Anit-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia

While unannounced the focus of this book is on ethics. The book makes gigantic claims of opening the potential of human desire without repression but ultimately just defines ethics in a very narrow way.

I'll give a classic example. Aristotle conceived ethics as a way for humans to excel in their field of interest and congregate into a functioning society defined as a polis. The flourishing of careful statesmanship can allow contemplation and the realization of the philosophic temperament.

Aristotle defined a lasting representation of our character that is generated by inward desire but has a container and illustrated in a body/soul dialectic. Deleuze and Guattari harness what they call the 'body without organs'. Their output of thought avoids a container or any abstract thought that can define aggregates of desire ultimately inhibiting us from passing judgment.

This approach is similar to the ancient skeptics who disliked the claims of virtue by the stoics and similar to the unhappy conscious of Hegel. Yet the comparison is extreme and anachronistic. The book does posit a few matters. The first matter is we currently live by the strings and pulleys of capitalism. The second matter is we universally struggle with an ethical dilemma of teetering between paranoia and schizophrenia and must find some middle ground to achieve pure individualism without neurosis. The third more hidden matter is that the solution to the dilemma must be governed by unformed drives in a person and to categorize this is to repress it.

The goal to be a thriving individual is far from the goal of Aristotle's thriving metropolis. While not mentioning Aristotle the authors refer to the city of Ur and use it as a monument to repression. Success for Deleuze and Guattari appears more like an outcast of society that cannot be assembled rather than an outlook that virtue is recognized and promoted to high ranks.

Because the book gives descriptions of the post-modern ethics that portray how society thinks and acts currently it has importance; however, a book that should be read with less enthusiasm than its authors.

Deleuze DIsorder

Deleuze fights psychoanalysis like a bad dream. The quality of psychoanalysis that bothers him is finding crystalline structures that shape what a human is. In some ways, psychoanalysis was a revolution that replaced old traditions with new laws on how humans are determined.

There seems to be a missed opportunity in psychoanalysis in Deleuze's mind. Why reject something arcane and replace it with something oppressive? The human is formless to Deleuze and we realize our potential in a maze rather than an actor in a play.

Speckled in with a preoccupation with absolute freedom of development is a fear of fascism. His writings suggest that fascism is order generated in a formless way. Fascism is to be avoided but could be a result of Deleuze's methods and he is careful to distance his thought from it--as if his fascination with Neitzche has shown that prioritizing a 'becoming' can be dubious in some minds.

For Deleuze, things are most real when they emerge from a nebulous origin and take shape with small acts of desire. Psychoanalysis, for instance, is artificial. It conceived after development and people then start to adhere to it afterward by contorting to its formula. But Fascism would not be like psychoanalysis and would have the origin that Deleuze deduces as most real.

Because of this connection, we have to judge what Deleuze is saying. Past philosophy likened the real with the good. For instance, Epictetus and the Stoics who aligned nature with ethics. Yet this primordial goop of Deleuze is not purely good and it is curious that his thought could have existed in the past but rejected because the nihilistic outcome. Are we left with the possibility that Deleuze is raising something problematic as the highest good?

Thoughts on Modernity

The focus on our subconscious shifts our focus from the perfection of stars to the muddiness of our dreams--Modernity. Its surfacing came from a period defined by war and a democratic spirit. Our desires are now put on a pedestal and an overarching explanation for why things are the way they are.

Then add a preoccupation with observation. To crystalize observation and preserve it. The highest of classes are those who are articulate and not just powerful by force. However, holiness is by science and art. Science is that of scant observations and art is that of illusions. The most articulate are those who can sound legible while distracting from their field's dubious origins are the most sage. To be noted down in a way that is without a typo is more valuable than gold.

The dream emerges as the origin. Everything seems to form before us and chaos before order. Order is human and the arrangement of dreams in a way that resembles observation and data.

Dissappearing in alphabetical order

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume cuts off logic from causality stating that all conceptions of reality are based on observations. These observations do not have any correspondence to the cause we associate these observations. Ultimately, we are left with a choice concerning causality.

When a cause is not part of some underlying nature we almost pick and choose it as if from a menu. This sounds like how we explain culture rather than some matter of fact.

The Amazing Shrinking Woman (1981) 

The movie is a joke about consumerism. Oddly it relates to Hume's comments on observation but in an inverted way. The woman who shrinks becomes a victim of some admixture of all the chemicals she owns. Her shrinking body has no known cause other than her purchases. Hume notes that when we try to get to the root of a cause we finally rest at some object or memory. Hume also notes that observations have a weakened impression on us if it from some memory and not currently being an experience.

The well-marketed items do not fade. In fact, the colors of the packaging are the bright advertising colors throughout the film. What fades is the observer and there is even a plot by some mad scientists to infect this inverted observer disorder to the rest of humanity as the final warped incarnation of capitalism.

No Creatures Hiding

David Hume's starting point is an object or a memory. He does seem to allow general properties that can be deduced like the three sides of a triangle but that is more or less trivial. He envisions a creaturely role for humans.

It is not as if past thinkers ignored creaturely but they allowed us to think beyond it as well to something much better. This is generally conceptualized as God or something like Hegel's 'spirit'.

According to Hume, we make judgments based on observations and memories and we act responding to them. However, our response is in no way integral with observations and memories. Because this connection between memory and judgment lacks intrinsic necessity we are proposed as thinkers who cannot get our bearings and have no compass or coordinates.

In a curious way, this way of thinking reminds me of economics. There are a lot of conjectures based on statistical data. Who would define the true meaning of the stock market in a Socratic dialogue? It may be an unfair statement but maybe Hume is not trying to find deep rooted truths but prepare us for a society governed by markets and modernity.

Very like finding a hole possibly made by an animal, but where we do not see any creature there. The hole seems mysterious and without origin and at best vacant.