Weird Studies/Borges

01 Mar 2022 12:43 - 08 Dec 2022 06:36
Open in Logseq
    • Focusing on Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. I already know this story very well so mostly interested in how they situate it and relate it to other things in the Weirdosphere.
    • Idealism: could it be like a virus? The universe is materialist, but idealism comes along...that is still metaphysical materialism as far as I am concerned. Oh the term cybernetics and emergence comes up, that's good. (around 19:00)
      • Does this change "the nature of reality"? There's no time without consciousness (questionable) so the world is idealist from the beginning (cite of Ægypt, interesting).
      • Do fossils exist? (Sigh, this discussion sounds dumb)
    • Borges avoids polemic or critique, he just describes some idea and lets reader figure out how to feel about it (for the most part).
    • Tlön: endless passion for metaphysics, which they treat as a branch of fantastic literature
    • Greatest moment in Western canon: In Wagner's Ring...
    • He (JM) is an idealist if the idea is that ideas are real. But also passionate about the world existing independent from human observer.
    • "parachronic time" related to Meillassoux , hyperchaos?
    • Michael Garfield mentioning Karl Schroeder, Degrees of Freedom, a haptic vest that allows you to feel the presence of wildlife...
    • The American slaveowner character, Ezra Buckley, a nihilist Tlönist who leaves his wealth to the effort on the condition that they "have no truck with the imposter Jesus Christ". Christ not just as son of god but emblem of the spirit in the material world.
    • Alliance between capitalists and esoteric illuminati
    • Lovecraft and the inhuman at the heart of the human.
    • Weird fiction and "the thing" – something that has been there without us, that is strange...outside of idealism because it pre-exists minds. But given the unconscious, we (humans) are the thing, strange to ourselves. Idealism does not allow for the new.
      • Glad that these people are as down on idealism as they are on materialism. But they post a "weird idealism", one more like magick. Compare to Pepsi and Sprite. Yeah yeah yeah this renews my faith in these guys.
    • Ref to Aleister Crowley injunction “For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”
    • Ref to Nietzsche line about how we haven't killed God because we still believe in grammar. Henri Bergson, free will, real time.