Die identitäre Generation is not so much a book as a pamphlet, to paraphrase Larry David discussing Jason Alexander's equally flimsy (but doubtless more profound and challenging) text, Acting Without Acting. 

Either way - book or pamphlet - it's probably one of the most badly written works ever published; certainly the worst I've had the misfortune to read in a long, long time. If this is the best that a graduate student of history and politics from the University of Stuttgart and darling of the alternative Right can muster, then (a) the German education system is in trouble and (b) the identitarian movement is even more ideologically vacuous than one might have imagined.  

Willinger disingenuously claims his work is not a manifesto, but this is precisely what it is; a succinct and clear declaration of his views on what's wrong in Europe today, who's to blame - the soixante-huitards - and what future changes should be made. What the work doesn't do - despite what it says on the back-cover blurb - is move seamlessly between radical politics and existential philosophy. Nor does it set out its arguments (such as they are) in a poetic fashion.

Rather, it remains stuck in a reactionary rut and relies upon the ugly, prosaic and völkisch-organic language of fascism, or what Victor Klemperer characterized as the lingua tertii imperii. A standardized and stereotypical language which lacks all nuance and loveliness, all subtlety or sophistication; a language that forever speaks with one tone: loud, monotonous, and threatening - like the barking of an Alsatian dog.         

It's certainly not the German used by Goethe, Heine, or Rilke. It makes a noise, yes, and it continues to pass the word along along, but it creates no sense of communion as George Steiner would say. Willinger gives us dead metaphors and ready-made slogans in place of ideas; his writing lacks vitality, style, and, above all, humour. It does, however, successfully mix common vulgarity and prejudice with high flights of romantic twaddle and fatal amounts of saccharine pathos.

The pamphlet-manifesto is divided into forty-one chapters and a brief Preface in which Willinger writes of a (prepare to yawn) crisis of the European spirit, which he blames on the post-War generation and their corrupt theories that have "determined the social discourse ... and dominated all the dialogues"[80] for the last fifty years or so.

Speaking on behalf of his own generation, born shortly before the Millennium, Willinger demands a return to fixed identities, real values, and traditional family life; a return which will, apparently, mean an end to boredom and loneliness - as well as to the twin evils of multiculturalism and feminism. For the "perpetual, deep resentment" [25] that Willinger openly admits to feeling and which shapes his thinking, expresses itself not only in the form of  racism, but also misogyny and homophobia.

And thus, it's not only the artists and intellectuals associated with May 1968 (the month and year of my own birth) who are to blame for making poor Markus feel so bad about himself and his life, it's also the immigrants (particularly the Muslims), the abortionists, the queers, the perverts and the scowling feminists ... Oh, and it's also the Americans and the big corporations who have "inflicted countless and terrible wounds on our planet" [74] with their irresponsible greed (like every good Nazi, Willing is a romantic anti-capitalist at heart who adores Nature and values every tree and every mountain as sacred).

Not that he wants to "damn and demonize" [46] anybody of course. He just wants the above to learn how to be a little bit more like him; that is to say, someone ready to die for the one great thing that provides a final refuge ...LOVE! In this world of pain and sorrow, writes Willinger, the highest goal and greatest happiness is to find true love.

But of course, as much as Willinger may talk of love and want to receive such, like all men of ressentiment he doesn't know how to give love. And so he quickly recoils back into hate and the language of violence, fantasizing about life not in the bedroom, but the barracks: "If there is any masculinity, honour, and camaraderie today, the credit is due, above all, to the hard training that men received in the army." [85]

Not surprisingly, therefore, Willinger wants a return to compulsory military service, so that all young men might be taught how to obey orders, how to fight, and how to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Perhaps they'll also be taught how to recognise real beauty: for although Willinger concedes that "there is no accounting for taste and every attempt at defining a definitive aesthetic standard is inherently impossible" [93], he knows good art when he sees it - "the sort that stands in unity with the natural world, the sort that radiates pride and glory, that represents something real and in which we can find meaning" [94].

Not modern art, obviously, which is formless and fragmented. And stomach turning.   

Finally, bringing his manifesto to a close, Willinger calls for brave, passionate action. And weapons. He promises that a final verdict will shortly be passed upon people like me who are responsible for the downfall of mankind and the ruin of the world; nihilists who knowingly destroy everything holy and fight against everything natural; queers for whom the concept of identity is a crisis in and of itself.

To be honest, one rather hopes it'll be a death sentence, if only so one never has to read any more of his appalling books ...  

On Not Taking Any Shit From Magicians

The fact that there is a dark and primitive religious subtext to National Socialism is surely indisputable. Many top-ranking Nazis clearly had esoteric obsessions and controversy only arises when we try to assess the influence of these obsessions upon their political thinking.  

Hitler's position in relation to this question remains somewhat ambiguous however - despite the huge amount of serious research and often crackpot speculation in this area. On the one hand, he did have some knowledge of Ariosophical ideas and did seem, in part, to endorse views first advocated by racial mystics such as Guido von List.    

On the other hand, however, Larry David is right to say that one of Hitler's more admirable traits is that he didn't take any shit from magicians, occultists, or the preposterous and posing völkisch crowd with their neo-pagan pretensions. This is clear from the following passage in Mein Kampf:

"The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old German heroism, about dim prehistory ... but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined ... they make a ridiculous impression on the broad masses ... For all this, these people are boundlessly conceited; despite all proofs of their complete incompetence ... Especially with the so-called religious reformers on an old Germanic basis, I always have the feeling that they are sent by those powers which do not want the resurrection of our people." 

 
  - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Hutchinson, 1989), pp. 327-28. 

Whilst Hitler may share in the reactionary politics, revolutionary dreams and Wagnerian fantasies of the above, he ultimately wants nothing to do with them. Lanz von Liebenfels may have regarded Hitler as one of his pupils, but the latter did not acknowledge him as one of his masters; in fact, he never even mentioned his name in any recorded speech, conversation, or written document. I think this is evidence of more than mere ingratitude. Hitler may have read Ostara whilst a young man in Vienna and it may have helped shape his Manichean and apocalyptic worldview, but ... well, I refer you again to the Larry David line above.  

We must conclude that Hitler was always more concerned with Realpolitik and exercising industrial and military muscle, than with mystical fantasy and the impotent posturing of magicians. The NSDAP under his leadership and control became a powerful war machine radically different in character to any of the secret societies or occult orders that are sometimes said to have paved the way for it.  

Note: This post is based on a revised and edited section of a paper presented at Treadwell's Books on March 18th, 2008 and which can be found in Volume IV of The Treadwell's Papers (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). The original artwork for the paper appears above.

Why Being Offended Doesn't Justify Bear Attacks on Children

Despite what Larry David argues with the neighbourhood cops in a classic episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (S2/E3), it's difficult to fully accept that being called a bald asshole by some local teenage girls constitutes a hate crime. It's impertinent, yes - and one can see that it might be hurtful to more sensitive members of the bald community - but it hardly warrants police action or being accorded the same degree of seriousness as the use of racial slurs for example, or homophobic abuse. 

Still, Larry's demand that a form of official reprimand be forthcoming - if only a stern word with the parents - is as nothing compared to what happens when the prophet and miracle-worker Elisha is also mocked for being a bald asshole in the second Book of Kings, 2:23-24. 

Making his way to the town of Bethel, about ten miles from Jerusalem, Elisha is accosted by a large group of youths who make fun of his baldness and challenge him to ascend unto heaven in a whirlwind like his master Elijah: Rise up baldy! they jeer. In response, Elisha calls down swift and savage retribution upon them: God bringing forth two she-bears from the woods who maul over forty of the youths.

It sounds insane and, of course, like most of the Bible, it is insane - not to mention morally indefensible; a divine act of psychotic overreaction and disproportionate cruelty at the behest of a delusional fraudster who is today venerated as a saint!

When will religious people learn that whilst they have the right to be offended, they don't have the right not to be offended; nor to extract violent and bloody revenge upon those who are deemed to have caused offence - be this in the form of suicide bombings or the unleashing of wild animals.

       

The Trial of the New York Four

Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer with their lawyer, Jackie Chiles,
in 'The Finale' (S9 E23/24). Originally broadcast May 14, 1998.

Everyone loves a good trial and one might almost be tempted to bookend Western civilization between the trial of Socrates in 399 BC and the Seinfeld trial almost two and a half thousand years later in 1998.

In the former case, an Athenian gadfly is accused of impiety and instilling the younger generation with a morally nihilistic and disrespectful attitude via his uniquely provocative mixture of irony, sophistry and dialectics. Found guilty, he is sentenced to death, which he willingly accepts by drinking the hemlock provided. 

In the latter case, which is my main concern here, an American smart alec and professional comedian is - along with his three friends - accused of contravening article 223-7 of the Latham Massachusetts Penal Code; i.e. the so-called Good Samaritan Law, which requires citizens to actively help or assist anyone in danger as long as it is reasonable for them to do so. 

Also found guilty, Jerry Seinfeld, Elaine Benes, George Costanza, and Kosmo Kramer are given a year in jail in order that they might reflect upon the manner in which they have conducted themselves in relation to society. In passing sentence, Judge Vandelay speaks of the "callous indifference and utter disregard for everything that is good and decent" that the four have repeatedly demonstrated. In this he echoes the sentiments of the prosecuting district attorney, who, in his opening statement, told the jury that the defendants not only ignored but mocked the victim of a violent crime and that they each had a long history of vain, greedy, selfish, and immature behaviour which often resulted in the abuse and deception of others.

To many fans of the show, this caused an uncomfortable moment; their own guilt and complicity ruthlessly exposed by the writer Larry David. They doubtless didn't want or anticipate a happy ending - but this was brutal. And many have not forgiven him to this day. However, the fact is Socrates was not falsely accused and convicted and neither were the New York Four. And, with a magnificently cynical form of stoicism and noble indifference, they accepted their prison sentence just as the ancient philosopher accepted death: no tears, no complaints, no appeals. 

And still - above all else - no hugging, no learning. 

Thus it is that the greatest TV show ends with its protagonists behind bars and still trapped in the magic circle of their own solipsism as Jerry lectures George once more and for all eternity on how the position of the second button literally makes or breaks a shirt.    

Dare to See the World Through Deaf Eyes

Sometimes, I like to pretend that I'm deaf and I try to imagine what it would be like not to be able to hear ... 
It's not so bad.

Perhaps we should all try like Larry to imagine what it would be like not to be able to hear and dare to see the world through deaf eyes. Perhaps we'd find the silence beautiful. And liberating as well as instructive.

For to live in a soundless, speechless world without birdsong or the insistence of the human voice, is not to live without contact or to be loveless: we do not become fish simply because we surrender our ears and enter a mute but amazingly dexterous world of sign and physical gesture.

But, of course, most people will never concede the point that the profoundly deaf are neither disabled nor stupid. For audism is deeply-rooted within our culture and draws philosophical support from what Derrida has identified as phonocentrism: i.e. the belief that the voice is the privileged medium of truth and meaning and that hearing is the deepest of all the senses, sound acting directly upon the great affective centres of being.

Until we deconstruct, or, if you prefer, curb our enthusiasm for this metaphysical prejudice, then we will continue to remain enthralled by orality and continue to discriminate against those who cannot hear and find the idea of reading lips offensive and humiliating.