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3rd Reflection

The below video I watched as a sort of brainstorm for thinking about my final project. It is an episode from the 1960 season of Alan Watts' KQED television series, Eastern Wisdom & Modern Life, entitled "Buddhism and Science".

I jotted down two most enjoyable quotes: 

“[Science is] a constant superimposition of human ideas of order upon the apparent disorder which we first find when we look at the natural world” (16:04).

“Knowledge is in other words, a form of eating “(17:50).

 I also have a strange proposition that I have pondered a few times, but can never outright dismiss, in that I have learned more from Alan Watts lectures, on youtube, and a 14 hour series I torrented, in addition to a book of his I have read, than my entire Oberlin education.

Now, the first thing I have to concede, using a sort of wisdom Watts fundamentally espouses, is that I would not understand how much I appreciate his oration, how strongly it reverberates with me, unless I had experienced the many moments of what I perceive as pedantic discourses.

However, I could also potentially apply that same critique to Watts had I been imbued in them fundamentally rather than supplementary. Perhaps, it is the experience of supplementary knowledge, of a seemingly secret, personal, and arcane experience that is so intriguing.

After all my Oberlin education is more than anything a function of my input. I choose my classes, I choose how I engage. The criticism ultimately reflects unto myself.

Now how all this relates to my proposed project on post modernism and audio, I cannot explicitly say. I have a lot of murky intuitions and what I’ll indulgently refer to as primordial concepts. But, I am not at that critical point of making claims explicit and persuasive. 

What I do find intriguing is how profoundly I feel Watts interpretations of Eastern philosophy have influenced my ways of thinking and how his lectures in particular are most influential. 

What primarily stands out to me is my relationship to his work through audio. But also of course, is his positionally and historicity. He is a white, British academic, espousing Eastern philosophy to the West, to the point of pseudo entertainer and celebrity. Of course one must wonder, is he appropriating and exploitative? The history of the plinth he lectures from undoubtedly is littered with blood, greed, evil, violence, rape...colonialism. Yet at the same time, his messages are often distinctly oppositional to violence, urgency, power, Christianity, many of the perceived primary drivers of colonialism. He potentially represents a transcendent relationship of a post-Colonial West towards itself and the East, although I also cringe at this assertion. It feels naive at best. His figure and position of morality are certainly ambivalent.

I am not sure there is anything distinctly postmodern about Watts, but he is a philosopher roughly of the time, and as I struggle to understand postmodernism, I find his thinking helpful and refreshing. 

So far I have read two essay one an interview with Frederic Jameson, creator of the term “postmodern,” titled “Revisiting Postmodernism: An Interview with Fredric Jameson” by Baumbach et al. 

I have also read “Belonging To The Network: Neoliberalism and Postmodernism In Tropic Of Orange” by Blyn.

As far as more tangible ideas towards my project, I am not sure I have much to offer. I would like to incorporate some form of video or potentially even interactive feature, using the program MAX/MSP. That may end up being too technical and laborious deviating from the intended conceptual work. 

Otherwise, I have to develop a more explicit understanding of “postmodern,” I still feel I don’t really know what it means. I am wondering more if it is simply a pedantic term. However, at the same time, I feel like the moment you label a theory as pedantic is probably the moment you are unconsciously operating within it. That is how theory seems to be such an enigma. 

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Conceptual Map, Tropic of Orange

Yamashita’s text performs narrative in a peculiar way. The surreal, and magical, are slowly induced, suspending disbelief. If I attempt to explain the plot, in a mored traditional way, a few notable events emerge, the super highway explosion, congestion, and repossession. And the literal, supernatural movement of the tropic of Cancer to California, and some sort of super violent wresting spectacle. 

These are bizarre, monuments, and catastrophic events, yet through the text they become understood as the characters, and their emotional states of being. The plot is embedded in the various personal narratives, which serve to shift focus from the utterly extreme and bizarre towards a more personal, and thus relatable account. 

Through the personal, the extreme, surreal, and even violent, become diminished, because ringing true of Cole’s Open City a person serves as their own neutral. And these, horrific or massive events, are absorbed into the baseline of the characters psyche. 

The above picture attempts to capture how extreme subjectivity can blur strange, bizarre, and even violent realities into abstract art, and/or symbolism.

My next “map” focuses on what to me, was the most poignant moment of the novel. The second time the archangel  performs the herculean feet of dragging a massive vehicle, using holes in his abdomen and old chains hooked into his flesh as the fulcrum. 

The symbolism and imagery of these scenes are immensely powerful. Archangel represents the ancient strength and wisdom of indigenous people. He shows how in spite of, and because of exploitative colonial and post-colonial systems, summoning the (now) arcane humanity deep within, resistance is possible.

I also choose to use aesthoemetry to create a recognizable embodiment of a “map.” I find this method particularly appropriate and recognizable because it uses vestiges of traditional cartesian geometry, to create an unexpected result.

The I did not draw any curves, instead the curves appear in the negative space of the straight lines. I think this visually represents some of our discourse about the dialectic. I also think it can represent how through traditional modes of thinking, representation, and understanding, unambiguously non-traditional or contrarian results are always possible.

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Is History Real?

I enjoy listening to Alan Watts. I have never watched his videos before. I find I have a more difficult time watching him than listening to him. When I listen, I am more able to absorb him on a conceptual and intellectual level and his work satisfies me on that wavelength.

As I watch, however, his presence and ideas seem much more a social game than an intellectual discourse. I cannot help to to notice how white and British he is and how appropriated his livelihood can be interpreted as. He is a philosopher of the East, yet he is white and British. Given his relationship to history can he be a great or even ethical philosopher?

HIs video argues ideas ought to be taken at face value, in the present, of the present, and for the present. 

I think this viewpoints that Watts briefly expounds, very closely articulates Hall. And I have found Hall’s essay to be among the most moving works I have read this semester. 

I think it is powerful to the extant that it is true. It deploys a wisdom that academic papers do not always have. It can be difficult to articulate exactly what makes this paper wise as compared to another, say Katz’s counter topography. But, the intuitive sense I have after reading Hall’s essay, as with any good essay, is that it evokes ideas and conceptions from within. Hall is helping me to understand what I feel I already knew, whereas Katz essay reads to me with a sense of conceptual distance.  

I would like to make a connection between Watts and Hall. Watts is lecturing as a white, British academic, specializing in Hindu and Buddhist history and philosophy. He lectures mostly in the US to an American audience of the 1950s-1970s. Hall, also a British Academic, specializing in cultural studies, Black, and born and raised in Jamaica, writes for a presumably academic audience, in 1990.

I found it interesting how two people with different histories, in different times, and with different academic specialities, could espouse such a similar theory for potentially such different aims.

Watts aims to essentially enlighten a Christian audience into hindu and buddhist philosophy. Hall aims to salvage and revitalize the ethos of African diaspora.

Yet they both rely heavily on this one, potentially simple idea. History does not exists. There is only the present, and history only exists to the extant that the present is aware of it.

As hall beautiful evokes, “meaning is never finished or completed, but keeps on moving to encompass other, additional or supplementary meanings” (229).

What is interesting about this interpretation of history or a lack there of, is that it potentially undermines globalization and diaspora. Taking these ideologies towards there extremes, one could posit, everything always was and is a function of the global, and everyone never was or will have home or a from. There is no such thing as from. There is no such thing as was. There is only the place you are. 

I don’t know if I like these frameworks though. They are provocative, and I do prefer them to their polar extreme; history is embedded, entrenched, and here to stay. 

But, I can’t help but to feel disheartened by the idea that history can be forgotten, because as the adage goes forgotten history is doomed to be repeated. 

I do find myself ruminating over ideas of imperialism and appropriation. They certainly happened, it certainly is horrid beyond speech. But, is imperialism essentially European, or white?

I really don’t know, and I’m not sure we can. I discussed this in a previous comment, about how conquest and power are synonymous with written history, and have manifested in essentially all cultures to some degree.  

It is uncomfortable to minimize imperialism and violence. But all it takes is nihilism or a massive historical time scope, say one million years, to do just so. It’s just, I also cannot but to have the feeling that, if it wasn’t Spain, it would have been China, and if it wasn’t China, it would have the Incas, and if it wasn’t the Incas, it would have been the Ottomans, and if not the Ottomans it would have been the caliphate, and if not the caliphate the kingdom of Ghana. 

And yet, it was Europe, and this reality is now, probably not forever, but certainly here now.

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A grumpy account of globerlin.

Without a connection, a sense of ownership, do we take care things? Yet, with a sense of ownership are we not compelled to protect, defend, feel emboldened and entitled? 

How easy it is, living in a caste system of extreme specialization, started by nature and hormones, continued by religion, enjoyed by an inbreeding few, seized by savvy scientists and capitalist, to write off any task to those unlucky individuals responsible. 

I know I enjoyed doing so on my afternoon excursion. Gross water backup, no problem, they pay someone minimum wage to deal with our carelessness and the small inconvenience of dealing with it ourselves.

Hungry, but don’t feel like cooking or cleaning. No problem, there are plenty more minimum and low wage people to take care of the whole gambit. And limitless selection, I elected to go with food from Korea. Although foreign food is hardly exotic anymore. Now to trick ourselves into something special, it must be pureed into a liquid nitrogen science experiment. It is very important to go through so much effort for fancy food because it shows how rich and smart we are; plus after spending so much on dinner we don’t feel as guilty passing by that homeless man.

Have this hole in your gut? Tried to fill it with genetically chemicalized food from Mexico and China, made by low wage bodies. Still not quite happy? No problem, we have many things in our local, small college, uniquely, largest in America, publicly traded book stores. Finally fit in and feel connected by buying our sticker paper, so you can turn your digitally obsessive fetishization of social dynamics back into a bargain priced $10 reality. 

Look at all the fun choices where you can buy the image of fiercely independent intellectual you have always been craving!

Stay worm, with Oberlin eco products, made in Honduras. A country with a GDP 862 times lower than ours. Where 7.8% of children ages 5-14 are in the labor force. (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/honduras). 10% of those, or 18,000, which ever theoretical indicator helps us to picture faces on the bodies, are in industrial settings like mining, or factories, such as the one that made the champion eco fleece, future friendly.

It is important to use five syllable words when discussing how wrong we think this is. That especially helps the children!

Feeling a bit down thinking about the suffering and injustices of the world? We thought so, and that is why with a little bit of that coveted green paper, or magnetic swipe, you can buy THUMB SUMO! Buy this product and allow the creative mind of Jayson Kayser,from Philedephia to help you feel better (oh the internet). Exploit Chinese labor and Japanese culture, while keeping your money domestic!

Remember all the white Oberlin people that died in the boxer rebellion!

 “During the Boxer Rebellion as a whole, a total of 136 Protestant missionaries and 53 children were killed, and 47 Catholic priests and nuns, 30,000 Chinese Catholics and 2,000 Chinese Protestants” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion#Boxer_War).

Definitely a tragedy for those protestant people, just there to try to show them how good Christianity is!

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