Passion, or commitment to causes and projects even when these things appear impossible, ridiculous; indeed, especially when they seem this way. Great feats of athletic, artistic, and intellectual strength and accomplishment. Generosity of spirit and openness to otherness, rather than impotent sneering and a desire to assimilate to ones own locution. People that hate the police and all variations of police rather than those that desire to be police or to be in the good graces of police. Those that prefer politics to governance. Those that refuse to be victims or to fall prey to the narcissism of victimhood and the creation of guilt in others, but who rather strive to transform their wounds into something universally emancipatory, the world and who affirm their own value despite being wounded. Those that refuse to accept the lesser evil or who refuse to be the person that in accepting the lesser of two evils always chooses evil. Intense criticism and insurrection that arises out of a sense of justice and commitment to equality. Those that don’t become overly attached to charismatic figures and causes such that they lose their ability to evaluate and criticize these figures and their movements. Those that despise conversions. Those that are suspicious of any club that would want them as a member. Kindness towards small things, guilt about stepping on insects, and generosity towards others. Those that do not blame others. Those that do not allow their wounds to develop into festering resentment towards themselves, life, and others, but who transfigure their wounds into something beautiful and just in the form of great art and egalitarian politics. Those that refuse to torture others to compensate for their own suffering, wounds, and insecurity. Heights of abstraction as seen in works like Plato’s Sophist and Parmenides, Spinoza’s Ethics, Hegel’s Science of Logic, Husserl’s Logical Investigations, Whitehead’s Process and Reality, Marx’s Capital, Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, or Badiou’s Being and Event. These are the shores of human thought. Lucretius and all those who follow the path he opened. Humor that reveals the ugliness of an unjust world, rather than “humor” that strives to wound and humiliate. Irony. Self-skepticism. Those that hold cliches like “communism is good in theory but not in practice” in disdain. Work that does not stink of personalistic and saccharine narcissism that publicly wallows in its own suffering to gain sympathy. Those that don’t punch back. Those that can concede a point. Revolution and those that desire revolution. Invention. Love. People who are not lackeys to leaders, dogma, churches, or parties. Brutal honesty as in the case of Rousseau’s Confessions. Those who do not hide behind honesty to be hurtful. Those who do not believe existence requires a supplement by the divine to justify itself or have value. Those who can discern intrinsic value in something even where it’s not useful or something to eat. Those who refuse governance or the characterization that alternatives are impossible such that everything must be played in terms of the rules dictated by oligarchs. Those who believe the rules can be changed. Those who hate hall monitors. Those who do not believe that there is something intrinsic to great people such that they should just be obeyed and never questioned, but who see themselves as equal interlocutors. Those who do not pray or show their piety in public. People who find a way to wake up every day and keep going even when things seem hopeless. Those that remember others. Those that believe everything is contingent and that therefore it’s possible to make things otherwise. Weirdos and cranks. Those that do not confuse their expertise with superiority. Good sex. Thoughtful gifts and those that give thoughtful gifts. Romantics. Those that serve others. Those that side with the underdog rather than oligarchs.
August 23, 2011
August 23, 2011 at 7:36 am
Perfect, Levi. Thank you for… it all.
August 23, 2011 at 9:31 am
why hate the police? did you prefer a state without law where criminals would do whatever they want?
or did you mean a «police state»?
ps: the domestication of humans seems a wonderful take at an onticology politcs!
August 23, 2011 at 3:51 pm
courage in all forms (although not put towards all ends, i.e. war), people who can add teeth to nonviolence, people who love to work hard even and especially for jobs that pay little but are worth doing, wild creativity and inventiveness, people who take big risks, holy fools of all stripes, sappy cringeworthy sincere sentimentalists, people who hear a different music, people who look insane for rejecting the “sanity” of our current values, non-dippy hippies, people on weird diets (I’ve noticed that many of the oddballs I admire most from history had weird dietary experiments, I think there might be something to this), people who refuse to diet (in the conformist sense), people who care for animals or the elderly, people who make stuff, self-discipline, independence without the myth of self-sufficiency, old people who still sound idealistic, anyone who manages to avoid bitterness, troublemakers, people who start communes, tinkerers and mad scientists, Robin Hoods, circus daredevils, happy warriors, all poets (even untalented ones), people who admit their crimes at great personal cost or humiliation, satirists, listeners, hospice workers, organ donors, expertise, gardeners, conscientious objectors, war tax resisters, public servants, people who understand that luck played a significant (but not total) role in their success.
August 23, 2011 at 5:05 pm
My kinda peeps!
August 23, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Things I admire:
I love that even though you are devoted to object oriented ontology, you still make space for the singular expression of first person statements. I love that you have enough openness to recreate your work based on new input and insights. I love that in your work I see the included middle AND the object at the same time.
I also love that when you wrote: “Those that can cincede a point.” – I thought for a long deep moment if this was a deliberate neologism or a Deleuzian esoteric word before deciding it was merely a typo.
Warmly,
-Tom
August 23, 2011 at 10:37 pm
Really dig this. Thanks!
August 24, 2011 at 12:59 am
Just beautiful.
August 24, 2011 at 1:17 am
admire destruction of the idea of property so nuno understands there are/were people (“subaltern”) who lived without desire for police, states, or an incessant possession for hoarding garbage.
August 24, 2011 at 3:28 am
This is pretty rocking Levi. I respond a little. BTW I just discovered a Lacan smoking gun re: “everything is a signifier.” In Encore.
August 24, 2011 at 9:43 am
maybe i´m just old school but I really prefer the existence of police to enforce the law in a democratic state. somehow that seems quite obvious – and I will just pass all possible and evident examples where police is a necessity.
August 24, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Some more thoughts on this passage: it’s all about parataxis.
August 25, 2011 at 3:12 am
[…] an earlier post I write that I admire: Those that refuse to be victims or to fall prey to the narcissism of victimhood and […]