Artgasm
(Wherein once again I sound off on the contradictions of modern life without having lived in any non- or pre-modern life conditions. Wherein I try to once again characterize art--functionally, not idealistically. Wherein the triglycerides of despair are emulsified by the bile salts of wonder. Wherein Moloch-minded exam drudgery is used to make someting, anything.)
So I've been thinking a lot about what I read a long time ago about the concept of "thrownness", which I've mentioned before. Basically, it's a snappy word for the idea that we don't choose when and where we are born; where we will be nurtured; what opportunities life will afford us; who our friends are; what ideas we are exposed to. But it's more insidious than that, I think. It's the reason I can never abide to listen to anyone talk about "free will", because there is no such thing, at least as commonly conceived. The best substitute I can find is "agency". We have some limited agency, mainly consisting in low-level decisions, which is what people praise or blame us on. Otherwise, it is a matter not of random chance, but something even weirdet: contingency. We forget in our individual-minded culture how little control we have: environmental disaster is upon us, wars and revolutions and brave religions and foolish ideaologies sweep streets and mountains and entire continents, the climate proceeds to fuck thousands over. That is trivial. But what's not trivial? The fact that I speak the hodgepodge of languages I speak was up to contingency. The fact that I am of a certain social class with certain education, certain job opportunities, certain propsnsities to rebel in certain areas of life. The people I make friends with, who feed back onto my personality as I affect them, the emotions that emerge from the subconscious, painting each day in a distinct hue. The ideology predominant among my places of work and leusure. These are pesonal examples, but they are universal. I the end, we are thrown into this cauldron and we may face a number of fates. We may be ground up by Babylon, or we may set fire to Babylon. Or we may do any number of things therefrom. And I'm willing to bet the extreme division of labour in the modern world contributes to this feeling more than anything else. I'm not a Marxist (anymore), but Mzrx was right when he talked about alienation; I thinbk alienation is a subset of what we mean by thrownness. If you give up your executive control of a certian field of endeavor, you become more dependent on the whims and contingencies of other people. Did you ever feel nauseous when doing a group project back in high school (or even today) with a group of semi-strangers? That's thrownness in a nutshell.
So what does a predestined early-21st-century upper-middle class person do to maintain a sense of agency in light of institutions thrown against it? (I speak here of a horrible feeling I get whenever I walk among tall buildings, or when machinery the size of a thousand humans moves with its fiendish insect mind, or when studying the mechanics of human physiology in a reading room with five hundred similar specialists. Etc., etc.) That's where that horrible vagueness that is "art" comes in. Let me just array one criticism at art before I begin: every epithet I have ever thrown at organized religion I apply to so-called institutional art. It suffers from the same institutional ossification that happens in huge ecclesiastical hierarchies: basic processes that fill human needs become abstracted (and, unlike in scientific practice, this abstraction is not warranted by anything) and obfuscated so that a team of specialists can leech off the needs of the multitude. So when I speak of art, I speak of it as a process performed by you and me. Art is what happens when I try to write a short story nobody will ever read; art is you and your friends whanging away at the same four chords on ever-so-slightly out of tune guitars; art is hastilu interpreted pseudo-tribal dancing to the ferosious torch-light in some park; art is singing nursery rhymes while cooking. And so on. Why is that great? Because that's where the agency comes in. We have all become specialists in Babylon. There's no denying that. (And, realisitcally, it provides us all with benefits such as physical protection. We are no longer the salt of the Earth, but we will live to approximately 100.) But when you make an attempt (however clumsy) at creating something, anything you assert agency. It's a kind of anti-dialectic wherein homogenization and sterilization (not in the biological sense--yet) produce efflorescence and fragmentation. So the po-mos are right in a very limted domain. Everything they've ever said about science and politics has been bullshit of the highest magnitude; but when it came to talking about the modern "soul", they can give us some guidance. Too bad they are making a covert attempt to become the clergy of the art world.
So fragment away! I expect to see many more honour students blasting their ears with phlangers. Expect to see software engineers vomitting on walls of subways--the tiles their canvas. Expect the carefully controlled surgeon to ignite fireworks at night and launch it at her neighbours. Expect to see your psychiatrist meditating in a magnificent oak tree. But also expect the flip-side. Expect the kind-voiced beardo to have a streak of the Ford Mechanical Man, or the vegan baker to have no compassion or tolerance for computer files in disarray.
Consider: "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope; / for hope would be hope for the wrong thing, wait without / love; / for love would love of the wrong thing; / there is yet, / faith; / the faith, and the love, and the hope are all in the waiting; / there is yet thought; / bout you are not ready for thought; / so the darkness shall be the light, and / the stillness, the dancing."
So I've been thinking a lot about what I read a long time ago about the concept of "thrownness", which I've mentioned before. Basically, it's a snappy word for the idea that we don't choose when and where we are born; where we will be nurtured; what opportunities life will afford us; who our friends are; what ideas we are exposed to. But it's more insidious than that, I think. It's the reason I can never abide to listen to anyone talk about "free will", because there is no such thing, at least as commonly conceived. The best substitute I can find is "agency". We have some limited agency, mainly consisting in low-level decisions, which is what people praise or blame us on. Otherwise, it is a matter not of random chance, but something even weirdet: contingency. We forget in our individual-minded culture how little control we have: environmental disaster is upon us, wars and revolutions and brave religions and foolish ideaologies sweep streets and mountains and entire continents, the climate proceeds to fuck thousands over. That is trivial. But what's not trivial? The fact that I speak the hodgepodge of languages I speak was up to contingency. The fact that I am of a certain social class with certain education, certain job opportunities, certain propsnsities to rebel in certain areas of life. The people I make friends with, who feed back onto my personality as I affect them, the emotions that emerge from the subconscious, painting each day in a distinct hue. The ideology predominant among my places of work and leusure. These are pesonal examples, but they are universal. I the end, we are thrown into this cauldron and we may face a number of fates. We may be ground up by Babylon, or we may set fire to Babylon. Or we may do any number of things therefrom. And I'm willing to bet the extreme division of labour in the modern world contributes to this feeling more than anything else. I'm not a Marxist (anymore), but Mzrx was right when he talked about alienation; I thinbk alienation is a subset of what we mean by thrownness. If you give up your executive control of a certian field of endeavor, you become more dependent on the whims and contingencies of other people. Did you ever feel nauseous when doing a group project back in high school (or even today) with a group of semi-strangers? That's thrownness in a nutshell.
So what does a predestined early-21st-century upper-middle class person do to maintain a sense of agency in light of institutions thrown against it? (I speak here of a horrible feeling I get whenever I walk among tall buildings, or when machinery the size of a thousand humans moves with its fiendish insect mind, or when studying the mechanics of human physiology in a reading room with five hundred similar specialists. Etc., etc.) That's where that horrible vagueness that is "art" comes in. Let me just array one criticism at art before I begin: every epithet I have ever thrown at organized religion I apply to so-called institutional art. It suffers from the same institutional ossification that happens in huge ecclesiastical hierarchies: basic processes that fill human needs become abstracted (and, unlike in scientific practice, this abstraction is not warranted by anything) and obfuscated so that a team of specialists can leech off the needs of the multitude. So when I speak of art, I speak of it as a process performed by you and me. Art is what happens when I try to write a short story nobody will ever read; art is you and your friends whanging away at the same four chords on ever-so-slightly out of tune guitars; art is hastilu interpreted pseudo-tribal dancing to the ferosious torch-light in some park; art is singing nursery rhymes while cooking. And so on. Why is that great? Because that's where the agency comes in. We have all become specialists in Babylon. There's no denying that. (And, realisitcally, it provides us all with benefits such as physical protection. We are no longer the salt of the Earth, but we will live to approximately 100.) But when you make an attempt (however clumsy) at creating something, anything you assert agency. It's a kind of anti-dialectic wherein homogenization and sterilization (not in the biological sense--yet) produce efflorescence and fragmentation. So the po-mos are right in a very limted domain. Everything they've ever said about science and politics has been bullshit of the highest magnitude; but when it came to talking about the modern "soul", they can give us some guidance. Too bad they are making a covert attempt to become the clergy of the art world.
So fragment away! I expect to see many more honour students blasting their ears with phlangers. Expect to see software engineers vomitting on walls of subways--the tiles their canvas. Expect the carefully controlled surgeon to ignite fireworks at night and launch it at her neighbours. Expect to see your psychiatrist meditating in a magnificent oak tree. But also expect the flip-side. Expect the kind-voiced beardo to have a streak of the Ford Mechanical Man, or the vegan baker to have no compassion or tolerance for computer files in disarray.
Consider: "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope; / for hope would be hope for the wrong thing, wait without / love; / for love would love of the wrong thing; / there is yet, / faith; / the faith, and the love, and the hope are all in the waiting; / there is yet thought; / bout you are not ready for thought; / so the darkness shall be the light, and / the stillness, the dancing."
posted by A. D. at 8:42 PM
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