_KevMusic_

This.
(a good external summation of a few of the thoughts in my head, read 2009-09-27)
"...Even recreational activities may ultimately come to lack playfulness and to be performed with the same demanding attitude as any other productive activity. These literalistic styles, moreover, tend to shape the quality of life in ways which are difficult to identify because our usual methods of observation largely depend upon the literal vocabulary of our dominant epistemologies. The prevalence of a literalist inclination could thus be viewed as a life-damaging compulsion to be 'normal'. We can perceive this inclination whenever there is a tendency to paraphrase or translate our metaphoric attempts into objective utterances even at the cost of annulling original meanings and de-symbolizing our own linguisticity. Should this tendency become dominant to the point of discarding our emergent thoughts, we would then become permanently constrained into the boundaries of literalness. And whenever forced to confront complex life situations, of 'foreign' areas of literalness, the atrophy of our metaphoric capacities would inevitably be betrayed.
In the potential dominance of conventions and literalness we can discern a novel method for somehow assessing an inconspicuous form of human pathology which we could name the 'literalist distortion', for lack of a better term. As we know, we commonly regard as mentally ill those who do not have a sufficiently good sense of reality and of interpersonal transactions. But then, this generalized approach could be integrated, by converse, with a concern for those who are so firmly in contact with standard reality that they ultimately forsake a contact with the deeper sources of their subjectivity, and thus with a more creative participation in reality. The domain of literalness gravitates in fact towards a sign-type of language characterized by a one-to-one correspondence to events and for a tightly defined equivalence to such events; a less literal language would allow for a one-to-many relationship, for a surplus of meanings, as Ricoeur puts it, which are not exact equivalents but rather suggest the nature of that which is expressed in language. As is maintained in psychoanalytic culture, there are subjects who may even develop a vicarious personality only intent upon being 'objective', and primarily engaged with standard representationalist concerns to the detriment of any awareness of messages originating from within...
...It is possible that new forms of pathology are now emerging, or else that we are now gaining an awareness of painful styles of life which have always existed. Life-damaging inclinations may be detected in a tendency to gravitate towards literalness in such a way that the more personal non-literal expressions are increasingly atrophied. What is left is a mute distress due to the annulment of one's inner life, or the need to search for ways of symbolizing such inner void in response to the rare occasions when someone may try to construe our irrepressible metaphoric attempts. In some cases it is almost as if a literalistic vicarious personality were at work, capable only of objective transactions and virtually incapable of authentic relations - almost an inclination to be an object among objects. Experiences are privileged to the extent that they are amenable to expression through the literal language which prevails, at the cost of inducing an even greater discrepancy from the experiences emanating from a 'silenced', concealed part of the self. At the level of verbalization a situation is created whereby language may be recruited to endorse a potentially increasing gap between a private 'true' self and a social 'false' self; and because a false self can be reinforced by means of dialogic responses, it will increasingly establish its dominance. Literal language might even become the almost exclusive means for being with others and sharing life's vicissitudes: it may sadly be the case that whenever a more personal language is used, the environment tends not to respond, as if the individual were non-existent. To adhere to a literalist language is perhaps to try desperately to be normal. And we can envisage a common literalist danger in the form of a massive transfer of inner conditions upon standard expressions so as to increasingly de-symbolize inner events. If this attitude predominates and is used to get rid of unbearable inner states, we inevitably move in the direction of a literalist pathology. And by depending upon such literalness we can also increasingly entrust our inner functions ot concrete objects and tangible situations. However well we use and coordinate these externalized inner functions, we may in fact construct for ourselves a life space of meaningless abundance."



This is exactly what is happening to this world today. And so much more besides. I will not let it. Yet it is seemingly inevitable, and has perhaps always been that way. This is progress, in the eyes of most. Fuck that. I will do all that I can, in my own way. Join me.


And maybe this guy too :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope








What is a scream, if not music?