"Fuck reality! Who cares about reality?" (Danny Fields 1967-1971)

(From Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
edited by Legs McNeil,Gillian McCain)

What is reality?
Is it the objective order of things? Is it the world suspended in the web of the natural laws of causation? The way things are? The world as a pure white snow? A virgin not yet polluted by the voracious filthy randiness of the nihilism of imagination and creativity... the unspoiled IT... the Being?

What is its opposite? Its anthitesis? The 'unreality'? Is 'reality' defined by the absence of 'unreality'? Can there even be a reality without it? Really? What is day without a night? Love without hate?

If the real is reduced to what IS, safely quarrantined from all that merely 'appears': from all the contrivance... from chimera and phantasm, then it is logical! Then it is reliable and can be tamed by rationality! Then, however, it is also the escapeologist's worst nightmare... the omnicage... rigid order of things the confinment of which can never be issued... so permanent... hopelessly helpless... helplessly hopeless...

And still we are a mistery to ourselves... a great puzzle with its eternal twists...

Ludicrously hard to second-guess, to call in question and doubt, the objective world of nature stands tall and supreme, mocking our futile attempts to handle it. Whatever we do, say or think, whatever we intend with our conducts and whatever its effects, whatever our conscious or unaware reaction to whatever triggers it – we can never really replicate nor portray what really is. Or at least so it seems. We can never grasp the complexity and immensity of what is. The World is the Being and the Being is, independent of human existence and influence. Human existence is but a sheer moment, a dot denied the privilege of extension that both time and space enjoy in context of the actual eternity of shapes and modes that the Being might or may not take. In the face of eternity the temporality of human existence is ridiculous and absurd... it simply vanishes. Whatever the shape, it is always due to the Beings inner course, its essence, the truth, the technology of its core that we only occasionally get to glimpse at, sense its existence through the mediation of its silhouette, a shadow, an ontology way beyond what boundaries of our epistemology offer to us, reveal for us here and there. We can never map it down and know it. At best, although it is a rather morbid thought, we can defect, stain, pollute, ugly and distort the shadow, the silhouette, the hologramic gaze of the World. Its core, the Being, remains however eternally untouched and untouchable. Love perhaps, one could argue, could be the rare one amongst many of human qualities that could be viewed as a potential or actual contribution to the greatness and beauty of the aptness of the Being. But with the gaze from perspective of the World as solely in and for itself, love surfaces merely as a technology, an accidental coincidence that is more of an occurrence than a product of a human consciously actualized eagerness for whatever. It is then temporality par excellance, a dot of non-space and non-time that is exposed to mankind in order for us to, for whatever reason, find reproduction enjoyable. Or in a word: nonsense. The same goes for hate, pain, joy and whatnot.
This is, at least if we are to view the order of things from what drives us, subjective and cultural humans, to challenge the boundaries of nature. We demand from nature the irrational, crave from it the impossible. In the meanwhile, our time on earth seems to be dedicated to suffering and dealing with the consequences of the reality, the truth so supreme and unmanageable, the revealing of the Being and the dazzling and inflexible light of its core.

Whatever is objectively real is objective only in our subjective world of experience, understanding and action. Any intrusion from an ontology that seriously claims its universal omnipotence independent and above human experiences is doomed to put out the fire of human experience with the gasoline of ignorance towards what it means to be human. Humans and the life as we know it are just a stain on the unbending ray of eternity – and stains don’t last, they fade away. The World exists in and for itself, self-sufficient and non-human. We humans are, in contrast, entirely depending on the World – not as it is, however, but only as we can gaze at it. Due to sheer existence of the Being we exist, though due to its great eternal qualities everything seems to point towards the contradictive notion that it is almost as if we never existed – in the shadow of forever of the Being our brave existence is turned into nothingness. However, we are bound to perceive ourselves as being-in-the-world – our individual consciousness, i.e. our self-awareness and consciousness of the others as well as of objects outside ourselves, unavoidably being caught up with the world that surrounds us, our bodies being the mediators making the consciousness possible by transcending the world for us. With the World left out – we cannot be. Of course, we should be aware of distinction between the consciousness and the things in the world – a point well defended by the fact that we can imagine things that world doesn’t contain, i.e. we can be, and often are, conscious of the ‘unreal’ – hence the round squares and quadratic circles… hence the flying unicorns and, under extraordinary propitious circumstances, the Swan Lake performances by pink elephants. The unreal, in turn, is generated outside the world by the consciousness that stays inside the world – providing human beings with capability to imagine. Nonetheless, we gain self-awareness through the mediation of the Other, i.e. the other people. And that is exactly why we have to turn our back to the Being as eternity, to the World as objective, in spite of its omnipotence. In vastness of the waves of the World, so gracefully thrown around by the strong winds of the Being, we are easily – and doomed – to drown. It is only when our gaze embraces the actuality of our being-as-humans-in-the-world that our existence makes any sense. Whatever the endeavour intended, while staring ourselves blind into the sun of the Being, we are bound to pay attention to what it means to be human, the actual lived experiences, to honour them with nothing less but recognition, be they pain or joy, love or hate, wellbeing or suffering, if we as humans are to earn a meaning for ourselves and among ourselves – to make our short visit in the eternity worthwhile.

Reality? Yeah, who cares about reality? Fuck it!

Until the next time, let following words worth repeating throw some light on the issue:

"I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real"
(Reznor 1994)

"Can a man possessing consciousness ever really respect himself?" (Dostoevsky 2001 [1863]: 12)

A century and a half year old echo of admonition...

Beware of revelation!

... especially through wanting to know...

Beware of the burden!

... perhaps not as much of awareness as of self-awareness... not of consciousness but of self-consciousness...

So how’s it gonna be:

“Beware! “?

or “Be aware!”?

If to know is to suffer and to suffer is to care, then we are caught in the web of particular moral principle... adding to the burden of self-consciousness the burden of responsibility...

“Hello”, inquiringly we greet ourselves. We gaze, we touch, we explore, we adore... blinded by the awe of our ego so immaculate... loooooove... hands so dirty... gaze so dire... unleashed filthy fingertips stain the innocence of virgin skin... forever... calamitous and ruthless gaze infuse the impiety...

You! You... you, you stupid fool... you, the object of your own reverence... you, the devoted devotee... you can’t cage the humming bird no matter how big the cage... you can’t purify the snowflake in the purgatory of your burning hand... you can’t wash the clear spring water with toxic waste... there’s no liberty in freedom... there’s no rescue in the refuge...

So, can a man possessing consciousness ever really respect himself?

The truth is that the truth is not!

"Too much is not enough and enough is just too much" (Mike Ness 1988)

Things they seem... much more than they ever are... I guess... at least it seems that way... and when they seem it seems like they've been like that forever... and yes, then we take them for granted and mistake the 'seem' for 'are'... but when they seem not to seem as we want them to seem... when they seem to collide rather than to cohere with our vision... then they hurt... and then we know this for a fact 'coz then we are hurt... and then we hurt... 'coz hurt people hurt, right!? It's how it works... or at least it's how it seems.

Sometimes it's okay... sometimes it just makes no sense... things, they change... and then they remain same. I love the world in my dreams... I hate it when I wake up. Everything is twofold. Ultimately, I am truly sorry for wasting your time...

... I hate myself! And yet I want you all to love me! Things don't get much crazier than that!?

"Time don't wait on nobody!" (Whitney, 17 years old girl spending her time in Warrenville prison for young delinquents)

"WHITNEY (17) – The eyes and ears of Warrenville, and our
unexpected heroine. Intimidating, self-isolating, and one of
Warrenville’s longest-term inmates, Whitney is infamous for a crime
she won’t talk about. Despite herself, she soon emerges as one of
the most powerful storytellers in the group. Her writing introduces
us to her charming, drug-addled father, a man whose mistakes paved
the way to his daughter’s heinous crime. As the performance
approaches, Whitney’s growing voice may lead both of them to
confront the past and try to move forward."


http://www.girlsonthewallmovie.com/

http://www.ur.se/play/158748

http://www.ur.se/play/158748

"What does it mean to be human and alive?" (Wade Davis 2008)

"We're living through a time when virtually half of humanity's intellectual, social and spiritual legacy is been allowed to slip away. This does not have to happen! These peoples are not failed attempts of being modern [...] these are dynamic, living, peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces. That's actually an optimistic observation because it suggests that if human beings are the agents of cultural destruction, we can also be - and must be - the facilitators of cultural survival!"

"[...] a negative approach in political life replaces a positive approach [...]" (Gramsci 2007 [1975]: 260)

"[...] with the result that one thinks of what 'not to do' rather than of what 'to do' concretely. The obsession with the rival is such that one sense the rival dominating one's own personality"

From Prison Notebooks, Vol III, by Antonio Gramsci (2007 [1975]: 260)

"Indian, Indian what did you die for? Indian says, nothing at all." (Morrison 1978)

"Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality (Koestler, Arthur)

 

...

originality...

... more originality...

...

and yet more originality!!!

"No matter how cold the winter, there's a springtime ahead", (Vedder 2002)

"[...] cesto se vrtimo kao vjetrokaz, i ne mozemo da odredimo svoj polozaj [...]" (Selimovic 2004 [1966]: 255)

"I wish that I could hold you / I wish that I had" (Vedder 2002)

"I will have the whole world to make music with me" (Astbury 1984)

"I'd trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday" (Kristofferson: 1969)

"Sometimes you can’t see a horizon between the ocean and the earth" (Strummer 2003)

"If we want to stop forces from transforming themselves the moment we turn our back, we should avoid turning our back!" (Latour 1993 [1984]: 199)

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Every man has within his own reminiscences certain things he doesn't reveal to anyone [...]" (Dostoevsky 2001[1863]: 28)

"[...] except, perhaps, to his friends. There are also some that he won't reveal even to his friends, only to himself perhaps, and even then, in secret. Finally, there are some which a man is afraid to reveal even to himself; every decent man has accumulated a fair number of such things. In fact, it can even be said that the more decent the man, the more of these things he's accumulated."

From Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Query: How contrive not to waste ones time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while" (Camus 2004[1947]: 26)

"Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting room; by remaining on one's balcony all a Sunday afternoon; by listening to a lecture in a language one doesn't know; by travelling by the longest and least convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by queueing at the box-office of theatres and then not booking a seat. And so forth" (Camus 2004[1947]: 26)

"[...] revolution's not a question of virtue but of effectiveness." (Sartre 1989[1948]: 229)

""We shall not abolish lying by refusing to tell lies, but by using every means at hand to abolish classes" (Sartre 1989 [1948]: 218)

HUGO: I never lie to my comrades. I - Why should you fight for the liberation of men, if you think no more of them than to stuff their heads with falsehoods?

HOEDERER: I'll lie when I must, and I have contempt for noone. I wasn't the one who invented lying. It grew out of a society divided into classes, and each one of us has inherited it from birth. We shall not abolish lying by refusing to tell lies, but by using every means at hand to abolish classes.

"Human life begins on the far side of despair" (Sartre 1989 [1943]: 119)

"You are God and I am free; each of us is alone, and our anguish is akin" (Sartre 1989 [1943]: 119)

"Your vaunted freedom isolates you from the fold; it means exile." (Sartre 1989 [1943]: 118)

"Ako Sarajevo umre, onda je ugasnula Evropa u slobodi i pravednosti, u ethosu multikulturalizma i pluralizma" (Sharchevic 2007: 14)

"Da usprkos dosadashnjem iskustvu, put do otvorene, univerzalne, tolerantne Evrope, prolazi kroz Sarajevo, kroz obuhvachanje politichke i etichke osnove ljudskog egzistiranja. Ako Sarajevo umre, onda je ugasnula Evropa u slobodi i pravednosti, u ethosu multikulturalizma i pluralizma.

Dovoljno je otvoriti ochi - i istina se pojavljuje u dubljim znachenjima. Samo to su, u svakom sluchaju, nepodnoshljive istine - sa ponorima, neizvjesnostima, predstavljivostima [...]

Na zhalost, desilo se da su taj krajolik lijepog [Bosnu] koje je blizhe istini od svega drugog, taj krajolik evropskog duha, tolerancije i koegzistencije, da su ga, ipak, neochekivano, naposljetku, slike preplavile i opustoshile. Dovoljno je rechi: mitologijske, nacionalne, politichke opsjene, koje teshko, na zhalost, zastare."


Evropska Kultura i Duhovne Znanosti, Sharchevich, A, 2007

"[...] it sounds much like an excuse, this freedom whose slave you claim to be." (Sartre 1989 [1943]: 117)

"How can a man arrive at self-knowledge? Through contemplation? Certainly not; rather, by action." (Goethe 1829)

"I shall never sleep again. But then - how shall I endure my own company?" (Sartre 1989 [1944]: 06)

"That's how things always are with us - the cart before the horse" (Tolstoj 1957 [1869] vol II: 1183)

"... Ge mig en paus / Fyll mig med tystnad nu..." (Berg 1998)

"Before I disappear/Whisper in my ear/Give me something to echo/In my unknown futures ear" (Vedder 2009)

"To myself I... surrender, to the one I'll never please" (Vedder 2002)

"Slow down everyone you're moving too fast, frames can't catch you when you're moving like that" (Johnson 2001)

"[...] the fairytale is a form of 'whishful thinking'" (Crapanzano1980: 6)

"They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got." (Conrad 1990 [1902]: 4)

"[...] your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to..."

by Joseph Conrad
in Heart of Darkness 1990 (1902): 4

"We have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get rid of political 'double bind'[...]" (Foucault 1982: 785)

We have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get rid of political "double bind", which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures.
The conclusion would be that the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.

Excerpt from "The Subject and Power" by Michel Foucault, published in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1982), pp. 777-795, The University of Chicago Press

"Think what would make the world worse off: to find itself without bankers or without poets", (Gramsci 2007 [1975]: 235, quoting Manzoni)

"Drought makes the workers dream", (Patton 1992)

"Stockholm ligger öde och världen håller andan", (Berg 2002)

"A man must judge his labours by the obstacles he has overcome and the hardships he has endured", (Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 1940: 9)

"[F]riends [...] must be mutually recognized as bearing goodwill and wishing well to each other", (Aristotle)

"[...] that which is good without qualification is also without qualification pleasant, and these are the most lovable qualities [...] such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together'; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not."



From "Nichomachean ethics", Book VIII, Chapter 2, p. 1060 in The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon (Random House, New York, 1941).

Recognize More

"You are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being", (Agrado in "All About My Mother" by Pedro Almodovar 1999)

"Spaces, experiences and concepts in-between cannot be finally defined since they escape identity", (Sand 2008:302)

"Spaces, experiences and concepts in-between cannot be finally defined since they escape identity and must be understood as a rhythmic process of becoming."

From Konsten att gunga - experiment som aktiverar mellanrum (Space in Motion - the Art of Activating Space In-Between), 2008, Axl Books

"This is a good time to reflect [...]", (Rami G. Khouri 2009-2010)

"This is a good time to reflect on the causes of our deterioration, so that we and our leaders do not collectively act like buffoons and simply perpetuate the mistakes that have defined our inauspicious start of this third millennium"

From article "A bad decade" written by Rami G. Khouri and published on a final day of third millenniums very first decade in International Herald Tribune (thursday-friday, december 31 - january 1, 2009-2010)