PF 2024

Aubade
BY PHILIP LARKIN

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Devs - Poetry Scene - (Aubade by Philip Larkin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DtMAUZ-p8

There can be no knowledge of oneself except in relationship - in relation to all of life. Why? Because, in truth, there is but a single body - the body of life. The enlightened wisdom that all beings seek is found in perfect relationship so intimate that there is no separation between known, knower and the knowing. In this knowledge we are the oak, and the one who cuts down the oak, and the bird who lives in the oak and the watcher of the oak.

Technology, information, knowledge, these all tend to give "mastery over" but not the wisdom of what to do with that mastery. If this partial knowing is developed lopsidedly, as within our culture, then there is deep alienation with ourselves, our bodies, nature. This alienation breeds an aggression whose hostility lashes out at the body of life. As the anorexic is at war with their embodiment, humanity is now at war with its enworldment.

The frenetic pace of technology allows for greater communication but less and less communion. Social media allows for huge amounts of talking but there is little true listening. To understand life in its wholeness, to understand yourself, or any "other", you must develop a tremendous stillness, capacity for listening, observation. For this you must face the addiction to stimulation that our culture offers to replace the loss of intimacy.

To know the world with open-hearted tenderness insures that one will indeed be broken hearted but also that one will know joy - both the joy of this world and an unborn joy beyond touch of decay or corruption. in this joy one discovers a love of live, a love in life, a love that pervades life. This Love of Life knows there must be relationship unspoiled by the wounds of memory. The mind, still, silent, without avoidance is swept through by the wildfire of Love and grief.

100 Days of Enlightened Mind by Traktung Khepa - Issuu
https://issuu.com/traktung.khepa/docs/eye_to_form_is_only_love_original

One of the roles of philosophy is to play the fool, or idiot. From its inception, philosophy has been closely tied to idiotism. Every philosopher who has brought forth a new idiom - a new language, a new way of thinking - has necessarily been an idiot. Only the idiot has access to the wholly other. Idiotism discloses a field of immanence of events and singularities for thought. This field eludes subjectivation and psychologization altogether. Communication achieves maximum velocity when the Same reacts to the same. In the inferno of the Same, communication attains its highest speed. In light of compulsive and coercive communication and conformism, idiotism represents a practice of freedom. By nature, the idiot is unallied, un-networked, and uniformed. The idiot is a modern-day heretic. Etymologically, heresy means choice. Thus, the heretic is one who commands free choice, the courage to deviate from orthodoxy. As a heretic, the idiot represents a figure of resistance opposing the violence of consensus. The idiot preserves the magic of the outsider. Today, in light of increasingly coercive conformism, it is more urgent than ever to heighten heretical consciousness. Idiot communicates with the In-communicalble. As such, the idiot veils himself in silence. Idiotism erects spaces for guarding silence, quiet and solitude, where it is stil possible to say what really deserves to be said.

It´s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces donť stop people from expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and even rarer, thing that might be worth saying.

Pure immanence is the void, which can neither be psychologized nor subjectivized. Immanent life is lighter and richer - indeed, freer - for such emptiness. The sphere of immanence to which the idiot gains admittance is the matrix of de-subjectivation and de-psychologization. It is negativity, wrestling the subject out of itself and liberating it into the immensity of an empty time. The idiot does not exist as a subject - he is more like a flower, an existence simply open to light.

(Byung-Chul Han - Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power)

As narration, syllogism represents the opposite of addition. Big Data is purely additive, it never comes to an end, to a conclusion. In contrast to the correlations and additions that Big Data generates, theoretical thinking represents a narrative form of knowledge. The Spirit is a conclusion, a syllogism, an integral whole in which component parts are meaningfully preserved. The intergral whole is a conclusive form. But without Spirit, the whole world falls apart into merely additive, unincorporated elements. Spirit constitutes the world´s interiority and composure - what gathers, or composes, everything within itself. Theory is also conceptual - syllogistic - because it comprehends all the elements it includes. Ultimately, the "end of theory" that Chris Anderson has trumpeted means taking leave of Spirit. Big Data makes Spirit - that is, thinking and thought - wither and die. Human science that is purely data-driven is, in fact, no longer human. It has no Geist, or Spirit. Totalized data-knowledge amounts to absolute ignorance, the absolute zero of Spirit.

Unlike mere addition, narration is a syllogism. Knowledge - the state of knowing - is a syllogism. Rituals and ceremonies are syllogistic forms too. They represent a narrative process. As such, they have their own temporality, their own rhythm and pace. As narratives, they defy acceleration. But when all syllogistic forms fall apart, everything has become additive, where all narrative tension - any vertical tautness - has gone missing, total acceleration sets in.

Today, our perceptive apparatus itself is incapable of arriving at any conclusion, it just clicks its way through the endless, digital net. Our senses are completely distracted. Yet only contemplative lingering manages to achieve any meaningful end. Shutting one´s eyes offers a symbol for arriving at a conclusion. Abrubt change from image to image, from information to information, has made any such contemplative conclusion impossible. If all that qualifies as reasonable is a syllogism - a conclusion - then our era, the age of Big Data, is an epoch without reason.

(Byung-Chul Han - Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power)

"Inasmuch as it expends a great deal of energy to force people into the straightjacket of commandments and prohibitions, disciplinary power proves inefficient. A significantly more efficient technology of power makes sure that people subordinate themselves to power relations on their own. Such a dynamic seeks to activate, motivate and optimize - not to inhibit or repress. It proves so effective because it does not operate by means of forbidding and depriving, but by pleasing and fulfilling. Instead of making people compliant, it seeks to make them dependent.

Power that is smart and friendly does not operate frontally - i.e., against the will of those who are subject to it. Instead, it guides their will to its own benefit. It says "yes" more often than "no", it operates seductively, not repressively. It seeks to call forth positive emotions and exploit them. It leads astray instead of erecting obstacles. Instead of standing opposed to the subject, smart and friendly power meets the subject halfway.

Smart power cosies up to the psyche rather than disciplining it through coercion or prohibitions. It does not impose silence. Rather, it is constantly calling on us to confide, share and participate: to communicate our opinions, needs, wishes and preferences - to tell all about our lives. Friendly power proves more powerful, as it were, than purely repressive power. It manages not to be seen at all. Today´s crisis of freedom stems from the fact that the operative technology of power does not negate or repress freedom so much as exploit it. Free choice (Wahl) is eliminated to make way for a free selection (Auswahl) from among the items on offer.

Smart power read and appraises our conscious and unconscious thoughts. It places its stock in voluntary self-organization and self-optimization. As such, it has no need to overcome resitance. Mastery of this sort requires no great expenditure of energy or violence. It simply happens."

(Byung-Chul Han - Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power)

INK_FLO: T.S.Eliot je super:

“And after our all exploring we will end up where we have started but know it for the first time.”

Kde je ta moudrost, co ztratili jsme ve vědění?
Kde je to vědění, co ztratili jsme v informacích?

(T. S. Eliot)

"Myths are public dreams. Dreams are private myths." (Joseph Campbell)

„Zdalipak ses,“ ptal se ho jednou, „ zdalipak ses naučil od řeky tajemství: že není čas?“ Vasudévovu tvář přeběhl jasný úsměv.

„Ano, Siddhártho,“ řekl, „je to přece tohle, co máš na mysli: že řeka je všude zároveň, u pramene i u ústí, u vodopádu, u přívozu, u peřejí, v moři, v horách, všude zároveň, a že pro ni je pouze přítomnost, nikoli stín budoucnosti?“

„Tak je to,“ řekl Siddhártha. „Když jsem se to naučil, podíval jsem se na svůj život a byla to také řeka a chlapec Siddhártha byl od muže Siddhárthy a od starce Siddhárthy oddělen jen stínem, ničím skutečným. Ani Siddhárthova dřívější narození nebyla žádnou minulostí a jeho smrt a návrat k brahmanu žádnou budoucností. Nic nebylo, nic nebude; všechno je bytí a přítomnost.“

Siddhártha mluvil zaníceně, toto osvícení jej hluboce obšťastnilo. Ach, nebylo snad všechno utrpení čas, nebylo všechno sebetrýznění a strachování čas, nebylo všechno obtížné, všechno nepřátelské ve světě pryč a překonáno, jakmile byl překonán čas, jakmile bylo možno čas odmyslet? Mluvil zaníceně. Vasudéva se však na něho zářivě usmíval, souhlasně pokyvoval, pokyvoval mlčky, rukou pohladil Siddhárthu po ramenou a vrátil se ke své práci.


Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, 1967