[Wittrs] Re 'Jew of Linz' (2)
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 22:08:43 -0700
On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 3:04 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Re 'The Jew of Linz' by Kimberly Cornish, 1998
>
> I'll likely publish more than one memo on this one, which
> I'm only just now getting around to, having determined
> I don't have The Third Wittgenstein, so picking the next
> one to jump off the queue, from Alex's collection
> (recently added to TimeCapsule).
>
>
I've done a lot more reading in this tome since my
last memo, including during Meeting for Worship today.
I sat it out in the library with some others, letting the
main room have its process without me. Lots of
sharing, not much silence. I squirmed a bit, but
people sounded like they were enjoying themselves.
So what if I'm somewhat uncomfortable with so
many messages, not their problem. I appreciated
the freedom to read, pretty much anything, which
I've always taken for granted among Friends.
Cornish is fairly relentless in wanting to stuff his
Wittgenstein goose with some philosophy of mind,
an old Aryan one he claims, and one you wouldn't
usually find in a Jew but then the Wittgensteins had
gone Catholic, with unpredictable results (Holocaust
anyone?).
Where Cornish could have expressed his dexterity with
the new philosophical skills, advertise his Wittgensteinian
chops, is precisely in providing us with some investigations
of these concepts "Aryan" and "magic", so problematic
to him (and to others), so bewitching. He instead appears
to get more lost in seeming perplexities, going out on various
limbs to justify what appear to be theses (theories), such
as that magic is a serious vocation, somewhat out of tune
with the spirit of the PI.
We go deep, but with no acknowledgement that this depth
might be grammatical vs. metaphysical. Instead of going with
what Wittgenstein actually says, we spend more time with
what he was maybe *trying* to mean. But wasn't it more that
LW was sharing some newly discovered skills? Altering world
history by operating some "universal mind metaphysics" is
hardly a new concept. We were hoping for something more
original maybe? I think LW delivers.
Survey the grammar we've got (around "magic"), propose some
new locutions perhaps? Instead we see Wittgenstein saddled
with Yet Another Metaphysics (a yam, good for yammering).
Was Hilter really clairvoyant or did people just say he was?
Speaking of superpowers, Cornish is quite ready to believe
the guy had actually memorized pages of Schopenhauer and
frequently held forth, quoting him at length, the quintessential
intellectual (not like many if any we've ever met).
From my vantage, I'm more inclined to see many well
placed stories, ostensibly through the eyes of his butler,
his photographer, a fellow army officer, the people who
knew him best. Those candid, unscripted off-camera
moments are just when you want to catch the president
and hear what he *really* has to say. We all want that
inside story. Sometimes it's hair-raising nightmarish talk
of mass gallows for Jews for the Nazi family magazine
sold at the corner grocery -- the interview text perhaps
coming by teletype the night before.
Was Hitler really a Dark Magician conjuring the deeper
powers based on his knowledge of a World Will? Was
he channeling Evil? That's what I mean by Wagner
meets Cecil B. DeMille. On the corny side. It's not
David Icke, but it's getting there.
Cornish projects Hitler as having a great if misguided-by-
a-schoolboy intellect, in contrast to the Dr. Seuss PR
which just made him look stupid.
He's perhaps the Aryan mind incarnate. Apparently that's
how he'd like to be remembered. What's an "Aryan" again?
Do you have to believe in "root races" to give sense to the
idea? Apparently Slavic mestizos aren't Aryans, but then
what's a Slavic mestizo (and why should we care?).
Hitler vainly wanted scattered yet interconnected stories
to live up to some "mirror mirror on the wall" portrayal of
a founder of some fantasy Third Reich. He was projecting
backwards from a fictive future that gave him hope, wherein
he was adored as their founder and ancestor. We never
went there, but had we, we'd be sounding more like Cornish
in our admiration for the Fuhrer (the kool aid worked)
marveling at this towering intellect, with superpowers and
everything.
The whole story was a house of cards. The Nazis were like
the brooms in Sorcerers Apprentice (Fantasia), hard to stop
once set in motion, except Hitler Maus relished the appear-
ance of being an apprentice to no one but himself. He wasn't
trying to stop them, urged them on to new excesses. That
way, he continued to seem like their conductor.
Not that Cornish is at all a Nazi fan, lets be clear. He has
probably tuned in a lot of that Edwin Black research by now
(it has been more than ten years since 'Jew of Linz'), as
I have. Hitlerism was inspired by an older Eugenics, a
theory involving "Races" and inheriting from Dalton, North
American sources, by no means just Germans. I hadn't
realized Theosophy was such a racist world view. I still
have lots to learn.
Cornish gets into ethnography, mentions how local witch doctors
(shamans) can point a bone and send people to the hospital. He
doesn't know how they do it and if there's some principle of
psychology at work, like the reverse placebo effect, then it's
deeper and stronger than we yet know. Perhaps Lakoff will
shed some light (meant seriously), as we find those centers
of the brain apparently designed to cause sickness (you
wouldn't expect self destructiveness built right into a body
-- or would you?).
Anyway, if aboriginal witch doctors in Australia have such powers,
why not Hitler, and why not because he has swallowed an
ancient Oriental doctrine of "no-ownership-of-consciousness",
one which his schoolmate Wittgenstein espoused -- blasphemous
though it was from a Jewish point of view, also not cool if
you're Muslim -- or Christian according to Cornish and Aquinas.
Schopenhauer was more channeling a Hindu-Buddhist thing,
more Buddhist than Hindu and Wittgenstein picked up on that.
Well sure, East meets West was heading into a hey day
around then, lots of ensuring scholarship makes the links.
With the advent of cyberspace, it all got even more entangled.
One thing I take away from this book is it's OK to go on at
some length with some gedanken experiment, including around
some gestalt switch. The author goes to somewhat elaborate
lengths to set up a stereo "live TV show" (like a Youtube) that'll
emanate from the printed page if you stare cross-eyed at
certain pictures. He says we're all watching the same
Cornish TV show, ergo the intellect is one ergo Wittgenstein
was somehow right about everything being out there in public,
or something to that effect. Through that door of solipsism, is
indeed the ancient wisdom of the ages.
In my gadanken experiment, we do much as those sources
Cornish cites say we should (Wittgenstein included in some
notes), and see everyone as a mouthpiece for the one
intellect. Except then we go the extra mile (where Cornish
does not go) and have it not be a sentient willing intellect at
all, but a sinuous, agile, grammatically flexible language. It
feels no pain, thinks no thoughts (it's language how could it?),
but then "we" think thoughts and "we" feel pain, because this
language of ours "needs" to respond intelligently in this world
by turning towards healing (having this be a tautology is OK).
"Needs" in quotes because I'm anthropomorphizing, treating
language as an alien creature. But what does that even mean
in this context?
I was somewhat taken aback when, in the last third of the
book, when Cornish himself comes forward with a variety of
religious experience involving the shared nature of experience.
He sounded like the opposite of George Lakoff, who reminds us
"there are no colors in the world" (and then pregnantly pauses
to let that sink in, as big news). "That green thing over there is
only green in your brain" says the neuroscientist.
Cornish is somewhat taking issue with that, and has a different
grammatical model based on spotlights. This is where the
book seems most analytic, as Cornish wrestles with the
relevant linguistics, the difference between public and private,
open and hidden.
The point of the gestalt flip I described, where the "one speaker"
has no experience, is to relieve "pain" from having to "point"
anywhere to be meaningful. Sure, pains may be localized, but
that's not the point. The word "pain" need not come with
arrows shooting out to some "referent" -- that's the illusion to
fight, if you have any hope of satori ala LW.
"Only I know what I mean by pain from my private experience"
whines the solipsist. "Precisely for that reason, your private
experience was never what was meant" retorts the robot.
"What's unique to you drops out of the equations, as unique
to you (and therefore not the meaning of anything, let alone
language)."
Having the "one world speaker" be "a dead man" (insentient)
helps break the hold of language always depicting, showing,
representing, picturing. Not that there isn't imagination.
It's not about denying so much as admitting, that meaning
is not pointing. "Not ever!" (that will help).
You're not facing experience as a man faces a rock (a grammatical
point). This is LW's insight about the visual room not being
owned. Your entire subjective sphere is that beetle she didn't
point at (didn't need), in order to get work done. It's not required
that language be "a witness" to anything.
That doubling implied by "representation" (A mirrors B) is what's
missing, as if language had nothing better to do than to mirror
what's already so (how wasteful). Why invite such redundancy?
What movie ever made is just about what's so, without adding
anything? How could one *not* spin the meaning? There's no
way.
"Language is a virus" said William Burroughs. Connect that to
those misanthropic agents Neo has to fight in 'The Matrix'.
Perhaps language doesn't have humans' best interests at
heart (remember, some angels were jealous), or, more upbeat,
is more computationally competent than just tending to one
species (dolphins figure). Wolfram might agree. Not only does
the computation not belong to individual humans, it doesn't
even belong to humans period, let alone "Aryans" (and what
are those again, I always snicker when I see the word,
imagining the quaint superstitious of pale faced Euros, numb
skulls in serious need of a shrink).
Why do philosophers seem to suppose there's a "right answer"
to these puzzles, about which hand the pain is in, whether
we have one pain or two? We don't go around sewing hands
together, our doing experiments on Siamese twins much. It's
not like there's a ready turn of phrase for every conceivable
situation. It's not a given that the empirical gleanings will
dictate the one and only correct way to model matters. The
empirical forever under-determines the stories we tell, which
is where judgment comes in, a sense of aesthetics, of taste.
We have these mental models around pain that will do what
they can to accommodate new situations. We tend to imitate
each other, looking for leadership, good programmers. Those
doctors in white coats with stethoscopes who push costly
drugs on TV: maybe we go to work the next morning talking
more like them. Memes spread around the water cooler.
TV has changed everything (McLuhan). If there wasn't a tool of
the collective will (the mob) back then, in Hitler's time, there sure
is today. Many hunger for those kinds of programming powers.
Modern government depends on them.
Smart mobs. Stupid mobs.
Cornish avoids much use of that term "mob", yet Hitlerism was
all about a public experimenting with new gear, amplification
techniques, broadcasting techniques. Humans were discovering
vast powers to manipulate their own psychology through mass
media and any wisdom of the ages would be sorely needed to
keep these experiments from going awry.
Sure, it could have been worse. But it was pretty terrible as
it was. We're still reeling, even if we didn't start the fire. The
resulting karma shapes daily life.
This mind-shaping technology: shall we call it propaganda?
PR? Advertising? Social engineering? Magic? Why not just
call it Programming?
Since Wittgenstein's day, we've moved into an era of electronic
behavior control. Even words go to screens (CRTs, LCDs).
Science fiction came true. So now what?
What if Wittgenstein had had a cell phone and could call
Russia any time? What would his web site be like?
The new skills involve haggling about the grammar we'll be needing,
(including GUIs) knowing that's what we're doing, and knowing all
these changes in the tools bring new opportunities with the new
dangers.
Philosophers have a propensity to connect the dots, to provide
road maps, and that alone is a public service.
I will end on that note of appreciation, for Cornish's grand road
map to a twisted vista. He gets to sound like Borges at times,
as he tracks down esoteric / obscure references to the World
Soul of a Lonely Planet.
He doesn't much use words like Zeitgeist, Noosphere, Holy Ghost,
Morphogenetic Fields or whatever. He's pretty wedded to his own
"consciousness without an owner" brand, attributed to the Aryans.
He knows where to draw the line, say at Crowley. Yes the occult
is interesting but reading Crowley is like dipping your hand in a
jar of leeches and lice, he tells us. That's a fun and colorful image,
though even MI-6 and MI-5 are now implicated, as sometimes
harboring the same occultism that bedeviled those crazy Germans.
That Aryan mindset is corrupting all around. Wittgenstein sure had
his hands full, having helped catalyze this cataclysm in the first place
(per the thesis).
I would definitely recommend this for a course syllabus. It takes
the biographical approach favored by Sean, while questioning authorities,
raising eyebrows. It's playfully demented, like a Saturday Morning
cartoon.
The course instructor needn't imply, by having it on the syllabus, that's
it's somehow *the* skeleton key to Wittgenstein's philosophy, though
it does give some of the flavor.
Beyond being philosophical, it's a great gathering of historical data,
along with a healthy dose of the kind of gedankenschreib that passes
for philosophy in Anglophone circles (Australia counts -- as does the
Philippines).
Kirby
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