November 19, 2009 at 9:00 A.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected.
March 10, 2009 at 8:46 A.M. Spacing has been affected in this essay. Other defacements and attacks on these writings are always expected. Letters will be removed, words deleted, other alterations are sure to follow. I cannot access my MSN group. Hence, any damage done to the writings at that site (if it still exists) cannot be repaired at this time. I am denied the use of images. My second book will not be sent to on-line booksellers, not even at my own expense. American officials have expressed concern about human rights in other countries and the need for freedom of expression everywhere. Someday, we will have freedom of speech in America.
March 9, 2009 at 2:46 P.M. I was about to post a comment focusing on Mr. Rabner and Ms. Poritz. Regrettably, N.J. hackers essentially erased the text that I was working on. This week has been filled with cyberwarfare experiences. I will rewrite that essay, at greater length, then I will struggle to re-post it at this blog. I have kept copies of the relevant newspaper articles.
How is the Xanadu matter proceeding, Senator Bob? I know that you will wish to "cooperate fully" with any authorities looking into that matter. Say hello to Gloria. And the babe. Ms. Portiz and Ms. Milgram no doubt share many "fond memories" of late night "working sessions." This touches my heart. I wonder whether Diana also worked late hours with her "friends" in Trenton, New Jersey? Was Diana providing introductions to nice young women? You like child porn, ladies? New Jersey is known as "child porn central" in America. ("New Jersey Superior Court Judge is a Child Molester" and "We don't know from nothing," then "Judges Protect Child Molesters in Bayonne, New Jersey.") Are these the persons judging my ethics?
February 12, 2009 at 8:02 A.M. "errors" were inserted overnight in this essay and others as part of a continuing harassment and cybercrime effort against me and my writings. Cubanazos and their mafia-political protection (Senator Bob?) are accustomed to censorship. See "Banning Books in Miami," (Editorial) The New York Times, February 11, 2009, at p. A30.
For an example of what is called "legal ethics" in America, see John Schwartz, "Judge Weighs Dismissing Case Involving Torture Memorandums," in The New York Times, March 7, 2009, at p. A13. A federal judge is considering whether to dismiss a civil law suit -- probably legal ethics charges will also be dismissed -- against one of the so-called "legal architects" of the torture methods and policies, an alleged "rationalizer of atrocity," Professor John Yoo of Berkeley's School of Law. No suit has been brought against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or Circuit Court Judge Jay Bybee, a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court in a future Republican administration, or any of the others justifying the Bush torture policy which has destroyed many lives and produced a number of murders of detainees while in U.S. custody. (Only one new "error" inserted since my previous review is better than I expected.)
MSN is blocked, MSN groups has "closed," and the Internet is periodically "unavailable" to me as a result of New Jersey's cyberharassment and censorship efforts. Just another day at the office. The U.S. government proclaims its commitment to free speech and asks others to respect the rights of dissidents, even as I am tortured and silenced (publicly!) in America. Any more cybercrime today? I will go to public computers later today to continue writing. I will use more than one computer in order to make things interesting for any New Jersey persons following along.
Perhaps to the disappointment of Ms. Poritz and Mr. Rabner, Bernie Madoff will probably get a deal for minimal time, after "pleading guilty to a $65 BILLION Ponzi scheme." "Madoff Guilty Plea Expected Next Week," in The New York Times, March 7, 2009, at p. A1. I was puzzled to learn that "Slim Jim" McGreevey was not investigated or prosecuted for operating the most tainted administration in terms of "pay-to-play" in New Jersey history. The N.J. Attorney General at the time of McGreevey's "sweetheart" deals was Stuart Rabner, who was later appointed to the position of New Jersey's Chief Justice by Mr. McGreevey, I believe. It makes perfect sense to me that all of these people are so chummy and, strangely, unindicted. Ethics? in New Jersey? Whatta-ya, kidding? ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
Go ahead, talk to me about your ethics in New Jersey's legal sewer. It is difficult to explain to readers the emotions one experiences as a result of censorship. There is, of course, a feeling of personal loss. One's ideas and emotions are trivialized and dismissed. One's efforts to communicate something learned, perhaps painfully, are destroyed or denied existence until they are plagiarized. This is also a way of denying a writer validation.
One cannot help being struck by the dismal quality of so much writing that finds its way into print these days. It is impossible not to realize that something more than assessments of literary quality are involved in these determinations and attacks, exclusions of voices with personality and power -- including attempts to destroy some written work and authors -- must be the motive for so many denials to "weird people" of opportunities to be heard.
I have paid for an ISBN number which may be invalid or nonexistent for a book that will not be distributed to interested readers in a society that criminalizes censorship or any violations of civil rights by the state. This hypocrisy and fraud on the part, I believe, of legal officials and their criminal friends in New Jersey (and elsewhere) is a source of laughter and merriment in Trenton.
In addition to such creative frustrations, of course, there is the almost daily encounter with the bottomless pit of hatred and malice that seems to flourish in some human beings, hatred which defies rational comprehension or explanation. You have to feel that effort directed against your words and yourself -- as you sit at your computer seeking to articulate a complex thought and justified anger -- to appreciate or understand what I am saying.
One's very creative intelligence and energy is detested as an impermissible theft of the magic of genius (no, I don't claim to be one), the lightning of the gods, that properly belongs to persons who have attended, say, Yale University, while concentrating on women's studies and vegeterianism. Anne Milgram, Esq.?
Writing against hatred and censorship is like being dipped in a barrel of shit, then required to judge different perfumes. New Jersey is the barrel of shit. The effort of concentration involved in this daily adventure of setting down words -- as I defend against defacements of my texts -- is nothing less than heroic. There must be any number of witnesses to this horror who are amused or indifferent, entertained or fascinated by the torments of a human being. Experts are bored by the destruction of Constitutional rights. I am fascinated by the indifference and banality of these silent witnesses who are complicit in atrocity and cruelty. Evil is only possible because of the silence of cowardly bystanders. Mr. Rabner? Ms. Poritz? Mr. Corzine?
"The Nazi extermination of European Jews is the most extreme instance of abhorrent immoral acts carried out by thousands of people in the name of obedience. Yet in lesser degree this type of thing is constantly recurring: ordinary citizens are ordered to destroy other people, and they do so because they consider it their duty to obey orders. Thus, obedience to authority, long praised as a virtue, [Terry Tuchin's "adjustment"?] takes on a new aspect when it serves a malevolent cause: far from appearing as a virtue, it is transformed into a heinous sin. ... "
Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper-Colophon, 1975), p. 2.
How can one explain the Jewish Nazis whose actions so horrified Hannah Arendt? I recall Arendt's letters and exchanges published in The New Yorker in response to criticisms from Jewish groups, after the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem, later analyzed by Mary McCarthy. For Arendt's mature views of the controversy, see Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971), pp. 3-17. How does a Jew become Mengele? How is such a thing possible? How does another Jew become Eichman? ("What is it like to be tortured?")
There is something about evil persons that causes them to hate anything that is well said or beautiful. Hatred has this deforming quality. Hence, the frequent depiction of moral hideousness as physical monstrosity. The myth of "Beauty and the Beast" has always attracted me for this reason. I think that universal myth is an attempt to come to terms with the mystery of beauty in aesthetic and moral terms, along with the necessary entanglement of competing values of intellectual elegance or quality with ethical virtues of goodness and grace. Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast poses the question: "What is true beauty?"
This tension and dialectic between values -- beauty against the messy reality we describe in our texts -- surfaces in multidisciplinary contexts today, after the second epistemological revolution in science and philosophy's linguistic turn. I direct the scientifically-minded to Michael Polanyi's essay Science, Faith and Society (London & Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 14-15, pp. 42-62. (" ... scientific discovery is a creative act akin to creation in the arts.")
"The scientific process can fairly be called dialectical, if we bear in mind that en route from any level of structure and/or margin of totality to the next, falsification and the elimination, that is to say, absenting, [Hegel, Bradley] of inadequate theories, corresponding to the nodal dialectical comment (DC'), and retrospective correction of the account occur."
Roy Bashkar, "Dialectic: The Logic of Absence," in Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 108-109. If you read Bashkar's brilliant comments on the philosophy of science attentively, any number of philosophers and scientists will pop into your mind. In this passage, the alert reader will be aware of Theodor Adorno's Negative Dialectics (humanities, social science) and also of Robert B. Laughlin's A Different Universe (science, mathematics-physics, quantum theory), also of Hegelianism, which is always important with Bashkar. Fascinating developments of continuities in the ideas of Jacques Derrida and quantum mechanics is found in Arkady Plotinksy, "Complementarity and Deconstruction," in Complementarity (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 191-271 (fusing physics with postmodernism).
Attacks on my computer since first posting this essay make it impossible for me to use italics to designate titles. Hence, many scholarly works that I would normally cite will not be mentioned. I am working on devising a way of listing books, perhaps by using quotation marks. My ability to use italics and bold script has been restored since writing the above. However, these tools may be gone tomorrow. I still cannot use images.
"A textbook example of Dark Corollaries at work is the correlation effect. The name itself is actually a reductionist misnomer" -- there are lots of those! -- "for correlation in quantum mechanics just means 'entanglement,' something that electrons exhibit always -- not just some of the time. Calling electrons correlated is like calling bodies of water wet."
A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down (New York: Perseus, 2005), pp. 150-151.
I would say of persons what Mr. Laughlin says of electrons: We are correlated, entangled, mutually dependent. Each of these words helps to define persons. Strawson's individuals are collective entities. There is a magnetic pull exerted upon our lives by the lives of all others, especially those we love, or great concentrations of others.
Censorship is about control. We live in a society that is ostensibly committed to the autonomy of the individual conscience and freedom of expression -- expression in political and philosophical matters, especially, is enshrined in the American Constitution, along with protections for the autonomous related realm of "inner life" or spirituality for every individual. The delicate ballet of principles in the First Amendment is an accomodation between the sanctity (I use the word "sanctity" advisedly) of the individual's private feelings and projects or expressions against communal needs for comformity, that is, "correlation" of self-with-others by allowing for plenty of differences and dissent. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
State power has increased so greatly with new technologies, including methods of psychological control, that the tiny territory allotted to persons -- the very concept of a "person" is in trouble -- has diminished to almost nothing. Criminal laws meant to protect against overreaching by the State are disregarded. I experience efforts to destroy, frustrate, prevent communication and expression of my so-called dangerous thoughts -- thoughts which should and must "enjoy" government protection. I am denied the use of images depicting all-too graphically America's responsibility for crimes against humanity and the disgusting cruelties of New Jersey's ruling cartel. ("News From the War on Terror.")
Public criminality by government seeking to produce Foucault's "docile subjects" has become routine. This government power is accepted by a domesticated and increasingly powerless population conditioned into a convenient apathy by sold-out journalists. Denials of access to philosophical acumen is not coincidental to this process, in my opinion, since young people are taught to "hate philosophy." This is to diminish and impoverish their intellectual lives. This hurts those young victims of intellectual prejudice and blimpishness. Eventually, it will hurt all of us.
This hatred of independent thought and obstructions of rights of conscience takes place with the cooperation of sometimes well-meaning persons who are under the impression that they are "enlightening" benighted millions of little people in need of their instruction, "little brown persons" (for Maurice J. Gallipoli, perhaps), inferiors, who display "resistance" or are in "denial."
Some of us are struggling to think and speak freely against all efforts of conditioning and control by self-described "superiors" who are more like oppressors. ("Maurice J. Gallipoli and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
This activity of thinking and speaking freely is essential in science. With the abolition of rights of conscience, you can expect that it will not be long before science is attacked and scientific truth, where it conflicts with religious beliefs or cherished prejudices, will also be in trouble. To fight the battles needed on behalf of science, the very worst thing you can do, Ms. Jacoby, is to assist or endorse the silencing or censoring of anyone by trivializing access to sophisticated philosophical discussion.
Have letters been removed from this essay? Has spacing between paragraphs been afffected, again? New Jersey's mafia-controlled government is now seen to be what it always has been -- a caudillo looting the public treasury. What must also be seen is the danger in authorizing censorship and destruction of free speech rights for anyone at a time when creative, daring and original thinking is desperately needed. We need Darwin, Einstein, Hawking to think, speak and write freely and fearlessly. The only way to protect that freedom is to ensure that everyone enjoys such rights of expression and access to ideas.
"The double action of destroying ourselves with one hand, and calling this love [therapy?] with the other, is a sleight of hand one can marvel at. Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves [psychological theories, political ideologies] and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth. By such mystification, we achieve and sustain our adjustment, adaptation, socialization. But the result of such adjustment to our society is that, having been tricked and having tricked ourselves out of our minds, that is to say, out of our own personal worlds of experience, out of that unique meaning with which potentially we may endow the external world, simultaneously we have been conned into the illusion that we are separate 'skin-encapsulated egos.' ..."
R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Pantheon, 1967), pp. 72-73.
The attempt to force comformity down the throats of our best thinkers and artists, scientists and philosophers is also an attempt to destroy them -- and eventually, you too -- as persons. We are trapped in a psychobabbler's paradise in contemporary America that looks like hell to most people on the planet. We live in a plastic polity modelled on prisons defined by an aesthetic of sanitation that is aimed at erasing all humanistic contamination through the elimination of originality and creativity. Most of all, freedom is a category of guilt. Torturer-censors say: "You must think as we do. We define rationality as well as reality, normality and goodness." I refuse to live in a slave ship. The "philosophical psychopath," to use Norman Mailer's term, responds:
"What a man [or woman] feels is the impulse for his creative effort, and if an alien but nonetheless passionate instinct about the meaning of life has come so unexpectedly from a virtually illiterate people, [Americans] come out of the most intense conditions of exploitation, cruelty, violence, frustration, and lust, and yet has succeeded as an instinct in keeping this TORTURED PEOPLE alive, then it is perhaps possible that [African-Americans] hold more of the tail of the expanding elephant of truth than the [white] radical, and if this is so, the radical humanist could do worse than to brood upon the phenomenon."
"The White Negro," in Advertisements for Myself (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 357 (emphasis added).
Accompanying this essay at MSN is an image of a strong African man holding a white child -- an image that is unacceptable to racists -- it is compatible with images of this same actor in roles of struggle and with his personal insistence on respect. These images constitute a dialectic in African-American masculinity, a masculinity which is indicative of a universal archetypal and heroic understanding of masculinity for a world of much greater gender-complexity and plural identities. Get used to it. African-American identity can be both strong and compassionate. Beauty can mean many things, including moral beauty. This controversial paternal image should be available at http://www.Critique@msn.groups.com/ (If that site still exists.)
This essay was vandalized at Critique, because (I believe) this one image is deeply controversial in an almost religious way for some people. This depiction of a strong African-born male, who is protective of a white child, profoundly alters the psychic landscape of America, as does the election of President Barack Obama, or the mere existence of Dr. Ben Carson, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Ms. Leontyne Price, Dr. Cornel West, and so many others. Racism cannot survive confrontation with these religious images. Hence, whatever war I have to wage to continue saying these things and posting these images is worth the effort and psychological cost to me.
I will continue to write and struggle in this battle of archetypal images and words.
