Genius 2000:
A New Network
by Max Herman
for Freda
"Love! His affections do not that way tend,
Nor what he
spake, though it lacked form a little,
Was not like
madness. There's something in his soul,
O'er which
his melancholy sits on brood,
And I do
doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some
danger."
William
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of
1.
Who are you and what is your name?
I'm Max Herman and this is my
book about my theory of history. I've
worked on it for a while and now I'm summing it all up for regular paper
publication. I think I might put photos
in it too. Anyway, I'm thirty-five,
mostly bald, a celibate demi-vierge, and more or less on antidepressants
constantly since 1996. I was sexually
abused once, when I was five years old.
I have two degrees in English, earn between thirty and thirty-five
thousand dollars per year, and live in
2.
Why should anyone read this book?
That's a good question. I think it's a relevant book and will present
a lot of useful information for you. It
will also show you my point of view on some things, give you some explanation
of some new ideas, and it will also help me set up and expand my Network.
3.
How long will the book be?
Two thousand quanta long,
which is standard book size.
4.
Will you put pictures in it?
I think I will just put url's
in it if and when I wish to point the reader to a picture. This will save me cash on printing and help
polish the fading sheen of the internet.
5.
Is your academic writing good?
It's not too bad, and what's more
important, I enjoyed writing it. Here's
an excerpt from a paper I wrote for my Master's degree entitled "Book
Review: The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783,
by John Brewer": "Brewer
argues that the English state before 1688 was shaped by three major
factors: medieval centralization,
England's avoidance of European wars, and the absence of a strong class of
venal or bribable administrators."
You may read the full paper on the internet at www.geocities.com/genius-2000/SinewsOfPower.html.
6.
Where
are you now?
I'm at the coffee shop. I'll be writing some of these on paper. I'll check the number at home before I go,
and then do that number on paper by hand.
7.
What
are the main ideas of Genius 2000?
The two main ideas are Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate,
which I didn't invent myself but learned from the late Professor Barbara Fowler
in 1990, and the following question called "Contribution One" from
the Genius 2000 Video First Edition:
"What does it take to be a genius?
Do you have it? Does anyone you
know personally have it? What does the
year 2000 mean? Does it mean this to you
or other people? What do the concept of
genius and the year 2000 have in common?"
8.
Aren't
there any more main ideas?
Not really. I'm thirty-five,
and when I was twenty-nine and wanted to make a video about genius, I decided
to make it also about the year 2000 as a good complementary topic for
interviewees. Then I wanted to filter in
my own ideas unobtrusively, so used the Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate cycle of tragedy
I'd learned in college from Dr. Fowler.
There were some other ideas as well but I would say that the primary
basic constituents are A-K-H-A and Contribution One.
9.
When
did you start Genius 2000?
I made a Genius 2000 pumpkin
and decided on the name for the video in 1998.
Before 1998, I'd never used the term "Genius 2000," but I'd
been in school, I'd had my theories about literature and so forth for a
while. Here's an excerpt from a paper I
did for Dr. Fowler, and then another one from a later paper about Hamlet and
Oedipus, to give an idea. I'd called
"my idea" by various names, such as "the Communicative
Hypothesis" and "the Communicative Paradigm," etc.
"Oedipus commiserates with the suppliants at
the very start of the play, 'I know you are all sick, yet there is not one of
you, sick though you are, that is as sick as myself....My spirit groans for
city and myself and you at once'(ll.59-64).
Ironically but fittingly, Oedipus identifies his own prosperity with the
prosperity of the city, constantly calling himself savior or champion. In a way, he is--he saved the city from the
sphinx."
"The ghost admonishes Hamlet, with a poignancy and tenderness
that riles up our most fervent filial instincts,
“If thou didst
ever thy dear father love--”
“O God!”
“Revenge his
foul and most unnatural murder.”
“Murder?”
“Murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this most foul,
strange, and unnatural” (1.5.24-30).
"The
simple yet striking meter in this passage, moving in seemingly innocuous but ineluctable
iambs and powerfully sounding the chord “Murder--Murder?--Murder,” expresses
remarkably the feeling of tenderness, loss, and passion that must have been
wringing Hamlet Jr. at hearing this news."
You may read these two papers in their entirety on the internet at
www.geocities.com/genius2000/ LearningToAcceptMistakes.html and
www.geocities.com/genius-2000/OedipusAndHamlet.html, respectively.
10.
Is it
true you're alcoholic?
Yes, I'm pretty sure that is
not in question. I would agree that I am
one. Maybe "alcohol addict" I
would agree with more.
11.
What is the purpose of the Genius 2000 Network?
I might be mistaken, but my
goal for it is to heal and fulfill human genius, to help with that very broad
and diversely pursued enterprise. To
help humanity live better, happier, and more fulfilled, is what I hope to
assist with. This is so general as to be
not much, but heck, it's the truth. I
don't care too much for the question--it implies there is, always has been, and
always will be only one purpose of Genius 2000, and that I can't agree
with. There isn't just one permanent
constant purpose. It's a stable
field.
12.
What is a stable field?
On one hand, the Genius 2000
Network is my own network, the network I have legally created and incorporated
as a business, a legally established for-profit corporation. So, its purpose is to make money or earn
profit. It is a stable field in that it
is a constituted platform or entity to carry out whatever needs doing for the
larger motive of profit. The Genius 2000
Network is my own independent music label and art gallery and publishing house
all in one, so like a restaurant, it's a stable field in which various food
dishes are made, sold, and eaten. Or,
where various records are made, sold, and listened to--it's the platform, the
continuing platform for all this.
13.
How
much money do you want to earn?
I'm single, 35, and addicted
to alcohol, so I don't need or want much.
If I could earn fifty thousand per year for the next fifty years,
adjusting for inflation, that would be enough for me. I don't have luxurious tastes. I do think there is a patriotic obligation to
acquire as much wealth as one can, not for one's personal gratification but so
as to "strike a blow for the common good"--to be able to protect the
Good. So, for example, a billion dollars
per year in revenue might ultimately be necessary--even a hundred billion
perhaps. Then again, one million gross
with $100,000 net might be preferable.
14.
Do
you support the U.S.-led War on Terror?
Yes I do. This is the toughest topic for me to
address. I used to be deceitfully
leftist, praising Nader and Chomsky.
This was a demented form of the semi-psychotic death-game called
"chicken." It's hard for me to
explain why I support the War on Terror, or what I sometimes call "the
Second Cold War." One can look at
all the horror, wastage, and misery of the First Cold War and still accept it
was necessary. I feel that way about the
Second Cold War, or CWII. It will take
me maybe my whole life to explain this adequately, in part because it is not
known yet how CWII will play out in all the variations.
15.
What
about all of your revolutionary posing from 1999-2002?
Well, that’s a tough
one. I guess I'd have to say number one,
in part I'm guilty of bad actions and regret that, and apologize, and have to
pay my debt to humanity. On the other
hand, I was never your orthodox Leninist for example, but rather went out of my
way to distance myself and Genius 2000 from doctrinaire Communism, Marxism,
etc. I say this despite my occasional
rhetorical episodes. For example, I
wrote in my "Crying Game" paper about Marx, sounding a bit Marxist,
but it's hardly damning. Also, in a lot
of settings they pressure you to pick a side, and if you don't they'll
excoriate you.
16.
Why
do you praise Chomsky so much in your early work?
I divide 1998-2002 as the
first part of Genius 2000, before I quit drinking and smoking weed and snorting
Ritalin in October 2002. On one hand, I
liked Chomsky; on the other hand, I wanted to call attention to certain
artistic factors and ramifications I felt that Chomsky and especially his fan
base neglect unjustifiably. I wonder
about this sometimes. But no, I can't
say I wasn't a bit confused about the value of Chomsky's work such as it is,
and his leadership. Taken objectively, I
don't see much similarity between Genius 2000 and Chomskyism.
17.
What
about the
You could say in one sense
that I've stolen or copied a lot of the ideas in Genius 2000 from Adorno,
Habermas, and Benjamin. That would be
fair. I would like to meet Habermas one
day. He was my first external way out of
post-structuralist literary theory as I encountered it at Oberlin,
18.
Why
use the question-and-answer means of composition?
Well, I like Collingwood,
whom I read in 1989 at
19.
Were
you a student at
No. My father was a visiting professor in biology
in 1989 and I visited
20.
Won't
it take forever to type these?
No. I type quickly. I type about 50 words per minute. I use typing at work, and learned real typing
at Sanford Junior High in
21.
Are
you ashamed of what you've done so far with Genius 2000?
Yes, very much so. Maybe so far I've had several phases of my
life in Genius 2000. Phase One was about
1998-2000, then my drinking went way out of control 2001-2002 so that was a
second, degenerate, evil phase. I really
feel ashamed about that alcoholic behavior.
It's disgusting to me to recall it.
22.
What
are your main anxieties?
I'm not sure I understand my
anxieties. Sexual I guess is the main
one. Social prestige and value in the
eyes of others, my sexual attractiveness, the health or wisdom of my celibate
life, whether I'm an insane failure or not--these are perhaps the main ones,
along with family and artistic phobias and worry. I worry that my mental health is so poor that
none of my reactions to anything are pure or healthy--I'm on antidepressants
and all. I worry that I'm homosexual or
sexually unsalvageable, unable to be an artist or even a human really without
sexual relationships. So, I guess I
worry about whether my tactics and goals are correct, my values, whether I work
hard enough or at the right tasks.
23.
Where are you now?
I'm at work. I work nine to five. My computer is acting weird. I'll be trying to type a few numbers here and
there during the workday, and at lunch, and then all evening so as to finish at
least five hundred numbers to send to agents in April. It could get me in trouble and fired
however. Work is a good place. The stress isn't overpowering; what is more
inimical to me and my peace of mind is the feeling of being an asexual failure,
or what you might call "an office eunuch," impotent and
inadequate. I never mentioned my penis
size, which is 5.5. This is no good for
all practical purposes, and thus I've felt it would be a manipulative insult to
request that a woman go to bed with me.
At work I get the feeling of not taking enough emotional risk, daring to
love at is were, accepting my fate and destiny, or loving love. Perhaps I could quit my job and write only
for three months--I do have the savings.
Exactly $2000 saved. I could go
for a brief time on that. And by selling
my Karmann Ghia, 1972 model year. Better
keep the job and write when I have time.
Palatino and Prestige elite, 1000 numbers by April 30. For the agents and all.
24.
How is Genius 2000 a theory of history?
Wow, good question. I may have to ask for a long-term answer
voucher for that. Genius 2000 implies
there are two factors that combine to create history: Genius and 2000. 2000 is the time, obviously; i.e., the
setting, conditions, space-time specificity, economic and technological
givens. Genius is the other complement,
and this is human genius, or just genius; human genius plus human 2000 equals
human Genius 2000. So, akin to how E=mc2
is a theory of energy and matter, Genius 2000 is a theory of history--an
equation or setting-forth of terms.
Genius 2000 is an equation.
25.
There is no equals sign, so isn't "Genius 2000" just a term?
Maybe Genius 2000 is a theory
or thesis about history, a hypothesis even.
By comparison, E=mc2 is part of Relativity theory of spacetime. G=mt2000 is an equation which is part of the
Genius 2000 theory of history. So,
Genius 2000 is rather a theory than an equation, but it implies the equation
History=Genius+2000 just as Relativity theory implies the equation Relativity=spacetime.
26.
What
is another theory of history?
Marxism is one, also
religions are theories of history.
Religions set forth how things started, how things or events occur, and
what is upcoming; cause and effect, patterns, conflicts, elements, rules of
events, etc. I might say that Science is
one theory of history, Dialectical Materialism another of the Marxist school;
factually I can't think of any more.
Nationalism and the various racist philosophies are theories of history;
one could say that Art is a theory of history.
Any idea or set of ideas, principles, that aims to define events or how
they happen and under what rules is a theory of history. So, the various economic theories are
theories of history in a sense.
27.
How can you justify the compositional form of this book?
There's no need to, because
how I write is my own business. I don't
have to justify it to you. That would be
slavish on my part. But, one could
justify it by my stable field theory, or by the aphoristic compositional style,
or the dialogue, or by In Medias Res, or any number of other compositions. But if you don't like it, you don't like it,
that's OK. I would prefer not to let
that make me feel sick and suicidal.
28.
Do you feel sick and suicidal today?
Somewhat. I occasionally will go off my antidepressant
and get depressed. I sense that I live
under a blanket so to speak, in a semi-protected infantile state due to my
medications. They protect me from my
nightmarish emotions with which I either cannot or will not cope. For example, off my medication I sense very
directly how intense and beautiful dating, love, sex, etc. could be, and this
makes me doubt my whole value system and worth as a person, making me feel
unsalvageable and in short repulsive.
Bald, thirty-five, and celibate but not in the funny who-cares way but
the horrifying, shameful, guilty, miserable, inexcusable way. The way that is a sin against humanity,
society, and myself. Nonetheless, as my
medication levels creep up over the next couple of days I will feel
monumentally happier, mellower, and safer.
29.
What
if someone doesn't feel like a lot of questions?
Well then they can just sit
and meditate. I am not saying people
should O.D. on questions or on trying to answer. As Collingwood said, it's a cycle. Excess of questions is manic; of answers
depressive.
30.
How
are you enjoying Nietzsche and Strauss?
Well, I'm reading Nietzsche
and Strauss for the first time. You
could say I lost touch, pace, with the real world of intellectual life in 1987,
when I went to
31.
Why
do you want people to know what you've read, and when?
I hate secrecy, and agree
with Benjamin Franklin that "honesty is the best policy." It saves energy spent in lying. So, I can't enjoy reading in secret. I don't like reading but not admitting it,
and I like getting credit for what I've read.
I also like getting credit for getting an idea before reading
something. For example, I critiqued
"Art" and "Plot" in Shakespeare as instrumental and linear
mistakes before reading Habermas, Adorno, Benjamin, and Benedict Anderson. I basically came up with their entire corpi
all on my own at age 24. And that
without reading any Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer--what have
you. So I want credit for what I did
before reading Nietzsche.
32.
Do
you think it's immoral to seek credit like that?
I feel guilty about it so you
could say I reflexively consider it immoral.
In other people, another person, I wouldn't consider it immoral at
all--I'd consider it refreshing. Much
more so than the same old classic rock tunes playing in the laundromat I'm
writing in now.
33.
Why
don't you try, for a change, to stop condemning yourself for actions you
wouldn't condemn in others?
I think I have habits of
condemning myself that have causes separate from whatever I might be doing,
i.e. the specific actions. For example,
I fear becoming vain and excessive in my braggadocio, and thus causing a disaster
for the species, that is, the polis.
34.
You
fear that to allow yourself to write freely and express your abilities might
threaten the polis?
I certainly do. I'm afraid that society could not survive if
I expressed myself freely and completely.
People would have to kill me to protect themselves from the consequences
my self-expression would have for the polis, the political-exosomatic patterns
that protect the future and present continuation of the species. In a sense, for me to express myself cleanly
and openly would, quite literally, kill the entire species so it cannot be
allowed. I suppress myself, therefore,
to save society the work-cost of repressing me and hope thereby to put my
society's heart at ease and gain its mercy if not reward.
35.
Isn't
that fairly neurotic and perhaps paranoid?
That is to say, isn't it merely an unhealthy obsession?
My gracious, it must be,
mustn't it? I can only think it
originates in my childhood deprivations and abuse. I suppress myself in a nightmarish automatic
response, because I've ingrained fear-based behaviors to the level of
reflex. If I'm confused about what to
write, or the role of the writer in 2005, I conclude that I must be evil. Because of course, when I kept myself
quiet--by the use of self-hate--through sad and abusive periods in childhood I
trained myself to think that to express myself would damage my social support
structure i.e. my family. I find this
moderately hopeful an analysis. It
suggests that I can un-learn my fearfulness and eventually get to a point where
I can express myself artistically, socially, and sexually. I.e. get a girlfriend.
36.
Do
you now accept and truly believe it is safe for your society for you to express
yourself in writing?
That would sure be great if
it were true. I'm not used to thinking
that way. I'm more used to thinking,
"I can't express myself because the world is too evil, desperate,
vulnerable, and dangerous. Therefore my
only hope to express myself is to fix the world, fix it to perfection and for
all time." But this is too
difficult. It forestalls my legitimate
hopes of doing a decent share, of doing enough, i.e. my two thousand hours of
socio-economic labor per year. I suppose
I would have to answer that I don't yet accept fully, in all its ramifications
and outcomes, the idea that I can fully and satisfyingly express myself in
writing without hurting or damaging my society of the human polis, but I
believe I can try and if you can try you can improve and theoretically
succeed.
37.
How
many quanta do you have left to write?
1963.
38.
Do
you often feel that the internet version of Genius 2000 was immoral, or do you
feel ashamed of yourself for doing it?
I feel extremely ashamed of
myself for doing it. I think there may
have been a grain of decency to it, but for the main part it was vile and alcoholic
in nature. I hope very much by writing
this book to clear up some of the evil-causing loose ends or sinful aspects of
Genius 2000. Again, this will take
approximately my entire life to live down.
Even one truly high-quality book isn't enough to repair the evil hybris
of claiming you're the Messiah.
39.
Do
you feel ashamed and guilty for having put yourself forward, even in
ultra-ironic postmodern self-mocking jest, as the second coming of Jesus
Christ?
Mainly I feel scared that
someone crazy, or more likely, a mob of very angry ignorant people, will
painfully kill me for having said it. I
feel that I have to or ought to exhibit
feelings of remorse or shame about it in order to save myself from being
murdered by zealous persons for blasphemy or sacrilege. In fact, I don't feel guilty or ashamed at
all for the internet phase of Genius 2000.
I made it partly crappy and partly superior on purpose. I'm scared that I'll be tortured and killed
for admitting that I did it. It's
complicated, now that I write it down.
40.
What
is your plan for Genius 2000 to help society?
To convince people to develop
their own genius and let other people develop theirs too. But given the crowded, confused, and
competitive nature of life in the zeroes, it's not likely to be accomplished in
one swift stroke. Rather, I hope to
enchant the avid reader into a sleepy, comfortably advancing state much as
sitting in class gradually adds knowledge to one's being. Despite the fatigue.
41.
How
are you feeling today?
Not very well. I took a three-day weekend using one day of
vacation time and feel rather traumatized.
I live in nearly total isolation.
I have a lot of doubts whether I can write or be a legitimate source of
wisdom given my isolated lifestyle. The
question whether a monk or a hermit can have any health or goodness
whatsoever. I am not sure of the
answer. It bothers and worries me
greatly that I cannot finish a good book, become a published writer, and do
something good or valuable for humanity under my current state of
isolation. I worry and fear that my
solitude and celibacy are a hideous sin, making me a broken and mentally ill
lunatic/mutant/freak, able only to write disgusting vomit. How to know?
42.
How
are you feeling today?
I feel pretty well. I have been pondering solitude and concluded
that it is a good thing, beneficial, if done correctly. It is not correctly done if one is expecting
a reward. The advantage of solitude is,
like that of G2K, anticlimactic. Nothing
happens. Once I rid myself of the compulsive
need to go see people or make myself girlfriend-worthy, nothing happens. A blessed nothing occurs. In this state is somewhat where I am today. I am resigned to the wisdom of writing daily
without extreme expectations or rules, just to sit and write, low-pressure,
reading and painting watercolor too. I'm
convinced there is no need to worry excessively. Rather than worrying about what to do, how to
fix the world, I can just write the two thousand. Noble two thousand!
43.
What
are your thoughts on Machiavelli?
He said that it is best to be
both feared and loved if one is in authority.
He implied that it is not always necessary to be loved. He also implied that love only, with no fear,
is never enough. I agree that authority
must be feared to some degree, to a sufficient degree, that the unavoidable
feelings of power-craving among those not in authority will not always lead to
an attack on authority, but will be instead filtered through a questioning
layer; and therefore a peaceful solution may be found insofar as one looks and
one is possible. In any measure the mood
of usurpation will be given a chance to pass, protecting against the risk of
all imperfect love to fail at one time or another.
44. What are your feelings on the progress of the
book?
I think it's doing fine. However, I return to worry as to my exoteric
naivete. Also as to the "factum
brutum of religious revelation."
Obfuscation, misdirection, things of this nature. I imagine that these may all suffer radiance
from my fear and uncertainty about becoming successful as a writer, i.e., read
by many. Would it throw a fragile
equilibrium into catastrophic imbalance?
Would the rapprochement of liberal and conservative elements outpace the
irritation of sensitivities or the need for diversity and dynamism? Do I dare to eat a peach? Gravel for my craw? O sages standing in God's holy fire, as in
the gold mosaic of a wall, come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, and be the
singing-masters of my soul. Consume my
heart away; sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what
it is, and gather me into the artifice of eternity.
45.
Are your ideas on the shortcomings of the art-as-object paradigm valid
or putrid?
I use to say "Art is
processes, not objects." I think
this is sound, though it never was my idea only. Think of E.H. Gombrich, Literary Change,
etc. Even the IDS tower is a process and
not an object. No one should doubt this
unduly much. Only out of fear would one
doubt it. The impermanent object vs. the
permanent process, the possibility thereof, the eternal return, the
will-to-power, fields of quanta, these all hold together. Even Shakespeare's "Like as the
Waves." Shakespeare is hardly rough
and raggedy. He's vernacular to impede
idolatry and to ease the shock of contrast.
A very kind and accurate fellow, truly.
46.
What is the relevance of Laughlin's theory of dots in a temporal
field? Rather, fields of dots in
temporal frames?
It's one idea about
neuroscience. Nothing to go insane over,
to start being rude and obnoxious. One
must never ignore the factor of reverberation, unseen corrections or
"opposite reactions" that are too often ignored. Again my thoughts return to danger, the war,
the often fragile peace among peoples and the equally hazardous thrall to
custom. One could call it "highway
hypnosis." People hate the
47.
Why
is solitude the most important habit for developing one's genius?
I find that other, outside,
attractive things tend to draw me to them but ultimately cannot give me the
development I am looking for. Perhaps
far back in time, before humans were able to make or fabricate much of
anything, there was never enough "out there" to become excessive. One had to strive constantly, sure, but also
peacefully endure wanting without getting.
Food searching basically. Now
there is more food than I really need.
Perhaps being alone in the right way, without anger or self-pity, is the
only way I can get loose from other people's habits and problems. If I'm around those other people, they affect
me. If I understand I'm permitted and
capable of solitude, allowed and strong enough, then I can shape my experience
and develop.
48.
How
can Genius 2000 be reconciled with the need for focused authority?
I agree this is an apparent
difficulty. However I would caution
people away from fear to in fact the most simple and clear conscience that
there is no discord. There is no contradiction
at all between Genius 2000 and the need for distributed authority. By distributed, I mean allocated, allotted to
some in greater measure than others. For
whatever reason, perhaps due to my own flaws, Genius 2000 has been interpreted
as intrinsically anti-authority. I would
caution everyone to in fact take view of the truth, which in fact shows that
Genius 2000 is in no way hostile or antagonistic to authority and its
organized, unequal distribution per se.
If the allocation is flawed, Genius 2000 can, however, suggest improvements.
49.
Do
you really think people will want to read your old college papers?
Maybe they will. But they don't have to if they don't want
to. I imagine many readers will enjoy
the academic work and even make use of it by citation in further, newer academic
works. Now that my papers are
published--not in an academic journal, but in my own book--they can be cited in
new academic papers. Academics will like
the papers I imagine, and even lay readers with an undiscovered taste for
academic writing will enjoy them. After
all, reading an account of what someone else has read can be a very enjoyable
experience in itself, akin to a travelogue.
People will be able to see that I have done some study, have been able
to commit to something, and am not totally uneducated.
50.
Do
you avoid activities that are considered healthy and normal, such as movies,
music shows, videogames, friends, TV, sporting events, et cetera?
I have virtually no social
life, as I've said before. I have a
primary belief that if I "do my own art" properly, which could mean
writing as an art form, I won't "need" friends or other amusement
arts such as TV, sports, movies, and music.
If I am to discover how to make my own writing serve my emotional needs
I perforce have to give up those things that ease and assuage my emotions, such
as TV. Friends may also serve to confuse
and clog the development of genius. Do I
"need" friends, or would it just be nice and pleasant to have
some? If I can experience total
fulfillment of my own genius without bothering to compromise with friends,
ought I not take that path? Many great
creators have been solitary.
51.
How
does Marxism relate to Genius 2000?
In a great number and variety
of ways. Suppose we accept that the
excessive concentration of art-value in certain objects is a hindrance to value
maximization. One could say this view is
essentially Marxism, fundamentally and logically Marxist. The terms "artist" and "genius"
have relevance to each other, and I am intentionally hoping to make art out of the
question "what is a genius?" and therefore out of the question
"what is an artist?" I hope to
address the question "what is an artist?" by making art in my
specific way, the specific way in which the Genius 2000 Network is art. Because art is an economic activity,
art-value is a form of value, and artists are value-producers in this system,
art is therefore an economic activity and therefore as susceptible to Marxist
ideas as any economy or economy per se.
52.
Is
Genius 2000 pro-Marxist?
I have specifically designed
or developed the concepts in Genius 2000, its composition, to refute Marxism;
that is, to reflect and express the numerous refutations of Marxism which I
believe can be made and are accurate.
One might say I intend Genius 2000 to be the ultimate fair and decent
refutation of Marxism, both in theory and action. In this sense, I mean that I try to express
the truth as I see it in Genius 2000, and I think it is true that Marxism (i.e.
Marx's ideas and their advocacy) are inaccurate, flawed, incorrect, weak,
untrue. Whether the words themselves
"Genius 2000" alone refute Marxism I can't say. Moreover, I'm not very expert on Marx--I
think I know a few concepts accurately--so what I think I'm refuting might in
fact be Smith and not Marx. Let the
readers judge for themselves.
53.
What
are the main primary errors in Marxist ideas, theory, logic, et cetera?
Marxism errs importantly in
several areas that have happened to catch my eye, though I cannot claim that
these are the most important flaws. They
are the flaws that played the most central role in my personal encounter with
and judgments on Marxism. (Leninism is
another side-theory to Marxism which also has several flaws.) Having been born in 1969, the year of Richard
Nixon's inauguration, I experienced the Cold War. One of my very earliest memories was asking
what the word "Watergate" meant, whether it was like a waterfall over
a fence for example. I can recall having
that image. That is to say, Marxism as
practiced in Communist nations was not apparently very excellent. I also believe that Marx's "farmer in
the morning, miner in the afternoon, literary critic at night" may be
off-mark. Lastly, soviet control
(committee control) of means of production is not worker control.
54.
What
about the problem of racial differences?
This problem should decrease
over time, assuming that the world does not repeat the complete descent into
violence of parts of the twentieth century.
It's scary to think that different races might actually be significantly
different on a genetic basis--scary people trumpet that view. I suppose race questions can be placed under
the larger issues of genetic human differences and economic differences (wealth
differences). If the problems of genetic
difference and economic difference can be resolved, then race problems will be
resolved in large part. However, there
is also the race-related problem of cultural difference and cultural
permanence, which often lead to race-based conflicts. I think Genius 2000 addresses them all well.
55.
Is
P.B. Medawar's idea of exosomatic or exogenetic evolution relevant to Genius
2000?
I recently purchased a used
copy of "The Future of Man" on Nicollet Mall in
56.
What
is the Millennium Hut?
That was a fun project I did
with architect Lance Kempf of
57.
Do
you favor
Yes I do. I just read "Rise of the Vulcans"
by James Mann and recommend it to all open-minded liberals. I was raised liberal and still am somewhat
liberal. But I also see the accuracy of
some conservative and neoconservative views.
The single-superpower strategy is, in my opinion, the plan with the
greatest likelihood of avoiding recurring world wars as seen in the twentieth
century. Avoiding world wars for one
century would be a very good idea in terms of advancing Medawarean exogenetic
evolution. Given time, I think humanity
can improve greatly on cultural relations and economic well-being, thus
reducing the root causes of war. The
single-superpower strategy is the only rational strategy, in fact, in my
opinion. I doubt humanity could survive
another twentieth century type century. Not
that the twentieth century was all bad.
Parts were good.
58.
What
would you say to those who are inclined to work against the single-superpower
strategy, either by seeking to destroy
I would ask them to
reconsider. Try to seek out all the best
evidence and arguments to the contrary.
In my opinion, no one's interests will be served by attacking or even by
neglecting to assist the single-superpower constellation. In all honesty however, I generally am very
insecure about discussing serious things.
I imagine there are millions of Americans my age who want something
other than the single-superpower plan and maybe they are correct. Maybe they'll say "oh gosh there should
be several competing superpowers; competition and fairness are always
best." I couldn't agree less with
that view, and I don't see anything liberal--i.e., pro-environment and
pro-humanism--about it either. It's just
pseudo-intellectual is all it is.
59.
How
do the Eumenides fit into Genius 2000 and the global political situation of
today?
Aeschylus's play "The
Eumenides," part of the Oresteia trilogy, is my most basic and fundamental
theory of art and how it relates to the polis i.e. society. No one who doesn't understand the Eumenidean
Theory can understand Genius 2000 even in the slightest measure. Without the Eumenides, Genius 2000 is totally
incoherent and worthless. Without the
idea of the Muses, i.e. the Eumenides, Genius 2000 has a confused relationship
to the polis and hence to the politics and political situation of today, the
past, global, local, et cetera. Without
the Eumenides you have no polis, you have only the Furies, death upon death,
blood calling out for more blood.
Society is both the end of revenge, and what results from ending
revenge, cause and effect--a dimensional change.
60.
What
are the Eumenides?
The Eumenides are the nine
Muses. They are, therefore, the arts and
sciences, because Art and Science were the same in ancient
61.
If
this book were to have a traditional form and argument, how would it go?
The bildungsroman or
"building novel," about my personal journey toward edification, could
be one. Another could be based on
political theory and its relation to art.
However, I always encounter the difficulty of means versus end; is
Genius 2000 didactic or spontaneous, analytical or creative? I'm thinking that if this book had a
traditional layout of thesis-evidence-conclusion it would not and could not be
this book. After all, what is a book? What is "book"? What is "the book," i.e., what is
the difference between yonder book number 79724 and the idea of the book as
such which transcends everything ever written?
"The book has become a major conduit of ideas and education, an
institution of both manners and science."
62.
What
was your first publication?
The Coup de Tete (sic) of
October 1993. So far it has in fact been
my only publication other than the internet.
I don't know if I can reprint or include the item here. It's mine of course, but the only purpose for
me would be to prove I was published in 1993 in an anarchist college
newspaper. Of course I do not support
anarchism; it's a pseudo-politics for pseudo-intellectuals. My essay was called "There Is No Such
Thing As Plot." The idea is that
plot is an illusion, a contortion of events into a didactic canonizable pattern,
in which the events are not events and the pattern is non-pattern. I later developed the ideas more in my paper
on Oedipus and Hamlet. Artist=authority,
authority=king, plot=usurpation-plan, plot=defiance of
authority=delusion=hybris. Artist=delusion=plot. Author=authority.
63.
What
is The Hermit?
That was a novel I wrote in
1992. Really it was just an embellished
journal without any characters or plot.
Basically it was a large amount of ranting and raving about a lot of
topics, with some emphasis on solitude, being a freak, what art is, and being
an outcast. Unfortunately I'm doing much
the same thing over 12 years later.
Perhaps it's inevitable. A lot of
agents wanted to read The Hermit
after I sent query letters, but none of those who read it wanted to represent
it. I even showed it to Bob Pirsig, who
said if I kept on like that I would need shock treatment, and he was really
quite correct--I did keep on like The
Hermit and did need to go on antidepressants, which I am still on. The premise of The Hermit was that art is solitude but society cannot exist
without art, so solitude is not solitude.
I wouldn't publish The Hermit
now however. It was depressive.
64.
Is
this book similar to Poe's essay on the composition of "The Raven"?
Aspects of it are, but in my
heart of hearts I'm still undecided as to the wisdom of that. For example, what if I were to point out how
much an effect the biblical passage "He spoke as one having
authority" has had on my thinking?
I suppose if I take seriously my feeling that honesty is best policy I
ought to openly admit it. Also the
astonishing effect studying Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and
Keats had on my mind in 1987 as a freshman at
65.
Why
are you afraid of saying things that might have damaging effects?
There must be a vast array,
as vast as the stars in the sky, of reasons why I'm beset so heavily by
fears. I'm afraid to say that I think my
childhood conditioned me to be afraid to speak out, because I'm afraid that to
say so is either incorrect and therefore dishonorable or correct and
potentially painful. I agree with Aiken,
"at whatever pain to others"--that story affected me greatly as it is
so atmospheric, odd, and yet ordinary--but I still fear that by causing pain I
will provoke violence against myself that I can't defend against or spoil
someone's motivation to persist, i.e. their self-worth, and thus become guilty
of violence myself and deserving of punishment, or what's worse,
persecution--being made an example of, tormented beyond all desert for the sake
of the crowd, of spectacle.
66.
What
is different about today for you?
I've not taken meds for two
days, not taken my forty milligrams of Paxil.
I find it humiliating and canary-like to admit this in public on
paper. It implies everyone on SRI's
should cough it up like mucus, no privacy at all. I'm tormented also that maybe keeping it
secret is a sin. Holy
self-confusion. Well, it's different
about today anyway. It makes me feel
headachy, a bit twitchy, a bit more oxygenated and alive, and more susceptible
to sex and romance stimuli. Perhaps
sexually I'm a basket case. I can't seem
to decide for myself whether celibacy is a virtue or a sin. It may be a sin for others and a virtue for
me; or a virtue for others and a sin for me; or a sin for everyone; or a virtue
for everyone. Or, sometimes a sin and
sometimes a virtue. Or, at various times
both sin and virtue in various degrees.
The difference about today is deep uncertainty.
67.
What
kind of a book would you be ashamed to publish?
Subtle question. Perhaps degradation is my primary fear, so a
degrading book would be the sort I'd be ashamed of, perhaps, but everything in
this world is so finite and transient that even the degradation would be merely
a passing whiff--a cautionary mention, one could say. It may be that I would never be ashamed of
publishing any book. However, I think
that if I were to publish something that was a fully artistic manifestation of
the personal mode of being of which I am ashamed in myself when I partake of
it, that would be a book I'd be ashamed of.
But why to dwell on such a possibility is something I can't see. I can't see the value-adding from such a
project; I can't waste the energy worrying over such a speculation. There's a pedantic side, trying to tell other
writers what not to do, to such an articulation. But that type of scenario-running might not
help. Much.
68.
What
is the difference between feeling ashamed of something you shouldn't feel
ashamed of, and, not feeling ashamed of something you should feel ashamed
of?
Over-shame is unhealthy, what
an abuser puts on the victim.
Under-shame is what the abuser puts on himself. So potentially we all may have over- and
under-shame tendencies. Shame
essentially is a negative, however, regardless of the level and
orientation. It has to do with social
condemnation of bad actions. If the
actions are good, you don't need to worry about the shame factor. If I take shame for granted, as a given, I'm
cementing the presence of bad actions, or rather, the presence thereof is
cemented in my thinking or map of events.
I would hope not to have to worry about either, neither about degrading
myself nor degrading someone else. Over-
and under-shame relate to degrading another and being degraded; they differ in
location only.
69.
Would
you be ashamed of sexually abusing a child?
I think I would. I've sexually abused other children when I
was a child, and I do still feel ashamed of it when I think about it.
70.
Do
you feel ashamed of being exoteric about things you should be esoteric about?
Absolutely yes, and even
saying I feel ashamed for not having been esoteric because of suicidal, greedy,
envious feelings, makes me feel afraid that I'm not being esoteric when I
should be. To confess one's sins in
public, for personal gain and self-aggrandizement, is a form of being exoteric
for bad reasons. It may relate to mastery
and compliance behaviors in an abuse victim, which I am. I variously may try to abuse someone else
(which is mastery, i.e. if there's abuse going on, I'm going to do the abusing)
or comply (OK abuse me). These may both
derive from a lack of esoteric values.
71.
Why
do you feel so often that you've got to spill your guts so exaggeratedly?
That may come from mastery
and compliance behaviors. I lose
confidence or even belief that I have a personal space I can live in, personal
boundaries, room to live. I let myself
freak out about abuse. I don't try my
best to heal from abuse, perhaps. When I
panic, I really fall apart completely.
After all, how can a bald thirty-five year old virgin, on paroxetine and
with a 5.5 inch dick, ever be OK? How
could I ever get better, and heal, and not be a disease-bearing mucus
only? If it can happen, it could only
happen by healing, and the healing would happen either by itself or by my own
efforts. I would have to do my
part. So quitting drinking was one side
of doing my part. I guess getting over
the reflex-action of mastery behavior might require I drop Genius 2000 if I
can't make it non-abusive.
72.
Don't
you want to confess about the bad side of what you've done on the internet, and
with Genius 2000 so far?
My goodness I absolutely
crave that. If I could only feel like
I'm a decent person again I'd be ecstatic.
I don't know if confessing openly to how disgusting what I was doing was
would help me get rid of my guilt or not.
I mean, I put forth all my sickness and abusiveness on other people as
much as I possibly could. I guess I had
some grotesque idea that if I could get away with it, then I should, and if
someone had to stop me, then I had to be as disgusting as I could in order to
provoke someone into stopping me. All
this is the same as what a rapist would do primarily. I've noticed that I have a lot of
similarities to both Lenin and Hitler--mediocre, paranoid, sexually screwed up,
very grandiose, and very abusive to others.
73.
When
did you first read Nietzsche?
To the best of my knowledge,
I first read Nietzsche about January 2005.
It may have been as early as 2004; I can't be certain. I borrowed a copy of "The Birth of
Tragedy" and "The Genealogy of Morals", two books in one, from
my parents' house. It's an old blue
paperback with a Chinese print, I believe, on the cover.
74.
How
could you have gotten through college and graduate school in English without
reading any Nietzsche whatsoever?
It was never assigned. I can assure you that I never read it in any
classes I took. I recall definitely that
in 1989 I saw someone with a Nietzsche book and discussed whether he was any
good, though I'd never read any.
Thereafter, I have a pretty good recollection. Maybe I read a few snippets.
75.
Isn't
Genius 2000 just a complete rip-off of Nietzsche?
It could not have been ripped
off from Nietzsche because I'd never read any Nietzsche. Of course I'd heard of Nietzsche, probably
absorbed some of his ideas through other sources, but I got all the main ideas
of Genius 2000 elsewhere. I got
not-being-religious from not being raised in a religious setting; I got an
understanding of artistic ideals of spirituality from British Romantic
Literature in 1987; I got tragedy from Shakespeare and a few Greek plays; I
encountered a little bit of cultural theory at college but not much--more
Milton actually--and no Nietzsche in graduate school either. I arrived at Messianism and history via
Walter Benjamin. Primarily I got all my
thoughts on these matters from PPP.
76.
How
are you feeling without your paroxetine?
Fairly well. I was off of it for almost six months a while
ago, I think. Office work can sometimes
make me feel desperate and panicky, so if I indulge that hopelessness and panic
I get to feeling quite bad. Given my
very poor self-care history and skills, there should be little surprise that I
occasionally bottom out if off meds for long.
What I do wonder is whether I am absolutely incapable of living without
paroxetine. What would it or could it be
that, by doing differently, would allow me to survive and even flourish without
SRI's? Writing assiduously might help,
pursuing an artistic life, accepting celibacy i.e. refraining from
masturbation. Masturbation might be the
worst of both worlds--I lose my vital energies and remain cowardly and alone.
77.
Are
you overweight?
I'm overweight by twenty or
thirty pounds I think. I weigh
approximately two hundred pounds and am five feet eleven inches tall. I should be more like one hundred sixty
perhaps. I can't say for sure. I've been getting healthier, rollerblading
now for two days in a row--wonderful sunny spring rollerblading at
78.
Why
is the One Superpower Option favorable to exogenetic evolution?
Theoretically it will free up
an enormous amount of time and resources for reducing the stress levels of
humans and for advancing and developing cultural practices that develop genius
in lots of people. When there were two
superpowers during the Cold War or CWI, there was a gargantuan wastage of
genius-potential and time. Time is
precious. Each superpower spent a lot on
competing. In my opinion this diverted
resources from other genius-developing activities. With the O.S.O., or One Superpower Option,
this wasteful carnage would not be needed.
In fact, the non-superpower countries or states could spend exponentially
less on weapons. The benefit to cultural
progress could be astronomical, assuming that the one superpower had a sound
basis of exerting influence and did not all of a sudden sink drastically in
power.
79.
Do
the benefits of the O.S.O. outweigh the cost?
In my opinion they do. Let us not forget, also, that the costs are
as of 2005 largely already paid. The
majority of yield from here forward will be (or rather, can be) benefit. Cost is an
elusive concept, as cost and value take many forms and are not static. The cost of things can take the form of time,
material resource, options, human goodwill, etc. The
Eumenides has to be considered again.
When the polis passes judgment and Ate is effected, i.e. the correction
of the distemper by forcible restoration of Dike, then the Eumenides arrive and
the Furies disappear--the latter is actually transformed into the former. As to the fearful possibility that the
Eumenides will be lost, there is forever, eternally, a need to keep up the
polis and thus prevent the re-transformation of the Muses to the Furies. Non-polis does this.
80.
Is it
fair to say that you've never read Plato or Socrates?
Very much so. I've never read much Plato. I've read a little, a long time ago, and
intermittently. I did visit Socrates'
tomb in
81.
In
other words, Genius 2000 resembles Nietzsche simply by the fluke that you never
studied Plato?
Well it's not really a
fluke. You can get Nietzsche from a lot
of sources. Ernest Hemingway, or even
Shakespeare. I used the Socratic method
to an extent in the Video First Edition, and also mentioned the role of
"mere self-assertion", and there are also aspects of the Good and of
forms implied in Genius 2000. Therefore
I can't concur that Genius 2000 resembles Nietzsche, nor can I concur there are
no Platonic or Socratic elements in it.
As I said, I read the early part of my Norton Two, the purple one,
well-nigh devotedly in nineteen eighty-seven, and Shelley's "Defence of
Poetry" had more effect on Genius 2000 than even Fowler or Benjamin--to
poiein and to logizein. I registered a
tremendous affection and regard for Shelley, and would rank him far above
Nietzsche.
82.
Why
don't you write about how you quit drinking in this book?
It's still too recent. The prospect of declaiming on such matters
does not appeal to me. "If you talk
about it," Hemingway said, "you lose it." I read "The Sun Also Rises" over
and over again in 1990, in part because someone told me "you have to pay
for everything in life somehow" in 1987 or 1988. I did find the book "Under the
Influence" at some point in 2001 or so.
But it's really not the purpose here.
I'm more than willing to elaborate on my celibacy and masturbation
struggles but as to not drinking, well that's my private affair.
83.
What
about the eternal return, or eternal recurrence?
I got this from Benjamin via
rescuing criticism and Reflections
per Daily.html. Frankly I originally
thought it meant "eternally returning to antiquity." So.
84.
How
much longer is that Kimoto Pake going to hold out?
Not much longer it would
seem. The tip has already been pushed in
a good bit, so that I need to hold the pen itself close to upright, well say
thirty degrees off. It's about five
years old as well. Yet the pen has
served me well, even if I've misused it for writing rather than for drafting or
drawing fine line drawings.
85.
Is it
possible to fulfill one's genius, and to gain thereby an increase of an order
of magnitude in one's quality of life, if one does not have a face and figure
in the top ten percent of mass-attractiveness?
It would be preposterous to
say no, but remarkably, almost every day I act as if the answer were. Median face and figure or even far less are
still entirely sufficient.
86.
What
was your earliest determination or proposal as the chief cause of human
problems?
When I attended the
University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1990-91, it occurred to me--on Bascom Hill
I believe, frankly--that all those buildings were there to help and assist me
and the other students. They were not
vaults keeping what I needed out of my reach.
Similarly, on Bascom Hill, where I walked daily from home to class, I
recall thinking quite distinctly that humanity inflicts its true misery on
itself. Humans upon other humans, not
fate, is the problem.
87.
All
human problems originate in religious hatred?
My reflections on the
question "unde malum?" first congregated into a succinct answer to
that effect. Whether it is correct or
not is another question, but in 1990, that was my proposition. I had had enough of blame. In my personal life in 1987 I'd arrived at
the idea "Success is the best revenge; success is the only revenge;
success is revenge." I may not have
written it down, but I had the expression most vividly in my recollection. I thought it in my car near the intersection
of
88.
What
is the law of hospitality, and how does it relate to Genius 2000?
The Law of Hospitality is an
ancient Greek principle of social behavior, which stated that no traveler
should be done harm by his host and vice versa.
Violating this principle gave rise to the Curse of the House of Laius,
which led to the Antigone and Oedipus tragedies much like original sin. King Laius had broken the Law of
Hospitality. The meaning of this law was
to permit communication within the Greek world, and thus animate its genius of
place and give it strength and awareness for both development and defense. There were no other communications than by
direct encounter and word of mouth.
Human instincts can only operate within the single setting or polis;
when there are multiple cities a network is needed. E pluribus unum, or, e unum pluribus by
extrapolation. Genius 2000 is such a
network, though I have personally violated the law of hospitality.
89.
What
is the best way to deal with sexual jealousy and anxiety?
There are few problems at
which I have less competency and wisdom than that of sexual jealousy and the anxiety
that can result. I got very hostile,
jealous, and dispirited yesterday when a very buxom and long-haired woman
walked past the room I was meeting in, office-worker style, at a very very fast
walking pace, with a co-worker, and having an extremely bright and gratified
smile on her face. It was
archetypal. No guilt, having a great sex
life and a great professional life, no misery on behalf of the convoluted and
paralyzed laggards like myself. I eat my
liver backward in through my anus, whereas the less self-cannibalizing soars to
great heights. Yet I am unsure whether
paternal and fraternal detachment or determination to "get mine" is
preferable.
90.
Is
Nietzsche's theory of going Beyond Good and Evil affecting you?
It's having somewhat of an
effect. Actually reading again with a
purpose, in general, may be the cause and not the Nietzsche. I like encountering his ideas on esotericism
and moral relativism, but I think he may be wrong. It's better to stop thinking about the top
ten or one percent sexiest bodies and how badly I want to have them or resemble
them. That's junk genius. To give myself permission to go out and get
my share of junk, well that's inferior.
Esotericism implies a question about whether to do a thing necessarily
implies that to do such a thing is good; as the magnetic field forms at right
angles to the axis of direction of current, so the moral field forms at right
angles to the axis of direction of action.
Nietzschean license cannot help me with my celibacy problem, perhaps.
91.
What
do you like best about the Minneapolis Institute of Arts?
The place seems to express
the idea of a society taking care of itself, of those with a finer knowledge
and appreciation making it available to the less fortunate. I got this feeling looking at the Doryphoros,
which was surrounded with lots of fragrant white flowers, some hanging from the
high ceiling, for Easter I believe but it may as well just have been
spring. All this shows that the wealthy
and powerful do in fact have a sense of obligation to the future, and thus to
the present, and serve this obligation at high expense and expenditure of
effort. Perhaps I'm infused by a feeling
of mortality, given the twenty centuries the spear-bearer has beheld. That, and the fragility of humanity's greatest
achievements.
92.
What
are some notable works at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts?
Rembrandt's Lucretia, Van
Gogh's Olive Trees, the Chinese god of literature (16th c.), the
Persian winged genius, the Fighter of the Spirit outside, the Chinese guardian
lions, the Roman head of the Cynic philosopher, the Jade Mountain, the
Temptation painting, the Gauguin with palm tree, the Cezanne with trees, Miro's
Head of a Woman, DuChamp's Box-in-a-Suitcase, DeKooning's sketch about being
ashamed, the grave covers for prince Cheng, the Egyptian Standing Youth, the 12th
c. Bodhisaatva, Chuck Close's self-portrait with beard, Manet's Man with Pipe,
the White Lobster Phone, the yellow Chihouly sun, two Klee's with amorphous
shapes, the Magritte with a turrent and avenue, the youth giving eagle a drink.
93.
What
is esoteric about the development and fulfillment of genius, and what is
exoteric?
These relate to the virtue of
patience, because it is a virtue to do what must be done. If you avoid doing what must be done, you jam
up the whole works so that the entire system or economy loses accomplishment
mass. Esoteric genius tends to be known
toward the fewer, and exoteric genius tends to be known toward the more. Like a tree in a forest, information is not
fully defined until the act of use or knowing occurs. Esoteric genius involves patience, and if one
is to reject the esoteric one must reject patience. And as Holub said, "humanity is a job
for two million years." Patience is
definitely not the only difference between esoteric and exoteric genius
however.
94.
Is
Genius 2000 esoteric or exoteric?
Genius 2000 is not limited to
either esoteric or exoteric principles, but respects and embraces each as
proper and valuable aspects of genius.
The inner thoughts, feelings, and capacities of each individual person
are esoteric, tending toward the fewer (the one). Rarity and uniqueness is, of course, an
inexhaustible source of beauty and strength in genius. The more extensive a degree of development
may be, moreover, the less common or "exoteric" it is. To each aspect or modus of genius the
movements proper to it. Even the genius
of place is esoteric, though one can see how these terms are relative and
therefore directional. Genius need never
be the same in every time or place. It
is not homogeneous.
95.
What
are the worst actions you've taken so far as part of Genius 2000?
It's not to my benefit to
discuss this kind of thing in public.
Those actions by which I have most harmed or degraded human genius are
the worst things I've done, though the question was not specifically asking how
I define "worse" and "better," much less whether my
definition is sound. From the standpoint
of Genius 2000 as a principle, the worst things are those things that kill and
do not make stronger. I've done things
that have injured and poisoned the human genius. It may be, nevertheless, that Genius 2000 in
principle has no desire but is rather the rules and laws by which or through
which our human desire works in the world.
Genius 2000 has no interest per se of its own. My worst acts were my most self-degrading.
96.
What
will you do if no publisher or agent wants to produce this book?
There is always the choice of
including it on my website. The irony of
one's internet site is that billions of people can look at your content if they
want, but there's no rarity or lucre about it.
This book could be printed by a printer, then bound, and covered with a
nice design, and sold by hand to be read any old where sans electrics. But then society would have invested its
approval on it. The number of times I've
been told to make my expression more attractive, polite, appealing, or
"successful" could fill the universe.
"Join Society," runs the advice, but why? To gain access to a printer, or to get money
and not have to work? Working two
thousand hours per year and doing the art on the side, and then using the
internet is the logical better.
97.
Do
you feel that certain very success-choked persons or producers ought to be
competed against, as their position is very weak yet they command a vast
allocation of resources?
It's painfully obvious that
their position is weak. Discretion being
the better part of valor, however, some things take time. The mountain of souls they sit on top of, and
plough and grade with no goal in sight, is still only today's mountain. All the wealth in the world, all the talents,
are merely all the wealth in the world today.
Divided by the wealth of the future, should it go on, it approaches zero
rapidly. So let them have it. And not just part--let them have it all,
every ounce. The alternative is too
unpleasing. What they actually have,
oddly enough, is most literally nothing.
So settle for something.
98.
Why
is water so enjoyable and lovely?
When they turn on the running
fountain, though lords and ladies of the lesser earth go streaming on, the
Cancer Survivor's Park in
99.
What
is the proof that celibacy is necessary?
Maybe there isn't any. However, my current agitation may be an
indicator. It's a very sunny day. Yesterday I exercised a lot. I'm losing some of the sense of guilt of
daring to imply my art and writing is worth a look. (Let us forget that it obviously, painfully
does, in some cases to an order of magnitude over other competing
materiel.) Losing this I wonder
"Why not sex?" and fate places me near a sexy lady. At a luncheon. Does she like me? Ought I approach her? Engage?
Inquire? Offer? Is sex a sin?
Who's to know, and what will I lose if I guess wrong? If sex is OK, what in the name of Christendom
is one iota wrong with Genius 2000 and Max Herman? Paroxetine is easier.
100.
Would
it be unwise for an artist or writer to forswear the money-earning avenues of
production in favor of the purely spiritually financial and commercial land of
the internet?
By doing so the genius might
variously deprive itself of food or gain room to breathe, lose time or gain
space. Time and space, mass, and
movement are of course the ingredients of war.
Think of Go if you're not too much of a clunk. One genius may be unlike another, as they
say. I am also this, and it may not yet
be decided in the proscenial disguise which one has which bent for me, or which
will be taken upon and which will not.
Of one thing you can be sure: you can't get blood from a turnip, and you
can't compress water. I can't decide
yet, because I haven't decided yet.
101.
Is
voluntary celibacy a common practice among modern societies in the twenty-first
century?
Celibacy is not very common. A good portion of modern science will suggest
that sex-urges are built in like the growth of fingernails and it is
astonishingly unwholesome and sociopath-making not to express them by action. Sex is healthy and natural, natural, the
scientific view says in my estimation.
As surely as swimming or dancing is healthy for the heart and lungs, sex
is healthy for the emotions. Sex is
driven by hormones and other innate mechanisms to repopulate society. Failure to act out one's sex preferences
breeds madness, suffocation, hatred, perversion, rape fantasies, and
self-destructive behavior. Like being
intransigent and angry at work.
102.
Is
the 2000 quanta system feasible and proper?
There do not appear to be any
major, decisive harms posed by the 2000 quanta compositional assemblage. When archaeologists dig up a big patch of
dirt with objects suspended in it, they call it an "assemblage," much
like the debris and accoutrements that pile up in a funerary tomb for
example. If a work or assemblage of
words over time results in feelings of revulsion or boredom, a judgment of
poorliness, after a span of time the consequences are very minor. We breathe, we add to the sum total of
pollution, we take up space; yet we also work a little, eight hours or so per
day, and having been the ones that were born are obligated to do things, to
attempt.
103.
Does
socialism deserve a higher moral estimation than capitalism?
No. Socialism, Communism, and National Socialism
promise to provide a conscience of human kindness where there is none. They also argue, "masters of
deceit" that they are, that human kindness and environmental protection
are forever and absolutely alien to capitalism.
They suggest with mighty propaganda that socialism can pass laws on
workplace safety but capitalism cannot.
The idiotic assumption--it would be a worse evil had not the trauma of
industrial transformation damaged everyone's
visual acuity--that social welfare cannot be bought in a market or legislated
by capitalist legislators is the original root of socialist inversion. Expropriation leaves the economy anemic, as
Lenin found. State ownership is morally
meaningless, in theoretical matters, beyond reasonable doubt.
104.
What
does it take to remain off of paroxetine, or to keep it off of one?
To keep paroxetine of off
oneself requires a sober willingness or "untermut ubermut," that is
to say, cunning high spirits, to believe that one day very soon one is really
and truly going to "fly by those nets" once and for all and get out
of the cannibalism cage. Of people
eating one another like a house-sized genetically fabricated cat, legless,
might slowly and with serial timing swallow newborn mice in saline through a
tube lolling in her mouth but tethered by a loose rubber band. The crapulence. Oh, for the bracing fact of "You know, I
have no wish to socialize with you.
Good-bye." The world is a
sow that eats her farrow. Hold me now
and ever in good stead!
105.
Might
the failure to drive home in the public thoroughfare such matters of pre- and
post- appertaining to things leave the world in all too shaky a state?
There is great good in
leaving the more irrefutable image of what one's expression compares to
unsaid. What this good is may be
described of "be careful what you wish for." Whether it is part of love's courage to be
strong (Robinson) not to allow the very poor to be praised and exercise command
is uncertain. Strong winning moves may
anger the minders. What I am speaking of
in this pseudo-cryptic palaver is my dot-paintings versus Hirst's. Mine are better, came first, and came with no
knowledge of him. And I can prove
it. If Hirst is asking for a free slide
because of custom, is he even mediocre?
106.
May
it be considered improper to lie to another, to knowingly persuade them to harm
and degrade themselves, if one's personal genital titillation is the end?
Nietzsche might say it is
good to lie to an emotionally weak woman, perhaps still bewildered by childhood
mistreatment, and by persuading her falsely that your real interest is in her
happiness cause her to act as your sexual victim for a while. After all, she may need to learn the world is
a rough place full of liars. No sexual
relation is nurturing anyway; it's all consumption only. The damaged woman actually is doing just fine
in the bargain, as she gets to have a lot of sex while she is young and nubile
without having to bother with her own genius, or having a future, or being able
to stave off even deeper feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness later.
107.
What
is a pen that you like much more than you ever thought you would?
This one that I'm using--the
Kimoto Pake Super Fine, made in
108.
How
best can humans survive and surpass the monumental, epic suffering of the First
Cold War?
This is best done in
precisely the same way in which one takes the final sit-up one may be
doing. Much that hurts is not good for
one, but some is. To know what is, to
work to know and then make the choice to "pluck its berries harsh and
crude," with reverence and not "diffidence that faltered," this
is the only manner by which our exogenetic evolution can occur. Fearfully, even the most probable benefit is
not certain. For this reason the
greatest humility is needed, and for the experimenter to "enter the
109.
What
is happening at the opening today?
So many things are going on,
which in large part I could not enjoy due to a slight lack of sleep. I felt cranky, cramped, inconvenienced,
pressured, and angry. I saw Meliere's
first movie, but missed "the train" and got there only to see the
French Dragoons. I mean Lumiere. The lady called it "Luminere." I like the Meliere to the moon, and decided
Flash Gordon is based on it. I saw a few
others, having largely the effect on me of good perfume. Spiteful.
Then I made a postcard and my general irritation was high. I feel vastly better here, in this line,
scribbling. All told I feel that I
missed in the aim I wanted--I flirted with zero women. Maybe I'm too testy for that just now.
110.
If
economic systems can remain roughly as they are, i.e. as capitalism, what can
be looked to for making things "much better"?
People can make a muck of
their daily lives and livelihoods out of sheer childishness. People's power to mess themselves up by
drinking is difficult to take away.
Marriage, children, sexuality, education, "diet" so to say are
under individuals' own management. So they
can ruin their lives even in Utopia, even in the perfectly-run state or
polis. Disease and accidents happen
too. So the "much better"
world will not be a place where everyone is lobotomized and glowing. The only "much better" is now
incremental, genius-by-genius, quantum by quantum. What could be better? As you sow, so shall you reap!
111.
Do
people need to scrap, and hustle, and predate, and strategize?
Ah, Sunflower, here's the
fine part. Genius 2000 can do just fine
under twenty-first century capitalism.
There is no conflict so long as we respect the polis and worship the
Eumenides. Then the arts of peace will
heal the sicknesses and exercise us to an athletic joy. Be grateful!
Make enormity of gratitude your daily habit. Don't believe for a second the Furies are
"better," because my god they're the same thing gone good. Don't
toy with absolute wreckage beyond your own genius, which sometimes will warrant
phases akin to autumn or winter and "the passing away of man which is
nature," because if you do then the measures taken by the polis to protect
the Muses will apply fully. Or, be
reckless if you like messing up your own life.
Want strategy? Try developing
your own genius. Generations have died
for merely the dream of one day giving this very decent hobby to you.
112.
Is
revenge esoteric or exoteric?
Revenge is the most exoteric
of all crapulent disasters and plagues.
Revenge loves company and acts as if there is no private world, no
healing. Blood calls out for blood, soaking
into the ground. "If we put Max in
a pot and boil him down to ashes, is that all he is?" Under the Furies everyone is the same and
there is no study of art. It's hard to
see how the Erinyes and the Eumenides can even be the same. Staying home, doing your checkbook, eating
properly, sketching and painting watercolor and all the other arts of peace
that grow organically and explode into bloom after simple days of respiration
and nutrition--these are only for those who take their own steps. The Eumenides are
esoteric, in this regard. Yet the
opposite is just as true, if not more!
Like the soliton it spins.
113.
Because
the Furies and the Muses are in fact totally different and unrelated Greek
deities, isn't Genius 2000's political philosophy utterly absurd and frankly worthless?
Certainly it doesn't
strengthen my hand that I committed an ultra-whiff on the Erinyes/Eumenides
question. I believe the most likely
thing is that in lecture Dr. Fowler said something like "by this vote the
Furies were turned into something domestic, more like the Muses." Perhaps I just invented it out of whole
cloth. Factually "the
Eumenides" means "the Furies" or "the Erinyes" exactly. There's no "conversion" of the
Furies to the Muses. Good lord what a
fractious blunder. Recovery seems now
unattainable. My theory of changing
vengeance to pleasurable artistic exuberance, politically permissible freedom
that develops, is a figment with no precedent.
114.
Is it
possible to make your Erinyes-to-Eumenides sound, gripping, and compelling by
sheer force of will and insistent stupidity?
At the Burning Man festival
of crapulent barf in 1997, I made a three-level ziggurat out of two-by-fours
and determined that any work of art can become the greatest work of art in the
world, in history even, if I decide it is and stick to my guns. Not me per se, but someone. Some people can do this, probably not me
however but why not "make believe" while we may, and when they do
this it is done. Part of making
something "the greatest" is just to treat it like the greatest.
One may, in this self-fulfilling manner, transform the stars or autumn
leaves into the very most perfect work of art ever to exist simply by steady
prayer. So--I challenge even the mighty
Aeschylus. So!
115.
Are
the politically welcomed Furies still vile blood-glutted monsters or the
driving energies of art and success?
The Furies finally figured
out--the damn junkies--that success is revenge.
Now this is "my way."
And maybe it's truer than you think.
Space in three dimensions is made infinitely "larger" by the
addition of time; just as while a floor alone has no volume one additional
element of height creates a room--from zero to a positive quantity in an
increase by a ratio of infinity. Therefore
it is clear that breaking the rules can be evil, but even making a rule--the
rule as such--is breaking the prior rule of the Erinyes and the "rule of
one master." Perhaps, the
ingredient of my insisting the Erinyes did
turn into the Muses is procedurally legitimate and even truer than the other "old story."
116.
Given
the "Eumenides Blunder", is Genius 2000 left unjustifiable?
It certainly does dump the
excuse I used to primp and preen over--no wonder no one ever thought of
it! I made it up myself out of thin
air! Absurd. I used to think, "Heck, isn't the whole
Communist Manifestation based on Furies not being Muses?" All their anti-bourgeois B.S.--as if Max the
Bourgeois didn't wear them all out on the field of art, endlessly. All the commies cared about was revenge,
expropriation, making the wrong right.
As if the Muses couldn't do it--as if, were it to be done, it would only
and could only be done by Terror. Good
luck with that over any length of time.
You'll rule the City empty of men.
Or, you must have no laws, no oracles,
no Zeus, only the One Master. Even if Aeschylus didn't say it.
117.
Is it
possible that the welcomed Furies are not the muses, but merely some horrific
poisoned archaisms kept around to scare the thick-headed, the Caliban?
No it isn't, because if that
were true the whole Oresteia would not be presenting a heightened, artistically rendered world. It would be, in a word, crapulence. Over-full.
All one has to do is read the play, even though by doing that today is
how I found my blunder. The Furies are different. They bless the city and bring it
fruitfulness. They are not just set to
the side, like an older and harsher justice to be brought out at tough
times. They're doing different work. Unfortunately, this will require some
quoting. But I can prove the polis requires channeling revenge into art.
118.
Can't
the revenge and the success come from different driving forces?
It would appear they
could. First you have mad-dog
revenge. Then someone says "oh
let's switch to success instead."
But what do you do with the old forces?
Maybe just shut them away and bribe them until they die of old age. But if there's no change of one thing into another there is no risk, problem,
uncertainty, or compulsion.
Unfortunately I can't make the case.
I blundered. Sorry, Lattimore.
119.
Can
Genius 2000's exuberance and delight in wholesome art convert the Furies' rage
to a benediction and thus save the polis, thus save polis?
I don't think it would be
precisely those qualities, if any, of this kind of thing that would change the
organization of forces from revenge to success.
It would take something else; moreover, this something else would cause
by precedence both those qualities to show as well as revenge-wishes to be
transmuted.
120.
Is
addiction fun?
Addiction starts out fun but
then the fun wears off and you just feel sick and miserable, because weakness is the true misery. Unless you think being sick and weak is fun,
which it isn't unless you're warped and insane and what not.
121.
Did
Genius 2000 already fix everything?
It already fixed everything
that was broken, that is to say the circle.
I mean the keystone. I mean, at
least it didn't wreck the whole damned world.
Or maybe it did. Wow. I guess it's fun to have no idea whether
Genius 2000 has killed and buried art and poisoned the earth forever in toto,
or saved everything.
122.
Are
God and art both monodeities?
It's impossible to know. What is clear is that it's eleven P.M. and I
have no lady, don't dance, and am getting out of here. Thanks for the music, band!
123.
Don't
the writings of Keats and Shelley cover you, cover Genius 2000?
Surely they do. Allow me to list to poiein and to logizein,
the unacknowledged legislator/prophet/Apollonian advocate of the
"Defence." Amazing how few,
eighty-six years later, people have read Keat's "Vale of
Soul-Making." To remedy this I
assign you Norton 2, which, be that as it may, is out of print. Read these things! "Get him, get him, get him, get
him."
124.
How
does art relate to the future viability of democracy?
In order for democracy to
work people have to become better artists and appreciators of art. Alexis de Tocqueville said, "as men
become more equal, they must become more competent." In fact, one of the only advantages of
enforced equality is that it compels individuals to improve just as a tucking
skater spins faster.
125.
Why
does Shelley mention "Of Death" and the Filium Labyrinthi in the
"Defence"?
I imagine that it was to his
purpose. People are so prone to ask
"why," without realizing that without answering the question
themselves they will never even begin to have the question itself much less the
answer. There is also the goal of
equating poetry with other endeavors of the human genius--philosophy, science,
and politics. Shelley and I are great
friends; he's a great friend to me. His
loss was incalculable. A simple boating
mishap! Imagine his final thoughts!
126.
Won't
it be difficult to write 1875 of these before September first?
Not for me. I have energy enough and need something to
do, and want desperately not to be "a hopeless case." I want back into the world! I want more life! Earning my way back into the fold, even by
reading, by looking again at "words twice spoken." Sure it won't be the simplest thing, but no
more taxing than a moderately challenging part-time job--like raising a
child. Rather, less so; it resembles
more building a decent garden in a single spring. Shovel, grade, weed, water, plant, powder,
clean. Amen.
127.
Doesn't
the comparison to Bacon and Cezanne shame Genius 2000 and thus mortify Max
Herman, and force us to the fence that we honor him with eyes nor ears until
the penance paid, which can be never?
This is not so in the
world. Zeus can fix all things with but
the tiniest effort, with "no hard breath," except to bring someone
back from the dead. Nor does this mean
we should be slaves to the fear of death, as if by bawling we could "get
out of it." Come now. No, Max Herman, should all go well with him,
will not be ashamed to meet Lord Bacon at a later time, and to greet Cezanne on
his walks by the Lac D'Annecy. As
128.
What
good are the proper instructions, laid out, if the fool prefers not to follow
them?
For a thing to be is enough
to prove it is possible. Hence the lies
of the fool may halt in mid flight, to his own great benefit, and without
harm.
129.
What
are the three greatest habits for one's genius?
These are avoidance of
addiction (temperance), daily reading (prudence), prayer (justice), and
light-heartedness (fortitude).
130.
Is
sexual arousal a bad thing?
Let's consider that it may
be, and then consider why. Many
societies have prescribed that women be covered, so that the men will not get
aroused except at home in the marriage bed.
Not the worst plan if monogamy is the primary value, that is to say, if
monogamy has more value than polygamy.
Other concerns arise, however, with this covering-up. The harm to me today of arousal is hard to
gauge. It has not been extreme. My god there's a white spider on my
thigh! Now inner! What has brought it thither in the
night? I would say that to see an
arousing woman, copulate with her, and let it go at that, well what's the
harm? Unwanted children? Not with a rubber. Perhaps the very idea one can get what one
"wants" is the culprit, the crime….
131.
Is it
not true, however, that you have re-dedicated yourself to constructive,
historically normal dating?
Very much so. Although my style of approach is to be
idiosyncratic, romantic, and my own, I've determined that my years of
masturbation should now good-naturedly end.
The White Spider told me so.
132.
How
is the current poisoning of the environment, land, and water to be best
addressed?
Conclusively the liberals
miss the steps involved in advocating for their twin priorities,
environmentalism and humanism. The polis
cannot be expropriated to purchase these second-order imperatives. The fiscal-military basis of civilization, of
exogenetically evolving polity, is the horse before the cart of E and H. Would you kill a horse to get it out of the
cart's way? Therefore the amity of all
genius in a healthy not "poisoned" peace (as Camus warned against) is
the task of art; this is to give love courage to be strong. Then, when the dynamic unity of sentience and
space-time is in place--this is the peace--then the victorious, safe, honored,
and secure warrior-guardians will make means of the "more perfect"
world more common. This will be done
when it endangers neither the future nor the guardians of the future. So think carefully and without flatulence ye
would-be chivalrics of E and H. Or is
all your frenzy just for attention, just antics to "get the girl," or
to barge onstage like a drunkard? If
that is the case, you're not really striving to help E&H anyhow so let's
not gild the lily. Paquin, pull down!
133.
Is
truth relative or absolute?
A thoughtful question, per
se. If a given phenomenon, say
"farting" instead of truth for truth's sake, is relative, then it is
absolutely true to say it is relative.
In turn, farting is only absolute relative to the non-absolute or
relative phenomena such as vomiting.
What do we have here? Perhaps a
failure to communicate. Every relative
truth is absolute, and every absolute truth relative: absolutely relative and
relatively absolute, respectively. Nor
does this end our inquiry. Let us recall
the magnetic field at right angles: the two go together. Is human nature (humanity or humanness)
constructed only? If so there is no such
thing as violence, harm, degradation, or slavery--only varying
arrangements. The answer (or release)
lies in time-steps, cells.
134. How can the Eumenides Blunder be fixed?
Very easily by a simple
inclusion of a step, and intermediary step between Aeschylus and me. Dr. Fowler mentioned that the Athenian Furies
were integrated into the polis. She
compared them to the Muses. I then
considered that the forces of nature, of its self-protection and revenge, can
be and must be, per Aeschylus, integrated into the polis. The true muses then are not the children of
Zeus and Poetry. They are the chthonic
forces of nature and hardly secondary at all.
Mere artifice is like twigs in a blaze.
Success is revenge. Genius 2000
therefore revises "art" from instrumental reason to passionate
nature, to factum brutum. The error is
only apparent.
135. Why is it detrimental to the development
of genius to feel obligated to take care of others?
Dysfunction, co-dependency,
and abuse give us a fine case study of how the feeling of obligation to take of
another can hurt your soul, your genius, your genius 2000. If I'm pre-occupied, due to fear, jumping the
gun in hastiness, with the guilt that I deserve not to write because my granpa
is sad then I won't write or at least maybe not well. More precisely, if I yield to that feeling,
obey it cravenly to appease, a posteriori I'm not writing. The feeling is unavoidable but acting on it
is. Turning it into an obligation or
rule, and taking the guilt and self-mutilation of non-compliance on oneself,
that is one form of making the feeling a rule that hurts.
136. Why is it so important to you to recall
Joyce?
Joyce believed in the modern,
i.e., post-medieval, idea of the individual artist. The individual, single-quantum genius was
theretofore a minor element, at most a nuisance or obstruction to the Great
Impersonal One. Joyce thought and wrote
that we "are stuck with it," the individual genius of cognition and
perception. The maps without this ocean
in them do not longer hold or serve. So,
he wrote "vermin bred of the sweat of sloth," as well as on the
archtype of the individual grandiosity of raw genial desire in Icarus
("the sky is black with
them"), as well as "when a soul is born in this country, nets are
thrown at it--family, religion, country.
I shall try to fly by those nets."
137. If global capitalism is an OK state of
affairs, and this historical tradition of art is also OK, why are you bothering
with Genius 2000---and much more importantly, why should anybody else?
Imagine a world in which people
could choose to behave well or ill.
Then, imagine a world where they actually chose well. They would do well under the conditions
available. What would this be like? Different religions' adherents not killing
each other and not destroying the polis in order to get
"supremacy." Imagine a
military core of authority sufficient to deter and dismantle any congregation
of ambitious fighters seeking to upset the apple cart. Imagine a cultural-behavioral field of
occurrences that both refrains from threatening the military core and loyally
protects it by duty. Art would be a part
of this, or what used to be called art.
138. Can art exist without any objects?
This was a question I
considered in 1994, in Literary Change (see
www.geocities.com/genius-2000/LiteraryChange1-6.jpg). The problem of the graven image. You won't believe I thought of Literary
Change before encountering Horkheimer or PPP but I did. (This fact makes me feel, incidentally, that
I must be insane--people say they think I lie because "no one could be
that smart and artistic." Imagine
people saying of a drawing you did, "that's too good for a slob such as
yourself. Who did you steal it from? Who?")
I did think of Literary Change.
It's not so hard to believe if you consider my maths background at
UMTYMP, more aptitude than results to be sure yet still a sign of analytical
problem-solving. Then ponder talk I
overheard in 1988 to the effect that "
139. What is the purpose of leaving up all
those jpegs, the papers, and the original Genius 2000 site, and so forth, if by
your own confession your previous actions were disgusting?
Some of the jpegs are
frighteningly bad, even sickening. Some
are acceptable. People may try to
pigeonhole me based on a good jpeg or a bad one--why would I want to make those
attacks, those reductions, easier for anybody?
If I pretended perfect knowledge of which were rich and poor, decent or
degrading, I might only make the entire thing worse. Go ahead and look at the ones you hate, or
ones you love, or your friend hates or loves.
Frankly I just don't want to take them down, I'm afraid to, and why couldn't I live
down the "bad" ones? Some are
quite decently intended but incompetent; some are lucid but embarrassing. So be it.
140. What if people mis-read archived emails
and then mischief or bad things result?
Oh what's the big deal
anyway, is my view. Go ahead and read
them, or go ahead and don't. Read one
but not the other. Read the funny ones
and skip the alcoholic ones. Point out
the patterns of my good or evil, my pathologies, my nobilities, my irrelevance,
your irrelevance, what felt good but went sour or fizzled. Maybe you'll try to "boil it all
down" as a school project and win a nickel. But as to taking them down, what is really
meant is being ashamed of them, not moving on, denying Zeus and his oracles and
laws, that is, taking down myself, eating my liver, philosophical suicide. And maybe I don't like that.
141. Aren't you sick of the ante-bellum
tensions, of an industrializing North losing its market and raw materials in a
rebellious South and thereby its capacity for Union and escape from Europe's
historical orbit?
Many would even today like
there never to have been a
142. Should one care to touch on the
attraction of television, of snack foods, of getting drunk and high; of video
games, of all the myriad amusements to replace the pen and the inks; should one
care to wonder about "junk for the genius," what would one come to?
Salt was rare in old times,
so it seems savory to the beast in humans, but it has no nutritive value beyond
a very low base level required. Excess
of that which is superficially attractive causes many an illness. Why I myself sometimes lack the foresight and
decency to hold my neck upright when I compose--I cramp and hunch as though
"I have to get it down," some astonishing formula. An emotional and sentimental vomitorium of
inks. Yet there are subtler, healthier,
well-nigh magical tastes whose savor merely gathers slower. Find them.
143. Should life be viewed and discussed (in
rhetoric) as a recurring cyclical process or a purpose?
We don't live as means only,
Kant said. We are not means only. We, the human, are an end in ourselves. Instrumental reason, the logic of means only,
mocks and what is worse forgets the end purpose of all the fighting, killing,
tilling, traveling, gathering, and wetwork.
Is this just to sit and vegetate, to be lifeless and equably rot? To be a rotting egg in an unwept carton? No, it only means that we rest peacefully in
the heart of God. We pray and
meditate. I call God "Genius 2000,"
I=Genius, 2000=Am, God=I Am, God=Genius 2000.
And you think I wish to denigrate religion, to smash it, to ridicule
it. Or perhaps I'm being
self-deceiving--everyone's always known I'm pious but principled.
144. Is it evil to discuss God?
Many religions, the oldest
and earliest in particular, prohibited "discussion" of God. This is mentioned in the Video First Edition
vis-à-vis Yahweh, YHWH, and ineffability.
Certainly in a world of widespread religious animosity (or
"fitna" as it is named in Islamic life) one might do better never to
discuss God. If the bourgeois coyness is
superior to discussion, and what is more, so superior that religion ought never to be discussed, then you have
your answer. Yet remember the law of
diminishing returns and even of pressured reactive response--never discussing
God creates some of the worst things the very prevention of which motivated our
silence. Not to defile God with rank
expressions, sure. But the fountain
overflows. "It is not what goes
into the mouth that defiles a man, but that which comes out--for that comes
from the heart."
145. Is unwholesome repression and quiet
exoteric?
The exoteric results can be
manifold. Does public discussion of
religion rob us of our inner life, of our inner genius? "Genius" is a pagan word, but as
the precursor or origin of both soul and of monodeity--of learning and learned
sentience--it may be in the ultimate sense far less pagan than much of
conventional monotheistic behaviorisms.
Done in a skewed way--skewed in a particular way--discussing art in
public "degrades" it, makes it common, vulgar, plebeian, democratic,
exoteric, entropic. Yet this is far from
the only effect. It may be that telling
you you have some element or pattern of the Good in you, a fragment, and that
everyone does, is the only way to give you a stake in the esoteric; and
moreover, this being factually true, it can calm you. And the dreams that move over calm waters are
what genius develops into itself.
146. What can we, the readers, make of the
fact that you masturbate and have no friends?
How I could know that is
beyond my comprehension. My guesswork
lately is that being off paroxetine makes my genius sharper but more volatile,
good for writing perhaps but likely inimical to my workplace
professionalism. I am already a touchy,
bald, aging son of a gun and therefore "under scrutiny"--my
"psychological time-bomb" is ticking.
I don't wish to be dismissed just yet, the moreso because I'm phobic
that this shan't be published and I will need my sinecure until 2035. So, being antsy and snappish, I choose to
masturbate. I know it's not what you
wanted to hear. At least I avoid
pornography sometimes! I can get off
into a liver as good as the next man.
147. Speaking of Bellow, have you ever read Dangling Man?
Yes, how coincidental you
should mention it. In fact, most of the
ideas in Genius 2000 were stolen or at least adapted from "
148. How did your personal letter from Bob
Pirsig get stolen?
I was moving away from
149. So you advocate hyper-redundant backup
arrays?
Only if you won't ever need
or want to erase it. By analogy, if
humans could never forget we could never sleep and that can be deadly. I do recommend backing up your efforts in
things like recorded work, writing, etc.
Every kid knows that it would be nicer now if we hadn't lost all the
books in
150. Do you have sciatica?
In fact a touch of sciatica
has been irritating me lately. It's not
physically inconsequential to scribble out twenty or so half-pages per day,
either. I get the twinges sometimes, but
also in my left under-wrist which may be from keyboard work at work or from
pinched nerves caused by weightlifting.
151. Isn't your idea not to diet and exercise
for vain "costly gay" sex-seeking but for medical health and energy
for writing only?
There are two factors
here. One is to lower my cholesterol,
lower stress, keep mental stability and mood levels, keep my job, lose weight
to help my sciatica and maintain adequate energy for nightly writing. Reconsidering isolation is a separate task of
emotional wellness. To lose the
self-castigation that rationalizes solitary resentment. At least to consider normal dating or
marriage?
152. Would you tell us about the three
standout qualities of speaking subjects?
This was a way I tried to get
some escape-leverage out of academia.
Little schemes and nonsensical gestures, ways of asserting my own little
piece of sanity and decency over and against the Great Machinery of
institutional thought. Among people
talking and debating, speaking, using rhetoric and language in the social
setting of life under pressure, you have certain effectuations--whether the
person is heard; whether they speak truth or more especially needful truth;
whether the speech is effectuated in action.
Why do people (humans) speak? To
consider, weigh, decide, and act. Hence
the three aspects--did one speak, did one speak right, was it effective.
153. Is monodeity a necessary result or law of
sentience in time-space?
By way of answer, consider
the following: art created
humanity. Art entered into the mixture
of things, "birth and death and thoughts of these," at some point in
primate evolution. Take the bone-using
kill-smasher from "A Space Odyssey" if you need to, but another might
well be better, though said has its advantages also. Art created humanity, created humans. It was here before us, and made us. How many dimwit liberals would even guess close to what that means? Maybe some, maybe none. Thus if art created us we have no say in what
it is. It's a law and we obey it or get
ridden down. And what was one to do
before Mendel? Even now the language of God is the only thing that
makes us human. Like it or not.
154. What does Daily.html mean?
That's just about my favorite
page of all time. Plus "Every Thought
Has A Number" with the Afghan flag.
Oh several. (Note to Self: write
PhD thesis on why phrasemaking comes from advertising idiom, widely, in a
rather touching manner.) The profane,
the avenue of its quietest approach, the restitutio in integrum, the external
downfall destined to find it--few things on this earth surpass that. A man hounded to death by National
Socialists! Ironically, when I was
mis-prescribed a potent anti-psychotic (forget the name--Propunchion?) because
of wanting to do Genius 2000, I lost the ability to sleep for a month, had no
health coverage, got put on seventy-two hour hold, but stole a New Republic
from the doctor's exam room to read inside--the cover story on "The Failed
Messianism of Walter Benjamin"! And
the ethos of responsibility as replacement.
155. Did you ever not want pre-emptive war by
the
Heavens no; any dimwit knew
in 1992 (the year of the Hermit) that the vacuum left by Sovietism would
require an expansion of capitalist democratic force structure. Only a supreme fool lacking any sense of
pragmatism would see such things otherwise.
Of course not just troops, but prosperity--a Marshall Plan and not a
156. What is the importance of Holub in Genius
2000?
At Oberlin in 1987 a lot of
us read Holub for a class there. I
myself enjoyed it, and wrote a good one-act play in the style of Holub and a
moderately good prose essay titled "Holub's View of the Effect of the Will
on the Dualities of the Human Condition."
Again, the Doubters might say such a paper and play are impossible, as I
was just eighteen at the time. Well,
read them and weep Mssrs. It's time to
return the library books and shape up.
Interferon as a theory of theater, that's effectual. Brief Reflections on Butchering a Carp. Or at least, a hint of
157. What is
the deal with Interferon, On Theater, only one death in the village, the
backstage of the world,
The deal is whether I really
read it, as many say is impossible in 1987, and whether it affected me when the
fly laid her eggs on the eye of the dead cavalier. The gulp of schnapps. No one is perfect such things give one an
idea. In particular, imagine you're a
moderate whiz at math, having decided only two months before not to return to
the dry instruments. Then, behold, a
poet with a day job--in science no less.
At the time it must have hit me so abruptly it didn't even register:
here is some relevant poetry for my concerns.
The additional appeal of "modern" poetry, Post-Victorian,
gritty and urban. "Stars of the
main sequence shine on forever."
All this just to say it showed there is more than "theory,"
that the job can be done.
158. What does the kung-an, or koan, have to
do with Genius 2000?
The origin of the talent, the
quantum, the kung-an, is lost even to me in the mists and fogs of time. Perhaps the 1-2-3-4 of math had something to
do with it. The specified variables x
and y. It may have been concern with the
one and the many, the artwork and the canon, which I encountered in 1987 in the
guise of cultural studies and whether
159. Is the Video First Edition worth seeing,
and if so, what does it mean?
There are legal questions
about the releases my interviewees signed so the thing may not be available. If you're on fire, don't watch my documentary
about the meaning of genius and the meaning of history--stop, drop, and
roll. What it means is itself, it's
non-transferable. It's good
however. Very dutifully done.
160. Why don't you want to bare your dirty
secrets?
They're only secret because
it's improper to put them in public.
They're private matters, and properly so. It's not what I want, it's what's proper and
mannerly. Would you want to spill all of
yours? You prefer to have no space or clemency? If so, then you spill. It's like tuning to a neutral third-party
tone, decorous.
161. When did you first read Eliot's
"Tradition and the Individual Talent"?
In 1990, in my Modern Lit.
class as a junior at
162. When did you first start using the terms
"expressive object" and "technological species"?
At this moment the specific
years are escaping me. "Expressive
object" came earlier, as I was trying to find a less dogmatic and
untraceable term for "artwork" or "artifact" or "art
object." When exactly I began to
question the status "artifact" eludes me. Both began in the nineties, possibly 1989 but
I highly doubt it. After 1992, after The Hermit, after I graduated
perhaps. The purpose of these two terms
may be to indicate when I tried to get away from the concept of great genius,
make great art-piece, build up artisticness, add-add-add, which individually
blocked me (asking why it was and why could I add more) and then turned out to
have blocked others, say the idea of accumulating wreckage or adding "an
inch or an ounce."
163. Why do you get so jealous, bitter, and
narrow when you see an attractive sexy-poo and know she doesn't belong to you
and will not ever?
An exciting answer for me to
say, because the needed awareness is not always there for me. I often forget how to "prune by
study." Perhaps I'm irritated that
pretty women, sexually active and attracting ones, insult me with their
preference for another. It would seem
that my artistic effortfulness and pretensions are only self-hypnosis to think
I'll soon get "the pretty ones," party with them, fill their minds
with my seed and get to view it. Perhaps
it is the fear of death I feel because as foci with such strong pull they might
array forces curt enough to crush me.
They do cause motion and trampling.
Yet if I heed the Great One, the Great Law, am I not secure? Can I not weather any storm one day to have
said "I've beaten out my exile"?
Perhaps.
164. Why are you jealous, bitter, and
desolated whenever you encounter happy, glowing, beautiful people having a good
time?
Good gracious I'm not sure
but it must have something to do with them having and enjoying something I want
but don't have; want to be but am not.
Young, sexy, attractive, my whole life in front of me. Fresh and alive.
165. Are you aware that you're missing the
Xenakis piece, a piece of music--you've got a ticket to an all-evening jazz
show--that involves math?
Yes, but this café is nice
too, maybe they could love me here, though it's really only the chairs that are
sexy, and the view. The early-evening
light. A clean well-lighted place! Run, Joe, run! And yet another dots-piece.
166. Are you finally proud of yourself yet?
Well I did get back in time
for the Xenakis so I'm proud of that; but whether that is myself or should be
treated as such in that the Genius 2000 is the real me and I only aim and
shoot, I cannot say.
167. What if the
Everything is a koan,
everything that occurs occurs in time-space like Shakespeare's pebbled
shore. I ought to try to be clear and
decent but it's not always easy for me to be straightforward and concrete. I'm still a "Knight of Cups" in
this respect. Yet here I go: all things
are occurrences, not objects; all occurrences occur in space-time, are finite,
yet "point beyond"; we are merely players. Clap then or leave me trapped in
168. So, everything is dots in temporal
frames, quanta-in-field?
Certainly, like the
Fischinger films here at the show. Dots,
spots, and circles on frames of celluloid.
People are like that too, the individual talent-in-history; time is a
volumetric tube on the slices of which we can run calculus. Even (wow, Fischinger is similar to certain
jpegs, though
169. What do shapes, slicing, microscopial
film-slides, and dada have to do with anything?
Science per se may or may not
be dada, innocent, innocuous and untainted.
There is something "not enough" with that. The "missing thing."
170. Did you just burn out a used-up pen, and
in starting another--rather a special pen bought in extreme hope--how does your
mortality hang on you now, brazen usurper?
Only that my mortality seeps
from me, time passes, I lose one pen stolen from my old temp job and start
another, one I bought with its twin "for a purpose," to go even I
think with a paper for a twin. How
portentous! Though now I use it
thankfully. Thank god I'm alive!
171. Does using or rather allowing oneself to
be used--wafted upon--by one's own time-space matter more and do more in the
end--toward the end--than impregnating the sexy (i.e. cloning oneself where all
wish to clone)?
It would be pleasing to say
only the former matters, is matter, but false.
172. What if your desire to "accomplish
something in your little solitary world" is only a mask for wanting to
take over and run and rape all the other spots, all the other chairs with folk
in them--their shoes, their gorgeous hair, their lips--and in this you are
completely sociopathic, rapist?
If if if, if a fool would
persist in his folly he would become wise; though my effortfulness here in my
own chair my love of another may arise--but even so this is only love and hope
for harmony. Hamlet said, "use them
after your own dignity, for use them as they warrant we are all
whipped." Perhaps I can unhook
myself by quoting "the eager ambition that profits the state." Maybe my only masturbating counts for
something, my celibate mask. Only I
don't know. "Keep thy heart light,
lest it make thee sink"!
173. What if envy is the love of nothing, and
in order to be one must care for something other than craving what one has
not--indeed to grow a loving lasting home of regard for what one has?
Surely a break may be needed
in the swamp of covetousness, a blade to mightily hack the knot. To envy thine merely to neglect mine
own. My desire tells me a woman would be
nice, satisfying, life-giving, but what is more, would change me, alter me, cause me to exist in a fuller, better, realer,
less speculative, less insecure (fleeting) way.
Perhaps this is the hormonal love-surge we require for loving
children. Candles do not determine the
need for more of me. Still the cravings
are of a kin to self-erosion, removal of the ground beneath me. What could be less endogenetically survivable
than the self-contained consciousness, sufficient unto itself? Maybe its absence in an exogenetic
species-making.
174. Is the first step of "not
looking" a betrayal of the West and of your own gonadic impressioning?
Not really. Let them look at me if they want but I don't
"owe it to the cause" to look at them. That's the Lolitation of the Men of Numenor
and well to be scoffed at. Sure not
looking pisses people off. But my god,
if liberal democracy has come to that it's cooked. Not looking, i.e. making it worse, and then
absorbing that state--well that's the
escape.
175. What else is there to Genius 2000 besides
the kung-an thing for those of us who don't need basic dating strategy tips,
i.e. meet our social comrades not in
the desperate swamp of inaction?
There's the rescuing
criticism part too, stolen from Benjamin, that "saves" all past art
from homogeneous oblivion. So chew on
that!
176. What is another of those wonderful
"keystone" experiences you make such claims about for Genius 2000?
The ideas I had "out of
the blue" about the essence of tragedy in
177. As an exogenetic evolutionary
experimenter (E.E.E.), might you not "guarantee" your own replication
or at least staying "around" by treating the beautiful women as
sisters and daughters?
That sounds lovely. Please count me in for that orchestra--front
and center. So.
178. Might thy chaste and filial manners be a
sidelong denigration of the lovelier angels?
Nay, there are far to the
more often shortages in the brotherly column.
So many clowns and villains trying to get into women's pants it
downgrades the whole stream of human endeavor--it's murder on the exogenetic
store of variegation. Holub called it
hominization.
179. Are you truly content with such a
Platonic, non-sexual posture toward the sexy ladies?
Certainly in part I am, that
is to say at times, particularly at times like now when my lonesomeness
stings. It pinches. I'll wait till my life isn't towtruck-ready
and then politely ask "hello."
"I find you charming."
180. Why does the dram of eale all the noble
substance of a doubt, to its own, scandal?
Because one small part of
something with a very strong effect on its surroundings can have a very
significant control-role on a very large amount of surrounding material over
enough time. Whether this is a
"bad" thing, to be feared, et cetera, thou mayest judge.
181. What does Genius 2000 make of all the
high number of peoples and polii who have gotten smashed along the way?
Some were not so good and deserved
it whereas some were wonderful and didn't.
Perhaps justice is more about "who deserved it." But there will be and always is a serious
problem on blame. When we blame others
we are--well, I can't in good conscience say blame is a mistake. An errorful way. Yet when we blame wrongly it is. Blame right or leave blame alone. Yes!
182. And yet, to times in hope, shall this
verse stand?
Many folk feel that a certain
dreaminess and agitation of particles of pabulum will give us the sweet
perfection. Thus a polis where the
toughness is put on most judiciously will be the finest. (Dang it, I wrote this C-D, C-D song way back
in the day in goddamned
183. Why don't you be the real genius and take
steps in the overspace while letting the many growing things go about their
way, and in so doing, gain the freedom in which you can finally move your limbs
without harming, love your fellow-beings who, did they know it, want nothing
more than to exist?
Pfff, if I knew that before,
but now that I do it sounds great. I may
not get to vent my baser reptilian feelings of hate and envy on anyone without
regretting it but heck, I'll take the self-respect if so doing will get me
it. Not to have the "oh gosh I've
broken fifty people's feet today by tooling around in my halftrack." To do something that is a thing, a thing to
be done or to do, perhaps provisionally, that does not provoke or attack other
religions, or belittle them, or insult them, or even ignore them, but on the
contrary gives them space--all of them more--and amity, fresh air and room to breathe
it--that's the real work.
184. If you're at peace with yourself then why
don't you stay out of everyone else's business with your cravings to be
necessary, preserved, and "copied"?
By all natural rights one
might think that to be the best path--to make no expressive object, to
articulate nothing, to be perpetually silent and mute. Unfortunately something will be "out and
about," something is always under expression. The risks must be weighed, the
advantages. Not that I wouldn't enjoy
expressing nothing if that's how the cards were dealt, it seems sometimes. And yes, the torments of "do I dare
disturb the universe" are possibly the cruelest that ever existed. Among all the multifarious testing methods
I've tried, several have recommended I publish though some have recommended I
never do so. Reason and logic don't
solve it, neither does passion, neither does guessing nor experience. And yet, our choices all go "in the record."
185. Will you be supremely disappointed,
crestfallen, if in September no one yet wants this book and so you are forced
to put it on the internet for free?
Sure, I suppose that's
possible--but how many of us get the chance to suffer that kind and level of
neglect? At a highly bald thirty-five to
put one's life's work on the internet for free, well, that's a pinch.
186. What if you fail to gain commercial
representation, place on the internet a book based heavily on masturbation and
mild mental illness, and therefore lose the job you have now held for over two
very salubrious years?
Such setbacks and
devastations are minor set against the horrors of a Van Gogh or Keats'
Tuberculosis. I welcome the severity,
though may change heart too.
187. What is the meaning of Paul Tillich's
statement that "Religion forgets that it owes it own existence to man's
tragic estrangement from his true being; it forgets its own emergency
character"?
Interestingly enough many of
the most devastating questions--devastating to peace of mind and cultural
stability--radiate from that mentioning, a mentioning that is no less
unavoidable for that fact, and which attains the soul-tearing force of
machine-gun fire when the evident truth that art is a religion remains
unprotected by dilettantish vapidity.
Jesus said, "I come not to preach to the righteous; they need me not,"
or words to that effect. The very best
any expressive quantum or array can hope for is to defend the most fragile and
unforceable growth--that of human genius--from annihilation. Whatsoever is accomplished is only
prophylaxis.
188. What is it then, that creates and
fulfills human genius, if not one human making it and then depositing same,
lazar-like, into the vessel?
Genius furls out of a life
like a flower from a bud by mysterious forces of time-space in nature and most
assuredly not by its own effort. It may
sound insane but I think the genius brings itself into being, into fulfilled
being, somewhat like a soliton. Our
crudely conscious efforts are preparatory and preventive, not the tiny subtle
dreaming moments themselves. To them our
only proper relation is awe and contemplation--no estrangement in this. Therefore Tillich's error may lie in his
hypertypically "modern" twentieth-century palaver bred of nicotine
and flatulence. Religion needs no help
from him. I only quoted him in my video
for purposes of self-amplification.
189. So in the end, if you may be interpreted
fairly, all that is left to enjoy and endeavor is the "immense peace in
the brain"?
Ultimately if one cannot
simply breathe, desire nothing, and see the coffee pot with one's own more
glowing eyesight no amount of labor
or fighting will fix it. For all the
fever and fret, the horrors, there is still only the "deep quiet of a
strong heart at peace." But how to
keep the heart strong, and protect the future, and spurn anhedonia--this may
call for us to hazard experimentation.
To be what Nietzsche called "attempters".
190. Is Yes/No worth looking at?
Oh certainly. I made that in April and May of 1999, and
even showed it in
191. How could things possibly turn out well
for you if, in four months' time, you have to dump all of these lonely quanta
on the waters--gratis?
Oh, the good, the good, the
well. Perhaps a cyber-art program
somewhere like
192. Is the SFMOMA82700 artpiece occurrence
obnoxious excrement or fine art?
This question is in great
suspension. Frankly no one has had the
giblets to answer much except me, who doesn't count, and others that don't
count either.
193. Do all of your Genius 2000 photos and
other scraps merit website space?
Definitely! After I finish this book I'll be scanning
some stuff and building out my new permanent cyber-home at
www.Genius2000Network.com. You can go
there and buy stickers, say, and stick them up wherever you want. All the one of a kind paper stuff, negatives,
Hi-8, DV, and other curios would have to go either in storage or to the garbage
disposal--after all those are the only two places in the universe. The boutique-style sale of my college videos,
music, new art, and heck who knows, new videos!
A whole new lease on life for the old impulse toward pure bright
greedless artifice! Simple faith in joy
and praise, quiet production of the more glowing vision to name the light and
thence the darkness too. Other lives could
be much worse. But to live with
shame--that's worse than never having been born at all, according to Faulkner
and me too.
194. Are the Genius 2000 Conferences hideous
and shameful?
That's extremely difficult to
answer--but no they're not. No more than
an alcoholic trying to make significant important art-history to get drinking money
is shameful. The first Conference was a
relevant comment on the reproduction of age, of making faux-patina. Harmless fun.
By the second one in 2000 I had of course begun to feel I have to use up
the oxygen, so it got more suffocating.
My sphinx-complex had set in!
195. You felt you had to play the messiah so
no one else could do so uncontested, and by the phenomenon of interference save
the world that only God can make?
In a nutshell, damn
right. I thought I had to use up the
oxygen. Which led to a lot of sometimes
nasty permutations.
196. Do you think you're innocent and free now
to primp your mediocre education, skills, and achievements in public for money?
That's a bit harsh, but
honestly speaking--no. The stigma of
what I did will always weigh like a gigantic burden on my heart. Seventy more years of Genius 2000
conferences, all done for free, will still never merit I receive a penny of
payment. DayJobBobby's my name. Keep your filthy lucre.
197. Yet what of all the pigs and whoremasters
amassing gigantic fortunes while you type clerical inanities and enjoy no
acclaim, no caring, no affection, and no free time other than the weekend?
Well there's sixteen hours
per day during the week I have free. My
weightlifting eases my anxieties too.
I'll have my fans in 2100, not to mention all-judging Jove.
198. What schools did you ever go to, and in
what order?
United Methodist Church of
Prospect Park for pre-school; Sidney Pratt for elementary school;
Marshall-University High and Sanford Junior High for junior high; the
University of Minnesota for advanced placement math and humanities in junior
high and high school; Oberlin College; Cambridge in England for sitting in on
two lectures for fun and what not; the University of Wisconsin-Madison (BA in
English 1991); Binghamton University MA program in English with Creative
Writing Emphasis (September to December 1993); and finally Syracuse University
(MA in English 1998).
199. Didn't you get kicked out of lecture one
time at
Yes, but I'm not proud of my
sexual dysfunction having caused hostile confrontations that made me feel macho
but ultimately degraded me.
200. Do you like to pray?
I certainly enjoy praying a
brief prayer of thanks before I eat my evening meal--I enjoy the meal
more. I pray prayers for my dog Freda to
be happy and at peace. Before going to
sleep I may pray now and again a prayer of thanks "to the world for
existing" and all my good health.
One could argue that reading poetry or philosophy and sitting quietly,
breathing, is prayer. Yet I do not
attend church and do not adhere to any theistic cosmology. Call me a failed messianic but there it
is. My most likely next object of prayer
is to pray for my masturbatory fantasies to be taken away from me and for my
life to take on a more decent, manly, adult, and matrimonial course and
flavor. Writing may be prayer too. Planning the Conference 2005 is prayer, in as
much as it is art since art is prayer.
201. What is your I.Q., and what relevance
does it have to the Genius 2000 Network, and most importantly the reader, user,
visitor, or consumer thereof?
My actual I.Q. has never been
tested formally except the time I was hospitalized for suicidal depression in
2000. That was caused by the Zyprexa
only and shortly after going off the anti-psychotic my ruminative depression
went away (I didn't keep my heart light, so it made me sink when hope had
kindled hope and lured me to the brink).
My I.Q. is approximately 150 or so, is what I'd guess if I had to. Back in UMTYMP there were sharper steers than
me, but then again I never did the homework.
If I had I think I might have worn out even the best of them, tired
them. About all it means, my 150, is
that I have some experience of life for upper I.Q. people (low genius level)
and Genius 2000 is made by a low-genius rated bald alcoholic virgin.
202. Are you considering some raunchy dating
before you put out this book?
My respect for the celibate
life notwithstanding I predict a return to dating for myself. Return?
Odd phrasing. Nonetheless, dating
seems OK. They're having date night for
oldsters later on. It would bother me if
"the other one" were depressive and "all beat up," in need
of therapy. My "stay celibate till
book and marriage" plan has been feeling proper, but how many non-insane
females stay virginal until matrimony is a serious question.
203. Did your fluishness come back, and if so,
does it make you fear rejection or indifference from literary agents?
Being fluish today has been a
bit tough. Still, the warmth of home
awaits with rest and spaghetti.
Homemade. Rest, and watercolors,
and grocery shopping, garlic and early bed.
204. Wouldn't staying chaste keep you out of
the dispiriting morass of modern sexual feeding habits and also paint a vivid
portrait encouraging others?
Perhaps; I can see hints of
same. Yet do we realistically expect
sexually mature twelve-year-olds to stay asexual until marriage? It's not sensible. My naturally very low sexual appetite and
anhedonic pathologies also distort that idyll.
205. What is the value and timber of The Tempest relative to the Genius 2000
Network?
The Tempest is possibly the single greatest work of human
literature that has ever existed or ever will.
While I personally read Hamlet
every day for half a year at age 21, you ought to try The Tempest instead. People
might believe that I never understood The
Tempest, let alone appreciated it and loved it. But if the only result of Genius 2000 is to
get that play read more, it's enough.
206. Would your ideal life include an office
in the
There's no way to know. My main preference is to follow my genius
development, and if this book is ever published for pay--which should be my decision and not an
"if"--it would become affordable to obtain an office somewhere in an
urban area--perhaps the Foshay. Yet I
have no ties to any social scene, or academic institution, or drug scene, or
party scene. It would really all be the
same to me even if I had infinite monies.
207. Are your academic grades and test scores
impressive, and if so, would you consider law school or a PhD?
I have no need for either of
these. My avocation and my vocation are
to write and create images. For this
thirty thousand per year is enough.
School just muddies the water, as I once wrote in a story about academe
(in 1992). I put my scores and grades on
the internet only for heedless expressive whimsy.
208. Can you commit to matrimonial chastity
now, in old two-oh-eight?
My answer to so many things
is "hard to know" that it may be interfering with my luck. Suppose I did have to decide--now--to go that
route, become financially successful, meet with the goal of marriage, marry,
and stay faithful. Suppose I did. Foshay!
I could be a recipe for misery.
209. What would you lose if you were to stop
belaboring questions of proper behavior and revealing un-retractable
information?
I'd lose my sense of
purposefulness and my sense of commitment.
I'd feel rather lacking in a specific immediate goal to work at, and I'd
lose my sense that I've put all my eggs in the basket for the big leap over the
canyon. I'd have free time to develop
with a clear conscience and no promises to fail to keep. I'd lose my chains.
210. Why are you against the
individual-hierarchical genius "of cold command," and isn't this
dyspepsia merely hypocritical bourgeois guilt and the most false and
manipulative demagoguery?
The Romantics, Shelley in
particular for the purposes of this example-quantum, were not
"against" "command."
Just read part 47 of Adonais:
"Who mourns for Adonais? Oh come forth fond wretch! And know
thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy
panting soul the pendulous Earth; as from a centre, dart thy spirit's light
beyond all worlds, until its spacious might satiate the void circumference:
then shrink even to a point within our day and night; and keep thy heart light
lest it make thee sink when hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the
brink." These are the words of a
conquering general to the greatest army that ever lived. A commander who knows the spirit lives and
rules where statues fall. He's neither a
defeatist nor a coward nor a traitor, despite his failings. So, think what you are saying!
211. What are some key terms for g2k?
Terminology--kung-an,
quantum, A-K-H-A, genius, history, histor, network, SFMOMA82700, Yes/No,
conferences, plot, jpegs, habituation, peace, "saving," hierarchical,
convention, iconoclasm, responsibility, authority, success, greatness,
political, 2000, time-space, long-term, technological species, expressive
object, canon, esoteric, exoteric, myth, taboo, heroism, enlightened
consumerism, exogenetic evolution, Habermas, Shelley, Benjamin, Keats, Blake,
Video First Edition, listservs, talents, lessons, fluxus, Zen and the Brain,
James Austin, Horkheimer, Adorno, Benedict Anderson, instrumental reason, PPP,
Literary Change, Barbara Fowler, UMTYMP, Syracuse, Second Syracuse, Holub
Miroslav, Strauss, querelle, monotheism and messianism, The Hermit, isolation, interconnection, individual and the group,
Possony, de Tocqueville, Federalist Papers, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Shakespeare, Luther, gnosticism, Gnostic Gospels, Adonais, Lycidas,
Frost, Millennium Hut, hybris, Coup de Tete, Communicative Hypothesis,
Communicative Paradigm, Rhizome, Shock of the View, Nettime, Artforum,
Thingist, Fluxlist.
212. Now that you have decided not to be
concerned with where to buy a home, whether to, whether to date or marry, being
a lawyer, taking care of people, or whether prayer is philosophically
permissible, what does it charm and enchant you to muse on?
Primarily Genius 2000,
thereby adding mulch to the garden that is the Network. I will need to scan a lot of heretofore
unscanned paper works, decode my old Oberlin writings still in MacWrite,
trademark "The Genius 2000 Network" and the dark pixel symbol,
explain a few things, and frankly just keep "producing." For many people, and some quite fairly so, my
talk about the convention of genius as "art-object-making individual who
dumps them into our heads and that's all there is" is just incoherent
ressentiment or revanchism. They don't
feel I'm a flaneur or raconteur, historing the novel and advertising
myself. Sure, there may be a corruption
of clergy when the radiance of the ineffable is codified and prescribed. But how I am any better is something I prefer
to make concrete and "to individualize," as Cezanne said. Or, both that and the other.
213. What about all the topics in the VFE?
Honestly they are not
dispensable, so integral are they to a direct impression of how Genius 2000 was
generated. It will need to be read
whether I copyright and sell it or not, and by need, I mean that I don't see
the value or logic in banishing it.
There are necessary errors and
failings in it that need to be
preserved as vindication of its occurrences.
214. What did you learn from your visit to
I learned monarchial regard
for leaders such as Gorm den Gamle and Harald Blatand, and other pleasant
impressions of quasi-socialist suburban life in
215. Would it be detrimental to
Possibly not. Virtually any state of affairs can be turned
to an advantage. Were artists to cover,
hide, and despise themselves in the
216. Why do you feel so sick when you realize
how deadening your asexuality is and how the West or Front Edge of
civilization's blade, the U.S.A., could no longer keep its feet and carry its
designated load of glory and crime did not both wings of ignorance--the liberal
and conservative--think for sure, and work and pray as well, that they are each
both "getting it" their way?
It makes me feel sick and
nauseous because how can such an one as I, devoid of normal utility and
compression, a non-participant, do anything at all, can breathe even one breath
is beyond my calculative surety. Only
the breath itself, one at a time, shows me that anything can be done, that I
can do anything of motion whatever and not die of gulping some air. Perhaps 2005 is the ultimate
"realized" art work, every human life and action conscious of itself
and connected to its opposite, its ground.
Or the sheer terror of being near sexy women who must despise me.
217. Do you fear that to quell your envy by
subduing your desire itself would be a crime to others and a degrading
reduction of your own selfness, and as such, a deprivation from yourself of the glorious peace and freedom of sexualized
Genius 2000?
My fear comes over me like a
mudslide and covers me up so fast I can't comprehend what it is. It feels like fear hits me in the stomach
when I see glorious sexy women. The
plain ones touch me not this way. The
hot, hard-eyed and ruthless sexy ladies are what make me feel old, weak,
bereft, angry, bitter, cheated, reduced.
And yet, I feel I would degrade myself further to avoid this place, this
cute and sexy modern museum area--the People's Palace--and go home to write
there instead. My feeling is, "why
should the sexually active, pleasant, happy, and well-adjusted get to hog the
entire tax-funded promenade? All their
dimwitted boys reign unopposed?"
218. What does your poem "Beside the Lake
in
Leafy plantains are hooked on to the
grasses
Girls are tanning their breasts and asses
And the lake smells clean.
Should I eat a pinch of gravel?
Gravel for my craw?
If I were like these creaking seagulls,
Trash-eaters, garbage-eaters,
I could digest my life by eating
A few rocky, trollopish stones.
219. How would a great artist who started the
art-movement that governed the twenty-first century creative constellation well
and toward peace resemble a helper, an accomplisher, a savior, a redeemer, a
vindicator, and a vindication, and therefore THE messiah?
In every way, did an artist
congregate peace and beauty and their ferocious lasting power into a resonant
guiding form--like a horn-blast vortex--far into the future able to govern,
increase space, free genii from "history's" gravity.
220. What holds you back from letting the
claspers and graspers of this plane suffer and sting from your non-need of
them, even to a scarring burn should they grip too stubbornly ever-tighter?
My weakness and fear hold me
back, as well as my habits, my sloth, my emotional clinginess, my womb-seeking,
a million things. There is a desire to
please and to be rewarded in turn with pleasure for pleasing that governs the
sexual motive. To please an attractive
girl, to in turn attract her to cleave to me and caress me, everyone getting a
lot from whence one step apart they had nothing. Turning on the pleasure orgasmo-popper. Going from deprived to fulfilled. Yet this applies to any gluttonous
pleasure. The pleasure of salt and fat
is equally irresistible to contemplation.
All one can do is let go of the tempter.
Forgive it, the American Girl in Blue Jeans, the alluring provocative
butt.
221. Are you willing to try not thinking about
sex, how much you want it, et cetera, i.e., not thinking about it from a
"weak" state and thus to stop making yourself truly miserable?
Quite willing, and this commandment
all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain. There is not much wisdom in seeking out
places to look at young girls, sexy women that is, in order to "make
myself feel good." I'm never going
to have those women. If I publish this
book and become successful I could meet a smart and attractive woman desirous
of sexual affection and companionship with me.
Perhaps even if I were rich, secure, and considered important it would
be better to stay celibate forever and conserve any vital bodily juices for
scribbling. Maybe book then marriage and
procreation, to set a good example. In
reality however all I want to do is work on Genius 2000; the cravings for women-touching
are just hallucinations caused by cranking hormonal shear.
222. Since you don't need the money, sex, free
time, or social recognition, why not practice supreme patience and publish this
book only when you have 2000 immaculate gems, like in 2010, and pass completely
on the present "plunge in and strike while the iron is lukewarm and you're
personally conflicted?"
The question of timing things
is ever a sensitive one. Suppose that
certain steps will bring a good, valuable result if timed properly and a very
poor or disastrous one if not. One might
consider such an operation, perhaps akin to open-heart surgery in which the
heart is actually stopped for awhile, to be too risky for any good to come of
it. However, sometimes the reward
outweighs the risk, or the risk of doing nothing is as great as that of the
enterprise. Importantly, timing is truly
one's idiosyncratic own, a sloppy given and truly as intrinsic to one's genius
as anything. It may be well thought of
as the origin of the consistent uniqueness of the many facets of one's genius,
the timing.
223. What makes Cezanne so special to you
personally, and why do you "keep harping on him" as though it were to
your own great benefit?
My special regard for Cezanne
comes primarily from one painting we were taught in Art 103 at Oberlin, which
had oranges or apples in an asymmetrical bowl, the Lac D'Annecy painting which
has an "open secret" in it regarding the character of the light even
though at first it's merely blurry--a spacious, peaceful character--and a few
comments he made including "Art is a religion." If my impression is correct he lived a long
time and was not a histrionic clown like so many "historic" artists
are. His style was very important and
conscious, but it doesn't make more than it's worth. He seems like a strong, unpretentious master
of respect for the truth of art, which he's found for himself and doesn't need
to impress anyone about. He just
appreciates the reality it gives him, he doesn't whine for
"more."
224. Is it really important to retrieve your
old college papers, as you spent over forty dollars on today in rented computer
time?
The papers I wrote on Holub,
and the one-act play in particular, are truly special and worth four thousand
dollars to save. They are all on a
couple--one--floppy disk from 1987. It's
only High Density so I can't get it to read on the current drives I've tried it
on. I'm optimistic that I will find it
however. Moreover, the papers I salvaged
today (including a paper on poetic Vision
in the English Romantic poets) are worth close to priceless amounts to me. It was a little impulsive to spend the forty
dollars but worth it. If my savings are
close to twenty-four hundred dollars now, and will soon slip below two thousand
again after I pay the rent, so be it. If
my savingness has been weak I accept that.
It has not been horrible at all.
I reject any guilt over it.
225. When did you first appreciate the
correlation of Bacon's "Of Death" with Hamlet?
In 1990 or 1991 I was reading
a few items by Francis Bacon for no reason--I take that back, because at that
time I had also looked into a book arguing for non-Stratfordian views and
basing itself on first letters of poetic lines and so forth--the reason may
have been an interest in Bacon as a possible non-Stratfordian alternative. In any case, while sitting in the McDonald's
off
226. Again to touch on these
"keystone" moments, quanta of amplified effect, is it fair to say
that reading a few short days ago in Shelley's Defence that he worked the same way is one of them, and significant
for you, and something of which you crave desperately to say "look,
consider, view this, I am not insane or delusional at all but far from it, as
far as North from South, 'sheer antipodes'?"
It makes me want to say,
dying "fit to burst" to make clear and unequivocal under witness,
that like Keats "I too am a Poet."
There are moments like this, comings-together, constellations, perhaps
what James Austin called glimpses of satori, that imprint themselves on a
person unlike anything else because they path to a new future. They are rare
indicators, highly consequential. To
appreciate this topic one must comprehend Keats' "Sleep and Poetry,"
"the strange journey it went," as well as Miranda's
"wholesome" drowsiness after hearing for the first time her father's story.
227. Why does Keats say "spite of
despond, spite of th'inhuman dearth of noble natures," and why do such
remembrances cause you to want to wield
"the jawbone of an ass"?
The rarity of the connective
moment, combined with the rarity with which people "battered" by life
can get even to the feeblest awareness of their possibility (i.e. not to give
up), can be deadly to new-forming genius.
"Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, such, Lycidas, thy
loss to shepherd's ear." One can
freeze with fear, panic, and fail to make the efforts and the moves necessary to the poetic mode of
life. In many ways the notice of this
rarity is akin to the notice of death, of "The Ruined Cottage,"
"I saw them and I knew them all."
Here most assuredly the blame is "all in the not done"; hence
we strive, "spite of despond,
spite of th'inhuman dearth."
228. Won't the extreme rush today have a
horrific effect on quality, not to mention your chances of getting a monetary
publication of this arranged?
Perhaps the quality and the publication chances will track
upward fast. Inordinately we all know
howsomever that I will put this new book on my new internet website in
September if no one has embraced it by then.
So quality be damned and may the devil take the hindmost. "Get him, get him, get him, get
him."
229. Would a theory of "processes with
shape and character" damn you for your folk/low music usage?
Perhaps I find it warming
like wax and felt, to keep out death by water, and also in that it waters my
rural roots by saying "forget you."
The fact remains that I, for all my sitting with publicans, did the eternal return of Jerusalem and
Athens--long before, five or six years before--reading Friedrich or Leo: a
truth you might not like, but there it is.
May as well hate air.
230. Do you hate the tan rock, etched glass
windows, and high-scoring spine of the yet-uncladded
Everyone wonders about my
hates and likes, whether I'm housebroken or a homicidal-maniacal "bad
person." This is in large part
because they don't rotate, don't turn, a simple thing, a simple gift. "Opposition is true
Friendship"! "The cut worm
forgives the plow"! Set me free.
231.
Is there an important thought-process-time-shape, meaning, to the two
mentions of "losing your perspective" in the VFE?
To me the answer is extremely
yes, in a much better level than Yoto Ohno.
Should her items be consecrated, immunized, made conventionally
protected by cracked prejudice from the better mousetrap? Can capitalism survive that collegial
vanitas? No. Not if it is always all there is. There
must be a sufficient degree of the better
getting into use. Two people, but
different, losing perspective, the
one facture and the many.
232. What is the resultancy of the truth that capitalism
and socialism are the same thing?
Primarily that artistic
beauty is all that can save us, that the wars of the twentieth century were
over who steers and not how,
tragically. Socialism taxes at a given
percent, decides by committee, and lets some things go as they will. The identical is true of capitalism. Let this break your heart so you can breathe
again.
233. Did Deleuze and Guattari say that
capitalism and socialism are the same thing?
Some told me this in 1997,
after I'd stated in an academic class with Michael Echeruo that the workers
don't immediately control the means of production and therefore socialism and
capitalism are not qualitatively discrete regarding decisional loci. I cannot confirm what Deleuze and Guattari
say on this, as I've never read a single word they've written, unfortunately.
234. How does the truth of democracy spill
over into the truth of monarchy in both the good and bad senses?
Democracy versus monarchy is
one of the oldest problems in the world.
Yet in reality, the two are not so absolutely separate, and there is
overlap. Democracies still have to act
on decisions. Monarchies need to admit
there are consequences for the citizens when authority decides. Democracies that get taken over by a bad view
of things are just as bad as monarchies that do. Perhaps the old saw "you can't get blood
from a stone" tells it the truest.
Democracies can commit slaughter, permit corruption, and misadminister
economic production as quintessentially as monarchies can. Conversely, monarchies can enforce decent
laws fairly and protect rights and liberties and act in the best interests of
the general public and its prosperity as democracy can. They're not different.
235. Isn't democracy decision-making by the
many, and monarchy decision-making by the few, which distinction renders the
two systems absolutely different?
In democracy, every adult
gets to vote and then the elected official decides on a law. In monarchy, the official is chosen by
hereditary lineage. The only difference
is how the official is selected. On
actual laws, the voters in a democracy don't get to decide--they choose the
official is all. Thus, we have an
unfortunate case of false opposites in the democracy/monarchy hatred. The fight is more often over who decides, not
how. This is a depressing suggestion
however, and since Matisse said "never anything depressing in this
art," let us recover--the differences between democracy and monarchy are
not absolute, but by degrees, as are the differences among socialism and capitalism.
236. Wouldn't it be best for everyone and
everything if "liberals" and "leftists" and
"socialists" were to, for the next five years, give their votes and
support--intellectual, cultural, financial--to the U.S. Republican party?
This is highly arguable. Liberals might be hurting their own future
best hopes by impeding the conservative consolidation of twenty-first century
power channels. In fact, liberals should
understand that their chief goals of environmental protection and human rights
will be best served in the long run
if the military necessities are put first, as the horse before the cart. Unfortunately the explanations for this line
of reasoning are beyond my skill and would take too long to be relevant. Let us proceed as non-emergency fellows, on
the comely grounds of art and culture.
We can take comfort in our being the cart after the horse.
237. Would it be a huge disaster if a Democrat
U.S. President were elected in 2008, or a huge success if a Republican were?
The extreme benefit or harm of
either is not apparent to me; rather, either one might be OK and neither is
likely to have extreme effects. Neither
is likely to enormously damage or advance the prospects of liberal-democratic
political economy in the twenty-first century.
238. How can
Avoiding drugs, sex, genially
degrading behavior, and so forth is the best way. Be sure to read, eat healthy foods, exercise,
and strive to be good and decent in all your actions and habits. Be neither sadistic nor revolutionary in your
political views. Try to treat other
people with goodness and caring as best you can. Avoid sex, drugs, and television. Read.
239. Why is forgiveness necessary to have
best-case outcomes for the twenty-first century?
The benefits of the First
Cold War ending will be lost if the two camps can't forgive each other and work
together for mutual recovery and healing.
The future prospects of the Athenian polis will be lost if revenge runs
wild in the streets. It can't be
allowed. And what is more, rabid
revanchism generally causes economic collapse, as was seen after the First
World War. Liberals too often take
economic stability of production for granted, though conservatives have their
biases too. I often wonder that leftist
views are needed in order to attract rural non-conformists and exceptions into
urban areas, like a comforting warm blanket and tea. We all need our motivating fantasies. My own attempts at transcendence are hollow
enough for any to see. Yet the survival
of liberal democracy for a long period of stability is far more likely to bring the environmental and humanitarian
improvements leftists seek than guerilla oppositionalism or sabotage of the
peace. Verily.
240. How can your argument that Modigliani's
"Little Servant Girl" of 1916 is acceptable and decent, worthy of
protection, appreciation, and forgiveness, meld with the argument that art
consists of processes not objects and graven images should not be worshipped?
Quite legitimately, though my
actions and expressions rarely make this clear.
Modigliani's object is very rare and factually irreplaceable. To destroy it, or by inaction allow it to
come to harm, would be a violation of
the "Options" rule of "Crazy" Hans Berliner's
"system" for successful chess.
Were a polis to destroy the art under its care, options would be
grievously killed. Protection is the
minimum requirement. Also, an object can
be both the conventional attribution
of stasis to it and an indispensable
location or being of a process. Looking
at the Modigliani is, for example, a process.
The object is matter and the process is energy, like E=mc2, i.e. both
co-exist.
241. Does Benjamin's "loss of the
aura" really just mean the decay, entropy, and hominization
(homogenization) of the processes concomitant with an object?
Indubitably, as objects
proliferate (whether by machinery or by hand makes no difference) the processes
they pull in and replicate will, by necessity in a finite space, clog and
confuse each other. To maintain cogency
some reduction is required. Yet to break
the object itself is a crime. Quietude
is the only escape outward in outcomes.
The rarity, uniqueness, and intensity of objects will recede, but if it
declines into hominization, that is a cultural catastrophe. Habermas called this "a distinct loss of
experience." What can save this
system from enfeebling congestion is only one thing--to increase the capacity
of human genius so that it is no longer crowded to death with its past expressions. A calming of agitated particles in a closed
space, a calming.
242. Is it not shameful for you to claim
special goodness and wisdom for your object-process-calming-rescuing claptrap?
The claims you speak of may
be verily your own, and mine only the clean companionship of untying the worser
knots. Of course, to say "just give
it time, that's the solution" is not really a solution if by that you mean
an instantaneous reconstruction of every phenomenon on new principles with zero
loss of continuity, i.e., by definition "the impossible." Some cosmology however does indicate the
quantum-by-quantum destruction and re-creation of all things (objects) and
processes, i.e. that the system's linearity is discontinuous.
243. Can you teach someone good things, as
some can do, or are you a complete parasite and exploiter?
I can teach about how objects
can't last, processes can, and processes can be organized for peace and human
genial development-creation.
244. Is monodeity a semantic necessity of
expression in exogenetically evolving populations in danger of early-technological
implosion?
Quite simply put, the
digestive stomach juices of human habit can cause horrendous destruction if not
given food to work upon or kept mild by constant hygiene. The present can appear to be
"everything" even though it isn't, and this can create concretion,
contortion, commiseration, and collapse.
Just imagine how perfect the future can be, but that you can't create it
until you get to it--though you must nevertheless protect it because it definitively
can be destroyed "from
here." If only people could forego
killing each other for fun, and take in concert the constructive steps
necessary to take the profit and disruptive opportunism out of it, make
agreements on polis, enact love's courage to be strong. But it's so confusing and uncertain.
245. Could it be fair to say that by
developing one's own genius, and not for any ulterior "crusade" but
in order to experience and enjoy one's own example of balance, one thereby adds to the calm beautiful peace of the
planet, and that this is the true increaser of the likelihood of non-war?
Very much so, and this is the
non-crusading, non-demagogic healthy
state of being I so often forget to care about.
All the bourgeois values are completely adequate except for the
"high-conflict" fighting edges of the world. The best case for me is to keep my heart
light lest it make me sink, and for you too!
The glorious anticlimax. A
wholesome cheerfulness when the devil himself is whispering at your elbow
"it can't be done, this quiet accordance, you must crusade." "Demagogue" and
"democracy" come from the same root; this shows the bad side.
246. Will keeping our hearts light, and
shrinking even to points within our day and night, decrease the gravity and
agitation and therefore the carnage of liberal democratic globalization?
My view clearly is that it
will, and with no loss of dignity or decency either so therefore no shame to
work at it and no need to wakefully formulate scenarios. The old world of many warring systems is
passing away. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
247. So, not to panic means to learn the
fecundity of the artistic-genial life of goodness and dignity?
Certainly the case for me is
that goodness and decency are the path to successful genius and the conversion
of revenge to plentiful comity. Making
trouble even against slights or crimes your logic tells you deserve it is a
recipe only for more trouble, more chaos, greater injuries, longer more
protracted conflicts, forever.
248. Is your own decision to put all these on
the internet for free if no book publisher wants them a panicky cowardliness?
Assuredly no, as the calming
influence of a "strong heart at peace," and quiet therefrom, is
rarely a commercial entity when things are "hopped up" yet remains
civically responsible and a lovely "loss leader" for the long-term
investor. I will also gladly quest to
publish and free more time for "me," but this comes across less and
less likely day by day.
249. What if your recommendation of celibacy
and sobriety becomes a hot commodity?
Then the responsible thing to
do would be to cool down the combustion, so as to reduce fleeting, false gains
and encourage stable growth as one would encourage taking the proper time to
build a house rather than shooting up on meth and clapping together a
death-trap.
250. Does your calm quietness forbid doing art
for money?
Accepting money for my
writing could be interpreted as a calming influence on the fear and panic about
whether goodness toward one's own humanity and toward others', and toward the
future's, can be acted out under capitalist activity. By refusing to sell an object that might
organize processes of greater genial development one would be falsely accusing
market exchange of incapacity to handle commercial distribution of happiness,
love, and human dignity. Such a
recalcitrance would be double the hypocrisy given that the economic luxury of not publishing sits concretely on
economic capitalism in the first place!
To refuse to sell my Genius 2000 Network products is to be hypocritical
about the legality of market trade while anal-retentively condemning myself and
others' humanity to postponement.
251. Can you clarify why artistic genial
development is crucial for political best outcomes?
Democracy has a whole set of
requirements to it, that differ from those of monarchy. One might say the two are different
organizations of the same thing--various structuration of political
administration. They have some
characteristics, virtues, and failings in common and some not in common. Artistic development allows people to fight
each other less, and to make fewer mistakes in their own self-governance and of
course in their voting habits. Artistic
development, genius-development, growth and healthiness of the kind of person you are, of you and your
genius, is what gives the political system you live in benefit rather than
damage. Democracy requires greater
levels of self-control and personal responsibility than monarchy does--it's
almost a sink-or-swim school of civic virtue.
So it's tough. But artistic
development, that's the key, because it is in this that we all see our
interconnected individuality, our responsibilities and rights. Cultural wisdom, capacity, genius, call it
what you will, no political-civic system or polis can function without it.
252. Whence is your manic terror at failure?
Failure is an undesirable
outcome, by definition, yet truly one cannot claim that a single outcome
determines all outcomes. I failed to lay
off the juice and became a hard-on alcoholic--what of it? It's no skin off my cheeks. Alcoholics are the coolest people anyway,
because they don't drink that crap anymore.
Unless of course they do, which is neither cool nor decent.
253. Do you recant your previous advocacy of
iconoclasm?
Iconoclasm can be of two
sorts, one superficial and degrading and the other one subtle and ultimately
conservative. Crude advocacy perforce
recommends the cruder possibility, which is to destroy objects or kill living
artists. Iconoclasm in one's own heart
or intellectual-emotional-volitional nexus is OK iconoclasm, I guess. Perhaps.
Never destroy an art object or hurt another person. Accepting change if it is necessary or
commendable, that is acceptable iconoclasm.
254. Can people just forget about all the crap
you're saying?
Heck yes, definitely I
recommend that. Simple good things like
grass, having a cup of tea, having wild sex, whatever your own genius in its
healthy freedom likes to do, do that rather than hear me preach. Yet if your conscience is out of kilter
because you're hurting yourself or others, check it out--correct the dots.
[sic]
255. If meditation is important, and
meditation indicates relaxed non-focus on a given artificial construct like
Genius 2000, and you concur meditation is an absolute requirement of the
long-wave brain patterns that give every human access to true Genius 2000
magnitudinal growth, does it not follow that Genius 2000 cannot lead to itself?
Concretely put, the only real
Genius 2000 is the one all individuals find and create themselves, and it can't
be bought.
256. If you pray to God, what does that
mean?
Again I'm afraid that because
I don't belong to a church or believe in God in the conventional sense I
shouldn't talk about prayer or God.
Suppose God is a principle, a mathematical law, a fact of sentience in space-time universally binding on every
sentience. Suppose it is what sentience
sees when it regards itself in time-space.
Consequently, to look at this principle and to recognize it is like
seeing a different, greater, bigger person than yourself. Physically, it may even be our contact with
the future--creative, cognitive, perceptual, emotional time-travel. It may be that time-quanta are connected to
each other by energy bonds that sentient genius can access. Thus, when we pray to God we are encountering
here in the present the preferable future, which we cannot experience now--we
are lesser--but we can ask how to get to it, by requesting to hear--to listen,
to be told, to acquiesce. Similarly we
can talk to the past, or more compellingly exist in it briefly by
genius-connections.
257. What do you do when you feel disgusted by
your own excessive self-advertising, actually to the point where your
conscience goes bad and you feel like you've committed a terrible crime,
similar to a sexual crime against a child?
In all honesty I think my pattern
is to become depressed. I'm trying to
think if I ever "get out of it" any other way. I do feel guilty for a valid reason, I
think--I'm exploiting the fact that we people are often hurting and
confused. I'm putting myself up as a
fabricated image of a conventional Genius, a meaning-maker for those inferior
beings who aren't capable of doing it themselves, my own worst enemy. I want to be the exact opposite of someone
who tells other people what to do, what to think or look at. It's the difference between being a sadistic
manipulator--a liar--and a good friend who can help others. But to help others for money? To refuse healing unless I get money for
luxuries? That's sickening. I'm confused thereon.
258. Is it factually true or accurate that the
classless society will actually be liberal-democratic globalization in which
the artist creates work in the evenings and on weekends, keeping a day job,
exactly as Marx predicted?
I can't figure it out. It's destabilizing to suggest the market
can't solve the lack. However, cultural
freedom for art and faith makes it possible to give away art or expressive
processes for free on the internet or elsewhere. Depriving a healing quantity out of greed,
that's insanely evil.
259. Can you be happy and accomplish enough
for the species even if your income for Genius 2000 is exactly zero in money
terms?
I can be happy living to age
seventy in my current job, my current apartment, everything. It's the dirty conscience I can't
handle. Or is it the lack of moral
superiority I get afraid without?
Certainly Sun Tzu's Moral Law, who deserves
to be King, is part of art.
260. Mightn't a very, very great deal of your
agony--not the moderate, healthy fatigue of work you get from lifting weights
and rollerblading, but the torment of whether you deserve to exist or not, and
if so, as what, under what rules--be the result of your sexual abuse and
emotional neglect as a child, which is telling you "you either have to fix
everything, which is to say, pretend nothing is wrong, or suffer this ongoing
bad treatment quietly"?
As to causes and origins I'm
just so unclear and uncertain I don't trust myself, but for the present alone I
feel a massive sense that I don't deserve
to be a published writer. Nothing I can
do, the feeling runs, is decent enough, or smart enough, or educated enough, or
natural enough, or anything good
enough to warrant success as a published writer. So I fester, get enraged, and get depressed.
261. If you were to resolve the querelle
between ancient and modern, the quarrel between then and now or older and
newer, would that be a good enough thing to earn you the right to exist?
Even if I were to fix the
querelle and then either get or not get published and loved for it, it still
wouldn't prove I deserved it--it would just mean I'd gotten it. I grew up liberal in a liberal environment,
just trying to get by, be treated decently, cared about a little, stave off
anhedonia--but the liberal ethos lacks an appreciation of military necessity; I
guess that's fair to say. Someone calls
me a pig, a rapist, a coward, and traitor: should I contest it or no I couldn't
say. Still and all, the revenge, the
urge to fight and vindicate oneself, to clash--all that does is perpetuate the
misery. Success is the only revenge.
262. Have you, do you think, gotten to an
emotional state in life in which you feel that you deserve to have good things
happen to you?
Emotionally my state would
more resemble one that says I do not yet deserve to have good things happen to
me. My emotional state is one of
childish hope that by a combination of effort, luck, obedience, and
criminality, I can someday get good things to happen to me. This is far from the same as feeling I
deserve good things to happen to me.
263. Is it likely that being abused and
neglected causes you to feel undeserving of good things, of even a moderate
amount of them, and not the flaws in your art?
It seems likely. Success or the prospect thereof, success at
getting or letting good things happen to me, or likely success, has long raised
ferocious forces of self-hate and revilement to arise in me. This was the main topic of my therapy in
1997-1999.
264. Would it be advisable then to be prepared
for the flood of internally generated hatred, fear, self-disgust, and other
crap, and to be on guard that it not color your interpretation of the goodness
or evil of your art--i.e., your self-guided expressive activity--in the Genius
2000 Network?
Because negative capability
is so important to productive experimentation in exosomatic evolutionary efforts,
it would be crippling to me if every whiff of experimental freedom brought on a
ferocious attack by emotionally suicidal forces. I had better be on guard. The alternative is perpetual failure,
stagnation.
265. Is it true that your liberal tolerance for
leftists like Ralph Nader would, if acted upon, create incomprehensible misery
and destruction for the human species for centuries into the future?
That's possible but so are
other things possible. Second of all, I
didn't create this screwed-up world of rape, crime, and abuse either.
266. Would you say that someone who wants to
become a published writer will have to both believe that they deserve to be
published and that they will be
published?
I think that to bring certain
conditions about you have to believe the condition is OK and that it is
inevitable. Maybe not inevitable. You can't be negative though. You have to have positive visualization
during play. Like me right now, I'm weak
on positive visualization during play.
267. Would you find it sickeningly pretentious
if someone else wrote a two-thousand-quanta book about their proposal for
twenty-first century art?
No I would not. I think someone should write a non-linear
hologrammatic book like that. Perhaps
they might do it very amateurishly or pretentiously. I might hate it or like it. Frankly I don't know if I'd like my own work
if someone else were doing it. I avoid
looking at too much work because I'm easily influenced.
268. Can you be confident that the Genius 2000
Network will not make the twenty-first century uglier, worse, and more
dangerous?
My guess is that I can be
confident about that, but my goodness it will be a change for me. Typically my response is to self-sabotage and
then ask for forgiveness. But to be confident,
well that feels great.
269. Is there an inexhaustible fountain of
topics to discuss, expressions to express, and genial development to be
undergone that does not either threaten the core of military authority or the
balance of its projection in the world in 2005?
Inexhaustible experience and
expression of beauty and genial development is a good thing, it's why humanity
wants a future; not threatening the military core directly is more
certain. I personally fear greatly that
it cannot come into being yet for fear it will unbalance the forces on the
board, break it all open in mass carnage.
270. Is it not the case that for a very long
time, over six years, you have argued that Genius 2000 would not cause gigantic
problems, military, political, or otherwise?
I've tried all along to
clarify and affirm that practicing Genius 2000 patterns of expression and
experience will not cause major problems with political-economic stability,
social tension, cultural disagreement, or otherwise exacerbate conflicts such
as liberal vs. conservative, science v. religion, markets v. socialism, gender
issues, etc. Basically I've said all
along that Genius 2000 makes nothing worse.
I've also claimed it makes everything better, that it is by definition
the only thing that keeps things as good as they are or can make things
better. I leaped to insane claims that
Genius 2000 can fix everything that is broken.
I extrapolated from "Genius 2000 won't cause damage" to
"it will fix everything and nothing else can."
271. Can you accept the argument that Genius
2000 will be reasonably safe for the species to do, and may have some good
effects, and even bears some likelihood of having extremely large good effects?
Those arguments are
legitimate. Genius 2000 is based on
syncretism, which I learned about in 1987 taking a class from Dr. Timothy White
at Oberlin. We studied the Ancient Near
East. I recently found in my recovered
files a fragment saying "How Graeco-Roman Use of the
272. Does syncretism guarantee a thing is
good?
Not necessarily. Yet syncretism is not exclusively bad or evil
either. Many people fear the mixing of
traditions into a homogeneous gruel, a sludge hostile to life itself. Yet syncretism implies something better than
mere mucking-together of everything into gruel.
It implies a vital, organic symbiosis.
Or, an attempt to take two or more currents and combine them into
one. It's not all roses however; on the
contrary, often war, migration, and collapse of great polities prompt it.
273. If the world could benefit from
syncretism today, could Genius 2000 contribute to syncretism and therefore
benefit the world?
I think my posture henceforth
will be that Genius 2000 is a respectable, positive art-piece and that if
someone doesn't like it they don't have to look at it. Those of us who like it can look at it. And yes, it is most emphatically in the
syncretic tradition, which is the
focal tradition of global humanity, in both the sense of good things or
strengths, and dangers.
274. Is that a new Kimoto Pake, and if so,
does it make you feel good, as though you deserve good things to happen to you
and by good fortune are in fact having them happen?
I'm truly grateful for all
the good things happening to me--publishing this book, being able to study and
travel, meeting caring people who like me and share my interests--and for this
second Kimoto Pake I found in my box of pens.
Thank you, Kimoto Pake Super Fine.
275. Aren't you scared, and in fact very
scared when it gets the better of you, of Genius 2000 turning to its own evil
mirror-image of itself, its own opposite in fact?
I get scared, angry,
frustrated--all of these things. I'd
wanted to make Genius 2000 uncorruptible, failsafe, constructed in such a way
that "evil Genius," or the
persuading but malignant personality concretion, could never take it over. My goal was to create a power for good that
could never be turned to evil. Yet still
I'm conscious of my own evil side, my capacity to degrade.
276. Could it be possible that even now, even
as the creator (so-called) of Genius 2000, you still don't believe it can be a
force for goodness in the world, deserving of existence and if success comes to
meet it of commercial reward?
My heart truly wants and
needs to believe these things, these gifts.
I want to believe Genius 2000 can be a work for peace and goodness in
the world; can serve the cause of the good; can be unashamed of existing; and
can even accept commercial success if it can be obtained.
277. Does the freedom of volitionality in
genius confirm that any act of choosing can go to either an evil or a good end,
by choice or by accidental chance?
I think anything can be done
for good or evil consequences, on purpose or by accident. Doing Genius 2000 could have an evil result
or a good one, or some of both. It's
creative freedom so it brings risk.
That's no reason to curse the entire project and abandon it out of
shame.
278. Would you argue that the existence and
practice of Genius 2000 as an expressive process will not threaten either the
ancient or the modern (as symbolized by the Doryphoros and Modigliani's Little Servant Girl, 1916) but will
rather help to preserve them both in a proper, decorous, fecund querelle not of
annihilation but of dynamic generative opposition, the eternal return?
This is my argument from the
start, and it has roots as far back as this paper I wrote when I was barely
eighteen years old: www.geocities.com/genius-2000/Vision.html. Blake said, "Opposition is true
Friendship," and that whoever tries to make Reason and Energy never oppose
one another seeks to annihilate existence.
279. Would your paper on Bellow's Dangling Man condemn or acquit Genius
2000?
It's difficult to say. You can read it for yourself at
www.geocities.com/genius-2000/DanglingMan.html.
The Jargon of Authenticity versus the Dialectic of Enlightenment, I hope
to blessedly make peace there as well.
280. Could it be excusable in you that you
still have such great feelings of fear, humiliation, and anger at age
thirty-five?
Blame is a very tough
question. Often I've given up and thrown
in the towel too soon; many times I've overworked a fruitless experiment gone
bad. Often I've thought I was being
"good" and "clean" and "decent," though in part I
was only repressing my anger about abuse.
I think that my situation is quite understandable and that I've often
made efforts to recover from my own mistakes as well as the attacks and harms
done to me by a violent, predatory, degraded world. In someone else I might excuse it more, or
less. What I believe isn't necessarily
what I want you to believe, either. It's
excusable to have angry feelings about being sexually abused, and to lack
emotional or social skills, and to have been somewhat self-destructive at
times, and to have sometimes neglected to put my efforts to the best aims. I think it's understandable sin.
281. Can every living human on the earth today
let go of their hatred and desire for revenge without sacrificing their own
dignity?
One could say that it is
possible for a human to consciously choose forgiveness and the success that can
bring over acts of revenge, just as it is possible for any human to
breathe. One can say it is a priori
possible for any human to let go of their cravings for revenge. Therefore, by logic, it is theoretically
possible for all humans living right
now to give up their craving for and quest for revenge. Whether such a thing would be desirable or
have only good outcomes is another question.
Perhaps it would leave people defenseless or lax. However, because what I really mean by giving
up revenge is to pursue success as the only true revenge, it may be the case
that the pursuit of success can provide sufficient defense and also stave off
laxity. In such a case, truly all
humanity could in one fell motion collectively set aside violent revenge in a
short span of time.
282. Do you have have hemorrhoids?
Yes; because of nervous
tension I think I do have mild hemorrhoidal burning and itching from time to
time. I use the witchhazel pads to cool
them down. My health regimen includes
salad, and I quit smoking cigarettes on September 1, 2004.
283. Do you hate the police and wish negative
things to happen to them, such as public disgrace, investigations, censure,
etc.?
The law enforcement officers
of the
284. Do you sometimes think you'd like to go
back to drinking or using drugs?
Of course, on occasion I
think about it, but frankly it's nicotine I crave more frequently. Cigarette smoke has seemed very desirable to
me at various times this spring, even though I've not smoked for eight months. The craving for alcohol has never really hit
me very hard. Primarily the concomitance
of alcohol with dating has preoccupied me more.
285. Can Genius 2000 cause the age-old plague
of racism to begone from human life?
What Genius 2000 can do is
not identical with what Max Herman can do, is my first reaction. If people are free to do what they want, then
they are by definition to that extent free to act in a racist manner and
express racist views. It is not clear to
me how this could be stopped except by taking away all freedom of expression. If the question is whether Genius 2000 can
make racism go away by being a more attractive and non-racist alternative form
of expression, I'd say yes it could replace racism; a truism.
286. Can Genius 2000 end sexism?
One would think that if
sexism could or can be ended it would follow that something could cause,
prompt, force, or enable sexism to end.
It may be that sexism can end, but will only--can only--do so on random,
unpursuable lines. If the prospect of a
more successful and more desirable expressive mode can encourage people to
cease sexist expression, and would in that case "cause" the end of
sexism, I think it is theoretically possible that the existence of Genius 2000
could end sexism.
287. Are your watercolors any good, and are
they worth looking at?
It is difficult to state with
certainty whether a given expressive image is "good" or
"bad," whether to look at it will have a given "good" or
"bad" result. Those things are
very complex. People might idolize me
falsely over mediocre watercolors or find my playfulness disarming and thus
consider potentially highly adaptive exogenetic syncretism they'd have ignored
otherwise, or both, or neither. For
example, who can say what the effect of this is (www.geocities.com/genius-2000/SplendidCelibacy.JPG)?
288. Can you remind yourself that it is OK to
be you, it is OK to have problems, and it is OK for this book to succeed and
for good things to happen to you?
It would be very good for me
to remember that it is OK for Genius 2000 and this book to exist and that I
deserve good things to happen to me.
There's a sick side of me that wants not to believe I deserve to have
good things happen to me. I can remind
myself to be on guard against these automatic emotions.
289. Have you remembered not to mangle
yourself emotionally, in your moods, over wanting sex but not being able to get
it, etc.?
Somewhat. I'm getting cluttered up and confused
lately. I purchased five large oversized
books on art and architecture today for sixteen dollars, used at the library. I've been a little discombobulated and
distracted. Plus I had a cold and
fluishness. Perhaps I forgot not to
corrosively condemn myself for not having a sex partner for snippets but overall
I haven't been.
290. Has it been productive to scribble out so
many quanta today?
It has seemed like a
lot. It was productive to be reminded of
how important it can be to believe I have a right to exist and to do Genius
2000, and how I have the right to sell this book and deserve to have good things
happen to me like marriage and social acceptance. Thinking these positive thoughts doesn't make
me lazy or bitter--on the contrary, they help me keep working and to set aside
destructive revenge for constructive success.
The pain of my emotions doesn't always come over me so strongly and
perhaps it was a strenuous amount of pressured writing that caused me to have
to fight through them, to cope with them, get into a dialogue with them. The self-revilement I can feel toward my own
work is sometimes astonishing and often counterproductive. If I'd given in to it early tonight I'd not
have written these quanta.
291. How are you feeling about setting sex and
dating to the side until you finish this book and publish it?
I haven't slowed down enough
to contemplate that in the last few days, but under the surface I feel good
about it. It's a good plan. The cases or times when I have passed on
chances to sleep with women have not always seemed so terrible and they appear
in a better light even now if I say to myself "that wasn't a good time or
situation; a good time will come along though; there's no need to get angry,
blame yourself or the girl involved or 'life', take it easy and good things
will happen because you deserve it. Keep
working on art, writing, and trying to be good." On this basis, my celibacy seems like a
legitimate, dignified choice and not the embarrassing, ugly weakness of a
cowardly fake with a median-length penis and kind of a chubby, pudgy
midsection.
292. What is the meaning of
It's an allegory for disembodied
technology, disconnected by the clouds from the ground, then disappearing, and
its disconnection from the trees. The
comment is about disconnectedness in technology which often gives a false sense
of completeness unto itself. Like a TV
tower does.
293. If in fact Genius 2000 is a somewhat
newish idea or kind of basic mode for expression, wouldn't it be better to wait
until the year 2025 to procreate it forth, due to the risk of destabilizing
precariously balanced cultural forces?
Waiting might also cause
greater destabilization, or might also sacrifice workable opportunities for
betterment. It is not completely clear
that a book on Genius 2000 in 2005 is incredibly rash.
294. How can people try to help the overall
political situation in the world today?
There are many good things to
be recommended, and equally many bad ones.
One can often do well to read and contemplate Shakespeare, if one reads
in English fairly well. As Keats said,
"I have plenty to be grateful for, as I can read Shakespeare." The best single thing you can do to help the
overall political situation in the world today is to get a book of Shakespeare
and read in it every day for two hours.
295. Isn't it dishonest to say that because
you know you won't be doing it and yet you think you are still helping the
overall political situation as much as possible?
Perhaps it's honest, because
I'm not addressing myself but the person asking me. If you sincerely are asking me what you should do, what I recommend, it is Shakespeare daily, two hours.
296. Have you lingered in the chambers of the
sea, by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown, till human voices wake
you, and you drown?
I think I haven't died by
water yet, though I came perilously close.
297. Is your teacup you made in pottery class
in 2004 and are now drinking from a good one?
It's excellent, wider at the
top then narrowing, white glaze inside then tenmoku over white outside to give
green with rust accents and deep richness.
298. Do you think you'll be OK in the end?
I think I will, if I don't
give up, and keep working, and keep my heart light, avoid revanchism, and
believe I can, will, and deserve to succeed.
299. What are they looking for?
A Hard Piece of Evidence, to
stick me and pin me, so I've got to find a hard piece of evidence to set me
free. Eleven-fifty-five p.m.
300. How did Byron say it, so many years ago?
If I should ever condescend to prose,
I'll write poetical commandments which
Shall supersede beyond all doubt all
those
That came before; in these I shall enrich
My text with many things that no one
knows,
And carry precept to the highest pitch--
I'll call the work "Longinus O'er A
Bottle,
Or, Every Poet His Own
Aristotle."
Eleven-fifty-nine p.m.
301. What is the relevance of Zen, the koan,
Thich Naht Hahn, and the talent in Genius 2000?
The purpose of all these
items is to work toward a constructive syncretism that takes the excellent
traditions of Athens and Jerusalem and not only reconciles them in a
productive, dynamic, non-homogenizing way but includes integrally the
traditionally Eastern sources of such great value in Zen, Taoism, and
Buddhism. The goal is both
artistic-genial excellence and the mutual co-operation, respect, and peace that
truly great and fortuitous syncretism can offer humanity at this scary and
slightly unstable or risky historical juncture or hinge.
302. What did you do this weekend, was any of
it an accomplishment, and what did you neglect to do?
Meditating, centering myself,
breathing, connecting to my emotions and opinions then letting go of them--this
is what I neglected to do this weekend.
I can try to think about this tonight, this evening, after I eat supper,
I can read, clean, meditate, buy a few vegetables. What I did do was go out to eat for thai
noodles, visited the Walker for Free Thursday, practiced kickball on Sunday,
saw the floral equivalency exhibit at the MIA from three-thirty to five; lifted
weights from two to three Sunday, did my back exercises, checked my email, ate
yogurt for breakfast. On Saturday I
think I went to get my Yes/No Hi-8 tape copied first, ate two pancakes, went to
the library, returned one book and bought five used art-books at bargain prices
of three dollars each. Big bold plates
from the Met, for example, for four dollars.
Friday I worked on recovering old floppy disks. A hodge-podge of activity. I hardly know where I've been.
303. By making the Eroica the opening music of
the VFE, have you absolved yourself of hybristic excesses of ego?
By making an oblique
reference to a thing, in this case Beethoven's Third Symphony in E Major, one
can place it on the table alongside other things. Whether I've conducted myself heroically
without falling to self-crown and Imperium, well that question is absurd
because the answer is "neither," the question is void. Clearly, a reference to a norm or behavior is
not the same as obeying that norm.
304. What is exogenetic or exosomatic
evolution?
It's when a technological
species develops external patterns or actions that give it adaptive results,
rather than endogenetic or endosomatic evolution based on the genes and natural
selection. Exogenetic evolution would
encompass attempts in culture, such as art or philosophy, by humans to adapt
better to the universe. There is still a
survival factor in exogenetic evolution, as well as competition among various
adaptations.
305. On what do you base your argument that it
is culture that has to provide the adaptations, should they be found, that will
allow humans to exist for a long time (such as two thousand more years) in a
healthy, fulfilled, and human state?
I base this on a combination
of observations or implications about what won't work and attempts to create
something that will work and put out the latter for experimental usage. For example, the Millennium Hut articulates
the transience of human effort, the non-technological nature of the task, the
simplicity of the materials needed, the adequacy of low amounts of money to
create the artistic challenge. It also
articulates the need for syncretism, the calm and decent tone of that
syncretism, and the combination of genial disciplines within and across times
and cultures--all of this in a tonally proper, earth-connected,
improvisational, concretized, and wood-built structure. Therefore the Millennium Hut places
computer-brain interface devices, for example, most emphatically "to the
side."
306. Do you have conflicting motivations and
preconceptions about leadership, particularly your own?
People need most of all to be
left alone and to "lead" themselves well, to choose books to read, to
grow more familiar with choosing "leaders for our cities and minds,"
and with expressing themselves. Not in a
violent manner such as rape or murder--I don't call that "expressing
yourself." Harming another living
being, or something that being may depend on is not self-expression by my
definition, but its antithetical evil manifestation. People--the members of the species--would be
better adapted for life in exponentially technological history if they were
able to stop craving and looking for "leaders" in those respects for
which their own faculties of genius,
cognition, perception, expression are the truly appropriate
"leader." As I've often said,
"it is better to be your own censor that to be censor of the entire
307. Is it not then completely hypocritical,
evil, exploitive, and self-contradictory for you to "take Genius 2000 into
your own hands," to try to "get people to follow you," to
"do what you recommend"?
Not necessarily, and when I
do good work such as the SFMOMA82700 there is no damaging
control-aggrandizement going on, just communication, sharing, and exogenetic
evolution. Mutual learning how to do
something is the most primeval adaptive behavior of the human species, or of
any technological species a priori by logic.
Mutual learning of a skill-based activity, as in "learning how to
play tennis" and not mere information-acquisition or esoterica such as
"I have learned where they are keeping the gold." These two forms of learning have to be understood
to make Genius 2000 honest, worthwhile, and respectable. My own proclivities toward "let's spill
all the secrets and expropriate," such as they are, do not negate the
desirable learning-potentials of the Genius 2000 Network.
308. Do you recommend, or does it follow
implicitly from Genius 2000 ideas, that people boycott museums and libraries,
i.e., all the works and expressions of past genius?
As Bacon said, there is no
harm in looking at something "erroneous" if one can keep a critical
distance. Someone once said
"everything nourishes what is strong already." I can go look at the Modigliani and,
theoretically, escape unharmed. It's
having the one without the other--to
view classic works as if your own faculties and capacities were irrelevant, or
worse yet, identical and competitive.
Almost every great artist of history escaped, in some manner or degree,
the "rat race" of self-aggrandizement into which the competitive,
professional sphere of art can degenerate.
The best artists escaped this consuming circle of Maya (lies, falseness,
crapulence, flatulence) in a significant measure. In fact, the truly creative and conservative
occurrence which I use the crude and arbitrary term "Genius 2000" to
describe has nothing of the greedy,
cowardly, superficial art-competition about it.
Though "I" do, "it" doesn't.
309. Do you respect the old
I still respect the
liberal-moderate plan of civic governance, and think that it is a pretty
respectable way to run things under typical conditions. Unfortunately, some conditions are so extreme
and dangerous that some of the priorities of liberal views become contradictory
in them. Perhaps conservatism possesses
less self-contradictory foundations. At
least Humphrey and Mondale tried to be good and decent, to a degree, maybe not
hard enough.
310. Doesn't the liberal, exoteric, leveling
value-array possess both objective and predictive accuracy?
It is accurate as a part of
the picture, part of the story. Luckily
the U.S. Constitution retains executive power and guarantee of rights, so that
half-plus-one doesn't give a party absolute despotic power. Some laws cannot be passed even with 99%
majority rule. The liberal
leveling-impulse can be misguided and even unconstitutional; in art, its
equivalent makes no sense at all.
311. Is it theoretically possible that other
states and polities could actually improve and enhance their own interests by
co-operating with
Very possible, even
probable. Were
312. Do you recommend that people enjoy a
sunny day, forgo crushing bourgeois guilt, enjoy having health care, enjoy the
capitalist process, forgive themselves, allow their genius to develop, and
enjoy the fulfilled moments of their genius as frequently as possible?
Most certainly all of the
above are the "ends in themselves" of humanity's existence, without
which the means of war and economic production are dishonored. Bourgeois guilt is actually a vice, a sin.
313. Is it esoteric to forgo self-mutilative
torment in preservation of one's Genius 2000, or, as is often simplistically
but inaccurately claimed despite its decent side, is fulfillment and experience
thereby of one's genius exoteric?
Just as the individual is the
material (and not, not hardly, the "solvent") of the polis, the
esoteric or "to the fewer"-ness of genius is simultaneously the matter of the political ordering of
society. Hence Shelley called the Poet
"the unacknowledged legislator of the world" not erroneously. The esoteric and the exoteric do not even
exist, properly speaking, without one another.
Again Blake on dynamic opposites.
The very idea of a community, or polis, or a relationship among many is
predicated on the existence of individuals.
If all humans were somehow forced into one body, one skin, one set of
circulatory systems, my blood literally flowing through your veins, there
wouldn't be a polis strictly speaking--just one agglomerated sprawling
"individual" or pseudo-individual.
314,
Now that you have taken a personal IQ test again and scored 150, and
your own self-assessment stands the steadier at 150, how can you rationalize
the mutual interest of high and low
IQ people to co-operate; moreover, how does this relate to the mutually destructive co-dependency of
dysfunctional and abusive families like mine?
The burden of proof, I think,
lies on those who argue people of differing IQ's do not have mutual interest in co-operation. IQ, talent, artistic aptitude, and all the
other varying quantifications of genius are secondary to the principle that by
definition mutual benefit is sometimes possible. If there is greater benefit to one IQ level
than another, or lesser, the overall "Good" or best interest of the
polis and the species is to have people of all IQ levels contributing to the
polis. Keep your personal differences from
jeopardizing the well-being of society.
Moreover, your own kids will have a different IQ from you.
315. Given the recent tremendously low view you had
on the entire Genius 2000 endeavor yesterday and today, after having spent a
day with family members, and given how fragile your freedom from depression
seems to be after about one month of not taking paroxetine, does it seem like a
proper idea for you to assume A) you will never spend any time or effort on
your family beyond the absolute unavoidable minimum ever again and B) you will
finish this book and forgo any radical moves such as taking down all of G2K
until it is complete?
By way of answer, if I do not do these self-remindings I will
surely regret it. Simply put, eating a
meal with my family makes me want to kill myself. After destroying all of my art first, of
course. I must avoid my family
religiously and with a light heart, and will; I'll also finish this book before
calling it quits on G2K. 1685 more--a
lot.
316.
Can you justify Genius 2000 morally in advance?
No, I can't, if by that you
mean proving beyond doubt before doing a thing that all the consequences of
doing it will be good, wonderful, perfect, and/or better than any
alternative. I can justify Genius 2000
in advance by saying I have the legal right to do it; exogenetically evolving
societies need experimentation; the First Amendment; pre-publication reviews
have been largely favorable and probative of safety; and the intellectual or
genial substance of Genius 2000 is self-regulating even if no outside critics can muster a modulating skepticism. Furthermore, I do not think that the moral
right of any given human to exist can be given in advance of what they might do
with that existence. Some people do not
have a moral right to exist in free society but the burden of proof favors the
right to exist.
317. Are you suffering under all the pressures to
"prove" or "persuade" that the Genius 2000 Network is
"good", "moral", will "help the world", etc.?
Yes I'm half insane with the effort
to prove my right to do Genius 2000.
Factually, after I publish this people may say "he had no right to
do that and must be punished" or "that was unconventional and
slightly upsetting but he had the right to do it." Actually I've been freaking out on the
question. Should I say "police
brutality is bad" or say it's good?
"Ignore it in light of discussion hurting rather than
helping," that is a wise voice speaking.
Let sleeping dogs lie. Let every
sleeping dog sleep forever? That is
hardly a defense of polity--rather an abandonment of it. Maybe hibernation is the only road.
318. Can you explain why your anxiety level
has gone through the roof, so to speak, over the last ten days?
Either I have to write a lot
each day (two hours!) to stay calm and hopeful about this book (which is my
life, my life, my life), or my lack of meds has just plain caught me up, or my
family exposure was too deadly, or gosh only knows. One fact is fair to say, I have been
thinking, planning, parsing, pondering, praying on Genius 2000 rather than
bringing it to fruition--"making it happen", making this book. I've been wringing my own neck over "Is
it moral? Is it evil?" Ask that type of psychotic question
(psychotic if in advance) and you
will begin to believe you need the answer to live; and what's more, you'll
think you just haven't found it yet (not that it doesn't exist). Hence Nietzsche's Secret: "If In
Advance".
319. How can creativity (new forms or new
arrangements of forms of expression, perception, genius, awareness, the
subconscious) be justified, excused, legitimate, or permissible in a society in
danger or under stress like
A little creativity, unlike a
little knowledge, is a very safe thing.
A little creativity calms people--like these scribbles, even a couple
here on the bus, calm me--and while a "lot" of creativity may be too
manic, ungrounded, and fake, just a little never is--it's always quaint,
cheering, and deradiating. Like saying a
mantra, it's the bare minimum creative level that keeps one respirant while
averting Maya. Not being creative enough
can also be a nightmare, possibly akin to economic recession.
320. Can you describe how reading
Yes. I was reading "Lycidas", as I often
do. Read it! "Fame is the spur that the clear spirit
doth raise," i.e., "Wanting fame is a spur that raises your clear
spirit." Clearly "Fame"
is a gigantic issue for me, which I couch in "love me!" pleadings and
analysis thereon but which also goes to a genuine question, that is, how many
(whether many) people can know about Genius 2000 without its becoming
unbalanced idolatry, addiction, control.
Does fame make a genius, is genius only fame, or only genetic IQ, these
concerns are the core of the "2000" part of genius. So, the "clear spirit" is what I
try to get hold of (or let get me) when depression and panic are setting in, making
me sullen, want to nap, afraid, ready to return to paroxetine: clear, empty,
clean, above, apart, oxygenated, lighter, open, proud, unenvying.
321. Aren't you sad that you can't make
concrete progress on Genius 2000; that it seems to fall to insolent garbage in
your hands; that you cannot tell your true errors from the scars of being
sexually molested?
I'm incredibly sad about all
of that, but sadness can kill. Then
again, not letting oneself feel sad can kill too. I can't choose both, and I can't tell which
is right, so I give up, choose neither, and fail to live.
322. Are you afraid of being killed for doing
Genius 2000?
Deathly afraid. How could any interest group on earth, any
institution that administers genius--any school, government, nation, family,
clan, or corporation--not want to
kill me? I represent the end of their
authority completely and forever. They
can never again claim authority over things of human genius. How could any of them, any group at all,
allow me to live? The one that saves the
world and keeps it saved forever has
to be killed, by an accident of course, a mistake. Made into literature.
323. How can you remember always to have
faith, and keep working, and persist in uncertainty by negative capability, and
let the devil take the hindmost?
Only by doing it I would
guess, and by not doing otherwise, that is to say, by not giving in to sloth,
laziness, non-writing, brooding self-hate, paranoid morally morbid
self-cutting. It's always possible to
forget these things and to begin to drown.
Just utter the simple words "I feel sad and bad, let me return to
my pen and paper, or my readings, or just sit and breathe, or take the corpse
position and review what actions I have done so far that day." There are so many ways of "getting back
to brass tacks" that the key is not which one to choose but simply to
choose one with as little delay as one can muster. These big choices and big decisions that
plague me as to means, goal, errors, goodness, destiny, "right and
wrong", these are all Death by Water, superfluity, archaic. Pah.
324. Should you expressly reveal in this book
every bad thing you know someone, anyone, to have done, and who did it, when,
and explicitly, or, should you and all people carefully and emotionlessly
consider whether such an exposure can be at some even great cost avoided?
The question of silence,
keeping one's trap shut, acquiescing to evil deeds, this is the toughest crux
in all history. Clearly it is good to
forgive, forgiveness and clemency benefit the polis while simultaneously
degrading it, and sometimes the fire is just too hot to stick your hand
in. Can a liberal, with a good
conscience, refrain from listing the sins of conservatives, and what is more,
liberal sins? Perhaps the best thing is
to forget all past evil actions. Yet how
would this affect the future? It seems
to imply "never tell on someone who sexually molests you. It's evil and sick to tell. It's your own fault you were
molested." That's what my folks
still say.
325. Do you feel like writing today?
Most emphatically not. I feel drained and exhausted from my struggle
against the zaps of despair yesterday hit me with. I'm glad that I stuck to my rule of not
watching TV, not eating paroxetine, and not quitting my daily art and writing
routine. I kept a moderate sense of
control even though I felt tremendously attacked and besieged. Now today I feel tired, and concerned that
words will scramble me up and send me back to danger and disarray.
326. Why don't you develop a good
"conceit", like "man risks life voyaging to center of the earth,
discovers new species of intelligent life", instead of your current
plodding, joyless, quantumnal mechanism?
Conceits have always seemed
flimsy to me. Maybe that's why I can
honestly say I'm inclined to try to "flip the whole pancake." What if formulating an easily-phrased concept
is now, actually, its opposite--quotidian, empty, and homogeneous--whereas the
daily tick-tock is extremely imaginative and allegorical?
327. If you were able to get rid of your guilt
feelings over using aphoristic quanta, could that pave the way to getting rid
of your guilt feelings about celibacy, iconoclasm, filial nonconformity, and
self-promotion, thus clearing the way to a low-anxiety, high-focus, low-stress,
productive growth-year?
If I could just really let
the OK-ness of the 2000 compositionality soak in, soak soak soak, I could then
be making progress and could go to more items.
Only one demon in the attic. It
could calibrate me to getting straight on certain tormenting obligations that have to be gotten rid of if I am to
"fly by those nets" and get to where I need to go, out of the
labyrinth. The chthonic primate prison
of fear and guilt. ("Get your hands
off me you dirty ape", i.e. "Noli Me Tangere", which I was
quoting years before I ever read
Nietzsche; I learned about it in
328. If Genius 2000 were to be thought of as a
recipe for ending religious hatred, what would its main ingredients be?
Exogenetic evolution, the
Eumenides, the One Superpower Option, forgiveness, meditation, syncretism, the
tragic cycle of A-K-H-A, rescuing criticism, personal responsibility for one's
individual genius, syncretism, and the parable of the talents in the Book of
Matthew. There could be other main
ingredients I can't remember. Taking a
patient view that there is no instant fix for the troubles of the world. Exogenetic evolution as a social norm, that
is to say, of reason, creativity, and freedom combined into an aggregate of
civilization which tends toward allowing individual and social genius to
develop, is simply not yet safe enough from its opponent for everyone to give
up all effort or responsibility. The
crushing forces of terrorism based in revenge, as well as ideological or
geographic opponents vying for the crown of superpower, these are still too
strong for all good-and-kindly people to just disarm.
329. Isn't it hypocritical or at least
pointless for you to constantly be persuading people why they have a right and
a duty not to worry maniacally over the O.S.O., pre-emptive war, and past
illegalities by the
Perhaps I crave some words of
comfort to share. I also worry no one
will care to lend an ear or an hour to art any longer, foolishly thinking
instead that they have to go fight in the war.
There's a good and honorable use in being civilian too, in working on
being a good person. Because the polis
is made up by individual genius in commerce with other examples of itself, it
is most indubitably salutary to the polis to make oneself better through
patience, meditation, study, exercise, and goodness. This can help the polis deeply. Forget not either that one can "set an
example", which is to say, express a pattern which while perhaps not
coercively binding on others may be attractive of emulation. The initiative of individual people to
respect and develop themselves using social freedom is progress.
330. How far behind are you for May?
Approximately one hundred and
forty quanta behind, give or take. The
pressure of writing so much can be very heavy on me. I'm fearful that by complaining about my work
at the office, or my celibacy constantly, I'll bore the discriminating reader
(hypocrite lecteur, mon sembable, mon frere!) and forgo any hope of
publication, progress, or freedom from said office captivity.
331. Do you believe people should be grateful
for gainful work, and not surly or contemptuous--much less destructive--of the
economic system they so benefit from and in whose structure they occupy a very
rare and historically enviable position of wealth?
My income is more than I
need, I've bought stimulating attractive spring shirts, I go to a dentist, and
sleep in a clean bed. No one ever kicks
me at work. I'd feel gauche to condemn
it. Greedy and grotesque. Yet glorious artistic emergence can also be
OK and fit in--and does not even contend with or hurt our workplace if our
Genius 2000 is liberal-democratic.
332. What are some good poems or artworks,
writings or images, you've seen that have affected you to respect work and
creativity?
J.D. Salinger's
"Teddy", "Samson Agonistes", "Don Juan" by Byron,
"Prometheus Unbound", "Adonais", "Ode to the West
Wind" (thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven, like
ghosts from an enchanter fleeing), Ezra Pound's "The Rest" and
"Hugh Selwyn Mauberly", and parts of the Cantos ("the ant's a
centaur in his dragon world"). I
liked Lord Jim in 1986, but didn't
read much in high school over all. I was
cocooned in a haze of sexual fear, internal hibernation, and marijuana smoke,
due in part to hitting puberty at age fifteen (which is to say an eternity
later than everyone else). I read a fair
amount of Doonesbury though, getting several books. How mediocre!
Not a complete lack of reading but little initiative in it. Later though I caught up some; Orlando Furioso, War and Peace in fall 1989, Pope and Hegel in fall 1989, Brecht in
1987, even Robbe-Grillet in 1991 or so--or was it 1993?
333. Did you ever read the Bible much?
Never a whole lot, though I
liked certain verses I read near Christmastime of 1999 based on "If your
son asked for an egg, would you give him a scorpion? How much more then will your Heavenly Father
give them who ask unto him?" I read
Revelations all the way through in 2003 or 2004, not, as some would guess, in
1999. For the VFE I stuck largely to
Matthew 25:14-30. Little (none) did I
know about the hailstones weighing one talent each, and how that relates to
January_1_Website or especially SFMOMA82700.
334. Could people theoretically learn as much
in studying Genius 2000 for a semester as they could a regular World Cultural
History course?
For sure. For example, "histor" in ancient
Greek meant "learned man" or something akin to "genius", so
genius and history are linked, even unto the logic of "Genius 2000=history"
if 2000="ness" or "ry", as in "poet-ry", "poesy",
poet-ness, history-ness, histor-ness, genius "happening" or
"event-ness" in genius.
335. Are large, large quantities of the
illegal or violent acts committed or condoned by liberal democracy over history
ascribable to the threats of communism and national socialism?
Certainly. Lenin wanted to undermine, collapse,
terrorize, and expropriate everything liberal democracy had--so did
Hitler. They didn't "fight
fair" either, but used gigantic amounts of pollution and lies to make
their respective runs at the top spot.
They caused liberal democracy to have to spend money on war, act out of
necessity to the damage of people sometimes, skirt laws by either exception or
reduction, and to postpone increases in living standards. So, like the Doryphoros's broken-off arm,
exogenetic evolution has suffered greatly at the hands of usurpers like Hitler
and Lenin. They were not just a couple
of good old boys, Dukes of Hazzard, having fun and keeping the bourgeoisie
honest. They were insane gamblers who
killed and lied in the highest degree, and deserve a big share of the blame for
liberal democracy's shortfalls.
336. Can liberal democracy continue to stand,
and develop, and grow genially, while it conserves the stability and strength
to make choices and protect itself?
We sure can. The Nazi-racist and materialist-Communist
theories were nonsensical lies--unfortunately persuasive at one time--that
cannot hold a candle to Genius 2000.
Both of these horrifically destructive pseudo-systems fail utterly to
appreciate the value and importance of art.
Hitler's sickening funky watercolors and Lenin's coffeehouse performance
art hippy antics are the true measure of how much they both sucked crap. So, I feel like I've let my liberal
democratic society down and want to be fair where once I was only frantic and
politically correct (i.e. comfortably pseudo-intellectual to please my
half-idiotic generational companions like Kurt Cobain and Thomas Frank, among
others). Chomsky will give you the
worst, most ignorant-sounding answers if you ask him how art relates to his
agenda, goals, and criteria. Ask him!!!
337.
Could
people learn the good side of Genius 2000 if they did their own experiments in
it, for example, by using it in their own art or criticism and by discussing it
with their friends and colleagues?
Big time they could. You could compare this in a sense to the
Socratic method (of people talking with each other, exchanging questions,
answers, and joyful bantering information), situationist performance art, Fluxus
art, Buddhist comtemplative group-formation (per the VFE in my scene in the
armchair), mail art, or a fun trivial-pursuit-type parlor game combined with
civic duty. Akin to how the New York
Intellectuals decided to oppose Stalin in 1950 even though liberal democracy had
flaws (such as segregation). People can
learn thereby "there is something there" even minus Max's personal claptrap.
Also questions as to how to conserve,
how to bring the individual talent to fruition within historical tradition
(i.e. without the "falze aufhebung der kultur") is key.
338.
How
crucial and critical is the twin idea-combo of Benjamin's warning against
"the false overcoming of culture" and Medawar's warning that the whole process or underlying system of
exogenetic evolution can be crushed at one horrific instant?
Those two concerns are
absolutely as high up in the critical issues of Genius 2000 as breathing,
eating, sleep, and poetry. Benjamin knew
about the Falze Aufhebung--Hitler's bookburners, idiotic drunk abuse-victims like
himself, who thought falsely they
could actually replace with some gory "esprit de corps" the
troubling, hard-won works of modernity they saw fit to incinerate. Kind of akin to the Taliban dynamiting the
Buddhist statues; sheer vulgar violence.
Contemptible but nonetheless incredibly dangerous and massive. So, the false overcoming can crash the whole
logic and process of polis, and once lost,
you can't get it back. Imagine if Hitler
had burnt every copy of the Bible for having Jewish qualities. False as false can be, and suicidally risky
(though Hitler hated his life anyway, the prick).
339.
Can
people be expected to recall things like der
falze aufhebung, and untermut and ubermut, amid all the clamor of your
aging bald-boy gutspilling?
Well here's a statement that
they should--"Please keep this foremost in mind, in the book and volume of your brain"--and being asked one can expect them to
listen, someday, if they are capable of listening and continue to be
asked--listen!
340.
How
can Untitled #1 affect the overall impact of Genius 2000 and help get rid of
some of the Gorgian rhetoric of lies and vainglory you sometimes use?
Untitled #1 is a true work of
art I would like to donate to the SFMOMA in return for the right to keep
SFMOMA82700 online or at least extant in some form, despite the copyright and
fair use issues. If this book gets
published on paper, something will need to be done. I'd like to re-create 82700 every 827 too;
maybe we can work out a deal despite my Enkidu-like gruffness.
341.
What
are some works you're seeing at the Art Institute today?
Table Rock, c. 1750; Orchids,
1849; the God of Literature, 16th c.; Chun Ware; Bowl with White
Rim; the "wall table", 17th c.; the rabbit wrist rest; the
turtle ink plate, 1st c.; the Dark Warrior; the Perfected Warrior;
the Peach Festival; "the celestial worthies" in various works;
Hiroshige's Fish, mid 19th c.; Sea Bream and Sansho sprigs, c. 1832;
Skeleton Beating a Skull, 19th c.; Toad on Straw Sandal, 19th
c.; The Hall of Increased Humility; Wu Family Reception Hall, c. 1600; Sutra of
Accumulated Treasures, late 12th c.; Amida Buddha, 12th
century; Sarcophagus of Prince Cheng Ching (Yuan Mi); Epigraph Tablet of Prince
Cheng Ching (Yuan Mi), dated 524; Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of
Poets at the Lan T'ing Pavilion, 1784; The Doryphoros, 120-50 B.C.; Stella,
Henry Moore, Mondrian, Klee, Picasso, Modigliani, Leger, Matisse Reclining
Nude; Chagall, Pissarro.
342.
Is
your sullenness bothering you today, your sensitivity and ill-temper around and
about other people, and is this feeling related to your workplace emotions?
Celibacy has been bothering
me less lately. I am liking it a
little. However, the niceties and
pleasantries of workplace emotionality are really grating on me the past couple
of weeks. Sometimes it seems far more
about being likable that working, giving affection and accepting it. What I sometimes want is space, to be left
alone, to be respected. Again, there
sometimes seems no way to know wrong from right. Ergo I just "take a stab at it."
343.
Can
you keep your conscience clear without listing illegal or immoral government
acts in explicit detail?
I couldn't have a clear
conscience if I were enumerating past acts of force or fraud. Nor could I feel guilt-free if I were listing
current actions the mention of which could hurt liberal democracy's chances.
344.
Do
you prepare topics for discussion in these quanta?
No, though I am considering
starting. Some topics are so repetitive,
such as my emotional anxiety, and others get neglected that would really make
the book better. For example, how
society is made up of individuals like quanta, who have to live side-by-side
and co-exist, even co-operate; but the freedoms people possess can cause damage
too if abused, so the quanta need to exist in an ordered field if the violence
of disorder is to be avoided.
345.
If
you could get rid of your guilt feelings, how might it affect you?
My guilt feelings really
define me to the deepest cellular level.
I feel guilty that I even exist, have the ability to attempt artistic
expression, and have relatively low levels of stress and trauma in my
life. The guilt is destructive because
it causes me to reject the freedom and prosperity which I have not earned, but
been given as a gift by preceding generations.
The guilt is killing me.
346.
Would
the guilt go away if you just live more appropriately, or accepted some
punishment?
It's complicated. The guilt could remain under even the most
perfect actions--one can always say they are not enough. One can go all the way to saying one's guilt
obliges one to suicide or homicide.
Alternatively, one can accept punishment as a cure, but even punishment
can always be said to be insufficient--it is complicated how to determine how
much is enough. Should the German nation
be sentenced to death or life imprisonment for committing six million acts of
first-degree murder? Should the people
of the former
347.
Is
living your life as an entry-level office worker a blameworthy rejection of the
opportunities society gives you?
There is a complicated,
mysterious uncertainty whether earning more money than I do now, doing work I
find more fulfilling, would be a contribution to society or a form of stealing
from other writers. My guilt-feelings,
which are distinct from actual guilt, confuse me profoundly and make me think
of myself and my own situation far differently than I would construe
another's. I wonder if I could look at
myself as someone else, not as me. I
could use the second or third person.
348.
Do
you worry that publishing this for free on the internet would get you fired?
It does concern me. I might have to sanitize it my making it more
boring and by removing any reference to off-color topics. I like this consideration, which seems fair,
democratic, practical, and clear-cut.
I'd like to stick to socially acceptable topics.
349.
Is
that second Kimoto Pake about to wear out?
It is. I feel guilty about that too, that I wasn't
able to make it last longer. I feel
guilty that I don't write more, and that I went to see a
350.
Is
perhaps a simple basic level of optimism, light-heartedness, plain application
of daily time, and constructiveness both required and enjoyable in you and in
this your writing?
Yes, I agree, well said. There is no reason humanity cannot learn and
improve, and no reason this book cannot help, and contribute, and merit a
moderate income to me. This can
work. Daily work, commitment, effort,
optimism, pragmatism--these will together make it all work out just fine. So
keep with it and keep thy heart light.
351.
Is it
OK to accept the morality of your secret-keeping, your private world?
It's completely moral to keep
quiet, to let others talk, to keep confidence, to wait for the proper
respectable place and time, to calculate in one's own behalf in preservation of
body and soul. It is inaccurate to
suggest everything can be shared, or to suggest it is wrong not to keep some
things for oneself. I feel guilty, yes,
but I have the right to exist, as well.
352.
What
is the importance of the question whether capitalism is acceptable/moral and
humane, particularly in comparison to other economic systems like socialism and
Communism?
It's as important as the
great amount of water in liquid form on the earth's surface and the
breathability of our part-oxygen atmosphere.
Cruelty and greed, exploitation, are possible under capitalism, but not
required or essential to it. Cruelty and
greed are also possible or even more likely under Communism and socialism. Capitalist economy can be extremely fair,
decent, and cooperative too. Marx's
claim that socialism is kind and unselfish, always and forever, intrinsically,
and that capitalism is intrinsically cruel, exploitative, and greedy is a false
claim. He's just wrong, pure and
simple. It's propaganda only. Marx was a propagandist for a specific
gathering of socialists in the mid-nineteenth century. Marx was more an ad-man and PR man than an
economist. The repercussions of this
fact are monumental.
353.
If
capitalism can facilitate the production and exchange of humane quantities
(like shoes made in safe conditions) and Communism was plain wrong to say it
can't, then don't we owe capitalism some forgiveness and lay part of the blame
for its shortcomings and meanness at the door of the Communist attack?
Certainly war and the expense
involved make capitalism's production less humanistic and
environmentalistic. The measures taken
to contain and resist Communism hurt people and the environment. But the Communists and their false ideology were enormously to blame
for that carnage, as well. Human
survival depends on globalization of liberal democratic political economy and
pre-emptive war when indicated. The
question is whether humanity can muster the faith and labor needed to make it
work. Liberals and other not-quite-as-bad-as-Marx
pseudo-intellectuals should take a hard look at whether they are repeating the
self-indulgent, self-righteous, false attack on liberal democracy.
354.
What
is the four-stage cycle you were thinking about last year or the year before,
under the name "Security-Prosperity-Freedom-Evolution", and what does
it mean for the Genius 2000 Network?
I believe I formulated that
in 2003 or 2004, though I doubt not someone else did it roughly the same way
before me. Polis needs security to bring
prosperity; prosperity to bring freedom (because freedom is laborious,
time-consuming, and costly); freedom to bring evolution; and evolution to bring
security. The great circle of polity.
355.
What
about pearls before swine, and putting the above up for consideration by the
vast hordes of pseudo-liberal pseudo-intellectuals?
Many people cannot take
responsibility for themselves, or choose not to even though they can--this was
me when I was drinking alcohol in an addictive manner. Of the relatively few people who take responsibility
for themselves and handle it well, there are some able to feel sympathy and
dignity for others, still fewer who can act effectually on it. Which means very few people have even a taste for the species' well-being. Which is OK, or not so OK, perhaps an
enigma. Certainly don't skip yourself….
356.
Would
it really be so bad if you had to publish this on the internet for free but
left in the frightening, mildly unpleasant personal revelations that might get
you fired?
It would probably not even come
to attention of my superiors here at work.
I would like, however, to set the standard that people can work two
thousand hours per year at a regular job and
also make great art. I'd also like
to establish that one needn't be hated at a normal average workplace if one is
developing one's genius--just don't be rude or offensive. Some people feel that serious art must contain morally or sexually
offensive elements that will cause one to be unemployable at a regular office
job. I aim to fly by that net, because
it gives too much power to the intellect industry, the professional
associations of art. I don't need them
for money, they can keep it. Art needs
to be free of those racketeers, and day jobs are the freest of all--so sleep on
time and don't look a gift horse.
357.
Might
changing your caffeine regimen reduce your anxiety and improve your writing's
depth, suppleness, and timbre?
My dentist told me today that
diet soda isn't so great for me as I severely neglected my teeth during my time
spent as a temp worker with no dental coverage.
But my caffeine has been too high anyway. It makes me tense, averse to scribbling, and
topically monotonic. Therefore, I may
try to cut back to only coffee. Who can
say. Caffeine only in the morning might
help deepen my breathing and my acceptingness toward poetry like this:
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Or, "news of a day I'd forgotten--if
I ever read it."
358.
Why
is relaxation so important?
Giving up old habits causes
worry and disorientation, which causes one to grasp. This grasping in turn prevents acclimation to
the new, freer mode of being (or 2000 of Genius). Hemingway called what is needed "grace
under pressure"; Keats called it "negative capability." I like to call it "the ineffable
union"; for Christ it was "the passion." (That gives me painful sensations of
topicality, even though I used the term way back in 1993 in the sense in which
I want to use it now but can't, for topicality.) Sitting up straight and standing up straight
also can cause an oddly vertiginous, rootless feeling. One must be careful to "persist in lucid
awareness" of this feeling, in spite of it, despite the concomitant
confusion. Don't panic. Caffeine sustains mild panic and prevents
learning how one's balanced state feels, and therefore how to maintain and
strengthen it. Caffeine=anxiety=amygdala
short-waves=no Zen in the Brain (to quote James Austin).
359.
Is
discussing, elaborating, and practicing Genius 2000 without any mention of
those dark deeds that must be forgiven an act or regimen of cleanliness and
posture?
Noam Chomsky would like one
to believe that he is just "telling the truth", but he is also
emphasizing things the emphasis of which harms the U.S. and thus harms the
O.S.O., further harming the chances made available in genial development under
the O.S.O. Being good and decent in
one's actions is a big part of having self-respect, which I greatly desire to
have. So it compares to washing, sitting
up straight, avoiding addictive chemicals, and is in no way easy. Because I'm an addict.
360.
Why
is it so difficult to accept that large, complex societies have contradictory
elements in them that cannot always instantly be reconciled, but sometimes
(usually) have to be managed?
I'm not sure. In certain moods I find it very difficult to
be at peace about the need for police and the harm caused by police
misconduct. Which is "good",
and why it can't be both, I can't say.
361.
Why
shouldn't there be a lot of conflicting, incompatible, irreducible activity in
the world, and even, isn't that a good thing?
Sure it's good, it's
fantastic I guess, but too much of it isn't so great--too much blood, carnage,
devastation; the natural world being traumatized, people being traumatized,
even the artifactual record betting broken or neglected. Still, conflict is necessary and good--often
the vulgar brutality of violence is that it cancels conflict--a falze
aufhebung. I used to think of it as
using an icepick in a pickup basketball game.
What's the point?
362.
So
everything's going to be all right, and there's no need for extremism?
Extremism of the vulgar sort
is actually the most clear-cut way of ruining the tension. The "opposition" that Blake says is
"true friendship", the refreshing wrestling of things that are
different. I used hominization wrongly
before; it means "making hominid" and not "homogenization." So sure, I'm damn glad police keep a city
from collapsing, but I don't like the sadism either. So--suck it up.
363.
Would
you like to have a little house here in
I'd like a little house,
yard, place to play music or make art--even have friends. I like renting too though, and travel--at a
slow pace--might do me a world of good.
What hap what may however. I
won't get fired just for mentioning sexual anxiety and abuse on my website, or
even if I do, I can get another job somewhere.
So letting go of the need (false need, said Cezanne) for perfection
yesterday would free up resources, free the position, free it to be
dynamic: hominized, not homogenized.
364.
Why
are you afraid of quoting the VFE and developing its points?
I fear everything--doing good
work as intensely or perhaps more intensely than doing poor work. There's no escaping it. I fear not owning the VFE due to insufficient
release forms, but also I fear its being idolized, made to serve an angry
ignorant mob. Also, I'm not used to
quoting or elocuting on the VFE and fear the new.
365.
Is
that second Kimoto Pake dead yet?
Close. The tip is almost all the way pushed in so
that I can only scrape the metal side.
So odd that a pen would be like that--maybe it's only for drawing on
film stock. I remember the old days of
when I was working the temp job where I got this pen out of the garbage. I was really on the edge then, I could've
stayed sober and been truly great at the young age of thirty-one. But I had to wait until thirty-five I guess,
or more. Still, I remember taking smoke
breaks in the old parking garage, moving large buckets of plans and documents,
unjamming the big plotter-printers. One
can do worse than Office Services. Yet
somehow there was a self-mangling element to my lifestyle back then, a
psychosis or scirrhosis of the psyche.
Yet I still dreamed of one day using special pens, deserving them,
honoring the use of a quality pen. I
also was given "De-Architecture" to read back then, in 2000, I still
have part of it photocopied somewhere.
366.
Will
it be a severe, even crippling loss to G2K if the VFE cannot be included in the
Network, if only even as textual transcript?
There would be a loss but not
an intolerable one by any means. I would
regret not being able to give those who signed releases their fair exposure. They had guts, and helped make the Genius
2000 Network a living reality, and for that they deserve their shot. Perhaps the releases can be shored up by
reiteration. Certain principles of
goodness and truth are included in the video in compressed form--like the
367.
How
can Genius 2000 compete with truly excellent poetry, that reads for real, not
scatterbrained but steady like Holub, Browning, and Keats?
No one's going to out-Keats
Keats, so pray thee I avoid it. "A
thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases, it will never/ Pass
into nothingness, but still will keep/ A bower quiet for us, and a sleep/
Filled with sweet dreams, and quiet breathing./ Therefore on every morrow are
we wreathing/ A flowery band to bind us to the earth/ Spite of despondence, of
the inhuman dearth of noble natures."
If you read and really let it sink in you can feel--not calculate, but
feel; to poeien not to logizen--that Keats was a proud beneficent Genius who
cared about himself and you with dignity: he saw human dignity and cared about
it. Genius 2000 does not come to refute
earlier poets, earlier genii, but to--to rescue them, care for them, do that
they can no longer do for themselves.
Advertise! Read your Norton 2
page 65 for Blake on Genius!
368.
What
about your other poem, "Fort Point"?
It's true I only have a poem
or two as yet. I burnt a large lot that
I wrote in 1991, god knows why, but managed to save a mountain of handwritten
journal--nearly pure garbage.
Fort Point
I saw the color of your eyes in waves
That crushed, pressing, pulling themselves
along
The concrete block that holds the south
Of
I wondered, was this iris-cycle of
thought and image
Made flesh in foam that never had a shape
before,
A starfish clinging to a weedy rock,
In bands of gray and jade and chalk
That faced an orange-red wall of sun,
Or in a freighter of the Cho Yang fleet--
One hundred fifty stackers above the
hull,
A rusting, quiet, sliding behemoth
Carrying the work of ten thousand hands
To their berth in heaven?
So.
I can print this, write more, recommend Keats, and a whole lot
else. Antique poesy.
369.
So
Genius 2000 is based neither on a "Sandy Sternlicht" falze aufhebung
as critiqued in The Book of Daniel
nor on exceeding what came before in excellence but in rekindling the love of
poesy by magic means, thus practicing rescuing
criticism to encourage, lovingly, the human sequence not to forget or
abandon its great achievements of exogenetic (i.e. cultural-technological, i.e.
artistic) evolution?
'Tis astonishing enough I
should have to say it but truly that is the case. True, finishing the VFE in April and
announcing thereby "April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of
the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire" does not, perhaps, prove a consciousness,
and a respectful one at that, of History and the Individual Talent, but Lesson
One online and G=mt2000 goes further.
Take away the crude violence, the empty ambitious flailing, the noise
that kills every slower brain-wave before birth--that is what a lull can
do. Just a lull and no more; anticlimax. Hush.
370.
Isn't
it hard to keep your roiling, spastic thoughts from fracturing and judging when
you go for so many hours daily without writing, gaining nothing, quiet and
spiteful at work?
My goal as of today--we'll
see if it lasts--is not to try hard, which as Hui-neng says in
371.
Why
have you been afraid to write lately?
I'm afraid of writing bad
quanta and screwing this whole thing up, ruining my chances of getting free
from my borderline data-entry job, and losing my self-confidence. One is always in danger of writing badly and
stinking up the joint. Perhaps I've been
busy too, afraid to let my physical fitness or reading slide. I can't say for sure. Perhaps I haven't really been deeply
afraid. Lazy, afraid, something.
372.
Your
work isn't borderline data entry, nor will it serve your employment safety to
publish such a stale comment on the internet for free, so why write it?
I get snookered in sometimes
by the need to get things off my chest--to state "my God, is it evil that
I want to be a successful writer?"
My discontent has been more noticeable lately. I've been grouchy and resentful of feeling obligated.
373.
Do
you miss the exciting, lightning-pace of your internet self-promoting days?
Part of me does, the addict
part--or maybe it's the healthy and confident part?--but I'm trying a new
dedication to a more ancient, traditional artistry. Don't ask me why one is better. Frankly, they both stink in my estimate. Estimate estimate estimate. I don't regret leaving all those internet
hacks and losers behind. They are shit
and I hate them and they hate me. End of
story. Plus the realm of the
non-electric, ink, grass, blood, that's important too. Hormones are in blood.
374.
Did
the VFE try to set down some of the basic, balancing, phases-in-a-cycle aspects
of Genius 2000 to avoid falze aufhebung, ideology, demagogy, and shabbiness?
Yes, it did attempt that
using A-K-H-A, the different quotes, different people's contrapuntal views, and
basic imagery like a hockey puck being knocked around, back and sideways,
traveling, moving across the bridge.
375.
Is
the video for Yes/No a good useful ingredient of Genius 2000?
It could be. It's questionable whether I have copyright
usage rights to the answers given to Yes/No.
I think the release may have been solid but it might be weak. The video however does belong to me, is dated
1999, and adds a gigantic layer of decent quality to the Genius 2000
Network. If you like that sort of thing,
here is a link at which you can buy the Yes/No Video:
www.genius2000network.com/ YesNo/video.html.
376.
Can a
person take all the various balanced aspects of the Genius 2000 Network, and
add their own discretion and goodness, then synthesize them all into a healthy
workable world view favoring genial growth?
Surely. Matthew Arnold's essay "Literature and
Science" confirms the truth of this.
Go ahead and take the wisdom of rescuing criticism, individual genius
(your own) in history, and discretion.
377.
How
come it always feels like what one really needs to discuss is submerged,
pushed-aside, forgotten?
It may be the 2000 outpacing
the genius. Additionally, I think of
numerous good ideas, phrases, and figures each day while occupied and not
writing. My concerns--the most cutting,
piercing ones--also frighten me into submersion and silence, even denial. Among these are my tension at work. I feel guilty that I am not as seemingly
affectionate, gregarious, and caring as my co-workers. I'm aloof sometimes, distant; the
guilt-feelings from this make me feel jeopardized and oppressed. The walls then close in. I have no escape but to create these two
thousand. I debate constantly: "if
I were forced for economic survival to work in a pornography store or some
other filthy disgusting environment, would I be entitled to keep my own
emotional counsel apart from my co-workers?
Or must I love, nurture, and care for them?”
378.
Are
you scared about going back to work on Monday?
To a degree. Despite a conscious, steady worry this
weekend I've done very little writing or painting. I can't think just now what I did yesterday,
though I recall being moderately active.
I did some dishes, did the laundry, lifted weights. I did not watch TV or sleep horribly late; I
didn't drink or use drugs, I didn't use tobacco. I played a little bit of basketball by myself
and read some of Portrait, which I'm
reading again. I could've sworn I'd done
more. I think I read the paper for
awhile. Today I made myself two pancakes
for breakfast, went to the grocery store, went to the coffee shop to check my
email (I don't have it at home anymore because of my addiction to it), went to
play a little bit of sports, then took a baby starling we'd found at the coffee
shop to the bird hospital. Then lunch, a
nap on the floor. Now.
379.
Do
you have a secondary list of Topics now as a mental aid?
Yes, I don't want to forget
certain topics; however, in one book I cannot get to them all. Perhaps I must write this book "by
heart" and that's just how the ball bounces. The five Chinese elements that make up the
physical universe in ancient lore are Wood, Metal, Water, Earth, and Fire. I compare these to the Five Elements of
Culture: Religion, Economy, Science, Politics, and Art. I think Art and Religion have been at each
other's throats and spoiled harmony among all five. I wish I could communicate to all humanity
how Art and Religion are both monotheistic and compatible; how Religion is
about the inexpressible and Art is about the expressible is all there is by way
of conflict. Esoteric and exoteric
perhaps. If I could bring leaders of all
the major religions and art-groups together in Unity, Peace, and Harmony that
would be truly Genius 2000.
380.
What
would the difference be in Genius 2000's situation in a Socialist vs. a Liberal
economy?
Suppose Genius 2000 is a
stand-in or variable representing "desirable expressive activity" or
"art-value". Under socialism,
the State would discern the value and goodness of Genius 2000 and then assign
resources of men and materiel to its production. Under capitalism (which is also called
"liberalism", and this is why "liberal democracy" also
means "capitalist democracy") individual consumers would see the value
of Genius 2000 and buy it for themselves using their own money. Art-value gets produced in either
system. The art-value might be neglected
also under either system, if (in the case of S) the State cannot or will not
produce it (i.e. select it) or (in the
case of L) the consuming customer can't or won't buy it. Yet there are many complications, which I
will address further in 381.
381.
What
are some complications in how Socialism (S) and Capitalism ( C ) produce and
select art-value?
The complications arise in
part because neither genius nor 2000 are uniform, and art-value is not
universally agreed upon. In either S or
C the value may only be seen for a given art-product by a very few. (In my case, only I so far have much
valuation of Genius 2000--which is exactly as it should be.) This is to say, under both S and C we cannot
assume that the greatest value is always produced. Both systems can err. Bad luck, incompetence, malefaction may all
thwart value. So, under either S or C
the higher or as-yet-unachieved (i.e. higher than the polis has at a given
time) may have to wait in unrealized form, "waiting", so to speak,
for more favorable conditions. Which is
to say, both system S and system C require time. Most systems are hybrids. War and so forth impedes both, but not all
active military states inflict equal loss on the cultural economy.
382.
Do
you recommend Bacon?
Yes, my summary-page of
various items at www.geocities.com/ genius-2000/NovumOrganum.html is in part an
homage and a prayer to Lord Bacon. The
page also has a link to the Novum Organum should anyone care to see it. I made that page consciously to call into
notice a relation between the two different things. In addition, I value how Bacon made the point
that we (cannot?) should not try to believe (he used the language of eating)
everything we read; we shouldn't expect every writer to be perfect. Otherwise, who would "scape
whipping"? One might hate me for
referencing Tennyson by the more severe enforcement of literary codes of
conduct. People conversely might adore
me uncritically for quoting Holub ("Poem Technology"). Part of this is just me being lazy but part
comes from the VFE: "there are going to be imperfections."
383.
What
about Machiavelli and The Prince, and how the Prince needs to be able to switch
from nice to mean, caring to cruel, good to evil, man to beast, as the occasion
demands, and this theory's relation to Genius 2000?
Fair enough. Everyone understands in their immediate
actions--their own daily life and "business"--the difference between
persuasion and compulsion. These are two
basics of political action as well. They
are both part of dealing with life. The
comparison to Genius 2000 is that one needs to be versed in both individual
genius and group genius if best outcomes are desired, because some occasions
will call for the one or the other.
Sometimes the hero or individual genius takes precedence and sometimes
the polis does. Basically, it's a
symbiotic synergy. Neither can be
completely neglected without extreme consequences, and tending to both
optimally is best. Sometimes History,
sometimes the Individual Talent. Per the
VFE, "if some people want to talk more, that's fine." Particle/wave and mass/energy too. And, ruler/people.
384.
Is
your
Assuredly not, though one
might wonder how it might actually go over were it constructed. It has a classical feel, an eternal return
about it that calms and uplifts the nerves and jangled heartbeats. It's a handsome plan. I'm extremely biased of course. Contemporary cultural production is so
complicated, what's good, what's poor, what will impress the neighbors and the
relations. I guess we're all headed for
a futuristic urban setting so that ought to guide us. Yet the old majesties--they have an earnest,
humble quality unto them that can really do wonders. To whom would I rush my watercolor to? Urgent plan, please consider. It's for my own mind, to illustrate my love
of antiquity and peace, balance, where the seasons change and pass,
"transient in their totality, their temporal and spatial totality."
385.
Could
the phenomenon of the kung-an be related to harmony among all world religions?
Maybe religions are meant to
be at odds, distrustful of each other, constantly vying against and undermining
one another like competing pottery factories, turning out pots like humans of
flesh and psyche. One learns a trick,
develops it, excels, others counter or follow.
An array of changeful homes for men and women. Perhaps they would wilt and recede if they
had not the obligation to strive against each other. If people heard about Genius 2000 and thought
to themselves "I like that idea, hero and polis, art, tragedy, the divine,
genial development and fulfillment, peaceful freedom, a strong current of
renewal to heal the injuries within the individuals in the global polis and
ameliorate the costs and labors of peace.
The genius of every religion included, all past art, within a
dimensionally increased present and future."
386.
Is a
lot of fake shame and meandering about really to the benefit of the great human
polis of the 2000's?
People can accept that art or
cultural expression is acceptable; that chance has a role in art (see James
Austin's book Chase, Chance, and Creativity:
The Lucky Art of Novelty); that art's role in exogenetic evolution is
impossibly essential; that some people "get lucky" and create
uniquely effectual art or expression.
People can accept these principles but when faced with something like
Genius 2000 they go all to pieces, floundering and blubbering about like so
many "soppy-stern fools at one another's throats, in old-style hats and
coats," to borrow some half-mangled Larkin. So I can back down, self-condemn, uglify it. However it is not a service to
387.
What
is the relevance of Joyce's call for Dedalus to use "silence, exile, and
cunning" in the new-birthed genius's survival?
Maybe he means it's too
difficult to make a dent in the hard, stony, rigid-faced hatred of what
Nietzsche called "mass man" for individual genius and the political
order that nurtures and protects it.
Then again, perhaps the safety is never there and never was, never can
be, because human beings' capacity for envy, gluttony, and wrath is eternally
provided by our reptile sub-brains. Show
that you've got a jewel and some swine will try to trample it--it's in the
character of the swine. One must be
practical and not rash. Yet what about
taking the bull by the horns, as Jerry Lee Lewis said? In all honesty I took the bull by the horns
because I thought I was Beowulf and my critics were Unferths, and Grendel
needed to be retired. Alea jacta est.
388.
Given
that well-timed revelation of secrecy can be highly useful in the combat of
deception that is War, deception being the essence of War under Sun Tzu's great
definition, is it OK for you to mention most openly how much you support the
O.S.O. and its necessary complement, pre-emptive war?
Difficult clouds of
uncertainty obscure the proper thing to do from me, but if honesty is best
policy then yes, part of gaining the advantage in the Moral Law--of Deserving
Authority--is public, exoteric, and non-deceptive. "Policy" means something akin to
"strategy" or "diplomacy".
Constant, absolute lying with no ingredient ever of honesty loses the
advantageous ground of the Moral Law--who deserves
to rule--and is most un-deceptive in fact since one's lies must be mixed in
cautiously with large quantities of honest truth in order ever to be taken for
what they are not--true--and thereby to deceive. A polis bereft of truth and honesty will thus
be weak in war.
389.
How
can the time slip by so quickly day in and day out with so few hours allotted
to writing?
I read now and again and lift
weights. I do exercises for my back,
having injured it somewhat in 2003. I do
sit-ups (also called "crunches") as well, and rollerblade (less
pounding on my lumbar region) around lovely
390.
If
you could absolutely write from nine p.m. to eleven p.m. every evening no
matter what, would that be an improvement on your current habits, and if so,
can you make up your mind this very instant to do so and never waver until all
two thousand quanta stand completed?
My commitment to this level
of effort is made now well and truly--thanks for spelling it out like
that. Under such a plan my fears will be
assuaged during the day and having room to breathe and act on my existence in
writing I can display more garrulous good nature at work. This will cement my glorious, blessed
sinecure of thirty thousand per year--why that's as good as Mr. Darcy, Mr.
Fitzwilliam Darcy had. As long as I've
done my two hours I can hang my head proudly--I mean proudly hold it high and
not hang it. Hang my troubles and cares
away and hover my head high like a proud wild falcon of honest, good, moral and
warlike expression.
391.
Can
you copy down that Blake poem you know?
Ah, Sunflower, weary with time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveler's journey is done.
Where the youth pined away with desire
Where the virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves and aspire--
Where my Sunflower wishes to go.
392.
Does
the
The imperative to heal from
the twentieth century and not to repeat its all-out military conflagrations
demands the answer be yes. If the
393.
What's
that Wordsworth poem you know?
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
As numerous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay
Ten thousand saw I at a glance--
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee.
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed and gazed but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood
They flash upon that inward eye
That is the bliss of solitude
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
394.
Because
it is such a long shot that you'll write 1606 of these before September first,
will you be writing them in two times and places (timespaces) in which so far
you haven't much, namely, on the bus and when you feel terrible?
Surely, though perhaps
"terrible" isn't the word.
Scared, empty, raw, vulnerable, unprotected, alone, betrayed, and
degraded are more the words to describe the feeling I've been getting more of
and during which I think I have to write, starting now, or risk very deeply not
finishing. Feeling surrounded by drunks,
sports, liars, frauds, and perverts, not to mention the infinite race of calm,
smiling villainous "regular people".
I've been feeling this way more lately, not wanting to clear my throat
with a reassuring, hominizing "Hm-Hm" like people do to punctuate
office silences. I feel like it's
degrading lately to make small talk at work, pretend to be friends; it's so
fake and false and demoralizing and degrading.
Yet all mores demand it!
395.
Apropos
of Friedrich's--Nietzsche's, not Caspar David's--phobic terror about "mass
man" or "the autonomous herd", the herd mentality absolutely
ascendant forever in all places: Is Genius 2000 Max Herman's first and rather
incompetent--not to mention only--attempt to escape herd-control, to break free,
to individuate, and "get up out of" the great cannibal-swamp of
regular people and "regular life"?
James Joyce mentioned it too,
a born soul trying to break free. An
individual genius questing to become itself rather than merely a failed
potential to become. Nietzsche feared
that the herd mentality, safe convention, and what Orwell called
"groupthink" would kill the infant of fulfilled human genius in its
cradle, for reasons of ill-temper and political self-indulgence, long before a political order that will
and can protect the individual genius
gains survival-strength. I'm a case
study of fearing herd-control, feeling myself drowning. Death
By Water, is it called.
396.
Have
you forgotten the freedom you gave yourself to make unpremeditated writing?
Could be I have. Writing scares me godless. I don't know whether to cry, pray, beg
forgiveness for writing, eat out, rent a movie, quit my job, excoriate a former
friend or now-estranged family member, or go back onto paroxetine. I've still been off of it in hopes of
learning and expressing better. But that
office Silence….
397.
Can
you think of a strategy for current mental action that can preserve your
writing goals, make you less negative and sullen at work, and make you socially
normal i.e. non-isolated?
It just seems too complicated
to resolve. Dedalus refused to take
Easter communion and refused to please and comfort his suffering mother. He gave up on the grand girl of his crushes. He gave up on saving the Irish Nation. And he gave up on lawyering to save his
father's wounded pride. Yet I cannot
without crippling guilt making me dangerously depressed, tense at work, close
to out-of-control, occasional paroxetine zaps, an inability not to masturbate.
398.
What
are some of the taboo things you cannot now and have never been able to discuss
openly that you'd now like to in your writing, to comfort yourself?
Boy that's a big list. Yet it sometimes seems like the things you
want or need most to talk about are the least welcome. For example, I mention my having been
sexually abused and being alcoholic to degrade myself in the eyes of would-be
idolizers, and know this will go over well with The Minders. No great artist is ever allowed to be that great, perfect, impeccable. So I therefore dirty and debase myself with
these revelations. Other things I still
fear to discuss, and don't know if it's right or wrong--virtuous or vicious--to
stay silent. Nietzsche was correct about
how modern people are a hideous admixture of codes and values and mores,
schizophrenic and enfeebled. My
liberal-left education from grade school on taught me to be honest, tell the
truth, the truth will deliver it is no drede.
Now I'm educating myself in Straussian esotericism, the pregnant
silence, the dark and terrifying necessities of global twenty-first century
survival.
399.
Don't
you want to write about being sexually abused?
Certainly, I want to put the
blame where it belongs. I told my family
about it with the abuser present at a family dinner in 1987. The abuser (my first cousin) and his brother,
and my aunt, and my parents and two sisters were all there. I told them all about how when I was five and
my abuser was fifteen (now I have figured out I was four and he was
fourteen--god I must've repressed it) he asked me to suck his dick, and I sort
of did for a second or two, insofar as a four-year-old knows how to suck
dick. He wasn't pleased with my brief
performance and tried to shove my mouth down on his abuse-weapon and when that
didn't work either he just masturbated.
I still think that's what most people are like, and if it weren't
half-true it wouldn't be so dangerous for me to think that. My abuser's mom still thinks he's OK. My family had other abuse too.
400.
Won't
you make yourself insane writing like this, and lose yourself your job in the
bargain if you put it on the internet?
It's true no one wants to
hear how four-year-old Max Herman was sexually molested by his cousin, who had
in his turn been even more savagely degraded by an older relative (in a much
more prolonged and horrific degree) which relative had, in horrid succession
going back, also been raped or abused by "an old granpa" who lore has
it "was not allowed to be alone with the kids anymore." I suppose in the olden times it was just part
of the daily routine--and it still is. I
don't know how people recover from it and don't know if I have--it would seem
not, given my rejection of all friends, and virginity at age thirty-five, and
being on paroxetine, and working borderline data entry with a Master's degree
and an IQ of 150.
401.
Despite
your intellectual acceptance that things that are taboo are taboo for a reason,
don't you feel obligated to no less a degree to express yourself?
I can't get away from the
need to express. However, most things
are "fire" in a crowded theater.
My parents want me to act like all the abuse never occurred--they want a
blissful falsehood of healthy kids and competent, nurturing parents. They don't like the story of their own abuse
and neglect. But they never dealt with
it; they just papered it over with a sickening set of lies. They loved their lies so much they wanted
their own kids to hold up the scenery for them!
How sick is that. And still I
worry more about what their sickening empty aging bourgeois fake-friends will
think of them if I publish than my own need to survive and get free. As if by logic and by God they have a right
to enslave me to the lies they're addicted to forever. And maybe they do! Who knows.
402.
What
about all the other crimes you know about, and ones you can imagine--do you
feel the need to expose them, and bring the guilty to justice, and pin their
crimes to them in the public square?
Well, society has two
voices. One is for kids and old people
and the other is for grownups. The
Public Voice says to tell on criminals and tell the truth. The Secret Voice says that sometimes rapists
and murderers are let off the hook, rape and murder, rape and murder, if for no
other reason than they know someone or the jail is full. After all, you can't throw the whole world in
jail--who would close the door after them?--and we're all rapists and murderers
deep down, or not even so deep down.
Sometimes criminals are pardoned because of a greater, broader plan of
which they were secretly a part--like the awarding of perks to eminent citizens
which allows their frat-boy sons (Future Rapists of America Team) one or two
excused rapes.
403.
What
is the other major secret that is sickening you?
In addition to having been
sexually molested at age four, and convincing my little friends up until age
ten to play rather too-advanced a brand of doctor which was in itself a form of
kid-on-kid sexual abuse, my other secret is in regard to my drinking cessation
program. I was, for a time, enrolled in
one of the quit-drinking programs based on the twelve steps about which one is
not allowed to speak in public after the fact.
Now if that isn't depressing and cult-like, or rather exactly like a
cult, I don't know what is. Certainly
it's not good medical science--medical science would never say "Oh here's
a great cure we have for cancer, but we can't reveal what it is and no one who
gets the treatment is allowed to talk about it." Allowed?
Who's in charge of allowing anyone?
You're not allowed to disallow the truth.
404.
Are
you comfortable revealing details about the twelve-step alcohol cessation and
religious indoctrination group you were in for a while?
I'm not comfortable spilling
details, no. But there was a lot of
amazing dysfunction there, cannibalism, which was why I quit. One person told me I had to make amends to my
cousin for having told my family and his family he'd sexually abused me. Now, to me, that kind of talk is strictly
psychotic, but in the logic of the twelve-steps I think it is fairly
common. So, something is wrong and I
can't say what it is. But what kind of a
group operates like that? It's
incredibly closed, and awful, and secretive, and arbitrary. Yet the stuff they say about God, and not
trying to fix yourself, that part's not wholly evil. Healing has to happen at its own pace, and I
mean the healing of withdrawal from an addictive substance. The spiritualistic stuff gives me the
creeps. They're abusers.
405.
What
about the sexual abusers and rapists you knew in your high school days?
One teacher at my high school
was convicted of child pornography along with his friend who had worked at my
junior high school. One could probably
state his name--Mr. Stradlater--without getting in trouble because he was
convicted. Or maybe you can get sued, or
will be sent to hell for being self-righteous and judging where only God can
judge. Anyway, there were a few others,
teachers, who had inappropriate sexual relations with students. Should I go back and tell? You can say I should, but what if society needs sex abusers to be teachers so the
kids can be educated? Or maybe lies and
sick raping is always the great unstoppable tragedy. You can bet other teachers knew and said
"oh my god it's too horrifying to mention, Mister Thompson-Brownlan
fucking sweet Susie Schaffer in the art room with the ribbed condom."
406.
Shouldn't
you also reveal all the other secret filthy crimes you know about or suspect,
because that's what drove Prince Hamlet?
I might like to catalog all
the sickening rapes and murders, or figurative rapes and murders, that I've
seen or can conjecture probably did happen.
I feel like if I don't tell I'm complicit, guilty by omission, and
somehow dirtied by the silence. I knew a few youthful lads in high school who
later went on to commit rape, and even two high-spirited fellows who lured a
gay man to a dangerous place and slashed him horribly with a butcher knife--god
knows why. Other abusive acts of a
lesser quantity are just far too many to even count--it's like counting drops
in the ocean, it's practically all there ever is! Maybe a few sparks of decency scattered about
but in the main, rape and murder or sub-rape and sub-murder is all there
is. Does one have to tell all the specifics? What if the rapists get angry?
407.
Clearly
the question of "tattling" on everyone is a tough one for you Max
Herman, one you can't easily disentangle from sexual molestation you suffered
long ago--yet still and all, isn't this two thousand quanta compositional
morass simply A) phobic avoidance of editing and B) manic-depressive addiction
to gimmickry?
Different people can say what
they like, but I acutely challenge any critic to sign his or her name to a
negative review of my 2000 quanta, because I will then personally roast his or
her ass over the flaming wreckage of A) his or her condemnation of my unedited
work as cowardice and sloth and B) his or her credentials, which will need to
be dismantled as a scary warning to all other folks who would try to put down
Mr. Herman and his two thousand. That is
to say, I refuse to play nice with people who simply just have to be broken,
and there's nothing for it. I've broken
up lots of hack art-careers already and want to break up some more, bad.
408.
Can
you explain why 1592 is such a magical number?
I think it's when Shakespeare
wrote Hamlet--just kidding, I have no idea when he wrote Hamlet, only that
Hamlet was faced with a rotten world
of raping and murdering, with a lot of pious intellectual bullshit trying to
cover it up and explain it away. Hamlet
had to fix the time, which was out of joint, the 2000, and set it right. He was a scourge. Try as he might, he could neither figure out
a proper way to address the murder and rape nor make up a reason not to care. It just wasn't in his character, the way that
Epictetus' lamp-thief didn't have respect for property in his nature. As I put it before, before getting to the
Epictetus part in Portrait, you can't
get blood from a turnip. Yet to unloose
the floodgates of global fear and rage, to make all those who have suffered
injustice and trauma into avenging Hamlets--well that would kill us all.
409.
Have
you been feeling bad about tattling on people lately?
Without any question, it's
true. Tattling on other people, on
trying to expose their crimes and misfeasances, is a serious problem I have. I don't quite--quite?--quite follow through
with my Eumenides idea, nor do I practice what I preach thereon fully to the
greatest possible extent. It's an idea,
sure, but a long hard road along it too.
The idea is a river to guide your path to the sea, but the road beside
it walks slow and hard as any. My wish
to feel less strangled and suffocated makes me confused about what the purpose
of writing is. Is it about revealing
little-known facts or is it about creating especially different and aesthetic
ones? Goodness knows why I shouldn't
shut up about anything bad anyone else ever did. Would it "set a precendent"? I've mentioned my history of sexual and
alcohol abuse. Perhaps I did this just
to get myself off the hook.
410.
Could
it be that exposing ill deeds is part of social functioning but not a
meaningful part of Genius 2000?
Ah, sweet love, you have
truly touched my trembling ears with your song.
Exposing ill deeds is not the role or end purpose of the artist. The artist's role is to create art, not to
expose crime. Crime is a tough, rough,
and hard to bluff deal, and it's used to hardships. It sticks around. All kinds of crime do. It bubbles up like a septic tank now and
again--too much crap in the cropper.
Crap crap crap. But art isn't a policeman. Genius 2000 is an art-making network and an
attempt at an example of a network itself as art. It's not a law enforcement network. Its goal is not to punish crime by pointing
out who did what and dictating a punishment.
Other agencies do that, and it's necessary but it's not art any more
than sewer pipes are restaurants.
411.
So
you can now stop adding to your crime-a-logue of people you know who've raped
people, and other less-than-fantastic things you've seen or heard about?
Goodness gracious I'd be so
joyful and relieved in that were true, if I could ignore and forget about
discussing bad things I know other people did.
The question is, "is it moral?", and the answer is, just
because I don't do law enforcement in Genius 2000 doesn't mean there's no law
enforcement. And I don't despise people
who, like Sylvia Plath, make money off how they were abused. Talking about abuse to some degree is OK. However, wrath and revenge are the very
forces I'm speculating are antithetical to syncretism, fatal to the polis, and
necessary to be moved beyond if we are to attain the Zen states of meditation
prescribed in Zen and the Brain. I can set aside my revenge fantasies too, if
I want--I'm allowed to. Theoretically,
under the G2K hypothesis.
412.
Although
forgoing revenge and law enforcement may free Max Herman's expression of Genius
2000 principles to a greater range of motion, doesn't it threaten to make it
boring and irrelevant?
Calculate it this way. Artistic consciousness is what art
generates. Artistic consciousness is the
driver of exogenetic evolution, or what in Portrait
is called "esthetics not eugenics."
Exogenetic evolution leads to more adaptive existence and reduced
stress, crime, rape, and murder (rape, murder, stress, and crime are the norm under
"the rule of One Master," life outside the polis walls, life in
banishment among theives, rapists, and killers with no law or kin about to band
with). So, art prevents crime before it occurs. That's why to do boring art-making and
forswear revenge, punishment, judgment, and tattling (in one's art) does not
set a pro-crime precedent, but the contrary.
413.
Isn't
your hope of finishing these on time virtually zero?
The tendency to create
whole-page quanta on these note pads rather than half-pagers, which I deemed OK
a while ago, is dragging things out.
I'll finish, though I may have to take out, modify, or over-write some
of my blaming exposures earlier on. Or
leave them in, to confirm my own shakiness and the fact that I was sexually
abused.
414.
Doesn't
the "success is revenge" principle imply it is OK not to really care
much that one was ever sexually abused, and that paradoxically "revenge is
failure"?
Touche. Factually it is an illusion to think that to
punish harms done backward in time erases them.
They still occurred. Therefore,
punishment does not erase. Neither does
success beyond. But to forget doesn't
mean condoning the harms done, or endorsing them. It means success.
415.
Could
it be that your manic, panicky, suffocated tension at work could be caused by
excessive writing and by reduction in your caffeine use?
Quite possibly. I rarely understand what causes which
emotions. I have been feeling extremely
antsy to quit my job for a better life, a more engaging life, and the guilt
that has been attacking me over this feeling is gigantic. Then I feel I will act bizarre and get fired,
and then have to move back in with my Mom and Dad. But positive visualization during play would
object to that negative imaging.
Negative-depressive ideation.
It's good to point one's wanting at an OK success in balance between
keeping one's job and creating art, like the hands of a clock point at ten and
two. The positive outcomes--by Gar that
is what I never let myself ideate! I'm
constantly calculating how to force the worst to be impossible, which can't be
done because anything's possible. So go
positive chief! Go glad!
416.
It's
become clear that releasing more art (pictures and words and sounds) on the
internet before finishing a true, decent, artistic, balanced book has been
plaguing you, but how do you plan to resolve it?
It could be that it's best to
de-escalate my internet addiction and forgo putting anything out there until
the Conference 2005. Doing those is
still OK. It's like meeting my dream
girl after publishing this book and getting married and a house.
417.
Aren't
the pottery pieces you made in your class in winter 2004 good and pretty?
Boy they sure as heck
are. I've got my two great coffee cups
(home and work), the yellow, green, black, and brown bowls, the large yellow
and narrow blue bowls, the yellow-and-blue bowl. Of course the small pretzel bowl and the two
astonishing tea bowls, my toothbrush cup, and my large red utensil vase are
also charming. Include gifts already
sent and it totals about twenty pieces, not too disreputable.
418.
Are
you still coughing up a lot of chunky phlegm due to having quit smoking
cigarettes on September 1, 2004?
I am not now nor did I ever
really cough up that much phlegm. I
think my lungs were burnt to a dry, hard sheen like a campfire coffee pot. I never coughed up too much at once--it was
very gradual. There were some real
doozies however.
419.
So
you can put your wrathfulness and self-righteous judgmentalism aside for awhile
without feeling guilty about cowardice in preventing and confronting ill deeds
done?
I can, it would seem, on a
logical level, i.e., it's not illogical or a priori impossible to do so. It can be done, and therefore I can at least
try to attempt the possible, which trying will lead to improvement which is the
definition of success. If I forget that
it's OK to forget vengeance as well as screaming for it, I can remind myself or
re-read this.
420.
Why
are you freaking out again today?
I'm not sure. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the
slings and arrows, or what Nietzsche calls "the poisonous stinging
flies" of mediocre mass man, or by opposing end them. Why does opposing them entail death? Possibly because it's likely one will get
killed if one tries to fight the ugliness.
Maybe not. "Or to take arms
against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them." That is, either conquer them or be killed in
the fight-at-arms. Boy what a confusing
landscape. Should I follow the twelve
steps, or Christian morality, or Science, or Shakespeare, or Nietzsche? I guess the whole value proposition (ah haha ha ah oh no it's depressing now) of
Genius 2000 is that none of these works; they are all outdated outworn
fragments of a map. Genius 2000 is the
real map, the map to reality now.
421.
Is it
evil to write no negative art-reviews, or is Blake correct that "bad art
will cease to exist when people stop looking at it"?
I used to think Blake meant
it wasn't needed to speak against bad art, because it will disappear as better
art gradually draws eyes away from it.
One can't bother with short-wave amygdalan wrathfulness toward bad art
by writing harsh reviews. Let it sit
there in all its fetid glory. (I used to
think I was obligated to write negative reviews of bad art.) Now I know that the gradual, holy, sacred,
anticlimactic demise of bad art is "slow as the decay of tritium,"
the pace of "hominization".
The "anticlimax of all truly wholesome progress" is what I
called it in the VFE. Mostly it's by
making good art that we remove eyes from bad art wholesomely and make Bad Art
cease to exist. "I am not Prince
Hamlet, nor was meant to be."
422.
Isn't
it almost impossible to get people to forgo wrath?
Blessed are the peacemakers,
because only if you're very special can you calm wrath-infested individuals,
and gracious knows if you do you deserve the praise of the polis. To convince the weak and powerless in the
world not to fight the O.S.O., but to accept and assist it, and that to do so
is in their own best interest and in the best long-term interest of the species
is to be a blessed peacemaker, a calmer.
A steer!
423.
Can
Genius 2000 actually work and gain enough hearts if Max stops using his evil
Machiavellian propaganda techniques?
Boy hot question. Max certainly does like a sickening dirty
cheating fight with no decency--when he's winning. After he wins though, and wants to settle
down and play nice, where's the safety?
Nowhere. Everyone hates him. He'll have to work as an office boy his
entire life.
424.
Why
do you put so many rules and strictness on yourself in doing G2K since you quit
drinking, and why do you make G2K in turn so pedantic?
I guess I'm trying to
convince certain Minders and Guardian Spirits that I'm housebroken and
perfectly willing to grovel on my belly if the age demands. Again, afraid not to prove my morality in
advance, my legal rights-and-wrongs in advance, before acting and before
conditions change. It's a habit. Child of Co-Dependency, lay down your controlling
behaviors!
425.
Does
every subsequent action change the conditions and contextual ground, and does
art relate in this both to Eliot's HATIT and Sun Tzu?
Every action leaves ripples
in the environment. So, I can't know
what the needs of the polis will be after I publish this. I can't tell what the outcome will be. I can't tell, a priori, if it will help or
hurt. It's a sheer guess.
426.
Do
you compare G2K to other astonishing pivotal works?
Darn yes. I compare it to all the great pivotal texts
of civilization, from the Book of the Dead, to the Old Testament and New
Testament, Greek tragedy, Homer, Thucydides, Islam, Buddha's teachings,
Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, Shakespeare, Shelley, the Federalist Papers, de
Tocqueville, Marx, Smith, Mailer's "The White Negro" and Advertisements for Myself and
"History as the Novel/the Novel as History", you name it.
427.
Taking
the view that Genius 2000 is not a rulebook of what others should do but a
fact-book of things Max Herman has done and is doing, is it proper for you to
let yourself be free and spontaneous or would this risk prolonging or inflaming
CWII?
For Max Herman to step
forward and say "here's an account of what I've done, what do you
think"--he'd win on all counts.
428.
Why
is it recommended to write and crank out quanta for several hours even when at
first setting out you might feel depressed, deflated, worthless, weak, and
grotesque?
Perhaps one part of the
answer is that extremely conflicting and confusing feelings can come about when
one is trying to make art and fulfill one's genius. I link a variety of functions together when I
try to describe "what happens" for living genii--fulfillment,
expression, development, incarnation--rather than limiting "what genius
does when active as opposed to inactive" to one verb (i.e. "make
art"). Perhaps this is a sin. For centuries, humans have striven to gain a
place for secular art within legal protections of society. Does it make sense now to talk about
"inaccuracy" in the traditional canonical object-based art-cosmology? It's like asking for cultural progress while
war is raging outside. It's crazy. Yet perhaps modernity cannot escape it.
429.
What
are your conflicting feelings right now?
There are many of them, if my
sense of it is correct--thanks for asking, by the way. I feel conflicted about questioning the model
by which a special individual makes an object which then contains art for
transfer to others. That model is pretty
workable and it's maybe immoral, greedy, inexcusable, and self-righteous to
imply or suggest a different, vaguer model is better. I'm conflicted beyond my ability to
comprehend about "am I good?" or "am I evil?" I can't figure out if it's unacceptable to
discuss art, unacceptable not to, or unacceptable even to wonder. I can't conclude whether I'm a special case
(by aptitude and education) or whether general rules about cosmic speculations
(they're OK/they're not OK) apply to me.
Is it evil to try to reconcile science, religion, and art, or evil not
to, or both, or neither? Is it evil to
make up my own mind about it, or evil to be guided? It seems like all the scenarios have possible
continuations to both good and evil.
430.
Do
you think that Negative Capability dictates that you cannot know in advance if
this book--Genius 2000: A New Network--will
be good or bad, or have desirable or undesirable consequences, and that it is
still OK to go ahead with it?
I think that I've decided for
sure to finish it out this summer (and am already one-fifth done). However it is making me feel crazy, the
working out of it on paper, and volatile at work. I feel anxious at work, impatient, offended
by the ordinariness of my job and co-workers (especially the co-workers). Nietzsche is make more sense to me now, but
he went crazy and I'm getting bags under my eyes. Perhaps even finishing this thing just for
negatively capable kicks is a big mistake.
Yet quitting seems to entail suicide.
I told myself it was important to do a book of two thousand quanta
before I turn thirty-six and the threat seems to have frightened me into
obedience.
431.
Can
you take comfort in the rationale that CWII shouldn't preclude all liberal expression or conservative
expression, just some when indicated by the "crowded theater"
principle, and that some kinds of Genius 2000 expression are fittingly liberal
or conservative?
The comfort doesn't seem to
sink in too fast--it seems to burn up to steam right on the surface in the hot
fiery sun. I know from personal,
incontrovertible experience that Genius 2000 is compelling. I've made it stick in a lot of very tough and
competitive environments. Genius 2000 has
already had a big effect on internet art, the idea of art in the internet age,
and internet art has a major role in art history. So am I to continue forward (as Clausewitz
said always to do) and see how compelling Genius 2000 really can be? Or am I obligated to revile and calumniate
myself for fucked-up reasons? I agree it
would be bad to set the liberals loose like insane raping monkeys.
432.
Do
you think you're scared that you will cease to be before your pen has gleaned
your teeming brain?
O well said, and I must
concur it is true. I'm so terrified of
not having enough time to get it right, scared that I've already missed my
chance. How can I make right all the
money and chances I've wasted? Should I
apologize to the people I use to criticize--persons W, X, Y, and Z--or leave
them out of it completely from now on?
There just seem to be so many questions piling up at the gates now
trying to get out of hell. "Hell is
the unanswered question." I can't
convince myself whether it is evil for me to try to interpret and describe my
experience of what God is, or to stay silent.
Sure it's easy to say "just do it in the proper manner." But what is proper changes. Jesus, David, Mohammed, and Luther all
changed what is proper. I'm scared that
my discussions will be sacrilegious and inflame rage and madness and become the
end of the world, of polis.
433.
Are
you going to go and get some soup for dinner?
There's a soup place by my
house (my apartment) that I didn't know about before and I feel I might like to
go get one. Yet it's a three day weekend
and I slept badly last night having drunk coffee late and napped today. Unfortunately it could be that I am coming
unraveled and will have to go back under paroxetine, my cosmic blanket. Can I tough it out, and stay clean? Who can say.
Soup is just to get out though.
434.
Do
you want to truly assist in winning the War for Men's Minds in CWII to the side
of the U.S.-led O.S.O.?
Truly I do. Yet part of our Moral Law element in the
position--which geo-political formation deserves
to rule--requires free cultural expression under guidelines of goodness and
responsibility. The cultural process of
exosomatic evolution--what Pound badly named "a few gross of broken
statues”--is both our strength and our weakness, a goal and a cost.
435.
What
does it imply that Buddha said "When leading, be generous with the
community, sincere in your words, and honorable in your actions. For the rest, do not be concerned" as
appertaining to Max Herman's day-terrors in his two-thousand quanta quest?
The implication is that I
should be decent, honest, forgiving, kind, and bold. The precise exact formula of what I want to
be, think I can be and have been, and think I should be. Yet this formula is like a corpse swarming
with worms within the cold flesh. I cannot prove it. As Nietzsche said, I am trying to be
"the I that does I, not the I
that says I." How can one get
permission for a new network before it even exists yet, if by permission one
means moral acceptance? It's simply not
possible, mathematically, to adjudge and accept the new before its
existence. I want to promise it won't
cause upset, can't harm anything, is easy as having candy kisses, but that
isn't true. It's scary.
436.
Do
you think that your Negative Capability is great enough, Shakespearean enough,
to keep doing this book until it is done, and then after finishing determine
"is it safe?"
If I could let myself use my
capability it would be great enough. All
I've ever craved so deeply to do is to use it, to let it create itself, the
giant moving mystery. It's like a God in
solution through my bloodstream, an incipient immunity. O sweet fairness, to use it; not to use is a
crime if we go by Shakespeare's single-digit sonnets.
437.
Are
you willing to try to love creative moments and your Mistress Urania, to pray
to and contemplate G2K, accept its gifts, and work for its great good fortune?
Oh gracious I surely wish to
be, and like letting my soul go down the flood-waters I pray here to "do
this deed that my own soul has to itself decreed." To express Genius 2000 freely and
unfettered--to incarnate it, a birth into the world.
438.
Are
you beginning to feel extremely guilty about something you don't want to write
about?
I feel very guilty about not
making my family happy right now. I think
that the devil--i.e., the enemy forces that dislike my getting free and
becoming an individual genius--is attacking me.
But how can I tell basic good-heartedness and pity toward people, family
and friends, who want me to care for them from enslavement? If my particular family and friends weren't
so depressive and dysfunctional they wouldn't crave and demand so much from
me. They'd let me go my own way and be
alone. They wouldn't be so sick and want
me to take care of them. They are sick
people and they are trying to drag me down.
How can I tell the two things apart?
Sometimes I get these super-strong feelings of sadness, pity for them,
and craving to go take care of them.
It's a form of addiction I think, to mutual strangulation in misery, is
the logical view.
439.
Should
you be ashamed of wanting to go ahead with your life on a Genius 2000
basis--taken to heart, not just as a sarcastic joke or a means of getting a
grade--or can you decently and without guilt leave your old family and friend
relations in order to exist freely and with self-respect and dignity?
It's so hard to leave other
sick people behind when you are trying to get well. It makes me feel so sad, bad, depressed, and
savagely torn by guilt that I've left my old friends and family behind. They all want me to go back to them but they
think Genius 2000 is arrogant, sick, and evil.
I can't tolerate being treated like that. It makes me want to commit suicide. I have to spend some hours around the people
at my work, who also hate me for not being like them, but I don't have to spend
time with family and friends. Yet the
guilt, the shame, the sadness and pity--boy these emotions are intense. It drives me toward recanting and regressing.
440.
What
are some of the things people can do to learn what Genius 2000 is?
Searching on a search engine
is a good place to start. Everyone will
find different results and be able to follow their noses that way. My first site at www.geocities.com/genius
-2000 is a good place to start, and the allbalux.com/g2k/pv. A nice guy named Fil Baumanis made that, I
don't know if it can stay up there or not.
It's a good site though. You can
also look at the various listservs I used to talk about Genius 2000 all the
time on starting with Shock of the View at the
441.
What
are some of the academic papers you wrote in college and graduate school?
Heavens I wrote numerous
ones. In a lot of them I was trying to
be a good liberal, but in some you can see I was getting restless and slightly
bitter (such as CryingGame.html). I
realize maybe it's too braggartly to put all these out as if they were any
good. I'm not saying they're
perfect. Yet they are part of my history
of genialogue and not irrelevant. Here's
a few:
(gc=www.geocities.com/genius-2000)
gc/McCarthy, gc/H&O, gc/MedicalTheory, gc/IntersubjectiveMirror,
gc/Vision, gc/literacy, gc/Trilling, gc/FH, etc. I wouldn't deny there are a lot of
inconsistencies and wild speculations in these papers, but I was just trying to
get by. Some people might accuse me of
being a god-hater, but that would be sickeningly false. I'm trying to understand God, the laws
governing human spiritual birth, growth, development, and fulfillment. Are you?
442.
If
Genius 2000 cannot be shown to be of evil origins and to lead to evil
consequences beyond a reasonable doubt, is it innocent and therefore legal?
Most certainly so. I've stated clearly how Genius 2000 is a
marketable information-commodity-form that benefits and values all human genius
in proper development. Genius 2000 could
have been implemented under socialism, and would have had to be by logic and
evolution. But Genius 2000 can also
certainly function as a market activity insofar as it needs physical economic
forms. I've started to clarify how
Genius 2000 is a form of "rescuing criticism" as Benjamin said, which
allows living humans to function in such a way that salvages and rescues past
art from oblivion. I've also shown how
G2K is respectful, decent syncretism, and how it concurs with the O.S.O. All of the major claims that people try to
make against expressive activity they call evil do not apply to Genius
2000. It's clean.
443.
Is
your Liquid Expresso running out of ink?
By Gar it truly is. It has a big clear reservoir you can see
too--I thought I'd have plenty of more ink.
Oh well. I can start using a new
pen. I might do a couple quanta with my
other fading Kimoto Pake too. I sure
hope I publish this book in paper. It
will have a great and interesting website to go along with it, and people can
network on their own too about developing genius and having a great life. People can help each other quit addictive
drugs and alcohol if they need to--you just have to abstain and let the
withdrawal symptoms glide away. I'd like
to pay off my student loans too, they are still up to thirty thousand. But if I have to, I'll put this full-size
book out on the internet for free. That
way people can get a sense of what G2K is all about and I can maybe get some
more opportunities later along down the road.
444.
Isn't
that Kimoto Pake almost pushed-in?
Yes it is. Which reminds me, I had a good soup for
supper. It was a good Vietnamese soup
with rice noodles, bean sprouts, jalapeno, fresh basil, green onions, a crab
claw which was extremely tasty, some fish balls cut in half, one scallop, two
shrimps, and I think some squid pieces.
It really felt good to go out to eat too. I was getting claustrophobic and crazy.
445.
Although
you found some more pens, aren't your remaining stocks from when you use to
work at that one temp job almost used up?
They are, yes, almost used
up. I worked there almost five years ago
and have been obsessive about saving the pens I got out of the garbage
there. I keep them even when they run
out of ink, because I find it symbolic and grounding. Currently I'm using my silver Zig Millennium,
.05, which I bought in a two-pack with a .01 in about 2002 or 2003 I think.
446.
Why
would you want to use a green Pilot Razor Point rather than your last remaining
black Liquid Expresso?
Well it's true I located one
last remaining Liquid Expresso. I found
a few Zeb-Roller 2000's as well but they have all been mostly used I think so I
retired them. I used to do that with
lighters too, retire them before they were quite out of fluid. I've got several with address labels pasted
on and then label-locked (laminated) with texts like this: "What thou seest, write in a book, and
send it unto the Seven Churches which are in
447.
Weren't
you also affectionate toward Pilot G2 05's back in the day?
Yes, I had about six of
them. I only found about twenty pens
total in the garbage at my temp job. It
wasn't that many, though I agree it was a few.
I haven't used any of the Pilot G2 05's on this MS, that I know of. Or Zeb Roller 2000's. I used to use them for other writings and
projects, like when I quit smoking I kept a vast quit smoking journal.
448.
Do
you think that the mention of Dr. Eric Burns idea of "seeing the coffee
pot with your own eyes" from his book Games
People Play, which you read bits of in
Yes, especially taken with
the character of the light in Cezanne's Lac D'Annecy. I think he was painting that kind of
light. It has something to do with
relaxed eyelids and eye muscles. I had
it at soup tonight.
449.
What
are some books, poems, texts, or artworks that have affected you a lot or in a
significant way over the years?
Oh there are a good
many. Giorgione's The Tempest, the Magic
Apple Tree by Samuel X____ (I forget actually, Collins?), Napoleon on a horse
by David, Euripedes' Alcestis,
Milton's "Lycidas", Lawrence's "Ship of Death",
"Zola" and "Erasmus" by E.A. Robinson, Browning's
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Hemingway's Torrents of Spring, Donatello's St.
George, Blake's poetry, Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities, a book by G.H. Pocock about commercial
humanism, Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and "The Ruined
Cottage", Milton's "Samson Agonistes", Rodin's "Prodigal
Son", Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Taming of the Shrew, Henry IV and Henry V by Shakespeare, "Adonais" by Shelley (perhaps the
most effectual of them all), Dryden's "Secular Masque".
450.
What
is your idea about "the master analyst" trope in twentieth century
intellectual history, and when did you get it?
I think I got this idea in
1995 or 1996, when I was at
451.
How
are you feeling today?
Conflicted, veering
off-course toward depression and disorientation, light-headed, bitter,
dehydrated, tight across the neck and around my eyes, tight up the back of my
head, and in addition to all this my back hurts. Yet there may be a feeling of resignation to
write two thousand quanta before September First and to publish them one way or
the other. The pain in my back is from
an injury I suffered while lifting my dog Freda in 2003. She had severe arthritis and needed to be
carried up and down stairs and lifted in and out of the car. My injury wasn't diagnosed until December
2004: I had stretched and damaged ligaments in my lower back, attached to my
pelvis and lower vertebrae, that were not meant to ever stretch. Therefore I decided I had to put Freda to
sleep in December 2004. She died on
December 31, 2004.
452.
Do
you feel guilty about having put Freda to sleep?
Very much so. She was not sick in any other respect and was
not suffering. Perhaps I should have put
her up for adoption. Why torment myself
over it? Why not? I gave myself a permanent back injury
carrying her. All in all the back pain
makes me feel like the game is rigged and the world is rotten, you can't win,
but it's heresy and a sin to say you can't win.
The permanent falsehood.
453.
Could
it be that you are experiencing the death-cries of your childish and obedient
genius as your adult and self-ruling genius is trying to be born?
I guess it's possible. The more I do what putatively is better for
me as an artist, the more worthless and lonesome I feel. The feelings get extremely intense, akin to a
demon's agitations when under exorcism.
Can I go ahead and make free time spent not on family duties?
454.
Should
you just be clever, and not openly discuss your projects for yourself but keep
a false deceiving face to the world that says "I am pious and
affectionate"?
Logical thinking might try
that route. But ultimately, if
individual genius is not openly permitted no amount of backstage machination
will ever be enough to protect it. I
could, for example, practice conventional methods in every area of my
behavior. I could do everything in the
acceptable way. That could be fine. But that is better for people with low IQ's,
or at least lower than mine; it's for people who can't see the implications of
"If P then Q; P, therefore Q."
It may be that individual genius will have to defer its claims on society,
because society needs consolidated unity for survival. Then again, an articulation of the lex and ius, the laws and rights, of individual genius might permit both a
war and a peace (a fiscal-military regime) that respects and gains from the
protection and encouragement of individual genius. The alternative is just which religious
dictatorship predominates.
455.
Could
your political-artistic credo be summarized as follows: that in order for
polity that protects individual genius to survive and prosper, actual cases of
individual genius have to be fulfilled despite
the risk of antagonizing the polis or conventional morality?
My credo might be fairly
summed up by that statement. If we let
Genius 2000 equal (as a variable of biocultural systems-practice mapping
algorithms) positive or good or desirable individual genial actualization that
does not harm the polis, then the only way for it to benefit the polis
concretely is for it to fulfill itself.
If it is only a debate or speculative discussion, it confers no benefit
because it only distracts intellectual resources and creates a picture of
uncertainty or panic. In fact, Genius
2000 that is only "the I that says I" and not "the I that does
I" is not true Genius 2000, as I have confirmed countless times over and
over.
456.
Having
bitten off more than most ordinary conventional artists and their productions
can chew, wouldn't it be better and more housebroken for you, Max Herman, to
choke on your attempts and dissemble and recant, go limp, cower?
Well I guess that's how we
get to the pinch, don't we. Historical struggles
are often decided by pincer movements undertaken using a genius arm of attack
and a 2000 one. (The guy over there is
protective of his girl. Why should I
care?) The historical pinch of temporal
and genial wings of advance coming together, making a matrix or womb in which
syncretic hominization can come to be.
Is it always better if the art-wing of society cowers and grovels to the
fiscal-military wing? No one likes a
groveling whiner. Artists are given
freedoms. If they use them badly, even
this is better than raw "diffidence that faltered". To use them well is best, ideal,
optimal.
457.
Why
have you been so restless and fretful this evening, at least in the last couple
of hours?
I've been avoiding
writing. I did some writing, wrote some
quanta with my pen by hand as I am now doing this book exclusively in this
fashion. Then I took some time to copy
out a Zen poem from Alan Watts' The Way
of Zen by doing the characters in watercolor. It led to a nice piece, using my green Razor
Point to lay down the grid and the translation.
Of course, I can't really write in Chinese characters but they look nice
anyway. In any event I was avoiding
writing more by typing. Earlier today
typing (I type these up daily) was making me feel good. It was appearing to me earlier today, or
yesterday--the days all blur together for me now--as I was forcing myself to
keep reading my sample chapters for agents (1-365) or forcing myself to keep
scribbling that this thing would work out OK.
Then back to scared I guess.
458.
Were
you going to go outside for awhile?
Yes, I thought it would be
pleasant to perhaps go to check my email at the coffee shop, get some more
white lilacs, smell them, and look at the people going around, or else to
attend the open mic session and play one of my songs, such as "Floatin' on
a Boat":
"Floatin' on a boat to take me home
again
Floatin' on a boat to take me to you
Floatin' on a boat to take me home again
Floatin' on a boat to take me to you
Floatin' on a boat
Floatin' on a boat
Floatin' on a boat
Floatin' on a
(repeat)
It's a fun, intellectual song based on a
charming folk melody in open chords I wrote.
Think about that and then reconsider how much you hate me and make me
out to be the bad guy.
459.
Don't
you wish, and weren't you very intrinsically considering last night as you
slept miserably with sore eyes, that you could just make this book either an
interesting non-fiction set of essays about fixing the world or a straight
novel about Thomas Berger and his struggles to run a coffee shop at the start
of the Second Cold War?
I often wish I could do
Genius 2000 in a more conventional, predictable, comfortable way. For whatever reason--my own evil nature
perhaps--it has not generally occurred.
Times have seemed very calm and craftsmanlike while others have seemed
torturous, nauseating, and doubled-over.
Certainly I will try the other ways if this one doesn't publish. "Thomas walked into the back room and
saw that all the #4 filters for the office catering event at MacRoone's had
been mislabeled '14's for Sunday' by Claire.
Why wouldn't she give up the notion of her return to medical school due
to Jerry's accident?"
460.
Did
you also think earlier tonight that you would benefit from some pleasing,
public activity such as the free-performance gathering where you could sing?
I was almost ready to go when
I realized how panicked I've been without writing enough (though I'd be
scribbling at the open mic event too).
As a rule, those type of outings leave me deflated, demoralized, and a
couple of dollars poorer. I'm already
down to $2305 in my acount; how will I ever get ten percent for a down payment
on a house or condo? Who cares. Realistically I have also had concerns lately
that a concern for non-writing activities (museum visits, getting sushi,
roller-blading, going to open mic as I did two weeks ago) has been
overshadowing my hopefulness that writing can feel good, calm me, and
continually develop Genius 2000. Going
to open mic might be scenic for Max for a brief glimpse of time but won't count
for Genius 2000.
461.
Why
have you given up your "talk to everyone and anyone constantly on the
internet and in pubs and bars about G2K and try to document the encounter
regardless of any artistic compositional or stylistic quality?"
Quitting drinking is one
reason; I quit in October 2002. The
drinking and the addiction to drink had me excited perhaps more than made
complete aesthetic sense about A) arguing with people that G2K is great and B)
pulling garish G2K stunts to see if the cat licks it up. I had been excited about forensic debate and
"found encounter" art at a good stretch. It gets tired out quickly booze or no booze
however. You get the "hey check me out! I'm not afraid to say my Network's good"
out of your system. Then you want to
become a better person, mature as a person, quit getting trashed on drugs and
cavorting with dunces, and increase quality.
Then solitude beckons.
462.
Do
you usually write first thing in the morning, after eating cold cereal, as you
are now?
No, generally during the work
week I will either type a little or read a little after waking up and preparing
my lunch. I drink my coffee with Mexican
chocolate, café au lait really, and read--often out of my Norton Two or
Nietzsche lately--for a few minutes before work. I wonder if I would benefit from writing
every morning.
463.
Did
you wake up early today for a non-workday?
I did, perhaps because as my
personal value-calibration is converting from obedience to composition I am
less at ease and more addicted to writing.
My eyes get sore and my neck as well, from worry. Or is it from writing?!? Every reaction is equal and opposite, and
that's apposite. I felt I had already
overslept but I hadn't. It was good for
me to wake up early (for me but really just on time) and stay out of the
uncomfortable wariness.
464.
Isn't
the main cause of your tension and anxiety that you are scared of loving human
contact and therefore close yourself off in a hell of futility?
There are really two schools
of thought on solitude and both are correct, in a sense, because to entertain
either school is to select it and make it true.
Often the very questions we ask determine our answers, who we become,
and what the truth of our existence is.
One school says that it is evil arrogance and pride to think one can be
fulfilled, happy, and complete through solitary Genius 2000. This school says, as noted by Phillip Larkin,
"virtue is social". (These
people might well be called "a crowd of craps".) Under this school, avoiding family and
friends because they undervalue and denigrate your individual genius is sheer
folly and vainglory--hybris in fact.
This school sees the pain and confusion of the solitary genius as
punishment that will never cease, i.e. a nightmare, rather than the healthy
feelings of adjustment to a new-born reality.
465.
What
is the other school of thought about solitude?
The other school is summed up
by the Conrad Aiken story which states "at whatever pain to others"
in the famous Milton Crane edition of Fifty
Great American Short Stories. I read
that in 1989, when I was working as a camp counselor, which I did for one
summer and did not excel. The story was
about how a kid was developing an artistic consciousness--or was he going
insane?--and his parents brought a shrink to examine him. They wanted to know why he was so out of
it. Dad wanted a more successful
athletic son and Mom wanted more affection.
The story may have been comparing art to mental illness. (I just bought that book again over the
internet, along with 12 Poets--two
number-books!--and I can't wait for it to get here so I can check it!) That school says solitude is OK, even though
it hurts oneself and em and pee.
466.
How
can the polis survive solitude?
A good question. The answer is counter-intuitive, in the same
sense that the magnetic field forms at right angles to current. Society, the group, the polis exists only as
a network of connections among solid functioning individuals. Everyone being melded together loses the
polis its strength and very existence.
For example, a building must be made of many bricks, not one giant
single brick. Hence individual rights
and development are so important to keep a polis together, and keep it a
polis. A million fused and blurred
quasi-people are not a true polis.
Solitude in this sense, of individual genius, esoteric consciousness,
Zen solitude, the immense peace in the brain, this is crucial to the
polis. If the polis is rightly ordered
it respects the individual and is in turn strengthened by individual
strength. Bad solitude can hurt the
polis but so can lack of good solitude.
Having good is best.
467.
In
other words, are you suggesting that your solitude is good and right and OK,
and you no longer want to feel guilty or deserve to, and your solitary
development can help the polis, and not harm it only?
Gratefully so is this the
case. Writing a good book helps liberal
economy. Developing genial competency
aids democracy. This system is really
about making improvement necessary. After all, if improvements are possible, why
not make them necessary so to speed them along?
If the improvements are not possible, why not confirm that in practice
sooner rather than later? Developing
one's genius is similar to the expression of a genetic code. "Gen" is the root for
"life" in a sense; it is from the Indo-European "Gen-", to
give birth or beget. It shows also in
Latin "genius", "procreative divinity, inborn tutelary spirit,
innate quality." So, this genius
has to be or is intended to be expressed, fulfilled, born; it develops from potential to fulfilled. This is how the
polis gets humans in it.
468.
So,
in other words, you think that the Indo-European, Latin, and Greek etymology of
the word "genius" is, if considered, enough interesting substantial
context to make Genius 2000 a worthwhile product for people to use?
Yes. Frankly, just considering "What is
Genius?" is key enough to justify all Max Herman's propaganda and
rhetoric. Of course it is ugly to see
someone like me scramble to get attention in the scurrilous, scrofulous art
world. It makes me look like an
exploiter or whoremaster and genius like a lie or weak piece of property. In part.
The other part is that Max's personal efforts and enterprise put Genius at front and center stage for the
launch of the new century. It's a great
achievement, if we can get over the anxiety as well as the possible truth that
it is too dangerous, too radical, out of step with the O.S.O. So my goal in this book is to bring G2K into
harmony with the O.S.O.
(Harmony=ar=art=fit together=army=order.)
469.
If
"Genius 2000" is therefore a mantra, a basic quantum-level item you
can always remember without effort, like "Om", then are you
suggesting that each person can flesh/spirit out their own Genius 2000 Network
as the web of experiences and reality they create for themselves out of or as
variations on the basic ground syllable "Genius 2000"?
In actuality that is my
argument. I am saying that there is
something about just the phrase "Genius 2000" that can help save the
polis by pointing us a little bit more in the direction of right polis. You shouldn't think of this book as a big
pretend land you get to live in. Think
of it as Max's extrapolation from the mantra.
You would do your own extrapolation to get to the real thing. It's only real
if you do it for yourself. But everyone,
by definition can contemplate "What is genius?" and "What is
2000?" To each his or her own case
in point. Just define the terms as you
go along.
470.
Don't
you get afraid this noble effort will fail and you will die obscure?
Surely the case is that I
do. I get so afraid. Will anyone remember to put all the
ingredients together? Will anyone care? Have I been too practical and Machiavellian
or not enough? Have I cut the Gordian
Knot or is it a sin to even think so or wonder, much less to do it? I get so confused. This confusion in turn sends me into deep
abysses of moral self-doubt, which my Tao poem, copied in watercolor out of
Watts last night, warns against:
"The perfect Way [Tao] is without difficulty, save that it avoids
picking and choosing. Only when you stop
liking and disliking will all be clearly understood. A split hair's difference, and heaven and
earth are set apart! If you want to get
to the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong. The conflict between right and wrong is the
sickness of the mind." What this
may mean is that: "Keep on writing this book, Herman."
471.
How
do you know "what to leave in, what to leave out"?
I more guess than know. This book doesn't have a set of characters or
who/what/where/why/when like a novel.
It's all about me. I could
mention people but I might be exploiting them if I did. So, I can only mention dead people really,
who left behind messages clearly stating "I want you to talk about
me." So Shakespeare and Yeats are
my characters, "those are pearls that were his eyes" and "set
upon a golden bough to sing".
"Sages standing in God's holy fire, as in the gold mosaic of a
wall." I make my little green
notebook of "Topics 5/05" to jot things to discuss if I ever am at a
loss or feel I'm forgetting what really matters. Yet I have no way of knowing if the Green
Notebook is authoritatively good. My
forgiveness-for-freedom plan demands I not name names except of dead
people. Yet what about what D.H.
Lawrence called "other folks' whoring"?
472.
So do
you just talk about anything you want at the moment's notice?
It's more to the good when I
use or "utilize" some restraint, discernment, and coolness of
temper. Belaboring other people's
misdeeds isn't to the good, or is it? If
I want to do otherwise, and do, am I neglecting the worthy? The worthy topic of being discussed? Lots of people asked me to praise them or
condemn someone else or advocate an artist, art-piece, or cause. Of course I exploited this ugly game in order
to amass demagogic power to myself. I
thought I needed to have demagogic power so as to use up the oxygen and prevent
its bad use by another. I thought I was
being a conscientious enterprising young trooper. Arguably I was. Yet too much praise for one person can in
fact impede that person's goal, so rich people with noble manners and being,
like one of Nadine Gordimer's characters, "accustomed to embraces",
keep mum.
473.
Wouldn't
you have more focused topics and cohesion if you practiced a normal marketable
genre of non-fiction, say, or novelizing?
My topics might be too
focused. The question with this two
thousand plan is whether I will panic, not get to all the crucial cruxes, or
get bored or lazy and spoil the tone like a souffle. Sure, I've queried about twenty agents and
none have answered. Who cares. The real course-setters always get ignored.
474.
Wouldn't
fewer topics better chosen and developed (like in Turgenev and
Could be, could be not. Practically speaking "Bartleby the
Scrivener" has good topics, like John Jacob Astor, "a round and
orbicular sound like unto bullion",
475.
Could
it be your sticklerness is vain and stubborn arrogance, which will sabotage
your ability to get enough time to learn Latin, Greek, Chinese calligraphy,
travel, date, have kids, and do watercolor?
Heavens that's a gut-wrenchingly
terrifying question. I could be going
about this all wrong. If I wrote
marketable fiction, like some other famous best-seller, I could quit my day
job, become cultured and emotional-socially gratified, and truly contribute to
the political genius and genial polis.
Could be not however; could be I'm correct, success-bound, a true poet.
476.
Does
Negative Capability have to cover the above type of anxious upset?
Qualitatively so. Could be I'm killing and murdering exactly
the thing I'm claiming most to champion, i.e. the poetic awareness captured by
Stevens in "The Emperor of Ice Cream". Could be I'm doing a good thing that few are
capable of, and fewer still able to appreciate.
Exogenetic evolutionary experimental risk needs Negative Capability.
477.
Don't
you get all choked up hearing that song you used to hear when you were working
as a residential remodeling subcontractor in 1993 and 1994, on the defunct Rev
105?
Oh of course I get choked
up. Everyone wants to belong and be
cared about. To be cared about, cared
for, welcomed, liked, approved of and appreciated, without being suffocated,
exploited, or controlled. Independent or
side-mainstream music makes me think "oh gosh I could be liked and
welcomed." But never forget, there
are lies and cover-ups galore in the College Radio world too, verily.
478.
Do
you think you may need to set aside that maudlin, bereft weepiness you got so
hit with after crawling out from under your paroxetine in March 2005?
That was just about two or
three months ago I re-attempted to experiment with life paroxetine-free,
smoke-free, religious-addiction-recovery-group-free (actually that was since
March 2004). The weepiness feels good,
the sobbing, remorse, etc. But it chokes
too and limits.
479.
You
think your gut-wrenching sobbiness, nostalgia, and compulsive craving for
"the good old times" limits and stultifies your genius?
Sure, it's just the
non-despairing side of remorse about going along the solitary, cruel path of
individual genial expression (expression in the sense that genes
"express" themselves, combining with the environment to make an
ineffably unified "Genius 2000").
If I'm really negative and hopeless, that kind of sadness and wishing I
could go back to the family/religion/nation--or the comfortable circles I once
thought, blindly, were that--is scary despair and not pleasing purgative
melancholy. If I'm moderately optimistic
about getting free, then hearing a song from my old housepainting times ten
years ago just gets me choked up, wanting to cry, not desolated black-suicidal-horrified. Nevertheless, as Holub said "a real
flood is when bubbles come from the mouth and we think they're
words." So even that sentimental
shittiness, shit-lips, can kill over time.
Pray thee, avoid it!
480.
Why
do they call it "love of wisdom"?
I think because of the
dynamic side and the desire, the never-quite-having. This Genius 2000 book is also more like a
Collingwoodian Question-and-Answer philosophical treatise, Socratic dialogue,
or Nietzschean aphoristic exposition than a strictly factual non-fiction
exposition or fictive entertainment virtual-world vacation. I'm declaring and utilizing a method. After all, there is the philosophy vs.
fiction dynamism as well as the history vs. novel, hero vs. polis, and genius
vs. 2000 ones.
481.
Wouldn't
you like to be popular and idolized, screamed for by tens of thousands at a big
rock festival, by the College Radio subculture?
I might like it, or for a
time. But being alcoholic and
drugaholic, not able to drink or get high anymore, there might not be any fun
in it. But why pre-judge? Here's my 2004 album "Maya on My
Mind" (ww.geocities.com/genius-2000/MayaOnMyMind.html). Is
it crap? You decide.
482.
Do
you really feel like you're being focused, and working, and getting something
done, and learning in your application to this book Genius 2000: A New Network, in the way you used to work at
tennis-playing when you were a teenager at tennis lessons and the summer tennis
day-camp known at the time as "Tennis Only"?
It's fun and healthy-feeling
to do tennis drills, practicing getting to the ready position, practicing
approach shots and volleys and overheads.
I had a good tennis game, but like almost all my potentials I could never
get past the self-shame to really go for success
with it--i.e. "all the way up", as Jake says in The Sun Also Rises. I was a
coward in competition always--I thought I'd get set upon and killed or raped if
I took the spotlight whether I did well or badly. Other, harder, greedier, and more desperately
masculine persons wanted the fighting chance more. So I never got to be a fighting, winning
competitor. I was diffident and now my back is shot; strictly a
never-was. Wasted my tennis potential
and thousands of hours of work. That sucks!!!
483.
Is
your rule for whether to "name names" in this book controlled by the
test of "is it exploitative"?
I'm still confused about the
exploiting part. I could name the name
of my tennis coach, he was well-known and a very fascinating character. Would that be exploiting him, or would not mentioning him be "diffidence
that faltered"? Does he deserve the credit of being mentioned?
It all depends on whether genius 2000 is grievous garbage or respected
accomplishment.
484.
Could
your second book be called Naming Names,
allowing you to leave names out of this book but putting them in the next one
(or not), or a later one, i.e. postponing the naming?
I'd rather resolve it. However, my calculus doesn't seem to give me
conclusive decisions. I guess I want to
make this book be focused on my own work,
labor, not being a Johnny-on-the-Spot with an attractive gimmick rounding up
volunteers.
485.
Were
all the people who agreed to be interviewed or taped for the VFE exploited, or
did they know what they were doing?
I can't say for sure--I think
it was some of each. Sometimes they were
drunk, high, or nervous. I got some
signed releases that I thought were really solid and signed under good control,
and some not signed very knowingly at all.
Some people were really self-possessed and some were eager to please, or
insecure. Some people said embarrassing
or ill-considered things which I put in to juxtapose with. Again, it comes down to whether G2K is trash
or gold. Some people's comments conflict
with others' in the video. Overall I
think the tape is good, reasonably respectable, and worth watching. Remember that nothing like it can ever be
made again, too--it's genuinely one-of-a-kind.
That's rare. Yet, if my own work
and effort and commitment was
lacking, that's what this book is for.
Fulcrum and lever.
486.
Could
it be that this book is good, decent, helpful to exogenetic evolution, worthy,
and tries hard to be good?
Even under the transvaluation
of values or an individual-based model of value, production, exchange, and
accumulation there is still the concern of whether a thing contributes or
"is a good buy". For example,
I may be trying by writing this book to drag you down, take revenge on your
individual genius, abuse you, and exploit you for Max Herman's vile
amusement. Unquestionably I am trying to
"take you away" from other books you could be reading (like
Shakespeare's Sonnets, including X). It
could be that I'm trying my best to connect with you in a non-abusive way but failing. Or, it could be that I'm creating a Network
that you can participate in or decide not to as you prefer. Every writer, don't forget, is also doing
exactly the same appropriative claiming on your time (2000) and intellect
(genius). Are they respecting them
better? If so, go read them, in all
earnestness, read the authors that treat you with respect and benefit you
without flattery.
487.
Is a
book akin to a counselor's advice to a king, the book-buyer being a monarch
reigning over his or her Genius 2000?
Certainly one can view it
that way. You, the reader, the hypocrite
lecteur, mon sembable, mon frere, (that's from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste
Land"), are the ultimate authority on what you read (beyond a few requests
put to you by schools or legal institutions).
I regret that some people are so desperate as to be led, taken care of,
that they gravitate toward Genius 2000 in a too-needy aspect. I regret even worse when I've exploited their
poverty or confused naïve gullibility.
Sometimes I thought it was indicated to protect the O.S.O., to use up
the oxygen. On occasion, I think it's
fair to say, I was acting out my abusive mastery-behaviors ("I'm going to
be the abuser now.") These cases
feel sick and horrid when I recall them now.
Yet how exploitive was I? I broke
some people's backs who deserved it, and commerced with others. It could be well to also consider that some
people entered into interaction with me freely, and I tried my best. Or was it all lies?
488.
Why
are you writing again?
I haven't written for about
eight hours and I'm feeling anxious and scared again. It would appear that I write to calm my fears
about going insane. It used to be that I
did reading for that. To sit, read
something you chose for a reason, read until the reason is clear in the
reading, keep on until the reason is done and replaced by boredom and
lassitude. Then keep reading with no
particular reason in mind, just blank, noticing all things afresh. Then to keep reading despite boredom, and
wanting "to accomplish something", and having come to the conclusion
of your original reason. That's negative
capability in reading, and it allows your soul to experience the book
afresh. Yet now I feel so horrible it
can't be explained. I typed for several
hours and went to exercise and grocery shopping. Now my entire moral compass is whirling out
of control again. My guilts and shames
are back in force. Should I try to get
forgiven?
489.
Might
it be better for you if you set your emotional state to the side a little,
rather than forcibly trying to resolve or comprehend it?
Gosh that sounds great. I'm still not very good with my
emotions. They can drive me absolutely
nut-crazy, all the permutations, what-ifs, and conflicting directives. I suppose it is morally OK to let them slide
by on simmer for an evening. I've done a
lot of examining today, wrote, exercised, grocery shopped, typed. It wasn't an overly sinful day. Or was it even a good day, one to feel proud
of? Could be. All the questions regarding what I should
have done, was/am obligated to do, movements I should have made, evils I
committed under the delusion they were goods.
Negative Capability, please save me.
You are the only hope for my own
personal exogenetic evolution it appears.
Other might work for others but my make-up seems to need you. Please help me.
490.
Can
you comment on Brecht?
I read his Galileo at Oberlin--is that exploitive
of Brecht, Galileo, Oberlin, and of the non-word "exploitive"
itself? In any case, I read it. I also recall reading about the
"alienation effect" as he called it.
Is the important or even essential thing to create an object, or a
state? If a state, then the
object-at-all-costs may be an unwise method.
Brecht wanted to back people out of the play, not suck them in for
catharsis. (Brecht was a frightful
Communist as well.) Brecht thought
catharsis numbed the audience to unjust property relations and class
oppression. So he flashed newspaper
clippings on a screen above the play. I
have a fondness for the story of Galileo as Brecht told it (without much
"alienation effect" at all, to my mind) and also a regard for
alienating the spectator back out of the object, back into his or her own
genius and environment. One might say Brecht
cracked open the art-object. I will
continue this in 491.
491.
What
are some more sub-academic flippant remarks about Brecht, drama, tragedy,
Aristotle, the alienation effect, the kung-an, the internet, and the
Communicative or Post-Canonical paradigm?
There are several. Brecht's critique of art may have had some
validity that his economics didn't.
I.e., from the strictly capitalist perspective one can see how value
might be lost to the consumer, and thence to society if people are unable to
detect differences in quality among goods because they are too absorbed in
something. (Basically I think that
wanting to buy products that advance the worker's interest is how capitalism
can operate like socialism as regards social welfare and the public good.) Brecht's idea to get people "out"
of the artwork could be explained without pro-Communist explanations--Plato and
the cave, for example. But wait, maybe
Plato is a Communist. Anyhow, alienation
effect, Communism, Galileo, Brecht, Max Herman.
492.
Could
it clarify things to say that Genius 2000 aims to expand the definition of art
beyond the art-object without damaging it or promoting Communism?
Perhaps it could, given the
muck I've made of it all just now.
Communist doctrine led to a lot of needless suffering, human repression,
and pollution. It's not a light thing to
praise it. Yet capitalism too had a dark
side and several very rough patches of road to get past--the nineteen-thirties
for example. One could as justifiably
blame industrialization itself as either Communist or capitalist administration
of it. The protracted conflict between
them had a high cost however. We're
paying for it still today. One can as
easily say it is good to kick people out of the artwork so they can be better
capitalists back in the real world.
Kitsch is what they call it when you just get sucked in though, and lose
your senses. But the feeling is so
lovely! Can it be all bad?
493.
Does
G2K stand or fall on the question of whether the artistic process can occur outside or above the traditional art-object?
I feel sick hearing it
spelled out so decently and fairly but I suppose yes. One cannot argue that Cezanne's art-objects
are stupid, silly, and backward however.
They are superb examples of genius fulfilling itself, and as Blake said
"The worship of God is, Honouring his gifts in other men, each according
to his genius, and loving the greatest men best. Those who envy or calumniate great men hate
God, for there is no other God."
Cezanne left objects, and the objects he made are far better than
anything I've ever done. What could be
wrong with objects? Before I go flush
all of this--and myself too--down the toilet, I could try to pipe up that it is
the living dynamic process going on that makes Cezanne's objects so great. They themselves are only servants to the
process they allude to and reflect. The
process or G2K of the paintings is what really counts, inextricable as it is
from the paintings in this case.
494.
Do
objects exist only in time?
Verily, they only do. You can't have anything exist except within
time. "To exist" means
"to exist in time". So, there
is a cheap terrible hokum sense of saying "old stuff is outdated" and
another subtler sense. The subtler sense
is more important than anything else I can think of. We can see it in Cezanne's remark "A
minute in the world's life passes! To
paint it in is reality! And forget
everything for that. To become that
minute, be the sensitive plate…give the image of what we see forgetting
everything that has appeared before our time." Cezanne perhaps is confirming that a painting
done this way is not a mere commodity or article but a partial record of a
great flow of reality. Yet Brecht's
argument was not merely that one cannot translate paintings to a dollar amount
(though you can). He wanted to alienate
us from the artwork. I think he was
wrong-headed in that and Cezanne's "become that minute" as it passes
is wiser about the transience of art--skill with which gives objects their
magic.
495.
So is
this all a kind of amateur art-lecture then, home-brewed Flora Lewis?
I sent Flora Lewis a letter
one time called "Art for Our Sake."
It was back around 1993 I think.
My argument was fairly straight Communist Brecht, that enjoyable aesthetic
art (sometimes called "autonomous art" by Habermas) was just
luxurious and false and stole expressive resources from the effort to deal with
humanity's problems. Clearly I was a
little nuts, (see text at gc/ArtForOurSake.html) but Flora replied to me noting
that a world without art would be very sterile.
I agree now that it would be sterile to the point of death. Yet I was just trying to figure some stuff
out. Clearly some art is just obnoxious
conspicuous consumption, and that goes for low art as well. As to the amateurness, well Genius 2000 is a
new theory of history based in part on the meaning of art and religious
expression. So sure, it's poor-man's
Gombrich, fine.
496.
Do
you like Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, William Hazlitt, and other art-critics
who did it before they called it theory?
I like some of it.
497.
Has all that talk about Brecht and Oberlin got
you depressed?
Yes, I went there for just
two years in the late eighties and I still feel like a disgusting failure
thinking about it. It's all so
impossible--I can't "wear myself out persisting to successes" against
it, as Pound said, and what's more, I never succeed against it anyway. I'm also very depressed about work
tomorrow. I've done five hundred of
these and accomplished next to nothing--I mean 496.
498.
Is your helpless attachment to showing that
you are intelligent a vestige of your childhood traumas, and in practice the
quickest path to unintelligence?
I want to be loved. To be loved, I need to stop being a
failure. To escape failure I need to
publish a book. Only books by smart
people count. Therefore I must prove I
am smart by talking nonsense about Brecht and E.L. Doctorow, putting all my
college papers on the internet, and finding the letter I sent to Flora Lewis in
1993.
499.
Might it be a good thing if you were to
accept that you can't fix the past?
Maybe. I suppose the past is over and done with
now. Some of my college papers were very
boring and average. Some were borderline
communistic for no particular reason, and others were quite patrician and
elitist. I was just trying on hats,
trying to grow up. I filled innumerable
journal pages back then too, all with nothing--no artworks--to speak of. Ruminative depression, my old adversary.
500.
Can
you think of a way to address your tension and discomfort at work, so that it
doesn't get you fired?
I'd probably be better off if
I got fired. I'd have to crawl back to
em and pee and make a new, daring, bold start--at thirty-five! A virgin!
It's complete insanity. No,
keeping the job would be nicer, for me.
It's a good job if I can stay sane at it. Maybe it's a good thing that I'm getting
restless and want a better life, a handycam with a decent lens and not the
foggy peanut on my current three-hundred-dollar one. I think I could be doing more with my life. The Tao would recommend I not struggle with
right and wrong because that is the sickness of the mind. I can't fix it. I can't resolve it. All I can do is pray to have good luck in art
from now on. But even which God to pray
to, or whether believing in God is evil, is disagreed upon by various prominent
leaders in the polis. Oh well, I'll get
by. I'll try to skip the worrying.
501.
Was
ruminative depression what drove you into the mental health facility in 2000?
The doctor called it that,
yes. He was also kind enough to say I
didn't need anti-psychotic Zyprexa anymore either, and that some obsessiveness
about writing is required and OK if you're serious and want to succeed. That was nice of him to say that. An interesting issue may be whether I can
write my G2K non-linear pseudo-Zen book or if it is just
ruminative-depression-causing. We'll see
I guess!
502.
Is it
fair to say that you're not an expert on Brecht, Doctorow, Ruskin, Habermas,
Benjamin, human emotion, or really anything for that matter?
Sure, I'm barely even an
expert on Genius 2000. You could say I'm
as close as you can get to an expert on G2K, because it lacks form and
consistency--like alchemy perhaps. But
being an expert isn't the only thing in the world, now.
503.
Does
Genius 2000 leave one with no objects or entities to pray to or take comfort
in?
It appears precisely none,
correct. This does not imply however
that other methods that do use objects or entities are bad however, or need to
be suppressed. They are just fine. In fact they are excellent and wondrous
fair. However, Genius 2000 leaves me
with no sense of achievement even after writing five hundred. It's the worship of nothing. Nietzsche talked about this too.
504.
If
doing practice of Genius 2000 yields no objects or entities for reverence or
worship, strictly speaking, is it therefore neither art nor religion?
First of all it may be
completely hollow and bogus, a pure sham.
It also may be a new kind of art and religion akin to Cubism and
Zen. Perhaps it's primarily a series of
word-games intended to make one think about genius but offers no permanent
creations. Maybe Genius 2000 is
transient in its totality.
505.
Because
Genius 2000 does not yield any objects or entities, is it therefore all the
more important for Max Herman to let go of his resentments, fears, hatreds, and
revenge?
Waking up this morning it
appeared that all my wraths and disgusts were waiting for me on arrival. I am truly powerless to dispel the ugliness
of bad artists and their art, for example.
They are stubborn and persistent like a bad smell. Even before reading Nietzsche, in order to
comprehend Blake's "Good is Reason; Evil is Energy", I tried to
conceive of evil as "evil-smelling", a veterinary term. Perhaps it is not my role to criticize bad
artists. They will still be extremely
free to do what they do. Maybe it is OK
for me to name their names, denounce, and condemn them. Yet by my own logic I should forgive them and
leave them alone in order that I may deserve to get free of them. Doing so would involve leaving their art
alone, never discussing it, forgoing retaliation for any perceived wrongs
they've done. Forgiveness.
506.
Have
you been asking too much of Genius 2000 over your lifetime so far?
Indeed, I fear I have. I've expected people to praise and approve of
me for doing it. Due to my need for
external approval and confirmation, I have expected people to support me in
Genius 2000 without flattery or lies.
I've also expected people to put down their own object, entity, and
obedience-based practices and pay regard to me.
In a sense, I've asked people to put aside their own Genius 2000 and
give me praise and comfort so I can have the rewards of being the admired object or entity and avoid the painful isolation
of losing my own idols. Perhaps this
would go some distance toward explaining my hostile selfishness at work
recently as well. I've been irritated
with the ordinariness of my work and co-workers, yet that ordinariness is a
great boon and benison. It would be nice
and profitable for me if I could be like Francis of Assisi and be actively nice
and sociable without expecting others to comfort me.
507.
Because
Genius 2000 used to be your attempt to conquer, subdue, punish, and reorganize
the art world, will it now all have to be taken down and repented of, that is,
all the stuff still up on the internet?
That is the toughest question
ever. Partly I used to try to crush and
dominate the art world by dominating its newest genre, the internet. I thought it might be justified and respectable
at the time. My concern was that bad
artists were too much in charge, they had to be smashed figuratively by
iconoclasm, and replaced with something that would protect the past and the
future. For me, my goal was twofold--to
attack all well-known and successful artists and critics and simultaneously put
forth my own alternative based on, roughly speaking, rescuing criticism. The rescuing criticism could be gotten from
Benjamin; he could explain it just fine.
All I had to do was keep reiterating "Genius 2000", shorthand
for "rescuing criticism practiced rightly and really", and keep up a
constant negative critique.
508.
When
did you start trying to make Genius 2000 actively affirmative?
Actually it started out
actively affirmative, but in the post-object sense I've tried to explain
previously. As the goodness of the
affirmative part seemed good and this made me more hopeful, I also got
confident, then angry or concerned (like Hamlet) that "the time was out of
joint; O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right." I then decided that acting as a negative
scourge was equally valid, plus it felt good to vent my pent-up anger and
observe how compulsory the terms of G2K could be.
509.
So
you still don't know whether to apologize, recant, take down the old site, make
partnerships with your former enemies, or keep condemning them?
Truly, I don't know. I guess my current plan is just to try to
leave it alone, Naming Names, attacking specific people. Still, Apollo did urge Orestes to avenge his
father and he did get off the hook. I
don't know if it was OK to criticize those people.
510.
Is
poetry like Robert Frost's "Into My Own" just as rousing, gritty, and
heavy-duty as rock music?
Possibly. I hate writing the question first and then
doing the answer later. It makes me feel
trapped and controlled. However, I think
that poem carries more force than any
rock music. The rock musicians would
dispute this, but they're wrong. They
rock loudly and shallowly. They have no
effect on profound levels. Or do they?
511.
Would
it be ungenial for you to put your CD "Maya on My Mind" out on the
internet, because it contradicts your precepts and clouds the issues at hand?
MoMM is me playing on a
4-track. I want to be liked and cared
for, and for that you need to do things the group
likes. If you forswear making yourself
likable, the herd reacts. If the herd is
sick, then it will actually try to kill its healers. The healers will be different than those
unable to heal. This is all in
Zarathustra Part One. I also think MoMM
is sneaky but what's the point.
512.
Perhaps
this is unwelcome, but do you currently have too many possible outcomes for
Genius 2000 and this book to focus, develop, achieve dynamic peace, and
resonate with a target audience?
O my prophetic soul, that is
truly welcome and truly true--though I drive it away at every moment. The fact is that I can't decide on a
strategy, try to follow several conflicting ones, and thus break up and founder
on the shoals.
513.
Though
your first feelings were to crank out two thousand of these and put them on the
internet for free, wouldn't it be more in your personal best interest to strive
instead for marketability and set aside the arbitrary September First deadline?
That sounds great. I'll write a very salable and enjoyable,
highly-crafted book, and abandon the rash self-mutilation of the hasty
internet, "rathe to destroy", as Pound said. The kamikaze makes a terrible entrepreneur.
514.
Why
are you still writing even when earlier today you realized how depressed you've
become--how poorly you sleep and how black the circles around your eyes are
now--and that, like DaVinci said, you need to step away from your
"work", as you like to call it?
Just habit I guess. Heaven knows I should quit, repent,
normalize, and plan. Yet there is a
foolish phobia telling me not to quit.
Perhaps it is Satan's voice, saying "Keep on! Keep on!" Satan, the enemy of all human peace, the
engine of hate, arrogance, deviousness, despair.
515.
Does
the blue ink cheer you up?
Not a jot. As they used to say, "Change not a
jot" in the Biblia, the Books. It
was all the books there were. Now there
are many books. This project so-called,
garbage-refuse really, has driven me back to darkest depression. Where have my happy sunny homilies flown off
to? My optimism, candor, and ruddy good
taste in confessionalism? All gone. How about resolving the querelle d'ancient et
moderne? Apparently Nietzsche already
did all of it. Aren't I clever now! Tarantula.
516.
Are
you all set to repair back to thy family anew and abase yourself in quest for
mercy and absolution?
I feel more ready to let
certain illusions die. In reality, I am
not a naughty willful prodigal son. I'm
a thirty-five year old piece of emotional and economic wreckage, barely
alive. I care for nothing and no
one. I am like a rat in the darkness,
terrified and murderous. It's not just a
tiny lapse in teenage judgment, a wee drift.
I'm as great a monstrosity as Bukowski or Nietzsche himself. And I plan myself books and weddings.
517.
What
did your Tarot Card reading say?
It was my only Tarot Card
reading ever and I got it in December or November 2003. The Situation Card was Eight of Cups
(emotional journey), the Problem Card was Knight of Cups (juvenile
male/alcoholic), the Relevant Factor Card was the Nine of Wands (the Hermit),
the Solution Card was the Four of Wands (house/book/marriage), and the Outcome
Card was Six of Cups (emotional abundance).
518.
Do
you think that your old, prior soul is dying and this leaves you sad,
remorseful, and limply anhedonic?
I don't know about souls
dying and whatnot. Emotional
habit-corpus perhaps, the skeleton muscle and organs of an older, improper
emotional regime. A daily diet and
system, akin to a car's parts. A, B, C,
D; a sequence or emotional cycle that exhausted itself. Basically, it was "behave poorly, repent,
rectify, despair." Something to
that cycle. It's old, old. I had it.
519.
Have
your fantasies about future success left you yet?
No, but I wonder not that
they will as the roots die. The roots of
"I'm grand but guilty." Fact
is I'm neither grand nor guilty. I'm
average plus gullible. I fell many
times, early and often, for the Rectific Paradigm. My emotional makeup, the one that is--I
hope--dying now like an unkept farm was about seven years old I think. That was when I learned to keep myself down,
because I was bad, and studied how to make others approve me, and to hate them.
520.
Do
you think you can hold your entry-level clerical job for the noble Thirty
Thousand while your emotional corpus of Before breathes its final guilt-rotten
breaths?
Could be. Fighting the deflation seems the worst, and
trying to buck up. The Aiken story
didn't come yet, gosh I am curious what the name is. The footsteps in the snow slowly
disappearing--the sound of them, that is--that's like
521.
Do
you like the idea of the Twilight of the Gods?
Yes I do, though I'm sure I
don't know what it means and have little or any right to an opinion. When I critiqued Yeats for being a wildly
swinging pendulum on certain opinions and blamed the crude technique of
symbolism, the professor wrote "those with the right to an opinion consider
Symbolism one of the most enduring poetic modes." So what.
I was right even in 1990. But,
wooden nickels.
522.
Had
you best not write about work or anything else unpleasant, so that you can
guiltlessly place these quanta on the internet in late August?
I haven't decided. It would be nice not to panic and give away
the milk for free. I could use a bit of
wealth-building such as an MS that waxes in value nigh unto the moment of sale
and publication. To keep it for my own
benefit and dream of getting out. Yet
free on the internet has a certain poetic justice to it. It could be a form of penance. Hoist by my own petard! Lo!
Where the place? Upon the
heath. There to meet with Macbeth.
523.
Has
the reading public much interest in a new cyber-hybrid theory of Cubist Zen
network-novelization on a time-scale covering the entirety of history?
It's the most popular genre
of airport literature. Middle management
eats that shit up like hotcakes. People
with corn-pone opinions adore it--it's where they get their corn-pone or
corn-bread from. Yea.
524.
Does
Genius 2000 surpass all that myth-kitty business, for which one has to have
read everything, and which fills poems and quanta full of dead spots [Larkin]?
One has hardly to have lifted
a finger in reading to be as erudition-having has me, the author of the Genius
2000 Network. Yet I tend to remember
everything, like the story of Polyneices from Herodotus. Polyneices was too charmed, too lucky, so his
wise man or guru told him to throw away the thing he loved best as overmuch
luck led to ruin. Polyneices, a great
king, threw his favorite possession--a golden signet ring--over the side of his
pleasure-barge into the deep sea. He
felt relieved. Many days later, some
fishermen brought a strange and wonderful fish before the king as a gift and
tribute. This pleased the king
greatly. However, when the king's guru
cut open the belly to read the meaning of the innards, he stepped back in
horror--there in the fish's belly was the signet ring. At once the king knew his throne would never
last.
525.
What
is the opposite of a false sense of security?
A true sense of insecurity, I
would imagine. True in the truest sense
of all, for example, in the knowledge that all things pass away and sic transit
gloria. That only in our greatest good
fortune is our downfall destined to find us [Benjamin]. For what could be worse than to stand
eternally? For that curse no human soul
is fit.
526.
Would
your best hope of ending this dark period be to go through it--fully and eyes
open this time--rather than to try running, pardon, or numbness?
Great heavens in the past
I've tried all three and never went through the darkness to the other side--to
the morning. I was always either
discouraged, distracted, or afraid. Perhaps
now, after all this time, I can
accept the voyage of oblivion that awaits me.
Because at least it's my own oblivion and belongs to me. Nothing else does. The claim to me belongs to the great blackness
of soul-death. Stand me now and ever in
good stead.
527.
What
are the primary tactics of evasion, appeasement, and anaesthesia to be spurned
and boldly given the lie?
Ideally ducks are made to
survive the winter--somewhere--and I can weather the storm of the death of my
obedient fears. It could very well be I
was designed by evolution to attain escape from the gravity of my past and
conditioning experiences. Therefore, to
find out--and who couldn't wish to at least see how these things work, if at
all--it could do me servicably not to return to kitsch or family, drugs, shame,
or self-perfectionism. In concrete terms
that means guilt, kitsch, family, and medication. All four I will keep aside until later (or
never, should all go well as I steal away into those dark trees, so old and
firm they scarcely show the breeze, fearless of ever finding open land, or
highway where the slow wheel pours the sand[Frost]). My ship of death, fitted out with cakes and
wine, will be work, scribbling quanta, proper diet, exercise, watercolor, and
reading. No Panicking!!!!!
528.
Does
your fantasy that doing Genius 2000 will help you get money, friends, and
dating interfere with the exploration of whether Genius 2000 is precisely the
operation that can allow one to live, develop, and find fulfillment without sex, friends, or money?
Doubtless this could be
"une autre" case of wanting to have my cake and eat it too, of
pursuing contradictory efforts. One
cannot gain an appreciation and actual experience of how an artistically
intense and developing life can redeem celibacy, poverty (thirty thousand per year),
and obscurity if one is constantly trying to use one's art to make those things
go away and bend art to such a purpose.
The purpose of art is to allow me to live in celibacy fulfilled, not to
get me dates. My constant fretfulness
over whether dating is "right or wrong" is the sickness of the
mind--"If you want to get to the plain truth, be not concerned with right
and wrong. The conflict between right
and wrong is the sickness of the mind."
529.
Is
your anger and peevishness at owning a low-priced videocamera rather than a
good one sort of counter-productive?
It almost seems to be the
work of the devil, that is, in the metaphorical sense of angry hostile negative
"amygdala" emotions reacting lizard-like in a quite irrational,
illogical, and ignorant fashion. I have
no need to make any videos now. The
cheap camera is not excellent but neither are most things. I primarily bought the camera to copy old
tapes, not to make new ones. Yet still,
I feel underappreciated, wronged, and deprived of my patrimony.
530.
Do
you want to have all your Hi-8 footage converted to quality SVHS, one-inch, or
digital stock, and do you feel wronged and offended by society for lacking
this?
Certainly I'd like to save
all that footage to a safe medium. But
whether it's all very superior, it's not.
Some is though. And it's the only
footage of its kind. Now all I'm doing
is fueling my resentful petulance. I can
do just great with pen, paper, and Tao only.
531.
Is
twenty per day for the next seventy-five days realistic?
Optimistic but possible, that
seems like a good definition of realistic.
That's about two hours per day, or fourteen hours per week. Heck, I can realistically guarantee
that. It does seem hard to write often
though, what with all the situps and vacuuming, the museum visits, the grocery
shopping, weightlifting, and painting.
Yet what must be, must be!
532.
What
are some lines from your now apparently lost scene (not play) in the Holubian
style, "When Something Takes Root"?
"It could be English, Danish,
French, Belgian, or sheer Esperanto."
"There's a blackness covering
Fingerton; I saw it from the train."
"It must, it will, and it can! It will and it can! It will and it shall!"
"They held the diagonal corners of
the sealed envelope between two spoons, and slowly turned it around with their
free hands."
"The old woman stood facing the
window, slicing bread."
"The old man banged his stick loudly
on the floor."
533.
Isn't
the blackness and death enveloping your soul, your system of directives and
values, what you wanted?
Good gracious I suppose it
is. The twilight of the old gods to make
way for the new, isn't that what I mean G2K to be my "ship of death"
for? Reiterating the question might not
be good style. It's warm and sunny
today. My rules and judgments on myself
are falling away so that new ones can express themselves. It's good and natural; all that is needed is
not to interfere or flee.
534.
Is
the promotion of G2K to others any indication for its use as one's Ship of
Death?
Plainly not. The contrary, rather. That is, whether other people like or use G2K
has no impact on whether it will work for me in exogenetically evolving my soul
to a state of decent fulfillment that is safe for itself and proper to the
polis. My key is to use it, in fact,
despite others' hate of it. They hate
me, my freedom.
535.
What
is the
"The perfect Way [Tao]
is without difficulty, save that it avoids picking and choosing. Only when you stop liking and disliking will
all be understood. A split hair's
difference, and heaven and earth are set apart!
If you want to get to the plain truth, be not concerned with right and
wrong. The conflict between right and
wrong is the sickness of the mind."
536.
Does
this poem imply that thinking you are doing right (and feeling you are doing right) is just as distorted as thinking you
are doing wrong?
They are both the actions of
a sick mind. This may be why Dedalus's
long period of repentance just fizzled when he was asked to join the
priesthood, and why I get so depressed and disgusted about feeling obligated to
help/support/love/care for/like my co-workers and family. Yet my uncertainty is, can I stop the mad
fluctuations, let my family call me if they wish or see them very rarely (or
both) and let the silences tower in my workplace? By yesterday's arguments I can.
537.
Do
you find it difficult to make decisions about right and wrong choices, that is
to say, about correct and incorrect?
Yes I do. Not only are there lots of reasons for and
against any course of action, there are also many courses of action
possible. There are an almost infinite
number of different and opposing possibilities of what I can do. I feel that my enemies like it when I get
confused and demoralized, because then I will default to the least difficult
and most conventional.
538.
What
decisions are bothering you most this morning?
Whether I will regret it if I
avoid a family gathering. As I've said,
I find my family, religion, and nation to be three two-sided coins. I have to assert my freedom and dignity
against each, or else the relation deteriorates into suffocation and
resentment. The Tao poem says that to be
concerned over correctly choosing is the sickness of the mind. So, I choose not to go to the event--concern
over.
539.
Have you
consciously decided not to name names in this book, either to damn or praise,
and to leave your website up the way it is?
It could appear that way. Other people can publicize themselves on
their own websites if they want. As to
excoriating bad artists and critics, I no longer have anything to gain from
doing that, but I will gladly and vociferously return to condemning them in the
future if I think it will benefit me.
540.
Doesn't
"The unexamined life is not worth living" conflict with "If you
want to get the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong"?
One would think so. Yet, perhaps they are both correct under
different seasonal pressures. I dislike
the idea that the West is all truth and the East all falsehood, or the ancient
all truth and the modern all falsehood.
If I skip the family gathering it will make them sad, but if I yield to
guilt and go it will depress me and damage me.
So, skip. Should I lie about the
reason?
541.
Are
you afraid of disclosing too much personal information in this book, and
thereby causing emotional distress to various people who will know it's them
you're talking about, and that you no longer want to spend time with them and
don't respect them?
I worry about all the
components of getting away from dysfunctional damaging relationships, i.e.,
whether they really are dysfunctional or if it is just me whining, if I have to
fix the bad relationship rather than
leave it, whether I'll be attacked and punished for leaving it, and how to
leave in the correct way. Bad relationships
are so manipulative; they have rules and force-structures all their own whose
goal is to keep you guilty and trapped.
They try to make it seem like it's sadistic to stay away and move on. The people you leave behind because they are
depressed, dysfunctional, abusive, and co-dependent will call you a sadistic
monster, and promise to change their ways, and all other manner of controlling
crap--all just to serve and propitiate their own inner controlling guilt,
shame, and sickness.
542.
Could
it be that this book can discuss various problems in general rather than
specific terms, thus legitimately avoiding the trap of sadistic recklessness
that those you are trying to gain distance from are setting for you, and
remaining able to sustain and contribute to the greater protection of
exogenetic evolutionary potential in the past and future i.e. the polis, and
the greater goal and ideal of polis?
General discussions of
principle are so great that I can hardly believe it. I think the angry devils who control the sick
make them want you to name their names so they can accuse you of being
"just like them" and drag you back down to their sordid level. The primary goal of co-dependent
sickness-forms is to get the escaping genius back into the fetters and bonds of
oppressed ignorance, back into the controlling mass group. Naming names is primarily blame and not
really self-protective, it's a type of revenge and revenge always ties one back
into the cycle of blame and guilt-crapping of emotional cannibalism. Therefore it is very good and joyful for Max
Herman to talk and write in general terms about art, polity, and so forth. But does it mean I'm a coward? No because one can always change back.
543.
Because
it is usually the things you don't want to talk about explicitly that disturb
you most, and because one of your goals is for writing and watercolor-painting
to ease your mental stress and anxiety, is it worthwhile to check the
hypothesis that talking in general terms about a specific problem that is
bothering you can help without aggravating the specific case of the problem?
I think it's worth checking
and testing out, but it's not my usual practice. So, it will take some learning. I suppose it all comes down to manners, in a
way. One can't just make child abuse or
addiction just disappear by "telling someone." Some people say that telling someone works
endless wonders, and some say it has diminishing returns--I cleave to the
latter because all returns diminish, marginal utility and all. Marginal cost, marginal utility, these are
all economics terms. I got the best
grade in the class on my economics exam in college. G2K also combines math, physics, statistics,
politics, and culture--the same as economics does. General terms are legitimate, safer, and they
do work.
544.
Does
avoiding a family gathering that one did not want to attend but would have out
of guilt (i.e. responsibility or obligation to reduce, prevent, and assuage
pain in others) liberate a person?
It's difficult to say but
like most actions it takes many over time for an effect to show. One instance of choosing not to attend a
family gathering can mark a change of course however and have significance
beyond the particular case. I am a very
co-dependent person so to avoid a family event is a big step. My addiction-recovery morals--I have a rather
crude version of them but they do emphasize pleasing others--were telling me to
go to the event, pity my family, "forgive" them for the depressing
and degrading effect they have on me, and take care of their painful
discomfort--pain they feel on thinking that not only do I dislike being around
them but that guilt does not control me.
That causes panic in them. I
doubt not that they will destroy the belongings I still have over there, though
I hope they don't.
545.
Why
are feelings so complicated?
Goodness knows! The more I work on an applied manner on this
book and practice "positive visualization during play," as my old
tennis teacher taught me, the more worthless, decrepit, and undeserving I feel. Emotions are relative I guess and all
interconnected like a great mass. My own
feelings generally beat the crap out of me.
Yet still I can't reject them as that is a losing play. My feelings of fear about writing a book
about art and polity is a ferocious fear.
It gets more intense the more I try to overcome it or "persist in
lucid awareness" of it, as Camus said, or by Negative Capability.
546.
Are
you going to start school for computer programming in the fall?
Yes, absolutely. Regardless of what happens with this book
apart from selling it. I just can't
survive for the long term, such as when my student loans fall into higher
repayment, on what I make now at entry level.
Yet how can G2K get famous if it's evil!?!
547.
What
are the relationships and relevances among Negative Capability, positive
visualization during play, sexual inactivity, losing the City Championship in
1987, being belittled and exploited by your father, whether Genius 2000
shouldn't be famous because it's evil, contradictory simultaneous strategies,
and the Ship of Death, and avoiding a family gathering?
Perhaps there are numerous
connections. Positive visualization
during play as a recommended or pedantic theory is not the same as actually
positively visualizing success for this book while I'm writing quanta. One concern or block is that I'm not
confident that for Genius 2000 to be legitimately published as a real book
would be a good thing. What if it caused
people to look at things wrongly, to idolize (selfishly) rather than practice,
to think they are learning a secret rather than a skill? Yet the bad outcomes can be prevented by
quality writing. It's still
complicated.
548.
Does
a tuna-fish salad sandwich with cucumbers count as tekka or kappa maki?
I prepare tuna salad using
one cup plain yogurt, two tablespoons mayonnaise, one-half cup diced red onion,
one teaspoon of pepper, one teaspoon of horseradish, and three cans of
tuna. So, with the horseradish and the
pepper you really do approach maki.
Sushi is a luxury.
549.
How
can you practice positive visualization during play if you haven't decided
whether it would have evil consequences for Genius 2000 to get published in a
real book?
I can take a different
approach. The goal can be different, to
be a good book regardless of how it gets published. The goal is to be good, interesting, decent,
respectable for book publishing or internet publishing. The positive visualization is that it be an
artistic, strong, good, and beautiful expression of Genius 2000: A New Network, not bound to any one publishing
method. Either/or is the positive
visualization.
550.
Aren't
you afraid that the opportunistic and superstitious tendencies of Genius 2000
will debase the will to do creative work in modern humans?
I'm afraid about people
confusing mere concomitance with the actual effortful building process. People can be so inclined to use drugs and
rape, batter, murder, and traumatize each other. People might want to make Genius 2000 into a
trendy topic for drug-induced crapulence at raves or keg parties. That would be a repugnant false overcoming
indeed, for Genius 2000 just to be another Sixties-style drug banter fad. Popular things get degraded so quickly,
exoteric things, or as one Zen poem says "when everyone recognizes
something as beautiful it is already ugly." Then again, things that take a
pseudo-bohemian "underground" path can also be incredibly pretentious
and usurping. So, one has to break those
currents. I know of a good medicine
against druggies.
551.
How
is your anxiety level?
That's such a monotonous
question. It's rather low however. Somehow I've gotten through a lot of very
tense days at my workplace. Frankly I
just don't feel like sorting it out. I
do worry that I'll get fired if I don't keep up appearances, make people like
me, and fit in. So I'm paranoid in that
respect. Yet changing my self-talk seems
to help and add up.
552.
Do
you feel that Genius 2000 is vainglorious at this stage of its life, bloated?
It's complicated. To a degree I feel it is good that Genius
2000 is so highly regarded and well-known if not faddish and publicly
praised. I think it's a good
art-project. The concern is over
"what will be done with it."
Currently it has a repellent quality that--now wait, there I go about to
divulge the quality of my position. I
don't want to weaken Genius 2000 by crass revelations just to make people like
me. I don't care if people like me. Yet if so, why write at all?
553.
Do
you think that Genius 2000 is also akin to Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, in addition to Cubism and Zen?
There is definitely a
kinship. I say that in all
fatuousness. I have no idea whether
there is a similarity. Frankly I just
glanced at Wolfram for a couple of days last year, over a year ago. If Genius 2000 is a magic concept never
before discovered, I am not confident presenting it as such. As Pope said, "drink deep or else taste
not the Pierian spring."
554.
Can
you have just as great a life if you abjure the glorious dating landscape of
the modern urban landscape?
Perhaps it is possible to be
in love with the very fibre of space-time itself. There may be some skills required I still
lack however. My wishes are to be
published, liked, have social friends, social activities, dating, a house,
everything normal and delightful. Can
celibacy, poverty, and isolation serve me just as well and thus allow me to
abjure the polis? Or is it evil even to
sit out?
555.
Can
the practice of choosing kings by divine right be properly understood as
rational, pragmatic, humane, and even democratic?
Yes, if one takes the proper
view without being self-righteous or bloated.
Back in the old times, various chiefs fought constantly. The fighting among the multiple chieftains,
thanes, and barons was intolerable. Thus
a superior power--the king over all of them--was created to stabilize
competition for the good of all.
Predictability and legitimacy were most important in the selection
process, which was intended to serve the chiefs and their people (the demos). Divine (undebatable) right was thus chosen by
democratic pressures, the particular person of the king being sufficiently
moderated by laws, offices, alliances, and ministers. Therefore bloat ye not on your fetid cowhides
of how the people of yore were evil.
"Paquin pull down" (Pound).
You think you are not obligated to work for the protection of the future
(and of that in the past that also protects the future). But over time you can learn better.
556.
What
about the jpeg you made with a sugar packet in October 2001, www.geocities.com/genius-2000/fuckface.jpg,
about two years before you ever knew about Beuys' artwork from 1972 made with
sugar packets (or a sugar packet,
rather, just one) when he was visiting Minneapolis at a bar (Nye's) which I had
also mentioned in the Genius 2000 Conference 1999, "The Mechanical
Reproduction of Age in the Art of Work?"
That's a huge problem. The fact is that I had more of the substance
of Beuys' work in my own before I ever studied or knew about Beuys' works than
any of the tens of thousands of dipshits who study his work every semester in
art schools. The problem with this truth
is that it's true, not just bombast. If
I push it, I win. I've defeated many,
many artists and critics this way. So
like Clausewitz said, that gives me the obligation to pursue my advantage as
long as it improves my position, and no further.
557.
What
about garlic.jpg?
I think that's a pretty good
one. Other people may hate it and want
to kill me because I made it. I wish I
were close to normal and had friends and a girlfriend. Then again, normal people sit around and
watch TV or play video games, and that's degrading. So maybe I am normal and all my dreams have come
true. Recherche.jpg I also like. Yet some of my jpgs are depressing and shameful. Is it a sin for me not to harp on the
terrible ones, or is the Greek correct who said "it is both noble and
pious to remember the good times and forget the bad"?
558.
Did
you know about the plague of hailstones each weighing one talent in Revelations
before you did the SFMOMA?
No, that was a fluke of
chance, yet either it doesn't matter or it kills me that I can't convince
anyone. That could be my Cassandra
Complex--I see the future but no one believes me. Oh hell.
559.
Do
you owe it to the world to reveal the secret of why G2K is so strong, or do you
owe it to the world to keep that knowledge secret?
I think I owe it to the world
to keep it secret. That's the burden and
my cross to bear. It takes negative
capability. Once an individual who tried
to sue me for criticizing his art said that I'm not a one-person Network but
must be some kind of secretly-funded team.
He meant it was impossible for one person to be so prolific and
high-quality.
560.
Does
it feel shameful and dirty to defend yourself against vile lowlife critics and
sick people who've tried to hurt you?
Surely it does. It makes me feel dirty and guilty, then
angry, then helpless, then demoralized.
What a litany of hideous feelings!
I wish it was OK for me to discuss the dipshit who plagiarized me, then
tried to accuse me of being a closeted homosexual, which I probably am.
561.
What
about your conflict over the twin goals of A) writing about what you want to
write about and B) not doing anything bad or despicable?
Those are tough, tough conflicts. For example, I'd like to write about the
short essay I wrote in 1995 on Mailer's "The White Negro." I think it puts my art in a superior location
and level over many people. For example,
over Matthew Barney. G2K is better than
his art, I think, even though he is sexier and more debonair and real. Compared to my essay on "The White
Negro" his entire corpus withers to trash, expensive trash,
excrement. Now is it evil for me to say
this? Does he have immunity from
negative reviews? I can't say. One could say that forgiveness requires
leaving everything exactly as it is.
Still and all, when Mailer talked about "a calculus of all human
communications, from ukase to kiss," that was about G2K, better than
Marx. Read it if you wish at Mailer.html.
562.
If
you think you are a better artist than Barney and Hirst, not mention thousands
of other highly valued artists, are you obligated to say so or to keep quiet?
Well, I think that having bad
art dominate the art world is both bad and good. It's good because it degrades society,
civilization, and human hopes for the future.
It's bad because people like to have something to look up to and emulate
like their art school professors tell them they need to. Factually all the apparatus of style and
connections and money in the art world is bullshit, because only the art
matters. So I've been able to crush
every artworld artist and critic I ever cared to. Is the damage indiscriminate and
self-destructive? No, I have nothing to
lose at all from their loss of prestige and revenue. They are akin to what
563.
Did
you read Stephen Greenblatt's book Renaissance
Self-Fashioning in 1996?
Yes, and I thought it was
pretty good. Whether people can just
manufacture themselves however they wish, or whether there are rules and
limits, is the oldest question of
humanity. Actually, that question is
what humanity is. That question is the ground of exogenetic evolution,
an evolution that only technological species can undergo, an evolution that
requires economies of expressive objects i.e. art. Foucault, whom I disliked in school and
worked against (see FH.html), said that humans have "an aesthetic of
self" by which we manufacture ourselves.
I think there are physiological limits imposed by nature, and not just
physiology but the cognitive physics governing sentience-in-timespace (genius
2000). Then again, maybe by critiquing
French poststructualism I'm undermining French psychological warfare ops and
hurting the fragile Franco-American alliance.
564.
Isn't
it the case that every bringer of a great essential truth--the kind that
defines centuries and even ages--gets reviled at first?
Historically that has been the
case. Perhaps. Yet some people have the intellect and
stamina to work secretly, behind the scenes, accomplishing great deeds
anonymously. Stendhal perhaps was one of
these types. Emerson and Ben Franklin
were more outgoing and open but they still were cagey and didn't shoot
themselves in the foot. One could also
argue that the real achievers in human exogenetic evolution (what we call our
history, art, civilization) are the quiet ones nobody knows enough about to
revile or hate. The famous iconoclasts
like Galileo might be evil and greedy.
Or, it may be some are and some are not.
Perhaps there are all different kinds of genii with all different
genius2000 proper to them according to their character. Yet still, I feel I am the most excellent and
superior artist on earth. Yet that is
evil.
565.
What
if doing Genius 2000 hurts the O.S.O.?
Certainly that would be bad
if one favors the O.S.O., as I most aggressively do. People are crazy if they think the world
needs another Soviet Union, if Stalin's real goal and achievement was to hold
566.
What
is The Enemy of the O.S.O.?
The Enemy is two-fold, a
twin-headed dragon of tyranny and terror.
"Tyranny" is a simplifying term used to describe any big
regime trying to become another competing superpower. "Terror" is the improvised,
decentralized violence intended to make a given regime unworkable and thus
necessitating a new power be instituted.
Terror is the tactics and Tyranny is the goal. The enemy in cultural terms are the various
schools of thought and ideas, genius-formations, that advocate terrorism or
competing potential superpowers.
567.
Is it
the case that a genius 2000-type logic could be used to favor terrorism and
tyranny?
It could definitely be used
to advocate terrorism and tyranny; it could be used to argue and persuade that
the tyranny is desirable and the terror is necessary. It could be used that way but it would be
wrong. Great efforts must be made to
keep terrorists and tyrants from hijacking G2K.
568.
Do
you think Qut'b is inferior to Genius 2000?
One could definitely ask the relation
of Genius 2000 to Islam. In fact, Islam
is the only major religion that mentions jinni or geniuses as a powerful force,
distinctly. Genius 2000 is compatible
with all monotheism and therefore with Islam.
I think that Ibn Arabi is relevant to G2K. Yet Qut'b, who is the source of philosophical
extremism or terrorism in Islam is inferior to Genius 2000. Qut'b advocated that horrific suicidal war
was necessary between Islam and Christian Europe. G2K proves that this is wrong. So, on that basis G2K attacks the enemies of
the O.S.O. It should be recalled
whenever possible that the innate properties of G2K make it favor the O.S.O.
and not terror or disruptive competition.
To try to use G2K against the O.S.O. is a mistaken misuse, yet it takes
work and determination to overcome error--it's not automatic. That's the "Patton," the glory,
getting the job done.
569.
What
thoughts have you had in the museum today?
Fatigue, pain in my lower
back, pain around my eyes, sexual jealousy and pain, shame of recent
self-pleasuring, fear of war among the various cultures, how can humanity
survive, how can the good be safe, the differences about Asia, what is Taoism,
visual art differing from literature i.e. textual, history of superstition, my
lack of focused labor, my impending return to office work on Monday, sexual
envy, envy, despair of human capacity to get away from violence, Nietzsche's
idea that violence is OK, my own inability to believe in Buddhist or Taoist art
as well as Hindu art, the idea that religious belief means to accept something
as good art, that liberals refuse to see Christianity as art, that Christianity
is the most scientific religion, that we are at war and therefore I am at war,
that I'm not sure who's fighting who or how to help. ?!?!?
570.
Is
your celibacy normal and healthy or abnormal and unhealthy?
Gracious knows. I've never tried the other plan. I don't know if sex is OK or not. I see it degrade some people and ennoble or
relax others. It makes babies too. We were all babies once. I can date after I write this book. Or, can I not write until I date? Not write unless sexually median? My tummy's flatter now so maybe I should
date. Sexy.
571.
Why
did Salome cut off John the Baptist's head and bring it in on a silver platter?
She wanted to gratify her own
disgusting vanity. Or, God made her evil
and so she played her part. One can see
how a woman would hate an ascetic celibate patriarchal religion that said sex
and romantic love had to be subjected to an innocent milky chastity. Sex under rules. That may have angered the headstrong
Salome. I've seen women get aggressive
and violent when balked.
572.
Did
you go to the museum today even though you didn't want to but wanted to go home
scared instead?
Yes I did. I just walked out the door and now I'm
sitting on the great granite steps, contemplating cultural conflict. How can we best limit brutal degradation so
people can instead reach up to God? We
weren't meant for permanent self-degradation, though we certainly can choose
that. We must go forward with the O.S.O.
573.
Were
people living under Sovietism constrained to do their part in the war effort
for Stalin just to get by and put bread on the table?
You bet. They had no choice. Once a tyrant gets control it's very
difficult to mount resistance without help from the outside, and Stalin kept
everyone out. So it was a sad deal. Some liberals might want it to happen again,
resurrect Stalin so we can all try again.
Can art help? I think art
can. Art does show what genius is better
for us and from us. From.
574.
What
did you see in the museum?
Oh many things. The Feast of Peaches, the Chun ware, the
rabbit wrist-rest (Beuys used rabbits I think to comfort the German people), El
Greco's Christ with the money-changers.
I used to call people money-changers--bad artists just trying to get
fame and cash--and pretend I had to knout them out. Christ sure did some wacky actions in his
day. I thought the El Greco was blurry
but similar to El Greco; then I saw the tag.
El Greco. I knew it was Raphael
in the corner too, then saw it was him, Titian, Michel Agnolo, and one
other--Covini or something. I saw Psyche
Abandoned, the 1 B.C. Turtle Ink Plate, the 5000 B.C. water jug from Neolithic
China, the Tiber Muse again, some great Madonna and Child paintings. It's so humid and sunny now the rain has
cleared away. It smells like a rich
greenhouse. Why can't I persuade people
to respect proper authority?
575.
Do
all technological species go through a lot of turmoil and stress on the way
from pre-technological to omni-technological?
To be sure they do, and a lot
of intervening technological species between beasts and humans, like
australopithecus, died out under very violent turmoil as well. Technology creates great, sudden, and
vertiginous power imbalances and fluctuations.
Moreover, the calmer more cultural side of technology called art often
develops more slowly than military or material-productive technology. Art is more subtle and fragile. Agriculturalization, industrialization,
mercantilization, and computerization are the most traumatic changes for a
technological species. Each phase has
its great wars between power formations.
What does this have to do with G2K?
I don't know. Nothing. I think I'm just trying to get a foothold for
my palaver. All technological species
have a lot of war to which blame is not the solution.
576.
Is
this constant scribbling an insult to people who take the time to write real
poems and books, like Robert Frost?
It must be but I just can't
quit. I have to write two thousand of
these. Then I can quit. I just have to see what happens. If I quit I'll go insane. After I finish I'll quit all this
"trying to make art" crap and get a computer programmer degree and
shut up. I'll just read.
577.
Will
you go back and remove those quanta in which you got all high-and-mighty over
other artists, like an idiot?
Good heavens I'd like to
remove them. I suppose it's OK for me
not to fight them at all or compete with them for turf. They can just keep being the famous ones, and
everything can go on as it is. No big
changes. There's a thought, no big
changes are either workable, desirable, or needed.
578.
Wasn't
your logic that people needed G2K to unify them in support of pre-emptive war
in behalf of the O.S.O., but that otherwise G2K was really just a picture of
what would happen over time and not a
prescription for directed action?
Sure, my logic was that
absent more world wars or a collapse or overthrow of liberal democracy, art,
science, and religion would have to make peace a little bit and certain
syncretism things would happen.
Essentially all that was needed to keep human exogenetic evolution on
the proper track was a longish period of relative peace for liberal democracy. Plus, for all my ranting I doubt seriously
G2K can help the O.S.O.--it probably can only hurt it. Thus my crackpot fakery that I'm a great
artist is just so much wasted hot air.
Who needs it? It's absurd. Everybody knows that global liberal democracy
is the key to peace.
579.
Would
a G2K attempt to hijack people's art-experiences just be a travesty?
It sure would. People can enjoy regular movies and picnics a
lot without Max coming around to ruin everything. Some people are either hard-wired for child
abuse or commit it due to having been traumatized. G2K can ameliorate neither. Gradual education to alleviate ignorance and
other scientific advances are good and will help.
580.
Was
all the chicken-little behavior in the VFE, in Genius 2000 heretofore, and even
this book so far just a cheap tactic to get attention, i.e. propaganda?
Yes, it was all propaganda so
far. The most important thing people and
humanity need is time and peace. Being
told what to do won't help them. I think
of the neighbors on my block. They have
kids, they are doing their normal deals.
They don't need any B.S. about technological species, endosomatic
evolution, expressive objects, and the communicative hypothesis.
581.
Are
liberals messed up?
Some liberals are extremely
confused, ignorant, mediocre, and messed up.
Others are not. Some of their
hopes and dreams are very decent and noble, and civic, but some are premature
or unrealistic and some are vengeful, ill-informed, or counter-productive. The same exact things apply to conservatives. So it's all equal. I can't hate them for their character, as
Epictetus said about the person who stole his lamp.
582.
Do
you just want to be a good-looking, happy guy for once, with dating, social
life, a nice rock band, a good job, time to garden and write poems, and not a
dark-circle-eyed raving ruminative-depressive jackalope anymore?
I just want to be liked,
safe, normal, and have dates and social interaction. All my G2K claptrap is just trying to get
attention and fake people out.
Realistically it has no aesthetic value at all, just rhetorical.
583.
So
it's taken you a good hundred pages of a book to say Genius 2000 is a useless
and pointless waste of energy?
Arguably so. I could have said it sooner. I thought I had a special historic role to
play and needed to forcibly save the world.
Factually, I'm socially inept, a desperate wannabe. An attractive girl in
584.
Will
you try to start making decent money for once?
I'm thirty-five and broke as
hell. My net worth is negative thirty
grand. My credit is a joke. Emotionally I'm an ignorant, panicky monster. I really see no purpose at all for G2K. It's purposeless. I tried to talk to a beautiful girl in powder
blue chaps at Burning Man in 1997, she didn't like me.
585.
Would
you like to apologize for all the hideous drunken crap you did to various
people over the years?
Yes, I'm sorry to you
all. Some of you I called drunk out of
my mind, blacked out, and unable to recall later what I'd said--only that you
never want to speak to me again. I must
have said some disgusting, frightening things in my blackouts.
586.
Would
you like to help repair and restore any careers and reputations you've injured?
I sure would. I guess it's fair to say I had no great
historical mission assigned to me that warranted attacking people ad hominem
whose artworks and psyches were, if the truth be told, much healthier and
better for themselves and others than mine ever were. I can't name names yet--I'm still getting the
hang of this absolution and repentance--but I'll try later.
587.
Who
were the artists you've actually hurt most?
I think there were really
only two I ever actually hurt career-wise.
These two I really got unethical with, trying to make people hate
them. I thought I was being the hero of
good art but it was really just saber-rattling and anxiety of influence. One's work was somewhat similar to my own yet
preceded it, and the other one I'd worked with on art and so was artistically
linked.
588.
Would
you like to get rid of your sense of obligation to be judge and revenger?
O certainly. It's strange that I have actually seen myself
as needing to do in the most complete degree possible all those things, exactly
those, that my argument says people don't need to do and should avoid. I had everything completely mixed up. What I really want to do is move to
589.
What
do you want most in life?
I don't think I know what I
want most. My wants are like fleeting
moods. Sometimes I think I want sex
most, a gorgeous girl, that summer feeling, expansive adoration "in
refulgent prime" (Shelley). Other
times I want vast wealth and safety, never to lack housing or food. Other times I want people to like me and have
social encounters, talking, etc. Other
times I think I want fame, to be adored and admired above all others. Sometimes I want other stuff; sometimes I feel
bad and want to cry or get angry. I
often want to be a better person, less self-absorbed and resentful. I often want to also get better, to recover, not be sick anymore. Sometimes I want questions and sometimes I
want solutions. I generally want to get
free from depression that makes me need paroxetine. So far I've been out from under paroxetine
for about two months or so. What I want
most is to find out and know what I should
want, my purpose.
590.
If
everyone helped themselves and contributed a fair share to a polity that allows
people to help themselves, would a lot of the poisonous guilt about not helping
others be dissipated?
It would depend if in
addition to helping themselves people could also let go of the guilt. But the guilt is so tenacious. People could help themselves and still feel
the guilt. But usually it's too tiring
to do both. I can only do it by working
way below my ability and education, at about thirty percent of my
capacity. Seventy percent idle.
591.
What
can you write about when almost everything in your thoughts is better left
unspoken, unwritten?
When I get overcome by an
urge to defame, revelate, or sermonize, it is finer to keep my heart and my
expression light lest it make me sink. I
was thinking about this last week. What
are good things to discuss aside from the harmful things I need to stop belaboring
cannibalistically? The routine.
592.
What
are the routine topics?
These are the topics it is
never damaging or hurtful to write about but always beneficial. They are akin to "counting your
blessings." So, I can mention good
decent respectable things as a hedge against the horror of blackest
despair. I can write about and catalog
things that are salubrious and wholesome.
For example, that I have made a doctor's appointment that was put off
for awhile to have a back exam and check my cholesterol. Then I set up a time to get my car fixed so I
can sell it. I'll try to think of more
good routine topics. What I want most of
all is to stop the bleeding and begin making forward progress in all areas of
life susceptible to accumulative improvements: emotions, finances, and
aesthetics. My financial accounts could
benefit from an increase in revenue, which would be attainable if I were to get
my Master's Degree in Computer Programming.
I'll start in October.
593.
Could
a list of topics you don't want to
write about qualify as a good routine activity?
I think that could
backfire. I better just stick to the
acceptable topics. These would be topics
that don't make me feel guilty, dirty, degraded, or ashamed afterward, and yet relate
to and build up Genius 2000 as an "aesthetic operator"; by this I
mean as in addition, subtraction, multiplication, syncretic-preservation
[sic].
594.
Do
you want to be in a rock band and thus adored by the College Radio set?
I'd like that I bet; at least
I envy those in that milieu feverishly with dark and greedy pangs of hateful
covetousness. I wish I could go
socialize with the different genders, say hi to people, talk and laugh "in
the best modern way" (Yeats). But
there is an awful burden of vainglory in the rock-musician-as-genial-hero-savior
activity sphere. There's a lot of grime
and guilt that goes along with it. Sweet
solitude is the best path.
595.
Does
syncretism necessarily call for the various religions to mix and recombine
their elements amongst each other, producing--for example--a Buddhist Easter?
I wouldn't think so. Syncretism might mean combining elements, as
when elements of pagan Norse myth were infused into Christian practice and
doctrine when the church first came to
596.
Is
your reckless offensiveness extremely self-destructive and pernicious for your
aesthetic enterprises?
I'm akin in some ways to the
clumsy lover in Chekhov who tries to flummox everyone and be liked by saying
"is it cockroach wine?" I do
junk like that. I thought it was cool,
plus I was desperate and ugly--a sexual never-was. But sex is only for those who are happy with
themselves anyhow. Not for those who've
not addressed their inner demons.
597.
Would
you like to make art or expression that respects aesthetic institutions like
museums, the media, and universities?
Uncannily so is this
truthfully yes. One can hardly imagine
how I can be so derisive of things the protection and enhancement of which are
"my dearest dream." For
example, seeing the wonderful cleaned Turner at the
598.
Should
people read regular poetry like "Lycidas" and The Tempest if they want good poetry, and not these quanta?
Absolutement. My goal is not to out-Herod Herod. Frost's poetry is good too--all the poets are
good, and among painters be sure to enjoy the Rubens of the baby with little
reptile feet, the St. Sebastian by Terbruggan (which is a truly light-green
masterwork) as well as Claes Odenburg's electrical plug. All at Allen.
599.
Do
you want to be clean again?
I would adore it. I just keep making my own genial condition--the
condition of my genius--worser and worser two steps back at a time. I'm so confused I don't know if it's wrong
and evil to bloat myself up to gigantistic misproportions or to pass on chances
to. What does Genius 2000 say? I'm not sure and further not sure I care to
know. There must be something I'm doing
wrong. Hybristic inflation of oneself
into an idolized Genius does not increase the true value, the G2K.
600.
Was
G2K meant originally to poke fun at pretension and the idea that certain
individuals were the only ones with a decent genius worthy of respect?
Yes, I tried to make G2K into
a gentle critique--mild as milk--of idolatry in contemporary artworld circles
along with a subtle, tender offering of a replacement alternative. The hyper-static-heroic which led to an
obscuring in the demos of their own genius which could and should be enjoyed
and developed/fulfilled. The goal then
expanded to an overly large morass of great weight that bowled me over. I got all caught up in myself. I lost faith in what Chaucer said: "the
truth will deliver, it is no drede."
Eliot also quoted Dame Someone of Norwich or Somewhere: "All shall
be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well." But the goal of G2K was first off to
delineate the hero-polis or individual-polis relationship in a healthy form,
humbly. Then I got bloated with a
monstrous sense of mission.
601.
What
are some of the lies and misrepresentations, foul things, that you've included
so far in G2K for your own vile purposes whose presence is now keeping your
personal genius from getting free of the muck, shame, guilt, and
self-revulsion?
I presented a lot of bad
crap. I put some footage in that was
culturally or aesthetically manipulative or deceptive, over-ironic. I made it sound like I really agreed with
Tillich that "Religion forgets its own emergency character." As if art doesn't forget its emergency
character, and the emergency is permanent in a more or less dire state--we're
all not very far from unhappiness or bad actions. I also stoked thoughts of panic or despair
leading up to the millennium (i.e. the decisive future). I wanted to present myself as a stand-in or
cipher, representing "the
solution" (i.e. anticlimax) but then got lost in my own web of lies and
self-bloating. I also got drunk a lot on
camera and sometimes used other people--volunteers--to make myself look sexy,
smart, cool, impressive, desirable, conscientious, and/or pure-hearted. I did very little in that video that was
spontaneous or took effort.
602.
Can
you believe how extremely this writing task feels like it will and can never
end, nightmarishly?
It's truly oppressing me that
there's no goal or purpose to this book anymore. It used to be to explain all the subtleties
of G2K so far i.e. on the internet and fill in all the vague spots. Then so much rot and error was found that I
tried to aggressively deny it was error.
Then I tried to fix it by twiddling, and finally to apologize for
it. This last one also felt coercive,
dishonest, and demanding. Again I
changed tactics to just ignore the errors because apologies were hollow. But the errors are too grandiose and gigantic
to leave be. So now it appears I must
catalog all the errors (which were already done and cannot be undone) and
simply ask "Forgive me."
Nietzsche has a nice point in the Zarathustra
that the will can't go back and change the past. Then he goes into forgiveness. I already had that in 1990, from Aeschylus's The Eumenides.
603.
Are
your college and graduate school papers vile bloated crap or kind of neutral?
Some of each, or as the
French would say "un peu de tout."
I display them for your perusal or indifference at Papers.html. You may also see some of my old exams scanned
there for your perusal. They will
confirm that we studied Polyneices and Thucydides in my class with Dr.
Fowler. I think Oedipus would be the
play to compare with what I did--I tried to save the polis by answering the
riddle of the sphinx and ended up finding out I'd caused the later plague
myself by having killed my father (creativity) and slept with my mother
(emotion). I'm sure not feeling so great
about that. Yet the moral of tragedy
also is "live and learn," or what one might replace it with,
"ignorant ambitious hero meets tragic fate, townspeople watch and are
edified." At least Oedipus tried to
unravel all of his guilt himself, and not evade it. I can try also.
604.
Was
everything the interviewees said in the VFE about history and the individual
stupid and ignorant?
No way, they did a trooper's job of it. Even the people who were tipsy or off-guard
did a splendid and honest job of addressing the questions and the fault is on
me, not them. I guess I knew that I had
a modicum of right to do the video but knew all along I'd have to fix the
errors later (or someone else would).
605.
Were
all of your claims about your historic importance and greatness drunken lies?
Truly they were. Only when I said "hey I'm just a pretty
average doofus who wants everything to work out OK" was I telling the
truth. I also lied horribly about how
messed up and sick I am as far as virginity, sexual abnormality, social
incompetence, intellectual depth, and aesthetic focus or commitment. I lied about all of that. I was afraid everyone would mock me if they
knew the truth.
606.
What
else is good about your life now?
I can't say for sure. I'm feeling exhausted. I went to the museum today and whatnot. I'm confused.
Computers are so complicated. I
wonder if I should switch to conventional art forms or genres like a regular
novel. It could be that my attempts to
utilize a new non-linear form are merely bogus cold-fusion nonsense. Or maybe the negative energy is just
collapsing in on me, the fatigue.
607.
Would
you like to be rid of all guilt feelings about G2K, and then quit it forever, and
be an ordinary doofus trying to date and save up for retirement like everyone
else?
Yes, I don't want to be the
hero of the world. It's a despicable
usurpation--everyone is their own leader, ruler, subject, citizen, and
hero. People take care of their own
geniuses. They're the only ones who can
do it anyway. They don't need any art
from me to do it, not this demagoguery at least.
608.
How
do you feel today?
Set-upon, vile, distracted,
and resigned. The cold hopes swarm like
worms within my clay (Shakespeare). I
feel beseiged by popular culture, infested and clogged with it--it's all I
am. All I have to go by. It's so egregious but catchy. I'm caught on it. I still can't say how to use
"egregious" correctly. I have
my own pop music I made on my four-track.
It's just old-fashioned four-part rock music, drums, guitar, vocals,
lead.
609.
Should
you provide your rock tapes to the world "to help the medicine go
down," to keep people in the audience the way Shakespeare's rollicking low
humor and charming songs did, or go for the complete stony ascetic prose?
It's obvious I want to be
liked and comforted by the bohemian college radio crowd. I'd like to interact with humans, other
living ones. I feel so sad sometimes
about that intense isolation level. At
the level of a lunatic.
610.
Why
might it be better not to worry about changing until after book done?
Changing my social life later
rather than mid-stream might be preferable.
'Tis preferable in the mind to stay with one's art-project through to
the completed course, even if other activities spring up as seeming much wiser
and happier. That's part of the
maddening illusion and hallucination of the active imagination. It's like a crazy drunk, drifting aimlessly
in and out of an aimless drunken stupor.
Detestable.
611.
Is it
also laborious and offensive to have to type all of these up?
I'm well behind on
typing. Once I get some writing (or
scribbling rather) done, the typing has added up. Who cares.
I like composing in pen and ink, away from the smothering pseudo-light
of my typing monitor. It's so ugly. It's like the evil light of hell that burns
but gives no light. Unnatural.
612.
Taken
in an objective and pragmatic fashion, what are some valid insights within
Genius 2000?
Gods of all major religions
are really just incarnations or representations of active, shaping forces in
either human life, the natural world, sentience in time-space, or some other
aspect of the real universe or our imaginings about it. Therefore the God of War, Ares, is a
personification of the principle of war that acts on human affairs.
613.
Is
the monotheistic view of God which one can see in Taoism for example really
just a rhetorico-logical assertion about Godness-as-such, the Universal
Principle of Godness that encompasses all lesser gods?
Literary Change (LC.html) was
a real precursor of G2K. I stole part of
it from how Blake said ancient folk ascribed a "genius" to every
thing--this pen, this table, my diet soda--its "in the worldness."
614.
Do
people really need to read your works from the 1990's (early to mid) to
understand Genius 2000?
Realistically, Genius 2000 is
the corporate-economic arm or instrument of my art, expression, writing, and
philosophy. It's the incorporated
for-profit business entity. The content
is based on my ideas and art tracing back to when I left high school in
1987. Prior to leaving high school I
didn't do much intellectual work, except math and some other things. I burned all my juvenilia in about 1993
during a mental health breakdown, or what society might call that. I burnt in the fireplace all of my math exams
and problems, a few stories and school assignments, lots of things. I'm not sure why--to get free of my family,
my suffocating, killing family guilt perhaps.
That was the goal but not the result.
That's what screwed-up people do.
615.
Can
you be trusted to take care of the reader's genius for him or her?
I'm ambivalent about taking
care of someone else's genius. You
should be taking care of your own and I my own.
The reverse is co-dependency. So,
my logic is all scrambled up. Instead of
taking care of my own genial development, I'm concerned that you won't take
care of yours. Perhaps by taking care of
mine, and doing so in a published manner, I can both earn money for myself and
provide assistance to others--for a fair price--in developing their own genius,
taking care of it.
616.
Do
you lack faith and dedication?
Very much so. I get depressed, despondent, and
self-pitying. I get confused and
lost. Sure I'd like to apologize for my
wrong deeds. But which are wrong, which
are right, and is apologizing itself right or wrong? I'd like not to feel guilty. So I should just decide not to. But I want guarantees. There's no guarantee.
617.
In
order to practice positive visualization during play (execution), don't you
need to decide first what the goal and purpose of this book is, i.e., internet
or traditional paper publication?
Clearly yes. I don't even know yet which I'd prefer, which
I'm shooting for. Traditional would give
me money revenue, is less likely (or very unlikely), constrains my artistic and
aesthetic movements, and would give me time and access to special people and
dating. Internet publication would bring
no money yet allow total artistic freedom and is a guaranteed certain
option. I don't like the eager-to-please
desperation of traditional. I am already
too profoundly co-dependent enough, too addicted to mutually strangling
sickness. Also I'm thirty-five and
realistically have "no time to mess around" anymore--I'm
half-dead. I'd say the pros favor
internet publication. I'll stay away utterly from the traditional art world
however that has already fully infested the internet also.
618.
How
will you make enough money to survive nutritionally?
I'll keep my day job,
depressing as it can be if I approach it wrongly, and also go to computer
programming classes for a boost in wages.
Then I won't be hostage to the artworld, the publishing world, or the
academic world--I'll be totally free to follow my own artistic choices. Of course, this is all predicated on the
unproven fact that I don't need the money or acclaim the creativity
institutions and markets offer, or can learn still how to get along without it
by overcoming my compulsive addictions.
Artworld, publishing world, and academic world acceptance and praise for
me and for Genius 2000 at this stage is impossible anyway, a futile
effort. If anything my experience has
proved that--or at least I'm no good at gathering praise and support. The goal then--to forget completely about
making this tender, sweet, and marketable.
Internet only. As good as
possible.
619.
Is it
beautiful and sunny, and is the cottonwood flying, and is the elderly couple
finished doing laundry and getting into their white Blazer with a little rust
on the rear wheel-wells?
Possibly. The cottonwood is moving slowly. The ant's a centaur in his dragon world
(Pound), and he crawled on the page! Now
my left thumb! Hello friend. He smelled the chips I'd eaten. He's a centaur. Hi centaur!
Farewell now.
620.
Would
your college-radio influenced personal CD of music, MoMM, be better kept silent
so as not to pollute your users?
Christ spent time with
publicans and sinners. I certainly don't
advocate the demagoguery I used to study for myself anymore. It's not respectful of Zen. Also, because I have no grandiose
pseudo-historical obligation to promote myself, I don't need to ingratiate
myself with manipulative "please like me" garbage.
621.
So
your decision is to make a quality book on the internet for free your goal?
I don't even know if this
will be good enough to deserve being put on the internet. And I see no purpose in putting it on the
internet, since I'll get no money for it, other than a continuation of Genius
2000's accessible existence in the world.
However, it would benefit me to put a good Genius 2000 book on the
internet in terms of my sense of guilt.
If I put a good book on the internet it could help clear away the
guilt--the purpose of it, accomplishment toward which would determine its
goodness, would be to clear away my guilt and crimes against Genius 2000 so
far. That way I could re-connect with my
aesthetic source of life, my genius. The
obligation on me to conform to what Genius 2000 demands of me is a confusing
question but it seems in one case something I need to do to keep from going
insane.
622.
Is
all the dating, drugs, catharsis, and companionship of the college-radio world
just a lot of lies and confusion?
I think so. The music itself, the artworks of the songs
and performances, is pretty weak. It's
founded on mass popularity, the stormy but conflicting emotions of inchoate
herd sentiment. It's akin to
complaining, anger, and greed. The
college radio (as opposed to regular radio) tries to be deeper, more literary,
more complicated, and more political but it's still primarily needless mass
conformity. The rock and pop musicians
of the college radio and the regular radio are all equally caught up in the
emotional holding pattern of wanting to be loved, wanting to fit in, wanting to
be different, and wanting to be left alone that constitute the genre of
"the song." Perhaps it's
harmless fun. One can see how liberals
and other pseudo-intellectual bohemians inquire only most shallowly into their
own sacred cows. If you want to get out
of that morass however, the songs do not help.
623.
What
would a more G2K picture of music be like?
The focus would be on live
performance. People would need to be
actually playing in the coffee shops and front porches. The performance or creation and use would be
more in line, where now the performance is by a small number, and most people
can't sing or play any instruments. That
breeds idolatry.
624.
What
about reading poetry instead?
Poetry has more clear and
appreciable sound and music than what we call music nowadays. Lines like "Thus conscience does make
cowards of us all" from Shakespeare have a more perfect, crystalline
quality in their sound and meaning than your typical rock and pop music. However, like low-fat food, one has to get
used to it to appreciate the flavor.
William Carlos Williams's "beside the white chickens" should
be more ever-present to people's considerations that the current pop song. But people can't handle quiet or solitude, so
they plug in to the loud herd-music.
625.
Are
you leaning toward not typing these as you go?
Realistically, yes. I'm getting close to one-third done and I
still feel like I can't concentrate or get to the point. I'm scattered so much. Typing also hurts my hands, neck, back, and
eyes because I have to type and look at the computer screen at work. The precious minutes and hours of scribbling
are my true love, in the morning before work, after work, and then on the
weekends also.
626.
Can
you live with the idea that no one will ever praise or appreciate Genius 2000
completely while you're alive, because it can't work that way?
I can completely accept
that. If Genius 2000 operates as a
demagogic idolatry it can't also operate as a calming, friendly, instructive
example. I've got to forgo the mass popularization
on purpose, to keep the way clear for actual appreciation of the valuable kind.
627.
Must
Genius 2000 remain obscure and underground, i.e., must it necessarily not be published in the traditional way?
I don't think so. I think it could be OK if it were published
in the regular way--it could also be published as a corrupted, inverted, vile
deformation of itself. Genius 2000
respects the esoteric and is itself part esoteric, but there is also a message
in it for exoteric areas of life. The
real key is that traditional publication is not required (though it is
desirable). The key is for me to keep
sane by doing good art.
628.
Do
you need to get some more pens and pads of paper?
I think so. This second black Liquid Expresso is getting
low on ink. I can see it in the clear
reservoir going down. I will go and get
a nice pen or two or four at the office supplies store, as well as a couple
more pads--actually, come to think of it, the pads can wait.
629.
Do
you think that the troubles confronting the aura of the artwork have as much to
do with compositional factors as they do with production methods?
Oh absolutely--and
well-phrased. The compositional factors
I think are equally relevant to the overall dynamic as the brute
economic-production factors. It may be
that Benjamin was too intoxicated by Marx, even though he was partly skeptical
and would hardly have been liked or supported in Stalinist Russia. I think there were things about Marxist
propaganda that convinced many intellectuals that some artistic activities
could not take place absent a conversion or transformation of economic
relations. So they had it badly, badly
backwards. O heavens yes. Factually, Communism, socialism, and so on do
not offer a qualitatively different
economic reality. Blocked on the
artistic front by a combination of inner and outer factors, many reversed the
dynamic into a bad distortion. Communist
aesthetic confusion.
630.
Given
that Communism was a falsity and a contradiction even of itself, were the
socialist-leaning intellectuals and artists of the twentieth century
sidetracked away from an investigation of compositional aesthetic factors at
play?
Quite arguably yes, though
factually I'm still not yet convinced that anything I do or say is true or
decent. On one hand, bad working
conditions are dehumanizing, do hurt
the polis, and do impair the genius of those working in them. Neither Communism nor socialism is required
to agree with that however, and Soviet Communist military attacks on capitalism
made the conditions worse in both systems and were motivated by
usurpation-fantasies and not the improvement of working conditions at all. Still, many people were convinced that
Communism had to be right. I can see
why; it was a hard time for everyone.
People have jumped to much crazier conclusions. Yet, the loss of aura is caused by
compositional and not economic-productive factors, primarily. Perhaps.
631.
Are
you sleepy and feeling somewhat happy?
I've had a good day for the
most part even though this pen is getting somewhat pushed in. I've been reading my way through Nietzsche's Zarathustra which has some OK aspects
but for the most part it seems to me he's "not waving, but drowning"
(Smith). I suppose folk might get that
from this too. Oh well. I feel OK for having kept busy-ish today,
plus it rained and the air is nice. I'd
like to have gotten a little more done but I think I accomplished the proper
amount. I did nothing improper.
632.
Would
you like to avoid doing terrible things you're embarrassed of later if and
whenever possible, from now on?
I suppose I'd miss my
mistake-making ways if I did that. Yet
to get over the habitual actions I find so great a portion of my life, I'd like
that. I want to know what to do and what
is proper, what virtue is. It doesn't
really solve it to say "oh virtue is a social norm that always
changes." It may be partly that,
but surely is also something else.
633.
Do
you feel that Nietzsche was grasping in the dark, due to his mental health
problems, and fundamentally erred?
I wouldn't care to pronounce
on Nietzsche because I've only just started reading him this year, and what is
more, I'm not sure I'm not missing the point.
Especially Zarathustra I feel is hysterical and hollow. Undoubtedly one would need a better knowledge
of Nietzsche than I have to make such a judgment. Still and all, I wager my A-K-H-A plus
Contribution One exceeds and illuminates his work.
634.
Are
you nervous about being a bad and sullen worker again this week?
Few things--nothing
perhaps--distress me more than my sullen, angry, ill-tempered silence and
shakiness at work. No normal person is
like that. I'm damaging the moods and
attitudes of those around me toward work and life. I've already significantly reduced my chances
for promotion by being temperamental, sensitive, and moody both in meetings and
throughout the day. I must improve!
635.
How
can you become nicer, friendlier, and more well-liked at work without degrading
yourself and your personal boundaries?
I feel invaded and controlled
by the workplace encouragement of cheerfulness, friendliness, and mellow
stress-reduction. I must surely be
immature and over-sensitive in this. I
don't deny that cheerful workers who get on well with each other get more done
and self-destruct less. I can be so
demanding. Yet I might forgive myself in
that I have almost no skill or experience in keeping my own moods and
self-esteem separate from those of the people around me. I'm getting close to feeling co-dependent
about my co-workers. I just want them to
feel OK and leave me alone, and not need me to cough "hm-hm" all the
time, and be their big brother or dad, or flirt with them as the case may
be. Yet those strange psycho-sexual
messagings are precisely what lubricate the workweek and gain strokes from the
deciders.
636.
Given
your pledge to try, at least, to lessen the complaining and pedantic filler
which will either have to be overwritten later or left in to tire and injure
the reader, might you now mention something in one of the many broad veins of
Wholesome Routine which you have heretofore alluded to?
I would like to find
something decent to write about, yes.
Imposing on the reader to endure my clumsy pleas about the O.S.O. or my
endless bellyaching is truly not very beneficial to Genius 2000 in me or in
others. Discussing works of art such as
the Doryphoros might be better. One can
do worse than to list the various art-historical periods, which are: Pre-Historic, Pantheonic, Monotheistic,
Renaissance, Neoclassical, Romantic, Modern, Postmodern, and Genius 2000 or
Messianic Jetztzeit. Perhaps that is
pedantic and not wholesomely, enjoyably, gratifyingly routine. What may be?
Facts about myself I prefer to be more chary with. Perhaps my task is not to write on these
wholesomely routine topics but to figure out what they are, first.
637.
Are
the basic fundamentals of the Genius 2000 Network both wholesome and routine,
that is, sinless to speak on and worthy of being returned to over and over
again for simple reiteration, aesthetic development, or both?
The decent basics of G2K, as
opposed to and distinguished--if possible--from its crimes, are good and
wholesome topics of repetition. If they
are not, the Network itself does not merit construction, use, or
maintenance. "G=mt2000" means
"Genius = media times talent to the 2000th power." It's a rather silly figure of speech from the
Video First Edition. The media compares
to mass as mentioned in Einstein's Relativity Theory. The reference is also to a possible
Newtonianism in the object-based model of art and of genius as a built-in gift
or static property. The comparison also
is of genius to energy, which is above mass in the counting system at
hand. The movie Rollerball has a crazy computer in it which also says "genius
is energy," but I wrote the equation before noticing that about Rollerball.
638.
Was
all the footage for the VFE shot in 1998?
Yes, I wanted to shoot
footage until January 1 1999 and then edit then release the tape. I asked all over the internet for people to
give me footage of themselves answering the questions, or talking about genius,
or talking about the year 2000--for proof here's the web page
(Contribution.html). Predictably enough
no one sent me footage over the internet.
I had to use all my own footage in the end. OK.
639.
Did
you shoot more footage after finishing the VFE?
Yes, I finished the VFE in
April 1999 and then shot the Yes/No Video right away in Point Isabel park in or
near
640.
Why
does the Genius 2000 Network's definition of genius merit being looked at?
Genius is a very important
concept, and so is history. Genius means
"high human ability" in one sense.
It also means "high IQ" or "very opportunistic" or
"very successful." It also can
refer to one's guardian spirit, or tutelary deity i.e. capacity for identity
and learning. It has more meanings and
more ancient history than almost any word.
And what is more central in the age of science than the individual
genius who discovers something or invents something? "Genius" connotes
"Einstein" much more than "human capacity to learn." Yet in truth, "Einstein" really
only means at bottom "human capacity to learn." Genius also of a place or time alludes to
fields of behavioral activity, the atmospheric qualities of genius, the fields
and fabrics of meaning that crop up in cities or communities. One can even say--as the ancients did
according to William Blake--that trees, brooks, grass, and the wind all also
have genii.
641.
So is
the primary goal of Genius 2000 to confirm that all humans and indeed all
living things have genius and that they have simultaneously the right and
obligation to develop and fulfill it, express it, protect it, protect it in
others and the future?
Fairly and well
said--yes. Genius is not limited to the
top one percent of IQ-people--that is a hideously narrow and catastrophic view
of genius. Someone in the tape stated
the universality of genius (that is
what "God" means) in the Video and I put that right near the end on
purpose. By design. That guy is smart and famous too; he thinks
I'm an ignorant insane loser now though--and by god he's right. The cult of science and the master analyst
won't help any further. Individual
humans all across the globe can't wait for some super-genius to come fill their
heads up. They need to do it themselves;
that's the healthy way and the pious way and it's fun too. Being king of yourself--in the proper
sense. That's G2K.
642.
Why
did you think you were obligated to establish a significant, even dominant
artworld presence for Genius 2000 if the whole point is not to bother with
prefabricated genius going from the few to the many anymore?
Because my instincts told me
that. Drift and inertia seemed too
dangerous at that time to me. Perhaps it
might amuse some to consider that the newly-founded polis (a Network is like a
polis) is run as a principality according to Machiavelli whereas the safe and
established polis like a republic. The
republic works when diffused authority does not threaten the state but
strengthens it. Anyhow, I felt I had an
obligation to make Genius 2000 very well known, using at times the filthy
sewage-like tactics of artworld clambering, in case no one else did anything
sufficiently similar. Some people claim
COBRA was similar, or Fluxus, or the Eternal Network, or some other junk. Maybe, maybe not. I felt obligated.
643.
Are
the basics and core history of G2K wholesome, routine topics?
Arguably they are and what is
more the most appropriate ones for a book about the Genius 2000 Network. Despite my uncertainty about paper or cyber
publishing, my doubtful ownership of the Video First Edition, my former
drunkenness, and my vile demagoguery at times, Genius 2000 is a legitimate
topic for discussion on the Genius 2000 Network (of which this book and the
companioned website are parts). Hobbes,
Locke, Giotto, Archimedes, Wittgenstein, Collingwood, Shelley, Blake, the Magic
Apple Tree, Giorgione, my two trips
to Venice in my life, my farting in lecture at Madison--these are all also
acceptable topics for the Genius 2000 Network.
Any genius, any 2000. The topic
of the O.S.O. and terrorism as a tactic used by disruptor powers seeking the
demise of liberal democratic polis in favor of either resurrected Communism or
medieval religious dictatorship--that's a topic too.
644.
What
are some other basic good facts, blessings to count, about Genius 2000?
I can think of a couple. One is, you don't have to commit revenge
against bad artists or other abusers of genius in themselves or others. This relates to the Eumenides again, Athena,
Apollo, Orestes, Clytemnestra, Aegistheus, Agamemnon, and the polis. You will certainly make mistakes and act
petty, but for this you can repent and be forgiven.
645.
Is
the main point that it is moral, often, to forgo revenge in one's own action?
Yes, that's correct. Sometimes revenge is unavoidable and
therefore not immoral, however. Often
revenge is avoidable, and when it is,
to indulge in it is to disgrace the polis, disgrace art. Don't waste your time trying to prove your
type of revenge is justified. It's not
the type of revenge that matters. If you
can step back from it at all, i.e. hear me at all, you can go the other
way. You're not obligated to commit revenge, though many people and groups will try
to tell you you are.
646.
What
is the meaning of "talent" in Genius 2000?
That relates to the little
pieces of paper I used to use to print the G2K questions and lessons on. I got the image in late 1998 from all the
stickers and little promotional papers you see all over. I was living on
647.
Now
that you got your books, your 12 Poets
and Fifty Great American Short Stories,
don't you feel all the worse that you are insane?
I do feel that I'm insane, in
that I see nothing normal about my thinking or convictions and feel irretrievable. The Aiken story "Silent Snow, Secret
Snow" is about a ten-year-old going profoundly insane. Perhaps he's eight. What could be sane in thinking my scribbling
mania is art or will help the world? Yet
many times have gone by where for me the insane paint did not stick. You think I'm insane--you're insane. I'm a living genius. A soul alive in a living body. That's what all this Genius 2000 talk comes
from, that living genius, not from insanity.
Though I'm sure you could find thousands of doctors to prove I'm
insane. It's impossible for one person
to write a book of two thousand quanta in 2005 that transforms the world. Or is that just bragging and sexual insecurity,
distemper, foulness?
648.
If
you write two hundred quanta per week will you finish by July 31?
That seems marvelous. That is twenty per day all week and fifty
each day on the weekends. I can take
vacation days too for extra production.
I don't need to do any more research, for example about Tillich,
computers, de Tocqueville, the Federalist Number Ten, faction, self-rule,
passion, the tyranny of the majority, the Rule of One Master. Aeschylus wrote about the Rule of One Master:
every man for himself.
649.
Is
Adorno OK under a strictly non-Communist light and not denuded or splintery?
All the good ideas fare just
fine under a capitalist-only worldview.
Communism is, after all, just capitalism with a one-hundred percent tax
rate. Dialectic of Enlightenment, reversion into subjectivity gone wild,
that pertains just as well if we grant that Communism, Marxism, and socialism
are all unnecessary and "not an addition" to the truths of the
world. But no one can read all that.
650.
Can
Genius 2000 really persuade people to forgo revenge and support the O.S.O.?
I doubt if I could convince
anyone of anything. People only see what
they want to see--especially liberals.
What liberals want most of all, above all else, is to have no guilt and
no responsibility. They don't feel like
they deserve to live, so they blame society for giving them the unearned
favor. Yet they convince themselves they
can keep their money and pleasures, luxuries really, because they constantly
opine the world is unfair. Yet their
luxuries and advantages they keep, though they could donate them. Or, they live very cheaply but within such a
rich society that even entry-level jobs pay enough for a very safe and
comfortable life. Oh I'm so angry at
liberals, the hypocrites. They never
push themselves, they have no concept of how to avoid another WWII or
Holocaust. All they do is bleat. How can you convince people of the truth if
they want to believe they are great?
651.
Can
you set aside your anger and peevishness toward pseudo-liberal
pseudo-intellectual Noam Chomsky and get on with discussing Genius 2000?
Chomsky should be forced to
answer questions about the role of art in human society and his ideas' relation
to and implications about art. Or maybe
it's best and wisest "to let him stew in his own juice." That's the true punishment, totally fair and
revengeless. But if you ever did want to
get free of Chomsky, just ask him what he thinks about art in society.
652.
Aren't
you afraid that you'll become insomniac, get fired for grouchiness, and have to
crawl back to Mom and Dad so they can emotionally degrade and belittle you to
take their pound of flesh?
I greatly fear poverty and
dependency. That's why I'll be quitting
art after this book so as to regain earning power as a
computer-programming-educated thirty-six-year-old.
653.
Isn't
anticlimax and sleepy boredom what's needed most?
After injury indeed rest
comes immediately after medical attention in order of sequence. The O.S.O. is the medical procedure to allow
traumatized, war-crippled humanity to have a rest of healing rather than
demise. Rest rest rest. Oh the sweet rest from all of our manic
revenging and questioning. Just accept
the gift of some time to heal.
654.
Doesn't
12 Poets have a beautiful
tawny-colored cover?
It surely does; it's really a
surprisingly attractive edition and well worth being reprinted exactly as it
first appeared by Holt Rhinehart Winston.
Perhaps they are no longer a house.
12 Poets is a lovely, simple,
handy, rich and complete introduction to English poetry. It has all the remarkable joy of Keats and
the dramatic clamor of Yeats. Even
"Prufrock" is in there. And
the paper and type are both marvelous too--and superbly edited.
655.
Must
you accept that you are incapable of forcing people to be good?
I guess I can't force anyone
to be anything--what they are is up to them and to fate. I have nothing to say about it. I want people to get off drugs, like meth
(which really hobbles the brain), and read poetry instead like Stevens' poem
"The Man With the Blue Guitar."
Yet people choose what they want--choisir--and my recommendations have
no compulsory power. I can continue to
reject this truth of the universe only at a great ongoing loss of my
life-force.
656.
Aren't
artists obligated to make people worship them so as to make art happen?
The art is more in the person
or user worshipping the truth and reality in a beautiful way, or idolizing not
the artist, the art, nor themselves but focusing on and efforting towards the
proper relationship of themselves to the universe, toward Genius 2000. Idolizing me, hated child-abused Max, would
only interfere with and spoil that.
657.
Do
you have a habit of dropping names to make yourself look really decent and
caring?
Yes, I tend to mention people
when I have nothing of my own to express.
It thus makes me look not effete, jejeune, blah, and exhausted, but munificent,
discerning, and a great friend to the common man. Yet what if I should mention a poem by a
little-known poet that I like a lot?
It's a poem about Buckminster Fuller.
It relates to the Fuller stamps on my kitchen table where I'm
writing. The stamps are in a
five-by-four square sheet. They are
sitting under the three-legged lamp I have.
The poem was about Buckminster Fuller.
The poem is by a little-known poet of very good quality. Yet for me to mention him in this book would
be shirking my own creative duties. Oh
well. I will have to mention him later,
or never. Some artists are mediocre and
don't deserve praise, but he's pretty good, that one poem.
658.
Are
you against the universities for teaching dysfunctional co-dependent models of
what genius is?
Oh gracious they probably
teach just the opposite. De Tocqueville
wrote about how as men become more equal they must become more capable (see
LC.html). Alexis de Tocqueville is
taught in some universities. Who is to
blame for the demise and sluggish degeniusization of human genius and all the
people, all the individuals whose personal geniuses are all in decline? Well, if your genius is declining into
mediocre idolization of flatterers and kitsch and gluttony mixed with drugs,
meth, booze, pornography, and sloth, and videogames and TV, it's your own
fault. Not universities'. At least universities encourage reading,
writing, and painting over watching TV and eating junk food. It's silly to blame universities. I thought I could, should, and was obligated
to and historically chosen or anointed to, but they're not to blame.
659.
Do
you sometimes try to avoid mentioning trivia in these quanta such as
"yesterday I ate salmon" or "my soup was bitter chill tonight and
kept the drowsy trees awake" [Browning]?
Sometimes the fact of
scribbling trivia or triviata makes me freeze before I can start. I freeze at the prospect of acting, acting
very inspired, very this, very that, very at ease, very thorough, very
assiduous and schematic. The acting, the
lying tires me before I even start.
Sometimes. Sometimes I write out
the trivia.
660.
Is
part of Genius 2000 about how one isn't obligated to commit revenge against or
to take care of other people and their geniuses?
A grown-up healthy adult
genius will be in charge of itself and make good choices to take care of
itself. It will try to get away from
harmful other geniuses, not to punish or revenge on them--as if that were the
point or even permissible. "I'm
going to punish you because you don't read enough!" Part of Genius 2000 is about rights, the
other is about laws and obligations. Ius
and lex.
661.
Where
did you get the idea for Genius 2000?
I was going to call the video
"Genius," and ask people to act and talk as if they were genii or as
they thought genii would act. I thought
that too difficult and actorly. So, I
just decided to ask them what they thought about genius and what they thought
it was. Then I added 2000 as a
cipher-topic to sound off on, to play at being geniuses, and for topicality and
temporal-historical transience in its totality [Benjamin].
662.
Have
you now switched to a new crop of pens you have bought yourself, rather than
holdovers from your old temp job at the architecture firm?
Indeed I have, and they are
horrid. They are feeling so terrible and
unflowing, they make an unpleasant rattling sound, and scrape over the
paper. The writing itself looks ugly
too. I ought to have bought the other
type. These make my writing almost
illegible. I can't believe it.
663.
Did
you adore Beethoven's "Rage Over a Lost Penny" in 1990, when you
ended your aimless drifting visit to
I had it on tape and liked it
dearly. It had a red case, a cassette
tape, on a period piano and with "Rondo Alla Turca" also. "Rage" was better than
"Turca," I decided back then.
Then I knew there was a purpose to study.
664.
Was
that pen so bad that you had to abandon it after just two quanta?
Yes, and I'd bought four of
them in a packet together, and relished the hope of opening them up to use
after the prior Liquid Expresso wore out.
I never imagined they would feel and sound so garish and frightful. I don't think I would even curse myself to
use them at work. I'd even use a lead
pencil first which can easily blur and fade and smudge. They're hideous pens.
665.
Are
pens triviata?
Nothing is triviata, that not
being an actual word. But yes, the topic
of my pen choices is trivia, something from the street, common vulgarity. Yet such litter and trash crowds in when
there is no plan, no goal, no research, and no composition or revision. "In a minute there is time for decisions
and revisions which a minute will reverse." [Eliot]
666.
Another
pen having died just there, a pen not altogether new but still surprisingly
close to death, would you like to mention the little G2K party you had and
taped in 1998?
Sure, OK. I was a bartender and barback for a little
while after getting my graduate degree.
I liked to be around the bar life of people and socializing. So I also shot a video of a little G2K party
I had at the bar on permission from the owner.
It went so-so. It felt
pretentious and I got extremely plastered.
And fired not long after.
667.
Are
you considering a return to the pen store to get some new and better pens?
This new pen I'm back to
again. Oh I wish I could get over
it. I should just suffer through it and
get to like its scrapy sound and rattle and rough, jerky movement over the
paper. It has no feel; it feels dry as a bone like plastic on plastic. With the pens I like I can feel a slight
moisture, and the pulp and fibre of the page.
This pen is like a nightmare for me.
668.
Why
not just use a ballpoint?
I find ballpoints, like this
one, squirmy and greasy. They make my
writing look like writhing worms one's run over with one's tricycle tires. The words lack dignity and life. I couldn't bear to look at them later. I thought this pen was not a ballpoint. That's the only reason I used it. Ballpoints to me mean "mental health
collapse." Composing in the
doctor's office waiting room, waiting for your lobotomy.
669.
Is
that new pen, the hateful one, even usable?
I don't know. Sure.
I can't handle the mania. I'm
clear now why writers like structure, form, a genre, a goal. Aesthetic beauty. Endless vomit of words just makes one
depressed. I've got this idea that the
formed artwork--with structure, contour, magic, theme, ambience--is a prison
and I'm the free but nauseous pioneer of the Third Millennium. Yet I can hardly bear to go on.
670.
Was
your G2K video party at the bar a depressing embarrassment?
Yes, it was grueling. Completely drunk was I. I had a couple of video players here and
there, and a microphone at the P.A. board.
I had lots of bread and wine around, good bread and decent table
wine. I had Lycidas printed out and
sitting on the pool table, and Lessons One and Two and Contribution One. No one really showed. Some strangers.
671.
What
did you call your embarrassing, pretentious, drunken Genius 2000 bar-night?
There really wasn't a
name. My other cousin, the brother of
the one who sexually molested me, was there.
He is a topic I don't want to talk about. I guess I can't talk much about my life, my
actual life, without either lying (if only by omission of the sexual abuse),
depressing everyone, or exploiting people or something bad. I feel obligated to discuss all these people
I knew, to damn and save them. That's
dysfunctional on my part.
672.
Are
you prohibited from talking about your actual personal life at all then in
Genius 2000?
Gracious there's a
thought. If I could cotton on to that
plan it would address a lot of worries I have, manic fears and concerns. No gory details about my life. I could even go back over this past first
one-third and excise all mentions. No
need to damn or save.
673.
Does
talking about your personal and family life in public on the internet make you
feel dirty, exploitative, false, trapped, guilty, and obligated?
Yes I feel all those
things. I feel guilty for revealing
facts about real people. I feel guilty
for harming people or even just making them feel bad with negative
comments. Then I feel frustrated and
enraged about the guilt, accusatory toward them "that deserve it" and
I have a historic anointed obligation to chastise them. All of this is just dismal and
sickening. Then I feel obligated to fix
it, dress it up, cover it over with more lies, pretty lies. Any facts about anything in my past disgust
me--where I went to school, who I tried to date, who my friends were. Similarly, this ultra-personal confessional
running monologue is also falsely "authentic," "the real
me," unedited and uncensored. Pure
vomitus. Plus my hands are shouting with
carpal tunnel.
674.
Does
it all go back to the idea that certain old-time writers asked to be
contemplated and discussed--like Shelley and Shakespeare--and that they are
fair game, but regular private citizens (Civilians!!!) are off-limits?
I like that idea. Shakespeare and Eliot and Ben Franklin can be
my characters and I can at least avoid doing further injury and crime toward
actual people I've known as friends and family.
I'm not obligated to make them famous or loved, or to punish them with a
knout like a beadle. Yet this moratorium
on gut-spilling leaves me with further zero topics and blankness. But that's OK, having no topics is OK. I wish the neighbors weren't fighting. Oh well.
So, I suppose I can leave out the ugly revelations. What do I have left then? Certainly not a novel. Talk of the Eumenides perhaps. We may find out. But 1326 more of these may be impossible,
ugly, doom.
675.
Is
this book worse in quality than it would be if instead of clerical work eight
hours per day you could read poetry, paint, socialize with other intellectuals,
etc.?
I think I'd be less anxious
if I had more time to read poetry.
Poetry really slows me down and pacifies my soul. I read the Zarathustra somewhat often, and am now in Part Three I think, but
it seems very, very thin and weak and clanging.
So, I now pledge to switch to 12
Poets for my after-work reading instead of Zarathustra. Also, I will try reading on the bus and at
work on break rather than scribbling. I
need the words.
676.
Did
that story by Conrad Aiken called "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" make you
feel abnormal and mentally unhealthy?
Somewhat. I get sad and demoralized by art that says
"be typical, share with others, give of yourself, be healthy,
give." It makes me feel so
frustrated and confused whether I'm to embrace solitude or relationships, some
of each, or when and what kind.
677.
Is it
OK not to have any objects or concrete accomplishments for this book, just a
vague feeling of ineffable union?
Possibly. There are plenty of writers out there using
plot, mood, and character. There's no
shortage. Also, just because I'm doing
otherwise doesn't mean I'm condemning or hurting them. There can be both--i.e. the Transitional
Artifact. Also rescuing criticism: four
dimensions contain three no problem, infinitely, plenty. Plus this Network is like Zen, a kung-an, not
a moon but a finger pointing to it. It's
not aesthetically pleasing or an end in itself but it helps create aesthetic
health. But that would go against the
instrumental prohibition not to ever be means only. However, the human ongoing genius-in-time is
the end in itself and the objects that guide it are, properly, transient fading means only. So, despite no concrete goals and
achievements G2K is good.
678.
Have
you been feeling strange and mightily poor today?
I think I'm going insane, if
by insane you mean an autonomous genius who needs nothing from the world. Again the conflict at work--be cozy and nice,
comradely, or quiet and cool, chilly?
The question makes my eyes hurt, around the back and insides, on top,
all around. My eyes. That's odd.
679.
Do
you perhaps have a hope of understanding why you don't like being kind,
friendly, big-brotherly, and avuncular at work?
I get co-dependent
feelings. I feel like I'm being coerced
and exploited. It seems degrading and
entrapping. God knows I must be crazy to
feel this way, wanting to be a sullen surly bastard, borderline. I wonder what a shrink would say. "Attachment disorder," unable to
connect with others or stay connected.
Severely emotionally neglected in childhood with a little sexual abuse
thrown in. Never recovered.
680.
Is
setting down your guilt feelings a hygienic routine?
Perhaps it would be best if I
gave up some of the guilt-cognition.
Guilty of this and guilty of that.
Guilty of doing and of not doing in equal measure. And left over? Nothing to live in! Nowhere!
So, return to the scribbling, daily daily daily. Never-ending.
Where's the guilt for me now? Oh,
I get guilty at work--my guilt drives me to want to entertain and coddle
everyone there. It's a no-win situation
because I feel the work is beneath me and to be there at all is failure
incarnate for me. Yet, perhaps it is a
test sent by Genius 2000. If I'm there,
it must be for a reason, goes the logic.
Yet I feel more profoundly than life itself that I am cheerleading for a
team I barely play for and have no stake in, a hollow shell. Conventional morality says I'm a coward,
loafer, quitter, and sullen loser. Too
fussy to join and be a mensch, a man.
681.
Why
must your moods and social cordialities at work plunge into a steep decline,
your attitude sour in the profoundest sense, just because you are exercising,
reading, and writing a lot?
Perhaps I see myself as doing
the work of an artist and therefore deserving the praise and recognition. Yet my workplace has no knowledge of or use
for my writing. There, I'm a borderline
psychotic balding weirdo who's lost a few pounds lately and gets very silent
for hours at a time. I would like to
think my emotions are OK. I wish I could
let them go and flow a little more, rather than avalanching guilt onto myself
for having "bad emotions" all the time. Why am I not cheerful, supportive,
affectionate, loving, and caring at work?
Why do I resist stroking, preening, and other exchanges of emotional
fluids? I must be socially incompetent. I simply do not belong anywhere. Or, I was too lazy, evil, or unlucky to find
where I do belong.
682.
Aren't
you ashamed and embarrassed that you write about your emotional problems in
these quanta and never, never, never about G2K?
I wonder if I do or not. I want to write about whatever I want,
whatever is proper to my expressive life or days-in-a-row. I want to gain emotional balance and to feel
truly alive in my writing quanta. So, to
do that I suppose I think I need to talk about my emotions and figure out my
emotional sins. After all, this book
depends primarily on my continuing to scribble daily until two thousand are
done. That depends on my not giving up
or going crazy. I suppose that's
unlikely, because my paroxetine is only twenty feet away in the kitchen, just
waiting for me to crawl back under it again.
I'll finish the book even if I do go crazy, have to take two weeks off
with pay for inpatient mental health treatment while I go back under
paroxetine. Or, I'll keep it off of me
and still finish.
683.
Considering
you can't "will backwards," as Nietzsche said, and change the past,
what do you want to do for the future?
I'd like to finish these
quanta for one thing. That will take
awhile. I'd like someone to publish it
in paper for me but that's not up to me.
More likely is that I can publish this on the internet for free in
September and then try to write a pleasantly rectally-massagive book for the
global literabook market in about 2008.
I wanted not to betray liberal democracy by refusing to publish in the
market. Yet it is clear the market
doesn't want me yet, so I have to move the market closer to me by publishing
for no pay first. Then maybe in
twenty-ten, 2010, they will ask me to write a real book and pay me for it so I
can take a lot of time on it, to research and compose and so on. For now, it might be evil to publish it for
free on the internet but that's my preference.
684.
Do
you have to stop doing Genius 2000 conferences?
No, I don't have to
stop. It's OK for me to keep doing
them. 2005 will be a wonderful year for
the conference because I have a lovely idea for it. It's surely sufficient to just will forwards
on those. I'll avoid the incestuous
rapism and ingratiation of going to the artworld to try to move in on their turf
and compel them to like me or swindle them by flattery and self-degradation to
like me. I'll just send direct e-mail
messages to the people on my list and not go on any of the artworld listservs
at all. Plus I've taken some time off
work next week so I can set up my website for the conference 2005. If disgusting people try to ingratiate
themselves to me I can just ignore them.
I also have a bunch of tapes I never sent out to former winners but I
can go ahead and send them the one tape I was going to if they ask.
685.
Is it
pointless for you to worry about all your sins and peccadilloes?
Seemingly so. I can't even define what right and wrong
are--not with certainty. I know that
drinking alcohol is likely to make me act very strange, and perhaps go start a
fight in a bar, crash my auto, or crap in my pants as I did on my final drinking
binge in September 2002. I got so tight
that as I lay passed out my body voided a full heavy load of excrement despite
my buttocks not being placed on the throne of voidancy. The body will vomit by reflex as well, which
caused the deaths of many, many rock musicians and alcoholic actors over the
years. Even Faulkner used to puke his
guts out on the floor of the hotel bathroom when he had enough cash to drink as
much as he wanted. But me, I'm a pious
guilty son of a bitch and I don't want to drink. Drinking is vulgar and binds me to other
humans and their repulsive emotionalistic odor.
686.
Does
this mean that your plan is to write about whatever you want, without forcing
yourself or trying to force yourself to write about things you don't want to
write about?
It could be more gracefully
spelt out but yes that is one possible outcome I hope takes shape in
reality-space. I just can't be whatever
I want to be. I'd like to be healthy and
good and sociable, a real team trooper, but factually I'm just scraping
by. I don't want to have to try to be
everyone's best buddy Mr. Perfect Wash-Your-Butt-With-Warm-Water
friendly-man. Sometimes I just want to
be left alone. Of course my future
success at work is limited by my desire not to have to be everyone's friendly
loving uncle. Yet I'll keep the job
until this book is done. I'm in no risk
of getting fired for my manic-depressive middle-aged sulking loser attitude--I
may even get promoted to King for it.
687.
Can
you keep using that bad pen you hated?
It's not so bad now. Far from the greatest. I'll go get a nicer pen this weekend or next
year. Who cares. Maybe it's a sin not to create characters and
a plot, a fake realm, or some easily planned and formulated philosophy, or a
market-niche friendly political view.
Heaven knows none of those things is what literature and society really
need. More market-oriented artistic
productions. Heck.
688.
Will
Genius 2000 answer people's questions about how they should live, think, and
spend their free time?
Oh gracious no. Nothing could be less useful in choosing what
to do. I have always tried to make G2K
didactic so it could fit into a marketable genre-niche, but intrinsically G2K
as an operator (such as subtraction or division) can tell you nothing at all
whatsoever about what you should do. Max
spouts that shit constantly but G2K could care less.
689.
Are
you feeling hamstrung over cross-pollinating with other internet artrepreneurs,
and whether that is healthy or degrading to you and them, and what to do about
having done it in the past, and whether to do it in the future like tomorrow?
I've always been a great one
for indecent respectless exploitation of pseudo-comradely behavior. I thought I had a right to do what felt
social, normal, and pleasing, and that I was obligated to contribute to my
art's fame and reputation. So, I'd
collaborate for mutual propaganda purposes even with people or groups who I
knew didn't support the O.S.O. or understand what I wanted in life. I used to collaborate sometimes with people,
I made a great show and charade about being a very collaborative, mutualistic
mensch. Yet that was largely lies either
to exploit people, snare them, or run them into the ground. So, maybe I should quit or curtail it.
690.
Wouldn't
it make sense to stop being Mr. Nice Friendly Guy on the internet too, and be
the straightforwardly extremely messed-up angry outcast poisoner you really
are?
That's a difficult
question. I like the idea of being able
to stop lying to people so profoundly and constantly. It would feel good to stop faking, lying,
scheming, and manipulating people so much with G2K. Like making people think I deeply respected
them, or would help them make money and get famous, or that I'd always be their
buddy or really liked or trusted them.
Then again it might be a sin not to collaborate with other people's
websites to garner traffic for mine and thus advance my profit margins. It would seem that the moral-analytic
approach always always always drags me right pluck down to the Morass of
Uncertainty. It could be I can just put
a moratorium on it, will forward, skip it for awhile, for good or evil.
691.
Have
you lied a tremendous amount in your life and in G2K?
O certainly yes I have,
doubtlessly. I've lied since day one
about everything--I'm perhaps the most intrinsically lying person that ever
existed. I am falsehood itself
incarnate, incarnadine, no, just incarnate.
Not incarnadine. I lie about
anything just so I can keep pretending I'm a writer.
692.
Can
you fix the horrible sins and crimes you've committed out of ignorance and
sickness in the past?
I sure can't. I can't make any of these terrible things not
have happened. They did happen. I can just will forward and add quanta as I go. I may have to take out the parts about me
being alcoholic and insane out of this book or it might get me fired from my
office job. Hopefully not. I need that god damn job! Even if rock music isn't evil and I could
write about it, like Yes, Rush, Steve Earle, and other rock bands people love
so dearly.
693.
Is your
expression more subtle, genuine, and accurate when you are not trying to either
fix or explain your past acts or decide what to do in the future, or now?
It's less aggravating,
frustrating, and fake-feeling, less suffocating, and more calming. If I'm trying to justify this or that I did
earlier for G2K, and separate the bad from the good, I just go crazy. I forget that instead of saying A and B
together at one time, I'd say A only in one place and B only in another. Because otherwise you'd have to say A-Z in
every quantum.
694.
Which
VFE scenes are you drunk or high in?
I wasn't completely
intoxicated in very many of them, or any.
By that I mean super-wasted. Some
I was a little bit high or drunk, about two or three pretty drunk, and
"tight" as Hemingway used to call it in two or three. Tight means you're getting close to shutting
down for awhile, not necessarily passing out but you're kind of whipped,
sloppy, blotto.
695.
Didn't
you originally want this book to be a lovely expert guided tour of G2K so far,
and don't you feel rotten that it hasn't been?
I did and I do. For some reason I thought I could fix it all
if I just sorted through, arranged, and explained it all. I thought I could take out all the
self-aggrandizement, lying, propaganda, manipulation, and greed from it and
leave the rest clean and refulgent. In
practice I don't know where I would start--1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000. I've done a lot of mediocre art, but some of
that was on purpose, to confuse and dissemble and neutralize. I've said negative things about good people
and positive things about bad. How can I
go back into the past, explain what each jpeg and email meant, means, and will
mean, and rate them all permanently on a moral-aesthetic scale? Maybe some day I'll see how that can be
done. Maybe I never will and can stop
straining to see it. Oleh, Chief.
696.
Do
you recommend 12 Poets and Fifty Great American Short Stories?
Sure, they affected me a
lot. They're fun too. 12
Poets is much more fun than TV, plus as a result you'll be cultured and go
to the elite ranks of society. You'll be
more equipped. Some of the poems may
help you deal with (constructively experience, that is, not repress or
exaggerate) various emotional states you may find difficult. Or, they may help you find tasks to work at,
which can be the most difficult conundrum and mystery of all--what to work at.
697.
Do
you think most people on the internet will forgive you for supporting the
O.S.O., not collaborating as much for awhile at least or at all anymore, and for
having exploited people and been a demagogue?
No, I don't expect it. I think more likely is the case that I'll be
called a fake and a hypocrite. But
that's OK. I'll be OK.
698.
How
will you decide whether to keep your old G2K site pages up or take them down?
I think it's most likely I'll
give the old site the benefit of the doubt.
Clearly some of it is no good and alcoholic. However, writers and painters can't just
retract all their previous works back out of galleries, museums, libraries,
bookstores, and people's minds. I'll
take down those that are super-sickening and ones that might get me sued. Or, I could leave them mostly up, who
knows.
699.
Does
putting this out on the internet along with Conference 2005 make you nervous?
Very nervous indeed does the
thought of it make me. It seems so
irrevocable and terrifying. It seems
fearfully fraught with danger. What if
it accomplishes exactly the opposite of what I want, or some random result, and
I regret it?
700.
What
does the acronym of the IDS tower, which is a greatly done modern hybrid of a
mountain, waterfall, fish, tree, and lantern, stand for for you if you want to
cheer yourself up that G2K is good and this book is good?
I think I'll keep that
secret, the secret acronym. Da Vinci and
Shakespeare both kept all kinds of secrets.
Exogenetic evolution, or Genius 2000, has both the esoteric and exoteric forces at work in it, just like the
universe has different physical forces in it.
The esoteric force is what keeps things what they are so everything
isn't uniform contiguous homogeneous.
Air is air and water is water.
Exoteric means things exist in a shared reality even if they don't
always interact much, like sunlight and gravity. Also in exogenetic evolution some things are
known toward the fewer and some the more.
701.
Didn't
Genius 2000 use to be all exoteric, with no respect for individual rights and
secrets, and a disgusting demagogic praise of the expropriative
revenge-rage-frenzy of the traumatized mass herd?
Not really. G2K always had all the logic of rights and
authority massively central and supported.
What was odd was that G2K had both
hero and polis, herd and individual, exoteric and esoteric, which is not
thought to be possible. Then again, this
might just be my personal bias. If the latter
is true, then I did use to play the demagogue who is the ultimate degraded
exotericist but really is also becoming more and more esoteric simultaneous to
the exoteric frenzy, both in a horrific isolated and exaggerated way. In a way I thought esoteric and exoteric had
already been dissevered and I was perfectly within my rights to exaggerate the
schism.
702.
Does
anything feel decent or proper to write about today?
Maybe my recent thoughts
about feeling guilty because I resist joining my sentiments and gladness with
the group. I've often felt extremely
guilty at that teetering moment when one realizes "they would let me
become one of them, they accept me, they are waiting and acting naturally as if
I am good and fit in, they are trustingly making the first move of acceptance,
and something rotten and arrogant in me is holding back." I've had this feeling very clearly, vividly,
and often in every phase of my social life from pre-school to the present. I struggle and scrape to prove I'm good
enough to be accepted, then I stand teetering on the precipice of
"throwing in my lot" with them, the group with their smiles and
hugs. Then an evil, rotten spark in me
says "what a farce. Stay
separate. Stay apart. Their safety is a prison." Then more guilt.
703.
Does
that feeling of having chosen not to embrace society's embrace or requested
embrace hang on you like hybris?
I guess it does. "Hybris," I was told by Dr. Barbara
Fowler in undergraduate class at the UW-Madison in 1990, was a word used only a
handful of times--like ten--in extant documents from ancient Greece. Medieval scholars in
704.
Is
Genius 2000 based on a complete revision of antiquity and of monotheism?
More accurately, Genius 2000
is a new relation between the old and
the new based on a new, revised definition of the new and the old. For example: John Nash said in the movie A Beautiful Mind that Adam Smith needed
"revision" in that wealth is maximized when we choose both what is best for ourselves and best
for the group. Both. Now, maximizing wealth
is not always the only priority.
Sometimes we inflict poverty in order to encourage certain behavior--as
when we give parking tickets.
Penalties. In great measure,
society needs the fragmentation and
chaos so bemoaned in civic circles for us to form individual
consciousnesses. Still, I revise
antiquity to a new shape and modernity to a new shape to get a new relation, a
new-shaped space between them.
705.
Did
you steal that idea about "the space between them" from the article
you read on the internet in 2005 about Damien Hirst's dot-paintings?
No, I knew all about shapes
and geometry since forever. Just look at
pumpkin.jpg or anything. (Gosh, now I'm
getting arrogant, self-promoting, and peevish.
Maybe I've lost control and am insane for real now.) Also, the guy in the VFE talked about
"interstices" as well as "into the paper." Also, the spaces between is not the most important thing though it
is important; more accurately, the spaces between things are the things. They're the
same. Hence the visual texture and
phasing of Untitled #1. It's also
discussed in Alan Watts' The Book,
from Vedantic theory, the hide-and-go-seek of opposites like in the yin and
yang. Not that Hirst isn't better than
me. Maybe he is. I just never copied him.
706.
How
can you win if you have to A) never copy anyone (which entails learning as
little as possible about other expressers) and B) show complete respect and
acknowledgement of all prior genius (requiring you learn comprehensively)?
I guess you can't win. I've avoided learning about things because I
thought they were trying to put a cage on my head to curb me with. I wouldn't take the bit, which is what they
say about horses that fail to become useful or ridable--to become horses. Those horses become glue or other
things. I probably should have taken the
bit. But saying that and taking the bit
are two different things. Yet I can't
take the bit! I'm going crazy! They tell you if you take the bit, you're a
goner--dead. You're no better than a
moving corpse if you let someone else, some institution, control who you
are. And yet, if you want to eat you
take the bit.
707.
When
there are lots of different bits and different people telling you to take them,
which one do you take?
Oh God how would I know. Logic says either you think it over or you
don't. If you don't, you're banishing
individual critical thought from life.
If you say do think it over and choose, you're assuming that people can
think, can think it over, can choose, and will choose correctly often enough
not to take the wrong bit so often that the polis collapses and everyone dies
of exposure. I suppose the argument is a
difficult one--that some people are sometimes capable of thinking things over and choosing, but not everyone is
always capable of thinking it over and choosing. So individual freedoms are limited, our
choices are limited to protect individuals and the group from intolerable
risk. No one is allowed to choose
whether or not to walk into a missile silo and launch an H-bomb. The choice is taken away by monarchial
authority.
708.
Is it
therefore the case that sometimes you, Max Herman, just have to take the bit
and sometimes you can spit it out?
It's a stupid and idiotic
comparison. A person in control of his
or her faculties is not a horse and they don't have to take any bit. They choose things or are forced into
situations by a greater power or by luck.
I detect a social view that says I should be comradely and jocular at
work, to play that role and comfort everyone with my actions. I'd like it too. But I get sick of being constantly told what
to be like and what to do. It gets out
of control. I don't want to get fired,
sure, but neither do I want to be controlled by a fake image of goodness. The fact that I still don't have self-control
to any great degree makes it all the more tormenting just to be alive for a
couple of hours. I go crazy. It hurts like crunches.
709.
Is it
true that you think you might be Prince Hamlet and might be born to take matters into your own
hands?
It's occurred to me, but so
has the moral code which says "be a spectator and not an actor, ever, at
all costs." To think you're Hamlet,
a lone focused selected hero created
by the polis and by the God of polis,
Zeus or any other Supreme Being, to take
action and in so doing transform the relations of all things to each other
and thus re-make the Human Universe in your own Image--well that's pure
psychosis. That's why they put me on
Zyprexa before. They said, "he's
crazy. Let's put him on
Zyprexa." Great Lord! What a conundrum. Yet like Hamlet I know the ghost was
real--others saw it before me and told me to come look. To be a hero means, distinctly, to take
matters into your own hands, to risk action.
710.
Is
Negative Capability different from taking action as the hero of the polis, the
quintessential Genius of the species itself?
Clearly. Negative capability, to my mind, has to do
with imaginary speculation. The Hero
takes action, makes a change in the world, not out of Negative Capability or
anything like it. If I publish G2K and
transform the species, that's an action--there's no turning back. It's Katy bar the door. You can't do G2K any easy way because it's
not easy, it can't be done any easy way.
It's risky and very taxing, very scary.
711.
Can
you figure out in advance any way of
making G2K predictable or safe?
No you can't, is my
contention. By definition you
can't. You're teetering on the
precipice. Either you go over or you go
back. You can't "figure out"
something, some secret, to make it go a certain way. You just go over.
712.
Is
that why the herd is justified in protecting itself from freaks and mutants?
Cordially yes, I concede
that's true. It's a killing frost to
flowers but you can't get away from it.
Often the herd goes crazy from the torment ("is it good or evil?") and then tears
the oddity apart. Then, either they
forget or remember. Memory is called
civilization, "recorded history."
It's unclear whether our line of history ends in species collapse or
continuation. It is always
undecided. We could adapt to our deadly
circumstances and survive, or we could fail to adapt and die out. No more humans, or no more historical
record. Sometimes the herd tolerates its
freaks though. Sometimes of course it
re-absorbs them but sometimes it lets them stay freaks, permissible
outcasts. They don't follow group
mores. Still, now every dipshit and slut
on meth thinks they're rebellious experimenters, and it's the good respectable
group that's lacking.
713.
Do
you apologize to the reader for being so shaky and never sticking to the point?
I certainly do
apologize. I can't keep to the
half-pages. I can't decide what to write
about. My carpal tunnel is going insane. I feel the book collapsing to shit. I feel no relaxation. I'm not calm about work or sex or
anything. I'm terrified and wracked by
guilt. I feel like I've lost control and
am a disgusting vile pig. I don't know
what to do. I think Genius 2000 might be
evil garbage or pure majestic Gold.
714.
How
did you use to decide what to publish or talk about?
My system used to be to put
up anything I wanted and leave it up whether it was crap or great. "I cared not for consequences"
[Blake]. Now however I feel completely
obligated to care about consequences because of the Second Cold War, and not
wanting the favorites (civilization) to lose.
It's just excruciating.
715.
Have
you found a pen you like better, and rediscovered a tool for peace that you'd
forgotten?
Yes, and yes: I have a pen
with more watery ink, which pen is slightly heavier overall and to the bounty
much nicer. I'm very content with the
new pen and it feels grand. I thought I
was going insane for a second. The pen
is kind of ugly but I don't care. It
feels good and I like how the written words look on paper. I feel I can press more lightly and still get
presence from the pen. Presence of
facture. The other pens were a waste of
about seven dollars, I detested them.
This group of pens, the new one, is ugly but I like the feeling they
give me in writing better. So the saga
goes on. I also remembered that
stretching makes me feel better often. I
used to do it in 1990, when I felt like I might be going crazy too. I stretched and laid in the corpse position
and re-counted all my steps for the day or pre-counted them. All told.
716.
Does
stretching make you feel good?
It does. The cage I feel I'm in is actually in me, in
my feelings. I'm not physically in a
cage, or physically trapped. I feel like I'm in a cage, compelled by
hostile social forces, unable to discriminate between what is good for my
genius and what harms my genius. It's
just in my feelings though, and in my thinking; it's not literally physically
real. So stretching neutralizes my
feelings. It reminds me how tense and
hunched over I've gotten lately, how cramped.
That's the cage, the suffocation--a sunken chest and shallow
breathing. The cage is in my
feelings. Also, stretching gets my
breathing a little nicer, gets my posture nicer, and helps me relax. Lifting weights doesn't have the same effect,
though I think the endorphins and weight loss are to the good with
weights. Stretching and a new pen with
liquid ink. Liquid liquid liquid ink.
717.
Does
something in you want not to put up a lot of crowd-pleasing things on your
website for 2005's conference?
I guess. Concretely I can't say what concatenation of
things I want to happen. Jesus told his
disciples not to worry about what to say when they were called in front of the
authorities to explain why they worshipped him.
He said the words would be given to them. It would appear that all of human history is
a chronicle of people trying to speak up.
And I don't just mean in the subversive Marxist way either. Marxists and Leninists are truly Masters of Deceit, as J. Edgar Hoover's
book of that name says they are.
Speaking up takes contemplation as well as study, stretching, and
exhaustive contemplation of what is good and proper. That is, speaking up also applies to showing
respect for good authority i.e. necessary authority. But how can one decide which authority if two
are contending? "Ye are the salt of
the earth, but if the salt hath lost its savor, wherewith shall it be
salted?" That's an old-time G2K
quote from the early days.
718.
What
if you could feel innocent again, wouldn't that be charming?
I would adore that. No more cowering in shame or blustering in
garish anger. Cloying draperies of
guilty moping and self-cannibalism. But
it's hard to feel innocent when you don't even know what you're obligated to
do. I've got a hundred different
authority-figures or would-be authority-figures giving me different orders and
I can't obey them all. It's
excruciating. I'm sorry; I'm not sorry;
I don't even know if I'm sorry or not that I can't obey.
719.
Had
you completely forgotten how well stretching works?
Gracious yes. I stretched just on an instinct after doing
my back exercises to strengthen my transverse something-or-other. One wonders about all these names. Yet then I remembered to stretch a bit,
particularly around the neck and back.
Shoulders. Then it occurred to me
how the cage is on the inside. I guess
maybe Foucault is right about all that then.
Sorry Foucault.
720.
Are
you seeing a little bit with the Lac D'Annecy light now, except that it's
evening and indoors, and getting gooseflesh?
Yes, I suppose it's a
fortunate thing. Good fortune. A good thing to have occur. The own-coffee-pot light. I had a dream last night about J.D.
Salinger's work. It was a dream about an
article about J.D. Salinger, a very technical literary discussion about how they
use a certain sophisticated technique that reflected a sort of scientific
worldview, a very scientifically
rigorous technique. Those types of
dreams are the rarity and I'm grateful for them.
721.
Might
all your anger and raging be getting you tense and snappish with your
co-workers, and making you want to ignore them or bark at them, and not bathe
them in your caring extra light?
Francis of Assisi said he
wanted to be caring not cared for, and I do contemplate that often. Yet I try to consider too what is best for
me. Do I need to get out and find more
genius-like people to work with? Maybe
Genius 2000 has decreed that I work exactly where I am, exactly exactly
exactly.
722.
Is it
true that some things just require time to pass, that is, you can't make them
go faster or change by effort alone?
I believe that's true. My feelings of guilt over rejecting my family
can only gradually go away. The more
forcibly I try to make them go away, or figure them out, or run away from them,
the more tired and frustrated I get.
Same thing as with nicotine cravings going away. Effort won't speed it up. Time is required.
723.
Does
that new show at the museum about time make you already feel like you're
obsolete, G2K is obsolete?
It gets close to that. G2K isn't just my idea either, it's just my
name for the great law of fulfillment or failure for sentient technological
species in time-space. Other people have
worked on it for years, whether in religion, art, science, or economics. Even people's emotional lives and raising
kids are part of it.
724.
Will
your anger and anxiety at bad people and their bad actions just have to subside
gradually, over the necessary amount of time?
I guess so. I can't make my anger go away, and I don't
rationally think it's moral politically or in my own best interest to act out
on it. So I just sit calmly like Buddha
or St. Francis and let the anger subside away, like the bubbles in a pot of
boiling water after you turn off the burner.
725.
Does
your wish that people wanted to buy G2K change the fact that you have to do
this book the way you are and can't do better?
I agree--I mean, no it does
not change the fact. People like to buy
a lot of crap that has nothing to do with G2K.
That's fine. Market research
proves that no one has ever bought a product related to Genius 2000. Therefore it's pointless to try to make a
tidy desirable buyable out of it. That
would degrade me and it.
726.
How
much writing can you get done on a bouncy bus?
Maybe four quanta each
way. It depends on how inspired I
am. Or anxious. I'm rarely inspired. I get upset and afraid mostly. Rarely do I get visions. Some things just take time only, but some
things take effort plus time, some take a lot of planning and calculation, and
some take sheer reckless abandon.
727.
Isn't
your day job or a day job crucial to
the development of Max Herman and of Genius 2000 as legitimate art?
Yes, I used to boast that I
could soon sell a lot of videos but that was all bluster. Bluff.
Bluffing because I had nothing to lose.
In reality my kind of work isn't marketable--the query letters are
coming back negative. I'm not the next
Golden Boy. I'm a thirty-five-year-old
malcontent failure. It's best to play
the old man, pinch pennies, care not for sex or prestige, save for retirement,
be old and incapable.
728.
Doesn't
the world need you to save it, and all the lazy losers in it?
Oh I doubt it. I can't make people stop abusing themselves
and each other with sex, kitsch, and alcohol.
I can't make them start taking care of themselves and each other,
mutually, sometimes. It's all up to
them. I could of course create a
reputation for being a reliable, effective teacher, friend, coach, and guide to
a given way of loving wisdom and expression: Genius 2000. Theoretically.
729.
Why not
just accept your job, your income, your city, salary, baldness, penis size,
celibacy, and artistic obscurity?
It's true I don't have it so
bad. I'd like to let humanity stew in its
own juice. I've already spelled out a
better way, but who hasn't? Making fancy
plans is easy. G2K is superficial lies
and selfish propaganda. It's neither
free nor healing nor respectful of the polis, nor of polis, nor true nor
beautiful. Only drugs are, and Raphael.
730.
Can
you decide now about putting all the old jpegs back up, like the ones from
2000?
I can't. I'm not sure how to decide. I have a deadline and certain concerns. If the concerns accrue to the negative at the
deadline I won't. It's all open to
chance until I decide. But you can't
will backward. But I don't want a bunch
of Marxist-Leninists and expropriators to love me and use me to hurt liberal
democracy and the O.S.O. So those are
the concerns.
731.
Is it
plausible that the more you feel burnt-out and exhausted, and the worse you
feel writing is for your financial and mental health, the more important it is
you keep scribbling quanta?
Perhaps. I will say this: quitting this thing before
it is done, and not just done but adjusted, edited, and digested, would be
suicide. I just can't do it. I can't stop it, drop it all, go back to
nothing and prepare and plan. I just
can't. I'm thirty-five already and I
can't accept that.
732.
Is it
crucial never to stop working ever, not when one feels horrible--like you're
dying, going crazy, falling apart--and especially not when you're hurting and
afraid?
From what I can gather, pain
and fear are the great preventers of artistic work. Who wants to be in pain and afraid? Pain hurts and makes you hate life, and it's
scary. Fear is scary too, plus it
hurts. One naturally recoils from
it. Going where one is not afraid and
doing what doesn't hurt.
733.
Do
you feel like you're going crazy and can't take it anymore?
Gosh that's melodramatic but
yes. I'm hurting. I feel myself getting in deeper and deeper
trouble with God. I don't know if God is
real, if it's a sin to believe in him or a sin not to believe in him. It all hurts incredibly excruciatingly
much. I don't know if I'm wrong to be
quiet, bitter, negative, depressive, anal, miserable, and confused at
work. I can't concentrate at work. I'm showing all the signs of a gigantic lapse
back into hard-core depression.
734.
Can
you take a breath and calmly assess your situation please?
OK. I'm pretending to be the Messiah, the Second
Coming of Christ. It's for fancy-dress
in part but the preservation of the future is never just ribbons and lace. My gambits and demagoguery with which I
sought to claim public notoriety worked a little bit. Then 911 occurred, which scared me to the
inner core of each of my veins and arteries.
Now I'm trying to take life rightly and be a good upright person. I'm alcoholic, am from an abusive and
neglectful co-dependent nuclear family, and have rejected all my friends and
friendship itself. I'm working
entry-level clerical, one step up from temp work and not even requiring a
college degree. I quit smoking
cigarettes nine months ago and haven't drank in two and a half years. I'm freaking out. I don't date or have friends, barely have
time to read and try to write for at least twenty hours per week. I'm scared and I don't know what to do, or
right from wrong.
735.
Given
that your previous answer was kind of panicky, can you assess your situation
calmly again?
I'll try. I'm writing a lot, more than I'm used
to. I'm scared of failure and of success
and of fear itself. I'm a little panicky
about just about everything. I'm panicky
about sex, friendship, Nietzsche, Leo Strauss, and getting fired. I've been off of my antidepressant for a good
three months or so, and the manic worry with the negative ideation is getting
out of control, the upper hand, and is wearing down my defenses. I need to control it. My ruminative-depressive voicings. They go along with the writing. But my terror is at work. It's excruciating there. I feel trapped, molested, raped, exploited,
and sickening anally fucked with every day.
I'm going crazy, as you can tell.
I feel brittle and a little lunatic at work--I was giggling like a
psychotic in the meeting today. I'm
considering quitting this book and my bid for freedom as too risky.
736.
If
there is a you in there who can still speak in a calm, intelligent,
self-preserving voice, can you let him talk to you?
Sure Max. You are feeling panicky, isolated, and
insecure. You have had a hard life with
some trauma and a good dose of emotional illness in it. You are trying to write and get away from old
habits at the same time and this leaves you in a vulnerable position. You're scared that you're too old to be a
successful writer or artist anymore.
Your childhood abuse and neglect created strong, persistent mental
patterns in you (and emotional patterns too) that often take over when your
new-born adult decision-making faculty gets overloaded or confused, or if it
starts to go near some of the dysfunctional you's holy ground--such as your
determination one day to make your parents happy, so they can give you the life
you'd have had were they capable of protecting you and nurturing you as a
child. All they ever tried to do was
strangle you to death as they drowned.
737.
Does
all your glibness and blaming of society (?!) for your discomfort seem quaint
and evil now?
Banally so. I'm so scared. I'm scared to admit I'm scared. I'm scared to say "help me Genius
2000." Good Christ I just can't go
on not saying what I think and feel any longer.
At least some of the time can I do it?
I honestly don't know that it's not de rigeur to be quiet about certain
feelings, thoughts, and emotions at all times.
Keep them bottled up and locked in.
738.
Are
you scared of wrecking the world's chances for a decent, workable, lasting
peace of approximately one hundred years' duration?
I shouldn't even talk about
peace and war. Why I can't calm down and
shut up is driving me crazy. Crazy crazy
crazy. I have to try to calm down and
stay cool. If I get fired it's back to
Mom and Dad's and a hideous nightmare.
739.
What
if it's a sin to control your emotions by repressing them, a sin against mental
health that is punished by insanity?
Oh heck I don't think it's a
sin to calm down a little. My book is scaring
me and so is being out from under my paroxetine, having rejected utterly all my
friends and family, and having quit all junk food for the most part. I'm under a lot of strain and there's really
no-one around to be nice or comforting to me.
I wish I could have someone like that, just a kindly friend, but God
knows why I chose to cut off all ties. I
think they say that's not necessary because doing so tends to make people go
psychotic.
740.
Is it
a sin or a crime or unhealthy to calm your more anxious or negative-hysterical
emotional states a little?
No, I don't think so--maybe
not. Maybe I can try it. Please, Max, calm down. Be calm.
Quit tearing yourself up. You're
killing yourself and your chances. Calm
down.
741.
Can
your calmness of itself be a conclusion and a solution, a redemption?
If I can stay calm, that
could be a great gain to my hopes and dreams.
Just to calm down. Calm
down. Forget about all the crazy
contemplation. Too much logic and
hysterical screaming about the polis and the gods. It could just be a lot of time that's needed
to get used to having rejected my friends and family. Getting used to working at a job where you're
neither addicted to everyone there nor depressively quiet. I've got a whole life's worth of learning to
catch up on. I was drunk and hysterical
for three and a half decades. I'm
damaged and frayed. Calmness and quiet,
taking it all very slowly. Slowly and
calmly reading and becoming healed by time and the life-being-ness of which my
life and getting well after trauma are an example. "I am of the nature of a living
being." Sum res genius.
742.
Can
you always be comforted by writing for a couple of hours, no matter how
criminally your day went?
It could be that words work
for me and can calm me. Words work for
some people, they say. "What could
the muse herself have done, when by the rout that made the hideous roar his
gory visage down the stream was sent, down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian
shore?" Words twice spoken, law,
Athena, the polis.
743.
Can
the polis of humanity survive and prosper without Max Herman and G2K?
O quite assuredly lord
governor. If I can't calm down, and
therefore go up in a big fart of smelly ashes, some other folk and their kin
will have a go at art. It's all to the good. Socrates and all those guys came before me so
now I can come after them, but so can anyone else. Calmness is the really scarce commodity. Being calm.
Not wishing or complaining, calculating, figuring, preaching, or
screaming. Calm down.
744.
Will
G2K be any good as content if Max doesn't calm down?
Max doesn't always do
right. He gets confused about what is
right and wrong and gets anxious, then angry, and then commits crimes of
desperation. Horrible, horrible crimes. Arrogant crimes against God. Calm down.
Calm down. Quit talking
crazy. Stop talking about yourself in
the third person. For God's sake please
don't do it, don't let yourself go insane.
745.
Is
the Genius 2000 Network about people's genius being in balance with technology?
I guess that a balance between
humans and technology would be a good thing.
It's such a scary period we're coming up against. I'd rather not go into great detail about the
"technological singularity," as some call it. A very difficult and unpredictable
time-period, one could think. Yet I
prefer not to contemplate scary things that make me crazy. Technology's OK.
746.
Could
it be that you really need to give up on this book (pseudo-book, really) and go
back to Feeling Good, avoiding hellish crucibles of anxiety?
My whole genius is telling me
this book business is a ton of crap.
Going to great efforts, sacrificing my social life, sex life, and career
life, for the chance to puke a lot of garbled and pedantic blasphemy out onto
the internet. I'd be better off and
probably my art would too if I went back to being normal, or trying to. Just be a normal guy. Give up these crazy schemes for getting
attention etc. Let the world solve its
own problems. G2K cannot help at
all. Certainly G2K doesn't need my
help. Plus I'm so manic. I should just go back under my paroxetine
blanket and start from scratch, castrated and lobotomized. Just start preparing for a comfortable TV
retirement. Let the world tear itself to
pieces; see if I care. I'd only make it
worse interfering.
747.
What
about writing a grown-up book instead of this adolescent one?
Truly that seems devoutly to
be wished. A consummation! I could go on dates, be normal. Yet my teetering and never going in to join
the circle of living humans, that's the killer.
I just flat out don't want to give myself to a relationship, ever. They sicken me. I think I can't think straight anymore.
748.
Do
you really want to give up on this book and on G2K and on everything, and take
it all down, completely and forever?
Gosh do I ever. I'm just not cut out for it. The constant anxiety and guilt just kills
me. I can't say I know what my life should look like, but this monster I've
created is just too wrong. I want to
cancel G2K once and for all. Lots of
morality-voices tell me I'm obligated to "stick it out" but they're
all contrived. I want to quit G2K.
749.
Do
you hate or strongly dislike, because it tires and deflates you, trying to
convince people G2K is good?
It's just torn the guts out
of me. I've tried forever to get
acceptance, to be liked and cared about.
But I never learned to take care of myself and look out for number
one. I've always gotten snagged on the
old compulsions to help my poor sick old Mom and Dad. The horrible swings. I guess I'm not cut out for writing. Art either I bet. A missed opportunity, no shame in that.
750.
If
you quit this book now, will you ever know how it might have come out?
No I suppose I won't. But it feels alcoholic to me to work on
it. It's not even a book. It's a manic journal. There's no structure, no ideas, and no
craft. It's just a numbered string of
diary entries by a poor kid with bad mental health hung up on the idea of
getting famous so he can live.
751.
What
are some calm, self-preserving things you can do while slow time passes?
Doing nothing is good. Stretching, not worrying. Not fantasizing about fame, sex, or
success. Not pillorying myself with
guilt over friends and family. All of
these are "nots" however. What
I can do is read poetry or other quality literature calmly. I can also clean my apartment, do laundry, by
groceries, or exercise. The worrying and
fearfulness could be let go. Again more
nots. The Goods: Stretching, reading
poetry, writing, exercising. Watercolor.
752.
Why
does it accomplish so little but make you so upset to show concern over sex,
fame, and money, and guilt?
I'm trying to adjust to a
new, healthier being-mode toward all of these.
The new way has to do with calming down and letting go of my cravings as
much as possible. The idea is that I'm
compulsive toward them and they run me ragged.
I used to be that way. Now I want
to let them fade away like ghosts. Sex,
friends, fame, riches, innocence--all fade.
753.
Is it
difficult sometimes to accept the idea that it's OK to reject your friends and
family?
The idea of it is much more
difficult than the real act of doing it.
The reason for this is, I'm not used to doing it so I don't have a lot
of internal narration to go along with it.
I do however have decades--literally three or so--of internal narration
grown up around loyalty to friends and family.
That narration is extremely powerful and deep, and it doesn't like it
when I reject my family and friends. It
goes into high action and attacks me with negative comments, thoughts,
feelings, and guilt. If I argue with it,
it always wins by a landslide. The only
good plan is to "shrink even to a point within our day and night"
[Shelley] and let it blow over--all the talk about how evil and arrogant I am,
all the guilt and the screaming. All I
can do is try to weather it out--I can't stop it. When it's in a lull, then I can compose new
narration.
754.
How
long will it take before you stop getting attacked by guilt-complexes within
your mental conditioning?
It's hard to say. It could depend on how well I am able neither
to run from nor repress them but weather them out. Like Lear, I can let them storm and rage at
me. But in such cases even an evil dram
of self-pity, anger, fantasy, or revenge can ruin the weathering. Ezra Pound said "hated, shut-in,
mistrusted: Take thought: I have weathered the storm; I have beaten out my
exile." This is not to condone
Pound's despair about democracy. He may
have spoken too soon of himself.
755.
How
can we make time pass faster, literally?
You can't. It's impossible. Time always goes at the same atomic
rate. It might seem to go faster
sometimes but it's always going the same pace.
The best thing is of course not to try to fight how fast time goes. Often I get sad or angry and want something
to happen, and get pushy.
756.
What
if your writing is corrupted with flaws and reinforces your bad habits?
That's a tough one. I could always quit writing. Yet I don't want to quit, not now--I feel
like quitting writing would be like starting smoking again. Sure it's attractive and appealing but I
don't think it's the healthiest. I want
to keep writing. Thus the solution is
for me to keep writing but to try to take out the corrupting flaws of guilt,
impatience, wrath, sloth, gluttony, lust, pride, envy, avarice (greed).
757.
Is it
a good thing to think about cultural artifacts if done in a balanced way?
Balance is the key. You've never got the whole truth in front of
you at once. For example, gluttony is a
deadly sin too--not just wrath. If
you're too negative when you look at an artifact, that distorts you. If you're too positive in looking at an
artifact, distortion can result. It is
best to contemplate the koan in the proper way, not compulsively, not in love with
it or angry at it.
758.
Why
are you so deflated for writing?
I couldn't say. I made a conscious decision today at work
that I will feel better and have an easier time of it if I act lovingly,
in-the-same-boatingly, with affection toward my co-workers. There's a truthfulness and fortitude to being
cordial. Being likable. It's good for the bottom line and it's good
business sense. So I'll keep doing
it. The alternative is too puritanical
and exhausting--it tires me and breeds insanity.
759.
So
you're tipping the scales toward lovingkindness then?
Well there's a logic to that
as well. My weaknesses are social
connectedness and affection. If I take
my weaknesses lightly and strain them I'm likely to fail. I feel more in tune with God--the law of
sentience in time--when I'm kindly and caring.
It's just the decent thing to do and it hurts much, much less than to
keep that ego cranking sideways all day.
760.
Will
you stick to the lovingkindness approach at work?
I think so. I think I should. It's not degrading. It means non-feasance of arroganter, crazy
feelings but that's no loss. It's not
good for me financially or genially to be uptight and hypercritical. Those silences were giving me cancer. (Hence the song which I dang near put myself
in the VFE playing--not really, but I taped myself on it during editing for
some reason.)
761.
Does
that kindly concern carry over to family ties, dating, and former friends?
I think it doesn't. My colleagues at work I have to be
around. The family and ex-friends I
don't. Though I'd like to in some
moods. I guess I'll have to go by
ear. What if I can't reject anybody and
have to go back to being Mr. Friendly?
Actually I am Mr. Friendly so that might get me out of
koyannisquaatsi. Life out of
balance. Doesn't G2K=life, i.e. sentience
in time? So then God=life. God=being alive.
762.
Might
you be overdoing the return to family and friends routine?
Could be. I can't say.
Certainly my brittle irradiated isolation wasn't feeling very good. What I mainly dislike about being around people
is when either you can't express yourself or you have to express yourself in a
bad way. My family and friends were all
co-dependent, so either suffocation or cannibalism is too common. Then there are the appealing times one wants
to return to--naturalness, loyalty, acceptance, fun. Fun, fun times.
763.
Could
that all be a fantasy?
I guess it could. The workplace affection thing is more
important and self-interested. I can't
hope for much in life if I'm constantly trapped in a social coldness or weirdness
that ruins my mental health and that of my co-workers. So for my own good vibes and safety,
financially, just to keep the boat afloat, I'm back into being kindly and glad
at work. The family and ex-friends part
is different, separate.
764.
Didn't
Possony remark at the end of Lenin: The
Compulsive Revolutionary how Lenin had no lifelong friends?
Sure, but I bet Van Gogh
didn't either--no, he had his brother. I
agree that being hung up on yourself causes friendships to die. Megalomaniacs probably cannot, by definition,
have a friend. Maybe I just need to be
away from friends and family while I write my book. Then I can rethink it. I can't figure it out. I don't know what's wrong or what's right.
765.
Doesn't
the book Peace and War in the Modern Era
have a lot of wise essays in it, for example including Kane, who helped write The Strategy of Technology?
Yes, Peace and War goes a long way toward explaining why the First Cold
War was so harsh, especially for developing nations. The Soviets sure had a good plan though. It was basically "hit below the
belt." So, that's how they caused
things to go. It was a bad, protracted
conflict, but the better side won, the side holding the better position under
Sun Tzu's Moral Law--who deserves to win the war.
766.
Will time
passing help your guilt feelings stabilize out a little concerning your
co-dependent family and friends?
I think so. Time can't hurt in that respect of settling
toward calm. Yet if the strategy is weak
then time can't change that. Who knows. It's embarrassing to be a friendless puritan
like Lenin. Then again, if Lenin had had
a better goal in life we might pity him more or admire his stoicness. Extreme incapacity to cleave to others is a
sign of trouble though, other things being equal.
767.
Can
you forgo the fun lost by rejecting your friends and family and the loss of
directly helping them (the guilt) on the chance that you'll grow better and
happier away from old friends and your nuclear family?
That's the strategy for
now. If one can't feel good without
one's co-dependent relationships going full speed then it will take time to
grow back that ability. For me that
would be the new narration I mentioned earlier.
Stop fueling the old, go calm, go quiet, hope for new and better.
768.
Could
you say that one can't generalize from one case to another all the time?
Definitely. My workplace behavior is for me, to benefit
my life and care of my own genius.
"Genial" means healthy and friendly too. Wholesome and good like a good dish of salad,
or clean pure water. Yet one must also
sometimes care for one's genius by staying away. I get confused. But for now we will try this plan of balance. Kind and caring at work, bound of course by
the welcome code of workplace distance and duration. Other dysfunctional relations I can still
avoid.
769.
How
do you feel when you look at old G2K jpegs, as you did tonight in preparation
for Conference 2005?
A combination of pleasure,
satisfaction, deflation, and excruciating shame. Some of the jpegs are plain soaked in alcoholic
swill. Making jpegs was my drunken joy
at times. Moreso than posting to the
internet. My feelings about prior G2K,
what was horrible and what was OK, still plague me greatly. Much of it eludes me still.
770.
Have
you been exercising a lot and getting healthier?
Yes, my health has improved a
good deal. My numerous watercolors of
2005 can attest to this, as for me watercolors are the truest sign of
well-being. My health is obviously better
mostly because I quit smoking. Losing
that chemical controller caused my need for and like of exercise to go up in
amount. Then I found out my cholesterol
was high and improved my diet. Therefore
I am no longer as overweight as I once was.
I am now one-hundred and ninety which is about ten to twenty pounds overweight.
771.
Do
you wish you could feel bolder about talking about books you've read, aspects
of G2K from the past, and so forth?
I wish I could spill my guts
completely. But it is also permissible
to calculate in one's own behalf. I have
a right to keep certain things esoteric, tending to be known only by me. That's the kingly prerogative we all have as
kings of our own genius. So I go slow in
learning to speak up.
772.
Are
you worried about Nietzsche today?
I'm concerned that he is a
pernicious influence and should not be read.
This sort of thing, this suspicious feeling toward artists or writers,
has hit me often. What if a crucial,
hidden part of their production is a lie and the entire edifice
misleading? I think I've seen some
errors, serious errors in Nietzsche. Yet
at the reductionist level, how can I even say they are there, much less that
they are flaws? Judge not lest ye be
judged, lest ye create an environment in which all are judged or foment retaliation against yourself. Hamlet said, "Use men after their
deserts, and who would scape whipping?
Use them after your own dignity."
In Hamlet's time, the time of the play, acting and art as we know them
had only recently ceased to be completely literally illegal. That actors had a valid place in society was
in question. Now I'm questioning it
again. That's presumptuous--or can it be
redeemed?
773.
Do
you like to talk about 911?
No I don't. It was the start of a major war, the Second
Cold War, which I feel is necessary to protect the future. A re-emergence of Fascism or Communism as
global rivals of liberal democracy cannot be permitted. The harms to humanity would be too greivous. But of course liberal pseudo-intellectuals
might hate me for saying that. I hope
they don't, and can see why their two core values--environmentalism and
humanism--cannot survive another twentieth-century type series of wars. The polis would be too damaged and poisoned
by such mass conflict to ever sustain the fragile growths of environmentalism
and humanism in the forseeable future if the great powers' weapons were fully
unleashed upon each other. Poor
liberals--I'm one of you, in a shabby sense, but sometimes I think you're not
trying.
774.
Would
people have to have a basic knowledge of the Genius 2000 website and the Genius
2000 Video First Edition to understand what this book is talking about?
Yes they would. You can go onto a search engine to find most
of it. There's no need to list it
here. But yes, having started this book
In Medias Res one might need to tell the reader to go see my website. The main website, my real first and original
and official website is still www.geocities.com/genius-2000. To get an idea of the Video First Edition,
try albalux.com/g2k/pv/ or the Transcripts on the main site. By the time this gets published my new url www.Genius2000Network.com
might also be operational. But the
original site, what I talk about when I say "Genius 2000 on the internet
so far," or from 1998 to 2005, that is all at www.geocities.com/genius-2000. As I've said, there are legal problems with
selling or distributing the video.
775.
What
are your feelings about rock music, including both the music you "grew up
on" and your own amateur efforts?
I'm extremely ambivalent
about the value of rock music. The same
doubt applies to all popular music genres, though rock and "college
radio" music was my preferred music starting with puberty. I think the genre itself might be
flawed. The rock musician is idolized
too much as the "heroic" genius, but in fact the process is not an
elevating or liberating one but one of craven attention, habituation, and
homogenization. I concede that my view
on this might be wrong-headed, all you rock music fans. Yet a glance at your own heroes and habits
might yield a similar verdict--the genre itself has reached, for some time now,
the level of its own incompetence.
That's just the way it is perhaps.
Unless I'm wrong, of course. But
as it is, I'm choosing not to put my own rock music out there.
776.
So
you won't be putting Maya on My Mind,
your CD of songs that you recorded on your four-track in 2004, out on the
internet or in stores?
No I won't. Sometimes I do things that seem to make me
feel good, decent, normal, and that other people my age who are happy and
healthy will like me for. So that's what
my pop music noodling was about. I won't
say I didn't like certain aspects of it, but overall I don't respect the genre
and think it is a false overcoming of culture, a false liberation. Hence the oceans of beer, wine, and liquors
drank along with it all across the globe and the years. I would be defiling my own goodness to use a
demagogic method to bring affection to myself, woman-love, and attention to the
legitimate artistico-aesthetic products of the Genius 2000 Network. Proferring rock music would just be
incapacity, fear, cowardice.
777.
Do
you respect your watercolors and ceramics now though?
Actually yes I do. I think work in those genres shows respect or
connection to what Pound called "a live tradition" and one doesn't
need to be a tippler to like it. I like
both making and using my ceramics.
They're a boon and a message of peace for me, yogic. And watercolor is also good, clear,
un-usurping, and enjoyable when neither drunk nor high. They're satisfying, not addictively
maddening. Though they do grow on one,
in a good way, proper cathexis.
778.
What
if people find you ignorable and prissy though without the rock music out there
as a hello?
That's just how it goes. I can always publish some rock music
later. One can always change if
circumstances change. Faulkner wrote
"you can always end that, choose to put a stop to that." He was writing on shame and suffering.
779.
Do
you think your SmartBot cartoon was a good artwork?
I like it. I think it's got a pleasant conceit and
reasonably legitimate execution. Some
would say it's vile and a pollution of the classical ideals, the canon of drawn
narrative. My thinking is that comic
book artists in particular would be fond of it and see that it's OK. (NowCartoons.html)
780.
Don't
your views on rock music go against the Shakespearean use of song and comic
relief?
Aha, I forgot about
that. It's complicated. I am convinced however that one cannot hear
or absorb poetry if one's head is bulging open with an over-stuffing of popular
recorded music. Classical and highly
artistic music have a less congesting, clogging, invasive-weed-like
effect. If one spends one's affection
for metrical language on popular music one cannot also spend it on quieter,
subtler poetic works. Popular music uses you up. Robert Frost does not. That's the difference. It's harsh.
781.
Could
the popular music question be another case of things taking time, and the
paramount need for patience in transforming one's genial habits?
Patience is extremely
important and virtuous. Many act as if
patience is a sin. They who haven't
tried it usually take that view. I myself
used to be extremely impatient and even violent, aggressive, and knavish. A villain-slave. Now I've been forced over and over again by
the necessities of survival to practice patience at least a little, and I've
seen the wisdom in it. Nothing subtle
can build, like slow-cycle waves in the brain while meditating, if everything
is herky-jerky, impatient, amygdala-controlled, and impatient. It compares to a car in first gear. One can't stay in first gear forever. In fact, the paradox is that if you want
results and you want them right away, try yoga, breathing, and being
patient. Genius 2000 is very patient,
kind, and good, though I personally get impatient and angry.
782.
Was
early G2K, that is, the first four years of it, inclusive of two years in
either direction from the turn of the century or "fin de siecle,"
primarily a propaganda effort or fight for control?
A goodly part of it was. I was confused and immature. I had a much more gigantic view of my
importance than I do now. I took Mark
Twain's dictum to "Blow thy own horn, lest it not be blown" rather to
extremes. It got out of control. Of course I doubted that anyone would ever
take me seriously and therefore I owed
it to myself to take matters into my own hands.
The punishment for this radically impatient, amygdalic, and revengeful
concept of success was alcoholism and more years lost. I also reaped the bitter harvest of
self-degradation and self-delusion. Lies
and falsehoods can be all the more difficult to get past if you create them
yourself and indoctrinate yourself.
783.
Does
your cultural background, consisting as it does mainly of rock music, drugs and
alcohol, and
Oh indeed I'm greatly obstructed. I feel like every beautiful thing should be
easy to get and repeat millions of times over.
I don't think of truth and beauty as having their own rules and
challenges inherent in them that I have to accept and follow. I think every great experience should just be
easily accessible to me when I think in that rock music, drinking and getting
high, Hollywood movie mindset.
784.
Can
anyone new to G2K ever understand all your self-promotion on the internet, in
chat rooms, on bulletin boards, and on listservs, that you did during the first
four years of G2K?
I think it's garden-variety
internet self-promotion. People still do
it like crazy. Just imagine going to all
legal lengths to get internet self-promotion, that's what I did.
785.
Why
is it a contradiction for someone to take on a demagogic role, as you did, if
the intent is to promote a decent or even true philosophy?
The demagoguery can spoil the
existence of the good art or philosophy.
The demagogy is the antithesis of what G2K's good side or worthwhile side
means. Demagogy says "I'm looking
out for your best interest" but really it's about gathering power to one
individual. It gathers by many people
giving their power, faculties, awareness, etc. over to the demagogue. Genius 2000 says that everyone has qualities
of sentience that they can develop, express, and fulfill, in balance, with
harmonious beauty and truth which is the excellence or principle that all great
art and religion points to. That is the
real substance of Genius 2000, and it doesn't "belong" to someone--me
for example--just because I'm promoting myself and saying "Oh I'm the
defender and savior of that."
786.
Is
there a proper kind of heroism, artistry, and authority in the actual process
of evolving toward or in consonance with Genius 2000 through exosomatic,
exogenetic evolution?
Certainly there is. Some authority is guardian-authority, which
is necessary to protect people and other fragile things or things that are
difficult to fix or replace (like houses, farms, bridges, etc.). Other authority is decision-authority, that
makes choices about how to go about something that needs a specific plan of
action. Another form of authority, of
legitimate Genius 2000 authority, is teaching-authority in which one person or
genius can teach another because it's more gifted or fulfilled at a given point
in time. Of course there is also
political authority, that has to administer the polis through the difficulties
of the temporal plane, and which has to manage the physical setting in which
exogenetic evolution occurs. The last
authority is the authority of the individual, which might be called
physiological fact or human dignity.
Another plane of authority contains the cosmos, the eternal, nature, and
the superhuman.
787.
Do
you often get restless and fidgety to go do something, to get something done?
I often get obsessed with
tasks like transferring files from floppy disks to CD, getting a new shower
curtain, getting a new pair of shoes, or some other things of a quotidian
quality. Just sitting and writing seems
to be the most excruciating thing in the world sometimes. I want to get up, go get a haircut, exercise,
fix my car, you name it. I've gotten to
the point where I don't have internet access at home and rarely turn on the
television or the radio. I get
distracted very easily. I'm afraid of
things that I'm afraid I can't get done, done properly, like writing, painting,
breathing, and so forth. I also like
very much to get things done that I've been forgetting right away when I
remember them, like buying more black watercolor pigment or whatever you call
it. I like to remember topics I've been
forgetting too, like James Austin's books Zen
and the Brain and Chase, Chance, and
Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty.
788.
Is
that a common thing in writers, to get up for drinks of water, or to check the
spaghetti sauce, or go buy some floppy disks?
In western culture I think it
is. Everyone remembers Stevie Smith's
poem about the "Person from Porlock" who came visiting Samuel
Coleridge when he was composing his poetic fragment "Kubla Khan":
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree." "Where Alph the sacred river ran through
caverns measureless to man."
"I have dined on honeydew and drunk the milk of
paradise." Stevie Smith said that
Coleridge may have already been losing his concentration. Stevie Smith, or "Smith," had some
other good poems too like "Exeat," about Caligula who would say to
prisoners "we are not yet friends enough." So it was some grim stuff she wrote
about. She wasn't the greatest. She did say that it took focused work to get
progress as a poet or writer though, I think.
She had numerous poems.
789.
Do
you get distracted from writing, in a sense, when you try to formulate moral
absolutes like "people should not use meth, but should be forgiven if they
do if they were abused as kids, but not if they are capable of quitting meth
even though they were abused"?
I get concerned over moral
codes, that's fair to say. I sometimes
think moral logic or mathematically exact moral formulas can by themselves end
religious hatred. I tried to make moral
pronouncements in the Genius 2000 Video and many of my self-promoting listserv
emails. I tried to market myself as a
great selfless arbiter of moral conflicts.
To achieve this effect I would make crude and false moral accusations
against some along with a complete release from any responsibility for
another. I'd blame the typical culprits
most of the time, then try to add enough atypical ones to seem new and exotic
in my proclamations. I was scared of
losing moral distinction and blaming-power, because I was very self-righteous.
790.
Are
you ashamed of going out to eat alone?
Yes, it seems improper. Maybe in this book--though it's more a
journal or a diary than a book--I should pretend to be completely normal. By acting strangely, I give the impression
that Genius 2000 as a mode of expression requires being a social outcast. I guess I would like not to eat dinner out
alone, but would I really? With
whom? I'm sure there are a lot of alcoholics,
for example, who would eat out with me if I bought them drinks. I've decided to cut my family and social ties
on purpose because I thought the relationships were holding me back from
developing. That is the truth. I felt I always had to act a certain way
around those people, I had to take care of them by doing what my role
demanded. Be the good son, the jolly
friend--all garbage. So, it's wrong to
beat up on people with whom a good relationship is impossible, so you just cut
free--that's where I'm at.
791.
Don't
you miss the coffee, and taking a train or cab to the cinema, then the film,
and maybe drinks after, or a party with music, flirting, romance, talk of art,
and sex at the end?
Well I never had that but I
do miss going to a film in the summer and at least feeling like sex would come
for me one day and would be OK i.e. not evil.
The medical profession would say I'm sick, that I have personality
adjustment problems that cause me isolation and failure. The definition of "sick," after
all, or one of them, is "has brains and good looks but won't buy into
life, analyzes everything to death, won't fuck, and fails to compete for
success to the best of his ability."
That's the kind of sick Nietzsche thought all of
792.
Why
don't you get back into life then, with good artistic people on a good sexual
basis?
Mainly I don't want to dirty
my ideals. To be in a social setting
around people one has to choke down certain disagreements. I've always found something not to my liking. Everyone's either too this or too that. I never felt like I could just be me. I got turned around very early on, trying to
alter myself to conform to what others wanted.
So I got distorted right away.
The entire project of my life got distorted, at about maybe age two or
three. Trying to agree with society's
demands, the people in my immediate society actually. Be less negative. Be more negative. Listen to what others ask for. Don't betray yourself. Find joy in self-sacrifice. Be self-interested. Nothing but a mountain of contradictions,
impossible to sort out or to follow.
That made me violent, damaged, so I had to banish myself. Then, now.
793.
Might
it take a lot of time not only to get away from bad relationships, but also for
the guilt feelings about doing so--the shame--to subside, and also even for the
reality to sink in that you've severed ties?
Currently I feel that I'll
eventually go back and restore all the ties I've cut asunder, such as to my age
group, college radio music, my family, my friends. I still think of myself as a disobedient
child playing hooky. Now, if the truth
is that I'm trying to get free, that feeling is very dangerous. It could well kill the whole project, my
whole network. The guilt about not
fitting in and barely trying to care.
Should I join an organized religious group? Some other group? A hobby-based group? Plenty of groups are happy to let you join if
you accept their values and follow their rules.
After all, in doing so you add to their numbers, diversity, and
safety. They'll even date you.
794.
Would
it help you to get over the past if you stopped trying to figure out if it was
good or bad and just went forward, willed forward?
I can't fix the past, but I
think sometimes, often, that I can. I
get the idea I can make it all better, all repaired, compensated for. All the sexual and emotional abuse and neglect
in my nuclear family, decades of misery and injury could all be fixed if I just
acted my role again. It's more a
cover-up really, a topical anesthetic, that my family wants from me. They don't want me to be well and go my
way. They want me to come back to them
and forever act the way that comforts them.
I can't do that and also be free.
They want me to act like I like them and have a connection to them. The reality, that I barely survived their
dysfunctional emotional mistreatment of me, is nothing they want anything to do
with. They want appearances, superfice,
kitsch, co-dependency, idyll, cannibalism.
795.
Will
it just take time for you to get used to having severed ties with your highly
dysfunctional past and the people in it?
Sure it will. Slow time.
But that's a good thing. The key
is not to disturb the gentle healing flow of time with guilt-machinations,
worry, fear, and anger. Those are
short-cycle emotions that obstruct and counteract the long-cycle, slow-cycle
flow of time and well-being experiences.
Stress-feelings can be really detrimental. Sure, you've got to get away from the
negative stressor but then the feelings and learned responses need to subside
as well. My guilt and anger feelings
just spoil the peacefulness. I feel
guilty for not taking care of the people I used to relate to and angry they
don't take care of me. But really I want not to take care of them or to have
them take care of me. But the new ways
of thinking are unfamiliar.
796.
Is
the purpose of publishing Genius 2000 to get money, friends, and dating?
My purpose for publishing
Genius 2000 is just to have a sense of decency.
I am OK and will get along without any fame, riches, or sexy
dating. I repudiate all that superficial
clutter. Actually, I still think it's
the greatest thing in the world, that successful-man lifestyle. I'm still not completely too old for it
either. I work out, I'm losing the
pounds, toning up, non-smoker. I could
go on dates, laugh and talk, and then kiss my date at the end or even during the
date. So I don't suppose I'm over that
despicable dream yet of dating. I don't
want to pre-judge anything. If I met
Elizabeth Bennett I might want to date her.
Yet the whole panorama of
things involved--no healthy woman wants to date or marry a loner. There's no purpose to it. The man has to have friends, be social,
public, popular, healthy.
797.
If
this book were to get published in paper, and you were to make money and get
famous, would you date attractive women or stay celibate?
That's not going to happen so
let's drop the subject. Books of two
thousand questions asked by a social outcast to himself about being an outcast
do not get published. Ever. They get placed on the internet for
free. And that is what is going to
happen to this one. September first it
goes on the internet for free. I can't
explain it any better than that.
798.
Is
one of your houseplants dying?
Yes it is, I think. The leaves are falling off. I hate when that happens. It seems like such a dismal harsh reality,
more death. Factually however it is
difficult to keep plants alive for a long time and I'm not skilled at it. Plants sometimes pass away. I hope it will live because I like it but
realistically, it won't.
799.
Is
the purpose of writing this book and of publishing it on the internet for free
in reality a simple assertion of faith and defiance?
Yes, defiance and faith are
the purpose or rather motives behind this expression. I refuse to accept the degradation of genius
as "the truth" or necessary.
Because I can't find a place where genius is fully respected and
fulfilling itself I articulate my expression toward a future utopia. That is the purpose of publishing this book:
to defy the present and communicate with the future.
800.
Will
you reject an agent or publisher's request to represent this book?
In all honesty I wouldn't
want to put the blame for this book on anyone but myself. It's my doing. Everyone else can just stay off to the side,
stay out of it. I also am tired of
waiting and trying to get people to like me.
I know it's my own fault I'm unmannerly but I don't care.
801.
If
you write this exclusively for the internet, aren't you condemning the print
media and traditional values?
Not really. I'm making a better mousetrap. It's too maddening and humiliating to sit on
the invention any longer. Like any
entrepreneur, I'm developing my product.
The traditional media are stagnated due to the historical "tight
spot" we are in. They are all
slaves to the bottom line, to the lowest possible risk. Either that or I just don't have the time to
learn good manners. I have to
self-publish to regain my dignity. Yes
the punishment if official obscurity for people who do that. Yet I don't care. I made a better mousetrap--here it is.
802.
Will
you lose money on it?
I've trademarked it. It may make money in the future, "down
the road." Certainly no one else
can claim it's theirs. It's publicly
acknowledged to be mine. That means I've
cornered the market.
803.
Is it
a sin or a crime for you to state that you were abused and that there was a lot
of abuse where you came from?
People abuse each other
constantly--just look around. I'm not
here to tell you I was never abused. I
was, and it messed me up. Still, I've
got to work to do my part in protecting the future. I got started too late to make regular money
and get cultured. Therefore I had to put
Genius 2000 on the internet for free.
There were no other options.
804.
Doesn't
the entire exogenetic evolutionary tradition--the entire historical record that
is--confirm beyond reasonable doubt that Genius 2000 is the best choice for
expressive activity?
Yes it does. But something being the best choice doesn't
mean people can choose it right away.
Sometimes it just has to sit there for awhile, so people can sidle up to
it gradually. If you move too quick it
scares them away. They're spooky.
805.
How
can you remember if you've covered all the topics, like "The Lateral
Line," bioelectromagnetics, the grotesque and horrid cases of the Genius
2000 Conferences in 2001 and 2002, and the difference between doing something
and telling other people to do it?
I can check later when I type
all these up. Frankly though I've
covered all the main topics. For the
video, I just asked people to talk about genius or the year 2000. What does it mean to be a genius, what does
the year 2000 mean. Then I tried to get
various aesthetic effects with my videocamera, and see if I could get anything
that seemed artistic. I also filtered in
some quotes from the Nag Hammadi texts, Zen, Sherwood Anderson, what have you,
to go for a variety of references. Like
the Prairie Style mixed with Polyneices' signet. I chucked in all my college and grad school
reading and papers for good measure, then self-promoted.
806.
Did
you leave out the Federalist Paper Number Ten, which warns against
"faction" and "the tyranny of the majority"?
I can't figure out how
Nietzsche thought democracy wouldn't protect individual rights if he'd read
Federalist Ten. Maybe at the time it was
considered provincial babble. Number Ten
specifically addresses the need for a bigger polis so that each given group
within it will be less likely to be able to form a dominating faction. Factions will tend to be smaller relative to
the overall polis if the polis is big.
This protection and others would ideally help to prevent tyranny by the
majority. Yet most liberals have no
knowledge of Federalist Ten, and the seriousness of its mission: to make
democracy tenable and safe from itself as well as external enemies. Most liberal pseudo-intellectuals think they
can blame everything on evil decisionmakers, but their own
pseudo-intellectualism is at least as big a factor--almost certainly greater.
807.
Can
Chomsky be made into a very laughable mockery if he is asked about art?
Chomsky is so incredibly
laughable, fake, incompetent, and ignorant when he talks about art all you have
to do is ask him about it and you'll lose all respect for him. It will become clear to you that he is not
really genuinely offering an alternative to the status quo. He is just attacking the
808.
What
does positive visualization during play have to do with writing these quanta?
It governs the intent to
create good quanta that make the project good and successful. Negative visualization during play leads to
poor, unsuccessful quanta. The definition
of a good quantum is that it addresses a worthwhile topic directly and
creatively, lending it own-coffee-pot-vision propriety of balance and
harmony. The topics of importance and
value to the Genius 2000 Network have to be addressed in a good quantum, and
addressed in a good way.
809.
Were
a lot of your listserv emails very ignorant, propagandistic, and asinine in
their support of Noam Chomsky and other foolish villains like Nader?
I took a couple of pictures
of Nader and even gave a copy of my video to his running mate in 2000. I suppose Nader and LaDuke really did want
everything to be OK, and everyone to be happy.
Yet they forgot the Cold War and its aftermath. They didn't seem to understand the measures
necessary to prevent a resurgence of Hitler-style fascism or Stalin-style
Communism. I used to act the same way.
810.
Why
would it be best for everyone if Nader and Chomsky both came flat out and said
that U.S. military and economic supremacy is proper and necessary, even for
liberal ideals like environmentalism and human rights, and that their followers
should forgive U.S. power for what it is obligated to do to protect the future?
Currently, Nader and Chomsky
think they are breeding reform by attacking
811.
Is it
acceptable to promote Genius 2000 using stickers, catchy marketing tactics to appeal
to vapid youth, and trendy antinomianism like your G2K lighters?
I don't see how a disposable
lighter quoting Benjamin on how Robespierre blasted open the continuum of
history is antinomian. Yet I do see how
it acts cool and crazy in order to get into the good graces of the
trend-seeking, thrill-seeking, mindlessly antinomian and
very-desirous-of-falsely-overcoming-culture internet generation. So I better quit. All that trend-making, cyber-marketing
guerilla-marketing evil vice.
812.
Was
early Genius 2000 a towering masterpiece of underground guerilla marketing?
Oh, my goodness yet it
was. The marketing itself was the
product. It was more fun and more
gratifying than any of the products involved.
It was like how Tom Sawyer got the neighborhood kids to paint the fence
for him. The reality is, however, that
in G2K the marketing was a great value that I gave people for free. The same as this book. I'm marketing humanity its future, and the
actual product is free. But yes it's all
marketing.
813.
What
is shaking your confidence more than anything lately?
The dark half-circles under
my eyes. To me, that's a sign of extreme
error in one's ways. It means you've
lost balance and wisdom. You're wreckage
waiting to be washed out to sea. If
someone could tell me "oh those are just from scribbling constantly and no
sign you've gone spiritually, artistically wrong" I'd be much more at
ease. As it is, I'm rattled.
814.
Do
you think it's OK for other people to have sex?
God I'm sick of thinking
about sex. Go read books about it if you
want to know. I've stated over and
over--I'm what they used to call straight-edge--no sex, alcohol, or inhaled
smoke. Why? I don't know.
Maybe it's just chance, or I'm all fucked up, or I've got better
morality, or I've got phobias, or I'm gay-in-denial, you tell me. There's a price for sex I'm unwilling to pay,
and have been.
815.
What
did and didn't you get done today?
I feel today's been almost
totally wasted. I woke up at nine-thirty
after nine hours of sleep. That's
OK. That's OK for a weekend. I ate two pancakes with coffee and read part
of this for two hours. (Hemingway used
to read The Sun Also Rises all the
way through every day before writing in it; I don't do that with Genius 2000: A New Network.) Then I went to a combination social and
exercise activity, which I have little investment in or heart for. It's not the team I belong fighting on. It's not the best use of my time, filler
perhaps, convalescent. Then I went home,
ate a sandwich, and read this MS some more.
Then just had to nap. I
napped. I had to. I was coming apart, it seemed, with anxiety. Then I felt a little better, and washed and
vacuumed my car, a 1972 Karmann Ghia, to sell it. Now I'm at the laundry.
816.
Do
people need to study and praise G2K so they can live right and save the planet
and the human species from a bad fate?
Let's not be arch. Plato wrote, "He who does not answer to
the rudder must answer to the rock."
That goes for societies and species as well. It's not a joke to protect the future. So yes, people do need to learn how to live
better so that humanity and the planet can achieve better outcomes than they
could if they didn't.
817.
But
isn't G2K pro-Nader and pro-Chomsky?
I acted like I favored those
dipshits for two reasons: so I could lead tipsy liberals into the ditch if I
had to, or into war for the O.S.O. if I had to.
Pure and simple. Then again,
maybe they are good decent citizens. I
think they have major weaknesses on the importance of art and historical
responsibility. Yet they do keep up a
vital opposition which is good to have in case a regime change is ever
needed. But really, I thought my
cleavage to Nader and Chomsky was tactically required.
818.
Are
you "the undiscovered conscience of [your] race," as Joyce wrote the
poet should be, or are you just a fixated bounder?
Gracious who knows. Maybe one, maybe the other. Maybe I'll change from what I am now, one, to
the other, later. Could be I'm just a
scribbler with no decent claim to be read by anyone. Or maybe as creator of Genius 2000 I have an
obligation to enlist creative minds to the support of the O.S.O. in the
aesthetic realm. It's extremely doubtful
anyone will follow me directly. I'm too
repellent. But I still can't figure out
what obligations having made G2K puts on me.
I do know that in a drunken stupor I kicked the crap out of the entire
artworld. What that means I don't
know. I wonder if really I didn't kick
the crap out of anybody--I just showed my rear end and my maladjustment,
psychosexual defectiveness, drunkenness.
819.
Did
you just have an infected pustule in your eye, in the lower eyelid?
Truly I did, like a big white
pimple. I had to pop it. It popped into my eye and then I wiped out
the pus with my pinky finger. I did that
after I vacuumed my car and came to the laundromat. Now I wish I could to to movies and stuff, or
be in a band, be normal. But I don't
want the conformity that goes along with those safeties.
820.
Won't
the success probability of the Second Cold War decrease if you, the Hated One,
come out in favor of the O.S.O.?
That's a tough question to
which I have no answer. Yes and no seem
equally true. People do hate Genius
2000. Yet common sense, logic, reason,
and decency can often prevail. People
know that individual artists can be hugely different from each other and have
hugely different effects on the polis and history. So they know from that fact that
"majority vote," not determining necessarily what art is best, may
also not determine everything else in the best way.
821.
Do
you believe that liberals have a particular, peculiar obligation to support the
O.S.O. and work hard to make sure it goes as well as possible?
Yes, I think liberals
do. I think liberals have some growing
up to do, genially, growing up that most of them want to do but like me feel constrained by their peer group not to
think differently. Liberals are more
open-minded and less set in traditional modes of thought than
conservatives. Therefore it is liberals'
duty to change their views proportionately more--"from each according to
his ability," was the old Communist slogan.
822.
Can
you please try to write something publishable so you can get out of your
entry-level clerical job?
Wait, I was just now trying
to get used to that entry-level job!
Plus I've been promoted to "a little better-paid, more securely
tenured" clerical job. However, I
would love a little better life.
Successful.
823.
Have
you been suffering today?
Yes, my eyes and neck feel
tight and my eyes also hurt. I am afraid
if things keep getting worse that I will have to go back under paroxetine. I guess worse things could happen. I would just be giving up on the idea I can
live and write without taking antidepressants, at least for now. I'm fearful and that seems to give me the
most suffering as well as the most harm.
I should try some way of resisting that fear, dealing with it.
824.
Is
your desire to publish this on the internet merely a desire to prove (or
rather, to create the illusion) that you are "in charge," and do not
need or want anyone's help?
I don't know. I get confused. I don't think it is healthy for me to give up
on the idea of publishing something, someday, through the for-money publishing
system. My life of obscurity and
clerical work isn't easy for me and hurts.
I'm hurting.
825.
Would
it comfort you to know that once this book is done, you can shelve it and
undertake some more marketable project, and you are under no obligation to put
this on the internet at all?
That's comforting
already. I sometimes go overboard with
things. I think I have to do things a
certain way, and am not allowed to learn or change. Changing my grumpy, sullen attitude at work
last week felt good and will continue to help me keep my job, if my sense of
things is correct. No one likes that
harsh, obsessive silence and it's not normal either--not in any society.
826.
Would
you like to remove all reference to your childhood troubles from this book,
because it shifts responsibility for your actions to others, and may also cause
them very serious pain and sadness?
I imagine there is definitely
part of me that would like to stop ever discussing my childhood
unpleasantnesses. Other people have had
far worse traumas. I feel bad and afraid
that it would be sadistic and shameful to publish any of the facts about
it. They're dealt with on a private
basis, these childhood hurts.
827.
Would
you also like to remove any accusations about other people's activity from
these pages, whether they are to be published on the internet, in paper, or not
at all?
My urge to accuse and condemn
people in public is seeming much more undesirable just now. Success being revenge and the Eumenides and
all speak against it, even though my personal private discomforts and
psychological troubles are in a different sphere than that discussed in Aeschylus's
play. The principle may hold equally
true for things on the personal level, private spheres of hurt, wrong, and
malfeasance. To list all the bad things
other people have done to me in the personal, private area of my life feels
like I'm either making excuses for my bad qualities or asking for pity and
pardon. In fact, I want to get rid of my
bad qualities and not be excused for them, and to feel dignity without being
pitied or begging for pity.
828.
Won't
it damage the organic continuity of this book if you go back and replace or
over-write the quanta that discuss your private life?
I don't think so. Animals in nature groom each other's fur, for
example, going through and removing nits or vermin. Sorting, removing, cleaning, these are
activities done by every living being.
Even bacteria sort, remove, and clean.
Cells do it and so do birds and clams.
It's OK. It's natural.
829.
Won't
it feel nice to stop beating up on people who may have done you wrong in the
past?
Forgiveness is a real
relief. No one wants to keep hurting
someone else after a while, even if they've hurt you. There comes a point where hurting the other
person in revenge becomes a punishment and a misery in its own right, above and
beyond the original damage the other person did to you. It's best to just get away if you can.
830.
Would
you also like to take down the Genius 2000 Network website completely, and just
have books only from now on?
Being on the internet with
all of my jpegs and chat rooms and all was kind of power-hungry. I didn't really like--much less love and care
for--the art I was doing. I was
primarily trying to take power in a certain very tiny, specialized area of the
artworld called "internet art" or "cyberart." That power-grabbing was extremely degrading
and poisoning to my life. I would be
willing to take it all down and start again from nothing if I could thereby
feel good and happy about myself and my life.
I don't particularly want to exercise power over people. I'd like them to take care of themselves and
their lives on their own. Then I can
take care of myself, live my life,
and not worry about them. Taking
everything of mine off the internet might be exactly the spritzer I need to
cheer up.
831.
Wouldn't
it feel good to take down SFMOMA82700, Yes/No, and all of the conferences from
the past, and everything?
It seems likely. That stuff was all power-grab stuff. If I could give up that greedy evil behavior
it could really aid in my ability to make new art and grow into a happy healthy
adult. It is also very much the case
that I have a moral or artistic right to take my website down or take things
off of it if I want. I can change
it. Changing the content on one's
website does not go against the aesthetic grain of the website as a
medium. I tried to make "permanence"
a feature of my particular interpretation of the website genre but that was
power-grabbing and not anything aesthetic per se. It was partly legitimate rhetoric, trying to
make a point and to play the devil's advocate, but it was mostly my attempt to
self-aggrandize and hurt people.
832.
Would
taking down everything off of the Genius 2000 Website on September 1, 2005 be a
wonderful birthday gift to yourself?
I think it would. I'm too old to go on with this needless
self-degradation. I can't rehabilitate
it so why not just take it down, is my feeling.
I don't even have to keep the domain up anymore. I save everything on CD anyway, just in case
anyone ever needs to look at it.
Ever. But most of it is junk
propaganda anyhow. I'd adore being able
to get the heck away from it. I could
even get rid of the name and everything--the name is bogus as well. I know this may seem strange to you all but
all of my reasons for having Genius 2000 exist at all are now either served and
done with, or were bad reasons to begin with.
Sure a lot of horrible net artists might crop up and try to degrade the
world, commit falze aufhebung, or hurt the O.S.O. But they'll have very little power and are
nothing to worry about. I used up the
oxygen and did prophylaxis long enough.
I can quit G2K now.
833.
How
about this for a bargain, a pact, a contract with yourself: if you write two
thousand of these before September 1, 2005 you can then take the entire Genius
2000 website down, conferences and jpegs and all?
That sounds great. I think I'd like to leave the one jpeg I like
up there but even that belongs not up there.
I'm not a permanent being so therefore my art shouldn't hang up there on
the internet permanently. I'll take it
all down, down, down, and just be a writer.
834.
Are
you afraid that you'll be "abandoning your post" by taking Genius
2000 off of the internet?
Probably Genius 2000 doesn't
belong on the internet, but no, I'm not really afraid. It may be that I'm abandoning my post,
factually, but as to whether I feel
afraid about that fact and whether it is true, I don't. I'm feeling calmly assured right now I am
clear to leave the net.
835.
Unlike
many days, do you have several topics you wish to mention today?
It seems as though I do, and
yes, many days it seems I have nothing in mind close to hand that I care to
mention. On those days I cast
around. Today I seem to have an
inclination to discuss the idea of how the traditional attributes that have
applied to artworks and give them their distinctive, coherent unity are, under
my G2K hypothesis, equally applicable to one's life, one's life as a work of
art. I don't mean this in the sense of
acting very artsy or decorative in one's activities. What I mean is more basic and
functional. One's life is the medium or material
that can be shaped by conscious decision and effort into a variety of different
forms. One's life is the book, or as Hamlet said, one's brain is "the book
and volume." One's life is a
painting, sculpture, musical composition, building, etc.
836.
What
are the drawbacks of quoting or partnering with living geniuses, and where do
they come from?
I'm sensing a lot of the
drawbacks right now of collaboration with other living people. They always seem to end up making
disproportionate, unreasonable, and unacceptable demands on one. People are so desperate and so unrestrained
in how they inflict their miserable greediness on anyone they have in their
power. One very concrete case of this
for me, right now as we speak, or rather read these words, is quoting people
from the Genius 2000 Video First Edition.
I could have explored my own mind for expressive material rather than
using interviews. I thought interviews
were more authentic, compelling, impressive, and overpowering. However I got myself entangled with a lot of
other living people who aren't really good people for me to co-operate
with. This happened on listservs too.
837.
How
did you first get the idea of the unity and continuity of artworks not being
exclusively attributes of artworks only, but of people's lives as well?
I'm not sure. At graduate school in 1993 I got the idea of
a film that expands beyond the edges of the frame, all the way in all
directions, until it is a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of vision. That idea was an extrapolation from how the
film as a medium is like a moving painting that extends through time. By making the painting move in time, it is
like adding a dimension to it. However,
the boundary of the camera frame is still there, so one could theoretically
extend those edges in all directions until there were no edges. "Shakespeare's Ghost," the story I
wrote in 1993, is also about life becoming art, how the artist is the artwork.
838.
Did
you use to read E.H. Gombrich's The Story
of Art quite often?
Yes, I got that book in
1989. I liked it. I lost it somewhere a while ago. Yet it starts with the sentence "There
is no such thing as Art; there are only artists." That captures my idea of the human soul or
genius being the artwork. Keats on the
"Vale of Soul-Making" refers to it also. In my papers on Oedipus and Hamlet from 1993,
I also mentioned it in how the hero becomes the artifact for circulation and
use among the polis or chorus. So the
idea of the person's life having the characteristics of the artwork is hardly
an idea I stole from someone who may have mentioned it in an interview or some
email I read once. It has an example in
Christ's passion on the cross as well, which was the key moment at which he
experienced full humanity and full divinity at the same exact moment: only
humans die.
839.
Do
you feel like you're spinning your wheels?
I sure do. I worked on the Genius 2000 Conference 2005
for a little while earlier today. It's
already afternoon. I drove to the auto
parts store and damaged the resale value of my car by spraying a little of the
wrong color paint on. Oh well, live and
learn.
840.
Is
the goal of this book to help heal and fulfill human genius?
Interestingly enough, I'm now
aware that no book can do that. God does
it. Now that may seem crazy to you to
hear me say, but it's true. What heals
genius? The healing capacities of genius
to heal itself. Similarly, you don't heal up your cut on your
knee--your blood cells, immune system, all that do. The cells grow back, heal. The DNA plus the physiological apparatus does
it. You as a decisionmaker don't do
it. This book can't heal your genius or
fulfill your genius--only your genius-in-time can do that. God is genius-in-time.
841.
Is
your goal to sell this book?
I'm not sure I can be happy
if all my work on the side, on art and writing, isn't an attempt to get an
income. Or shit maybe I can. I'd rather have no day job and sell lots of
books. Or is that vulgar and evil? I can't decide. Oh well, let's drop it. I have no idea.
842.
Aren't
leaders of the Genius 2000 Network, decision-makers for the network, obligated
to have some idea of goals and how to achieve them?
Maybe Genius 2000 is just
ironic prattle. Were I to try to
pronounce a new religion, a new method of putting one's life in context with
God (the laws of living sentient beings in timespace), wouldn't I be
blaspheming against other religions and thus causing fitna or pain and cultural distrust? Perhaps it is best if no one ever tries
anything. Just let the crazy medieval
religions keep fighting. Or, should one
just coolly operate in secret?
843.
Is it
OK for you to lie?
Machiavelli says yes, other
religions say no, such as yoga. I've
gotten out my yoga book lately, Ten
Minute Yoga by Christina Brown. I
like it. It reminds me to breathe to
collect my energy in a color (I've chosen yellow, which as Van Gogh declared is
the color of peace). I think one of the
rules of yoga is not to lie. But lying
for self-preservation, or omitting some of the truth, well I'm not quitting
that. You can if you want.
844.
Has
your mental order been deteriorating?
I think so. I was hoping I'd keep getting healthier and
more energetic. Lately my eyes have
gotten as black as raccoon's eyes. I can
see the creases in my forehead from across the room in the mirror, they're so
deep and dark. That forehead-wrinkling
causes the eyebags too, I think. Or
worry. Worry and scowling. All my plans and goals seem forgotten.
845.
Doesn't
D.H. Lawrence's poem "The Ship of Death" imply that as you grow and
change, you lose control of how things go, that is, direct control?
Sure it's true--unpredictable
things happen when you start making art.
Writing is a form of art.
Creative expression of any kind is art.
Or maybe it isn't if it's athletic.
Maybe athletics aren't art. It's
a good question. I don't know if
religion is good or evil. Is God just a
superstitious fable like the tooth fairy?
Let's not delve too deeply into the question of God. You can see my Catch-22. If I assume God is an irrelevant topic, I
exist in a reduced context because so much of art and history is focally
concentrated on God. If I say God is
important, and offer an interpretation of what God is, people say that I'm
attacking their beliefs. Realistically,
that's who gets killed by the angry mobs of history--people who talk or write
about what God is.
846.
Have
you decided not to be afraid of being hurt or hated, only of hurting and
hating?
Oh yes actually I did. I don't care if fundamentalist Christians,
Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Shinto, Jain, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Sikhs, Taoists,
or Confucianists try to kill me. They
can go ahead and do their worst.
Besides, you can't kill me--I'm indestructible. If you kill me I'll enter directly into your
brain and control you completely, forever.
You'll lose completely. It's
better just to leave me alone. As to
respecting the temporal authorities, well I'm of the scientific persuasion and
I know that the O.S.O. is necessary. It
really can't be debated any longer.
There are no feasible alternatives and circumstances require that action
be taken to secure the present in order to protect the future. That means that condemning or criticizing the
847.
What
about your self-control, and calmness, accepting a quiet life, and all that?
It's clear that there's no
alternative. Or maybe there is. Suppose someone comes along and creates a
permanent art-effect that has nothing to do with any object or material
artifact, but is pure process. Then that
process has an existence, and the universe is never the same after something
new comes into existence. The reality is
that the only way to kill Genius 2000 is to kill all the people, every sentient
being in fact. You can maim and injure
people too, and that can prevent Genius from developing in them in accordance
with 2000, in accordance with the rules of how genius shapes timespace and material-energetic
components thereof around itself into a cumulative form, like flowers growing
or genes expressing themselves. Yet even
all the killing and harm in the universe doesn't change the facts of life--the
rules governing genetic expression in time-space energy-matter for species
capable of exogenetic technological evolution and evolutionary experimentation.
848.
Are
all the fields and disciplines of human exogenetic evolution, such as math,
science, politics, economics, biology, art, religion, poetry, painting,
chemistry, physics, biomath, computers, history, and child-rearing subject to
the rules of G2K?
Oddly they are. Neither economics nor religion makes any
sense without the acknowledgment of the principles of G2K. G2K is sort of akin to phenomenology, which I
never studied but articulated in the web-page "Every Thought Has a
Number" in 1998 and re-introduced myself to after coming across the
Strauss-Lowith letters on the internet in 2003.
Those letters were the first thing I found on Strauss after reading in a
Boston Globe article, I think it was, in 2003 that Leo Strauss was the
intellectual grandfather of Neoconservatism.
In any case, Strauss states in there that Husserl once told him "If
there is a datum God, we shall describe it." I like that.
It is also stated in the Strauss-Lowith letters that Strauss thought
that
849.
Are
you arguing that you came up with the core basics of Leo Strauss before 1998,
before--long before--you'd ever heard of Strauss, and what is more, incarnated
the eternal return around the cruxial point of the fin de siecle, like a sine
wave?
That's a good summation. No other construction fits with the
facts. I have had, at times, an uncanny
ability to incarnate very very complex mathematical bio-cultural patterns. Therefore I had to cover up all this
greatness with drunken piggery. The
alternative would have weakened my position.
Piggery is a fantastic repellent of formulators and co-opters. It burns their hide. Of course it was an added bonus that I
actually became addicted to the alcohol I was so fond of pouring into my mouth
and over my great, flowing beard and moustachios down upon even my
shirtfronts. Drink drink drink. Piggery.
Confusion of forms.
850.
Is it
reasonable to expect yourself to play ignorant and inarticulate forever, and
suffer no pain or damage therefrom, nor any confusion or dismay?
I think it's
unrealistic. The premise that genius
must be dull and inarticulate because sharp edges are risky and cutty--well
that's unworkable. One just has to be
adequately careful, but remember Blake wrote "the cut worm forgives the
plow." In actuality, strong clear
genius is so different and incredible that only strong military focus is able
to protect it and to protect the polis from the tumult of its action. There must be adequate military consolidation
to protect the exogenetically evolving core-body from attack, and to keep an
orderly productive harmony--not stagnation but balanced conflict--between the
individual and the group. As we convert
from object to process in art as we have from industry to information in
economy, strong military consolidation is required to keep the tremors of
change from shaking the exosomatic evolutionary matrix itself to pieces. So support the O.S.O., liberals!
851.
Do
artists or writers have to solve all the political and social problems in the
world, or can they just relax and take drugs?
Neither one is good. Of course I could be wrong. However, one can't solve every problem
because many of them require long time-periods or are other people's concerns
in which you have no role in solving.
Artists shouldn't interfere
with problems being worked on however.
For example, it was wrong in the past for some artists to support
Communism. It is also wrong for artists
to inflame racial hatred in order to get attention for themselves. As to drugs and oblivious relaxation, well
artists have the same obligations to try as everyone else. For some artists, they had to have heroin
waiting at the end of the workday or workweek in order to keep motivated. The best thing however is for people to work
on their own genius (which is what they have the most and most effectual
authority over) and to support the O.S.O. and syncretic-tolerant biocultural
exogenetic evolution.
852.
Are
today's multinational corporations much like Communist economic ministries
would have been had the
The differences are extensive
but in some regards today's multinationals are faced with the same array of
tasks that would have faced victorious Soviet economic operations had the
U.S.S.R. won. The multinationals are not
like a small sandwich cafe just multiplied a billion times over. The big multinationals administer either very
large amounts of money or productive functions with extensive economic
implications (such as military research or high technology). The operations of multinationals therefore
have a political dimension that small
cafes do not have, though even a café has relations with the neighborhood, pays
utilities, uses the transport system, etc.
Soviet ministries of energy, war, agriculture, etc. would also have quasi-political
functions had they won the war.
853.
Should
intelligent liberals who are intellectually educated and not just trying to
differentiate themselves from their parents or from suffocating
communities-of-origin think about how "Neoconservative" means, sort
of, "used to be liberal"?
I think it would help
liberals of today, including all the artistic bohemian types, to avoid the
smelly bathwater of the aging hippie generation. There is a deep core of error in liberal
thinking that impairs both intellectual growth and the well-being of the
polis. Neoconservatism was in some
senses an acknowledgement by many liberals that the Communist threat was too
strong to be dealt with by a quasi-socialist West. Liberal democracy had to work from its
strengths and not from its weaknesses if the
854.
If
it's not your responsibility to make sure everyone does the right thing
politically, why do you mention your support of the O.S.O.?
Until now I couldn't really
say, but it seems to have dawned on me that what I was really doing before was
threatening to harm G2K in order to bring attention to it and thus find help
for it. This was a bad plan. I was just remembering some of the bad things
I did while an active alcoholic, such as bringing street criminals and hustlers
into my parents’ home when they were nice enough to let me stay there. It sure is scary what street hustlers get
like once they're inside your home.
They're serious business.
Realistically, I need to make sure I don't do that anymore, or things
like it. Nevertheless, it seems to me
that liberals like to accuse other people of being bad but rarely do they clean
their own house. I want to be the mean,
preaching liberal who puts the fear of God in the rest and gets them to reform.
855.
Is it
OK for the majority of liberals, who are just crowd-followers, to retain their
liberal prejudices unthinkingly?
Yes it is, though the reason
why it is is quite a perverse one.
Prejudiced, blind, ignorant leftists or liberals are needed because they
are useful in serving as a herd-like alternative to the conservative herd. They are a counterbalance, which reminds me
of the great Kandinsky print I have on my wall, "Counter Weights." If all the liberals all of a sudden lost
their delusions and prejudices it might even be an inclement shock to the
system of genius, the overall "economy of genius" as one might
say. Liberal biases are a useful aspect
of the overall landscape in some ways.
Therefore, it is not necessary for one to convert all of them to a
balanced, intellectual view. One can
just develop and fulfill one's own genius and be guilt-free about it. One can't cure someone else's prejudice.
856.
Does
even the most liberal view of things recommend supporting the O.S.O. in all the
three spheres of human activity, past, present, and future?
Yes, liberal causes do better
when people can develop free from the stressors of combat warfare and cruel
poverty. Liberal causes take time; they
are almost like dessert in a sense.
Sometimes it would appear that liberals want to eat dessert only and
they don't pay heed to economic and military consolidation. But they need it.
857.
Did
you use to attack liberal democracy primarily in order to get attention for
your ideas on art, which you felt were too easily ignored otherwise?
There were a variety of
reasons for my behavior. Manic
compulsive patterning caused by increasing alcohol addiction was one
reason. Others were of all kinds. I also thought I could refer for my defense
to my conservative credentials if I ever got too carried away with Ralph and
Noam.
858.
Is
Noam Chomsky a pseudo-intellectual?
Yes he is; he's
flatulent. Also Ralph Nader is a
pseudo-politician. One of his campaign
slogans was that "Hemp is the economic future of
859.
What
is God?
I think God is the single,
integral, primary law of all human existence, which states that all humans are
humans and if they exist they exist. God
is the principle that rules human existence, and to pay attention to it and
learn how to obey it is virtue, and to ignore it and reject it is vice. In this sense, God is both a person (human)
and something dimensionally greater and vaster than any single human (the
principle of humanity).
860.
Do
liberals give themselves a false superiority on the arbitrary hierarchy and
empty convention they accuse religion of having, and in so doing commit a
complete instance of falze aufhebung der kultur?
Without doubt they do. Liberals all have their own priestly caste,
based primarily on the "master analyst" role I've pointed out in
Freud and Marx. Liberals, atheists, and
secular humanists also take a monodeity as their God when they worship Art or
Science and trust it to save, bless, and redeem them. Liberal kitsch and peudo-intellectual
dribblings are very identical to empty ritual or hollow convention in any
religion. Secular humanism is therefore
unfairly gentle on its own misdeeds and hypocritical. Once I told a couple of liberals who'd been nice
to me that saying humans didn't arise from natural selection was bourgeois
guilt, but maybe they were right. Though
I doubt it. They got enraged at me and
hated me ever since. The woman-liberal
even said to me "You should go down to
861.
Do
you often fear that you won't get enough time to write a truly good book ever?
I sure do. I'm constantly afraid. My yoga book states that how I breathe
through the right nostril feeds only my logical left brain and suffocates my
artistic right brain. This is because I
sleep on my left side mostly. I need to
sleep on the right side more to open up my left nostril and thus oxygenate my
right brain better. Then I'll write
better.
862.
Isn't
the artistic or art-faithful thing to do to do the Conference 2005 about
watercolors, and then publish this book whenever you can?
That sounds great. This is a pretty good book already and once
it's completely done, like in 2006, I can publish it for real and finally get a
real life. It's not a sin against G2K to
be an entrepreneur and succeed in a liberal economy. In fact, it's a sin and vanity not to
succeed--it's tantamount to saying liberal economy is anathema to G2K. Nothing could be further from the truth.
863.
Do
you still feel it is morally, ethically, assuredly, and aesthetically OK to
take down all the old G2K conferences and any jpegs you find disgusting now?
I think that's one of the
prerogatives of having an internet site.
You can put stuff up and later take it down if you wish. You can change your mind. Painting, for example, gives the artist the
power to paint over something he or she doesn't like if he or she wants
to. Writers can cross out words and make
all kinds of changes after the fact. One
of the only prerogatives of value from the internet as a medium is that you can
take things off your site and put them on as you please. I do feel guilty about not leaving my bad art
or immoral art up, so it's a conundrum for me which is best now that I'm erring
on the side of self-scrutinizing moral hypervigilance. They tell us drunks to scrub ourselves raw in
that area. Scrub scrub scrub.
864.
Since
you're not going to publish this for free on the internet, why don't you stop
working on it until you get a plan together that will make it salable?
The amorphous field of quanta
is the plan--you should know that by
now. The goal in doing this is to
create a full-field, pan-dimensional three-hundred-sixty-degree artistic
experience, like a combination of Cubism and Zen. Imagine one's genius is made up of a
two-state substance called Talent. The
talent or faculties of experience and being, material nodes of being, can exist
either in the inward-moving single point or Esoteric state or the
two-thousand-point expanding Exoteric state.
Like Shelley described in Adonais, we rhythmically cycle in a process
alternating from single point to many-points and back again. The points move inward and outward as on the
surface of an expanding and deflating baloon.
The points gather raw information and then share it with the unified
field. Carlyle likened the intellectual
process involved to systole and diastole.
It also compares to the line on a radar screen that goes around and
around, creating a picture of objects with its range of tracking.
865.
What
are the lines from Shelley again?
"Who mourns for Adonais? O come forth
Fond wretch and know thyself and him
aright.
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous
earth;
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious
might
Satiate the void circumference: then
shrink
Even to a point within our day and night,
And keep thy heart light, lest it make
thee sink
When hope has kindled hope and lured the
to the brink."
866.
Does
the principle of God state that humanity has to practice both learning and
learned genius-sentience in order to evolve exogenetically, that is, to be
human?
The basic reason for religion
is that humans are artificers--we fabricate, remember, record, and learn. God is the Great Artificer, the principle of
artificing sentience of which we are the evolutionary product and to which we
are therefore bound as fundamentally and essentially as we are to sexual
reproduction, mortality, and sensory perception. We're creations of the artificing
principle. But what is that, to be a
living being that creates and invents?
That is the question that religions seek to resolve or address in theory
as well as and perhaps primarily in practice.
867.
Is
God the law of exogenetically evolving sentience in timespace?
That is a good way of
thinking of it. There are some things
that humans can do, and some we cannot.
We can't eat flaming charcoal briquettes without getting burnt. Anything that can do that isn't human. We are bound by restrictions, that is, if you
"boil us down to ashes" as Wittgenstein wrote that isn't all we
are. You can't cut our heads off and boil
us to ashes and paint us on the wall and say we're still human. Humanity is processes, not objects; a corpse
is not a human being anymore. It used to
be one. Therefore genius is both
creative and conservative; it is human sentience and can therefore perceive and
create but it is also human sentience in timespace and therefore bound by certain
laws. At the very least, we can see it
is bound to timespace. Some people argue
whether you can take it out of the body.
Certainly, you can't surgically replace a human's brain with an ant's
brain and say it's still a human--what you have is an ant-human at that point,
an ant-man. So--there are laws. Procedural, physical, and physiological laws
of human experience.
868.
If
God is the principle of humanity, and our path toward humanity lay along
contemplation of how we align with that principle, then is worship of God the
only way to be human?
There is a key question one
has to ask, and that is whether one is human.
To answer that one has to have a concept of learning directed at the
principle of being human i.e. to worship God.
And by this I don't necessarily mean conventional traditional religions,
though they are perfectly OK. They are
just as OK as the artistic tradition or the scientific tradition. If done correctly, worship in any of those
traditions will not detract from your appreciation of God. The key is to have an ongoing cycle of
learning and wisdom; learning is new and experimental, creative, where wisdom
is lasting and consolidated or conservative.
That's what I meant in the Video by saying "genius is creative, but
it's also conservative." The
example was, there's a "genius" or living spirit in a tree, which
creatively generates that tree into life , but that same genius also keeps it a tree--that is crucial. Cru-cial.
Akin to genetics.
"Genius" was the early, ancient concept for genetics.
869.
Do
secular-leftist humanists make a mistake by not wanting to go to church?
It's a difficult
question. I'm not going to church right
now. I've found churches kind of
difficult in my recent experience, spiritual groups and communities and so forth. I'd like to think that Genius 2000 can be a
basis for wholesome interaction or a way of new relations among individual
geniuses. A topic you can mention in
order to locate like-minded, decent-minded individuals out there. That way you won't have to live
super-isolated, maybe, like Nietzsche and me.
Then again many relationships are just two people grafted onto each
other, sewn up together into the one skin.
How gruesome. Realistically one
doesn't need that because God, the principle we can gain learning and wisdom by
co-ordinating to, can give you what really the hot sexy girlfriend can't. Isolation being sometimes healthy, then, and
the least appreciated healthy thing, current churches might not be able to
solve everything.
870.
How
does making images provide the thread by which to trace the history of
religion?
In pagan times they had many
gods. People are makers and they could
make up lots of different gods. This
created instability and chaos, with people unable to agree on what to worship. This caused either entropy and loss of aura
or conflict. It became more adaptive in
some cases to consolidate the divine into itself, into maker-ness. Thus monotheism came into preference. After some time, it became more
exogenetically evolutionarily adaptive--more adaptive in exosomatic
evolution--to return some of the maker-ness to the individual humans, back to
them from the central single deity.
(Those who advocate a return to medieval totalitarianism deny this was
adaptive at all and call it degrading.)
Therefore we arrive at our current status: organized religions,
including the religion of Art, are primarily monotheistic, but the maker-ness
has been distributed back onto actual people in practice, the democratic
experiment.
871.
What
if the democratic experiment fails because people fail to use their maker-ness
strongly, well, properly, and responsibly?
In that outcome there would
have been a lack of learning by people to respect their maker-ness sufficiently
and in the proper way to learn in it, have wisdom in it, and protect it in the
polis for the future. Basically, if
liberal democracy fails because people abuse or neglect their self-creative
faculty the lack would have been in getting the people to do right.
872.
How
can artists or writers use G2K concepts to get people to respect art and do it
the right way?
They can't, by definition,
because to do it the right way means to do it in your own way, or rather, your
own best way as you can given your genius and its laws of fulfillment. People have to do it themselves and also to
let the genius-growth process express itself in their lives. You can't do it for anyone else. That's the false path.
873.
Is
trying to fulfill someone else's genius for them just the flip-side of trying
to get someone else to fulfill your genius for you?
Exactly right, it's just as
you say. That is, addictive, insane,
lunatic, co-dependent behavior. No one
can do sit-ups for you, or do your back exercises for you. Even choosing what books to read--you have to
choose for yourself what books to read, because the choosing allows you to
follow your own unique development-path.
If I just told you what books to read, you wouldn't develop that skill
and insight, that instinct and confidence, of choosing books for yourself. Of course, first things first, and it may be
that recommending a book to someone is the greatest way to help someone who is
stuck. I'm glad that they assigned Catcher in the Rye, for example, at my
high school. I guess it's hard to know
what to ask for help with and what to gut it out on. I know I get in trouble on that topic
constantly. It takes practice.
874.
Have
there been any people so far in G2K that you just flat-out stole ideas from?
Good question--I don't think
so. I taped people, they said stuff, I
put it in a video. I don't think I've
stolen anything. It could be I'm in
denial. Or actually, it's almost
impossible not to steal. I can't think
of anything I've stolen. All the main
ideas of G2K that I call mine I had long before I started going out and interviewing
people, going on the internet, et cetera.
875.
Is
Genius 2000 basically an implementation of the ideas in Literary Change, which you did before even finding out about
Habermas and, through PPP, Benjamin, Adorno, and Horkheimer?
Basically, yes. Literary
Change was based on a fluke show they did on NPR about the Ten
Commandments. I was painting houses and
had dropped out of
876.
Do
Freedom and Democracy require that people develop their own genius using
artistic methods?
The methods don't necessarily
have to be artistic. When people are
healthy, they are happy, and when they are happy, they don't fight. Therefore healthiness is required. Religion encourages artistic expression yet
often people only make art to get money, or to please their social
surroundings.
877.
How
can you keep developing yourself?
My personal plan is to write
every day, almost all day, until I finish this book. Then I will overwrite or take out and replace
the bad quanta, the ones that deserve to get removed. Then I will decide what to do for the
Conference 2005. Then I will decide how
to try to get this book published. That
can take place over time. My main goal
was to finish a publishable book, by my own conscience's standard, before I get
older than thirty-five. This is not the
perfect book but it's at least an effort.
878.
Might
you be well-advised to set your plans and teaching for other people to the side
a little and think about yourself?
Certainly. This writing and art is intended to keep me
from stagnating or getting depressed in my clerical job and not-famous or rich
life-situation. Being famous just means
you have a lot of flatterers, and rich a lot of drugs, other than the element
of being a benefit to society. One might
call it being a role model to benefit the polis, or someone selected as a
praiseworthy "genius." So at
that level, I have an obligation to my society to be successful and well-known.
879.
Were
you able to scrub off most of that bad brown paint you accidentally sprayed too
much of on your car in the wrong spot today?
Yes, and it "saved some
part of a day I had rued," as Frost wrote.
I was really cramped up earlier today and grumpy. It seemed like life had gone sour. I may just have to write at an unrelenting
pace to conquer that feeling because it's defeatist.
880.
Are
you afraid of people stealing your ideas?
I am. People steal each other's ideas all the
time. I've already had a lot of my ideas
stolen. I'd like to write down all my
best ideas in this book and then publish it so no one can steal them. As a writer and artist, all I have are my
ideas. That's why I get afraid that I'll
forget to write some of my ideas down here, and they'll get stolen.
881.
Shouldn't
a G2K book have a plain-spoken pedantic agenda for political and intellectual
reform, spelled out in a very mainstream social-reformist-nonfiction way?
It could be. I can't say.
I can try that technique later.
This technique is the two thousand quanta one. Typical nonfiction books are often skewed to
one side to please the reader and marketing gurus. I don't like following that. It's better not to cater to the lowest common
denominator. It may not be possible to
accomplish this artistically but I'll go for the chance that it is.
882.
Do
you feel that the bags under your eyes are a punishment for sin?
Yes, I feel like I'm sinning
against God, my culture, and my family by trying to write a book. The implication is that I think I'm better
than the people who can't write books but want to, and that I'm bored and
superior-feeling with the rest of my culture's productions. So on that line, Blake is accurate in saying
that the Devil is eager, reckless energy trying to find new things. Maybe the devil is OK though.
883.
Can
you remember any of what you wrote earlier today, or even in the last few days?
I cannot. I'm not typing these up as I go any
longer. That was murder on my wrists and
slowed me down tremendously. It was
getting me down. This way however I just
forge ahead and never stop to develop any themes, or really get detailed and
calm about anything. Like my yoga book
for example, being in the moment, I could discuss how that relates to G2K.
884.
Are
you hoping that all your self-consciousness, self-doubts, and analytical
pretentiousness have gotten exacerbated by your attempt to write a
comprehensive account of the G2K worldview but will subside and recede as you
continue forward?
I'm very concerned about the
state of my soul. My left,
logical-analytical brain seems to have taken over. I believe in yoga it is called chitta-vrtti
or "brain chatter." Perhaps
not. In any event, I have anxiety dreams
at night about not getting my work done at the office, about not being able to
figure something out. I hate these kinds
of dreams. Whether from writing many
hours per day and painting too, or from thinking "controlling"
thoughts, my eyes are sore, tired, achy, and have dark circles under them. I don't look too good lately. My force-power when lifting weights is also
very weak. I think the constant stress
of trying to figure out what is right for me to do is weakening me--but I must
keep going. Quitting would crush me.
885.
What
do you have to do today?
I always stock up on chores
to do because they make me feel active and effectual. Yet they are usually expendable. Grocery shopping is needed. My other chores include waxing my car to
spruce it up for resale, getting a haircut, going to the Art Institute (also
called the Minneapolis Institute of Arts), perhaps working on my website a
little. I also have a sporting
engagement in the evening. It is also my
day to lift weights though I feel like rollerblading too. Fair enough?
886.
Are
you deadlocked between childhood and adulthood?
Primarily I feel good if I
feel I am doing what is expected of me, such as taking care of my nuclear
family members and friends. I am unclear
whether this is a child's view of life, an adult's view, a sick view, or a
healthy view. I cannot say I'm yet
accustomed to letting my nuclear family take care of itself, themselves. I feel horrifically obligated.
887.
Do
you think you just have to go for yogic calm and let your new, free, adult
consciousness grow by itself?
Oh that is very
accurate. I can't force it. I've always tried to force it, to force the
growth. The growth of my genius and all
its aspects--mental health, sexuality, emotional security, independence, artistic
skill. The reality is that it has to
grow by itself, at its own pace, and I cannot force it. The more I try to force myself to grow up the
less I actually can grow, because I'm so stressed and distorted. As a child in a co-dependent setting laced with
low-level but persistent abuse and neglect, I learned how to lie--to act well-adjusted, happy, and
grown-up. That act was what was expected
of me and to withhold it got me in trouble--it still does. That's why I reject my family and old
friends. They were psychotic and
extremely harmful to me.
888.
Now
that you are thirty-five and have your own apartment, can you finally try to
start growing up and healing up?
I hope so, if I can keep
practicing not just acting
grown-up. I get so worried that I'll
never have a girlfriend, never get published, never get a good life. I guess I just have to be patient. Yet I get so confused. I feel like maybe I could fix it up with my
nuclear family somehow. I just hate the
guilt. It seems greedy, evil, prideful,
satanic, and vainglorious to try to be capable and happy without bringing all
my good progress back to my nuclear family to give them. I know that's so sick but to me it feels
normal. I also feel guilty for not going
to support groups anymore. I feel like I
don't respect them so it's a lie for me to go.
I don't respect social relationships that one cannot question openly but
has to just accept as good no matter what bad crap you see going on. Good and necessary too.
889.
Is
Genius 2000 the product of a co-dependent, bald, thirty-five-year-old
semi-virgin who only earns about thirty thousand per year at a clerical job?
It certainly is. That's a badge of honor too by the way. People always wanted G2K to be some kind of
Golden Boy smash hit record. Especially
young people like their idols to soar high on fleeting success, then crash and
burn. I don't get why this is. People love to see celebrities get excoriated
and mangled. It's like cyclic abuse--you
can abuse me, but I'll get my revenge. I
know that I've often liked heroes I thought would take care of me, who really
understood me and were fighting for my interests. Yet those were mostly rock musicians who I
felt that way about, and now I realize my interests benefit very little from
either listening to rock music or from what rock musicians accomplish in the
world. So, I think they were mainly just
hustling me out of my time. "Desert
Places" rocks harder, too.
890.
Would
you like to forgive yourself for breaking free from family guilt, artistic
guilt, and social guilt?
Philip Larkin writes in one
of his many poems "virtue is social," and he finds this kind of
oppressive. (I also like what Larkin
said about how he objects "to this myth-kitty business, which I rather lay
at the door of Eliot and Pound, because for one, you've got to have read
everything and have this extreme erudition, and because it fills poems full of
dead spots." I like to hear someone
with an honest, honorable, decent criticism of the Holies in whatever
sphere.) I get feelings like virtue is
social too. How can I be good if my
social sphere tells me I'm no good? My
family tells me I'm no good if I don't act my role in the co-dependent charade
of lies. My generational counterparts
prefer college radio and pseudo-intellectual anti-Americanism. So, to get friends and dates one has to first
and foremost accept those basic aesthetic and political philosophies of
value. However, they are
meretricious. I reject them.
891.
What
if the young social set removes its affection and anointing from you--won't you
go into obscurity?
They don't really like anyone
anyway, they just like to exercise the pseudo-power of "making and
breaking" their favorites. That's
what the youth market in aesthetics revels in, in the making and breaking of
their playthings. They are, as Browning
wrote, fools, for "so a fool finds mirth, makes a thing and mars it, till
his mood changes and off he goes!"
They like to set up heroes to amuse them, like rock musicians, because
the game is that the rock musician will give them something or gain something
for them if they cheer it on, follow its banner, sacrifice for it, do what it
says. But it's all fake. In fact their favorite pleasure is to see the
hero broken and mangled for its luxury.
It's a sick process. I think I'm
here to set it right, somehow--I guess by just avoiding it, success is revenge.
892.
Do
you want young people to dislike you?
Essentially I don't want
fools to like me. Blake wrote,
"Welcome the contempt of a fool. It
is a kingly crown!" That's how I feel. I hate that I'm so desperate for sex that I
can be controlled in my very most fundamental value system by women with good
sexy figures. That's the part I can't
tolerate, having my artistic future development ruined because some women seem
so sexually desirable. It's my own fault
for idealizing them and building them up into some extreme peak experience that
can change me. I've got to get free of
that enslavement to the idea of sexy women.
It's garbage, that addiction. The
women aren't to blame, they're just like anyone else though of course just as
bad as anyone else or worse often because they have power. Yet ultimately I decide whether to let my
sexual desperation control me. It's so
sickening, I hate it.
893.
How
does your covetousness of sexy women degrade your artistic development and
life?
It changes all my emotions
and my value system and throws me off track so I can't work, concentrate,
develop, or make decisions. The idea of sexy women takes over in my mind
as the greatest supreme value in life. I
then get enormously conflicted whether writing is a form of self-hate, because
sexy women don't come of it for me.
Perhaps the best path is not to care at all about sexy women one way or
another. That's a good plan I think. There's no need even to dwell on it. It doesn't matter one bit that I'm still a
virgin, or semi-virgin.
894.
Is
your wrist absolutely humming with pain from carpal tunnel, and numb?
It is. Perhaps I just physically can't write for
several hours per day. It can't be good
for me that this carpal tunnel is so savage.
Yet I want to express my genius-potential, grow, develop. I can't keep denying it. Perhaps I have to though.
895.
Is it
OK to read poems, i.e. to use graven images?
The question of graven images
is the key question in human history and the central issue at hand in
exogenetic evolution i.e. civilization.
People don't understand the dangers of graven images. Even poems and plays are dangerous. The key point is to use the graven images but
not to worship them. Don't get swindled
by the object-ness of the image or poem.
That's how the thieves of genius get you addicted to their drugs.
896.
Is
everything anyone may have to say worth listening to?
It's worth it for them to
listen to it, i.e. people should listen to themselves. But not for the other people to listen. That's why esoteric private space is so
crucial for the growth of genius. If
you're dependent on other people listening to you, i.e. giving you their space,
you can never really grow, because they physically cannot give away their
space. One has to have and use one's
own, esoteric space.
897.
Is
this book valuable to people who want to find better success in helping and
growth for their own genius?
I think so. One of the worst enemies of the growth of
your own genius is your own mind, what I call your own False Genius. Your False Genius is the one you make or
allowed yourself to adopt in order to either protect yourself from abuse or to
commit abuse. It's basically a reptilian
rape-and-murder-based genius that operates on high-stress, fast-cycle amygdala
waves. These waves take over the body
and intellect via the hormones, heart rate, concious chatter or
"chitta-vrtti," and so forth.
The long, slow brainwave-cycles associated with calmness, peace, and
wellness are where you can begin to achieve growth of your genius or rather to
let it successfully occur. Genius 2000
is not the product of a growth process but the process itself,
irreducible. You can learn to get away
from bad relationships and your False Genius or fake-golem-genius if you try,
and this book can help you learn how to try.
898.
Does
Genius 2000 currently consist primarily of Max Herman's False Genius?
Not exactly. The False Genius in your consciousness, what
might be called the Instrumental Genius (akin to what Adorno called
"instrumental reason," the goal of which is to control and bring
about, i.e., to exercise power via "means"), always gets stronger the
more you try to get away from it or get past it. As I tried to do the real, healthy, decent,
and good Genius 2000 I got further tangled in my False Genius. Because I still had a lot of destructive
patterns which I in part perpetuated so as to throw off a repellent stink from
G2K. One truly has to keep the ravening
hordes away. Therefore, no, or maybe
not. Of course I could be wrong
regardless of how I answered. There is a
great deal of good non-instrumental content in G2K however already, and it's
trying to self-regulate and get the crap out.
Create a vocabulary, teach people to fish, calm the confusion.
899.
Don't
you want to be normal, and regular, and play guitar songs, put your CD on the
web for marketing, enjoy being an entrepreneur, date uncodependently?
Oh who wouldn't. It's all good. I'm not even sure what I'm working at. Being in control? Surrendering to a Supreme Being? Accusing people? Forgiving them? All's I know is it's boring to always think
about all the bad things going on. I
just want to feel cool and accepted. But
I don't like to pay the price. So I'm
going to cut ties.
900.
Are
you going to let the liberal pseudo-intellectuals, college radio people, sexy
women, your nuclear family, your religion (the Art World), and your nation (the
Democratic Party) just take care of themselves and stew in their own juice?
Yes I'd like that. I'm halfway to death now, and I figure half
my life for them and half for me. They
can stew in their own juice. All they
want is for me to say I like them, but I won't.
901.
Was
the earlier G2K too anti-America and anti-corporate, i.e. anti-O.S.O. liberal
democracy, to be left up?
I think it's pro-O.S.O.
liberal democracy. That liberal
democracy under the O.S.O. I was really
only trying to illustrate forcefully, effectually, that liberal democracy
without O.S.O. was the worse option as art would be less likely to survive
under it. I call it "art" but
I really mean sentience-in-harmony-with-spacetime-energy-matter. Art works are concretized examples of
it. But how can you have art without
objects? I can't answer that, if you
don't know.
902.
Isn't
all art just force and propaganda?
Some say it's all propaganda
and force. I guess I don't know. Nietzsche and Foucault say it's all force,
that meekness and mildness are a lie. I
guess there's an artistic, peaceful side of life and then a violent, greedy side. Machiavelli says it can be either, or
both. I guess I don't really believe I
can leave the fighting alone. I want to
though.
903.
Is it
possible to have a gratifying, sustainable life without fighting and raping for
pleasure, to aggrandize yourself?
It's unclear whether that
peaceful state of humanity is a lie invented to enforce obedience or a truth we
can rarely realize--it could be both, in fact.
I bet it is. If people are
degraded, poor, traumatized, and ignorant, only the rape-and-murder reptile
brain functions. The slow-cycle Zen
brain stays switched off when one is in aggression-survival mode. Getting to the reverse is the task now--and
that doesn't mean prohibiting
pre-emptive war in protection of the O.S.O.
Pre-emptive war is the only viable defense the O.S.O. has against
terrorism and geopolitical disruptor-powers in the battle for the future. Pre-emptive war falls into the category
"the best defense is a good offense."
It's almost like liberal pseudo-intellectuals don't want their values to prevail--they just want to criticize the
904.
Wasn't
G2K 1999-2002 primarily a sandbagging tactic?
Oh yes it was. I was sandbagging, which is a poker strategy
to beef up the pot by acting like you don't have a hand. As Taoism says, always use deception in war. "Deception is the essence of war"
is how Sun-Tzu phrases it. I really
don't care to get into it however. I'm
sick of it. Everything makes me
sick. I can't decide whether to talk
straight and tell the truth, lie to aggrandize my power, or just cancel this
entire art-making deal.
905.
Is
G2K founded on the idea that there can be harmony in one's soul and therefore
harmony between the individual and the polis, and long-term viability for
humanity?
G2K is completely dependent
on the truth that when achieving Zen states, the violent self-centered reptile
brain shuts off. This per James Austin's
Zen and the Brain. If this is false, so is G2K--completely.
906.
Is
the Zen brain, the "higher" one, the slower-cycle brain that comes
into play when the reptile brain shuts off, the mode that allows for G2K to
occur?
Yes. That is why the Zen hypothesis is so
crucial. If humans can only operate on
the kill-rape reptile basis then there is no hope for civilization, i.e. for
exogenetic evolution, because we would be in that case a strictly
endogenetically evolving species.
907.
Is
the reptile brain the False Genius brain?
By my logic yes. I'm saying that the hero cut off from the
natural cycling-back into and through the polis is really just a regression
into the reptile brain. Being a
technological species, it was easy for humans to conquer our biological enemies
in the world. However, to survive our
own attacks on ourselves, we have to accomplish Zen states of balance. These states are also described fully in
Judeo-Christianity and Islam.
908.
Is
Genius 2000 therefore monotheistic?
I think so. It proposes one core principle to be directed
at. The core principle is of course
"Genius 2000," which could be conceived as a syncretism of Science,
Art, Religion, Economics, and Politics--the Mighty Five Elements of the human
civilized Universe. One could say Genius
2000 is my description of the new Primary Law of human exosomatic evolution, of
maker-ness. It's a new God. It's not exclusive of the old Gods. As Jesus said, "I have come not to
destroy them (the old prophets) but to fulfill them." Yet it may be thought that Genius 2000 is not
monotheistic, because it doesn't syncretize the five Monodeities--Art,
Politics, Economics, Religion, and Science--into one Law of Human Existence but
just plops them all together in a sophistic basket woven of jargon and
half-truths. The question here is
whether G2K can be experienced, understood, and acted upon as a unity and not a
multiplicity. I think it can. I propose that I'm doing it right now.
909.
Is
Adorno and Horkheimer's short book Dialectic
of Enlightenment incredibly important to G2K?
It's focal. I had inklings of the critique of
instrumental reason in 1993 when I wrote "Shakespeare's Ghost" and
saw the inversions in heroic purpose, the negative feedback looping that could
occur. I looked up "plot" in
the dictionary, and also "Art."
"Art" comes from the Indo-European "joint," as in
"arthritis." It also connects
to arm, army, artist, and that is how I got the essential idea of
instrumentality, of a weapon--it's not an end in itself. I got that idea from Hamlet in 1993. So it was early on. "Literary Change" about the graven
image and the Second Commandment was 1994.
Both of these were key, one
910.
Are
you unlikely to make peace and friendliness with the people you've combatted
with so far within this book?
I'm not ready to forgive
certain people. I forgive
911.
Why
is it important to you to protect the future?
I think for some people it
has to do not with crude self-interest but with the need for internal
consonance with the Good. If I have a
faculty developed enough to perceive the Good, and if I appreciate this
principle in my life, I'm discordant against myself if I neglect it where I see
it in need of protection. So it has to
do with integrity, being able to sleep OK at night, of having a clear
conscience, of being what Joyce called "the undiscovered conscience of my
race." Socrates expressed this by
saying one who knows what virtue is cannot help but practice it. It's not that I'll be alive in a hundred
years, but artistically I can perceive obligations that the future projects for
me. It would be like standing on a
ship's deck, and seeing a drowning person, and not throwing the life-ring to
them; even if ten other people on the deck also see them and don't throw it, it
doesn't mean you can also not throw it.
Having a bad conscience can ruin your life.
912.
How
can people tell when you are being the healthy G2K-maker-interpreter and when
you have gone sour?
I guess by the smell, as one
might say. The overall impression. Yet even then it might be just a frightening,
grim part of life I'm describing. But
that question has made me infinitely depressed.
I can't be sure I can go any further with this G2K deal. It's like a bottomless pit.
913.
What
if you just really and truly stopped caring about right and wrong, as stated in
the Taoist poem from Alan Watts' The Way
of Zen, the very most ancient Zen poem?
I guess I'm afraid I'll lose
the capacity to talk about good and evil, and to steer people to protect the
O.S.O. and protect the future. But
protecting the future is a very touchy business, similar to open-brain
surgery. One can easily over-protect if
one is an amateur. The
914.
Could
Genius 2000 function better as just your own personal network, that is, Max
Herman's own internal network--an esoteric network--rather than a regular
network for a lot of people to use?
That seems plausible. Certainly, the baggage I'm carrying is
untenable. I couldn't convince pee to be
yellow. No one would ever follow my lies
and pedantic nonsense. It's like a
neurotic New Age workshop for intellectual organization skills. "No!" as Eliot wrote,
"I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was
meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or
two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy
tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool."
All my reasons for Genius 2000--launching
CWII, my vanity--are moot now.
915.
Is it
hopeless to try to get liberals to support the O.S.O.?
I think it is. They are just too ignorant and
prejudiced. Even though I was raised
liberal and educated liberal, I'm not obligated to convert all other liberals
to sanity and decency. They are just the
great mass of average people who just want to act self-righteous and couldn't
care less about responsibility. I can
let them stew in their own juice--I think that's morally permissible--and just
take care of myself.
916.
Don't
the liberals have it in their power though to destroy the O.S.O.?
I think maybe they do. In which case those of us who can see that
have an obligation to fight them, which is why I'm willing to insult and
degrade Noam Chomsky--I mean really wear him out. Reduce him to a laughingstock, an
embarassment even to his own kids and his wife, who will say "Gosh how
could you be so lame?"
917.
Would
you be willing to pillory Howard Zinn too?
Sure, but he's a tough
hombre--he might scuttle me. I'd take
him on though. First I'd try to see if
he'd try to defend Marxism or socialism.
I'd roast his carcass one way or another, I guarantee. Then on to Al Franken and finally Michael
Moore. I'll crucify them all. I'll run them all out of town on a rail. All the liberals.
918.
So
have you really gone insane then?
I guess so. Either that, or I've found my voice. Only one thing sickens me more than ignorant
liberals--and that's ignorant conservatives.
Fat pigs and dimwits. Oh it's
just a litany. Yet I can stick to my own
business. But am I obligated to subdue
everyone, the left and the right, every man jack? A full-on power-grab of all the intellectual
power on earth? Perhaps some very humble
folk art is better. Or secret espionage.
919.
Isn't
it obvious why no agent will want to represent this book, why G2K is inherently
unmarketable?
I think it is clear. The truth is unmarketable. Only lies are marketable. No one is going to try to buy wisdom. Or will they?
Maybe I'm just feeling demoralized.
I am getting the depressive zaps and tingles and starting to panic. Oh well.
It's hard to try to do stuff.
920.
Is it
true a mind divided against itself cannot stand?
I think so. On one side, I feel obligated to do
nothing. I really can't tell what to
do. I'd like to sell this book and have
a great life but that seems hopeless.
Maybe it just seems hopeless for now, and after I get over the guilt of
rejecting my family--finally--it won't anymore.
It would be good to just soft-pedal everything so I don't freak
out. Freaking out causes complications.
921.
Are
you going to try to take it easy on yourself for awhile?
I think I need that. The panickiness seems writerly in a cliché
sense but it bodes ill. As Shakespeare
wrote, "that way madness lies."
I'll crap out on these quanta if I go insane like that. I want to try to stay out from under my
paroxetine too. I can talk about genius,
Genius 2000, et cetera. I don't have to
fix the confusing part of it. Or do
I? Gracious sakes.
922.
Do
you accept completely that self-interest is the only way to go?
Yes I do. I can't save anyone, and I'm not obligated to
punish anyone. I'd like to comfort
everyone and make things easy and perfect but I can't. I lack the ability to deal with "leading
the masses," which I joked about being able to do in the Video. I joked I am good at leading the masses. How humorous.
I wish I'd never made that damn sick video or even done G2K at all. It's just mentally ill crap. Horsecrap.
923.
How
can you manage the depression of going back to your clerical job?
Good question--I have no
idea. I'm in free-fall. It's doubtful that I can survive 1077 more of
these. I'm gradually getting sicker and
sicker. I don't want to quit but I may have
to. Oh Christ. I'm coming apart. I have to stop it, turn the tide. I've gone insane. Now comes the real work, the power of G2K is
being completely tested. As Browning
wrote, "Childe Roland to the
924.
Will
you be OK if you just breathe and let the madness pass over you?
I think I will. I'm lost to family, society, and the artworld
now. I'm just a blank empty genius,
hollow, devoid of attachment to any goals or causes. I'm unable to call my God by the Christian or
Taoist names so I call it "Genius 2000." Now I'll find out if my God is a strong God,
the true God, or a false god. Now I will
find out for sure.
925.
Does
Genius 2000 ask you to breathe properly while you scribble?
Yes it does. I need oxygen to avoid panic while writing. I'm going to let my nuclear family go into
oblivion, I shall never see them or care about them again. They are just like any other random people
across the globe. Those relationships
are completely done. Let's not gild the
lily. I shall only go there, to that
evil house, one more time to pick up my things.
Then I shall curse them and break all contact, forever. It's what they deserve. They're evil.
926.
Are
you going to break all ties to TV and popular music, and movies?
Yes, all that kitsch. I reject it all. It and the people who like it can all go stew
in their own juice. I don't care if
people call me insane. Go ahead and call
me that. I don't care. I can work at my job and get my money even
though I've cut all ties. Even to
contemporary writers my age--I reject you all.
927.
Are
you actually willing to completely cut ties from your nuclear family?
I don't see any other way to
go. Either I owe them something, or I
owe them nothing. By my calculation I
owe them nothing. And it's imperative
that I survive, that Genius 2000 survive to save the species. There's no more time for another G2K to come
along. I'm the one, the only one.
928.
Do
you wish you could go back to the bars, getting crocked, telling people about
G2K and trying to get them to react in a usable, exploitable way?
I'd sooner murder an infant
in its cradle [Blake]. My artistic
growth is what matters now, not marketing hijinks. Plus the marketing side of G2K is already, as
they say, conclusively done. Everyone
knows about it. The question now is how
to make it any good, anything that contributes.
So, as to going out to bars, getting crocked, begging people to send me
an email, I don't miss it. Even the self-deprecating
part is redundant now.
929.
If
the purpose of Genius 2000 is not to help anyone or to make money, why do it?
It could be that it's like
Taoism. I have to do Genius 2000 to keep
myself calm and in harmony with the laws of life. Or do I?
I'd be happier not caring. The
disease may be in thinking there is any need or purpose at all for any
art. Or maybe that I need to quit
writing for a couple of days. But I
won't.
930.
What
is it then that enlightened beings can share with each other, or with those
still stuck below?
That's a crazy way of looking
at it, but I don't know. Harp music I
guess. They can talk about the celestial
music of joy and love, sing songs of praise, they can do whatever. I'm just barely past initial decisions. I'm getting impatient. I need to calm down and breathe. Breathe.
931.
Are
you getting impatient for inner peace, artistic growth, and as Wordsworth wrote
"abundant recompense"?
I think so. I'm not wanting to go through the grieving
process but I need to. I need to give
myself pity and forgiveness, caring time, to absorb the loss of my family and
social comforts. It hurts to be totally
isolated. The anger just wears me out if
I try to make it fix the pain and sadness by revenge. There's no use in blame. My schools just took my borrowed money and
set me to the side. My family was
co-dependent, poisonous. The Art World
chewed me up and spit me out, then crapped on me. All my violent anger at them just kept me
confused and tangled up longer. I even
thought I was saving the world, and that infection is still with me. I got infected by that idea. It will take luck and massive labors to get
myself right again. All I can do is be
patient and let the poison gradually metabolize out, all that "I'm
great" ugliness.
932.
Is
your patience really the key then, for your personal survival?
I think so. I was going crazy before with anxiety. Sure I'm messed up, and sure the world
is. All the fancy words and art-world
scheming in history can't change that.
So for me, for my survival, and thus for whatever decent art I might
hope to make one day, I would do well to learn patience. Patience and breathing. When I write like this all day I hunch over
and my breathing gets shallow. Then I
get scared as all get out. Patience,
patience, patience, and breathing, breathing, breathing.
933.
Can
you be patient and breathe about not having any artistic form or scholarly form
to this book?
I think so. I'm aware it's unlikely that I can create an
aesthetic result with no aesthetic form other than the one I'm using. Maybe I can just create a quiet, still pool
of calmness and breathing however. Or, a
bit of conversation about the history of humanity on earth, quietly.
934.
Do
you feel sad today?
I sure do. Maybe I shouldn't mention it. I feel sad, hurt, and extremely alone. I also feel guilty and "in the
wrong," deserving of punishment.
Yet intellectually I think these feelings may just be passing ghosts and
that actually I'm doing nothing wrong. I
am going to try again to be patient and to breathe. Just breathing, when I can't bear to think
about anything else. Patient breathing.
935.
Do
you also want to stop giving brain-time to the negative ruminations about your
choices?
Negative visualization during
play can bring failure. Positive
visualization can bring success. Patient
breathing. I will be OK. I can get through the terrors with patient
breathing. Yet do I even want to succeed? I doubt whether my boycott of rock music and
my family is morally acceptable. What is
the minimum allowable contact with one's family, if they are dying to see you
and strangle the life out of you? Is it
never?
936.
What
are some positive affirmations you can tell yourself?
It's OK to be alone. It's OK not to date. It's OK that you did bad things when you were
actively drinking. It's OK that you quit
the 12-step groups. It's OK that you
want to get away from your family.
You'll be OK. This book will be
OK. You can cut out and change the
horrible, embarassing, degrading parts.
You'll be OK. It's OK not to
decide about leaving the website up until this book is done, or indefinitely. Patient breathing and calmness will really
make you strong and able to let the fears fade away and not be ruled by them.
937.
Will
your family and friends be OK without you?
Sure, they'll be OK. They're hurt very badly for a while but I
think they'll be OK. I'm really scared
they won't get over it though, and by staying away I'll be guilty of a
horrific, unforgivable crime. I'm afraid
to break ties but the ties were killing me, they were so degrading.
938.
Would
you immensely like to take all of G2K off of the internet, stop writing this
book, and just cancel it all forever or at least indefinitely?
I would. I'm hurting.
I'm panicked, worn-down, and very tired.
I've realized that I have no holistic aesthetic vision for G2K, no
artistry. I looked at a few recent
quanta and the anxiety is tremendous.
I'm lost. I'm scattered. There are fifty basics of emotional survival
and wellness that I don't do. I want to
go back to my parents, and let them degrade me with guilt so I can feel OK
again. I also want to stay away from
them until I no longer feel guilty about protecting myself. I feel like writing about them, my family, so
all the world knows I deserve to cut ties with them. But even if I told all, it wouldn't prove I
shouldn't forgive them all the more and work all the harder to "fix
it." I can't even swear, I'm trying
to be decent. I hate this.
939.
How
about not mentioning all the impossible topics?
I bet that is in game theory
as "no-play zones" or "mine fields" or something. Taboo.
I'd forgotten to mention having read Wittgenstein's
Poker in 2004. He talked,
Wittgenstein, about how "That whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must
remain silent." Taboo,
esoteric. I am really in need of some of
that, a lot of that. Forget talking
about the Impossible Topics: my family, early/drunk G2K, sex, alcoholism, the
war, politics, religion, art. If I could
do that….
940.
The
idea is it's OK not to talk about the war, or politics, or economics, or any of
those taboo/mined/exhausted no-play topics?
There's an idea. I was so miserable last night I swear if I
hadn't slept well I'd be back under paroxetine right now. I felt completely decimated last night. Annihilated.
Now, maybe I can learn.
941.
What
if the old G2K keeps on talking about the taboo topics as you try to stop now?
That might be OK. I'd like to take down the old site. Some of the images are violations of
copyright (scanned images of candy wrappers etc.) and most of it is just plain
crappy. I do have a tendency to
"mar" or take down in disgust things I've done well and I fear doing
that to the good bits in G2K so far.
Constant fear. Frozen with
fear! Frozen! Frozen!
942.
So
you'll take the old G2K site down?
No, I'll leave it up. Or, maybe not. I'm delaying that decision. It's taboo.
It's killing me. I can't
think. Maybe it's OK to get disgusted by
my own work sometimes and burn it. I've
burnt reams of writing. Yet there is
also my fear of being successful, fear that success will get me killed, so I
put my light under a bushel. I do.
943.
What does
the Yoga book say?
It says to breathe and be
patient. I sometimes try to quote too
many sources and spin arguments and "make a case." It's tiring.
There is also a tendency to focus on myself and either boast or
gut-spill, whine, cry, lash out--a real emotional fish-out-of water. Then to accuse myself of bad names, condemn
myself. Many habits. Perhaps some good ones? I wish I wasn't dead-set against ever
thinking well of myself. It's so
exhausting not to. What are some good
things about me? I have a job, I have an
apartment, I can breathe. Breathe
breathe breathe. I'm selling my extra
car. I regret stuff a lot. I've read some books. I've never made love to a woman. Oops, that is gut-spilling. I must breathe. Breathe.
Breathe. Breathe. I won't talk about the minefields. I don't want to get hurt in them. I just am doing my thing, doing my art. I guess if you're pure and devoid of
revenge-feelings you can sit out the war with a clear conscience.
944.
Would
you like not to talk about your job either?
I'd like not to talk, write,
or think about any of the things that make me sad or angry. I want to heal and grow. I don't want to think about all the bad
stuff. Later I'll go back over this book
and erase all the bad stuff. I get so
guilty-feeling, I don't know what to do.
But if it's OK, I'd like not to write about the bad stuff for awhile.
945.
Is
the sun shining on your watercolor?
Yes, it's a blue watercolor
that says "Genius 2000" and then has squiggles all around the
letters. It's on large paper I got from
my old temp job at the architecture firm, back in 2000. Sarcasm makes me feel tired, guilty,
hopeless, and sick. The sun is shining
some now. I can see gray roof shingles
outside my window, which faces south.
Almost all roof shingles. Then a
bigger tree on the left, and a smaller one on the right--just the tops of them
above the top of the roof. Then just the
sky. Shingles, treetop one, treetop two,
sky. That's it.
946.
Would
you like it if you took out a lot of quanta from before that were depressing?
Any quanta that add to my
fear, sadness, or anger I'd like to take out.
But realistically we can't just "take out" things from the
past that we don't like. If they are
depressing or make us angry, we still can't take them out. I guess I don't have to take them out. I'll wait until I finish the rest before I
take any out. Then I can look at the big
picture.
947.
Does
it work to rapidly cover up bad things by adding lots of new things to cover
them up?
I don't think it works very
well for me. I haven't found anything I
can add a lot of rapidly, that doesn't have its own drawbacks. Letting the bad effects of the bad things
subside just takes time, quiet, patience, and breathing, and maybe other
things. You can't just cover them up though
by adding a lot of new things and new effects.
948.
Is
G2K really all about marketing?
You could compare G2K to a
brand name, where there really isn't any other product except the brand. Branding is a very important part of
marketing and of capitalism. It's
strange that "branding" and "brand" refer to the practice
of branding cattle. One forgets that use
of the word. Branding, branding,
branding. At my workplace branding is
considered very important. I'm grateful
I have a job.
949.
Is it
unpleasant and risky to be "too clever by half"?
I think so. If you're too clever you can create problems
because cleverness doesn't always solve anything. For example, if patience is what is needed
then cleverness just gets in the way or obstructs. Patience and Cleverness are like two
competing gods. I think monotheism
humanized a great deal of formerly divine qualities. In pagan cosmology there is a God of Wisdom,
but in monotheism we ask for it as a gift from the divine to the humans.
950.
Do
you wish you could forget all the bad things you've seen on TV, and all the bad
things you've seen people do to each other?
I'd like to forget. The bad things make life ugly and
depressing. I want peace and quiet and
good things. I want to sell my extra
car, my Karmann Ghia. It's extraneous
for me now and I'm even getting bored with it.
It used to make me feel like I was special, had flair, and enjoyed
life. I'd like to forget all the TV I've
seen yet I can barely stop thinking about it.
951.
Do
you like to talk and write about rock music and
No, I'd like to forget about
those as well. I'd like to remember
higher art, not kitsch all the time. I'd
like to remember Paradise Lost, or
great novels. I've read very few
novels. I wish I had a genre to work in,
skill in the basics of a genre so I could accumulate my writing into a greater
aesthetic whole. I guess G2K is a genre.
952.
Is
not knowing what to do one of the most uncomfortable states of mind?
I find it highly
uncomfortable. Yet Yoga instructs us
that one must be able to sit and do nothing.
Alan Watts also talks about this in his book The Way of Zen. Perhaps I
have erred in trying to accomplish something with these quanta. I've tried in a sense to get an overall
structure, a goal, message, or product. I'm uneasy with the idea this book has no
message or purpose. I often try to
define G2K by its effects on other things like Economics, Religion, Art,
Politics, or Science--what I call the Five Elements of Civilization.
953.
Are
your references to ancient Greeks you've studied--for example--contradictory to
the goal of not striving, not trying to prove something or achieve a goal?
Zen teaches us not to strive
for goals, but to achieve peace within.
If Genius 2000 had a goal or was a goal, it wouldn't compare to
Zen. Genius 2000 may be more a state,
balanced and harmonious, than a goal--even the goal of balance and
harmony. If we treat those states as
goals we are already in error.
954.
Is
the purpose of writing these G2K quanta to write them without any purpose?
It could be. Negative judgmentalism is not the path to
goodness. Perhaps these quanta have a
purpose but not one beyond themselves.
I've tried to get together a long chain of ideas like Horkheimer and
instrumental reason, things of this nature.
Yet the calm emptiness of what
955.
What
if Max Herman is just a scary nightmare I'm praying to wake up from?
I've created a persona so I
could do marketing. Art requires an
artist and a product. I sometimes think
I'm amusing myself by talking about the war, and how it's a necessary war and I
want the good side to win. I get
agitated, very agitated and sad writing about war. I want to be in a Zen state of peace.
956.
What
happens to you vis-à-vis Genius 2000 if you build yourself up as a traditional,
successful hero-genius?
The law of Dike, ancient
Greek for "just proportion," calls for your downfall over time. You need to fall back into the soil. I am getting very angry and frustrated by
mentioning heroism. I have an incredible
amount of emotional anger that I still can't articulate my thoughts on
heroism. And that I'm not
respected.
957.
Is
the critique of Genius a critique of heroism?
Yes but I like heroism. The problem is when it's too clever by
half. I'm trying to be a big hero by
articulating a theory of heroism. History
is grounded in heroism. The hero has the
active force acting from within out into the world. The gods act through the hero. Christianity is a unique type of
heroism. Heroic culture relates to
Genius as a cultural definition. In
tragedy Dike is why Ate knocks the hero down again.
958.
Do
you want people to have a regard for your theory of history, heroism, genius,
and syncretism?
Yes I do. I want to be the daring hero who gets to the
core, for a set time and purpose, of what is heroic. I thereby want to point out the transience of
heroism. I want to get to the key point
that heroism isn't meant to be permanent.
I want to be a temporary hero who helps articulate awareness of the
transitory nature of heroism.
959.
Doesn't
it make your mental health deteriorate for you to want something?
I've been shitted on so
constantly for so many decades whenever I tried to articulate something that
now I feel sick even when wanting to want something. My parents were so co-dependent and still are
that any attempt by me to articulate anything is hated and belittled and mocked
by them. They're the dirty pigs who
tried to tell me G2K is mental illness, crap.
960.
Is
this two-thousand-quanta composition a bad way to talk about heroism, write
about heroism?
It could be. It has very little texture or structure to
develop the thesis of transitional transitory transient heroism in. There is little or no structure. It's driving me crazy. I want a structure, with an introductory
essay, fully adequate research, an assessment of the current literature on
heroism. I've got to be crazy to think
no one thought of this already--Dike and all, dynamic balance or just
proportion of hero and polis. Now I've
gotten myself anxious again. I'll just
keep on trying calmly to breathe and discuss the issue: whether it is possible
or makes sense for me to try to articulate myself as a genius (conventionally
famous and listened to) in order to get across the idea to the world that
genius is a transient thing if viewed as a cultural or economic
value-locus. It's so complicated, how to
write about genius.
961.
Does
Nietzsche's idea that you can only will "forward" have a lot of
implications for your guilt feelings, desires to go back and "fix"
your family, and not editing any of these quanta?
Perhaps it does. It does if it's true. Why can't you go back and fix something
that's broken? Maybe you can fix some
things but only forward; you can't go back and make them never have been
broken.
962.
Do
you still require a lot of improvement in patience and breathing, while you
work and while you write?
I still have a very great
deal of room for improvement. I say this
as a hopeful, humble recognition that I can get better. My patience and my breathing. Patience does not mean passive sloth or
numbness however. Hence I still have got
to write. Patience while I write, so that I don't get so deoxygenated and panicky and
full of depression-zaps, is I think what I need to keep going. Patience and breathing. Breathe.
963.
Has
the verb "to articulate" become more significant in the last couple
of days for you?
Yes, I think
"articulate" is an important verb.
"Express" seems to connote a fully-formed delivery of
something. If I articulate something I
think the spatial implications are different.
"Express" implies that the thing has formed and primarily
needs to go from within to without, inside to outside. "To articulate" seems only to imply
for me, in my mood, to give detail and "to make work" by giving
"articulation" i.e. joint-movement.
"Articulation" is an important change of emphasis for me from
"express," "develop," and "fulfill." To articulate one's genius, the genius one is
designated and able to articulate. Yet
breathing is still the founding basis--I've already had panicky twinges today,
this early morn, about the future. I
worry whether I'll be grouchy at work or need to make nice again with my
family. Ex-friends less so, they'll do
fine.
964.
Are
you trying to articulate a cosmology for yourself to go by?
I'm really working for the
bare minimum. I think I'm starting from
zero. People say I'm a copycat and an
expropriator. Well, I guess they can't
hurt me unless I let them. I am trying
to find a cosmology of genius within which I can grow and survive. I keep my books around me, on yoga, Zen, my
Norton Two, Aeschylus, the Bible, and so forth, to remind me--things I can
navigate by. I keep my healthy food in
the fridge, I avoid tobacco, I try to breathe.
Doing watercolor for some unknown reason, mainly to make myself feel
artistic and loose I guess. I'm trying
to have a cosmology to orient by so I don't just exhaust myself in useless
turning, in Maya "the round of illusion" as
965.
Is it
difficult for you to articulate your feelings about your parents, in part
because those feelings are taboo within your nuclear family dynamic?
Frankly, yes. I spend most of my time either hustling like
mad to be "a good boy," a "good son," something to make my
parents less miserable, or feeling intense guilt and self-contempt over having
failed to fix their misery. Yet in truth
they are miserable because they both came from broken homes, depression-era
broken homes, and never dealt in a constructive way with the abuse and neglect
they themselves have suffered. Instead,
they constructed a complex lie--a false overcoming of their own abusive
history--based on an idyllic, fake family, superficially respectable yet
internally infested with emotional neglect and sexual abuse. I owe it to myself, to society, and to the
species to get away from that poisonous harmful environment. I don't owe my sick parents any more slavery
and bondage. I've done more than
enough. I'm thirty-five.
966.
Doesn't
it violate your credo of avoiding harm to others when you write about bad
things people have done, to you or to others?
I suppose there are a million
rationalizations but factually it does go against it. The idea is a radical one, but it does say
one shouldn't publish anything bad about anyone else. At the most basic level, never write anything
about crimes done to you or that you know about or abuse committed against you
or that you know of. The idea is not to
talk publicly about what an abuser or criminal has done. Now this clearly makes no sense. Society has to have some means of discussing
and revealing crime and abuse. A total
lack of tattling would leave abusers and criminals too free for their own good
much less for society's good. The
question is, when. When to talk about it
and when to stay quiet. Quiet is for
when the danger is still present.
Talking about it is for later, when things are safe. Simple.
967.
What
about your fantasy that this book will cause nothing but good feelings?
Even Jesus said, "I
bring not peace but a sword." Blake
quoted that. I've gotten most of my
favorite biblical quotes from Blake, including Yes/No. In any case, Genius 2000 cannot just smooth
over everything, though as a former abuse victim that is my propensity and
bias. I'd like to write a book that, for
example, fixed all the criminals so they could all be released back into
society and never commit a crime again.
Clearly I can't do that. Many
people might say that it is still my obligation to make my high school, for
example, appear to have been this incredibly great place with no sexual abuse
or misconduct. Well factually that would
be a lie. If I ever did go back there,
I'd call for a show of hands: "who has encountered or knows about sexual
abuse or misconduct here at school?"
I won't name the school, because they're all the same.
968.
Are
you worried you'll have to go back and take out every quantum that talks about
bad things that were done?
I get worried but I'm not
scared. I can just throw this all in the
garbage anytime I want. I'm concerned to
make a fine book and that requires prudence, justice, temperance, and
fortitude. Did you know that after just
glancing at "My Heart Leaps Up" a few days ago, my decades-ago
memorization of it was completely rekindled so that today, when I saw a rainbow
in the spray under the
969.
What
is the difference about "articulation" that makes it so importantly
better than "expression" or "fulfillment" or even
"development"?
It may not be better. Yes as I was tossing fitfully in bed this
morning it occurred to me that "articulation" was the key to stopping
one of the endless rounds I'm in. I
dream now about work, about not being able to complete a basic form or
transaction, or what seems worse, not being able to explain how to complete a
form or task. This may be a castration
dream or a repressed-homosexuality dream, I don't know. It is however the case that I get bad dreams
about inconclusiveness and indecision.
"Articulation" seemed to calm that this morning and I fell
back to sleep. "Expression" is
too abrupt and revelatory, despite the genetic connotations, and
"fulfillment" speaks of desire or inevitability. "Articulation" is subtractive, like
carving away stone or burning away the plate with acid as Blake did. Articulation is functional, mechanical
even. Yet it leaves me the more human
because there's me, and then there's it.
970.
What
needs to be articulated?
I guess it's the rules, a set
of laws, or as in olden times myths or gods.
The regulations or articles of
how things are done, so that activity doesn't come to a halt. Human living bodies have to keep moving. We can't simply do nothing--even doing
absolutely nothing directed is a complete and comprehensive activity. To articulate something in the aesthetic
realm is to lay down rules of activity.
We are neither "expressing" something gestated within, like a
baby, nor "fulfilling" a predestined further nature out of a cruder
prior one; at least not these things only.
Articulation is the work of a technological species and its exogenetic
evolution. The evolution of humankind is
no longer endosomatic. We have to
articulate. If this is already someone
else's exciting art-theory, maker-ness-concept, I apologize for having
discovered it independently. You are probably a jackass I am going to have
to whip on now to keep you from humping my leg.
Or maybe you're great.
971.
Can
you be sure this whole book isn't a great mistake, irreversible and fatal?
No I can't. I can sense it's OK though. It will be OK and I'll be OK. I deserve good things to happen to me. I can breathe fully while I write, and sit up
straight. I can even go and reconcile
with people that I may have molested into being participants or contributors in
G2K so far. I can try to make it up to
them within reason. Maybe they are
fantastic artists, articulators, or actors just waiting for a little boost of
fashionable encouragement to articulate great genius. "Articulated genius," now there's a
good way of looking at it. So the answer
is that I can give myself a little optimism.
Of course most people hate my guts and would like to see me fail. But I don't care about them. They are just not going to be able to get
what they want, in that respect at least.
They'll never be able to live in a world that never had Genius 2000 in
it. Or me either.
972.
Won't
you be sad when this is almost over, when it's number 1972?
I sure will. Now's my chance to talk to all the people
through the medium of writing. I know
you've suffered and been traumatized, and I know it can be tough to continue
trusting in human goodness. Yet it does
exist. It has been articulated before,
the rules and procedures, and it can be articulated again. You'll be OK.
It takes committed effort, work, pluck, and luck, but you'll be OK.
973.
Do
you make nice pottery?
I think it's alright. I took pottery in high school from a very
good teacher (who despite not being abusive in any way, not even remotely, but
on the contrary extremely respectful and constructive of learning, was still
unable to eliminate all sexual
malfeasance from the high school). I
then took pottery again in 2004 when I quit smoking Winston Filters
full-flavor. Here's the pictures
(Pottery.html). I did number ten in
1987.
974.
If
aesthetic experience requires not primarily the evacuation of something inner
that needs to be outer, nor the consummation of a quasi-genetic predestiny, but
the establishment and practice of rules that keep the genius-flow going as the
skeleton holds open the veins and allows blood to flow, what are the articles
of G2K?
Ah splendidly consummated old
chap. "The articles," quoth 'a. Ripping fine.
In the case of G2K, the articles are the 2000. I know you might think that's insane but it's
true. The 2000 is the sum total set of
technological conditions in time, material conditions and even energy-conditions (as distinguished from the
energy itself, strictly speaking, though these are mutually co-shaping). The articles are also the rules for genius I
guess too, because the genius has to keep the rules going just like the veins
bring nutrients and so on to the bones through the marrow.
975.
Does
this relate to Blake's idea that Reason restrains and Energy creates?
I think it's fair. Genius is like flesh and 2000 is like
bone. Genius creates and 2000
restrains. That's a constructive
partnership of balanced contending forces, like the hero and the polis or the
human and the divine. The rule and the
player. Yoga is also about having a
rule, a controlled level. Yoga means
"yoke" or constraint, a way of properly harnessing the
life-energy. G2K aims to be a set of
rules, "a covenant, if you will" as I stated in the Video. The rules give proper form and shape to the
genius, both creating and conserving it.
I know this may sound ignorant, but it's not unlike letting the suction
tube at the dentist's breathe for you by keeping your nose open. Or like any other cycle one isn't used
to. Genius 2000 is the convergence of
the Genius and the Rules, of the Genius of G2K and the 2000 of G2K.
976.
Is
complete seriousness and commitment required to make writing as excellent as
possible?
I don't know. It seems probable. If you don't care about what you're writing
no one else would be able to. Writing
needs to have good purpose or proper motive and also proper effect. The direction of the writing follows the
articles and then also the magnetic field generated at right angles also has
the proper form. Yet just as many people
would say that rules are sickening and should be abandoned or destroyed
whenever possible. I disagree because I
feel bad without routine and rules to work by.
I want to have rules in my life but I don't know what they should
be. So that creates chaos and
discomfort. I have no goals, no plans,
no decisions made, no method of reward for myself, no sense of
accomplishment. As Dickens said,
"Whether I will be the hero of the story of my life;" which would say
that I'm the art work, the medium of articulation.
977.
Have
you already got everything figured out for G2K?
Not hardly. I'm gradually getting together a few ideas or
concepts that seem pretty sound. Yet I
am still riddled, infested even, with mistakes, errors, and bad habits. Extreme self-consciousness for example, and a
limitless craving to be helped and cared for.
I'm barely starting to learn to fend for myself. So no, G2K is not a fully-formed ethos ready
to govern the polis and everyone in it.
It's a crude beginning, and in that sense worth nothing to the
book-buying public who only want either amusing kitsch or confirmation of their
prejudices.
978.
What
can your working process be if you know that you've got a ton of errors in you?
The past and present of G2K
are almost completely composed of errors.
These are disgusting and aesthetically depressing. Yet that's the way the cookie crumbles. Sure I've made loyalty mistakes in thinking
Friere had no basic errors. Yet the
scientific method goes on, per the NovumOrganum.html.
979.
How
does Genius 2000 relate to Fluxus?
I learned what Fluxus was in
about 1999, after I had already formed the basic rules and ideas of G2K. I learned about it after going on the
Internet Art Lists in 1998. Fluxus was
an art-group that focused on doing art that didn't have a final object or
product as a result. For example, they
might go and join hands in a circle around a famous statue on a particular day,
with no pictures taken.
"Fluxus" referred to flux, change, transience, no permanent
record. I had heard a little about
Joseph Beuys in graduate school at Syracuse in 1995-1998 and worked with people
who I'm sure understood Beuys and Fluxus--for example, I'd heard of the Beuys
artwork "I Love America and America Loves Me" in 1996 or so. There is a connection between Fluxus and G2K
but I don't know exactly what it is. I
feel mainly "anxiety of influence" toward Fluxus.
980.
What
are your goals for this book now?
Now I just want to use it as
a source of ideas, a way of getting something out of my system, and a symbol
that I can set a large goal and pursue it.
It's not in my interest either to put it on the internet or to try to
get it published. It's a nice exercise
though and I'll never be in this spot again.
I also want to get it done as soon as possible.
981.
Is
the essential character of G2K amenable to regular non-fiction or a novel?
Boy that's a scary
question. Presumably not. Any easy pat summary of it wouldn't be it
itself. It's easy to prejudge
however. I could surely conform G2K to a
novel or a nonfiction book--there's not even a doubt. One can do non-fiction about Zen and Cubism,
and novels about Zen and Cubism--a Zen Cubist novel. I wonder if Cubism is capitalized. I'll look it up.
982.
Do
you know if your eye-bags are being caused by excessive worry and unwholesome
mental states or by lots of writing i.e. close focusing?
I don't rightly know. It could be some of each. Relaxing and breathing seemed to make
everything better however, including my eyes.
Patience and breathing. Those are
the two great helps to articulating one's genius.
983.
Isn't
it overly schematic to divide genius from 2000, sentience/cognition from
time-matter?
I don't think it's
appropriate to be so negative at such an early stage of G2K. Of course there might be errors, but they are
of no consequence. For example, imagine
that a person is learning Chinese calligraphy.
It is of no consequence if the person were to make errors in every
single one of the first two thousand characters the person wrote. In like fashion, all of the errors of G2K so
far are of no consequence aesthetically.
984.
Is it
plausible that all the evil actions of Max Herman so far are of no consequence?
Max was under a lot of
pressure from many directions. He was
exhorted from birth to use his intellect to strike for the liberal cause. The idea was that the liberals were pacifist
and outnumbered but their fine public schooling and intellectual Chomskyism
would gain victory over the not-as-good forces of all the non-liberal,
non-pseudo-leftist-pseudo-intellectual powers in life. I was urged of course therefore never to take
any great personal pleasure in intellect, nor to apply it to my immediate
surroundings or my own self-interest.
Being a liberal is actually similar to being a Lutheran I think, or even
a Catholic. Not that I want to condemn
them all. Actually liberal-leftism is a
natural outgrowth of Protestantism. In
practice it's like a religion. I was
raised in it. It confused me. So I erred, both in obedience and defiance.
985.
Is it
unrealistic to think anyone else would want to read this, as it amounts to
little more than a diary of your daily thoughts?
I myself can barely read back
on it. It has nothing structural or
detailed about it. Great, broad portions
of it are just immature jejeune meandering and self-consciousness. I can't think what anyone else would get out
of reading it or I from publishing it.
I'm just getting something out of my system, an experiment.
986.
What
are the main ideas of G2K?
That everyone has a genius;
that everyone needs to develop their own genius; that society can't do it for
you; that society must give people freedom to develop their genius; that people
must defend and work for free society if it is to endure; that asking a lot of
people "what is genius?" creates a networked response; that these
two-thousand questions could be better or worse; that G2K is like Zen
Cubism. Etc.
987.
Are
you loth to brag about G2K?
Oh certainly. Individual over-inflation and aggrandizement
is the number one sin in Genius 2000, which calls for balance among all the
geniuses. If I raise myself up as the
superior dominator, I'm oppressing other people's genius and courting sick
idolatry or idolization. The true key to
being a great genius is to have a large increasing effect on people's regard
for and articulation of their own
genius for themselves. The truly great
hero or "genius of the heart" as Nietzsche put it, one who has
megalofuxia or "great-souledness," does not cause or elicit stagnant,
degrading infatuation in others. The
truly good individual genius increases genius-value not for himself or herself
but for society, the overall amount of genius-wealth in production and
circulation. By the same logic, one who
merely stifles or eradicates one's own genius has contributed nothing to
society or to genius, as in the parable of the talents, which is mentioned on
the same page as genius in Dostoevsky's Netochka
Nezvanova.
988.
Don't
all these isolated facts need to be arrayed in a pleasing, handy structure in
order to count as added-value?
Perhaps not. Convenience is often an illusion. Almost any appearance can mask an almost
completely opposite reality, and often it does.
If I were to make G2K easy and convenient for you, it wouldn't be G2K
anymore--it wouldn't be like the Tao or like Zen. Put another way--pre-packaged G2K would not
count. On the other hand, it probably
would.
989.
Wouldn't
a pre-packaged, well-articulated G2K be a wonderfully good thing and product,
and true to itself and true to the concept of wholesome "authority"
or authorship?
I think it would. The other argument would require the idea
that no work done by one person on his or her genius could ever benefit another
in a wholesome way. That's incorrect. That amounts to a gigantic error in G2K and
in the composition of this book.
990.
Are
perhaps both the traditional and non-structured forms both OK ways of
articulating G2K?
I think maybe they are both
OK. I have liked certain aspects of
doing this totally free-form diary of quanta.
It creates an existential drift that might be unavailable in the
standard flow of information-forms of the marketplace. I find it challenging and also rewarding. It isn't all misery by any stretch. It teaches one to have balance, and patience
with breathing above all other hopes of plan and accomplishment, etc. If both are OK, the 2000 quanta way and the
traditional way, then it's OK to be doing the two-thousand quanta way. After all, it's hardly illegal or
unmarketable to do stuff the traditional way!
On the contrary. One forgets that
by doing things a new way one need not infringe one iota on those doing things
in a previous way. In good fortune there
is room for both ways. That's
"rescuing criticism," too, as Benjamin said.
991.
What
are the chances that you will put this out on the internet?
They seem weak now. I don't want to hurt myself out of
impatience. This work, this text, would
not help G2K much. Then again, maybe it
would. But I don't want to make G2K be
too well-liked--or maybe I do want it to be excessively liked, or don't but
should, or shouldn't.
992.
Doesn't
this quanta-system just waste a lot of time for you?
I could be. I'd rather be rich and setting up a nice
life, house, social life, and other things.
However it may be a healthy task or routine to keep coming back to these
quanta day in and day out. Two hours of
writing per day, or less, or more, depending on the day and what is often going
on. Some days I will exercise a lot or
try to go to the museum. I find the hip
new museum here completely abominable.
The people in it are like corpses.
Plus they stole my dots idea for the grass.
993.
Didn't
Camus say that the most relevant question was whether to commit suicide?
I think so. I think he asked about this in The Myth of Sisyphus, why to keep on
struggling. I'm not feeling suicidal
which is good. But the flat, clinical
"medical" view of suicide aside, there is the artistic-aesthetic
side. It's easy to gloss over the
question of suicide. Realistically though,
I think that one has to ask it of artistic life, i.e., why bother to make art
at all?
994.
Are
you extremely decided that you are going to finish these two thousand quanta?
Oh most certainly yes, I'm
going to finish them. They're my friend
now. I'll decide later about putting
them on the internet, or rewriting some of them, or whether they are good
enough to try to get them book-published.
I'll see if all my book-learning comes through, like about Blake and Shelley.
995.
Have
the Nag Hammadi gospels been unwisely suppressed, and is there a valid
scientific reason for belief in Christ?
I take it for granted that I
can write what I like about religion.
Being grown now however, I realize that you can't always speak evil
about someone else's beliefs with no consequences. I like parts of the Gnostic gospels, but I
don't wish to offend or insult people who dislike them. Therefore I'm in a strict dilemma. Whether I can advocate for the goodness of
the Gnostic gospels is unclear to me. It
comes down to "do I dare disturb the universe," as Eliot wrote, and
the crisis of tradition and the individual talent. Personally I feel that I am the resurrection
and the life. Jesus sent his words down
through the centuries, like a long forward pass, to the year 2000 and I caught
them. No one else did but me. So I'm special. And that gives me the right to talk about
religion--even the duty.
996.
Aren't
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and all other monotheistic religions based on the
application of limit-theory to the one-and-the-many over long time periods?
Clearly they are. Time-periods that are long enough, i.e.
limit-theory taken to many steps like how Archimedes
sliced his circles and volumes, are how one gets to the one-and-the-many as
articulated or configured in arbitrarily long time-spans into the future and
past, i.e. eternity. People hate me and
like to think I lie, and cheat, and am a thief or fake. But I'm not.
I'm the real deal. I have an
actual viable theory of bioinformatics or cultural calculation that is the true
main-core line of humanity's development.
And I'm incarnating it. I'm not talking about it in nice formulated
phrases, coy fake allusions or reductions.
The novel form is just a network form anyway, with very large packets
and slow exchange, and that's OK.
997.
Is it
possible for you or anyone to strictly adhere to all religions?
A priori, no it is not. There are eleven major living religions:
Jain, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, and Confucianism, according to a book I've seen. Of course there are more than that but who's
counting. You might even say that there
are as many different religions as there are individuals practicing religion at
any given time. I cannot be true to all
the religions. Factually I think I want
to practice a religion that respects all the other religions but isn't a crude
porridge of all mixed together, i.e. political correctness. It's a tough deal. How can a Jain believer and me be friends,
co-operate, etc., if we are not both Jain?
On the one hand, there's that. On
the other, there is the rejection of hatred among the religions--a rejection
that one has to work and fight for, i.e. a duty. I pledge myself and my articulation, Genius
2000, to religious tolerance and syncretism.
998.
Is it
the aesthetic sense of beauty and order that compels one to protect the future,
though this faculty is often called conscience or faith?
In my opinion ugliness and
beauty are the real guides in slow-cycle genius activity. It is just plain ugly and repulsive to me not
to defend the future as best I can understand its defense to be in need of my
help. Beauty and ugliness have a great
effect on my sense of right and wrong, good and evil. I think that may be what Nietzsche was trying
to get at but couldn't, because he couldn't get over his stress, his urge to
"force it." (Or maybe he
tricked us all, tricked us one and all.)
To me it is the strict honoring of beauty in the highest sense, the ultimate sense, that causes me to need
to protect the future as best I can. And
for that, terrorists must be hunted down and killed. Threats to the O.S.O. must be attacked
decisively and with pre-emption when indicated.
That's where I come down on that.
999.
Do
your high IQ and training in math and chess teach you that pre-emption in
necessary conflict is not evil?
People think that military
attack is strictly for criminal or disruptor powers and never can be used in
the service of peace and security.
Simple basic logic refutes this.
If
1000.
Are
your didactic or analytical (to logizein) quanta excusable?
I think so. Sometimes I like or feel a need to explain
things, like how Francis Fukuyama does in The
Great Disruption. Sure I've disputed
some of
1001.
Aren't
you hurting yourself and your career-chances by mentioning connections (like
Wolfram's A New Kind of Science has
to Genius 2000's "a new kind of art") without fully exploiting and
completing them so that someone else can swoop in and cherry-pick?
I can protect my
orchard. There will of course be some
losses but on the whole I can keep my fair control over my ideas. If I couldn't, then this wouldn't be a
network. If I can't keep control of all
the intellectual assets then the Genius 2000 Network will be broken up and
assimilated into some other network or networks. Plus it's risky to steal, because one never
knows what could happen if you're caught.
I don't think it's worth the risk for people to steal from Genius 2000
because there's plenty to go around anyway, and if you get caught the ultimate
embarrassment occurs--you've admitted G2K is better than anything you could
think up yourself. And that's the
ultimate punishment that sticks forever, and makes G2K far stronger overall.
1002.
Why
is it such a bummer to write a bad quantum?
I can't say. It colors your overall mindset I
suppose. It makes you despise yourself
and think that others will despise you.
Then, maybe you'd get defensive or something. It could be that it makes you feel you've
insulted life, or can't write a good quantum later. Yet it ought not matter. Even bad quanta are OK. They indicate that either your rules are no
good or that you're not following them.
1003.
How
can you keep Genius 2000 from becoming a trendy college-radio crapfest?
It's complicated. It involves do's and don't's. The bricks sit piled one upon another, each
other, in the hotel walls. It's a good
hotel to care for visitors. Quanta are
not going to give you vitamin C. If I
can't remember the question here without looking up I'm just going to
ramble. Quanta can be good or poor. Becoming trendy and fake is a good way to
make friends and money, but it doesn't smell good.
1004.
What
about how good it feels to have friends and be liked, and to be successful in
earning lots of cash?
Those can be difficult. Everyone wants to be liked, rich, and
popular. Except people who have
discovered the journey of their genius.
Those people like to be left alone and don't care about success or
riches or popularity. We like to get by
but we don't expect someone to walk up to us on the street and give us a hug.
1005.
Have
your cholesterol levels and weight gone way down under your new "extreme
fitness" activity-form?
My cholesterol is down from
quite bad to a sterling 150 all and 107 bad.
That is incredible. Plus I've
lost close to fifteen pounds, replacing fat with rock-hard or pretty hard
muscle. It's a good deal for me. I get a healthier life. The breathing project becomes workable. The cigarettes stopped in September 2004 so
now I'm much healthier. I'm fitter too.
1006.
Do
left-liberal artists and intellectuals need to get beaten down by one of their
own to prevent them from wrecking their own past, present, and future?
I think left-liberals have a
distemper in their consciousness and structure (genius and 2000) that makes
them feel they have to replace God. What
they don't recognize is that Art is a monodeity and none of us is the only
source or complete source of all Art.
Art is all around us, all about us like "the Force," as I
referred to in the Video First Edition.
The Master Analyst trope trapped everyone in a "smarter-than-thou"
cycle of deteriorating asininity.
Everyone's trying to play the role of a Master Analyst. Under such conditions people cease to
improve. I know I've kept a lot of
morose self-pitying tripe in these quanta; I did so because it was the ugly
reality. It's lame I admit. Yet Art is the God that made humanity,
literally, in our evolutionary history or early hominid days. Left-liberals are just as conventionally
imitative and dogmatic as any Christian.
So if the left-liberals don't improve, the polis is at risk.
1007.
Isn't
selling a book for money, in bookstores, the true mark of being a successful
genius?
I don't think so. It's conventionally expected but not
necessary. The great genius, or the
articulating principle as expressed or incarnated in a specific human who has
gained security against direct threats to his or her survival, will use the
most aesthetic means rather than what is conventionally expected. The internet offers me a great deal of
aesthetic advantage over the book publishing world, which has many strictures
related to money. Publishers are
consolidated now and cannot take risks on books that may not be appreciated for
twenty or thirty years. They also can't
badmouth the rest of the product line.
Therefore, as G2K is unpalatable to every
media concretion extant before and at its arrival, it must by definition be
self-promulgated. I'd never have had the
situation at hand without the internet.
Or would I have?
1008.
How
was the VFE and the website at early moments, such as 1999, like a siphon?
Good question. I knew I could siphon the material out of
society and into the artistic record because I knew the water level was out of
whack. I could go and ask people
"what is genius? What is
history?" and then siphon that content, that "undiscovered
conscience" as Joyce put it so beautifully, "like unto bullion"
as Melville wrote, onto the internet and into the very structure of art
history. Then the question would exist in art history because of the answer coming
from the interviewees. The great
infinite aquifer of human genius could then be itself finally a great force in
art history. Yet like any responsible
experimenter I kept strict control over all conditions. It wasn't any crap-shoot. Everything was controlled by the concepts of
G2K, which predicate responsible exogenetic evolution.
1009.
Were
the control concepts of G2K all in place from the get-go?
Yes they were, to the
extreme. Think of it as limit-theory and
equation work. In a sense it results in
a new aesthetic source of power for human evolution in the exosomatic realm. De Tocqueville also spelled this out as I
quoted him in "Literary Change."
There is no expropriation going on, because rescuing criticism keeps the
proprieties. Marxism is broken by the
contradiction of soviet control superseding worker control. Individual authority and creative power is
confirmed. All things are in balance and
proper for the long-term creative prosperity of the species. Except for the terrorist and the disruptor
power. They are the only way to conquer
exogenetic evolution's success at keeping the planet for human, not quasi-human
occupation and use. Only the chaos and
poverty of a world abandoned to terror and fief wars can destroy the
success. They cannot be permitted to
try.
1010.
Do
many of the current necessities of exogenetic evolution derive from the
difficulties created by the end of the First Cold War?
Clearly they do. The collapse of the U.S.S.R. brought great
danger of total conflagration. The
instabilities were potentially catastrophic.
Extreme caution has to be our goal now, but not too extreme. Everyone thinks there can be a pound of flesh
taken out of the
1011.
Is it
impossible to convince all the left-liberals to do what is right?
They are extremely stubborn,
self-serving, and closed-minded in my experience so yes it may be
impossible. I can certainly try however,
and point out how their own values and goals demand they rethink their hatred
of capitalist democracy, the corporate multinationals, basically their whole
pantheon of demons. Yet maybe they
cannot rethink their views. I certainly
can't waste all my time trying to fix
them. I do however want to take G2K away
from the list of attackers against
1012.
Are
you displeased that you seem to have left quanta 1002 through 1011 at the
computer-rental place today?
Clearly yes. I'm not so dismayed that anything would be
harmed by it, as I wasn't naming names and reputation is the greatest harm of
all. I am peeved because I thought they
were good quanta and I haven't lost anything recently. Oh who knows.
So I left some quanta at the shop.
I'll probably get them back tomorrow.
1013.
So
G2K doesn't offer any pat criticisms of or pseudo-intellectual alternatives to
the Second Cold War?
It sure doesn't. There's no way that the
1014.
Are
breathing and patience much more important in saving the human future than
attacking the
Yes they are. Because of a massively gravitational
convergence-point of technology as the computer age goes into high gear, military
stability is even more important and requires and even greater deterrent and
containment of ambitious military disruptors.
Hence the O.S.O. is justified not only by the recent demise of a large
superpower but by the technological chaos that can occur at the
"super-singularity." Every
technological species hits the super-singularity when technology goes into high
gear. At that point there is an even
greater need for syncretism and acknowledgment of natural individual genius
than ever before. Otherwise, fanatical
war-cadres of splintered fringe groups take over, along with weird
pseudo-aesthetic material injected directly into the brain by fiber-optic
cables. That would be the agglomerated
mega-individual pseudo-polis or the fast lane to hell, to evil.
1015.
Are
breathing and patience necessary to get aesthetic experience from natural
conditions, and therefore to get by without direct brain cabling?
They are. All the faculties of genius have to be
healthy and calm, peaceful, and flexible for the subtle dreaming to occur that
brings imaginative development. Without
peace and quiet, the long-cycle waves of Zen cannot settle in and resonate to
all the patterns of the genius (which include physical patterns). This is why people who are traumatized or
stressed will often revert to cabled-in aesthetics rather than trying to locate
their own through balance, inner peace, and harmony. I am just speculating here but it may be
crucial that left-liberals take their time and spend it on aesthetic
development along G2K lines and don't spend it on anti-U.S. propaganda. There's no sense blaming the
1016.
What
were the lost quanta about?
I think one was about keeping
G2K from being trendy. I thought they
were decent. They felt decent. Of course I can just rewrite them but still,
I prefer not to lose them. I think one
quantum was about the Video First Edition and the Gnostic gospels, incarnating
things--oh yes, also about limit-theory, math, bio-informatics in
cultural-mathematical equations, Archimedes, monotheism, and
the-one-and-the-many.
1017.
Can
you accomplish everything G2K is capable of in this one book?
No, I'll probably need to
keep doing art my whole life long. This
book is really just one artifact to lay down some basic principles. Clearly it can't be an instruction-book that
everyone out there will pick up and live by, so as to make other books and so
forth redundant. No, only a small
fraction of the people on earth will ever read this book. It's about an experimental method of making
post-artifactual art, one method among quite many.
1018.
How
can doing these quanta help you to be a better version of yourself, and keep
developing, and be a good decent co-worker as long as necessary?
It always comes back to where
I am at financially and so forth, have I found the right mode of
life-in-society. Clearly I spend a lot
of time and energy on writing these quanta, reading, thinking about G2K, and
making watercolors. I also think about
the past G2K on the internet when I was drinking. This doesn't leave me with a great deal of
extra energy for work advancement. Yet
my level of discontent at my current job is noticable. I can't honestly say it's all I'm capable of
doing. I don't think success is immoral,
such as publishing a book. I do have
very odd and perhaps incorrect ideas about art that make it difficult for those
in charge to encourage or reward me. So
I've chosen an independent, self-promulgating strategy. Temporal success may not be in the offing.
1019.
What
is the cosmology of G2K?
I think it's very stark and
basic. There is just genius and
2000. There is the sentient living
being, and then the conditions. Because
humans are a technological species we are subject to exogenetic evolution, or
history, in which our conditions evolve in part due to our own maker-ness and
creation of conditions. Our 2000 starts
to accumulate modifications by our genius.
Our genius in turn takes on new capacities and limitations based on the
inescapable 2000-ness or fixed-condition-ness of what it, as genius, has
already done. The cosmology then
includes genetics, human evolution out of the primate-hominid line, acquisition
and modification of technology, and that technology's feedback effect onto our
genius via fixed modifications (or temporarily fixed) which function as fixed
laws (or temporarily fixed laws). Hence
it was human genius that created Modigliani's "Little Servant Girl"
and the Doryphoros, which have now become part of 2000 for me and my genius,
part of fixed conditions.
1020.
How
can these fragmented quanta get beyond sloganeering into creative richness?
It's not clear that they
can.
1021.
So
all the fragments of life and experience come together like leaves on the
surface of a pond to compose our experience of reality and hence our aesthetic
experience?
Yes. One can look at very bad, worthless fiction
and see that the form and structure are obnoxious, false, and structural only
in the diabolical sense. Structure and
cohesion that does not derive from the reader or viewer's own exercise of the
integrative faculty, as a juggler would organize several balls into a moving
ring with integrity and unity, is merely the appearance or outward conventional garb of unity and
structure. This comes down to no more
than habit and custom. Every piece of
kitsch or demagoguery has a beginning, middle, and end, or thematic
consistency, or artful diction, or well-described scenery, or painstaking
research. Yet in most cases the goal is
to replace temporarily the chaos and decrepitude of the reader's soul with a
conventionally imposed picture of coherence and order. G2K gives this not.
1022.
So
G2K gives no formal structure other than that which the reader, viewer, or
consumer sees fit to articulate upon the fragments?
This is a fair
description. I cannot personally see any
logical alternative. Reality occurs in
fragments and we make a picture, an ongoing moving sculpture of bioelectrical
signal-patterns in our living flesh. We
cannot re-create this pattern instantly at will. It is more like the spinning of a top or the
contents of a garden. We can adapt it
but only given time and within limits.
At least this book of quanta has no story, no characters, no great
conflicts of good entities versus bad entities.
There is no moral dictum I can find.
I am personally a relatively unfascinating creature. My personal history has some garish,
lascivious episodes but I try not to name names as much as my anger and
impotence request. I provide rather fragments
and kung-an for the reader to utilize.
1023.
Didn't
you also lose a quantum today that talked about siphoning the mass of human
"genius and 2000" into art history on the internet by using the
questions of Contribution One?
I sure like remembering
things, as Aeschylus called it "words twice spoken," which Matthew
Arnold also used. A great technique of
style that truly comforts in the kitschy, too-brassy world. I did in fact mention the
"siphoning" idea about how I tried to affect art history. I was astonished how artistic the results of
my ad-hoc, unscripted interviews in the video were. They didn't call for expropriation or
usurpation either. They were neither
Marxist necessarily nor false overcomings of culture. They radiated sweetness and light, or more
properly speaking, resonance and interest.
They confirmed that people or
individual geniuses are the medium of art.
People making answers or answering-patterns to the question of genius
and history, cyclically, continually through time. That was the truth of art that I knew I could
"siphon" or move, from the human realm into the
exogenetic-evolutionary or art-historical realm, as art. I did this by placing the question in both
locations at once, like a siphon.
1024.
Does
reduction in your demagogic self-magnification in G2K help you face and then
try to overcome the panic about G2K having no aesthetic unity?
Clearly my propaganda and
other tactics to manipulate the art-market or biocultural transaction-sphere
takes the form of self-promulgation, demagoguery, and exploitation. Yet perhaps it is justified by the difficulty
of getting the necessary events to occur otherwise. I cannot say for sure. Certainly many people will kill an aesthetic
process if they can and see it as a competitor in the art-market. One could take the pacifist stance and refuse
to defend the process-product one is marketing.
Yet this would be derelict if the process merits articulation and is in
fact a better mousetrap. What might be
called rhetorical power in the Gorgian sense can be warranted in protecting a
fledgling art-process at a critical moment.
Therefore all mother ducks will protect their nests quite belligerently,
to save the eggs. My
self-Leviathanization is therefore justified protection of the G2K aesthetic process,
or rather, was in the past or arguably was.
So extreme guilt feelings on my part are misplaced. Perhaps.
1025.
Don't
you just want people to like you and support you so you can get a nice
book-publishing deal and have a social life?
I can't say I'd hate having a
good and interesting social life. I'm
really very normal and well-adjusted. I
like to listen to Mozart and talk about the latest films. Well not really. But I do sometimes act normal and decent. Plus there are other factors. Yet my main purpose now is to keep writing
quanta, omitting name-naming and blame as I go forward, and then to go back and
take out the negative, depressing quanta later.
If I want to.
1026.
So
G2K is really the key to developing one's genius, protecting the future,
defending and promoting the O.S.O., and keeping exogenetic evolution on the
best aesthetic-physiological path?
G2K is my name for the
procedures and rules, or the category of patterns and rules, that accomplish
that. Just as, if I say
"E=mc2" is how matter and energy compare, it's really that I'm saying
"that's the name for it."
1027.
Do you
actually prefer not to talk about the bad times in your life and the bad things
that have happened to you or that you know have happened to others?
We are all a little bit like
the Furies in the Oresteia and we all want recognition and retribution for the
wrongs we've suffered. The question is
whether we can move on to a different mindset.
Instead of punishing (or trying to rectify, somehow, through punishment)
the bad actions of the past we direct our energy and decision toward protecting
the future and blessing it with goodness and beauty. This is how I'd prefer to creatively digest
the bad things that have happened to me.
As for the bad things I've done, they are aesthetically detrimental so I
would like to stop doing them and try to fix them if possible (though in most
cases, such as my evil, demagogic, and false praise of Chomsky and Nader in the
past, the sins cannot be undone completely).
Therefore to me the happiest, most alive, and most beautiful state of
existence means making quanta or kung-an that keep my genius healthily
articulate and provide also for the aesthetico-moral demands of my conscience
for consistency, integrity, and dignity.
1028.
Why
is it so unpleasant to write when you're feeling good, and at peace, and want
to just soak in the well-being vibes?
For me it is most likely
because it is unfamiliar, unaccustomed.
Generally I will relax and go with the flow if I'm feeling good. Writing as now, when I feel like "things
make sense," would threaten to spoil my gallant mood. I could spoil it with gruesome, anxious
thought. All part of learning and
strengthening the fibers.
1029.
When
the trees grow out of the concrete, is that a blessed sight?
I think it is. They look happy too. I like writing here. The tables are round like a G2K symbol. Everything is just a marketing tool for the
marketing guru. Creating a desire by
formulating an obtainable need. The
trees are doing well, are well-leafed.
Capitalism can work, and decently too, all the more decently when people
are working at their portion in piety.
1030.
Yesterday,
when you lost the quanta, had you also written about how Art is a monotheism
and artists or secularists lack piety and a sense of rescuing criticism, which
lack commits for them the same conventional dogmas and prejudices they accuse
religion of?
Clearly I've thought about it
at least; whether I wrote on it yesterday in the Lost Quanta I cannot say for
certain but it feels likely. Iced tea is
delicious. Art or maker-ness is a
factual, continuing condition of all technological species and hence of
humans. All enduring conditions take on
the form or laws, at least temporary and sometimes permanent. Laws are often articulated as gods or objects
of contemplation even though they are actually processes, that is,
characteristics of process. Art and God
have always been closely, closely linked--parallel partners one could say. Maker-ness and the divine. Art is not a made-up deal, it's a law, the
law of laws. Zeus, so to speak.
1031.
Rather
than talking about Art, God, and law, wouldn't you rather be involved in the
College Radio scene as a sexy music-maker?
Sex is a dead end. It's not the way, the Tao, art, Genius
2000. I'm as infatuated with sex as
anyone I confess. Yet it is not
technically necessary. People can go
without it, and those who get a lot of it generally get disappointed I
think. One is only really top-notch sexy
in physical terms for about fifteen years at best. Then we just look ordinary and sexiness goes
way, way down. Yet everyone has to go
their own path with sex. In my case, it
helps me to recall that it's a two-part swindle in the College Radio world, the
kitsch and the sex combining into an addictive, non-nutritive alloy. The music on College Radio is beneath the
intellect of any healthy genius no longer in college or of college age. The sex part is a dead end.
1032.
Are
you going to have to go back and remove a lot of the whinier, more depressive,
more complaining quanta?
I distinctly want to. I'd like to keep the demoralizing, abyss-deep
spiral of gut-spilling to a minimum or even to zero. G2K is respectable and decent, despite my
past excesses, and I don't need to make a spectacle of contrition and flakiness
of myself. I can take out all the parts
about bad things that were done to me, and bad things that I know were done to
others. We'll all be turning into
welcomed, blessed, Athena-friendly Eumenides from now on. I can also take the really dismal or illegal
parts of Early G2K down off the internet (some of my jpegs I think may violate
copyright). I can take it easy on myself
and also forgive the human polis for its shortcomings. It's not yet time to euthanize the whole
species. Yet we have to get progress on
our art-historical theory, and quick.
Now!
1033.
So
did they have your lost quanta at the computer place?
Yes they did! It reminds be of Beethoven's great musical
piece, "Rage Over a Lost Penny."
That is a solo piano piece, which is great and rollicking like Mozart's "Rondo
Alla Turca." On a period
eighteenth-century instrument it is even more exciting, because you really had
to bang on those things to get a big sound.
The modern piano really compares as an electric or amplified acoustic
guitar. A completely different
deal. "Rage Over a Lost Penny"
is a great, great gift from the past. It
uses "development," which in the musical sense means "variation
and sophistication of a basic theme or motive through the use of aesthetic
reinterpretation." Bad composers
use merely orchestration only to create variety. Beethoven was a great master of development. I get concerned at times that G2K quanta are
just boilerplate, orchestral compensation for weak development.
1034.
Aren't
G2K quanta capable of carrying out thematic development just fine, but you are
insecure and anxious because sometimes you panic and do poor quanta?
Yes, I think that these
quanta are capable of development and thematic resonance, and consequently of
aesthetic structure and integrity. But
they are not guaranteed to have it
just because it's magic me writing them or because I want them to. Writing can be great or horrible regardless
of who is writing it. In addition, I'm
still somewhat new to making G2K quanta on a continuing, steady basis. I'm still getting to a basic knowledge of how
to give them resonance, beauty, and articulate structural content.
1035.
Is it
plausible that a nice book of G2K essays about exogenetic evolution and so
forth is a better and more marketable, less inconveniencing and bleak way of
sharing your ideas with interested users?
Completely. When I get this journaling out of my system
and calm down I'll do one.
1036.
Considering
this is just a preparatory list of notes for a structured, readable book,
possibly, what are the main ingredients of the regular book?
Well, I'll need to put in as
many pieces of the G2K puzzle as possible.
It will need to start off with a good proposal and then carry it
out. The proposal will have to be how
art is the key area for human evolution and G2K is my humble contribution to
new evolutionarily adaptive art theory and practice. Then the book will need to explain about
object and processes, as I did in Literary
Change. This move is also the more
from idolatry to monotheism. Yet the key
is to avoid mere destruction of artifacts and to "rescue" the meaning
out of them, out of the objects and into living people who are processes. A human is not an object, but a process. So now that it's all laid down there's no
need for a structured book. Or, perhaps
there is, and it's not guaranteed but might be a very good product to put out
there.
1037.
So
human beings are processes?
Yes, they are. Everyone knows that humans are not
objects. We object to treating humans
like objects, instruments, or tools with no feelings. As we try to make ourselves better, we work
on our rules, habits, and regular routines that we do. This is the purpose of monotheism. Monotheism and polytheism are both OK. There is no need to attack either one. Given a basic level of peace, a minimum
level, the syncretic process of the free market will call forth solutions. I have criticized someone in the past about
saying that syncretism now happens only in the market. Well, in the VFE I pointed out the importance
of the market but also its limitations.
I still stick to my argument that I made. If you say that nothing can happen except in
the market, then of course syncretism occurs there. But in my opinion the market is often the
last to know what is really happening.
1038.
Are
economic ideas such as entrepreneurship, investment, finance, distribution,
production, marketing, advertising, innovation, supply-chain theory, and
clock-speed all relevant to G2K?
G2K is now a capitalist
for-profit corporation. The Genius 2000
Network is a registered trademark and Max Herman is incorporated. Therefore all of the capitalist principles
apply to G2K as a business enterprise.
One doesn't have to argue about how it works--one can look and see. (Genius 2000 as a "siphon" practice
is clearly experimental, scientific, and a test case.) Genius 2000 is a rhetorical, intellectual
form that I've invented or created, re-invented or re-created. Some people sell fantasy-fiction novels about
characters the buyer wants to identify with and which frame the world as the
buyer wants. There is no harm to G2K in
letting novels continue. Clearly
novelists might hate G2K but really they themselves created G2K by creating the previous secular maker-ness networks of
producers, documents, and users.
1039.
Was
the novel form also a network when it started?
The novel form itself was and
still is a network. Novels started off
with Cervantes and his Adventures of Don
Quixote. It was an area of
literature that got free of religious dictates.
People liked it because it allowed them a greater variety of literature
without undermining their religious doctrines directly. To distribute the new literature, networks of
book printing and subscription delivery were created. The novel as an artform was transmitted on a
network of paper moved around on ships and horse-drawn carriage. As McLuhan wrote, "the medium is the
message," which is easy to read incorrectly but it means both that the
medium determines what kind of content can be delivered on it, and that the
medium itself also takes on a kind of meaning in its own right, both
symbolically and by itself practically altering the world. TV changed life, it wasn't just the shows
that changed life.
1040.
If
you're going to take all the self-pity and revenge out of this book, and all
the "overthrow corporations and the U.S.A." demagoguery, and
everything else that doesn't add up to a constructive and enjoyable book, why
not go straight to work on a traditional regular book with chapters and
research?
I think that's a fair
question. All I can really see of value
to the 2000 quanta structure at this moment is that it's half over (just
kidding). If one doesn't need for some
incredibly urgent reason to overthrow anything, not even traditional aesthetic
forms like the pastoral and the Horatian ode, why do I insist on this
structure? I can't answer why so that in
itself suggests it is nonsensical.
Actually I can answer why but don't really want to give the same old
reasons of Zen Cubism, the "nouvelle" as "the new,"
"the networked new," the network as novel, novelistic consciousness
as network consciousness, etc.
1041.
Do
you wish you had a real book in the works, that an agent already represented
and was already being eagerly awaited by a publisher?
I sure do. I'd feel like a grownup then, someone who
contributes to society. Not that I'm not
doing that now, I'm just not doing it as a writer, I work at a regular office
job. But sure, I'd like to have a
marketed bestseller about G2K. It's not
a radical view so it wouldn't be rejected on grounds of radicalism or
offensiveness. It's not racist or
homophobic or anything. It's a moderately
intuitive thesis that wouldn't have to be presented in strictly academic
terms. Perhaps I don't spend as much
time as I should visualizing a real, good, respectable bestseller. I really would like to get out of my
self-imposed obscurity and so forth. The
existence of the internet changes things slightly but perhaps not in the
fundamentals.
1042.
Why
are you so angry and anxious today?
I don't know. I just feel very exasperated with my life and
my values. I'm constantly swinging back
and forth from Art to Religion. They
really scare the Religion into you in treatment. The idea that they impress upon you is that
if you don't believe in God, a basically Judeo-Christian God-god, you'll go
back to drinking. So, I let them tell me
that and I also quit drinking. I even
attended prayer-and-spirituality groups within the recovery movement. I no longer drink. Does this then prove that God exists and that
I must worship him or die? No. My idea of God is that set forth by Art and
Science. I wish I could just say
"Oh I'm completely just conventionally Judeo-Christian and nothing
else." That would be a lie. Yet I will probably have to cancel this one
due to blaming and specifics.
1043.
Could
it be you are anxious because of not having written any quanta yesterday?
I could agree one hundred
percent on that. I felt good for the
last couple of days. When I feel good I
don't feel like gut-spilling or accusing and blaming. I need those good-feeling days to keep
going. They keep me going. Yet, I took yesterday off from quanta to
re-read the first part of this book. I
could have skipped it but I wanted to see what it was like. I thought it was pretty good and a lot less
gut-spilly than I thought. I'm thinking
that it would be OK to put it on the internet. My main concern with that is that I want to
make my support of the O.S.O. completely stark and clear. Yet I do get fearful that one shouldn't
openly support the O.S.O. if one used to be a liberal.
1044.
Does
your whole value-system seem to careen from one pole to the other, religious to
secular, almost ceaselessly?
It's strange but I am very
afraid to express my belief or my disbelief in conventional religion i.e.
God. I don't know which is right or
wrong, good or evil. I think I may be close
to knowing what is good for me, right for me.
I am less clear whether this right-for-me is right for everyone, or
appropriate for exoteric expression. If
I can know what's right for me however and just practice it, keep with it,
that's all I can ask for. It's always good
to keep mum about the development and evolution of one's genius when one
can. I often think I have to spill to
the world, but I don't. It's my choice
to keep mum if I choose. The
obligation-feeling to spill is like a little kid. You crave permission and confirmation.
1045.
Doesn't
it break your heart to go back to your clerical job?
It stings the pride. I've been snappish and fretful all day. Perhaps taking a late lunch contributed. I can't say.
One of my co-workers is practically catatonic. Oh well, I am trying not to feel obligated to
cheer everyone up constantly like a camp counselor. Not trying to do this makes me feel guilty,
the guilt makes me feel in danger of getting fired. It's all twisted. It's OK for me not to be a camp counselor and
nurturer for my department. Unless this
book gets out and they decide I'm a bad influence, fire me, I lose my home,
medical coverage, everything. If only I
could feel more secure. Basically I like
writing and can start formulating a decent life for myself. I could put G2K forth on the internet in this
book or try to publish.
1046.
Are
you angry at the world again?
Very much so. I'm just plain angry. One group of wise men will tell you you've
got to have sex, a lot of it, with sexy ladies and out of wedlock (i.e. be a
normal sexy sexually active young person) in order to be well. Other wise people will tell you to conserve
your vital juices. I cannot for the life
of me decide who is correct. The
indecision is killing me, because I can't like myself.
1047.
Do you
seem to need quanta-writing as an emotional stabilizer?
I'd guess so. The idea of the quanta not accumulating hurts
me. I just took one day off to read old
quanta a bit and it hurt very badly. This
despite the fact that I have very little good to say about the old quanta I
re-read; around 800 to 820 they are particularly bad. There's just nothing to be gotten from them, no story, no conclusions, directives, or
grand insights--completely nothing.
1048.
Are
you angry at yourself for not getting a real sex partner?
I suppose I am. It seems wrong to try to get one though,
given how messed-up I am. I have no
active friendships. I don't do anything
normal people do. I never socialize
except at work, where I'm forced to utter a few commonplace terms like "hey"
and "thank you." I have
canceled all contact with my family and ex-friends. For this I feel crippling guilt. Yet what kind of woman would get together
with a man in my situation? Only a very
sick or crazy one. So dating seems
absurd.
1049.
If
this book becomes known at your workplace, you will surely get fired, will you
not?
You'd think so. I'm extremely paranoid as an individual
however. I'm afraid of things happening
that sane people or psychiatrists would say are irrational. But it would seem too obsessive to come
across as completely normal. I'd like to
correct that. Henceforward, nothing
crazy!
1050.
Did
it occur to you earlier that it is OK, right, and good that nothing
"results" from doing these quanta because nothing results from Genius
2000?
I did consider that. It could be the same as a kung-an, there is
no real purpose other than to create a contemplative state. It is not like a story, which gives us
something to do for a set time and no more (a narrative duration). It is not a conclusion that says "do
X" or "do Y." It comes
across therefore as completely vague, worthless, unartistic, and grim. Yet Zen and some other arts also have that "purposeless"
quality.
1051.
Is it
OK for you, a thirty-five year old clerical worker with completely zero social
contacts, to do pointless, inconclusive quanta-writing?
Most shrinks would say I'm
crazy and going downhill fast. Yet I've
been off of any paroxetine for about ten weeks.
Good God it seems like centuries.
I suppose I am crazy at that, mentally very unhealthy.
1052.
Won't
this book lose all of its gritty honesty if you cut out the parts about onanism
and depression?
It's true those are the key
facts of my reality. I'm actually
struggling to get away from them and to be happy and social. No, I'm not trying. I've given up trying. I'm trying to find a replacement, i.e.
writing quanta. I even take the mindset
that if I succeed with these quanta it will no longer be necessary to stay
isolated from culture because my way of being will have become culturally
acceptable. It's just a fantasy though.
1053.
Why
can't society handle going from object-based art to process-based art?
Well, I can't say. I think it's just that we can't handle
process-based art period. Object based
art is the square-root of process-based art, slower and less dimensional. Process-based art is
objects-art-squared. We can't handle it
yet.
1054.
Does
art history follow the pattern where a "possessed genius" gets all
disturbed by a new vision and has to get it out, against all hatred, and the
new vision eventually gets accepted and praised?
Well they crucified Jesus so
yes, any Exogenetic Evolutionary Experimenter will be hated as a mutation until it becomes clear that
what has occurred is an adaptation. The unusual or freakish is hated and attacked
in every evolutionary i.e. living population.
Any new way of defining genius will be hated--and I mean hated, they
hate you, they want to cut your throat and burn you over hot coals. They want to kill you ferociously.
1055.
Do
these quanta serve a therapeutic purpose for you, the writer, Max Herman, in
addition to any intellectual-historical value they may have for a secondary
reader?
These are basically numbered
diary entries. I try not to talk about
things that are too gruesome. But to
some degree I feel it helps me to talk about stuff a little.
1056.
Because
there's too much to write about to ever get "the whole story" down on
paper, shouldn't healthy people give up on writing entirely?
Maybe I would be healthier
and happier if I quit writing. If I
think for five minutes about my sexual development as a child I become keenly
aware that it will take decades to make any sense of it. Therefore writing is a waste of time--being
concretely aware of life in fact is a waste of time. I'm being a coward and lazy I guess--a
quitter. I was just thinking about my
sexual development though and it made me feel totally defeated. Moreover it's evil to write about it or talk
about it, much less in public! How can
one get through it all if it's a crime even to start working on it? It
seems like a Catch-22. Ye cannot serve
God and Mammon. Some people say
"repress and ignore, bottle up, deny everything sexual you've ever felt or
experienced." I guess
scientifically I just can't see the logic there.
1057.
So
you want to write about your sexual feelings and experiences growing up, but
are ashamed to write them here for fear of getting fired or humiliating your
city and family?
I guess so. I've never worked through all those
degrading, frightening emotions. I want
to tell and be honest that I'm very messed up and that's probably why I do such
a bad job of G2K--it's not the government's fault. I was sexually abused once--well by someone
older than me, once--and then the rest of it was all pretty standard. Hit puberty late, ashamed of infantile body
and penis, taunted and degraded by peer group, developed extreme asexuality
complex by mid-adolescence. Therefore I am psychosexually extremely fucked
up. But that may be nobody's
business. Frankly I'm just going on
artistic inspiration, or scientific honesty.
I honestly do not know if G2K is bullshit because I'm sexually
maladjusted in the extreme, or if it's decent and accurate in spite of me.
1058.
Did
you ever find the paper and brief scene you wrote on Miroslav Holub for your
Guest Writer class at
No I did not. I was able to read my floppy disk from back
then on my old Macintosh Classic primitive PC but the Holub papers were not on
it. It would appear they are lost forever. I reconstructed part of the brief dramatic
scene earlier I believe. I have mixed
feelings--sad they're lost, glad to know for sure finally, perplexed whether
saving and copying everything is morbid and anti-Zen or simply good hygiene. No difference here.
1059.
Have
you done horrible things to people in the past?
Yes, I've done some very,
very sickening things both to myself and to others. I've treated friends and family atrociously,
not least by severing all ties to them after deciding they are unhealthy for
me. I wish I hadn't done the bad things,
the sickening things. But they're all in
the past, I can move on.
1060.
So is
G2K all about getting choked up about how evil you used to be?
No, G2K is about being in the
present time--what Benjamin called the Jetztzeit or "the time of the
now"--and if the past creeps back into the present well then so be
it. To close out the past is a false
overcoming of culture, a false overcoming of history. The present contains the future and the past
both like swirling, shifting breezes that carry sound and messages. Don't hate the past just because it's the
past--hate it because it sucked shit.
1061.
Do
you feel like making G2K suitable for young kids?
I used to want that. I used to think that was a legitimate
priority. Now I consider such thinking
absurd. I want to be squeaky-clean and
innocent and perfect, but the perfectionism is killing me. It kills my creativity, my contentment, my
confidence, and my genius. It's not for
kids. Sorry kids.
1062.
Aren't
you by inclination more comical and crazy than this book and its wallowing
misery would suggest?
I used to be an extremely
humorous young chap. I could make even
the gruffest old graybeard crack a smile.
Not really. Maybe I was comical. Grownups always hated me. They never thought I was funny. Either lyric and golden, or confused, or
sacrilegious. You know, mocking. I don't suppose it matters now.
1063.
Is
writing quanta now like a friend to you, your only friend, around whom you can
relax a little, learn values, and learn how to talk about things without going
hysterical?
Not going hysterically manic
is the key thing I want to learn to do when I write quanta. Hysteria just creates blunders and chaos,
chaotic misery. I get hysterical easily
enough at work. I wish I didn't feel so
repressed and catatonic at work. I made
my bed however--thirty-five, two degrees, virgin, entry-level clerical.
1064.
Hasn't
the precedent been set for people to get fired for writing about work on the
internet?
Yes it has. There is no guarantee I will not get fired
and then have to go beg to live with my mom and dad and then be truly damaged
and degraded beyond repair if I put this on the net. There are no guarantees. But my job would appear to be below my
capabilities. Yet my capabilities are
arguably nil, particularly considering my crappy personality, attitude, and
"people skills." Oh well. Work's work.
1065.
Didn't
you like it better before when you felt like you'd stopped complaining about
your depressing life for a little and were articulating
a working practice of G2K?
Could be. I felt great about G2K on Sunday. I felt OK about everything, or maybe I
didn't. I don't know if I'm getting
better or worse, or if I should pray to God or dismiss religion. I'm lost.
1066.
Does
it feel alright to be lost?
It's difficult. I keep thinking of the episode of Tintin
where they ask Captain Haddock if he sleeps with this beard over or under the
sheet. There's no answer because the
beard isn't touching the sheet. It's a
taunt for silly people. I keep
forgetting to keep quaint bourgeois nonsense out of this. Sorry about that. Also, Haddock was an alcoholic.
1067.
Don't
you feel best when you write a lot, but not about the war or your checkered and
painful past, not too over-confidently about fixing anything, nor too bleakly
either?
I can't say that making
explicit statements about my childhood or my alcoholism makes me feel
good. I still fundamentally don't know
if I have a right to talk about those topics in public, or if it helps me to do
so. I do think I get better if I write a
lot and about G2K, not guiltily and not with false innocence and
perfectionism. Just right, like
Goldilocks. That makes me feel good.
1068.
Isn't
there a point where one has to quit thinking and talking about the bad stuff in
order to get a little bit of escape velocity from it?
For me there is. I always get to a point where I say "OK
then, dwelling on it more and more intensely isn't going to help anything. If I start acting right from here on out, as
right as I can, and hope for the best, that's OK. I can quit belaboring the past, because
that's not going to fix it anyway.
Success is revenge."
1069.
After
you go back and edit, will you keep only the quanta that discuss G2K principles
in a useful, constructive, impressive, professional manner?
I may keep the gut-spilling
in for human interest. Gory, gruesome,
private feelings and experiences puked up for all the citzenry of the polis to
enjoy. A glorious vomitorium of words
and feelings. Then, after that, I hop
right back over to exogenetic evolution and hybris, incarnating the Word, and
the Gnostic gospels.
1070.
Is it
difficult for you to preserve decorum and decency in these quanta?
Extremely difficult. I am primarily struggling to get free of ways
of thinking, views of the world. I am
trying to see myself and my life in particular differently, and to go from
being a thwarted, failed genius to being an articulated one. This requires changing and not just in my own
daily actions but long-term, gradual effects of daily changes. I get impatient and angry, and can't
breathe. So then I lash out and my
thoughts get violent and ugly. Such
distemper just gives me more guilt and frustration.
1071.
Do
you want to re-dedicate yourself to strict rules of conduct, based on never
blaming and never being explicit?
Those are two of my chief
errors that I commit constantly. I
accuse people, and I name names (so to speak).
This prevents me from forgiving forgetfulness and from keeping mum. I suppose I'm pretty thick-headed that after
all these years I still don't know which is correct, accusing or forgiving.
1072.
Are
there any major, great changes or reversals you need or ought to make right
now, this instant?
I don't think so. I think I'm stuck. It really just calls for patience and
breathing. I'm struggling with a newly
extreme and constant awareness of myself in present, past, and future
time. This can be very demoralizing as I
lose my vainer ideas about myself. It
will just take a lot of time. I am
impatient and would like a rapid, breaking change to be indicated. Yet very slow and peaceful, gradual change is
the way of the long-cycle brain waves. I
sometimes think of it also like radiation--my problems and crimes have a
"half-life" that just plain has to elapse and there's nothing for
it. Adding new crimes on top of course
has to stop. I guess I feel that having
rejected my twelve-step group I have no right to take any of their advice on
gradualism based on trust of them. I
have to try to get to the worth of gradualism on a G2K basis, not a twelve-step
basis.
1073.
Even
though you want to stop being a demagogue in talking about G2K, are you still
fearful of taking it all down off the internet?
My past demagoguery disgusts
me. By leaving up my past works I'm
leaving the demagoguery largely intact.
I would like to take it down but am afraid that would make me a loser, a
nobody. And I desperately crave to be
somebody, to be acknowledged and respected, not treated like a piece of
garbage. I also think that I might
regret taking it down later. It's just a
case of something in life that I can't figure out right from wrong on. I can't decide. The only cure is to gradually meditate and
try to evolve my understanding through patience and breathing. I can develop into a better, happier,
healthier genius. As that gradually takes
place, I can make more decisions. At
present I cannot decide on many aspects of life, right, wrong, and how to be
happy. If I can quit my angry struggle
against not knowing what's right, and calm down, eventually per G2K theory I
may get a better understanding. Like the
Tao poem, sort of.
1074.
Why
is gradualism so important?
For many reasons. Individuals only change gradually, not in
great leaps. Society is built of
individuals, so true social change is also gradual. Everything stuck to its history can only
change gradually. Some changes are, I
admit, sudden and abrupt. But not
all. Many just take a slow tick-tock of
days and breathing to occur, like an injury healing. Injuries don't just all of a sudden
"heal" like a door slamming shut.
If "gradualism" is an attitude of method that accepts the need
for patience and the discipline of patience, one must practice gradualism to
get its benefits for one's genius. If
one's genius or life-spirit has been injured, revenge won't heal the
injury--only patient time will. If one
is extremely confused, like me, and alienated by habit from my feelings, it
takes time for the confusion to settle out of solution and for the calm wisdom
to take shape. Gradualism isn't
everything but it can be very important.
I've been getting very agitated and getting ahead of myself. Calm down.
Breathe and be patient.
1075.
Do
you often get lost, disoriented, confused, and forget what is best for you?
I get lost constantly. I can barely remember ever having not been lost. And I don't mean "unsalvageable," I
mean "without knowing where one is and which direction is which or where
things are in the world." I get
completely lost with what I should do, or think about and write about. As we can easily see, these quanta have no structure
or orderly pattern or goal. They are
almost completely random and directionless or lost. And yet, I don't need to fight or struggle to
know what's right. It doesn't help. Only patience and breathing help. Plus in some things there aren't any very
good choices, just less bad ones. Like
cutting ties to family and old friends.
I can't both cut and preserve the ties.
I can't decide which is right or wrong objectively. So I make a subjective decision--I need to
cut the ties. Maybe later I'll be
punished for this, or rewarded.
1076.
Can
you tell what you want from doing G2K?
I cannot tell very clearly,
no. I am aware that there is a great
deal of unmet need and desire under my subconscious mind. There is something I want but it hasn't
formed completely out into my conscious mind yet. Sometimes I want power and domination over
other artists and over users of art.
Other times I try not to care about others and what they think. On very rare occasions I want to publish
something about G2K. Often I want to
chuck it all in the garbage and get out of it, cancel it all. Let someone else, someone pretty and strong
do G2K or whatever they decide to name it if it needs doing. Maybe I will decide to cancel G2K completely
one day. Certainly I'm mortal and will
not be around forever. I also want to be
decent, socially accepted, with good healthy friendships and dating etc. The fantasy life of wholesomeness and
goodness, the six of cups.
1077.
Is
this your first re-write?
Yes, this is the first
quantum I’ve over-written. I’ll be
adding these in order. They’ll all be
.25 pagers. I wanted to mention how
fearful I got on the last hundred quanta, sick to nauseous death viz. Sartre,
and vomited up some “bad things I know about that other people have done.” Burke said that even a bad act can have a
good effect.
1078.
Does
your move toward decorum and respectability preclude you from talking about
your feelings and your abused past?
On the one hand, I'd like to
put this on the internet or publish it if it's good enough. I want to make a stand for G2K and the
O.S.O. Yet my instincts say the best
thing for the O.S.O. is to cancel G2K.
My intellect alone suspects G2K does have a valid purpose to exist. My intellect searches for slim chances and
then checks whether they can be exploited.
There is also Berliner's Options principle. I think G2K may be blocking up the center,
which is good for a controlled position with a controlled advantage. In any case, in addition to helping the
O.S.O. I need G2K for personal therapy.
Hence all the talk about being sexually molested, my parents being
co-dependent and worse, etc. Yet still I
feel sadistic saying "I'm from a nuclear family choked up to the gills
with sexual and emotional abuse."
They all want me to act like they're normal and good. Hellish.
1079.
Isn't
the question "what can one talk about at length without doing harm,"
and along with that, whether you should be working on a separate book or essay
about your emotional problems?
Clearly my argument is that
one can talk about G2K and only G2K at any length without doing harm, that
G2K-type ideas are needed at the outer extent of our discussions i.e. at their
extremities or growth-plates. Whether
G2K is what I argue it to be and will be accepted as such is not yet determined. I have not yet shown that even I the
initiator of G2K can talk or write about it at length without doing harm. Clearly I have grasping urges to talk about
my sufferings. I can barely shut up
about how much evil I've encountered and how it has crippled and disillusioned
me. If I could just keep it out of
here. But perhaps those compartments are
arbitrary. I can't say.
1080.
What
does Max Herman's dysfunctional life-history have to do with Genius 2000?
Nothing I guess. Even my own art-piece doesn't need to hear
about my cries. I guess that's because
people used to hurt me, and ignored my cries, now I want to force someone to
hear my cries. And not the people who
used to hurt me--I got away from them somewhat.
Not really I guess. Yet maybe I
can't analyze myself properly. I get so
confused. I feel sick. I hate life when it's like this.
1081.
Do
you think people should just give up on everything and call it a day?
I guess my depression is
coming back around. I'm so negative and
out of control. This kind of journaling
is what people do before they go crazy or in my case, back onto
paroxetine. I don't even know what I was
talking about with G2K. The primary goal
is to increase people's disposable income.
Or is it? Maybe the species needs
artistic evolution.
1082.
Didn't
you state earlier that when you don't know what to try to do, don't try to
know?
I said something to that
effect. Currently I have no idea what I
should try to write about. In these
moods I often write about bad things that have happened to me or that I know
have occurred. One could say I feel the
terror and discomfort of not knowing what to do, and then I lash out in
anger. Or, I may lash out in optimism
and forcibly express a lot of fabricated, "positive" rhetoric about
things turning out for the best. I get
that basic writing classes and books talk about not forcing it when you don't
know what to write about. I usually
force the topic to the war or child abuse when I can't think what to do. Thus the previous question, what can be written
about at length without causing harm? If
it's G2K hypothetically I can try to explore the hypothesis. G2K is a hypothesis that says "I am
something worth writing about, a strong hypothesis."
1083.
Doesn't
your success-is revenge theory proclaim not to write about your bad experiences
out of a feeling of obligation?
I often feel obligated to
write about my bad experiences. But
writing about them won't make them never have happened. Even if I write about them constantly they'll
still have happened. The key is what to
do now, how to will forward. I wish I
hadn't gone in for so much religious indoctrination when I got sober. It's so suffocating. Now I actually feel that I have to believe in
the theology of the Twelve Steps because "it saved my life." More complaining and accusing. I guess I can't stop it, or don't want to--I
don't know if I should. I don't know if
I should follow the idea "when you don't know what's right to do, don't
force it. Relax, be patient, and
breathe. Keep your pen moving on neutral
routine G2K topics like Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate, Dike, Hamlet, the Gnostic
gospels, the talent, G=mt2000."
1084.
Aren't
you also extremely upset that you have gotten little interest in the classified
ad you put up to sell your Karmann Ghia?
Yes I get frustrated about
that too. Yet uttering a few G2K phrases
just now made me feel a world better--Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate, Dike or just
proportion as in the division of an inheritance, the histor of ancient Greece
meaning "learned man," and exogenetic evolution; rescuing criticism
to save the present time of the now from being crushed under the weight of
infinite accumulation with no transvaluation.
Adonais and Lycidas about our bereft state, every creator's bereft state,
and the kindness we can receive from the dead who came before us. Genius
2000: A New Network, the name of this book; SFMOMA82700, Yes/No. NovumOrganum.html and www.geocities.com/genius-2000. There used to be a tilda before the
"genius-2000" but Geocities changed all that.
1085.
Can
writing assertively about G2K when you're feeling guilty or angry be one
strategy to get yourself out of the bad past?
I think maybe it could. I generally feel badly after my negative
moods drag me into them for a period of time and drag me away from writing
about G2K. I imagine that with some
practice I could learn not to obsessively catalog bad things I know about. All the bad things I've encountered in youth,
childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. I
could just keep those topics out of this book.
1086.
Is
the best way that repentant left-liberals like yourself can help the O.S.O. to
sometimes just be quiet about it?
Liberals need to take some
time off from protesting to learn about the O.S.O. I think. It's not very widely discussed outside of
policy circles. I think it is in fact
too confusing and complicated for most people to comprehend. Yet artists and intellectuals are very
perspicacious and owe it a hearing.
1087.
Aren't
most left-liberals looking for a way to support the O.S.O., and therefore
likely to find it?
I think that a lot of
liberal-left intellectuals understand that the O.S.O. is the only practical
hope for the goals of Environmentalism and Humanism, and will be trying to
formulate arguments for supporting the O.S.O. and also for supporting the
tough, painful, non-liberal-left-seeming measures needed to support it in
practice and not just in theory.
Liberal-left politicians and top decision-makers are of course already
doing all they can to support the O.S.O.
Some artists are, and some are not.
1088.
What
if artists like you should just focus on art, and stay out of the debate over
the Second Cold War and the O.S.O.?
I'd love to stay out of
it. Sure I'd lose my soapbox polemic of
this or that but I'd love to get out of it.
Partly I just want to exorcise the Nader-Chomsky demon from G2K.
1089.
Was
G2K ever--has it ever been up till now--genuinely what you claimed it to be,
and not its opposite or diabolical side, false prophecy, even the anti-Christ?
I suppose it was always
disingenuous and fake. I was a failed
academic, too scared and lazy to write a novel, so I tried to become an
artworld hustler via the internet. I
exploited the problems and weaknesses of the world and of liberal democratic
secular culture "between-the-wars" in particular to make my shallow,
crass gimmickry appear inspired and deep.
I claimed to have everything figured out--how to fix everything. In reality, all I had was a complete lack of
shame, reckless ambition, and a middle-aged virgin's eagerness for conflict and
disruption. Not to mention my alcohol
and drug abuse, which had gotten out of control even by New Year's Eve of
1998. So. I was never what I claimed to be. So why keep the lies and fakery going?
1090.
Isn't
your deepest dream to get these two thousand quanta well-and-truly done, so as
to get them out of your system finally, and then go back to real life?
That sounds great. Life is too short for me to waste mine
excoriating myself for having been a vague and disgusting wannabe artstar. Sure it's a crappy world. But a lot of artworld-based demagoguery helps
nothing. I'm also tired of constantly
saying "perhaps" or "maybe" or "I could be wrong"
after I write anything. Those go without
writing.
1091.
Is
your Ghia worth even two grand?
Who cares. I'm sick of talking about trivia. I've done disgusting things by publicly
accusing people of adultery, or using the "F" word to them. And yet I don't feel one bit ashamed. And I should, but I don't seem to be able
to. All I can think of is crucifying
myself. But even then, I'm obligated to
get mileage out of it.
1092.
Won't
you be letting the world down if you just quit art and go to computer
programming school?
The world's doing just great
without me--just look how great the artworld is doing. All the areas of culture are thriving with
abundant creative growth such as the music industry, college radio, the film
industry, and the publishing industry.
They are all doing great and hardly at all in need of any experimental
ideas from hated, cutting-edge, unconventional artists to stink things up. All I ever did was make a big stink. I accused people of all kinds of terrible
stuff. I called them names and said they
were pigs. I insulted them and
criticized their art. I got drunk and
high, and then said my art was great, and then puked my guts out all over the
place or crapped in my sleep. All in a
day's work. And they used to say I was
such a smart and good boy and encourage me!
All I did was crap on them.
1093.
How
does doing G2K in the present "save" or rescue old artworks from the
past?
The idea is from Benjamin,
not me. Despite his Commie sympathies
and delusions, he was correct in fearing that if people lose the artistic sense
in the present then the works of the past will be lost, as if the
"language" they are in were being forgotten. Think of artistic appreciation as a language,
a sort of specialized and odd one. All
the old artworks were made in one or another dialect of it. If we don't practice at least some dialect of it ourselves, here and
now, we won't be able to "read" the old works anymore. They'll be lost. They do not exist forever simply by virtue
that their physical objective forms still exist. It takes living in the Jetztzeit, the art of
the time of the now, to appreciate what older artworks are about and thus to
"rescue" their meaning. This
is why I call G2K messianic, or salvific, like unto salvaging or helping to
salvage a ship (the past) or its contents (the artworks of the past).
1094.
Would
it take about a year for someone to read all the basic texts G2K is based on?
No more than one year. I really ought to spell them out. A couple of Nag Hammadi texts one can get
from Living Buddha, Living Christ. Zen
Keys by Thich Naht Hahn talks about "the kung-an and its funtion." The parable of the talents from the
Bible. Habermas' PPP spells out a great deal of it.
That would about cover it. You
could also read Adorno and Horkheimer's short book Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Eliot's "Prufrock" and "History and the Individual
Talent." I've read a little McLuhan
here and there. You could read the
Greeks on Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate, and on Dike.
Blake's section from the Norton Two would help. De Tocqueville on the risks and opportunities
of democracy. Shakespeare. My website and college and graduate school
papers. That's all there is. It's a simple idea, and rather weak.
1095.
Can
ordinary people practice G2K or is it only for artists and intellectuals?
It's hard to say what's
what. G2K is strange enough that it
probably takes a relatively high I.Q. to make sense of it. On the other hand, being very brainy yet
conventional is no good. Average
intelligence is plenty for the basic ideas.
Yet even I, with an above-average I.Q. and being the creator of it,
cannot practice or elucidate G2K consistently.
That is probably just my fear and sloth however. Plus I get scared and so forth about right
and wrong, particularly during wartime.
Yet I despise terrorists, and the retro-medievalist view of culture they
advocate, and I'm sick of being a liberal who just cries and complains all the
time but never fights. I want to kill
terrorists too, where they live and breed--in their minds. I want to hunt them down and kill them
intellectually, violently, and take risks like soldiers do.
1096.
Is it
fair to say that most people, even above-average ones in education or I.Q.,
have little or no concept of exogenetic evolution, what it is, how it works,
and how it differs from endogenetic evolution?
Honestly I think very few
people ever consider evolution at all any more--particularly left-liberals, who
are so smug and self-righteous they think they are the peak of existence. I still think someone needs to put the hurt
on them but maybe not.
1097.
Do
you feel deep in muck again?
Yes, I do. Before the war, I felt that I had to make G2K
so popular that I could lead the O.S.O. to pre-emptive military attack, when
necessary, on those countries that wouldn't accept G2K. Now I just feel like I need to rally support
for the war, or just make people forget about it. The fact is that I can't decide what is right
or wrong for G2K.
1098.
If
you don't know what is wrong or right for G2K, shouldn't you just be patient
and breathe?
Yes I should. I hope the war ends soon. I hate to think about people getting killed
and maimed in wars protecting and promoting freedoms I enjoy and yet so
obviously do not know how to use. It
makes me feel guilty. The freedoms are
definitely important, because having them forces
us to learn how to use them, and that forces exogenetic evolution, and that
brings security.
1099.
Isn't
it true that you are peevish that you even have to write at all?
Yes I am. I'm angry that I'm required to write even one
quantum. I'm angry that I have to
construct my own existence out of mute raw materials and am not told right from
wrong. I'm forced to figure out right
from wrong by myself. Therefore I make
endless mistakes, for which I am justifiably punished because I did them. It's torture!
1100.
Couldn't
you look at your freedom as a great gift, the gift of being able to write and
make art, and your task in the security of the species as being that you learn
how to use your freedom?
I can accept that. I'm not qualified to decide when and how to
make war. I don't have either the
knowledge or the courage for fighting.
I'm not strong. I suppose I could
join up however. I don't know if they
take people on paroxetine. Back on the
positive side, because complaining doesn't help anything, I can forget about
helping with the O.S.O. Maybe just for
this book I can forget about the war and focus on art, on how to use my
freedom. After all, that is why we fight
for freedom--so we can use it well.
Learning how to use it really well and then sharing that knowledge can
be one way to assist with the war. But
since I'm not sure about supporting the war, or opposing it, I just try to
breathe.
1101.
Just because you
"really wrote these," is that a valid reason for putting them on the
internet?
Well I defy anyone to write two thousand questions and answers
and have them not be crap. I wish I
wasn't so crabby. I'm so negative. I try to explain about art, I get hit with
"you're pedantic." No matter
what I do I get kicked down for it. I
feel like I can't breathe. I may have
trouble sleeping tonight. Sometimes I
just can't bring myself to talk about G2K.
Yet I am really anxious to get these 2000 quanta done and over
with. They're like a curse. After they're done I'll probably even have to
type them up to get them out of my system.
Gosh then I might even want to burn them they're so bad. But factually I'll likely not. I'll likely ponder how to write a marketable,
regular book. Yet I don't even want to
do that. Who cares? I'm getting anhedonia.
1102.
Why don't you cozy back up
with your parents, and let them help you get through law school?
Good question, it does sound logical. Yet it makes me intensely depressed even to
ponder the plan. This is despite the
plain truth that I'm bound to be broke as long as I keep my current plan of
dipshit job and morose scribbles at night.
I actually don't know what if anything I want in life. Indecisive.
1103.
If you remove all the
quanta about your bad experiences, others' crimes, your daily feelings, and the
war, will there be anything left?
Not much. It's highly
doubtful that I could finish 2000 edited by September 1 when so few that I'm
adding can be kept. I seem unable to
write on any topics but my anxieties,
my past, others' crimes, and the war.
That's not very artistic. Perhaps
if my patient breathing self would speak up.
1104.
Patient breathing self,
what would you have me do?
Keep writing these quanta but try harder to keep decorum. If you feel the urge to write about bad
things then just sit and breathe until it passes. When you feel just OK but not great, not
euphoric, be sure to write a lot then, as much as you can take. Write with determination and don't
self-destruct.
1105.
What should I do now?
You should remember to write a lot but never about destructive
topics. If you are feeling tense check
your posture and be sure to breathe. You
may also wish to get up and get some water to drink. Avoid non-classical music and too much
caffeine. Try to be good. Think to yourself how hard you've worked to
get free of addiction. Try not to panic
or indulge negative emotions. Try to get
a handle on your emotions, and when they occur, what provokes them. Try to be hopeful too.
1106.
Are you convinced that the
idea of the Jetztzeit and Zen and the
Brain are related?
Yes I'm convinced. (I
almost answered "no" out of spite and bitterness, whimsical
rage. It's so insidious, that bitterness
I have.) I think that G2K only makes
sense with a physiological view that everyone's brain is susceptible to calm,
higher-resolution, "larger," slower-cycle states as described in
James' Austin's book Zen and the Brain. That book won the Best Neuroscience Book
Award of 1998, the year I shot G2K.
Somehow I heard about it and would mention it on occasion. It means, if true, that artistic or spiritual
awareness is a skill that every normal brain, not just the high-IQ ones, is
designed to achieve. That's the
democratic part of G2K and the only democratic part. Zen relates to the Jetztzeit as being an
aesthetic and rhetorical method of encountering the "time of the
now."
1107.
Even though your personal
pain hurts a lot, and hurts more when you try to write, accomplish something,
or grow, don't you really want to stop writing about it here?
It does create long stretches of useless quanta. I want this to be an actual case of practice
and not just a didactic or analytical treatise.
But my outbursts of anger and guilt feel more like tantrums than
engagements. I hate the idea of
suppressing my emotions and one is often told it is wrong and unhealthy to do
that. But to give vent to them at work
for example--you would just get fired.
No psychiatrist recommends zero emotional restraint. Having angry tirades against people who have
hurt me or others doesn't help my writing or my G2K development. Other people can write books about that, or I
can write about it later. My goal now is
2000 quanta about G2K, not my personal anxieties.
1108.
Is it important to remember
to be patient and breathe?
Yes it is, especially for me.
I often get agitated and anxious and try to explain things away, analyze
them away, decide on something I'm unclear on, or just get very angry and
accusatory. The polis cannot handle
constant revenge-seeking, and the network is the polis for rapidly
technologizing species like humans in the twenty-first century. Alternatively, this book cannot handle constant
flows of anxiety, anger, guilt, and negative emotion from me. It would lose its ability to articulate
anything.
1109.
Instead of trying to make
absolute rules, which you've mentioned before, should you just try to practice
Zen through breathing and patience?
I can't do anything else, it seems. I want to feel better and act better but I
can't figure out what exactly to do, how to change. That requires patience, and breathing helps patience.
1110.
What about the concern that
some people don't like G2K, or don't consider it intellectual enough?
Clearly one will not get a lot of encouragement if one tries to
do G2K. People want action at which they
can be spectators, that is the reptile brain or the pre-G2K brain at work, in
spades. G2K is boring. Yet one can strive to stick with something
even though it is boring and unappealing to the spectator class, the
consumer-culture. One just needs to
accept that one will not be a hit, or exciting, or rich, or popular.
1111.
Doesn't the better
mousetrap have a moral obligation to make
itself more popular using self-promotion, i.e. advertising?
Perhaps, but only up to a point. After a certain point the energy spent on
advertising a product is wasted. At that
point patient breathing is the key. It
is morally acceptable to limit one's advertising budget. To keep the business alive, we set limits on
budget.
1112.
Could it be that your
bitter, angry, vengeful feelings are the old habits struggling hard to reassert
themselves as you change to something better?
I think so. If I'm letting
go of my anger at the government, then that anger will start to resurface and
reassert itself in my matrix of beliefs.
My new beliefs are not consonant with my old beliefs. So, when the old beliefs percolate back up,
my ego or consistency-enforcer says "Hey this is no good! You've got two or more vastly incompatible,
irreconcilable beliefs here! Choose one
and negate the other! Inconsistency
leads to chaos, danger, and death!"
This all keeps me very anxious.
I'm in constant turmoil. My only escape
is patience (which says "the new ideas are still being formulated so let's
soft-pedal the discrepancies") and breathing (which gives me a slower
brain-pace and lends calmness to all, as well as favoring my new beliefs).
1113.
How does G2K relate to
healthy bucolic scenes like busy downtown, with people going to work and
bustling about, and produce stands all over with flowers, fruit, vegetables,
and bread?
I guess G2K would have no relation to such a setting. Jesus said, "I come not to call the
righteous to repentance, but sinners."
Happy good work, weather, being out, urban living, shopping. There's nothing wrong with that. The question is, whether G2K can take such a
form that doesn't hurt what is already good.
G2K shouldn't be jealous and envious, and break or expropriate what is
already good. Traditional art like
Modigliani and the Doryphoros deserve respect too. G2K should be able to respect them and give
them space to live. I'd like G2K to be
able to do that. I'd like to be able to
feel good and not jealous and dark when I see goodness and joy.
1114.
Because you are trying so
hard to keep writing regardless of your mood, how can you remember not to talk
about bad things, and to stick to it?
I wish I just had something to resort to when I want to blame
or criticize. I think that "success
is revenge" is the only thing I can offer.
I can't explain it away, the bad feelings I have or the bad experiences
of my past. If I can just let them pass
away. This would fall under positive
visualization during play.
1115.
In truth, do you want this
to be good enough to put on the internet in September?
I'm contemplating that.
I often don't know what I want, much less what I should want. It's so
incredibly confusing. It doesn't bear
analysis. I have to try my best
though. Perhaps. I guess I can't state anything for certain,
except that I am full of errors--I am almost wholly error.
1116.
Does G2K have a lot to do
with "necessary but not sufficient conditions"?
I think so. One has to
stay off liquor to get at G2K, but just staying off liquor isn't enough. There are also things one doesn't have to do, things that are neither
sufficient nor necessary (like fighting the government). G2K really does just happen of its own power,
like healing of wounds. We don't even do
our own G2K, much less others'. G2K is
what one could call the natural balancing of the human being with its
environment, genius with its 2000. Or,
let's say that when there is an absence of stressors then a sound can
start. Then the sound can start to
resonate and echo into a new, second-order sound. This is how G2K works. You can't just force it to happen. It's a feedback mechanism which is involuntary.
1117.
It seems you have finally
gotten to the true essence of G2K after 1116 quanta, yet is it enough to still
keep talking about how we can't even force our own G2K to happen?
Yes, that's enough to talk about because there's not much more
one can accomplish. G2K happens as an
escalated phenomenon like an oscillation.
It's uncanny. It's what religions
call a divine force acting on the human to transform it to a higher level. You can't force it, and you can't really even
stop it except by damaging or stressing yourself to kill the balance. Let's say that balance gives calm, and calm
gives quiet. In this quiet, a very quiet
sound can begin to resonate in the calmness, building into a strong, resonant,
dominant pattern called Harmony. One
cannot control the quiet sound or speed up its resonance.
1118.
So this is your
sonic-physical model of how G2K happens?
Yes, I've never thought of it until just now. I'm starting to feel a little strange, like
Eric Berne's "seeing the coffee pot with your own more glowing
vision" from his book Games People
Play. It's not exactly sound-waves,
it's more like magnetic waves or light waves.
Resonant wave-forms in the matrix.
That's what G2K is about. It's
about creating a resonant wave-form in your consciousness, or rather, letting
one arise--one can't manufacture it. And
this is the only alternative to decay and destruction for individuals and the
group. You don't cause it, but you
remove the obstacles to it (sin). You
can't do your own, or remove the obstacles to someone else's, but you can and
must remove the obstacles to your own G2K.
I can't do that for you. That's
why the Gnostic gospels talk about "If you bring forth what is within
you." The harmony is within, but
it's broken up and smothered, fractured.
1119.
Is gratifying the reptile
brain, or trying to gratify it, or even talking to it, the surest way to destroy
the calm and thus any G2K process that could occur?
Yes, the reptile brain is in the amygdala and it is the home
and engine of very noisy, power-hungry emotional experiences. Caliban represents the reptile brain that we
are eternally stuck with. I think I'm
really onto something. Patience and
breathing, patience and breathing--then finally, speak.
1120.
Would it be best never even
to mention your worry or anxiety and just stick to G2K?
Mentioning it and railing on it never helps. It doesn't help me feel better and it
articulates nothing for G2K. It's only
relevant as a general topic. How does it
relate to Genius 2000, that should be my only concern. Otherwise, I accomplish nothing.
1121.
Are you saying that one
needs to be tough and self-reliant to do G2K?
Max Herman needs to be tough and focused to be Max Herman. Everyone needs to stop the bleeding if
they're bleeding. I'm missing out on
life in a huge, huge way by expecting something to save me. Liberals are dumb because they believe the
government has to save them. I often
want someone to save me. Conservatives
look out for number one. Liberals are
co-dependent.
1122.
Does Max need to live in
the real world?
Yes, it's the only world.
I've lived in a fantasy world for a long time, a pretend world of
make-believe. What I really want to do
is gather my thoughts on a structure for a book, put together a winning
outline, and flesh out the prose and the research. Winning Play.
Max Herman and G2K are winners!
We Win!
1123.
So all the moping and
crying is over?
Yes, success is my new watchword. Not the queasy "moral" victory of
the martyr and the masochist, the passive-aggressive and ruminative-depressive
Minnesotan. Success is survival and
revenge, and it feels good--it is good.
The question is not what G2K is, but how to make it successful. And that's by skill and power, not by crying.
1124.
Does it hurt to have so
many weak quanta in here?
Yes it does. It hurts me
that I may have too many to rewrite and type before September 1. I also face the daunting task of setting up
my website before then. Oh well. I guess it's all in a day's work.
1125.
Can you at least be a
little proud of the improvements you've made, and take thereby courage in the
quest onward?
I've done OK in some areas.
I quit drugs and alcohol, cigarettes, and some other stuff. Yet I don't want to get into bragging. I need to stick to G2K. If there's one thing I've picked up on, it's
to stick to G2K and not veer off into discussions about myself. That's the only way to keep my head above
water.
1126.
Is it hard to know what one
can talk about at length without doing harm?
I find it hard at times.
All of the major topics are so volatile now--economics, religion,
politics, science, and art. The grounds
for agreement and political unity seem so weak.
And some of the grounds that seem solid appear to be flawed. It would appear that my lack of study in
political economy is showing. I don't
know what to discuss.
1127.
Isn't the key thing just to
keep cranking out quanta that don't talk about bad things?
I need to avoid distressing and demoralizing topics. My personal anxiety gets too agitated by the
dark topics of war and reform. If G2K is
to be a good thing that one can talk about and write about at length without
causing harm, it would need to avoid politics and religion. It could focus on art, economics, and
science.
1128.
Can you write about wanting
to take Genius 2000 off the internet completely?
Maybe. Things like De
Tocqueville and the Federalist Number Ten, public associations and faction,
those are more intellectual topics.
Taking my website down is more emotional. De Tocqueville said that public associations
or art-groups were the key to avoiding privatism. Privatism leads to faction. The Federalist #10 feared faction.
1129.
Will most people read all
the way to number 1128 to read a short quantum about Privatism and Faction?
We'll see, but they might not need to. A friend could point them straight to it;
they all go in a row in order. A big
polis or a
1130.
What you were saying
earlier about the amygdala thing being the reptile brain, is that based on
solid science?
Not really. Some say the
medulla oblongata is the reptile brain.
I should probably use less poetic license. The amygdala is fear, rage, lust, hate,
etc. I think. Take it with a grain of salt. There's a low-brain and a higher more
"spiritual" brain. It's part
of the brain that is more active in religious meditators. To get the real, expert story, just go buy Zen and the Brain; it's by a real
scientist. I'm speaking in very rough
layman's terms which I'm sure are rather inaccurate. "All geniuses work together, even when
they work apart," to paraphrase Robert Frost. Max is just assembling odd pieces together in
hope of a theory. He's got no master
plan. It's all flimsy. It's just too hard to write a real book with
chapters and everything.
1131.
Do G2K, Literary Change, Federalist Ten, and de
Tocqueville explain why complete privatism threatens liberty?
I think so. We need
social cohesion, just not the bad, fascist, racist, sexist kind. Not the evil kind. What about the banality of evil? That's evil too. Just regular art-school living for example,
conventional group-wisdom of postmodern art, that can be banally evil
"bad" public association too--i.e. Faction. Privatism leads
to faction. Faction is Privatism, the
rule of the One Master, gone exoteric--toward the many. This is how democracy, ancient Greek polity,
liberty, G2K, freedom, Benjamin, and Strauss all come together. It's basic limit-theory. Bayesian theory says "the sum of all
sub-event probabilities is greater than one." Benjamin spoke of how Privatism gone wild
into Faction is a false overcoming of culture.
A false prophecy.
1132.
Do you still desire the
concrete material expressions of success, like friends, family, dating, social
acceptance, a high income, and the like?
I try to want what's right to want. One school of thought says you should just
want naturally, freely and not control your wants. I can accept that. That seems to go along with not fighting and
struggling constantly. Fighting and
trying to force it just clouds the spirit.
I mentioned before about letting the quiet sound of G2K resonate in the
calmness until it creates a strong harmony.
Fighting yourself to force yourself into balance is the false path. So I ask myself whether it is OK not to want
fame, success, money, dating, and drugs.
Mainly I don't want to offend against anyone, some vague authority. I feel obligated to want success. What if in fact exactly what I want is simply
to be a "bachelor," work a day job, write at night? I don't need all the other stuff, the travel
and glory.
1133.
Would most of my anxiety go
away, leaving me free to do G2K, if I accept that I don't want dating, luxury,
college radio fame, the perfect family, and so forth?
My anxiety might go away, it's true. At least some of it. I feel greatly that I need to get rich and
famous quick so I can start dating before I completely lose my looks. I'm bald but still somewhat handsome. Yet if I can get to the point where I don't
want dating or need dating, then I could really calm down and do a great job of
G2K.
1134.
Do the books you've read
and mentioned spell out all necessary sources for G2K?
Yes, there's not much erudition required. Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct got me started on a certain line in the early
nineties. But mostly the Norton Two and
the other books, the de Tocqueville. Twain's
"Essay on Man" was a curiosity.
He was nuts.
1135.
Are you certain whether a
G2K bestseller would even be a good thing for the polis and hence for G2K?
I think being underground is a good thing at first for new
art-historical movements. Bestsellers tend
to fizzle out. Then again, never disdain
society. Bestsellers are great. Yet being an underground artistic movement,
that's great too. It gives everybody
more breathing room. If something
becomes a bestseller then all the layering of society is transcended. Underground trends and stirrings below the
level of official culture keep the soil of society aerated, like worms. Maybe G2K is just a great army of worms
slaving beneath the surface of culture so that new crops can grow. G2K is like a lot of worm-holes in the ground
bringing air and water, not to forget nutrients, to the roots below. Worms are really the kings of the earth. And they forgive the plow.
1136.
Does G2K really mean just
sitting and appreciating a tree at 8:55 pm on June 23?
To do G2K one has to be able to just go blank and breathe. G2K is like Zen meditation--not my manic
scribblings, but not gigantic sweeping novels of heroism either. Perhaps.
I sometimes don't know what G2K is or isn't. I get so touchy. G2K does have something to do with heroism,
as I've said before. It's not just
passive resignation.
1137.
Does it all key on how the
hero filters into the polis, as art, with limit-theory added to it?
The marginal heroism of individual actions reduces as more
actions are added. Economics uses
limit-theory too, sums and slicing like Archimedes did. Early in society heroism is more concentrated
and rare. Then, at the outer limit, acts
of heroism actually become anti-heroic or destructive of art-value for the
polis. At that stage, you need G2K.
1138.
So limit-theory is the key?
Yes. Jesus saw that
military-fiscal power could not be opposed except by stronger fiscal-military
power. He saw that the tendency would be
toward consolidation of military power in the very very long term, because that
was the logic of military power--to consolidate. He also saw that raw economic and
technological power would reach its universal consolidation only to find a
stark question facing it: does the human have any worth at all in itself? He spoke of Hell as the absolute power under
which humans live in eternal damnation.
The alternative, over the very very long term, is the New
Jerusalem. This is where the
military-technological complex is the servant and guardian of human dignity, of
the divine spark in humans. The bad-case
scenario is something like Hell. He knew
that military consolidation would bring a singularity, a technological
super-singularity, and that at that point "he would return."
1139.
So G2K is the Second Coming
of Christ, the New Millennium?
It's either that or my bunk and bogus wannabe art-school
project about performance art in the postmodern urban youth-culture. I.e., it's either a successful or a failed
attempt to consolidate the message of human dignity alongside
military-technological consolidation.
G2K is my attempt to
articulate the message of Christ over again, in a new historical setting, two
thousand years after his birth.
1140.
Doesn't such a grandiose
claim actually go exactly in the opposite direction of the spirit of G2K, which
calls for the dignity of all and tyranny by none?
G2K is tyranny if it's tyranny and freedom if it's
freedom. C.S. Lewis made the same
argument about Christ himself in Mere
Christianity--either Christ was the Anointed, the Messiah, or the
Anti-Christ. The same applies to Max
Herman. And sure, go ahead, think I'm
nuts.
1141.
So Christianity has a
second half to it, which is secular art as culminated in G2K?
It's constructive to look at it that way. Think of it in blocks of time: year zero,
year one thousand, year two thousand.
Then use a sine wave with the start at zero, the halfway mark at 2000,
that would put us at the half-way mark.
Or you can think of it as a sphere, with Jesus at one pole in year zero
and me at the other pole in the year 2000.
It's a very simple, basic resonance chamber. In any case, I grew up doing geometry at
UMTYMP so I think in terms of curves and waves.
Or, like a palindrome--"Able was I, ere I saw
1142.
So G2K is actually Max
Herman's attempt to win "the war for men's minds" for the O.S.O. so
that exogenetic evolution (civilization) can continue, i.e., a propaganda
battle with the highest of aims?
Yes, that's fair to say.
Every aesthetic philosophy implies a correlative political
philosophy. Therefore G2K implies the
O.S.O. Without the O.S.O., G2K becomes
completely unworkable and contrary to stability.
1143.
Now that the true arguments
of G2K are coming forth, do you really look forward to placing this on the web
in September?
Yes I do. The world
needs to know about the constellation of G2K, the assembled assortment of ideas
and facts that is the Genius 2000 Network.
I dare say this network has never existed before. That's why I've trademarked it and
incorporated myself. This could be a
big, big moneymaker--if I keep the anarchist and Marxist crapola out of it.
1144.
Are all the basic necessary
facts about G2K online, so that anyone can reconstruct them at will?
Yes they are. All the
references and facts are there. Many
more can of course be added. There are
errors too, like "hominization" and my Eumenides mistake, but none
fatal. G2K is just a good solid argument
about art and its historical meaning.
1145.
Did Leo Strauss also
confirm the convergence or reconciliation of
Yes he did. He wrote a
book called Jerusalem and Athens. He also liked Jonathan Swift, so you can bet
Strauss would have appreciated G2K.
Strauss was also very concerned with what type of intellectual authority
was necessary for capitalist democracy to defeat totalitarianism. He knew it wouldn't be easy, as Larkin said,
"with a cast of crooks and tarts"--and by that I mean Nader and
Chomsky, the ultimate crook and the ultimate tart. Sure, Chomsky would say that he's not a tart,
but he is. Just ask him about G2K or
about how his "theories" of language relate to art. He'll say "Oh I'm just a sassy little tart,
I've no expertise in art." Which
proves he's one, because only tarts play dumb like that, dilettantes.
1146.
So G2K is actually just an
argument in favor of humanity?
Precisely, and it is in this sense that it has a narrative
purpose, a coherence as a work of art, what in Zen is called
"thusness" and is also spoken of in Joyce's Portrait. G2K is the attempt
to reconcile monotheism, i.e. universal humanity, with the tragic or defined
aesthetic tradition exemplified by
1147.
Ought the ideas of the
Second Syracuse, the "argument" for G2K, the limit-theory nature of
myth and religion, and the polis-as-hero to have come much earlier in this book
and remained more central?
I admit that I've included a lot of writing about my personal
anxiety. In part I was trying to use
this as therapy, and in part I wanted to be honest with the reader about what
kind of a person I am. I wanted to show
that in most ways I'm just like everybody else.
The Second Syracuse idea I've had since 1995, but the
"argument" idea, rhetorical persuasion as aesthetic unity, that is
new to me just now I think. I've always
known that--or for a long time--that "argument" also means
"plot," as this word is used in old-time writing like
Shakespeare. I checked the dictionary
just now and they use Shakespeare twice as examples of usage. The etymology is white, brilliance, light,
and clarity--silver. Proof, to prove
value.
1148.
Does G2K-as-argument take
away from its Zen, meditative, or calm attributes?
That's a tough call. I
think we can affiliate plot with argument and argument with light or clarity,
"claritas" as Joyce expressed it in Portrait. I think Zen does
ask us to move from one state to a better, so it is not stasis or passive
stagnation. Meditation is also a
moving-toward, a dynamic state--the amygdala is calmed (the me-me-me) but the
higher, spiritual brain (the All) becomes active and moves. The true capturing of plot or argument is
within each genius--each person is the scene of the action--the person becomes
the polis. Therefore the problem is
false plot, false overcoming of culture, essentially the annihilation of
aesthetic coherence. So, the
"plot" to restore the
proper authority, the Dike, something like that, is the "argument" or
plot of G2K.
1149.
Is it difficult and
daunting to stick to the topic of G2K?
I have a lot of anger and self-pity about never dating, never
being successful. I want these negative
feelings acknowledged and fixed, but the world has its own concerns. Factually I do not warrant special
assistance. It angers me that no one is
going to help me, I'm just being allowed to help myself as best I can. The feelings however are exacerbated by my
own immature naivete in thinking that if I cry loudly enough I'll be
helped. When I just get to work on
helping myself I feel much better.
1150.
Is the G2K Network a plot?
I'd say it has a
plot, like a novel does. The plot is
"in the middle" right now, it's the story of humans achieving
long-term sustainable exogenetic evolution by averting the threat of
destruction posed by the technological super-singularity. That's the larger, bigger storyline in real
life.
1151.
Is it important that you
stick to the argument of G2K, like an attorney?
I may end up going to law school. I took the LSAT without preparation and got a
mediocre 165. So I'm no super-genius. I won't succeed just by talent alone. I can't sing or draw and my prose is very
crude and basic. Anyway. These quanta are just better when I stick to
the topic of G2K. They are nicer to
write and I'm sure more interesting. All
in all I have a clearer conscience and more contentment if I stick to the
topic. It's not like an attorney
however, more like a monk.
1152.
How does taking the city
bus to work relate to G2K?
Perhaps in its utilitarian democracy. All different IQ levels take the bus. It's basic transport. It's how to keep the polis functioning, a
basic infrastructure. ("Argument"
also means "variable" in the mathematical sense.) The bus crosses the great
1153.
Are religions networks?
Yes, religions are networks of people, places, data, and
protocols. Yet religions are not just
about transportation. Religious networks
are also about adding value, increasing spiritual value in the individual and
in the group. Economic networks are also
about growth and value-creation, not just moving-around. Biological networks are also about
growth. So, theories of history are also
networks in a sense.
1154.
Is space-time and
everything in it a network?
Arguably yes. I tried to
get at this in the VFE, by mentioning how "Newton thought the universe was
a big square box," and by mentioning "the literary theory of
relativity" i.e. my own G=mt2000 (Genius equals media times talent to the
two-thousandth power). Clearly space and
time create a network just by their own dynamic union. Sentience adds another dimension to this
network-matrix.
1155.
Can you just try to be
patient, and breathe, when you're feeling upset or negative?
I would like a regime like that. I'd like to just say to myself, "you're
feeling upset, angry, sad, anxious, that's OK.
There's no need to lash out or super-calculate. Just breathe and think positive thoughts
about G2K succeeding someday."
Often I get upset and angry, and my thoughts start cycling and chaining.
1156.
Can the ideas of G2K help
people help themselves?
I think there are two types of expressive objects. One is meant to be used passively by the
consumer, the other actively. With the
former, we accept a fantastical world because it pleases and comforts us like a
womb or a pleasant dream. We're
flattered by it and we escape our pain and fear. The active object merely gives us a means of
articulating and shaping our real lives.
It's not fantastical, convincing, comforting, or pleasurable in any
extent--it's utilitarian.
1157.
Is the active aesthetic
life slower, more painful, and more gradual than the passive aesthetic life?
It can be both slow and fast, gradual and abrupt. It has a lot of variety. The goal is to find G2K in life. Yet often one merely feels disgusted and
bored. I'm not always sure how to
experience G2K. My negative thoughts and
feelings sometimes accumulate very much, so I can't feel content or at
peace. I often feel anger or envy. I'm not always sure how to fix that. Breathing, to calm down, and patience, for
the good feelings that calmness will bring.
1158.
Can breathing and patience
bring confidence?
Overconfidence just gets one in trouble. Yet calm confidence might help me get out of
negative thought-patterns and moods more quickly. I can just breathe, and then the good picture
of the good life, the better life I'm working toward, can return. Yet my ideal life-vision may be facetious.
1159.
Is your desolation and
personal self-pity so intense right now that you can hardly keep a positive
attitude?
I do feel rather glum.
Yet in reality this feeling does not need to be cared for. I feel glum, perhaps, not because of today or
yesterday or "lately." I may
feel glum because of any number of things that may have happened a long or
short time ago. Virtually any
cause. The key is not to ask why I feel
glum--the key is to grandly refuse to feel glum, to be king of my life. The idea that feelings just happen and have
to be embraced is a false idea, in my experience. I don't need to give any of my emotions and
consideration at all. I can ignore them
or choose which one to feel. I think I
can anyway. By force of will, can I
simply refuse to feel sad, and say to sadness "I reject you"? I think I can. People can manage their emotional reactions.
I can choose to write through it.
1160.
Does the plot of G2K read like
a bildungsroman or "building novel" about Max Herman, is that the
story?
I'd love to have G2K be the great story of how Max Herman
overcame adversity and suffering to accomplish a great work of art and
culture. That's a great story. I'd love that to happen in real life
too. Yet there are so many other forces
and characters at work--my past, my co-workers, my city, my genetics and
hormonal history. There are all these
other characters and settings, laws, conditions. Yet the story could still be mine to make
happen. I can still shape G2K into a
successful argument if I can bring the Eumenides, and Aeschylus, and the Second
Syracuse, and faction, and Federalism, and privatism, and the Community of
Genius, and the polis, and all these other factors back into play. That way G2K can be a real, true, great work
of art.
1161.
Is sticking to the argument
and continuing to write constantly the key to success for Genius 2000?
Yes I believe it is. I
must keep trying. Despite all my
insecurity. I deeply want to stop
writing these quanta and start on a marketable outline, a book of traditional
form and appeal that I can sell and in which my time and effort can accrue.
There is so much more I could accomplish if I had all day to read and
write. Working my clerical job is just
inane. I agonize over whether my
attitude is evil, whether I'm vain, arrogant, or fail to show the psycho-social
openness need to truly bond with my co-workers.
The extreme absurdity of that would state that I'm obliged to marry my
co-workers. The fact remains that my
I.Q. is higher than the job requires. I
often hate myself for wanting to get out of that job into a new job. I could apply to PhD programs in Network
Culture. I bet I might even get into
one. Doubtful.
1162.
Do you feel newly certain
that you don't need to give in to your emotions, and you don't need them to be
glad or pleasant to write quanta?
I've not thought it through very recently or very often. I don't think I've ever really accepted the
idea that my emotions are something I have a meaningful choice as to how to act
on. I've generally acted as if my
emotional states were dictated by my essence and its interaction with events or
conditions. I've not really taken the
self-reliant, self-sufficient mindset that emotions are to be managed and not
merely accepted whole hog. I don't know
where I got that habit emotionally. I
think from secular humanism and artistic leftism. The idea that our emotions are a force of
nature that has to be obeyed is a common left-liberal pop-psychological
one. It's conventional American
bourgeois wisdom. The nations of the
developing world do not have that attitude toward emotions.
1163.
Is fatigue also mainly a
feeling that one can resist and deny control of one's actions or decisions?
Fatigue can be real or subjective only both, I suppose. Like any feeling it might be deceptive and
changeful. One may feel extremely tired,
and yet on making an additional effort find great reserves of energy. In my own case, I may feel the quanta form to
lack susceptibility to beauty and then on making a greater effort find
incredible reserves and richness of aesthetic quality. Feelings, I think, can be very
deceptive. They are not always the pure,
honest voice of the heart speaking. I
guess my wish is that I will continue to persevere with my writing despite
upsetting emotions and resist the urge to quit completely, collapse in a heap,
and cry myself to sleep. One could argue
I've already tried that plenty of times and now wish to try out the
alternative, smiling and staying awake.
1164.
Are your emotions that bad
right now?
I'm feeling better now, surprisingly. I was getting very glum before. The act of writing and then getting a
reasonably relevant thought helped.
Writing really does help, and not only through typically therapeutic
venting. Venting has actually proven to
be surprisingly unhelpful in many cases.
I guess I expected writing and fulminating on my various indignations
and indignities to take up more of the valuable content of this book. Perhaps a little more than enough is just
about right.
1165.
Do you like having a little
desk that you write at, and the half-size legal pads, the package of pens that
you like, a window, the dictionary, watercolors and so forth all close to hand?
Perhaps gradually I am gaining an appreciation of my nice small
desk, 1920's pine in the very basic style, one drawer across and thin
legs. With my pens, and taconite, the
Doryphoros, and Modigliani's Little Servant Girl. Gradually.
1166.
Would a concentrated,
focused, well-edited book about G2K be more successful than this diary format?
I think so. Yet this
format has a lot of advantages in that it is so difficult, shapeless, and
unpleasant. It prevents one from
reducing G2K to a tidy slogan or a pat set of ideas. It keeps G2K as an example of what Henry
James called "a loose, baggy monster." If I collated and sorted G2K to a pip, it
would be more intriguing and concentrated however.
1167.
If you did a
well-articulated and clearly written book about G2K, would it necessarily corrupt
the message into a cheap schematic doctrine?
Not necessarily at all.
I could leave out the whining and meandering of this format. I could present the arguments, evidence, and
main ideas in a compact articulate form.
The argument would be concise and compelling. Primarily I'm just fearful and lazy.
1168.
Is the quanta-format
necessary to preserve the "antic disposition" and faux-clumsiness of
G2K intact?
It helps preserve a quality of incompetent irrelevance, to be
sure. The appearance of witless inebriation. This might yes be an advantage. I can't say.
The desolated feelings I had earlier have given way to moderate
confidence and peace of mind, which in turn leads to a quite understandable
desire to keep it.
1169.
Would it be inappropriate
to quit these two thousand quanta now and try to do a regular book?
I think I'd regret it.
Somehow this format has been extremely intense for me. I've gone through unbelievable ups and downs
with it. This is not necessarily a sign
of great literary value, but it's notable.
I get into a lot of emotional and intellectual extremities under this
format. Having gained a little
confidence and some sense of safety, perhaps even greater gains are
possible. 831 left.
1170.
Could the extreme ugliness
of this book, with all the wisdom and good ideas hidden in with the ugliness,
be a great preventive against cheap reductionism and idolatry?
As is the case with Literary
Change, idolatry and the graven image are a consummation devoutly not to be
wished. As my copy of Alan Watts states
"Above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground for the
foot." It would appear that even
fate has a sense of decorum and humor.
By writing out the Genius 2000 Network in this way I am keeping true to
the idea of G2K. Perhaps. I guess I will never know for sure. However, at the very least it it worthwhile
to complete all two thousand of these before starting another project. This project may turn out to be quite good
and I may even decide to put in on the internet. I will never, never know for sure if I quit
in the middle. So I'll keep going.
1171.
Is it hard to spell out
exactly what G2K really is?
I sometimes find it difficult.
Maybe it's easy for the right person.
I feel I've done so much wrong in my life that I need to be hyper-vigilant. This makes me angry. It seems unfair that I should be loaded down
with shame and agony. It may also be
destructive. Yet to "let myself
go" completely also seems wrong.
Perhaps the difficulties never disappear. It is never granted for certain what one can
write at length about without causing harm.
There's a nice breakfast place by my work downtown. I'd like to go there one day. Yet it's a luxury and one must save one's
money. Perhaps I would enjoy it
though. In any case, one cannot do
things in advance of doing them. I still
have to avoid drinking and my urges that go against the O.S.O., my urges for
revenge. Therefore I cannot just let
myself go all over in every direction.
There must be decency and management of the emotions. With breathing and patient practice I can be
freer.
1172.
Does the idea of creating a
pleasant and formulated book about G2K go against the Tao and also against G2K
itself?
I desire fame and wealth, so I desire a Genius 2000 book that
is marketable. Therefore I desire that
Genius 2000 fit and conform to the demands of the book market. This desire conflicts with my desire to keep
G2K free of what the book market wants.
Two conflicting desires cannot both be gratified. Yet they do not really conflict. Or do they?
If I make G2K and this book exactly as I wish, no publisher will go
within ten miles of it. If I cut and
prune it away from the two thousand quanta composition then I will have
replaced the inner G2K engine with an external book-market engine, one of which
I have to confess I have no knowledge.
Yet the crisis is not urgent. I
can easily remain true to my variable plot (argument) by finishing these two
thousand quanta and placing them on the internet later if I wish.
1173.
Does the filter of
protecting the O.S.O. and not naming names make it impossible for you to write
freely and naturally?
One can write freely on many topics. Avoiding anti-O.S.O. topics and revengeful or
blaming topics can also become a very natural habit, akin to sitting up
straight and breathing properly. It only
becomes natural and easygoing after some time.
Yet my subconscious patriotism and learned restraint can keep me from
promoting Chomsky and Nader any longer.
They don't appreciate the importance of art, and the need for stable
prosperity in order to protect freedom, art, and exogenetic evolution. They are on the wrong side of the G2K
debate. Yet I don't hate them and don't
wish to harm them. I want to be free of
them is all. I don't want to make fun of
them or work to discredit them, or take revenge on them by calling them names
and undermining their reputation. They
are perhaps trying their best to do what they think is right, like many
liberal-leftists.
1174.
Is Alan Watts's book The Way of Zen a good help in
understanding Genius 2000?
I have found it to be. I
originally connected G2K to Zen via James Austin's book Zen and the Brain, which came out the same year as G2K. Prior to that I had used mainly the
neuroscience of language as I'd found it in Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct to articulate how
G2K had a physiological basis and not merely an artistic or imaginative
one. Somehow I got into comparing G2K to
Zen. I thought I'd covered the
connections among tragic theory, monotheism, and economics. Somehow Zen came to my attention. I feel like I'm forgetting something
important, like when I first considered Zen.
In any case, I bought Thich Naht Hahn's Zen Keys which then told me about the kung-an, which I naturally
linked to the idea of the "talent" I'd gotten from the Book of
Matthew. Living Buddha, Living Christ then consolidated all this and
expanded it.
1175.
Is the ineffability of YHWH
and the ineffability of the Tao also a strong link to "the ineffable union
of history and individual cognition" in G2K?
Yes those are very close links.
Every intellectual system has to deal with individual consciousness
versus consciousness in general or in the group, and with the relation of
consciousness to time and conditions.
Therefore any intellectual system about human experience will bear
comparison to Genius 2000, which means Human (genius) Experience (2000). Yet the connections to Zen go into
complicated spots that I am still learning about. For example, the "thing-event" in
Buddhism and Zen called "shih" is comparable to my own comment
"Every thought has a number."
There are other comparisons too.
Back in 1987, when I was kind of
lost, a good person tried to help me out and mentioned in passing
"shoulders back, don't roll the pelvis, think about Zen." I think that was where it started, freshman
year in college.
1176.
Aren't you terrified of
leaving things out of this book?
Yes it bothers me. Zen
for example, I'd like to include all the important topics of relevance to
G2K. Clearly the neuroscientific link to
James Austin is most crucial in a way, because it confirms that there is a
higher, more aesthetic, more spiritual existence available to everyone willing
to access it in themselves. This inner
physiological capacity built into every human brain, per
1177.
Are you hearing some loud
alternative rock through the window?
Yes, it distracts me and makes me feel adolescent. I have some difficult decisions I can't
resolve right now. Therefore it may be
best to postpone them until after I finish this book. Otherwise they just distract from the book
and frustrate me. I don't have to care
about the neighbors' aesthetic development, just my own. I can set all my decisions aside for later,
or never. Patience and breathing.
1178.
Is it still important to
fight and attack terrorists and those who would destroy the O.S.O.?
I think so but I don't want to go overboard. On the one hand, I want to be courageous and
do my share. On the other, I don't want
to be squirrely and create needless fitna.
I might mention however that I think Qut'b and his radical-terroristic
book In the Shade of Islam is
inferior--inferior to me, to G2K.
Inferior to Ibn-Arabi.
Unacceptable.
1179.
If the Ottoman Empire had
conquered
Yes. People don't grasp
these things because they are so caught up in trying to be correct and please
themselves. They don't understand the
economics of the
1180.
Is it wrong to put forth a
syncretic art-historical theory while a war is going on?
I think it's OK. Part of
protecting the O.S.O. is the "War for Men's Minds," which was needed
against Stalin fifty years ago, and compares to "The Moral Law" of
Sun Tzu which is one key to victory--who deserves
to have authority and win an armed conflict.
I argue it's the O.S.O.
1181.
Is writing quanta
mechanistic and artificial?
It could be, it can be, but it can also be organic and
natural. It's a tough call. One can call the choice to fabricate a
conventional narrative plot or rhetorical plan artificial or natural. What may be more relevant is how I constantly come back to the idea that I
need a "hook," a project, something marketable, "an idea"
for a book because the quanta idea is lacking.
Well, maybe it is lacking or maybe it is replete also. Perhaps it lacks in some respects but has
great reserves in other respects. It's
always grating at my nerves, and that says something about my nerves and my
habits of thought. I desperately want to
contribute to my culture. I've got this
extreme compulsion to make something worthwhile, positive, constructive,
valuable, creatively conservative. I
want to make G2K into a great way of thinking, expressing, and contemplating
for the consumer market in these topics.
1182.
Is Genius 2000 itself as a
conceptual model (like Zen Cubism) and its "vehicle" the Genius 2000
Network (to borrow from "Mahayana" or "Great Vehicle" i.e.
"big tent" Buddhism) a good and useful or valuable product for the
consumer market in, say, self-help, which is as yet hypothetical and therefore
in the formative, guerilla-marketing, and "seeking investors" stage?
Clearly yes. G2K is a
concept and a practice of the innovative or entrepreneurial variety. I am trying to work out the bugs and create a
stable product-line that can be copyrighted and converted to a salable
commodity. I don't deny this is
possible, but I haven't completed the task yet.
Like Buddha himself, when he was traveling around looking for followers,
I am trying to gather interest in G2K.
As people react and tell me "that's great" or "this
part's no good" I alter, develop, and enhance the product. That's the commodity picture, anyway.
1183.
So if the Socialists had
won the First Cold War G2K would have had to be done via something like a
"Ministry of Cultural Development," but the Capitalists having won
needs to be implemented as a consumer good?
Concretely yes. There
are really no highly active "Ministries of Culture" due to the
victory of capitalist-liberal democracy.
State-run enterprises are a drag on the capitalist dynamic and in
decline. Any cultural activity needs to
follow the logic of the market. This
creates both negative and positive circumstances, limitations and resources. On the negative side, there is no accounting
for taste and no guarantee of sales. On
the positive side, one doesn't need to curry favor with a Minister. All in all one shouldn't cry constantly over
the fact that capitalism won. Think of
it as democracy having won over the attacker totalitarianism as a brighter
picture. The need is to invent, market,
produce, distribute--I am still doing guerilla marketing.
1184.
Would Miroslav Holub have
been a useful help in articulating the advantages of a scientific-humorous
concept of art in the post-Communist era?
I think he already was.
He passed away recently. He did a
lot already and one can still read his works.
I wonder if Miloscz would like G2K.
I think perhaps not. It's not
aesthetically very mature yet. I think
it's aesthetically adolescent or young-adult.
Knight of Cups, Donatello's St. George.
1185.
Do you think it would be a
sin for you to exploit your homemade music CD to gain a more positive reception
among youth culture for G2K?
That is a tough, tough call.
Popular drumset-based music in four-four time with guitar and vocals is comforting
but also rather mediocre. I should be
able to hang tough without people liking me.
But if getting them to like and trust me as a "mensch" gains
consideration of G2K, is it worth it? It
may just lead to falze aufhebung.
1186.
Do you really feel like
reading today?
Yes, reading seems like it would be nice. I like to read. I was just looking at the comic-book version
of Paul Auster's book City of
1187.
Are you having some anxiety
right now about something in your personal private life, and not inclined to
write about it?
I've got the idea that it might help me to "cut off"
my emotional upset with a decision rather than let it enter my quanta-writing
and therefore drag me all over creation.
The anxiety is about something unrelated to G2K. I don't want to tax the reader with the
negative talk. I'm just going to make my
decision about it, ignore it, and keep writing.
1188.
Is your paper about the
Foucault-Habermas debate, at FH.html, germane to the topic of G2K's aesthetic
coherence or "object-ness" or "argument"?
I think it may be. It
presents an idea about non-instrumental aesthetic theory, non-making aesthetic
theory. It may also give a sense of what
I was working on in 1995. I'd discovered
Habermas via Philosophical-Political
Profiles in 1994 and gotten into graduate school. That was about three years after The Hermit.
1189.
Is G2K essentially an
argument or hypothetical statement about what war can achieve and what it can't
achieve?
Yes it is. That's the
crux of it. G2K looks at art as an
instrumental function and asks what its limit-bounds are, therefore. Art=arm=instrument. The hero is the material of art, the focusing
of genius into the one-vis-à-vis-the-many that is canonical or canonizable
artifactual aesthetic culture. There is a
point at which the heroic paradigm regresses into itself-gone-wild, a point of
diminishing or negative returns as Adorno makes clear (as does the parable of
Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and of Christ, among others). At "that point" a new aesthetic
model is required. This new model could
be called the start of the second phase of exogenetic-aesthetic evolution. It is not the replacement of the hero with
nothingness but a great peace, a calm dynamism.
I'm not quite done articulating this but you get the general idea.
1190.
Is G2K then a theory
calling for sustainable expression and evolution of human genius based on a
conversion from a cumulative paradigm to a communicative paradigm?
I can't seem to find the correct word. Also, "communicative" aesthetics
most definitely require lots of good silence and personal space--otherwise you
just get agglomeration. In any case,
every technological species acquires accelerating instrumental (or tool-making)
capabilities, because that is what it means to be a technological species. It's a truism. The accelerating instrumentality begins to
take on a different meaning as it approaches certain limit-points or
limit-bounds--the bounds are merely the transition-place at which effects or
conditions begin to change. So it is
with the instrumentalization of aesthetic faculties. The cycle is inevitable and intrinsic to any
evolving technological species--in fact it's the crucial moment, the
super-singularity of technological culture.
Art, and objects, and maker-ness.
1191.
Your contention is that the
meaning of the "role" of "genius" is exactly that which
must transform to a qualitatively
different state as a technological species passes through the cultural
super-singularity?
Clearly yes, that is my argument, my plot, the artistic center
and coherence-point of my network and of the distributable or individualizable
group of protocols and processes my aesthetic theory connotes. The heroic role is no longer the greatest
value-producing role for the individual genius, nor is the choric role. The roles are subtly different. One might call it a synthesis or a syncretic
evolution of the roles. Each individual
now has to articulate him or herself, and be the hero to one's own inner
chorus. This change in no manner
requires destruction of the old objects--in fact the opposite, it rescues them
from forgetfulness. It all comes down to
conduct in a way. Personal
self-creation, one's self unfurling out of one's self by its internal logic and
laws.
1192.
Isn't this a lot of New Age
crap?
It would seem to be so.
All of the unfurling and heroic and all of that. Yet the basic facts are correct. One cannot get to any alternative by any course. At least that's my case, my argument. The question then becomes whether my goal of
articulating this first makes me
guilty of demagoguery or the regression into heroic imbalance. It can often be the case that people just
want to be admired, be in charge, take control over others. Primitive instincts can motivate this. Often heroic efforts come to eventually
decline into tyrannical misrule, as we see in the case of Oedipus. It's a very complicated deal, a complicated
transfer of information or moving of pattern actually. The question really comes down to whether
what I'm saying is true. If it's true,
then I'm not a false prophet. If it's
false, I am a false prophet. If it can work, but just hasn't been tried
yet, then I'm a guerilla marketer.
1193.
Is it crucial to avoid the
tyrannos?
Yes, the tyrannos is the false overcoming of chaos, the false
overcoming of misrule. The demagogue
makes you think he's teaching you to govern yourself, but really he's
controlling you like a puppet on a string.
He's the hero, the star of the action, the agent, and you are merely a
spectator. That is not most to the
good. Christ himself taught that we can
all be saved and live in harmony with God's will. He was not a demagogue or a tyrant, telling
people what they wanted to hear so that he could get money or acclaim. Look at the temptations in the desert. Christ in a sense represents the Perfected
Hero, who has the limit of tyranny and destruction already demarcated in his
actions so that he doesn't drive over the cliff. Christ knew the societal paradigm of
hero-worship at extremely close hand. He
created an extremely scientific and mathematically sophisticated aesthetic of
heroic limit-theory.
1194.
Is the key to protecting
the O.S.O. going to be cultural and aesthetic maturation beyond the
uncontrolled, amygdalic, pseudo-heroics that cause and represent regression
under the constraint of exogenetic evolution?
Yes, it takes maturity, development (not orchestral
boilerplate), syncretism, calmness, meditation, acceptance of responsibility
and a fierce defense against false overcoming to protect the future of the
species and its exogenetic evolutionary line by the O.S.O. It's very difficult for people to get to this
state aesthetically because it is so new, and factually it's only just
beginning to get worked on. Therefore it
cannot be relied upon yet to sustain and protect the O.S.O. all by itself. It's like a newborn infant child. It has to be protected in its vulnerable
condition and the O.S.O. is the best way to protect it. Only the longest time-periods of exogenetic
evolution get to the complexity-point where the leap in development can
occur. If the O.S.O. collapses we may
never reach it again.
1195.
Do you think that
legitimate theologians will accept G2K as a secular art-theory that appreciates
and respects all religions, or call it heresy and sacrilege?
I think the moderate ones will grant that it is tolerant and
respectful, whereas the more fundamentalist theologians will accuse me of
wickedness. I just don't see how I can
get out of it. If I reject secular art
and science completely, I suppose then that fundamentalists might accept G2K
but only if I joined their particular fundamentalism and attacked all
others. It's just a place full of
conflict where I can't please every prejudice.
1196.
What if G2K is exploited by
anti-tradition or anti-religion forces?
Naturally they will try to exploit it. They know that falze aufhebung has its best
chances when people are trying to accomplish true aufhebung. So they attack and infect wherever an attempt
is made in culture to evolve, then they try to exploit and expropriate it. So, they have to be met with negative
reinforcement.
1197.
Who are the most rabid
anti-religion and anti-tradition forces?
It's not hard to guess as they are very vocal about their
hatred for religion and tradition generally.
Drug-based scenes like college radio and the nightclub scene are very
anti-religion. Academic Marxists
too. These types of cretins have to get
negative reinforcement from G2K. It's my
obligation, they are the thick-headed Calibans and it's my obligation to take
care of them, monitor them. It's not
easy to discuss aesthetic evolution and the exogenetic tradition of stored
experience with drug-and-sex oriented people, or with "bounders" i.e.
disruptor-usurper cliques. They don't
listen and don't make a decent effort, but they are very weak nonetheless. When they pipe up, you just single out the
ringleader and reduce him or her by mockery.
They are primarily philistines and money-changers, whoremasters and
publicans. They like to operate in gangs
and they're very idolatrous and "leader-fetishing." Just single out their idolized heroes and
slap them with ridicule.
1198.
Aren't you scared to attack
the anti-religion forces, like all the drug dealers and pornographers?
Well, there's a lot of them out there. They want to sell you drugs, or sell you
pornography going straight into your brain through a cable. There's also the danger that attacking the
anti-religion forces would make certain undesirable pro-religion factions too
strong. So it takes a balanced approach
and long-term application of right measures.
Factually science and art in the true, noble sense are not
anti-religion. That's a false rivalry,
between reason and faith, brought understandably to the fore by historic
traumas and conflicts. Yet Art is a
religion by every sane and decent standard, and science has proven the function
of faith and contemplation in the brain (James Austin). Science is not contrary to religion, or to
aesthetic tradition, or to protecting and honoring them both. You've only got to keep tabs on Caliban, and be
sure not to forget, like me, you do
have to.
1199.
Does the two-thousand
quanta format require what is called in the Eightfold Path "perfect
application" and "perfect vocation"?
I think so. Whenever my
mind wanders I get very anxious. I
really have to stick with it. Negative
or anxious emotions hit me sometimes, and that's when I really have to gut it
out. You could say it's like "just
sitting" as is sometimes practiced in Zen.
What's the product? Where's the
value if there's no product? The value
is in the protection and the appreciation of the ability to value, the faculty of right valuation, which is the
supreme and greatest value overarching and supporting all other value like
heaven and earth frame existence. The
value for me of G2K is that it permits me to experience value in life by making
my consciousness acceptable to me and not disgusting. The non-G2K consciousness is too frustrating
or nauseating. Only G2K works for
me. If I can sell my G2K expressions,
fine and good.
1200.
Isn't it difficult to keep
the whole structure of G2K coherent without any plan or organization to this
book?
It depends what you mean by "structure of G2K." The structure of Genius 2000 is obvious, and
never-changing--it's ten symbols lined up in a row. G-e-n-i-u-s-2-0-0-0. If you are wondering about narrative plot, a
polemic, a didactic message, a summation, I would think that these are not
"the structure of G2K" because G2K is not the same thing as Max's
presentation of it. I.e., "C'est
n'est pas une pipe." The structure
of G2K is also the structure of sentience-in-time-space, which could hardly be
affected less whether Max writes in quanta or chapters. I'm being a little argumentative or schematic
but the doubt is valid, because G2K's structure may just not be as "structural"
as people are used to.
1201.
Is Genius 2000 primarily a
communicative process, but one that can also be engaged in solitude?
My hypothesis seems to be that communicative expression is the
most human. However, there must be
non-communication along with the communication, and that's the solitude
part. The key is that sometimes truly
communicative principles of expression don't work in actual life, so we go
inward, to solitude. Hence most objects
of art and contemplation are for solitary use.
I'm kind of rambling here. The
basic point is that whereas communicative, totally transient or process-only
expression may be ideal but it comes under great stress in the traumas of
history under technological transformation.
Direct expression is replaced by contemplation and by images about the
return of the blessed state. Admittedly,
the argument against the aesthetic power, permanence, and necessity of
expressive objects is a very subtle and difficult one to make.
1202.
Do you get lonesome at
night and want to turn on the television for company?
On
occasion I do, but I resist the urge and read, write, or paint instead. If my emotional mood gets too insistent then
I have to address it and say "I know I'm feeling twinges of loneliness,
but I'm not going to give in to them.
They're not absolute and they're not the whole story. I have the right to feel self-reliant and
secure in my artistic solitude also. I
have the right to feel good feelings too, not just bad ones. I choose to experience the good ones."
1203.
How does G2K relate to
heroism?
Heroism is a big, big question.
Almost all religion and art, human culture, is based on heroism--the
exploits of the superior. Heroism is far
from evil incarnate; just think of any person or artist you admire and seek to
emulate--that's heroism at work. All
questions of better and worse engage heroism.
The question is whether you can be "the hero of the story of your
life," to paraphrase Dickens.
1204.
Is it doubtful anyone will
plow through all two-thousand of these in a row?
I think people will. I
think people want to have experiences and they do things that may seem
pointless or absurd like climbing a mountain, "just because they're
there." G2K is a very good idea
with some major weaknesses, as well, and this will give competing artists an
opportunity to steal ideas on the cheap.
If G2K lacks a strong popular presence, competing artists would be able
to steal with relative impunity. Also
the pans and critiques may point toward better, preferable realms of
creativity. Certainly people will read
this all the way through as a curiosity.
And those people will be the ones who truly grasp what it means not to
have a conventionally accepted object-ness to cling to; they'll sense and share
the terror. They can also be the ones to
gather up the fragmentary ideas, figures, and phrases and perhaps re-use them
more successfully than I have.
1205.
Do you have trouble
concentrating on these and staying committed?
Yes, I get up all the time to get a drink of water or put in
eye drops, any old excuse to stop writing.
I still cravenly fear doing bad quanta.
I like to try to get my nerves settled.
I don't like to give in to the anxiety about writing badly by casting
blame, getting explicit about misconduct I've seen, or railing on about what D.H.
Lawrence called "other folks' whoring." I do try to keep on task.
1206.
Is it helpful to remember
the main books you're reading lately?
Perhaps. Recently I've
been reading mainly in my Norton Two and Alan Watts' The Way of Zen. Also I like
to read my American Heritage Dictionary. For a while I was reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra and found it
quite unprepossessing. I like to read in
my 12 Poets book. I read Eliot's "Tradition and the
Individual Talent" again a few days ago.
I read Portrait again last month. Mostly I write nowadays, or work.
1207.
Did that encounter with the
White Spider in April make you start dating again?
No it did not; I do not date and have not gone on a date in
about six years. You may find that
freakish but there it is. I do not go on
dates, nor do I socialize in the normal sense.
I suppose I have decided to put off any major lifestyle changes until I
finish this book. There's a woman at
work I would like to go on a date with, but I doubt it would be healthy. I am a monk-scribbler with no friends or what
Jane Austen would have called "connections."
1208.
Is it hard to explain what
people should and should not do?
Very much so, because people are all unique and moreover should
choose for themselves what to do so as to learn better how to choose. Also, people
should sometimes do nothing, and relax, or allow someone else who is more
expert--like a tennis coach--advise them what to do. Learning, improving, evolving, changing,
reforming--those are the things people should do. Plus enjoy life.
1209.
Are your emotional states
your own personal business and not public property?
Yes, I'm allowed to keep them private and not write about them
constantly. Primarily I think emotions
can be very misleading, particularly when we try to pin them down and evaluate
them, or to act on them as if they were literal instructions on what we should
do. I speak as one with very unpleasant
and volatile emotions much of the time.
I am much better off if I just let them flit past and away like moths
into the night.
1210.
Do G2K and other
art-historical and aesthetic methods like it require more time and operation to
develop into anything of comparable value to object-based art?
They need a very great deal of time, as do I. My Zen book by
1211.
Isn't it better to try to
do "regular" art like painting or poetry than Genius 2000?
Certainly for some it's better, maybe for all, and maybe even
for me. I like my watercolor-objects
I've been creating by maker-ness. They
are far from capturing the full meaning of everything however. It doesn't seem realistic to prescribe what
everyone should do artistically; I've said before "never say
always." There are always exceptions. I also like making pottery on the wheel in
the traditional way--here's some cups and bowls I made in 2004
(Ceramics.html). They are objects, I
made them, perhaps they violate G2K. Are
they too over-heroic? Let's suppose they
are OK and respectable, a virtue and not a vice, added aesthetic value to the
world. How can this be? There would seem to be a dramatic problem
here with the "communicative" hypothesis as I call it, the need for
art at some stages in life to get away from instrumentality, purpose, heroism,
exceptionalism.
1212.
Because it is an
art-object, should the Dragon Throne (18th c. Chinese, in the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts), a postcard depicting which you have on your
desk at this very moment, be destroyed?
That is of course the ignorant and evil perversion of
iconoclasm that we must fight like mad to prevent--that is book-burning, the
false overcoming of culture, the bottomless pit of murder and suicide. Besides, destroying one thing does not at all
necessarily give rise to another thing.
It's not the object that is to blame, nor its existence that must be
ended. There is another type of thing
that needs to come into being, a newly-created form of genius--a New Network
formed on Genius 2000 principles. Such a
thing would be like a city made of moonbeams and echoes of wind, immaterial. Yet it would also be an object. Perhaps I've confused myself way too much and
unnecessarily by being skeptical of instrumental objects.
1213.
Can it be said fairly that
G2K is not an object Max Herman can sell you, but a transient, temporally
regenerating state of being (one could equally well call it resonant-harmonious
balance, RHB, or "happiness") that may or may not exist at any given
time in a given human?
Yes, G2K is a state of being and not a material object I can
give to you or sell you. G2K is rather
like a healthy liver, good digestion, or mental health. It belongs to a class of very important,
indeed essential and supreme things that are not objects yet are still
necessary for life. It illustrates the
fact that even objects are not really what they appear to be--fixed, permanent,
absolute, and immutable. Objects of art,
like all material entities, are caught up in the flux and movement of all those
forces and conditions which are not objects--like time, gravity, war,
prosperity, health, hearing, vision, breathing, light, and so forth.
1214.
What do you mean by
"cognition" in the statement "God is the ineffable union of
history and individual cognition"?
I emphatically do not
mean cogitation or ratiocination--mental calculating. I mean it in the broader sense of sentience
and experience. As my dictionary states,
"that which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or
intuition; knowledge" (American
Heritage). Cognition means in this sense
something more like "experience" rather than "analytical
thought." The idea is that when
history (as events and conditions and the expressed account or description of
them) "unites" in a dynamic formulation with a living person's
experience, history and individual sentience or experience becoming something
different and higher than either alone, which is also untranslatable into any
other form (ineffable). I don't mean
this as a limitation on what God is, just an additional phenomenon that I think
falls under the definition of God.
1215.
What is the meaning of the
G2K logo?
I based that on an alteration of the vision
1216.
Can a person find all the
important elements of G2K in this book, on the website, in the VFE, and in the
books I've quoted?
I think so, with one caveat of course that these sources
contain only the most important elements of G2K so far. I have not yet
become a truly committed and assiduous scholar or poet of G2K and I suspect
many of the most important elements of G2K are still to be discovered (by me or
someone else). The basic G2K sources
contain most or all of the important ingredients that I have been able to
gather. All of my emails to the various
listservs can for the most part be ignored as demagoguery. Ninety-nine percent of them were merely witty
or trying-to-be-witty references to the Video, my site, and so forth. On the other hand, there were transient or
fleeting aesthetic moments from 1998-2002 on the net that can't be recovered,
like Fluxus.
1217.
Is your urge to read fairly
extreme right now?
Yes, it's extreme. I
can't say why. Everything in my books
just seems so intriguing--I've got this feeling it will match up with G2K I
guess. I know The Prince did. Zarathustra does not attract me however,
it honestly reminds me too much of The
Hermit. I've got a big shelf with
everything on it, and then two small shelves.
One of the small ones has Benjamin's Illuminations
and a volume with Burke's On Revolution
and Paine's The Rights of
1218.
Is G2K probably too ironic,
subtle, and paradoxical for most readers?
I think so. Most people
would have trouble with the idea that I am both setting myself up as an
important writer (i.e. that my writing is worth reading by many, thoughtfully)
and claiming that people need to focus on their own genial development and not
look to someone else to do it for them.
This would appear to be a contradiction, I agree. I would further argue that it isn't necessarily
a contradiction however. It is possible
for one individual in a large, complex society to gain an insight or a picture
of things that is new, useful, and accurate.
This picture might be thought of as akin to a theory in science--a
hypothesis. The hypothesis is germane
and useful to the many, yet at its outbreak is only known to the individual
discoverer. In this case, at times what
needs to be known by the many is known only by one at first.
1219.
Is it thus the case that
G2K is a compressed picture of one-many interactions in complex society which
at this current moment is known only to Max?
Arguably, that is to say, it could be. G2K could be an accurate hypothesis. If it is, then it will over time become more
"conventional" and current.
Also, if it does have anything new or newly arranged in it, it would
follow that this is recognized at the present time only by me, who is the one
trying to articulate it. Of course there
is an alternative, negative scenario: that there is nothing new, useful, or
accurate in G2K and therefore nothing in it that is currently esoteric but will
in time become exoteric, i.e. currently obscure insights familiar only to their
author that will someday become very familiar to many people. This negative view rests on whether G2K is an
accurate picture. If it's accurate, then
the paradox is strongest. If it's false,
then it's of course all garbage.
1220.
Is it extremely difficult
for you even just to sit and write quanta for one hour?
I get restless. It can
really pressure you to write, and get uncomfortable. This can be particularly true when you begin
to feel you are finally getting your point across. At these times the genial focus is most
acute; it can be very tense and taxing.
One gets restless in those heightened states, and wants to fidget.
1221.
Could G2K be made relevant
to a great many more epochs and periods in human history, if only Max were more
educated, well-read, and had more time for scholarship?
Max has been kind of a shaky individual in some ways. I haven't always answered to the rudder, and
therefore have often had to answer to the temp job. Hence many multitudinous hours gone to
waste. Even if they hadn't been, one
cannot be an expert in everything from nuclear physics to ancient
1222.
Does syncretism occur or
need to occur when the forms and patterns for articulating information change?
Precisely. As society,
technology, and economics change, the forms and patterns used to store and
transport information change. I don't
mean mere mechanics either of paper versus radio wave. I mean also the aesthetic patterns, the
ideas, rules, and concepts. Mechanical
technology (i.e. canvas versus jpeg) is one very important factor but it isn't
the only factor. Ideas also lose their
marginal utility so to speak, using an economics term--they reach a point of
diminishing effect. Biological systems
and even chemical systems have the same concept of saturation and "coming
out of solution" in them, limit-bounds, transitions. Syncretism tends to occur, I think, when ideas as the communications matrix of
information change or become obsolete.
At that time, new ideas are created and created based on knowledge of
both previous ideas and current circumstances.
This is a new birth, not a simple "combination" or pasting
together of many. It's new.
1223.
Is the new birth of the
syncretic idea what is sometimes meant by "hybris" in the positive
sense in G2K?
I have major problems about my use of the term
"hybris" in G2K. As you can
imagine, my alcoholic insanity and degradation made any potentially worthy
aspect of the concept very difficult to stick to. However, the case can be made and I have to
stick to it. Hybris does not mean
literally "overweening pride."
It was never used that way in ancient
1224.
What is the real meaning of
"hybris" in G2K?
Continuing from 1223, it does not mean "Pride" in the
Christian sense. The two are analogous
but not equivalent. Aquinas in the
Middle Ages set up a particular relationship of ancient to what was then modern
in 1250. (By freak chance, it appears
Aquinas was born in 1225.) It was of
course necessary to compare hybris to pride in order to make ancient literature
and culture comprehensible, and what's more, to give modernity some leverage
against it. Ancient civilization in
1225.
Is Aquinas particularly
relevant to G2K because he resides at a very critical, strategic spot in the
relationship between the ancient and the modern?
Aquinas may be much greater than I know. I know virtually nothing about him--I've
never even read a good biography of him or survey of his writings. All I know is the snippets from Joyce, which
I read in high school in 1985 or so, then probably again in college circa 1990,
and now again in 2005. I recall once
associating Aquinas with Scholasticism and the use of hybris as an equivalent
or bridge-concept to the Christian sin of pride. The analogy is very appropriate and
well-chosen, and in an important sense restored antiquity to the world by
making it both safe and intelligible. It
also gave birth to modernity--a simple equation. Yet the analogy was made under other
circumstances and for other needs than prevail today, in 2005.
1226.
Does the study of
"hybris" require more than just a few quanta here and there?
Yes, these are just drops in the bucket. I can't pretend I'm creating an exhaustive,
accurate, good, scholarly treatise on this topic. I'm alluding to it briefly, stating its
importance, then moving on. I'd like to
exhaust it but I can't. (I don't think
Joyce did either, not in Portrait certainly). My argument is that this tension or topic is
irreducible--it's ongoing, at the very center core of the now vis-à-vis the
past.
1227.
Did Benjamin have a concept
of appropriate breakage, to accommodate the disruption of change--positive
breakage of growth--as distinguished from the degrading violence of the false
overcoming?
Yes but I forget where he mentioned it. I bet it's in the PPP. I should probably
re-acquire that book and cite it properly, MLA rules observed and
everything. Perhaps. In any case, Benjamin had a category of
acceptable breakage, and I think there is an aspect of that in hybris--necessary breakage if you will, the
iconoclasm of growth and evolution.
1228.
As to mainstream or
respectable theologians, whom do you know of that might acknowledge a modicum
of decency and value in G2K?
Certainly I would hope that Professor White would. Yet I have never corresponded with him and
only took one class from him in 1987 or 1988.
I doubt extremely that he'd remember me.
His intellectual work however would make me suspect he might have regard
for an aesthetic theory such as Genius 2000, a theory and a practice. I first learned the concept of syncretism in
Dr. White's course. He's now at U. Texas
I think.
1229.
Does G2K relate to Matthew
Fox's The Coming of the Cosmic Christ?
I found that book in 2003 or so. It never affected G2K 1998-2002 as I never
knew about it. I had however found The Birth of the Silicon Savior, a real
book, in the attic of my apartment in
1230.
Why do you mention Fox's Cosmic Christ?
For several reasons. It
would appear to be an example of contemporary syncretism and of legitimate
contemporary theology that is not antithetical to G2K. Also, it has interesting scholarly material
in it. It also has an interesting theory
about the divine feminine principle. I
also think it is different than G2K, in some ways, and G2K is trying to do
something else or something in addition to that book. I have not read the whole book, just
portions. I can't vouch for everything
in it, nor for my own understanding of all its arguments. It's by a respectable publisher, however,
Harper and Row, unlike The Birth of the
Silicon Savior which was self-published by someone, I think. I would also like to emphasize that Fox's
book uses a non-literal interpretation of the Second Coming which as such, i.e.
as non-literal picturing, is like G2K.
G2K takes a non-literal view also, based in part on Yeats’ poem
"The Second Coming" (see my site) i.e. the arrival of a new aesthetic
method, which consolidates a sustainable productive querelle.
1231.
Is the aesthetic or
pleasurable side of G2K also important, and not just the analytical or
scholarly?
Yes, the aesthetic, direct experience is crucial. Many good ideas fail because they lack
aesthetic power. In this regard, it is
clear that world peace within the O.S.O. requires aesthetic help to succeed,
under the Moral Law of Sun Tzu to win "the war for men's minds." Aesthetic, direct knowledge is mentioned in
Pound's "The Rest," which was a crucial poem in my development in 1990. "In a Station of the Metro" was
also crucial for me. This also connects
to Socrates' claim that those who know what virtue is will practice it i.e.
live by it. What he means by knowledge
is aesthetic knowledge. I.e., those who
perceive the aesthetic superiority of virtue will choose it for itself and not
from fear of punishment only. The work
of artists in the survival and success of humanity is to articulate the beauty
of virtue, of evolutionary necessity.
1232.
Do you like the view out of
the window at your writing desk?
Yes, it is great. It's
just the shingles of the roof next door, gray, one great flat sheet of
them. The building next door used to be
a church, so the roof is just two-sided.
The shingles are gray and take up half of my window. Then above the line of the roof is the sky,
with only one tree's upper foliage showing above it to the left and another
smaller tree's very top few sprigs at the right end. It's an extremely basic view, similar in composition
to the Yes/No video.
1233.
Do you need to explain
Yes/No?
Yes/No is pretty self-explanatory as it exists currently on the
internet. It is a quasi-objective
questionnaire asking people whether they think a new art-historical period is
imminent. The questions and answers are
all from 1999. The dynamic was similar
to my "siphoning" idea about asking the question in "hoi
polloi," the non-art-historical sphere of daily humanity and also making
it within the art-historical record at the same time, to create a
connection--an analogy.
1234.
Have you resolved all the
talk about hybris, and Aquinas, the querelle, iconoclasm, syncretism,
exogenetic evolution, and conventional contemporary theology?
No I've not brought all the topics to full closure. I apologize for bringing up a lot of topics
that don't make sense instantly, and don't all reconcile or add up right
away. I'm very conscious of the
inconvenient sprawl of G2K as an argument.
I try to prune it back as I can, when I can. But yes, it sprawls, I still haven't fixed
that. Yet it could be that it needs to sprawl, it can't go about
itself any other way. It's like a
population explosion. It's not
clear-cut.
1235.
Can you at least claim with
certainty that the concept of hybris needs to be contemplated?
I think it does.
"Hybris" could have applied to Orestes, or even to the oracles
of
1236.
What else is important
about hybris?
It is very important to remember how dangerous it can be, both
within one's own psychic ecosystem and within the polis. There have to be serious measures taken to
control it. In 1998 I was aware that a
book about Hitler had come out with the word "Hybris" in the title. I felt it was an inaccurate usage, or a
conventionally simplistic one, though I didn't read the book. It's a complicated word and a complicated
aspect of human history: it captures the problem of individual rights versus
the group's need for order and stability.
The word means "crime," flatly put. Crime or "transgression" are now
gigantically over-valued and popularized by despicable, mediocre "cultural
studies" type work like Stallybrass and White's book about
transgression. I reject them and their
work, and want very much to discredit them as shallow and weak. They don't understand good hybris versus bad
hybris. So it's a very dark
thicket. We've only just now, this
second, entered the woods. Any talk of
getting out of them is too soon. I
detest Postmodernist and post-structuralist cultural studies propaganda about
transgression, like Madonna.
1237.
Do you have a great deal of
"Noli Me Tangere" in your feelings right now?
Yes, I get disgusted with things. I don't want mediocre or vile parties to
think I support them. I don't want
Genius 2000 to be expropriated by anti-religion or anti-tradition forces like
the sex-and-drugs crowd, the extremely anti-genial-development culture of sex,
nightclubs, designer drugs, all of it.
That stuff is horrific. Certainly
I used to try to belong in that druggy scene.
I wanted dating and to be cool.
So, in a sense I'm hypocritical to criticize it. Yet the fact is extremely clear that all that
sex and dancing culture is extremely decrepit.
Or maybe it isn't. I just don't
want to condone it and be what the Beat writers were for hippie druggies on
LSD. Sure I'm cripplingly jealous of
people who can drink and go to clubs, dance, smoke pot, and have sex
after. I'm jealous. But I still reject their validity. They are crassly consumeristic--in some
ways. Maybe they are OK too, just trying
to have some good times. I'm confused
again now. In any case, I'm very afraid
G2K will be co-opted.
1238.
Is P.B. Medawar's essay
"The Future of Man" relevant to G2K?
I think so. I more or
less quote it all the time when I say "exogenetic evolution" or
"exosomatic evolution." I
recommend the essay to everyone. It
boldly states that humans have two systems of hereditary evolution, one genetic
and one non-genetic, and that our future hopes lie in the latter which has
virtually nothing profound in common with the former. Genius 2000 then, it would seem, does not
need to act like it's under pressures of natural selection and so forth. Maybe I forget that and think G2K is too
literally "genetic." It's all
so difficult to sort out. Perhaps I
haven't done my homework on this book deal yet.
In any case, learning and so forth can teach people how to adapt
better. Yet I contend as well that there
is still the competitive aspect of the market, and the reptile brain, and
military necessity to consider.
1239.
Is writing always fun?
No, often I have to force myself to do it. It's generally pleasant however once I start,
unless I'm trying to work too hard and it hurts. For example, trying to explain my take on
hybris. Frankly it's depressing. I'm not even sure that I'm correct about
hybris. I guess I'm sure that I might be
correct. Oh hell I guess I have to
explain it. Maybe I don't. I don't want it to look like I'm condoning violence.
1240.
Is it hard to do this G2K
deal?
Today I feel very angry and I don't know why. It's starting to rain on my coffee (iced tea)
at the sidewalk table. The next step is
to go back home. Home is hard though,
staying there too much. It could be the other
coffee shop is where I need to go. Or
just to calm down. I'm confused again,
angry, restless. Frustrated. Angry.
1241.
Why is it so hard to
discuss hybris?
I guess I don't know. I
don't want to fail. I'm afraid it's too
much work. I'm angry. I'm frustrated. All of G2K stands or falls on whether there
are different definitions of hybris in antiquity and Christianity, and whether
there are permissible and impermissible forms of hybris. I'm claiming hybris is OK and necessary in
evolution. If that's wrong, I'm wrong
and G2K is wrong. I try to put hybris in
a cycle also to meliorate it, modulate it.
I try to place it in the aesthetic cycle, the tragic cycle, the creative
cycle. Why can't people understand
it? I'm getting anxiety from
rejection-fears I think. Heroics require
a degree of hybris and antiquity realizes that.
Oedipus was forgiven after he was crushed. Christianity seems less considerate of
hybris. It does not consider it a
necessary stage in spiritual growth.
Hybris is at the core of my being.
1242.
Is hybris the absolutely
key topic of G2K which you cannot avoid?
I think maybe it is. I
wanted to skip it earlier but the logic of these quanta says that skipping is
questionable. I used to think that there
was an OK hybris akin to iconoclasm, heroic assertion, the necessary arrogation
of authority to an individual active agent.
I used to consider it as the OK aspect of, say, Napoleon. Ancient
1243.
Can you prove that G2K is
not the evil or reprehensible kind of hybris but rather the good or
evolutionary kind?
I guess I don't think I can prove it. Godel's theorem may confirm that I cannot
prove it, that it is a relationship and ineffable.
1244.
Would good hybris be the
kind that advances exosomatic evolution, and bad the kind that retards it?
I think that's accurate.
Benjamin left open an acceptance of a kind of legitimate violence,
necessary violence. He acknowledged that
to practice rescuing criticism requiring changing the status quo to bring a new
birth. Yet most violence is clearly just
bloody, rapist, vulgar ignorance like a psychopath torturing an animal. I don't know how I can distinguish between
the two. I feel discouraged. Is it impossible? Eliot states that each new work of art
changes the sum total of all, the great system of art. Every action we take changes things,
destroying the state of things and replacing it with a new state. How can there not be some degree of change, risk, experimentation, and
assertion? Even Beethoven, a German,
forgave and admired Napoleon until he went "too far." What's too far and not far enough?
1245.
Is G2K Max Herman's attempt
to carry out good self-assertion on proper principles that acknowledges the
needs of the polis and evolution yet does risk change?
Yes it is. I am arguing
that Genius 2000 and the Genius 2000 Network is a permissible, acceptable
addition to the polis--to civilization, the great system of non-genetic
heredity. I don't know for certain
whether it actually is. It's a
hypothesis. Sure I've used coercive
tactics against my enemies in the artworld, basically thuggish hoodlum
tactics. Yet setting that aside, I want
to present an aesthetic hypothesis--one which, if correct, could have a
significant impact. I don't see how this
attempt as such could be called
inherently evil. The consequences may be
negative and sickening. Yet the attempt,
the attempt, can that be called evil in advance? I'm very scared that the answer is
"yes" and that I should know what I'm doing is criminally satanic but
don't, but deny it.
1246.
Are you angry that G2K is
so disrespectful of your emotions and fatigue?
Yes I am. Genius 2000
doesn't care at all about Max Herman.
G2K is just an equation or formula, like the heliocentric model, that
wants me to explain and articulate it.
It doesn't care that I'm lonely, tired, angry, sad, or afraid. It's like a slave driver whipping me to
death. If I collapse in a bloody heap
I'll be dragged to the side and another worker will take my spot. So it goes.
1247.
Is it clearer now that
doing G2K and writing quanta changes you, and requires upright posture, good
breathing, and patience about the change?
That could be the case.
I've heard it happens with physical fitness--the more you train, the
more you crave training. I could be
wrong. It does make me extremely
miserable to think about quitting. G2K
is merciless. One cannot escape even for
a second. It's a harsh taskmaster.
1248.
When doing Genius 2000, do
you always have to try your best, breathe properly, sit up straight with good
posture, relax, and be patient?
The indeterminacy of doing G2K can be maddening. I see other people and think "My god
their lives are so sweet and simple; what the hell is wrong with me?" Well, it's a cruel thing to have been
born--the Greeks knew that too. Life is
suffering, Buddha said. Being alive
hurts. Hamlet knew that too--"the
slings and arrows." You wish you
could quit, but can't.
1249.
Does the question matter of
hybris and whether G2K cruxes get worked on subconciously, in the great oceanic
depths of the subconscious, and only occasionally need to be worked on at the
surface level?
I think the mind has an unconscious aspect and it does work on
things below the surface. Perhaps we tax
the neurons, strain them, then they recover, growing back stronger, enhanced,
re-shaped.
1250.
What if people can't take
the uncertainty of G2K, the painfulness, the discomfort and tension?
They can certainly choose not to confront the difficulty if
they wish. No one is forcing anyone to
regard the G2K hypothesis. Of course,
some things in life are difficult to face and one cannot just ignore them
forever and have no ill consequences.
Alcoholics like myself have to face the fact that they're addicts. It may seem difficult but it's the
truth. Sometimes difficult things are
not everyone's cup of tea, and not everyone needs to try them. Some people also carry a greater aptitude and
some carry a lesser for the same task.
Just because something is difficult doesn't mean one has to do it, but
some difficult things are completely necessary for survival and some are
difficult but bring great rewards that pay back the effort they require. This is of course all generalistic. G2K may not even really be that difficult.
1251.
Is it harmful and
unnecessary to say negative things at length about oneself like "I'm
weak," "I'm a coward," "I'm degraded," and so forth?
Psychiatrists say it's no good to talk to yourself like that
and I agree. One wouldn't talk to a
child that way, if one were a good person not wanting to damage the child. Sometimes pain is just difficult effort but
sometimes it's degrading damage. I often
condemn myself. I'd like to stop doing
that when I get frustrated. Clearly I'm not
perfect. Yet I think that trying to make
good art is OK, and I think I'm making an honest effort. I'd like to just take direction from my
betters but often you have to learn by doing, learn by making mistakes. Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of hybris,
and of sin--that we learn through the pain of error, gradually, over the long
term, like geology. I can't say. I'm a good person though.
1252.
Do you need to stick to
more half-page quanta?
I think so. I've been
doing a great many full-page quanta lately on these half-size legal pads. It's a sign of my concern however. I'm getting very concerned about the problems
of G2K. The treatment of hybris in early
G2K was a huge problem. I was trying to
shake up the establishment by criticizing it, but I took a very judgmental and
hypocritical tone. Perhaps. In any case, I take pride in being
responsible.
1253.
Does a comprehensive, deep,
consistent program of rescuing criticism call for a little bit of iconoclastic
transvaluation?
I think that's fair. As
the cliché goes, standard procedure may need to be corrected, and some people
may lose their jobs. Someone may need to
take a leadership role, and get a higher salary. There are always risks in creating a new
Jetztzeit, facing the problems.
1254.
Would you be better off not
making such grandiose claims for G2K, and thus being able to fulfill them?
Possibly. I'm well aware
this whole project could be a blasphemous, syphilitic waste of time--a complete
crime. I do try to mention the Eightfold
Path and so forth, "perfect vocation" and so on, things that support
the argument. I don't know why I want to
get at the truth, or why I think I can.
I can't quit however--I'd go completely psychotic. I need it now.
1255.
Does your lack of security
and salary make you feel sick sometimes?
Definitely yes. I get
scared. Yet I do have a very concrete
plan to undertake after I finish this book--I am going back to school to learn
the marketable trade of computer programming.
This will cover my food, shelter, and medical bills for the next (the
last) fifty years of my life. I'm
quitting art and G2K again for awhile after this book, no question.
1256.
Since you only have a few
short quanta left, let's say seven hundred and forty-four, what do you really
want to take care of?
I've tried to mention a lot of the basics. I despise terrorism and advocate U.S.-led
efforts to kill them all. I also want to
make clear that the One Superpower Option is the best hope to get the species
through the super-singularity and I support it completely, despite my obscurity
and incompetence. This requires an
essentially neoconservative platform, and I accept that I'm neoconservative
(i.e. used-to-be-liberal). Like
Strauss. I completely regret all the
Chomsky-Nader cheerleading I used to do--they're ridiculously bad and
irresponsible. I don't want to get too
serious though, because people need to keep their hearts light a little
too. It's so difficult, yet the key lies
in letting go also. If liberals could
change a little they'd be OK.
1257.
Why did you do so many bad
and disgusting things before?
For a lot of reasons. I
wanted attention, and I wanted to scare people.
I wanted to shock people's sensibilities so they could realize that art
is important. I also wanted to damage
artistic activity I thought was either mediocre or dangerous. I wanted to take responsibility myself for
cleaning house in the art world. The
overall logic of this has partly to do with Hamlet "putting on an antic
disposition," and contradicting myself, scaring people, discouraging
flattery.
1258.
Are you willing to
sacrifice all the false popularity you gained during your "drunken
leftist" phase?
O drunken and perfidious Monster! (Shakespeare). Yes I am.
I don't want to be liked by all the cowardly crackpot leftists like
Chomsky anymore. They disregard military
necessity and place their own most cherished goals at risk. I want the college radio scene to hate me
also.
1259.
Won't G2K flop completely
if the youth counterculture decides they don't like it?
No, I don't think so.
Teenagers can't handle G2K anyway--they're too ignorant. G2K has a much better chance of success if it
focuses on decent intellectuals in their thirties. All the youth counterculture wants to do is
party and get high. They cannot be
relied upon to appreciate good art. They
were sick of me anyway.
1260.
Isn't it irresponsible to
let the youth counterculture get away if they could at least be influenced a
little by a more conciliatory, ingratiating G2K?
They youth counterculture is a mob culture. It's about formulaic, mass
non-conformity. That has nothing at all
to do with G2K, because it is straight false overcoming. I would puke my guts out if they liked
me. Frankly I don't feel secure about
anyone liking me. Blake said
"cherish the contempt of a fool--it is a kingly crown!" I'll be liked in 2100.
1261.
Are you looking forward to
computer programming school, reading, getting a small house in a couple of
years, and getting ready for retirement?
Yes I'll be very glad to get off the G2K propaganda
machine. The deeper meanings of it are
all just impossible to get at. It will
take centuries of real peace for humanity to even start to get its act
together. One cannot force these
things. I'd like to say everything is
being done that can be done, and in a sense it's true.
1262.
Can G2K convince people to
do the right thing in every case, en masse?
People cannot decide what is right and wrong, so they have
trouble doing either. G2K may be able to
squelch people who would seek to persuade people to do wrong en masse, by
discrediting false overcoming by mediocre pseudo-artists. I guess that would be the only contribution
and an extremely thankless one. I doubt
I can convince left-liberals to convert to neoconservatism and support
pre-emptive war, but perhaps I can. It
could occur over time I guess.
1263.
Do you honestly want to try
to bring all the opposing camps in the world to peace with each other, complete
unity?
It would seem hopeless to try to reconcile a Chomsky fan with a
Possony fan. Yet I understand and like
both, each as he deserves. This is
abnormal however and very few if any people can have such little care over
preferences. It also might not be good
to abruptly bring opposing camps together; certainly to waste energy trying is
foolish. Therefore I should give that
up.
1264.
By giving up trying to
reconcile liberal with conservative, can you just go ahead and do G2K?
I have trouble distinguishing what is possible from what is
necessary. If I see a possible good
thing, I make the error of considering it necessary. Some things are unpredictable and if you try
to control them you come to grief. I'd
like to just express G2K without concluding I have to fix the world, convert
people, all that. I can't understand why
I'm so fanatical about convincing people.
1265.
Is it morally acceptable
just to try to get one's own head in order, and not to bother trying to fix
anyone else?
My co-dependent background and naïve Boy Scout education
notwithstanding, I rationally agree it is OK to let other people go their own
way and just fix myself. I've not been
raised to believe that, this taking care of oneself, but I conclude it is true
from my experiences. As for trying to
make liberals see more correctly, that's hopeless as well. It's morally OK not to give a damn about
anyone going to hell in a handbasket, and also OK never to try to express a
single word of caution or wisdom. I'm
being facetious, but I'm angry. I get
frustrated so easily. I get angry that
there seem to be contradictory instructions: try to help others improve, but
don't try too much. Focus on yourself,
but don't focus on yourself too much. It
takes a grownup to face these shades of gray.
I am not very mature, socially, sexually, emotionally, or
intellectually.
1266.
Doesn't Medawar's idea of
evolving tradition contradict the unstructured, unedited form of two thousand
quanta?
Possibly. I'd like to
consider that question but I'm just feeling so tired. I'm getting self-pity feeling again too,
loneliness, urges to quit G2K completely, forever, and be a computer
programmer. Trying to create culture
does not appear to be acceptable--only reverence and piety are acceptable. The idea that it is worth the trouble and
risk to create cultural activity (do G2K) seems wrong.
1267.
Could it be that Max Herman
simply never bargained for an all-out shooting war to erupt smack in the middle
of his antics and completely transform the military landscape of the
twenty-first century?
That would be fair to say.
I never considered that the
1268.
Setting aside the need to
be a great cult leader as much as you can, how can doing G2K help a given
person lead a more satisfying life?
I don't think it can. I
think it's all just propaganda. Now I'd
better calm down and take a breath. It's
not all propaganda--it's a hypothesis.
Other modes of life and art are far more developed and consummated,
fleshed-out, than G2K. If you want to be
happy, go to one of the worldview-communities that are up-and-running. G2K is volatile and experimental and unlikely
to give you anything of value unless you are an artistic type who likes
confusion.
1269.
Has the start of the Second
Cold War made the tactic of glib anti-authority demagoguery obsolete and
unacceptable?
I think so. There's a
very serious war going on with very serious implications for the entire
twenty-first century. If one has an
art-school level project to promote, don't use the war as a soapbox. War's too serious.
1270.
Would it be fair to say, at
least, that there is something in the universe that even all the books and
artifacts of tradition cannot give you?
I just can't comprehend this process right now, but yes, some
things cannot be gotten from books or paintings. What this has to do with G2K eludes me. Even more, what writing quanta about G2K has
to do with G2K eludes me. Should G2K
take away people's love of tradition?
Reinforce it?
1271.
Is G2K really obsolete at
this stage, because the outlook of P.B. Medawar has prevailed?
G2K might be obsolete and better off canceled. I don't like it much anymore, that's for
sure. Frankly, what I used to like about
it was that I felt sure it would bring me money and sex. I liked it for that reason only, that I was
confident it would succeed and defeat all other art. Now I'm thwarted in that, it's not going to
happen, and I feel guilty too.
1272.
Isn't it just normal daily
work and hygiene, not any tremendous new art-theory of the post-object type,
that will maintain humanity and keep it evolving?
Actually I'd say yes.
Just normal work, the very quotidian process of ordinary life, is what
is going to bring peace and survival and evolution. Society doesn't need a big fat new
art-theory. Yet if I quit this book now
I'll go crazy wondering. So I'll finish
it, but no, G2K is not needed.
1273.
What if all the druggies,
mafiosos, fundamentalists, and nano-warriors take over with no "great
middle" to offset them?
That won't happen.
That's just dystopian claptrap, it's for the movies only. After the novelty wears off people stop doing
drugs. Plus, drug use brings young
people together for hot sex and parties the world over--it's the great
unifier. I can quit this G2K bullshit,
go hang with my old friends again, and get laid.
1274.
Have you done a good job
today of both explaining what G2K is, and why it's unnecessary and bogus?
Oddly it would appear so.
I've tried to make the case for hybris as a confusing and dangerous
social behavior. Also exosomatic
evolution. Yet these basic facts are
eminently already accepted everywhere
in modern society. It will just take time
for them to take effect is all. And as
for not having enough time, the O.S.O. has been launched to insure that there
is enough time. Factually everything has
been taken care of, not by G2K but by very capable people who read some of the
same sources and came up with the proper conclusions. Leo Strauss, for example, figured out G2K a
good seventy years ago. The difference
was, he set to work on making the world safe for G2K, not, as I have done,
screaming for affection and praise for having "thought of it." My work was already done by previous, better
people.
1275.
Could this book then be a
grand farewell to G2K; not a beginning at all, but a request like Prospero's
epilogue that the audience clap to set him free?
I'd like to put something out as an apology for all my
demagoguery. I really feel a lot of
intense guilt and disgusting dirtiness now for having tried to be heroic.
1276.
Do you start every day over
again, with no progress toward a structure and nothing having been added to a
goal?
That's not accurate. The
results are perhaps not as clear as they might be, or exact, or what I'd hoped
for, but I think something changes. I
couldn't say what. Subconsciously in the
great ocean of soul-making perhaps something occurs. Such as when we go rollerblading, and get
tired, then overnight our muscles repair themselves and grow a little. Maybe the results are indirect and
invisible. I do wish however that G2K
gave me more certainty and comfort.
1277.
Do you still feel like you
want to finish all 2000 of these?
I think so. I think
quitting early would leave me far too preoccupied with whether I'd done rightly
or wrongly. I can't say I enjoy it very
much however, or that the result is as cute and gimmicky as I used to think G2K
was. I used to think that G2K was extremely
clever and precise, and everything would be grand for me from here on out
because of it. Now I find it glib and
reckless, demagogic, and exploitative of people's bad habit of picking heroes
to do their psychological dirty work for them.
Perhaps it was clever, but the fact remains that I did little or no
serious, long-term work on it. It was
almost all opportunism and rhetorical sleaze.
The very miniscule elements of good, worthwhile art were there but I
tried to exploit them. Perhaps. As it is, I am also feeling like I have no
right to quit G2K. G2K is the Caliban,
the ignorant one.
1278.
Would it be easier and more
comfortable for you if you could stop confusing slim possibilities with urgent
necessary certainties, and then also to avoid the guilt and self-recriminations
for the hybris of trying to force a false overcoming?
I think so. If I could
just stop trying to force a false overcoming I could then forgive myself for
trying. False overcoming is the bad
hybris. True attempts to do the work of
evolving myself is not really hybris, it is more a case of taking the steps I
need to take in order that the natural evolutionary process might evolve
me. Or, my natural growth-potential
might be allowed to occur a little bit.
I can't force the growth, I can just avoid harmful conditions and seek
to create favorable ones. I can't force
the growth even in myself, that's up to the Tao. Mere analytical cleverness means nothing. Therefore I can also avoid guilt.
1279.
Is the true curse of G2K
that you have to keep doing it, but you're not going to get a single iota of
money or sex for it?
That could be the case.
I'm consciously aware that I could be doing more harm to the polis if I
take down G2K and create a vacuum.
Therefore I'm obligated to try to keep it up and just to take all the
false overcoming out of it. Any hybris
that might be called for is not up to me, it's up to the overall verdict of
history and exosomatic evolution.
1280.
Would this all mean then
that you will most likely have to finish this book, do the conference in 2005,
put the book on the internet for free, and get no acclaim at all?
I think it's fair to say that given my extremely tardy and
backward development, stunted by years of procrastination and drunkenness, I
will not be able to create a marketable G2K book for about another ten more
years, fifteen more likely.
1281.
Could it help you to accept
that this book is not publishable in normal terms, only as a free internet
book?
I'm struggling with the idea that G2K cannot succeed via normal
cultural channels but only via the internet.
I don't mean to put down the culture market--though I would have a
slight critique of it i.e. that it cannot replace underground creativity--yet
it just doesn't seem possible to publish a G2K book in the normal way. Then again, nothing makes more sense. Or does it?
True G2K isn't specific enough, one-sided enough, or titillating enough
for the book market. It could be
smothered in lies to make it sell, but it wouldn't be the G2K that was
selling. I don't want to be a quitter or
a social reject but I can't see the alternative. It's exactly how other, better artists than
me felt--there are no buyers. The
question "why make art no one likes?" is a basic question. I used to try to use force to get people to
encounter G2K, Gorgian rhetoric.
1282.
Do you find it very
unpleasant to contemplate permanent artistic obscurity?
I guess maybe I do. Who
wants never to get the praise, sexy lovers, money, and people letting you be
the big shot? At my clerical job I'm
just another person, nothing special.
I'm really in a dark place. I was
strongly wishing to cancel G2K one hundred percent, take it all down. But I had something akin to a vision--G2K has
to stay up, on the cross as it were (the locus), so that nothing else can try
to go up there, and as a cautionary exemplum.
I'm cursed.
1283.
Is it impossible for G2K to
be popular and successful?
Yes, because if it were popular it couldn't operate as
G2K. Which is also why no publisher can
publish it, and no agent can represent it--because G2K is that which is unpopular, unpleasant, and necessary. It's like ugliness and pain. People, even the ugliest people, want to
pretend they're pretty. They hate the
truth.
1284.
Isn't sitting down and
writing your only salvation, your only success?
1285.
Are you certain that no
book on G2K could be published?
It's a plain fact, a logical certainty. G2K has no attraction for a book
publisher. Likewise, it has no appeal
for academia. Academia is too partisan
and political. G2K has no appeal for the
consuming mass. It has no appeal for
anyone. It's ugly and depressing. Matisse said "nothing depressing in this
art." Well, why do I have to accept
that? Because I'm not trustworthy.
1286.
How can you continue
writing if everything is off-limits?
I guess just to write about writing. I can write about the ink, my pen, my
hands. My skeleton. Some people want writing to have a result, a
product, like grocery shopping. What
will be will be. Sometimes writing
hurts, but not writing hurts more. I
doubt any psychiatrist would say I'm doing allright, that what I'm doing is all
right. It's hard to comprehend being
moderately happy and still keeping up the G2K charade.
1287.
Is keeping G2K on the
internet your punishment for claiming you're the messiah?
That's a funny one. I
can't say for sure. Nothing is
clear. I can't decide anything, I'm
freezing completely. I see both sides of
everything too much. Yet I don't want to
do false overcoming either, make the whole disgusting freakshow disappear with
Holub's "gulp of schnapps."
1288.
Because this cannot be
published in a book, can you then make a pledge to take care of yourself by
taking out any references to anything that might get you fired?
I can't get too anxious about that. I'd like to feel secure about my job because
it keeps me alive. I'd like to have a
writing formula that worked. I couldn't
write about anything odd or even the tiniest bit uncomfortable though if I
stuck to the rule "what is going to score you brownie points in the
workplace?" Realistically I can get
away with some uncomfortable mentions.
If I do get fired though because of this book I will be in serious,
serious trouble though. I won't likely
get another job this good if I lose this one.
I'm often self-destructive and I cannot let that get the upper hand. I have to take care of myself against
self-destruction. I have to keep my job at
all costs.
1289.
Have you burned all bridges
to the outside world?
I've burned many. I
don't keep an internet link at my house--what a disgusting invention, "the
internet." Maybe it's good. Maybe it's fantastic. Or maybe it's the banality of evil that caused
Hitler to almost conquer the world. My
cosmology could be clearer. I have cut
myself off from TV, music, movies, friends, family, everything, in a quite
systematic, compulsive fashion. I've cut
my ties to everything, burned all my bridges.
Alea jacta est as they say--the die is cast. Whether I will go insane here at home with my
scribbling or stay sane, that is the question.
I've also cut myself off from religion, even from the religion of
art. I'm skeptical of all monotheism and
all polytheism. I am tied to no
religious doctrine. I think they are
curious and intriguing but I don't take any support or guidance from them.
1290.
How can you stay
non-psychotic without friends, connectedness, money, dating?
Well I can't say that I can--maybe I can't. But even if I don't it doesn't mean I
couldn't, or someone else couldn't. What
if I can live on air, like the "luftmenschen" of the old days who
starved to death on park benches? Heck
my job pays me plenty, enough for my own one-bedroom plus medical coverage. Nothing can destroy me if I keep that
job. Were I to lose the job, I could
arguably find another. I'd like to keep
this one though the reality is I only do it for the paycheck and care little
for my work itself. I am proud of
serving the common good however. Yet
it's an honest question, whether I can survive and stay sane without the normal
life. The question is whether this
writing, this G2K sensitivity, can keep me going. I appear to have the strength to write, to
keep scribbling. Possibly I can put this
on the internet. But it's so risky.
1291.
Is today's culture set in
stone, and only the far-off future open to changes?
Clearly the current state of culture is as fixed as the human
personalities living in it. Capitalism
cannot be allowed to collapse, and therefore a highly socialistic hybrid
capitalism cannot be allowed. Capitalism
is free, and people buy the art they want and like. They buy what we call "mass
media." The consuming mass--they're
not even individuals, they're an agglomerate.
Yet they are what they are; blame is of no use in fixing the
problem. I used to complain so much
about my work, not dating, being bald, not being allowed to take revenge on my
persecutors. People did bad things to
me, were not punished, and I am prohibited from seeking vengeance on them. It's all in the interests of the polis, of
keeping the polis going, of avoiding complete collapse, complete destruction,
the rule of the One Master--(i.e. "every man for himself"). Hell is capitalism with no laws.
1292.
Do you often try to make
these quanta amusing to an imagined internet fan base, now that you know
traditional publishing is hopeless?
Oh yes I get in that habit.
I try to act cool and conversational.
The idea would be, I guess, to cultivate fans and solicit
affection. This might be a good plan, if
my goal was to be likable and genial. In
fact I strive to be anything but genial or friendly. I can't handle the boundaries problem. I find boundaries difficult, and therefore am
a classic case of complete self-isolation.
I'm perfectly willing to go back on my meds and back to complete
defeated mediocrity in every department if that's what the gods decide. I would like to experiment with freedom first
however. Do the psychiatrists really
expect me to believe I have to have a sexy girlfriend to keep my sanity? There are plenty of sane people who never
came within a hundred yards of laying a sexy woman, and never will.
1293.
Is voluntary celibacy
considered evil and sick by contemporary culture?
I think it is considered to be a maladjustment to the
difficulties of social and emotional interaction, yes. That's the conventional wisdom and I'm sure
it is correct in almost all cases. However,
if it has any exceptions to it, and if I am one of them, then I could stay
perfectly sane and sustainably so without any sexual contact whatsoever--i.e.
celibate.
1294.
Do you often destroy
yourself and therefore lose your confidence about surviving?
I get frustrated and dissatisfied with the monastic life at
times. Often I do condemn myself
mercilessly, in a thanatoptic impulse (i.e. a death-wish, a desire to
self-negate). I don't mean this with
pride. I get discouraged and angry and
take it out on myself--I actually harm and damage myself in vindictive anger
because there is no one else to attack.
That self-mutilation is very horrific.
But I can also stop doing it and heal from past acts of it, arguably.
1295.
Are you nearly at the end
of this book, having reached no conclusions or great valuable products
whatsoever?
That could be the case.
I've created nothing popular, no network of fans and slaves to follow
me, no attractive network of sexy good times.
I haven't solved my problems and I won't get any money out of it. I've accomplished nothing, which is itself a
great accomplishment. For when artists
begin accomplishing things for us, we've begun to die.
1296.
Are you having déjà vu?
A bit of a case of it.
Déjà vu may be a case of time travel, the good you traveling back from
the future to visit the bad you. People
might think that's crazy but I only mean it metaphorically. I believe in scientific truth, not made-up
lies. Falsified, fabricated lies and
illusion are in my view the opposite of truth.
I'd like to expound on the Greek Philosophers, but I know next to
nothing about any of them. Get a real
book about them and read it, like Leo Strauss' book on Plato's Symposium.
1297.
Why can't you stay true to
Chomsky and Nader?
Because they're liars.
They think that the U.S. should be weakened and dismantled to perhaps
twenty percent of its current power and influence, because then everyone would
be at peace, anarcho-syndicalism would reign supreme, everyone would be
fulfilled, no oppression would occur.
They don't tell the truth, that without U.S. power as the O.S.O. there
would be incalculably greater oppression, environmental degradation, and loss
of human rights. But Nader and Chomsky
will never tell the truth, because it's in neither their nature nor their
interest. So, to punish them, ask
Chomsky how his universal grammar idea relates to artistic development, and ask
Nader where he keeps his personal financial records and how hemp is the
economic future of America. Just ask
them. I'm disgusted with myself that I
ever even considered those disgusting liars to have leadership and integrity.
1298.
Why is neoconservatism a
better doctrine than liberal-leftism?
I couldn't say, because all I know concretely is what a
mountain of crap left-liberalism is, having been taught it in liberal Minnesota
and liberal colleges. I've never studied
conservatism or neoconservatism at all.
I studied de Tocqueville a little but tried to bastardize him over to
the leftist cause. What can I say, I've
barely studied the conservative view at all.
So, go get other books by real intellectuals about that, if you're
curious. I'm a rank amateur.
1299.
Does neoconservatism need
G2K, because of what Strauss said about Jerusalem and Athens in the letters to
Lowith, and because of the querelle?
Well neoconservatism has already been doing G2K so they don't
need my scribblings. Basically they have
been doing the real G2K, and I've been doing the false-overcoming version of
G2K. You could say I'm the
anti-G2K. In fact that is the only thing
I ever did with any dignity to it.
1300.
Given that your emotions
are subject to choice, can you choose to feel better about your job, your life,
and G2K?
I think so, but it would be very new to me. I get tossed around all over the place by my
thoughts and emotions. Good feelings,
bad feelings, good thoughts, bad thoughts, they all stir me up exceedingly and
fly out of control. My good, positive
thoughts make me go toward euphoria and reverie, whereas my negative gloomy
ones drag me to the bottom of despair. I
do not as yet actually follow the practice of managing my emotions. I take each one that comes as the gospel
truth of "who I am," "what my experience really is," even
when from day to day they alter like crazy.
I want to feel better about my job and be kinder and more affectionate
toward my co-workers. I also want to
feel free and independent, with boundaries intact, cut free from my family.
1301.
Whenever you get an
emotion, do you want to try to let it pass away without trying too hard to act
on it or understand it?
It's so difficult. I see
other people act on their emotions a little bit here and there; they can do it
at work; they don't have to fake it or overdo it. In basic terms I want to be secure at my job,
is my main goal. I guess I feel like I can't
afford the risks of acting on my emotions.
People will always say "Go ahead and act on your emotions, it's
healthy," but they neglect the fact that we are often punished by others
for expressing emotions they don't like.
It would seem here that my intellectual habit of "looking at both
sides," along with little or no native confidence about being emotional,
leaves me at a torturous emotional and intellectual impasse. It's this trapped feeling that makes me
uncomfortable through the day.
1302.
Can you just stop worrying
about the future, about having money, starving, getting married to a fantastic
woman, succeeding, etc.?
Many people will tell you that giving up on your dreams is a
despicable sin. Others will tell you the
opposite, that it's the highest spiritual virtue. Which is right? Flip a coin.
Both are logically sound. Only by
empirical research can we find the truth.
Empirically, I go by G2K even when I'm uncertain. That's the experiment I've given my life
to. G2K says, "let go of
money-dreams and sex-dreams, they're secondary."
1303.
If you let go of
money-dreams and dating-dreams, can you be more kind, cheerful, and
affectionate at work?
I'm scared now. It seems
logical that I could be friendlier and nicer at work, more pleasant, more
talkative. Yet it scares me that I'll be
giving up my independence and right to be myself. I guess I will have to be patient, breathe,
and meditate on it. A better workplace
psyche.
1304.
Do you want to have greater
patience and positive confidence when negative emotions crop up, to manage
them, and more confidence about G2K as a monastic-aesthetic life that can be
possible without worldly success?
Yes, I think I'd like to ask for those. Being a highly affectionate, highly social
person at work is too perfectionist and it suffocates me. Making really, truly great art out of G2K
will happen afar off and maybe never.
What I'd like to try for and work on is just to improve my workplace
mood and behavior a little, and get a little more stable in my reactions to
G2K-thoughts. It seems crazy (and it
makes me feel like my mental health is slipping away) to be so volatile about
whether to take G2K off the internet or leave it up, things like that. It's kind of like the chicken and the egg--I
don't want to leave it up because of its flaws, but if I don't leave it up I
can't fix it. I'm wanting a solution,
and I'm very envious and hateful toward people who have one. I guess I need to be patient and
breathe. And contemplate things.
1305.
Are the quanta you write a
little less calm than your feelings when you just sit, or read?
There are alterations in both, good and bad states. Sometimes when I just sit I feel crazy. Sometimes I panic. Sometimes when I write, I feel good. I guess there are bad aspects to both. I can't say that only one or the other is
OK. In both I need to be patient,
contemplate, and breathe.
1306.
Do you often wish you spent
more time on craft, so you could have experiences like Dedalus's morning
inspiration?
I kind of like that poem, "Are you not weary of ardent
ways, lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell
no more of enchanted days." I've
been getting jealous of good-looking people a great deal lately, in part
because I'm getting back in shape again and have stayed off of my
paroxetine. My jealousy has really gone
off the charts I think, the green-eyed monster.
1307.
Are you getting close to
finishing this book?
I think
so. It's easy for me to write one
hundred and fifty or two hundred quanta each week and if I keep that pace I
will definitely finish. Unless I quit
and give up completely I'll finish. Yet
I've gotten fairly obsessive-compulsive about continuing. I'll keep going, and finish, I think it's
fairly certain.
1308.
Can you feel the mutability
and fleeting chances left for you in this book?
Yes, I get intimations of what's to come, what it will feel
like when I've gotten up to the seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen
hundreds. I'll be glad it's getting over
with but also regretful I haven't done a better job. I've gone off onto a lot of emotional detours
that take away from the keen intellectual exuberance of cutting-edge art-theorizing. Yet I can't get away from that, this book is
all I have, my only place to express myself and contact my feelings and mental
condition. All else is fake.
1309.
If you're having a negative
emotion, how can you make it stop?
I wish I knew. Breathing
and trying to relax I guess. Often I try
to analyze them away, interpret them.
What can one do, technically? I
think they are like ghosts and cannot be controlled. Yet that attitude just makes me feel
angry. I guess the negative emotions can
be dealt with in some manner but I can't say what. My lowly career and social status often
discourage me. When those feelings
hit--of frustration, anger, dissatisfaction--are they real, genuine, and so
forth, or ungrateful and evil? I
honestly don't know. Some people succeed
and become affluent; some people dither and remain subsistent. I've dithered a great deal. I've invested my life in G2K, something which
could well turn out to be a complete waste of time--a total loss. Yet I chose it freely, I wasn't compelled.
1310.
Isn't breathing the only
way to let go of anxiety?
I think it is. I usually
try to figure out right from wrong, i.e. analyze under duress, i.e. worry in
order to cope with worry. I think this
makes it worse. I get a worried thought
that my life is a joke, the I try to figure out whether or not my life really
is a joke. So, the negative emotion took
control. It's controlling me right now
even. The negative emotion must not be
given control. The key to keeping
control over the negative emotion of shame or anger is to just breathe it away,
breathe and let go of the emotion--don't try to control it. Just let it pass. Aesthetically, it may very well be that I do
not do this, but let a negative aesthetic emotion ("this is crap")
control all of my actions. I hadn't
thought of that. Yet I can only go
gradually, by not feeding into negative emotions.
1311.
Does most everything for
G2K come down to diet and exercise, figuratively?
It could be. I'm scared
and confused. But meditating "on
the reasons" won't get me out of it.
That only keeps me in it. The
real principle to follow is doing what I need to do regularly, like diet and
exercise, and ignore the hyperbolic
fears. I can't attack my anxiety at work
head-on, in a great assault, because the solution is to relax, breathe, be
healthy, and grow boundaries. I don't
like getting treated poorly at work; no one does. But I've chosen to work a very simple, basic
job and to write this book. As basic
jobs go, it's excellent. I feel guilty
about being restless. I don't know if
anyone needs to hear about this, or whether I just do it for my own
therapy. I'd like to set forth an
incredibly rigorous, close, intricate, and beautiful mathematics of genius 2000
but that just didn't happen. Maybe
later.
1312.
Did you realize again today
how important stretching is?
I carry a lot of tension in my neck, back, shoulders, and
torso. I don't even notice it until I
stretch. After stretching I feel like I
can breathe again. When I'm breathing
well, I get more coffee-pot vision (my shorthand for
1313.
What is the best plan for
creating quanta?
To avoid blaming and anger or wrathful quanta as well as
fantastical quanta. Both in equal
measure bring me upset and imbalance.
Anger and desire, or revenge and desire you could say. Both are too volatile and give me pain or
nausea after a while. Moreover they
cannot be kept under quality methods.
1314.
Should people think back
with compassion for the past?
Yes they should. People
forget that five hundred years ago only a tiny percentage of the world's
population knew how to read. Trade and
travel had increased exponentially.
Imagine the incredible difficulty of keeping any kind of controlled,
durable social dialogue going in such conditions of short lifespans, economic
tumult, and general illiteracy. Taken
thusly the vital need to contain heresy can be understood. As can monotheism. Check Literary
Change for a good example.
1315.
Can people think of G2K or
Genius 2000 as a mantra or byword to be used at will as a cipher, variable,
argument, or invocation much in the sense of the sect who repeated "the
name of the Buddha" as their primary effort toward contemplative progress?
One school says not to pronounce the name of the deity (YHWH)
and yet another asks to do merely that.
These are hardly antithetical approaches; you could say they are equally
focused statements that "naming of the deity is important and must be
looked upon with caution and clarity."
Far from opposites. Saying the
words "Genius 2000," or, the word and the number, can be a good
thing, neutral, or bad. The content of
the usage is largely up to you. I always
did have the goal of creating a legitimate phrase and I think "G2K"
is one. Though it's used for dozens if
not hundreds of unrelated goods and services.
1316.
Are there a great many
truly relevant and good topics within Genius 2000 that you just are not getting
to efficiently?
Yes, I think there are ten that elude me for each one I
articulate. That is just the reality,
the unfortunate fact. I used to get good
thoughts often writing emails. Yet I
lacked responsibility; I acted on impulse.
That's reckless and vainglorious.
I hope to be forgiven for my past mistakes, at least to forgive myself.
1317.
If people are stuck, can
they use breathing and patience, and then look to either a sentience (genius)
or a time (2000) for a comparative example?
Sure. If G2K is your
baseline mode, your basic principle, it can become very vague, fantastical,
depressed, or solipsistically morbid (like unaerated ground). To articulate, place a sentience (like
Luther) next to a time (1499) and contemplate the relationship. This will give a baseline activity to add to
breathing and patience.
1318.
How can one learn to be
content with one's looks, one's past, one's job, one's dating?
These are difficult factors but the key is not the conventional
"take revenge and/or acquire more of what you want." You'll burn out fast that way, and fail, and
cause harm. Rather, avoid clinging to the
feelings of revenge and desire, wrath
and envy. Don't cling to them as if they
are the be-all and end-all, and moreover, don't try to get rid of them or drive
them away by force. Actually, just
breathe, be patient, and sit there and look at them. Without trying to control them. Then they weaken in their control over
you. I think this is basic Buddhism or
Zen. For G2K, we have to give up our
desire to be, for example, the absolute genius incarnate to control
everything. Rather, we are growing beings
who get made into good things by the life-process of which we are but one
working example.
1319.
Is the organic, living
quality of genius the key?
I think so. People are
not synthetic machines, fabricated metallic automatons. We can be contorted into automatonistic
shapes but we are organic cell-based beings.
Our genius, creativity, capacity, and consciousness arises or takes form
out of our cells and their functioning.
Hence we get bad results when we go against that organic principle. Biomathematical functions of neurons are what
cause Zen, and not explicit programming as with computers.
1320.
Is the quest to codify G2K
a mistake on your part then?
It could be. I am
completely fearful of G2K being dismissed by the world as too weak, juvenile,
and incompetent. I'm manic and desperate
to prove it, confirm it by comparisons and analogies--and by attacking its
enemies. These are false overcomings of
the threat to G2K. The key is to follow
it and conform to it myself, calmly.
I.e., "success is the only revenge."
1321.
Might this book be more
interesting if it weren't so heavily sterilized?
I have gotten to the point of boiling a lot of the crunch out
of it. The fact remains however that my
blame and lust had gotten out of control.
I can go completely off-kilter if I let myself rail on against something
or in favor of something. I can't easily
discriminate what of my G2K past is of these categories of misconduct and what
is not. Basically I went on the internet
and did a gigantic amount of demagoguery.
Yet I lied tremendously in the process and perpetrated a sickeningly
large amount of ugliness. I neglected to
discuss anything in an even-handed manner.
I tried to become like a cult leader, addicted to the process like a
miser is addicted to money. Now I feel
guilty and bad about it, as though I've caused harm and neglected my
responsibilities. Like Prince Hal maybe.
1322.
Weren't all your antics to
use up the oxygen however, and to aerate the soil, and thwart people's hybris,
and otherwise control the center decently?
I can't say it was so decent.
I never talked about the importance of certain things that I thought
might make people think I wasn't cool. I
covered up my personal weaknesses and fears and tried to come across as very
perfect and infallible. There was a lot
of careerist jockeying going on. I
thought I was just being a responsible advocate for G2K, which I thought was an
idea that deserved and needed a very strong and very successful advocate.
Consider it this way, as I did on the bus a few days ago, by the Pelli
library, coming home from work: imagine you are an epidemiologist and you
discover a cure. You are only a
post-grad student. Your superiors have
other pets with lesser ideas but who have already been entered into the
grooming process. To protect the idea,
you make a stink. Sure it's ugly, but
the idea can redeem it if it is what we're assuming it is. Exceptions, guessing.
1323.
Is it necessary to avoid
and to suppress attempts to topple over or collapse the global
capitalist-democratic power structure?
Yes, it can't be permitted because collapses like the 1930's
create Holocausts. It can't be permitted
so trying to make it happen for either revenge or desire is plainly
counterproductive. Capitalism can value
and hence proliferate the worker's interest via both legislation and consumer
choice, so Communism was obscenely wrong that all progress required liberal
democracy's destruction. The
improvements and reforms are slow and expensive however, so terrorism--the
strategy of "death by a million cuts"--cannot be allowed to flourish
as a weapon against liberal democracy.
The rich and powerful can gradually, steadily improve the lot of the
majority of workers with greater success if there are no efforts to capsize and
expropriate. Aesthetic evolution to
teach calm and self-organization under necessary security measures is the best
possible outcome, one to which liberals have no alternative and should
therefore support and expedite.
1324.
Did it occur to you earlier
today that you would do a lot better with your self-development if you were
able to forgive yourself?
One's genius has to breathe and move in order for the
sophisticated, simply complex and durable relations with 2000 to develop that
constitute the fulfilled and articulated balance, harmony, and interconnected
higher awareness designated in religions and aesthetic experience. If the genius-mode or patterns of form are
too fixed, the subtlety collapses or never generates. Therefore fixed, arbitrary ideas or functions
of any kind within the genius are to be avoided. One cannot, however, simply in one autocratic
stroke banish them altogether forever by force.
To think one can do so is a false overcoming and a fixity in
itself. One must forgive oneself,
therefore, for making errors in order to get over them. If I could forgive myself better I'd improve
more.
1325.
Is there an inclination not
to write quanta if you are feeling good?
I think so. Writing can
bring up difficult questions sometimes, or squelch fantastical moods. I personally am inclined toward pleasant
daydreams equally along with negative rumination. For example, I like to daydream about being
accepted and liked. I also like to
"just feel good" without "spoiling it" by forcing myself to
do something difficult or dutiful. Yet I
think it is wiser to write especially
when I feel calm and good.
1326.
What are the main ideas of
G2K?
I couldn't say. I think
one may be to let go of rigid images you may be imposing on your own genius,
which is a flowing process and not a static object. Think of one's genius as a living thing in
the world and not an abstract quantity or form.
Any changes or improvements are often gradual. By getting one's own genius in harmony and
balance with events (2000) one's experience can improve exponentially. Respect the polis and try to think about the
O.S.O.
1327.
Why do you want to refrain
from using your four-track rock music to garner interest and affection from
people?
Well I don't want to indirectly thereby endorse the politics
and aesthetics of the college radio scene.
I don't want to concede to the college radio people that one needs to be
liked and thought "cool" (which exceedingly often just means
"orthodox"), nor that popular, vulgar music forms are the only way to
communicate. So, I want to declare independence
from that doctrinaire and very hero-worshipping genre and subculture. It's difficult to cut one's ties to the genre
which is most common and popular among one's age group, popular music. Yet I need my personal integrity more than
any fleeting acceptance from youth culture or acquiescent
"coolness." I suppose I have
to take a stand against rock music on aesthetic grounds, and to use my own to
get attention would be hypocritical, a lie of omission.
1328.
Are there contradictions in
your practice of isolation?
Certainly. Christ sat
down and ate and drank with publicans and sinners. These were drunks and prostitutes. I get so finicky about right and wrong
conduct. I guess I have very little
experience with right and wrong. Still,
my go-it-along attitude is unprofessional.
Frankly I have no concept of how to act socially--friendly or
aloof? I couldn't know less.
1329.
Why are you feeling so
anxious?
I can't specify the reason.
My job grates at me. I can't help
but feel I was cut out for more and am capable of more. I feel claustrophobic there. Is that a sin, to feel that way? Everyone needs to work and get by, and we all
get dreams of doing more. I don't
understand which is proper. I'm playing
a contradictory game because I feel like G2K is too strong, too great,
too far ahead of the rest of what's out there, to be permissible. I'd like to appeal that decision.
1330.
Do you want this book to be
an exoneration of G2K?
I like to hide behind the "contrite alkie" façade but
in actuality that's a very fake picture.
People have a falsely psychological assessment of alcoholism. In fact it is physiological--see the book Under the Influence. Moreover, I quit free and clear and don't
miss it. I try very hard to do
right. Yet there comes a time when you
have to take charge, take control; if you're the greatest artist, you have to
take that role.
1331.
So G2K isn't evil at all
now and never was?
Clearly. People get so
ridiculous. They accuse me of horrible
things. I try to get them off my back
and show I'm a considerate rational being, and that just eggs them on. One conscience standing clear dislodges and
dislocates the entire globe, the all.
And that's why I am "The King of Kings." You object to that? OK, but I won't recant.
1332.
Do you want to vindicate
yourself and G2K?
I think I do. The
alternative is to construct a web of homilies and half-truths about how Max is
sinful and over-promoted himself. It's
not clear to me that I over-promoted G2K beyond its worth at all. G2K is reverse-engineered, if you will, from
the question "if there were to be a serious aesthetic response to the
problems of the human condition, what would it be like?" For example, it would have to cut through the
din of mass entertainment to a sufficient
degree. It wouldn't have to completely
supplant mass entertainment. But it
would have to be discernible to a sufficient number, if even only one. It would have to meet a lot of minimum
requirements. Now some people might say
it's evil and hybristic to engage in this kind of formulation, that nothing new
is needed, aesthetics are evil and so on.
Well, if they're correct so be it.
It is quite likely they are not correct.
1333.
Do individual artists have
an obligation to take personal risks in order to protect the O.S.O.?
I don't think so. I
think everyone is an artist basically, ranging from good to very poor. Humans can do far more to destroy beauty than
to create it, because Nature largely creates it. Nature created our senses and brains and the
complex balancing of forces that we call beauty. So, humans create mainly ugliness when they
try to create--like videogames. These
are a complete and abysmal act of ugliness, yet they pay the bills and are
addictive. Also, to say that individual
artists have an obligation to risk their safety makes it sound like they are
obligated to attack the dominant military structure. As I've said before, none of us have any hope without the O.S.O.; the
alternative is global collapse before mid-century. If you want that you're not alone, but you're
sick.
1334.
Aren't the main topics of
G2K and the querelle taboo, making this book a waste of breath?
Religion and war are both indeed taboo subjects, because they
mean "fire" and the global theater is fully crowded. The religious and military stability of the planet
are both hanging by a thread. If G2K
wants to create havoc, well that's no good.
1335.
What if your personal
desires for success really don't have
anything to do with why G2K is right or wrong?
If that's true all my bellyaching and worry are for naught. I don't know if it's evil and hybristic for a
given person to say "I don't care about what the mass media, or
universities, or the government say about aesthetics and history. I can get my own ideas and try them
out." Is that evil? Can societies permit that kind of
non-obedience, of starting from your own experience? Often they do not.
1336.
Do you feel obligated to
publish G2K?
Very much so. I feel
obligated not to ever take it down from the internet and I felt obligated when
I made the video in 1999. I felt I had
finally calculated a way to fulfill some tiny particle at least of my
obligation to existence--to the universe.
Clearly I sound insane to talk of my obligation to existence. Well, think of me as insane then if it makes
you feel better. G2K is my obligation to
existence. Of course there are a million
different prepackaged worldviews out there trying to tell you what your
obligation to existence should be.
"Be kind," "have a lot of sex," "drink
alcohol," "be an art school dipshit." All of these are great religions, theories of
history, formulas for you to live by, definitions of what is human. The difference with G2K is it is the true
one. You might think the true one keeps
mum, but it doesn't--not anymore. It
can't.
1337.
Is it a viable option just
to blather on about a lot of neoconservative truisms and your personal anxiety
for the rest of this book?
It's too killing to me.
I can't take it. I can't take not
writing at least one book about G2K before I pass thirty-five, and G2K is on my
mind and I can't live with the future if I don't get it out. I just can't keep a lid on it any longer, I
can't rationalize doing so on any grounds.
Of course if I think it's too hot I'll keep it off the net. Off everything. But I can't not write it. I can do watercolors for the public, but I
can't not write the truth about G2K at least once in a book before I get past
age thirty-five. It's an obligation to
existence, to the planet itself. Or
something. I can bite my tongue on
everything else, or try, but I can't not at least try this to see what comes of
it--the real case for G2K.
1338.
Isn't it better just to
keep quiet, very quiet about what G2K is and practice stoic endurance and
delayed gratification to advance the great aims of which G2K is merely an abbreviation?
I agree very much that I like being quiet too. I like hiding and not offending anyone, not
taking any risks, just barely subsisting on air and water. I like not committing all the grotesque crime
other people commit day in and day out just to feel good. I like to think that I can, by canceling G2K,
give back power and glory to all the deserving art-hustlers and false prophets
(purveyors of false overcoming) who lost everything when G2K arrived. I'd like to be let off the hook for my obligation. Who knows if that can happen. I don't think it can. I think my curse is to actually be the
creator of an enduring G2K presence now.
That's the despicable dismal curse.
It's like being a gargoyle on a church.
1339.
Ignoring the cacophony from
the other schools of thought innumerable, what does the school of G2K tell you
to do?
Not very much. I can't
hear it very well. I think I've gotten
away from it somehow. I tried to replace
it forcibly with alcohol, demagoguery, and conventional monotheism successively. Now I'm at a crossroads. The plain G2K truth doesn't appear to me very
often--I think I've gotten away from it.
I tried to blame the bad people, those possessed and controlled by
vulgar, degraded behavior patterns. I've
tried to calculate a perfect didactic product (like a self-help book) that
would amuse readers and gain for me affluence and domestic bliss. I've gone down many a dark narrow path. Yet the great power of G2K was always close
at hand, I just didn't accept it. Now
after weeks and months of grueling effort I can finally get to the simple
truth--I have to listen to G2K and learn about it.
1340.
What is Genius 2000?
I think it's phenotypic development to consummation. That's a succinct summary. It can occur on the level of one or many. It's quantumnal in that regard, not
collective. Like any glandular or
sensory development it occurs on the scale of the individual only. The group is primarily an obstruction at
most, never a source of the phenotypic development to consummation, which
occurs on the level of the individual organism and its environment. Genius 2000 is when they are in developed,
balanced harmony.
1341.
Is it crucial to learn to
talk about Genius 2000 in such a way that it doesn't transmute into its
opposite, i.e. its own destruction or degradation?
I have a lot to learn about how to express myself about G2K
without violating the spirit and the precepts of G2K. I used to think this would be a piece of
cake, and that I only violated G2K principles to create tension and confuse
predators. Now I accept that I did so
mostly because I lacked skill and patience.
And confidence and maturity.
1342.
Wouldn't you like to figure
out that acceptable way of articulating G2K, and then develop it into an
intriguing publishable book in the scholarly mode?
Sure I'd adore that. I
think it's pretty likely I'll even do it.
This is of course compulsory now, these two thousand quanta, but I'm
growing in my respect for G2K and my sense of endurance. I'll be able to put together a good book with
real paragraphs and such by about 2008 I think.
This one can stay home.
1343.
Do you even know what to
pray to or for anymore?
I pray to Art to help me be less sullen and crazy at work. Does that sound like a workable plan? I'm so angry.
I just painted two watercolors and they were both disgusting. It makes me scared. I was so arrogant earlier. I really want to curl up and cry but I'm
afraid it would be the wrong move. I
want to strike out. I need to listen
better to G2K.
1344.
Do you regret having been
lustful, intemperate, wrathful, and a hundred other sins?
I bleakly do. The cycle
of sin is so endless it seems to have desiccated my heart. I seem to be a complete bolus of envy and
greed. I look at the contemporary world
of successful young people and all I feel is jealous. They appear to have no problems. And they deserve not to care about my
difficulties at all. I'm the only one
obligated to care about my difficulties.
I just get so angry, it's like radiation poisoning at a constant
level. I get jealous. Why can't I have more success and
recognition? So many questions. Yet my work-plan is clear: to write
constantly, respect taboo, and strive to figure ways of articulating G2K that
do not cause harm. Learning to let go of
negative emotions and breathe. How to
decide which emotions are negative and which are decent and should be acted
upon is a false conflict. All emotions
are temporary and passing, hence unworthy of being clung to, bad and good
alike.
1345.
Are you obligated to try to
keep writing even when it hurts and you feel manic?
I guess that's the bargain, yes. I get used to doing prose quanta and if I
quit I get withdrawal symptoms and feel wracked. I can never tell which topic is most
important, and thousands race through my head each day, constantly. History.
Popular culture. My past
relationships. My job. Fear.
Conformity versus non-conformity.
Pleasing others for mutual job security.
Giving up and submitting.
Appropriate boundaries versus sullen obstructionism. The necessary and pious use of force and
fraud to protect authority. The danger
of using "and" too much in sentences.
Sitting up straight and not hunching.
Whether I need to be more garrulous and jolly at work. Clearly the tension is not helped by my
quiet, misfit-like sullenness. I don't
follow Assisi's prayer asking that he become himself a comforter. Yet co-dependent people like myself have
horrific problems in taking too much care of others; also too little. We're sick.
1346.
Is the whole G2K method
little more than co-dependency run rampant?
I suppose it could be.
I've negated the boundaries between myself and other and taken their
difficulties, the ones only they can take care of properly speaking, onto
myself. That's controlling
co-dependency. I cover it in liberatory,
euphoric phraseology but it's really just avoiding myself and controlling
others--forcing them to like me, like my art, pay me money, praise me.
1347.
Is it OK to let your
feelings move more fluidly, and to talk about them a little bit in these quanta?
I guess the therapeutic side of all these quanta is real. I can't seem to just sit and crank out
G2K-theoretical observations. I'm scared
that I put in my emotional concerns unhealthily. Yet it may also be a healthy outlet that can
cause my workplace psychosis to decrease.
People with zero social life have a kind of a tough go of it. Suck it up.
1348.
Does the book Under the Influence criticize a given
twelve-step program a little bit, and in a manner that reflects some of your
own concerns?
Yes. I don't know why
people aren't allowed to say the name of the twelve step program if they ever
attended a meeting of it, but they're not.
In any case, the book questions the twelve-step program's use of a
theological concept of sin-repentance-redemption to serve as the basis for
recovery. I am still hamstrung by this
concept. The problem is that we are
forced by society to accept this model, which is basically a code of obedience
for kids, until we no longer sin. Even
adults are required to act like disobedient kids vis-à-vis the great monodeity,
be it God or Art. It's discouraged that
anyone say "I'm allright."
That is the most uncontrollable quantity. I guess I think for me the
"disobedient-child" model of conduct is constricting me now.
1349.
Are you going to have to
scrap this book due to having lost your temper so often in it?
Possibly. People blurt
out crappy thoughts and feeling constantly, everywhere, however, so I'd hardly
be the only one. Maybe it shows the
erroneous character better too. I get an
emotion recurring for me, which is to quit G2K completely and let people find
their own way. Then I get some
"responsibility" zaps.
1350.
Do you feel obligated to
produce Great American Art, yet to keep low success and an ugly persona so as
not to threaten official circles?
I do. It's only a
feeling, sure, but I get it. If I quit,
moreover, I'll be sacrificing any chance of making the Network a success--it
depends on continuity from 1998 onward to function as a steering/navigational
mechanism, like long wires steer satellites.
1351.
Do your compulsive cravings
for fame, prestige, dates, and more money, and moral innocence almost exhaust
you and overwhelm you completely?
God I feel I can barely breathe or move. I can sleep OK however which is a good
sign. I have to remind myself to
stretch, hydrate, and keep good posture (i.e. don't slouch or hunch). I try not to get too wrought up, angry,
anxious. I try to remember that if I can
only relax and get away from a suffocating dilemma I can get to a better, more
calm wisdom about it. If I'm in
amygdalic fight-or-flight anxious mode, I can't tell right from wrong and can't
decide. I constantly get guilt and
confusion about leaving my recovery group-life and so forth. I think I need this scribbling in great
measure just to reconnect my life-management to G2K, or I get extreme urges to
fight or flee.
1352.
Can you give up completely
on dating and success?
I think I could. I still
cling to them out of a sense of shame, guilt, anger, and obligation. If I could just accept and embrace permanent
total celibacy that would be a great relief.
I can duly and reasonably expect no one else to follow in my hybristic
footsteps, so it's not demagogic. I don't
want to give up on dating and social prestige, but it would appear that G2K is
currently impossible without the mental quiet those two desires disrupt. If I could give up on dating and success
fantasies I could meditate more, be more calm at work, write more, and breathe
better. I could operate like a child of
God. There's a long-term plan there I
think, something sustainable. I could
give up on music, college-radio success, being in a band, everything--and not
passive-aggressively either.
1353.
Have you decided to leave
unpleasantness out of this within reason?
I hope so. My emotions
tend to fly out of control lately I guess.
Maybe they are becoming more stable but just feel more crazy. I avoided caffeine a little more than usual
today and feel a little the better for it.
I had no afternoon caffeine and had to deep breathe a lot. I almost freaked out a couple of times and
became irritable. I guess anything can
happen in life.
1354.
Are you afraid to put this
on the internet because of all the outbursts and incontinence?
I don't care at all if people mock me personally and call me
psychosexually retarded for my incontinence, my cowardice. I care about damaging the polis by my
actions--the polis I correspondingly want to live and work in. I don't want to be banished to living with
the rapists and murderers. My squalling
and sniveling is just me though, my deal, pure confusion and agonizing
uncertainty.
1355.
Can you duly let go of your
desire for dating and social success?
I'd like to. I often
forget why I'm so critical and dissatisfied--it's because I have so much
envy. Breathing and patience help to
conquer the envy, i.e., to wait it out.
I get scared about my snappishness and curtness at work--it's
detrimental to my team's chemistry. I'm
the weak link regarding chemistry. I'm
aloof and cranky at times. I lack
intimacy skills and my boundaries are not so good either.
1356.
When you get tight, tense,
anxious, and confused, is it almost impossible to tackle any complex decision
with wisdom?
I get totally lost when I'm stressed. I can't tell what is right and what is
wrong. They blur completely and no
amount of dissection classifies them.
So, I have to get calm and quiet and let the wisdom happen gradually and
slowly. The quick intense reactions are
always tumultuous and disturbing for me.
Breathing and patience.
1357.
What will people who know
you say about this book?
I think people who know me have usually one of two opinions:
either that I'm a gentle, clever, unlucky but generally good person or that I'm
a defiler, a wreck, a bad accident.
They'll each see this differently.
They'll think, probably, that I've finally gone truly insane or that
I've finally "failed for good."
The psychotic or the loser.
1358.
Do you have trouble finding
topics to write about?
Yes. I'm afraid to write
too much on topics where G2K is strong, because I'm afraid of making it too
strong and being guilty of hybris. I'm
afraid of defaming it and condemning it, because I'm a susceptible type and
that negative judgment--especially from myself--really gets to me. I struggle to find the middle-course of
quanta and it is never easy, it hurts like the devil every time. Painful.
1359.
Is the only great risk of
putting this on the internet that you will lose your job?
That's the only direct risk to me personally. I have no success in the art world or writing
world to jeopardize; I'm already considered an insane outcast, a true
"leper" in the Biblical sense.
This can't make that any worse.
The friends and family I used to relate with, I couldn't care less what
they think or whether they like it. To
me they are like offensive-smelling vermin.
The only harm it can do to me is that I lose my job, which is a
difficult job for me because of my anxiety but which is a great long-term, safe
survival. It's security and that counts
for a lot. Yet I'd be willing to risk
it. The harm to society of course, to
the polis, that is the great harm that lurks behind everything. Ironically, I think if I make the book very
ignominious and unattractive the polis will be safer.
1360.
What if there's a great,
orderly way to present all this and you'd find it if you just stuck it out for
one more year?
That's possible but something tells me it's unlikely. Writing it all in a sexy, hip young novel
would be the only was a sexy publisher would care to publish it. And novels about ideas, particularly celibate
lifestyle concepts, are not sexy or hip.
The college radio scene detests that kind of novel. I'd like to show courage and single out some
college radio people to mock, along with some contemporary artists. I'd like to, which is why I can't. It would be too extreme. The proper life for me is not to attack or
condemn anyone, but to keep my end of the arc reaching out to connect back in
2100. I don't get to make a splash now,
that's the curse of it. I only get to
send out a greeting to 2100. At that
time they'll say "ah, hello, there's the coffee-pot vision."
1361.
Is a mere daily
conversation about trivial topics good enough for a book?
Yes, Benjamin wrote that "boredom is the dream bird that
hatches the egg of the imagination."
Apparently they didn't like Benjamin in his milieu because he wasn't
Communist enough. My old G2K rallying
tactics were quintessentially Leninist, i.e. Bolshevist, i.e. rabble-rousing
demagoguery to assemble intellectual brownshirts. Pigs.
I've never even read a single word of Goethe, yet I put myself up as a
great thinker. People forget that
Carlyle wrote "the law isn't on the papers it's printed on, it's a living
dynamic meaning in our minds" or words to that effect. That goes for all tradition--it's not on the paper,
it's in our G2K. And if there's no G2K,
there's no law. No oracles and no
Zeus. I think A-K-H-A plus the Eumenides
is better than Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, but that's speculative. Strauss and Lowith exchanged excellent
letters about whether "everyone was a philosopher, and I don't mean
Ph.D.'s."
1362.
Does Goethe's Urphanomene
correspond exactly to the talent, the paper quantum of August 27?
I think so. Wittgenstein
called it "an atomic proposition."
There are other corollaries. I
talked about these almost forever in all my emails to the lists from
1999-2002. Four square years of
talk. I just read about Goethe's
Urphanomene in Arendt's introduction to Benjamin's Illuminations tonight at my supper of corn and steak. Corn, corn, corn. I also used to like and was influenced by
Arendt's idea that in Totalitarianism the individual gets lost in the mob--the
Nazi mob was an escape from the pain of individuation. Islamofascism is the same escape. Nothing is more scary or more excruciating
than becoming an individual. Believe me,
I'm experiencing it as I go right now. I
was in a G2K brownshirt gravy of sickness for a long time. I like Arendt on that, and the banality of
evil, I think in the intro to Reflections,
also by Benjamin, which I read well before G2K, around 1995 or so.
1363.
Therefore you object less
to this book having a lot of pouting and self-analysis in it than something
that seems striking and intellectual but could harm the polis?
Very much so. People can
read all these quanta about my neuroses and there's no harm to the polis. People think the polis is invulnerable and
can never collapse. That's OK to tell
kids so they don't panic but grownups know that in reality stuff like the
Depression and Stalin really do happen unless you work and plan to prevent it.
1364.
What about all the good
connections of G2K to the Eumenides and Thucydides and the Strauss-Lowith
letters?
There are some good ones.
I just bought Philosophical-Political
Profiles by Habermas off the internet for twelve dollars. I'll finally own the book that transformed my
being from one suffocated by kitsch and guilt to an academic hustler and
schemer. PPP is good though, I'll quote out of it maybe. I hope I don't revile it now.
1365.
Can people improve and get
better and thereby make the world better?
Yes, but not by a lot of college-radio self-righteousness,
unfortunately. That stuff only goes so
far to make one a better person. One
gets tired quickly of that herd enthusiasm--it takes a lot of beer and
cigarettes to keep it going. College
radio is like eating dogmire. That's why
I'm never going to put out my music, to make people love me, think I'm moral
and decent, etc. Deep down I'm very
sick, actually.
1366.
Haven't you said too many
offensive, self-aggrandizing things in this book to put it on the internet?
I struggle every day with vanity and my incredible depths of
error. I can't seem to function as an
ordinary person. I can't determine what
is wrong or right, or what to do, because I lack wisdom. I therefore have to breathe carefully and be
patient, letting my genius get better at its natural pace. I also have an obligation to preserve and
protect G2K for the future.
1367.
Do most of your errors come
from emotional fixations on wrath and lust?
Yes, for me it's anger and desire that cloud my mind most. It gets into my soul-making process and
spoils the entire workings. If I could
only believe rationally it's OK for me never to date or have sex, and never to
take revenge on anyone who has treated me badly, I'd be much calmer and
therefore wiser. Wisdom means able to see, to capture subtlety in the field of
view.
1368.
Must you constantly drag
yourself back to paying attention to your posture and breathing?
Yes I do. I started
exercising a lot more again and then got much more able to breathe, especially
having quit smoking cigarettes ten months ago.
I quit smoking ten months ago.
Yet I still start to think "I deserve dating, I deserve to be a
respected man, I deserve an affluent lifestyle." In reality, I haven't worked hard enough to
earn that stuff. I've floundered about
and courted personal disaster.
1369.
Why didn't you put anything
anti-Communist in the G2K video?
I think it was inherently non-Marxist or even
anti-Marxist. I did want to call
attention to the problems that a market system can present "if the salt
hath lost its savor." The parable
of the talents was in the Video so that speaks volumes in a way; other factors
are not hard to notice. But no, I didn't
"put in" quotes about how the workers don't control the means of
production under soviet control--it's controlled in their behalf, in behalf of
the workers' best interest, and that includes the workers of the future as
well.
1370.
Can you determine how to
easily be less sullen and dour at work?
I've been tense at work, I admit. I get the feeling I have to fit a mold, and
take care of everyone, entertain them, please them. I just can't take the co-dependency of that,
so I'm trying to keep my boundaries intact.
I am not happy that I'm kind of irritable. But I quit paroxetine, I'm writing, it's not
easy, I need to forgive myself a little.
I can't please everyone.
1371.
Are you feeling the
pressure to write something angry or lustful creep back again?
Yes, it constantly haunts me.
I'd like to write about Shakespeare or Proust. I've never read any Proust--not one single
word. I've read Wordsworth however. I think I'm primarily an early
nineteenth-century British intellectual.
That's really the period that captured my intellect. Keats and Shelley. Yet I don't follow their strictures either.
1372.
When writing, don't they
say one should have a plan and a style in Strunk and White?
Yes, they say the reader is crawling in a swamp and we need to
throw him a rope to get him up on dry land.
Like all the stories in my Fifty
Great American Short Stories book, "The Girls in Their Summer
Dresses" and so forth. The Aiken
story turned out to be too weird and psychiatrically nightmarish for me now,
"Silent Snow, Secret Snow."
Still I think it's OK for me not to have any structure, plan,
integritas, claritas, quidditas, or style.
1373.
Does it feel good to say
goodbye to all of your fantasies about having a non-dysfunctional family, and
having a great normal love life, and being in a successful college radio band,
being published in books, and being a respected academic?
Walter Benjamin didn't get any of those things (that I'm aware
of, certainly not all) and he died like a hunted animal. He didn't want to leave us with the
impression that he was willing to give Hitler the satisfaction, i.e., "get
your hands off me you damned dirty ape."
Benjamin didn't want to create even the appearance that Hitler had any
reality to him at all. Not that I
condone self-slaughter in most cases. My
main point is just that Benjamin had a gigantic effect; you could almost say
that he created G2K (in that he prepared people's minds to understand G2K when
the time came, properly). Therefore I
don't need conventional success either.
1374.
Do you want credit for the
good work of G2K on the querelle between ancient and modern?
I do, yes. I want proper
credit for what I've done well. I don't
want the flattery and hero-worship that seems to be all that people are capable
of now, however. I want credit for how
G2K captures the querelle between Jerusalem and Athens (as Leo Strauss put it)
in an aesthetic framework with addition of the Eumenides. After all, philosophy entails the aesthetic
quality of "love" of wisdom, which I take to be an aesthetic love. I also think that Habermas, despite his
leftist inclinations, would appreciate and respect my work and how it relates
to "correspondences," Lowith, Strauss, Benjamin, and Adorno. I don't believe that it is advantageous to
the polis that I keep G2K under a bushel.
From him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
1375.
Are you guaranteed not to
lose your job after this comes out?
No, but I could lose it for my churlishness even if it didn't
come out. I don't think it's worth being
afraid of. More important is not to
neglect my own basically Neoconservative views--i.e., used to be liberal. I gave up on PC in 1989 when I left Oberlin
after two years. I'd met more than
enough windy, swollen liberal pseudo-intellectuals to last a lifetime. Studying basic history was enough to confirm
where leftists are wrong. My history
teacher at Madison, where I finished my B.A., advised us to "take Marx
with a shaker of salt."
Neoconservatism simply recognizes that free societies, modern liberal
democracies, have flaws and improve slowly and painfully over relatively long
organic periods of time. In the interim,
defense is paramount. I'm not as
eloquent at it but I do advocate it.
Just read Benjamin and the Strauss-Lowith letters.
1376.
What kind of a career
improvement would you gladly accept?
I can't even think of one.
I'm going back to school for computer programming after I finish this
book. That would be a step up for me--a
great step up--financially, so I'd accept that.
Gladly, perhaps. Willingly to be
sure. I like the idea i.e. I fantasize
about being a lawyer too. Then I'd be
somewhat respected, perhaps, so could respect myself and not feel like a leper
or coward.
1377.
What about the fantasy
where a famous art gallery asks to do a show of G2K art, and the sales are in
the millions, so I could retire and do only art for the rest of my days?
I can see myself rejecting that. I have a morbid side that fears that, it
relates to fear of sex. I fear admitting
I want something. The desire is too
destabilizing. I have attachment
disorder, as I've heard of. I can't even
picture a form of success I can seek out.
1378.
Are you committed to
putting the Conference 2005: Watercolor Jpegs up on July 4?
Yes, I've decided for sure on that. It will feel good to get rid of my worries
about whether to do that or not, alea jacta est and so forth. I'm comfortable with the idea that I'm
obligated to keep G2K up and try to make it respectable and successful. I'm obligated. It's not just whether I like doing it. There are bounds within which I can choose,
like what to leave up, but some of it
has to continue, like the yearly conferences.
1379.
Does politics sometimes
fatigue you?
I get burnt out on it.
Political progress, real progress and not the false overcoming that is
violent eruption (like the Nazi revolution), goes very slowly and is really as
slow as the aesthetic improvement of the species. A lot of two steps forward, one point nine
steps back. I would advocate political
moderation focusing on pragmatism. Yet
even that has the objection to it.
Mainly, for most people, moderation.
1380.
Is the impulse to gutspill
personal information a craving for attention and mothering?
I think it is a request for mothering. One wants to be seen as special and then
given attention, and comforted. No one
is really "special" except to one's mother. We're all the same, people, good and
bad. I could talk about a great thought
I had once, or a lucky connection I saw once.
G=mt2000 for example, is that asking for mothering? I can't say.
Daily.html.
1381.
Is blind, ignorant,
unthinking, left-liberalism actually OK, because it provides an alternative
unthinking electorate to be molded into backing for a different political
ruling party should one be needed?
Ignorant liberals are just as good, correct, and useful as
ignorant conservatives. There's no point
in trying to persuade or convince them--they know I'm just trying to make time
with the ladies. G2K doesn't have to
rally the liberal left, ennoble it, embolden it, lead it to glory. G2K is free from them.
1382.
Is it really OK not to
describe every single good G2K idea past or present in this book?
Yes it's OK. I can write
one book like this each year, from April through July, then go back on my Paxil
until spring comes again. I don't have
to do anything in particular with this book at all. It won't be getting published on paper so I
don't need to care if it's readable. It
won't fix liberals or win the CWII all in one stroke, so I don't need to try
with those tasks either--unless I might want
to, which is different. Wanting, and it
being OK to want what you want, that's the road to emotional and aesthetic
wellness. Recently I've been very
concerned to try to shut negative thoughts and emotions down before they
occur. This has created tremendous
frustration. Today I just let my
negative emotions go and the washed over and through me like refreshing water
and were gone.
1383.
Is not fearing the blank
page really the key to happiness?
One can always just sit and meditate, let the emotions and
desires just go by and settle away like ripples in a pool. One doesn't have to accept that they are
true, false, should be acted on, or shouldn't be acted on. Clearly in times of war the stakes are higher
and the dangers are greater. Still, one
can find inner peacefulness. One can't
rant and rave as freely during war as one can during peace. But you can still be free.
1384.
Is your main goal in this
book to keep G2K going at a basic level and to explain why G2K doesn't go
against the idea and practice of
Yes, I wanted basically to take G2K off of the list of
anti-U.S. art groups. The O.S.O. is very
important to the peaceful, free, orderly, and humane development of the species
throughout the twenty-first century. The
risks without it, from technological and cultural superconvergence, are just
too great to permit.
1385.
What about all your talk
about Nader and Chomsky, and how official culture won't do G2K, etc.?
I've mentioned Nader and Chomsky--they are so vastly divergent
from the true core of G2K you'd have to be blind not to see it. They are antithetical to G2K, it's clear and
obvious. You can even just ask them if
you want. They disagree fundamentally
that aesthetic evolution under global liberal-democratic stability is the
safest and best hope for their goals for humanity--environmentalism and human
rights. They even contradict themselves
profoundly and are frankly indefensible.
I think they deserve to be mocked a little, but not hated, because they
honestly don't know any better and can't know any better. They are just a curse. But if you're capable of critical thought you
can see their errors. Official mass
culture might not mass-market G2K, but that's because it's "dry as
dust" to the general, caviary. They
can however permit it. So can the
academy, as they already do.
1386.
So Max Herman is obligated
to do G2K, not to topple anything or judge, or revolt, or save the masses, but
just to make himself better and make a proper contribution to free society,
i.e. that which others in the past earned for him so that it could be both utilized
in the time of the now and handed down again to future artists?
Frankly that about sums it up.
It's a balance. I can't prevent
you, or your friend, or his friend, from going out tonight and dying of a drug
overdose. If you decide to go that route
nor I nor G2K can prevent it. Also, it's
not a condemnation of me that I'm not doing it.
My obligation is to work in the true art realm, the heritage going back
even to pre-human organisms. I'm
obligated to appreciate that which keeps me from going crazy. I need to observe the proprieties and behave
correctly. What is suited for me to
do. So the answer to the
"either/or" questions is often "neither/nor," calmness,
wisdom, de-escalation.
1387.
In other words the
requirements for this book are very low?
Yes, it practically has nothing at all it needs to
accomplish. I said in the Video that
"anticlimax is the essence of all truly wholesome progress." That is still one of the profounder truths I
ever articulated, but it's not that profound either. It's pragmatic. It was a very typical and pragmatic approach
to the fin-de-siecle, would it bring apocalypse or "just another
year." It's OK to have just another
year, but not too much just another
year! Get it? As Frost said it of metrical rhyme,
"almost doggerel but not quite."
1388.
Which of Frost's poems are
most germane to G2K?
All the ones in 12 Poets,
"The Bear," "Out, Out," "The Gift Outright,"
"Design," "Desert Places" in particular. "Into My Own," "The Hill
Wife," "Two Tramps in Mud-Time."
"My object in living is to unite / My avocation and my vocation /
As my two eyes make one in sight."
1389.
Why is it still important
to write two thousand quanta before September 1?
It's got something to do with a curse I put on myself. I cursed myself to trying to make G2K
something decent and presentable. Mind
you, G2K is used by dozens of other products unrelated. Also I am incorrigible and need to keep
myself occupied. I get very emotional,
elated or depressed, very easily. It's
like I have no ballast or keel. I need
this for that.
1390.
How can people save the
world if not by radicalism and extremism of art and politics?
They can save the world best, not to mention better, by
practicing calmness and balance in art and politics i.e. by avoiding radicalism
and extremism in art, politics, and all things.
It goes to show how framing a question can distort one's mind. The key is to avoid mass upheavals, to take
care of one's self, to radiate that as a non-compulsory ethic
(necessarily). Everyone taking care of
themselves, some help when proper, protecting the O.S.O., avoiding false
utopian thinking.
1391.
Is it painful and
depressing to know there isn't any golden status, affluence, or great love life
waiting at the end of this book as reward?
Yes it hurts and depresses me almost more than I can bear. Therefore I try to compensate by envisioning
or imagining the perfect life as best I can--the dating, the pleasant home,
travels and education, the sense of accomplishment. Now I know I am merely a placeholder, little
more than a beast, occupying a center that I can't glorify, just save for the
competent people of the future. I'm
really just a prophylactic measure against evil. Therefore I'm about as exciting as a white
blood cell. At least I know where it
comes down now however. It's
anticlimactic. I did G2K so no one else
could do it--no one totally evil and unteachable, I knew if I was anything I
was teachable--and now I have to keep it in place so as to prevent it from
never having been, and unraveling the universe.
1392.
Isn't it grandiose to say
G2K is a placeholder for the great aesthetic evolution yet to come, in the
future centuries?
If it's false it's grandiose, if it's true it's quite pragmatic
and respectable. Genius 2000 is an odd
mix. It's what I think a great contribution
to aesthetic evolution should be, if I were capable of knowing what that might
be. It's a hypothesis about how to
orient or guide aesthetic evolution. And
in that regard it's at least somewhat correct, in its goal at least it
articulates the goal--even if it fails.
The goal is the proper orientation toward aesthetic evolution, or one of
them. By presenting an erroneous image
of the planetary orbits, you could say Ptolemy created or engendered the
correct hypothesis--heliocentrism.
Tragedy also practices this principle.
By making an attempt, a legitimately effortful one, one can even or
especially in failure clarify and give form to the goal or question. It's akin to a feedback mechanism. Right angles.
1393.
Do you wish you had more
time to read books like Brian Greene's The
Elegant Universe?
Yes, I dearly do. I like
all those ideas about quantum mechanics, the Crab Nebula, and so forth. I find them very, very soothing. Plus I used to be a borderline math genius
when I was a kid so my brain is starved for that acute information. Highly articulated. I'd also like to learn German, such as Goethe
and his term "Urphanomene." I
would have to characterize the quantum of the sort I'm writing here and the
kung-an as being similar to the "Urphanomene." Also, the talent. The basic fundamental unit of exchange or
location. I'd really like to learn about
all that, I bet. I think I'd really like
it a lot. Yet one has to work and
getting angry only ruins the time I do have.
Therefore I content myself with not knowing German, not being able to
read much, and working at a good but somewhat unaesthetical job.
1394.
After this book is done
will you then be able to spend more time reading?
I hope so. It could be
that I have to keep writing a lot to stay sane. I don't rightly feel I could get along right
now without this aimless quanta-writing.
I'm not really one for dramatic, exciting plans. Benjamin called it "epic theatre"
and he did know what he was getting at.
Maybe Brecht called it "epic theatre," with no big highs or
lows, a weak theatrical force, spilling off to the sides of the stage backward
and forward out into the audience too, neither lyric nor tragic. Brecht had his weaknesses of course, but I
recently read in Arendt's introduction to Illuminations
that Adorno didn't like Benjamin's association with Brecht. Maybe it's not even the same Brecht. In any case, I'd like to read more but maybe
I've even now read too much and primarily need to express myself, do that
shaping-process myself which is kind of digestive or cognitive in nature.
1395.
Is your basic solution to
the real crises that crush you, and cause you not to know right from wrong, to
just back off from them and take no action until your calm, balanced,
wisdom-vision harmony comes back?
I rarely do this but it's my goal. When I get super-upset about things like
dating and social prestige I just get so crazy I can't think or relax. Then I know I'm in a bad state for making a
decision. At those times I need to
breathe and take a view toward patience.
1396.
What if you begin thinking
patience is failure?
That's the crisis-point.
Patience is not failure or humiliation.
Even if someone at work blames me for something they did, and I get
cheated and mutilated, it's not worth reacting angrily to. Sure it's demeaning and demoralizing. Yet until I learn the skills to stick up for
myself calmly, without getting fired, it's best to do nothing. It won't cost me my job, income, safety,
future, or anything. I can go forever
without being respected.
1397.
What about letting your
negative feelings have a little more freedom to circulate too?
I could try that. I get
to where I'm trying to fix all my negative feelings, turn them into good ones
as soon as they crop up. A feeling of
dissatisfaction at work, and smother it with an enthusiastic outburst of
affection for a co-worker and volunteering for more work. Or, I try to calculate why it's evil. I think I can't manage that way. It's OK, it's not even "negative"
to think I'd prefer a job more aligned with my education. After all, I have a genius IQ and a master's
degree yet work in a position not even requiring a bachelor's. It's true that any observer would say I'm
underemployed. Yet there is also the
fact that given my preference for the eight-hour workday this job meets my
basic needs for shelter and medicine and allows me relatively clear time to
write in the evenings. If I can just
stop hating myself for not loving my job and co-workers I'll be happier.
1398.
Would a great scholarly
tome about Benjamin, the Eumenides, and G2K be the great successful bestseller
to create a great life out of?
I don't see that selling many copies, it would be routed to
academic publishers and not having a PhD I wouldn't even get far
there--certainly not a bestseller.
People don't buy books about complicated, confusing things. They want something with a story. I know G2K is the ultimate story, what
Wallace Stevens called "the supreme fiction," but publishers are
incapable of seeing that.
1399.
Are exciting quanta better?
Not really, because everyone has to fill up their own
quanta--that's the key to all this. Even
if I wrote two thousand perfect quanta, you the reader would still have to make
your own life as you go. You have about
two thousand thoughts and feelings per day, i.e., two or three per minute. You have to have those, and my writing some
for you won't replace your doing them.
Perfection's fake.
1400.
What about people who argue
that protest, radicalism, obstructionism, and outrage are the only way to
prevent the O.S.O. from abusing power and becoming an absolute tyranny?
They are incorrect and really, really need to deeply re-think
their approach because it is actually inferior and very counterproductive to
their own goals. On the contrary, helping the O.S.O., in particular by
forgiving the U.S. fiscal-military state
for its uses of "force and fraud" both currently and in the past,
will bring the high-conflict phase of CWII to an end more quickly and reduce
the dangers of the conflict. The O.S.O.
has every interest in environmental protection and human rights, obviously, but
not at the expense of everything else because that would turn back and lose
even the E and H. Strong support of the
O.S.O., which is the only polis worthy of the name under superconvergence, is
particularly requisite in the Eumenidean sense of forgiving necessary wrongs to
protect the future best.
1401.
Would you like to apologize
to all the people who thought you were truly a left-radical and loved you for
it?
Some yes, some no. I
feel badly about having lied to some people but not as badly about others and
some not at all. I guess I wish I hadn't
done any demagoguery at all but had stuck to the straight and narrow from the
get-go. Unfortunately I didn't find a
way to do that. I thought I had to use
up the oxygen, be the "just one devil in the attic" as Holub wrote,
and to be "the dram of eale" that "doth all the noble substance
of a doubt, to its own scandal." An
innoculation if you will, a way of presenting a failed or wrong hypothesis so
someone else can discover the true one.
Also, I wish I had not dirtied and sullied the ideals of what Art should
be so grievously. Now I've reduced
myself to little more than a groveling political-psychological operative, when
my goal was to be the next Shakespeare.
1402.
If you're within the bounds
of what can be allowed, then are you OK to continue with G2K?
I think it's OK if I keep away from blaming, hating, offering
false overcoming, and things like that.
Avoiding either bound, or, all the multiplicity of bounds, the
three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of boundedness.
In fact to keep my genius together, and stop hemhorraging life, I need
to stay in bounds to infinite degrees.
1403.
When you're skimming
through books as you did earlier today, and you see things that make you think
G2K is good and legitimate, how do you feel?
It's a combination of varied feelings. I may feel scared G2K is a good idea someone
else will steal from me, re-name, and get the credit for. That's the primary feeling, fear of getting
out-competed by some other artistic person or writer. I get scared I'm losing time. Then I get the urge to cite and prove, then
shame, then guilt.
1404.
Why do you get shame about
whether G2K is good and valid?
I'm uncertain why. I
think it has to do with my fear of demagoguery.
"Making the worser argument appear the better," as Plato or
Socrates said Sophists do. If I quote
something very compelling and persuasive, something that really clarifies G2K
and confirms it toward the good side of its possible outcomes, I feel that I'm
committing a crime, stealing, arrogating.
1405.
When did you first read
Yeats' "The Second Coming"?
I would guess in 1990 or 1991.
I had left Oberlin, where there was a ton of homework, for the
UW-Madison, where I could pay in-state tuition due to reciprocity and hoped
there would be less homework. Less
demands overall, fewer duties to belong.
I'd felt suffocated and worn-out at Oberlin. I wanted to go my own path. I read a lot of extra poetry, especially from
the Norton Modern Poetry, in Madison 1990-1991.
1406.
Did you quote Yeats in your
original website to illuminate the Video First Edition and the project of G2K
as a whole?
Yes, but no one seems to care about these things in the correct
way. They think that a new
art-historical era means knocking over the military order, the structures of
authority. People can frustrate me. They don't realize that Yeats was talking
about an aesthetic evolution. They think
progress means destroying corporations.
So, all my talk and quoting meant nothing--no one got it.
1407.
Is that why you now realize
that demagoguery and courting ignorant pseudo-intellectuals is inimical to G2K?
Something has changed my attitude. I used to think it was cute and doughty to
talk about Chomsky and the future of hemp production. Reductio ad absurdum and all. But now I know there is a risk and damage to
G2K in that, where G2K could and largely has become nothing more than that,
nothing affirmative. Psycho.
1408.
Is it primarily a distemper
or sickness in the liberal-secular art community you wish to attack?
I guess more to neutralize than to attack, more to denature
it. Liberals have regressed
intellectually and aesthetically. They
don't recognize that their worldview is basically monotheistic, based on a
monodeity of art inclusive of science.
They don't understand their own obligations, so they have become
hypocritical and hysterical, volatile, manic, unable to meditate calmly. They worship maniacs and chaos. They have regressed in their worship of
instrumental reason, control, artifice, exactly as Adorno predicted, into crazy
myths and taboos. Essentially, the
liberal intellectual is more of a corrupt clergy and hypocritical philistinism
than the actual clergy and the actual commercial world. It's a frightening fact but the greatest
threat to liberal goals of E and H are liberals themselves, their hypocritical
mania and chaos.
1409.
Is it not that you are
obligated to fix liberal mistakes, fix liberals, nor that you can but must not,
but that you can talk about G2K in a measured way and if it helps liberals calm
down, OK?
I can't fix and teach all liberals not to be ignorant in five
seconds. Many of them are drunk, high,
or so full of lies and prejudice they're unsalvageable. You can just take Chomsky as an example of
stubborn, plodding ignorance--ask him about art. I can't fix him, he likes being
ignorant. Yet I also can't just
completely shut up about him either. I
think I have an obligation to make the argument that he doesn't acknowledge
aesthetic evolution at all, that he in fact acts as if it's irrelevant. I guess I feel obligated to make some open
reductions of Chomsky. Yet you will find
that most of the people willing to talk in my Video, or who've openly liked me
so far, did so not because of the art-ideas but because they thought I was a
big champion of Chomsky. Actually, G2K
is the anti-Chomsky, the Chomskyism of art not politics, good Chomsky.
1410.
Is the real truth that
Chomskyism or complete opposition to all authority as such, i.e.
anarcho-syndicalism, is just as idiotic and destructive, a false overcoming of
the most essential class, when articulated in art as it is in politics or
economics?
Clearly yes. I wanted to
co-opt Chomsky, steal his arguments away from politics (where they are nothing
more than anti-Americanism as Pat Moynihan knew, harm to liberal democracy's
chances) and exploit them for my own uses in art. I wanted to expropriate the art world, all
the museums, the critics, the galleries, the academy, TV, every artistic sphere
of activity from high to low in every culture, I wanted to expropriate it for
G2K. My thinking was that Chomskyism in
politics was wrong and couldn't work, but regarding art it was virtuous and
could work. This is artistic-cultural
Leninism, Bolshevism, demagoguery. It is
the false overcoming of culture.
1411.
Is your main goal for this
book to stop G2K from being evil, i.e. from attacking itself or rather its own
actually good valuable potentials, so you can keep it going without guilt?
Clearly that is my goal.
I have got to get rid of the evil that I was doing with G2K up until now
and by inaction am still doing. I wanted
to attack the art world so that I could then expropriate it. My plan was incoherent and self-destructive,
like a body's immune system attacking its own tissues. Basically I was a great mass of immaturity,
impatience, anger, impotence, jealousy, and crappy mental health. I was very weak in emotional development. Therefore I took a horrible path, of
attacking art world people only to become exactly
what I was attacking. I lost my own
integrity and hope, my life-spirit. I
could have just stuck to doing G2K and not attacking anybody, any artists or
groups or institutions. But I got crazy,
Leninist, I thought I could expropriate.
1412.
Is G2K therefore riddled
with contradictions and flaws in the extreme?
Absolutely. I've never
understood proper success. For me it was
always lust or revenge, complete confusion with no self-control or
self-awareness. I had no concept of
right and wrong, boundaries, or respect for myself and others. I was basically a lunatic or sociopath. To me the logic was there, I had no workable
option. Great artists had always beaten the crap out of their
competitors, and there wasn't any nice-guy nonsense or collegiality about
it. In the art business it's kill or be
killed, competitive capitalism. You
either merge, bankrupt the other guy, or go bankrupt yourself. They call it ruthless. My strategy was to win completely, and then
uncrown myself, a conceptual inversion of Napoleon and the Eroica. The Second Syracuse. So this is all working out just fine
then. The key thing is to keep myself
from success.
1413.
Is it then necessary that
G2K acquire no political, financial, social, or institutional success at all,
but remain extremely weakly magnetic, "even to a point within our day and
night" as Shelley wrote?
I think so. The
cumulative logic of production forgets the law of diminishing returns if it's
applied to aesthetic awareness, development, and evolution. The worst and most degradingly un-G2K (or
"bad G2K") outcome would be if G2K got trendy, popular with critics
or art departments, hip with the college radio scene or the club scene. I even used to act like I was going to be or
already was a cult figure in the MDMA-based club world. That world is disgusting, though the people
in it are good and OK--they were all right to me. I shouldn't call it disgusting, and try to be
a scourge, favor the wrathful teetotalers.
I just don't want to over-favor any one group. I can't take any drugs or alcohol anymore
anyway. People should stay calm.
1414.
Do you need to stick to a
more religious regimen of quantum-size, making only the quanta ending in 0 or 1
full-pagers and the rest half-pagers?
Yes, this book is already plenty long enough. I'll never finish the typing and proofing by
September first if I don't keep most of the quanta to a half-page length. That means keeping them to about six
sentences total, each. That's crucial
and OK.
1415.
What if you get anxious and
need therapy and want to write full-pagers?
I can just write half-pagers and breathe patiently until I get
to a full-pager. It will increase my
calmness and balance if I get used to using half-page quanta for therapeutic
topics or statements, calming concepts, as well as full-page quanta. They don't have to entail crushing or
shutting down my emotions either, condemning certain ones. I can feel restless and grouchy but should
learn to let go of it, breathe, not clutch onto it or keep it angrily severe.
1416.
Is it acceptable then for
G2K not to be successful in commercial avenues or in political extremist
liberal-left crapulence?
Yes, I need to keep a low profile. The liberal left is like a "sow that
eats her farrow," as Joyce wrote.
They take anything you do and try to turn it into an attack on authority
they can use for expropriation. They
fail to understand the limits of expropriation--you can't get blood from a
stone, or aesthetic evolution by false Bolshevist overcoming.
1417.
Can liberals forgive
themselves like you have and try to be good and right again?
They sure can. Liberals
have an obligation to improve themselves and not just commit hara-kiri. Everybody makes mistakes. A lot of liberal desires like environmental
protection and humanism are acceptable and decent but need a little greater
understanding to go along with them as they are not the only concern in the
world and are not automatic--they have to be earned. Basically I think liberals should consider
Neoconservatism, i.e. "used to be liberal-ism." Liberalism plus realism.
1418.
Does the basic meaning of
art and polity require the existence of unequal authority?
Yes. In art and politics
both, there is a need for unequal authority.
It's not the panacea but it is necessary as both a preventative and a
creative force for decision-making.
Exosomatic evolution is why. It
can be destroyed irrevocably and therefore must be protected; it requires
organized group effort and therefore requires decision-making. Both of these require some level of
compulsatory power to exist and be used some of the time.
1419.
Do you recommend Walter
Lippmann's The Public Philosophy,
anything by Leo Strauss, and the Oresteia on political authority?
I recommend that people seriously, seriously consider the
conservative or neoconservative views.
Liberal-left ideas are just not compatible with history, the realm of
responsibility and necessity. Political
stability cannot achieve everything--the "arts of peace" have a
crucial role--but neither can global collapse of capitalist democracy be even
slightly risked.
1420.
Is it crucial that G2K not
be popular or successful in the conventional sense, i.e. to become its evil
twin or false prophecy and false overcoming?
I can't think that G2K should or can succeed in the
conventional arena of sex and money. It
cannot go over into the realms of false overcoming, however lucrative or
gratifying they might be in the short-term, and still remain G2K. It would be contradicting itself or in short
not even existing or happening at all if it became a false, empty,
convertible-into-dollars trend. I get
nightmares about this. All my fears and
greeds tell me that I need a girlfriend, need to be famous. I can't use G2K as a selfish exploitative
mechanism in that regard. I have to keep
it free and autonomous from all the conventional avenues of success--that's
exactly what will bring its own real success, the new kind of success or
meaning of success its goal and purpose is to articulate or point to.
1421.
Does the book The Elegant Universe talk about quanta?
Yes it does, though I haven't read the book through yet. I glanced at it a little today. It appears that Einstein had the good fortune
of not knowing that other people were working on relativity at the same time he
was, because they all had it wrong. So
he was in a blessed obscurity that gave him clean space to work in. I on the contrary get angry for being so
disconnected. I get angry. This results in very tumultuous moods that
can make me very upset and uncomfortable.
I get confused. I get very
confused about this book, whether to leave in anything about anything bad
that's ever happened to me or that I know someone else did. I'm scared that accusing people of specific
misdeeds will bring a guilt on me for violating the amnesty, such as it is, of
the O.S.O. I can't figure out what to
do, what my obligations are. I'm very
anxious now.
1422.
Are you afraid that very
many of your quanta will need to be rewritten because they are revenge-seeking?
When I complain about bad things done to me, I'm seeking to
excuse my own bad behavior and to commit revenge. They go hand in hand. I'm also concerned that the very fabric of
G2K is vengeful, its basic function, the idea of fragments and quanta, Zen
Cubism, all of it expropriative and vengeful.
1423.
Can you delimit at all what
is unacceptable and overwrite it before September 1?
That is a daunting challenge.
Primarily I want to keep political blame-attacks against the U.S. out,
and blame-attacks against things people did to me or that I know about. It seems crazy that I even need to consider
this. In a published book, one should
never attack individuals because it just creates trouble. I can't guess how many quanta so far are
revengeful like this. It's
difficult. I may have to overwrite up to
half.
1424.
Can you leave in quanta
that just make you look anxious and stupid, and might bore the reader?
Yes, I can leave in anything monotonous or terrible. I suppose I can leave in some general
mentions of bad human actions but definitely not ones that will grievously harm
anyone. Even make them feel grievously
bad or to hate themselves. There comes a
point where punishing people is just disgusting sadism or sociopathy.
1425.
Do you therefore need to
forgive all the institutions and individuals who have wronged you personally or
done wrong to others?
I guess so. Complete
forgiveness of everyone's bad acts, no matter how bad they were. I won't discuss anything anyone has done
that's bad, either to me or to others.
That's just the bargain. Clearly
I need to keep all my personal relationships and family history out of the
book--that's private and confidential.
I've broken that rule at times but now I have to try to stick to it.
1426.
If you could take all the
blaming, accusations, and revenge out of this book could it be published in
good conscience?
If I can take all the accusations and condemnations out of it,
it would become OK. That comes down to a
very, very basic, fundamental, and ancient question surrounding sin, i.e.
crime: what is the nature of forgiveness?
One can say that cruel justice and revenge are the only permissible
practice. However, I have built G2K on
the idea of forgiveness without practicing it.
1427.
Do you personally fail to
forgive yourself and others, thus keeping the Furies a threat?
Yes, I've kept the Furies of revenge alive in my own actions
and behavior even though technically I knew that was unacceptable and
untenable. The polis organized around
exosomatic evolution has got to permit mistakes or crime and punish it in a
measured and not absolute manner. Some
forgiveness is required to keep things evolving. The alternative is pharoah-style fixity.
1428.
Has your dilemma over
whether forgiveness is permissible been your major stumbling block in life
recently?
It could be, though I'm still unclear on how one can keep order
in society and in one's life while forgiving crimes. I don't have a strong personal awareness of
the Eumenides in my own existence. I
still seek revenge, and still accept the political philosophy that makes a weak
rejection of revenge i.e. Marxist-Leninism.
My aesthetic theories may also be unsalvageably vengeful and stagnant.
1429.
Can you describe what are
the vengeful acts you'll need to take out of this book?
I'll have to take out any quanta that are directly vengeful
against individuals I've known. Also
against groups or organizations. I
cannot keep G2K in its good, acceptable form unless I remove all attacks like
that from it. I cannot attack anyone who
has done wrong to me or to others. I
cannot attack the O.S.O. or liberal democratic government for having used
"force and fraud" in wartime.
I also can't go overboard and excuse everything.
1430.
Are there limits to
forgiveness and what it can accomplish or should be used for?
Clearly there are limits to effective use of forgiveness. For example, one cannot just make everything
legal and permissible, voiding all law and boundaries. In personal life as well as political life we
have to keep laws and structure. Yet in
principle we have to recognize that forgiveness of crime or sin is also an
inherent part of managing history i.e. of the exosomatic evolutionary process
which of necessity includes mistakes and bad times. Scientific research, for example, depends on
the freedom to make mistakes even though it cannot abide calling those mistakes
the truth. The question is not whether
the
1431.
Does forgiveness fix
everything in your personal life, or do tough decisions still have to be made?
Forgiveness may be my "most missing" link in
adjusting to life, or as Dr. Fowler said in lecture once, my "major
maladjustment." I of course should
not prettify everything with gruesomely sentimental anecdotes about people I
really only barely knew. At least in my personal
life I know I cannot forgive my way to making everything perfect because that would
be a false overcoming. I can't go by
criticism alone, is I guess the point. I
can criticize others and myself but I can't function only that way or I end up
with nothing. Forgiveness really only
says there comes a point after which condemnation and punishment become
counter-productive. Yet the real
relevance of this factor is unclear.
Many people are incapable of forgiving authority, liberal democracy, the
1432.
What are the limits to
forgiveness in your personal life?
Well, I guess it might be that I can't go back to co-dependency
or continue indefinitely in my entry-level job.
There are some things where forgiveness just really isn't the
issue. For example, terrorists are
pitiable in many ways and largely young men manipulated by the anger and
frustration of their elders. Yet
forgiving them does not mean we can let them conduct attacks. They are too great of a threat to stability
and improved living standards and polity in the developing world, especially.
1433.
If you completely stop
naming names and blaming people now, can you possibly complete and publish two
thousand quanta before September 1?
I think it's possible. I
have to stick to eighty percent half-page quanta. This will allow me to finish composition more
quickly. It will take a lot of work to
type these all up but I will take some vacation days. Then I will go back and overwrite all the
unacceptable ones. It will take two very
busy months.
1434.
Can you forgive yourself for
wanting to get a computer programming degree and increase your income with a
better career?
I can accept that it is OK intellectually; emotionally it will
take a while to sink in. It takes a lot
of patience, basically complete patience.
I can definitely forgive my co-workers for perhaps sometimes not being
perfect--gosh I shouldn't have to be so simplistic but I'm kind of remedial in
social maturity. Still it won't alter
the fact that I need to seek out greater personal and career fulfillment.
1435.
Mainly do you want to ask
people to forgive the U.S. and the O.S.O. for doing what is necessary?
Yes, I think aesthetic evolution will only suffer a setback if
people cannot get to a point of forgiveness and acceptance of the O.S.O. Aesthetic, exosomatic evolution is fragile in
some ways and cannot flourish under constant major war or standoffs. People need to accept the best possible
solution and stick to it. Fighting the
O.S.O. (i.e. not forgiving it) means you're hurting art's chances.
1436.
In your personal life, do
you basically need to keep in mind that forgiveness can't fix everything?
I want everything to be fixed.
I want to do what people want me to do, so I can belong in society and
date and so forth. I feel like if I
could forgive, I wouldn't have to be a hermit but could go back to all my old
relationships and life-habits.
Realistically however I can't go back to everything, the college radio
music for example. It doesn't fix
everything to forgive.
1437.
Is it still OK to leave a
bad relationship or unhealthy interactions?
I think it must be. I
guess I feel guilty for every having acted like I wasn't going to end up a solitary hermit, for making promises to
people that I could have known I wouldn't keep.
Yet I wanted to fit in. I made
some bad promises. I would like to be
able to go back to all my old relationships but forgiveness isn't the only
issue. There are boundaries too, other
factors, significant problems.
1438.
Have you basically decided
to put this on the internet for free regardless of how well it turns out?
Yes; if I can keep out the vindictive rage and the unacceptable
accusations, then I'd like to publish it on the internet as an apology for
G2K's past mistakes. I really want to
get back to where G2K is not a source of guilt and shame for me. I want to be able to fulfill my obligation to
keep it on the internet without causing greater harm.
1439.
Does the low quality of
many of these quanta preclude putting them on the internet?
No, I don't care if many of them are boring or mediocre. I know that some of them will be disliked
even though they have to be kind of bland.
It's OK to be disliked for being bland.
It is the harming to society, to the chances for a lasting peace with
freedom under the O.S.O., that I cannot keep doing. If they have a very low value, that's OK with
me as long as they're not destructive.
1440.
If you can keep doing
Genius 2000, and go to computer programming school to get a career, are you
secure for life?
I can continue with that kind of life until the end of my
days. I do not need to get famous, or
rich, or change the world--in fact I arguably need only to avoid those
things. The artistic life provides
stability and contentment in things like reading and just being respectable. I have an obligation to keep the Genius 2000
Network in existence as long as I possibly can, but it only has to have a very
low baseline existence. I don't have to
accomplish anything spectacular or cataclysmic with it. Yeats predicted the end of the
"gyre" (or bi-millennium, i.e., the two thousand years from zero to
2000) would bring a new art-historical period, yet he may not have understood
how anticlimactic it would be. I compare
it to a sine wave just dipping below the x-axis with a period of 4000. Quadrature is also relevant to gradualism,
periodicity, etc.
1441.
Are you struggling against
the rules of solitude and celibacy?
Yes, they seem crazy, useless, and a recipe for bad mental
health. I don't see why I or anyone
should require them. I know there are
reasons but I can't comprehend them at this point; I don't have any
wisdom-knowing vision on it. It may be
that my breathing and posture have just become poor so far today over the
course of the day, and I'm clouded.
Sitting up straight just now has helped.
I was hunching over, reading in The
Elegant Universe about quarks and gluons.
Hunching and worrying always causes me to doubt the hermit's way. The hermit is really a very OK and acceptable
role in the aesthetic-exosomatic evolution of the polis. It's OK for the hermit to be solitary and
celibate--it doesn't mean at all that everyone has to be. The hermit, or the outcast, the "holy
fool" or otherwise aberrant but useful individual is accepted in many
cultures past and present. I'm still
unclear.
1442.
Is the key to learn to be
stable and harmonious even without getting everything you want, the perfect
life, friends, dating?
I have forgotten the basic reason for any individual efforts by
the artist or attempter. I conceivably
never knew it to begin with, have never known it. I've been dancing around the topic
intellectually is all. To find out for
sure, by direct experience, that one doesn't need to date the pretty girl or be
socially popular liberates the creative artist.
You are no longer compelled to do what others want you to do.
1443.
Do I need to be able to
tolerate solitude and celibacy in order to learn to do Genius 2000 in a
significant way?
Perhaps not. One could
discuss Genius 2000 with other people among all the other topics of life, and
have relationships and so forth. Therefore
arguably I could be engaged in friendships and dating right now with no damage
to Genius 2000. Theoretically. It could also be that I cannot do both
because I'm not competent enough. If
this question matters at all I'm floundering then to that extent.
1444.
Is it really just that
friends and dating just take up too much time?
I hope this doesn't become a problematic type of quantum
needing to be overwritten. I actually
have no idea why solitude or extensive study and celibacy or non-dating are
necessary. I'll just delay thinking
about it until I get calm wisdom and understanding. There may be something about the dependence
on another person that causes the problem.
If you can't get along OK without the other person, you're not capable
of full freedom.
1445.
Have you decided not to do
any blaming or accusing and no writing things that will hurt anyone?
I'm feeling more determined to put these all on the
internet. That seems like the obligatory
step for G2K. It is not an acceptable
option at this time to take it down.
Therefore I have to leave it up and clear away its great sinfulness
against the O.S.O. and the future polis.
A long book like this can clear it away.
I should also not add more criminality if I can help it.
1446.
Will you be overwriting
quanta about bad things that have happened to you?
Yes, because I don't want to blame others for my bad
actions. I did my bad actions because I
wanted to, not because of what someone did to me. It's called personal responsibility and if it
doesn't exist, G2K is meaningless nonsense.
I don't want to use G2K as a cruel stick to viciously beat people who
have slighted me. That is a misuse of
G2K. G2K is not created to be used for
revenge, but to convert our desire for revenge into a blessing on the future
polis.
1447.
Will you be therefore
making all the G2K content yourself now, more or less, except for the
conferences (at which you'll be the only judge)?
Yes, I am not going to entertain just anyone's comments or work
about Genius 2000 on my website. I used
to suggest that I would welcome all contributors and give anyone a voice,
"media access," no matter what they wanted to say. Now I reject that. They can put it on their own site if they
want. I can do all the Genius 2000
Network content myself. I'll make all
the content.
1448.
Is that a major change from
the Video, to make all the content yourself now?
Yes, the old concept was to act as a clearinghouse or conduit
for anything anyone else wanted to do.
The idea was that I would have something like a very large network of
people making content. Now the idea is
to have a very narrow network, carrying mainly my own content. (If you want to put your own content on your
own network, go ahead.) I'm not going to
hire people or recruit them to do G2K.
1449.
Is it important to learn to
meditate, read poetry, and let your emotions pass by in order to do G2K, and
not be socially bound?
Social relationships are either trivial or non-trivial. Because I do not yet know how to truly do G2K
(as opposed to just speculating about it) I get distracted from trivial social
relations into wanting them to be non-trivial to compensate for my lack of G2K
abilities. This leads to infinite
entanglements of desire, manipulation, conflict, and blame, all of no purpose
whatever in learning G2K.
1450.
Rather than merely
cataloguing your fears and uncertainties, what are some positive products you
can include in this book?
The main purpose of this book is to affirm my personal
commitment to low taxes, deregulation, and pre-emptive war on terrorism. Aesthetic evolution of humanity is the
crucial key, and for this the O.S.O. is the best available option. The O.S.O. requires wealth and power focused
in the only superpower, as well as the exercise of that power to prevent a
rival from emerging. Co-operative
partners in protecting freedom and liberal democracy are more than
welcome. Those who wish to re-start a
new version of the U.S.S.R. are not
welcome. They will be confronted. And the political world will make sure that
the O.S.O. is not killed by the death of a million cuts--taxes, regulation, and
utopian treaties. The free world did not
win the twentieth century just to have to go through it all again in the
twenty-first. Now pre-emption is the
standard operating procedure, not appeasement or containment. Period.
1451.
Does democracy in genius
have a false overcoming side as well as a true aesthetic evolution side, just
as democracy in politics does?
There is a false evolution and a true evolution in both
aesthetic and political democracy. Both
involve genius. Ancient
1452.
Can majority vote make
inferior art superior by fiat?
No, art is not susceptible to being voted into being
better. If the art is vulgar and
degraded it doesn't become noble and decent automatically if the majority votes
that it thinks it is. This is why
individual freedoms must be protected, and why the majority of artistic people
disliking G2K does not automatically mean G2K is inferior. Simple majority vote does not determine
scientific fact either--you can't just vote to decide whether the earth moves
around the sun or not.
1453.
Since it is impossible to
compel liberals to rethink their views, does this book merely have to extricate
G2K from the left-liberal mob mentality?
I can't cause anyone to be wiser than they are willing to work
to be. I am still obligated to try to be
wise myself however and not cause ignorance to be inflamed by what I do. Thus I have to get rid of the anti-authority,
anti-O.S.O. stench that I allowed to saturate G2K.
1454.
Once you render yourself no
longer an appealing fetish object for revanchist left-liberals, how can you use
this book to increase your own G2K abilities?
It will take me years to learn to practice G2K in a meaningful
sense. Prior to now I only advocated
false overcoming. I was a demagogue, a
Leninist seeking to take dictatorial control over all human culture. That is completely despicable. I now have to keep G2K up simply as an
atonement of that sin, that crime. I
cannot accept any praise for it because it is still far too filthy with
demagoguery. I have to consciously make
it unattractive to all the demagogue-prone parties that I used to try to cater
to to assist my Bolshevik (i.e. usurping) plot.
I wanted to usurp the art world's authority because I thought that
nothing else could protect the O.S.O.
Now I realize how ignorant I was.
A very great number of people understand the dangers of terrorism and
revived Communism, and they work diligently to fight them. My duty now is to support the fight.
1455.
If you cannot really people
behind the G2K banner to support exosomatic aesthetic evolution in concert with
the O.S.O., what can you do to accrue value?
All I can do is keep developing my own genius as best I can, in
a way that fulfills my obligations under conscience to the O.S.O., and when
necessary and proper to share that development with the world for proper
benefit. I have totally forfeited any
claim to social or monetary gain for G2K, by my sins of Bolshevism. My work now is to stop continuing that harm
and to repent.
1456.
What about the demagogic
claims that G2K can save the world, bring peace, etc.?
Those were the acts of a demagogue. It is impossible to make peace with
terrorists. You either let them kill
you, or stop them. Only people taking
care of themselves and doing what is necessary to give others the opportunity
to take care of themselves can save the world.
G2K cannot take care of anyone, nor can it make them protect freedom for
others and for the future. People can do
those things, or rather, the properties of genial brain-growth can accomplish
these things if people meditate and articulate responsibly.
1457.
If someone meditates to
calm the amygdalic fight-or-flight brain, and then allows their individual
genius (or soul) to take form according to its genetically endowed capacity, is
that event what you mean by Genius 2000?
Yes, that is correct.
Genius 2000 is not something I invented or fabricated. It is a true fact of how complex sentience
exists. It is a fact of the universe,
just as Zen is a fact of the brain and gravity is a fact of physics. Genius 2000 is not up for debate.
1458.
Is Genius 2000 therefore
more a scientific reality than an aesthetic reality?
Genius 2000 is my name for the scientific reality of how
aesthetics function. History is
aesthetics, as we can see by the etymology of "history" and its roots
in the word "vision," or, as we could say, "vistory." History is aesthetic and history is relevant
to both politics and science. Genius
2000 is not however able, as a fact, to force any person to make the efforts
that will allow their soul to take form.
I portray G2K as something I've fabricated but it's not that at all.
1459.
Will it be necessary to
remove the many quanta in which you reveal unpleasant or distasteful
information about yourself?
It could be. I cannot in
good conscience jeopardize my career (my "day job") by revealing
unpleasant or socially weird facts about myself. Primarily these have been related to my
private life, my past, my childhood, my love life, and so forth. Some facts from my childhood are acceptable
for publication and some are not. I will
have to make this judgment as I go through typing and revisions. I think I will cut out any unpleasant or
unconventional revelations about bad things I've done or had done to me. It is not acceptable to make a public
monstrosity of oneself in order to garner negative opinion. I have an obligation to keep a paying job and
public internet statements that might make my presence at a job unacceptable
will have to be avoided. I can chasten
myself other ways. I'll overwrite or cut
out the ugly revelations. I don't want
to harm others or make excuses for my sins and crimes.
1460.
Why are social isolation
and Genius 2000 connected?
That is perhaps the central question. I have more confusion on that than on
anything else--social ostracism. By all
accounts, many artists are social outcasts in their own time because they are
the leading edge of aesthetic evolution.
The new experiment seems alien and dangerous to the people of the
time. This is the only connection I can
think of. It's either that or merely
that I am defective in my constitution or attitude. Another case may be that G2K is morbid and
unhealthy. I think there are a lot of
interconnections. One could say that
even healthy, stable aesthetic experience is solitary. Individuation as they call it. Clearly I would like to be a little more
social, yet on the other hand, I would like not to care. Social interaction is not a magical
cure-all. Also, I'm barely beginning to
pursue an existence as an artist so I'm not used to it. I still crave social acceptance.
1461.
Is it necessary to explain
all the complexities of individuals, exchange, communication, value, danger,
and so forth?
Genius 2000 is a theory of economics. Art-value is looked at like any other
socio-economic value. It gets produced
and exchanged in a more or less efficient manner. This means the "talent" equals
individual capability as well as the unit of value in exchange. This connects to the kung-an as
"document of official value," to quote Thich Naht Hahn, and as the
quantum or art-piece. The art-piece is a
cycle however, a cyclical fleeting
unit and not a static one; each tragic cycle or A-K-H-A is a quantum or kung-an
having "claritas" as well as the general cycle itself--the kung-an is
"a finger pointing to the moon," that is, not a repository but a
directional "thing-event" or "Urphanomene." Each art-work or object of value is a location in a larger scheme of economic
value and production. Economy is not
static but dynamic and cyclical.
1462.
Is it frustrating that
people don't understand G2K?
I get frustrated easily though perhaps others do not. The kind of women that like me are the kind
who want a weak charity-case they can control, like a male child. That type of dating I don't need. I'm not successful enough to attract a strong
dynamic woman. So, I just tolerate
stagnation or patience. I put a negative
tone on it at my own risk. I'm just
disinterested right now.
1463.
Are your ascetic strictures
feeling very artificial today?
Yes, I feel very angry.
Other people seem able to be so much more natural and easy-going. Yet the key is not to think about it too much
or too intensely. I'm developing a new
aesthetic theory. I'm putting it on the
internet because I can't get a regular publisher. I stick to myself because social
entanglements are really not what I need to develop as a writer. I use the quanta format as an experiment.
1464.
Does it concern you that
there is so little directly stated in these quanta to lend credence to G2K?
Absolutely it's a concern.
Yet I'm operating under many weaknesses.
I have very little knowledge of what is proper or OK to talk about. I am fearful of criticizing anyone or
anything. My thoughts and opinions of
things are not always appropriate. I
think that the key to G2K being legitimate and decent is for me to learn
self-discipline and reserve.
1465.
Could you develop G2K as an
economic theory into greater detail?
I think so. Yet I am
also like Hamlet, trying to keep up "an antic disposition." Leo Strauss wrote about this question in Persecution and the Art of Writing. Writers have often had to speak indirectly to
avoid antagonizing people unnecessarily.
I don't feel comfortable rambling at will about G2K, and getting excited
and happy about it. In real life you
always come down to the harsh reality that can't be dreamed away, the horror.
1466.
Is the idea of the
Eumenides that you can't really fix things that were done badly in the past?
I guess so. I have a lot
of anger about bad things that have happened to me. Yet if I act on that anger, I just make
things worse. The key is to get away from the bad things. One cannot transform them into good
things. Or can you? That's curious. I don't know.
Sometimes bad relationships can be fixed, arguably.
1467.
What if you just wrote
about the good sides of G2K, how it's compatible with pluralistic liberal
democracy, how it calls for religious tolerance, how it advances aesthetic
evolution, and de-emphasize the gloomy side?
That's the perfect solution.
The gloomy side is really irrelevant.
It should be ignored. The reality
is that one should think about the good side of G2K, the side that works, then
articulate and sell that side, as a taught skill.
1468.
Does struggling against the
panicky feelings (that G2K is evil and doomed) merely make them worse by
precluding calm G2K meditative states and expression?
I think so. The panicky
fear doesn't just go away when I try to make it go away. It's permanent, but I can ignore it and focus
on other things. I really don't need to
make the fear disappear. If I focus on
doing positive, healthy articulation of G2K that is all I can hope for. I can ignore the negative thoughts.
1469.
What if you can't think of
any positive thoughts or connections about G2K?
It's easy to think of one, just think of Zen peace of
mind. For example, if you can't think of
any positive G2K thought, just meditate and breathe for a Zen calmness. Be very calm and patient. Let the fear and panickiness just drift
away. There's no need to control
it. Just be very calm, sit up straight,
don't hunch, don't get angry, don't think dismal thoughts about failure.
1470.
Factually is G2K still too
anti-authority to deserve publication in a real book?
Yes, it's still too demagogic.
I have got to get rid of that demagoguery. Yet I cannot take it off the internet
completely. It's a curse. I have to leave it up and atone for all of
its weaknesses and crimes. I have to
convert the Eumenides like Aeschylus did in the Oresteia, by words
twice-spoken, and so forth. It gets
complicated. Maybe I could just not put
this on the internet at all. Yet it's
very similar to a blog so in that regard it's completely decent and
typical. Bloggers are everywhere, they
say any old thing. So this is a very
typical and unremarkable genre, which I call "quanta." It's no big deal compositionally. The difficulty is to respect authority and
the political stability that protects aesthetic exosomatic evolution now and
into the future, and its past recorded form as well. It's a gradual skill to learn. I can be patient, I don't need societal
success.
1471.
Isn't this book just too
full of depressive rumination to be worth anyone's time?
Yes it is. It's got too
much complaining and too much despondency.
Depression is not the goal or meaning of G2K. Sometimes they say you have to go through
depression when you're giving up old values, old parts of you are dying, old
processes of yours have stopped or are stopping. M. Scott Peck said "Depression is
healthy." I don't know about that. I think it might be better to keep my
depressive thoughts and narration to myself.
If I could just understand better.
I don't want to bring anyone down, but I don't want to boost them up
either like a drug. I guess real artists
don't get this anxiety, they are natural and confident. I'm a house divided against itself. G2K is a house divided against itself. I can't let myself be normal, come across as
strong and correct. And yet I also can't
let G2K fail. So the only option seems
to be to let it stagnate.
1472.
Why can't you just drop G2K
completely, I mean, completely, utterly taking it all down and never doing it
again, ever?
I've gotten zaps before that that isn't acceptable. Zaps are something you get if you're a
paroxetine user sometimes. I really
can't be mentioning this. I'll have to
strike this quantum. I'm
deteriorating. This can't go on, I'm
lost.
1473.
Is this book just a bogus
waste of effort like The Hermit?
Yes, it's idiotic. It's
a depressive diary. It has nothing to do
with a real book that other people should want to read. It is just an exercise at this point. I guess my dream or fantasy of putting out a
book about G2K in my thirty-fifth year is failed now, doomed. That's fine.
This bullshit about keeping everything clean, keeping away from taboos,
that's strangling me anyway. The world
isn't ready for aesthetic evolution yet.
War is the answer.
1474.
Since you're cancelling
this book, why shouldn't you cancel the conferences too?
That's a great idea. All
of G2K needs to come down. The website,
everything, canceled tomorrow. My
Declaration of Independence from the internet.
Complete cancellation of it all, completely. An extremely rash and horrific decision. Factually however G2K deserves to die. It's evil.
Or is it just too difficult, and I'm being a coward?
1475.
What about just stopping
the conferences and leaving everything else up?
I don't know. The idea
that I have a duty to keep G2K up isn't sticking. It's just not a needed quantity. It's mere depression. It can't help individuals or the
situation. But if I take it down that's
irrevocable. If I leave it up maybe it
can help things by being a preventative measure. Maybe it can't. I don't think I can handle this situation the
way it is any longer. It's too sickening.
1476.
What if you're just sad and
angry from realizing you've chosen the lonely artist's road, and need to be
patient and keep G2K online to try to show that a non-demagogic art practice is
possible?
That seems workable. I'm
in extreme pain due to my dreams of social inclusion dying. This inner death is causing me to panic. In my panic, I can't make any
distinctions. Not being able to tell right
from wrong, I want to give up. This is
my situation now.
1477.
Even though G2K is to date
ninety-nine percent demagoguery, do I still have the obligation to keep it
going and live it down?
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe
I'm obligated to give up the spotlight to other, real artists. Financially and emotionally I'm bleeding
out. My energy is dying. I'm letting it die. I'm in extreme trouble. There's no way I can put this on the internet
and risk my job, my career. It's just
not an acceptable risk. The best call is
to let someone else with better mental health do G2K around 2010, in cooler
times.
1478.
Is it beneficial to write
quanta even when you feel you are becoming extremely anxious and negative
emotionally?
I haven't found that writing quanta helps me when I am getting
very anxious. In those cases I generally
benefit more from drinking water, stretching, and breathing consciously. Only that calming process seems to help me
feel better. I think that I am still
trying to learn emotional management without my paroxetine. It can be difficult.
1479.
Are you anxious about the
conference for 2005, putting these quanta on the internet, and keeping Genius
2000 online?
I'm very anxious about all of these questions lately. Trying to "figure them out" doesn't
help either and I generally react to anxiety by trying to "figure it
out," i.e. solve it like a math problem, rather than letting it glide away
through breathing, stretching, hydration, and posture. I get very anxious to have a life-plan, which
I feel I am lacking and am therefore ethically in violation of goodness.
1480.
Does letting go of the
things that cause anxiety seem to be the key?
They almost feel like convulsions. If I relax, the spasmic convulsions
stop. If I try to forcibly control the
convulsions by clenching up, they intensify.
I often worry about the solitary life of a writer and whether it is
healthy. I get extremely agitated about
this sometimes, tinged with anger, remorse, shame, guilt, degraded
feelings. I become very emotionally
upset. I get angry at society or my past
professors for not liking my ideas about writing, for example--when in fact
several of them did, and encouraged me.
I guess I distort reality quite a bit to fit my negative
mood-convulsions. Letting go of the
feeling that I need to control the anxiety-convulsions is not easy. They are scary and uncomfortable and no one
likes fearfulness and discomfort. I wish
my faith were stronger that it's OK to be a writer. You may notice I rarely use that word. I rarely think of myself as a writer.
1481.
If Marx is aesthetics and
not economics, can't you free up a lot of time-labor by jettisoning Adorno and
the Frankfurt School, and can you not also openly compare Art and Religion as
aesthetic-evolutionary activities?
I couldn't say why I spend so much time on Adorno and
Benjamin. I got my ideas about the
art-object and immediate language in Literary
Change before them. Same thing goes
for Nietzsche. I want to set Marx aside
but I want to do so in a way that persuades others influenced by Marx to do so
too. If I can bypass Marx as a
"wrong turn" I can also bypass Habermas and Adorno I suppose. Yet there remains the problem of Derrida and
Baudrillard--I guess I just lack the time to read them. I could just bypass them too. Religion and Art are two aspects of the same
thing, the aesthetic evolution of humanity (also called exosomatic evolution
inclusive of other factors). Religion
and Art are enemies now but they shouldn't be.
It's a drain on humanity that they are fighting.
1482.
If Genius 2000 is so good,
and so beneficial, why aren't any museums or universities or governments
advocating it?
That is a crucial topic.
I think it is too evolutionary a jump for most belief-systems right
now. Even rock music, the supposedly
reckless wild genre, couldn't acknowledge G2K without breaking some of its most
sacred prejudices. Evolution happens
when it becomes necessary and not before.
Before becoming necessary evolution isn't worth the time, effort, cost,
or risk.
1483.
Are individual civilian
artists and writers, creators, obligated to take certain risks that large
institutions can't take?
Yes. People in universities
have to feed their families and send their kids to college, and they have to
keep the university's reputation up with investors, trustees, and
consumers. They cannot take up any old
creative project with weak chances of success.
Neither can the giant culture-producing corporations, nor the
government. Only private individuals can
reasonably be expected to do the risky art.
1484.
Is it best just to keep
writing quanta, trying to express what G2K means, while keeping good breathing
and posture and letting anxious fearful thoughts drift away when they appear?
I think so. I am
starting to feel like this book is legitimately acceptable to put on my
website. If that becomes a reality, I
can do another two-thousand quanta book each year. This scares me viciously.
1485.
Is it difficult to write
these under fear of mentioning specifics that might hurt people you know, or
the political survival or aesthetic-exosomatic evolution?
Some people write books about bad childhood experiences, and I
mention mine a little. That may be
excusable. Some people talk about having
left relationships, and I did that a little.
I can't please everyone. I guess
the only way to displease no one is to write nothing. If I cut out anything about my personal life
or the war that's OK too. Avoid the
personal and the political.
1486.
If socialism and capitalism
are basically the same, and democracy and monarchy are basically the same, and
art and religion are basically the same, why is there so much disorder and
conflict in the world and difficulties for G2K?
I can't say. There are a
lot of reasons I suppose. Moreover, the
level of disorder and conflict is not as high as it might be. Some people may not be aware of the kinship
between art and religion, for example, and feel they have to fight one against
the other. Things aren't perfect.
1487.
Do you regret any personal
offense or betrayal anyone might feel due to your consideration of
neoconservative views, or your belief in the solitary writer's life?
I definitely regret causing anyone pain, and having acted in a
misleading way about my political views.
I thought it was cute and funny at the time to act very
anarcho-leftist. Realistically I did not
deal decently with people I gave this impression to.
1488.
Is it painful to the world
to discuss the monotheistic similarities between Art and Religion?
I think it's always painful to confront one's fears. Pain isn't always the same as harm,
however. Sometimes pain warns us to stop
doing something--to take our hand away from the hot stove. Sometimes pain is a more moderate
side-product of sustained effort.
Certainly the comparison of Art and Religion shouldn't be pushed too
hard. Those with mutual understanding
can talk.
1489.
Is it difficult not to want
great praise and social success for doing Genius 2000?
Yes it is; I often lapse into daydreams fantasizing about
Genius 2000 being genuinely successful.
I get these images of possible outcomes for things going very well. I do still have hopes. Yet I get extremely sad or angry at times
also--despondent, broken-hearted. For
example today I very nearly had a complete breakdown. I think I am in a fragile state. I can't let myself get out of control in any
direction, or too controlled.
1490.
Do you get anxious or eager
for this book to be completed, so you can type it up and check it for
unacceptable material then place it on the internet?
I get scared, anxious, eager, and frustrated. My emotions are very tumultuous. I am extremely scared that there is an
insurmountable number of quanta to be overwritten. The quanta about my private personal life are
the most questionable, along with certain other ones about conflicts I've
had. I don't think I need to exclude
everything unpleasant. I can't make my
past life perfect no matter what I do and scouring quanta won't make my life
clean or perfect. I'm also very scared
that I'll leave in quanta that do irreparable harm to someone. Yet all in all I strongly hope I can put this
on the internet before September 1. I
want to get my conscience clean about world politics. I can't bear the guilt of anarcho-leftist
fakery any longer.
1491.
Is it OK if many of these
quanta are boring or mediocre, or you leave out a lot of exciting interesting
G2K material?
It's OK to have a lot of mediocre quanta in here. I don't want this book to be
"particularly momentous," to quote the Video. Momentous events can frankly be a big source
of misery for everyone. Excitement is
overrated; it's really just the aesthetic version of inflammation. Calmness and breathing are the great anti-inflammatories
of the soul. Keats called life "The
Vale of Soul-Making." I like
reading Keats. I suppose my goals for
this book are very modest. I hope to get
very few hits on it and very little if any public excitement. People tend to go into inflamed, psychotic
frenzies so easily. We as a species are
in great need of calm and breathing, peaceful contemplation and strong
dedication to the O.S.O. Aesthetic
evolution demands it, the Vale of Soul-Making.
1492.
Do you sometimes forget
that this doesn't have to be your last written book?
I do. I think I have to
resolve everything, everything in my life, everything in the world, everything
for all people forever. So the task
becomes overwhelming. It's good to
remind myself my main goals are just to talk about a few aspects of G2K,
apologize for my anarcho-leftist demagoguery, explain why the best hopes for
aesthetic-exosomatic evolution are under the O.S.O., and why the polis requires
that the Eumenides forgive "force and fraud" sometimes.
1493.
Doesn't the tight, confining
quality of the current wartime proprieties make aesthetic evolution
impracticable?
No, because calmness and meditation can take the vengefulness
and radical emotionality out of aesthetic expression and permit greater
conscience, responsibility, and caution.
Many quality artists and good people out there already comprehend this
and the latecomers like myself can gradually learn.
1494.
Is the idea of not wanting
to cause harm and make mistakes a new idea for G2K?
Yes, because I used to want
to cause harm as much as I could (to show I was tough and mean) and I also
thought there was no such thing as a mistake I'd regret. I am not very good with boundaries and
emotional control so I really went overboard when I thought I didn't have to
care about making mistakes. I thought I
had a "carte blanche" to attack and insult anything I wanted. Now I see that was self-destructive.
1495.
When you find you've made a
mistake, do you sometimes get very angry and upset and feel your entire
existence and all G2K is forfeit?
I can be very sensitive about making mistakes. That is a mark of my immaturity. I also get hung up on it not being OK ever to
contradict anyone. I'm a very submissive
person when it comes to conflict--pathologically so. I rarely feel it is safe to stick up for
myself. I get upset about that. I was like that in childhood and graduate
school as well. That probably gave me my
Stalin complex.
1496.
Will you be able to write a
more regular book about G2K in 2008 or so, after you finish going back to
school?
I think so. It could be
sooner; however, it may be that I will never succeed in presenting my thoughts
in a systematic way. I am very scared of
being misappropriated by people with malicious goals. When one systematizes something it can be at
risk for misuse and exploitation by demagogues.
However, if I can write a cleaner book than this one that might be good.
1497.
Does Marxism really just
say that capitalism is too unaesthetic, i.e. too poor and too unrefined?
Marxism took a cheap shot at capitalism, and almost destroyed
the world in the process. The idea was
that capitalism could not evolve, could not facilitate human evolution, but
would have to be smashed. Marx based
this not on logic but on propagandistic use of aesthetic condemnations of
poverty and crudeness. However, his
aesthetics were greatly inferior to G2K so I'm obligated to smash him badly.
1498.
Is it OK to make mediocre
or unimpressive G2K art some of the time, as you're developing, or just during
lulls?
I am completely OK with that and mediocre art is just fine with
me. I will not be attacking anyone in
the artworld, or any galleries, or anyone academic or on the internet
anymore. That was a disastrous addiction
that almost killed me, an addiction to the Furies, an addiction to wrath. Now I'm content with non-wrathful mediocrity,
yes.
1499.
Do you also want most
dearly not to harm or denigrate any of the great genres or traditions of art
such as film or novels, but to "rescue" them if possible and at the
very least leave them in peace?
Yes, I don't want to hurt novels or help malignant forces
denigrate the great traditions, such as history painting and Chun ware. Poetry, camping, dating, having great pets
and fun times, I want to never harm or denigrate any of these things ever
again. I want to add to, complement, not
replace, obscure, or denigrate.
1500.
Will you be dismayed if
people mock or ridicule you and G2K because of this book?
No I won't care because people have that right to ridicule me
if they want. I spent years trying to
denigrate their work and their milieus, attacking and insulting their
communities of art-practice. It will be
eminently fair and decent restoration of Dike (or "just proportion"
in ancient Greek) if people ridicule me a little. It would be the fair and understandable thing
to do. I also took myself way too
seriously before and it would help restore balance to the cosmos. Clearly, I overstated the quality and
significance of Genius 2000 as much as I possibly could, whenever I could,
because I was pathologically terrified of being ignored. Now that it's clear I was a neurotic lunatic
I am OK with people mocking me and what I've done for the good side of G2K so
far--it's been a paltry, ridiculously small sum.
1501.
Do you feel like you are
making the right choices for G2K in putting this on the internet for free,
forgoing all pretense to any money or critical acclaim, and leaving in some of
the errors or bad quanta?
I'm not sure at all. My
calculations don't come up with anything useful to go by. I'm not sure if my personal emotional state
is OK to talk about, or general historical principles, or artistic ideas. Nothing is self-evident to me now. This completely desolated, insecure feeling
had me in misery yesterday. It may be
from as mundane a cause as too much caffeine and too much worry. I worry about having given up on traditional
success. I worry that this is defeatist,
pessimistic, a sin against myself. Jesus
said, "He who loses his life shall find it, and he who finds his life
shall lose it." The aesthetic and
artistic (the two are different) implications of that statement are
astronomical. Yet I still lack faith and
seek conventional success, or guarantees.
1502.
Is it really bad when
people become objects to each other, machines, instruments?
That is bad. It is bad
when you have to act a certain role to accommodate someone else's delusion or
"maya." That is why
co-dependency can destroy your life, erode it away to nothing. If you deny and damage your own development
as a genius in deference to someone else you are going to suffer. Yet what if it is in relationships that we
are real, and we must interconnect? In
that case getting out of a relationship would be wrong.
1503.
Are your calculations not
to be trusted just now?
That could be true. I'm
confused and not thinking clearly. Not
clearly at all. I'm scared and
angry. I am very scared about living
life disconnected from the social obligations which Joyce (or Dedalus) called
"nets." Is it evil to go away
from nets, is it permissible? Maybe I am
just panicking. Of course it's OK. It's even OK to write that your nuclear
family was dysfunctional, and not see them anymore.
1504.
Are you scared to write
about your family life and in so doing destroy their lives?
Yes, I think their quality of life depends on my not discussing
them at all in my published work or anything about how my family life may have
affected me. I can't get away from the
need to obey them even in my writing.
It's impermissible to act as if anything is wrong. It's a strange deal. I'm not sure how I can survive it. Talk about it, don't talk about it, tell the
truth about it, lie about it.
1505.
Why not just be silent on
the topic of your family life and childhood?
I've already mentioned it in previous quanta but I could cut
them out. I don't know if it is right or
wrong, virtue or vice, to write about family concerns. I suppose I can accept that for this book I
shall leave those topics out. However,
this book is my only outlet for self-expression, and I have anxiety about my
emotions, and I want to talk about my anxieties.
1506.
What if we remember our
basic policies, which are not to use G2K sadistically, that success is revenge,
that it is OK to keep private matters secret?
I guess it comes down to my wanting "satisfaction,"
my wanting someone to fix it all for me and to punish people who maybe didn't
always treat me properly. Direct revenge
is a dead-end, however. If I can just
remember that. I don't like the idea of
"breaking their hearts" by putting my family history on the
internet.
1507.
When you are getting
emotional anxiety related to family concerns, how can you let go of that other
than by explicitly writing about it?
I guess by the "success is revenge" theory, or the
idea that by surviving the past I get free from it. I don't know.
I don't know what's right or wrong.
I can only go by the idea that it's OK for now to leave my family
personal history out of this book. I
don't want the revenge.
1508.
Does the somewhat solitary
life of a writer make any sense objectively?
I'm not clear why I can't go out and be in a college radio
band, date, make all kinds of friends and buddies. I get greatly envious when I hear really
compelling, bohemian-sounding singers on college radio such as at the coffee
shop where I go to check my email (no internet at home). I guess it's best to let the envy drift away,
and not try to figure it out or control it, crush it, etc. Let it drift.
1509.
Do you also want to forget
all your gripes and grievances with the artworld, the academy, the culture
industry, and the government?
Incredibly so. I
calculate endlessly trying to figure how or whether I'm allowed to just forget
about the artworld say and just do Genius 2000 with not a single thought or act
directed to the art-market or art world.
I careen back and forth between "I must love them" and "I
must fight them"--the answer's neither.
1510.
By ignoring the academy and
the artworld, and the culture industry, aren't you indirectly condemning and
attacking them?
Not at all. All I'm
saying is that G2K isn't right for them and they're not right for G2K. We don't mix well. As long as I well and truly leave them alone,
and don't try to attack them from a false position of neutrality, I'm doing
nothing wrong. G2K just doesn't make
sense as part of the art market or the academy.
It's OK for me to just do my thing in the evenings, on weekends, not
seeking either love or hate from society.
The key is however to truly forgive them, to completely not attack them
ever. I have to completely remove any
anti-artworld behavior from G2K.
Besides, G2K is intended to be rescuing criticism that helps protect other art anyway. Therefore I'm glad that I haven't written too
explicitly or named names about people in the artworld or academy in this
book. Not very much, so I can cut them
out easily.
1511.
If you completely avoid
competing with or criticizing the artworld and the academy, can you still have
a clear conscience that you're doing enough to promote G2K?
Yes I can. Civil society
requires freedom, because only freely chosen behaviors can teach evolution or
allow people to evolve. Therefore, even
if I have "a better mousetrap" I cannot use compulsatory tactics
(such as defamatory criticism) to expropriate from existing artists or arts organizations. I am obligated to let the free choice go
where it will, gradually and over time.
I compared this previously to a graduate student who'd found a cure for
TB. This is too extreme. If G2K is the better mousetrap, time will
tell, and I am obligated not to use coercive defamatory tactics. If I use them for gathering obedience or
conformity, it's not freely chosen and G2K hasn't been evolved to, but imposed.
That's just Leninism, Boshevik gangsterism. My obligation to G2K is to be true to it
myself, not to force it on others, that's false evolution.
1512.
How can you continue G2K,
with yearly conferences for example, without continuing the attacks and
defamatory demagoguery that it so far consists mainly of?
Perhaps I can't.
Previously I attacked people very commonly. I insulted them and condemned them, thinking
I was promoting G2K. Yet some people say
that such combativeness is good, wholesome, necessary, and the obligation of
those making better mousetraps.
1513.
Are you clogged up even in
trying to think of right and wrong about attacking people?
My problem is that I want to quit attacking people, I think,
yet I can't get to the idea "it's never OK to attack someone else's art
and say it's no good." After all,
other people attack each other's art all the time. They call it criticism, satire, tough-love,
or just basic honesty. I guess my
confusion is even more strict. I have to
let it drift away, the right and wrong of attacking people. I hope I can be content not to attack people.
1514.
Clearly you no longer want
to attack certain people or groups, or people you've known personally
(including friends, family, and sex partners), but is this stoppage of attack
morally acceptable?
Let's say I can quit the attacking now if I want to, if I find
it aesthetically preferable to stop attacking.
That's a crazy way of thinking of it, I know. My whole thesis is aesthetics-based however,
so perhaps to find consistency and solid ground I have to look there. Aesthetics first.
1515.
Could you just leave this
book offline and let silence on political matters speak for you?
Perhaps I could, but I want to get clean and straight with low
taxes and pre-emptive war. They seem
like the worst things in the world but they are the only prudent protection for
the O.S.O. I can't handle sitting on the
fence. Maybe I'm wrong to say G2K is
neoconservative, but on all major topics it is.
1516.
Do all the mistakes,
contradictions, reversals, and inconsistencies in this book make it
unacceptable and demagogic?
Basically I want to bog G2K down by granting the legitimacy of
both sides. Chomsky, for example, is
very rathe and devil-may-care in discussing crimes committed by the U.S.
governement but he is less open and vocal about his own freakishly inaccurate
ideas about art. I want to avoid this if
I can. Yet not really.
1517.
Are you like Claudius,
wanting forgiveness for all your G2K crimes while still possessing the stolen
demagogic powers you gained by them?
Very much so. That is
partly why I'm so eager to degrade myself by revealing ugly details about my
personal life. Yet in the end these
details just hurt other people, not me.
All of this is basically manic, calculating, absurd. Maybe I can't actually do real G2K myself at
all. The confusion is killing me though,
ruminative depression.
1518.
Does forcing yourself to
write out many quanta mean that you have achieved wisdom or aesthetic
evolution?
I don't think so, but it is possible that forcing oneself to is
a necessary task in getting to aesthetic evolution. I'm in extreme desire of quitting right now,
and to continue to force myself to write at a heavy pace may be exactly the
effort I need to make. Yet Zen says,
"not by effort."
1519.
Does Zen really say
"not by effort"?
No it doesn't, not directly.
Besides, I don't know much at all about Zen as you can probably
tell. I don't practice Zen, have read
approximately one book about it, and do not meditate. I have the most cursory knowledge of
Zen. A superficial knowledge and not a
practical one. I came to suspect that it
bore resemblance to non-objective art like Benjamin called for with "the
prohibition against graven images" as mentioned by Habermas in PPP.
I am primarily neurotic and anxiety-ridden usually.
1520.
Do you still get very angry
that G2K is not recognized and admired, and jealous of other people with more
success, income, social prestige, and dating success?
Yes, I have weak management of my anger and jealousy. I have the intellectual idea that I shouldn't
feel angry or jealous but the feelings still come often and when they do I get
very confused and agitated and try to "figure them out." In this fashion they manhandle me. They beat the crap out of me. I can intellectually state that I don't have to have money or prestige yet the emotional
fact of wanting them is what really
controls me. It can be either a euphoric
daydream that I will get money and prestige or an angry fear that I won't get
it, or that I haven't gotten what I deserved.
Therefore I cannot continue with G2K when these emotional convulsions
take me because I lose all calm and stability.
1521.
If you can give up the
wanting social and financial success, can you then additionally grow less
guilty about not having gained it?
The wanting seems harmless and healthy but in actuality it
causes me great harm. This is because if
I let myself give in to the wanting and desiring, it gets built up in my mind
as a good thing. Then, when it occurs to
me that I don't have the good thing and haven't had it for a long time--or
ever--and may not ever have it, I get negative emotions as an automatic
backlash, anger and jealousy. If I can
resist the wanting or at least not treat it like the gospel truth then I won't
get the anger and envy. Also, I won't
get the guilt over not doing things the conventional way. If I build up my subconscious regard for the
objects of desire then I feel guilty against myself for not getting or giving
them. Therefore the guilt would also
recede in power, I think.
1522.
How does allowing yourself
to be directed by wanting things you don't have cause guilt for you in the end?
I think because when I go along with my fantasies on things I
want, I get shaped into someone who thinks those things are the good life. My actions concretize themselves into
beliefs. Then, I feel I'm harming myself
not to work to get them. Or, if I
fantasize about making someone else happy.
1523.
Do you need to stop
fantasizing about social and financial success?
Yes, very much so. I
even need to stop wanting them. The
reward of Zen is not to get what you want, but not to want it--to get over
it. That's the difference between Zen and
winning the lottery. One has to keep
one's emotional inclinations from becoming habits or ruts that control
you. I'm being controlled by my
fantasies about sex and money. The only
way to get peace and the truth is to give up those desires, those fantastical
images.
1524.
Is therefore the proper
publication of this book one which gives you no prestige, money, or pleasure of
any kind?
Yes, that would follow.
I have always wanted to be successful and that has been my
destruction. To stop wanting and desiring,
to let that drift away, is the cure for me.
Then of course the guilt will try to tell me it's greedy not to want and
crave. Yet I can ignore the guilt
feelings as well. That will allow me to
keep a Zen calm.
1525.
Does it seem immoral,
sinful, a crime not to want certain things?
I think for me it feels that way. I feel obligated to want certain things, to
be bound and chained to them. I identify
with my wants, they are my goal and purpose in life. Giving them up would be like a betrayal. Not to mention all the other people who want
them. There is also the question whether
not wanting is really a form of rejection of life, truly. Yet I can't have it both ways. I need to let go of positive emotions too.
1526.
Is it necessary to let go
of positive or desiring emotions too, and not try to figure them out or control
them, the same as with negative emotions like anger?
Yes it is. Often I cling
ever-more-desperately to my desiring emotional states as I get vertigo from
losing my anger or envy. Actually I tend
to substitute clasping to desirous dreams of sex and money for the negative
emotions. It's very difficult. I also struggle with whether to try to finish
this book by September 1, many other anxieties.
1527.
Are you heading back under
the protection of paroxetine?
I've been getting there.
It's sad that I don't seem able to make a go of things without the
pills. I feel that if I keep going as I
have been I will lose my temper at work and say something improper, such as a
curse word, without thinking and jeopardize my survival. This job has long-term potential, though I
can't say I look forward to thirty more years there. Oh confusion.
1528.
Didn't you find an
interesting phrase in a website about cognitive therapy today, "negative
introspection"?
Yes I did. It bothers me
that I cannot talk about the topics most fascinating and stimulating to my
heart in these quanta. I cannot
criticize the artworld, for fear of becoming its tyrant. Politics, war, religion, art, science are all
taboo and verboten. I can't even speak
well of G2K, because that would be self-aggrandizing. Which leaves nothing.
1529.
Have these quanta become
"negative introspection," the causal cognitive mode of your past and
present ruminative depression?
I guess so. I constantly
talk or write about what's good and what's evil, blind faith or
skepticism. The tone is deflationary and
numbing. Right now I feel OK but
tomorrow I will be very angry, grouchy, hypersensitive, with dark half-circles
around my eyes and a wild look. My neck
will hurt. All because I'm ashamed to
speak. Yet perhaps I have to be strong.
1530.
Can you just fill the rest
of these up with mindless questions such as the neighbor's fan in their window
and your piercing neck-ache?
I could fill this with mildly negative introspection. I don't know if it's evil to mention my
parents. Probably there is an acceptable
way and an unacceptable way. Let's just
say they were born in 1931 and 1940, children of the depression from broken
homes. Now perhaps that is disgusting
and evil to mention. I honestly don't
know. I've never published anything
before, and the G2K stuff on the internet, that didn't really count. I was extremely confident no one cared and
nothing was at stake. I guess I'm
desperate to have a purpose in life, something to do. I feel so guilty that I left my former
friends and social groups. Yet I had the
right to cut my ties to them. If I could
only think more positively. If I could
only ease up on some of the cruel self-condemnation. "Too religious," "not
religious enough."
1531.
Why not take back some of
the old irreverence, and publish this book just to spite fate?
I would like very much to spite fate. I was just remembering just now some creeps
who were mean to me in college. Clearly
they had the right and the inclination to be mean. But now I get angry and want to get back at
them. How? Well I could write about them, how lame and
crusty they were even then, how mediocre.
So what if they were mean to me--they had nothing to gain from being
nice to me. I should have left them
alone and not begged them, asked them to like me. Plus maybe I was defective even then. After all, people have always critiqued me,
even to my face, ever since I hit puberty.
Everybody had a theory about what was wrong with me and what I needed to
do, all different. I guess just spilling
out my heart is my only salvation. Four
hundred sixty-nine more, as fast as possible, as boring as possible.
1532.
Do you feel that you have
no right to exist or make art?
I do feel that way, that I have no right to talk about what I
think or how I feel. It would make my
hardworking parents feel bad in their retirement, unaccomplished and
hypocritical, so it's evil. I mustn't
express myself. Cretins will steal my
ideas. The polis will collapse. My minders will be forced to execute me. People will go too far left or right, the old
books will be neglected, mere anarchy will be loosed.
1533.
Is it acceptable to write
about some of the bad things that have happened to you, and the bad you've seen
done?
Gracious I hope so. Then
I won't have to cut anything out of here.
So my employers might fire me for writing an internet book about sexual
maladjustment and anti-depressants--go ahead, I don't care. Fire away if that's your take on G2K. You're philistines and cobbler's boys if you
go that way, I reject thee. I'll sue
too.
1534.
Per cognitive therapy, is
some resistance to feelings and negative thoughts a good thing?
My experience of cognitive therapy back in the nineties, when I
read Feeling Good by whoever it was, was
that you should make charts and get rid of your disturbed thoughts. Matrices of modulation. I agree that is a good plan. Yet I also have a fundamental doubt whether
it is evil for me to break free from my nuclear family. Can I do that, or is it evil?
1535.
Won't it hurt your family's
pride and ego if you succeed, and get published, make a living, and cut ties to
them?
Yes but gosh I crave that more than anything. Just to get away, to be able to stop having
to fix and save them, care for them so they stop crapping on me. Just to fly past them. They would be so crushed, totally crushed if
I broke ties to them. Yet there's
nothing I'd rather do, nothing I want more in life than to break ties to them.
1536.
Does your guilt-voice kick
in now, and say "but if you publish a book for free on the internet about
wanting to cut ties to your family, won't that be irrevocable?"
Sure it's irrevocable.
If you publish something longish, and call it "your book," and
give it a title, and it's your first one, people know you care about it. You suffered through it. Clearly if I said anything in any book I
published it would be irrevocable.
Frankly the opposite, silence, is also irrevocable, and it's choking me
to death.
1537.
Will people complain this
book isn't really about G2K?
Yes, they'll say it's just me whining. Well, that's OK. You can't hurt G2K. As de Tocqueville said of democracy, it has
all the hallmarks of a providential fact, as all actions of all men advance its
progress. If I could just rein in my
euphoria, which is so discordant and ugly.
I mean, it's OK if people attack me or my book, it won't hurt the
long-term chances of the reality-option I name as G2K.
1538.
Do you really feel best
when you are just dutifully producing quanta that you know you can be unashamed
to publish?
Gosh I hope so. My head
hurts so much, it's so cramped, I don't know which way is which. I hope I don't have to go back under
Paxil. I'd like to control my negative
introspection, push back against its tide, the enormity of it. Press back, the tide, the black tide. It's OK to want. It's OK to publish. G2K is OK.
It's OK to forgive.
1539.
Is it OK not to feel
obligated to fix your family and make them all happy?
Yes, I have the right to publish a book about suffocating
middle-class emotional dysfunction.
Those books are extremely legal.
Yet it seems so gratuitous and cruel, or as my parents always seem to
beseech me, "can't we just forget about all that?" I guess I can't. I can't survive if I just suppress it all and
forget it all, ignore it all. I have to
let the thoughts and feelings come and then deal with them.
1540.
Isn't "let yourself
feel" just psychotherapeutic lies and mischief?
There are disagreements about emotions. Far be it from me to say which credo is
accurate. You might argue that feelings
are bad, and should be punished. You
could say they are OK. My book on
co-dependency says that one of the most verboten things in co-dependent
families is to want anything other than what the other person wants. I've got that problem. I guess I can't keep living without getting
some kind of a break from my sick family--and they're all still alive, I swear
they're immortal. They'll be alive in my
head till I keel over. The Buddhist
"not wanting" then feeds into the bad co-dependent "not
wanting." If I could only get them
somewhat straight. Yet I've come to the
conclusion psychotherapists are no good.
Fancy that. I just decided. Many moons ago. I'm guilty of a lot of questionable
decisions. Yet what if psychotherapists
are bad? I had a good one once that
helped me though.
1541.
Are you in pain, and do you
feel like no one cares?
Yes I'm in pain. I'm in
grievous pain, practically unfathomable.
Not physical but spiritual and psychological. Making art can really cause you to dig down
to the depths of your soul and find great pain.
For example I have the gargantuan pain of my nuclear family's horrific
betrayal of the people in it. The
abuse-victims of generations gone by exacting their pounds of flesh. All to please the broken-hearted
grandmothers, depression-era widows (one a widow, one jilted by a jerk after a
failed knock-up maneuver, is my guess).
Pleasing the desolated, forsaken grandmothers. What a good life. I can't keep going without publishing; I used
to think it was a workable option just to quit and write computer software
manuals (say), or become an attorney.
None of that will work. Only
publishing will work. Nothing else will
work. I'm going to publish this.
1542.
What if you want not just
to publish but to write about your favorite topics?
I can't keep silent on my favorite topics. Some people can and some can't. Some people can run sideways and some
can't. I can't live without writing and
publishing it on the internet. It just
can't be ruminated or introspected away.
I have to plead my case. The war makes this even better, ironically,
because ever since 1991 on the streets of Madison I knew we needed this war,
aesthetic evolution needed it.
1543.
Will respected theologians
and people like Bill Moyers respect the idea of the soul as an aesthetic
project?
Yes they will if I make it clear it isn't a decorative
matter. The soul is like an eye through
which we see, it is an instrument of perceiving and hence experiencing beauty,
of God's grace. Truth and beauty are aesthetic
in our direct perception of them. Hence
the physiological and categorical limits--the eye sees, it doesn't hear.
1544.
Are you anxious to clearly
set forth your own Declaration of Freedom?
Very anxious. I've never
felt free to do it before. Now I know
that I can at least try. The Second Cold
War, also called the War on Terror, is necessary to consolidate the victory of
liberal democracy over Fascism and Communism and to preserve orderly civic
life. Terrorists, holdouts, and
ambitious die-hards cannot be allowed to gather and regroup. They must be ridden down.
1545.
Is the Second Cold War
justified because it keeps the exosomatic evolutionary process in place, in continuance, despite its
imperfections and as-yet-unmet potential?
Yes. Military stability is
required for aesthetic evolution to continue under the greater project of
exosomatic evolution. The arts require
the polis, which requires some degree of war or at least preparedness. Liberals especially need to contemplate this
and to contemplate the Oresteia, and the Eumenides, and Dike.
1546.
Can a person learn all of
G2K by heart?
I think the only relevant things to remember are those that can
be got by heart. My current status of
G2K is to keep alive the idea that I need to publish, I can't keep living
without publishing. There's an
obligation to keep quiet when it's dangerous and an equally great obligation to
talk when it's safe. It's the same as
inhaling and exhaling, black and white, yin and yang.
1547.
Should everyone act like
we're back in Stendhal times, of warring Jesuits and Jansenists, or Hitler
times, when the SA dipshits were attacking everyone better than they were, or
the Stalin days of purgation?
No. People have an
obligation to speak out in favor of low taxes and pre-emptive war--the means of
victory in the Second Cold War--and to articulate the great philosophy of
aesthetic-exosomatic evolution. Those
are two great topics on which to speak out.
And also to ask Chomsky about art; Nader, hemp.
1548.
Is publication of this book
your ticket out of your entry-level clerical job?
It's not a ticket in monetary terms but it might be a signal
that I'll be allowed to move along. My
GRE's are very old now but I might be able to get into a PhD in English
program. Doubtful. I can't picture anyone hiring a crazed
thirty-five year old for grad school.
Yet I can fantasize. It's OK to
want things, a better life. I can make
my thesis be about G2K, organized.
1549.
Does the idea of publishing
make you feel sick and afraid?
Yes but in a good way, a good way I haven't felt in a long
time. If I can limit my cataloguing of
anti-O.S.O. propaganda I'll be fine.
People have to realize that we didn't defeat the Soviets and the Nazis
with clever arguments and impeccable standards--we broke their backs, then let
them surrender. That's how that story
went. Liberals need to fight also, or
the good guys will lose.
1550.
Do you find it essential to
accept almost on blind faith that it is OK for you to publish, and to want to
publish?
There's a certain amount of soul-searching and moral
self-criticism that is OK, good, prudent, and responsible. Then you get to a point where it's
mechanical, dogmatic, negative introspection that only causes ruminative
depression. Clearly sometimes I go
overboard in the self-scrutiny area. Fundamentally my desires for dating, social
acceptance, and financial safety are OK.
They're not evil or delusional (maya) I don't think. There is a point at which Zen doesn't
work. Perhaps I lack the competence and
authority to say that. Yet whether I do
or not I can't just stay silent, mute, forever.
There is something to publishing my expression on the internet that I
can't completely condemn, even though there is no doubt that what I do is
imperfect. It's OK that it's
imperfect. It's OK for me to want to
date a pretty, smart, healthy, confident woman.
1551.
Aren't you making light of
corruption, war, murder, and cruelty?
I've already made clear that art (or more properly, aesthetic
evolution) can stop bad things before they happen. It increases the likelihood of peaceful
solutions. Thus, to do true art now
helps prevent the bad things of the future from happening. Yes it is unfortunate that sometimes cruel
and brutal measures are taken to advance imperfect political ends. Yet there is no extant absolute power on
earth to prevent all crimes, all murder, all rape. One could say that the developed countries
are obligated to impose humane, western-style governments on all developing
states. There just isn't enough money or
military power to do this, even if the sovereignty issues weren't
prohibitive. Some things can be done but
not everything. Also, the majority of
people in the world are poorer than average, because of the gradual and uneven
process of economic development. One
village gets food and medicine, one
gets neither.
1552.
So has your personal
philosophy made any progress out of negative introspection?
Clearly, the decision to publish this is the core fabric of my
being. I can't keep going back and
forth, and now it's decided. It feels
like it took forever. Now I know that
I'll type this and put it online in August, just like the Rite of Spring in
1905. I'll cut out some of the worst
items but factually there's little that I need to cut out.
1553.
Does Communism compare to
corporate capitalism?
Very closely. The big
ministries and industries under Communism were very like corporations. There were big controllers and
decision-makers. Extra production was
stored up, applied, as it were "invested" where it would create the
most wealth by decision makers. The
Party was the ruling class, and they had a higher living standard. This is just to say that socialism is no
panacea, smashing liberal democracy is not
the solution. Aesthetic evolution is
what we need. That's pre-eminent.
1554.
Does aesthetic evolution
happen gradually, and on an individual basis?
Yes, it isn't like passing a law all of a sudden for everyone
to drive on the left. The brain has to
quiet, and then the slow-cycle waves can begin.
After some calm they start to show "large patterns," objective
or transcendent comprehension of things.
One will imaginatively move among many points of view. It takes time, can't be rushed, can't be
transplanted on person to another, and can't be forcibly imposed synthetically
(i.e. by brain-cabling). Like God making
a pot on the potter's wheel.
1555.
Are artists allowed to
compare Religion to Art and vice-versa in a positive--mutually
positive--comparison?
Yes, all religions are about aesthetic evolution. Most artworks are more false prophecy, false
evolution, someone trying to be important and valuable (Mammon) by tricking
people. But that false evolution isn't
value, it's fake. It's like any
investment bubble. Lots of liberal art
is fake evolution.
1556.
Did McLuhan say he could
put The Gutenberg Galaxy in one
paragraph?
He did, I believe. Also,
Paul Valery was quoted by Benjamin as saying that after mechanization got to a
certain point the nature of art would change.
That change is what I am trying to present some hypotheses about with
G2K. One could almost say the new
art-entity is like a force-matrix, such as gravity--an invisible object. Conceptual art relates to this, where the
idea is the art.
1557.
Do you have anxiety of
influence about Joseph Beuys?
More anxiety of labeling.
I did Beuysian art long before I ever heard of Beuys. Plus, I
articulated the revision and improvement on Beuys before hearing of Beuys, i.e.
in "Literary Change." Also,
Beuys did a piece of art with sugar packets in
1558.
Is the problem with one's
attempts to "be a good artist" that even if you win the struggle, you
lose the victory?
I don't know. I don't
like to be put down or dismissed by people who say "oh he's not a real
artist." But I also don't like to
convince them otherwise! It's better
just not to care what they think. You
can't defeat them, any more than you can defeat the smell of burnt toast. It just smells, not good for much, that's it.
1559.
Isn't it evil to say you're
just as good as Beuys, etc., and not give him the true respect he deserves?
It's the dual hazard of over-praise and under-praise. But no, my goal with rescuing should be to
help protect Beuys and the concrete artistic feelings he tried to create. For example, the piano with the rolls of felt
around it--that is a shrine of mourning and repentance for the country that
committed the Holocaust. So I shouldn't
try to expropriate and one-up Beuys, but try to protect his work.
1560.
If the aesthetic processes
indicated, set in motion, or kept in maintenance by various art-objects are
difficult to protect, why not just let them all decay?
Because they have valuable content that can't be lost without a
negative result. They are like spinning
tops that make a sound, not gold bars or coins.
Yet it is difficult because one cannot, strictly speaking, completely
preserve or continue the processes in the works. The goal is to rescue the meaning which they
have for the present into the
present, rather than letting it go completely unused. What meaning there is, that can be rescued,
needs to be rescued. There's no
utopianism or moral exhortations here.
Hence the idea that Beuys came to
1561.
Does the constant quest for
a formula on how to write quanta, how to create good and avoid evil, lead to
ruminative depression?
Yes, it causes negative introspection. One can't perform future actions in
advance. It is temporally
impossible. The only quantum I can write
is the one I'm writing. Yet how this one
is written affects the other ones, both by how the field of thing-events
interact with each other and by the habits I gain or lose in the writing of
this quantum. I want people to consider
Jonathan Swift and the introduction to "The Tale of a Tub," and how
the present relates to the past. The
querelle of ancient and modern. I think
this is the mirror-function we are meant to complete and then begin the
reiteration of, as if by millennial quadrants in a cycle of four thousand: one,
two, two-prime, one-prime. Antiquity
looking to modernity; modernity comprehending modernity; modernity sending back
a message forward to future antiquity; future antiquity receiving it.
1562.
Is aesthetic evolution the
necessary precursor to global economic development?
Yes, because one cannot enrich one's enemy due to the risks
posed by dual-use money, which can buy guns or butter. The aesthetic evolutionary path is that which
allows various people to co-operate without agglomerating, to maintain stable
authority, and to elevate the condition of all in harmony. Aesthetic evolution is what will outgrow the
hateful ideologies of ethnic and religious intolerance, not by false overcoming
but by real.
1563.
Is the twenty-first century
likely to be rather violent but not as violent as it could have been without
the Second Cold War?
Yes, there will be a lot of small wars. Yet it is most likely that for powers to
become or remain great they will need to join the liberal democratic system
rather than attack it. If that occurs,
which is likely, big big wars like World War Two will be unlikely. Aesthetic evolution shouldn't try to smash
that hope by being greedy for perfection.
1564.
Is it "impossible to
say just what I mean," as Eliot wrote?
I find it very akin to an "infinitely gentle, infinitely
suffering thing," as Eliot also wrote.
It might appear to be ineffable, as it likely is, non-transferable, yet
it can still be experienced directly if we allow it to occur in our own souls,
the fragile growth of aesthetic evolution.
Medawar's model is good and necessary yet there are actually properties
of how the cells and neurons function in their subtler aesthetic roles.
1565.
Will it take you many years
to fully get to know about G2K, and to express a lot of it?
It takes one's entire life.
One is always growing and developing in one's genius as long as one is
alive, in the same sense that trees keep growing. They send out roots and new leaves every
year. That is why Larkin's poem about
the Trees had such an effect on me in 1991, when I first read Yeats too. 1991 was a very big year for me; 1992 too.
1566.
Does less caffeine make a
world of difference, and can you spend the rest of this book writing on G2K not
the war or anxieties?
Yes, caffeine reduction to very low levels can really help the
amygdalic cacophony go silent and then I can let go of my worry about the war
and my personal emotional upset. This is
because when you are actually directly expressing a deep aesthetic state, you
can easily grasp that it minimizes the frequency of war (or even greed and wrathfulness)
as well as providing an exit passage from personal pain.
1567.
Can a deep aesthetic state,
also called G2K, just be handed over to someone for a fee or given away, or
imposed by force?
None of the above. In
fact, all three of those approaches are false overcoming as they all tend to
excite the amygdala. Think of the genius
of each person as a pool of water, the amygdala of mating and killing as a
motorboat, and one's spiritual existence (or G2K) as the reflection of the sky
in the water. Stop the motorboat
whenever possible.
1568.
Is it impossible to quiet
the amygdala with more amygdalic struggling?
Yes, that is like trying to stop the wakes and roiling of a
motorboat by driving it on top of the disturbance. One only makes more chop and raises more mud
trying to chase the wake with the hull.
The best way is just cleanly and without ado stop the motorboat. If there's a leak, drive directly to shore
and dock, then cut the engine and get out.
1569.
Aren't your desires for G2K
to be famous and popular motor-boating?
Not exactly. I want G2K
to become itself, I want G2K to succeed.
That of course can be thought of as a form of grasping, or what
Sophocles called "eager ambition."
Yet to calmly watch G2K take
form in the reflection of the sky in the lake, that is also G2K and not, emphatically, grasping. That would be the real, actual, art-potential
hidden within the demagogic noise of G2K.
1570.
Would it be nice to create
an exhaustive set of G2K notecards capturing facts such as the Buddhist sect
whose only act in quest of enlightenment was to repeat the Buddha's name over
and over?
I would like to create a very extensive, coherent catalog of
facts. Yet even such a catalog would not
capture the essential G2K itself, nor would such a catalog be necessary to extensive
direct experience of G2K. Leo Strauss
called it "the factum brutum of religious revelation," and it is the
direct opposite of "every man a Ph.D." It's the real evolution of which the false
evolution or false prophecy is just a reckless, indifferent mockery. If the entire world could experience an
extensive period of aesthetic evolution simultaneously, that could legitimately
be called a great "re-tuning" or harmonization of the world. That could make a big difference. But "it's not in my power to make it
happen," don't you see that, it's an organic property of sentience out of
the way of which we merely get ourselves, and other obstructions. The Father doeth the works.
1571.
Can all the painful, ugly
talk about your personal anxieties and history be taken out, or left in?
I will have to decide that soon, such as right now. I have made ugly statements earlier in this
book, angry frustrated statements. I
made these statements often out of frustration and anger, trying to break
chains or ties. It seems very
complicated to me now. I don't want to
be gratuitous, and I greatly appreciate the significance of "peace and
reconciliation" as is practiced in South Africa to the great credit of
everyone there. The book Under The Influence openly talks about
the misinterpretation of physical addiction as psychological sinfulness in the
twelve-step community. Other books can
help articulate co-dependency questions, as I was helped with on the topic of
it being "OK to want what I want" by the book "Beyond Codependency." Those books talk about uncomfortable things,
real factors. As to my braggartly
demagoguery, I carry that cross in full.
1572.
What is the difference
between the Eumenides just saying "OK we don't care then" and
"we'll accept this verdict if we are welcomed into the polis"?
The former would be a false overcoming, a "distinct loss
of meaning" as Habermas puts it of the Eumenidean forces. By converting them into a forward-directing shaping force, rather than a rectifying
destroying force, they grow into harmony with political law, the younger gods'
law.
1573.
What if one is simply
trying to superficially pretend there was never anything wrong with one's
co-dependent family to begin with?
That would keep me trapped in the cycle of guilt, anger,
resentment, and self-cannibalism. If I
try to act as if there are no co-dependency issues or that they are
insignificant, I get trapped in the old cycles of dysfunction. That is not what the Eumenides represented in
the way they joined the polis to bless it.
It was a transvaluation of values based on willing forward. Hence Jesus said "I come not to destroy
but to fulfill." Also, necessity
and not mere comfort decides.
1574.
Can left-liberals lose
their revanchist anomie and begin to will forward their protectiveness of the
environment and humanism?
I think they can. I am
familiar with their belief-systems and practices, "what makes them
tick" if you will. Their scientific
skepticism is fairly rigorous, even against their own dogmas, and they are
often both observant and civic-minded.
Plus I know first-hand that their cosmology does not function without
Eumenidean transvaluation, at all.
1575.
Can G2K be reasonably
expected to contribute to the transvaluation of left-liberal values?
I think that's fair.
Left-liberals have as much obligation as any camp or faction to clean
their own house, and they have a kind of unkempt house. Liberal-leftists grew rather hysterical over
the years, due to their extreme impatience with cultural evolution and their
willful self-delusion about certain military and political realities. Yet they are largely rational and I think a
bit tired of maya.
1576.
Do you think you should
join an actual church like McLuhan and Eliot did?
I agree with all of the primary tenets of Christianity and with
its overall aesthetic organization. It
is a religion most explicitly addressing the aesthetic evolution of the
individual as the basis for the aesthetic evolution of the polis. It's about that relationship. So I would like to make that commitment. I'd like to end my estrangement from
tradition, but it's complicated, and my exile may not yet be ready to end.
1577.
Are individual rights and
the value of individual excellence intrinsically necessary in aesthetic
evolution and hence in any evolving polis?
Yes, the majority cannot abolish individual excellence. This goes for art, and the art-sphere, as
well as for political economy. Even in
the Soviet regime of Stalin, extra resources were allocated to the scientific
community as favored over agricultural workers for example. Aesthetic excellence is also like scientific
excellence in revealing truth.
1578.
Is it difficult not to want
something to come of this book, to result from it?
It is more difficult to keep wanting. No one can predict when the water will go
calm and the reflection appear. Maybe
even a wind will rise up and disturb things.
Wanting G2K to succeed paradoxically keeps me agitated and angry,
leading me ever more in circles, if the wanting is amygdalic and
impatient. If the wanting angers me it
weakens and worsens G2K.
1579.
Are some ugly revelations
forgivable and acceptable, and others to be excised?
Yes I will excise some and not all. I would like not to excise any but we shall
see. I don't care if they bore or
depress the reader, or make me look like a loser. I am in fact pretty much your typical loser,
yet I'm also very stubborn and patient.
Plus I have had the lucky good fortune to have encountered some of the
most astonishing recorded geniuses ever to grace a technological
species--Shakespeare, Shelley, Faulkner, Swift, Eliot. Keats is also great to read, and many others.
1580.
Unfortunately, is it going
to be necessary to write these last four hundred quanta at a much faster rate
than the first five hundred?
Yes, I am almost out of time to compose. That may be good also because I am not good
at composition and would like not to have to fret over it. Writing at a forced pace is not always so
easy for me to do without laying claim to the ill tactics of worry and amygdalic
fear. Fear can be a great motivator, but
it clouds one's harmony quite darkly.
Fear, hate, envy, greed, wrath, lust, these are the basic
emotional-aesthetic enemies of balanced expression. Rage and frustration keep one from perceiving
the subtle "mazy motions" of the universe, as (I think) Coleridge
said. Zen does offer a decent
counterpart to Christian meekness and humility.
They are not completely alien views, or exclusive, as is easily seen in
the book I quoted from in the Video Living
Buddha, Living Christ. Also, the
selflessness of socialism is analogous to these two faiths if we distinguish
properly between true civic-mindedness and the immersion in mob non-identity
that in fact relishes terror and expropriation only, the ritual sacrifice of
true individuality.
1581.
How can G2K differentiate
itself from New Agey palaver?
Actually I don't think it can, and that's a good thing. People who experience deeply aesthetic states
will grasp the difference between what they've experienced and New Age
guru-ism. Those who have not experienced
any deep or somewhat deep aesthetic states will be unable to make distinctions
among the various doctrines, and that's OK.
J.D. Salinger's story "Teddy," which I have some difficulties
with, states that kids should just be taught to meditate and vomit up the apple
of the tree of knowledge. It's arguable
that that cannot be done. Meditation
cannot keep us in a state of permanent innocence. William Beckford's book Vathek, written in just two weeks' time, confirms this. Blake's poems, "The Book of Thel"
in particular, also capture the permanent irrevocability of the fruit of the
knowledge of good and evil, which is actually the function of existing in
time. Adam and Eve entered time, was all
that really occurred. Time brings
knowledge by pain.
1582.
Is Genius 2000 a new
network in that everyone is the network, that is to say a portion of it like
the water is the ocean, and in that the vale of soul-making is the narrative or
the novel of the field-system?
The creation of aesthetically evolved individuals--not
decorative clones mind you but sentient beings with skill and strength in experiencing beauty--is the Supreme
Fiction, as Wallace Stevens said. The
person is the basic unit of art, not the art-object. Marx objected to the definition of humanity
as the locus of value. However, he was
an incredibly flawed and basically worthless thinker. He failed to apprehend his own weaknesses,
because he was a stagnated idol. The
worship of idols, be they objects or selected individuals made up to function
as objects, detracts from the real locus of aesthetic development and action
which is the evolving individual. Nor
does this mean objects can be harmed, or allowed to come to harm. They are the products of the evolving
individuals and polis of old times.
1583.
Will the typing of these be
an incredible effort?
Yes, because far too many of them are full-page quanta. The page length might read fifteen hundred,
God forbid. I prefer that it would
remain under one thousand. In any case,
I will need to type at an extremely rapid pace and also to take significant
vacation time to complete all the typing.
Yet I will undertake it to reach my goal.
1584.
Will publishing this
automatically accomplish aesthetic evolution in yourself or the polis?
No it will not. The
lakes all have to go calm of their own accord.
People all have to learn to keep out of the motorboats too. Publishing has no effect on any of that, nor
on my own soul's condition. Publishing
will also not convert my living situation because there will be no acclaim and
no income. Hence my work life will go on
as before. Nothing drastic will
happen. It may become feasible for me to
marry and be socially successful, yet it may also not become feasible.
1585.
Didn't these two thousand
quanta go by very quickly?
Actually they did. At
times I was groaning under the difficult burden yet at other times they coasted
by. I've not truly appreciated the gift
they've given me either. The chance to
say "thank you" to Coleridge, Wordsworth, Frost, Habermas, and all
the great artists of history has gone by quickly. Like Giotto and Donatello, Cervantes,
Christopher Marlowe. Tamburlaine's a
great play that I wrote about in graduate school--it was a big influence.
1586.
Is Adorno wrong if Marx is
wrong?
Adorno and Marx were both wrong on their own. Adorno looked to ideas of instantaneous,
universal reconciliation of all humans with each other, inanimate objects, and
nature. Adorno was not clear on how this
could occur or be worked at. Certainly
he was talking about a great messianic super-event. His confusion was quite extreme because he
rejected both the necessary evil of a strong ruling or policymaking class and
aesthetic-evolutionary potentials in typical bourgeois activities like reading
and writing.
1587.
Would you like to apologize
to everyone for the garish and unwieldy bulk of this book?
Not really. You deserve
to suffer, I'm sure, because perhaps you need the exercise. Yet I do apologize in a manner to speaking
for my many profuse errors in trying to express the inexpressible. There is an old saying, "when you are in
a Zen state, everything you do is Zen," or something to that effect. I don't know if that is in
1588.
Does almost every great
intellectual and aesthetic system have an Achilles' heel, a flaw, a place where
it breaks apart?
Most great geniuses have made either some very mediocre work or
committed some grand mistake (or several).
Ezra Pound came apart at the seams, I think, and cottoned on to Fascism
in what I think was hysterical desperation.
1589.
How do you know whether in
writing about your personal life you are seeking revenge or simply avoiding maya?
I'd like more clarity on that.
Clearly those bad things done to me were either necessary or done by
people who didn't know any better and couldn't help it. I suppose it would be just as well never to
mention any of it, and just stay away from them. I'm still not clear. I do get fantasies about "fixing my
family," making everything OK and everyone happy. Yet that is an extremely dangerous way of
thinking for me, it's deadly.
1590.
Does the same concern apply
to explicitly writing about what other people you've known socially have done,
and what governments have done?
Very much so. It's not
clear to me whether to mention specifics about experiences I've had
socially. It's not as if mentioning bad
events in explicit detail will correct them or make them never have
happened. On the personal scale as well
as the political one can only will forward, as Nietzsche said.
1591.
Can you state clearly
something you are very glad not to have discussed much, such as details of your
family life, and then extrapolate from that a privacy credo?
There are numerous things that I'm glad so far not to have
explicitly written about here regarding my private life. I suppose I am torn between a desire to
prostrate and humble myself, and a desire to keep proper decorum. I want to make myself unpalatable to those
who would seek to make G2K into just another cult of hero-worship. Of course earlier on I wanted that cult
following, but now I don't. If I mention
certain ugly facts about myself it seems to counter my fears of being
idolized. Yet it may be a false
solution. The real humility might lay
elsewhere, such as in expressing good art and political doctrine. I also like to show that I'm not perfect, by
being irresponsible and sadistic at times.
Yet that is perhaps just a rationalization. I guess my goal or lodestar is "no pain
to others."
1592.
What are the primary bad
things you've mentioned so far?
Mostly about my personal life, a bad childhood incident,
co-dependency in my nuclear family, my own chemical dependency. Maybe some bad things in the artworld or
academic world that I've seen. I guess
the details of these things are constantly boiling in my anxiety-brain and
sometimes burble out onto the stove and make noise.
1593.
Can you eliminate as flawed
any of the arguments in these ugly specifics' favor?
Revenge against others I can reject because it roils the
amygdala, wakens the Furies, and spoils G2K.
Compositional spontanaiety I can reject because overwriting is just as
spontaneous. Lack of time before I turn
thirty-six can be defeated by long hours and by typing the over-writes. Abusing myself to avert hero-worship can also
be set aside. That leaves mainly the
idea that I'm afraid of glossing them over, setting bad precedent, condoning
bad things, betraying myself.
1594.
Can you leave in
generalities but take out the terrifying specifics?
That could be good, I've done that some already. I also want to give some regard to the urge
to express oneself and the difficulty of expressing painful feelings with
perfect tact and decorum every time. Yet
in some cases it is nicest to find a general way of talking that doesn't attack
too directly. I like to be able to not
attack.
1595.
Clearly you can't clear out
the amygdala-motorboat with more amygdala, so will the decision of what to over-write
have to wait until you do the revisions?
Yes I can't decide now.
My calming soul wants to avoid offending anyone yet that in itself is an
echoing ripple, a guilt-message sent by the fading anxieties of old. "Never say always" and "Always
say sometimes" are two good rules to go by. It's sometimes OK or best to talk in
specifics and sometimes not, given the circumstances. Circumstances change. It is completely possible I could leave every
single quantum in as is one hundred percent.
1596.
Have you felt very angry
and anxious today, perhaps because of the beautiful woman you saw on the way to
work today?
I may have given myself to fantasy too much and allowed an
emotional meltdown to occur. I've felt
very angry and confused that life has done me wrong. Yet realistically I have it pretty good for
an artistic type. I have a job to
provide all my necessities and enough time to write. I guess thinking about my anxiety won't make
it go away.
1597.
Is your only route just to
be as calm and as wise as you can?
I can try to stay calm, and stay wise, or get more wisdom. I also want to articulate the calmness
however, express it, if that makes any sense.
There is the calmness, but also the reflection in the lakewater. The calmness shows me what things really are. In my calmness I can see what to do, how to
will forward. I've done nothing
unnacceptable so far in these quanta.
Sure I've stated there has been force and fraud, false evolution, and
co-dependent abusive neglect. That's all
though.
1598.
Is it not just to calmly
accept that I have to publish this, but also to accept that's OK, that I can do
to be calm?
The worrying about harms and helps does not clarify the
issue. Only non-worried calmness can
address the question accurately. Clearly
there are risks I will do harm by publishing and also risks I will do harm by
not publishing. The endless worry goes
nowhere. In my calmness I accept that I
can publish. Even if what I publish
isn't what people like.
1599.
Isn't the irrevocable
choice to declare your family deeply, fundamentally dysfunctional a gigantic
transformation?
It's an incredible change to go from spending one's energy to
lie and cover up a dysfunctional family to the other tack, which is to work to
get free of it. The two are mutually
exclusive. The problem of course is
whether one is correct or not. If I'm
just a bad person and my family is OK, then I'm guilty. That's crap though--any objective observer
would conclude it's dysfunctional. The
key is to get away.
1600.
Does the constant debate
whether you or your family is the dysfunctional one a source of great cognitive
dissonance for you?
Yes, it is, because the two are mutally exclusive. Factually my family, my nuclear family, is a
disgusting sow what eats her farrow, flatly stated. It's a fake family, pure falsity. Therefore I have to get away from it. It was created by emotional trauma suffered
during the Great Depression of the nineteen-thirties. It's a sick family, and I quit. I have the right to publish these facts, just
as anyone else has the right to publish books about their dysfunctional
family. I can of course choose to leave
out the gruesome details of all the chemical dependency, co-dependency,
emotional and sexual abuse and neglect, and garden-variety lying that went
on. I can leave out the gory
details. Yet I can also make the publish
statement that I, Max Herman, the creator of the Genius 2000 Network, was
raised in an extremely dysfunctional and abusive nuclear family. That's an acceptable topic.
1601.
Is publishing stuff a permanent
action?
Yes it is, it's irrevocable.
Yet so is not publishing, in a sense.
Of course, all my long years, three decades, of covering up for my
family's sickness has damaged me greatly and that damage is irrevocable. I can change tack now but it won't erase the
effects of the past. The question is
whether I have the right to break ties with my dysfunctional family. Clearly I do.
I've kept the vast bulk of all the familial horrors secret, out of
pity. But I have a right to publish the
basic truth. Of course as soon as I even
assert such a thing, that "I have a right," the suffocating
co-dependency emotional coercions kick in--I feel pity for my family, and for
how they in turn were horribly neglected and abused. I get the fantasy that I can take care of it
and fix it. I can do G2K and go back to
make them proud and comfortable. Yet G2K
doesn't work like that, you can't use it to lie with. I won't cut out quanta just because they will
hurt my nuclear family.
1602.
What about quanta with gory
details that will or might hurt the academy, the artworld, or the polis?
I think the concept of the Eumenides can correct any harm. Of course it hurts to discuss the reality of
artistic stagnation, or intellectual stagnation, or the use of force and fraud
by liberal democracy against those who would like to destroy it. It hurts but it's healthy and right, and I
can leave out the gory details. I
haven't named names in this book so far and I'll stick to that.
1603.
Is doing G2K all the more
painful because it yields no tangible product and peace or relief only in a
very meager sense?
I have trouble distinguishing G2K from mere anxiety. Negative introspection and the like,
precisely what Socrates was killed for encouraging--yet Socrates outlived
ancient Greece. Perhaps experimenters
with aesthetic exosomatic evolution live at the discretion of their
policymakers, within bounds of what the polis can safely afford.
1604.
Is your willingness to
state publicly that your family is dysfunctional comparable to your desire to
state other things?
I would like to strenuously compare G2K to all previous art and
religion. I tell myself this would be a
sin. So which it is, then confuses
me. I act like G2K is an obligation, and
then I act like it's a sin. I want it to
succeed, but not too much. I don't want
to upset the apple cart. So how one can
proceed is not clear.
1605.
Is it absurd to try to
combine all the religions and aesthetic worldviews together?
Not at all. All one has
to do is concede that they are aesthetic worldviews and they are already
combined in the most extreme sense. Yet
fundamentalists see that as an attack, and so do secularists. The former want literal truth not aesthetic,
and the secularists want to condemn the literalists. I think most thoughtful people will, however,
accept the truth that God is an aesthetic principle, the principle of aesthetic
evolution, and that this is not hardly an "image" or idol.
1606.
Will it take you decades to
work out all the subtleties of G2K in a calm way?
By definition, it will take me my whole life to do all my own
aesthetic evolving. One can never cease
aesthetic turning and cycles. To the
same extent one can never stop breathing and trees never stop growing leaves
and rings. Thus this book cannot
"finalize" G2K any more than I can breathe now my breaths of
2008. Hence there is nothing missing
from this book.
1607.
Do artists need most
desperately to gain a more positive, collegial relationship with monotheism?
Yes we do. We have
backed away, with understandable reasons, from the monotheism implicit in art
to a form of polytheism. This is why art
is at a stopping-crux. Art cannot get
any further without addressing the aesthetic principle of monotheism and also
of its corollary, messianism. Yet
artists are bound by professional groups not to address the absolute or
question the creed.
1608.
Have you always known that
G2K is not a meta-statement but an "atomic proposition" (as
Wittgenstein called all meaning) and that there was no gradualness at all to be
found?
I think I have. I knew
for a very long time that one cannot reason with academics. You just have to crush them, embarrass
them. They are craven by nature and will
not give you any respect unless you can cause them pain at will, take away all
of their prestige. They are not good
people.
1609.
Why bother to hold back any
specifics about your private life, academics you've known, government
misconduct, and so forth?
I used to think it was because sadism is evil. Now I think it is because of the Marshall
Plan principle, and Sun Tzu--do not corner a defeated enemy. Give them room to escape if the objective has
been won. My goal was to make sure that
I got away from my family dysfunction, and that everyone heard about G2K.
After that, they can stew in their own juice.
1610.
Is Genius 2000 like an
art-brand?
Yes, it is an exercise in aesthetic branding or marketing. This is true both in the crude and the
complex senses. It's easy to see. All businesses can tell you the necessity of
having a brand. It helps you keep your
works and creative products--your cattle--separate from others. It makes it difficult for anyone to steal
your ideas. I knew that academics and
culture workers are a rotten bunch, very unoriginal and desperate. They steal ideas as a profession, it's all
they are. Therefore I had to mark my
ideas and work clearly enough so that they could never expropriate it. In order to do this I made the brand the
product, and the product the invocation of the human soul. Hence it's an ironclad strategy for
benevolent domination. Genius 2000 is
basically a business plan for making social progress and justice a manufacture
without Communism. Communism is not
warranted. G2K is capitalistic
utopianism.
1611.
Did you always know that
you were dealing with transient conditions and could not leave everything to
the mere passage of time?
I knew that it would be very tricky to get the doctrine of
aesthetic evolution across simultaneously with an equal proper portion of
political recommendation of the O.S.O.
Humans are always looking for a false overcoming, which is what causes
long-term projects to be so difficult.
Containing terrorist destruction-fantasies, for example, is a very, very
long-term project. One could say it is
of infinite duration, because terrorists will never voluntarily quit. Hence the only way for aesthetic evolution to
continue is for there to exist a disproportionate military predominance capable
of crushing any attacker. This is just
logic. If there are no guardians or the
guardians are weak, the libraries they guard will be burnt to ashes, that is
just a truism. Hence one cannot talk
about aesthetic evolution without talking at the same time about pre-emptive
war.
1612.
Were you always just
waiting to sucker-punch Chomsky, and humiliate him?
I guess I knew that he would have to be made ashamed of himself
by questions as to how art relates to his concept of universal grammar. Pinker does not go from language as a
genetically endowed faculty to Chomsky's anarcho-syndicalism. So now it's my obligation to put hard questions
to Chomsky, just as he puts hard questions to liberal democratic
governments. Yet Chomsky is irrelevant
now.
1613.
Does it factually then come
down to the fact that some people understand what aesthetic evolution is, and
others understand only delusion and consumption, and that the latter can never
be allowed to control the polis?
Clearly aesthetic evolution requires the existence of
authority, i.e., power, held by the guardians of aesthetic evolution against those who are degraded and need
to evolve. It's basically a
monarch-subject relationship. Ignorance
and false evolution must ever be thwarted and kept from gaining power until it
learns wisdom.
1614.
Is your alcoholism, and
history of emotional and sexual abuse, and demagoguery therefore a necessary
part of the G2K picture?
It's just the honest facts.
It is the truth about who I am, the angry frustrated demagogue trying to
reform that I am. It's a banal,
ignominious existence. I simply can't
maintain the façade of thinking that G2K entails Chomsky any longer. Everyone knows there are two versions of each
of us, the drunk and the scholar, the terrorist and the citizen. That’s a factual side of G2K Chomsky
rejects.
1615.
Is it impossible to argue
with Chomsky?
Yes. In the end you just
have to get away from him. He will go on
and on forever and he'll never admit he is artistically inferior. He can't admit it to himself even, because it
would call his entire self-worth into question.
He'd no longer be able to sleep well, or have self-respect around his
kids. Also he simply can't grasp the
meaning of art, the difference of
dimension between the artist and the barbarian. He sees only degree.
1616.
Did Benjamin also make a
mistake in thinking that "every document of civilization is simultaneously
an act of barbarism"?
Not completely but he did err in one respect, which loses him
the figure entirely. Certainly, the
existence of civilization presupposes the existence of barbarism, one inside
the city walls and the other outside.
The disproportionate allocation of wealth to mind the walls, however, is
not the cause of the barbarity. Hence
Benjamin's entire corpus falters.
1617.
Is the true concept of
social justice and workers' liberation not insurrection or some administrative
trickery but merely growth, the increase in wealth?
Yes in fact, and it is the banal obviousness of this that
caused so many Marxists like Adorno, Benjamin, and Habermas to make the mistake
of blaming capitalism. They thought,
"the answer or solution can't be so crude as the progress and optimism the
capitalists call for--it must be an intellectual, analytical leap."
However it is not, unless you call God's aesthetic grace an analytical
leap.
1618.
Aren't you scared to
mention God?
Religious people will know that I'm speaking from the heart when
I talk about God so no I do not feel afraid.
Actually, little could be truer than that when talking about God, God
takes away your fear and tells you what to say even. Jesus said not to take thought what you will
say when you go before the other churches.
"The Seven Churches which are in Asia," I take that to mean
global internet communications, the technological upper bound, the whole.
1619.
So God is precisely that
eternal, absolute principle guiding human expression which, when you talk about
it, takes away your fear and tells you what to say?
Yes, and it is highly unfortunate that artists came to hate God
because in so doing all they really hate is Art. People forget that Art is about finding the
harsh reality of truth, not about decorating or faking. People forget what "aesthetic"
means, they take art to be a trivial pleasure like fashion or ornament. They want art to be fun and easy. Art is a jealous God.
1620.
Because G2K is a critique
and revision of instrumental aesthetics under a climate of monotheism and
scientific evolution, isn't it absurd to exclude talk or quanta about religion
from this book?
Clearly yes. As Blake
said, "the cistern contains; the fountain overflows." Christ said, "If you bring forth what is
within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring
forth will destroy you." And what
this means is exactly what I meant it as in the Video. People cannot evolve if they are receptacles
of aesthetic product. We have to be makers, each choosing, studying, and
deciding as artists do about how to create our lives in harmony with our
nature. Christ brought this as the
greatest religious message of his being.
Each of us has to learn to live and act in accordance with the will of
God. God is that which we cannot act in
defiance of without consequences, no matter how hard we try. For example, I have to publish this.
1621.
Will terrorists want to
kill you once they realize that you are bringing the power of monotheism back
to secular art, redeeming it?
No, they won't care about me at all. They will in fact consider me a good and
religious man functioning within the fallen modern world, a great source of
hope and hence a reason to give up terrorism and rather to help fight it. This is because respect for monotheism is the
necessary category of Zen on a historical scale. It is the alliance of moderates that will create the stability to minimize carnage and
breed justice and understanding under global liberal-democratic co-operation. Moderate secularists and moderate
religionists will be able to get to a common ground. Primarily now it's the hell-bent-for-leather
secularists who are most out of control and on drugs. They are by far the most lunatic and in need
of calming. They can't help it, it's the
curse of religious freedom. Religious
freedom brings religious confusion but also religious evolution.
1622.
Does it really take two
thousand of these to achieve a balanced message?
It could be done in fewer but this is a good ballpark number. There are infinitely many topics but a broad
selection can be enough. Not that my
anxiety has gone away. Giving myself
free license or rather free obligation to publish has given me some degree of
clarity in my mind however. I can only
wear myself out if I try to sanitize G2K.
It is intrinsically about
religion, politics, psychosexual trauma, and history.
1623.
Doesn't it hurt in the
extreme to have given up your hopes of being on college radio?
I still cling to the hopes, the same as I cling to fixing my
family, stopping all war, saving Art, getting published, dating, marriage, all
of that. Yet it's not real. I can't go forward with the college radio
fantasy. It goes against G2K. Even though the college radio people seem
crazy and free really they're just very average and predictable. Of course if I'm wrong G2K is a mess of lies,
and I'm just a prudish monk.
1624.
Is it OK to be a prudish
monk, and to place this book online to universal indifference?
It's crazy to think so but there truly will be universal
indifference. I cling desperately to no
longer lifting a finger to get attention of acclaim from the artworld or
academia. They can't help me now. I have to go my own path. Attacking them or allying with them would
both only cause me agony; guilt because I might be wrong and pride because I
might be right.
1625.
How many people have you
ever met who really appreciated the meaning of G2K?
Basically none. Also, as
you can see from this panicky and erratic book I don't even understand it. I've met scientists who thought G2K was good
because it's atheist, leftists because radical, hedonists because hedonist,
dilettantes because fashionable, parasites because promising, bourgeois because
tractable. After thirty-five years of
life I, the creator of G2K, still openly admit I lack deep understanding of the
proper way to live uniting religion, art, science, politics, and economics--the
great five.
1626.
Will these quanta all be
done before you know it?
Yes because I'm coasting now.
It's not painful anymore to sit down and write--in fact it's my only
sanctuary. At work I feel I'm wasting my
life in a cubicular setting, which I know is an overreaction and ungrateful but
because of my extreme artistic desires I do feel a little unsatisfied. I guess it's a boring topic, as everyone has
to struggle sometimes to keep up a positive, friendly attitude at work.
1627.
Do you want to finally
achieve G2K and then be completely done with it, like a task?
I'd like to feel capable and successful in life, but I can do
that by just keeping my job and continuing to do G2K for my entire life. For me G2K is a way of protecting my mental
health. It's like a religion, art, and
hobby all rolled into one. It's
difficult to explain. Yet I do wish to
continue to fail in terms of academic or art-world acclaim, not to mention
popular-cultural acclaim. My proper
scale of notoriety is that of quirky outsider.
1628.
Is G2K obligated to become
popular?
Not at all.
Popularizations of G2K already exist in vast numbers and have for
centuries--another one is not necessary and hardly an obligation. I'm obligated to keep G2K online but not to
make it popular. I'm obligated because I
need to make use of the opportunity and education the polis affords me in a
contributive manner. Yet there is no
obligation at all to create or try to create a mass following of any kind
whatsoever. I can rest easy about that.
1629.
Is it forgivable that
you've made so many mistakes, errors, and wrong turns with G2K?
It's forgivable. I
sometimes try too hard, sometimes not hard enough. I get angry and dogmatic or opinionated when
I'm trying to stick to a principle. I
strive to do what's right, or to know what's right, when I should actually be
patiently allowing my soul to calm down or watching the reflection of the world
in it. I also get very scared, or
suspicious. I've had a confusing
education. My hope now is to be able to
survive and get a good job computer programming. After this, it's a vacation from art for a
good long stretch.
1630.
Don't you wish you were
already done with this book so you could relax?
Yes I do, but unfortunately I will have to type like crazy to
get this done by September, over thirty quanta per day. That is going to severely test my carpal
tunnel, but at least I won't have to think or decide. Sure it's boring, embarrassing, and
ungrateful, but I'm putting this out without a single alteration. The worst things I may have mentioned may
turn out in the end to have the best results.
Even Keats and Shelley criticized the government at times, or indulged
in vanity out of fear and weakness. I'm
not here to say I don't have horrible weaknesses. I can't argue that I'm not extremely flawed,
or that I've not done some hideous things due to drink and artistic
vainglory. Someday I'll be able to
forgive myself but for now it's penance and hard labor. I'm going to have to write at a cruel pace to
get these final quanta written within one week's time. It may take two.
1631.
Is it now imperative that
you take a full week off from work in early August to complete the typing of
this work?
Yes, I need to go ask for the time off tomorrow. I cannot come so close and then fail due to
laxity. This book may help me correct
some of the major errors that have been strangling me in my aesthetic evolution
so far. I committed vicious crimes
against the polis out of vanity and impatience and I want dearly to correct
them. At least I can try to retract some
of my disregard for responsibility and tradition. I can also try to openly state some of my
previously hidden beliefs about democracy and the need for the O.S.O. (which
seems anti-democratic but it is most definitely not). I'm scared of not
finishing this project, but if the day arrives and I decide not to upload it
well that's OK too. I can still go over
to my educational goals seeking a better-paying job with a clear conscience for
having tried.
1632.
Do you feel ashamed and
nervous this morning for having asserted yourself yesterday on topics such as
your right to discuss God, and not caring if you get fired?
I'm a co-dependent personality all the way up, so whenever I
claim to have rights of any kind I
get scared afterward. I ask whether I
went too far and whether I can plausibly retract my demands. Co-dependency works that way. For example, I have a few belongings at my
parents' house which I'm afraid they will destroy if they read this. I need to get them.
1633.
Are you scared that this
writing is unhealthy and negative and will make you grouchy at work?
I fear any kind of disapproval.
I do my work well but there is always someone next in line behind you
who wants to see you fail--who would gain by your failure. Yet if I don't like the job or the people I
should just quit and give us all a break.
My concern is not knowing what other job to take. Clearly I can't stay forever.
1634.
Can you delay worries about
your job?
My amygdala tells me to want things, like dating and social
respect. Wanting and not getting upsets
the soul. Yet wanting is also
healthy. It would appear I'm faced with
a contradiction. Frankly I have to say
it appears that some of the most basic and ancient creeds of human behavior
contradict each other. Zen says to let
go of wanting dates or a good job; standard psychology says it's OK to want. I guess they are not contradictory.
1635.
Are wanting a more fulfilling
career and being patient at your current job compatible goals?
Arguably yes. If I let
myself get too frustrated and angry I'll just have unpleasant days at
work. Before I started writing this I
was just fine with my job. I'd listen to
music and take it easy. Now I think
music, especially rock music, degrades my aesthetic sense so I don't listen to
my own rock music at work. I read poems
instead, mainly. So I'd like to relax
again and not care.
1636.
Is it OK to picture this
book being OK, and your life turning out OK?
I think it is. I only
have one chance to go through life.
Clearly vulgar people will tell me not to do G2K, because they think
it's confusing and threatening. This is
your average co-worker. I can't both be
free of that and let it control me. If I
accept that G2K is a sin because my family, friends, and co-workers don't like
it, I'm done for. My workplace is very
tolerant of diversity so they should tolerate G2K too, if I do this online on
my own time. But if they fire me who
cares.
1637.
What if all the people who
love kitsch or fundamentalism get angry about G2K?
That can't be helped.
People who love kitsch and fundamentalism will always hate aesthetic evolution, and that's OK. Yet I can't let it make me feel guilty or
I'll get depressed. I can't both do
aesthetic evolution and also simultaneously comfort those whom it
discomforts. The guilt is too much.
1638.
Are you obligated to make
your parents and siblings happy in life?
No, I'm not even though I have incredible guilt complexes that
I am. They are not my
responsibility. Their problems and
misery go way back into childhood, way back into the history of their actions
and activities. It's not me that causes
their misery and it's not my obligation to cure them. I have the clear unequivocal right to get
away from them. That's a clear truth I
can rely on.
1639.
Aren't left-liberals very
much like a co-dependent bourgeois nuclear family?
Yes, they're almost exactly like one. They've therefore always hated the
independent, free aspect of G2K. After
all, they've sacrificed their lives to a suffocating dogma, a hierarchy equally
as corrupt as any clergy, and they get tortured whenever anyone gets up
momentum to break away. It's the same
with a co-dependent family; they panic and gnash their teeth if anyone gets the
courage to leave without feeling guilty.
Left-liberals do this in the extreme.
1640.
Are most left-liberals,
fans of Nader and Chomsky, extremely ignorant?
Yes they are in my experience.
They are poorly informed, extremely biased, and very mechanical or
herd-like in their thinking. Yet that is
their choice. Their parents and teachers
encourage it, their friends encourage it, and they have to act that way to get
dates. They like to go to outdoor music
festivals and take acid, and that makes them feel exalted and extremely
righteous. Self-righteousness is their
basic function. They are unwilling to
consider the harm that their ideas and actions do to the future, and to their
own avowed goals of E and H. Even Herge,
the author of Tintin, pointed out how leftists like to draw up and impose
elaborate plans but think more of the plan than the results, like Lenin. Very few people know how greatly even Lenin
feared Russification and Fascism under Stalin.
He saw it coming before his death but was unable to counter the
predator.
1641.
Do you feel guilty when you
think about getting free of people who neither like nor respect you, such as
your family and co-workers?
I feel guilty about getting free, having good connections that
accept me for who I am. After all, what
if the other people are stuck in the misery and can't get out? Why do I deserve to get free? Many people stay trapped in depressing
conditions, and my getting free won't help them, except of course by example
and reduction of gravitational mass in misery.
Frankly I just have to accept that God made me to be free and it's OK to
get free of left-liberals, underemployment, and my co-dependent nuclear family. I can keep my distance from academia and the
artworld too, and not feel guilty about exceeding their inmates in joy and
gratification. Sure they won't all get
out but that's not my problem. I don't
have to feel guilty. Plus,
underemployment, that's the great word to capture the reality of workplace
stagnation without specifics.
1642.
Isn't G2K just guerilla
marketing, and aren't you just a confirmed bachelor?
I'd like to date if I could date women of quality--I don't care
for the ordinary ones--and yes my work on G2K is primarily marketing, trying to
build brand awareness, and having a business production plan in place should
buyers appear. I could for example sell
lots of DVD's of my videos, many other great things. The crucial first task is to position the
brand.
1643.
Doesn't generating
non-object-based art entail degrading objective art?
No, you can add to one without reducing the other. This is just as how workers can gain control
of the means of production without taking control away from the capitalists.
This would seem paradoxical but it's not at all. Factually object-based art cannot exist
without process-based art. The objects
of art don't have to be destroyed; that's false overcoming. Their patterns have to be incarnated in
actual people is all. The objects are
not ends in themselves.
1644.
Do you actually feel confused
and angry today?
Yes, I'm scared too. I
know people don't like an oddball who sits to the side. In particular if the oddball isn't desperate
for attention and affection. Such a
solitary genius is disconcerting, and people dislike me for that. I've recently come to feel that some anger is
healthy; for example when someone does you wrong or mistreats you. I have a right to be angry at those who've
mistreated me. The real question of
anger is how best to act on it, what it recommends.
1645.
Is the best response to
anger sometimes just to end a relationship rather than fighting?
Yes, it is often necessary to end suffocating dysfunctional
relationships. It's OK just to cancel
the interaction. You don't have to fight
or duke it out. One of course may not be
able to get away, in which case one has to be very patient and quiet, waiting
patiently for the chance to get free.
One then can prepare an escape and act on opportunity.
1646.
Does the practice of
breathing tell you you don't need to get angry about having only a modest
income, or a routine job, or a relatively solitary scholar's life?
I want the life of a romantic princeling. I'd like to be in a rock band and a jazz
band, and also a classical ensemble on oboe or viola. Heck you name it. Painting, watercolor, a big yard and barn for
sculptures, plenty of gorgeous dating, no hatred, all honest, you name it.
1647.
Does G2K need to become
extremely respected and famous in the artworld, pop culture, and academia?
I think it's OK if it doesn't.
The obscure works can still have by far the greatest effect, the
decisive effect. Being an outsider is
also good for my character and constitution.
It allows me to get to where the shoe pinches. Clearly one can picture a better
culture. But does praise of G2K help us
get there? As Frost implied, mediocrity
and stagnation also move us forward brilliantly. The boredom that hatches the egg of the
imagination. Patience.
1648.
What about the risk that a
book like this will degrade any of G2K's chances to be a typical success story,
a bestseller?
The real Biographia
Literaria didn't sell in the billions, it just was the best. People of discernment perceived it and got
it. The great mass of people did what is
common, as they always do, by definition.
The necessity of art gets its point across to the discerning anyway, and
you don't need a bullhorn.
1649.
Can you let go of all the
cute women and "the girls in their summer dresses"?
I think I can somewhat.
Intellectually I still think the life of the bon vivant is the best, the
man of gratified desires. Dating, great
lectures, squash, canoe trips, full engagement.
Yet that's not in my cards.
There's no reward or payoff for letting go of desires though. Let go of your desires for sexy women, and
there's no payback, no cashing in, just patience and harmony and the great
"peace in the brain," a calm well-being. It's sad that confusion takes so great a
toll. Clarity is wealth.
1650.
Do G2K and this book
definitely have a claritas, a quidditas, a suchness?
Clearly it does. I can feel
it "in the deep heart's core," as Wordsworth wrote. Or I can grasp it at times though only
indirectly, at right angles. I get the
feeling people should look at the G2K video and really respect it. Then I think of all the other good
ingredients of G2K, its value. My own
crimes are so minor as to be virtues. I
made a clown of myself to thwart idolatry and imitation. I showed a bad side for balance and
flexibility. I made the stakes
"mortal," as Frost wrote in "Two Tramps in Mud-Time." I compared the artist to the Christ and vowed
to bring him or her to victory. Then I
also compared art to monotheism and economics to art via the talent or
kung-an. Then I created a brand or
commercial fabric and implemented the fabric as an actual aesthetic array of
Urphanomene. The references to academic
work and political economy were also set in place. Now it is just a matter of time.
1651.
If G2K is a positive and
decent thing, why can't it be set forth in an orderly prose style, like the Biographia Literaria?
I'm sure it could be and I plan to do that in a couple of
years. These are really just preliminary
notes, fragments toward a greater future edifice. I also like the abstract challenge and the
difficult order of an arbitrary form.
Socrates favored the question and answer and so did Collingwood. The novel form is not strictly dialogic but
the premise of it is that it offers a stage for dialogue and as a stage
dialogues with the audience, other stages, and other productions. Yet I wouldn't claim this book is
perfect. It's unedited, simply two
thousand quanta written longhand, typed as is, and placed on the internet. I like the simplicity of that. Also the difficulty of trying to avoid bad
topics and find good ones, make a good case, remember points of value to the
argument. It has been an exercise in
patient calm at least.
1652.
Is even just an ordinary
city park, with oaks, grass, a bench or two, and some bocce courts a divine
temple?
Yes it
is, it's a visiting place of the divine.
Some people hate the word divine, the idea of divinity. They see it as superstition imposed by
arbitrary authority. This is an
unfortunate state of affairs, because all art is divine. A human sentience without meditative calm is
flat, like a floor. Peace and calm allow
the tent-poles of the third dimension to go up.
1653.
Would it have been better
if you had kept to a more neoconservative rhetoric all along?
Not necessarily. Clearly
a mindset that recognizes the truths in leftist and rightist thought both is
best. There are factual truths in
each. Faking and posing are however the
tactics of competition. An artist should
never take the easy, popular way out, but should side with the underappreciated
truths to restore balance and keep the exosomatic evolutionary tradition safe,
whole, and active.
1654.
Is it enough to just have
five trees to look at, and no date?
Not dating is hard. It
makes one dissatisfied. It also prevents
some of the unhealthiness of dysfunctional dating, and allows solitary work to
go forward. The ultimate question is
whether one can experience aesthetic gratification and evolution as a bachelor
or monk. If one can, then the question
of lacking a date fades to insignificance.
1655.
Do people often degrade and
betray their own genius just to get or please a date?
The compulsive pursuit of dating is one of the pre-eminent
slaveries flesh is heir to. It has
caused perhaps as much trouble as any other ignorance. Most people don't even try to question the
compulsion, because it feels so good and it is so permanent. The arousal response is practically as
irresistible as sensitivity to heat and cold.
Yet if you want to have access to your own calmness and the genuine
reflections it shows, you cannot allow sexual desire to make you happy or sad,
clouded.
1656.
Do you want to be as good
an artist as Shakespeare?
Shakespeare is my ideal of excellence. He set forth all the evolutionary puzzles of
his age, for rich and poor alike. He
really captured the entirety of life and civilization, all kinds of
configurations. Who can forget an Iago
or a Falstaff? They're truly archetypal
and immortal. Shakespeare infused the
entire atmosphere with the energy of aesthetic evolution. You could say he both created and redeeemed
the English nation.
1657.
Do you wish you could go to
see a music show, or a lecture, or a dinner party, perhaps with badminton and
emotionally solid people?
People are overrated.
I'm reading a fantastic book right now, Europe 1815-1848, by Jacques Droz.
I would like that better than any badminton party. People get so picturesque; there's really no
gain to it. So I try to appreciate the
not-going to the movies, to see a band, to a play.
1658.
Has a great bulk of what
you've done been loyal to the neoconservative cause, i.e., to the
used-to-be-liberal or liberal-but-pragmatic-in-conflict cause?
I think so but a good deal of it was just dumb luck, a lucky
guess. One also never knows whether to
espouse a belief or hide it. Again, the
evolution of art is much like the evolution of science, which goes on inside
the orderly world created by the polis for that purpose. Fiscal-military concerns take priority.
1659.
Will extreme, long, painful
hours typing these be worth it?
Yes, there is nothing I could see that will make me quit typing
or keep this out of the internet. It
captures the confusion and difficulty of being a person and of doing G2K. It's not perfect but perfection isn't the
issue. I won't even know if I'll replace
any until I get to typing them, that's when I'll check for unacceptables. I want badly to break my left-anarchist
hemorrhaging.
1660.
Are you just a brief
flicker of time away from these being all gone and done, never to be altered
again?
It's striking how quickly it goes now. Early on I felt it would never end. It literally seemed to stretch on
forever. I wanted to include so many
things, but there was so much pain along the way. I wanted to include the profound democratic
skeptic and examiner de Tocqueville. All
I knew of him was privatism and the quotes from "Literary Change,"
but I read a good portion of Democracy in
America at Oberlin and I knew there were valid concerns there. The need for aesthetic education, sure, but
also trust and acceptance of the providential
character of aesthetic growth--it is given
to us, provided us by our being in
concert with its surroundings like vision is our eye cells plus light, actual
light in actual space-time. Kittens for
example raised in distorted visual environments don't acquire vision. Aesthetic character is like that, not like
decoration or industrial manufacture.
1661.
Is the key to an extremely
good twenty-first century for moderates all across all societies to ally
themselves with the U.S. under a fiscal-military O.S.O.?
That is the key to achieving exceptional results in the
twenty-first century but it is unlikely because people reject the possibility
that the
1662.
Doesn't Kant, one of the
archetypal Enlightenment philosophers, state clearly never to treat humans as
means only, which goes directly against the instrumentalism of which Adorno
accuses the Enlightenment?
Yes, and I don't think this should be shrugged off. I'm not sure what Habermas would say of it
but the flaw is a serious one. It is a
deep flaw in characterization, of Enlightenment rationality as
instrumental. I think Marx is much more
rigorously instrumental as he condemns the divine, the providential.
1663.
Isn't it going to be hard
to use your new, glorious Reeves watercolors if you're typing constantly
between now and September 1?
I think I'll need or like an expressive outlet while copying;
it will help me choose what is unacceptable for the internet. It can be a wonderful complement and respite
from copying, the Reeves watercolor in a row of little tubes. I'm enchanted with them but I'm using up my
Prang first. I even had some old singles
left from Madison days, ninety-five cents from the University Bookstore,
fourteen years old!!
1664.
Did Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Stephen Greenblatt's
book on Renaissance Self-Fashioning
have an effect on you?
Yes, I arrayed Adorno against self-fashioning and couched
Tamburlaine in military-ascendant terms.
I took sides against Tamburlaine's capitalist instrumentality. Yet in fact that was a blurry
comparison. I would almost say the
puzzle pieces fit together perfectly in that paper on Marlowe, but incorrectly
as fate would have it. In a sense
Tamburlaine was just the better business man.
1665.
Will a small archive of
your college and graduate school papers be placed online to go along with this
book, as a chronicle?
I will be placing Literary
Change, my Coup de Tete article, and numerous other college papers
online. I won't be putting the
professor's comments online though in many cases I could. There is no cause to single anyone out--in
such a climate we all would deserve whipping.
Similarly for the art world, the pop culture world, private life,
governments, religions, and businesses.
1666.
Would you like to distance
yourself from your own rock music now, even the music you've recently made,
because you want to let the writing in this book stand or fall on its own?
Partially; I also want to prove that I can make it in life
without rock music i.e. that a modern, deep aesthetic is possible without rock
music. I believe it is possible, but
I've always been dependent on rock for my euphoria, confidence, ubermut, and
social identity. I want to prove rock
music is not required.
1667.
Will the quanta from eight
hundred to twelve hundred probably take the longest to type?
Yes; I think I wrote a good ratio more full-page quanta during
that stretch (full-page on half legal pads).
They will be kind of depressing too I bet. Back then I was still trying to prove why I had
a right to do G2K, why G2K was good, why anything could be considered
good. I was really struggling there to
see the value of this enterprise. Struggling
and failing.
1668.
Is a calm, well, breathing
Zen peace the greatest wealth and luxury of which humans are capable?
Yes, all material luxury is just an image of the name of
"the immense peace in the brain."
Gold, castles, all of the delicacies, they are all just shadows or
echoes of the Great Peace. After all,
aren't they all no better than the contented peace their possession
brings? And weakly, transiently at
best. Zen peace is by far the greatest
treasure, resting in the heart of God.
1669.
Would having an enchanting
ladyfriend make you more of a person, a better, realer man?
It could make me worse and faker. I think sexual arousal makes us think on
purpose it makes us better and realer.
That's how it works so powerfully.
It closes the normal channels of self-regard and well-being and routes
them through a narrower course for an intense but brief current. In fact I do think that a true, honest
marriage would make me a better person.
Even good dates would or could.
But they are not in the cards, and other things are.
1670.
Will your enemies attack
you bitterly after this comes out?
I think they know better now.
Such rambunctiousness has only gotten them discomfort in the past. I think this book will be mightily ignored,
and I like that. It will be my free,
unappreciated gift to society in exchange or partial repayment for all my past
drunken hooliganism. I also think people
understand me better now and like me.
I've always been very likable in general, except when I get depressed or
preoccupied. Most people who've known me
will attest to the mainly cheery but sometimes brooding quality of my moods. So most people will say "Oh he's not a
bad person, such-and-such is wonderful about him, he's just not perfected
yet. He's not fully developed yet." Of course many will take pot shots and maybe
even try to hurt my reputation (which is already arguably as low as it can
get). No one wants to take swipes at a
loser, it looks gauche.
1671.
Are a very great wealth of
wonderful fragments to be found all through G2K?
Yes they are. Beginning
with the very first G2K email in 1998 to the very quanta of this minute, there
are good fragments and moments in abundance.
The G2K video is in point of fact a very fine work of art, practically a
masterpiece in my opinion. It should not
be changed one iota except to re-master it from the original Hi-8 to improve
color and sound. No re-editing is to be
desired. The website is still very good,
many of the jpegs are very good. Some of
the emails are good and some are, in fact, atrocious. But even that fact in itself is good. It proves that nobody's perfect. Several of my short essays from academia are
quite good, and a couple of poems. I
have a novel which is not any good, The Hermit, and several short stories
which are also not any good. I'm more an
aphoristic-epistolary intellect than a dramatic one, thus far.
1672.
Is the full relationship
between quantum and relativity, artwork and art-history, matter and energy
still unresolved?
Yes it is eminently and literally unresolved. There is still great tension and dynamism
there, for the same reason there is tension between each human and humanity in
general. I can't just say "objects
are bad, art is a process." Every
art-object partakes of process, like the kung-an. The kung-an isn't evil, it's a doorway.
1673.
Is worker desire for
control of the means of production merely an angry reversal-impulse or mastery
behavior bred of poverty, and not an intrinsic dynamic of history at all?
Definitely that is correct thinking. Control of the means of production should be
exercised by those most capable of doing a good job, i.e. well-educated and
well-supervised managerial types. La
carriere ouverte aux talens, as I always used to like to say. When controlled so as to most benefit the
workers of the present and future, the workers win, they have triumphed, their
interests are in control.
1674.
Why do you avoid mention of
the popular culture that has made up such a great proportion of your perceptual
life, popular film and music?
I think because I want G2K to stand and survive without popular
kitsch to endorse it. I think the
popular genres can really suffocate a person, particularly in their prolific
and repetitive aspects. I want G2K to be
articulated without their help, even though I've spent years listening to and
looking at popular music and film. I
want to cut free of it.
1675.
In addition to all the
aesthetic and philosophical nuances you have yet to get through in life, do you
also have a large amount of unsorted emotional material?
Yes; far be it from me to say I've reached permanent emotional
perfection. Most of my emotions are
still highly dysfunctional and deeply buried.
Yet without a working, sustainable, publishable aesthetic practice in
order I can't even start with the emotional digging. I need the artistic theory, the G2K, to keep
on with the other stuff, the emotional and financial career work.
1676.
Does even-handed, moderate
bourgeois thought serve well in most situations?
Yes, conventional wisdom and "seeing both sides"
works very well. The book by Jacques
Droz for example, Europe 1815-1848,
is a very even-handed book about industrialization. There's a logic to revolution, restoration,
monarchy, aristocracy, bourgeoisie, socialism, reformism, finance. Even the divine right of kings had a humane,
decent, democratic logic to it as a means of peaceful uncontestable succession.
1677.
Can G2K articulate itself
without conceding vast aesthetic territory to popular culture?
I am confident it can.
That is why I don't want to mention a lot of popular entertainment in
this book. Popular music and film
especially I think occupy too much of one's genius-time for most people. I want to articulate G2K without making
alliance with popular culture. I think
popular music and films are similar to junk food, in that they do very little
to nourish the soul or genius and have some bad health effects also.
1678.
Did you recently encounter
some useful information about controlling depression?
Yes, I saw some on the internet. It was about cognitive therapy for
depression, which consists of countering extreme negative thoughts in one's
mind with more balanced, calmer ones.
For example, instead of panicking that I'll be fired for publishing
this, I can think that is a childhood fear of self-assertion and not very
likely. Also, the idea G2K is wholly
evil and arrogant can be countered by the great value in free societies of
artistic evolution advanced by experimentation with acceptable risk.
1679.
Does distorted perception
of one's responsibilities lead to depressive guilt?
Yes, the website also said that. I often become afraid that to mention a
logical, comprehensive revisioning of art and religion will cause trauma
whether it succeeds or fails. I think
that if the new hypothesis is rejected the effort spent will be wasted and
people will be demoralized. If it
succeeds, other options may be lost.
This leads, uncountered, to irrational depressive guilt.
1680.
What is the importance of
Blake's statement that the Bible is also the most entertaining book in the
world, because it is a book of the imagination?
The Blake section of the Norton Two had a huge effect on me in
1988 and really indelibly colored my views.
The idea is that the Bible is more than a code of obedience, negative
reinforcement. Blake actually calls it
"entertaining," i.e. both fun and wholesome. That basic view is extremely important in
comprehending the relation of aesthetics to Religion. Benjamin is less instructive on this than
Blake, though he is more analytical. I
have more kinship with the British work of the first half of the nineteenth
century, Benjamin with the French of the second half. That is mainly because I've read so little but
also because
1681.
Is it crucially important
that people experience the aesthetic satisfaction of virtue, and escape from
the sin/punishment cycle?
One gets nowhere if crime is seen as fun pleasure and obedience
as necessary suffering. For example,
many believe that only drinking or wasting money can give pleasure. It is difficult to take pleasure in
virtue. Yet like eating healthy food, if
one sticks to it it is greatly more fun than the alternative. The amygdala is not capable of deep
enjoyment, merely of convulsive contraction.
Yet if that is all one knows, that is all one can go by. Hence Socrates said that if people know what
virtue is--what it really is,
directly experienced--they can't help but follow it. It will be both logical and desirable. The desire will be philosophical, i.e., the
love of wisdom, not the love of a graspable stand-in for aesthetic, balanced
evolution i.e. wisdom. Wisdom is a
moving process like balanced harmonious walking. It's healthy and pleasurable.
1682.
Was it because you knew
that G2K was completely sound in its potential
for good and right decorum that you extolled it even into realms of
deterioration?
That's a curious question.
I'm happy about my career going well today, my savings and income and
security. I'll be able to get my
programming degree and live a long, happy artistic life. Hence it occurs to me to comfort and forgive
myself. I knew G2K was good and decent
and though as yet hypothetical, would
work. Therefore I pushed it.
1683.
Did you think it necessary
to actually incarnate the aesthetic power of G2K rather than hide it under a
bushel?
I did, most emphatically.
This was why I emphasized the parable of the talents. Economic value is not static but
dynamic. The value of G2K could not just
be deferred indefinitely. That's what
incompetent bureaucrats of the soul try to tell you so they can keep their
sinecures, but they lie hidden in half-truths.
People need to experience virtue directly in order to follow it.
1684.
What if everyone tries to
do G2K now?
There's only one first time for anything. If someone wanted to start another G2K
now--well, you can't because it's already past the fin de siecle. It's impossible now for that reason, at
least. Also because the second iteration
is a completely different quantity.
Holub called this principle "interference," and it applies as
much to political and art-historical factors as to biological ones. It applies to every informatic system. Moreover, I'm actively committed to
aggressive competition.
1685.
Would your perfect dream
career be just to sell a lot of art online?
Yes, my dream life would be to sell a lot of ceramic bowls and
cups, DVD's, watercolors, and writing online.
I would not have to operate through any gallery system or university, no
corporate distribution. I could
articulate G2K completely on an as-needed basis. It would resemble in spirit the subscription
system of early novels, in the eighteenth century. I think I'm more of an eighteenth-century
type of person, ironically. Benjamin
they say was nineteenth.
1686.
Is it important to
comprehend that what other people may want one to do may not always be the best
thing for one's self?
Yes, and herein lies the conflict. One's nuclear family can be likened to a net,
intended to keep various occupants organized.
Its role is to confine diverse entities by obligation. It has its own logic and needs, like a
multi-part song. The song tries to
defend itself. If the net or song is no
longer needed, the individual has to break free. The others will condemn you. That is how nets work.
1687.
Can guilt over having left
a confining, limiting relationship-system poison one's independent growth or
evolution?
Quite certainly. One may
feel the need to go back to the grasping, suffocating nuclear family
rules. Rules and constraints are the
ropes in the net. Codes of behavior,
such as acting happy on cue or sad on cue.
These are typical of sick relationships.
When one escapes the system of rules, for better rules, one will likely
feel guilty. But you're not.
1688.
Should people read the
Modern Library paperback editions of Plato and Thucydides?
Yes, the Plato is dark purple and the Thucydides is dark
green. These are very good books,
classics that have affected life in twenty-plus centuries. These are serious books to give you a better
life. They may seem boring or confusing
at first, but after the first hour you'll be vastly rewarded. So, quit using whatever kitsch you may be
using.
1689.
Do you want to condemn
happy people like Generation Y, younger people in their teens and twenties, or
single out popular culture figures or works for specific harshness?
I'd rather not make specific attacks on celebrities and I'd
rather not condemn the fun-loving, care-free youngsters per se. They have a role in society as well--both
groups. Celebrities and the happy young
have nothing I need to take away. I also
don't care if they like me. My only need
is to articulate plainly for those who need to evolve that kitsch and being
pretty won't help you, you can skip them both.
1690.
Is it only necessary to
hold a bit of ground against high kitsch and low kitsch, not to extirpate them
completely?
Exactly right. Genius
2000 cannot be forced on anyone, because it arises only from natural processes
occurring when a person consciously decides to create a calm spot in their own
soul. The person has to consciously
choose to keep out the encroaching kitsch.
Once a person makes that choice, to develop their individual genius, or
rather to take on the obligations of diet and effort necessary to protect its
development (as one protects a new growth from injury), then the process for
them has begun. There is no way for G2K
or anything to replace it. If a person
decides not to make that choice, nothing can take root for them anyway (no
matter how perfectly formed the seedling may be, or genetically
well-bred). The individual genius has to
keep out the encroaching amygdalic disruptions to the soil. Nothing can replace that.
1691.
Why is it necessary for the
stronger military power at any given time to actively attack the weaker rather
than just to "live and let live"?
Aesthetic evolution and exosomatic evolution, the long-term
hope for humanity, take up energy and time.
They have a cost. In any given
competition between states, states that prefer not to co-operate, one will take
the anti-evolutionary track and one will take the pro-evolutionary. States can motivate their citizens via hatred
of evolution. This is why states trying
to protect evolution are so vulnerable.
It is easier to break something than to protect it. Therefore, states protecting evolution must
not only protect against states trying to break it, but actively degrade the
power of states motivated by the attempt to break it--the power to break
evolution must be sought out and dismantled pre-emptively. It is unacceptable to let it grow. This is why societies that reject freedom and
individual rights can't just be ignored, but have to be confronted and weakened
by the use of force and fraud as well as by persuasion. This is the nature of conflict.
1692.
Does Europe need to
recognize that G2K is the aesthetic-evolutionary obligation of the present to
the future, and hence to U.S.-Europe co-operation?
It may not be strictly necessary but it could have good effects
if Europe were able to conceive of the U.S. as an aesthetically evolving
polity, one capable of and engaged in serious aesthetic-exosomatic
evolution. Europe is clouded I think by
anti-American fears against recognition of U.S. potential and compatibility
with high ideals.
1693.
Do your ugly revelations
about your own asexuality or sexual isolation need to be expunged from this
book?
Probably not. I don't
care if people think of me as sub-sexual, sexually non-threatening. In fact that is better than being thought of
as a great passionate lover. It's better
for the real G2K if women don't desire me sexually and men aren't jealous or
fearful of me sexually. It kind of hurts
my ego to be asexual but it's also advantageous, like Teiresias.
1694.
Will it help to mention
quadrature as an aspect of Genius 2000?
I think so. I always
liked drawing sine curves, cosine curves, and conic sections in UMTYMP. I think everyone should get a book of basic
trig functions and conic sections and draw them. They are good for the intellect and
employability too. Pi is also a good parable,
about Archimedes, the use of limit-theory in gaining accuracy, antiquity; and
pi also is the basis of quadrature.
1695.
Does the Bayesian concept
that the sum of all sub-event probabilities is greater than one relate to Godel
as well as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?
Yes it does. It also
relates to the idea that G2K is ever-so-slightly greater than one; it's one
plus the smallest addable unit of measure.
In this sense the kung-an or talent is also one plus the smallest
additive extra, the uncertain, because the future is not determined yet. Future indeterminacy is present in the
present as the uncertain.
1696.
Are Benjamin's concepts on
the character of the Jetztzeit and "homogeneous, empty time"
important?
Yes, and for this discussion I recommend Habermas' essay on
Benjamin in PPP, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, and Benjamin's
"Theses on the Philosophy of History." Time is not just like "a big square
box," as I mentioned in the Video.
"2000" represents space and time both. Modern physics, symbolized by relativity and
G=mt2000, has a great deal to teach us about "linear time." Therefore real people who understand physics
could really help articulate this aspect of G2K.
1697.
Could the G2K network
operate as a subscription service that publishes articles, say by physicists
about art in a concrete way?
I'd like that if it could.
I don't want to go back to my old exploitive, demagogic tactics
however. I won't pretend that I want to
get a greater audience for everyone--that's
an incoherent idea. It's better, for now
certainly, to do all the content myself.
Even the articles on particle or string physics.
1698.
Does your desire for
marriage and social success contradict your desire not to be controlled by
external wants?
I guess they go hand in hand.
I want to remain excited or mildly enamored of life and its good things
in order to keep me motivated and cheerful.
At least I don't want to condemn myself in draconian fashion if it
occurs to me I'd like to have a great marriage with a wonderful woman. Cognitive therapy says not to go to extremes,
as they are the stagnant caesuras in the cycle of experience.
1699.
Do low taxes and
deregulation, ironically or paradoxically, help the long-term pursuit of E and
H?
Liberals may not be able to understand why low taxes and
deregulation help humanism and environmentalism's chances over the long run by
keeping liberal democracy strong and able to fend off competitors. Without economic strength, the U.S. would
have lost out to the U.S.S.R. and to Hitler as well. Those political systems in the long-term are anathema to E and H, defeating them
salubrious.
1700.
Does it all come down to
limit-theory and the raveling-out of articulated processes into long future
time-spans?
Yes, that is how history works and how complex informatic
systems over long time-spans work.
Wolfram on cellular automata or patterns after many iterations is
relevant to this. Certainly monotheism
form its earliest beginnings is about limit-theory; math and logic both require
us to ask what happens to a move or an operation if it is repeated many, many
times. What is the logical conclusion or
evolution of having many, many gods as opposed to one God? These ideas also operate on a basis of
qualities, such as "goodness" which is universal by definition to all
gods. If the divine is a unified trait,
then logically there is only one God.
Reduction and oversimplification are of course to be avoided in living
systems; the surest way to rid a body of a disease is to kill it; we must
realize that the future and present are each in part eternally indeterminate,
uncertain, ineffable.
1701.
Does it always spoil your
mood to fantasize about being in a rock band, being popular, famous, admired?
I guess it does tend to.
It makes me feel like I'm missing out on life. That is kind of a daydreaming fantasy
however. Then when I start writing
again, finding words again of good or low quality, the hazy desire for popular
acclaim goes back away again. Perhaps
I'm still glutted with fantasies about being liked, having the prettiest girl
wanting to have sex with me, willing to have sex with me a lot until I decide I
want to try a different girl. Of course
I don't want to willfully or arrogantly degrade my own impulses for sexual love,
romantic coming-together. I wouldn't want
to damage myself. Then again, one must
be harsh sometimes. I don't like the
finality of saying "I'm done with kitsch music now despite the pretty
girls that go along with it."
Sexual love, romantic love, it's kind of an hallucination.
1702.
Are you actually much
closer to the medieval fundamentalists than to secular evolutionists?
No, despite my argument that sometimes you have to give up on
sexual fantasies. I guess I'm tired of
caring. The medievalists do say that sex
is an evil, bestial act that interferes with connection to God. This is basically true, because sex is
amygdalic hallucination that takes away one's calm clarity and gives power to
the reptilian sub-brain. Yet I differ
with fundamentalists regarding how best to worship God, and whereas I permit
them they would prohibit me.
1703.
What if there is no
physiological limit on how genius takes shape?
If everything is constructed only, just a variant of
fabrication, then there is no such thing as slavery or violence or
oppression. If that's true, there is no
moral obligation to work toward anything or against anything. In other words, if there is no permanent
human nature, left-liberals have zero case.
1704.
Is it hard not to get
peevish and querulous about lacking fame and dating?
Let's put it this way, it's easy to get peevish. All you have to do is take that briefest of
moods like a spark and fan it into a worldview--that you've been cheated and
wronged, deprived, of your deserved sexual access to the women on the
advertising posters. I get resentful
easily. Yet part of it that I forget is
that my abusive past has deprived me of healthy, good, normal sexuality. Thus I need more therapy and healing.
1705.
Is part of the problem that
the kind of woman you'd want would have no interest in a solitary artist?
Yes it's true. Part of
me still clings to the ideal of social success, lots of good connections, the
typically great life. It just seems
impossible. Therefore I'm working on the
alternative, which is never to have a gorgeous girlfriend or wife and what's
more, not to care. It's just the way
life turns out. I'm grumpy from three
caffeines today.
1706.
Does it seem wrong that all
the efforts of this book would seem to amount to little more than public
self-humiliation?
It makes me feel bad to think that but it's basically
true. One should, when making a new
art-historical period incarnate, give up on social success and acceptance
temporarily--i.e. as long as necessary--but not permanently. That's my take on it too. One has to keep hoping for a good wife. If you don't keep hoping no woman will every
marry you.
1707.
Doesn't making yourself
contemptible inoculate G2K against being idolized?
Clearly yes and that's the whole point of it. It's perfect.
Yet the reward of perfection is non-existent! The creator gets nothing in return, not a
single particle of recognition, fame, or acclaim. That's my lot. Other people, the younger people later on,
get to enjoy all the gratifying benefits like dating and fulfillment. All I get is the dubious distinction of being
"the first." It's a curse, as
I've said before.
1708.
Can you go out and date
women your own age?
I'm back in shape now so I bet I could get a date with a woman
my age. I'm not sure it's OK to try that
though. I'd like to just go completely
back to normal, and act like everyone else.
Then I'd have to start listening to popular music again, being normal
and typical, doing what people expect of me.
I'll pass on the pleasure.
1709.
Is it socially detested to
be a monk unless you're in a conventional religion?
The most detested level of existence is that of the
unsuccessful male artistic aspirant.
It's cute maybe until age twenty-five, and then it's no longer
cute. By my age, it's downright
ugly. The premise is that if you had any
talent or courage, you'd have succeeded by now--though what success means is
not clear. I guess it means you no
longer resent the state of acclaim you enjoy.
If I could cease to be angry about being obscure I'd be likable again.
1710.
Is it crucial to avoid too
much caffeine on the weekends, so that you can enjoy the long hours in an
artistic measure?
Typically I would be drinking an iced tea right now yet lately
I have been "skipping" normal caffeine drinks. It would seem trivial but I think it affects
my mood fairly deeply. I rarely get the
feeling that I'm behaving rightly, both in the moment and in my current life
overall, if I don't skip some caffeine.
Call it a learning curve I guess, to use corporate lingo. Because my progress is so eminently not up to
me but to seismic shiftings in my deep soul that can only occur if I go calm,
it is the more important that I not push my luck. My calming-down time is not up to me to
control. All I can do is stop the
motorboat; after that I have to wait.
Then I have to wait again to see the reflection, then wait again to
catch the patterns, then again to catch changes in the patterns, again to tune
or pace myself to them.
1711.
Is there good sense both in
letting yourself want things and not letting yourself want things too much?
As the ancient Greeks said, "moderation in all
things." It's OK to want to calm my
mind, and to get away from the sick demands of sick relationships. It's also good and advisable not to want too
much, to want the unattainable, i.e. to keep control over your wants and their
extent. There is a higher degree of
wanting that wants to control or govern wants.
That is also a good want. Yet
technically on all of this there is also the overarching concept that one
cannot control one's mind, one's true mind, by force. It's a power beyond our control to force it
what to do. So, I have a rather complex
situation regarding what to want and how to want. Co-dependency is a false cure, a false state. Wanting to get away from that is good. Wanting what is healthy to want is good. Wanting too much can render you
dissipated. Trying to control too much
is the false path.
1712.
Do you often want to just
wait and publish nothing until it all makes more sense to you, what is right
and what is wrong?
Yes, I often also want to quit writing quanta and just bask in
a good mood or a peaceful state. It may
be that the writing is however what makes the state of peace arrive, so one
can't quit writing completely. Gradually
I think I am feeling better and becoming a better person, which is all I can
ask for. Certainty just isn't here yet,
all the time.
1713.
Does popular music usually
take its power also from a strong state of emotional desire, like sexual
arousal or a desire to be acknowledged, and therefore obliterate the subtler
aesthetic sense?
I think that is fair to say.
I got to a very basic understanding of this in "A Word to the
Ignorant," which I wrote at Binghamton in 1993. Drama is generally based on sexual
separation; the urge to re-connect is the tuck that spins the skater in that genre. It's a strong factor.
1714.
Must one go through a lot
of avoidance of popular music to get past the discomfort and jealousy to
appreciating the rhythms and contentment of, say, nature?
I think so. Many people
cannot take any pleasure at all in the green, white, and blue concert of trees,
sky, and clouds. I think Frost's poem
"The Cow in Apple Time" sums up the dangers of intoxication, and not
only from chemicals. Emotional states
are chemical states too. Popular music
is a drug.
1715.
Is also the closed, controlled
nature of medieval fundamentalism a great flaw?
Anytime you give people control over others for any reason you
create the risk of corruption, of the abuse of that power. Clearly, some societies take the risk of
stifling evolution because they want order and unity. I dislike a society that would stone
fornicators in the street, because that is simply barbaric and
animalistic. The truly righteous will
take no heed of another's venal sins.
It's no good to make the priests the jailers too.
1716.
Wouldn't that one book of
Plato from the Modern Library, which you have
but haven't read, discuss all these
topics and more, better?
Some topics it doesn't cover, by definition. It's a great book however, and remember
"I come not to destroy but to fulfill"--the true artist comes not to
destroy tradition but to rescue its meaning into the present and hence keep an
old language alive. Every artist is like
a Rosetta stone. That is the sense in
which G2K rescues the past.
1717.
Are individuals obligated
to do what institutions cannot do?
I think if you can do a thing, you are responsible for doing it
or not doing it. It's your
accountability. Institutions are often
bound by the powers granted to them on certain conditions. Universities for example have obligations they
have to consider, and to pursue G2K is to neglect their obligations. Thus G2K falls to individuals, private
persons, to formulate and incarnate. The
schools can't.
1718.
Do you get a lot of
internal conflict about revealing things about G2K that would be exploitative
of others?
I get worried a lot. I'm
very concerned about discussing things that other people have done or said
regarding G2K. As I've noted, it's
unclear to me how solid my releases are for the Video. I also get very hesitant to recount
conversations about G2K I've had with someone.
There are problems as to whether there were expectations on the other
person's part that I'm not going to live up to now.
1719.
Is there still a very large
number of quanta left to write?
Yes there is, and I'm getting a little concerned about what
I've forgotten or misrepresented. As
I've said, it's not clear to me whether it is good or evil to talk about some
of the things other people have told me they think G2K is about. There's an intriguing quality to those
comments but my political dishonesty makes them off-limits now. I lied to get the interviews.
1720.
Is it OK now to stop lying
as to neoconservatism, and therefore to give up the access to willing creative
participants?
I'm resolved to give up the manipulative lying I used to get
people to "comment on G2K." I
made it appear as if they were advancing a left-liberal political push, when in
fact my goal was to undermine Chomsky and Nader as profoundly as possible. Hence I got people's comments on false pretenses--I
lied. This makes me culpable and now
prohibited from using the intellectual and intelligent things they said, for
now. Everyone has to re-examine the new
principles of G2K before I can in good faith accept their contributions
again. People need to understand that
G2K is culturally, politically, and economically neoconservative. If they still then want to comment again,
that's fine. Yet I can't write about it
now. G2K is "going public" if
you will, opening up the books to investors, going through a "quiet
period" wherein I can't mention specific people.
1721.
Do you have an old Tadao
Ando print from 1983, from the exhibition he (or she) held at AXIS gallery in
Yes, I've had that since 1995.
I think I found it in the garbage or at a garage sale in
1722.
Would it be OK to state the
names of people you studied with in college and graduate school?
I don't know if that's considered honorable or not. Of course I've stated some already. I liked a lot of my professors and would like
to say thanks to them, but am not sure if that would be exploitative or
dishonorable. Professors can be very
generous and kind however, discussing what they know. I guess they have the right to be left alone
by me is my view now.
1723.
How about if, after
publishing this on the web for free, people still contact you about wanting to
comment on G2K, reconnecting and/or resuming contact?
That seems the decenter thing to do. I need to get clean with myself about all the
extortion and coercive tactics I used to use to corner people about G2K. I did some very unpleasant things to people
that I thought deserved it and that I thought needed to be done. For now, for this book, the rule is not to
name names. To try to clean up.
1724.
What's left of G2K if the
controversy is gone, the attacking?
Hopefully the aesthetic integrity of it will be left. By demeaning myself so thoroughly in this
book, and permanently excluding myself from any artworld or academic mystique,
I free myself to talk about G2K and create G2K works such as videos, DVD's,
essays, and watercolors and ceramics. My
artistic conscience will be clear and my political too. Eventually, perhaps only clear by 2018 or so.
1725.
Is Noam Chomsky a rogue
state?
Yes, I think he's a reckless and irresponsible, unthinking, and
selfish entity with political ramifications.
He is kind of a conglomerate of sorts, a spatial congregation of people
around his books, notoriety, and website.
I think Chomsky has created a territory of activity called
"Chomskyland" that does not face up to its own aesthetic mediocrity
and hypocrisy. He flouts the basic rules
of historical aesthetic law, and damages the future.
1726.
Is it still true that
corporations and the government cannot save the world?
They are necessary but not sufficient conditions to save the
world. Aesthetic evolution is beyond the
capacity of the fiscal-military institutions of twenty-first century capitalism
to incarnate. What they can do and are
doing very well is take measures to prevent competitors from getting close
enough to make a full-scale power grab by violent means. Individual artists and providence, or the
divine, natural phenomenon of soul-making, has to do the rest. This is what Martin Luther King meant when he
said peace is not just the absence of war.
1727.
Does Stefan Possony also
mention "the arts of peace" in The
Strategy of Technology?
Yes, the ideas that the cultural arts of peace are also at work
alongside, and not against per se, the capacity to make war. The arts of peace have to be utilized and
exerted along with the arts of war for the best outcome.
1728.
Is it also honorable and
decent to talk about artists and writers who have placed their work in public,
for the public to consider and react to, freely?
Yes, it is good and decent to talk and write, within decent
limits, about Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground, Thomas Bernhard's Woodcutters, Knud Hamsun's Hunger,
Herodotus' The History, Max Frisch's I'm Not Schiller, and Phillip Larkin's
poetry. One can of course also put
forward and discuss one's own work, also within limits of decency.
1729.
What about what F. Scott
Fitzgerald said, about being a "taker-outer," and being a
professional, to "know when to write, and when to stop writing"?
At times I feel I lack the decorum and propriety of the old
greats. Yet I also struggle with the
monstrous internet as an historical concomitant. One could say that the conditions have
altered somewhat for the writing of aesthetic words. Possibly.
Yet I still have guilt, yes.
1730.
Isn't it OK for people to
be healthy, or get healthy, and create beautiful imaginary landscapes of art to
move in and enjoy?
I think when people really get calm, and really get into the
deep aesthetic mystery of being alive, they are doing something incredibly
valuable and deserve to set aside some of the other seemingly more urgent tasks
of life. We can't bring back our deep
aesthetic experience from itself like a photograph and give it to someone else,
transferably. It's
non-transferable. It's like eating a
meal. The purpose in life is to live
your own life, not to control someone else's.
Therefore I may be ignoring my own aesthetic life in my exaggerated
concern for controlling other people's aesthetic lives. Maybe I should take up the art of the
traditional novel, with characters, plot, and setting. That kind of art that I mock and dismiss is
really the real art of the community.
People can give themselves to an aesthetic experience like sex or a novel
with no loss of dignity. I'm mistaken.
1731.
Is it a fundamental error
of G2K in denying that there are two
kinds of geniuses, the kind that create beauty and the kind that contemplate
it?
I have a quasi-Marxist critique of the division of labor
implicit in G2K. As I stated in Literary Change, my argument has been
that "you can't divide up the world into readers and writers." In reality of course you can; some write and
others only read. Some write published
books, and some read them. My argument
was that God is accessible to all, directly, through their own contemplation,
nature and the Word of God much as Luther said.
I thought these were valid comparisons.
It may be that I took this logic too far, and expected that everyone
could or should stop using novels and novelistic films, that entire heroic
mechanics of art. I still have got that
idea like a giant blob in my mind.
Better articulated, I should say that in addition to novels there may be
non-novelistic writing that actually makes life itself more novelistic.
1732.
Is it also clearly possible
that the entire proposition of G2K is erroneous and flawed?
Completely possible, even probable. It is improbable that it would be rejected by
virtually all those who come into contact with it if it were any good. I place G2K out there not as something to be
liked, enjoyed, or trusted, but as a highly improbable hypothesis. The idea would be, that you could go ask your
friend "what do you think about G2K?" and a good result would follow,
an aesthetically evolving one.
1733.
Do you have a terribly
tight cramp or crick in your right shoulder blade region, trailing up into the
back of your neck?
Yes I do. It hurts. It has been bothering me for many days. I wish that I created great poetry instead of
this gimmicky nonsense about quanta, right and wrong, guilt, objects,
processes, saving people, et cetera.
It's intolerable. If this can
just prove once and for all that G2K is pure crap I'll be grateful.
1734.
Might you be getting tired
and grouchy from having written already for many hours today?
I'm sure I've lost enthusiasm partly for that reason. Also it is inevitable when one really takes a
deep look at what G2K is--just an obsessively repeated name or label for a mess
of incoherent babble. I try to enliven
it by pedantry, polemics, or self-denigration but it's actually a bad waste of
time. It's not art, industry, or piety.
1735.
To guide and nurture the
evolving souls of humans, is it necessary both to leave them alone sometimes
and also to use the genres of custom and tradition?
Fables, myths, stories, plays, farces, novels, songs, and poems
are the real substance of sharing among people.
Excessive logical analysis is neither logical nor analysis. It's like Milton said, a "rank
mist." Good writing should be almost
doggerel, almost kitsch, but not quite.
Being the analytical anti-hero is just self-mutilation.
1736.
Is it better then to stop
with quanta and other crapulence and make traditional works in the conventional
genres?
One might as well complain about the use of sounds and letters,
and punctuation, as about the novel form.
All the great minds of history from Shakespeare to Faulkner, Aeschylus
to Frost, accepted the need for the aesthetic whole, the claritas, the genre.
1737.
What if G2K, like
conceptual art, makes life itself the genre and gives it aesthetic coherence
and beauty, radiance, claritas?
That would tie G2K to ideas of religion and God. If G2K is just my word for God, and I'm
trying to say "God will give you aesthetic evolution," and I'm using
aesthetic means to communicate that argument or reflect it, that would be
consistent. Yet it would also commit me
to claiming I'm a prophet and not really an artist in the conventional sense at
all. I'd rather be called a guru or a
poet-priest than a prophet. Yet that's
the aesthetic corner I've painted myself into.
1738.
Aren't God and the word for
God practically the same thing?
Yes, they are like the word and the sound of the word. The name of God is closely linked to the
divine itself. This is a scientific neuro-phenomenological
concept of God. You could say that all
we have of God is our providentially granted faculty for experiencing God plus
our volitional usage of that faculty. All
we have is the Word of God. Or,
"C'est une pipe."
1739.
If G2K can overthrow all of
Surrealism and Dadaism and everything, doesn't it deserve acclaim and affection
from academia?
Not really, academia doesn't have the courage or honor to
acknowledge G2K so I have the obligation to keep it going myself. One cannot deserve something from someone
that isn't theirs to give. The most you
can say is that academia promises some things it cannot deliver, by
definition. By promising them and not
delivering it does its best to call for their lack to be compensated by
individual creators.
1740.
Does the schmaltzy music in
this coffee shop debase and anger you?
Yes, I'd forgotten how irritating the emotionally exploitive
music in coffee shops can be. I know
that the proper word is "exploitative" but I like to mis-use the word
the other way. My apartment is too hot
for comfort today and I get claustrophobic in there day in and day out. Here at least I can conquer my fear of being
out and about. Certainly I wonder often if
I'd like to take all mildly unpleasant facts out of this book. There would not need to be any reasons about
the coffee shop, or why I dislike the emotional pleading of the song "I
love you, I'm sad, please give me what I want, I'll sing it
demonstratively." Some people will
say I'm emotionally repressed and deformed.
Maybe it would be better if I covered over all the self-abasing
comments. Also self-revealing implies
workplace insecurity.
1741.
After all is said and done,
doesn't it really just make most sense to leave it all in, even the explicit
leaving-out, and release it all on the web for lack of a better alternative?
I think that's the only plan.
I'll be much better off anyway if people think I'm an impotent,
defective loser anyway. I don't need to
go into all the misprisions of my youth and drinking days. Clearly I did some harsh things as a heavy
boozer. If I get fired for publishing an
internet book about being an alkie abuse victim, so be it. It's the truth. If I get fired so be it. If anyone tries to pick on me, I'll ignore
it, or ask them to please quit. There's no
danger. I thought yesterday there's a
need for triumphalism, not excessive but just right. Just a little. Well, some at least just for myself and for
balance. Much of this book has been
about fear and self-scrutiny.
1742.
Don't modern physics,
biology, and economics indicate a reality in art that is closer to a
traditional monotheistic God than to secular artistic heroism?
Yes, I think it does. I
think that antiquity was partly about heroism and only indirectly about
monotheism. Classical Greece and Rome
started off pagan then grew toward monotheism, eventually combining heroism and
monotheism in Christianity, which ruled after them.
1743.
Is it OK to talk about
religion?
I guess I can't stop people from talking badly about religion
or about anything. Yet religion does
come down to heroism and monotheism. The
many and the one. These are always in a
tension. Yet the mechanistic view of
objects is just wrong. Everything occurs
in a sticky, stretchy fabric of space and time.
Empty space, empty time do not exist.
The very first day in the universe is still embedded in today.
1744.
In reading the Droz book,
is it clear that times were tough in early industrialization?
Yes they were. Yet I
don't think Marxism necessarily helped.
It said that the collapse of capitalism was scientifically
inevitable. In fact this is wrong. Communism is just very high-tax,
high-regulation capitalism. It's a joke. Yet many people need to be walked through it
if they are to get over anti-capitalism.
1745.
Wouldn't it be better just
to leave well enough alone, because of the negative introspection of this book?
I can't decide. I drink
caffeine to get myself cranked up to write, just a little iced tea but
still. My quiet calm lakewater surface
is something I don't always attend to. I
still scramble about things. I don't
want to get excessive about making myself look bad. If other people want to start rehabilitating
me in 2018, that's their choice.
1746.
Would you like the rest of
this book to be a summation of main ideas?
It would be nice to foresee the end of the book and start to
sum up. I only have one-eighth left to
go. Partly I just want to get it over
with. Yet my obligation is to try to
make the case. The summation would be,
to support neoconservatism for global order and advocate in one's practice
aesthetic evolution. Yet this is so
vague and general as to mean nothing.
1747.
What about the fact that
after doing great amounts of G2K or Zen there is still no product, no
accomplishment, no progress?
There's no product but one's aesthetic capacity improves and
evolves. This is the essence of all
truly wholesome progress. One realizes
that there were real, urgent reasons for the property qualification to the
franchise in Restoration France. There
are two sides to everything, yet despite that sometimes an obligation to choose
a course, to decide. Maybe I can neither
sum up nor claim a product.
1748.
Isn't it most accurate and
fair to say you have no certainty at all whether G2K is a good thing, or
artistic, at all?
Honestly that is true.
I'm not confident that G2K is a good, useful, or workable aesthetic
theory, and I'm not sure if I've articulated it well or rightly. I wish I could be less risky and experimental,
but I feel the civilian artist is obligated to.
I'd like not to put anything on the web that might embarrass me at
work. But I don't see a choice.
1749.
Is the summation that G2K
is a hypothesis about aesthetics and society?
Yes I think that's really the final end product. G2K is a hypothetical model of how aesthetic
evolution works and how best to do it.
It's just a guess, with some logic and facts of uncertain accuracy to
back it up. I used to try to coerce the
art world, the intellectual realm of society, what in the eighteenth century
they called "The World," into accepting the hypothesis as true and to
go by it. Now I want obscurity, minimum
exposure.
1750.
Isn't what you really want
just to be a cool guy, with friends, buddies, dating, a nice car and good
income, a sexy girlfriend, good health, and all those things; and won't
publishing this make those goals impossible?
I guess it comes down to what I really want. What I want is to be cool, liked, attractive
to and successful with women, affluent, socially respected, fulfilled, healthy,
and care-free. This book, if published,
will insure that G2K never helps me get social, sexual, or financial
success. It comes down to forcing
things. I can't explain it really. What I want is to be healthy and happy, I
want the things that feel good, but I also want above all a clear conscience. If you can see, really see, like the moves on
a chessboard, that G2K will work for the good of the polis, one's polis, one
cannot resist doing it--even if there are no rewards. I can't explain this dynamic. I think it's in human genetics.
1751.
Do you accept the basic
idea that the hero is the experimental individual, who innovates and initiates
but also threatens the polis and is therefore obligated?
I think there has to be some degree of risk and risk-avoidance
in any complex populated system. The
hero or artist takes an experimental step of unknown results. The polis reserves the right to dispense a
verdict on the results. The hero or
prophet can't keep silent but is driven by "fumos," a fume or mist of
divine consciousness "breathed in" or "inspired." That's basically me. I'm possessed or controlled by something
that's taken control of my logic and perceptions. Still, to talk about aesthetics and religion
means you are talking about topics that have great institutions and power built
up around them. You're encroaching on
the territory of the galleries, academia, the church, and the state. You're putting yourself at risk. Thus one cannot get out of it. It's just the risk of being a living being.
1752.
Is the goal of G2K not to
give people a static consumable, like a fetish, idol, or VR fantasy world, but
to get them to think for themselves
the G2K way?
Yes, that's my goal.
It's largely a guiding, requesting, or didactic project. I'm trying to get liberals to support the
O.S.O. and give up their dogmas. I am
trying to create a peace between art and religion, bridging science and
politics. I have a lot of goals. I'd also like it to be entertaining. Yet if you're in college, your professors
won't like G2K.
1753.
If you introduce an
experimental aesthetic framework, won't you exacerbate the Second Cold War?
I think the war has an ideological component that has to be
won, decided one way or the other, as much as it has an economic-military and
political side. The collision of
intellect and belief, science and myth, is at the core of global unrest. The querelle is at the core of it. Hence this querelle can be submerged or
struggled through, at the discretion of all, but it's intrinsic.
1754.
Do you sort of hope that
G2K can be accepted by some small group of people somewhere, decent people not
parasitic flatterers, in the near future so you can date and be liked?
I would love to go to school somewhere and get my PhD in
English, or bioinformatics, or something related to Internet Branding and date,
be a good person. I've been frustrated
in dating because people (women) treat me like a desperate washout for not
having gotten famous yet. This brings me
rejection or charity, not healthy dating.
1755.
Is it best not to seek any
wealth or recognition from G2K, and just to keep it out there as a placeholder,
a stand-in?
I think what is most difficult about serving the cause of
aesthetic evolution is that you cannot depend on personally benefiting because
you don't know if you're right or if the model will work for others. Generally it's not politically safe to raise
someone up as a great genius because they might "go bad." Thus kitsch is proliferated and true
experimentation gets driven by loners with "no choice in the
matter."
1756.
Is your main primary goal
for this book to take your share of G2K, the share you can still redefine, and
move it out of supporting left-liberals like Nader and Chomsky toward support
for neoconservatism?
Actually that is greatly my dear wish. I can't make people be decent, especially not
left-liberals like Chomsky. But I can
try, at least, to take myself off the list of their supporters. This can't be done just by saying it. You have to take action against them,
propaganda-wise.
1757.
Was G2K formerly involved
in a lot of propaganda for Nader and Chomsky?
Yes, I touted them as the great models of political leadership
toward and under aesthetic evolution.
After all, one would think that if aesthetic evolution makes people
better it will stop war and pollution.
Hence to an inferior mind Chomsky and Nader would deserve power. Yet this puts the cart before the horse. I wanted to destroy the liberal left from
within, by reductio ad absurdum and secret poisoning, but now I want out
publicly.
1758.
Is the end-product or
accomplishment of G2K merely to do it over again in yourself, again in the next
quantum and the next day?
Yes, there's no escape from the recurrence. I'll have to wake up tomorrow and live, just
like I had to wake up today. G2K doesn't
end or finalize anything. It doesn't
make the process end and freeze in a consumable. That would be false overcoming. Real overcoming never ends, never
completes. That's why one gets such
feelings of frustration. Let them glide
away.
1759.
Can you be happy if you
forswear marriage and riches, fame, social adulation?
I am staking my whole economics of the aesthetic on that
premise. If it's wrong, I'm wrong. The premise of G2K is that you don't need to
be a sexy or famous person to experience the highest levels of peace and
fulfillment. If you do, there can never
be peace for the plain or homely like myself.
It's OK however to let the sexy people and rich people go their
way. Fighting them is too risky, they
serve a purpose, and calm saves energy.
1760.
At some point will the
sex-seekers lose their looks, and then come over to G2K?
Everyone gets ugly sooner or later. Even the sexiest women will be ordinary or
ugly within ten or twenty years. It's a
fleeting time and very difficult to disagree with in its height. Yet everyone else, the plain or celibate like
me whose difficulties or unattractiveness cause them to lack access to the
gorgeous, we need to try to keep our dignity and mental health. To a degree we need to accept that we won't
be having sex with gorgeous celebrities or other fantastic beauties. It's better for us if we can let go of this
compulsive craving. Sure, it feels like
we're accepting a degraded or inferior state of being. But that's really just the hormones attacking
us. If we refuse to give them our urgent
attention, they subside. Hence it is
important to accept more modest goals in sexual desire, and if possible,
celibacy. I know this is not going to
make me seem like a very typical American Guy but it's my working theory.
1761.
Wouldn't it be nice just to
do this book to get it out of your system, take a lot of notes and prove to
yourself you can work hard, then not publish it and write a good one?
I get confused about complexity. For example, in the Droz book it shows how
power got set up and negotiated in Restoration France. The workers had very bad conditions and often
rioted. Various other groups tried to
set up governments that kept collapsing.
I think they wanted the U.S. to be a fresh start, with so much resources
that the strangling back-and-forth could be avoided--everything could be
started from better, more rational, less constrained and hence more freely
chosen principles. Clearly the U.S. had
its harsh working conditions as well. In
any event, we may not see vastly improved working conditions in this
century. New wars and other upheavals
may keep improvements to a minimum. It's
difficult to say. They could also
improve a lot if everyone joined the same rational religion.
1762.
Didn't Feuerbach say the
same thing as Tillich, that monotheism is the intentional alienation of
humanity's best nature from itself?
He did say that, as quoted by Droz. If that's true, then Art as monotheism is
also extreme alienation of the best. Yet
it could also be that because Art is a process, not a static state or object,
our actual contemplation of it in static form is from a distance, alienated,
ineffable.
1763.
Does global liberal
democracy have a sufficient motivation to alleviate poverty?
I think it does. People
in poverty are liable to become terrorists and are unable to buy anything. Not everyone can be made wealthy or well-off
at once. Rich people need to be overpaid
to get their co-operation, because that's what makes them tick. As people are made well-off gradually and
unequally, non-simultaneously, measures must be taken--guns and walls--to
protect the richer from the poorer. If
the confidence of the poor can be gained, that is the best case.
1764.
Does Zen also need to have
added to it a desire for progress, an active urge, a creative, positive
impulse?
G2K makes no sense if all that is needed is for everyone to
practice Zen. In a sense, you might say
Zen is a static or defensive position.
Balance is necessary but because of entropy, active creative patterning
is also needed. This is difficult to
resolve. It may be that creative
expression or goal-seeking is all maya.
It may also be moyo, great dreaming, great revelation.
1765.
Is it difficult to
reconcile Zen and Greek tragedy?
Very difficult. Greek
tragedy looks at passionate heroism interacting with a processing polis or database. It is experimental and somewhat chaotic--it's
dramatic. Zen does not call for
imaginative flights of fancy. It appears
on the surface to discourage dreams, fantasies, and desire. I think these two inclinations are battling
within G2K, as Blake said, peace and tumult.
1766.
Ultimately is all this
experimental at best, reckless at worst, certainly not to reveal its long-term
value in the short term, and urgent only because you're thirty-five?
I couldn't have asked a better question. Of course G2K is completely hypothetical and
imaginary. There is no way to predict
how things will go, or to know for sure how they should go. This is a hypothesis of cloudy value. I simply can't drop it in the garbage though;
it is compelling to me. I'm thirty-five
and if I don't publish it now I'm de facto saying it's crap, which I don't
think it is. Cognitive dissonance.
1767.
Is G2K the principle of
cognitive resonance?
I think it is roughly described that way to a degree of
accuracy. I can't say for sure. I get cognitive dissonance when I don't talk
about G2K, or when I try to reduce to oversimplification, or lie about it. So, for me, to have cognitive resonance means
to try to do G2K the best I can.
1768.
Would a lot of
left-liberals you've met like to jump the gun on G2K, on aesthetic evolution,
and attempt false overcoming?
Almost all the left-liberals I've met, online and off, but
especially in the academy, attempt false G2K every day. It's a gigantic industry. The academy is designed to mass-produce false
G2K. Hollywood at least would admit its
goal is to make money and nothing else.
Left-liberals wouldn't be left-liberals, wouldn't advocate weakening the
U.S., if they understood true G2K.
1769.
Do you need or feel you
need to release this book at great abasement to yourself to retract all G2K
support of left-liberalism?
I don't wish to go back on all the lists and beat up the
left-liberals directly. They serve a
greatly necessary purpose in the great scheme of life and I don't want to
disrupt the ecosystem. I just want to
articulate why I don't agree. I mean, I
want to mop them up--intensely--but I'm too big.
1770.
Do you have the courage and
stamina to work your entire life from now on as a computer programmer, with no
acclaim for G2K?
I can only answer that after many years have gone by. Currently I am convinced that G2K is neither
good enough for mass success nor deserving of reward. For now, I accept that there is no acclaim,
no awards, no money, no lionization, no prestige. I also accept that I can't force the success
because true success has to be freely given by the polis--if you steal it it's
not success but extortion. Logically I
cannot see any success-granting entity willing to give me success. I also do not care to appeal to the ignorant,
vulgar masses because they are degraded and disreputable. (I used to fake that I would go straight to
the masses, so as to oust the artworld-rulers as a demagogue would and use the
expropriated prestige to amuse the masses and cure all sin.) Hence all I can do is forget about
success. All the plotting for success
drains me; I'd rather have a day job.
1771.
Even though you've given up
on real success for G2K, aren't you still obligated to keep it online so as to
prevent anyone from trying to usurp a power vacuum?
Yes, now I'll just be sitting at the top of Mount Olympus like
a gargoyle. There's no need to promote
anyone, much less my flatterers of the past, and no need to condemn
anyone. Under the O.S.O. basic progress
in science and culture will be more than enough to bring world order and
continue aesthetic evolution. Clearly
climate change, poverty, and the war on terror will be very difficult. But the progress toward aesthetic evolution
will continue, probably. On the other
hand, there is some risk that left-liberals will destroy the O.S.O. and I don't
want to be guilty of helping them. Also,
there are slim but extant chances for great syncretic evolutionary advances
under aesthetic principles like G2K which could even have a capacity to assist
the O.S.O. And that is my obligation,
why I have to keep G2K going.
1772.
Does virtually every art,
science, and discipline have relevance to G2K?
Yes, they all do. They
all have to do with the one vis-à-vis the many, cycles, physiology, economics,
experimentation, law, conflict, and limit-theory. I have found interesting examples of G2K
principles in every discipline. For,
example, the Cancer and Skin jpegs on my site are meant to reflect false
overcoming, false G2K, and true G2K.
1773.
Do you wish you could just
go back into the public realm and hammer people again?
I do wish for that and I feel that is the right thing to
do. However, because of my massive
mistakes in supporting Nader and Chomsky I have to resign the role of scourge I
think. I may go back to fighting people
in public again, fighting the terrible and terribly bad artists choking the
waterways of genius like rancid seaweed.
Yet for now I have chosen, quite arbitrarily, to be totally obscure and
unsuccessful, uninvolved.
1774.
Does capitalist democracy
now have enough wealth and security to have an interest in protecting the poor?
Yes, I think it is now more costly to global capitalism to have
a lot of poor than it is to give them a better life. Security concerns are still paramount however
because one cannot give wealth to those who will use it to make war against
you. Yet poverty like that of 1830 is
not in capitalism's interest, and capitalism has plenty of mechanisms and
desire to reduce poverty. Socialism is
neither required nor worth fighting for, now.
1775.
Do you wish you had not
mentioned anything negative about yourself or anyone else in here so far?
Yes, because now I know I have to publish on the internet for
free. I'd thought before I might be able
to publish this for money and wanted to make it simultaneously more gritty and
more self-abasing--to show that I'm humble now, to act humble, and to give
strength to the polis that I need in order to become the next Shakespeare.
1776.
Can you leave in the mild
negativity and mild self-abasement as instruction?
We all sin and make mistakes.
The bad things I said earlier prove that I'm not a very good person, and
they also serve to make me unattractive to flatterers. It shows that I come from a very demagogic,
chaotic reality. I am basically a
recovering demagogue. I feel badly about
mentioning certain things, but at the time I felt there were certain negative
things that couldn't be ignored completely.
1777.
Is it partly the desire to
make everything all right and have a perfect life that makes G2K so
unattractive, and so daunting?
I have a compulsive desire to make other people happy. To gratify this urge, I will do practically
anything, and will certainly lie to cover up a problem. I used to lie a lot to cover up problems with
Chomsky. Now all that lying has given me
massive cognitive dissonance. G2K seems
good and right, to me anyway, but there's no payoff in it. That makes me frustrated and feel guilty
about straying.
1778.
When one diverges from
accepted doctrine, only to see no payoff or acclaim, do you feel resentful you've
wasted your time and guilty for having rejected conventional wisdom?
At least I do. I get to
the point where I realize G2K won't bring any tangible success ever, and think
"I'm a sinner for having betrayed family, religion, country." It's aesthetically correct from my point of
view but the whoremasters and drug dealers get all the money and acclaim. That's life.
1779.
Is it OK to take comfort in
the fact that you've set the course for the twenty-first century?
I feel guilty about G2K, I don't feel proud. I don't feel content, at peace, secure,
anything. My only salvation is to ignore
questions in my head about whether G2K is any good. G2K is just a question with no answer as yet,
just hanging there. It may never get
taken up by the polis and addressed. I'm
precluded from self-promotion, but obligated to set the book out.
1780.
Is there truly no escape
from doing G2K for the rest of your life, with no reward?
The reward is knowing I obeyed my conscience. I cannot accept any reward; the comparison is
to Napoleon refusing to be crowned Emperor at all. Clearly it's embarassing to me and damaging
to my career hopes in the artworld to keep doing G2K. Yet there is no escape. There's no escape from being alive
either. There's no escape from God. G2K means "living according to
God." Not really, well sort of
really. It's complicated to try to do
G2K. I'd like to just give up on art
because I can't draw or write well and I can't seduce people, I can't sell
myself. My greatest urges now are not to
publish this on the internet. Yet I know
it would benefit G2K. It would mortify
Max Herman and my own cravings for glory completely. Everyone would think I'm an idiot or
insane. Factually I'm not at all insane,
I just can't rout my critics because it would create disorder.
1781.
Isn't it possibly
ridiculous to try to do G2K, and unpleasant into the bargain?
I've heard it said that people who become artists do so because
they can't help it. They can't sleep at
night if they don't do the art. I think
I may have that. It's either that or a martyr complex. A martyr complex is OK if you martyr yourself
ignominiously and don't inspire anyone to copy you and cause havoc in the
polis. In any case, my work on G2K is
just a hypothesis I try to articulate because I think it may be correct. The idea would be that rock music is no good
because it involves idolatry or hollow bombast.
The rock musician would be analogous to a demagogue, taking authority
away from good art, real art, and taking it for himself or herself. Then again, maybe rock music is a great and
wonderful folk movement. I guess I have
no confidence at all on this. As usual,
after a time I lose my hope in G2K completely and collapse.
1782.
What if you could just stop
caring about all these dilemmas completely?
I guess that might make sense.
Zen patience and breathing. I
could just stop trying to convert the world to G2K. I could just let the world go forward and
onward with no G2K at all. They could
just go by capitalism, Fluxus, Zen, and all the other wonderful elements of
culture. Christianity, Judaism, Islam,
Hinduism.
1783.
Haven't all the other great
writers out there already done everything of value in G2K, like Thomas Pynchon?
I couldn't say, because I've never read any Pynchon. Perhaps there is nothing new at all about
G2K. It's just my craving for
attention. How can one answer that
question? One can't just go and ask a
teacher or a parent, as they say. I do
know that I lose faith in G2K, because it hasn't worked and will not work for
me, or give me the standard measures of success, making it a waste of time.
1784.
Unfortunately, does it just
make you feel insane to think about quitting G2K?
It does make me panic. I
can't say why that is. Even just
stopping writing for a while makes me panic.
I guess my whole life is invested in G2K being right. If it's not right, I wouldn't care, but I
just want to know if it is right or wrong.
Maybe the answer is that because I don't know yet if it's right or
wrong, I'm obligated to keep going.
1785.
Could that be the final
great summation of all of G2K, that because I don't yet know if G2K is right or wrong, I have to keep on with it?
I
think yes. I can't quit because I think
there is a reasonable chance G2K is right and will work. I can't quit yet, I can't quit until I know
for sure it won't work or can't work.
Little setbacks and trivial criticism do not prove G2K is wrong. Therefore I'm obligated to keep doing G2K,
even though it hasn't worked yet. I'm
still learning about how to do G2K.
1786.
Is every type of political,
scientific, and economic rearrangement insignificant without aesthetic
evolution?
Yes, they are all dependent on aesthetic capabilities and
stability for operation. As Carlyle
said, the law is in us, not on the paper--it's aesthetic. Politics require aesthetic perception of the
good. Economically, people buy what they
desire aesthetically. It's OK to take
one's lifetime to work on aesthetic problems and leave the other disciplines in
a stable stasis.
1787.
Is this book therefore
really just a prolegomena, a statement of principles, and not a farewell in the
least respect?
Correct, I am cursed to doing G2K forever. I'm sorry I can't do it very well yet. But I'm cursed. I don't want to encroach on anyone's successes,
not the artworld and not the left-liberals.
They are both OK and good. I
don't want followers and I don't want success or prestige. I won't bother artists or liberals.
1788.
Can you even stop emailing
anyone about what's on your web site, or about the Conferences?
That's a great advantage I hadn't thought of. Now that pre-emptive war has been implemented
and accepted, I don't need to rally the liberals to war or shock the artworld
into accepting war. Therefore I don't
need any recognition from the artworld or academia at all. I don't need to fix them, trick them, or make
them like me.
1789.
Won't that be a great gift
if you could just stop self-promoting completely?
Yes, that is a great relief.
If I keep working on how to do G2K I gradually learn these things. I realize that I can keep working on G2K at a
gradual pace. I realize I don't have to
court opinion or publicity at all but can just set up the conference link each
July 4 and leave it at that. I don't
have to make people like me, or get a gorgeous girlfriend, or be feted in
Soho. I can just be obscure, outside.
1790.
Will it be wonderful to
start school again in the fall?
It will be glorious.
I'll have set forth my great apology and gotten free of my putrid
anarchist demagoguery. I'll be able to
go forth on a good life of getting a better job that will secure my retirement
and health insurance. I'll be able to
write, paint, and put them on my website.
I won't have to worry about public acclaim or committing sins to garner
acclaim. Mark Twain called it
"corn-pone opinions," and Marx called it the economic production of
ideas--I can sidestep them both. Marx
was horribly mistaken and irresponsible.
He thought it was cute to say "there is no such thing as G2K." I'm obligated to stop Marx, to discredit
Chomsky, for one simple reason--that I can.
You're only obligated to do what you're capable of. Sure I've said some embarrassing things about
myself and made myself unappealing, even repugnant. But that's OK. I don't need fame.
1791.
Will science and art and
human goodness advance aesthetic evolution even if G2K flops utterly?
Yes they will, and that is the wonderful beauty of it. Aesthetic evolution is what people do,
naturally, when the escape-routes of false overcoming are blocked. It's like a tub filling with water once you
put in the stopper. Fluxus, Beuys, the
science of Zen, string theory, and the economic imperatives of tolerance and
syncretism will lead artists to discover the new dimension of art, i.e. its
incarnation. This will go rather slowly
but that is OK. All the religious
leaders of conscience will seek out ways of decency and progress. It will be a great world around here in 2500
CE. I'm not obligated to rush the
process, or save it, or get credit for it.
All I'm obligated to do is keep G2K online until I die as a cipher, a
finger pointing to the moon, a placeholder, a hypothesis.
1792.
Were you just thinking just
now that Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" might be a
reply to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach"?
Who knows, I mean, yes I was.
They're both very short and laid out similarly; both consider religion
as it relates to historical awareness. I
was hoping Benjamin was trying to kick Marx's butt. Now I think maybe he wasn't, which saddens
me. Still, I think one could sort it
out.
1793.
Why did Benjamin want to overthrow
the ruling classes?
I guess he thought, like Marx, there could never be peace
between the ruling classes and the ruled classes so the rulers had to be
destroyed and replaced by total equality of authority. It's incomprehensible how they could believe
that but they did, and I bought into it too.
God I was a horrible sucker for that "smash the state"
hustle. I got hustled. Well, in any case, even in Communism there is
authority and law and decisions are made.
True art can be the basis for peace and goodwill among ruler and ruled.
1794.
So the whole rescuing
criticism element of Benjamin, all the messianic moments, that's all crap?
I guess so. I wanted to
think that the ruling class of academia and the artworld was evil and used
false genius, evil genius forms, to maintain control of the masses. Now I know that to be crap. I went with that nonsense for so long just
because it got me attention, or I thought it did. I never thought through the idea of
legitimate authority.
1795.
Did Benjamin maybe like Marx
not really wholeheartedly but because he was against Fascism?
It's hard to know but I think Benjamin feared Fascism
more. I guess he thought he could handle
Marxism. I think his "Theses"
was sort of a cut against Marx. I
suppose I should work it through to clarity.
Maybe it's the curse today has given me.
It's like a math problem.
Feuerbach said humanity was alienated from God by religion; Marx said
Feuerbach was too passive; Benjamin said revolution was religious.
1796.
Does Marx assume wrongly
that we can make ourselves and that religion is passive contemplation in his
"Theses on Feuerbach"?
Marx makes almost nothing but errors all down the line. He makes some vivid ones in the "Theses
on Feuerbach." He says that
"practical-critical" thinking or processes are also objects; not only
objects function as objects. I say the
reverse: not even objects function as objects.
I hate Marx.
1797.
Don't you just just jump
around from topic to topic, with no clear conclusions, no final product for the
reader?
That's true. I don't
resolve the Marx-Feuerbach-Benjamin issue, or the issue of political authority,
the question of anarchy, the O.S.O., or whether people should believe literally
in the Bible, or whether I should. I
often think I need to just stop complaining and convert to Christianity like
McLuhan and Eliot. My choices seem to be
that or blasphemy.
1798.
Is it blasphemy to say that
G2K is scientific Christianity?
I guess I don't know what is blasphemous or not. I'm tired but I try to keep plugging
ahead. I have very dark circles around
my eyes. I soar and crash all the
time. I'm scared. Earlier I felt committed to putting this on
the net. Yet it is heresy, to put it
mildly. I'm suggesting Christ was an
artist who perceived the humanizing principle in existence--God--and created a
message that would insure God would save humanity. Maybe that's blasphemy, maybe it isn't.
1799.
Is belief in God or Jesus
not the same as belief there is a fan in the corner?
For many people it is the same and that is OK. Even for me, I know it's the same--God
created the universe, and everything in it, and sent his only son Jesus Christ
to save humanity from our sins. Now, I
could also say that is just a story, like a fairy tale or the tale of the
Easter Bunny. Yet that would be wrong,
and a trivialization.
1800.
Is it permissible for you
not to be a Christian, yet to talk about Christianity and compare G2K to the
message of Christ?
I think that's permissible.
I get scared so easily. I get
tired and scared and sad. I'm not an orthodox
Christian. I have a habit of praying
from treatment, please in the morning and thank you in the evening, but lately
I have been praying to G2K. I pray like
this: "Genius 2000, great principle of peace in the universe, great
balance and harmony, please help me to be a better person today. Help me be grateful and affectionate toward
my co-workers. Help me relax and become
a better person." I know that
sounds absurd but I can't answer any other way.
I believe all religions have a lot of good to them, and that most
anti-religious contemporary art is too arrogant and bloated, vain, shrill,
mediocre, and I want to protect religion.
I figure if I pray to G2K I'll be able to take it more decently, as a
more decent principle. Yet honestly, I
think I might be blaspheming.
1801.
Because it's impossible to
get all the religions just to suddenly merge, is it best to pursue tolerance
and let the distant future go where it will?
Without religious tolerance the modern world is doomed. Yet I can't understand how a Christian could
say of me "he's allright, he's a righteous man." I guess that doesn't need to happen. Liberals and secularists like me however have
to be tolerant of other religions and treat them with respect. If we don't there's no basis for global co-operation. Protestants and Catholics have to be tolerant
of each other as well. That's why my
sick dream of wanting all religions to combine in support or friendship of G2K
is a wrong move. G2K is just an
art-brand that says art should have more calmness (like Zen), more messianism
(like Christianity), more respect of the great artistic and spiritual-aesthetic
contributions and truths of all religions, and own up to its own corrupted
clergy, philistinism, idolatry, superstition, dogma, and prejudice.
1802.
Does Marx err in the
"Theses on Feuerbach" in saying that humans are constructed by social
relations?
Marx says in VI:
"But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single
individual. In its reality it is the
ensemble of social relations." Now,
this goes against Zen, which says that finding one's essence is an individual
connection to the Tao. I think Marx errs
or distorts by his phrasing. I don't
think humans are just our social
relations. There is also an individual
side; a legitimate one.
1803.
Has your G2K philosophy so
far been basically Benjaminian liberation theology, anti-religious,
anti-authority, and anti-U.S.?
Yes, I took that path. I
made the mistake partly in LC too, thinking art objects were superstitious and
communication or social activity was all that counted. I then tried to compensate for this with the
Rescuing Criticism idea from Benjamin.
It's been a string of bad mistakes.
I never really worked it through.
Yet to condemn a Frost poem because it's an object is crazy.
1804.
Is the Utopian goal of G2K
to have aesthetic beauty exist in the atmosphere, the full spectrum, and not to
depend on a static object?
My goal or Utopia is that we would realize the Universe and
time are a big aesthetic unity. Art
objects do not sit there in empty space or time. One cannot or should not confine art or
aesthetic evolution to a physical object, nor should one think that by ignoring
or smashing the object space is freed.
1805.
So is G2K not entirely
wrong or worthless about the object and the process?
It may not be entirely wrong but it's been hideously overstated
and poorly articulated so far. It's the
bare germ of an idea. The Video was just
propaganda marketing because I thought I could maybe make a lot of money or get
a fad started. The Video has a few
cliches in it and some kitschy setups.
It is not aesthetically or intellectually rigorous. It's the bare germ of an idea. I wish I did have that object-setting or
artifact-process problem articulated but I don't.
1806.
Is the preservation of artistic
authority analogous to the preservation of political authority?
Yes, that's fair to say.
The example of Sternlicht in Doctorow is an example of bad, ignorant
iconoclasm. So is the Taliban's act of
destroying the Buddhist statues. True
iconoclasm tries to evolve toward good authority, proper authority, and
whenever possible or preferable authority over oneself.
1807.
So what does the
prohibition of artifacts, of graven images, come down to in the end anyway?
It's a supremely aesthetic move, an epochal or
historical-periodic one. The old
multiplicity of pagan gods were outlawed in Judaism by the Second
Commandment. This set everything after
it along a course. This was akin to
Zen. I'm not yet able to explain it
clearly and often I despair of its value.
Fluxus, which I learned the name of in 1999 after already having created
G2K based on LC and my academic work, is also non-object.
1808.
So it's hard to determine
the proper relation of object to process?
"Process" is a weak word. "Sphere" or "field" is more
interesting. The spatial and temporal
fabric is what I want to get at, the "ground" as they say in
painting. There's an important feedback
mechanism of evolution between the two, between the fixed artifact and the
"life-world" as Habermas calls it. I think if we think of objects only, and not
the human life-space, all that humans are and do in addition to artifacts, we
end up with weak Newtonian maps.
1809.
Why do you forbid yourself
then to release your four-track music?
I think it's vulgar or easy and suffocating. I think it would make people like and trust
me more but I don't want to be liked and trusted. I want to get free of rock music, kitsch,
being popular, wanting to be popular, that entire stagnant realm. It takes a long, long period of not using
rock music to learn other ways and absorb them.
1810.
Isn't your forced avoidance
of artifacts actually a false overcoming, a false prophecy?
In part it is, exactly a repetition of Marx and Feuerbach's
mistakes. I try to keep respect and love
for good artifacts whose process-shaping is still good or healthy, whose
patterning influence is holy and righteous.
The Tempest compares artistic
illusion to a storm that disturbs, rearranges, instructs, and subsides. Shakespeare makes clear the necessary use of
plot or artifice to protect or restore proper authority rather than to
usurp i.e. upraise evil degraded authority.
One cannot say all plays, poems, sculptures are bad. But what of all the ones that are bad, mere cases of someone trying to
steal power out of degraded reptilian amygdalic lust, like Claudius did? Macbeth even showed how lust could take over
one's entire awareness and all one's faculties.
I could really try to make good artifacts. I know some artifacts are good, and some are
vulgar idols.
1811.
Are you afraid for your
life to become totally monotonous, losing your desire and effort to get famous,
get a great life?
I'm very afraid I'll regret it later after having missed my
chance to get famous. Also I fear
getting anhedonia and just giving up on life completely. I can't really fathom how complete a
commitment this book will be. It will
choke me like a noose. I'll have made
myself permanently unattractive to the artworld, the publishing world,
everything. Yet I feel obligated to do
it. I can't rationally explain the
feeling. It's intuitional as well, to a
great extent. I just think it's the only
way to go. I certainly fear losing my
job for mentioning unpleasant things most of all. I'm giving up all hope of an art career so I
feel the need for my day job more than ever.
Yet I will be giving my G2K ideas away for free for anyone to steal,
avoiding the sin of silence. It's the
only way I can see but it sure is sad to give up the dreams.
1812.
After you publish this,
will you change to small, organized essays?
Well, I'll go over to studying computer programming and being a
computer programmer. I still don't think
I can in good conscience quit doing conferences but I can make them extremely
mediocre. Actually, I can tell right now
I'll have to work hard at G2K as long as I live. Yet after this book I'll be taking it easy
and going back to school for computer programming.
1813.
Is it impossible to keep
wanting all the trappings of success?
I definitely get sad and miserable wanting the great life,
fame, success, affluence, dating. The
life of a monk is nothing to get elated over.
It's ignominious, anonymous. Yet
that's where I stand at the crossroads.
It's actually not even a choice anymore.
I'm a monk. I have a religion and
a god I pray to, and that's it, no elation, no hedonism. God help me from becoming depressed over it.
1814.
Will the ignominy of this
book, its obscurity and unpopularity, help make sure you can keep your job?
Yes, that will be a big plus.
All I ever wanted was that the real people, those decision-makers and
people of discernment, could find G2K on the web if they went looking for
it. All I had to do was make it
findable. If it got too popular that
would be a sin. All I needed to do was
make it extant and findable.
1815.
Would you take a teaching
job somewhere, or join a graduate program, or sell lots of DVD's on the web, or
join a gallery, if offered?
I don't think I could now that I'm taking the logic of this
book. I'd be sorely tempted by the hope
of free time, social prestige, wealth, and dating. Yet I need to keep disentangled from all of
that. It would be very unlikely that I
would be offered anything. But if I were
I think I would have to turn it down--even if the SFMOMA wanted to buy some
stuff. I'd refuse.
1816.
Are you now most eager to
get this done, and out on the internet?
Yes completely. It's
been a long road. I want to meditate,
forget, and start over. Start life over
again. Start G2K over again. It's difficult figuring out problems like the
relationship between the object and the field, the artifact-in-spacetime,
iconoclasm, Marx, Marx on Feuerbach, Tillich, rescuing.
1817.
If you publish this will
you truly have taken on the monk's life, the habit?
I think so. It will be
all over for craving acclaim and success, the bitch-goddess. That's a funny term. Everything will greatly devolve for me. I won't have to keep up with Modern Art
anymore because I'll be an outsider. I
can stop keeping up with things. I can
iron out the kinks and just spruce up the site now and then. I won't have to cater to anyone or make any
disgusting allegiances. I can just work,
work like a madman. I'm entering my
artistic prime and after getting this out and my new computer training, I can
really work on G2K.
1818.
Is another of the major
Marxist errors in G2K your acceptance of Habermas' claim that the Enlightenment
equated the property owner with the human-being-as-such?
Yes, I took the Marxist side there, contradicting my own
theories of enlightened consumerism and the deep aesthetic of value. I took a trip on the bandwagon. It's so sad, to consider now, how distorted I
was. That's the curse, that I have to
untangle it. The consumer of value
comparing to the human being as such, I accept that, that's OK.
1819.
So is it the weak development
of power that makes room for Marxist disruption?
Yes, Marxism attacked at the weak spots--the poverty and the
dislocation of industrial change. People
can want to buy justice and classlessness; destruction of commerce is not
required or desirable. Attempts to
weaken or destroy the market are not helpful.
Yet it seems they are the curse of transformation and its weakness. Again, I can't find the words. Talent=kung-an=money=value.
1820.
Are you somewhat shocked to
already be so close to the end?
Very little can shock me anymore, due to my drinking and
emotional repression, but I am a little surprised. I think for a great portion of this I thought
it likely I'd wise up and quit; also I was in despondence often over how
incoherent and corrupt G2K is--how inarticulate. I struggled and I strove against unbreakable
knots of lies mixed with logic. I've had
major caffeine problems, breathing problems, self-hate, self-contempt, guilt,
loneliness, and anger issues. I have so
many contradictory voices I'm trying to accept--"feel your anger,"
"let go of your anger," "be bold," "be cautious,"
"be just," "be irreverent."
I essentially bought into a lot of Marxist crap too, about toppling
aesthetic authority. The real answer is
to work and strive to improve the polis, respecting the rulers and the ruled
both, seeking to protect, help, and improve both. Objects are not evil, nor money, nor kings,
nor religion, nor schools.
1821.
Are you starting to feel a
percolation of "final topics" that you don't want to forget?
I definitely am. I
haven't been going back to re-read this, I haven't been typing as I go, yet I
can still sense the unresolved contradictions--"where the shoe
pinches" (Holub). I do know that
I'm very grateful that I can sit at this small desk and write, longhand, all
these quanta. I know that I've tried to
reconcile G2K with post-Marxist theory like Benjamin and Adorno and left myself
the task of revising Marx to reconcile with classical economics, marginal
utility, guns and butter, externalities.
I've created one, big, gigantic mess of a network. I must reiterate how much more work I have to
do, in researching Feuerbach, the connection to Tillich, perhaps some
contemporary theologians, the theology of money. Marx has only weak counterpoints and I'm obligated
to close off his territory. I am also
weak and derelict on the artifact vs. the field.
1822.
Does accepting the life of
a monk make things clearer?
Yes it does. It
clarifies for me the future life I'm cursed to and what I have to work at. I have to get a computer programming degree
so I can get out of debt, my college debt, and begin to save for
retirement. I need to get a house or
condo and build equity in it. I shall
also give up my rock music fantasies by selling my drum set. It seems comical but it's going to hurt very
badly--it already does hurt, like re-breaking a badly set break.
1823.
Did Possony's introduction
to Marx's Communist Manifesto affect
your thinking recently?
Yes. I also read
Hoover's Masters of Deceit many years
ago. They are primarily correct. Imagine the difficulty of facing the soviet
ideology--atheistic, superficially scientific, savage. The terrorist ideology is the same
way--nothing to defend, no record to justify, all expropriation and rage.
1824.
Was it difficult to get
enough substance into this book to make it count, but not enough to go
overboard?
Yes, and it still is difficult.
I am barely learning how not to make any old psychotic claim. I used to make any statement I thought would
make me look smart, regardless of how I was poisoning the world for
wisdom. I wanted to be like Young
Goodman Brown, terrifying. I used to
quote things so superficially, not having even thought Marxism through.
1825.
Is it important for all
religions, including the religion of art that Cezanne spoke of, to work
together against terrorism and global economic collapse?
Yes, all the religions need to make peace with each other. When they all hate each other, gain fervor by
stirring hate, all the good chances of co-operation go down the drain. Artists fear religion now largely because
during the twentieth century they attacked it so cruelly and
hypocritically. They fear retaliation.
1826.
Will you be content if no
one emails you or visits G2K online again for years and years?
I'll be very content. My
worst nightmare is becoming popular. I'd
like to get very little if any interest in G2K or the conferences for a long
time to come, so I can cool out and reconstruct my life. I want to clarify an articulate economic view
of aesthetics for example, based on Nash's comment of "best for self, and
best for group."
1827.
Does your concept of the
transitional artifact open the door to progress?
Yes, that's a good idea, the transitional artifact. My old college papers have a few good ideas
to use if I could just get over my alcoholic lunacy. Clearly I still lack clarity and focus--it
takes time to come back when one has muddied the spring for so long. The transitional artifact is how to get true,
gradual evolution, or what Benjamin called the "weak Messianic power."
1828.
Is capitalism encumbered in
part by the fact that many things can be bought, sold, and produced
mechanically, but many things can't?
Yes, that complexity is a paradox that makes people confused
and scared. Marxism exploited it. Marx was propaganda. I can't express that emphatically
enough. In capitalism, there exist
spiritual or genial, aesthetic processes that lurk as externalities. Benjamin said they lurk as cunning and humor,
but they also lurk or hover like angels, peace, messengers.
1829.
Can people take the
"Theses on the Philosophy of History" by Benjamin and Marx's
"Theses on Feuerbach" as basic texts for sussing out where G2K is
wrong, and where right?
Yes, I'd forgotten and neglected my copy of The German Ideology that contains the
"Theses on Feuerbach," which I'd never read. I quoted Benjamin's TOTPOH like crazy all
through G2K; I even printed parts of it on address labels to toss all over the
place. Yet I lacked the deep
comprehension of it.
1830.
Does the Bible itself
contain a great deal of very deep ideas about money, the state, aesthetic
development, and limit-theory in the workings of history?
The Bible contains all the major ingredients and topics of
consequence to a technological species.
The military machine of the Roman Empire was the great nonpareil
military-fiscal state of the first millennium.
All the major topics of money, writing, food, temples, cities, the sea,
nature, migration, ancient Egypt, philosophy, clergy, mathematics, rhetoric,
and politics are all there in the Bible.
Artists are hypocritical not because they choose to consider the Bible
an artistic creation, but because they prejudicially and dogmatically neglect
even to give the Bible its artistic due.
Hence they commit the exact sin of dogma and superstition, sloth, they
accuse religious people of committing against science and art. Plus the truth of the Bible is in its fully
accurate portrayal of aesthetic evolution as providential, not mechanical.
1831.
Are you reluctant to go
shop for groceries and put off completion of this book even further?
I am very eager to complete this book and eager not to fall
behind schedule in typing it for the internet.
In the worst-case scenario I will need to scan it at work and put the
actual handscript online! I hope not to
have to do that. Yet I fear greatly that
I'll fail to give my best effort and leave inexcusable mistakes and
omissions. I accept that I'm imperfect
and am congested by error and doubt. Yet
this does not in any degree excuse me from making my best efforts. So I'm scared. It's only in extreme effort that I can even
begin to get the noxious filth of my demagoguery to wash away a little. I also fear greatly the consequences of not
having worked this all out and planned it.
What I'm forgetting, what I'm neglecting, torments me. I have to get to the core of the
artifact-field question, the hero-polis, give them justice.
1832.
Does western and global
culture have the capacity to evolve, the potential?
Absolutely it does.
Capitalism does not preclude a priori evolution, exosomatic and
aesthetic evolution. Democracy does not
preclude it. The artifact-field or
hero-polis core does not preclude it.
Peace among Islam and the West can be achieved, though it will be
mightily difficult and depends greatly on the greatness of Islamic
moderates. Nothing is guaranteed but
nothing is excluded either.
1833.
Do you have a copy of
Possony's Waking Up the Giant: The
Strategy for American Victory and World Freedom?
Yes, I bought that awhile ago, in 2003 or 2004. I didn't like it as much as The Strategy of Technology. However, I do think it was followed by
neoconservatives in the early days, like Moynihan and Kirkpatrick, so that by
1980 they were in agreement with a tougher foreign policy stance. The book came out in 1974 and was effectual I
think. I've only read bits of it.
1834.
Could G2K theoretically
help younger generations in the developing world take a less antagonistic view
of the West?
Yes, I think it can although I'm a long way from becoming
"articulate" on G2K. I thought
I could cheat and replace research and application with stunts and
demagoguery. If I can get it clearer
though I think it could offer a better view of the West than one gets strictly
from kitsch and revanchist left-liberals.
1835.
If Islam had conquered
Yes, and I think moderates in the Islamic world can try to use
this fact to defuse hate of the West. If
the Ottoman Empire had prevailed around 1400 it would have dominated global
trade and kept
1836.
Are there extremely
numerous cases of self-contradiction in this book?
Yes, I contradict myself constantly throughout this book
because I'm still struggling to understand what G2K is and what it means. It's like an imaginary state or country for
which I'm trying to make a map describing the main roads and rivers. I can't get all the threads untangled. I struggle, and sometimes the struggling
makes the knots tighter.
1837.
Is it OK to have all the
contrition, the self-pity, the self-abasement, and the confusion in this book
intact?
I think so. I will still
struggle with the question of justice and authority, good and evil, wisdom and
cruelty. I haven't got things all sorted
out. Sometimes I feel drawn to
conventional Christianity and other times I feel more secular. I guess the truth of both have a relentless
grip on me. I'm cursed to try to
reconcile science with religion, antiquity with Christianity, rhetoric with
biology, all of this crazy stuff.
Rushed.
1838.
Is the real curse from how
you did G2K before that you didn't try hard enough and didn't believe in
yourself enough?
Yes, that's the horrid curse because that's what I did wrong and what I can't blame on
anyone else. I can't get out of it. I screamed like a baby because certain people
I demanded like me didn't. I then gave
up and became a demagogue. A demagogue
is basically a faithless, selfish, lazy person--a pig-infant. We promise to help the masses of people but
exploit them and the institutions,
the polis, endangering both.
1839.
Are great American
statesmen and stateswomen needed as we go into the coming decades?
Great leaders can be nice and are always better than weak
demagogic leaders. Yet in the U.S. the
system itself can compensate for a weakness of any individual. Moreso what is needed is for people to
"be their own censors," be a great statesperson of your own life and soul,
be a great King or Queen of your own G2K, that's needed most of all.
1840.
Is a great part of your
vacillation and contradiction in this book caused by your own fears and lack of
development in G2K?
Greatly so, the fears and confusion cause me to jump all over
the map. I get scared. Yet as I've kept going through all the muck
and mire, the hundred or so days it took me to write this, I've gotten a little
calmer. I'm confident G2K can be fixed
(if not my career thereon) because the basic fundamentals are sound and
inclined toward the good of humanity. I
realized that I've got a very weak comprehension of the basic tenets of
iconoclasm, the aesthetic field theory, economics, and political authority. I've got a lot of work to be done in future
books and essays to get all these things sorted out. Then my own aesthetic of Zen Cubism can start
to come through, or McLuhan's "Gutenberg's Galaxy" in one
paragraph. I think I can get over my bad
actions toward others, the revenge and demagoguery I did online in the
past. I'm optimistic now.
1841.
Did you manage to stay off
the paroxetine all the way through, no relapsing to pot, Ritalin, cigarettes,
alcohol, or chewing tobacco?
Yes, I don't appear to be much of a relapser in this
decade. Who can say why. Yet I've gotten lucky too, particularly in
having bought a yoga book months ago and re-discovered it on my shelf in the
dark days of May and June. I found a
good website about depression and distorted thinking which reminded me of the
cognitive therapy book I'd read parts of long ago, Feeling Good by David Burns. The site and the book downplay the
efficaciousness of "going back under paroxetine." I got a little reminder to control my
thinking, which as you can see in this book gets pretty down and crazy. I liked finding the term "negative
introspection." I've been able to
remember many of the good things in my life, such as how my psychiatrist said
"it's OK to be a little obsessed if you're trying to be a writer, if
you're driven to succeed." That
helped too.
1842.
Would you like to track
down that New Republic article about
Benjamin's failed Messianism?
I guess I would. I think
Benjamin didn't fail completely, in the aesthetic sense, because Hitler is now
the great dirtbag of all time and Benjamin is artistic and read if not
completely correct. Yet Benjamin was not
a very tough customer at the time, is for sure.
Plus I need to moderate my praise of him until I learn more and do real
work.
1843.
Was Claudius the false
prophet in power, the false overcoming before Ate?
Yes, Hamlet had a lot of conflicts about that. I used the passage "Love? His affections do not that way tend….The
hatch and the disclose will be some danger" as the headnote to The Hermit. I guess I actually did become a real hermit
after all. I've accepted that the world
of success and fame is not for me, but rather life as a computer programmer
with a goofy experimental website. Ah
life!
1844.
Does the true monk or
experimenter have to learn to feel good about work even if it doesn't get you a
lot of money and dates?
Yes, because if you can't do that then you bleed out. You give your effort, and then condemn it
because someone beyond your control may have withheld reward. That's why one must be able to get the reward
from the aesthetic process itself, and be a soliton. It takes effort. Yet in the rare times I've been able to
access that self-reliance, the increase in productivity is immense because the
system doesn't leak.
1845.
What are the keys to being
able to restore and reconstitute one's own genius-energy?
You have got to be able to say something is good, even if other
people dislike it. If you can't do that
you're a slave to other's like and dislikes and can't innovate. You get to a dialogue with yourself that says
"Hey, you're doing some good G2K, you're making progress. You've got a good job and you're working
through the economic, political, aesthetic, and theological concerns as best
you can. You're all right." Saying that even once is half the
battle.
1846.
Do you really want to have
at least a few good G2K-affirming quanta in here?
More the key is to give myself some credit. I get angry because people don't like it and
then I take the anger out on myself, by self-contempt. That then bleeds over on to G2K, making me
think it's ugly and see it only in a negative light. Then I think I need to lie and be a demagogue
to advance it. It's a crazy cycle. Factually I've done some good things and it's
OK that I've dedicated my life to G2K, and not had much great dating.
1847.
Are you going to go to the new
French Room at the Art Institute on July 14 if there are still tickets?
I'd like to do that even though I'd be going alone. I like to do treats for myself sometimes and
I've been too negative toward
1848.
How can the great works of
art at the Art Institute, like the Modigliani and the Doryphoros, be good and
valuable if G2K is also good and valuable?
I think because all of the steps in the evolution are good, and
they all have an important place in the cycle.
The Doryphoros was from a time when people wanted to express ideals of
balance and harmony in the human form, to reflect their hopes and
challenges. The Modigliani was about
finding harmony and grandeur in basic forms, imperfect symmetries, and the
ordinary. G2K is about how to reconcile
the two in a meaningful present.
1849.
Are history and limits kind
of like an abacus?
Yes, because after you get several of a thing or Urphanomene
you then click over a larger unit and start from zero: binary numbers are like
that too, it's number theory, accrual theory, and also historic patterning
theory. It's cyclicality. You get several of a thing, each seems unique
and additive until suddenly a category hits you and suggests its opposite, a
new zero, a new blank start.
1850.
Are the Modigliani and the
Doryphoros even a more perfect duo than you suspected?
Yes, they almost seem born for each other, in direct dialogue
with each other. This book has a great
deal to do with my having seen the fiery splash of orange out of the corner of
my eye. I've had them hidden away as
bookmarks for awhile, in my Watts and my Norton Two--I'd forgotten how
talismanic and comforting they were.
They remind me of the question of how G2K deals with the artifact. I'd like to make artifacts, poems in particular,
also paintings, ceramics, all of it.
It's great to do that stuff. Yet
it's a triangle, with the Modigliani on the left, the Doryphoros on the right,
and this ticking-by of quanta up a level between them. The old, the new, and the present. The Modigliani even seems the more archaic
and primitive. The two postcards are
also compositional echoes of each other, with the blank eyes and the vertical
but curved composition, slightly pyramidal base. Actually, it's this: The one, the other, and
the correlation.
1851.
Is G2K primarily common
sense, which you've distorted out of fear you'll be ignored and ambition to get
famous?
Ah that is clearly true.
I thought common sense was so beleaguered and jeopardized I had to
rescue it via deceptive demagoguery. Of
course, common sense is often the first casualty of stress, and technological
species undergo tremendous stress in early transformations such as the use of
weapons (neolithic), planned agriculture, merchant trade, writing, machines,
and computers. Yet for all my salvific
desire I also lost sight that G2K takes common sense and hard work. My energy was always trying to figure out
stunts to pull, tricks, ways to defeat the competition. I forgot that G2K is a lot like math, and to
get a basic handle on the aesthetics you have to do the mathematical equations
and absorb them. Thus I've had a lot of
wastage of time and bled-out energy. I
sometimes can't even remember the topics of a couple of days ago.
1852.
Is it important to recall
the Eumenides, now that we are doing our summary?
Yes, I've mentioned many topics that deserve their own
well-researched books, such as the Eumenides.
Yet this entire deal has been thrown together. Clearly societies cannot evolve without some
melioration of revenge. Even the Iliad
thought that, excess of revenge by Achilles.
I've mentioned a lot of topics too briefly. Yet that's the way it goes. Life can be fragmentary sometimes.
1853.
Is there a certain value to
Habermas's questioning of the-human-as-property-owner?
Yes, because one can't buy aesthetic evolution in a sense. Yet society can value it, and recognize this value in the economic realm of
life. So it's complicated. Basically capitalism is about making what
people want to buy. If the demand is for
guns, they're supplied; butter, supplied.
Some things are prohibited, like slavery. The market economy produces what people want,
demand, and the economy is also "what we do."
1854.
Is the key factor of all of
these contemplations that it is OK to do G2K?
Factually that's all it comes down to. I'm arguing that it's economically,
religiously, politically, scientifically, and artistically OK to do G2K. To talk about G2K and think of G2K as an
aesthetic quantity. I can't prove these
things, I'm just saying it's my opinion.
But the likelihood is high. Of
course trees are judged by their fruit, and I can't force anyone to like
G2K. Yet for some reason I keep trying
to make the case.
1855.
Is part of the topic of sex
mores about whether it's OK to do G2K if it doesn't get you dates and
popularity?
Yes, there are major concerns about dating. People love it. Yet it may be for some that they are not
willing to be governed by the preferences of others and wish to pursue G2K even
though "the crowd" won't reward it.
(They will reward denouncing G2K, however, oftentimes.) The question then is, can you make the change
to G2K if the beautiful people reject you for it.
1856.
Is G2K also a
scientific-aesthetic hypothesis?
Yes, it's kind of neurophenomenological. Sometimes the "observer effect"
means that until a question is asked, the answer to it isn't true. This is because the question transforms the
field. For example, by creating the
question "Does the earth go around the sun?" Galileo created the
answer by vacuum or contrast. Setting
out the hypothesis can bring about the truth, the hidden articulation of the answer. Therefore one must ask "Is G2K
aesthetic?" before it can be aesthetic.
1857.
Do you still feel guilty a
lot?
I still do. I get a
guilt feeling, and then I get angry, and I don't want to act on anger. Therefore the calm wisdom is my preferred
goal and it goes very slowly. I try to
not get angry or act out of anger, yet also not to completely disregard what
caused the anger. Then I try to let the
anger die away and then take wise action, or calm.
1858.
Can you remember any of the
topics you wrote down, or are you going to go get the green notebook called
Topics 2005?
I decided to go get the green notebook, actually called
"Topics 5/05" as written on the front. It of course doesn't tell me which topic to
mention, though the one I was going to start with, Denmark, is actually the
first one in the notebook. Let that be a
message and a tip to close the notebook, as I now have done, and mentioned
Denmark.
1859.
Did you live in Denmark?
Yes, I lived there for one year when I was five, 1975 to
1976. It's a good country. I enjoyed living there in a suburb of
Copenhagen called Kokkedal, on a small street called Jellerod Have which was
near an open field through which I would bicycle to get to school. The school was less structured in a way than
American school, where things were a little more technical. I often romanticize life in Denmark, and
shouldn't, because it's another place like others, yet magic.
1860.
Is it understandable that
the early Church Fathers kept the Gnostic gospels out of the Bible?
Clearly it's understandable and we shouldn't condemn it. The Bible includes "the kingdom of God
is within you" in Luke chapter seventeen.
This was in response to the Pharisee who asked Jesus when the kingdom of
God would come. (Jesus also said
"tempt not the Lord thy God" when the devil dared him to jump on the
rocks.) The Nag Hammadi texts, ex
nammhar if you will, speak more like "he who drinks from my mouth shall
become as I am." Now this can be
misinterpreted to suggest that Christ's message was that everything and
everyone are the same, i.e., that Christ's message wasn't unique and
sacred. It is necessary to reduce
heresy, which one can see liberal professors doing every day in their
classes. I could name names, but just
think of your own to be sure. The
aesthetic message of Christianity was clarified and solidified, made more
durable, for respectable reasons.
1861.
Why is it acceptable and
democratic to concentrate aesthetic power, aesthetic authority, unequally?
This is OK because sometimes one message is of greater value
than another, and also because of entropy or chaos. Greek tragedy says heroism is necessary, and
Oedipus blessed the city of Athens at his deathbed. Left liberals pick their favorites as well,
the authors they value over others, the ones of whom they say "listen to
this one speak." Hence the Master
Analyst replacing the priest in Freud, Marx, Irigaray, Foucault, Derrida,
Baudrillard. They can't argue they don't
do it. Even choosing a Balzac or a
Spivak to single out is an anointing, a selection. Reading Said is a selection. Therefore they have no case who condemn
Christianity because it is a selection, a favoring or valuing of Christ's word,
as I have implied and said. As the video
states, "It's OK if some people like to talk more." What is bad is when the case for talking is stagnant or false. And Christ's case was not false--he said
"the kingdom of God is within you."
1862.
Does it get painful and
excruciating to have to take such baby steps and to lack a coherent cosmology?
It hurts a lot. I get
angry and tense. I cut back on caffeine
but I still get hostile. I have to take
a second to ask again "on what can I speak at length without causing
harm?" I got to the conclusion that
by putting this on the internet I will be killing my chances, any chances, for
an art or publishing career. I'll be
excommunicated from the popular culture because of my unattractiveness and
confusion, and I will cease to court anyone.
I can talk about that, the vow of chastity.
1863.
Is it difficult to sum up
and justify democratic capitalism at the drop of a hat?
I guess so. Yet I know
it's OK as a system for exogenetic, exosomatic evolution to continue. It can protect and preserve non-genetic
evolution within the cultural tradition.
Once can't once and for all clear it of fault because it has many faults
and will continue to keep old ones and develop new.
1864.
Is it necessary to get
famous and make a splash in the artworld, or publishing, or college radio in
order to do G2K?
Not one bit. Those
working-groups are designed to create celebrity, not clarity. Did you even encounter a religion that said
"get famous because fame is God?"
Never. Fame is a bitch-goddess, a
false goddess. Respectably known to a
proper degree is all one needs, and to keep away from putting one's light under
a bushel. Cautious clarity.
1865.
Is it OK not to attack
anyone in the artworld, but in fact to respect and love them?
Jesus said to love thy enemies and to turn the other
cheek. This allows one to escape the
cycle of one-upmanship that makes people fight to become king of a
dunghill. It keeps the amygdala
quiet. Certainly most people are like
Caliban and will fight and claw to be liked by the celebrity-makers. They can go ahead and do it, it's part of the
cycle of culture that they do. All it
takes to do G2K is just not to renounce it completely, never to quit,
ever. Work harder, don't quit.
1866.
Are you looking forward to
going back to school for computer programming, and giving up on art-fantasies,
and doing yoga?
Yes, I love yogic meditation and I'm going to love working on
G2K for no audience. It will be the
greatest not to have to care or hate myself for not being successful. I cannot serve G2K and the artworld. They have a job to do and they can't waste
time on me, so I get to leave them alone and go my own way. I get to be patient.
1867.
Will you still keep quoting
neoconservative sources like Leo Strauss and affirming the O.S.O.?
I'll do everything I can to support the O.S.O. Humility, which I didn't have before this
book, dictates that my best way to help the O.S.O. is to give up on celebrity
and just make G2K good art. All I need
to make is the minimum effort to get it looked at, the requisite dutiful effort
not to hide my talent in the ground or leave my light under a bushel.
1868.
So the minimum requirement
is just the conference each year, this book, and nothing more?
Nothing more is required.
I'm not obligated to use degraded genres like rock music, that I'm
greatly habituated to, to make people like me.
I'm not obligated to make people like me. I'm not obligated. I can just work on the twenty-year plan,
getting ready for the great G2K conference of 2025, "Crossing the
Rubicon." I'll stick to that for a
topic.
1869.
What about all the lies
you've told so far and promises you've broken or failed to fulfill?
I'm not going to honor every promise I made before I quit
drinking. You can just forget about
that. I'm sure a lot of people would
adore seeing me back on the sauce, but I'm not going. Partly all I can do to fix any of it is just
to quit making buddies with people. I
don't want to make internet buddies with you.
Just get away from me. Take care
of your own genius.
1870.
How can a person keep
working in a consistent direction if everything is so complex, with many sides
to every story?
It's a problem. As the
Greeks said, moderation in all things.
Question your beliefs, but don't question them immoderately. Be sure to spend some of the time believing
in them. I find it to be a struggle in
that my basic values tell me that dating and love are necessary to a full
life. Yet on this topic, I'm prepared to
accept the slim chance that I can also have a fulfilling life without
them. It's a risky, hypothetical
experiment. Yet I am freely choosing it
because I don't see the aesthetic value in doing all the things one has to do
to get dating and love. The same
principle applies equally to men and women.
I'm freely choosing it, regardless of how helpless and constricted my
hormones make me feel around attractive potential mates. Plus with calmness and breathing, rational
self-talk, articulation, peace of mind, one can gradually get the right lasting
values in mind.
1871.
Will the July 14 Bastille
Day event at the Art Institute be your last cultural event before this is all
over?
If I go it will be. I
can't necessarily grasp what the value of it might be, but it's free, and it's
cultural so why not. It's something to
compare to all this, though I'm scared of being overwhelmed. I can be overly susceptible to influences,
for example if I get infatuated with a woman.
I guess the monkish thing to do would be not to go, to avoid the
sentimental kitsch of it. We'll find out
if I go. I don't like going to cultural
events just to try to meet a date. It's
just silly. Yet I sometimes go to these
events and it can't hurt to go in the guise of a monk. I could even make myself a cassock and wear
it to work, and get a tonsure. I'm
already bald however. We'll see. French culture is just so sensual, luxurious,
and romantic however and clearly G2K is more akin to rustic contemplation,
ascetic and bare.
1872.
Have you forgotten to
mention anything?
I've left out dozens of topics I've decided aren't
appropriate. I think I'll leave in some
of the quanta about my childhood but I may not and therefore don't wish to add
more. I do want to castrate myself
however relative to the artworld and the childhood unpleasantness and my
current monkishness will definitely accomplish that. But I don't necessarily want to drag it
out. I'm not obligated to say any more about
it.
1873.
What difficulties might
other people encounter if they try to do G2K?
A lot of difficulties perhaps or very few. I can't predict what all would happen--people
are all separate and slightly different.
I suppose the most difficult obstacle or consequence is that one's peer
group or environment might object to your doing G2K. Parents, teachers, friends, your co-workers,
the popular culture will probably not like your attempt to do just fine without
them--better even. G2K isn't for
everybody, yet. You can try it though.
1874.
Would you like even to let
go of any missionary zeal for doing G2K, any urgency?
Yes. My deadline for
getting this book done, while I'm still thirty-five, is just arbitrary. Yet I did that to make myself take
action. Sometimes we don't have the
emotional luxury of just meditating and letting art history take its
course. I had to rectify the leaking
poison that was G2K just in order to have any hope at all of feeling proud with
a clear conscience again someday.
1875.
Can you also write another
book like this every April to July from now on?
That's the great part--I can write more. I can write five, ten, twenty, fifty more of
these books of quanta, one every year until the collapse of my life. The next one could focus more on economic
doctrine for example, how capitalism can keep making great art and keep
aesthetically evolving for people at high and low IQ levels. There are a lot of people out there, several
in every hundred people, with a higher IQ than me but not necessarily evolving
better or doing G2K.
1876.
Do you like the taconite
pellets that fall off of the train tracks by your house?
They're great. Taconite
is a product from the north of Minnesota that is used to make iron I
think. I keep twenty of them, the
pellets, here on my desk as I write to represent the twenty centuries. They're like beads of an abacus. Sometimes I pick them up or move them around
a little, but mostly they stay put in stacks of five, four piles with a rough
balancing of one on top of the others. They're
irregular.
1877.
Did you tell your Tarot
reading wrong?
Yes, I said the Knight of Cups was me, but it isn't or wasn't
in the magic star pattern reading I got--it was the Cause. I was the cause. Eight of Cups was the Problem, Knight of Cups
the Cause, Nine of Wands the Factor to be Considered, the Four of Wands the
Solution, and the Six of Cups the Outcome.
I think it was the best Tarot reading I could have gotten, though Tarot
is not something I take literally.
1878.
Is it burdensome and
suffocating to think you have to talk about and explain all the bad things
you've done and know about?
I sure don't like thinking about other people's bad acts. I'd like to just forget about them and move
on. The facts are so sordid regarding so
many of the people I've known. Rapes,
divorces, betrayals, harsh words, suffocating guilt, belittling, revenge,
cruelty, lust, darkness. Truly
"ignorant armies clashed by night," hordes of dating folk.
1879.
Can you always go back to
the Art Institute and see the artworks unchanged, like the sarcophagus of Cheng
Ching, the festival of peaches, the rabbit wrist rest, and the 1 AD turtle ink
plate with the I-Ching on it, the 16th c. God of Literature, the
Celestial Worthies, the Money Tree, the Dark Warrior, the perfected warrior,
and the great altar table, and all the other great Asian art?
I certainly can, and see the Persian Winged Genius also. Modigliani too.
1880.
Do you hope fervently that
moderate leaders in Islamic countries can succeed in building stable states on
good terms with the West?
I'm going to work my entire life to help them. G2K is the true pattern for syncretism and
tolerance between science and religion.
I am also officially now on my last pen from the packet I bought some
while ago. They go quickly. I hope that moderate Islamic leaders can
begin to teach their communities that the West is not an infidel nation and
peace with the West is a good thing, a sacred mission in keeping with God's
will. I believe that God wants humanity
to live at peace, all the nations with each other, with freedom and
dignity. Yet those who would use this to
attack the authority that prevents chaos--the fiscal-military foundations of
power--is shirking responsibility and courting disaster. It's easy to call the rest of the world an
infidel, and then set the world on fire in sacrifice, but it won't be allowed.
1881.
What if all the old fans or
so-called friends of G2K hate, ridicule, and ignore you now?
That would be great for me because it would prove they never
really liked G2K anyhow, they just liked my lies and false promises--they just
liked the demagogue. The demagogue is
kind of like a golem, a big VR talking monster.
It's an old paradigm with a long, squalid past. I will be greatly relieved to no longer have
any "following." I like how,
when someone approached him saying "Good Master," Jesus said
"Why are you calling me good? It's
God that's good, not me." Now if
you can't appreciate the fantastic qualities of someone who could say that
you're just not going to understand much.
Left-liberals even treat Art like they've got it clipped and locked in a
little cage--all they have there is their own soul, clipped and
broken-down. I don't want to hurt anyone
and I regret having lied to people, and having let them down--they didn't deserve
it. I wish I could make it all better,
but as Jesus said, a very great deal of suffering comes first.
1882.
Is work different from
worry?
Clear is the difference between work and worry though it takes
wisdom to see it. Constant debate and
circling gets you nowhere, which is stated by the Hsin-Hsin Ming. It's OK to look at art but be careful about
making it divine. The truly divine does
not exist in an object. It exists in
everything, object and non-object, artifact and field, it's really in the
subtle magnetic fields that consciousness floats among, between, like ripples
on a pond.
1883.
What if people throw your
old, bad art back in your face?
They can do whatever they want.
My old art wasn't all bad anyhow, just greatly bad, high in the bad
category. I used to make a few Jpegs or
send off some emails as an excuse to get high or drunk. So one can easily conceive how the quality of
the art got corralled into creating a particular mood, i.e., that I'm great and
have accomplished a great deal and deserve to kick back with some substance
abuse.
1884.
Would you like to never
speak or write about some of the unpleasant topics in here ever again?
I'd like that. I'd like
to stick to art and intellectual topics.
Hopefully people can identify this book as a horrific confessional
stench and steer clear of it. I
personally would like very much not to have to put this online or bother with
dark memories ever again. Yet the cards
just haven't come out that way. I have
to get over this stuff, and I can't just ignore it completely. It goes along with my redemption.
1885.
Is it all for naught if the
peoples of the world cannot agree on some basic principles of co-operation
under the O.S.O.?
It's difficult to picture how humanity can enjoy stability and
peace with freedom and evolution if most countries are unwilling to work
together. I guess to the extent that
societies cannot work things out peacefully there will be war. I just wish the Marxists, theoradicals, and
revanchists could stop doing that.
1886.
When meditating is it helpful
not to covet?
I've found that fantasies about getting something I want but
lack generally get me nowhere and are not strictly meditating. I am not a great meditator in part because
I've often felt I had to accomplish something.
Then the so-called goals turned out to be wrong and left me with a
chaotic mess to fix. Now I would like to
make clarity of goals and self-control my true aims under meditation and art.
1887.
Is it good to try to see
the holiness in all things?
That perception may be the aesthetic spirit I've been trying so
hysterically to explain, describe, quantify, and articulate. It's really the vision that all religions talk about and Art, when it's not pulling
its own chain, as well. Seeing the
holiness in a pen, ink, paper, taconite pellets. Also in hearing, like the train going
by. It's neither an easy skill nor is it
particularly difficult, nor as I've said is it particularly a skill. It's a cosmic event caused by or built of a
million tinier, subconscious cosmic events, aesthetic life.
1888.
Are there a lot of cultural
and political conflicts you just don't want to write explicitly about
currently?
Quite a few. I want to
articulate my support for the O.S.O., my support for the War on Terror, and my
belief that moderate, pragmatic pursuit of the above is the best alternative
for both liberals and conservatives, for the planet and species as a
whole. Of course I haven't explained
this very well or thoroughly but in rough terms that's my goal.
1889.
Are there some questions it
is much better not to ask?
Yes there are. I'm not
sure if G2K is one of those questions.
Because I'm not sure I want to back off of my previous
demagogic-maniacal confidence. Some
questions just cause hurt or cover up the real truth. Too many questions can be bad for the
mind. Some questions just need to be let
go of, to not feed into. If you have
some questions that are like that and really cause constant misery it might be
good to rethink them.
1890.
Does it anger you that the
bus driver just drove past you while you were standing on the median waving?
Yes it angers me. Now
I'll be ten minutes late for work, which I never am. I don't like that the guy saw me but kept on
going, or that he didn't give me respect.
Yet he has no obligation to respect me.
I wasn't at the stop so technically he wasn't obligated. He could have stopped but he's not a friendly
bus driver. Who cares I guess. I'm going to get a computer programming
license and make my living that way.
There is a great deal of good, scholarly literature out there about
political stability, military necessity, and economic theory for the
neoconservative view so I won't try to act like an expert. My only argument is that G2K is compatible
with the O.S.O. because the O.S.O. will permit and have the greatest interest
in aesthetic evolution, i.e. exosomatic evolution, i.e. civilization. Marxists and terrorists say that civilization
is evil but they're wrong, false.
1891.
Do you fantasize about
having a girlfriend like the red-haired woman?
Yes I do, she's great. She
rides the same bus as me. I guess who
cares. It would appear I'm wanting
immediate gratification, something to give me payback. I've got a habit of that you may have
noticed. She's got a lot of style. Yet if I could let go of it, not exacerbate
it, I'll be happier. I can just choose
not to fight, consummate, or analyze the feeling. It's OK to have it, it's not the gospel
truth, and it's a passing thing. I can
just relax. I'll reinforce my aesthetic
lifestyle. I like to meditate, read, and
practice good posture. Good posture and
breathing are the best, they make me feel content and strong. Patience to let my aesthetic work take its
own time and course, because I don't have to concern myself with the artworld,
or political stuff, economic theories and so forth. I can concentrate on words and shapes. Aesthetic development for me can take time
but I can be patient.
1892.
Is it hard to accept you
won't ever make it big in a great city like
Yes it does. I live in a
humble city because I'm a humble computer programmer with a lot of school loan
debt and bad habits. I can't hack it in
the big leagues, the big town where everyone hustles like mad and has great
talent. I'm more like a moral sage,
unknown and little liked, like early Frost.
But permanently.
1893.
Does the West have to keep
producing and permitting kitsch, like sexual titillation and conspicuous
consumption (vanity, luxury, fashion) in order to keep leverage on emerging
powers that are very wealthy but undemocratic?
That's a tough reality but clearly the answer is yes. Soft power in the area of fashion, film, and
culture are a great and necessary advantage the developed world holds relative
to the underdeveloped. Asceticism and
puritanism would just weaken the West and therefore weaken protection of deep
aesthetic evolution (God). Kitsch is a
necessary evil.
1894.
Will global development
take a long time, be fraught with security issues, and require
co-operation--not confrontation--between North and South?
Yes it will, all those things.
Marxist or terrorist attacks will not help the pace of development. Nor will revanchism against the
1895.
Why should some economic
inequality always remain?
There are many good reasons for economic inequality. One is that some people may work harder. Another reason is luck, because rewarding
luck is a good way of building value.
Unequal wealth opportunities also motivate people to excel, rather than
stagnate. Wealth also has synergistic
properties, in which giving one group food and
shelter, rather than one group food and another shelter, works better. Wealth also has a continuity-value over
time. Plus military supremacy requires
wealth, above all.
1896.
Isn't there some risk still
of G2K being demagogic, i.e., the anti-G2K?
There is but the risk is acceptable, indeed obligatory, and
therefore has to be managed. The risk of
not doing G2K at all is greater. I've
already mentioned why most or all of the categorical rejections of G2K are
flawed. Society has spent millions on me
and my intellect, feeding and clothing me, and G2K is, though still
hypothetical, of potential value to society so I'm obligated to keep working on
it publicly. I'm not obligated to get
popular or rich though.
1897.
Is it depressing and a
little sad to contemplate life as a computer-programmer, low-end, rather than
an artist, writer, or filmmaker?
Yes it is but we all have our crosses to bear. Some people are homely and some have serious
illnesses or disabilities, or accidents.
It's curious how left-liberals think one can't live without as much
luxury and glory as possible in the world.
They forget how to be content, disciplined, hardworking.
1898.
Realistically is your
primary goal to confirm how G2K is neoconservative?
I'm not good at being clear because I'm lazy and haven't sorted
things through; I'm still half-Marxist.
Yet G2K requires a great effort, a "complete vocation" as
stated in the Eightfold Path. I have to
at least get the worst demagoguery of Marxism out of my soul, but there are so
many Marxists it's impossible to convince them.
One just has to go on with life.
Many people don't think.
1899.
Is it hard to know what you
have to do and what you can let drift away?
I do get confused. I
can't tell if I'm obligated or not sometimes.
Yet I can't put off the decisions any longer. If I scuttle my art-career with this book I'm
then at least clear of further demagoguery.
I guess just stopping the hideous wrongs I commit is the first order of
work, yet seemingly insurmountable given my hesitation and fear. I don't know what to take offline, or leave
online. I can only breathe, be calm, and
try to articulate as best I can.
1900.
Have you made a fateful
decision?
Yes, I've decided to type the first nineteen hundred of these,
finish typing them, type 544 through 1900, then write the last hundred
afterward. I'm on my schedule and could
finish easily by my deadline but I'm going to take a curve, a swerve. I'm not certain if it can help but it might. I can't stick to schema so it is doubtful I
will keep a tab of questions to ask for the last hundred. I could decide to of course. I could write one question every eight
quanta, possibly. I'll just decide now
not to--there are no tricks that ever work.
My pains have been great today, greatly sad and morbid, but I'll take
the pleasure of writing quanta away from myself--the waking slumber, the
catatonia. I got finally that they are
"Urphanomene," I'd been spelling it wrong. That's what professional writers do not
do--I'm just practicing. So, the pains
of loss, grief, my last friend, I type now.
1901.
How has it been for you
since you quit writing quanta to type fifty-five days ago?
It has been odd and less than pleasant. I became very anxious and upset, returning to
my paroxetine twenty days ago. The
typing was difficult and taxing. I typed
all nine days of a week I took vacation time for. It was blistering hot, and I sweated to a
soak every day, typing. I felt that the
book was unpublishable, not morally acceptable to put on the internet. I intentionally missed the September 1
deadline for completion for fear I would panic and publish it. Now I’ve had an exposure to grace as a
concept through Miloscz’s Second Space,
which I received on Saturday for my birthday.
I’d never read any Miloscz except for an article in the Winter 2005 Wilson Quarterly. I start school soon.
1902.
What are some good possible
chapter titles for the real Genius
2000: A New Network?
One. Biographical
Necessaries, 2. Building Blocks, 3. My Education, 4. My Politics, 5. Scientific Bases, 6. Current Events, 7. Time and History, 8. Biology, 9.
Important Sources, 10.
Predecessors, 11. My Internet
Phase, 12. My Personal Failings.
1903.
Can you use these last
hundred to develop the publishable book?
Yes, and I’d like to.
What is or can be reputably, profitably published is a legitimate
concern. Some things I don’t want to
publish. It’s OK for me to have
boundaries and a private life-world, as well as a public and professional
artistic life. Just like at work. So, I can plan and research, edit, outline,
rewrite. All these good-for-me things.
1904.
Are you scared to be
finishing this book or diary?
I’m scared. I’ve decided
about the conference 2005. I haven’t
written much in over a month. I finished
the typing up to 1900, but intentionally missed my September 1 deadline for
finishing this and dumping it on the net.
Call me conservative now. It’s
the nineteenth now. I want to be more
normal and get ready for my change.
1905.
What will be changing soon?
I’m starting computer-programming school. That will take up a lot of my time for the
next three years. I may be able to work
on a salable book alongside it, or a net-publishable one of these. Maybe there isn’t so much change. I can still write a lot, work on a book
plan. Meditate and let go of febrile,
anxious questions. It’s about to
rain. Time to go.
1906.
Do you want to finish this,
and then start school?
I want to finish before school starts. I want to get closure with this so I can
start anew. I want to create a long,
publishable text about Genius 2000. To
do this I need to meditate more, plan more, edit more, and set better
boundaries. Define things to let go of
and things to explore.
1907.
Do you want to let go of
some of your recurring anxieties?
Yes, I can benefit from that.
Persistently recurring anxieties about sex, love, solitude, the
direction of my life, theological dilemmas, my past behavior, bad acts. I get into conundrums that consume my
energy. Should I feel guilty, or defiant? Objective analysis of anxiety won’t and can’t
resolve such questions. It goes by feel,
conscious experience, direct.
1908.
Do you have a list of
important things to mention?
Yes, I do. I have a lot
of things that are relevant to G2K. I
got Miloscz’s Second Space as a gift
for my thirty-sixth birthday. It’s
uncannily relevant to G2K. It compares
to the Second Syracuse idea. I also read
this summer Pascal’s essay in which he uses the phrase “ineffable union.” Many people will think I plagiarized that,
but I didn’t, we both came to it independently.
1909.
Does Miloscz also mention the
aesthetic implications of Einstein v.
Yes he does. I also
explicitly mentioned that in the G2K Video.
I did that very purposefully, without ever having read a word of
Miloscz. I’d read Holub of course, as I
stated before. Yet I don’t recall him
ever contrasting
1910.
Did you ever read
Swedenborg?
No I didn’t, only Blake’s discussion of him in the Norton
Two. He mentioned Swedenborg. I didn’t pick up on much more than the
name. Miloscz mentions some secret
societies in Second Space. That calls to mind again the contrast of
esoteric and exoteric. The need to
preserve both individual existence and the collective system. The individual and the polis, the personal
and the public. I want to get better on
my boundaries. I’d like to meet girls
and not be ashamed of my sexuality. Then
again, I’d like to keep my autonomy. I
get a good feeling from keeping good posture, walking with my back straight,
not hunching. Sitting up straight
too. Good posture, good breathing. Yet this seems arrogant and therefore risky
and aggressive. However, when I was
thriving in 1997 and 1998 I kept good posture and ignored the fear of
arrogance.
1911.
Did you skip your morning
prayers today?
Yes I did. I feel they
are overly schematic. They have been
feeling a little compulsive and mechanical.
I have liked better the letting go of anxious worry-patterns. These worry-patterns consist largely of
questions, questions about right and wrong conduct. These questions center around whether it is
right to do a given thing, wrong to do a thing, right to abstain from a thing,
or wrong to abstain from a thing.
Basically I’m lacking the direct feel to approach these questions with
any calm. The worrying just spins
forever. I believe the best way out of
my dilemmas is to let go of them. To do
this I adhere only to one consistent idea, and that is to be clear and open,
letting go of the questions, not trying to solve them. To accept that letting go is OK, and then to
let go.
1912.
Can you let go of the
question of war?
I don’t know that it is OK in public to take an ambivalent view
of modern warfare and contemporary military conditions. Again this is another question of
“feel.” I support the war for the
O.S.O. I think it copes with future
dangers to exosomatic evolution and has a cost, but is necessary.
1913.
Do you have problems with
your personal self-respect and boundaries?
Yes, I get excessive feelings of obligation. I feel obligated to personally control and
take care of everything on earth—every creature, every condition, every single
event. There must be some kind of
extreme emotional disturbance causing this—my freakish celibacy, for example. Yet perhaps not. Perhaps, I want to advance art history, and
can do so, and doing so will greatly assist the human condition.
1914.
Do you often feel like a
guilty, disobedient child?
Definitely yes. I still
feel like a guilty adolescent most of the time, a guilty teenager. Anxious, disobedient, secretive, rebellious,
disloyal, yet still dependent on my parents—whom I don’t respect, literally or
figuratively, overtly or secretly. I can
rarely get myself to openly confront, say, Nietzsche. There’s too much that’s taboo.
1915.
Do you feel controlled by
taboo?
Yes. Previously,
therefore, I thought the cure was to disintegrate the taboo. Now I accept that the taboos are the rules by
which imperfect humans avoid danger.
It’s akin to superstition and not without its hazards. For instance, now we have scientific proof of
genetics and neuroscience. Yet in the
distant past, the only means of making decency mainstream was to make heresy
taboo. Arbitrary, yet orderly.
1916.
Will it hurt to reduce your
commitment to art and study computers?
I think it will. Yet
fiscally I cannot justify my current salary.
It is not workable in the long run, and would require me to live on
welfare when I retire. I can’t justify
this. My goal is to strike a good
balance between art and income. My
career needs some work, as I’ve neglected it for quite a long time.
1917.
Does it feel good to have
correctly decided certain things?
Yes, I feel good about deciding to do the conference for 2005
yet to have not placed this book on the internet. It’s too anxious and too out-of-control. That was a good decision. I can really keep on with the anti-climactic
tenor of G2K. “Not with a bang, but a
whisper.” A novel is probably the way to
go, that artistic feel.
1918.
Is it OK to not to work on
any art to speak of for a couple of years?
Yes, I give myself permission to focus on meditation, mental
health, my own happiness, reading, and computers for the next four or five
years. If I can finish a good novel by
2010 that’s OK. I’m really not under any
extreme pressure. I think my political
obligations have been met. I’m free now.
1919.
Can you let the political
world go on the way it is?
I think so. I’m not
obligated to make any big moves. I can
do the G2K conferences or even skip them.
I can let go of my anxieties, meditate, and take care of myself. This is good for my mental health, which is
good for my art, which is good for art history, which is good for aesthetic
evolution, which is good for political evolution, which is good for society.
1920.
Does G2K have to be famous?
Not really. G2K is just
my name for something that has had a lot of other names over the millennia, and
often happens quite impressively even when it’s not given a name
explicitly. Science, art, politics,
religion, economy. People-in-history or
humanity-in-time is there with or without me and G2K. Even a squirrel in the grass, like here at
the park, is taking part in G2K. Maybe
G2K is my name for life-in-spacetime. On
the other hand, it may be that Max Herman is playing a crucial role, is
protecting something no one else can protect and accomplishing something no one
else can accomplish. Logic doesn’t lend
itself to easy, entropic generalizations.
I’ve got an excitingly unique, special, and significant role in art
history, just like William Blake, Vincent Van Gogh, Jesus Christ, Walter
Benjamin, and Goethe.
1921.
Are you often too
moralistically judgmental of yourself?
Heck yes. I did a lot of
evil things when I was drinking but a lot of it was just harmless fun or
innocent self-expression. Sure I drove
drunk a lot, but I never got caught or killed anyone. I drove drunk probably twenty times. It’s not as if I drove drunk every night for
twenty years. I screamed at a few
people, got mugged about twice, never got beat up, never beat anyone up, never
date-raped a woman, never raped a woman, never robbed anyone. I got arrested once. I made an ass of myself innumerable
times. I embarrassed other people hundreds
of times. I never exploited any women
sexually—I never even had sex drunk. I
only really drank a lot for about three years, mostly at home, safe and sound.
1922.
Have you been feeling
miserable lately?
Yes I have, very forlorn.
It’s odd. I’ve been feeling
almost ashamed to be alive, ashamed to want anything. My job is just your basic, decent,
one-step-above-entry-level clerical job.
It keeps me alive and it could for many years, like Kafka. Yet like he said, I feel stagnated over it.
1923.
Does it make you feel
better to write a little?
It seems to today. I was
feeling ashamed of being so lowly in achievement. Yet I cannot decide what type of achievement
is OK. I’m unclear on esoteric versus
exoteric values. I’m unclear on
self-assertion, goals, aspirations, hierarchy, loyalty, and humility. I suspect hope to be a moral lapse. My thoughts are jumbled. Amorphous.
I’ve been reading Pascal’s Pensees.
1924.
Is it only the starting you
like, as the writing teacher once said of your cursive handwriting?
I get rapidly overtaken by guilt and self-consciousness. Even sitting up straight makes me feel
conspicuous and vulnerable. I begin to
feel obligated. My thoughts wander and
clog. The teacher, when I was twelve,
looked at my cursive and started. She
looked alarmed. She said I like
beginnings.
1925.
Are you confused about what
to do, in art, your career, and socially?
I certainly am. I’m
conflicted and confused, in turmoil. I
don’t know how to act or what to work at.
I’m unclear if it’s OK to publish when I’m so uncertain. It seems like a crime to publish doubts, yet
false certainty can also be criminal.
I’m not sure how to act socially, with my family, at work, or
artistically.
1926.
What are some items you
wanted to mention as relevant to G2K?
Quite a few. About 150
in my green notebook. Some foolish. Yet here goes. Miloscz’s Second
Space is very like to G2K in theme.
The added dimension, the added order of magnitude. His perspective or starting point is greatly
different from me however. Polish aristocracy
of the pre-Nazi era for him,
1927.
What are some more topics?
Quite numerous. That
networks both hold together and hold apart.
That you can’t have a group without individuals, nor community without
individuality.
1928.
What are some more topics
related to G2K?
G2K is a network of concepts and ideas, not of wires only. A network of people and the network of time
and space plus consciousness. Strauss
keyed on megalofuxia, which is akin to G2K.
I liked Larkin a lot starting in 1990 or so. Abbie Hoffman tossed singles at the NYSE but
I only heard about that after SFMOMA82700 and the spirit’s different.
1929.
Why don’t you talk to girls
and women and try to date?
I can’t say. I’m trying
to practice zen and let go of all desire.
That’s the key. I think love and
dating will hurt me, degrade me, simple as that. Distract me from poetry. I’m reading Pascal. Pascal’s Pensees. He says “Give up your pleasures and you will
find faith.” Could this mean religion is
just for anhedonia? A prehistoric
serotonin reuptake inhibitor? Could
be. Lisa Jevbratt.
1930.
Are you going to just pack
more fragments in here?
Yes I am. I read
Buchloh’s two reviews of Beuys in Mapping
the Legacy for the first time, this year i.e. 2005. He’s got a point. I read O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh in 1987 or 1988 at Oberlin. I recently heard in say 2003 about a
questioner of Freud who doubted the Oedipus complex at a public seminar. He went on to develop family systems
theory. Freud was dismissive. The man was young at the time of the
question. That’s comparable to G2K. Debunking pseudo-heroic would-be genius,
false genius. The devil is false
genius. The messiah is the antibody to
false genius. Delmore Schwartz taught
Lou Reed at
1931.
Do a lot of things relate
to G2K?
Clearly yes, like many phenomena relate to gravity or chemical
properties of carbon, or the nitrogen cycle.
G2K is about the relationship between cultural energy and matter,
historic and aesthetic relativity, G=mt2000.
Everything in science, art, religion, politics, and economics relates to
that principle. Heroic, tragic,
economic, and ecclesiastic cycles.
Yin=process, yang=object. Or, the
opposite: yin=matter, yang=energy. Possony mentioned Evolutionary Conflict in
one of his books. He had his flaws but
wanted to protect evolution. I recently
read Feuerbach. I’m just listing fragments
to get them in. (My new book, my next
book, will have eloquent chaptering, graceful architecture.) Feuerbach felt that “religion owes its
existence to man’s tragic estrangement from his true being.” He was against religion on proto-Marxist
grounds, as I have sometimes been, superficially.
1932.
Have you encountered lots
of trouble not knowing the method or purpose, medium or audience, of these
quanta?
Critical trouble. It’s
not meant as a whole work. It’s all
contradiction, anxiety, stops and starts, worry. Roiling up the water that meditation should
make clear. Self-consciousness. Quite forgivable. Now I’m meditating for real, sitting
meditation, breathing, it transforms everything.
1933.
What are some more factors,
facts, you’ve left out as topics?
Some are Mao’s cultural revolution, his purges, the
unpraiseworthiness of G2K as art, the Godhead, the ideogrammic method (as in
Pound), Holub on Pound, free association, Qut’b on suicidal immortality,
Benjamin on acceptable hybris in PPP,
or in O at Colonnus, enlightened
consumerism, the business cycle, putting a comprehensive papers page on my
site.
1934.
Are you much more content
with a functional job now, as opposed to a dreamed-of euphoric one?
I’m more content now to earn my keep with non-artistic work,
that is, by computer programming. My
work can be utilitarian. I can preserve
my life and time for art-making best that way.
I’m free in such a case. I can
work free of artistic commerce. I’m
scared, afraid, and sad to accept that, but it’s self-pitying to be so I think. I have to be a little tougher.
1935.
What are some more topics?
My parents never abused me, I’ve not trademarked of
incorporated G2K, I’ve not revised this at all (not one word), I’ve nothing on
genius2000network.com to date, I’ve named the MPL’s architect wrongly I
suspect, why democracies have to fight undemocratically to survive, Eric Berne
on “seeing the coffee pot in my own way, not how I was taught to see it.” Le Lac d’Annecy, et al.
1936.
What are some more topics
you’ve left out of mention here?
One important one is the idea that Modernism is analogous to
Romanticism, starting 1898 and 1798 respectively, lasting about thirty years,
then going to Postmodernism and Victorianism, then to Decadence in each
case. Thus the “new” art-historical
period would be beginning now, in 2005.
A large-scale, pervasive, century-shaping constellation made of one
large exclusion and one equally large inclusion.
1937.
Is G2K like any two-part
function?
Yes, it is like God and Man, Science and Faith, good and evil,
true and false, rich and poor, war and peace, old and young, alive and dead,
etc. It is a two-part alternating cycle,
like yes and no or black and white. This
is not all that crude, by any means. All
chemistry revolves around positive and negative atomic charges that build atoms
and molecules. Many complicated patterns
can occur.
1938.
What are some other side
topics?
Ibn Arabi mentions “the slave to God,” and whether that’s
possible. Chomsky is vulnerable
concerning art and can’t save face there.
In Beowulf, boasting is said to be a form of commitment, viz.
Unferth. Socrates + Thrasymachus =
what? Unclear. It’s OK for G2K to be mediocre, unliked, weak,
like Benjamin’s “weak messianic power.”
No revolution, but constructive co-operation with power.
1939.
What are some other topics?
The importance of optimism and how things should go, Moynihan’s
Pandaemonium, Pagels on the Gnostic
gospels, the literal truth of the artistic experience i.e. aesthetic and
exosomatic evolution; Mao’s cultural revolution, not being able to praise G2K
as art, Godhead, Pound and the ideogrammic method. Threat of organized crime or warlordism
dominating the third world, putting my papers online, things I’m ashamed to
discuss, taking down e-groups.
1940.
What are some other topics?
Opposition is true friendship, my parents never sexually or
physically abused me, my parents helped me a lot in many things including
getting sober, other people have been pretending to be me on the web since
2003, why power will seek a vacuum in China and after the First Cold War, again
the Eumenides, whether to overwrite blaming quanta with forgiving quanta,
forgiveness, the NY Intellectuals viz. the First Cold War.
1941.
What are some additional
topics?
Stable monotonic repeating quadrature, pi, the Acropolis,
Archimedes, Holub, Miloscz’s Second Space,
The Elegant Universe, how I’m not
identical with G2K, my personal emotional problems, the need to rally U.S.
support for the war, joining the guard, avoiding celebrity and un-G2K devilry,
patience and breathing, constructive goals and hopes, cutting ties, publishing
v. internet, watercolor jpegs, limit-theory and logic in time-based history,
repetitions like Wolfram.
1942.
What are some more
side-topics?
Celibacy, jealousy, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, pride,
whether it is moral not to judge and punish sometimes, whether there is a
danger of G2K being idolized, if there’s a danger in discussing the O.S.O.
(though I think this is becoming more mainstream now), Sherwood Anderson,
Benedict Anderson, The Torrents of Spring,
The Sun Also Rises, UMTYMP, my visit
to Denmark, funerary lecture I saw, studying Wittgenstein at Cambridge in ’89.
1943.
What are some more topics?
D.H. Lawrence’s “Ship of Death,” my own 4-track music from
2004, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Larkin
in the Norton Modern, leaving old friendships, being trapped, the artist as
inclusive of the poet in Joyce, Lycidas, Alcestis (I read it in 1990), burning
my adolescent juvenilia (some writing and drawing, math works, some very good),
not saving things, burning my fifty poems from Madison in 1990 and 1991, giving
away my old books to the Goodwill, F-16 instability, Brecht.
1944.
What are some other topics?
Games People Play by E. Berne, VFE quotes, liberal democracy, Paul Nitze, prayer
as art, God as art, the cult of the master analyst, Auden’s “Shield of
Achilles,” honesty as the best policy, the need to fight to protect the future
from terrorism, Dryden’s “The Secular Masque,” Wolfram, Mailer, Tamburlaine, VFE transcripts, leaving
people out, betraying old friends, Polyneices in Herodotus, pop culture
references.
1945.
What are some other topics?
Professors I’ve studied with, their better and lesser writings,
that I’d like to go to law school and be liked, temporal and ecclesiastical
powers, naming names, Dr. Barbara Fowler, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes,
Aristophanes, Thucydides, Herodotus, Homer, the hero and the polis, the
individual and the state, Leo Strauss.
Lippman’s The Public Philosophy,
G2K as rationalism, war as the locus of danger and disagreement, the aesthetics
of political action (voting).
1946.
What are some other topics?
Medawar, Stephen Pinker, Bacon’s Novum Organum, the Elvehjem in Madison, Bayesian probability, the
Millennium Hut, the Fitzwilliam Art Museum, the Allen Art Museum, the Eroica,
how to deal with heroism. That’s it,
I’ve written all the items down from the little green notebook called “Topics
5/05.” Now I can sum up. I want to decide on web publishing and a coherent traditional structure.
1947.
Have you mentioned all the
extra, leftover topics from the notebook?
Yes I have. Now I’m just
going to wrap up. Please also note that
1948.
Have you come full circle
in this laundromat?
Yes, I began this here seven months ago. Today I’m concluding, by finishing penning the
final fifty quanta. This is not
publishable on my site, I’ve determined.
I’ve just finished Moynihan’s Pandaemonium
after stumbling on it in the used book store.
He cites Strauss, and predicts the Neocon plan I believe. My work will be different now.
1949.
Are you settled on a
programming career now, finally?
Yes, this book helped me determine that. It is a great relief. It is sane and healthy to take that
career. It pays well, creates no further
school debt, and will permit me freedom.
I’ll take two or three years to get my degree. This leaves the decision on purchasing a
house, getting another dog (in 2006 I think now), whether to associate with old
friends and family.
1950.
Is your main goal now to
create a work that is OK politically?
That’s a good way of stating it. The obligation to security, polity, and
country. After the crisis of
nine-eleven, it is clear that my pseudo-Chomskyan agitation is no longer
humorous or responsible. I can get G2K
extricated from that claptrap easily.
G2K never liked that Chomskyism anyhow.
A good, clean blueprint is my greatest desire, clean like the plan of
the Millennium Hut. I felt a need, real
or fake, to place a huge amount of incoherent content on the internet “just in
case.” Now the Just In Case rationale has
gone into eclipse. I can take it slowly
now. I can read, be at peace, meditate,
get my programmer degree, put G2K into stasis.
I can study and research for the goal of a good plan. I can think about the other life-tasks. I can avoid junk food and take care of
myself.
1951.
So there’s no urgency to
get a big fuss going over G2K?
No, I can take my time.
Wasting time is not good of course but critical crisis-actions are no
longer indicated. The machinations and
Machiavellian contortions can go by the wayside. If in fact the world has absolutely got to
have G2K today, it’s still there. It’s
there in a difficult and unclear but usable form. It can hang in there. The question of 2006 is still bugging me but
I can defer any decision until June 2006.
I can consider my family relations.
I can decide clearly on the web-only or the commercial publication
route. I can do the programming
exclusively if I want. I can keep doing
the conferences by hand if I want. I can
just scribble out the words and concepts.
I can do it about the Eumenides.
I can’t decide about my friends and family.
1952.
Are you going to get
another dog?
Not until 2006 at the earliest.
I might get a dog in
1953.
Is it OK to do meager
conferences only with no marketing, till 2009?
Yes, I’ll be forty in September 2009. That can be my goal for a good book. I can work on it gradually, organically,
until 2009. I can get it out just on the
first day of 2010. January 1 2010. Then I can put it out there. For the interim I can create it. A great holistic document. In the interim I can do conferences—the
Eumenides, Pandaemonium, Miloscz, Shakespeare, my book.
1954.
Can you truly finish this
today?
I think so. I can do ten
per hour. I can hustle. I can just race through them. The anxiety of G2K has come to an end. I can put any call to do it as an emergency
to rest. I can just stop concerning
myself with it. I can go cold until I
can articulate a mature vision. I can
quit the conferences at seven, or keep going.
It’s all OK.
1955.
Is it a great
transformation to become a Computer Programmer?
It acutely is. Computer
programming is a serious career that will secure my safety and my
retirement. I can’t go any longer
without taking such measures. Law school
is OK to skip but I cannot retire securely on my current wages. Programming will clear my college debt and
obtain secure housing. It’s the
mechanical machinery necessary to stay alive with food, shelter, medicine. There’s no guilt and no regrets.
1956.
Have you kept almost all
the considerable excellences of G2K secret?
Almost none of them are in this book. That is because I considered putting this on
the net, and G2K cannot yet be considered excellent by the multitude. It cannot be considered excellent yet. It has to remain secret. Staying exactly as it is now, it exerts
perfections onto the currents of humanity.
Exactly as it is now, confused, unclear, ineffectual, minor.
1957.
Can you let go of G2K
panic?
Yes, I don’t need to panic.
The great war for stability and a long future for humankind is under
way. Launching it was the great
crisis. Continuing it is now
inescapable, and in this context the urgency and crisis is passed. G2K is no longer needed at all in that
respect. It’s OK for Max Herman now to
go quiet, do the Eumenides in 2006, and then also continue meditating, learning
programming, and getting a house and dog.
It’s OK.
1958.
Are you paranoid about the
right?
Yes, perhaps mainly because I never studied their views or
their history. I still fret constantly
about the right, because I feel afraid I may be obligated to fight them and may
go to hell (lose my soul) if I don’t.
Yet sometimes the best way to neutralize a force is not to oppose it but
to let it run its course and peter out.
That is clearly the case now. The
principals are working it out and it’s no concern of mine.
1959.
Are you going perhaps to
need to consider that it is moral for you to exist?
Being a computer programmer—becoming that, not in half but
all—will calm me and cause me to consider my right to exist free, privileged,
unashamed, dignified. It will take
enormous work to learn computer programming.
I can’t worry about the political obligations of G2K. I’ve got to set them to the side for
now. Of course the parable of Christ’s
return, the artist-king, Lord of all, that is compelling.
1960.
Would you like to be a part
of a healthy, artistic social group, and not isolated?
I worry my isolation will kill me. It may drive me back to drink. Were that to occur, I could always go back to
[a twelve step group]. I’m so
scrambled. I don’t know if I should
restore contact with my family, and give them the love they deserve. I can’t determine which choice would be the
worse mistake. Perhaps I’ve lost my
confidence. In any event, that’s the way
it goes. I can’t get to the truth by
logic because I’m lacking the facts of my own experience. I can only get these facts of my own being
from experience.
1961.
Will it be difficult to
finish?
I will need to be quite focused to get forty more done
tonight. Forty is quite a few. I’ve only got six hours. I also need to grocery shop, wash the dishes,
do some classwork reading, and so forth.
Yet if I finish this book I can make a clean, courageous plunge into my
education. I am going to get an M.S.
degree and can then make approximately fifty thousand per year. That would gain me security to live to an age
of eighty. I’d gain up to fifty more
years of physical existence. I can get a
home, dog, and build equity. Of course a
condo and a very small dog could work also.
In any case, I’ll be grateful not to have to torture myself over career
choices again. Law school will be a
thing of the past. It’s not my
career. Computer programming and
creative writing will be my destiny.
I’ll wake up each day, go to work, and study computer programming.
1962.
Does your Paxil make you
slothful?
I guess so. I went back
on it, so I could get safe again. I was
getting very overcome by panic. I might
have done something horrific out in the open like publishing this “for the heck
of it.” I can’t let that happen. Hence I must take Paxil. In this way I can evade the compulsions of
panic. It will give me time to
plan. Yet it makes me slothful, inclined
to nap (as now), kind of cowardly. I get
a vague, fearful fatigue.
1963.
Is it now 1963?
Finally I’ve gotten to them, the last forty or so quanta. I’ve not accomplished much over mere
persistence. I’ve created two thousand
quanta, which is something. Neither very
quickly nor very slowly, either. Merely
a contemplative act, such as looking out my front window, west, at the General
Mills plant, the lavender sunset, a telephone pole, a tree, the greensward.
1964.
Will it be wonderful to
relax and relent in your quest to create and just learn?
I look forward to it. I
need to learn; learning the language of computers and programming will help
me. I can learn all the basics from A to
Z, then some subtleties and become a master programmer. I can read and work with a focus, free of
guilt. It can help free me from the
guilt of not doing G2K.
1965.
Once free of the guilt of
quitting G2K for now, can your meditation prosper?
Yes, that will be great.
Good old G2K can be laid to rest.
The video, the paper printouts, all the email lists, all the chicanery,
and the conferences. I can lay it all to
rest. It can end forever with the
winners page, in yellow, of the 2005 conference. I can let it go and go to computer
programming school. I’m listening to
Bach and it sounds well. It’s getting
cold these days. It’s November now. I’m getting older. Thirty-six.
1966.
Are you listening to
Beethoven?
Yes, I’m now listening to the very part of the Eroica that
starts the video. The very most quiet
part in the start, that shows the blinking bridge light. A beginning can be an ending too. The second hand on my watch is still
ticking. I’m now past the Eroica measures
that began the video. It’s now back in
glory to Ludwig Van Beethoven. Just as
Napoleon now ought not crown himself, so G2K.
Yet none can be told—that would, perforce, be a crowning.
1967.
Will you just let history
crown you?
History continuing, and perhaps going well at times, will be
the crowning for me, Christ, and all who have worked for the proper cause. We won’t get the overt love of the masses,
but that is not the crown. The contempt
of a fool is the kingly crown, as Blake said, and this is OK. Therefore now my scribbling these last quanta
becomes a very basic and sincere farewell, to the strains of the Eroica, the
Heroic.
1968.
Are you about to be born
again?
So many wars, Napoleonic, wars of attrition, boredom, and
necessity. Grace isn’t like these
wars. It’s when we let the club do the
work. It’s OK. Hitler began World War Two exactly thirty
years to the day before I was born. The
span of a young man’s life did I come after that horrific deed. What a slight and minor gap in time. Clearly all we can hope for is some quiet in
which to heal. We must all hang
together.
1969.
Are you born again?
You could say so. I’m no
longer doing G2K, no longer forcing myself to write. I can meditate now, and study computer
programming. After a fashion, G2K is
over. Without success and without
publication. I am going to set it, all
of its debates, tirades, fears, and coercions aside indefinitely. I will let go of it. It’s OK.
Like Napoleon not crowning himself.
An innoculation only, not an infection.
No infestation. OK to forget G2K,
let it go completely.
1970.
Can you write until six,
then sit?
Yes, I can do sitting meditation at six, when the symphony is
over. All the sounds together. When that is done it will be close to
six. Then it will be quiet for a short
time. Then I can meditate for twenty
minutes. Then I can eat steak and
pesto. Then I can grocery shop. Then I can work on my computer programming
studies. Then I can do my back
exercises, to help my back. I can decide
about a new dog in January. I could name
him Samson. That is a good name for a
good dog. It feels good to be back at my
writing desk. I have been away for many
a day, first to type the earlier quanta and then merely in quietude. It is not clear how I can work on art along
with computer programming at the same time.
I could obtain black watercolor from an art supply store and work on that. I am trying to hold my head straight, and the
paper, and not to the left. This causes
my writing to skew left. Tip.
1971.
Seeing the Modigliani and
the Doryphoros again, warped due to the summer rains coming through the window,
and your millennium rock and [a twelve-step] coin, how can you assess what has
been accomplished here?
I cannot claim that much has.
I have acted and refrained from action most impulsively. When difficult elements came to mind, I
recoiled in fear. For example, the
extremely notable G2K imagery in The
Matrix Revolutions. The symbolism
was quite extensive. To mention this
seems inappropriate, so I keep it quiet, out of these pages, until now. The details of my detractors’ attempts have
gone unmentioned and unrebutted for fear of excessive good fortune in the mold
of Polyneices. The camouflage of G2K
must remain. People cannot be called to
praise me. My greatest test and
temptation is now, is to remain quiet and obscure. Hence my gratitude for calm, and meditation,
and computer programming school, and to mention the Eumenides for conference
2006, Samson.
1972.
Is G2K really, at its core,
about the reversal of aesthetic heroism—as in The Tempest, Samson Agonistes,
the Eroica, all of it?
All great work is the ongoing attempt to escape idolatry. Yet the mere renunciation cannot last. The other kind of religious faith must grow
as an alternative. The growth has time-cycles
of its own that cannot be forced. Long
generations of gradual growth. Hence the
reversal of heroism takes time. Christ
contributed to it. The imperative to be
as Christ would have us is the call to depart from the idol, the heroic
without.
1973.
Can you be content in
leaving G2K alone for three years, i.e. for 2006, 2007, and 2008, to be
expressed in a short book in 2009?
I can accept my lack of celebrity until it is safe and decent
to gain fame. I can write this book, the
new one, in 2009 and publish it for conference 2010. This can be a very decent historical
humility. Until then, only living,
healthy meditation, goodness, decency, a dog, computer programming. I’m free.
1974.
Is it true that 1974 would
never come around again?
Archetypally so. The
memory or the reconstruction comes around.
I recall that year, which is the less unfortunate for me as I recall how
unpleasant and improper it may have been to have had sex with my downstairs
neighbor in
1975.
In your studies of computer
programming, need to pressure yourself to conform?
No, I can verily remain celibate, isolated, alone with God, my
pen, my brush, my meditation. I can
remain free from the calls of my society to date, go to group therapy, go to
personal psychotherapy, be a sexy celebrity, marry, have children. I can accept my isolation with peace and
grace. I shall remain alone as the monks
do. If I care to. I am free to do so.
1976.
Is it almost six now?
Yes, it is very close to six.
Soon I will go to meditate.
Clearly I can complete these remaining quanta tonight, if I make the
effort. And I do consider it useful to
complete them before my schooling begins.
I’m concerned people might find out where I’m going to school, where I
work, and either damage me or try to make me a celebrity idol. It will be good to get out of the political
propaganda game for a couple of years and get my M.S.
1977.
Will you feel glad this is
done?
I’ll be glad that I stuck with it, kept my pledge, worked, gave
it a try, and got done. I can put it on
CD and archive it. I don’t care to
publish it now but here it is. I can
archive it. It’s incomplete, sparse,
with gaps. I mention nothing about the
most important and striking facts and factors. Moreover, a great tumult may be soon to arrive
in the politics of the
1978.
How is your depression?
Manageable I guess. I’m
back on Paxil—have been ever since August, when I realized this couldn’t go on
the web, and therefore it had no goal or purpose. It was stillborn. That got me down. My thinking is so distorted and
fragmentary. I’m craning my head to the
left. Just stopped. Anyhow, I can’t seem to get a grip on
myself. Yet I’m functioning, getting to
work, not drinking or smoking.
Metamorphosing into vermin.
1979.
Have you had lots of sexual
fear?
I’ve had sexual fear, shame, and trauma at all my good places
of living. I could go into them but it
could be a sin, a sin against mental hygiene.
How I felt degraded after being sexually abused, corrupt, deformed,
broken, disgusting. I still feel
completely disgusted with myself, yet I repress it so as to function. So it goes.
I’ve lost any sense of the good life.
All because of my fake do-gooderism, messianism.
1980.
Is this your second
re-write?
Yes, it’s the second.
Hooper said in the Video “there will be mistakes and
imperfections.” My over-writing them
reflects the esoteric or privacy factor.
Also, like Heisenberg you can’t determine the object-ness or
process-ness of something both at the same time. I try to do that sometimes and get shame and
guilt. Shakespeare wrote about grafting
and cutting plants.
1981.
Could quitting caffeine
reduce your dark eye-bags?
I guess maybe. I can’t
say what causes dark eye-bags. Mine have
gotten an enormous lot worse this year however, this year of 2005. It looks to be a “sad” ending shaping
up. “In war the law is silent.” The great war on terror is now all that
matters. Let our grandchildren write
poetry. If only I could write poems that
kicked the terrorists in the balls, caringly.
Exploring my feelings. My work is
oppressive, tedious, and could be done better by someone with half my I.Q. They’d be friendlier and more grateful. It would invigorate them. What can I do? Where can I go? G2K can’t shine yet because of the battle,
the creation of hatred. Hate is the wind
in the sails of the ship of state.
Absent hate we are all in the doldrums.
There is nothing to steer and no progress. We have to hate the terrorists to fight them.
1982.
Is all your
self-condemnation getting quite overly heavy now, burdensome?
Glory yes. The
self-cannibalization and self-condemnation is excessive and intolerable. It’s negative introspection. Factually society cannot speak the truth
today, nor can we discuss this fact openly.
Strauss was correct about esotericism.
All Nietzsche meant was that global human power had to consolidate and
expand, take charge.
1983.
Why can’t you just bark out
the truth?
I’d like to. But it
would harm the project of bringing order and calm to the angry lunatics of my
species. The tide is turning now for the
Democrats against the Republicans. The
Democrats will regain power. Then all
this unpleasantness will be forgotten in a great orgy of comity. People don’t need to be told about the
Eumenides—it’s been orchestrated for
them. Our leadership has accomplished
phenomenal things in getting this war launched, and how they did it, how
stably-radically.
1984.
Will it now just take some
time for people to do G2K on their own?
Yes, G2K was my name for the good humanity will do once they
get a long time-period under relative safety in liberal democracy. It’s the cultural evolutionary process and
direction—my name for it, rather—of liberal democracy when globally secure and
only minimally at risk. The G2K quotient
of the 2100’s will depend on how well we take care of terrorism.
1985.
Isn’t it forbidden to
discuss even one microscopic fragment of truth?
Truthful discussion sets a dangerous example. We can’t be allowed to discuss “the horror”
as Kurtz said, to “get into it,” because that means going insane. No longer to be a clerk or an errand-boy, a
Victorian functionary, but the dark lord incarnate like Kurtz. The horror was always there but you can’t
talk about it. That’s the real power in
culture, the fear, the void, the danger.
Darkness.
1986.
So 9/11 and the War on
Terror are “the horror”?
They could be. After
all, the defeat of global terrorism (banditry, warlordism, atomization, the
Rule of the One Master, the war of all against all) requires massive
infrastructure and gigantic applications of horrifying measures. So, in order for us clerks and cobblers to
stomach it, it has to be dressed up in fairy tales and childish
explanations. The truth is a
death-storm.
1987.
Why can’t you accept the
mountain of death, the cruelty, and just be happy?
Perhaps it is cognitive dissonance. If one cannot see the grime on the walls, it
is not there, it is not grimy in one’s room, your room. The room you live
in has clean walls. There must be acres
of homilies about this. Don’t watch them
making war or sausage. Pig snouts and
cow anuses all blended together, hardly fit for consumption. Hence don’t expect democracies to be able to
make war.
1988.
What kind of great future
then is set forth for us in this next century?
Clearly not one of facetious claptrap like I stated. The crowds must be kept in check. War is not a game for children. It’s a fight to the death; the losing
culture’s dreams are killed by defeat.
It’s practically the murder of your god and the erasure of his face from
history. It’s what makes surviving
defeat a fate worse than death. War’s
what you win or die.
1989.
Can you get over your great
messianism?
I hope day by daily day.
The great seers and planners, the chess grand-masters like Wolfowitz and
Cheney—truly conquering generals of the highest greatness perhaps ever seen on
earth—are working on this very problem and are in command. If anything, G2K would be the surface gilt on
the great machinery of destruction. The
terrorists must be torn to shreds by massive ordnance air bursts, ridden down.
1990.
Is this a rewrite, and what
did a friend of yours, now a celebrity, tell you in high school?
Yes, and he said “You have the right to say what you want, and
other people have the right to kick your ass.”
So one can’t always be certain of security in advance. You can try to be careful and try to fix
mistakes before you publish. That’s the
Eumenides at work. Also, some mistakes
are going to happen.
1991.
So there’s no truth for G2K
out there in culture-land, propaganda-land, the public sphere of communication?
Clearly there is nowhere to get a foot down safely. It’s all war, the law is silent. “God himself has not said a word!” as
Browning stated so clearly. G2K is each
person’s inner struggle and inner cause.
The external realm is now completely lost to Satan. It cannot be salvaged or redeemed. All we can do, we of light and leading, is
hack it into a confined space where it can burn itself out—all the religious
hatred, all the fossil-fueled chaos. Now
the conflict of personal greeds will smolder and eventually die. Personal greed and ignorance will now carry
liberal democracy to safety, safely incorporating once-Red
1992.
Did you have to overwrite
this quantum, and did you include all the links here for convenience?
Yes, and
yes, here are the links:
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1993.
Can you get along without
the cajolery of galleries and the celebrity circuit?
Oh, I can do fine without all of that garbage, the endless
sluicegates of it. I don’t require the
artworld’s acclaim. I don’t require the
false pleasure of scourging them. I can
let go and let God take care of them.
Good old [twelve-step] wisdom, here at last in my final
never-to-be-published quanta. The
red-striped beetles are crawling into my apartment and expiring. The night falls at five now, too.
1994.
Is A/K/H/A important for
people to contemplate and study?
I guess not. They can
study whatever they want. They’ll never
be able to kill G2K now. Only G2K (i.e.
me) can kill itself by chaotic frenzy.
The civil society, the liberal democratic experiment, will safely
continue now indefinitely because the final perma-war has been exerted. Nothing more is critical.
1995.
Is it needless to go on?
Yes, no further conferences are needed. Not even to render G2K uncataclysmic. Stopping at seven is very run-of-the-mill and
respectable. It’s the perfect caesura to
the network itself, the un-crowning or non-self-crowning. Others will be given the power to crown or
ignore G2K as they see fit. After the
lapse of one year, one year lost in 2006, the spell will be broken, the charm
gone, just like The Tempest. All lost like the breaking of a scepter. And this only secret.
1996.
Are you too old to think up
a real book now?
I’m quite old and almost certainly too old to do anything
“great.” Putting this kind of flotsam
out would only give tinder to the sputtering fire of “collective egoism,” as
Niebuhr called it. Collective
hero-mania, Fuhrerism. Now the law will
be king. Law, that is, will be King. This is a good thing. I need not make any cataclysmic moves, I’ll
just leave it up.
1997.
Would you still like to put
this on the web, despite mentioning 9/11 and sexual abuse?
I can’t do it. I have to
accept that the final seventh church has been completed and there will never
again be a single addition to G2K. I
regret never having mentioned the Eumenides.
That was a greediness and a failing.
Perhaps by some saving grace I mentioned it somewhere, secret, hidden,
incontrovertible. As it lay now however
is as good as can be expected.
1998.
Are these finally now the
years during which you worked on G2K?
They are. I got the
idea, created a website, created video interviews, compiled them, mounted an
e-mail campaign. As Burke said “in every
society there must exist a certain quantum
of power, authority, command.” I
couldn’t agree more. I never mentioned
the Eumenides, perhaps because I felt I needed a secret weapon or golden
treasure in reserve. My esoteric
mystery.
1999.
Is the future exciting and
bizarre?
I don’t think so; I think rather the great extension of
futurity is more repetition and homogeneity than it is novelty. Except for the extermination of humanity,
there is not much that is new, strictly speaking, that futurity could bring
us. Now we can truly pray for the great
endless anti-climax of which E.A. Robinson wrote “God’s touch will leave its
one chord quivering.” Hence I can humbly
model my habits and goals on that, artistic life.
2000.
In short, will this
therefore not make you, Max Herman, famous?
It will be read by few or none.
As I told the woman I was speaking to at my criminally betrayed mother’s
sixty-fifth birthday a fortnight ago, I set myself the goal of writing the Literaria Biographia of the next
century. Yet every repetition of a thing
will be as inversely related to its precursor as conditions are. This book now exists but no one will read
it. The Network exists but very few or
none will ever go to it. It won’t look
anything like what I spoke of it as, and perhaps this is wherein lies what
integrity it has. The Genius 2000
Network, A New Network. I can set it
aside now, to cure let’s say. I am
thankful for it. I would like to end
with a prayer for all humankind: Lord,
please forgive us and bless us, take care of us when we are going crazy, allow
us to calm down, and breathe, and be good people. Amen.
