EMF Map 28

Key: Surprise

EMF Map 27

Key: Blackjack

CEMI Theory 1

Conscious Electromagnetic Information Field Theory

Digital Information within neurons is pooled and integrated to form an electromagnetic information field. Consciousness is that component of the brain's electromagnetic information field that is downloaded to motor neurons and is thereby capable of communicating its state to the outside world.

The CEMI Field theory suggests that processing information through the wave-mechanical dynamics of the cemi field provided a significant advantage to our ancestors that was captured by natural selection to endow our minds with the capability to process information through fields. We experience this field-level processing as consciousness. Its defining feature is its ability to handle irreducibly complex concepts such as a face, self, identity, words, meaning, shape, tool, or number, as holistic units. All conscious thinking involves the manipulation of such irreducibly complex concepts and must involve a physical system that can process complex information holistically. The only physical system that can perform this function in the brain is the cemi field. It is through this mechanism that humans acquired the capacity to become conscious agents...

The cemi-field theory proposes that consciousness is the inner experience of information/awareness encoded in the brain's EM field. From the reference frame of the cemi field, conscious actions are its actions - its influence on the world. In this sense, agency is the experience of influence on the world from the frame of reference of information/awareness capable of encoding meaning. Only human brains generate fields with this capacity and are able to communicate these objects and concepts (although artificially generated fields may encode complex information and transmit it to TVs or radios, they lack the dynamics to communicate anything other than the information encoded within their signal - they have nothing else to say). That capacity - human consciousness - may be the key evolutionary advantage captured by the human mind.

- JohnJoe McFadden

EMF Map 26

Key: The Star

EMF Map 25

Key: Interruption

EMF Map 24

Key: The Network

EMF map 23

Key: The Potion

EMF Map 22

Key: Quixote

EMF Map 21

Key: Barbarossa

Kwisatz Haderach 4

"Sometimes I can feel your thoughts...but I...we live only through...the reflection of...your awareness. Your memory creates us. The danger...it is a precise memory. And...those of us, those of us who loved power and gathered it at...any price...those can be...more precise."

-Frank Herbert, from Children of Dune

EMF Map 20

Key: The Keyster

Eternity's one question...

And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then - whether you were man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or independent, fortunate or unfortunate, whether you ranked with royalty and wore a glittering crown or in humble obscurity bore the toil and heat of the day, whether your name will be remembered as long as the world is and consequently as long as it stood or you are nameless and run nameless in the innumerable multitude, whether the magnificence encompassing you surpassed all human description or the most severe and ignominious human judgment befell you - eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not, whether you have despaired in such a way that you did not realize you were in despair, or in such a way that you covertly carried this sickness inside of you as your gnawing secret, as a fruit of sinful love under your heart, or in such a way that you, a terror to others, raged in despair. And if so, if you have lived in despair, then, regardless of whatever else you won or lost, everything is lost for you, eternity does not acknowledge you, it never knew you - or, still more terrible, it knows you as you are known and it binds you to yourself in despair.

-Kierkegaard, from "The Sickness Unto Death"

EMF Map 18

Key: The Gate

EMF Map 17

Key: ALL IN

Knight of the Infinite

...No, not one shall be forgotten who was great in the world. But each was great in his own way, and each in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. For he who loved himself became great by himself, and he who loved other men became great by his selfless devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all. Everyone shall be remembered, but each became great in proportion to his expectation. One became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal, but he who expected the impossible became greater than all...

...An old proverb fetched from the outward and visible world says: "Only the man that works gets the bread." Strangely enough this proverb does not aptly apply in that world to which it expressly belongs. For the outward world is subjected to the law of imperfection, and again and again the experience is repeated that he too who does not work gets the bread, and that he who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the man who works. In the outward world everything is made payable to the bearer, this world is in bondage to the law of indifference, and to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world's treasure,has it, however he got it. It is different in the world of spirit. Here an eternal divine order prevails, here it does not rain both upon the just and upon the unjust, here the sun does not shine both upon the good and upon the evil, here it holds good that only he who works gets the bread, only he who was in anguish finds repose, only he who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved...

...One can discover nothing of that aloof and superior nature whereby one recognizes the knight of the infinite. He takes delight in everything, and whenever one sees him taking part in a particular pleasure, he does it with the persistence which is the mark of the earthly man whose soul is absorbed in such things. He tends to his work. So when one looks at him one might suppose that he was a clerk who had lost his soul in an intricate system of book-keeping, so precise is he. He takes a holiday on Sunday. He goes to church. No heavenly glance or any other token of the incommensurable betrays him; if one did not know him, it would be impossible to distinguish him from the rest of the congregation, for his healthy and vigorous hymn-singing proves at the most that he has a good chest. In the afternoon he walks to the forest. He takes delight in everything he sees, in the human swarm, in the new omnibuses, in the water of the Sound; when one meets him on the Beach Road one might suppose he was a shopkeeper taking his fling, that's just the way he disports himself, for he is not a poet, and I have sought in vain to detect in him the poetic incommensurability. Toward evening he walks home, his gait is as indefatigable as that of the postman. On his way he reflects that his wife has surely a special little warm dish prepared for him... If he were to meet a man like-minded, he could continue as far as East Gate to discourse with him about that dish, with a passion befitting a hotel chef. As it happens, he hasn't four pence to his name, and yet he fully and firmly believes that his wife has that dainty dish for him. If she had it, it would then be an invidious sight for superior people and an inspiring one for the plain man, to see him eat; for his appetite is greater than Esau's. His wife hasn't it–strangely enough, it is quite the same to him.

On the way he comes past a building site and runs across another man. They talk together for a moment. In the twinkling of an eye he erects a new building, he has at his disposition all the powers necessary for it. The stranger leaves him with the thought that he certainly was a capitalist, while my admired knight thinks, "Yes, if the money were needed, I dare say I could get it." He lounges at an open window and looks out on the square on which he lives; he is interested in everything that goes on, in a rat which slips under the curb, in the children's play, and this with the nonchalance of a girl of sixteen. And yet he is no genius, for in vain I have sought in him the incommensurability of genius. In the evening he smokes his pipe; to look at him one would swear that it was the grocer over the way vegetating in the twilight. He lives as carefree as a ne'er-do-well, and yet he buys up the acceptable time at the dearest price, for he does not do the least thing except by virtue of the absurd. And yet, and yet–actually I could become furious over it, for envy if for no other reason–this man has made and every instant is making the movements of infinity. With infinite resignation he has drained the cup of life's profound sadness, he knows the bliss of the infinite, he senses the pain of renouncing everything, the dearest things he possesses in the world, and yet finiteness tastes to him just as good as to one who never knew anything higher,for his continuance in the finite did not bear a trace of the cowed and fearful spirit produced by the process of training; and yet he has this sense of security in enjoying it, as though the finite life were the surest thing of all. And yet, and yet the whole earthly form he exhibits is a new creation by virtue of the absurd. He resigned everything infinitely, and then he grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd. He constantly makes the movements of infinity, but he does this with such correctness and assurance that he constantly gets the finite out of it, and there is not a second when one has a notion of anything else. It is supposed to be the most difficult task for a dancer to leap into a definite posture in such a way that there is not a second when he is grasping after the posture, but by the leap itself he stands fixed in that posture. Perhaps no dancer can do it–that is what this knight does. Most people live dejectedly in worldly sorrow and joy; they are the ones who sit along the wall and do not join in the dance.

The knights of infinity are dancers and possess elevation. They make the movements upward, and fall down again; and this too is no mean pastime, nor ungraceful to behold. But whenever they fall down they are not able at once to assume the posture,
they vacillate an instant, and this vacillation shows that after all they are strangers in the world. This is more or less strikingly evident in proportion to the art they possess, but even the most artistic knights cannot altogether conceal this vacillation. One need not look at them when they are up in the air, but only the instant they touch or have touched the ground–then one recognizes them. But to be able to fall down in such a way that the same second it looks as if one were standing and walking, to transform the leap of life into a walk, absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian–that only the knight of faith can do–and this is the one and only wonder.

But since the wonder is so likely to be delusive, I will describe the movements in a definite instance which will serve to illustrate their relation to reality, for upon this everything turns. A young swain falls in love with a princess, and the whole content of his life consists in this love, and yet the situation is such that it is impossible for it to be realized, impossible for it to be translated from ideality into reality.

The slaves of paltriness, the frogs in life's swamp, will naturally cry out, "Such a love is foolishness. The rich brewer's widow is a match fully as good and respectable." Let them croak in the swamp undisturbed. It is not so with the knight of infinite resignation, he does not give up his love, not for all the glory of the world. He is no fool. First he makes sure that this really is the content of his life, and his soul is too healthy and too proud to squander the least thing upon an inebriation. He is not cowardly, he is not afraid of letting love creep into his most secret, his most hidden thoughts, to let it twine in innumerable coils about every ligament of his consciousness–if the love becomes an unhappy love, he will never be able to tear himself loose from it. He feels a blissful rapture in letting love tingle through every nerve, and yet his soul is as solemn as that of the man who has drained the poisoned goblet and feels how the juice permeates every drop of blood–for this instant is life and death. So when he has thus sucked into himself the whole of love and absorbed himself in it, he does not lack courage to make trial of everything and to venture everything. He surveys the situation of his life, he convokes the swift thoughts, which like tame doves obey his every bidding, he waves his wand over them, and they dart off in all directions. But when they all return, all as messengers of sorrow, and declare to him that it is an impossibility, then he becomes quiet, he dismisses them, he remains alone, and then he performs the movements. If what I am saying is to have any significance, it is requisite that the movement come about normally.

So for the first thing, the knight will have power to concentrate the whole content of life and the whole significance of reality in one single wish. If a man lacks this concentration, this intensity, if his soul from the beginning is dispersed in the
multifarious, he never comes to the point of making the movement, he will deal shrewdly in life like the capitalists who invest their money in all sorts of securities, so as to gain on the one what they lose on the other–in short, he is not a knight. In the next place the knight will have the power to concentrate the whole result of the operations of thought in one act of consciousness. If he lacks this intensity, if his soul from the beginning is dispersed in the multifarious, he will never get time to make the movements, he will be constantly running errands in life, never enter into eternity, for even at the instant when he is closest to it he will suddenly discover that he has forgotten something for which he must go back. He will think that to enter eternity is possible the next instant, and that also is perfectly true, but by such considerations one never reaches the point of making the movements, but by their aid one sinks deeper and deeper into the mire.

So the knight makes the movement–but what movement? Will he forget the whole thing? (For in this too there is indeed a kind of concentration.) No! For the knight does not contradict himself, and it is a contradiction to forget the whole content of one's life and yet remain the same man. To become another man he feels no inclination, nor does he by any means regard this as greatness. Only the lower natures forget themselves and become something new. Thus the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it was a caterpillar, perhaps it may in turn so entirely forget it was a butterfly that it becomes a fish. The deeper natures never forget themselves and never become anything else than what they were. So the knight remembers everything, but precisely this remembrance is pain, and yet by the infinite resignation he is reconciled with existence. Love for that princess became for him the expression for an eternal love, assumed a religious character, was transfigured into a love for the Eternal Being, which did to be sure deny him the fulfilment of his love, yet reconciled him again by the eternal consciousness of its validity in the form of eternity, which no reality can take from him. Fools and young men prate about everything being possible for a man. That, however, is a great error. Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the world of the finite there is much which is not possible. This impossible, however, the knight makes possible by expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by waiving his claim to it. The wish which would carry him out into reality, but was wrecked upon the impossibility, is now bent inward, but it is not therefore lost, neither is it forgotten. At one moment it is the obscure emotion of the wish within him which awakens recollections, at another moment he awakens them himself; for he is too proud to be willing that what was the whole content of his life should be the thing of a fleeting moment. He keeps this love young, and along with him it increases in years and in beauty. On the other hand, he has no need of the intervention of the finite for the further growth of his love. From the instant he made the movement the princess is lost to him. He has no need of those erotic tinglings in the nerves at the sight of the beloved etc., nor does he need to be constantly taking leave of her in a finite sense, because he recollects her in an eternal sense, and he knows very well that the lovers who are so bent upon seeing "her" yet once again, to say farewell for the last time, are right in being bent upon it, are right in thinking that it is the last time, for they forget one another the soonest. He has comprehended the deep secret that also in loving another person one must be sufficicut unto oneself. He no longer takes a finite interest in what the princess is doing, and precisely this is proof that he has made the movement infinitely.Here one may have an opportunity to see whether the movement on the part of a particular person is true or fictitious. There was one who also believed that he had made the movement; but lo, time passed, the princess did something else, she married–a prince, let us say–then his soul lost the elasticity of resignation. Thereby he knew that he had not made the movement rightly; for he who has made the act of resignation infinitely is sufficient unto himself. The knight does not annul his resignation, he preserves his love just as young as it was in its first moment, he never lets it go from him, precisely because he makes the movements infinitely. What the princess does, cannot disturb him, it is only the lower natures which find in other people the law for their actions, which find the premises for their actions outside themselves. If on the other hand the princess is like-minded, the beautiful consequence will be apparent. She will introduce herself into that order of knighthood into which one is not received by balloting, but of which everyone is a member who has courage to introduce himself, that order of knighthood which proves its immortality by the fact that it makes no distinction between man and woman. The two will preserve their love young and sound, she also will have triumphed over her pains, even though she does not, as it is said in the ballad, "lie every night beside her lord." These two will to all eternity remain in agreement with one another, with a well-timed harmonia praestabilita, so that if ever the moment were to come, the moment which does not, however, concern them finitely (for then they would be growing older), if ever the moment were to come which offered to give love its expression in time, then they will be capable of beginning precisely at the point where they would have begun if originally they had been united. He who understands this, be he man or woman, can never be deceived, for it is only the lower natures which imagine they were deceived. No girl who is not so proud really knows how to love; but if she is so proud, then the cunning and shrewdness of all the world cannot deceive her.

In the infinite resignation there is peace and rest; every man who wills it, who has not abased himself by corrupting himself (which is still more dreadful than being proud), can train himself to make this movement which in its pain reconciles one with
existence. Infinite resignation is that shirt we read about in the old fable. The thread is spun under tears, the cloth bleached with tears, the shirt sewn with tears; but then too it is a better protection than iron and steel. The imperfection in the fable is that a third party can manufacture this shirt. The secret in life is that everyone must sew it for himself, and the astonishing thing is that a man can sew it fully as well as a woman. In the infinite resignation there is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow–that is, if the movement is made normally. It would not be difficult for me, however, to write a whole book, were I to examine the various misunderstandings, the preposterous attitudes, the deceptive movements, which I have encountered in my brief practice. People believe very little in spirit, and yet making this movement depends upon spirit, it depends upon whether this is or is not a one-sided result of a dira necessitas, and if this is present, the more dubious it always is whether the movement is normal. If one means by this that the cold, unfruitful necessity must necessarily be present, one thereby affirms that no one can experience death before he actually dies, and that appears to me a crass
materialism. However, in our time people concern themselves rather little about making pure movements. In case one who was about to learn to dance were to say, "For centuries now one generation after another has been learning positions, it is high time I drew some advantage out of this and began straightway with the French dances"–then people would laugh at him; but in the world of spirit they find this exceedingly plausible.

What is education? I should suppose that education was the curriculum one had to run through in order to catch up with oneself, and he who will not pass through this curriculum is helped very little by the fact that he was born in the most enlightened age.

The infinite resignation is the last stage prior to faith, so that one who has not made this movement has not faith; for only in the infinite resignation do I become clear to myself with respect to my eternal validity, and only then can there be any question of grasping existence by virtue of faith.

Now we will let the knight of faith appear in the role just described. He makes exactly the same movements as the other knight, infinitely renounces claim to the love which is the content of his life, he is reconciled in pain; but then occurs the wonder, he makes still another movement more wonderful than all, for he says, "I believe nevertheless that I shall get her, in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible." The absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen. At the moment when the knight made the act of resignation he was convinced, humanly speaking, of the impossibility. This was the result reached by the understanding, and he had sufficient energy to think it.

On the other hand, in an infinite sense it was possible, namely, by renouncing it; but this sort of possessing is at the same time a relinquishing, and yet there is no absurdity in this for the understanding, for the understanding continued to be in the right in affirming that in the world of the finite where it holds sway this was and remained an impossibility. This is quite as clear to the knight of faith, so the only thing that can save him is the absurd, and this he grasps by faith. So he recognizes the impossibility, and that very instant he believes the absurd; for, if without recognizing the impossibility with all the passion of his soul and with all his heart, he should wish to imagine that he has faith, he deceives himself, and his testimony has no bearing, since he has not even reached the infinite resignation.

Faith therefore is not an aesthetic emotion but something far higher, precisely because it has resignation as its presupposition; it is not an immediate instinct of the heart, but is the paradox of life and existence. So when in spite of all difficulties a young girl still remains convinced that her wish will surely be fulfilled, this conviction is not the assurance of faith, even if she was brought up by Christian parents, and for a whole year perhaps has been catechized by the parson. She is convinced in all her childish naïveté and innocence, this conviction also ennobles her nature and imparts to her a preternatural greatness, so that like a thaumaturge she is able to conjure the finite powers of existence and make the very stones weep, while on the other hand in her flurry she may just as well run to Herod as to Pilate and move the whole world by her tears. Her convichon is very lovable, and one can learn much from her, but one thing is not to be learned from her, one does not learn the movements, for her conviction does not dare in the pain of resignation to face the impossibility.

So I can perceive that it requires strength and energy and freedom of spirit to make the infinite movement of resignation, I can also perceive that it is feasible. But the next thing astonishes me, it makes my head swim, for after having made the
movement of resignation, then by virtue of the absurd to get everything, to get the wish whole and uncurtailed–that is beyond human power, it is a prodigy. But this I can perceive, that the young girl's conviction is mere levity in comparison with the firmness faith displays notwithstanding it has perceived the impossibility. Whenever I essay to make this movement, I turn giddy, the very instant I am admiring it absolutely a prodigious dread grips my soul–for what is it to tempt God? And yet this movement is the movement of faith and remains such, even though philosophy, in order to confuse the concepts, would make us believe that it has faith, and even though theology would sell out faith at a bargain price.

For the act of resignation faith is not required, for what I gain by resignation is my eternal consciousness, and this is a purely philosophical movement which I dare say I am able to make if it is required, and which I can train myself to make, for whenever any finiteness would get the mastery over me, I starve myself until I can make the movement, for my eternal consciousness is my love to God, and for me this is higher than everything. For the act of resignation faith is not required, but it is needed when it is the case of acquiring the very least thing more than my eternal consciousness, for this is the paradoxical. The movements are frequently confounded, for it is said that one needs faith to renounce the claim to everything, yea, a stranger thing than this may be heard, when a man laments the loss of his faith, and when one looks at the scale to see where he is, one sees, strangely enough, that he has only reached the point where he should make the infinite movement of resignation. In resignation I make renunciation of everything, this movement I make by myself, and if I do not make it, it is because I am cowardly and effeminate and without enthusiasm and do not feel the significance of the lofty dignity which is assigned to every man, that of being his own censor, which is a far prouder title than that of Censor General to the whole Roman Republic. This movement I make by myself, and what I gain is myself in my eternal consciousness, in blissful agreement with my love for the Eternal Being. By faith I make renunciation of nothing, on the contrary, by faith I acquire everything, precisely in the sense in which it is said that he who has faith like a grain of mustard can remove mountains. A purely human courage is required to renounce the whole of the temporal to gain the eternal; but this I gain, and to all eternity I cannot renounce it–that is a self-contradiction. But a paradoxical and humble courage is required to grasp the whole of the temporal by virtue of the absurd, and this is the courage of faith. By faith Abraham did not renounce his claim upon Isaac, but by faith he got Isaac. By virtue of resignation that rich young man should have given away everything, but then when he had done that, the knight of faith should have said to him, "By virtue of the absurd thou shalt get every penny back again. Canst thou believe that?" And this speech ought by no means to have been indifferent to the aforesaid rich young man, for in case he gave away his goods because he was tired of them, his resignation was not much to boast of.

It is about the temporal, the finite, everything turns in this case. I am able by my own strength to renounce everything, and then to find peace and repose in pain. I can stand everything–even though that horrible demon, more dreadful than death, the
king of terrors, even though madness were to hold up before my eyes the motley of the fool, and I understood by its look that it was I who must put it on, I still am able to save my soul, if only it is more to me than my earthly happiness that my love to God should triumph in me. A man may still be able at the last instant to concentrate his whole soul in a single glance toward that heaven from which cometh every good gift, and his glance will be intelligible to himself and also to Him whom it seeks as a sign that he nevertheless remained true to his love. Then he will calmly put on the motley garb. He whose soul has not this romantic enthusiasm has sold his soul, whether he got a kingdom for it or a paltry piece of silver. But by my own strength I am not able to get the least of the things which belong to finiteness, for I am constantly using my strength to renounce everything. By my own strength I am able to give up the princess, and I shall not become a grumbler, but shall find joy and repose in my pain; but by my own strength I am not able to get her again, for I am employing all my strength to be resigned. But by faith, says that marvellous knight, by faith I shall get her in virtue of the absurd...

Faith is the objective uncertainty, together with the repulsion of the absurd, held fast in the passion of inwardness.

-Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

EMF Map 16

Key: Dark Horse Candidate

The Lantern-Bearers

...Toward the end of September, when school-time was drawing near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our repective villas, each equipped with a tin bull´s eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigour of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled noisomely of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull´s eye under his topcoat asked for nothing more. The fisherman used lanterns about their boats, and it was from them, I suppose, that we had got the hint; but theirs were not bull´s eyes, nor did we ever play at being fishermen. The police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them in that; yet we did not pretend to be policemen. Burglars, indeed, we may have had some haunting thoughts of, and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a bull´s eye under his topcoat was good enough for us...


...For, to repeat, the ground of a man´s joy is often hard to hit. It may hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside, like the dancer´s, in the mysterious inwards of psychology...

...the poetry runs underground. The observer is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to court deception. We shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives.

And, true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing.

For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action. That is the explanation, that the excuse. To one who has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books. Hence, when we read the English realists, the incredulous wonder with which we observe the hero´s constancy under the submerging tide of dulness, and how he bears up with his jibbing sweetheart, and endures the chatter of idiot girls, and stands by his whole unfeatured wilderness of an existence, instead of seeking relief in drink or foreign travel. Hence in the French, in that meat-market of middle-aged sensuality, the disgusted surprise with which we see the hero drift sidelong, and practically quite untempted, into every description of misconduct and dishonour. In each, we miss the personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset; each is true, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied walls.

-Robert Louis Stevenson, from ´The Lantern-Bearers´

Purity of heart is to will one thing...

The talk asks you, then, or you ask yourself by means of the talk, what kind of life do you live, do you will only one thing, and what is this one thing? The talk does not expect that you will name off any goal that only pretends to be one thing. For it does not intend to address itself to anyone with whom it would not be able to deal seriously, for the reason that such a man has cut himself off from any earnest consideration of the occasion of the address. There is still another reason: a man can, to be sure, have an extremely different, yes, have a precisely opposite opinion from ours, and one can nevertheless deal earnestly with him if one assumes that finally there may be a point of agreement, a unity in some universal human sense, call it what you will. But if he is mad, then one cannot deal with him, for he shies away from just that final point, in which one at last may hope to find agreement with him. One can dispute with a man, dispute to the furthest limit, as long as one assumes, that in the end there is a point in common, an agreement in some universal human sense: in self-respect. But when, in his worldly strivings he sets out like a madman in a desperate attempt to despise himself, and in the face of this is brazen about it and lauds himself for his infamy, then one can undertake no disputing with him. For like a madman, and even more terribly, he shies away from this final thing(self-respect) in which one might at last hope to find agreement with him.

The talk assumes, then, that you will the Good and asks you now, what kind of life do you live, whether or not you truthfully will only one thing. It does not ask inquisitively about your calling in life, about the number of workers you employ, or about how many you have under you in your office, or if you happen to be in the service of the state. No, the talk is not inquisitive. It asks you above all else, it asks you first and foremost, whether you really live in such a way that you are capable of answering that question, in such a way that the question truthfully exists for you. Because in order to be able earnestly to answer that serious question, a man must already have chosen the invisible, chosen that which is within. He must have lived so that he has hours and times in which he collects his mind, so that his life can win the transparency that is a condition for being able to put the question to himself and for being able to answer it --if, of course, it is legitimate to demand that a man know whereof he speaks. To put such a question to the man that is busy in his earthly work, and outside of this in joining the crowd in its noisemaking, would be folly that would lead only to fresh folly -- through the answer.

-Soren Kierkegaard

EMF Map 15

Key: Ruling Faculty

MindWar Doctrine 1

My young warriors,

In a few minutes you will enter into the Place of Honor where, one by one, you will learn whether or not you are fitted to swear the oath which will bind you to the Imperial Stormtroooper Force forever.

For five years you have been preparing for this moment. You have mastered the techniques of PolWar and Intersystem Relations, of translite navigation and combat, as well as a host of subjects too numerous to mention. Your studies have encompassed every area of knowledge and have provided you with the most advanced preparation available to any being in the known galaxy. Though you were carefully selected for this training, many who began with you are not here today.

In the process of your training here, you have sharpened to a keen edge certain qualities:
unusual powers of observation and memory; a degree of patience and persistence unknown among the masses of men; and, above all, the ability to clear each problem given you of its accidental elements - to arrive quickly at its essentials. Here you have also learned courage and honor, for these are the marks of all true warriors.

Yet for all this you may only have become excellent warriors, a credit to the Stormtrooper force, but NOT graduates of this academy; for there is more that you must know. You must know how you will be Mind Warriors.

What have eyou learned of the Universe you will soon be roaming freely?
That it is a million-billion parts? That it stands against itself? That it sleeps and wakens and dies? I tell you to learn this: It is ONE.

Have you remembered your yesterdays and dreamed your tomorrows? Thought and wearied of thought? Admired and despised? You have been mistaken: They are ONE.

The Oneness of the Universe is found in your KNOWING of it and in the corners of your mind where knowing is most at home. Knowing and the Known are ONE, indivisible, inalienable. The true knower labors not but lets the known become him.

What is a god? It is only a shadowy image in our dreams of what we might be if we knew the Universe. Let me teach you that you WILL be gods if only you will labor not against the Universe but will know it as it is to be known.

How may you do this? Dismiss from your memories the fear of death, for it stands in your way. The living is in the dead and the dead is in the living, and they are ONE. The Universe does not notice a distinction between life and death, but is forever changing its colors and textures to become another and to seem fixed and inviolate. You shall see in number what the Universe is not. And what is in a number but the fear of death.

Dismiss also from your imagination any lingering hope that you may resist the pulsing life and death and Oneness which is the Universe. The ages are filled with the howling ghosts of the fools who have tried. Were your resistance to succeed, what would be the result? You would obliterate your own being, as it is one with ONE. For you are ONE, and at ONE, and of ONE. But your resistance will not succeed.

And how shall this teaching change you? How may this final instruction make you a Mind Warrior?

It will give you eyes to see the weakness of your enemy, for he cannot distinguish the essential from the accidental. He must depend upon his own Will; that is to say, he must depend upon his vacant hope to be what he may not be. This hope, I teach you, rests in the heart of your enemies. They despise you because you have no hope; but you will be victorious over them, and they shall be defeated. You will know them, and you will know your time. You will know yourselves and when your time is not. You will be alone and they will be in hosts but you will KNOW and they will not KNOW. They will be feverish and will think of their fever as a virtue, but you will be cold and will KNOW.

They will hate you, but you will hate not, for you will KNOW. They will pray to pull you down; but you will not pray,and you will not be pulled down.

You will look down into the minds of your enemies and you will find there the hope which they have lodged there. You will measure their hope against their power. They will have power, for their hope is but a part, and they are ONE also. But their power will avail them not, for you will not attack their power, which is ONE; but you will attack their hope, which is not ONE. In this you will defeat them by knowing them and by knowing their wills and by making the error which is their wills cause their defeat. And you shall know their errors even before they may be committed, because you will know how they are not at one with ONE.

I teach you that it is ONE, and that the ONE is a thought, and that you are thinking that thought. Henceforth you may not see as other men see, nor hear as they hear, if you are thinking the thought that it is ONE. You must be a riddle to men and a danger, but you may not be of them any longer.

And whom do you serve? We are warriors of the Empire, for it is the time of the Empire and not another time yet to be. And the Empire is making the Universe ONE in its way, for it is time to make the Universe ONE. You will, therefore, serve the Empire.

Now you will each proceed alone into the Place of Honor. As you pass within, you will find two doors. On each door you will see a sigil, unbeknownst to you. Behind one door is the Oath Scroll and the Trapezoidal altar. Behind the other, the Universe in which you once lived. He who selects the latter door may never return to this Hall.

In the sigil on the first door is the KNOWLEDGE OF THE ONE which leads to the path of MindWar. It is the sign of overgoing and bridging and seeing. In the other sign, however, there is hope. If you have understood these final instructions which I have spoken, you will sleect the first door because you will recognize the sign. If you have not understood, you will select the 2nd door because you will be drawn to its sigil. When you have opened one door the other will be forever sealed to you, so choose well; but choose as you will choose.

Those who sign the Oath Scroll will dine tonight in the Great Hall and will learn of the company there. Pass through, if you may, for I have completed these instructions.

-General Terclis/Colonel Richard L. Sutter, U.S. Army

excerpted from `The Dark Side`, by Michael Aquino
for access to full text, go here:
http://www.xeper.org/maquino

Writing Samples

***From Up From the Feuilleton: A Theory of the Filmic Game, a research paper comparing Herman Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game to current trends in computer technology

...Stories and games, stories in games, and games in stories are converging into a hybrid art form that blends cinematic narrative with dynamic interaction. The formation of Wingnut Interactive in September of 2006 is a sign of the times, heralding a concept known as the ‘filmic game’[1]. This art form resembles life more so, perhaps, than any previous discipline because it is dramatic, story-driven, moves backward or forward according to the participant’s decisions and is disturbingly real. Thus, it is existential. The Glass Bead Game is an ideal narrative for this new storytelling discipline because it is an existential story about a game by one of the foremost authors of the twentieth century.  And, it is a story, which, up until now, has hardly been touched by the newer media.

In trying to understand some of the underlying reasons for our culture’s obsessive fascination with gaming, it might be useful to go back and investigate Hesse’s work. Throughout the text, the word Game is capitalized. Hesse thus transforms the meaning from just a game into the Game. The Game is sacred. All games contain within their kernel, elements from the Game. In Hesse’s consideration, gaming represents a metaphysical activity.  But why is this so?  

In the General Introduction that he provides, the 'present age' (approx 23^rd century) is an era in which there is little creativity. Human culture has matured and accumulated an enormous amount of intellectual history. After the troublesome Age of Feuilleton (20^th century) has passed, the primary endeavor becomes a playful examination of thoughts and ideas that have been collected through history. These concepts have an underlying symbiosis and a game is formed based on the ability to relate disparate topics together; to see hidden connections between musical motifs, scientific theorems, floral patterns, etc. ad infinitum. The Glass Bead Game is an engagement of elaborate idea association. It is a play of synchronicity; of meaningful intersections. It demonstrates that knowledge of the occult relationships and the secret connections between all things. It is a metaphor of the mind's synthetic power; it's ability to recognize subtle associations and analogies amongst diverse and apparently unrelated subjects. The Glass Bead Game is closely identified with music, rhythmic processes, and variations on a theme. The Glass Bead Game is the Mind's playful and lightning quick ability to examine, measure, analyze, compare, contrast, and recombine data. The Glass Bead Game is the Imagination of Knowledge. Most importantly, the Game represents the authoritative achievement of Mind’s triumph over Church and State as the emerging vessel or symbol of divinity in a new age.

 *** From Technecromancy (“Technological Necromancy”), a proposal for a video game cinematic based on the 1911 Savannah automobile races.

My approach to the video game discipline comes from an appreciation of cinema and a love of history. Cinema has opened up the past in such an immediate way, literally making real the concept of a dimensional portal between different periods. With video games this process became interactive. I am interested in the overarching concept of the game itself, the driving storyline, epic, or mission. What is the essence of the idea, the summary? How well is it presented? A good game should take us into the movie. It is this brief sketch or preview that I have begun to make the cornerstone of my career as a game designer. I collect kernels and their immediate associations and arrange them in a way to present a comprehensive imaginative vision.  This aspect enables more freedom with detail, camera movements etc. than in the actual play of the game.

The industry focuses on two general concepts: the environment and the avatar. There is a world and there is something or someone moving through the world. Immersion refers to both. We enter the virtual world. We become accustomed to it. It insulates us. We also become the hero or whoever's identity it is that is at the center of action. Understanding this basic dichotomy leads to the next point.
            The subject matter of the video game world is wild and wacky ranging from cartoonish figments of the puerile imagination to real moments cut out of wars or other portions of recorded history. For the purpose of this project, the focus is on the historical imagination. My intention is take two moments that have been recorded in some visual way, through photograph or painting etc. and make them come to life. In order to isolate the different categories of environment and avatar the subjects are distinct and unrelated.

For the environment, I will be taking a painting done by Peter Helck in 1911, concerning the international car races held in Savannah. For the avatar, I am focussing on a daguerrotype of John C. Calhoun done in the 1830s. My intention is simply to bring these moments into real time. The race cars come alive and zoom by. John Calhoun perks up and begins delivering his "Disquistion on Government."

Technology offers humanity powerful new tools to amplify its reflective historic experience. Photographs, old paintings, sketches, and the dusty tomes accounting previous experience are not obsolete items. My thesis is that the energy of a culture depends on its ability to access its history imaginatively. By utilizing contemporary software developments, the past is no longer a dead yesterday but a living portal to another dimension.

***From $knecht = server[2], a research paper on server-side scripting languages

When confronting the overwhelming and complex sprawl of computer languages, the massive and multiple data systems that support or are supported by them, and the speed at which it is all taking place, it is sometimes difficult to discern whether civilization is approaching a 'confusion of tongues' scenario like the one depicted in the 'Tower of Babel' story from the Bible or a hitherto unprecedented evolution of the logoidal impulse towards a universal meta-language similar to that described by Herman Hesse in his novel The Glass Bead Game. It is not this paper's intention to satisfy that philosophic question. This is due, in part, to the immensity of such a task as well as the writer's own ambivalent moods and multiple confusions on the subject, though he does have a few notions one way and/or the other. The main focus, rather, will be on analyzing the ‘glue-like’ phenomenon of server-side scripting languages; addressing their current position within the world of Information technology. These languages in many ways do symbolize the aforementioned gargantuan and thus beg for an analysis that moves beyond technical specifications toward existential reflection. Thus, it may be useful, periodically, to frame them in such a way that a more comprehensive picture of their function emerges.

Server-side scripting languages are made up of variables, functions, tags, and objects put together as programs, that relay messages between a client making certain requests and a server who receives that request and acts based on certain instructions. Whereas, originally, web pages were read-only HTML documents, now they involve complex interactive applications that require dynamic updates. This is why these languages are important and popular. Whether a user is buying a book from a shopping cart application like Amazon, searching for a piece of music on the Database of Recorded American Music, or generating multiple emails to remind students not to be tardy with their assignments, server-side scripting is increasingly in demand.  To be effective, these languages must have the capacity to 'talk' to several different systems and users and either 'fetch' information from a database/file stored somewhere on the server’s system or generate a new file, and then bring it all back to the client’s browser. They are integrative or hermetic in the sense that they make possible links between different interfaces, facilitating live communication. In order to operate them, a programmer must become adept at moving from one interface, system, platform, environment, or language to another.

This paper will compare and contrast four different languages: Perl, PHP, ASP, and ColdFusion. The format will move in a nonlinear fashion from a general run through of each language's history, development, and defining characteristics; to comparisons and contrasts between them; and, finally, to some general statements regarding the cultural impact of the underlying trends that each represent.

 

***From The Devil Went Down To Georgia, Revisited, an original short story

A strange red-bearded man holding a fiddle appeared in Johnson square a few minutes before our pub tour was supposed to go out at 9:30 PM. It was March 17, St. Patrick’s Day - a bit muggy for a spring night. There was fog in the air and thunder in the distance. Nobody saw from which direction the man had come. He was just there, all of a sudden, in the midst of tuning his fiddle. We walked over towards him and he turned to rosin up his bow. I’m not sure why we were so attracted. It just seemed that he was there for us. He reeked of whiskey and it looked like he was missing a tooth. Could this be our tour guide? The sponsoring company was a reputable one, well spoken for by all the concierges in the city. Yet this fellow was a rogue by even the most conservative and generous consideration. Who would dare hire this vagabond? Or was it an illusion? Was it just a costume? An act? Maybe. We couldn’t be for sure in a city where so many outlandish characters were incorporated into a professional touring industry of enormous proportions. It was probably best to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He was standing upon the base of the Nathanael Greene monument. He raised the fiddle bow up in the air. Then, suddenly, a string of fire ignited along the bow's length. He arched his back and slid the bow of fire down his throat and out again. Then he cocked his head at a forty-five degree angle and spewed out a dragon's breath so big that it must've singed the leaves on the live oak trees leaning over the square. A clump of Spanish moss ignited.

The gentleman standing near me remarked in disbelief,

"That man just ate fire."

Knowing a little bit about the history of the city, having taken a day tour earlier in the afternoon, I ventured a speculation.

"Well, you know this is where the biggest secession rally in the whole South was held, six days after South Carolina seceded in December of 1860, right before the Civil War."

"You don't say?" the man was still in disbelief.

"Yeah, apparently there were about 10,000 people jammed in this square and all the fire-eaters made their speeches right there on the Greene monument under a flag with a rattlesnake coiled that read, "Don't tread on me". That was what they called a passionate Southern orator at the time. A fire-eater.

He apparently didn't hear me for he had wandered up with the others to get a closer glimpse. I followed.

As we gathered around him, the fire-eating fiddler straightened his lanky body, took a long glance at everyone, and then grinned. He introduced himself as Darby Hicks and said that he was here to lead us on a pub tour in old Savannah that we would never forget. His voice had the lilt of a prankster, varying in pitch, creaking from high to low in a single sentence. It sounded almost like his fiddle as he plucked it to check the pitch.

He then went on at some length about the mysteriously haunted nature of the city and warned us to stick close, emphasizing that we would be creeping along an energy vortex where the spirits of the past peered into the present. Savannah was the most haunted city in the United States and he was going to tell us why. And if we weren’t careful with our ‘mead’ intake we might get caught up in the romance of it all. And what a tragedy that would be! Then he gave a knowing wink. Everyone looked at each other under the spell of an intrigued wonder as he waved his arm forward and turned to the south. He was moving fast and before we knew it we were on our way down Bull Street, the “Avenue of Heroes,” drawn along by a strangely magnetic force and an old Irish lay.

***From This World, That World, a research paper on technology and spirituality

The promise of another world is an ancient concept informing religions, mythologies, mystery schools that advocate spiritual initiation, and the imaginative literature surrounding individual descriptions of transcendent visionary experience through the ages. It is the place of the idea. Whether this place is a destination, an origin, or a realm that one can periodically interact with while in the process of becoming, the legend is that there is another place outside of mundane reality where a different order prevails and strange and extraordinary things are said to happen. The general belief that cuts across cultural lines is that this is a spiritual realm or plane where the operant entities are to a degree disembodied and where traditional physical laws break down and give way to concepts of immortality and strangely enough, chaotic magical theories underlying the cosmos. Fundamentally important, is the dualistic nature of human consciousness and the recognition of the significance of multiple dimensions and their relationship to the real world. Even in the blander more behavioral forms of modern psychology, there is the admission of the mytho-poetic spiritual dream world of the subjective individual psyche haunted simultaneously by phantoms, archetypal motifs, and memories, as well as the material world of objective relationships where logic dictates clearly visible causes and effects.  Distinguishing between these two visual realms and learning to properly synthesize them, according to those who recognize the existence of both, is the hallmark not only of sanity but also of transcendence and the evolution of consciousness. 

***From The Electromagnetic Frontier, a proposal for a video game

Panic seizes the United States of America after a devastating earthquake saddling the San Andreas Fault has destroyed much of the lower half of California. Lamentations are heard everywhere as lava flows through the streets of Hollywood. A chain reaction of explosions deep within the earth has ruptured the planet’s electromagnetic field and caused a warp in the space-time continuum. An enormous volcanic mountain, radiating a strange gamma ray light never seen before, has arisen where coastal California once stood proud. The geothermal radioactivity has ripped a dimensional veil and destroyed the barrier between the past and present. Different peoples and creatures from the past are suddenly walking forth in the present. The world is overcrowded with its history. 

Everyone is being drawn in a westward direction toward the volcanic mountain which is attracting the world like an enormous magnetic black hole vortex.  An ancient sea creature circles the volcanic mountain, viciously guarding it. The world is about to implode upon itself as civilization approaches a critical mass. Both theologians and scientists argue that this is the end...

The energy crisis has made it virtually impossible to rectify the situation. Civilization has taught mankind to depend on energy that flows from a cosmopolitan grid. Due to the present chaos, however, people are no longer able to derive their power from artificial sources. Older survival tactics from the period of frontier settlement must be studied so that power can once again be retrieved from natural organic sources. Oil reserves have been disrupted and most roads destroyed because of the earthquakes. Mechanical transportation is currently defunct. The only way to travel other than foot or horseback is by light waves on...The Electromagnetic Frontier.

 Electromagnetic Frontier (“EMF”) Blueprint Flow Chart

 

***From The Challenge of Charisma: Vanity, Deceit, or Inspiration, a research paper on postmodern directions in American Theater…

The concept of theater as an arena where human interaction is played upon through time in various ways suggests that the medium may provide general representations of the values of a particular milieu and thus might serve as a useful laboratory in which to analyze this tumultuous period. The eclectic shifts in thought and action in American theater since the 1960s are too enormous to encapsulate within a brief study. Another complication makes itself apparent when one is trying to ascertain whether or not it is possible to establish, equivocally, any unity in American theater at all, its pluralism refuting simplistic summary or interpretation. However, there are certain contemporary microcosmic productions in the past thirty years that offer a useful glimpse at some of the more important ideas that are still effecting change throughout the country.

This analysis will focus on the work of the Wooster Group, from New York’s Soho, during the early 1980s, arguing that it represents a culmination of the revolutionary theatrical practices initiated earlier in the century and coming to the fore during the 1960s and 70s,  with special regard for its production L.S.D.(...Just the High Points...).  This work represents a certain maturity in the troupe’s development. It is an excellent isolate example of American postmodern theatre. And because of the controversy it caused with its appropriation of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, it brought up several important contemporary questions concerning postmodern methodology and its irreverent premises, the relationship between playwright, text, and interpretation, the antagonism between being and becoming, and the function of morality and responsibility in the public theater…

The Wooster Group is headed by director Elizabeth LeCompte and has been producing plays in New York under that heading since 1980. It is descended from Richard Schechner’s Performance Group which had been in operation since the late 1960s. In October of 1984 the Wooster Group opened a production to the press (after almost a year of showing portions of it to special audiences) entitled L.S.D.(...Just the High Points...). In this piece, LeCompte juxtaposed excerpts from writings of key Beat generation activists with scenes from Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. Timothy Leary was the representative icon in the group’s production and provides a contrasting identity of sorts with the hero of The Crucible, John Proctor (Savran 180).

The issue of textual analysis is a somewhat difficult one, for L.S.D. follows no concrete verbal script. In a review of L.S.D in the Summer 1985 issue of The Drama Review, Arnold Aronson describes their subject matter as often evolving “from instinctual or subconscious sources”(65).  And for that reason, this analysis will not dwell long on a review of the play as much as it will on the particular methodology that the Wooster Group used when fielding this production and the subsequent controversy that it engendered. Aronson summarizes their approach effectively in his review:

...the Group has taken modern classics (The Cocktail Party, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Our Town, and The Crucible) as raw material upon which to construct theatre pieces. Out of these sources come fragments of scenes, characters, dialog, and thematic material, which are explored, reworked, echoed, quoted, blended, and juxtaposed with fragments from popular, cultural, and social history as well as events, ideas and situations that emerge from the personal and collective experiences of members of the Group. (66-7).

     Their techniques have been influenced by “the expressionistic style of many ensemble groups of the late 60s” especially in regard to the emphasis on immediacy (65).  It is impossible to have an accurate appreciation of the Group’s work, therefore, unless one has actually been there to see the performance. However, “the structure-- the most dominant aspect of the performances,” according to Aronson, “is highly formal and abstract,” and is thus available for effective analysis (65).  

 ***A review of the film, Being Light (2002)

Being Light (2002), an independent film written, directed, and performed by Ramain Duras and Jean-Marc Barr, is a satire of “heavy” Western modes of expression. The story involves the journey of Maxim and Jack from Paris to India, in search of the beautiful Justine.  Through the conversations engendered from their various adventures and relationships, Duras and Barr demonstrate the wisdom of Being Light.

 As the backgrounds shift, the perceptions about the characters transform in the contrast between Western and Eastern worlds and the value systems that each represent. In part, the character Jack personifies the West. His ruling idea is that “Greed is the engine of progress!” Maxim personifies the East in the worship of his guru, a small plastic pig that he often pulls out of his pocket and speaks to: “O beloved Pigmaster, give me the courage to know all worlds around me!” Next to the title, the exhortation to explore multiple worlds is also a driving theme as the plot develops around a quest that bridges those worlds. 

The symbols of these worlds also extend past the attributes of the characters. The West, as Paris, is shown as fast moving, unethical, materialist, and coarse to elevated sensibilities, a place where Maxim must be locked up. The East, as India, is depicted as a realm where spirituality and madness are actually cultivated rather than restricted, a place where Jack must die. 

One method that Duras and Barr use to establish the contrast between the worlds is through suggesting an identity between advertising slogans and ancient enigmatic oracles. Maxim, a lunatic that has recently escaped the Flowery Field asylum, is entranced by the statements that he reads on signs:  “Follow your instinct!”, “Even when we are closed we are open!”, “Wake up your tongue!”, “Please empty the trash!”, “Beauty is our city. Preserve it by keeping it clean!” He reads them with great enthusiasm, not as a consumer fooled by his own appetites or as a citizen mindful of his obligations to the hygiene of a community, but as a seeker after truth, following encoded suggestions from worldly signposts. His humorous exaggeration that achieves the imperative commands with astute earnestness, ridicules the ways that signs direct the actions of individuals.

By the end of the story, Maxim, the escaped mental patient, is recognized as a lucid spiritual guide (Though he has much to learn from Justine). Jack, who is successful in the business world, is exposed as a shallow idiot who has been hiding behind a wig (literally and figuratively) and who is incapable of appreciating experience without considerations of profit potential. This is the most important reversal in the film. The taxi driver in India begins referring to Maxim as “Sir Maxim” after he receives unabashed advice from him concerning marriage and the treatment of his wife, advice that Jack would be embarrassed to give. This is enforced by the reference to a mad child in India as one who is “protected by the gods” and also by the epileptic fits intentionally induced in Indian shamans, to achieve higher levels of consciousness.

There is an identity here between the asylums of the West and the sacred temples of the East when Maxim begins slapping a man during a fit and warning him that he will have to go to the third floor if he does not calm down. This again suggests the close connection between madness and wisdom.

The friendship between Maxim and Jack, however, is mutually reinforcing and rises above a direct criticism of capitalist aggrandizement.  Jack, by listening to Maxim, and observing his interactions with the world and also to Justine, is able to restore part of his compassion and sense of humor.  Maxim, through Jack’s worldliness, is able to fully express himself with security.  Duras and Barr carefully express the more serious themes indirectly, though, in accordance with the title, which directly undercuts any attempt to assign meaning. It is a paradox. The meaning of the film, even when we attempt to assign one, is that there is significant value not trying to assign grave meaning. With this interpretation, the taxi driver’s rebuke of Jack’s pretentious humility, embodied in the exhortation to “Forget Ghandi!,” becomes clear.

 The strength of this film is in its simplicity. Ramain and Barr concentrate on conversation, human interaction, and an intriguing plot development to hold the attention of the audience.   The natural environment of India and cosmopolitan Paris make for colorful contrasting backdrops. There are no special effects. The vivid personality of the characters against these backgrounds is the real enhancing element. Maxim is the central figure and “hero” of the film. More than anything else, Being Light is an exuberant reflection of his life spirit which is light, free from the gravity of the Western world. The best scenes in the movie are those in which he dances with Justine on a mat. There is no music. It is a nonsensical expression of joy that interrupts the serious undertakings that surround the two of them in an asylum, restaurant, landscape, or in any world that they may meet.

---

[1] 'The Future of Storytelling' - panel speculating on potential of the filmic game narrative

at the XO6 conference, September 2007.

http://events.teamxbox.com/movies/3683/X06-The-Future-of-Storytelling-Panel/

[2] Joseph Knecht, the Magister Ludi (Master of the Game), is the hero of Herman Hesse’s final novel, The Glass Bead Game(1943). ‘Knecht’ is a German word for ‘servant’. Servant and server are often used interchangeably in the English language.

Platonic Politics 1

And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not?

Most certainly, he replied.

Then without determining as yet whether war does good or harm, thus much we may affirm, that now we have discovered war to be derived from causes which are also the causes of almost all the evils in States, private as well as public.

Undoubtedly.

And our state must once more enlarge; and this theim there will be nothing short of a whole army, which will have to go out and fight with the invaders for all that we have, as well as for the things and persons whom we were describing above.

Why? he said; are they not capable of defending themselves?

No, I said; not if we were right in the principle which was acknowledged by all of us when we were framing the State: the principle, as you will remember, was that one man cannot practise many arts with success.

Very true, he said.

But is not war an art?

Certainly.

And an art requiring as much attention as shoemaking?

Quite true.

And the shoemaker was not allowed by us to be humbandman, or a weaver, a builder - in order that we may have our shoes well-made; but to him and to every other worker was assigned one work for which he was by nature fitted, and at that he was to continue working all his life long and at no other; he was not to let opportunities slip, and then he would become a good workman. Now nothing can be more important than that the work of a soldier should be well done. But is war an art so easily acquired that a man may be a warrior who is also a husbandman, or shoemaker, or other artisan; although no one in the world would be a good dice or draught player who merely took up the game as a recreation, and had not from his earliest years devoted himself to this and nothing else? No tools will make a man a skilled workman, or master of defence, nor be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them, and has never bestowed any attention upon them. How then will he who takes up a shield or other implement of war become a good fighter all in a day, whether with heavy armed or any other kind of troops?

Yes, he said, the tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.

And the higher the duties of the guardian, I said, the more time, and skill, and art and application will be needed by him?

No doubt, he replied.

Will he not also require natural aptitude for his calling?

Certainly.

Then it will be our duty to select, if we can, natures which are fitted for the task of guarding the city?

It will.

And the selection will be no easy matter, I said, but we must be vrave and do our best.

We must.

Is not the noble youth very like a well-bred dog in respect of guarding and watching?

What do you mean?

I mean that both of them ought to be quick to see, and swift to overtake the enemy when they see him, and strong too if, when they have caught him, they have to fight with him.

All these qualities, he replied, will certainly be required by them. Well, and your guardian must be brave if he is to fight as well?

Certainly.

And is he likely to be brave who has no spirit, whether horse or dog or any other animal? Have you never observed how invincible and unconquerable is spirit and how the presence of it makes the soul of any creature to be absolutely fearless and indomitable.

I have.

Then now we have a clear notion of the bodily qualities which are required in the guardian.

True.

And also of the mental ones; his soul is to be full of spirit?

Yes.

But are not these spirited natures apt to be savage with one another, and with everybody else?

A difficulty by no means easy to overcome, he replied.

Whereas, I said, they ought to be dangerous to their enemies, and gentle to their friends; if not, they will destroy themselves without waiting for their enemies to destroy them.

True, he said.

What is to be done then? I said; how shall we find a gentle nature which has also a great spirit, for the one is the contradiction of the other.

True.

He will not be a good guardian who is wanting in either of these two qualities; and yet the combination of them appears to be impossible; and hence we must infer that to be a good guardian is impossible.

I am afraid that what you say is true, he replied.

Here feeling perplexed I began to think over what had preceded. My friend, I said, no wonder that we are in a perplexity; for we have lost site of the image which we had before us.

What do you mean? he said.

I mean to say that there do exist natures gifted with those opposite qualities.

And where do you find them?

Many animals, I replied, furnish examples of them; our friend the dog is a very good one; you remember that wellbred dogs are perfectly gentle to their familiars and acquaintances, and the reverse to strangers.

Yes, I know.

Then there is nothing impossible or out of the order of nature in our finding a guardian who has a similar combination of qualities.

Certainly not.

Would not he who is fitted to be a guardian, besides the spirited nature, need to have the qualities of a philosopher?

I do not apprehend your meaning.

The trait of which I am speaking, I replied, may be also seen in the dog, and is remarkable in the animal.

What trait?

Why, a dog, wherever he sees a stranger, is angry; when an acquaintance, he welcomes him, although the one has never done him any harm, nor the other any good. Did this never strike you as curious?

The matter never struck me before; but I quite recognise the truth of your remark.

And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming; - your dog is a true philosopher.

Why?

Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy aonly by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance?

Most assuredly.

And is not the love of learning the love of wisdom, which is philosophy?

They are the same, he replied.

And may we not say confidently of man also, that he who is likely to be gentle to his friends and acquaintances, must by nature be a lover of wisdom and knowledge?

That we may safely affirm.

Then he who is to be a really good and noble guardian of the State will require to unite in himself philosophy and spirit and swiftness and strength?

Undoubtedly.

-Plato, The Republic, from Chapter 2