C
constantin constantius
Guest
i want too further expand on some of the ideas from the earlier post relating to this piece, and hopfully shed light on the child in NSM and the kinds of movements she will have too make to get out of her position.
as i see it, she will have to go through three stages: the immediate, the ironic and then finally, the positive alternative. immediacy and the other two stages i will be disscussing are basically about the level of consciousness found in a human being. immediacy represents the lowest form - half human and half animal; it cannot see past its own instinctive appetites and desires. the other two represents a break from this into the creative freedom of an individual to be able to see the world and himself in new ways.
the first stage, immediacy, is what she and every human being is born into. but what do i mean exactly by immediacy? well, it is the uncritical and unthinking acceptance of one's given nature, one's physical body and its characteristics, one's socially determmined identity, and so on. and it comes in different forms: ranging from the purely sensous immediacy, characterised bythe childs unreflecting trust in his parents and the world, to the individual's unreflecting pursuit of desire-satasfaction, to the ethical immediacy of a person who accepts and abides by the norms of his society without ever reflecting apoun them or calling their athuority into question. in relation to love and recognition, it is this immediate life that morrissey speaks from and to, but with one qualification, he speaks of its contradiction. he is a poet of immediacy's contradiction.
there are a minority in society, and i think we would all have meet some, who hardly ever face contradiction. they possess all the qualitys needed to go through life without a hiccup: beauty, confidence, the gift of the gab; life for these will be plain sailing, but they are gennarlly the shallowest people in society. for the rest of us experience will often refute us; our needs and desires will sometimes be fuffilled, sometimes unfuffilled, and we will struggle through life sometimes happy, other times unhappy, but at the end of the day most of us will say we where glad to have lived. another minority, symbolized by the child in NSM, find their whole life in contradiction with the world. their need for love and recongnition as full human beings will never be given because society itself exsists in the immediate life.
contradiction in the existentail sense, whether that be phisical, emotional, spiritual or intellectual, always entails suffering. but people should not assume this suffering as being purely negative - for there is someting positive here;namely, an individual will only question himself and the world through experiencing such a contradiction. and it is only through questioning that one can develop one's own mind and one's own opinions, beliefs and values,etc, and so discovering whether the truths and values laid down by society are rigth or wrong. i said earlier that morrissy speaks from immediate life, but this is a bit unfair to him, for in some areas he's went beyond this. for example, morrissy is a vegatarian, but i am sure he would not have always been one. maybe as a child he loved to tuck into a juicy roost and a hamburger or two. but at some point he began to question the ethics of killing and eating animals, and through this questioning he discoved an alternative and so became a vegatarian. most people, on the other hand, will retain their immediatly given appetites and desires and eat meat without ever reflecting on its morality. in relation to love and recognition, morrissey only ever speaks from immediate life, and this is why in my firt post i called him negative and a dead-end, because for the child in NSM and other people like her, if they can only see life through morrissey's (immediacy's) eyes the only place they'll end up is in self-pity and despair (is'nt morrissey's music full of this) and the only route out will be suicide. so she must begin to question her life and this will take her towards the next stage that i will disscuss: the ironic life.
if she is to become ironic then she must literally die to immediacy. she must dissasociate herself, and regard external to herselr, her n immediate given nature. and it will mean dissasociating from all the goals, ideas and identitys that society conditions into people from birth. so instead of letting the world refute her, she must actively refute the world. when she has done this she will still, externally, continue engaging in the relationships and conventions of society as normal, but inwardly she would have repudiated it all and life becomes mere play-acting to her. this ironic life represents a more developed consciousness than found in immediate life but it is still negative, because having emptiedout immediacy's content she has become a void. she is like a ghost caugth between two worlds: having rejected immediate life she yet to find an alternative world to fill this void. and this will take her to the final stage: the positive alternative.
the positive alternative, as i said earlier, consists in seeing and reinterpreting the world in a different way. we all see the world in terms of ideas and images, and the reinterpreting mean to consciously strip away the old ones and replace them with new ones. for her, life in immediacy is like living in a high-rise tower block - very cold, impersonnel and inhuman, and continuing to interpret her life through immediacy's ( morrissey's) eyes will only mean she will remain there, and all her self-pitying and despairing cry's will just be echos whistling down its dark and deserted corridoors. so what she must do is to destroy the old tower block and build herself a new home. a one where everything is arranged, by her; where everthing has meaning, for her; and where everthing concurs, with her. she migth alway suffer, but at least this way she will find meaning in that suffering, and that, not some knigth in shinning armour, will prove her saviuor.
if you think i am being a little far-fecthed in disscusing concepts like irony and alternatives - not really. almost everybody who cares to read this post will have been in ironic an relationships to many things external to himself. and again, almost everybody interprets the world in their own paticular way - helping them to cope with and make sense of life. the child in NSM just has to do it in a more radical way.
as i see it, she will have to go through three stages: the immediate, the ironic and then finally, the positive alternative. immediacy and the other two stages i will be disscussing are basically about the level of consciousness found in a human being. immediacy represents the lowest form - half human and half animal; it cannot see past its own instinctive appetites and desires. the other two represents a break from this into the creative freedom of an individual to be able to see the world and himself in new ways.
the first stage, immediacy, is what she and every human being is born into. but what do i mean exactly by immediacy? well, it is the uncritical and unthinking acceptance of one's given nature, one's physical body and its characteristics, one's socially determmined identity, and so on. and it comes in different forms: ranging from the purely sensous immediacy, characterised bythe childs unreflecting trust in his parents and the world, to the individual's unreflecting pursuit of desire-satasfaction, to the ethical immediacy of a person who accepts and abides by the norms of his society without ever reflecting apoun them or calling their athuority into question. in relation to love and recognition, it is this immediate life that morrissey speaks from and to, but with one qualification, he speaks of its contradiction. he is a poet of immediacy's contradiction.
there are a minority in society, and i think we would all have meet some, who hardly ever face contradiction. they possess all the qualitys needed to go through life without a hiccup: beauty, confidence, the gift of the gab; life for these will be plain sailing, but they are gennarlly the shallowest people in society. for the rest of us experience will often refute us; our needs and desires will sometimes be fuffilled, sometimes unfuffilled, and we will struggle through life sometimes happy, other times unhappy, but at the end of the day most of us will say we where glad to have lived. another minority, symbolized by the child in NSM, find their whole life in contradiction with the world. their need for love and recongnition as full human beings will never be given because society itself exsists in the immediate life.
contradiction in the existentail sense, whether that be phisical, emotional, spiritual or intellectual, always entails suffering. but people should not assume this suffering as being purely negative - for there is someting positive here;namely, an individual will only question himself and the world through experiencing such a contradiction. and it is only through questioning that one can develop one's own mind and one's own opinions, beliefs and values,etc, and so discovering whether the truths and values laid down by society are rigth or wrong. i said earlier that morrissy speaks from immediate life, but this is a bit unfair to him, for in some areas he's went beyond this. for example, morrissy is a vegatarian, but i am sure he would not have always been one. maybe as a child he loved to tuck into a juicy roost and a hamburger or two. but at some point he began to question the ethics of killing and eating animals, and through this questioning he discoved an alternative and so became a vegatarian. most people, on the other hand, will retain their immediatly given appetites and desires and eat meat without ever reflecting on its morality. in relation to love and recognition, morrissey only ever speaks from immediate life, and this is why in my firt post i called him negative and a dead-end, because for the child in NSM and other people like her, if they can only see life through morrissey's (immediacy's) eyes the only place they'll end up is in self-pity and despair (is'nt morrissey's music full of this) and the only route out will be suicide. so she must begin to question her life and this will take her towards the next stage that i will disscuss: the ironic life.
if she is to become ironic then she must literally die to immediacy. she must dissasociate herself, and regard external to herselr, her n immediate given nature. and it will mean dissasociating from all the goals, ideas and identitys that society conditions into people from birth. so instead of letting the world refute her, she must actively refute the world. when she has done this she will still, externally, continue engaging in the relationships and conventions of society as normal, but inwardly she would have repudiated it all and life becomes mere play-acting to her. this ironic life represents a more developed consciousness than found in immediate life but it is still negative, because having emptiedout immediacy's content she has become a void. she is like a ghost caugth between two worlds: having rejected immediate life she yet to find an alternative world to fill this void. and this will take her to the final stage: the positive alternative.
the positive alternative, as i said earlier, consists in seeing and reinterpreting the world in a different way. we all see the world in terms of ideas and images, and the reinterpreting mean to consciously strip away the old ones and replace them with new ones. for her, life in immediacy is like living in a high-rise tower block - very cold, impersonnel and inhuman, and continuing to interpret her life through immediacy's ( morrissey's) eyes will only mean she will remain there, and all her self-pitying and despairing cry's will just be echos whistling down its dark and deserted corridoors. so what she must do is to destroy the old tower block and build herself a new home. a one where everything is arranged, by her; where everthing has meaning, for her; and where everthing concurs, with her. she migth alway suffer, but at least this way she will find meaning in that suffering, and that, not some knigth in shinning armour, will prove her saviuor.
if you think i am being a little far-fecthed in disscusing concepts like irony and alternatives - not really. almost everybody who cares to read this post will have been in ironic an relationships to many things external to himself. and again, almost everybody interprets the world in their own paticular way - helping them to cope with and make sense of life. the child in NSM just has to do it in a more radical way.