"The rent's too high"

Sat Jan 7 14:06:09 CST 2017

Civilized Cruelty: Nietzsche on the Disciplinary Practices of Western
Culture David Michael Kleinberg Levin Northwestern University
"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a
document of barbarism." Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of
History"
1
 "We should reconsider cruelty and open our eyes. . . . Almost everything
we call 'higher culture' is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on
its becoming more profound." Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil,
Part VII, §229 "Everywhere where it is mutilated, consciousness is
reflected back upon the body and the sphere of the corporeal in an unfree
form that tends towards violence. . . . This mechanism must be made
conscious, and an education must be promoted that no longer sets a premium on
pain and the ability to endure pain." Theodor Adorno, "Education after
Auschwitz"
2
 Why can a dog feel fear but not remorse? Would it be right to say,
'Because he can't talk?" Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel §518
3
 "In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has
always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereign
ty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant." Max
Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dial

On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 2:38 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Didn't Nietzsche say something like all civilization is built on cruelty?
> But what's the alternative?
>
> David Morris
>
>
> On Saturday, January 7, 2017, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I didn't see this mentioned here so I'll insert it.
>>
>> Property taxes are another form of rent. Even when the property is owned
>> 'free and clear' and the landlord or banker is vanquished, property taxes
>> come due regularly with an unsentimental threat to pay or face confiscation.
>>
>> I digress...
>>
>> I used to spend a lot of time  checking out "homesteader" holdings when I
>> was younger. I was always impressed by how thoroughly they were reducing
>> the actual cash needed for survival. Most back-to-the-landers (better
>> description) were well aware that they had to pull together enough cash
>> each year to pay their taxes or they'd lose their holdings. Usually this
>> meant some sort of  off-the-land seasonal employment (fruit picking or
>> Christmas retail) but often it meant planting fine lumber trees which would
>>  be sold off to lumber companies a tree at a time to make ends meet when
>> the land holder got too old or too crotchety to bring in the cash. The new
>> plagues of boring beetles in the US must be upsetting a lot of
>> best-laid-plans coast-to-coast nowadays.(Didja know that when I started
>> non-toxic farming 30 years ago that there were locust fence posts in some
>> fence lines that had been standing for nearly a hundred
>> years?Traditionally, locust was so innately rot-proof that it outlasted
>> other hardwood fence posts at a ratio of about 4 to 1 (If your posts were
>> oak you'd replace them 4 times before you would have had to replace a
>> locust post.) Now, thanks to chaos in the natural order (here in WV most
>> likely caused by precipitation of toxic discharges of smoke stacks
>> somewhere in the mid-West acidifying the soils enough to disrupt the
>> primordial soil foodweb even on 'virgin soils' enough that entropy of a
>> system that had maintained itself through millennia ensued) In the past
>> dozen years more and more locusts are infected with a 'heartwood fungus'
>> that causes the locust to produce a wood that is essentially not rot
>> resistant at all and certainly doesn't hold in the soil any longer than a
>> good oak post.
>>
>> -Allan in WV
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 8:18 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Except for yours which is being raised.
>>> >
>>> > On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:33 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com
>>> >
>>> > wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Every time I see this goddamn discussion thread re-appear in my inbox,
>>> >> I get nervous all over again.
>>> >>
>>> >> Jeez with the RENT crap already!
>>> >>
>>> >> ;-)
>>> >>
>>> >> YOPJ
>>> >>
>>> >> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 6:35 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >> > Or even, thinking of the lifelong power/ domination theme, all
>>> about "
>>> >> > structured subjugation", a phrase I like learned in an essay on
>>> >> > globalization, which is not, or not just, " everything solid
>>> melting into
>>> >> > air" these days, something Pynchon also knew in his (only)
>>> pre-modernity
>>> >> > novel, Mason& Dixon.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Sent from my iPad
>>> >> >
>>> >> >> On Jan 7, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> Isn’t the relationship of landlord to renter a rather obvious
>>> mirror of
>>> >> >> the more universal Pyncon theme of colonizer and colonized?
>>> >> >>>
>>> >> >>> Can the relationship between renters and landlords be extrapolated
>>> >> >>> into a broader existential dynamic? It's worth a thought.
>>> >> >>>
>>> >> >>>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Chase Carnot <
>>> chase.carnot at gmail.com>
>>> >> >>>> wrote:
>>> >> >>>> "[...] Crocker Fenway chuckled without mirth. ‘A bit late for
>>> that,
>>> >> >>>> Mr.
>>> >> >>>> Sportello. People like you lose all claim to respect the first
>>> time
>>> >> >>>> they pay
>>> >> >>>> anybody rent.’"
>>> >> >>>>
>>> >> >>>> When I saw PT Anderson's IV, this line jumped at me for the first
>>> >> >>>> time. In
>>> >> >>>> the novel, it must have just washed over me. Anyway, I've been
>>> >> >>>> thinking
>>> >> >>>> about diving back into the novel sometime soon with an eye toward
>>> >> >>>> rent as a
>>> >> >>>> central theme. I felt vindicated when a reading app I use
>>> cropped the
>>> >> >>>> IV
>>> >> >>>> 'Last Supper' poster... it left the center...
>>> >> >>>>
>>> >> >>>> https://goo.gl/photos/zaJops8hNHUrju2u6
>>> >> >>> -
>>> >> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> -
>>> >> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>> >> > -
>>> >> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>> >
>>> >
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
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