A Philosopher's Guide to Home Decorating 1: Always Use a Paintbrush Not a Roller

Deutsche Philosophen malen lieber mit Pinseln 

(SA/2022)

 

 

We all know the advantages of working with a roller rather than a brush; thanks to its porous character, the former holds far more paint and provides a thin, even coat over a larger surface area.

 

Thus it is that rollers are much favoured by those who worry about saving time and money, which is probably the majority of people drifting round Homebase like DIY zombies.   

But even if the roller is a faster and more economical method of painting walls and ceilings, as a philosopher I continue to advocate for the use of a fine set of brushes and decorating slowly with great care taken over every stroke, so as to create a more textured and individual look.   

 

Ultimately, the paintbrush is a genuine hand tool (and thing) in the way that a roller is not. 

 

That is to say, when one paints with a brush, one works in a blind fashion that is determined by the body (its pleasures and fatigues); when one uses a roller, the mind is very much directing things and the eyes remain wide open at all times. 

 

I don't know if Heidegger ever painted his mother's house, as I am now doing, but he certainly knew a thing or two about the vital importance of what he termed handwork (which, rather surprisingly perhaps, also includes thinking) [1].     

 

Just as the typewriter degrades the art of writing, so does the roller degrade the art of painting [2]. Take a brush in your hand and paint with it and you will understand that, in its essence, it is more than merely useful - it is reliable. 

What does that mean? 

 

Well, according to Heidegger, the reliability of things (as things) - be they tools or items of footwear - consists in the fact that they "embed human beings in those relations to the world that make life stable" [3].

 

A roller is reliable only in the most banal sense of the word, exhausting itself in pure functionality. It might allow you to quickly add colour to the walls of a property, but it won't allow you to paint a dwelling place (any more than email allows you to compose a love letter). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See my post 'You Need Hands' (1 June 2019), for remarks on Heidegger's love of the human hand: click here. 

 

[2] Readers are reminded of my three part series of posts reflecting on the typewriter published in June 2019: click here, for example, to read part one on the case of Martin Heidegger and the Schreibmaschine.   

 

[3] Byung-Chul Han, Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), p. 69. 

 

 

On the Necessity of Killing Carpet Moths

Trichophaga tapetzella [1]

 

 

I.

 

I have always liked moths. Indeed, I once wrote a post in praise of them: click here.

 

And even when they ate holes in my favourite Vivienne Westwood jumper, I didn't complain and figured it was not only in keeping with a punk aesthetic, but ethically the right thing to allow these little winged creatures the right to feast freely; they've got to live, after all.    

 

However, a £200 piece of knitwear is one thing and a £2000 pure new wool carpet is something else, and I fear that my fondness for moths and wanting to do the right thing by them won't stop me reaching for a spray gun should they start to munch away at my Axminster ... 

 

 

II.

 

Now never in my life have I sprayed a living thing: I never wanted to. I always felt insecticides very repugnant: sinister, mean. Other people could spray if they wanted to. Myself, individually, it was repugnant to even try. 

 

But something slowly hardens in a man's soul. And I know now, it has hardened in mine. One must be able to spray carpet moths if they threaten one's home. For wherever man establishes himself  upon the earth, he has to fight for his place, against other forms of life. [2]

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Once common, this species of moth is now quite rare in the UK. The larvae feed on naturally-occurring fibrous material such as hair, fur, or feathers and are typically found in birds' nests (or carpets). The picture is a modified version of a photo of an adult specimen located at the Mississippi Entomological Museum.

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence writing in 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 353-54.

 

Cat Killer / Cat Saviour

The Gayer-Anderson Cat

britishmuseum.org

 

I. The Case of Steven Bouquet

ITV recently broadcast a particularly distressing documentary about the Sussex Police investigation into the murder of several cats by security guard (and former Royal Navy gunner) Steven Bouquet, in 2018-19. 

 

Jailed for five years and three months in September 2021, Bouquet was found to have killed nine cats in total and injured seven more with a knife in and around the Brighton area, during a campaign of wilful and sustained cruelty. The police suspect he may have actually harmed or killed as many as forty cats. 

Personally, I take an ancient Egyptian line when it comes to punishing those who kill cats, but English law has no provision for capital punishment. Still, I'm pleased to report that Bouquet died in January of this year, whilst still refusing to admit his guilt and to apologise for the pain and suffering he caused.

 

May the goddess Bastet devour his soul. 

 

 

II. The Case of Robert Brantley

 

On a happier note, it's nice to know that there are kind-hearted ailurophiles like Robert Brantley in the world ...

 

Upon discovering a tiny kitten at the side of the road and fearing for its safety, Brantley decided to play the good Samaritan and rescue the abandoned creature, only to then be ambushed by a dozen other kittens hiding in the long grass, all looking for protection and meowing at his feet, as can be seen in this video on YouTube: click here.

 

Clearly surprised and a little overwhelmed, Brantley initially informs the kittens that he can't take them all. However, because he has a big heart, I'm pleased to say Brantley did take all thirteen cats home with him, where they are presently being fed and cared for. 

  

Brantley plans to keep at least two or three of the kittens - including the one he initially stopped to rescue - and distribute the rest amongst friends and neighbours in Louisana.

 

May the goddess Bastet bring blessings upon him and his family.    

 

 

Note: for a related post requesting kindness to cats, click here.  

 

External link: Cats Protection: cats.org.uk

Anti-Human Reflections on the Red-Billed Leiothrix

Leiothrix lutea

 

 

I. 

 

In a country in which insect numbers have fallen a staggering 65% in the last twenty years and other factors, such as agricultural intensification and habitat destruction, are all making survival increasingly difficult for our feathered friends, it's surprising that any foreign bird species would decide to try its luck and make the move to England.

 

However, that's just what the red-billed leiothrix - known by some as the Pekin robin or the Japanese nightingale - has decided to do; much to the horror and outrage of those who fear this brightly-coloured subtropical songbird will colonise our gardens, threaten native bird populations, and change the dawn chorus for ever ...

 

It's a familiar tale: the same people who hate ring-necked parakeets hate these little birds. And they always justify their opposition to the invasive species on the same grounds; namely, a desire to safeguard the survival of native creatures, although they don't seem to have done a very good job of that over the last 50 years, during which time tens of millions of birds have disappeared from our skies.  

One might have imagined, therefore, that they would welcome these newcomers, who have been recorded in several parts of the country. 

 

But not so: a tiny number of red-billed leiothrixes spotted in southern England and thought to have escaped from captivity - not flown here directly from China and not known to be successfully breeding - has got them worked up into a frenzy: Non-native species are never a good thing, sometimes they’re neutral, but they're never positive, as one expert put it.

 

II. 

 

Meanwhile, I heard today on the news that ten thousand human migrants have (illegally) crossed the Channel in small boats and set foot on British shores so far this year (after 28,500 arrived in 2021), ever increasing the UK human population and transforming England into the most overcrowded (and nature-depleted) large nation in Europe.   

 

Personally, I'd like to see far more birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects and far fewer people on these islands and would happily support an extensive programme of rewilding and depopulation in order to increase biodiversity. For frankly, the latter isn't going to happen without the former. 

 

Ultimately, I agree with Birkin, there's no thought more beautiful or cleaner than a world empty of people and full of birdsong.   

She Never Lied to Us: Reflections on the Case of Irena Dubrovna

Simone Simon as Irena Dubrovna in  

Cat People (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1942)

 

She was marked with the curse of those who slink and mate and kill by night ...

 

 

The 1942 psychological and supernatural suspense - I wouldn't call it a horror movie - Cat People is the fascinating tale of a beautiful and mysterious fashion illustrator in New York; Serbian-born Irena Dubrovna (played by the kitten-faced - but said to be temperamental - French actress Simone Simon).

 

Crazy as it sounds to her new apple-pie loving husband and the creepy psychiatrist he persuades her to visit, Irena believes herself - rightly as it turns out - to be descended from an ancient race of ailuranthropes who shapeshift (or metamorphose) into panthers when emotionally (or sexually) aroused.        

 

Her foreignness combined with her feline qualities make her doubly exotic and doubly attractive to those of us who identify as xenophiles and cat lovers, although she undoubtedly would make a problematic wife or girlfriend, unless one happens to have a fetishistic desire to be killed and possibly eaten by a wild animal (which I don't, but some people do).    

 

Several critics have described Cat People as boring and Simone Simon's acting as poor. But, having recently rewatched the film on TV, I would challenge this. The film may not be sensational, unlike many contemporary films, but it has a subtle understanding of shadowplay and the sexual politics of the period. 

 

Further, as far as I can see Miss Simon does a perfectly fine job in the role of Irena, one of the strangest characters in mid-20th century American cinema; a woman soothed by the sound of lions roaring and who finds the darkness friendly.     

 

One only wishes that the character could have embraced her nature and acknowledged her kinship with the feline-looking woman (played by Elizabeth Russell) who addresses her in a Serbian restaurant on her wedding night as moja sestra. 

 

And it might also have been satisfying to have seen Irena use her claws on Oliver, her patient but patronising (and ultimately unfaithful) husband (played by Kent Smith) and his co-worker-cum-mistress, Alice (Jane Randolph), as she does on the sleazy shrink (and sexual predator) Dr. Judd (Tom Conway) who, having dismissed her fears as irrational and infantile - and having threatened to have her locked up - attempts to seduce Irena, thus triggering the fatal transformation from woman to panther.

 

If things don't end well for Dr. Judd, then, sadly, things don't end well for Irena either and she too lies dead at the end of the film, thereby leaving the path clear for Oliver and Alice to marry and live happily ever after in a world no longer threatened by Irena's inhuman otherness [1].    

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Actually, that wasn't quite the case: in The Curse of the Cat People (dir. Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise, 1944), Oliver and Alice (played once more by Kent Smith and Jane Randolph) are now married and have a six-year-old daughter, Amy (Ann Carter), an extremely introverted child with a predilection for fantasy, who befriends the ghost of her father's deceased first wife, Irena (again played by Simone Simon). 

      Although sharing some of the same cast and characters - and clearly marketed as a sequel by RKO studio executives hoping to cash in on the success of their 1942 release - The Curse of the Cat People has little relationship to Cat People. Interestingly, however, its critical reputation has grown over the years and it is now seen by some as an enchanting and complex study of child psychology disguised as a ghost story.     

To watch the original trailer for Cat People, click here. 

 

To read a related post from May 2017 on woman-as-animal (with reference to a picture of Naomi Campbell by David LaChapelle entitled Cat House), click here.   

Notes on Byung-Chul Han's 'Non-things' (Part 2)

Byung-Chul Han: author of Non-things,

trans. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2022).

Page references given in the post refer to this work.

 

 

Note: This post is a continuation. To go to part one (sections I - VI), click here. We continue our reflections on Byung-Chul Han's new book by discussing things in their evil and magical aspects ...

 

 

VII.

 

Han argues that things have lost their malevolent or villainous character; that objects, if you like, no longer seek revenge upon subjects - even when those subjects are cartoon mice or silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin. Material reality has become a safe space and offers no resistance or dangers. 

 

Things, in short, are now subordinate to our control and "even Mickey Mouse leads a digital, smart and immaterial life [...] and no longer collides with physical reality" [47]. Now there's an app for everything and a quick solution to all life's problems. Objects behave themselves; even if we build our world upon their backs, they'll no longer attempt to shrug us off. 

 

But, just in case those pesky objects are still up to no good when we're not around to keep an eye on them, we have invented the Internet of Things: "The infosphere puts things in chains. [...] It tames things and turns them into servants catering to our needs." [49]

 

In the past, we accepted the independence of things; the kettle might start whistling before we were ready to make the tea; the door might start creaking or the window begin to rattle in the middle of the night, keeping us awake. 

 

Even Sartre remained familiar "with what it means to be touched by things" [50] and this filled the protagonist of Nausea (1938) with terror. On the other hand, for Rilke things emanated warmth and he fantasised about sleeping with his beloved objects. 

 

But then things cooled down and no longer warmed us, touched us, or seduced us. And now, things are not even frigid: 

 

"They have neither cold nor warmth; they are worn out. All their vitality is waning. They no longer represent a counterpart to humans. They are not opposing bodies. Who, today, feels looked at, or spoken to, by things? [...] Who feels threatened or enchanted by things?" [52].

Perhaps a handful of object-oriented philosophers and a small number of objectum sexuals - but that's about it. It's a bit depressing to realise just how poor in world we have become as we sit staring at screens (and this has nothing to do with the so-called cost of living crisis or rising inflation):

"The digital screen determines our experience of the world and shields us from reality. [...] Things lose their gravity, their independent life and their waywardness" [52], says Han. And he's right. 

 

Right also to argue the impossibility of forming a genuine relation with a world that consists more and more of digital objects (or non-things). People talk about a mental health crisis, but depression is "nothing other than a pathologically intensified poverty in world" [53].   

 

VIII.

Han argues that we perceive the world primarily through (and as) information. Information not only covers the world, but "undermines the thing level of reality" [56] in all its intensity of presence. 

 

One way to counter this would be to establish a magical relationship with the world that is not characterised by representation, but by touch (an idea that will appeal to witches and Lawrentians alike). This is really just a question of greater attentiveness paid to things as things and forgetting of self for a moment or two: "When the ego gets weak, it is able to hear that mute thing language." [57] 

 

This may of course be disturbing, but Han wants human beings to be disturbed by the world; to be "moved by something singular" [58], to be penetrated from behind and below, so that we are thrown into a condition of radical passivity and presence is allowed to burst in. This is what creates epiphanic moments (as well as erotic joy). 

Apart from magic, there's also art ... At its best, art creates things, or material realities that are born of handwork, as Rilke says. 

 

A poem, for example, has a "sensual-physical dimension that eludes its sense" [60]. And it is because a poem exceeds the signifier and isn't exhausted by its meaning, that it constitutes a thing. One doesn't simply read a poem - any more than one simply drinks a glass of fine wine - both invite one to experience and enjoy them (to know their body, as it were).

 

Unfortunately, art is - according to Byung-Chul Han - moving away from this materialist understanding of its own practice. And what is particularly depressing about today's art "is its inclination to communicate a preconceived opinion, a moral or political conviction: that is, its inclination to communicate information" [64].  

 

In brief: "Art is seized by a forgetfulness of things [...] It wants to instruct rather than seduce." [64]  

 

Artworks today lack silence, lack stillness, lack secrecy; instead, they shout and insist that we interact with them. This probably explains why I would now rather sit in my backgarden amongst the daisies, than visit a bookshop, gallery, or theatre.   

 

 

IX.

I'm going to refrain from commenting at length or in detail upon sections in Han's new book dealing with Kakfa's struggle against ghosts and the philosophical importance of the hand in the work of Martin Heidegger (something I have previously discussed in a couple of posts published in June of 2019: click here and here).   

 

However, I very much like Han's observation that, were he alive today, the former would reluctantly resign himself to the fact that "by inventing the internet, email and the smartphone, the ghosts had won their final victory over mankind" [54] [a]. 

 

And it's always good to be reminded how the latter raised his hand (and stomped his foot) in a vain attempt to defend the terrestrial world against the digital order. He was a bit of a Nazi, but it's hard not to admire many aspects of Heidegger's thinking. But, as Han concedes, human beings have long since stopped dwelling between Earth and Sky:

 

"Human beings soar up towards the un-thinged [unbedingtheit], the unconditioned [...] towards a transhuman and post-human age in which human life will be a pure exchange of information. [...] Digitilization is a resolute step along the way towards the abolition of the humanum. The future of humans seems mapped out: humans will abolish themselves in order to posit themselves as the absolute." [72]

 

There will be no things close to our hearts - but that won't matter, for we won't have hearts, nor hands, feet, or genitals in the disembodied time to come. 

 

What was that line from Proverbs again ...? [b]

 

 

X.      

 

Why do so many people have headaches today? (I have one now.)

 

Could it be because the world is so restless and noisy; because no one knows how to keep still and stay silent; because no one can close their eyes or shut their fucking mouths for a moment?

 

As Arthur Fleck says: "Everybody is awful these days. It's enough to make anyone crazy. [...] Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy." [c] 

 

But you don't have to be a mentally ill loner to recognise this - Byung-Chul Han pretty much tells us the same thing: "Hypercommunication, the noise of communication, desecrates the world, profanes it." [76] 

 

Learning to listen is a crucial skill; as is learning to be still if you wish to know the transcendent joy of the Greater Day and gaze with wonder upon the immensity of blue (this includes the blue of the sky, the blue of the sea, or the blue of a butterfly's wing, for example). 

 

But, paradoxically, learning to gaze also involves learning how to close one's eyes and look away, because gazing has an imaginative component. And that's important, for as Han writes:

 

"Without imagination, there is only pornography. Today, perception itself has something pornographic about it. It has the form of immediate contact, almost of a copulation of image and eye. The erotic takes place when we close our eyes. [...]

      What is so ruinous about digital communication is that it means we no longer have time to close our eyes. The eyes are forced into a 'continuous voracity'. They lose the capacity for stillness, for deep attentiveness." [79]

 

Staring at a screen is not the same as gazing at the sky; if the latter produces wonder, the former results only in eyestrain and a slavish inability not to react to every stimulus (which, as Nietzsche pointed out, is symptomatic of exhaustion and spiritual decline). Noble and healthy souls know that doing nothing is better than being hyperactive; that philosophy, for example, is born from idleness. 

 

Han terms this ability to do nothing negative potentiality:

 

"It is not a negation of positive potential but a potential of its own. It enables spirit to to engage in still, contemplative lingering, that is, deep attentiveness. [...] Stillness can be restored only by a strengthening of negative potentiality." [82] 

And where is all this leading? Towards the loss of identity - the surrender of self - towards happy anonymity: "Only in stillness, in the great silence, do we enter into a relation with the nameless, which exceeds us [...]" [83]

 

 

XI.

Byung-Chul Han closes his book with an excurses which begins with him falling off his bicycle (talk about the villainy of things) and then falling in love with a jukebox (talk about things close to the heart).  

Han likes old jukeboxes from the 1950s; they are erotico-magical things to him which "makes listening to music a highly enjoyable visual, acoustic and tactile experience" [87]. The records played on the jukebox give him "a vague sense that the world back then must have been somehow more romantic and dream-like than it is today" [88].  

Admitting that Heidegger would probably not have been a fan of the jukebox, Han insists nevertheless that apart from playing tunes, it imparts presence and intensifies being, which is something Alexa can never do.

 

This does kind of hint at the fact that Han awards thing status to whatever objects he happens to favour: J’aime, je n’aime pas - Oh, Miss Brodie, you are Barthesian ...

 

  

Notes

 

[a] I keep telling members of the D. H. Lawrence Society that whilst Zoom is extensive it lacks intensity and that being connected is not the same as being in an actual relation. Like it or not, digital communication negates physical presence and "accelerates the disappearance of the other" [55]. 

      Unfortunately, they either do not listen, do not understand, or do not seem to care. To read my post on this subject: click here. 

[b] I'm referring to Proverbs 4:23: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." According to Byung-Chul Han, this was placed above the front door to Heidegger's house. 

[c] Joaquin Phoenix in the role of Arthur Fleck (Joker) speaking to Robert De Niro's character Murray Franklin (shortly before shooting him) in Joker (dir. Todd Philips, 2019): click here to watch on YouTube. 

 

 

Musical bonus: as Byung-Chul Han loves French singers and jukeboxes so much, here's Serge Gainsbourg on TV in 1965 performing Le claquer de doigts.

 

    

Notes on Byung-Chul Han's 'Non-things' (Part 1)

 

Polity Press (2022) [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Once upon a time, to value material objects - or things - was seen as some kind of moral failure; a sign that one lacked spiritual refinement; that one was greedy, vulgar, and superficial.

 

But times have changed and, today, more and more people are waking up to the fact that if they wish to do more than live their entire lives in a virtual universe, then they had better find a way to reconnect with actual objects which provide a (relatively) stable physical environment in which to dwell and encounter other beings.      

 

Philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han has been telling us this for some time now and, in his new book, he describes how the terrestrial order is disappearing before our very eyes; that is to say, how the world of things is being rapidly replaced by a digital realm of Undinge. 

 

Not only does digitalisation disembody the world, it abolishes memory, as the Japanese author Yōko Ogawa foresaw in her 1994 novel Hisoyaka na Kesshō [b] - a work that Han nods to in the preface to his new book, although, as he points out, in contrast to her fictional dystopia, "we do not live in a totalitarian regime whose memory police brutally rob us of our things and memories" [viii], it is, rather, "our intoxication by communication and information that makes things disappear" [viii]. 

 

In other words - and this is the main argument of the book - non-things obscure actual objects, including human beings, draining them of physical presence as they effectively become ghosts in the machine: "We no longer dwell on the earth and under the sky but on Google Earth and in the Cloud." [1]          

 

 

II. 

 

The old tree at the bottom of the garden - or that little wooden table which has stood in the corner of the frontroom for as long as you can remember - these things provide a calm centre to the world and stabilise our lives by providing a level of familiarity and continuity that you won't find in the frenzied virtual realm. 

 

Even the so-called internet of things, is really just an attempt to turn things into information terminals. Similarly, 3D printers "devalue the being of things" [3], transforming them into "the material derivatives of information" [3] - simulated objects which you can interact with but never touch or hold tight (not that we still possess hands). 

 

It's impossible to be Heideggerian in the land of non-things: for Dasein dwells in the terrestrial order of things. The smart home is really just a smart prison allowing ever-greater surveillance of our lives; we are being incarcerated, says Han, in the infosphere - and its happening in the name of greater freedom (not the freedom to act, but the freedom to choose; the freedom of the consumer). 

Another thing that is vanishing, is truth - remember that? It seems we don't have time for it any longer: "In our post-factual culture of excitement, communication is dominated by affects and emotions." [6] Spend a few minutes on Twitter and you'll soon find that out. 

 

Not only do we have no memories of the past, we cannot promise the future; as Nietzsche recognised, we are no longer capable of making commitments or being faithful - again, these things require too much discipline, too much hard work and too much time. We're too playful - and too pain averse - to practice even the slightest degree of cruelty towards the self. 

Those who still have hands and feel themselves able to act, have a duty to safeguard those old things in which memories are stored (to resist the urge to sell everything on eBay) - and to self-harm ...

 

III.

 

So: is it better to own a small record collection, or be able to access unlimited music online? How you answer this question tells us a good deal about what sort of human being you are (and not simply what generation you belong to). 

 

Possession, as Han says, "relates to the paradigm of the thing" [13]. 

 

Those like Klaus Schwab who think access rather than possession is the key to happiness, are not, it seems, interested in forming intense libidinal ties to objects. Indeed, some of these people are "no longer able to dwell with things or to imbue them with life" [13]. 

 

Personally, I love objects from the past - particularly from childhood (not that I have many) - even objects which have no value, interest, or meaning to other people (such as an old sea-shell). As Han says, possession is characterised by intimacy and is psychologically charged: "Things in my possession are vessels filled with emotions and recollections." [15]

 

In an interesting passage, he continues:

 

"The history that things acquire in the course of being used for a long time gives them souls and turns them into things close to the heart. Only discreet things, however, can be animated by intensive libidinal ties [...] Today's consumer goods are indiscreet, intrusive and over-expressive. They come loaded with prefabricated ideas and emotions that impose themselves on the consumer. Hardly anything of the consumer's life enters into them." [15]

 

This, sadly, is particularly true of children's toys and games (not that modern parents seem to care or the youngsters know what they are being denied). But it's also true of books, which have also lost their thingliness and their fate: 

 

"An e-book is not a thing, but information; it has an altogether different status of being. Even if we have it at our disposal, it is not a possession. It is something to which we have access. [...] It lacks the auratic distance from which an individual fate could speak to us [...] and it does not allow for the formation of intense ties. [...] E-books are faceless and without history. They may be read without the use of the hands. There is a tactile element in the turning of a book's pages that is constitutive of every relationship. Without bodily touch, no ties can emerge." [16] 

 

 

IV. 

 

Talking about the heavy weight of fate ... We now come to a chapter in Han's book on smartphones; in a nutshell, he doesn't like 'em. Like Walter Benjamin, he prefers the big, heavy phones from back in the day, which had "an aura of fate-like power" [18] about them. 

 

You don't get that with a smartphone - you get something small and light that you can put in your pocket; something that makes you feel in charge and connected to a non-resistant world that is at your fingertips 24/7 (the digital illusion of total availability). 

 

Meanwhile, what passes for and remains of the real world is desecrated as smartphone users retreat into their own self-enclosed space, where all is image and information. We carry the smartphone, but the smartphone enframes us, depriving reality of its presence and human beings of lived experience.

Oh, and don't get him started on the smooth design! Something he has previously compared with the trend for Brazilian waxing and the art of Jeff Koons (as discussed elsewhere on this blog - click here, for example). 

 

Their shiny smoothness shouldn't disguise the fact that smartphones are essentially the "devotional objects of the neoliberal regime" [24]; a regime that is itself smart enough to know that by serving our needs and exploiting our freedom it can exercise complete control.  

 

Whilst they may well function as devotional objects - i.e. a digital form of rosary - they are not transitional objects (i.e. a digital form of teddy bear or security blanket). And that's because they do not represent the other - rather, they are an extension of ourselves and the relationship we have with them is narcissistic. We might better think of smartphones as autistic objects (i.e. hard sources of sensation which ultimately destroy empathy and intensify our loneliness).     

 

 

V.

In a post from October 2013 on selfies, I said this:

 

"I have no wish to add my voice to those who suggest the selfie is evidence of either the empty narcissism of today's youth, or a sign that they have been pornified and suffer from low self-esteem. I understand the arguments put forward by concerned commentators, but fear that they often collapse into precisely the sort of moral hysteria that greets everything to do with technology, sex, and the play of images." [c]

So it's a little awkward - if I wish to appear consistent - to now agree with Byung-Chul Han's critique of selfies: "A selfie is an exhibited face without aura. It lacks 'melancholic' beauty. It it characterized by digital cheerfulness. [...] A selfie is not a thing ..." [33]

 

However, he's right that an old (analogue) photo lovingly kept safe in an album is a thing in a way that a digital image stored on one's phone is not: "Because of its material nature, it is fragile and exposed to the processes of ageing and decay." [29]

 

And he's right also to say: "In digital photography, alchemy gives way to mathematics. It disenchants photography." [31] Worse, it eliminates the referent - i.e., kills the thing it seeks to represent - and instead of capturing something of the real world, it generates a "new, expanded reality that does not exist, a hyper-reality that no longer corresponds to reality" [32]. 

 

If e-books have no history and smartphones have no fate, then digital images have no destiny and selfies have no secrecy. They don't deserve to be printed - only quickly viewed and then deleted. Snapchat is an instrument of what Han calls perfect justice and "represents the culmination of instantaneous digital communication" [34].

 

The problem I have with a lot of what Han says here is related to the question of the human face, something he regards far more positively than I do. Also, he wishes for photography (and human life in general) to be accorded a certain seriousness and depth. 

 

Thus, he hates selfies for "announcing the disappearance of the kind of human being who is burdened by destiny and history" [36] and for giving expression to "a form of life that devotes itself playfully to the moment" [36]. But I think that's why I like them - I don't want to see people - especially young people - looking mournfully into the camera like beasts of burden weighed down by the spirit of gravity.   

 

VI.

 

I like this idea: "Artificial intelligence is incapable of thinking, for the very reason that it cannot get goosebumps." [37] 

 

In other words, AI lacks the "affective-analogue dimension, the capacity to be emotionally affected, which lies beyond the reach of data and information" [37]. 

 

Not only do heartless machines lack passion, but they aren't prone to moods either - i.e., they can't attune themselves to the world in the way human beings can and so cannot access the world (or read the room, as it were). 

 

Oh, and they're also deaf, which is a problem, as genuine thinking requires the ability to listen. 

 

Which is all very reassuring, particularly for Heideggerians keen to reaffirm Dasein's uniqueness. Han will be telling us next that robots lack spirit ... 

 

"Artificial intelligence may compute very quickly, but it lacks spirit." [38] 

 

See - what did I tell you? 

 

Without a pinch of Geist, all AI can do is assemble Big Data which will provide knowledge of a rudimentary kind, but won't reveal unto you the secrets of the universe, or even allow you to understand the results of your own data gathering. 

 

Human thinking may have its limitations, but, at its best - when it has become a form of erotics and seems to some a kind of madness or idiocy - then it is more than mere problem solving: "It brightens and clears the world. It brings forth an altogether other world." [43]

 

And the main danger that arises from AI, "is that human thinking will adapt to it and itself become mechanical" [43].     

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022). The work was originally published in German as Undinge: Umbrüche der Lebenswelt (Ullstein Verlag, 2021).

 

[b] This novel by Yōko Ogawa has been translated into English by Stephen Snyder and published as The Memory Police, (Vintage, 2020). 

 

[c] To read the post on selfies and the rise of the Look Generation in full, click here.  

This post continues in part two, which can be accessed by clicking here ...

Reflections on Another Jubilee (There's Still No Future in England's Dreaming)

Jamie Reid: sleeve artwork for 'God Save the Queen' 

by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977) 

National Portrait Gallery (NPG D48055)

 

 

I.

 

Celebrations to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee are set to take place over a special four-day bank holiday weekend from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 June 2022. 

 

Seeing the Union Jack bunting and hearing all the Gawd bless 'er majesty bullshit reminds me very much of the Silver Jubilee back in the fateful summer of 1977 - the summer of hate as it is sometimes known; i.e., the summer of punk ...

 

II.

Although not old enough to have partied with the Sex Pistols on their notorious jubilee boat trip along the Thames, I was old enough in 1977 to have woken up and realised what side of the bed I was lying on - and it wasn't the side with the red, white and blue sheets.

 

As far as I recall, I was pretty much the only Essex schoolchild who refused to attend (or have anything to do with) the street parties being held on my estate that June. 

 

And my sense of alienation - combined with a long hatred for all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal family - meant that I now aligned myself with the Sex Pistols (what this meant in practice was keeping press cuttings about the band, taping 'Pretty Vacant' off the radio [1], and doing my best to perfect a Rotten persona). 

 

The Sex Pistols were the flowers in the dustbin and they were the poison in the human machine, but it was precisely their uncompromising nihilism that made them so attractive; that, and the way they looked [2]. 

 

III. 

 

Finally, while we're on the subject of the Sex Pistols ...

 

Tonight sees the start of Danny Boyle's six-part TV series Pistol - a Disneyfied punk pantomime loosely based on Steve Jones's memoir, in which a kamikaze gang of foul-mouthed yobs is reimagined by a cast of impossibly middle-class actors [3].

 

Were he still with us, I'm sure Malcolm would regard this as a prime example of what he termed karaoke culture [4] - i.e., one lacking in authentic sex, style or subversion.  

 

So, rather than sit through Danny Boyle's load of old bollocks, why not click here to watch a new version of the video for 'God Save the Queen' - one which combines footage shot by Julien Temple at the Marquee in May 1977, with footage of the Thames river boat party (a fun day out which resulted in eleven arrests, including Malcolm's). 

 

 

Notes

[1] I couldn't record 'God Save the Queen', of course, as it was banned from the airwaves. Famously, it was also prevented from getting to number one in the official UK singles chart, although it was the highest selling single during the jubilee week.  

[2] I loved the songs too, but the music was always secondary to the politics, the clothes, and the artwork - which is why I soon came to appreciate that Malcolm was the fabulous architect of chaos and Rotten just another juvenile Bill Grundy. Indeed, he's now something of an admirer of the Queen it appears.

 

[3] For earlier thoughts on Danny Boyle's Pistol click here and here. 

[4] Readers who are interested in this can watch McLaren's TED Talk of October 2009 on authentic creativity versus karaoke culture: click here. 

From the Soil Beneath Our Feet to the Iron in Our Soul (Another Open Letter to Heide Hatry)

 The biosphere cannot exist without exchange 

and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere

 

I. 

 

My friend Heide recently sent me a link to an article by George Monbiot, a writer known for his environmental and political activism, which powerfully argued the case for soil: 

 

"Beneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It's as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it." [1] 

 

Pretty much, I agree with what he says and share his astonishment for the wonder of soil - that pedolithic mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life on Earth. It's amazing to realise that even a small handful of soil contains thousands of tiny creatures, millions of bacteria, and a complex network of fungal filaments. 

 

And, as Monbiot writes, "even more arresting than soil's diversity and abundance is the question of what it actually is" - not just a ground-up rock and dead plants as many people think - but a "biological structure built by living creatures to secure their survival". 

 

Expanding on this theme, he writes:

 

"Microbes make cements out of carbon, with which they stick mineral particles together, creating pores and passages through which water, oxygen and nutrients pass. The tiny clumps they build become the blocks the animals in the soil use to construct bigger labyrinths. [...] Bacteria, fungi, plants and soil animals, working unconsciously together, build an immeasurably intricate, endlessly ramifying architecture that [...] organises itself spontaneously into coherent worlds." 

 

Monbiot concludes: 

 

"Soil might not be as beautiful to the eye as a rainforest or a coral reef, but once you begin to understand it, it is as beautiful to the mind. Upon this understanding our survival might hang."

 

And that, dear Heide, is where my problem with Monbiot begins ... 

 

 

II. 

 

For suddenly it becomes clear that, ultimately, the destruction of soil only concerns him because it threatens human existence; the "thin cushion between rock and air" should be valued because it supports mankind and allows Monbiot to continue his comfortable middle-class life in Oxford. 

If Monbiot and his fellow greens were genuinely concerned with the preservation of the soil and really believed that the future is underground, then they would advocate for (voluntary) human extinction [2] - not just new farming techniques. Like Rupert Birkin, they would see that we have become an obstruction and a hindrance to the process of evolution and that only man's self-extinction will allow life to continue unfolding in inhuman splendour.

 

Monbiot should be encouraged to understand that nature is not our home and that if life matters at all, then every life matters equally; human presence or non-presence doesn't determine the blessedness (or indeed the beauty) of anything. 

 

Not that I'm saying life does possess any intrinsic value; as a philosopher, I'm obliged to affirm the essential truth of nihilism, which, of course, is the truth of extinction [3] and the fact that life is epiphenomenal - a rare and unusual way of being dead, as Nietzsche says [4]. 

 

Even so-called ecophilosophy should do more than simply further human conceit and perpetuate a kind of Gaia-loving vitalism. Its duty and, indeed, its destiny is to acknowledge the fact that the Earth has interests that do not coincide exclusively with the life upon it; as Giorgio Agamben reminds us, the biosphere cannot exist without the chthonic thanatosphere [5].

 

Ultimately, soil only goes down so far and even those strange microscopic organisms that live in the rock deep beneath the surface of the Earth, are no longer anywhere to be found. For ultimately, the Earth isn't alive - it's a solid ball of iron and nickel with a radius of about 760 miles and a surface temperature as hot as that of the sun, surrounded by a molten outer core.  

 

Equally amazing - and just as important - is the fact that iron not only constitutes the soul of our planet, but, along with other metals - such as sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and zinc - makes up 2.5% of the human body. 

 

As inorganic biochemists like to joke, man cannot live by SPONCH alone ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] George Monbiot, 'The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing - and the key to our planet's future', The Guardian (7 May 2022): click here. 

      See also Monbiot's article from several years back, 'We're treating soil like dirt. It's a fatal mistake as our lives depend on it', The Guardian (25 March 2015). Nice to see him recycling old material in this (environmentaly friendly) manner.

 

[2] See the post 'On Voluntary Human Extinction' (12 Oct 2013): click here. 

 

[3] See Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). And see my post on this book (26 Nov 2012): click here.

 

[4] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, 109. 

[5] See Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now?, trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), pp. 105-113. 

On Chthonic Vitalism 2: In the Etruscan Tombs with Giorgio Agamben

 

Etruscan tombs (Tarquinia)

 

The aim of those who practice philosophy in the Etruscan manner is to learn how to die.

 

 

I. 

 

For D. H. Lawrence, the Etruscans conceived of everything in terms of life - even death [a].

 

But the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben sees things the other way round; for him, the Etruscans conceived everything in terms of death - even life - and their civilisation was (whilst vital) fundamentally chthonic in character. 

 

This is evidenced by the fact that although the Etruscans chose to build their homes on sites which were ostensibly above ground, they chose to dwell in a more profound sense in the vertical depths: "Hence the Etruscan taste for caves and for recesses dug into the rock, and their preference for tall ravines, gorges, and the steep walls of peperino [...]" [b]

 

Those who visit the tombs, writes Agamben, "immediately perceive that the Etruscans inhabited Chthonia, and not Gaia" [109] and that they had their true being in the underworld - were epichthonioi as the Little Greek would say - and not on the surface of the Earth facing skywards. Agamben writes:

 

"The uniquely subterranean character of these Etruscan spaces can also be expressed, when comparing them to other areas of Italy, by saying that what we are seeing is not landscape as such. The affable, familiar landscape that we can serenely embrace with our gaze and which overruns the horizon belongs to Gaia. In chthonic verticality, however, the landscape vanishes; every horizon disappears and makes way for the nefarious, unseen face of nature." [110] 

 

 

II.

It's not that Lawrence is wrong exactly to stress, as he does, the vitalism of the Etruscans, it's just that he fails to emphasise the chthonic nature of this vitalism. Agamben is spot on to write of this fascinating people with iron in their soul: 

 

"They did not love death more than life, but life was for them inseparable from the depths of Chthonia; they could inhabit the valleys of Gaia and cultivate her countryside only if they did not forget their true, vertical dwelling." [110-111]

 

This is why the tombs hollowed out in the naked rock do more than merely house the dead and allow us to imagine how the Etruscans conceived of the afterlife; they also allow us to more profoundly understand "the movements, the gestures, and the desires of the living people who built them." [111] 

 

The reason that the Etruscans "built and protected the dwellings of their dead with such assiduous care" [110], was because of their "unshakable chthonic dedication (rather than, as one might assume, their chthonic dedication arising from their care for the dead)" [110].

 

They understood - in a way that most modern people do not - that life only exceeds mere existence and flowers into the fourth dimension when it "safeguards the memory of Chthonia" [111]. 

 

In other words, because we are mortal, then confronting our own finitude and learning how to live in the knowledge and the shadow of death is the most vital aspect of being human. As Heidegger says: Dasein is essentially a being-towards-death [Sein-zum-Tode] [c]. 

The Etruscans demonstrated "that there is an intense community and an uninterrupted continuity between the present and the past, and between the living and the dead" [111]. We forget or dismiss our relationship with the underworld, with the realm of matter, with death, at our peril (a point that the New York based German artist Heide Hatry makes repeatedly in her work). 

 

For ultimately, not only must Gaia and Chthonia be understood as inseparable, but the world of the living (the biosphere) "cannot exist without exchange and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere" [111].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the first post in this series on chthonic vitalism - 'In the Tombs With D. H. Lawrence' - click here.

 

[b] Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now? trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), p. 110. Future page references will be given directly in the post.

 

[c] See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II, chapter 1.