Before & After

René Magritte, The Lovers, 1928

Bonnard, L'homme et la femme, 1900

On Parole

 Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:

parole/pəˈrəʊl/ 

▶noun

• 1 the temporary or permanent release of a prisoner before the expiry of a sentence, on the promise of good behaviour.

• 2 historical a prisoner of war's word of honour to return to custody or act as a non-belligerent if released.

• 3 Linguistics the actual language used by people. Contrasted with langue.

The private and the public spheres intersect all the time, everyday, and often it's a seamless movement; often, nothing much is stirred, uncovered.


The understanding which seems to accompany the system that is language has built into it the clues which signal to all that a statement needs modifying before it can be made public, or that it needs modifying before it can be absorbed in informal exchanges.


But the once fluid division between the public and the private is becoming more rigid, less flexible, clearer even as it confuses (me anyway!).
Because why else would any of us integrate into our daily exchanges disclaimers of all types?


Language is one system.  When it is used by individuals it temporarily becomes a function of that individual's thoughts, opinions and feelings, while at the same time remaining an abstract monster which exists in spite of any one speaker's will or influence.  It is very much like Frankenstein's monster.  Created but, once unleashed, no longer dependent on its creator.


At the same time, individuals modify, add, subtract, mix, superimpose meanings, images, sounds, and paralanguage to improve or impoverish language, every time they use it.


What interests me is the tragic development I see all around, whether in written or spoken language. I see people - individuals and groups - forgetting that when they speak, they have the power to influence listeners AND language; that when they speak, they do not have to integrate any of the vices, habits, clichés, opinions, metaphors and similes already dancing around the collective atmosphere.  Every engagement with language is a chance we all have to express our own thoughts and feelings according to how we see the world, instead of adopting someone else's views wholesale.


Our current obsession with choice is an amusing thing.  While adamant we do not want only one or two possible alternatives when it comes to food, politics, and a number of other things, we seem to be unaware that is exactly what we are getting.  The existence of different brands of the same exact product does not mean we can choose between or among different objects.  
The best example I can think of right now is news channels.  MSNBBCNN.  This Friday I watched the news on TV for a while, after a moratorium I imposed on myself since March 2010.  CNN, BBC News, Sky, Al Jazeera, France 24...  At the same time in the evening, this Friday, ALL these channels were telling me the exact same thing.  All of them.  They all start their "financial news" at the same time.  It is almost as if the directors of each channel phoned one another and said "ok... ready?  NOW!" and had their people press PLAY on the same stories.  And how varied, creative, at least authentic! do you think each channel's report was with regards to the words they used in the story?  They're in more perfect unison than the choir in my local church.


Is this choice?




This happens with language and when it does, it is even worse, because more insidious. The irony is this silent threat is loud.
Speak with 12 people and ask them all the same question. See how many give the same answer.
Speak with 12 people and see how many use the same expressions, turns of phrases, metaphors, similes, etc, to express their opinion.  See how many differ in terms of their opinions on the same issue.
Speak with these 12 people and, at the end, see how many of the expressions they used to convey their wildly differing opinions can be traced to MSNBBCNN.


Recently, talking to someone close to me, I broached this topic, and she said it is because there are a lot of not v bright people in the world.  Maybe.  I'm even willing to agree with that.  But, I asked here, wouldn't that translate into, say, 12 or at least 10 DIFFERENT stupid opinions?  How come the stupidity is so uniform?  Why is the putative stupidity being expressed in the same ways?  Surely there isn't a Stupid Club, like the Trekkies have, whereby ppl get together to exchange views on whatever, and come up with a small collection of things to say?  The "government line" of stupidity?  


But not even governments can keep their cabinet members from stepping into piles of sophistry designed by journalists who work for papers which exist thanks to advertisement from companies whose interests go against the people, sovereignty, and democracy.  


Manufacturing Consent (MC) shows this.  I know I am not discovering anything new.  What I find is that the processes outlined and examined in MC are spreading to private exchanges, to informal conversations.  The property language has of becoming a flexible tool to anyone who uses it is eroding, and no one has to make an effort to make it so.  It is just happening because too many people's mental inertia is allowing it.


The public use of language is invading our private exchanges and not being renewed by individuals' linguistic creativity, or at least not at the same rate.  Like eroded soil, linguistic rain is no longer penetrating the atmosphere, and condensation is more and more a concentrated version of a compact formula of pollutant elements designed to incite apathy and ostensible transparency.  No! Not even. Transparency is NOT a positive thing.  Seeing THROUGH something is not seeing the something itself.  I sit corrected and, after having thought it through, hereby declare those clouds to be of ostensible opacity.


Fratelli, let's think, please.  


Yknow how in churches the pastor, priest, preacher, will say, "brothers and sisters, let us pray" ?


Please, let us think.


You know it is the same thing, but saying THINK instead of PRAY changes something, does it not?


Why does it change something?


According to me, it is because we think for ourselves, but pray outwardly.  Thought is introspection, as good prayer ought to be, and often isn't.


Let us use language to fit our real thoughts.
Like the economy and economic theory, language exists and was created by us, to suit our needs, both to communicate and create.  Like the economy, it needs to fit our lives and benefit us, not the other way around.  We should not modify our thoughts merely to fit around the economy and the language being imposed on us.
Language, like the economy, does not belong to pressure groups, political parties, or academics. Like Castro Alves said "the public square is the people's, as the sky is the condor's". Language is the biggest public square. Let's not let malls own it like they do so much of the literal public square now, too much.


Let us let language fit our need to create.
We do not have to use the expressions ppl on telly use.  NO ONE has the monopoly on language. It belongs to all of us, and we can ALL of us use it how we want to use it.  


I want to put Langue, according to Def #3 at the beginning of this entry, ON PAROLE, and free Parole from the outdoors prison in which it currently floats.  Seriously.  And I'm not talking about JamesJoyce Syndrome.


This is so important because language shapes thought.  Try to think without words. Can you?

I haven't read it but like the cover

My generation is so sad.  My generation has no link, no connection to what went on before it; we're loose bits of rocket released in the vacuum of space, without even knowing we were once part of the rocket.  We've no intellectual home, no emotional link to our predecessors; no idea or ethos binds us together as a group or in opposition to another group.  The generations which come later are even worse.  No will to LIVE, no incentive; no goal has been identified, no philosophy has come out of it, and these are the yrs when vigorous rebellion is easiest, when hormones and unapologetic arrogance not yet earned are at its peak.

Technology has never been more advanced -- (btw, what kind of stupid phrase is this anyway? Of COURSE technology can only become more and more advanced as a linear conception of time follows its course! but I digress) -- and ppl have seldom been this illiterate.  

Not even in a traditional way. 

Ppl know other forms of knowledge and literacy to the ones I knew at, say, age 20. But the problem is the lack of connection with everything else.

How is one to measure progress if the body of work produced by Man so far is no longer acknowledged -- not even known!

Are we about to witness 3, 4 generations studying like mad only to reinvent the wheel? Out of sheer ignorance?

What ARE they studying?  Theyre not reading the classics, theyre not studying political or economic theory; theyre not studying philosophy or fine arts.  They've no clue how language and History connect, no idea about the extent to which language itself influences ALL disciplines and how theyre formulated, posited, and directed.  And if *I* am saying this the problem is grave, friends, because I'm hardly a polymath.

Were I Dictator of the Polyverse, my first decree would be that an introduction to metalinguistics be made compulsory in formal education at age FIFTEEN.  "These are the tools used in order to steer ppl's thoughts THAT way instead of any other way it could have gone."  In all disciplines!  From scientific discourse all the way down to softer disciplines which teach ppl v little (i.e. pedagogy).

Reductionist views of the human person and what s/he can accomplish, why, and how, effectively removes the infinite potential we all have in us to create or rearrange what already exists.  This does come from a sloppy and misguided conception of language and how it shapes thought.  

The idea that something is only real and true once it has been proven by science, using the scientific method as it is today, is so destructive even of science that I am perplexed flabbergasted incandescent, plus which baffled as well as fascinated by the fact ppl don't see it, don't discuss it, and scientists themselves do not address it.

Because if the v nature and foundation of the scientific method is by definition an endless process whereby epistemology is a work in eternal progress (with perhaps the exception of some elements of biology and physics), then why should A Scientific Discovery be considered as a more final, solid, reliable truth than any other got via another epistemological field?  

If science is never done, if the scientific inquiry itself is always being perfected and its accepted truths challenged (necessarily), then surely it is AS reliable as any other type of knowledge.

But everything is not about science and how some of its tenets have been misapplied and misinterpreted.

The problem is a lot more serious.  I see these 20somethings walking around as if they've already died, not unlike the zombies they spend so much time attempting to kill in videogames.  There is no joy on their faces, no understanding of the beauty lying there, created by countless generations before them.  They know technology intimately, and think that because their grandparents couldn't operate a computer or a videogame, they were less intelligent, less capable, more naive.  In reality it is the v opposite.  

When one opens a BOOK, a dictionary, one doesn't only learn what one was looking for. When one looks for one word in the dictionary, one ends up seeing many others, and learning what those other words mean, too.  

Analog absorption of knowledge is more complete, more thorough, more vast, if yes slower.

But learning by analogy, identifying analogous elements in the world is far more important than knowing WHERE to click on a computer screen.

In my own circle, I have noticed how more and more ppl have difficulty identifying rather unimpressive, common, symbols, which anyone who grew up in a certain culture ought to be able to discern; ppl can't speak metaphorically anymore.  

The paradoxical element of metaphorical language is that because of its seeming vagueness and potential for misunderstanding, ppl apply their intellectual ability a lot more!  When an idea is conveyed in non-metaphorical language, the words used to convey it had better be pretty well-chosen, pretty accurate, for the interlocutor will not think twice. And this is tragic when linguistic knowledge has either not been ingested or has been poorly digested.

Metaphors HELP us think.  They help us think more, and better, and in different ways.

Symbols do, too.

But these elements are scarcer & scarcer in daily speech and, worse, in literature & in art!! The v womb of metaphors&symbols. This womb is now an inhospitable one, to match the general sterility of the average 20-something, plucked and clean, straight and falsely serious.  No! They're not even serious! I'm wrong!  They're DULL.

Instead of metaphors and symbols we get avatars and txt msg lingo.  At the HEIGHT of freedom, we choose to put ourselves in a prison of ignorance.  At a time when we could have the most knowledge about any and everything that's already been created, we choose instead to make our "knowledge" narrower and narrower, about things which are finite, and whose application is limited, and in the service and for the benefit of those whose interest is to keep us ignorant and disconnected, atomized, lost, depressed, drugged, surrounded by machines and meaningless objects, buying, buying, more&more, to dull the senses, distract the mind, lose focus; anything but see that we're running around in squares.  Yes squares!  My God 20somethings these days are square in the worst possible way!  Get married quickquick, have kids, get mortgage oweowe bucketsful of money to banks, to schools, quickquick, indebted youth has no time to think, they have to workwork get job makepayment every month!

This entry's organization is a reflection of the topic treated here.

I trust Mankind's potential.  I believe curiosity will prevail, even if at times it looks unlikely.

Today's young... the younger they look the older and more hopeless they are inside.  I wish that they,  like me, may become younger, the older they look.

Humannoyeds

The apparent clear line which separates the objective, scientific form of thought from subjective or "artistic" approach is becoming blurred.  It is both fascinating and confusing.  It stretches logic and, if one observes what is said and goes on around one, it is hard to escape the conclusion that these two modes of thought have been exchanged between these seemingly mutually exclusive fields and the ppl who operate within them.

More clearly, it seems scientists, who traditionally concern themselves with discovering a truth about the physical world, are increasingly adopting the concept of beauty in representation of said truths-- heretofore the domain of the arts-- in not only their conclusions (insofar as that is possible in any "absolute form" in scientific discourse) but also in their pursuit, their research; while contemporary artists, on the contrary, have become more preoccupied with how accurately their work depicts reality  and "authentic experience" more than ideals-- of beauty, of representation, or of the imagination.

The root(s) of this curious development, to me, can be found in scientific development and linguistic shifts, but also, and perhaps mainly, in the way in which society has integrated political frameworks and goals.  It is not controversial to say humanity as a whole has made considerable progress when it comes to improving ppl's daily life.  Basic needs have largely been met in rich countries (of course with pockets of poverty), and countries in development have made considerable progress in that regard.  This has not been achieved without pragmatic measures; priority has been given to utilitarian concerns (physical well-being comes first, everything else is secondary).  While this may be an acceptable way to get ppl out of poverty, it does not come without some consequences.

Here, then, I'm interested in the outcomes this has had for thought, and how scientists and artists engaged in this curious free trade.

Roughly speaking, the line which traditionally separated scientific thought from the arts and religion was (and is) the idea that the former starts from a question about a given phenomenon and the latter presents a vision, an interpretation, of something.  The former focuses on the meticulous steps involved in getting an answer--whatever that might turn out to be-- and the latter is an interpretation and a representation of a person's subjective sensations, out of the imagination.

Scientists ask how something works and set out to find out; artists tell us what they sense.  Human sciences attempt to explain how these non-scientific mechanisms work.

But I see the shift.  This is no longer the case most of the time.

What I see now is how thought has developed since the Enlightenment, when early scientists really did ask totally open-ended questions and presented the research and conclusions regardless of what the outcome might be, largely because they were not funded by any corporation or government; there was no line to tow, no section of the population to appease, no political concerns to take into account; curiosity reigned.  

Man's Reason took the place of "revealed truth", discovery replaced description. 

In the arts, Romanticism emerged from this rigid mode of thought that is the Enlightenment; but there was also a number of artists who adopted this framework in their representations of the world and how they think about art.

Suddenly, ideas became more important than ideals in art.  No longer were we facing a picture of Man or the world which presented to us what could be, but only what is.  From interpretation and subjectivity to faithful description and a kind of decontextualized objectivity.

Previously, even in the arts, when the main mode of thought had been mimetic (largely vis-à-vis Ancient Greco-Roman art), artists kept the "ideal" in their work, whose main purpose is to elevate what  is, transforming reality and highlighting perception, the imagination.  After Romanticism, this disappeared.  

Thought, not feeling, has come to dominate the arts.

Going to any museum today will give anyone evidence of this. If one looks at works made in the early XXth century and before, there is no brochure, no "statement" from the artist apart from the art itself; in music, there is no obvious political (or otherwise) message outside of the lyrics, or somehow "embedded" in the work via a lengthy text or PR statement telling us how a sequence of notes is representative of concerns with global warming.

Conversely, in scientific discourse, we no longer get the straight-fwd, open-ended possibilities we have come to expect from the scientific method; after all, the main role or purpose of science is to tell us what we do not know, it is to challenge common sense and to discover how something we do not understand works.  What is curious about science today is that it seems to "discover" exactly what the political consensus says.  It is true that some political changes occurred after important scientific discoveries, but today, science seems to be directed by politics, with a dose of corporate money thrown into the mix.

And art is directed by a strange type of scientific realism, politics, and the application of a distorted version of democracy.  

It is as if we have become so disenchanted with the way political and scientific discourse have evolved that we simply displace the modes of thought inherent to these systems to art and artistic endeavour.

The misapplication and misconception of the idea of subjectivity is largely to blame in how ppl have come to think about art.

Thinking everyone is an artist and that everything is art means that no-one and nothing is.  To declare something Art does not make it so. To have two million people say it is art, good, bad, or mediocre, does not make it so either. To have two million people say it isn't art also does not make it true!

But, important though these points might be, what really confuses me is this:

Humanism, the main philosophical foundation of the Enlightenment, the spring of science, is being denied, disavowed, diminished, by many many ppl, scientists, politicians (through their misuse of the word), as well as some non-religious secularists!

If the core of a philosophy is that there is no revelation, only discovery, then it follows this can only be accomplished by Man -- with his Reason, as posited by Kant -- and that all other kinds of knowledge are not acceptable because not scientifically sound, i.e. cannot be verified by anyone, given the nature of subjectivity.

So... it follows, too, that if Man's Reason is no longer trusted to be able to do the job (="ppl are stupid" a phrase we hear often, and maddeningly, to me, it comes with either a pro or an epilogue: Einstein said that, yknow!  And he did, too! "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.")

Goya, los caprichos, #39 Hasta su abuelo

If scientists themselves think Man so low, what is the basis for their opinion that the truth can be got at via Man's Reason?  If the basket of Reason has a hole in it, why should anyone put all his eggs in it?  If we aren't to trust our Reason, if we are in fact no better than an ape or an ant or a dolphin (and some even say these other species are better than Homo sapiens because they have some kinesthetic abilities we lack), why should one fund ANY scientific exploit anymore, what is the motivation in asking questions if the answers-- and the questions themselves-- will be regarded as anthropocentric illusions? Delusions of anthropological superiority?

Bizarrely, the three monotheistic religions have Homo sapiens as the center of the Universe, as the most important creation.  An utterly Humanistic position!  And one non-religious secularists dislike!  

It is very confusing to me.  How can I, at the same time, hold that...:

1- Knowledge has to be got through the use of Reason;

2- The scientific method uses Reason as the foundation of all inquiry;

3- Any knowledge not got at through science cannot be trusted to be the truth about the Universe;

4- Dolphins are not scientists;

5- Man is stupid

Goya, los caprichos, #42 Tù que no puedes

...and say I am a humanist?  

And with all that, mathematicians and physicists see beauty in mathematics and physics.  This is more than I can say for most artists these days, who not only do not see beauty in art anymore, but aren't even attempting to create anything beautiful.  When it comes to truth, artists have been presenting truths which are so realistic they become contrived, and thus, paradoxically, are transformed into lies, since art is not produced like a chemical compound.

Recently, I have been interested in Hegel. Hegel's dialectics is a v useful tool when thinking about anything.  Comparing things, having a dialogue in the mind helps one arrive at a conclusion which takes into account more elements from the things one is analyzing than mere observation of a solitary object.  So applying this idea, I look at science, and at art.  What I see is that scientists who used to start their inquiry from an open question, now start from the conclusion and attempt to find experiments which will demonstrate this conclusion is correct; artists, who used to start from the end, from a vision akin to a revealed truth, now start from concepts, ideas, open-ended questions about society and all the rest of it, and produce things which depend on 30 pages of explanatory text in order to put their "points" and "messages" across.  

Even as "opinion polls" and "public opinion" are most venerated, opinion, as such, which one may encounter in a conversation, is dismissed.  Tell someone what you think about something and, if it does not come with the scientific stamp, it is more likely to be dismissed; if it does not come with 13 pages of Google results which can back it up, it is not going to be taken v seriously. But ppl claim to want novelty, originality.

One of the most beautiful, thoughtful, meaningful, true segments I've ever watched.  And eloquent.

Oscar Wilde
The soul of man under Socialism

(...)


And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form of individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public have always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference. If a man of science were told that the results of his experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought, provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those who had never thought in any sphere at all - well, nowadays the man of science and the philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected to brutal popular control, to authority in fact - the authority of either the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the community or the Church, or the Government, to interfere with the individualism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with the individualism of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does more than linger: it is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.

In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such badly written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style, psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned, are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament, would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender everything that is valuable in him. In the case of the drama, things are a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true, but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art. Delightful work may be produced under burlesque and farcical conditions, and in work of this kind the artist in England is allowed very great freedom. It is when one comes to the higher forms of the drama that the result of popular control is seen. The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. Any attempt to extend the subject matter of art is extremely distasteful to the public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large measure on the continual extension of subject-matter. The public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses. The public are quite right in their attitude. Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. They endure them as the inevitable, and, as they cannot mar them, they mouth about them. Strangely enough, or not strangely, according to one's own views, this acceptance of the classics does a great deal of harm. The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in England is an instance of what I mean. With regard to the Bible, considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter, so that I need not dwell upon the point.

But in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays. If they saw the beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama; and if they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of the drama either.The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions - one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter. But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones. There is not a single real poet or prose writer of this century, for instance, on whom the British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France is the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make the establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England. Of course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word. That they should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet was only to be expected. Wordsworth was a poet. But that they should have called Charles Kingsley an immoral novelist is extraordinary. Kingsley's prose was not of a very fine quality. Still, there is the word, and they use it as best they can. An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it. The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value what so ever.


(...)

Discourse & Truth

Michel Foucault

"Parrhesia" is ordinarily translated into English by "free speech" (in French by "franc-parler", and in German by "Freimüthigkeit"). "Parrhesiazomai" is to use parrhesia, and the parrhesiastes is the one who uses parrhesia, i.e., is the one who speaks the truth.

(...)

Parrhesia and Frankness

To begin with, what is the general meaning of the word "parrhesia"? 

Etymologically, "parrhesiazesthai" means "to say everything – from "pan" (everything) and "rhema" (that which is said). The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks. The word "parrhesia" then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician's own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people's mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes.

(...)

Parrhesia and Truth

(...)

It would be interesting to compare Greek parrhesia with the modern (Cartesian) conception of evidence. For since Descartes, the coincidence between belief and truth is obtained in a certain (mental) evidential experience. For the Greeks, however, the coincidence between belief and truth does not take place in a (mental) experience, but in a verbal activity, namely, parrhesia. It appears that parrhesia, in his Greek sense, can no longer occur in our modern epistemological framework.

(...)

If there is a kind of "proof" of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous – different from what the majority believes– is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes. If we raise the question of how we can know whether someone is a truth-teller, we raise two questions. First, how is it that we can know whether some particular individual is a truth-teller; and secondly, how is it that the alleged parrhesiastes can be certain that what he believes is, in fact, truth. The first question – recognizing someone as a parrhesiastes – was a very important one in Greco-Roman society, and, as we shall see, was explicitly raised and discussed by Plutarch, Galen, and others. The second skeptical question, however, is a particularly modern one which, I believe, is foreign to the Greeks. (...)

Lectures, 1983, Berkeley Uni

Magna est Veritas

Here, in this little Bay,

Full of tumultuous life and great repose,

Where, twice a day,

The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,

Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,

I sit me down.

For want of me the world's course will not fail;

When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;

The truth is great, and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail or not.

Coventry Patmore

Une Odalisque, Delacroix, 1847

Invidia

Gericault, Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy c. 1822

"What Nietzsche and Freud share is the idea that justice as equality is founded on envy--on the envy of the Other who has what we do not have, and who enjoys it. The demand for justice is thus ultimately the demand that the excessive enjoyment of the Other should be curtailed so that everyone's access to enjoyment is equal." 

Žižek, Violence (Picador, 2008), p. 89


Yes I'm happy with this definition of envy, and think it isn't talked about enough. However, it needs to be contrasted with jealousy, so all the by-products of one and of the other can be exposed. Invidia bifurcates.  We look at the root of the word in Latin and it quickly becomes apparent that it stems from another word.  Going backwards:  invidia from invedere (regard maliciously), from in- (=into) + videre (= to see).  


I read further.

"An evil person is thus not an egotist, 'thinking only about his own interests.' A true egotist is too busy taking care of his own good to have time to cause misfortune to others. The primary vice of a bad person is precisely that he is more preoccupied with others than with himself."

Žižek, Violence (Picador, 2008), p. 92


True.  This point is v important and ppl often neglect the implications of true egotism, or selfishness. Then:

"Here is why egalitarianism itself should never be accepted at its face value: the notion (and practice) of egalitarian justice, insofar as it is sustained by envy, relies on the inversion of the standard renunciation accomplished to benefit others: 'I am ready to renounce it, so that others will (also) NOT be able to have it!' Far from being opposed to the spirit of sacrifice, evil here emerges as the very spirit of sacrifice, ready to ignore one's own well being--if, through my sacrifice, I can deprive the Other of his enjoyment..."

Žižek, Violence (Picador, 2008), p. 92


But Slavoj, aren't you dodging v important factors?  Two, off the top of my head.  Namely:


1) The possibility egalitarianism and enjoyment can be levelled up. I don't deny the very real fact that if there are two ppl and one of them is cheerful and the other isn't, it gets complicated to see how both can be equally joyful, given the positive energy will come from one individual and the other will absorb it, therefore each person ends up with less energy than existed before it was divided in two; however, it is also possible that multiplication will arise from the division.  Now, with more positive energy than he had at the beginning of the equation, SadIndividual may turn into CheerfulIndividual and start to produce his own positive energy, enough to give some back to the person who was already joyful, increasing the product.  It's a possible interpretation of the Parable of the Talents, no?  Multiply the initial natural resource, and;


2) It is problematic to isolate envy without contrasting it to jealousy, because one crucial element gets lost in the analysis of only one concept.
I agree envy is characterized primarily by not only the desire to have a quality or a thing the Other possesses but also, and, more importantly, by wanting to take it away from the Other so that no one has it in the end.  "If I can't have it, I don't want you to have it either."  It's a framework where everyone loses.
However, the missing element must be inserted into the equation precisely because I believe that once it is brought to light, the likelihood envy will turn into jealousy is encouraging.


If one starts from the premise that jealousy is characterized by the desire to possess something one doesn't yet have, without the added factor of wanting the Other to lose it, one reaches the conclusion that the dispossessed may end up achieving the object of his covetous thoughts.  Coveting isn't necessarily bad-- it may become negative if one crosses the line into envy.


Envious ppl could experience a positive transition into jealousy if they considered the following:


a) If the object of my envy loses what it possesses, the world becomes poorer and poorer, until, in the end, if my wishes are granted, I won't even have anything to be envious of, since no one will have anything worthy of my envy;


b) I, too, can have what I envy, within reason, if I apply myself and take the paths which lead to it;


c) Envy is stupid: what the envious person fails to perceive is that he who observes a quality has the perspicacity, the sensibility, the intelligence, the emotional resources to look at it and make an assessment of it, to see it, to value it for what it is.  The reader, the spectator, the listener is as responsible for the elevation or recognition of something as the person who created it or has it.  If I look at Magritte and see nothing, I have no reason at all to be jealous/envious.  If I see how stupendous it is, some of the credit goes to me, too!  Magritte wouldn't exist if no one could see his talent, and appreciate his art.  So envious ppl only need think this through.  They're underestimating their own capacity to identify quality, beauty, value.


Slavoj, I'd like to know what you'd say to this, but I don't think you read my blog.  I know you wouldn't be envious, though.