I apologise, my fair imaginary reader, for the downward turn in quality of these blogs at the moment. Well, perhaps the quality isn’t lacking, my genius being as it is and all, yet the imaginative drive behind them seems to be lacking. I’m writing a lot more on the short story front, expanding the Jerusalem Artichoke project by 5 characters a day, but still my mind is drawn to the events of my personal life which are so unspeakably dull that I couldn’t possibly bear to mention them somewhere such as this blog. Nevertheless, consider this an apology for a mind unfocused. A lapse of stoicism…
It does strike up an interesting question though, as to what is the ideal situation in which to cultivate mental productions. For me it’s summarised by the lifestyles of the great Enlightenment thinkers. One must firstly have access to a certain level of financial stability, from which the possibility of sedentary life emerges and then, presumably, have access to a broad network of intellectuals with which to argue and, in spite of yourself, actually learn from. But then this is similarly the culture that Voltaire famously said needed religion in order to put up with its constant indigestion. Living on a diet of meat, beer, pastry and endless gravy would certainly cripple me; although hopefully only in the hilarious style of Matt Bramble in Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker.
Nietzsche (who may in fact be the real supplier of the Voltaire quote above; his having written on the same subject has gotten me a little confused…) often talked of his “sick health”, a “healthy sickness”. His need of the perfect climate, company and diet in order to think. Saying that, an aphorism a day isn’t exactly what my northern family would call “hard graft”. The idea that one must be sick in order to be creative is an interesting one though. In Earthly Powers Burgess writes of a young poet who assumes a phlegmatic constitution in order to resemble Keats… a curious parallel of the “rock star” lifestyle if ever there was one.
For me, the later Romantic poets are a lot like the late period Romans in this capacity. Works like Byron’s Don Juan or any of Shelley’s tiringly majestic masterpieces fill me with the same sense of distanced appreciation that I get from Petronious or Seneca, despite them being almost incomparable stylistically. I’m drawn to stoicism the same way that I’m drawn to hedonism. Both seem to be a way of seeing the Self as an Other so that the Self can engage in its own annihilation. It’s deeply solipsistic, borderline ascetic, and no doubt connected to some spiritual drive; for these reasons it also makes you an incredibly unpleasant person to be around.
Speaking of Stoicism, I’m currently reading into its philosophical development post-Plato in the hope of developing my quasi-Deleuzian idea of the Reading Event, and I’m coming up against a few troublesome walls. The fundamental stoic principle reduces Cause and Effect into State of Affairs and Events; the Effects come from the causes but aren’t “caused” by them. The Event of a war is distinct from the State of Affairs surrounding physical mutilation of children. The two may be linked, yet war is never killing and killing is never war, they cannot be linked under the same ground. Now this principle comes rather close to the McHalean version of postmodernism, it comes close to the genealogical morals of Nietzsche, but strangely it doesn’t come that close to the modern conception of Stoicism.
Perhaps my trouble with Stoicism, my lapse that resulted in this blog, is rather the revenge of causality. As I wander the countryside, considering the age of trees, the tracks of previous generations, bizarre chemical chance… the State of Affairs is severed almost via an act of self-hypnotism. Sketching some of the varying elements that make up multiplicities both captures them in conjecture and releases them in unknowables. It’s a fast track to understanding, albeit a tenuous one. But then Events appear, romance and responsibilities, and the emotions that I refuse ownership of under any name but “chemicals” or “guts” all start to dance…
I put it to you, my imaginary buddy, that peace, homely calm, stability, eudemonia, all these and many more are only forms of self-hypnotism. The common attributes of passion are given as those of madness, of unpredictability and chaos, but for all that they’re still universal. The wise men, the thinkers, they are the ones who are mad, if madness is taken to be something that goes against nature, or the status quo. It’s the “love affair with knowledge”. It’s the “there goes another novel”. It’s watching the slow minutes that you used to take such joy in filling all shrivel up and drop off. In the words of Captain Beefheart, “Someone’s had too much to think”… Roll on uni, bring me back the lines of the dead that I may prostrate myself at their festive altars…
It does strike up an interesting question though, as to what is the ideal situation in which to cultivate mental productions. For me it’s summarised by the lifestyles of the great Enlightenment thinkers. One must firstly have access to a certain level of financial stability, from which the possibility of sedentary life emerges and then, presumably, have access to a broad network of intellectuals with which to argue and, in spite of yourself, actually learn from. But then this is similarly the culture that Voltaire famously said needed religion in order to put up with its constant indigestion. Living on a diet of meat, beer, pastry and endless gravy would certainly cripple me; although hopefully only in the hilarious style of Matt Bramble in Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker.
Nietzsche (who may in fact be the real supplier of the Voltaire quote above; his having written on the same subject has gotten me a little confused…) often talked of his “sick health”, a “healthy sickness”. His need of the perfect climate, company and diet in order to think. Saying that, an aphorism a day isn’t exactly what my northern family would call “hard graft”. The idea that one must be sick in order to be creative is an interesting one though. In Earthly Powers Burgess writes of a young poet who assumes a phlegmatic constitution in order to resemble Keats… a curious parallel of the “rock star” lifestyle if ever there was one.
For me, the later Romantic poets are a lot like the late period Romans in this capacity. Works like Byron’s Don Juan or any of Shelley’s tiringly majestic masterpieces fill me with the same sense of distanced appreciation that I get from Petronious or Seneca, despite them being almost incomparable stylistically. I’m drawn to stoicism the same way that I’m drawn to hedonism. Both seem to be a way of seeing the Self as an Other so that the Self can engage in its own annihilation. It’s deeply solipsistic, borderline ascetic, and no doubt connected to some spiritual drive; for these reasons it also makes you an incredibly unpleasant person to be around.
Speaking of Stoicism, I’m currently reading into its philosophical development post-Plato in the hope of developing my quasi-Deleuzian idea of the Reading Event, and I’m coming up against a few troublesome walls. The fundamental stoic principle reduces Cause and Effect into State of Affairs and Events; the Effects come from the causes but aren’t “caused” by them. The Event of a war is distinct from the State of Affairs surrounding physical mutilation of children. The two may be linked, yet war is never killing and killing is never war, they cannot be linked under the same ground. Now this principle comes rather close to the McHalean version of postmodernism, it comes close to the genealogical morals of Nietzsche, but strangely it doesn’t come that close to the modern conception of Stoicism.
Perhaps my trouble with Stoicism, my lapse that resulted in this blog, is rather the revenge of causality. As I wander the countryside, considering the age of trees, the tracks of previous generations, bizarre chemical chance… the State of Affairs is severed almost via an act of self-hypnotism. Sketching some of the varying elements that make up multiplicities both captures them in conjecture and releases them in unknowables. It’s a fast track to understanding, albeit a tenuous one. But then Events appear, romance and responsibilities, and the emotions that I refuse ownership of under any name but “chemicals” or “guts” all start to dance…
I put it to you, my imaginary buddy, that peace, homely calm, stability, eudemonia, all these and many more are only forms of self-hypnotism. The common attributes of passion are given as those of madness, of unpredictability and chaos, but for all that they’re still universal. The wise men, the thinkers, they are the ones who are mad, if madness is taken to be something that goes against nature, or the status quo. It’s the “love affair with knowledge”. It’s the “there goes another novel”. It’s watching the slow minutes that you used to take such joy in filling all shrivel up and drop off. In the words of Captain Beefheart, “Someone’s had too much to think”… Roll on uni, bring me back the lines of the dead that I may prostrate myself at their festive altars…
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