Kombinat!
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz
Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz:
The personality of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), also known as Witkacy, goes beyond the confines of philosophy to embrace a whole series of creative activities that make him a unique figure in Polish and European culture between the two World Wars. Dramatist, poet, novelist, painter, photographer, art theorist (from 1919 onwards he was one of the most representative members of the poetic and artistic avant-garde in Poland, together with Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz, and a supporter of Formalism), and last but not least an acute and eccentric philosopher: this multitude of interests sums up a restless spirit who is difficult to classify in the usual categories. Of all his activities, he certainly considered philosophy as occupying a central place. But the philosophical thought which incessantly accompanied all Witkiewicz’s activities was mostly unknown to his contemporaries except as mediated by his art.
Witkiewicz was a radical critic of bourgeois society and the kind of social existence generated by capitalism, which he feared would lead to the complete dehumanisation of social life and a growing totalitarianism, with the consequent annihilation of the individual personality. Paradoxical and ironic debunker of bourgeois morality; harsh critic of the overwhelming mass society he saw as irreversibly invading both West and East not only in the hypocritical guise of a democratic system but also behind the banners of the proletariat; tragically aware of the progressive abandonment of authentic values linked to the individual, creative personality of man in favour of the spread in social life of values based on happiness, utility and material satisfaction, his philosophy of history led to a catastrophic diagnosis of contemporary reality: the welfare towards which society tends and to which even the "working classes" aspire leads them to forget the mystery of existence (a concept he placed at the centre of his "monadology"), to extinguish the metaphysical sentiment that springs from it and hence to the demise of religion and art, which have their foundation in it. It also marks the end of philosophy, its suicide: this is the negative result of his diagnosis of the growing mechanisation of life, the crisis of the individual in contemporary society, increasingly threatened by the advance of uniformity and democratic homologation, the greatest embodiment of which was for him Socialism. And rather than live in a society moulded by Socialism, as an authentic nihilist Witkiewicz preferred suicide ¶ 5:05 AM 1 Comments Links to this post
The personality of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), also known as Witkacy, goes beyond the confines of philosophy to embrace a whole series of creative activities that make him a unique figure in Polish and European culture between the two World Wars. Dramatist, poet, novelist, painter, photographer, art theorist (from 1919 onwards he was one of the most representative members of the poetic and artistic avant-garde in Poland, together with Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz, and a supporter of Formalism), and last but not least an acute and eccentric philosopher: this multitude of interests sums up a restless spirit who is difficult to classify in the usual categories. Of all his activities, he certainly considered philosophy as occupying a central place. But the philosophical thought which incessantly accompanied all Witkiewicz’s activities was mostly unknown to his contemporaries except as mediated by his art.
Witkiewicz was a radical critic of bourgeois society and the kind of social existence generated by capitalism, which he feared would lead to the complete dehumanisation of social life and a growing totalitarianism, with the consequent annihilation of the individual personality. Paradoxical and ironic debunker of bourgeois morality; harsh critic of the overwhelming mass society he saw as irreversibly invading both West and East not only in the hypocritical guise of a democratic system but also behind the banners of the proletariat; tragically aware of the progressive abandonment of authentic values linked to the individual, creative personality of man in favour of the spread in social life of values based on happiness, utility and material satisfaction, his philosophy of history led to a catastrophic diagnosis of contemporary reality: the welfare towards which society tends and to which even the "working classes" aspire leads them to forget the mystery of existence (a concept he placed at the centre of his "monadology"), to extinguish the metaphysical sentiment that springs from it and hence to the demise of religion and art, which have their foundation in it. It also marks the end of philosophy, its suicide: this is the negative result of his diagnosis of the growing mechanisation of life, the crisis of the individual in contemporary society, increasingly threatened by the advance of uniformity and democratic homologation, the greatest embodiment of which was for him Socialism. And rather than live in a society moulded by Socialism, as an authentic nihilist Witkiewicz preferred suicide ¶ 5:05 AM 1 Comments Links to this post
Jan Lukasiewicz
Jan Lukasiewicz:
Jan Lukasiewicz is known all over the world as the founder of the first non-classical logical calculus, the so-called trivalent or polivalent logic, and as one of the most prominent and significative logicians of this century. But he was also very active in historical research on logic, giving a new and up-to-date interpretation of Aristotle's syllogism and of the Stoics' propositional calculus. His activity is strictly connected to the school founded by Kazimierz Twardowski, whose first pupil he was in Lvov . Maybe less known, but very significant, was his philosophical reflection about science and the role that creativity plays in the invention of theories, regarding which he followed an anti-inductive attitude in many aspects similar to Popper's conceptions ¶ 5:02 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Jan Lukasiewicz is known all over the world as the founder of the first non-classical logical calculus, the so-called trivalent or polivalent logic, and as one of the most prominent and significative logicians of this century. But he was also very active in historical research on logic, giving a new and up-to-date interpretation of Aristotle's syllogism and of the Stoics' propositional calculus. His activity is strictly connected to the school founded by Kazimierz Twardowski, whose first pupil he was in Lvov . Maybe less known, but very significant, was his philosophical reflection about science and the role that creativity plays in the invention of theories, regarding which he followed an anti-inductive attitude in many aspects similar to Popper's conceptions ¶ 5:02 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Kombinat! randezvous at K Street
K! Street Kombinat! is. On K! Street let's have a tryst.
Randezvous today at noon,
bring your macaroon and don't look like a goon.
Sing a happy tune.
There's work to do, Kombinat! Voo Doo to do.
Admire Amerikan bravados of K! Street aficionados. Ole! ¶ 8:57 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Randezvous today at noon,
bring your macaroon and don't look like a goon.
Sing a happy tune.
There's work to do, Kombinat! Voo Doo to do.
Admire Amerikan bravados of K! Street aficionados. Ole! ¶ 8:57 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, June 15, 2006
webreading
Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?:
Two points here: Structural Participation and Benevolent Dictator. Very important distinctions. ¶ 11:26 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
What's at stake here is what is called "subcultural capital" by academics. It is the kind of capital that anyone can get, if you are cool enough to know that it exists and cool enough to participate. It is a counterpart to "cultural capital" which is more like hegemonic capital. (...)(link from Scruggs' comments here)
"Coolness" is about structural barriers, about the lack of universal accessibility or parsability. Structural hurdles mean people put in more effort to participate. It's kinda like the adventure of tracking down the right parking lot to get the bus to go to the rave. The effort matters. Sure, it weeds some people out, but it makes those who participate feel all the more validated. Finding the easter egg, the cool little feature that no one knows about is exciting. Learning all of the nooks and crannies in a complex system is exhilarating. Figuring out how to hack things, having the "inside knowledge" is fabu.
Often, people don't need simplicity - they want to feel proud of themselves for figuring something out; they want to feel the joy of exploration. This is the difference between tasks that people are required to do and social life. Social life isn't about the easy way to do something - it's about making meaning out of practice, about finding your own way.
Bugs make technologies seem alive, particularly if they're acknowledged and fixed. They give texture to the environment and people are impressively patient with it if they feel like the architects are on it. It makes the architects look vulnerable which brings them back down to earth, making them real and fallible, but giving them the opportunity to do good. They let the benevolent dictator really serve the people
Two points here: Structural Participation and Benevolent Dictator. Very important distinctions. ¶ 11:26 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Teatr Bagatela - Rewizor Mikolaj Gogol
Teatr Bagatela - Rewizor:
Gogol daje chwile wzniosłości swoim prowincjonalnym błaznom oczkującym na przyjazd - nieważne fałszywego czy prawdziwego rewizora. Myśli o nich ciepło, rozumie ich gorycz. Pozwala im śnić sen, o "dobrej, ludzkiej władzy". Do dziś nie ważne we współczesnej Rosji, Polsce czy gdziekolwiek na świecie zmieniła się ludzka mentalność. Gogol zrozumiał, że zahukanemu obywatelowi odległej guberni nie zależy na tym, żeby brać udział we władzy, czy patrzeć jej na ręce. Gogolowski bohater chce, aby to władza cały czas patrzyła na niego. Po to przecież została stworzona - niech wszystko widzi, niech wszystko rozumie, trochę pogrozi i w końcu przebaczy. W micie tak pojętej władzy ludzie szukają usprawiedliwienia dla własnej małości ¶ 4:16 AM 2 Comments Links to this post
Gogol daje chwile wzniosłości swoim prowincjonalnym błaznom oczkującym na przyjazd - nieważne fałszywego czy prawdziwego rewizora. Myśli o nich ciepło, rozumie ich gorycz. Pozwala im śnić sen, o "dobrej, ludzkiej władzy". Do dziś nie ważne we współczesnej Rosji, Polsce czy gdziekolwiek na świecie zmieniła się ludzka mentalność. Gogol zrozumiał, że zahukanemu obywatelowi odległej guberni nie zależy na tym, żeby brać udział we władzy, czy patrzeć jej na ręce. Gogolowski bohater chce, aby to władza cały czas patrzyła na niego. Po to przecież została stworzona - niech wszystko widzi, niech wszystko rozumie, trochę pogrozi i w końcu przebaczy. W micie tak pojętej władzy ludzie szukają usprawiedliwienia dla własnej małości ¶ 4:16 AM 2 Comments Links to this post
Speed Shitting Contests Kombinat! is
How to Be? How much do you need to "Have" to "Be"? In pursuit of Having we give up our Being and become Human Havings, transactional creatures vomiting phrases dumped into our gaping mouths when staring into that Thing. - So, how to Be? How much 'Having' is enough to "Be" when you wake up in a world of manufactured scarcity every single day.
I told my friend whose responses of "I don't shit money" to her teenage girl's incessant pleads to 'buy, buy, buy' - that she does not have a chance. She must 'shit money' - it's the only game in town - her daughter a transfixed participant in these bulimic games of compulsive swallowing large quantities of desire and vomiting contempt and disrespect on her mother for not shitting fast enough
(From comments at IMproPRieTies: The world we have:) ¶ 3:49 AM 1 Comments Links to this post
I told my friend whose responses of "I don't shit money" to her teenage girl's incessant pleads to 'buy, buy, buy' - that she does not have a chance. She must 'shit money' - it's the only game in town - her daughter a transfixed participant in these bulimic games of compulsive swallowing large quantities of desire and vomiting contempt and disrespect on her mother for not shitting fast enough
(From comments at IMproPRieTies: The world we have:) ¶ 3:49 AM 1 Comments Links to this post
Internet Archive: Details: Eben Moglen - Opening Keynote @ WOS3 - Audio
Internet Archive: Details: Eben Moglen - Opening Keynote @ WOS3 - Audio:
and the transcript of the speach
Die Gedanken sind frei.
and the transcript of the speach
Die Gedanken sind frei.
And so we found ourselves confronting a system of power based upon ideas of property relations that the technology of the owners was already making obsolete. It is not possible for industrial organizations to do a better job of distributing music than 12 year-olds can do. Hence the world in which the music industry confronts the children on the barricades, attempts to jail them, fine them, control them, and loses. The same is true for all the other forms of art given to us by the 20th century and being freed by the very technology that the controllers of artists hoped would control art even further. This, like the adoption of movable type printing at the end of the 15th century, constitutes a moment at which the powers of control have adopted technology which transforms their conditions of existance, will they, nil they. They do not will it but it happens to them anyway. And the technology that they have freed, like the sorcerer's apprentice, finds itself overwhelmed by its own implications¶ 2:18 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
The New Megadodo
BBC - Radio 4 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The New Series:
Zarniwoop further explains that whereas the business once relied on selling lots of old Guides to billions of people, the new plan depends on selling One Guide many many times to billions and billions of people. This is possible because the new Guide has been built to operate transdimensionally, available anywhere at any time across the layers of the multiverse. And instead of the voice of a plummy pompous pedagogue lecturing to penniless hitchhikers, it boasts a sultry Brantisvogan Escort Agency VIP vamp voice ¶ 1:39 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Zarniwoop further explains that whereas the business once relied on selling lots of old Guides to billions of people, the new plan depends on selling One Guide many many times to billions and billions of people. This is possible because the new Guide has been built to operate transdimensionally, available anywhere at any time across the layers of the multiverse. And instead of the voice of a plummy pompous pedagogue lecturing to penniless hitchhikers, it boasts a sultry Brantisvogan Escort Agency VIP vamp voice ¶ 1:39 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
bla bla bla out to sea.
So many times a writer thinks "did I communicate this right? did I use the words, sentences to say what I wanted to say?" - well, did I even know what to say and then did I say what I thought I wanted to say or did I just say what I said and then read what I said and said to myself that what I said was not what I wanted to say. For writers saying and writing is the same activity.The same verb.
Voices in my head! Shadows on the Wall! Bla Bla Bla, they never shut up so writing and saying is just the same. Bla Bla Bla. Words crashing your brain, pushing against you, disturbing your breakfast appearing out of nowhere, thieves of your attention. There you are cleaning your desk or repairing a bicycle and words just show up in your head and want to be formed and stuffed in casings like sausages. Imagine there you are with a screwdriver in your hand and these words like sausage meat just pressing out and you have to somehow stuff'em, stuff into some kind of casing or a bag or a box or something because they are like vomit all over you. Words like that, like a fireshose shooting sausage meat directly into your brain.
And what to do? What is there to be done in this situation? Well, many things. Recently ignoring it seems to work. Ignoring it completely. Working on ignoring, sweating ignoring, heavy lifting of ignoring, a monumental work of ignoring going on. Large fields of time ignoring, digging trenches of ignoring, meliorating, ditches, dikes, pushing words out back to the sea like dutchmen with canals and contraption made of wood and metal and brain power and dynamite and cannonballs and rapiers, swords, clogs, delft pottery and tulips, fields and fields of tulips.
There the words no longer crashing, the dikes holding, a screwdriver in my hand I am ready to face the day. ¶ 11:59 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Voices in my head! Shadows on the Wall! Bla Bla Bla, they never shut up so writing and saying is just the same. Bla Bla Bla. Words crashing your brain, pushing against you, disturbing your breakfast appearing out of nowhere, thieves of your attention. There you are cleaning your desk or repairing a bicycle and words just show up in your head and want to be formed and stuffed in casings like sausages. Imagine there you are with a screwdriver in your hand and these words like sausage meat just pressing out and you have to somehow stuff'em, stuff into some kind of casing or a bag or a box or something because they are like vomit all over you. Words like that, like a fireshose shooting sausage meat directly into your brain.
And what to do? What is there to be done in this situation? Well, many things. Recently ignoring it seems to work. Ignoring it completely. Working on ignoring, sweating ignoring, heavy lifting of ignoring, a monumental work of ignoring going on. Large fields of time ignoring, digging trenches of ignoring, meliorating, ditches, dikes, pushing words out back to the sea like dutchmen with canals and contraption made of wood and metal and brain power and dynamite and cannonballs and rapiers, swords, clogs, delft pottery and tulips, fields and fields of tulips.
There the words no longer crashing, the dikes holding, a screwdriver in my hand I am ready to face the day. ¶ 11:59 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
time wormhole thoughts
If one has the power to move mountains one has to take into effect the consequence of such moves. What may look like a trivial landscape project in one's backyard ends up fucking up years of delicate ecosystems not yet understood. Our readiness to share the world with other people does show up in our willingness to let the mountain be where it is. It is in that willingness not to fuck with it knowing that we do have the power to blow it up that we first begin to see freedoms to express humanity in ourselves and let others breath easier and be available to share life with us.
As a child I was told that if you find something of value that does not belong to you then you must find the owner and return it because it is of greater value to return value back than to appropriate it for yourself. For many years I thought this was bullshit but I've always acted on that lesson from childhood honoring a tradition of giving up on opportunity to profit from other people's mistakes and misfortunes.
What does it take for a human being to walk away from the opportunity to steal? Perhaps to know that all of us are born thieves and opportunists. Yes, but what does it take to walk away? ¶ 7:50 AM 1 Comments Links to this post
As a child I was told that if you find something of value that does not belong to you then you must find the owner and return it because it is of greater value to return value back than to appropriate it for yourself. For many years I thought this was bullshit but I've always acted on that lesson from childhood honoring a tradition of giving up on opportunity to profit from other people's mistakes and misfortunes.
What does it take for a human being to walk away from the opportunity to steal? Perhaps to know that all of us are born thieves and opportunists. Yes, but what does it take to walk away? ¶ 7:50 AM 1 Comments Links to this post
A spark has struck on a dead battery.
A spark has struck us. So there I was sitting in a comfortable chair reminiscing my few minutes spent at the Recycling Station in a town of V. It looks like town of V. has nice and friendly place to recycle things of all kinds of recyclable nature and I don't mean just paper and plastic but also dead roots of roses no one has bothered to water for over five years and they needed to be dug up cut up and tossed to the paper container and yes, later can be brought there. - Upon that thought I decided to bring a gift to the Recycling Station since someone has left it on a street in front of my house. It was a car battery. I was quite curious why such a thing should occur in a town of V. A car battery suddenly appearing in front of my house. I have seen strange things here like one of my neighbors, obviously a psychopath or why would he be screaming at me gesticulating with his idiotic flabby arms saying "don't you fucking park your car in front of my driveway" and here I was needing to just stop for few minutes and it wasn't like he was in a dire need to go anywhere and here a small baby sleeping in a car seat and fresh butter melting in a back seat and a wife in a front seat just having been picked up at the dentists. I was looking around for a baseball bat so I could shut up that small monkey for his scream was quite annoying but I drove away and parked two houses down having decided to came back later with a big sign that should spell "Screaming Monkey. Cheap Thrill. Only 25 cents" and make some money on that lazy sunny hot Tuesday afternoon - and I could have pulled even more than 10 bucks because right about that time on my street plenty of kids were returning home from school with their parents and knowing how little children adore wild life, from turtles to tigers watching a screaming monkey for a quarter would have been indeed a thrill.
But this post is about a battery or rather about the Recycling Station in a town of V. or maybe even about the human nature, I shall leave the topic of this post to be discerned by the reader, and why not the reader, why should the author worry about such a thing as introducing evidence after having decided what the post is about? why I ask? The reader should be free to decide to him/herself what the post is about. After all we live in a free post modernist society and we are not going to be stuffed into predestined posts, no, enough of this blogging with clear titles and well defined Cartesian linear thoughts. Let the reader decide for him/herself if indeed my neighbor is a psychopath or just a screaming monkey. Let us not let the author make such judgments.
I drove the car battery to the Recycling Station where I said these words in broken German - "Ish musshte diese car battery recycle, bitte" to a young recycling specialist girl, well, not really a girl and not really a woman, let us say simply a Young German Female, such a female you can see everywhere in a town of V. It looks as if they don't know if they want to remain girls and are not sure if they are women yet, their giggling with no longer girlish and coming from a body of a young woman quite infantile. After two sentences I found out that I was really talking to a German Bureaucrat, infantile bureaucrat, fresh and already on her way to a fine bureaucratic career. Said battery indeed can be recycled but must be brought on first tuesday of the month between 9 am and 3 pm. This is the schedule for a special truck which will be parked at the recycling station and which will accept car batteries and burned light bulbs. Apart from those scheduled times these articles can not be recycled. - I was faced with a conundrum - Pretend I don't speak German, English or any other language and simply hand the battery to the girl-woman bureaucrat and drive away or inquire about this stupidity and ask about
"store and forward" business techniques. I chose to explain first having already perceived that asking "why can't I just leave it here until the truck comes" will be replied with "because we don't have a container for it" which would prompt me to ask "why don't you just leave it by the door or next to regular batteries, you seem to have a lot of space here, huh?" So I explained that the battery is not mine. I have taken upon myself a responsibility to deliver this battery to a recycling station instead of having it permanently displayed on a street in front of my house or conveniently pushing it in front of the house of my psychopath monkey screaming neighbor so he can dump it in the river which would be irresponsible. My explanation was met with a smile but not a smile of sympathy as I was hoping for. It was an infantile smile of a bureaucrat. Her lips parting, revealing a pierced tongue saying a well memorized directions "I am sorry but the truck comes in two weeks". There for a moment I saw she was genuinely sorry, it was in here eyes but was soon replace with her convenient helplessness and unwillingness to do anything about it. As I stood there I gave her a battery but she took her hands away and stepped back still smiling, giggling like a girl, functioning as a bureaucrat wishing I should go away but a bit glad she's had a chance to speak english.
The battery is in front of my house. One of these months on the special day when the truck comes between 9am and 3pm I will drive to the Recycling Station with it but every day I am pushing the battery 3 centimeters closer to the doorsteps of my screaming monkey psychopath neighbor. ¶ 6:44 AM 2 Comments Links to this post
But this post is about a battery or rather about the Recycling Station in a town of V. or maybe even about the human nature, I shall leave the topic of this post to be discerned by the reader, and why not the reader, why should the author worry about such a thing as introducing evidence after having decided what the post is about? why I ask? The reader should be free to decide to him/herself what the post is about. After all we live in a free post modernist society and we are not going to be stuffed into predestined posts, no, enough of this blogging with clear titles and well defined Cartesian linear thoughts. Let the reader decide for him/herself if indeed my neighbor is a psychopath or just a screaming monkey. Let us not let the author make such judgments.
I drove the car battery to the Recycling Station where I said these words in broken German - "Ish musshte diese car battery recycle, bitte" to a young recycling specialist girl, well, not really a girl and not really a woman, let us say simply a Young German Female, such a female you can see everywhere in a town of V. It looks as if they don't know if they want to remain girls and are not sure if they are women yet, their giggling with no longer girlish and coming from a body of a young woman quite infantile. After two sentences I found out that I was really talking to a German Bureaucrat, infantile bureaucrat, fresh and already on her way to a fine bureaucratic career. Said battery indeed can be recycled but must be brought on first tuesday of the month between 9 am and 3 pm. This is the schedule for a special truck which will be parked at the recycling station and which will accept car batteries and burned light bulbs. Apart from those scheduled times these articles can not be recycled. - I was faced with a conundrum - Pretend I don't speak German, English or any other language and simply hand the battery to the girl-woman bureaucrat and drive away or inquire about this stupidity and ask about
"store and forward" business techniques. I chose to explain first having already perceived that asking "why can't I just leave it here until the truck comes" will be replied with "because we don't have a container for it" which would prompt me to ask "why don't you just leave it by the door or next to regular batteries, you seem to have a lot of space here, huh?" So I explained that the battery is not mine. I have taken upon myself a responsibility to deliver this battery to a recycling station instead of having it permanently displayed on a street in front of my house or conveniently pushing it in front of the house of my psychopath monkey screaming neighbor so he can dump it in the river which would be irresponsible. My explanation was met with a smile but not a smile of sympathy as I was hoping for. It was an infantile smile of a bureaucrat. Her lips parting, revealing a pierced tongue saying a well memorized directions "I am sorry but the truck comes in two weeks". There for a moment I saw she was genuinely sorry, it was in here eyes but was soon replace with her convenient helplessness and unwillingness to do anything about it. As I stood there I gave her a battery but she took her hands away and stepped back still smiling, giggling like a girl, functioning as a bureaucrat wishing I should go away but a bit glad she's had a chance to speak english.
The battery is in front of my house. One of these months on the special day when the truck comes between 9am and 3pm I will drive to the Recycling Station with it but every day I am pushing the battery 3 centimeters closer to the doorsteps of my screaming monkey psychopath neighbor. ¶ 6:44 AM 2 Comments Links to this post
