August 20, 2010
Redirect
As I have clearly not maintained this mirror site - and realistically won't - please redirect here.
July 9, 2010
Story: Uxory and Society
(Note: there are many posts absent from this miror blog site, these posts can be found here.)
But you were too tired to rub my back last night - it would have just been doting laced with complaint, which you know I can't stand.
~My Wife
Mostly this blog is about interior experience and intimate relationships and as a rule I do not comment here about society as a whole or even very much in part. Today I have something different, though not too different since my purpose in opining a little on society is to ultimately inform a fairly new symbol (my symbol) to this outlet, that of 'a good story'. To do this I begin in a well explicated spot for I've been talking endlessly about the inadequacy of some typically used symbols to describe the great thing my wife and I have. And while I do believe I have finally figured I may not need more adequacy (right now) than "Doting is to Octopus Heart and the Love-of-his-life", the point of this assay is not to differentially search for such a label again, but rather to trace a path untraced here before, or at least the first part of that path, about passion, society and towards 'a good story'.
I've already talked a great deal about passion; I am in fact an advocate for passion and am 'passion positive' because passion is where we get meaning and motivation, piece by piece. I firmly believe passion is a good thing:
Yet there are also 'passion negative' things - such as the definition of uxorious:
Excessive, not 'more than normal' or 'above average', but 'excessive'. Implied is fondness beyond standard, necessary, or prudent passes into the realm of 'submissive', and 'submissive' (for a man) is 'excessive'. This is one of the nicer standard definitions; other definitions are clearer about submissiveness. (I won’t even get into the obvious misogynistic nature of a society and language where there isn't an opposite of uxorious, a woman who loves her husband greatly, because no one thought to label "the ordinary way things ought to be". Indeed the only word that comes close is 'wifely'.) Some of those definitions with less than pleasant connotations:
Ignoring the obvious stereotype violation that a woman's supposed to be dependent on her man, not vice versa, (a stereotype finally seeing its comeuppance incidentally), together these definitions seem to say 'greatly loving' someone is 'excessive', is too 'irrational', and that 'greatly loving' someone means the same thing as to "yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of" the one you love.
And while I ultimately disagree with the connotation here, I readily admit that in a very real sense it is true; any time anyone loves or cares for another, they are possibility subjecting themselves to the vicissitudes of rejection, spurning and loss. What if your beloved bikes in front of truck? Or witness Romeo and Juliet, the infamous cautionary tale of impassioned 'star-crossed lovers', who each kill themselves at the thought that their beloved is already dead. Their sheer grief of love's loss, the overwhelming pain of beloved's absence, seem to say they were truly destined for tragedy because they loved so greatly and so passionately and shouldn't have; and the story merely came to an end deserved for the foolishness of excessive fondness.
Yet I say no, tragedy is not the height of passion's embrace, but rather fear is the depth of tragedy's embrace. We fear of falling out of love, our partner falling out of love, perhaps not divorce so much anymore but we certainly fear the 'I told you so's' and the 'sour grapes' of buyer's remorse over a passion that for whatever reason didn't last, and that now we therefore must believe couldn't have lasted because it couldn’t have been true.
~
Which brings me to my minor point about postmodern society: we may put the skeptical, cynical, knowledgeable face on postmodern dispassion and disinterest, but (as I can’t resist reference to a book I love) I agree with Wendy Steiner's suggestion postmoderns don't enjoy good things 'too much' when they have them because to do implies they have bought the falsity and trickery of mere relative assigned value.Of course, her book Venus in Exile is about twentieth century society's rejection of beauty in art and literature.
Yet in my experience, we are individuals who know beauty –and passion– by direct experience, not by indirect analytic interior construct. Quite aside from the dissonance of having any interior construct deny one's immediate experience, the reversal in relationship between experience and interior construct is at the heart of what is true for any person. For philosophy, 'truth-loving', is having your immediate experience form your interior constructs, and adjusting your interior constructs to adequately express and explain your experience. And if having your interior constructs filter your immediate experience is unavoidable to some degree, intentionally forming one's experiences to fit their interior constructs, intentionally truncating and curtailing experiences to fit, is the Procrustean essence of ideology.
And if we live openly and truthfully to our experiences, including experiences of beauty and passion, yes, we invite the inevitability of 'bad' experiences - such as grief. And I have known grief and the terrible wasting depression that comes with it, and honestly I'm more than sympathetic to it. Yet if in the face of fear I said (uxorious) passion was for those already standing on their own two feet, so also I believe passion is for those able to face their own fear and life's differences and changes with courage and a positive attitude. Living in the openness of reality may be a difficult thing to do because there are realities we don’t want to see, but it does not mean doing so isn't of worth, value or true.
And so despite the word 'uxorious' giving me the impression that in the collective unconscious of contemporary postmodern society to 'greatly love' someone is necessarily synonymous with the irrational stupidity of willfully entering into a bondage of the mind and with a foolish and silly enslavement to passion, what I really sense is the pervasive individual's fear of meaningful immediate experience.
~
The last two definitions of uxorious above are included in Kate Moses' enjoyably literate and intelligent essay about the word. Moses clearly thinks uxory isn’t for everyone, but everyone would agree with her on this point: different people different passions. Yet she also suggests "it may be something wasted on the young" and (if you can) you should "take your uxory where you can find it" (i.e. while you still can) because someday its passion going to end up 'a broken ring in your jewelry box in need of repair'. And this where I part company - with Moses and with society's collective unconscious if I must - because for me this essentially negative attitude towards immediate experience, this skeptical, cynical, postmodern opinion of passion, is not only detrimental to the individual (in dissonance), but is problematic for attaining a balanced mode of meaning that leads to a positive perspective, one oriented on growth, happiness, well being, that is open to experience and treats experiences as real and valid.
When I saw my first definition of uxorious, "foolishly fond", I didn't see it as a bad thing at all (perhaps I couldn't have seen it as a bad thing); I thought it was great that human experience required the English language to have such a word. But now I realize that for the most part other people look somewhat askance on long-term romantic 'passion sensibility' as a rather childish, immature, puppy-love-ish Romanticism, something that is at best 'quaint' or 'old-fashioned' in today's times, despite the fact that many of those same people want more meaning, romance and passion in their lives.
Which brings me to point of communicating such manner of meaningful immediate experience as passion, without falling afoul of prevailing sentiment towards irrationality, without burying the meaningful experiential content in analytic differentiating dissection. Which brings me to the idea of 'a good story' (poetry, movies, television, any format or media) as a 'sideways symbol', as an indirect expression able to sidestep the 'direct' explication of experience through interior or social constructs and communicate with an individual's interior sensorium of immediate experience - and speak its native language.
~
But you were too tired to rub my back last night - it would have just been doting laced with complaint, which you know I can't stand.
~My Wife
Mostly this blog is about interior experience and intimate relationships and as a rule I do not comment here about society as a whole or even very much in part. Today I have something different, though not too different since my purpose in opining a little on society is to ultimately inform a fairly new symbol (my symbol) to this outlet, that of 'a good story'. To do this I begin in a well explicated spot for I've been talking endlessly about the inadequacy of some typically used symbols to describe the great thing my wife and I have. And while I do believe I have finally figured I may not need more adequacy (right now) than "Doting is to Octopus Heart and the Love-of-his-life", the point of this assay is not to differentially search for such a label again, but rather to trace a path untraced here before, or at least the first part of that path, about passion, society and towards 'a good story'.
I've already talked a great deal about passion; I am in fact an advocate for passion and am 'passion positive' because passion is where we get meaning and motivation, piece by piece. I firmly believe passion is a good thing:
Yet there are also 'passion negative' things - such as the definition of uxorious:
- having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one's wife
(OxfordDictionaries.com)
Excessive, not 'more than normal' or 'above average', but 'excessive'. Implied is fondness beyond standard, necessary, or prudent passes into the realm of 'submissive', and 'submissive' (for a man) is 'excessive'. This is one of the nicer standard definitions; other definitions are clearer about submissiveness. (I won’t even get into the obvious misogynistic nature of a society and language where there isn't an opposite of uxorious, a woman who loves her husband greatly, because no one thought to label "the ordinary way things ought to be". Indeed the only word that comes close is 'wifely'.) Some of those definitions with less than pleasant connotations:
- excessively attached to or dependent on one's wife
(Collins English Dictionary)
- foolishly fond of or submissive to your wife
(TheFreeDictionary.com)
- greatly or excessively fond of one's wife, doting
(The New Short Oxford English Dictionary)
- dotingly or irrationally fond of or submissive to one's wife
(Webster's New World College Dictionary, Third Edition)
Ignoring the obvious stereotype violation that a woman's supposed to be dependent on her man, not vice versa, (a stereotype finally seeing its comeuppance incidentally), together these definitions seem to say 'greatly loving' someone is 'excessive', is too 'irrational', and that 'greatly loving' someone means the same thing as to "yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of" the one you love.
And while I ultimately disagree with the connotation here, I readily admit that in a very real sense it is true; any time anyone loves or cares for another, they are possibility subjecting themselves to the vicissitudes of rejection, spurning and loss. What if your beloved bikes in front of truck? Or witness Romeo and Juliet, the infamous cautionary tale of impassioned 'star-crossed lovers', who each kill themselves at the thought that their beloved is already dead. Their sheer grief of love's loss, the overwhelming pain of beloved's absence, seem to say they were truly destined for tragedy because they loved so greatly and so passionately and shouldn't have; and the story merely came to an end deserved for the foolishness of excessive fondness.
Yet I say no, tragedy is not the height of passion's embrace, but rather fear is the depth of tragedy's embrace. We fear of falling out of love, our partner falling out of love, perhaps not divorce so much anymore but we certainly fear the 'I told you so's' and the 'sour grapes' of buyer's remorse over a passion that for whatever reason didn't last, and that now we therefore must believe couldn't have lasted because it couldn’t have been true.
~
Which brings me to my minor point about postmodern society: we may put the skeptical, cynical, knowledgeable face on postmodern dispassion and disinterest, but (as I can’t resist reference to a book I love) I agree with Wendy Steiner's suggestion postmoderns don't enjoy good things 'too much' when they have them because to do implies they have bought the falsity and trickery of mere relative assigned value.Of course, her book Venus in Exile is about twentieth century society's rejection of beauty in art and literature.
Yet in my experience, we are individuals who know beauty –and passion– by direct experience, not by indirect analytic interior construct. Quite aside from the dissonance of having any interior construct deny one's immediate experience, the reversal in relationship between experience and interior construct is at the heart of what is true for any person. For philosophy, 'truth-loving', is having your immediate experience form your interior constructs, and adjusting your interior constructs to adequately express and explain your experience. And if having your interior constructs filter your immediate experience is unavoidable to some degree, intentionally forming one's experiences to fit their interior constructs, intentionally truncating and curtailing experiences to fit, is the Procrustean essence of ideology.
And if we live openly and truthfully to our experiences, including experiences of beauty and passion, yes, we invite the inevitability of 'bad' experiences - such as grief. And I have known grief and the terrible wasting depression that comes with it, and honestly I'm more than sympathetic to it. Yet if in the face of fear I said (uxorious) passion was for those already standing on their own two feet, so also I believe passion is for those able to face their own fear and life's differences and changes with courage and a positive attitude. Living in the openness of reality may be a difficult thing to do because there are realities we don’t want to see, but it does not mean doing so isn't of worth, value or true.
And so despite the word 'uxorious' giving me the impression that in the collective unconscious of contemporary postmodern society to 'greatly love' someone is necessarily synonymous with the irrational stupidity of willfully entering into a bondage of the mind and with a foolish and silly enslavement to passion, what I really sense is the pervasive individual's fear of meaningful immediate experience.
~
The last two definitions of uxorious above are included in Kate Moses' enjoyably literate and intelligent essay about the word. Moses clearly thinks uxory isn’t for everyone, but everyone would agree with her on this point: different people different passions. Yet she also suggests "it may be something wasted on the young" and (if you can) you should "take your uxory where you can find it" (i.e. while you still can) because someday its passion going to end up 'a broken ring in your jewelry box in need of repair'. And this where I part company - with Moses and with society's collective unconscious if I must - because for me this essentially negative attitude towards immediate experience, this skeptical, cynical, postmodern opinion of passion, is not only detrimental to the individual (in dissonance), but is problematic for attaining a balanced mode of meaning that leads to a positive perspective, one oriented on growth, happiness, well being, that is open to experience and treats experiences as real and valid.
When I saw my first definition of uxorious, "foolishly fond", I didn't see it as a bad thing at all (perhaps I couldn't have seen it as a bad thing); I thought it was great that human experience required the English language to have such a word. But now I realize that for the most part other people look somewhat askance on long-term romantic 'passion sensibility' as a rather childish, immature, puppy-love-ish Romanticism, something that is at best 'quaint' or 'old-fashioned' in today's times, despite the fact that many of those same people want more meaning, romance and passion in their lives.
Which brings me to point of communicating such manner of meaningful immediate experience as passion, without falling afoul of prevailing sentiment towards irrationality, without burying the meaningful experiential content in analytic differentiating dissection. Which brings me to the idea of 'a good story' (poetry, movies, television, any format or media) as a 'sideways symbol', as an indirect expression able to sidestep the 'direct' explication of experience through interior or social constructs and communicate with an individual's interior sensorium of immediate experience - and speak its native language.
~
N.B. Incidentally, my favorite standard definition of uxorious still does not escape 'unusual' or 'excessive' is "characterized by doting and unusual excessive fondness for and often submission to a wife" and my favorite related nonstandard definition of 'uxory' is (1.) passionate attachment to a spouse (2.) perfect blend of love and lust.
June 6, 2010
Darkness: Perpetually Dissatisfied
(Note: there are about 30 posts absent from this miror blog site, these posts can be found here.)
I have been talking about how motivation as a matter of value and worth, how desire and passion as a matter of 'individual will', are indicative of our common and individual humanity at some essential and meaningful level so that I may ultimately shed some light on (my) interior darkness and (my lack of) heroism.
Throughout most of my life I have found very little to be of 'lasting value and worth', consequently I've always been very uninterested and unmotivated compared to other people. Even now, I don't watch television or film (or movies), I don't 'entertain', drink or smoke, have a hobby, garden, collect anything, or even have any 'friends' most people might consider worthy of the name. In college, my professors believed I was good at understanding the necessary shadings of difference that make a good student when I applied myself. But that was the problem, so very little struck me as of lasting significance, value or worth that I spent most of my time shunning education and even most forms of 'fun' in favor of searching for something 'better' and more fulfilling. If I managed decent grades on strength of good memory and sheer cleverness, I was never a very good student, and today, though I am not 'searching' as diligently as I once was or even for the same sorts of things, in some ways my 'persistent perpetual dissatisfaction' now finds even less to be of lasting significance or importance than ever before.
And such a maximizing 'search' has its price; as my wife often remarks, I don’t seem to enjoy life very much and worse, my abiding lack of interest in nearly everything has been often (mis)perceived as an evaluative and reductive dismissal, earning me something of a reputation for being arrogant. And to some extent, I think both assessments are correct. I've said before I think of myself as a differentialist, seeing difference and similarity everywhere, but I suspect it's precisely such constant analysis that leaves me with a somewhat dark attitude about living and enjoying the activities of life. By taking and enjoying so little of life at face value, I find much of life little of value.
~
In my defense, I do point out that I do enjoy reading and writing, that a good bit of my reading and writing is quite life affirming – but of course some of it is really a continuation of my 'negative differentialist search'. Differentiation inevitably has its shortcomings, but in the course of separating life affirming analysis from the more nihilistic that I discovered how such negativity is detrimental – even in a life affirming relationship.
I also enjoy my 'occupation' and truly feel being my wife's partner, homemaker and stay at home father is my 'avocation', my 'calling in life', so unsurprisingly there are a great many things about 'doing what I'm doing' that make me deeply happy and satisfied (whether I am good at them or not). But I've been trying (as possibly many uxorious men do) to use the 'powerotic' passion I have for my wife to get me motivated to do things I wouldn't otherwise have the motivation to do, but the 'bait and switch' tactic of trying to get my wife to demand that I do things I don't want to do (ostensibly so she'll be happy) violates some pretty basic realities of an honest, intimate love symbol negotiation.
And this is what I meant about true heroism: I may be happy now merely to be on the path I'm on and 'doing what I'm doing', but in order to have the most happiness I can have in life, I'm eventually going to need to do something about this darkness. But my darkness, my shadow self, can only ever be faced down and conquered by me. My wife will help me of course because she loves me, but she can't, powerotically or otherwise, do it for me. If I'm ever going to manage my own idea, hope and standard of 'standing tall', one less selfish, lazy, uncaring, unsympathetic, unmotivated and nihilistic, then I've got to be brave and be my own hero.
I have been talking about how motivation as a matter of value and worth, how desire and passion as a matter of 'individual will', are indicative of our common and individual humanity at some essential and meaningful level so that I may ultimately shed some light on (my) interior darkness and (my lack of) heroism.
Throughout most of my life I have found very little to be of 'lasting value and worth', consequently I've always been very uninterested and unmotivated compared to other people. Even now, I don't watch television or film (or movies), I don't 'entertain', drink or smoke, have a hobby, garden, collect anything, or even have any 'friends' most people might consider worthy of the name. In college, my professors believed I was good at understanding the necessary shadings of difference that make a good student when I applied myself. But that was the problem, so very little struck me as of lasting significance, value or worth that I spent most of my time shunning education and even most forms of 'fun' in favor of searching for something 'better' and more fulfilling. If I managed decent grades on strength of good memory and sheer cleverness, I was never a very good student, and today, though I am not 'searching' as diligently as I once was or even for the same sorts of things, in some ways my 'persistent perpetual dissatisfaction' now finds even less to be of lasting significance or importance than ever before.
And such a maximizing 'search' has its price; as my wife often remarks, I don’t seem to enjoy life very much and worse, my abiding lack of interest in nearly everything has been often (mis)perceived as an evaluative and reductive dismissal, earning me something of a reputation for being arrogant. And to some extent, I think both assessments are correct. I've said before I think of myself as a differentialist, seeing difference and similarity everywhere, but I suspect it's precisely such constant analysis that leaves me with a somewhat dark attitude about living and enjoying the activities of life. By taking and enjoying so little of life at face value, I find much of life little of value.
~
In my defense, I do point out that I do enjoy reading and writing, that a good bit of my reading and writing is quite life affirming – but of course some of it is really a continuation of my 'negative differentialist search'. Differentiation inevitably has its shortcomings, but in the course of separating life affirming analysis from the more nihilistic that I discovered how such negativity is detrimental – even in a life affirming relationship.
I also enjoy my 'occupation' and truly feel being my wife's partner, homemaker and stay at home father is my 'avocation', my 'calling in life', so unsurprisingly there are a great many things about 'doing what I'm doing' that make me deeply happy and satisfied (whether I am good at them or not). But I've been trying (as possibly many uxorious men do) to use the 'powerotic' passion I have for my wife to get me motivated to do things I wouldn't otherwise have the motivation to do, but the 'bait and switch' tactic of trying to get my wife to demand that I do things I don't want to do (ostensibly so she'll be happy) violates some pretty basic realities of an honest, intimate love symbol negotiation.
And this is what I meant about true heroism: I may be happy now merely to be on the path I'm on and 'doing what I'm doing', but in order to have the most happiness I can have in life, I'm eventually going to need to do something about this darkness. But my darkness, my shadow self, can only ever be faced down and conquered by me. My wife will help me of course because she loves me, but she can't, powerotically or otherwise, do it for me. If I'm ever going to manage my own idea, hope and standard of 'standing tall', one less selfish, lazy, uncaring, unsympathetic, unmotivated and nihilistic, then I've got to be brave and be my own hero.
March 14, 2010
The Meaning of Meaning - Part 1
Assessment: When I first saw a possible connection between the numinous relationship experience and the human experience of meaning itself, I quite thought I mightn't have much more to say about (female led) relationships at all any more. I was (happily) wrong; see especially here, here, here, here and here. In my last segment about the nature of the human experience of meaning I think I either burned myself out or finally managed a functionally accurate (enough) theoretical framework with adequate explanatory power (for a while anyway). However, although in this analysis of the 'biological meaning matrix' I've hinted at how to do this, I haven't yet adequately connected the human interior experience of meaning (and passion) to the numinous (female led) relationship experience.
Theory: The experience of numinousity is similar to 'flow' and 'play' in that it results from action or passion (nearly) completely 'filling up' the 'space' within a given (no matter how they are 'derived' or 'created') set of rules, borders or limitations.
Yet the experience of numinousity is unlike 'flow' and 'play' in that it's meaning has an aspect of 'revelation' or 'epiphany', akin to a 'short circuit' of consciousness, that (I think possibly) results from a large scale 'fitted-ness', like (a large number of) puzzle pieces (all at once), of symbol/experience with one's interior mental framework.
The numinous intimate (female led) relationship experience is thus particularly interesting because the dynamic (I think) is one's partner becomes (to a large degree) the set of rules, borders or limitations (through empathy and sublimation) that one (nearly) 'fills up'. The result I think of as a 'relationship synapsis': the perceived intimate 'lining up' of two people's interior spaces and an intimate sense of 'fitted-ness' that also has qualities of 'playful flow'.
This is an emotional 'rim experience' on the mental space spectrum but since it happens (is at least perceived as happening) on both one's emotional interior and interactively on one's exterior, this lands on arc C or D (depending on how compact or differentiated one's mental framework is) and arc A.
And, to answer another question I had, I do think meaning is both an emergent property of mental frameworks and used as if functionally accurate for the objectively 'real'; thus meaning is (or at least can be) simultaneously concurrent to experience and retrospective.
Theory: The experience of numinousity is similar to 'flow' and 'play' in that it results from action or passion (nearly) completely 'filling up' the 'space' within a given (no matter how they are 'derived' or 'created') set of rules, borders or limitations.
Yet the experience of numinousity is unlike 'flow' and 'play' in that it's meaning has an aspect of 'revelation' or 'epiphany', akin to a 'short circuit' of consciousness, that (I think possibly) results from a large scale 'fitted-ness', like (a large number of) puzzle pieces (all at once), of symbol/experience with one's interior mental framework.
The numinous intimate (female led) relationship experience is thus particularly interesting because the dynamic (I think) is one's partner becomes (to a large degree) the set of rules, borders or limitations (through empathy and sublimation) that one (nearly) 'fills up'. The result I think of as a 'relationship synapsis': the perceived intimate 'lining up' of two people's interior spaces and an intimate sense of 'fitted-ness' that also has qualities of 'playful flow'.
This is an emotional 'rim experience' on the mental space spectrum but since it happens (is at least perceived as happening) on both one's emotional interior and interactively on one's exterior, this lands on arc C or D (depending on how compact or differentiated one's mental framework is) and arc A.
And, to answer another question I had, I do think meaning is both an emergent property of mental frameworks and used as if functionally accurate for the objectively 'real'; thus meaning is (or at least can be) simultaneously concurrent to experience and retrospective.
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