Time is nil, but you can never leave . . . . . .

Now as I envision what could be chasing me or eluding me, I consider that Simone Weil discussed a lot about "means."  When looking at some redemption from this fear, consider the words of Weil, “Any attempt to gain this deliverance by means of my own energy would be like the efforts of a cow which pulls at its hobble and so falls onto its knees.  In making it one liberates a certain amount of energy in oneself by a violence which serves to degrade more energy.”  The means is the process of life, the ends is the end of It. One hopes to bring oneself through the process with a lover in tow, but really when traction happens, one is alone.  In loneliness one reaches some destination or infinity.  There is a problem here as well; aren’t infinity and finitude just constructs? Let me stop you and just give you the real answer to that question.  Yes! Realizing that it hurts for folks to hear that their cherished ideas are inventions or tricks the mind plays on itself; just as it thinks that change is really something called “time.”  Yes! Our cherished time is a construct.  And those of us that think mind is all there is, from Ram Dass to Descartes to Einstein and all the others in that good ole boy’s club, it should be remembered just how limited we are in the grand scheme of things.  As Alain Badiou has said in such an aesthetic way, “in its radical alterity to both the multiple form of situations and to the regime of the count-as-one, an alterity which institutes the One of being, torn from the multiple, and nameable exclusively as absolute Other. From the point of view of experience, this path consecrates itself to mystical annihilation,” and it is annihilation itself which we experience as corrupt, sweet "nil.”

The infinite

The infinite whole, the Real; that which one witnesses in a shadowy form, but not even the shadow itself, just a glance.  This discussion (among psychoanalysts and philosophers) witnesses to something bothersome to me.   As I consider the ability to grasp concepts larger than or beyond our capacities as persons, I am reminded of how liminal these ideas are for those who understand personhood   to be primarily informed by basic survival techniques.  I am reminded that appropriate food, shelter, safety and physical health are preliminary conditions that persons seek.   But, there is something which I believe must be attended to before these can even be considered; it is psychological certainty.  The question is: where does one find the source that fulfils such a need.   Certainty is not to be found in the imaginary, or in the symbolic.  In other words, those things that are represented to us, impressions of the inner and outer world, are fluid, intangible, and lead to uncertainty.  So the source cannot be found, unless we experience it as real. Real is an order or register that Jacques Lacan theorized, as well the Imaginary and Symbolic.  Conceptually we have an object of desire, all of us do, and the seeking of the object our desire is fundamental to our existence.  The flash of terror which happens just behind me indicates to me that there is something I desire which I can only see vaguely, over my shoulder at a glance.  I need not seek my desire though, because it is in search of me.    

Pain . . . have I felt this way before?

“Pain is not shared” Simone Weil expressed it in the following way:  “At a certain moment, the pain is lessened by projecting it into the universe, but the universe is impaired; the pain is more intense when it comes home again, but something in me does not suffer and remains in contact with a universe which is not impaired.” (7) Psychoanalyses have revealed that when the limit to pleasure is surpassed one experiences pain; the duplicity of pain is that it is intricately tied to pleasure; this is what Jacques Lacan calls jouissance.   If one has experienced severe emotional pain, this link between pain and pleasure may not be evident or line up with experience.  Extreme depression can be like crawling back into one’s symbiotic relationship with mother.  Delusions from a purveyor’s point of view may seem to be so convincing to the delusional person so as to seem real enough to commit the most glorious of acts to the most trepidations.  Illness of the psyche comes not to the deserving, but it rains on many who would else wise be contented without it.   The way out of such a predicament is not to become ubermensch, but to take a lowly status; to give way to punishments of all sorts.  Even self-flagellations are to be considered, but this may be too close to the jouissance phenomenon propped-up by Lacan.   

No dead among them . . . . . . .

Weil (2002a) also writes, "This world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through" (p. 145). This is a cognitive exercise of seeing obstacles as something more.  Necessity is a barrier and a bridge between us and the utterly other. Weil attempts to reach an understanding from the hysteric’s point of view, note here that this understanding can never be reached.  I am not trying to reach anything other, if at all, I am running from it; but would fancy myself not to be neither, that is my take on it.  The world is not a magic wonderland or a book of fairytales, none of the religions of the Book have been convincing to me; though people would put the followers of these religions down and mock or scorn the little sheep. For the record, my transvaluation would have to be considered pitiful in the grand scheme of things.  My greatest grandiosities pale in comparison to their passions and compassions.  I think it foolish to berate them, all in the name of either looking atheist enough or intellectual enough.   Some of the most brilliant and talented persons were of these persuasions, from Rumi to Bach.  It is always devastating to me to hear of the hurt of others, even if or just because their lineage goes back to the most backward or horrifying behaviors by such believers.  No matter whom they praise or commune with, either each other or outsiders, they fascinate me with the peculiar fashion and followings.  Though they be irrational or serendipitous in belief I cannot argue with the simple nor complex ways in which they might envision the universe.  The beauty of the multiverse, whether lectured on by a great scientist or boasted about in the name of blessing, is always a dedication to how varied is persons’ experiences of it.  So, the world is a closed door, being both a barrier and a way through? This sentiment may be possible for some, but quite a contradiction to others; taking a position on this matter does not make sense to me. For the most elegant arguments in the most ivory-towered settings seem to have originated among the people of the Book.   

Metaxu, Simone Weil's reality . . . .

Simone Weil wrote, “What is it a sacrilege to destroy? Not that which is base, for that is of no importance. Not that which is high, for even should we want to, we cannot touch that. The Metaxu. The Metaxu form the region of good and evil. No human being should be deprived of his Metaxu, that is to say of those relative and mixed blessings (home, country, traditions, culture, etc.) which warm and nourish the soul and without which, short of sainthood, a human life is not possible.” Destruction cannot happen to the crushed or the inviolable be touched by such. It is more likely that something which is earthly, but no mundane thing would satisfy the desire of the psyche of my attractions.  Ritual has been robbed from us by the emptiness of entertainment. I hide in the shadow of emptiness, of the void; within the lack which cannot be filled.  I no longer need to attempt to fill the lack, though presumably my inner person (whatever that might be) continues to seek such a process.  I do not feel anything missing, because the emptiness is form and the form is emptiness.  That is the nature of the Metaxu Simone talks about.  It is the contradiction within me and without harbored by no longing but to be settled in a dark place of brilliance. As I walk a dreary path at times the mundane is interrupted by the memory of that clash of thunder behind me and that electric surge that went through me, as I experienced the fleeting tug on me to address something I missed along the way

trepidations

“Pain is not shared” Simone Weil expressed it in the following way:  “At a certain moment, the pain is lessened by projecting it into the universe, but the universe is impaired; the pain is more intense when it comes home again, but something in me does not suffer and remains in contact with a universe which is not impaired.” (7) Psychoanalyses have revealed that when the limit to pleasure is surpassed one experiences pain; the duplicity of pain is that it is intricately tied to pleasure; this is what Jacques Lacan calls jouissance.   If one has experienced severe emotional pain, this link between pain and pleasure may not be evident or line up with experience.  Extreme depression can be like crawling back into one’s symbiotic relationship with mother.  Delusions from a purveyor’s point of view may seem to be so convincing to the delusional person so as to seem real enough to commit the most glorious of acts to the most trepidation.  Illness of the psyche comes not to the deserving, but it rains of many who would else wise be contented without it.   The way out of such a predicament is not to become ubermensch, but to take a lowly status; to give way to punishments of all sorts.  Even self-flagellation is to be considered, but this may be too close to the jouissance phenomenon propped-up by Lacan.   

the intent of the other and who I am

For artificial intelligence, animism, and religion one looks for intentionality in the object looked upon, this is also called anthropomorphizing.  In other words if something behaved as though it has intent or even consciousness we consider it to be alive and aware with thoughts and direction from the source of its consciousness.  The wind is considered to be spirit because it seems to have a way of being that is intentional, potentially destructive, and alters our experience.  An animal displays an aggressive behavior we tend to believe it has intentions driven by some form of intelligence.  I assume another person has intentionality when they behave and speak in certain ways.    This intentionality and personality entice me to know the consciousness and subjective experience of the other.  It does not take much time for me to be curious about what the other is experiencing, what their about, etc . . .  My wondering mind creates scenarios about how I might enter the other's world, experience their intentionality, their choice, feelings, and perspective.  Looking inot the eyes of the other is an invitation to a world through an experience which I will never know, but my interest in in social creatures of all kinds.  I worry that I think about the other and do not have a grasp on the ends of man, how am I to be with, speak for the other, or know the intent of the other, really, when humanity as we know it is not lasting.  I am talking Foucault, who said man is “an invention of recent date that soon will be erased like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.”

so many things to think about . . . too much

Lately, the only thing I seem to be able to understand about being human is that I share language with others.  Language acts with metaphor and symbol to represent what it is that I experience.  Lacan said that the unconscious is structured like a language.  Language seems to be the only thing I can hang my hat on, in terms of “consciousness.” I feel the lived body experience as real, but somehow language is both inside and outside my head.  A statement or a song with lyrics will often fill a gap where my intentional thinking “mind” does not take the whole space of my “consciousness.”  I use no terms lightly (mind, body, unconscious, consciousness, language) and they are representations of things in the mental and physical world.  That world is the one my bodily experience embraces, though my gut and brain carry me to the precipice of annihilation or self-destruction or my demise.  My life is founded on all these matters and it is driven by my intentionality.  I find no escape from my inclinations.  Eternity, the infinite whole as Schleiermacher put it, escapes me.  Time is a construct,  I bring this up because no matter what I “think” I am measured  by time and I realize that I cannot be measured, at least it feels that way.  Time is based on change and is what we have invented as humans to order our daily activities. I have to get all this off my mind periodically in order to see clearer in my path of survival.  Again my cognitive world is driven by passions and I reckon with that with everyone I meet.   Again, I think it would be incredible to be on the inside of another’s subjective experience, to understand if that other experiences what I experience, for starters.    

Eternal impossibility

As the feeling of fear and separateness lingers, I think of all Westerners who claim to have met with the Eternal (as I will call it for now).  It is recognized as the numinous, Nirvana, satori, the Now, Sanctum, and Other.  Outside of living in a culture that under-girds these experiences (if you will), I find it difficult to believe anyone in the West (without exception) has reached satori or Nirvana.  It seems unlikely that anyone as well has seen the face of a god as devised in the words of some. The inescapable loneliness, separation, difference, Lack of the Other. 

passions the master of reason

Is anyone out there, just to hear your nemesis’s prayer?  I have wondered, daydreamed, been curious if an Other could be possible.  It does not seem likely by all my reasonings or calculations.  David Hume said once that “reason is and always will be the slave of the passions.”  Those objects in the world or entities conjured up into the atmosphere remind us that we are alone.  If we take Hume seriously it will be in many cases that one could say those entities are a product of our passions, but really all that exist are impressions, not even data.  We would be hard pressed to conjugate our passions into a sensible (i.e reasonable) linear framework.  That might result a very immense conundrum. Can my passions be reliable enough to sense an Other.  There are forces that we realize are greater than ourselves: wind, the ocean, rivers, and others.   Sentient life almost always seems to be a force beyond my speculation.  I have always been interested in the subjectivity of others; what does it mean to be the other person? (Empathy for an ant).    

knowledge

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and all of those who think they have knowledge realize that it collapses on itself.  Because meaning is deferred I cannot reach the point of contemplation.  I feel as though mean people determine the status of what is true, like that militant philosophy professor in college.  When it comes to that point of fear, the fear that engulfs my body and mind or my whole consciousness, I realize meaning is determined by humans.  It is this understanding of meaning and knowledge which, though I know it is a fallacy, makes the assertion that the powerful determine what I know, and how I come to know what I know.  But that flash of power just over my shoulder reminds me otherwise.  I make meaning, though it is differed, I cannot escape that responsibility and that necessary step each day.  I have not determined how much the power on the horizon just over my shoulder, which I can never reach and informs my fears; that jolt assures me of something I do not know but it is there.

Hope is not evident, fear is reality, knowledge is only as powerful as I make it. Something tells me that that which is behind me is the most powerful, but is experienced only as fleeting.   It is irritating not to be able to put my finger near truth of any kind.  I acknowledge that when I am in a situation that affects my mortality, it is not as strong as the fleeting.  When I get the feeling that I have been here before, I think of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, and then I wonder, almost daydream.  Denuded dreams of days past become the knowledge I have.  Wonder is elementary and the only certainty, I think. 

Filler-up of the void

From Simone Weil I interject that “To accept a void in ourselves is supernatural. Where is the energy to be found for an act which has nothing to counterbalance it? The energy has to come from elsewhere. Yet first there must be a tearing out, something desperate has to take place, the void must be created.” (11)  To allow for the void to be torn into me, for something to leave, to “endure the void,” which is lingering as it is filled only temporarily with the flash that I have experienced.  That flash frightened me so that the void was created, no, the void was made more obvious, became a driving force in my life. That force could have been summed-up in the form of desire, which is forever seeking to fill a lack that is common to all human experience.  As Jacques Lacan would have it: lack indicates a separation which in turn identifies an anxiety.  There I am, left trying to fill something that the flash left gaping.

So powerful, though, was that fearful moment, I am able to look lack in the face in my attempts to fill it with the desiring I do.  This is somewhat of a mystery to me that I often cannot articulate it in a fashion that I am sure the other can comprehend.   At times I feel I am the very desire itself; at other times I feel I am the lack.  Void is a trait, lack is a condition, neither is equivalent with the other one.  Again, with the voice of Weil I say that “The imagination, filler up of the void, is essentially a liar. It does away with the third dimension, for only real objects have three dimensions. It does away with multiple relationships.” (16-17)  I credit Weil with being able to know how empty life is and admire her hysteric’s yearning to fill up void, to no avail.  Yes, I would say even of Weil, she was always in pursuit of lack as well, forbidden by necessity, the way things just happen to be in the case of those who do not ignore the spontaneity of and power of the chasm opened behind us, as a shout.

Weariness from the Event

Weary of the onslaught of a thought, I looked around to try to recognize where the thought had come from, but it became apparent that thought was only happening within me.  Nonetheless, that flash behind me frightened me to the degree that it felt as though a thought had entered me.  Perhaps it was in my imagination that the flash and thought occurred, but it seemed real enough to make me shiver after a jolt. It occurred to me that thoughts are bodily experiences, which generate a particular energy within, which lingers only fleetingly, briefly enough in this case to overcome me.

  

Apparently this is an experience others have had, the feeling that something behind has sparked fear in the body.  It is quite a thing to remember, like electricity coursing through one’s veins.  The memory of it will never go away, but never will the experience come again.  It is a once in a lifetime event on a horizon that can never be reached no matter how far one travels back in thought.  Etiology, derivation, whence it originates from is unknown to those who would try to reproduce it.  A light, a flash of lightening, more than fear or angst, more than trembling, that coursing feeling which leaves one numb and tingling.

The most adept expert in the mind/body experience could not separate the two in order to find a singularity of thought alone.  The need to know might as well be forfeited, because the deeper one goes, the further back, the further the experience dwindles away, like a real horizon, one never really reaches it, though it is indeed out there.  Frustration sets –in as this paleo-experience harbors beyond reach. Pain, excitement, a pulse once felt, now gone.      

Simone Weil wrote quite a bit in Gravity and Grace about contradiction, which I make as contradistinction with paradox.  So many scientists and historians have written about complexity, but I would like to suggest that the real nature of the phenomena in nature and human exploration is complication.  When Nietzsche was writing about the idols’ twilight he was up against what is the postmodernist’s nightmare, which is which God really exists (even if of our creation).  As Michael M. Skolnick writes, “Can we now fulfill our true destinies: to introduce consciousness of evolution to evolution, to become like our old gods by providing attention to evolution” (4).  The atheist is faced with the quandary of what it is nature is doing when it is creating its own gods.  This complication, throws doubt on the light which evolution doing. Is it creating a more complicated scenario rather than what complexity can account for; this may be the gunfire or strike of light behind one’s head.  The look of fear may be the beginning of yearning for some who would dare to imagine smrtghhng god in this world that we do know

Skolnick, Michael M. "Seeking the divine in evolution: implicit parallelism and Nietzsche." Festschrift in honor of John H. Holland (1999): 25.

Beginning of Simone Weil’s Metaxu: Interrogating for Truth

Simone Weil’s Metaxu: Interrogating for Truth

Dorothy Tuck McFarland (1983) views Simone Weil as a "writer with profoundly holistic vision of man [sic] and his [sic] relationship to the world" (pp. 168-169). This vision is demonstrated in Weil's use of Attention, Decreation, and, most specifically, Metaxu to integrate her words into a singular and consistent corpus of literature that we find today. As a hysteric, Weil demands all the knowledge that she possibly can and then is not satisfied and desires more knowledge. The hysteric's discourse demands knowledge beyond what is given by the master narrative, by the hegemony of the time, and this is exactly what Weil does in her discussion of Metaxu.

I understand the word Metaxu to refer to three main cognitive actions which Weil employs in description of the term; 1) Weil uses action when she postulates that a wall or veil is both a barrier and a way through; 2) She further uses an insistence on looking for and holding together contradiction; 3) And Weil intends the view of the idea of a means versus an ends. This demonstrates the ways I see Weil’s ambiguous use of Metaxu and its multiple, complementary meanings.

Weil (2002) does acknowledge a Platonic understanding of Metaxu as a "between" which she refers frequently to "the distance between the necessary and the good." (p. 105) However, her concepts explored in this article demonstrate that Weil is concerned not with middle ground between two contradictories, but the bridge that allows one the means to travel back-and­forth between these points. This use is somewhat different that the traditional use of Metaxu.

For Weil, Metaxu has many different connotations including suffering, contradiction, impossibility, and certain contradictions that connect us to our humanity.  What is of premium importance in understanding Weil’s use of Metaxu is its process or action. Weil takes her action use of Metaxu to accept challenges, contradictions and power struggles as they lead her further along the path of the hysteric's search for more truth or knowledge.

I have found Weil to be a hysteric, especially from the perspective of the psychoanalytic characterization of the hysteric based on the theory of Jacques Lacan.  The hysteric, in this conception, is the person who cannot accept authorities’ definitions.  The hysteric seeks the fill lack; it should be understood that in Lacanian theory lack can never be filled. Therefore, though not accepting truth Weil continues to seek it out.    

Weil was a political activist and thinker who also used theological notions in her writing. Weil does not make a distinction between political and spiritual realms in her idea of Metaxu. The message of Metaxu refers to the transcendent or a "higher plane." Therefore, Weil's methods of Metaxu also lead her to an understanding of a move, which is never fully complete, which conflates the spiritual and the political.

Sources: 

Weil, S. (2002). Gravity and grace. New York, NY: Routledge.

McFarland, D. T. (1983). Simone Weil. New York, NY: Ungar Publishing Company.

a flash of fear behind us

As Jacques Lacan attests there is some experience of an ideal state through which we are to both have great suffering and pleasure simultaneously and fleetingly.  For Simone Weil this state of being is found in Decreation, in the understanding of life as it passes through a void.  In my experience emptiness and void have always been both dynamic and fleeting.  This experience I find is a flash over the shoulder of one who would look behind themselves glancing at a spark that startles and awakens or kindles in them a very similar yearning which I believe Lacan, Weil, and I have experienced.  Through the years I have known that this experience does indeed happen for many people.  It is not a turn to Christ, but a fear that strikes one the his or her body as though something tremendous has happened, of which one cannot give word to and yet cannot be ignored.  

I feel my heart pound and my breathing become shallow, as some feeling which would situate itself in the darkness of St. John of the Cross and he might have feared.  This fear is healthy and devastating, a feeling that perhaps Schleiermacher or Kierkegaard or even Nietzsche or Schopenhauer might have described in a moment of angst and oneness with something totally Other than themselves.  The flash over the shoulder is driven by anxiety and startles one to uninhibited feelings of grace that for many are unrecognizable.   I hope that this flash leads to a yearning for many who would become inclined to linger in the fear and find something there that is beyond words.  This is not the numinous which Rudolf Otto spoke of, nor is it a light at the end of a tunnel, but something that seeps through the blinders we all have on which prevent us from, as Simone Weil would have it, being scorched by the Law, the Word, or the Face of God.  This scorching in Weil’s understanding is prevented by what she terms necessity, which is a sort of law of the universe that shields us.    

Weil Lacan and the author

In my dissertation I approach the work of Simone Weil through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and by doing so I provide a framework which demonstrates thematic consistency in Weil's literature. This framework is structured by three major constructs I find in her work: Metaxu, Attention and Decreation. Weil's work clearly addresses issues around social justice, morals and ethics. The way I read her work implies consideration of an internal pattern, at least in her works Gravity and Grace, and The Need for Roots. I venture into the constructs above in an effort to demonstrate their usefulness as structuring devices and ways of putting her thought into transformative understandings.

The reader will find that Weil's thought, as illustrated through Lacan's psychoanalytic science, makes available Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation in such a way as to illiterate consistent and viable applications to social justice and change. Metaxu opens a way of actively balancing and understanding dichotomies as contradictions, bereft of explanation through paradoxical thought, standing on their own as contradictions. These contradictions point the way to the action of bringing just as much significance to one side of the dichotomy as to the other.

Attention is a process by which broader views of dualisms, with each opposite, though they may contradict one another, are accepted each for its uniqueness. An example would be when each side of the power/weakness dichotomy is accepted for its importance in the development of a theory of justice. For Weil, "the right union of opposites" occurs when the opposites are seen, through Attention, on a "higher plane,"