Thursday, January 17, 2008

Thoughts on Base Materialism

Thoughts on Base Materialism:
The first reading took a bit to acclimate to the writing style of the authors, the stream of consciousness, forming ideas as a visual experience; or perhaps that's the way I read.
Even in the first reading I felt the spark of something known, questioned, explored - yes, these ponderings are very familiar to me, yet in the rush of daily activity, the societal fitting, I catch a glimpse of my constant questioning.
I love the disturbance this has created in my mind. This disturbance was demonstrated in the differences between my first piece of clay and the second, "the mess". The disturbance, although good, was still just another offshoot from my linear trajectory with which I have been operating from since conscious development. Ah, agitation, how does one get off a well grooved track?
The word '...materialism must "exclude all idealism" (which is a far more complicated job than it might seem) "heterogeneity" designates from the outset what is excluded by idealism (by the ego, capitalism, organized religion, and so on.) But above all, the term "heterology" has no philosophical antecedents with which it might be
confused,... .' Everything splits into two, even materialism.'
Exclude all idealism? Not to name, not to speak, not to think, not to move, for to do so would be to remain stuck on the track that is incessant in it's own movement forward to death of this body. Is death a destination? Only for the living unconscious.
Who's driving anyway? I must remain, on some level, riding the track line, but to free the self of all idealism, would that mean death or perhaps detachment - split in two, for everything to me is inherently a dichotomy.
'The formless matter that base materialism claims for itself resembles nothing, especially not what it should be, refusing to let itself be assimilated to any concept whatever, to any abstraction whatever. For base materialism, nature produces only unique monsters: there are no deviants in nature because there is nothing but deviation. Ideas are prisons; the idea of "human nature" is the largest of the prisons:in "each man, an animal" is "locked up...like a convict." '
The wild, indigenous self, imprisoned from the lack of questioning, from the acceptance of the norm, the status quo, which in itself has no existence. The norm is an example of an average, not a reality. Then what is reality? Is something real because I believe it to be so? And even with all our questioning, it seems that the quest for answers lead to more questions. There is no end nor a beginning, and what is the middle? Have I accepted the idea that this body starts at birth and ends at death and I make up the middle? Although I would like to think not, I have a body, therefore I have a mind, and I think so I am. What if the thoughts stop? Do I cease to exist? No, instead, I become more like a "human being" as opposed to a "human doing" and may possibly relate to the nature of becoming human. Picking at the lock which imprisons the wild indigenous nature of the whole self without ego.


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