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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   24788 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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While it is true that Dr. Frankenstein wanted to know something, I think to state that as his motive, and leave it at that, leaves out what is most essential. I submit that Victor Frankenstein has more in common with Faust, or Elric of Melniboné than he does with, say, Paul Erdos, or Thomas Edison (doesn't it feel so?). Like Faust and Elric, but unlike Erdos or Edison, Dr. Frankenstein commits copious moral transgressions in the service of his compulsive quest (e.g., desecrating dead bodies, theft, vivisection). In his effort to cross certain boundaries as a far term objective, he crosses boundaries that he knows, or ought now, should not be crossed in the here and now. He could have violated those boundaries in a quest for knowledge, or, like Elric or Gilgamesh, in a quest for something else. So, I think Frankenstein's quest for knowledge is relatively incidental while his quest by forbidden means, for what he ought to know is within the exclusive dominion of the gods is essential. Like Prometheus.

If this analogy [I presume you mean the analogy between the trans-mania and Frankenstein] has any legs, it has to be about the desire to see if man can be turned into woman and vice versa, about transhumanism and the escape from the binding of natural laws without regard for prevailing morality... Not the petty bureaucratic impulse of classification and normalization that moves Canada as a nation and its managerial ilk today, which itself is justified by conforming to a morality, not disregard for it.

From this I suspect one difference between you and me is that I believe Dr. Frankenstein -- along with Faust, and Elric, and the trans-mutilators -- are recklessly crosswise of morality plain and simple, not merely "prevailing" morality. They all lie to themselves to justify the intoxicating ecstasy of crossing boundaries, and seeming, for the time being, to get away with it. Like Prometheus.

Indeed I think our disagreement here may see its source in our different approaches of morality as a philosophical object.

It seems fair to characterize your view as accepting some visceral, objective, absolute, perhaps divine, morality. My own soul offers me no such luxuries and I am unfortunately bound to the perhaps cynical Nietzschean skepticism: morality is a subjective and instrumental construct of power. Tradition and natural law, though the elect of my own prejudices, I can't resign myself to call universal.

That said, we can perhaps mend the gap a bit.

The thrill of transgression you point to is real, that "meddling with the primal forces of nature" does indeed have something exciting about it.

I submit that this excitement is nothing else that will to power. That self-same transcendent impulse that is enabled by technics. The essence of modernity, and the bending of nature to one's will. There is something of this in trans-anything. It is undeniable to anyone who is intimately familiar with the matter. The power to decide that one of the most immutable components of one's condition is now subject to one's own control is awesome.

And in a sense, this is also what motivates the Canadian bureaucrat. But his isn't a thrill of bending nature to will, or at least not through so direct a mean. So I will still insist that, though both impulses can be arranged in the same rubric, be it of modernity or of hubris, they are still meaningfully different.

And this difference is I think extremely relevant to our current moment and key to understand no less than the present and future of politics. The current battle lines of elite and counter elite in the west are once again drawn on a precise difference between two modes of dealing with modernity. And that difference is quite exactly the one we are talking about here, between an individual desire of transcendence, escape and a collective desire of management, control.

The current battle lines of elite and counter elite in the west are once again drawn on a precise difference between two modes of dealing with modernity. And that difference is quite exactly the one we are talking about here, between an individual desire of transcendence, escape and a collective desire of management, control.

Management and control by what agency and to what end?

To no end. This is whence the conflict comes. There is no end. It's very postmodern, which scorns the still-modernist futurists.

People always seem to speculate that the managerial class is motivated by money, power, ideology. They are all individually moved by such base human ends, but as a class these are immaterial. Adam Curtis describes this very well in Hypernormalization. The only identifiable goal is the maintenance of the current order, not of the principles of it, not of some fixed idea of it, just pure maintenance and management, with no vision, no goal, no real fundamental spirit.

This is how they are able to hold contradictory ideas and policies and turn on a dime whenever fashionable (as Covid made most conspicuous). Because the system in itself doesn't believe in anything. Not even the Promethean impulse that built it and which is embodied by this rival faction.

The current battle lines of elite and counter elite in the west are once again drawn on a precise difference between two modes of dealing with modernity. And that difference is quite exactly the one we are talking about here, between an individual desire of transcendence, escape and a collective desire of management, control.

...To no end. This is whence the conflict comes.

Then I have no idea what you are trying to say. Which side of the struggle corresponds to (A) individual desire of transcendence, escape, and which corresponds to (B) collective desire of management, control ?

It's all of course more complicated and blurry than this one simple cut but broadly:

A is the Paypal Mafia, accelerationists at large, the dissident right, class reductionist Marxists, private capitalists and generally people at the top and bottom of company org charts.

B is the professional managerial class, neoliberals, the DEI complex, state administrations, NGOs, various social clubs the likes of Davos, public fund managers and generally people in the middle of company org charts.

Power is an end in itself, as Orwell noted.

or Elric of Melniboné

I'm more familiar with Elric of Amestris; he is a bit more well-rounded when it comes to the topic of forbidden knowledge. While his actions do cause a great deal of suffering to himself and others, he isn't actually evil.

The difference is that most of his actions were in (or eventually orient themselves towards) the cause of serving others and not just serving himself; the person most affected by his actions in the first episode knew there were risks involved (though, inherently, not necessarily which ones).

Which is, ultimately, the difference between "we're pushing the boundaries with an objective goal in mind even though we know there are risks involved" and "that you felt like a girl one day is good enough for me so here's the pills, this'll really shock the squares/your parents/the outgroup, I swear I'm prescribing sterilization surgeries because it's helping the patient and not because I'm getting off on the idea of young people being castrated/that all men should be like this, etc.".

Does it not give you any pause that you've now likened these real and existing Canadian doctors to five fictional characters and zero real people? In fact contrasting this fictional archetype with two actual people.

Does it not give you any pause that you've now likened these real and existing Canadian doctors to five fictional characters and zero real people? In fact contrasting this fictional archetype with two actual people.

Interesting question. Answer: no. Can you elucidate why you presume it ought to?

Do you think humans were not meant to have fire?

Good question. The theft of fire from the gods is the most common, indeed the default archetypal original sin in world religions [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_fire]. I don't believe there is any natural moral law forbidding people from making or using fire, or that we ought to give it back. The cultures that held (or hold) the stories sacred, including the classical Greeks, also didn't think they needed to relinquish fire or give it back. At the same time, I do believe there is a lot of wisdom in those stories. If that perplexes you, it might be because you are approaching religious mythology with the wrong hemisphere of your brain.

Looks to me that on your Wikipedia page, it's usually a divine being who steals fire, not man; the theft of fire is no mortal sin at all. This is true for the Greeks, certainly.

(The Abrahamic version of Prometheus is of course the serpent, and he didn't steal fire but rather talked woman into taking morality, and that WAS original sin. But IMO making the serpent a villain was a bizarre choice)

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