1. Perceiving and Interpreting: The Logos of the anthropological Self
2. Foundational Simulacrum in Human Groups
3. Working a Field Becomes Simulacrum for What?
4. George Mosse, “The Culture of Western Europe” (1961)
5. On Konrad Lorenz On Aggression
6. Physiological Resources and the Simulacra of Anthropology
7. Constructive Nihilism in Human Group Simulacra?
8. Hitchcock’s MacGuffins
9. After the Definitive Fall of Myth
10. Logical-Conceptual Possibility from Socio-Genetic Physiology
11. Against the Current (1979) Isaiah Berlin (Princeton Univ. Press, 2001)
12. Star Trek, The Original:

-Opprobrium in the biology of the individual, becomes the group’s imposition over individual physiologically corporeal entity;

-Opprobrium is a force of metabolic alteration in the individual and also impinges heavily on perception, although not completely; the relevance of biological opprobrium is thus in this double sense: in regards to metabolic physiology on one hand, as well as the individual’s sensory physiology.

-Opprobrium and its continuation of originally physical morality, is the foundation of the culturally rational, because social congruence imposed on the individual is also the individual’s possibility of subjectivity according to a cultural paradigm of the correct, socially congruent experiencing of the physiological and its interpretation.

-A physical morality of human groups is bourn of adversarial contexts of physiologically corporeal interaction; human language itself is a more advanced form of physiologically corporeal interaction associated ultimately to a specifically collective, working congruence biological opprobrium makes physiologically relevant for all singularly physical individuals who are physio-corporally subject to the group.

-A physiologically corporeal congruence of linguistic meaning allows the group to posit increasingly complex causalities and conceptualizations on group experience, which biological opprobrium once again makes physiologically relevant and binding for all singularly physical entities of the group; a posting of causality as meaning on natural phenomena that achieves a socially binding congruence, in regards to elements beyond all possibility of contradiction (logical dead ends as anthropological atrezzo), becomes the foundation of living, specifically cultural rationality.

-The availability, then, within the human group of a physiologically relevant and binding, social congruence as a nascent conceptual rationality, becomes the imposition on singularly physio-corporeal entities to effectively assume a group-congruent, paradigm of the cultural self, specifically as a culturally rational, publically congruent individuality.

-Opprobrium then continues to externally energize and invigorate social congruence as the perpetual ever-present reason the culturally rational needs to be socially congruent, naturally because individuals do not necessarily have to conform to the correct experiencing of anything…

–The physio-corporeal and sensory self is the perceiving self; but the cultural self is the synthesizer of physiologically sensory experience—the interpreter and exerciser of subjectivity very much against our deeper, individually corporeal, physio-sensory nature.

-And thus, it is the cultural self and the at least social congruence it imposes on the physio-sensory self, that saves us—has always saved human groups—from the living, physiological anomie of the only thing we really know for sure we are—that is, simply the permanent impression of just our singular, sensory experience.

 

 

Self-preservation in the context of human groups becomes a sustained, physiologically sensorial (but not real nor even rational) experiencing of mob killing—necessarily in individual metabolic and physiologically sensory entity; and this, naturally because human groups can hardly afford to regularly gang up on, maul, murder or expel individual transgressors, except eventually only in the form of a spectacle of ritual, officialdom and cultural reinforcement.

Because individual self-preservation is so violent, in order to better service the permanence of the group through time, the predicament of individual bodily survival is physiologically transferred to the moral plane of appropriateness and the social congruence that appropriateness is based on. Biological opprobrium is the means through which such a physiological reality becomes a simulacrum for the exclusion of physical conflict, at least within the group and against the group’s otherwise inevitable dispersion.

The physio-moral simulacrum of human groups thus requires 1) a social congruence of whatever nature, off of which 2) a specific human-group paradigm of individuality is possible and in regards to which singularly physiological-physical members of the group will create their own personal identity as their respective cultural self the others can effectively understand and relate to.

The separation, in this sense between a deeper physio-corporal entity and the socially congruent, cultural self, is in fact the possibility of support and permanence, through time, of the culturally rational—that is, from outside is the simulacrum of cultural morality supported always by the violence of individual, physical self-preservation and imposition; and this becomes an indirect and remote centering of really the physical itself—albeit cryptically—at the very structural heart of moral, human-group and physio-sensorial simulacrum.

Logically, the greatest form of congruence with reality is through physical entity, but human groups can only afford adherence to this circumstance through a cryptic mechanism of deferring singularly physical experience: from this standpoint, the physiological substance of our experiential being in sensorial impression, becomes a resource through which the simulacrum of individual, cultural identity is possible.

And the simulacrum of culturally rational identity is, of course, the metabolically simulated—but not plainly rational—archetypical predicament of the solitary human being before a dark and hostile plain of primitive vulnerability and hardship, and whose only option of survival is to desperately seek to maintain, in all circumstances, the favor of the group she belongs to and her physiologically immediate fellows.

But today, of course and after the historical consolidation of agriculture (that is, as of at least some 10,000 years ago), such an experiential reality can only continue to exist for all a but the tiniest fraction of human beings effectively only as a metabolic and physiologically sensorial simulation at the universal, socio-genetic core of sedentary human groups—and this as long as working cultural rationality loses not its force of imposition over the sedentary group.

The deferring of physical experience that human groups have no choice but to impose on themselves comes about through a physiological creation of social congruence—over time and in the repetition, within socially complex contexts, of individual, physiologically sensorial experience. Because of the socio-genetic nature of anthropological individuality, the deeper opprobrium-configured strata of human, physiological being can only be defined through taboo, which could very well be conceptualized as the underlying physiologically corporal brick and motor of human group permanence and integrity as of direct, physiologically corporal experience; but more sustained, sedentary experience for greater periods of time (and certainly as of agriculture) would require more intricate forms of physiological homogenization, through physio-anthropological atrezzo and the positing, finally, of logical assertions human groups end up requiring as further resource towards the individual’s ability to effectively remain in the group;

And such a state, at that point, of human groups in the context of greater forms of stability and increasing physiological complacency, effectively imposes the need on all singularly physical and physiological members to assume something of a paradigm of a specific human group’s individuality in regards to those incipient logical assertions so necessary to maintain group integrity—assertions as in fact a social congruence individuality in effect defines itself in regards to.

Taboo and the deeper physiological and physio-sensorial self, remain however, specifically in the rationally cryptic function of defining the socially congruent itself, from outside and as a shadow from that point on and forever more, of the culturally rational self:

For the culturally rational self and the complacency of especially sedentary anthropological contexts it produces, cannot continue to be rational unless it needs to be—that is, unless human groups are forever spurred on by the deeper physio-corporal, bodily self who, in her will to self-preservation and life as physiological imposition, alone in the fury of her own forlornness of sensory impression, is also permanently forced, once again, back to the fold and its social embrace.

 

 

 

 

Culture itself is simulacrum for physiological anomie. Socio-genetic, physio-sensory experience, in order to preserve integrity of human groups, is driven to take part in the physiological simulation that is social belonging; and individuality as the culturally specific, rational self is the highest form of anthropological simulacrum.

But, a simulacrum for what or in place of what?

Human physiology, as of its historical point and condition of ceasing to evolve, is most adapted for living in nomadic packs in basically permanent movement, and in permanent inter-conflict and strife amongst themselves. But survival in groups over and through the lives of its temporal, living members, can only be understood from the standpoint of what for us is our own inexorably corporeal rationality, as an unresolvable paradox—a paradox that of course is never to be actually resolved, but rather sustained in the always only present and inchoative violence of individual sensory impression and need.

And thus it has been the logic human groups have historically been able to impose on themselves that has in fact saved us from our own physiological entity. Socially congruent, physiologically relevant forms of superstition—but also the culturally enforced logics of religion and belief—are vitally important mechanisms of structuring individuality itself, and not just as a way of “explaining” natural phenomenon and human limitation. For it is only through physiologically homogenized individuals that groups sustain themselves, through time.

 

 

Chapt. 21 National Socialism and the Depersonalization of Man

(OPENING PARAGRAPH)

National Socialism and Fascism shared a common world view. Both rejected what they called the bourgeois system of values and substituted for it a belief in the organic state, as well as action and struggle. Hermann Rauschnigg, who was close to Hitler at one time, called the national socialist advance to power the “Revolution of Nihilism,” and there was in German fascism something of the same emphasis upon action for action’s sake that was seen in Italian fascism. Italian fascism based itself upon a view that history was the prime determinant of man’s struggle; thus truth itself was relativized. Whatever had succeeded in history was a final reality, was a truth, and this success was due to the action of men of will. Hitler had a similar view of the importance of man’s will, for this will, if sufficiently ruthless in the constant struggle, would transform man into a “heroic personality.” Both shared also, and most importantly, the ideal of the organic state with which everyone must integrate himself for it expresses the soul of the people. With neither of these fascisms did this view of state led to an abrogation of the existing class structure or the social revolution. (pg.359; Westview Press, 3rd Edition, 1988)

 

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—Physio-semiotic projection, but initially within the anthropological stability and complacency that can effectively sustain such a projection;

—In this way does the rational clearly become a structural pretext to the physiological itself, and as long existing anthropological complacency as stability can sustain the physiological.

—Thus can it be inferred that anthropological complacency as stability, in order to effectively remain in place, must itself provide forms of physiological invigoration and expanse ultimately towards its own structural permanence and reinforcement; otherwise the impetus of the physiological will impose on, and eventually undermine, the structurally stable, collective possibility of physio-semiotic projection;

—From this it must also be inferred that human beings live in a physiological and physiologically sensory need of sustenance that is made even more problematic by sedentary experience, forcing the historically logical intensification (universally, in all cultures and again and again) of the auxiliary anthropological development of a sensory sphere of representation—in the physiologically aesthetic in all its forms—to effectively compensate for the circumstance of sedentary experience.

—In a certain sense and from the standpoint of the structural integrity of human groups, through time, truth is always relativized, and given that a more important supremacy of collective, physiologically semiotic possibility depends critically on the working definition as limitation of collective, socially congruent rationality; the stability of capitalist, consumer societies, similarly, has always preserved above all a physiological freedom of self-definition and imposition for individuals, logically at the expense of higher—but frequently illusive—forms of understanding, preferring the wholesome tension of ideals to the necessarily destabilizing consequences of the real implementation of those ideals.

—Thus does rational non-definition itself become key to the accommodation of the paradox of structurally anthropological contexts, in human survival as preservation of groups rather than individuals, and in regards to singularly bodily experience that, in its deeper socio-genetic essence, can therefore only exist itself as a dictate and physiological homogenization of the group; that thus makes the “heroic personality” really a deeper, physiological-corporeal paradigm of the universally cryptic primer to all cultural rationalities and the social congruence of all human identities—the universal and very much napoleonic, physiologically corporeal self who is, universally, raison d’être and shadow force of the possibility of human rationality; a shadow element permanently external to our rational understanding, but that is the catalyst—vector, even—of your rational understanding of you being you, and your not being me. Cain of the Old Testament is another name and avatar; and perhaps even the conceptualization of Ataman (which is, of course, Brahman), who is no one, but also simultaneously everyone—until the physiological self is structurally pushed to the socio-genetic, living community of culturally singular, individual identity.

 

 

1. Existence is in the impression of individual perception; but human groups stay together because individual sensorial impression is homogenized to some extent and regulated, though never completely (because exclusively singular, corporeal reality is the real priming force of the need for some degree of homogenization, in the first place.)
2. With this it becomes necessary to postulate physiologically sensory homogenization as the foundation of identity; that is also a form of meaning and rationality, albeit not yet of a conceptual nature.
3. And further, also must the relationship between group permanence and the need for nascent identity for individuals be posited, given that human groups can only illusorily be considered a single, whole unity, making the individual’s real belonging to the group and assumption by it only physiologically possible and in regards to sensory perception, but never in a physical sense; evolutionary survival, in the history of human, physical experience, however, has only ever taken place in groups.
4. Further, increasingly complex logical posits and elaborations made by the group itself, become mandatory points of support for culturally-bound paradigms of individual self-understanding, making the individual’s possibility of interpretation and rational synthesis of her own sensory experience, artifact and domain of that specific group in regards to which she is in fact an individual. That is, her individuality is a product of her physical and physio-sensory dependence on the group, first and foremost.
5. Finally, the changes imposed on human groups by sedentary circumstances, and specifically agriculture, are to be understood as also the cause for the need for more elaborate, conceptually-rich forms of individuality, given that the decrease, collectively, of physical movement by no means implies that the need for physiological and physio-sensory engagement also decreases.
6. And it is primarily, then, moral dilemma itself that comes to the aid and benefit of sedentary human groups as a form of physiologically rational and sensory invigoration in compensation for the absence of previous, physiological contexts that were themselves also physical;
7. It is this cleavage between the physical and the physiological, then, that forces the need for more physiologically invigorated forms of collective experience that are, however, physically obstructed in the sedentary circumstances of any form of civilization as we know it.
8. Moral dilemma requires a different, more conceptually elaborate form of individuality, specifically in the individual´s capacity (that is in fact patrimony of the group) to synthesis her own physiologically sensory experience:
9. That the powers of rational—or at least socially congruent —analysis make socially construed, opprobrium-configured individuality in this sense possible for an individual who is no longer sure she can in fact consider herself as appropriately belonging to the group at all, can be conceptualized as a necessity agriculture did not impose on human beings (biological opprobrium originates, phylogenetically, much earlier), but rather exploited primarily as something of a proxy source of physiological sensorial invigoration for individuals, specifically to make the confines of sedentary existence more bearable—that is in fact an essential element of the very functionality of agrarian-based, human existence.
10. Such a premise is inexorably founded on the human need for sensory engagement, in addition to the other, oft-mentioned primary needs of contemporary biological theories.
11. How is defiance key to individuality? Social Individuality hinges on the group’s rationality of which physio-corporeal individual can avail herself; but social or cultural individuality is not simply the assumption of logical assertions opprobically imposed on the culturally-bound, perceiving subject: it is rather an assumption through opposition to the force of biological opprobrium, more than just compliance with it. Given that the individual can never physically be anything else but what she singularly is, the physiological and physiologically sensorial force of the group over the individual (felt bodily as in fact a vague but certain threat and terror of expulsion, or bodily destruction at the hands of one’s own peers) constitutes an immediate and violent internal conflict with one’s own deeper, core physical entity, for at the root of the power of biological opprobrium is in fact the individual’s will to self-preservation, which can know no compromise whatsoever with regard to its own self-imposition.
12. Thus, physiologically sensorial experience and impression (that is part and parcel of biological opprobrium) can be morally real and relevant for the perceiving individual, but not necessarily socially (nor much less politically) real. The force of biological opprobrium is of a physiological and physiologically sensorial nature—it is an intimate part of the individual’s physiological process of mind, but is not in itself an event or even an act that can be publicly observed—and thus can be described as anterior to rational and command thought.
13. Towards achievement, then, of greater heights of invigorated tension against the physical and physiologically sensory limitations of sedentary experience, the corporeal individual´s belonging to the group through a culturally rational self can only be understood as ultimately a form of defiance, to more or lesser degrees, and as a latent, sub-rational violence of conformity, due once again to the foundational paradox of the anthropological self in that I am physiologically you—on the opprobrium plane of human group survival—but never physically can you be me.

 

1) The physiological substance of human experience within sedentary contexts, takes place in higher, rationally constructed contexts of social congruence and agency; that is, bodily individuality lives in the sensory impression, but the social possibility of the physio-sensory, through time, is founded on the homogenization of physiological experience by means of what we know as rationality, but that is better conceptualized above all—and whether mythological, or in the form of a cultural positivism—first and foremost as socially congruent.

Such a social congruence, in conjunction with the physio-metabolic impetus of the physical individual under the permanent drive of biological opprobrium, combines to force the inexorable conceptualization of the cultural self as a dependent paradigm of the group, in regards to which the singularly physical-physiological, bodily individual forges a socially congruent mode of individual, corporeal being.

Because the physiological self is situationally outside and primer to the cultural self, it remains experientially opaque to the culturally rational sphere of meaning—or, that it is, the better part of physiologically sensory experience, in its technical subjection to the very possibility of the culturally rational, must necessarily remain divided from its socially congruent counterpart;

But, although a rationally elusive, physiological mode of knowing is indeed possible—that is the aesthetic itself, for instance—the anthropological existence of a socially congruent, rational understanding in fact exists because part of physiologically singular individuality is excluded, towards the structural permanence of the group, through time.

In this way, the resilience of physical self-perseveration only an individual can know, is in some sense transferred to the cryptic heart of human group stability; and thus from outside is the culturally rational sphere of physiological homogenization invigorated through its silent partner of the very much socially incongruent, very much non-negotiable individual will to life, at all costs.

And such a physiological invigoration of the sedentary, rational self, comes eventually through a form of physio-moral titillation the bodily individual experiences as the force of biological opprobrium in all her socio-genetic, corporeal fibers; but effectively has the physical world been all but substituted by a morally relevant, physiologically sensory simulacrum of the mind.

Against such a structural fortification of only physio-mental experience, sedentary anthropological stability then positions physiologically immediate interaction between physical individuals as its supreme force of counterbalance to its own opprobrium-configured artifice of guaranteed human group permanence, through time;

For, quite logically, the foundation of any form of the socially congruent can ultimately only be in the body itself, even if—or specifically because—the structural entity of sedentary human groups must, paradoxically, curtail, homogenize and make remote, part of physiologically singular, body experience.

And thus physiologically immediate, social experience not only compensates for the physio-opprobic structural requirements of sedentary, human groups, but it could in fact be conceptualized as the very working possibility of that structural stability, and in the exo-rational (to some extent exo-cultural) reinforcement of the bodily singular but socio-genetic, living individual,

Specifically and most powerfully in physiologically immediate others.*

 

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*An objectification of the separation of living individuals, mediated by images (Baudrillard)

-“In proposing to relate symbolic language to self-understanding, I think I fulfill the deepest wish of hermeneutics. The purpose of all interpretation is to conquer a remoteness, a distance between the past cultural epoch to which the text belongs and the interpreter himself. By overcoming this distance, by making himself contemporary with the text, the exegete can appropriate its meaning to himself: foreign, he makes it familiar, that is, he makes it his own. It is thus the growth of his own understanding of himself that he pursues through his understanding of others. Every hermeneutics is thus, explicitly or implicitly, self-understanding by means of understanding others.”^[35]

Paul Ricœur

2) Further historical development of positivist cultural spaces and the expanded means of human communication eventually also allowed for alternative morally relevant, physiologically sensory contexts of individual, opprobrium-configured invigoration, and what constitutes a physically remote, representational form of reaffirmation of the anthropological self—by no means in substitution for physiologically immediate social interaction, but most certainly as an auxiliary space of simulacrum and physio-sensory exercise for the sedentary, anthropological individual.

In such an historical evolution to compensate for the progressively less physical, positivist cultural experience, the possibility of auxiliary physiological spaces—in the form of representation (artistic and political), entertainment, and sports—proceeded physiologically towards higher forms of simulacrum (texts, images, film, radio, eventually television) creating ultimately a form of spectator being, as an opprobrium-configured (so morally relevant), physiological exercise of anthropological individuality that in fact might very well be understood as inexorable in regards to sedentary experience itself; for the problem of a necessary rational sphere of the socially congruent is, once again, dependent on the impetus of physiological individuality that eventually must make physiological use of culturally rational development itself, as what could be understood as permanent need to restore myth to positivist cultural contexts.

Naturally, such a restoration of the mythological takes place on the fringes or outside altogether of rational understanding—specifically, in a physiologically aesthetic, subcultural realm of sensory invigoration, often so subtle that is seldom rationally approached at all—except for professionals of the image (including writers or other artists) or by individuals and organizations in fields in which the culturally rational self is object of physiological and behaviorist tactics of persuasion, pressure and conditioning.

In regards to sedentary experience, the physiological but rationally opaque reality of individuals and their dependence on the group, becomes a physiological and physiologically sensory necessity of the impression itself, as a subcultural adjacency to the socially congruent—but that, in the structurally mutual interdependence between both, is only fleetingly noticeable, really in the influence of one on the other.

And thus the argument also can be made that, in regards to non-sedentary, human experience, in which physical movement is imbricate with need itself and the group’s ability to achieve states of comfort, a need for the rational is consequentially less—whereas sedentary cultural spaces, as of agriculture, however, exploit human sensory physiology to cater to the same, underlying physiological reality: the physiological, bodily origin and circumstances of the socially congruent becomes, in this sense, a resource.

 

 

 

Collective physiological contexts are viable because progressively more complex forms of physiological dichotomies arise and mutually define themselves; physiological opposition and interdependence in this sense becomes the foundation of the culturally rational. But states of structural stability will always require further episodes of invigoration necessitated by the deeper essence of human physiological and physiologically sensorial experience. That is, the structures of meaning or congruence created through physiological opposition, while creating physiologically rational contexts people come to depend on, are contexts that will also themselves need to be physiologically exercised and invigorated—such is the deeper reality of human corporeal, physio-sensory experience.

 

In the case of strictly adversarial contexts of physiological impetus between opposing parts, conflict in itself becomes all-important as the deeper pillar and foundation of anthropological stability; permanent strife is not constantly possible, of course, but the real engagement living individuals are dependent on (as in fact their life force and vitality) must inexorably renew conflict as a physiologically existential meaning of life. Indeed, such a physiological significance of intense impression for the experiential self—and in the individual’s eventual dependence on it—becomes at least structurally, already a form of meaning:

 

Physiological opposition and dichotomies create contexts of physiological interdependence between entities that are (even for animals) a form of meaningfully defined and ordered, collective physiological opportunity to life, that, over time, becomes a sustainability of physiological substance of experience for multiple, mutually dependent, living entities.

 

Crucially however, order and nascent meaning that arise from physiological opposition are originally auxiliary to simply physiological possibility itself; order as meaning in this sense, however, is lived by singular, physiologically corporeal individuals as only ultimately a form of invigorated comfort through permanent cycles of varying, sensory impression.   

 

For human beings development of meaning as of physiological dichotomies—in conjunction with more and more sedentary circumstances—leads to the creation of a strictly sensorial realm of existence that is physiologically real, though not necessarily objectively real. But such a physiologically sensorial realm of at least a physiological reality must also sustain itself of invigorated cycles of activity, elation and rest.

 

The exercising of such a physiologically sensorial realm of physiological though not objective reality, is by means of moral dilemma itself; and the game of being a culturally rational, culturally specific, singularly corporeal individual, is the greatest, most permanent pursuit the anthropological individual takes part in necessarily through the better part of her natural life: the invigorated stability of more sedentary anthropological contexts in fact depends on it.

 

But the possibility of moral dilemma for anthropological individuals and the groups they are dependent on, ends up requiring physiological opposition not only between individuals, but also in regards to opprobrium-configured, physiologically relevant, conceptual entities human groups impose totemcially, first on the objective circumstances that surround them and that comprise their natural, physical and spatial worlds. Such anthropological atrezzo constitute in fact logical dead ends that are useful specifically in that no logical contradiction is effectively possible, allowing human groups to posit whatever causality—eventually concepts and systems of belief—they choose, and as part of an original social congruence individuals have no option but to opprobically relate to as singularly corporeal individuals who eventually can no longer always be entirely sure they indeed actually belong to the group, or not.

 

The individual’s circumstance of opprobically relating to conceptual posits that are socially congruent and so socially enforced, becomes a physiological relevance of those concepts for the individual in regards to which she is anthropologically coerced to define herself; such a definition in this sense of the singular, physio-corporeal self produces the other side of anthropological individuality, that is the also socially congruent, social or cultural self.

 

Certain nuances of the concept of nihilism, therefore, are problematic for the contemporary, rational and positivist observer, given that it is really physiological and physiologically sensory experience that is the core of our cultural being and which it is channeled, over time, into higher-tiered structures of social and opprobrium-configured congruence derived of 1) physio-corporeal opposition between singularly physical entities, and 2) conceptual posits that acquire opprobrium-configured, physiological relevance for the individual. But the moral connotations of the notion of nihilistic behavior would seem to obstruct the understanding of the nature of the individual’s living, corporeal sensuality ( almost a form of hedonism) as the real brick and mortar of what later becomes socially congruent rationality itself; a rationality that is effectively independent in a certain sense from our physiological entity, given that social congruence becomes something like a product of physiological substance of experience in collective circumstances, but does not exist anthropologically in its own right (except, of course, as a methodology of the practice of science.)

 

To further complicate this situation and the state of separation ultimately between our physiologically sensorial, body life, and the socially congruent order we live in—through which we in fact understand ourselves—the socially congruent, cultural self is also forever still a physiologically corporeal self that exist in the permanent need also of physiological and physiologically sensorial engagement— in spite of and very much against the stable, anthropological complacency social congruence eventually affords us.

 

It is perhaps from the standpoint of such a complacency that purely invigorated, physiological engagement appears to us as nihilistic, and so subject to the inquisitional scrutiny of the opprobrium-configured, socio-genetic force of our own and individual will to belong to the group; and of course conceptually do we also duly construe the rational arguments necessary to understand and safeguard us from the ultimate consequences of physiological anomie (as generally all religions have historically done). In this way, it is easier—and more collectively efficient—if individuals have available to them the conceptual logics human groups have always used, in one form or another, to in some way transcribe the physiological predicament their collective experience and survival is based on.

 

In fact, cultural individuality could be understood as exactly that which arises in such logical contexts afforded to singularly physical individuals, but underpinned by the opprobrium force of specific, living human groups; and in just such circumstances of especially sedentary human groups, individuals are indeed obliged to assume a quite specific paradigm of the physiologically homogenized, cultural self.

 

The indeed physical origin of morality in this sense, is thus also similarly the possibility of socially congruent rationality upon which the history and evolution of different human groups has edified, over the centuries and millennium, the necessary conceptual instruments to in fact synthesize and know their physiologically corporeal and sensory selves—according to whatever particular, functional logic that becomes a specific control mechanism against the physiological towards what we understand simply as a specific cultural identity.

 

But even though morality is identity in regards to the physiological substance of individual, physio-sensory experience, logical thought borne originally also of moral possibility, similarly serves individuals towards a physiological control of a greater integration of both sides of anthropological individuality, rather than just repression by one side over the other—and it is Ulysses who could be considered (at least in the western tradition) as truly one of the first heroes in this sense. For when he did not renounce the sensorial delight of the song of the sirens, but also assured his physical survival by plugging the ears of his crew, he dealt with the physiological predicament of human groups another way and perhaps in reverse, in the individual’s sensorial embrace of reality while the group steels itself against it; but either way, it is the group that must prevail in what is clearly the unresolvable paradox of the group’s own sensorial reality, perceived nevertheless by singularly physical individuals.

 

Knowing our physio-corporeal, sensory selves?

The inchoative nature of anthropological stability, as a state of sustained tension in favor of collective, physiological possibility and substance of experience–but that only really supports itself in the structural order of the conjugation of its own collective, rational congruence–renders any complete and definitive knowing ourselves impossible and a structural contradiction of terms: for it is the rational opacity of the collectively corporeal and sensory that which requires of our rational selves—the very reason, in fact, of our need to be rational. Human beings are rational because the evolutionary survival of human groups depended on above all the group’s permanence over time, and through the lives of the individuals that composed it; it is actually the group’s physiological, physiologically sensory appropriation of individuality the individual understands as her own rational self. How then could she thoroughly know herself and still be rational in her physio-corporeal subjection to the group (that is in fact the foundation of her own rational awareness, in her not knowing and a culturally imposed distance from, her only physiologically corporeal, sensory substance of experience?)

 

Knowing ourselves, then, on the structural plane of group permanence and stability through time, but from the standpoint of the physiological substance of our bodily experience, becomes a living and renewed exercise of anthropological individuality, for a physiologically rational, corporeal entity that only through collective congruence itself can ever aspire to logically synthesize her own substance of bodily being in sensory perception. But the simulacrum that is the cultural self (in regards to singularly corporeal experience that is however, deferred by the structural urgency of the collective group) is only the functional homogenization—through biological opprobrium—of a physiological reality and substance of experience, but is not itself ever definitively physical, nor finally ever unequivocally delimited; it is rather only opprobically impinged upon perception that is capable of judging—hence interpreting—not only what is good or bad (big or small, etc.), but also what really is, or not; for is not only morality that is founded in the opprobrium-configured reality of our physiologically corporeal, sub-cultural (so, sub-rational) body life, but so is the foundation of meaning itself.

 

Existential non-definition and ambiguity in this sense is living opportunity for the physiologically corporeal, but-also-culturally-rational individual, who, because she is a cultural (so rational) self, can in fact seek to know her deeper, physiologically corporeal reality through the very rational protocol of mind that is her own cultural definition. That is, cultural rationality that inexorably still must anchor itself in physiologically corporeal and sensory experience of bodily perception, resorts to that very physiological substance of experience now available to it, to effectively expand, in a certain sense, its own physiological possibility of experience in a realm now culturally available of the physiologically conceptual. A realm that, in the very impetus of the individual’s own culturally specific, physiologically rational imposition, will inexorably be refined, built upon and enlarged: for the deeper physiological substance of our being means we cannot help it but to invariably push forward in our physiological imposition, through whatever recourse the living, cultural present we happen to be born into offers us.

 

Perhaps it is in regards to this circumstance of our physiological nature in expanse (that is itself only really in a form of imposition as expanse), that another kind of nihilism arises more dangerous than the original nihilism mentioned herein. This second type of nihilism more than just a physiological nihilism, is physiologically rational nihilism, that is a physiological substance of experience that, however, takes place in a strictly sensorial realm of also the rationally conceptual, where the individual benefits, of course, form a much broader margin of physiological freedom and fantasy—given that objectively real, physical consequences are not, at least initially, to be expected nor feared.

 

But the reality of only physiologically sensorial and conceptual experience is still to some degree a physiologically relevant (‘opprobrium-configured’) reality the cultural self is not completely immune or oblivious to; moral transgression in the realm of only the physiologically sensorial and conceptual, is a form of sometimes very intense stimulation the cultural self in fact uses to re-affirm itself—that is a recourse structurally anthropological contexts also rely on as an individually experienced mortification through only sensorial perception (in the form of cultural representation or the actual witnessing of morally relevant phenomena), but that is effectively a collective mortification of a specific, anthropological individuality in itself.

 

But in our physio-corporeal and sensory invigoration lies the real possibility of anthropological, human group stability for especially sedentary human experience; that is a rationality perennially reaffirmed through the physiologically sensorial need to consolidate itself, once again, in its own living, social congruence—as part of the long and universal saga of our own history as a species and the thwarting of the threat of demise of the group through its own physiological anomie.

 

Finally, nihilism could be considered positive as human physiological impetus that requires only of rational pretext to collectively sustain itself, through time; but it is surely negative when a posterior, culturally evolved plane of the physiologically rational and semiotic, continues, however, to relate physiologically to in its own only conceptual, intellectual nature; and especially when science, in the form of technology, crosses form the physio-sensory realm of the culturally conceptual, and semeiotic, into the realm of physical reality ultimately obliviousness, however, to its own physiological substance of entity: anthropological stability maintained its very equilibrium in historically not allowing this to happen so abruptly, if at all, throughout most of the millennium of human history and its social evolution. Scientific man as of quite some time ago, however, can no longer afford to relate only physiologically—or even perhaps anthropologically at all—to our own technical power of imposition over life on earth.

 

 

 

 

Is a conceptualization of sorts of physiological and physio-sensorial pretext, over rationality itself! Or, that is, the notion of rational pretext in favor ultimately of physiological, physio-rational, invigoration…

 

The Birds (1963)

Certain comments made by character’s, and Hitchcock’s repetitive visual emphasis on the female human body under savage attack, lead one to question the seriousness of the actual birds at all; as if the threat of invasion of the small town and our way of life, had really something more to do with heinous criminal violence itself—in the story Cathy Brennon tells of her brother’s work as a lawyer defending a man who shot his wife in the head six times, because (we later are told) there was a ballgame on TV and his wife changed the channel; and in regards to most of his clients Cathy refers to as hoods (because, she says, that is what her brother calls them.) And the symbol of the encaged love birds which seem to perhaps represent the nature of couples versus the hostility of the world, and for whom, additionally to themselves, there is the recourse to humor—and perhaps the invigoration of serious moral outrage—but not a whole lot else in the growing social and physio-social confines of 1960s Western civilization;

 

That is, perhaps the bird war on man as portrayed in the film is itself a MacGauffin that allows for an indirect contemplation of the what seems to be in fact our dependence on the idea of crime and, specifically, its violence (a theme Hitchcock goes back to again and again), and that would benefit us in the physiologically sensory exhilaration the idea—and its imagery—affords us, which in some sense is the real, deeper imagery content of The Birds.

 

-Rod Taylor, at the height of the bird onslaught—and once that there is no option whatsoever to war—is presented wearing a dinner jacket in regards to his upper body, while waist down he is dressed in olive-drab combat fatigues, as if this image were the true revelation of civilized man and our Janus-faced ambivalence of etiquette and simultaneous violence.

 

-And it would seem survival is really a matter of a needed invigoration through which all the central characters seem to realize themselves in one way or another, as if the experience itself were a form of ultimate good fortune in at least its outcome, and assuming you physically survive. A sort of wholesomeness in fact between the remaining, surviving individuals is formed in the kiln, so to speak, of the ordeal.

 

Historically, of course, the film coincides with rising crime rate in at least the United States of that time, and compared with data from the 1940s and 50s. Although Hitchcock could be said to have based his work as director, from in fact his professional beginnings of the 1920s, on violence and society’s relationship with it, does this 1963 film really question what has changed, suddenly, about human nature, rather than psychotic starlings, seagulls or crows?

 

In any case, the protruding and supreme image in the viewing experience of this film–that exercises its physiologically sensory dominance over our sedentary, civilized eye, and  which prevails over our visually stimulated emotions—is the mangled and hued, human corpse of especially a woman’s. And thus, explicit in this film is what was only suggested in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Stranger’s on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958)—all films in which the only implied elliptical idea of a woman being strangled then supports the plot of each respective film. But unlike Psycho (1960) which is, of course, also famously explicit, The Birds seems to create something of a cover argument in the actual birds themselves fronting, so to speak, the real source of terror that drives human beings, it would seem, to bigger versions of their own person, just as the characters here end up psychologically going beyond and overcoming themselves through the turmoil depicted; and perhaps even as something of a political statement, it seems the director is suggesting that this dilemma—that of greater growth in some sense as human beings through hardship, strife and turmoil—is a conundrum of a consumer society, only somewhat more manageable, of course, because of film itself, no doubt!

 

 

 

And after the definitive fall of myth, they had no choice but to return through the desert whence they had come, back to their original group and the conflict that was, once again, awaiting them as itself a form of embrace…

In the desert of the real, outside the embrace of physio-sensory representation and the contexts of physiologically conceptual expanse it affords, human groups still have each another and, crucially, the enemies or rivals through and against whom they are in fact able to define themselves. For there is succor in the physiological itself on strictly the physical and spatial plane of physical conflict, if physiologically sensory and representational invigoration is not culturally available.

In the absence of more developed semiotic spaces for physiologically rational-conceptual expanse, a certain degree of communion with our deeper physiological entity lies in conflict itself, for in the physiological invigoration of our sensory, corporeal selves there is the anesthesia of an adrenaline-charged mode of being and of knowing one’s self that is, of course, intensely physical and all-enveloping—to the point that higher forms of culturally representational being are not necessary. Adversarial contexts of physiological meaning based inevitably on some degree of physical conflict (or at least the threat of it) come to supplement, or even substitute all together, higher modes of physiologically semiotic projection the individuals in agrarian-based, sedentary contexts are inexorably compelled to live in.

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-But physiological substance of sensory experience is a form of communion with the deeper, corporeal and socio-genetic self; the succor of physiological-sensory invigoration then, because it is opprobrium-based, can only take place in the company of other human beings, for construed entities of the mind projected on to the contours of the spatial world are never physically perceived, leaving the anthropological individual ultimately cleaved and separated from, the physical component of our own rational possibility.

-Because human sensory entity is opprobrium-configured, it exists in some sense prior to actual physical community. That is to say (as Jose Luis Pardo affirms), the city in regards to human history is an anterior posterity (una posterioridad anterior) in that what is already motivating human experience in its socio-genetic foundations, in itself a form of purpose pre-existent to specific historical, technological cause.

-Physio-sensory representation in the form of spectacle has always existed (it could be argued that all human perception is a form of representation in the mind); and so has spectacle always ended up serving as mode of deferring physical reality for human groups, or at least the violence of that reality. For through spectacle, physiological and physiologically sensory invigoration is achieved, albeit without jeopardizing the integrity of the group. And crucially, human-group sanctioned spectacle, mirrors the underlying mechanism of anthropological individuality that is the channeling of individual physiological response into a group-imposed congruence (that is, the group’s very rationality, if only initially of a physiological and sensory nature).

But of course, all human groups eventually do impose some sort of conceptual logic (myths, narratives, group-understood ideas) in regards to the physiologically sensory substance of their own experience, through time. And it is no surprise then, that elder members of the group, in their condition of steadily waning physical prowess as compared to the younger generation, become the natural guardians and real executers of that corpus of conceptual understanding, as the knowers of what needs effectively to be known if one is indeed a member of the group, and as the very semiotic structure the younger group members must subject their own physiologically sensory selves to.

Physiologically sensory spectacle, thus, is key to the diachronic permanence of the group because it is sensory-intense, but not, however, necessarily physically demanding for the onlooker. And the communion of physio-sensory entity that spectacle is, becomes a force of really physical unity and reinforcement of the group, through time and in regards to the different ages and physiological states of varying, individual ontologies.

And finally, the physiological reality of specifically narrative for human groups constitutes itself a form of purely physiologically sensorial representation, and so could be understood as mechanism of removing physical spectacle—the exercising of anthropological, human group individuality it affords—to the realm of sensory simulacrum that is, nevertheless, physiologically real and, above all, morally relevant for opprobrium-configured, anthropological individuality; and originally such a capacity of human groups as of the development and progressive evolution of language, could only be considered a serious force of group permanence, and ultimately power.