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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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ressentiment; leveling
#21916241 - 07/08/15 06:22 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Well I am on kind of a break from my work, and life, to deal with some health issues. I'm still in my second youth or so, and I feel like I should be biting to things.
Probably it leaves me a bit wanting in a general way of life, and it is a compensation, but I also have found a few biting analytical observations into life recently.
Probably I should contemplate more meditatively, but alas, here is one thing I read that I can't get off my mind.
Quote:
"It is a fundamental truth of human nature that man is incapable of remaining permanently on the heights, of continuing to admire anything. Human nature needs variety. Even in the most enthusiastic ages people have always liked to joke enviously about their superiors. That is perfectly in order and is entirely justifiable so long as after having laughed at the great they can once more look upon them with admiration; otherwise the game is not worth the candle.
In that way ressentiment finds an outlet even in an enthusiastic age. And as long as an age, even though less enthusiastic, has the strength to give ressentiment its proper character and has made up its mind what its expression signifies, ressentiment has its own, though dangerous importance. ….
the more reflection gets the upper hand and thus makes people indolent, the more dangerous ressentiment becomes, because it no longer has sufficient character to make it conscious of its significance. Bereft of that character reflection is a cowardly and vacillating, and according to circumstances interprets the same thing in a variety of way. It tries to treat it as a joke, and if that fails, to regard it as an insult, and when that fails, to dismiss it as nothing at all; or else it will treat the thing as a witticism, and if that fails then say that it was meant as a moral satire deserving attention, and if that does not succeed, add that it was not worth bothering about.
…. ressentiment becomes the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction. Neither does it understand itself by recognizing distinction negatively (as in the case of ostracism) but wants to drag it down, wants to belittle it so that it really ceases to be distinguished. And ressentiment not only defends itself against all existing forms of distinction but against that which is still to come.
...The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of leveling, and while a passionate age storms ahead setting up new things and tearing down old, raising and demolishing as it goes, a reflective and passionless age does exactly the contrary; it hinders and stifles all action; it levels.
Leveling is a silent, mathematical, and abstract occupation which shuns upheavals. In a burst of momentary enthusiasm people might, in their despondency, even long for a misfortune in order to feel the powers of life, but the apathy which follows is no more helped by a disturbance than an engineer leveling a piece of land. At its most violent a rebellion is like a volcanic eruption and drowns every other sound. At its maximum the leveling process is a deathly silence in which one can hear one’s own heart beat, a silence which nothing can pierce, in which everything is engulfed, powerless to resist. One man can be at the head a rebellion, but no one can be at the head of the leveling process alone, for in that case he would be leader and would thus escape being leveled. Each individual within his own little circle can co-operate in the leveling, but it is an abstract power, and the leveling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The leveling process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity. ...
It must be obvious to everyone that the profound significance of the leveling process lies in the fact that it means the predominance of the category ‘generation’ over the category ‘individuality’." The Present Age (Alexander Dru tr.), 1962, pp. 49–52
Thoughts?
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Buster_Brown
L'une


Registered: 09/17/11
Posts: 11,309
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Re: ressentiment; leveling [Re: Kurt]
#21916914 - 07/08/15 08:43 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Self abasement of a generation could apply to lemming migrations.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Quote:
Another mode of convalescence (in certain situations even more to my liking) is sounding out idols. There are more idols than realities in the world: that is my "evil eye" upon this world; that is also my "evil ear." Finally to pose questions with a hammer, and sometimes to hear as a reply that famous hollow sound that can only come from bloated entrails — what a delight for one who has ears even behind his ears, for me, an old psychologist and pied piper before whom just that which would remain silent must finally speak out.
Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols; How to Philosophize with a Hammer.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Zizek's Nose [Re: Kurt]
#21920023 - 07/09/15 01:32 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Buster_Brown
L'une


Registered: 09/17/11
Posts: 11,309
Last seen: 3 days, 6 hours
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Re: Zizek's Nose [Re: Kurt] 1
#21921017 - 07/09/15 05:38 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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I guess there's nothing like it.
One for the hangman
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Ferdinando


Registered: 11/15/09
Posts: 3,664
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Re: Zizek's Nose [Re: Kurt]
#21947236 - 07/15/15 12:50 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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I was amazing to be around today I like to read about jhanas I find that shortly before you reach a jhana it is very interesting and good to read
-------------------- with our love with our love we could save the world
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Meditation...
There were western philosophers who actually knew how to meditate. Seneca wrote of tranquility of mind as stilling the fluctuation like in a body of water.
Stoics understood breath (pneuma) in its significance. They sought to be like nature, or physis in the organic sense as growth or becoming. They did not find that social values necessarily had to be leveled, or reduced to one dimension of representation.
From slaves like Epictetus to emperors, like Marcus Aurelius, they understood that there were such things as eminent human distinctions of nobility and merit in any circumstance which life and experience can impress...
From Marcus Aurelius's Meditations;
Quote:
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.
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Buster_Brown
L'une


Registered: 09/17/11
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Re: Meditation [Re: Kurt]
#22008007 - 07/28/15 04:39 AM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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OK...the Middle-Way between the extremes is to passively observe the reaction to friction.
Edited by Buster_Brown (07/28/15 06:16 AM)
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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What do you mean? :-)
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