Gypsy swing

2004. Bireli Lagrene. You will realize, when you listen to him, why it did not take me long to understand that this prodigious kid would necessarily become an international star.

Later on he revealed himself capable of understanding a music piece in less time than is required to write it… and he played and plays today with anybody without difficulty. Obviously he never studied music, that is how it is taught in the “Conservatoire”. He does not read partitions for example. He plays everything by ear.

Around 16 years of age he listens to Georges Benson, Jimmy Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, American jazz and he absorbs everything at a phenomenal speed. What is more, he works the violin, the bass... Soon he escapes to the US and plays everywhere with Jaco Pastorius, the most famous virtuoso bassist of the time. At age 24, Biréli has assimilated all American music and jazz. He can play with the best.

He has, for around the last 2 years, started a group which plays the themes of Django. In the group there are gypsies but also the son of… Jacques Dutronc. How long will Biréli stay in this line? Probably not too long, the danger for him being to be completely absorbed, body and soul, and thus to be squelched in a certain sense, by the spirit of “show business”…

Imagination IV

When we are engulfed by imagination, we lose the sense of reality, hence of quality. It is important to see that it is through reality that we attain quality, and through quality that we attain reality... not at all through imagination! We have so much difficulty in inducing substance that it is always possible to slide into a figurative mode, whereas quality puts us in direct contact with reality. In fact, substance is completely overlooked in today's world; not only do we replace it by relation of reason (i.e . the "universal", One from the multiple, Being as an abstraction) but we don't distinguish relation of reason and real relation. Hence, we cannot discover what realism is, as relation dispenses of distinguishing between realism and idealism.

In the order of Being, if we do not ask the question what is the is of the judgement of existence "this is" (i.e. what is Being), our experiences are always susceptible of being idealized and of being enveloped by our imagination. Why do quantity and imagination often go hand in hand? In my view, it is because quantity has no limits. Incidentally, quantity plays a huge role in psychology. To let oneself be taken down the river of quantity can give us a thrill not unlike that of rafting. In any case, one can well measure the difference between the Freudian and the Aristolian vision... for the former, our sleep and our vegetative life are the peak of the human person, whereas for the latter the peak is the spiritual soul: intelligence and will in act.


Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/

Imagination III

Imagination is borne of the body. It is what is most subtle in it. It indubitably comes from it for it is grounded in our senses (hence the body). Without a body, no imagination. Hey, do you realize "angels" don't have an imagination!? Hard to imagine, huh? :wink:

It's a curious thing because imagination proceeds from the body and at the same time it seeks to separate itself from it.That's what imagination and virtuality are: a world that could exist but doesn't; a world that proceeds from reality but that is not reality.

There is an affective virtuality, a mathematical virtuality, a scientific virtuality, an artistic virtuality. It is because this make believe world, which once more doesn't exist but could exist, proceeds from me that I like it so much and that it often interests me much more than reality itself.

In short, however this subject warrants a much longer development, the body, hence imagination, is terribly limited, but it is positive in as much as it enables the soul to live of sensibility. That will be all for today. At ease! ;-)

Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/

Dialogue with God

Dialogue with "God" on Dialogus2.org

Avatar: ...while I'm at it, ill give you my viewpoint on euthanasia. Given that I cannot stand to see others suffer, I am in favor of local euthanasia dispensed in priority to those who suffer confronted to the suffering of others. Like that it will only be necessary to take care of those who suffer without having to be bothered by those who don't suffer. Me for example, if a family member dies, I have asked for some local euthanasia beforehand... for I do not want to suffer unnecessarily, nor lose my dignity for that matter. It is not only liberty which stops at the moment where that of the others begins, you too may I point out!

God: Only the suffering of those who are close to you make you suffer?

Avatar: It is a question which is absent of you. I suggest the following one. Who is close to you? It is in effect not customary for you to interest yourself in what is measurable and quantity, rather in what is not measurable and quality. It is even the first time I hear "solely" in your mouth. May this serve as a lesson, for now you are diabolically preoccupied by the fact that a suffering does not weigh enough.

God: there is much subjectivity in your words. What do you know of my "morals"? Why should I only be interested in what is not measurable? Why should measure be a quantity?

Avatar: Your morals? How do I know them? Don't be a snob please, as if we did not know each another! Jeepers! Why would you only be interested in what is not measurable? With what you pay me, do you really think you are the right one to ask me this?? Why should measure be quantity? That one is easy, because quantity is measurable. :)

God: hmmmmmm

Avatar: Don't pull that face!! No kidding, I find your strategy consisting in sending the ball back in a backhand crosscourt passing shot with "it is in your head that it is true" undertones a bit short. Short passing shot if you will. If I were in your sandals I would try to have a bit more fun. You have no excuse really! I would help them to a theology of the sea on its natural coulis of metaphysics. If you want my opinion, there is only you to ban religion. Hey, for example we spoke of humility, why didn't you answer: "Humility bores me. It has in common with arrogance that in both cases you speak of yourself." How did you say? Hmmmmmmm. Did I say that right?? :0)

Spiritual vs intellectual

"Avatar" answering the question "should one distinguish between spiritual and intellectual...?"

It seems intelligence and spirit have fundamentally the same meaning: one speaks without distinction of human intelligence and human spirit... intelligence signifying what proceeds from human intelligence, and spiritual what comes from the human spirit.

From this objective consideration, and as is often the case when there are two synonymous terms, other meanings have been superimposed. We say intellectual, for example, when we wish to say non-manual, or university professor, or abstract, or someone whose feet are not grounded in reality, or even “mind-aching” (prise de tête). The same diversity exists with the word spiritual, which sometimes means humorous, or religious (this last term is in my view a quite equivocal falsehood), or even divine (“Gods” spirit), to distinguish between divine intelligence and human intelligence, etc.

As far as the distinction made by editors in their “Spirituality” collection, we have here, I think, a mistranslation (which I pointed out) between spiritual and religious. Yet, fundamentally, there is synonymity. I see here on the one hand a type of marketing gimmick which seeks a label which does not ruffle anyones feathers; on the other hand, one must recognize that these collections include everything and its opposite: religious considerations, psychoanalysis, astrology, clairvoyance, and what have you... Therefore, they include what purports to be a rather speculative reflection, which happens to correspond to the first sense of “intellectual”.

I think the term intellectual is not used solely because the connotation is sometimes pejorative or mocking in nature; the same is true for the term “speculation”, which would turn away the clients who claim to be non-intellectual and pragmatic, concrete, with their feet solidly anchored in the ground! Hence “spiritual” is much more consensual, and in any case the term is gratifying. In short, “spiritual” signifies astute and clever, whereas “intellectual” can signify pretentious and pain-in-the-neck, which is evidently not the best pitch.

In brief, spiritual sounds “authentic” whereas intellectual has undertones of “concepts” or “ravings”. It is a bit foolish, but I think that is why it is so; a bit as why red and yellow are associated to biscuits, and why few of them are sold in a blue package. :-)

Fifth round

It’s a classic, at the fifth round of drinks, someone gets up and says “if God knows in advance what I will freely decide, that means in truth that it was planned or written in advance, and this means that I am not free.”

So someone else asks “if "he" whom you call God exists, and if "he" is as you suppose eternal, why would "he" not know in advance what you will decide freely? For that would mean that "he " is not atemporal…”

Obviously, this creates a bit of discomfort, and usually the spotlight swings immediately to “and me, why don’t I know in advance what I will freely decide?”

Which then shows the desire to not be free, putting forward the following dialectic: “If I know ahead of time what I will decide freely later on, then I will freely choose the opposite, or at least something else, just to experience what it will do. Yet I cannot decide to do differently or the contrary of what I ignore!”…

Thus the bloke answers that he would like to freely renounce his freedom, which is a sophism evidently... therefore, we find ourselves in front of the following assertion: “I am not free to not be free”, that is to say in front of two consecutive negations.

But does saying “I am free to be free” make any sense? Not really any more than the preceding double negation, for “I am free” is enough, and we don’t clearly see what “to be free” adds. In consequence, it seems that a freedom which contemplates itself should necessarily and logically lead to its suicide, bogged down in a sort of perverse effect: I request not to be free”. Just as if that was the only choice. Curious isn’t it?

This shows that freedom is not an end in itself, and also that when one seeks to make a transcendental out of it, we kill it. I wonder if that is not what we do when we carry to the rank of transcendental whatever else that is not one, like beauty for example. I mean by this that I wonder if to make a transcendental out of beauty doesn’t also, sooner or later, lead to negate beauty. Finally, instead of creating, that is when one assimilates oneself to "he" whom religious traditions call “God”, what we mostly know what to do, is destroy lol

What characterizes contemporary thought is negation. Aristotle is the friend of wisdom in as much as he starts by admiring, even that which is reputed to be self-evident. Aristotle is the philosopher of admiration. The contemporaries are for the most part the buffoons of doubt and of negation. It is Descartes who pulled the first punch: “I think, therefore I doubt, and therefore I am”… Geez! 

It is because of Descartes that all of contemporary thought is a saloon-bar philosophy.

Never vanquished

Should you ask people around you what truth is, you will mostly be told that it depends on your conception of truth. If you insist and point out that what exists or not is entirely oblivious to any opinion one may have of it as far as being or not being, you will, without more ado, be singled out as sectarian. You will be told that you are trying to impose your ideas, exactly as if reality was an idea. Now then, whether or not you seek to impose what you think neither affects error nor truth, and consequently it is well and truly postulated that reality does not exist outside the idea you make of it. Not to consent to the relativity of reality constitutes in many places a form of raging intolerance. To accept that each and everyone can express his opinion is one thing, something important, for sure, but on the other hand truth also deserves to be upheld. :)

A suicide of intelligence

These days you are not understood if you say that the primacy of being has been substituted by nothingness. Most people stare at you with a dazed look. Yet, for anyone who has the slightest inkling of metaphysics, it is obvious that being primes over non-being, and that it is well and truly being which is, before nothingness… despite Jean-Saul Partre and the cortege of logy intellectuals of the 20th century. Thus negation has taken front stage, in all spirits, even those of the blockheads.

In short, if one is no longer understood on a metaphysical level, one can nevertheless clearly distinguish the primacy of negation concerning the human person and freedom. In this day and age, in the person we firstly see someone who is ailing (thanks to the psychocretins & co who have reduced the human person to personality), and in freedom the capacity to say “no”, that is to say the most infantile vision of things.

Thus we find the three poles where lies the solution to any problem (the person, truth, freedom) absolutely poisoned by negation: truth is firstly nothingness, the person is firstly ailing, and freedom is firstly saying “no”. If that is not a suicide of intelligence, it strangely resembles it, for what “falls” first in intelligence is being, not non-being, which figures the absence of being, thus the destruction through despair of intelligence, memory and will. Hence, we claim to fecund the spirit firstly with nothingness, that’s a good one, for it is exactly as hallucinating as a farmer who would sow “nothing” whilst prophesizing an unparalleled crop.