A Theft and Recasting of a Line by Zarathustra (Nietzsche)

What the masses learned to accept without reason

reason cannot refute

and the pretty baubles and grand gestures

trip the light and sell the rabble

while logic becomes dressed as witchcraft

and is danced from fear to shame

and returns, hollowed out,

as sham and excuse

The Free Market Ain't Free

So, Marxists are self-deluded utopians, right?   Any Objectivist uber-capitalist will tell you that they are the ones who see the world with clear eyes.

Or do they?  It seems that Objectivism relies on utopian self-delusion (or is that faith?) more than anyone is admitting.

Case in point: an open and freely competitive market will always result in the best products.

Oh really?

Three words: VHS versus Beta.

Three more words: Mac versus PC.

The only possible way you can judge VHS video systems or PC computer systems as superior products is if you consider advertising, market leverage, and distribution as part of product quality - in that sense, these products did prove superior.  A capitalist accounting always takes into consideration the excess detritus that makes up the whole of the thing as it appears in the market (the thing + its production + its marketing + its initial position in the market as determined by the market strength of the entity that owns it), not simply the thing itself.

Since capitalism deals only with the quantitative, not the qualitative, the products cited are judged superior, since they are the ones that took over the market.  This is the destructive reductive central aspect of capitalism: because it does not deal with the qualitative, it can not judge "good" in any meaningful way.

Sometimes the best product takes over the market.  Sometimes it doesn't.  That's a long way from the "cream always rising".  It's a long way from the understanding that the Objectivist publicly projects about the market.

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And what exactly is a "free market" anyway?  Is it a market which is naturally allowed to evolve on its own without interference, or is it a competitive market?

"Unencumbered" markets (markets which are allowed to evolve naturally) tend toward monopolies.  Strong corporations become stronger and more dominant in the market as markets become more complex and difficult to master.  There are, of course, some markets which don't readily lend themselves to monopolies, but wherever monopolies are possible and desirable, they will occur unless there is interference from the outside.

Monopolies per se are not the problem; rather, it is the tyranny of the bottom line that is given primary importance by the capitalist system that causes the problem. Monopolies allow corporations the ability to focus solely on their own bottom lines without having to answer to competitive challenges . . . again, the primacy of the quantitative wins out, and in the case of a monopoly, the qualitative is wholly subservient to the quantitative. Monopolies are built to control markets; the production of goods is secondary.

American professional sports leagues are shining examples of the efficacy of regulated markets.  The fact that amateur drafts are always ordered to place the worst teams first (except for the NBA, which has a [somewhat flawed] formula that theoretically orders the worst teams first without allowing teams to manipulate the system) shows how sports leagues value the outcomes of their systems over the mechanisms.

It can be argued that the competitive limitations leagues put on their teams actually hurts the quality of the product: what if the richest team, the "monopoly" team, were able to bid openly for talent instead of waiting in line for the draft, or dealing with some variation of a salary cap that allows less rich teams to bid for the best players? Theoretically they could buy the very best players at each position, and then stock their benches with the second and third tier players simply to keep them away from other teams.  This team would, by any definition, be the best team available, and it most likely would dominate its league.  In this case, the "monopoly" team would be the best not just in a quantitative sense, but in a qualitative sense.

This is an important point.  Monopolies are not necessarily bad . . . they are as good as their goals.  If your goal is to build a space program that will get you to the moon in a few short years, then a monopoly is not a bad idea.  If your goal is to pool risk to lower the costs of medical coverage for an entire population, then a monopoly is not a bad idea. If your goal is to put together the most insanely talented football team ever, then a monopoly (no draft, no salary cap, just a wide open market) would be good . . . and not just good in a quantitative sense, but in a qualitative sense as well.

But what is the ultimate goal of "quality" in professional sports?  It's not to have the best team, it is to have the best contest . . . and, to that end, the sports leagues have decided to heavily regulate their markets.  It ranges from baseball, who will theoretically let you pay as much for your roster as you wish (but try to make the balance more competitive by taxing the living hell out of you if you spend too much, thereby making it prohibitive to spend above a certain amount), to NASCAR, who essentially makes everyone drive identical cars, who will change rules as soon as one team displays even the most minute of technical advantages, and even aren't afraid of changing rules on a race to race basis*.  In this sense, the market regulations that the leagues have imposed have been successful, since they make the leagues competitive and interesting . . . and, importantly, despite the ebbs and flows of their incomes, wildly successful in the quantitative as well as the qualitative sense.

The simple fact that discussions occur on the qualitative level, whatever the final outcome may be, makes sports markets superior to financial and commercial markets. It also puts in sharp relief the question: what is a free market - the market which is most free in its mechanics, or the market which is most free in its access?

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And, free or not, who went and made the market the final arbiter of all that is great? Oh, right.  Ayn Rand did.

Please, next time you want to include Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche in the same sentence, remember the following quote:

Far from the market place and from fame happens all that is great: far from the market place and from fame the inventors of new values have always dwelt.    -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: First Part, "On the Flies of the Marketplace"

So you can just go to hell, John Galt.
____________________
*  Does anyone else find it ironic that the sport most closely tied to the Tea Party is the most socialist of sports?

You Can't Handle the Truth

In amongst the usual drivel on Nietzsche, I would like to insert this, from Ronald Bogue's discussion of Deleuze and Guattari: Nietzsche's "new conception of thought", via Gilles Deleuze,

is antithetical to the traditional, dogmatic image of thought in three ways.  First, the element of such a thought is not truth but meaning and value, the categories of such a thought being 'not truth and falsity but the noble and the base, the high and the low' (Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 102).  Second, the enemy of such a thought is not error, a force external to thought that diverts it from its natural course, but stupidity, a base way of thinking internal to thought: 'there are imbecile thoughts, imbecile discourses, that are made up entirely of truths; but these truths are base, they are those of a base, heavy and leaden soul' (NP, p.105).  Finally, such a thought does not require method, which protects thought from error, but the violence of 'forces which take hold of thought'.  Violence must be done to thought 'as thought, a power, the force of thinking, must throw it into a becoming active' (NP, p. 108).      -- Ronald Bogue, Deleuze and Guattari, p. 19

Bogue sums up this thought by saying that "Thought is always interpretation and evaluation, and it is either noble or base, depending on the forces that seize hold of it.  When thought becomes active, it results in a joyous destruction of all that is negative and a creation of new possibilities of life" (Bogue, p. 19).  For me, it is certainly about that, but also about radical responsibility: one is ultimately responsible for one's own thought and subsequent action.  There are no truths but the ones we create, and we are ultimately responsible for what we create.

This, more than the abortion that is the general conception of his superman, is the ground zero of Nietzsche's contribution.

The Death of Everything

1.

Burroughs: "Tear it down, tear it down, tear it all down!"

actually it was "Take it back, take it back, take it all back!", but who's keeping track? Bogus attribution and outright lying is the chic literary device of the first quarter of the 21st century. If this seems like a week attempt then it's because I've come unstuck in time.

2.

This is the death of everything. The title reeks of berets and Sartre, of pretension so mundane it's become a Halloween costume. It's like

DEATH

"oooohhh, scary . . . who the fuck are you trying to kid and/or impress?"

There's the big death, and there's the little death. And a few deaths in between. It's virtually meaningless to talk about death, the big empty. Death is too big; death stands in for its own meaning.

Or not.

3.

I call this blog the death of everything because I want it to be, in a sense, a series of endings. I perceive life/reality as a cycle, a series of cycles, a group of cycles, whatever . . . but unlike circles, there's no smooth continuum, and unlike spirals, there's no controlled (or, sometimes, even logical) motion. As such, you can point at any moment and say "that's the end! DEATH!" and you would be right. Or, you could say "that's the beginning! BIRTH!" and be correct as well. It's all a matter of perspective, you see?

Problem is, everyone wants to be RIGHT. It doesn't work that way. The circles have flat spots, the spirals are less spirals than they are a careening about in scenery that is occasionally familiar, occasionally not.

This is life beyond mathematics, spiritual or actual . . .

4.

Everyone wants a new beginning without an ending. Birth without death.

But it doesn't work that way.

So, lacking rebirth without pain, they choose the status quo. Problem is, there is no such thing as a status quo. Everything is always changing.

You get up every morning at the same time. You eat the same thing for breakfast - say, a bowl of Cheerios. Every day. Same time.

But today, it rains. Yesterday it snowed. The sun will be out tomorrow.

The president got shot. Someone flew airplanes into a large building.

You had sex.

Nothing is ever really the same. But

5.

Somehow, it is. Sartre tries to convince us that just because the sun rose in the east yesterday, and yesterday, and yesterday ad infinitum, that doesn't necessarily mean that it will rise in the east again tomorrow.

Sure. I can buy that. But nobody ever lost money betting that the sun would rise in the east.

"The more things change, the more things stay the same."

God, how I hate the old saws, but this one's apropos. It's the spiral, the careening about in scenery familiar and unfamiliar. It's a life of deja vu.

"It takes money to make money."

Less apropos, but I was thinking of Green on Red for some reason, and that line from one of their songs just came insistently barging through. But wait: not so beside the point, it turns out. Because if you expand it to

"Power serves naught but power."

then you are getting closer to the point.

Money serves money. Power serves power. The status quo exists solely to project itself into infinity.

And that, friends, is the source of everything that is burning up our world: the enormous resource drain to power the continual return of the status quo. I don't mean that strictly in the environmental sense (though, indeed, that applies), but a macroeconomic sense, if economy here is expanded to mean the sum total of all exchange. You see, entropy is the natural tendency of the universe

(everything falls apart)

, and it takes energy (or applied energy = power) to fight against the entropy. So, the more mass a given film clip/reality attains, the more power (energy) it takes to maintain the status quo, like holding an ocean liner at anchor. Turns out the status quo is not the mundane, same-old-same-old; but rather, a raging inferno, a nuclear implosion, and energy sink that swallows up everything in its wake.

Entropy, on the other hand, is zen-like. Sometimes horrible, sometimes violent

(ultimate entropy separates atom from atom, fractures nuclei, sends electrons careening from orbit)

but always tending toward the peace of oblivion

(and [need it be said?] no energy/power drain).

The true conservationist does not preserve. The true conservationist is the death of everything.

6.

the death of everything wants to scrape the barnacles off the ocean liner of culture.

7.

Today we have hundreds, nay, thousands of people telling us what's up with this or that. The democratization of message transmission has led to (what can only with extreme charity be called) the democratization of expression. That's fine: it's not as if the voices are any more wacked out, it's just that there's more of them. And besides, some of the most wacked out voices are right there on the top of the "traditional media" pile.

the death of everything strives to break apart the control systems at the heart of the word. This is particularly tricky considering the fact that the operations take place at the level of word. the death of everything is far from pure in this sense, especially when "calmly and rationally" discussing politics

{assuming that this defective, bipolar political monstrosity is somehow a) functioning logically, and b) worthy of "serious" discussion is in and of itself dangerously faulty logic}

or appearing to align itself in the political spectrum.

"Political", here, meaning American politics.

For that reason, the death of everything needs to be taken as a whole. A defective whole, certainly, but hopefully with its moments of

8.

insight? No, death. The breaking apart, the entropy is the thing. Effective in and of itself, the aiming, the focus, the purpose tends to pollute it, but not fatally.

9.

And thus, the circle, the cycle, the . . . whatever. One thing's for sure, after you've looped around, you're not in the same place, even if the deja vu is heavy . . .

10.

Life and death. Death and life. You don't get one without the other. As the ocean liner of this reality trundles along,

11.

becoming more massive and burdened as it goes,

12.

it sinks ever more precipitously to the dark depths.

13.

Our reality is burdened to the point that it is becoming unworkable. It has to be picked apart, torn asunder, loosened up (nuclei split, electrons ejected from their orbits). Something has to die so that reality can live. And, more than just something, it has to be

14.

everything. Anything less than everything would betray an agenda. Everything dies so that all can be reborn.

15.

"Now I die and vanish," you would say, "and all at once I am nothing. The soul is as mortal as the body. But the knot of causes in which I am entangled recurs and will create me again. I myself belong to the causes of eternal recurrence. I come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent . . . " Zarathustra's eagle and serpent

16.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust - Remember always: from ashes you came, to ashes you shall return." Ash Wednesday Invocation

Action Figures Fragment 3

Stop bemoaning the twilight

for at twilight the sky is beautiful.

Do not be seduced only by the dawn.

Whoever does not want to die of thirst

must learn to drink from all cups.

Whoever would stay clean

must learn to wash

even with dirty water.

One must look away from oneself

to see much:

this is the hardness necessary

for every climber of mountains,

this is the courage necessary

to slay vertigo and sickness

at the edge of the abyss

(and, indeed, where does man

not stand

on the brink of the abyss?

Is not seeing always

seeing the abyss?)

this is the courage necessary

to slay even death itself.

You are moving toward greatness:

that which before had been your ultimate danger

has become your ultimate refunge.

One must look away from oneself

to see much.

(he reached the other peak

at the height of the ridge

a second sea spread before

him. The night was cold,

clear, and starry at this height,

clear and starry bright.)

Whence came the highest mountains?

Out of the deepest depths

come the highest peaks.

STANDING SILENTLY

OVER THE MOCKING CLATTER OF PEBBLES

CRUSHING THE ROCK THAT MADE IT SLIP -

MY FOOT FORCED ITS WAY UPWARD, UPWARD,

ALTHOUGH THE DEVIL SAT ON ME

HALF DWARF

HALF MOLE

LAME

MAKING LAME

DRIPPING LEAD INTO MY EAR

LEADEN THOUGHTS INTO MY BRAIN

Fragment: Action Figures 2

The great events -
they are not our loudest hours
but rather, our stillest of hours.
Through the fury
the earth revolves inaudibly
silence seeping like a pregnant moon
saturating a secret valley
blank meadows opening to cold white light
flooding the valley, a beatification -
Power, turned gracious,
descends into the visible

(kindness, the final self-conquest of the powerful)


My stillest hour speaks in a whisper
the stillest of sounds which brings on the storm
and goes forth as a shadow leading the way.
Great events rarely roar
as cannons over killing fields -
When the noise and smoke clears
very little has happened.
Of little consequence
are mummified cityscapes
and statues thrown down in mud.

Fragment: Action Figures

Prank -

-star

when the soul becomes great, it becomes prankish

Icarus
ca-pering around the sun
as denial of the spirit of gravity
shed the earth
shed the parable permanence
become the parable elevation

escape the lying poets of

the ONE, the PLENUM
Unmoved
Sated
Permanent -

the problem is to leave the earth, and not to leave the earth
be that which must be left behind
hungry
lonely
violent
and godless
the lion will
divested the happiness of slaves
be that which overcomes, that which must be overcome

squinting in the yellow sands
burned by the sun
surrounded by islands/wells/oases
oases where living things rest under dark trees
marketplaces churches government buildings
idolaters and idols and idols hiding from the stare of the sun

be fearless and great
be a struggle
a becoming
an end
an opposition of ends
the crooked path of will

"Whatever I create and however much I love it -
Soon I must oppose it and my love."


3/7/09 minus font and layout structure

Nietzsche, bitches!

From my notebooks on Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Marketplace of Ideas

“Far from the marketplace and from fame
happens all that is great:
Far from the marketplace and from fame
the inventors of new values
have always dwelt.” - Zarathustra

The stink of excuse
rises from every pore –
paper and metal excuse,
system of death deferred,
life on the installment plan.
These things that serve themselves,
these golden calves,
cast and worshipped
above the hand that cast it:
how can that be –
we worship creators, no?

Corrupt surface,
a sheet of ice, everything slides
down to an inevitable –
wait, inevitable, really?
Why is the death coded in?
Why is the death coded in?
These, your talismans,
like chickens of proverb,
have come home to roost.
They are idea.
They are value.
They are world.

There is no room left
for what has become
beneath, even, contempt.

That dollar is a crumple of paper.
The blood in my eyes has nothing to do with paper.
That gold is no more than flavored lead.
The tremor in my voice
has nothing to do with sullen metal.
The voice that tears from deep within
speaks not of gold, silver, or paper.