Thursday 26 June 2014

"assessed according to the superficies"

Having recently relegated the online activism work and poetry of Charles Torres Veitch, to the darkened place in my non-awareness it's increasing irrelevance demands, I was surprised and horrified in equal measure to stumble upon a video of his entitled "Privacy is the Fetish of Evil", having been irresistibly compelled to watch such an intriguingly titled video, I have also decided some use value may be derived from a quick review of the ideological propositions on offer within it, the first striking impression received was that I couldn't help notice that Charles' "Freedom Fighting" crusade, has really become a cruel parody of his original apparent intentions, to produce a socially empowering artistic critique of our dehumanizing capitalist society, instead his rebellion has become a commodity, with what little popular appeal he garnered now serving predominantly private interests, as his means of obtaining donations from anyone with money beyond sense, who finds themselves moved by his increasingly elaborate appeals.

 Words from F. Nietzsche's Twighlight of the Idols
image Cornelisz van Haarlem's "Adam and Eve"

The reason Charles makes a good subject for a blog about Truth Fetishism, is simply his susceptibility to it's practice; the way the easy answers he seeks are translated into various sensational slogans like; the frequently deployed "freedom" façade; the ambiguous though apparently still effective 'appeal to pathos': "love"; the numerous false dichotomies littered throughout his performances; or as in this video where he describes his private encounter with a Sgt (Dick?)Tracey; simplified, reduced abstract thinking like "nothing is moving there is no space time", a slogan that nicely encapsulates the disjunction between mind and it's prime mover, the immediate environment, maybe therein is a hint to the naming of the character from the American television show he's been watching.

As with any 'ontological conservative', Charles inevitably comes baring illusory ideal forms with pre-determined moral values of good and evil, his attention, intellect and marginal oratory skills are primarily engaged in the maintenance and substantiation of his particular ideology, or "the truth" from which these ideal symbolic fictions and absolute values are derived, the concepts he intends to conserve through his asserted consciousness of their being.

This fundament of his work is evident in his poetry about quantum mechanics, his opinions on reality and the selection of enhancing facts he can extrapolate from philosophy, psychology, popular culture or behavioural science, -shaping what conforms, or can be made to appear to conform, into his narrative- to convey a façade of credibility, however these insights appear to be developed only so far as is required to assert and support his particular ideological vision, the essential aspect of them, and what the viewer receives from him, is what can be used to advance his agenda, support his sense of order, defend himself against those unpleasant sensations, experiences or situations he encounters in the world, with their material, tangible causes, which he refers to as "evil".

"Truth" at this stage designates all sorts of things that we today call "figments of the imagination", the factitious representations of concepts, people, events and situations, construed as being the embodiment of either a good or evil spirit, to be embraced or rejected, accepted or opposed, loved or hated, are assumed to be universally applicable and then applied to his superficial concepts of; "government", "the State", "taxation", or specific individuals, generally that which is encountered in the world which does not conform to his ideal, or which disagrees with his 'a priori'** moral values, these abstractions; "state" "media" "education" etc,. coming to represent a figurative grinding post for any fetishistic axe, everything is 'assessed according to the superficies', wheat separated from chaff then lumped together in 'bundles', forming the basis of rejection, a negative ideological worldview from which to become.

His interests in the subject are not with the processes at work, the forces at play, the totality of a thing it's inherent contradictions, nor are they with the thing itself, but in how his concept of 'it' serves to substantiate or affirm his adherence to this sense of morality, however this is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena — more precisely, a misinterpretation. Moral judgments, like religious ones, belong to a stage of ignorance in which the very concept of the real, and the distinction between what is real and imaginary, are still lacking.

"If people are good to you, if people are kind, if they treat you with respect, you should at the very least do the same for them"

In this blog I merely seek to question their motives, what lies behind this sycophancy, this desire to misinform and fill the mind with sweet nothings, is it insecurity, to what end is somebody making such a show of benevolence?

More often than not this tendency to appear to do good, to be humble, to flatter with kindness while seducing with factitious platitudes, is an attempt to ingratiate themselves, to weaken one's resistance gradually, to the imperceptibly slow advance of their control over your perception of them, this is how a salesman establishes "rapport" with somebody, by convincing them to perceive them a certain way, by conveying a certain image of approachability, respectability or enlightenment,  an evolutionary adaptation the Lion, Hyena or Crocodile could never accomplish, thanks no doubt to the prevalence and protection of the nursery rhyme every child should know: "Never smile at a crocodile".






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*see his comments about christianity, preteen girls, menstruation and suicide. 
**refers to an earlier entry in which Veitch posits an inherent "sentience" akin to transcendental good and evil.
*ˆsee Stanford Prison experiment, again another useful 'fact' constantly reproduced within this milieu, to support the rejection of psychology or all forms of authority outside the self, an example of how Truth fetishists focus on only what confirms their personal opinion.

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