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Flat-headed leafhopper, Titura sp., Ledrinae, Cicadellidae

Photographed in Malaysia by Nicky Bay // Website // Facebook

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“This idea of an unbroken lineage of enlightened teachers is a well-constructed myth.3 Yet at the same time Zen practice, which can have great benefits, depends on the student’s unquestioning confidence and trust in the teacher. The dark side to imputing attainment to people who do not really have it has resulted in the steady stream of abuse cases in Zen Buddhist communities, sometimes around extravagant garnering of wealth, but almost always involving sexual abuse. ... This paper will look at some of the recent scandals in the Tibetan traditions and examine how they mirror each other through institutional self-definitions, imputed attainments, and institutional guarantees of authority and orthodoxy. Unquestioned authority is at the core of all these scandals. I will discuss five representatives of these sanctified lineages, mentioning also a number of other high lamas as they relate to these teachers. We will see how the authenticating process along with the samaya—in Tibetan damtsik (Wyl., dam tshig)—vows pledged by their disciples empowers these teachers as enlightened beings, who are viewed almost as superhuman by their followers, and how this process prevents virtually any critical thought about the teacher’s actions.11 "

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The interface ... positions you in relation to it, and to the rest of the stack, as a particular kind of subject: you are a user. Let's say you are a user who wants a book ... Once you confirm that this [book] is what you really want, this information will pass as if it were a vector, a particular kind of line, through a whole other series of layers of stack infrastructure, which will return this product to you, either immediately or in a day or two. Each such expressed desire becomes a unique vector through a layered space that can fulfill an almost infinite number of desires, so long as they all take the form of a user asking an interface to satisfy a demand with a commodity. It does not really let you want or be much else.

“Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse?,” Mckenzie Wark

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... Who can doubt but that this decision as to the meaning of the sign was his, and his alone? One could have drawn quite different conclusions from such a series of reverses – as, for example, that he had better become a carpenter or a revolutionary. For the decipherment of the sign, however, he bears the entire responsibility. That is what “abandonment” implies, that we ourselves decide our being. And with this abandonment goes anguish.

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”

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Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”

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“Traditional despotisms could ask of people only that they remain passive and obey the laws," he writes. ''A democracy, ancient or modern, has to ask more. It requires that its members be motivated to make the necessary contributions: of treasure (in taxes), sometimes blood (in war), and always some degree of participation in the process of governance. A free society has to substitute for despotic enforcement a certain degree of self-enforcement. Where this fails, the system is in danger." Is this account persuasive? Some doubts arise at this point. Surely, the payment of taxes and induction into the army depend nor on self-enforcement but on enforcement by the state? "Some degree" of participation in governance (by which Taylor means taking part  in elections once every four or five  years) explicitly refers to a statistical measure of the entire population and not to a measure of how strong individual motivation is. It depends, therefore, on the political skill with which large numbers are managed-including the organization and financing of electoral campaigns-rather than on the ethics of individual self-discipline. The distinctive feature of modern liberal governance, I would submit, is neither compulsion (force) nor negotiation  (consent) but the statecraft that uses "self-discipline" and "participation," "law" and "economy" as elements of political strategy. In spite of the reference to "democracy, ancient or modern,” which suggests a comparability of political predicaments, the problems and resources of modern society are utterly different from those of a Greek polis. Indeed Taylor's statement about participation is not, so one could argue, the way most individuals in modern state-administered populations justify governance. It is the way ideological spokespersons theorize “political legitimacy." If the system is in danger it is not because of an absence of self-enforcement by citizens. Most politicians are aware that "the system is in danger" when the general population ceases to enjoy any sense of prosperity, when the regime is felt to be thoroughly unresponsive to the governed, and when the state security apparatuses are grossly inefficient. Policing techniques and an economy that avoids disappointing too many in the general population too seriously are more important than self-discipline as an autonomous factor.

Talal Asad, “Formations of the Secular”

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John Thomas Baines, The Eastern Cataracts of the Victoria Falls, 1869, Oil on canvas, 19.5 x 25 in.

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Jan Konupek (Czech, 1883-1950)

The soul in space, 1943

Pencils on paper

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(from ch. 2 of “Lunatic Lovers” by Suehiro Maruo)

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