Dread, Walking.

Superb. The phenomenon being discussed (virally-pervasive Christoanalytic therapeutics), on the other hand, is unbelievably depressing. Northanger quoted some Critchley crap recently (about the foundational role of blind obedience to berserk theocratic imperatives) that had smoke coming out of my ears. Think strategic discussions about how (or if?) this trend can be fought are becoming critically important. One God is the enemy. Yes: Resist!

ahem, really trying hard not to say "fyn!", but why does it matter how many gods *I* personally happen to count?

northanger - hey，don't take it personally, but there's a war on ...
What would be the significance of saying "fyn" anyway?

nicholas, if you're tired of my god crap i'm as equally as tired of yours.

northanger - oh for dog's sake! anyone ever suggested you have a slight paranoid streak? you really think this "Christoanalysis therapy" discussion is about your (utterly incomprehensible) version of cystallized hermeto-monotheism? it's about academically-entrenched Lacano-Christian claret-sipping evangelism - your deranged futhnorking gnosis of pythagorized extraterrestrialism is something quite different, and no, i'm not 'tired' of it - there now, is that irritable and snarly enough for you?

nicholas, you know adore and love you? i mimick you constantly and was only trying to get my jockstrap in a twist. you're so cute when you do that.

Monotheism? - it's incomprehensible to me. Coincidentally, I found myself screaming that very phrase "born-again lacanian jesus-freaks" during a lecture on What Is Philosophy? last week. Did someone mention Levinas? What's so difficult about it? There's no room for either first or final cause. I keep remembering Land's formula: "inverse causality without finality". That's all. Anyone who reads Deleuze and Guattari well has no doubt. Remember the brutality with which he stabbed the old guy to death whilst saying those words? Maybe some people just don't have the stomach for it, which is undertsandable. But it had to be done.

Or perhaps they start seeing gods everywhere, which is fun but hardly convinving.

Actually, I'm not averse to immersing myself in Christian theology simply to see how it runs. However, I think that your identification of the 'pscychoanalytic gambit' being played out here is spot on and absolutely pernicious.

Moreover, my original point about 'I'm right and they're wrong' was tied to the way in which Badiou and Zizek's arguments were being presented to me (incidentally, I agree with you about Badiou; I gave up on Zizek years ago), i.e. that what was being said about mysticism and Paul was antithetical to mainstream Catholic interpretation. I have't yet read the Badiou, so I can't be sure, but I have a horrible feeling that what is going on here is the repackaging Pauline doctrines in such a way as to make the acceptable again. This is a move that should be strongly resisted.

Thought for the day : "But in many ways, Jesus Christ was very much the 'punk' of his time..."

Glad some others have survived with their fighting instincts intact. Although tempted to just bask in the warm glow of companionship, of course I can't resist being picky/second-guessing my tired-and-emotional rant and saying
(1) in my default indifference, I find the whole god-stabbing thing too passionate, a protest too far (but maybe he was fighting off a dose of g-p). And even modern-day Hyperstitional pantheism IMHO periodically falls prey to a flirtation with hushed-tones seriousness unbefitting the cosmic orphan (here, nick, your question of tactics needs serious thought...) There's a fine line between experimentation and merely basking in the fug of mystical mix&match.
(2) Someone is bound to come along and say in a snotty voice that badiou's is not an argument about christianity but about fidelity to the indecidable event, or something like that. Yes, I do realise that. Nevertheless there is an reactive accomodation of theocratic rule at play in the very structure of this - IMO Ray B the only person to have overcome the initial (quite understandable) flush of ecstasy of finding an intelligent professional philosopher, and asked some tough questions about this ineffable truth of Badiou's. Calling numbers 'being' is dubious enough without adding a supernumerary level of universal immmortal truth; Zizek, from my limited knowledge, is worse - a real horrible alliance there between christoanalysis and the exactly-cognate cult-studs principle "if it's on TV, it must be _important_ , denoting an universal psychic complex, and therefore it needs to be exacerbated by infinite theorisation".

Is it too obvious to state that this stuff is a tributary of the same reactive currents as totalislamitarianism?

btw, northanger, I _am_ 'tired' of it :)

"This is a move that should be strongly resisted" - but how?

'totalislamitarianism' should of course read 'totAllahtarianism', talk about missing a trick.

John, it seems to me that as soon as you start arguing philologically, you're already in danger of being digested (simlilar to Heidegger-scholasticism in this respect, once you bow to the authority of the Big Book...) A well-informed argument from the POV of "mainstream Catholic interpretation" would probably be interesting but my problem is a different one, and I'm quite happy to assume the vandalistic position of 'vitalist terrorism'(to use Badiou's phrase) against all this wholesome thoughtfulness.

Yes, there is a certain amount of buying into a repackage deal; I can't really argue against Badiou's principled stance in disinterring all those thinkers who have been written off as 'not sufficiently liberated', he writes a lot of interesting stuff, and often manages a truly novel diagonal between analytic and continental philosophy. But I get an uneasy feeling that there's some stuff under the surface of Badiou's political writings that some of his fans would find indigestible were it not for the hypnotic-osmotic manner of its revelation. Given that the birth of various weird gnostic-lacanian-commmunist fanaticisms amongst the conference-crowds has been its only fruit so far, I'll continue to reserve my judgment. Also we need to keep in perspective the fact that unchecked reaction against '68ism' goes beyond Badiou, beyond philosophy, beyond universities (I've got a more extensive piece on this to be posted soon).

As to 'what is to be done'(assuming we're not talking about 'how can we manage to give more conference papers than them') maybe the primary tactic should be the conjoining of puerile vandalism and noise with rigorous axiomatic-building experimentation
;)

Robin, nice post. This Christian thing although has nothing to do with me but is really disgusting. Christianity can be resisted easily or difficultly (at least it can resisted effectively) but the problem of monotheism (from its Zoroastrian germ-cell to Islam) is more complex; as Ibn Maymun put it the beast never gives up; so there should be at least two assaults, one from the Outside (a mutated brand of Paganism which cannot e pacified) and one, more significant in terms activity / intensity, from within: Maymunist sabotages, heresy-engineering to the omega point, minority propagation, civil-war conspiracy, etc (the Z. Crowd).

Ok, this is for fun; all those who dumped their ex-lover, JC, (including Nick, ok, just kidding), read these novellas by one of my favorite writers, Carlton Mellick:

Electric Jesus Corpse

The Baby Jesus Butt Plug

which cannot e pacified ---> which cannot be pacified

and more correstion!

shit, is there something wrong with this keyboard or my hands.

do you mean _correction_? :)

but reza, if you've never been 'on the inside' how/why sign up for heresy-engineering?

Quote:

various weird gnostic-lacanian-commmunist fanaticisms amongst the conference-crowds

academically-entrenched Lacano-Christian claret-sipping evangelism

"born-again lacanian jesus-freaks"

the polite chattering society of lapsed-relapsed interpretationists

Just WHO are these people? Sorry to say, I've never encountered anyone who would match these descriptions. Which is a shame, as they sound most entertaining - a commitment to Lacan's God as the always-already dead crossed with rabid adherence to canonical texts...a heady, intriguing brew indeed. More to discuss than the lazy atheist.....

For the slightly-cheap record, if we're going to indulge in rubbish psychoanalysis at the same time as frothing at the mouth about how awful Lacan is, nobody I know who works on Badiou (I hesitate to say 'Badiouians', as I'm not sure there are any) was raised in a Christian household, or that of any other monotheistic faith. I don't see the re-emergence of a dark, no-doubt oedipal, childhood God-conviction anywhere. Incidentally, just to be really petty about it, Badiou's father was a communist mathematician who fought in the French resistance, so probably not a lot of theological-weirdness at the heart of that particular upbringing....

Not sure what either 'totalislamitarianism' or 'totAllahtarianism' means either. Please enlighten.

I think the polite term is "Digitally Challenged", LOL! We'll forgive you, given your recent run-in with the Old Ones.

that was directed at reza, of course, not the unchallenged IT..

but reza, if you've never been 'on the inside' how/why sign up for heresy-engineering?

I'm inside of the Mahomet thing for Druj's sake. The version of JC you're talking about(whose daddy left him on the cross) is alien to me cause i'm reading the Quran ;)

'those people', rest assured, exist only as bad-tempered illegitimate extrapolations from blog-entities. Just like 'lazy atheists' (it takes energy to resist such a fundamental human predeliction, surely. Saying atheism is lazy is begging my question, as if we all automatically had God-worries inside us, if only we'd make an effort). The point about people's childhoods wasn't meant to be a universal-personal explanation - just one possible reason why it might be easy to slip into holy-book exegesis.

'A heady, intriguing brew' is the very problem, really: theology has always supplied plenty of tangled crossword-puzzle intellectual intrigue, I'm not sure that's enough justification for me.

And, obviously, by those terms I meant radical militant muslim fundamentalists. OK, I admit, it wasn't very PC ;)

sorry, reza: by 'if you...' I meant 'if one...' in general (or specifically a lazy atheist like me ;)

>>> I think the polite term is "Digitally Challenged", LOL! We'll forgive you, given your recent run-in with the Old Ones.

lol ... laugh you capitalist freak, this keyboard is 8 years old so i can't punch the keys without punching another key. BTW, the Old Ones plague is spreading in the house, everyone is going to join the masters right now ;)

>Badiou's father was a communist mathematician

ahh, but _tell me about your muzzer..._

> laugh you capitalist freak

why not pray to you-know-who for a new keyboard, you islamic-republican-freak ;)

"Badiou's father was a communist mathematician" - so that's alright then

IT,

>>> Badiou's father was a communist mathematician who fought in the French resistance.

ex-commies are potentially JC-lovers like here that ex-Tudehies (iranian term for the servants of the masses) are now faithful muslims, sufies and pathetic Dervishes.

>>> sorry, reza: by 'if you...' I meant 'if one...' in general (or specifically a lazy atheist like me ;)

aha ... i see; well, you should continue to be a lazy atheist or join the mutant pagandom. Do you have any other option?

>>> why not pray to you-know-who for a new keyboard, you islamic-republican-freak ;)

Don't worry, it will give me a new one soon.

"I'm inside of the Mahomet thing for Druj's sake" - LOL

obv, wasn't accusing u/c of being a lazy atheist - you've just told us that you've been thinking about it your whole life. There are lazy atheists about ('oh, obviously all religion is silly, anyone who believes in God is an idiot'), those who refer to Darwin (or less often Marx), but, when pushed, can't explain exactly why evolution or history does for God ...and there are top dog atheists (we may or may not agree on Spinoza, the atomists, Diderot, Hume, etc.)...this is precisely not to imply that there are somehow 'God-worries' inside all of us that need to be beaten to bits with reason, merely that it's often the case that someone who has genuinely worked out some justification for their religious belief has an oddly far more thought-out position than someone who assumes the mantle of atheist in a secular society without reflecting upon their reasons for doing so. (This is not to deny that there are a lot of very rubbish religious people indeed.)

""Badiou's father was a communist mathematician" - so that's alright then"

Well, it's neither here nor there really, is it? Merely trying to reassure u/c that Badiou didn't write about St Paul to piss all over his priest-father's rotting corpse, or whatever.

And, indeed, ex-commies are potential JC-lovers (and, ahem, do we really need to go back to the 1840s to work out the problems with turning the kingdom of heaven into the kingdom of man?), but if the British academy is anything to go by, they're much more likely to be low-level guilty hedonists, concerned only with keeping their job and occasionally mentioning just how fragile and finite this all-too human flesh is....

infinite thought - "in a secular society" - hmmm ... (this is a weird europe thing, and i wouldn't count on it lasting long)

yes, yes, beaten to bits with reason (or mechanism). Not poked at and stirred around endlessly like an open sore (and in this regard I count bedroom-satanist-transgressors in the same category as bible-scholars).

But still, I have to admit (and I can't justifiably give this any more status than a personal declaration) that 'anyone who believes in God is an idiot' is more persuasive to me (both by empirical induction and rational deduction) than any 'thought-out position' of religious belief has been so far. Reza is an interesting case though but these crafty persians never lay all their cards on the table ;) (I could mail you a new keyboard hidden inside a copy of the quran, perhaps, R?)

What's in store for us, then? Falun Gong? Fascist Catholicism, replete with enforced procreation from the age of 13? Ba'haism? militant Zoroastrianism?

I'm honestly curious as to what you forsee for us 'Europeans': you may well be right, even if we do currently seem to uphold a strange mix of non-nonsense empiricism, republicanism and vague indifference towards those with any religious conviction whatsoever.

(also hold my hands up to being intemperate with antibadiou remarks - obviously a function of my mixed fascination and distaste as I plough through his writings). Certainly wasn't trying to suggest priest-father-pissing scenario (worthy of bataille himself)

>and i wouldn't count on it lasting long

exactly what worries me.

must extract myself now to get this game finished...

when yr back u/c, wouldn't mind head-to-head with you about what exactly you have in mind when you talk about 'Enlightenment' (state secularism? the tribunal of critique a la Kant? some sort of anti-Enlightenment enlightenment via Nietzsche? Or wot)...what's 'the game', anyway? I have my own game at the moment - trying to build a bed (or is it an altar...). I doubt it's a fun as what you're doing tho ;)

u/c - you've got 'better' things to do (this ain't going to disappear anytime soon)

infinite thought - look, i really don't feel prophetic about this, but you surely have to accept that the enlightenment dream is dead (last chips blown on communist bullshit), secularists don't breed (population collapse, which seriously matters a lot, since the only feasible replacement pop. for europe is Islamonutters), socialist societies (europe) decay, and the future just doesn't have a place for PC secularist tranzis - what comes next? my guess - really hideous shit for you guys.
Recommendation: take religion really seriously because Sharia is right in your face

in that case, I won't be back until I've read lots of big books...I meant (something like) the global, systematic applicability of mechanistic explanation of phenomena, together with the repudiation of authority through revealed religion.

nick, is that what you mean by a timelapse (finding yourself replying to someone entirely different about something entirely different)?

and, nick, if you wouldn't mind, I would be curious to know what the status of 'secularism' is in China these days. I'm sure what we hear about it is a load of bollocks, but is the message 'between capitalism and communism' otm, or completely wrong?

scarily DailyMail interpretive possibilities in your last comment, nick, but you may be right; I was thinking of something more along the horrific lines of a mass invasion of happy-clappy evangelists from over the atlantic. What's to choose?

also - first GOOD reason for 'taking religion seriously' (but 'taking seriously' in an entirely different way to what I was talking about)

wasn't suggesting for a minute that we live in 'enlightened' states. Everybody knows that's dead, why bother when you have cute capitalism and so on...but really wonder about the Sharia idea. Surely radical Islam is failing to convince even the populations of nominally Islamic states...dunno what Reza will say, but struck me that Iran, e.g., is quite secular in practice, most people don't go to mosques, everyone takes the piss out of the mullahs and so on....will we thus have to be invaded by the few crazed 'barbarians' or will mass-conversion do for us booze-soaked, wife-betraying infidels? ;)

and sorry to invade the comments but I thought populations were falling almost everywhere, except sub-saharan Africa:

http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/low/world/4208479.stm

this is SUCH an interesting thread

u/c - you've got 'time slippage' - what took you so long, I mean Moses Jesus Mohammed!

infinite thought - this is the issue of the Aeon, so no point rushing it, but be assured Europe's demographic crisis is remarkably horrific (Russia (utter chaos (+ Chinese takeover)) and Japan (robotic xenophobia) trump you guys, otherwise you're right up there). US projected for 500 million by 2050, they're hanging on - all those redneck christians, right?
PS. I'm massively biased, but hoping Han Chinese will sustain thread of planetery sanity, don't believe the 'one child policy' stats (1.3 billion), been told 1.6 billion (and counting) more plausible. Any society that finds a PC acceptable way of fast-tracking Chinese immigration has a fighting chance, but i'm not counting on that degree of common sense ...
'Secularism' in China? - really interesting q. - commies screwed up massively by devastating traditions in the cultural revolution (check out Taiping rebellion too - al Qaeda of its day, and christian influenced (commies still love those assholes)) - to be honest, just guess work at this point (up for grabs - but whose doing the grabbing? Horrible possibility the evangelical christians most organized to clean up here) - you're deep into my nightmare zone at this point

even 'planetary' (but who cares, right?)

but nick, I thought you loved the "merry" factor of Shanghai Community Church? (ROFL, sorry, couldn't resist it)

... and .. and .. Don't take Iran as a model, deeply anomalous because it's doing theocracy, screwing up, and thus has most pro-Us pop. outside Israel/Kurdistan - expect Reza to be a little inhibited about this, but medium term major Shia-US alliance on the cards. This just IS the Bush admin. strategy (unless they're really stupid, which i doubt, despite european prejudices).
PS. Read the Austrians - Schumpeter in particular - he has better grasp on the topic here (failure of techonomic globalization to generate a self-supporting ideology) than anything else you're looking at, i promise you. (Expecting Mises, Hayek too deep into red meat zone to register, although i love them, obviously)

u/c - that hurts!

thanks for the all that, nick, was just the thing. Heard a radio programme about a year ago about the millions of Chinese born outside of and thus dispossessed under the 'one child' policy (so 'citizens' without identity, familial nomenclature, etc.) and how politically problematic this large group may prove to be.

Obviously you know how Britain is opening up to China these days - they can come on holiday from March onwards and so on, not just students and long-term UK residents any longer. We may thus be moving closer to stealing all the best people for our purposes, as per usual....direct flights to Shanghai coming up too.

I wonder, tho, how much of the US population growth thing is down to immigration? It was but a few years ago we were hearing about how the US would be hispanic before we knew it...and not sure how virulent latino catholicism really is...

As for Europe - well, it's true we don't breed quick enough to replace populations (esp. Italy where everyone stays at home until they're 30 and then has no kids cos they're too busy buying consumer durables), but fuck it, not sure I'm bothered about immigration making up the figures. If we can't be bothered to propagate the species, why not leave it to those who can?

infinite thought - really enjoyed this communication (you were just a meaningless web address before) - hope we can perpertuate the interchange
getting the whole Chinese 'welcome' thing from the other side here (foreign terror of illegal immigration) - actually pretty sceptical about the whole issue (Chinese don't blow themselves up for a religious cause - can't say that! - it's ethnic profiling, besides they might do something really grotesque like raising GDP per capita (never going to forgive Tebbit for the whole HK passport issue, but suspect that's before your time)).
Anyway, my sinophilia is going to get out of hand (really racist this way, think any society basically legitimated by the proportion of Chinese it integrates - every other pop. group on the planet has condemned themselves by their socio-religious choices IMHO)
- anyway, now i like you, however embarrasing that proves to be - will follow your development carefully

>anyway, now i like you, however embarrasing that proves to be

they don't call him master of the backhanded compliment for nothing

btw as regards 'stealing all the best people', at least in technology I think what's happening and likely to happen more is like the indian model - virtual outsourcing (tons of superefficient, fast programmers who work while western management sleeps). Why move halfway across the world when you can suck out the cash remotely?

goodness, such acceptance! well, certainly up for discussing these things (China, populations, Islam, etc) in more detail (once I've read some Austrian economists of course...);)

Perhaps I am stymied by taking Iran as my model here too - the brain drain is massive there, and no such burgeoning technological expansion like India (all the money goes to Dubai instead - now there's a completely insane country). Mind you, I'm getting sick of those cold-calls with the five minute pause as the Indian networks click into the British ones....

I found this particularly informative: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1223131,00.html

hey, no trolling on my patch!

Fair enough.

Oooooo, I'm really itching to wade in here (rather more on the Badiou(ism)/christianity/cryptotheology in recent continental philosophy/lazy-versus-militant-atheism etc. axis than the europe-china-secularism-religion-immigration one, though both are hugely interesting), but know that if I do I'll probably not emerge for at least a day or two (especially since I think I have a perspective on these things pretty much out-of-step with both u/c and IT/the Badiou apologists, and is thus bound to beget further discussion), and must devote my time and energies to other things for at least another week ... but I totally agree with u/c, JE, IT, nick et al. that all this needs a good thrashing out, so I really hope that this issue remains a live one here for a while yet and that we can all meet up some time in the near future to engage further ... perhaps we can even persuade Ray, Alberto et al. to have a say as well -- not to mention a certain lone advocate of a rather ill-defined position called 'Cold Rationalism' (who/which I suspect may be at least partially responsible for the impression that u/c has formed of a certain surreptitious complicity between Badiouism and the unmistakable whiff of deeply unpleasant sanctimony recently emanating from certain quarters of continental philosophy/ conspicuous blogs>).

btw: I loved 'tot-allah-tarianism', not least because 'tot' in German, of course, means 'dead' (and what more unambiguous evidence could there be than the global outbreak over the past one hundred years of so-called 'religious revivals' and 'religious fundamentalisms' that Allah, too, is dead, and that the great event proclaimed by Nietzsche in the late 19th century was by no means something that only affected Europe, or something that only 'Westerners' are challenged to come to terms with/prove themselves equal to?)

I knew it was you, Bloot. Can't understand why dominance of the global political climate by the shadow of totallahtarianism is evidence that 'allah is dead'...surely in a hyperstitional sense (which I take to be nietzsche's sense) it suggests the opposite?
I feel I should apologise to alain - my intemperate remarks are only an index of the obvious strength of his ideas and my mixed fascination and distaste with them; no doubt they often run ahead of my slow ploughing through his works. You're right, I am more riled by dubious uses. But actually, I'm not even all that riled by that now either (and certainly, please please please, don't want to turn this into another forum for CR evangelism/bashing) - ...thanks for helping me get it out of my system, john ;)

Infinite thought comes across like some sort of wry nun.

>>> Can't understand why dominance of the global political climate by the shadow of totallahtarianism is evidence that 'allah is dead'...surely in a hyperstitional sense (which I take to be nietzsche's sense) it suggests the opposite?

Nietzsche says that the death of God casts a very long shadow, but he surely didn't mean by that that he wasn't dead. Similarly, I take this "shadow of totallahtarianism" you refer to (though we might be thinking of quite different things here, of course) to be not the shadow of Allah, but the shadow cast by his death (i.e. Islamic fundamentalism as a response to the event of the death of Allah, rather than a genuine 'revival' ).

Re CR: point taken (though "bashing" was not at all what I had in mind) ... but then of whom were you speaking with your allusions to "born-again lacanian jesus-freaks", and whose dubious use of Badiou so riles you?

Must skidaddle.

I can see that phrase is going to haunt me, LOL! I think I should give way to Reza on this shadow-of-allah issue...

That's weird -- I rewrote that comment before clicking on 'post', but only my first (rather too succinct) version appeared. Oh well, the basic kernal of the point I was making is there, so won't bother to expand upon it.

>>> I think I should give way to Reza on this shadow-of-allah issue...

Yeah, I too would be interested to hear what Reza has to say on this, but must prise myself away now ...

wry nun? that's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me. Thank you 'guy', will remember you in my ironic prayers.

"btw, northanger, I _am_ 'tired' of it :)"

what are you tired of exactly?

your piece set me off. positive i have missed your finer points & all points following.

i cannot speak with authority on spinoza, or kant, or badiou, or any philosopher -- never read them. i cannot speak with authority on the quran or the torah -- never read them. however, i have read the bible front to back and this i know: christianity puts the spin on hyperstition. you want dark sorcery? i've seen & experienced it in christian churches -- didn't know what i was looking at until i met reza.

your post set me off because i was raised a catholic & still have that ten-commandment guilt complex hanging around.

but i know i'm not a christian. no self-respecting "christian" would accuse me of being so because, surely, John 13:34 abrogates every law before it & should have knocked down many things long ago.

since yall are ova hea, I hauled my last the latest hyperstitchin along

plop . ..spittle zpl ash

Today I scolded a dutch anarchastrosopheric webwriter for using the 'moses' table smashing' (plutonic illuson with cool and collected saturnalian law') metaphor without switching from the figurative (favoring, selective) into the literal (grounding) mode. I didn't do so without adding such a back- and underside to his rant so as to allow him to let go of his monolithic way with law (where it stands for a mere, yet at the same time deified ((hiding the step from 1 to two (((hence all others))) here)) means). Dust specks, innumerable and innumerably combined, ditto composed, composted and compartmentated in organic descendants of their usually slower, more reliable and deliberate akinaccountancy . .. it's not the smash (act, put on) that counts, it's the result(ing substance, lightened up, sensitized, subtleized suscepti- and sensibilitated material aggregation and interactibility quotient that matters most on surfaces struck by the type of celestial beckoning that has us wander)

"Numbers do not require – and will never find - any kind of logical redemption. They are an eternal hypercosmic delight."

lets asssume numbers are/stand for dust and are indeed numb dumb notseekers, nutsy perhaps but far as yet from nati, nazi and all that social trouble, whatever . .. . . ..if dust is oxidized matter than reduction could stand their redemption resulting in far from unlight, delicately lit, delighted, much lighter in 'soortelijk gewicht', alightable and open to as well as already opened by light, all it takes is a baptist who takes his task literally enough and another combative bataillan bites the dust .. . ..

'totAllahtarianism' a funny term indeed, especially for those who, like me, once again heard the voice of convert v/d Ven on the radio trying to empasize he 'totally' hadn't encouraged the ameridutch man who was with all the other terroarroosts recently active, to kill anybody, 3 or 4 times. I wanted to soufflict a totalitarianally or totalitareally on him but oh well, spekken sie doitsj here is media too.

a prophecy from the sixties that is now coming to stass . ..eh pay . .. .

You ladies and gentlemen, don’t you ever sleep?

Infinite Thought, (just a very brief and naive answer as my internet account will expire soon): Iran’s secularism is not secularism at all, it is simply the Iranian shia which is very confusing and cunning to transmit its lines of movement and political waves through anything possible; what you see as secularism just happens at the surface, islam heavily and fully embedded within Iranians; no matter how you try to unroot it (whether by triggering negative reactionary mechanisms from the side of Mullahs or providing them with western options). The pro-American sentiment in iran is also a superficial symptomatic plane of entirely different anomalies running under surface. Ask Esmail, he will tell you about the profound anti-secular and anti-Americanism in Iran beneath the surface. This is one of the most confusing aspects of iran. However, as Nick mentioned if (in a very remote fairy tale) US topples the government by indirect means i.e. aiding local oppositions or a surgical strike (which doesn’t presupposes occupation) the Iranians welcome the scenario without asking question (however, this doesn’t mean that they will dissociate from Shia Islamism which to me is far more stealth and dangerous than Sunni fundamentalism); but if US tries to attack Iran (repeating again: tha seems very unlikely) as in the case of Iraq, another pole of shia (which is iranian ultra-nationalism) will fuse with the islamic side of it and you will see what anti-Americanism really means.

Once again, I accept the Shia-US alliance that Nick is speaking about (and possibly Isreal-Shia alliance if someday the government collapses); but the question is: how far does it (this alliance I mean) go? And what hideous purposes have been planted in this alliance by the Shia.

u/c,

Hey the idea of new keyboard is superb but you big brain, don’t you know that iran is a major exporting country of the Quran; and you want to send me a Quran? lol ... surely, the officials will think it is a highly encoded text. So send me the keyboard hidden inside a satanic book instead ;)

poetpiet, you're a tidal wave.

GATES OF EDEN = GAME OF CHESS.

BOB DYLAN = OLD ONES = SIFTING

Azer:
>So send me the keyboard hidden inside a satanic
>book instead ;)
yes, inside a hollowed-out ABJAD compendium.
Wonder whether this 'embedded islam' is the 'bottom' layer in iran...a more optimistic scenario would have the pragmatic 'persian' element deeper and more abiding still - ?

poetpiet, northanger:

please cease and desist, or undercurrent will be forced to introduce "kollektivisating deletions" on this blog, for your own good.

:oþ snooty.

Azer - US/Shia, however this plays out, it's the big WoT story in the medium term. Not expecting a loving marriage, but a fairly robust (implicit) strategic alliance - based, as you say, on the toppling of the present mullocracy (+ 'dealing' with Hizbullah, bracketing this for the moment). First indications of how things will pan out will come from Iraq, which will be the primary building block in this system. If a strong nontheocratic state can be established on the basis of the 60+% Shia majority - with solid Kurdish support - then it will be the base for subverting the political arrangements of neighbouring Shia areas, revolution in Iran (hopefully with loads of beardy-freaks swinging from lampposts) with new government - very democratic - to become major US ally in the region, pressurizing Pakistan to the East and driving contagious democratization of Gulf states, eventually overthrowing the house of Saud (endgame, at least several years down the road).
Taking out the Syrian regime is a semi-separate issue (expect that could come early).
So you better get that Stars and Stripes neatly laundered to wave out of the window ;)

u/c

>>> Wonder whether this 'embedded Islam' is the 'bottom' layer in Iran?

sorry, i poorly expressed the issue; no this embedded Islam is not the bottom layer. will try to hint at this problem in email or later posts on chronopolytics.

Nick,

well, things are happening here that even most of Iranians have no clue about them. I doubt that the theocratic state collapses soon (something absolutely hideous and the same time more stealth [quasi-reformist and silent] is surfacing from its core). so, i have prepared a green flag with the word Allah on it. ;)

Nick,

+ and you'd better get one while you are in Asia ;)

Azer - there's definitely an important topic to do with speeds involved in this - think the US operates as a planetary accelerator, and this is a major source of antiamericanism (the rest of the world feels an insidious speed coercion which it can't quite pin down but it seems kind of Texan flavoured). If 'stealth' means slowness there might not be the time to do things the subtle way. Anyway, one thing about contemporary Americanized temporality is you never have to wait too long to see how things are cooking (Bush's guys have got the pedal right down onto the metal) ...

PS. Stimulating neocon Michael Ledeen (very keen to see Iran flipped) always ends his pieces with the words "Faster please ..."

No one knows what the Mullahs are really brewing up but I guess, this American speed fatally crashes when it reaches the militant core of the Shia. Right now, Iran is a too sensitive spot for a Texan scenario.

ok, everyone back to work ... u/c has more important things to do (the Decaplex project I mean) ;)

Azer - "but I guess, this American speed fatally crashes when it reaches the militant core of the Shia" - crashes? but what does that mean?

Quagmires?

Quagmires?

something like that.

Will explain later ... my internet account will be expired in a few minutes.

AQ 317 = INTERNET ACCOUNT = HANDBOOK TO THE GAME = HYPERSTITIONAL = OCCUPATION-TOKEN

> ok, everyone back to work..

ah, surely we can get this sucker to 100c...

"Will explain later ... my internet account will be expired in a few minutes." - Azer
Compare:
"Will revise strategy later ... my command-control system goes up in smoke in a few minutes" - random Arab dictator
"Will formulate an economic reform package later ... rioting on the streets begins in a few minutes" - random Eurozone bureaucrat
- who's doing the crashing?

Cool discussion.

Some of you people may like to join up what used to be the Spoon's Lyotard List but is now the "Discussion of J-F-Lyotard, Alain Badiou,the Event" [THEORY-LYOTARD-BADIOU-EVENT@MAILTALK.AC.UK]

http://www.mailtalk.ac.uk/lists/THEORY-LYOTARD-BADIOU-EVENT.html

A discussion somewhere between Deleuze and Badiou about their similarities/differences/whatever is going to fire up soon. I have tried to get something going on the main D&G list deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces@lists.driftline.org but to no avail...

Someone asked if they had met anybody who they would recognise as a follower of Zizek/Badiou in the worst sense. I reckon K-Punk fits the bill.

Ciao.

Nick,

LOL

well, i think you are too obsessed by the smooth and fast maneuverability of the black choppers. Let's see how the US manage the Iraq's situation first while Iran pouring its insurgent agencies to Iraq from Kurdistan and other border provinces; if a Shia government rises it is not the conventional Shia-US alliance but Iraqi Shia, the hidden puppet of Iran’s shia. I have heard stories that Iraqis are going for the worst options (another islamic republic?). Toppling the Iran government is not something as easy as it looks like: [1]surgical strike: surgical strike against who or which center? the leader? so what another leader from Qom, Mashhad or another place emerges fueled by the victimhood of the last leader. [2] Direct Attack: there are certain people here that has already planned for it; iran's army as they publicly mention will use environment-damaging (counter-balancing) tactics to force the US cease the attack and as one of key figures in the ministry of defense stated they won’t hesitate to burn the whole region since ‘Islam = Iran’s government’; one thing I should remind you of is that Arabs are usually so ferocious when they are in a more powerful position, for the Shias this panorama is diverted, and during all these years they have proven they never joke. Modified Shahab missiles (+ plus all sorts of weapons they have been provided by the Russians after the war) have already been installed near Pakistan border, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Vast military movements in the last year near Khorasan and Kermanshah have been reported. Israel and Pakistan will be two obvious targets. The pipeline system will be shutdown for the whole Europe (this is the worst possible scenario for Europe, for evading which they will do anything). In a possible story, that the US succeeds to occupy Iran, the fusion of Persian-positive super-nationalism with the Islamic Shia starts to reacts, unlike Iraq or Afghanistan ... Iran is not a geographically appropriate plane for conventional American warfare. The situation will become so messy that other potential powers will start to interfere; controlling Iran means controlling the whole Middle East (and gradually taking over Europe and a part of far East); both China and Russia are so hungry for what Iran gives them for (almost) free. More than Oil and Gas, Sarcheshmeh complex is something that everyone tries to possess it. Providing these Europeans and Asiatic powers with almost free resources (which are not reported anywhere like the materials exported from Sarcheshmeh complex), the regime has strategically empowered potential enemies for the US in a possible war.

[3] Oppositions: if oppositions rise from the Outside, the Mersad Operation will be repeated again. Artesh (secular), Sepah (now a moderate army), Basij (Hezbulah) will join to symbolically overkill the opposition and that fortifies the regime which is not something that the US seeks. And let me tell you, an opposition from the Outside (even in its purest form) will not be supported by the majority of people even the pro-Americans, don’t know if you have followed the crafty ploys iran has used to discredit every kind of opposition from the Outside by planting its own puppets in Iranian TV stations (esp. in the US and Germany) that seemingly belong to the pro-American oppositions; and they have worked well for the regime. Internal oppositions: this one is so absurd and ridiculous that I prefer to skip it.

I’m sure American fast-forward scenarios won’t work in this case; they should find other solutions to puppetize the regime not dismantling it.

So IMHO ‘America vs. the Iranian regime’ is too simplistic even for a prophecy (at least for a decade ... until then, you should also bring the attrition damages that the US has taken during these years to the panorama).

(sorry to interrupt, Azer...must remain silent on the apocalyptic-arms-race since I have opinions [agree that nick's prophetic scenario a little too 'pure' although US as generalised accelerator is a promising line] but too little knowledge)

glen - thanks for your comment; I think I can speak for a few of us here in saying that at one time in the late 90s the spoons d-g list got interesting, but degenerated pretty badly into desultory scholarly tinkering...and now it seems that blogs provide a more interesting, informal rhizomatic model for discussion. I might sign up, but usually get fed up with being bombarded by emails within a couple of days...

>>> must remain silent on the apocalyptic-arms-race since I have opinions but too little knowledge

go ahead, i'm really interested to hear your opinions. btw, you mean Azer, don't you? :)

Azer - well that cover worked well ;)
(Azer, master of disguise)

>btw, you mean Azer, don't you?
of course, thats' what i said ;)

Mr Dread, he done good

caesar had better ciphers than that.

>>> (Azer, master of disguise)

LOL ... when some of the Jay’s puppets uncover their masks over at your H.home, you will find who the real master(s) of disguise is/are ;)

>>> caesar had better ciphers than that.

lol ... Actually have no answer for this :)

Some people might just think that Paul is a fascinating character who led a really quite impressive life under the circumstances and that maybe we could study him. Some of those who are recovering Christians might just be relieved to be able to make some attempt at reading religious texts -- many of which are quite interesting and even beautiful in spots if you "bracket" the God aspect -- without the old bearded guy looking over their shoulder.

It seems to me that atheists who hate and shun particular texts because they've got God all over them might be spending too much of their time worrying about God. Avoiding all things that are religious because you already know that they're crap sounds to me like exactly the strategy that people like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News use here in the United States to inoculate people against certain ways of thinking. In any case, atheist fundamentalism is tedious, as are all arguments where the conclusion is "Turns out I was right all along! And I didn't even need to do any research!"

that's ironic. just finished reading crowley's 5th aethyr (vision & voice) - LIT: 5. "The Vision of the Middle Pillar. (Arrow). The Mystery Of Atheism."

And he says: O thou that art so dull of understanding, when wilt thou begin to annihilate thyself in the mysteries of the Aethyrs? For all that thou thinkest is but thy thought; and as there is no god in the ultimate shrine, so there is no I in thine own Cosmos.

100!

thanks for posting the 'century', northanger :)

Adam, of course, despite my overly caustic tone (I'll be more careful in future, don't want to be accused of 'stimulating debate'!) I didn't actually suggest that no-one should ever read religious texts or that they weren't interesting; more that they can be used as an excuse to reintroduce ethical codes at various levels of interpretive irony ("Don't love thy neighbour/act meek/fetishise suffering cos Jesus and his bureacrats say so, do it because it's rational, and thanks to the revolutionary ideas of x,y and z we now realise that jesus/paul/augustine/whoever were just fascinating guys/were simply explicating the pure universal laws of psychic logic from which we can never escape...a _bit_ like religion, but it's rational/hermeneutic!") It was this type of line to which I was answering "no, I was right", after, I may say, due consideration and analysis of what its effects were (been thinking about it for past few months, in fact). If it hadn't been emerging right in front of my nose, I would have been quite happy to be a quieter atheist...the fact remains, atheism is actually _right_ given all the evidence from every important advance in scientific endeavour - saying it's "tedious" doesn't change this (and now who's being dismissive/evasive?) .

I'd agree on 'fundamentalist atheism' which I presume would be a sort of hyperscientistic enlightenment-faith that believed religion had all been wiped out back in the 17th Century and had 'no place' in the modern world whatsoever. These are precisely the sort of people who are being proved horribly wrong by the rise of totallahtarianism/US evangelical empire. It is _against_ such people, and because of them, that we require properly militant atheism. But I reserve the right (as did Nietzsche) to be a loud atheist without being accused of being 'a little too interested in God' (again, the same _psychoanalytical_ gambit designed to draw from the 'patient' the admission that 'after all, we're all the same...same neuroses, same lack, same need for divine sanction...)

I was attempting, apparently with little success, to avoid that cliched psychoanalytic argument of "Oh, you say you're an atheist -- all the more proof you're a theist!" And in retrospect, given what you wrote and the crowd you run with, I should not have assumed you did no research. I agree that atheism is right and have no interest in the warm fuzzies of "spirituality" or the fires of religious zeal; in many of its forms, however, it is tedious on an aesthetic level to repeatedly say, "There's no God! People shouldn't believe in him! There's no God!" I'm rather immature in that way, I suppose.

This whole thing is a bit silly. It seems as if you want people to stop feeling guilty because of what some God may or may not think and then try and make them feel guilty for having irrational beliefs that go against the greatest scientific advances of our time.

"Don't love thy neighbour/act meek/fetishise suffering cos Jesus and his bureacrats say so, do it because it's rational, and thanks to the revolutionary ideas of x,y and z we now realise that jesus/paul/augustine/whoever were just fascinating guys/were simply explicating the pure universal laws of psychic logic from which we can never escape...a _bit_ like religion, but it's rational/hermeneutic!"

Do you really believe that? I mean that there are "pure universal laws of psychic logic from which we can never escape"? Or that, because it is rational instead of religious, it is better than what Augustine and the like had "true opinion" of? Cause, and I could be way off, but that seems to be quite a stretch and not all that different from religious dogma in that you have no actual measure to make such a claim.

Clever neologism though.

I'm not interested in making anyone feel guilty, why should I be?

>Do you really believe that? I mean that there
>are "pure universal laws of psychic logic from
>which we can never escape"?

no! that's why I was parodying it!

>not all that different from religious dogma in
>that you have no actual measure to make such a
>claim.

Er, well "science" is what we call consistent, systematic measurement of reality yielding a body of verifiable (or falsifiable) axioms that can be employed in materially constructive ways....that's what makes it different from accepting what a priest tells you is true.

- so

>because it is rational instead of religious, it is better

yes.

Adam:

>it is tedious on an aesthetic level to
>repeatedly say, "There's no God! People
>shouldn't believe in him! There's no God!"

Well, I think I agree with this - I suppose what _I_ mean by militant atheism is in fact a 'militant indifference' (now there's a neologism that'll run) rather than a foaming-at-mouth satanic hatred for God, which I think is a bit foolish, really. As described, I don't usually get worked up about it, and had assumed such indifference to be widespread, but was(naively) taken by surprise by things...

Sign me up for "militant indifference." I promise to use it at every opportunity, until it enters the philosophical lexicon.

"Er, well "science" is what we call consistent, systematic measurement of reality yielding a body of verifiable (or falsifiable) axioms that can be employed in materially constructive ways....that's what makes it different from accepting what a priest tells you is true."

Thanks for the sixth grade science lesson, but we hadn't actually mentioned science above. We were talking about reason which you claim proves there is no God and that all religions are tripe. Now are you trying to equate reason and science together? This is starting to become a real mess.

I'm going, for the sake of arguement and for your lack of explanation, assume you are equating reason and science together (regardless of how silly that may be). These two things, it would seem you suggest, are falsifiable meaning that anyone can learn it if they just have the right tools or can remember properly (another Platonic atheist). Hence why science is so neat and superior to religion since religion relies only on "what a priest tells you is true." Except that isn't why you claim science to be. You claim that science is a systematic measurement of reality itself. A created measure, I assume, having noting to do with truth-in-itself (whatever that may mean). What's so different here than with religion?

I'm thinking of The Dialectic of Enlightenment here. Explain how science is better than religion, or at the very least, how science is not itself worked out religiously in the political sphere.

unless you're actually a member of the taliban or the pope, you're just being bloodyminded for the sake of generating pointless philosophical debate, so I refuse to participate. I suppose you're hoping to get me to admit that 'rationality is just a faith like any other' or something like that. OK then.

Hahaha. OK, sorry.

I'm actually trying to get you to admit that you are a member of a kind of taliban or Vatican (which I hope you know is different from the Pope or else you haven't been forced to learn too much about Catholisim just yet). Trying to get people to admit, "OK, God doesn't exist and all my work in the field of religion is pointless. I should really leave the area of philosophy and just become a lying priest, maybe take up in some other irrational pursuits like raping little boys [an opinion always just on the outside of the rabid anti-religious position]."

Also, I'm curious not combative, why are you so quick to admit that "rationality is just a faith like any other"? I would have taken out the "just" at the very least.

Do you read a _lot_ of Žižek, Anthony?

No. Do you?

Anthony, I honestly don't think what you're saying has much to do with me or anything I've said. I don't want you (or anyone else) to feel guilty or admit anything, if you do it's your own business.

Obviously, I am 'quick to admit' blah blah...simply because I feel it would be pointless to get into long discussions to 'justify' my view on the patently obvious structural difference between monotheistic belief and rational-scientific materialist systematic thought. But just to round off this fascinating thread I will try: One is based on abject submission to an authority beyond all possible experience but which confirms humankind (in the case of christianity, humankind in its most cowering miserable state) as locus of universal importance, the other is based on the systematic charting of the concrete in its utter mechanistic indifference; one perpetuates itself as received tradition through repetition fear and dogmatic adherence, the other constantly transforms itself and the world around it through ingenuity, curiosity, application and courageous defiance of both common sense and dogma.

If you feel you can reduce this to 'take your pick, same difference', then I can only say that we don't have any more to say to each other short of actual military combat.

I have quite a few other things to write ATM, little did I suspect that a spontaneous rant would draw so much attention - I suppose this proves the point, talk about God and they will come ;)

btw - Nice one getting those funny Z's to work, Sph..ubrahmanyan.

U/C

The only real problem I have with your views is how neatly you divide everything. It looks as if seem to be saying the same thing about each other, that is "you are far too simplistic." I don't doubt that religion is as you say it is and the same for science, but I have a problem with how neatly you make one this and the other that. Religion has within it ways of thinking that don't make humanity the locus of universal importance and often times science operates on the assumption that man is just that. Religion has also played a role in making the world beautiful and science has also played its role in cultural wars.

I'm actually quite annoyed that Nietzsche is being used to show that "It's them! They are the ones who smell! Not us!"

adam kotsko "Avoiding all things that are religious because you already know that they're crap sounds to me like exactly the strategy that people like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News use here in the United States" - that's surplus value i hadn't expected

PS. MKP gone all godbananas over at K-Punk again

As Deleuze & Guattari always say, there are only de jure distinctions and de facto mixtures. So you're quite right, anthony, I'm not, nor did I intend to, cover the whole history of religion science and rationality, so my argument necessarily depended on a bit of butchery...

But then, I think we might well suspect that the role of religion in creating beautiful and awesome things is in the past now...My original piece concerned christianity as it has been in my lifetime, after all.

Likewise, althought I did suspect the moral argument might come up sometime, you'll notice I _didn't_ lean on this ("religious people always start wars!") because it seems irrelevant to the structural distinction and relative intellectual merits.

- I don't think I used Nietzsche like that, if so I apologise to him.

- And, lastly, just for the record, I don't claim to 'have transcended religious belief', I never had it, never wanted it, will never want it. Suspect I don't have much use for these lovely-sounding 'convictions' either...

btw sorry to John Effay for linking his name into all of this!