I am “reading” Judith Butler’s “The Psychic Life of Power” via Google Books. My reading style has always been to read lightly, not tread to deeply into the cognitive awareness of the author. I only devote truly intense reading to my obsessions or object of my theses. So far I have been cognitively intertwown with Arendt (thesis #1), Theodor Herzl (thesis #2) and now Heidegger (basis for all my future theses). I tried to hook up with Hegel in graduate school but my brain was blown apart from his confusion too many times. With Butler, she tends to go on tangents on concepts that really do not illuminate her theses nor her skill as a theory technician. These tangents are usually where her worst sentences occur. I do not want to describe Butler as confused in these places but I think she is trying to fit in any divergent theoretical point into her overall thesis.

I find her theses on power very interesting but throughout the book it gets so bogged down by technicality of theories. Butler loses focus on the importance of psychic developments of power. Or maybe she never understood the real life importance of it to begin and is only enamored with the theoretical moves she can make in exposing this previously unrealized phenomena. As my “liquid brain” is formulated in a way to perceive consciousness structures in a Heideggerian sense, I can perceive how power structures in prisons help formulate limitations on consciousness and awareness and how that effects the living human being. I talk everyday with someone who is a 4 time felon and in and out of jail. You can feel the limitations of his reality as imposed through these psychic power structures.

There are also power structures that are in the obvious “psychic” realm that Butler never discusses. You have the power of emotion and in reality, there are positive power structures such as therapy that enable humans in the regard. But you also have negative emotional power structures such as child abuse or even trauma of war or political prisoners that completely reroute consciousness. What is the power there? How can we give it context and meaning beyond mere rehabilitation or healing? How can write these power structures in a way that promotes meta-healing and super consciousness? How can we help people like my friend navigate intellectually through these limitations imposed by these power structures? This should be our goal as philosophers.

I had a dream about Heidegger and consciousness. That is how I came to start exploring how ontological rivets and ridges in old philosophical texts somehow through transmissions of thought (analog and digital thought) superimpose structure on our consciousness. Implicitly, I think Heidegger’s most famous “students”, Derrida, Arendt and Levinas, understood this. That is how each of them were able to enter a domain that was obscured by this superimposition and revolutionize it. Arendt was able to break through politics to find something outside any ascribed notion of it. This ontologically sedition with the conception of politics is what allows Arendt to write about the political scene (Brown vs Board of Ed) and have her thinking not succumb politicalization (as we see with Judith Butler). The capacity of Being within this mode of ontologically sedition from our limited reality allows for meta-conceptualization of areas of our consciousness that contribute to our lives. In the same way, Levinas was able to think about sociality, the possibility of ethics without succumbing to the weight of trauma of the Nazis and the overwhelming meaning of Jewish persecution (like Israel is doing right now). I argue again that this is learned philosophical truism that allows consciousness to enter into ontological sedition where one escapes the oppression of limited thought and streamlines thinking through Being or the possibility of Being. Derrida’s work was the most intimate to Heidegger’s philosophical truth. Derrida’s work tapped right into consciousness and broke it down to reveal new ways of thinking that can bring out more truth. Derrida began to teach us how to read and how to see within this new construct of thinking. I believe his work is far from finished.

“I had a dream…” is not a notion to triviliaze. But why can’t philosophers dream of consciousness and thinking? Is it not our desire to bring these conceptions into the world so all people can discover truth and higher structure of mind that can help them perceive their own potential as human BEINGs? Arendt, Derrida and Levinas each tackled and triumphed in their humanness (politics, trauma, learning/reading) in order to get to the heart of Being.

Today I am beginning a year long reading aka meditation on Heidegger’s “Being and Time”.  While it is highly regarded as the most important philosophical texts of the 20th century, Heidegger and the proponents of philosophy remain in relative obscurity compared to other 20th century philosophical heavyweights Marx and Nietzsche.  Moral nihilism and communism always seem to make the chat circuit at high brow functions while phenomenology gets left out.  

The series of concepts in Heidegger’s “Being and Time” — ontology, phenomenology, being-in-the-world — are incredibly philosophical potent and open up the philosophical system for those interested in philosophy as a form of consciousness. Marx and Nietzsche only tackle forms of molded consciousness ie politics and religion as they were already well in existence.  At these high brow functions, the abstract cannot participate in the banter for it escapes that pre-formed cynical view that egos tout around at such functions.  Heidegger is not necessarily difficult to articulate but what he is searching for within his text has no relevant interest to the ongoing human drama.  

But Heidegger makes consciousness accessible for all who wish to engage it.  Philosophy has been historically known as the arbiter of higher thought and opening up to heightened consciousness and awareness.  In “Being and Time”, it is as if Heidegger reached back through time, obliterating our condensed version of reality/time in the way, and brought forth through this portal the philosophical keys to our understanding of ourselves, of how in philosophical fundaments of “how to think”, “how to be”, “how to live” that we had only understood in our preformed reality.  In that way, the truest form of reality is in this abstract that Heidegger tries to bring to our attention.  Heidegger did not create this abstract in order to make our preformed notions of things convoluted as modern theory does today. Like a TIME archaeologist, he searched through the rubble of all of our preformed notions put into soup cans by time, history, narrative and unearthed them in their original state without time, without the strain of packaged human perception.  To me, “Being and Time” is proof that WE ARE ALIVE inside ourselves as thinking living being humans but we cannot escape this manufactured reality of ours.

In the following year of meditation on “Being and Time”, I will read a page or so a day and take notes. I do this in hopes that I can illuminate with scholarly exegesis my impressions of the work as a living artifact of WHO WE REALLY ARE, timeless beings, and what that really implies.  

For proposed panel on Quantum Physics and its adaptation to the humanities at the 2013 Modern Language in Boston.

Quantum Phenomenology: Thinking Through Ontological Force Fields with Heidegger and Einstein

In our current evolutionary state, the consciousness Heidegger describes in Being and Time is incredible difficult to achieve.  By breaking down phenomenological nature of thought and adapting it to a quantum theories, I hope we break through the necessity for ontology and begin to define existence beyond elementary fundamentals such as time and nature. In this moment of philosophical awareness, we can achieve a new stage of consciousness.  

With quantum physics, I am primarily focused on Einstein’s Theory of relativity and his other essays on time. I’m going to be showing that phenomenology has quantum-like elements in itself.

Interesting concept. “…a mixed up kid with tears in his eyes staring at that bathroom mirror muttering to himself like a post-modern George Bailey, feeling like he’d blown it already before he’d even begun.”

Source: http://thekern.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_archive.html

Hi Professor Bernstein:

I tried to write about the Tuscon shooting using Arendtian thinking on thought and action.  The scene of Obama’s speech that (with incredible audience participation) objectified the loss of life for a political agenda that used “freedom” and “nationalism” would have been something I think that would have greatly bothered Arendt. But in the few weeks I was attempting to write about the real political ramifications, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Wisconsin, Ireland, Greece etc occurred.  Now I feel these global events are really an extension of the political ramifications in Tuscon with this very unclear notion of nationalism.  People are revolting and crying out for change against all types of governments from the US to the Middle East, but they do not know what kind of government they want or what they really need.  I was reading your recent article in Benhabib’s new Arendt anthology where you made an incredible clarification.  I’m sure you know but you specified between the type of totalitarianism that Arendt experienced in WW2 and what we are experiencing now. 

In my writing and trying to conceptually keep up with the political upheaval on the planet, I came up with a very liberal paraphrase of Arendt:  Revolution is only as transformative as the level of reflective progressive thinking the people in the revolution are willing to commit to. 

How do we begin to define and provide a clear analysis of this different type of totalitarianism so people can really be aware of the kind of government they need/want?  What are your thoughts on all of this?  I was going to write something up and leave it in gas stations and at malls, but that seems a little dramatic. :)

Thank you in advance for your response.

Kindest Regards,

Sarah Hyatt

When I think of the books I buy, I think of a house when I’m older and a child around 13-14 picking through the books on the shelves.  What books will ignite that child? Will inspire truth, consciousness, compassion?  For me, it was Ayn Rand’s “We The Living”, a story about man vs state and the ultimate price for freedom, and Joyce Carol Oates “Childwold”, a disturbing first person narrative on child abuse and seduction.  Both of those books I discovered on my aunt’s bookshelves in her summer home on Fire Island.

Of course the trajectory of my reading after Ayn Rand and Joyce Carol Oates went with Marx, Freud, Lolita, etc.

Now I’m reading Vladimir Imgre’s “Ringing Cedar” series and I wonder if the child in my head will read those books and be swept out into the woods to experience the immense connectivity and energy of nature.  A more advanced reading experience than my walks in the woods reading Anne of Green Gables.

I’m also reading Marcia Shafer’s “Confessions of an Intergalactic Archaeologist” and I wonder if the child will not need books about the experience of ETs and psychic abilities.  By the time that child reaches 13, the simple truths of unconditional love and spirituality will already be well known to it.  

In my head, I see the child running its fingers along the spines of the books on the bookshelf.  My books, the ones that ignited me to enter into a deeper experience of the world, are on the bottom shelf, collecting dust.  For the depth of Marx and Ayn Rand, by the time that child is 13, will already be considered a shallow interpretation of our world.

One could hope anyways.

The child will already be beyond the Bible, being born knowing the deep truths of its soul and God.  Instead, it will relish reading books like “The Third Eye” by Rampa and the works of Edgar Cayce.  Those books will confirm what the child already knows about itself.

The power of books and the bookshelves that remind us of our own thought experience will be revolutionzed by our children.  Give them the power of revolution of thought and soul. Stock up your bookshelves with your truth, so your child can experience even a deeper truth than your own. :)

People are Hungry, Starving for Concepts…

As per my academic training, let me break the sentence down for you. By people, I do not mean fellow academics, people (aka political operatives) with very emotional and personally-invested (economically greedy and personal relevance are number one reasons) opinions in the plight of humanities, high-brows, low-brows, or anyone who even claims the privilege of even having a brow.  ‘People’ means the everyday folk that I work with, bump into, casually converse with at the gas pump or in the grocery store line.  Their “educational status” is questionable at best and their affinities (even the ones whose speech syntax belie some degree of higher ed programming) are usually not toward any notion of “education”.  I would like to say that those who do have an education on all levels of the “system” (of programming) use their education to get ahead, be it out in the business sector or by giving some ramped up self-important lecture at the MLA.  Excuse my smarminess, but it is an effective way of getting your attention.  The mentally elite always respond (again programming) to sarcasm and the ironic as we love the double-blind entrails that our supposed wisdom can create. 

So the ‘people’ have been defined as the majority of the population who have managed to pass high school and might have gone to college for some training to be able to work (aka survive in capitalism).  I wrote a conference paper a long time ago on Marx, Levinas and that hunger that people have.  Levinas saw that Marx was not writing about an un-evolved state (or primal) of man when it came to the Proletariat.  (Come on, don’t you sometimes associate people with only high school diplomas with cave men?) According to Levinas, Marx was writing about that starvation for connection, for meaning that would quell that internal horror show of not knowing who I am, of not knowing any sense of ‘being’.  Again, breakdown, there is no knowledge of self; there is not even a feeling of self.  As intellectuals, we create our sense of self through our 3-d knowledge (oh pretentiousness) but aren’t we all screaming inside too?  In our rush to embrace all things cool and technological, we fail to see that social media is not fulfilling this need for connection, for knowing of self.  We just project a created version of who we think we are without digging deep into the roots of our existence.  Somehow the ‘people’ have begun to realize this on simple subtle levels and we have not.  The ‘people’ are more connected to realizing that this world and the systems we have created is not working.  In my everyday research, the ‘people’ are more prone to translate their personal anguish into a critique of the system, usually eloquent and well spoken too.  They are starving for concepts, for ideas that will help them break down the structures and lies that keep them down.  Many “people” are elated that they even have the ability to think. 

To the academic who writes the paraphernalian blog, I have never seen a more self-serving digital tantrum of an academic post than yours: “To be quite blunt, I didn’t get a Ph.D. in English literature to spend twelve hours a week defining an adverb for students who barely graduated from high school.”  Really?  Really?!  Hey, at least you’re honest.  There is nothing more exciting than thinking in a public space.  I do not mean thinking on Twitter or any venue that only really (come on be honest now) serves your self-interest (and a heap load of ego and emotional satisfaction that silences that inner screaming).  I mean #1 connecting with the people, really connecting as in engaging in a conversation that is balanced (linguistically too, no using too many big words now) and where the other person feels recognized and important part of the conversation.  Read Dale Carnegie if you need help with this.  You can’t fake this; you can’t go through some inner cycle of lowering yourself to the people.  As I mentioned before, the “people” have a much more awakened sense of this world and the way it works than we do. They will know when you are being condescending and when you are being fake interested.

There is nothing more beautiful than a person I am speaking with realizing that “Yes, I can think!” and “Yes, what I think matters!” Screw teaching adverbs, awakening the art of thinking is so much better!  Their eyes flash with that excited brilliance of neurons firing.  If you think around these “people”, think Levinas-style in a way that matters to others.  Your thinking can compassionately illuminates and extrapolates the other’s situation (extrapolating existence is further down the road in a relationship) in a way that helps them.  You do not impose your ideas (not your grand theories involving esoteric books) on to them, but open them up to the possibility of having ideas on their own.  By leading the way at the gas pump or the grocery line or your local mechanic garage or at a little league game (etc etc), people in turn think and they think with such compassion and soul because you introduced them to such notions.

Most “people” understand “thinking” as the stuff that created the atom bomb.  Most people make statements that politicians are crafty and are all slime bags.  Why?  Because most people believe that “thinking” is cold, calculative and the meaningful ends of thinking are only to trick others (politicians) or kill off other people.  Really!  Most people do not trust others who seem like they are thinking.  We all have been sold a bag of goods that has made thinking or the act of free thought superstitious and suspicious.  Programming is the new thing. From us elites writing about our favorite films and reveling in it to the “people” brainlessly watching endless hours of TV to suppress, exorcize the starvation, we have all cow-tailed to major ideologies and/or modes of brain operation (yes I am sure that even declaring yourself a Democrat establishes some sort of standard neurological protocol in your noggin).  But back to the original point of this paragraph, if you do not present your “thinking” in a compassionate and truly connected way (not digital), not only will you be considered the next uni-bomber but the “people” will shut down and no beautiful soulful realizations of “I can think! My brain works!” will occur.

These proclamations of the ability to think come before any hard-lined political stances.

In fact with the birth of thinking, most people eventually forgo all that political stuff.  They can think through all that loud noise and see straight through to the truth, their truth. (A philosopher’s wet dream ;) They can discern what is real in this world and what is really going on.  Take for example a very “hot topic” right now in all things academic and social media: Wikileaks.  Do you think most people on some level have realized that Wikileaks is part of some grand government opera to take away our rights?  They have.  They talk about it with a sort of disinterested exasperation over a beer at the local pub.  The only thing it means to them is that it will be even harder to get by each day.  Life will be harder to live.  It will mean more survival to get by in this disemboweling capitalistic society.

Now I come to the conceptual part.  We all have the concepts in our bag of tricks (thinking), but they are so twisted and maligned by us forcing them to fit into this academic niche that is now so irrelevant to the world. And that was the point methinks.  To take concepts such as life or thought or being out of mainstream world and make them not only beyond even an educated persons grasp but make them incredibly unattractive and incoherent (except for those name dropping hob knobbing folk).  Do you think when I talk about life with these “people” that I even mention Plato or Marx?  No because chances are they don’t know whom that is and again, it will make them uncomfortable and they will shut down.  Much has been made of Foucault’s “What is An Author?” in this new era of digital reading, but why would I even mention Plato’s name when I am trying to communicate concepts of soul, of life to a starving human? 

“People” eat up these concepts. Then a week later, they come back to you with their adventures with these concepts and you see just a flicker usually of how their life has improved.  That is why I was reading Freud and Marx as a teenager, for that flicker of truth, of light that could possibly exist.  I think even Plato missed the point of philosophy and life. My self-declared “status” as a philosopher comes from these experiences.  Those exclamations of “I can think!” are my CV’s bullet points of professional achievements.  Before I began to approach life and “people” this way, I was just another intellectual roaming the streets thinking everyone else were cavemen, supporting that superstition that damns thinking to hell. 

You do have the power to change the world.  Clear erudite thinking, figuring out your priorities and healing your concepts from all the ego and hurt, and learning how to communicate with everybody.  I would start with the communication bit.  Pick up a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.  Read it (not analyze it and put it into some ideological framework so your brain can process it) and then put it to practice. It will be painful at first. Trust me, I have been there.  I sold cars for a year just to get past that hurdle of being an intellectual that could not talk without being condescending.  Then, connect with yourself, figure out the concept of soul and work with it.  I hope you can light the fire of “thinking” once you become free of programming yourself.

Any questions or for help with any of this, I am available at s.e.hyatt@gmail.com.