God said:
I have a metaphor for love or attachment.
It is called Truth.
He said:
I have a metaphor for Truth.
It is called ethics.
He said:
I have a metaphor for ethics.
It is called social life.
He said:
I have a metaphor for social life.
It is called the individual.
He said:
I have a metaphor for the individual.
It is, of course, myself.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
?
Eureka Moments
Gloves affixed to hands that once
trembled as it approached the breast of life.
Colours on mirrors until they reflect
the view of high windows
peering down with Merlin eyes
at disembodied puppets
that flay with happy barking dogs
affirming kinship and the soul of real life.
What is that leap upwards into the dull stoned tower or the bungeeless jump to meet the odour of the ground and to be a witness to one's own martyrdom?
Why, it is the trick of an unconscious ingenuity,
a harmonization of truths,
but not all truths,
that are heard by rhythms:
a realigning of the psychic cosmos
when two forces play together
to the tune of an idea.
One needs stupidity or lies: either will do.
Gloves affixed to hands that once
trembled as it approached the breast of life.
Colours on mirrors until they reflect
the view of high windows
peering down with Merlin eyes
at disembodied puppets
that flay with happy barking dogs
affirming kinship and the soul of real life.
What is that leap upwards into the dull stoned tower or the bungeeless jump to meet the odour of the ground and to be a witness to one's own martyrdom?
Why, it is the trick of an unconscious ingenuity,
a harmonization of truths,
but not all truths,
that are heard by rhythms:
a realigning of the psychic cosmos
when two forces play together
to the tune of an idea.
One needs stupidity or lies: either will do.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
London
Were you waiting,
You cross-legged creature
in the post-mortem hall
after the image of embarrassment
crowding the roaring currents
of the sickness of vodka,
art in hand?
You see,
in London,
in a dead-cushioned couch.
Geekly staring forth,
into a bottomless screen.
Expressionless but happily flushed.
The lighted hallways resound as
the bottle scrapes the floor.
The party is over, but the crowd lingers,
like the Turners on the wall.
The vast silence grows louder,
as the bottle breathes its last alcohol breath
and the spotlights darken
against the darkening sky.
You cross-legged creature
in the post-mortem hall
after the image of embarrassment
crowding the roaring currents
of the sickness of vodka,
art in hand?
You see,
in London,
in a dead-cushioned couch.
Geekly staring forth,
into a bottomless screen.
Expressionless but happily flushed.
The lighted hallways resound as
the bottle scrapes the floor.
The party is over, but the crowd lingers,
like the Turners on the wall.
The vast silence grows louder,
as the bottle breathes its last alcohol breath
and the spotlights darken
against the darkening sky.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Poorly formed confessions part 4
I
I miss you terribly.
I miss the excitement you bring as you enter into
the alleyways of dimmed lights.
I love the uncertain footsteps,
tinged with the pace of slight
anticipation, slight, but appealing.
Ungrounded in peaceless bridging,
like tense thread strung over Fates.
I love the spark of unclaimed, unspoken feeling,
your pauses , your silences,
enriching like dew-drenched hay, to stay the rotten beetle
of slant-eyed seeming.
Memories as dried fruits.
Life as syrups that cling to hoarse lips.
Groans stifled as ulcers are cut.
By steel of deathless truth.
II
The stars have bled
like prune eyed souls that with poor hands grasping
Strayed into narrow boroughs.
Splayed with the stench of truths
like overripe fruit that clung to trees like disease.
Dripping twisted grins like pressured slime
tracing the rivulets of sceptered cracks
in the streams of conscious cries.
The cheeks, the lips, the collapsing bones,
that weathered and hardened and reveried no more.
If peace could dream up paintbrushes,
and with a heavy heart, stake a claim and draw,
turn the cross beams of the heavens
into unspoken Jesuses and jigsaws
so would the nut and bolts of truth
collapse into music, like a crown.
III
Remember? I was standing on the
skeletal porch of the millennial church.
It was morning, and the potted plants
spoke with the conviction of absolute truth.
The busload of sinful souls rumbled past,
on a pedestal of frustrations and proofs.
It turned back,
like a coastal tide.
And swearing, good-naturedly, I mounted that stairway.
I loved the chill,
the life-sown cold that traveled as we stumbled
over dead sea-shells, amid a cold drizzle.
Finally, anticipation,
the false glance of salvation:
that would guide me, and all men,
to love, joy, hope, happiness,
and divine truth.
I miss you terribly.
I miss the excitement you bring as you enter into
the alleyways of dimmed lights.
I love the uncertain footsteps,
tinged with the pace of slight
anticipation, slight, but appealing.
Ungrounded in peaceless bridging,
like tense thread strung over Fates.
I love the spark of unclaimed, unspoken feeling,
your pauses , your silences,
enriching like dew-drenched hay, to stay the rotten beetle
of slant-eyed seeming.
Memories as dried fruits.
Life as syrups that cling to hoarse lips.
Groans stifled as ulcers are cut.
By steel of deathless truth.
II
The stars have bled
like prune eyed souls that with poor hands grasping
Strayed into narrow boroughs.
Splayed with the stench of truths
like overripe fruit that clung to trees like disease.
Dripping twisted grins like pressured slime
tracing the rivulets of sceptered cracks
in the streams of conscious cries.
The cheeks, the lips, the collapsing bones,
that weathered and hardened and reveried no more.
If peace could dream up paintbrushes,
and with a heavy heart, stake a claim and draw,
turn the cross beams of the heavens
into unspoken Jesuses and jigsaws
so would the nut and bolts of truth
collapse into music, like a crown.
III
Remember? I was standing on the
skeletal porch of the millennial church.
It was morning, and the potted plants
spoke with the conviction of absolute truth.
The busload of sinful souls rumbled past,
on a pedestal of frustrations and proofs.
It turned back,
like a coastal tide.
And swearing, good-naturedly, I mounted that stairway.
I loved the chill,
the life-sown cold that traveled as we stumbled
over dead sea-shells, amid a cold drizzle.
Finally, anticipation,
the false glance of salvation:
that would guide me, and all men,
to love, joy, hope, happiness,
and divine truth.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Philosophic Musing in the Continental Style
How to extend the rhythmic immediacy of emotion.
To transcend an academic style that is wedded to one's throat like a swelling tonsil that sings stable sounds, deceptively true, confident, as if it could stretch out pure like life in mornings of sunshine.
Of course, the pillaging of one's need for nature is the easiest and earliest undistilled mode of extension - the arrow that slices through air. But how single-minded, how Singaporean, an arrow is! It merely becomes its owner, and its truth is but its target, sole and lonely, and as bound to accusations as it surely deserves it.
So, what is therefore the prognosis of this disease - the Tantalus-yearning-melancholy for the content of unity? The representable, and therefore, far off unity? A separation wrought by the hidden hand of disintegrating conditions?
To speak in uneven tones, to collapse and to be reborn in another form with another step, to sense all and to yield nothing, without the love of suffering self-disgust: that is the given, the economic tradeoff of the untold life, and its mere statement the siren of sadness that is morally wrong, that should never be heard.
To transcend an academic style that is wedded to one's throat like a swelling tonsil that sings stable sounds, deceptively true, confident, as if it could stretch out pure like life in mornings of sunshine.
Of course, the pillaging of one's need for nature is the easiest and earliest undistilled mode of extension - the arrow that slices through air. But how single-minded, how Singaporean, an arrow is! It merely becomes its owner, and its truth is but its target, sole and lonely, and as bound to accusations as it surely deserves it.
So, what is therefore the prognosis of this disease - the Tantalus-yearning-melancholy for the content of unity? The representable, and therefore, far off unity? A separation wrought by the hidden hand of disintegrating conditions?
To speak in uneven tones, to collapse and to be reborn in another form with another step, to sense all and to yield nothing, without the love of suffering self-disgust: that is the given, the economic tradeoff of the untold life, and its mere statement the siren of sadness that is morally wrong, that should never be heard.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Not Well Read
At times, deprivation is the best form of nourishment.
I don't even want redemption.
I think its better to suffer the pain of guilt and exult
in the self-reverence
of one's emotions.
I think I'll have a plate of choicelessness, please.
From a menu of illusions, of course.
Noise. Noise. Noise. Will the world just shut the fuck up.
I don't even want redemption.
I think its better to suffer the pain of guilt and exult
in the self-reverence
of one's emotions.
I think I'll have a plate of choicelessness, please.
From a menu of illusions, of course.
Noise. Noise. Noise. Will the world just shut the fuck up.
Monday, March 07, 2011
2 General Features of the Singaporean
More will be added later:
1) He does not trust his own intuitions or feelings. Eg. Defensive spontaneity of the coffeeshop uncle.
2) Success is the essence of all ethics. Eg. Failure is ethically wrong.
These 2 features have contributed greatly to Singapore's economic success.
1) He does not trust his own intuitions or feelings. Eg. Defensive spontaneity of the coffeeshop uncle.
2) Success is the essence of all ethics. Eg. Failure is ethically wrong.
These 2 features have contributed greatly to Singapore's economic success.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Interesting Q&A
Here is a list of 20 questions to ask someone to get to know them.
* What is the one thing that you love the most about yourself?
* If you were to change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
* What's the first thing you notice in a person of the opposite sex?
* Any specific personality traits you would like to see in your life partner?
* What do you appreciate most about your life?
* What are the 5 important things you would include in your things-to-do list?
* Any regrets from life or past relationships?
* What do you like to do in your spare time/on weekends?
* Do you miss your childhood?
* Are you still in contact with any of your childhood friends?
* What's the worst relationship you have ever been in?
* Do you get along well with your family members and relatives?
* What's your opinion about your parents' relationship?
* Whom are you more closer to, your mom or your dad?
* Why do you think would anybody wish to get into a relationship with you?
* Do you like having children around you?
* Do you see yourself getting married in the next few years?
* When it comes to career, what do you think would be an ideal job for you?
* If you were to win $10 million, what would you do with all that money?
* If your were to get an opportunity to live anywhere in the world, which part of the world would you choose?
Interesting questions; and quite fun to answer.
1. What is the one thing that you love the most about yourself?
I like my ability to roast a philosophical problem in my mind like turkey over a slow fire. I mean my focus levels under favorable conditions.
2. If you were to change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Its hard to decide between two demands. One is the capacity to be more socially successful, two is the ability to grasp the mathematical-logical mode of thought in a more intuitive manner. I'll choose the first one, narrowly.
3. What's the first thing you notice in a person of the opposite sex?
The face, the figure, and the ability to carry off femininity in movement and poise. All three are very closely related, so it is a single effect, a single thing.
4. Any specific personality traits you would like to see in your life partner?
Gentleness, unlimited patience, kindness to perform the role of emotional crutch.
5. What do you appreciate most about your life?
That I have the privilege of an upper-middle class background in a historical moment where opportunities for individual development are at unprecedented levels. And a loving childhood.
6. What are the 5 important things you would include in your things-to-do list?
1. Get a first-class honors.
2. Get a decent job for money.
3. Quit the decent job and enter further studies.
4. Attain a sustainable position within the research industry.
5. Write a seminal philosophical text.
7. Any regrets from life or past relationships?
To have insisted on quitting the piano at an early age.
8. What do you like to do in your spare time/on weekends?
Surf the net. Listen to music.
9. Do you miss your childhood?
Yes. The primary reason is that I am not experiencing it now; the secondary reason is that one knows it is over.
10. Are you still in contact with any of your childhood friends?
Didn't have any. Oh wait i did have a few.
11. What's the worst relationship you have ever been in?
Not nice to talk about.
12. Do you get along well with your family members and relatives?
Family yes, but i do not take the initiative to talk to them when I'm busy. Relatives are like strangers, with the additional encumbrance of obligation.
13. What's your opinion about your parents' relationship?
My God, don't get me started.
14. Whom are you more closer to, your mom or your dad?
My mom.
15. Why do you think would anybody wish to get into a relationship with you?
There are masochistic people around.
16. Do you like having children around you?
No.
17. Do you see yourself getting married in the next few years?
No.
18. When it comes to career, what do you think would be an ideal job for you?
Ideal job is an oxymoron. Refer to above.
19. If you were to win $10 million, what would you do with all that money?
800 quid on audio equipment, 1000-15000 quid on musical instruments (depending on whether I really want a harpsichord), invest the rest for sustainable income without working.
20. If your were to get an opportunity to live anywhere in the world, which part of the world would you choose?
Somewhere in Northeastern US.
* What is the one thing that you love the most about yourself?
* If you were to change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
* What's the first thing you notice in a person of the opposite sex?
* Any specific personality traits you would like to see in your life partner?
* What do you appreciate most about your life?
* What are the 5 important things you would include in your things-to-do list?
* Any regrets from life or past relationships?
* What do you like to do in your spare time/on weekends?
* Do you miss your childhood?
* Are you still in contact with any of your childhood friends?
* What's the worst relationship you have ever been in?
* Do you get along well with your family members and relatives?
* What's your opinion about your parents' relationship?
* Whom are you more closer to, your mom or your dad?
* Why do you think would anybody wish to get into a relationship with you?
* Do you like having children around you?
* Do you see yourself getting married in the next few years?
* When it comes to career, what do you think would be an ideal job for you?
* If you were to win $10 million, what would you do with all that money?
* If your were to get an opportunity to live anywhere in the world, which part of the world would you choose?
Interesting questions; and quite fun to answer.
1. What is the one thing that you love the most about yourself?
I like my ability to roast a philosophical problem in my mind like turkey over a slow fire. I mean my focus levels under favorable conditions.
2. If you were to change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Its hard to decide between two demands. One is the capacity to be more socially successful, two is the ability to grasp the mathematical-logical mode of thought in a more intuitive manner. I'll choose the first one, narrowly.
3. What's the first thing you notice in a person of the opposite sex?
The face, the figure, and the ability to carry off femininity in movement and poise. All three are very closely related, so it is a single effect, a single thing.
4. Any specific personality traits you would like to see in your life partner?
Gentleness, unlimited patience, kindness to perform the role of emotional crutch.
5. What do you appreciate most about your life?
That I have the privilege of an upper-middle class background in a historical moment where opportunities for individual development are at unprecedented levels. And a loving childhood.
6. What are the 5 important things you would include in your things-to-do list?
1. Get a first-class honors.
2. Get a decent job for money.
3. Quit the decent job and enter further studies.
4. Attain a sustainable position within the research industry.
5. Write a seminal philosophical text.
7. Any regrets from life or past relationships?
To have insisted on quitting the piano at an early age.
8. What do you like to do in your spare time/on weekends?
Surf the net. Listen to music.
9. Do you miss your childhood?
Yes. The primary reason is that I am not experiencing it now; the secondary reason is that one knows it is over.
10. Are you still in contact with any of your childhood friends?
Didn't have any. Oh wait i did have a few.
11. What's the worst relationship you have ever been in?
Not nice to talk about.
12. Do you get along well with your family members and relatives?
Family yes, but i do not take the initiative to talk to them when I'm busy. Relatives are like strangers, with the additional encumbrance of obligation.
13. What's your opinion about your parents' relationship?
My God, don't get me started.
14. Whom are you more closer to, your mom or your dad?
My mom.
15. Why do you think would anybody wish to get into a relationship with you?
There are masochistic people around.
16. Do you like having children around you?
No.
17. Do you see yourself getting married in the next few years?
No.
18. When it comes to career, what do you think would be an ideal job for you?
Ideal job is an oxymoron. Refer to above.
19. If you were to win $10 million, what would you do with all that money?
800 quid on audio equipment, 1000-15000 quid on musical instruments (depending on whether I really want a harpsichord), invest the rest for sustainable income without working.
20. If your were to get an opportunity to live anywhere in the world, which part of the world would you choose?
Somewhere in Northeastern US.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Poorly formed confessions part 3
Lilting soundless songs from life trapped lips. Springs of sturgeon darkness. That vileness of spool wrung present, taut as an unrelievable bow. The death of an arrow, as unfree as its owner, unsure as its aim, as broken as its bodkin tip, its sorry hopes.
"Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way."
Yeats, W.B.
"Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way."
Yeats, W.B.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Poorly formed confessions part 2
Reactionary moonglade
spill forth your beams
leafy pouts and stored stiff cries
from drunken howl-sore wells
splaying, festive, through
certain tones and pinched off June waters.
Spade a spade and enshrined bones
Sturdying stricken palpatations
Grating, scraps and flaking
Soaring into hell-dreams
Grappling burning ladders
descending, crackling with flames and
overwhelming laughter
All in descent.
All in motionless falling.
Leaping eternally. A cat yowling, and falling apart.
Into brine and bone.
Stuck! Staked!
Turpentine and flailing,
directness in stalking memory.
Violate it, like an indecent dream!
Wide-toothed and lust-soaked grinning,
Raping and pillaging peaceful memory.
As it screams, interfered in prophecy,
cracked in venerable rock and still unworn statues;
spilling forth, what -
notions, mere notions.
Multitudes of mutinied confusions.
Slipping over the observer's perch.
To return to that cliff-rope
that breathed the current of light, dead, dependably futile
breath-stops.
spill forth your beams
leafy pouts and stored stiff cries
from drunken howl-sore wells
splaying, festive, through
certain tones and pinched off June waters.
Spade a spade and enshrined bones
Sturdying stricken palpatations
Grating, scraps and flaking
Soaring into hell-dreams
Grappling burning ladders
descending, crackling with flames and
overwhelming laughter
All in descent.
All in motionless falling.
Leaping eternally. A cat yowling, and falling apart.
Into brine and bone.
Stuck! Staked!
Turpentine and flailing,
directness in stalking memory.
Violate it, like an indecent dream!
Wide-toothed and lust-soaked grinning,
Raping and pillaging peaceful memory.
As it screams, interfered in prophecy,
cracked in venerable rock and still unworn statues;
spilling forth, what -
notions, mere notions.
Multitudes of mutinied confusions.
Slipping over the observer's perch.
To return to that cliff-rope
that breathed the current of light, dead, dependably futile
breath-stops.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tentative Muse
It just occurred to me that one is fundamentally unable to react to the fact of existence so one attempts throughout their lives to confess about this most guilty inability through things like "love", "achievement" and so on. What therefore, is sociability, and the great pantheism of this orientation in our acting lives? Why, it is the nice nicotine where the strange sufferingness in the need for an exploration for such a reaction finds its best solution. What do I mean? It submerges the problem of the itch to come to terms with the question of who i am under the wonderful intensity of fellow feeling that means that "not I" can no longer perceive "I", and more importantly, that it is therefore NOT NECESSARY and morally wrong to preach otherwise. So much for the modern institution of sociability - the modern replacement for religion (and very economically efficient too!)
What about achievement? It is again, an effective act of confession in the feeling that one has therefore suffered enough to warrant the indecency of one's allocating oneself the privilege of a description. And of course, crude as it is (beyond pragmatic need - i am speaking of pride here) everyone wants, begs for a description, even though he knows he does not deserve it unless others give it to him, that poor humble idiot, who fights for his dignity.
How terrible indeed to be a thing as well as to be!
Note that i'm talking about institutionalization that remains the post primary driving force that partially structures our understanding of our actions, and their developments into instinct. I am not developing a cynical, bitter theory of single motivations, although, then again, I might be.
Damn, this looks like psychologic dualism!
What about achievement? It is again, an effective act of confession in the feeling that one has therefore suffered enough to warrant the indecency of one's allocating oneself the privilege of a description. And of course, crude as it is (beyond pragmatic need - i am speaking of pride here) everyone wants, begs for a description, even though he knows he does not deserve it unless others give it to him, that poor humble idiot, who fights for his dignity.
How terrible indeed to be a thing as well as to be!
Note that i'm talking about institutionalization that remains the post primary driving force that partially structures our understanding of our actions, and their developments into instinct. I am not developing a cynical, bitter theory of single motivations, although, then again, I might be.
Damn, this looks like psychologic dualism!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Poorly formed confessions part 1
From the comforts of dressingness
Stay and uncrease.
Savour custard and broken plates
Which find happy reuse
Like locked doors concealing precious
recyclables
i mean accidentally broken glass
which once told past in colour.
Unrelenting shivers from the closets
Closets?
Yes, a couple of broomsticks and mop-heads.
The better romance you can find.
The cleaner, the clearer.
The stare-inducing mirror, which, observe,
elicit happy mute screams of suction power.
Yawness as happiness - my new quote.
Stillness today.
The remainder of nothing new.
Still staring outward in with the blank-guard's eye.
Happy prison, watchful freedom.
Drowning in a carpet of hope
and the dust of the future.
The strange uncrackability of faith.
Like disease, it feeds on the past.
Barrel born history and a seaworthy fool.
Hell-hives. Barnacles. Plaster so stiff its emotion.
Pirates cast themselves into ponds to declare their love of ducks.
Therefore, England,
can, and should, sink.
Stay and uncrease.
Savour custard and broken plates
Which find happy reuse
Like locked doors concealing precious
recyclables
i mean accidentally broken glass
which once told past in colour.
Unrelenting shivers from the closets
Closets?
Yes, a couple of broomsticks and mop-heads.
The better romance you can find.
The cleaner, the clearer.
The stare-inducing mirror, which, observe,
elicit happy mute screams of suction power.
Yawness as happiness - my new quote.
Stillness today.
The remainder of nothing new.
Still staring outward in with the blank-guard's eye.
Happy prison, watchful freedom.
Drowning in a carpet of hope
and the dust of the future.
The strange uncrackability of faith.
Like disease, it feeds on the past.
Barrel born history and a seaworthy fool.
Hell-hives. Barnacles. Plaster so stiff its emotion.
Pirates cast themselves into ponds to declare their love of ducks.
Therefore, England,
can, and should, sink.
Write about an event...
I wrote this as part of a psychology experiment. It asked me to describe a potentially life changing experience in the past three years.
"The experience I will describe is a slightly traumatic one in the sense that it threw me entirely out of my comfort zone and forced me to develop emotional independence. I am speaking of my being conscripted into the army for "national service" in my home country, after my A levels. This was about two and a half years ago and i was due to serve for two years. Certainly many of my peers disliked having their time appropriated from them by the state, but most accepted it grudgingly, presumably because it did not affect their emotional lives too deeply. My dislike for the army life stemmed from two major problems, firstly my need for copious amounts of privacy and 'alone time', and secondly my lack of affinity for the craft of soldiering.
Of course, in an environment where value is placed on specific physical competencies (eg. reflexes) and the ability to establish a camaraderie that facilitates teamwork with anyone and everyone, failure to live up to expectations, or perceived failure to do so, did affect my sense of self-worth and fed back to the habit of asking "what am I doing here?". The complete rupture from an academic environment as a student, - which to be honest, I believe I have grown too comfortable with for my own good - where conformity to an entirely different set of social expectations (eg. attitudes and values of manliness, loyalty to your platoon) made me feel terribly oppressed and disconnected. That is, the army environment not only prevented expression of individuality; it required active effort to display your conformity in terms totally contrary to my inclinations which I found extremely draining. On retrospect, I see that my sense of my disconnect from the environment, and the very unhappy states due to my complete inability to satisfy my emotional needs in relation to that environment, made me project wishes of being a free person as a sort of coping mechanism, which therefore started to elicit a habit of bitter complaining. It was certainly not the activities alone which I resented; some of them are actually remembered with a surprising amount of ambivalence. The issue was more to do with the people involved. For example, during training, being shouted at was common, but when it reaches a certain stage of frequency and intensity, for things like failing to greet your superiors, it becomes extremely exhausting. Essentially, one needs to recover after all this by a good deal of alone time, at least by my book.
Now, this is made really bad by the second problem of the total lack of emotional recovery time, of time when you can feel alone. When you stay in a 12 person bunk of your section mates, it simply means that you have zero time to just feel yourself. Why do I need such time? What does it help me do? Well, it is a form of engaging with yourself, of introspective reflection, and more importantly of feeling your own thoughts, and I require a daily dose of that for emotional health. I guess one can apply the analogy of a lover in love with myself, specifically the reflective part of myself, and without the opportunity to interact emotionally with this part, I will be pretty unhappy, and lonely.
So how did I cope with this? Well, I'm not sure that I did very well. But essentially one just goes through the training stage and then gets sent to the unit. When I got a unit role, i faked a knee injury and was sent to an administrative depot, where could leave after work, similar to an office setup. Things improved greatly after that.
What is the significance of this episode? I believe these stages very much established the mould of my emotional habits and character. That is, I became convinced of my different, and uncommon psychological needs and grew pretty cynical about the ability of others to understand me - which sounds strangely adolescent. Also, I think it was then that I began to conceive of the separation of the private and public me in absolute terms and in terms of effort did really let drop the public image. That is, I became established in the inclination to think that me, my world, matters so much more than all your worlds, and that communitarian world, that strange, interwoven ambitious world, teeming with desperate engagements (drunk in the delight of its own terrible uncertainty), full of absolute assumptions; the real world. I think alot of my adulthood would actually revolve around the development, or else the slow eroding, of these basic assumptive positions in the way I approach my life."
"The experience I will describe is a slightly traumatic one in the sense that it threw me entirely out of my comfort zone and forced me to develop emotional independence. I am speaking of my being conscripted into the army for "national service" in my home country, after my A levels. This was about two and a half years ago and i was due to serve for two years. Certainly many of my peers disliked having their time appropriated from them by the state, but most accepted it grudgingly, presumably because it did not affect their emotional lives too deeply. My dislike for the army life stemmed from two major problems, firstly my need for copious amounts of privacy and 'alone time', and secondly my lack of affinity for the craft of soldiering.
Of course, in an environment where value is placed on specific physical competencies (eg. reflexes) and the ability to establish a camaraderie that facilitates teamwork with anyone and everyone, failure to live up to expectations, or perceived failure to do so, did affect my sense of self-worth and fed back to the habit of asking "what am I doing here?". The complete rupture from an academic environment as a student, - which to be honest, I believe I have grown too comfortable with for my own good - where conformity to an entirely different set of social expectations (eg. attitudes and values of manliness, loyalty to your platoon) made me feel terribly oppressed and disconnected. That is, the army environment not only prevented expression of individuality; it required active effort to display your conformity in terms totally contrary to my inclinations which I found extremely draining. On retrospect, I see that my sense of my disconnect from the environment, and the very unhappy states due to my complete inability to satisfy my emotional needs in relation to that environment, made me project wishes of being a free person as a sort of coping mechanism, which therefore started to elicit a habit of bitter complaining. It was certainly not the activities alone which I resented; some of them are actually remembered with a surprising amount of ambivalence. The issue was more to do with the people involved. For example, during training, being shouted at was common, but when it reaches a certain stage of frequency and intensity, for things like failing to greet your superiors, it becomes extremely exhausting. Essentially, one needs to recover after all this by a good deal of alone time, at least by my book.
Now, this is made really bad by the second problem of the total lack of emotional recovery time, of time when you can feel alone. When you stay in a 12 person bunk of your section mates, it simply means that you have zero time to just feel yourself. Why do I need such time? What does it help me do? Well, it is a form of engaging with yourself, of introspective reflection, and more importantly of feeling your own thoughts, and I require a daily dose of that for emotional health. I guess one can apply the analogy of a lover in love with myself, specifically the reflective part of myself, and without the opportunity to interact emotionally with this part, I will be pretty unhappy, and lonely.
So how did I cope with this? Well, I'm not sure that I did very well. But essentially one just goes through the training stage and then gets sent to the unit. When I got a unit role, i faked a knee injury and was sent to an administrative depot, where could leave after work, similar to an office setup. Things improved greatly after that.
What is the significance of this episode? I believe these stages very much established the mould of my emotional habits and character. That is, I became convinced of my different, and uncommon psychological needs and grew pretty cynical about the ability of others to understand me - which sounds strangely adolescent. Also, I think it was then that I began to conceive of the separation of the private and public me in absolute terms and in terms of effort did really let drop the public image. That is, I became established in the inclination to think that me, my world, matters so much more than all your worlds, and that communitarian world, that strange, interwoven ambitious world, teeming with desperate engagements (drunk in the delight of its own terrible uncertainty), full of absolute assumptions; the real world. I think alot of my adulthood would actually revolve around the development, or else the slow eroding, of these basic assumptive positions in the way I approach my life."
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Reflections On Nietzsche Seminar
Self-satisfaction is the fear that has been smothered over by identity.
How does one overcome fear?
By organization; by re-representing oneself.
By creating a set of associations by which one can observe oneself.
How does one overcome fear?
By organization; by re-representing oneself.
By creating a set of associations by which one can observe oneself.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
A Post
The weight of expectations that formulate concepts of the past, present and future relative to individual agency as the moral conclusion of individual identity makes it hard to return to the timeless and becoming modality of self-identification that is the sole root of honesty and authenticity that comes from the aesthetically rewarding contemplation of life. That is the fantasy of the philosopher - the concept of truth whose wavering beams play upon the weighty bearings of existence, dissolving existence in a sea of concepts and lifting modalities of associative thought. Everyone needs truth and uses it for a reason, therefore everyone defines truth differently.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Quite Right
Let the blackening soul run through, you stupendous fool.
For once, the joy of gaining seeps like blood into skin, the starkness of knowing like the proud shutting of eyes, away from the formless echoing.
The movement of flags shutter this vastness, and grovels forth a notion that implicates, posits, implies, running like glaciers through mens' minds, bearing them away with the impetuosity of time in its barren magnetism, as if we were pins, as if they could draw truths where they carried only sadness.
I thought of yesterday, remembered the value of forgetting that drew us to our identity, force fed into validity, reduced into the tidal monotony of routine. Are our soul-seas an image of the churning, formless clouds?
Do I remember anything else? Has anyone been so desirous of freedom that he suffers from it? How could I bear to?
The sun is beaming into the recess of hidden corners again; its pointed fingers tap on the shell of consciousness, promising a relief, tremendous relief, and autonomous silence that sings, with that insolence of innocence.
For once, the joy of gaining seeps like blood into skin, the starkness of knowing like the proud shutting of eyes, away from the formless echoing.
The movement of flags shutter this vastness, and grovels forth a notion that implicates, posits, implies, running like glaciers through mens' minds, bearing them away with the impetuosity of time in its barren magnetism, as if we were pins, as if they could draw truths where they carried only sadness.
I thought of yesterday, remembered the value of forgetting that drew us to our identity, force fed into validity, reduced into the tidal monotony of routine. Are our soul-seas an image of the churning, formless clouds?
Do I remember anything else? Has anyone been so desirous of freedom that he suffers from it? How could I bear to?
The sun is beaming into the recess of hidden corners again; its pointed fingers tap on the shell of consciousness, promising a relief, tremendous relief, and autonomous silence that sings, with that insolence of innocence.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
A Thought Experiment
Let us begin.
The setup of personalities is configured by the equilibrium of personality drives.
Today, we will look at the neurosis in terms of its role as a connecting principle which underlies the state of being. The State of Being, in this case, is essentially a present State of existing, comprised of both phenomenological and unconsciously/consciously rational aspects, grounded in interpretive networks that apply unconscious beliefs about identity to experience.
In this model, the nature of personal response to all stimuli is conditioned by the integration of its aspects according to an underlying belief structure. This structure is in itself adopted through a process of projection - for instance, the movement of fingers, the sensation of the movement of fingers, the worldview by which the agency of the movement of fingers is inferred and given to make sense, according to metaphysical principles such as the assumption that the phenomena is innately expressive of the fact (and the fact as the overarching fuctional glue for different actual worlds), and according to psychologic principles such as we will mention.
Let us examine this by way of example - the neurosis of the spoon. The spoon is viewed as a projected identity, and the treatment of the spoon vis-a-vis worldly objects reflects linearly the treatment of the individual as regards his surroundings, and the spoon is an object that must be kept pure as against the polluting context of its existence.
In this case, the neurosis may be occasioned by the trauma attending physical discovery of the world in terms of disgust: a shocking enlightenment about one's and others' existence in the material world forced into the underlayers of unconscious identity creating belief. As the previous equilibrium is shocked into acceptance of new networks and possibly, a new frame from which to approach ideas, it may attempt to reverse the unconcious trauma situation, and attempt to fully accomodate the new structural imbalances caused by enlightenment through an immediate compensatory act that recovers the state of equilibrium, through adapting a neurosis that can:
1. respond to the nature of the perception of the disturbing phenomena, according to the principles laid out by even deeper epistemic beliefs,
2. remind one of the pre-disturbance state, which identity is associated with.
3. By linking 1) and 2), the epistemic beliefs become more secure.
Note that the machinations, if done normally, do not deny the new possibilities, but re-accomodate them in terms of previous beliefs (ideas that allow one to contain new ideas, with the containing idea becoming solidified and sanctioned as "personal belief".)
So that, beyond rational frameworks of thought, there exist psychically relevant identity-relation frameworks, which regulate the significance of ideas. Obviously neurosis and collective beliefs are mostly effective on that level.
Eating with the spoon becomes associated with the act of agency over physicalism and the sensate notions (ie, desires) - (these two may even be closely associated).
Since,
1. Agency is seen to be correlated with transcendentalism
2. Most persons' identity must immediately presuppose transcendentalism when faced with the phenomenological phenomena of existence
3. Identity must be defined such as to be relevant at every moment through its actual-terms association with those aforesaid sensate phenomena
4. This sensate phenomena will always bear the character of trauma
Therefore most agencies of a reaction-type will have to find their true psychic function as a means to recreate the effective unconscious-regulating feelings originally associated with the act of eating or sleeping or socializing or whatever.
Their first role, as trauma adaptibility instruments, now evolve according to new disturbances and potentials for equilibrium according to new epistemic and aesthetic frameworks.
On a sidenote, creation of Dionysian art is but a great intensity of phenomenological trauma that calls for
One way of defining the individual is to trace the continuity of the principles by which all these stimuli are received and responded to, or the drives interpretive and reactive
The setup of personalities is configured by the equilibrium of personality drives.
Today, we will look at the neurosis in terms of its role as a connecting principle which underlies the state of being. The State of Being, in this case, is essentially a present State of existing, comprised of both phenomenological and unconsciously/consciously rational aspects, grounded in interpretive networks that apply unconscious beliefs about identity to experience.
In this model, the nature of personal response to all stimuli is conditioned by the integration of its aspects according to an underlying belief structure. This structure is in itself adopted through a process of projection - for instance, the movement of fingers, the sensation of the movement of fingers, the worldview by which the agency of the movement of fingers is inferred and given to make sense, according to metaphysical principles such as the assumption that the phenomena is innately expressive of the fact (and the fact as the overarching fuctional glue for different actual worlds), and according to psychologic principles such as we will mention.
Let us examine this by way of example - the neurosis of the spoon. The spoon is viewed as a projected identity, and the treatment of the spoon vis-a-vis worldly objects reflects linearly the treatment of the individual as regards his surroundings, and the spoon is an object that must be kept pure as against the polluting context of its existence.
In this case, the neurosis may be occasioned by the trauma attending physical discovery of the world in terms of disgust: a shocking enlightenment about one's and others' existence in the material world forced into the underlayers of unconscious identity creating belief. As the previous equilibrium is shocked into acceptance of new networks and possibly, a new frame from which to approach ideas, it may attempt to reverse the unconcious trauma situation, and attempt to fully accomodate the new structural imbalances caused by enlightenment through an immediate compensatory act that recovers the state of equilibrium, through adapting a neurosis that can:
1. respond to the nature of the perception of the disturbing phenomena, according to the principles laid out by even deeper epistemic beliefs,
2. remind one of the pre-disturbance state, which identity is associated with.
3. By linking 1) and 2), the epistemic beliefs become more secure.
Note that the machinations, if done normally, do not deny the new possibilities, but re-accomodate them in terms of previous beliefs (ideas that allow one to contain new ideas, with the containing idea becoming solidified and sanctioned as "personal belief".)
So that, beyond rational frameworks of thought, there exist psychically relevant identity-relation frameworks, which regulate the significance of ideas. Obviously neurosis and collective beliefs are mostly effective on that level.
Eating with the spoon becomes associated with the act of agency over physicalism and the sensate notions (ie, desires) - (these two may even be closely associated).
Since,
1. Agency is seen to be correlated with transcendentalism
2. Most persons' identity must immediately presuppose transcendentalism when faced with the phenomenological phenomena of existence
3. Identity must be defined such as to be relevant at every moment through its actual-terms association with those aforesaid sensate phenomena
4. This sensate phenomena will always bear the character of trauma
Therefore most agencies of a reaction-type will have to find their true psychic function as a means to recreate the effective unconscious-regulating feelings originally associated with the act of eating or sleeping or socializing or whatever.
Their first role, as trauma adaptibility instruments, now evolve according to new disturbances and potentials for equilibrium according to new epistemic and aesthetic frameworks.
On a sidenote, creation of Dionysian art is but a great intensity of phenomenological trauma that calls for
One way of defining the individual is to trace the continuity of the principles by which all these stimuli are received and responded to, or the drives interpretive and reactive
Saturday, June 20, 2009
A Movie Review: Apocalypse Now
The movie begins with the plainness of unhindered experience. The quiet calm that insures our experience from the undercurrents of our inherent power and our will to power, our unseeing possession and uncontrollable control. Impossible stillness in the mind generates its own desire, despite the intimidating immensity of life; we assert our dominance over nature- and in doing so, invite nature over ourselves.
Movies aspire to explore this dynamics for artistic gain. The aesthetic capacity aroused in the act of self-contemplation- it feeds on our godlike ability to be both ourselves, immeasurably bound to bounded experience; and the product of our thoughts- a reverie of contemplation that trivialises the great external themes. This division is no mere dualism; it contains irreconcilable modes of meaning that can only be bridged by man in his act of experience, in his reactions, made in rawness and detachment, one at the same time. Impact and insight, thus, become the methods of art; they draw you in to give detached insight meaning. No movie I have seen wields such force of psychological impact, yet the beauties of tempting passion and detachment. Like life itself, it transcends it boundedness; it injects all meaning into it.
The technical brilliancy of the movie has been avouched for. Coppola himself acknowledged the ambitions of the project: it does not aspire to represent, but to be life itself. Few movies achieve the immediacy and importance of life experience; that it substitutes it completely in my viewing, and resonates in the quiet moments thereafter, is proof of the success of Coppola's execution of his first intent.
Part of its success rests in the perfection in scene after scene. They are nuanced yet exhilarating; it neither simplifies nor censors itself. Through its fidelity, it invites viewers to a truer experience. The screenplay and thematic progression achieves pacing and balance; the trail upriver is arduous, boring, frustrating, terrifying. Politics, civilization give way to jungle, jungle gives way to man. Psyche resides at the end of experience.
Of course, the inevitable descent into nature culminates in the truest discovery man has capacity to experience: that of insanity. Nature returns man into his failed state, the price and reckoning of being the nothing out of which he was born.
Nevertheless, this is arguably not the final conclusion of the film, as some critics choose to believe. Its climax lies not in man's conscious discovery of himself in all his rawness and experiential instincts and horror, for these are all subconsciously known, but in the conduct of man's totality; the synthesis of his domesticity and animalism, in the French plantation outpost, of progress.
Internal dialectics rip apart the arguments of the film. The unbearable rawness of combat unhinges breaking points, and forces men to ironic detachment. In an incomparable movie scene, LTC Bill Kilgore orders a massacre of villages and the VC played to music of Wagner. It beautifies destruction in its recoil from the horror of it, and murder becomes a matter of an aesthetic means to overcome guilt and terror. The surfboard and the crew filming death on the beach; men have snapped into their broken detached states; yet the rawness of horror consumes them. Men have no control over their fates, and they submit to death and death-making.
We condemn them, but in retrospect, they are but victims of themselves and their powerlessness in the setting of war. The primacy and invariable truth of the immoral man, who "kills without passion", absolves them. The final effect of the later arguments Col Kurtz expounded in self defence is to negate our compassion and horror at the killing- the film refutes itself in a dialectic between the first and second parts. Civilized moral outrage is made irrelevant when confronted with the inherently nihilistic construct of man; moral judgements guided by an understanding of consequence is submerged by the liquid primacy of the present. Col Kurtz's arguments achieve validity because they are raw, and rawness is truthfulness when translated from experience.
The scenes of the French stronghold, then, form the centre and climax of the film that unites the didactic elements together. Detachment and rawness, love and violence, union and hatred, come together in fleeting, fragile and romantic vision of truth. This truth isn't complete- it must lie in the edge of the realms of experience and meaning, rawness and detachment. Lovers must be vicarious, a projection of ancient yet personal desires; it must lie beyond a unspeakable curtain. The greatest insight in the film, sublimed into the truest experience, is spoken in a moment both of passion and detachment; sex is an incomplete form both of love and violence. Yet it is sustainable, good, and true. The scene is the uniquely precious counterpoint to the horror of the plot, of life. It rejects the combination of love and violence to create death, to generate possession and betrayal, to blow up the helicopter in place of a lost daughter with a grenade. It becomes a means to create life, and to realize the tragedy of man's creation as a product of opposing, incommensurable forces, that can only be dealt with by passion and understanding that knows yet asserts itself. The French scene contains references to all the other main scenes in the movie, as it contains the solutions, in a metaphoric stronghold, the final centre (to shore up our remains).
The movie closes with a final didactic; the opposition of the necessity of noble lies to the dangerous gain wrought by understanding of man's truths. This is Col Kurtz legacy: two forever competing solutions, to reconcile man's need for truth and his idea of a good life.
Movies aspire to explore this dynamics for artistic gain. The aesthetic capacity aroused in the act of self-contemplation- it feeds on our godlike ability to be both ourselves, immeasurably bound to bounded experience; and the product of our thoughts- a reverie of contemplation that trivialises the great external themes. This division is no mere dualism; it contains irreconcilable modes of meaning that can only be bridged by man in his act of experience, in his reactions, made in rawness and detachment, one at the same time. Impact and insight, thus, become the methods of art; they draw you in to give detached insight meaning. No movie I have seen wields such force of psychological impact, yet the beauties of tempting passion and detachment. Like life itself, it transcends it boundedness; it injects all meaning into it.
The technical brilliancy of the movie has been avouched for. Coppola himself acknowledged the ambitions of the project: it does not aspire to represent, but to be life itself. Few movies achieve the immediacy and importance of life experience; that it substitutes it completely in my viewing, and resonates in the quiet moments thereafter, is proof of the success of Coppola's execution of his first intent.
Part of its success rests in the perfection in scene after scene. They are nuanced yet exhilarating; it neither simplifies nor censors itself. Through its fidelity, it invites viewers to a truer experience. The screenplay and thematic progression achieves pacing and balance; the trail upriver is arduous, boring, frustrating, terrifying. Politics, civilization give way to jungle, jungle gives way to man. Psyche resides at the end of experience.
Of course, the inevitable descent into nature culminates in the truest discovery man has capacity to experience: that of insanity. Nature returns man into his failed state, the price and reckoning of being the nothing out of which he was born.
Nevertheless, this is arguably not the final conclusion of the film, as some critics choose to believe. Its climax lies not in man's conscious discovery of himself in all his rawness and experiential instincts and horror, for these are all subconsciously known, but in the conduct of man's totality; the synthesis of his domesticity and animalism, in the French plantation outpost, of progress.
Internal dialectics rip apart the arguments of the film. The unbearable rawness of combat unhinges breaking points, and forces men to ironic detachment. In an incomparable movie scene, LTC Bill Kilgore orders a massacre of villages and the VC played to music of Wagner. It beautifies destruction in its recoil from the horror of it, and murder becomes a matter of an aesthetic means to overcome guilt and terror. The surfboard and the crew filming death on the beach; men have snapped into their broken detached states; yet the rawness of horror consumes them. Men have no control over their fates, and they submit to death and death-making.
We condemn them, but in retrospect, they are but victims of themselves and their powerlessness in the setting of war. The primacy and invariable truth of the immoral man, who "kills without passion", absolves them. The final effect of the later arguments Col Kurtz expounded in self defence is to negate our compassion and horror at the killing- the film refutes itself in a dialectic between the first and second parts. Civilized moral outrage is made irrelevant when confronted with the inherently nihilistic construct of man; moral judgements guided by an understanding of consequence is submerged by the liquid primacy of the present. Col Kurtz's arguments achieve validity because they are raw, and rawness is truthfulness when translated from experience.
The scenes of the French stronghold, then, form the centre and climax of the film that unites the didactic elements together. Detachment and rawness, love and violence, union and hatred, come together in fleeting, fragile and romantic vision of truth. This truth isn't complete- it must lie in the edge of the realms of experience and meaning, rawness and detachment. Lovers must be vicarious, a projection of ancient yet personal desires; it must lie beyond a unspeakable curtain. The greatest insight in the film, sublimed into the truest experience, is spoken in a moment both of passion and detachment; sex is an incomplete form both of love and violence. Yet it is sustainable, good, and true. The scene is the uniquely precious counterpoint to the horror of the plot, of life. It rejects the combination of love and violence to create death, to generate possession and betrayal, to blow up the helicopter in place of a lost daughter with a grenade. It becomes a means to create life, and to realize the tragedy of man's creation as a product of opposing, incommensurable forces, that can only be dealt with by passion and understanding that knows yet asserts itself. The French scene contains references to all the other main scenes in the movie, as it contains the solutions, in a metaphoric stronghold, the final centre (to shore up our remains).
The movie closes with a final didactic; the opposition of the necessity of noble lies to the dangerous gain wrought by understanding of man's truths. This is Col Kurtz legacy: two forever competing solutions, to reconcile man's need for truth and his idea of a good life.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Meaning And Existence
Existence is a property which relates other properties not to concepts of properties, but to a universalisation of the particular, a concept to an experienced form.
Therefore, if existence is an empirically verifying/affirmative quality of meaning, then the concept of existence must rely on the conceptualization of the experentiality of existence as well as the meaning of existence; it must include existence's own mode in its description of the property of existence.
In conceptualizing the template of subjects rather than the subjects themselves, one faces the difficulty of propertifying an experience which is felt rather than thought, or, to put it more clear
ly, universal rather than comparable with others. Existence has nothing else other than non-existence to compare with; its mode is not a meaning- it is a mode unto itself.
Therefore we are stuck. The inability to deconstruct existence into concepts, and thus relate concepts with existence in a a conceptual, rather than experiential way, as well as the complete dependence of our world view on these two mental wheels - this would seem insoluble.
Where might future solutions derive from?
Therefore, if existence is an empirically verifying/affirmative quality of meaning, then the concept of existence must rely on the conceptualization of the experentiality of existence as well as the meaning of existence; it must include existence's own mode in its description of the property of existence.
In conceptualizing the template of subjects rather than the subjects themselves, one faces the difficulty of propertifying an experience which is felt rather than thought, or, to put it more clear
ly, universal rather than comparable with others. Existence has nothing else other than non-existence to compare with; its mode is not a meaning- it is a mode unto itself.
Therefore we are stuck. The inability to deconstruct existence into concepts, and thus relate concepts with existence in a a conceptual, rather than experiential way, as well as the complete dependence of our world view on these two mental wheels - this would seem insoluble.
Where might future solutions derive from?
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Euthyphro
Plato's short dialogue on piety culminates in negatives; its greatest insight is to expose the fundamental incompatibilities of two disparate cosmological propositions: that of a universally valid standard of meaning and the good, against the standards seen to derive from the caprices of the Greek pantheon. This contradiction has come to be known as the Euthyphro's dilemma.
However, the present interest lies in the fact that this incompatibility was not in itself the main focus at the point where it was raised. Socrates introduced the issue in his attempts to examine and disprove Euthyphro's assertion that the pious is that which is God-loved. For simplicity's sake, we will take that to mean that a necessary but insufficient aspect of the pious, is that it is God-loved.
Socrates's arguments run as such:
1. A thing is God-loved because God loves the thing, not because it is inherently God-loved. (The adverb sequentially succeeds the verb. Being God-loved is not a quality inherent in the thing).
2. The pious is God-loved because of its piousness. (Being God-loved is a quality inherent in the definition of piousness).
3. From 2, it follows that (all?) God-loved things are God-loved because they are inherently God-loved.
4. This in opposition to 1., therefore only one of the statements, 1 or 2, can be true; being mutually exclusive, they cannot be true at the same time.
Now, the fishy points in the argument lie in 2 and 3. It becomes apparent after some thought that in the course of the argument, Socrates must commit the implicit assumption that if piousness was pious not because of God's love (but due to some external standard), then God's love of piousness must derive not from God's act of loving, but from the implicit inherency of God's love as a quality in the thing. In other words, it assumes that the only way in which God can love the pious is if that which God-loves (namely, the pious) was, in essence the God-loved. By that score, nothing that is God-loved can be anything else but THE God-loved. Again, in other words, it assumes the truth of the bracketed statement in thread 2 of the above argument, when of course, requiring God's love by definition certainly does not mean in any way that something is God-loved in its original state. It is a complex form of the age-old straw man fallacy.
This would then trap Euthyphro in the depths of the Euthyphro dilemma which is in fact not bound up directly with the argument at hand.
However, the present interest lies in the fact that this incompatibility was not in itself the main focus at the point where it was raised. Socrates introduced the issue in his attempts to examine and disprove Euthyphro's assertion that the pious is that which is God-loved. For simplicity's sake, we will take that to mean that a necessary but insufficient aspect of the pious, is that it is God-loved.
Socrates's arguments run as such:
1. A thing is God-loved because God loves the thing, not because it is inherently God-loved. (The adverb sequentially succeeds the verb. Being God-loved is not a quality inherent in the thing).
2. The pious is God-loved because of its piousness. (Being God-loved is a quality inherent in the definition of piousness).
3. From 2, it follows that (all?) God-loved things are God-loved because they are inherently God-loved.
4. This in opposition to 1., therefore only one of the statements, 1 or 2, can be true; being mutually exclusive, they cannot be true at the same time.
Now, the fishy points in the argument lie in 2 and 3. It becomes apparent after some thought that in the course of the argument, Socrates must commit the implicit assumption that if piousness was pious not because of God's love (but due to some external standard), then God's love of piousness must derive not from God's act of loving, but from the implicit inherency of God's love as a quality in the thing. In other words, it assumes that the only way in which God can love the pious is if that which God-loves (namely, the pious) was, in essence the God-loved. By that score, nothing that is God-loved can be anything else but THE God-loved. Again, in other words, it assumes the truth of the bracketed statement in thread 2 of the above argument, when of course, requiring God's love by definition certainly does not mean in any way that something is God-loved in its original state. It is a complex form of the age-old straw man fallacy.
This would then trap Euthyphro in the depths of the Euthyphro dilemma which is in fact not bound up directly with the argument at hand.
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