stupidity dialectical; or, how about them Mets!

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Mittelwerk at aol.com writes:
> fetishizing contradictions is not a dialectical procedure.  it is salon
> relativism.

So it is. But what exactly is apropos? I don't recall anyone
fetishizing contradictions unless maybe it's that excluded middle
school of Pynchon critics who seem to think that one can ride between
the horns of one's cow when really one ought to trade it in for a
horse.

> the purpose of contradiction is that it is natural history's way of asking
> you, subjective receptacle of cognition, to intervene--that is, to mediate.
> And you can't reside in the mittel without doing the werke.

Alternatively you can live with (or rather on the edge of)
contradictions by restricting your ambitions. Poeple do all the time.

> when little Ms. Lifeworld (who analyzes sheep-stool for Archer Daniels
> Midland), decides she is taking part in a process which no longer demands
> mediation, the ghost is given, thank you.  Her stupidity--as everywhere, an
> opposition which no longer includes its opposite within itself--still
> proceeds dialectically, down into her like a hole.  And the world becomes a
> dialectic towards the end of dialectics:  an object free of subjects.

Sounds like a definition of artificial intelligence.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.