 
To: BLUECANARYINNAOUTLET 
Cc: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@ANDREW.CMU.EDU,
        Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: Muses of the Apocalypse? Hmm... 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "20 Nov 92 19:35:00 EST."
             <01GRDWU1AD8G000YXI@YANG.EARLHAM.EDU> 
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 14:48:53 EST
Message-Id: <4691.722548133@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU


>>(Actually, there's more detail available than that -- we need a new
>>spatial experience (which we have -- telemedia) out of which come the
>>related developments of a new mathematical consciousness, a new monumental
>>architecture, and new myths ... Oswald Spengler's _Decline of the West_
>>is the relevant reference book here)

>   Interesting.  Why "new monumental architecture", particularly? (And why
>is Spengler so applicable?)

Spengler has provided the only philosophy of history (as he called) it
or theory of the life, growth, decay and death of cultures, that I know 
about. He examined the Greeks, Egyptians, Western Europeans, Near Easterners,
Babylonians, Chinese, Indians, and two more that I forget, and concluded
that all of them rose and fell according to a similar pattern.

As for new monumental architecture -- I don't know "why", particularly,
from my reading -- don't think it was addressed. I suspect that it has
to do with public space and that building techniques have become so
hyperdeveloped that we should look for parallels in our city planning (or
unplanned development); if monumental architecture just isn't made any
more, then we should use the more general term "public space" for "monumental
architecture."


>>So we need people able to hack around with them. The problem that I see
>>so far is that most people working with myths are fruitcakes.

>   Awfully pointed terminology there-- but I know what you mean.  I think
>the thing is to understand how both myths and more objectively grounded
>accounts of the world function in a society as *narratives*-- but at the
>same time, not to put them all on a level.  Postmodernism, maybe, without
>the absolute relativism.

Are you familiar with the philosophy of F.H. Bradley (on whom T.S. Eliot
did his dissertation) which posits three possible stages of growth in 
cultures and people: the first stage, the simple unreflectiveness of children 
and savages; the second stage, "Relational Consciousness" in which words and 
categories are the whole realm of meaning (and take on their meaning via
their relationships with the other words and their usages); and the final 
stage of Transcendence, which is beyond words and in which words are seen
as tools, and, consequently, meaning is seen as a tool?

(I have not read Bradley in any kind of depth and am here giving a 
simplification of his thesis, of course.)

(One problem that arises if you bring Bradley and Spengler together is that
by the time a culture has reached the syncretic stage when it sees the
arbitrariness of its various "discourses" and should be ready to make the
leap into transcendent values, instead it goes all decadent and eats itself.
Damn!)

Again I refer to Aldous Huxley's notions of mysticism as presented in
_The Perennial Philosophy_ -- I think that they satisfy the requirements
of an understanding of Transcendence that will fit into the Bradleyan 
philosophy, and provide the perspective from which Postmodernism can be
used as a value-free tool and not a creator of values. If Postmodernism's
doctrines of the arbitrariness of all discourses are apprehended from within
a consciousness that is still operating in terms of Relational Consciousness,
well, they don't really lead anywhere but into angst.

>   Hmm.  Have you by any chance read McLuhan?? (I've read a lot of his
>stuff; also the work of his old comrade, Walter J. Ong.) My own

Not McLuhan but Cage & a little Fuller; some Ong, more Eric Havelock.

>  Whoa.  I don't know about this corporate stuff.  This is one of my major
>hedges about Bill's ideas.  I think that the means shape the ends, and
>that they have the capacity to become ends in themselves.  I think
>capitalist/corporate culture is part of what's wrong with this world, not
>part of a solution...

So what do you propose? I'm all ears.

>   The responder's suggestion "that the easiest and most secure
>self-defense will be poverty and mobility" seems ethically sound, but is
>it necessary or practicible? How do you plan to be mobile and poor at the
>same time? Surely not through animal herding, but that's the only way I
>can remember such nomadism working.  If you've already explained your
>ideas to the group, could someone e-mail me and fill me in? 

Mendicancy is an extreme, and can work in all developed areas with a
culture level higher than that of the Middle Ages. Networks of mendicants
built communal agriculture / schooling stations which, even if they didn't
refuel all individuals, fueled the community.

But what I'm talking about is doing a more modern thoreauvian thing and working
part-time jobs and not putting down material roots in any partucular place,
so as to make it easier on yourself to live a life of mind and spirit.
Working in bookstores will satisfy these requirements, as an example.

>Thoreau tried
>to get away from material constraints through simple living, but if I
>remember right he went home every day to eat with his mother, didn't he?

Aaaack! No! Wrong! His experiment was a success. 

>   Depends to what degree you mean to imitate the monastic structure, but
>I think that's a good idea.  In my art history reading, I saw a plate from
> ...
>building a monastery, complete with gardens and cottage industries.  Maybe
>we should try hunting up stuff like that, see what worked...

I've got a reading list prepared and hope to begin study in late Winter ...


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