Yes,
for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just
that:
not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change
reality,
so
(the] writer can escape the limits of reality.
The
unworthies in power feel danger,
like
cows uneasily pawing
the
ground with a great "Moo." –Burroughs: Last words, p.16
This
essay is an attempt to establish and exhibit an interpretative
perspective to poetry and literature or, more broadly, culture, that
is built on understanding the human being as Complex Adaptive
System1and/or
an organized dissipative structure where the organization or
structural complexity is accessed through genetic constraint2.
This understanding is derived from an interdisciplinary theoretical
framework that scientists such as Murray Gell-Mann3
have established in their works, but ideas and theoretic frameworks
are also drawn from for example Albert Camus’ vision of art as form
of rebellion4
and William S. Burroughs’ wide range of ideas. But, as the
perspective I am trying to construct here aims to be practical and
adaptive, every theory and framework that can be applied in this
formulation is of course welcome to join in. No
perspective is an island.
In medias
res; from this perspective the written word presents itself as a code
much like the genome or binary (bit language) with which Complex
Adaptive Systems preserve and processes information, information
which, whether gathered or created, will have a life and an evolution
of its own. This comparison with the genome is relevant also because
a genome is a code that conveys information of how the system in
question is built and how it functions, and like the written word,
which has its origin in human experience, the genome is a package
gathered through experience; evolution, trial and error. Biological
evolution is not, of course, as coarsely linear and simplistic as
perhaps implied in this essay5,
but in this context, elements of evolution-biology provide frameworks
or allegories that are, it is to be hoped, helpful in understanding
the functions and emergence of phenomena such as literature or
poetry. These frameworks are instrumental in establishing the
perspective attempted here as the objective is to provide a way to
evaluate the produce
of the most Complex Adaptive System known to humanity: humanity
itself. The produce in question is culture, art; all the
manifestations of self awareness contemporary or historical, thus,
within the limitations of this work, there is perhaps no need to go
into a detailed description of how the processes of adaptation and
elimination function in nature, not to mention other possible modes
through which the genome gathers information.6
It may be
interesting, however, to bear in mind that, as the processes of
evolution create mutations which, if favourable, lead into the
creation of entirely new life forms or Complex Adaptive Systems, the
process also produces greater diversity, which is favourable in terms
of the perpetuation or survival of the process itself because variety
of features ensures that at least some subjects possess the abilities
to survive the altering conditions. My intention is to show that the
written word, as an art form, can be perceived as a parallel or
additional medium to the genome and other such codifications and
informational structures.
This — as
experienced by an observer within the observed, as an artist
interpreting art — I attempt to show without eliminating the
possibility of generating metaphysical meaning or of expanding the
`natural´ of natural sciences considerably by introducing something
previously shut out of the `natural´, as supernatural or paranormal.
Compared to the genome, the written word can store and convey much
more than just blueprints for the construction of a species and its
instinctual automations. However, it must be said, that the genome is
probably much more complex in its functions as inferred in this above
comparison.
As a
codification the written word is more versatile for some of its
functions as it is used for gathering information (as in experiences,
statistic occurrences etc.), conveying and preserving information (as
in sensations, feelings and impressions), but as the written word
thus provides the human system with information of reality, or the
quasi-classical7
range of approximation, that exceeds the range and possibilities of a
single individuation, it does what the genome has done for millions
of years. In other words, via both these codifications the system
carries experience and empirical data beyond the death of its
momentary manifestations or feedback
loops,
that individual human beings can be seen to represent, and the
written word is an additional medium to the genome in that it can be
corrected faster and carry more information.
Art may also
be perceived as a directly creative medium — a medium through which
the artist dictates the genomes of new forms of being that, as said,
have a life and evolution of their own, once established — as
another way to summarize it would be to describe art as a process
that takes place on the outermost frontiers of existence as well as
in the innermost strongholds of dignity8;
defending and expanding the system that, through rebellion9,
tries to evolve towards greater unity and diversity. And because the
language is human, the system here must mean the human system. And
art is the medium through which we, as human beings, achieve our
humanity in relation to animals, which we too undeniably are, but
with a power to transcend the automation of instinctual behaviour
through the processes of creation and self-evaluation.
There
is, nevertheless, a problem in applying the perspective of natural
sciences in this manner that arises from a problem which is in the
context of arts and culture usually referred to as the post-modern
paradigm, and in evolution biology the same or similar phenomenon is
referred to as genetic diffusion — note the above mentioned
understanding of the genome as a package of information — in a
growing population; the growth of population leads to greater
diffusion in the gene pool10.
This frame applied to sciences could be formulated in this way: the
greater the number of scientists working in a field, the greater the
variation in their theories. The exception to this rule is, of
course, found in the unifying power of solid theories that resonate
perfectly with measurement results and thus have great explanatory
power11.
This
is ultimately an application of the second law of thermodynamics: in
short, the greater the scale of the macro-level the greater the
number of possible micro-level variations inside it, and the greater
the number of possible variations, the greater the probability of
disorder. For example, if you fill each half of a box divided with a
wall with a different gas and then remove the wall, the organization
created by the wall dissolves into disorder or entropy. In a growing
population this means that as the population grows, so does the
disorder or heterogeny within it. In a post-modern era of subjective
truths this translates as: the more there is variation, the less
there is consensus, and this lack of consensus means that the greater
the population, the lower the probability that the population is as a
whole capable of altering its own course12.
From
this “law” arises the urgency of a rebellion as defined by Camus;
a rebellion that calls for unity in order to reduce human suffering,
which is too often the result of the internal politics of the
species, and battle injustice, which is, as well, a matter of
internal organization. In addition to Camus’s vision of human
suffering, the contemporary rebel is faced with human folly that (in
addition to needless suffering) causes the pollution of the human
habitat. Thus the rebel has to create unifying structures of meaning
that could serve, for example, as subject group fantasies as defined
by Felix Quattari and Gilles Deleuze13
that create unity in the form of a common goal and purpose. Here art
is instrumental, as science fails to provide the sense of purpose the
human system requires to remain functional as a subject. Thus the
suggestion is that as the reduction of sciences, as suggested by
Murray Gell-Mann14,
from a more specialized level, for example biochemistry, to a more
fundamental branch, as in quantum physics, could be understood; so
that the most specialized area of research, if quantum physics is the
most fundamental, is culture. But this area simply cannot be
approached with the same almost deterministic insistence shared by
natural sciences that there really is no meaning to be found, only
descriptions for phenomena; there must also be meaning to be found.
Ockham’s
razor is the wrong tool to probe the depth of the universe with,
because its integral function makes it produce ultimately only
description that has no qualitative bearing. This we can see in the
history of contemporary sciences as the method produces, as a rule,
results that strip the world of all purpose, like the results that
appalled Albert Einstein: everything we see and are is ultimately the
product of random processes of quantum fluxuation15.
Even if this were the ultimate truth, the human subject needs a
purpose to battle entropy and thus rise above the level of
instinctual automation. This is acknowledged also by Benedict
Anderson, who, in his Imaginary
Communities
pointed out that nationalism and the sense of nationhood can be seen
to have aligned with the large cultural systems that preceded it. In
his words: “nationalism […] came into being” out of these
cultural systems, of which he names two relevant systems: the
religious community and
the
dynastic
realm16.
The problem here is that the doctrines of nationalism, like those of
the preceding systems, justify sectarianism by making nations
historical entities just as the preceding systems made religious
sects and kingdoms realisations of the divine will. Needless to say,
the heads of dynasties were perceived as embodiments of this divine
will.
From
the need for unity arises what the sciences that research human
culture have to provide: meaning, meaning that motivates and unites —
and in this context unity does not mean homogeny. So, the focus is on
semantic content and, accordingly, the ultimate question `what does
it all mean?´ can be seen rephrased over and over again in, for
example, literature and poetry. But we, as human beings, have come a
long way, too long to accept arbitrary codification and literal words
of God. This for a reason: scientific rationality demands empirical
evidence, verification of meaning, and with this rationality human
beings have developed the ability to question the authoritative
structures that impose their rule on humanity and human reality. Even
if human meaning were only an approximation, as Camus writes17,
the species cannot afford to accept codes of life that could
ultimately lead to annihilation. The rebel cannot submit; neither to
the affirmations of suffering that religious systems offer, nor to
the looming possibility of a disaster that may annihilate mankind or
reduce it to barbarism.
It is in
this connection that the way human beings understand themselves and
their place in the world becomes instrumental; meaning-structures can
be seen to have a life of their own. As Murray Gell-Mann suggests,
even ideas can function like complex adaptive systems18.
And as complex adaptive systems often do, ideas live among other such
adaptive systems often in relationships that could be described as
parasitic or symbiotic. Thus some identity structures, which are of
course based on some structure of meaning, can be ultimately seen as
harmful, and others as advantageous to the survival of the system it
lives through. For example, R. S. Thomas in his poem A
Priest to his People
can be seen to be, on one hand, commending the Welsh people for their
rejection of structures that do not correspond with experience and
are not advantageous to the species and, on the other, criticising
himself for perpetuating the very structures:
A
Priest to his People
Men
of the hills, wantoners, men of Wales.
With
your sheep and your. pigs and your ponies. your sweaty females.
How
I have hated you for your irreverence, your scorn even
Of
the refinements of art and the mysteries of the Church.
I
whose invective would spurt like a flame of fire
To
be quenched always in the coldness of your stare.
Men
of bone, wrenched from the bitter moorland.
Who
have not yet shaken the moss from your savage skulls,
Or
prayed the peat from your eyes.
Did
you detect like an ewe or an ailing wether,
Driven
into the undergrowth by the nagging flies,
My
true heart wandering in a wood of lies?
You
are curt and graceless, yet your sudden laughter
Is
sharp and bright as a whipped pool,
When
the wind strikes or the clouds are flying;
And
all the devices of church and school
Have
failed to cripple your unhallowed movements,
Or
put a halter on your wild soul.
You
are lean and spare, yet your strength is a mockery
Of
the pale words in the black Book.
And
why should you come like sparrows for prayer crumbs.
Whose
hands can dabble in the world's blood?
I
have taxed your ignorance of rhyme and sonnet,
Your
want of deference to the painter's skill,
But
I know as I listen, that your speech has in it
The
source of all poetry, clear as a rill
Bubbling
from your lips; and what brushwork could equal
The
artistry of your bearing on the bare hill?
Indeed,
the poem even brings to mind this lyric from a Black Metal song by a
band called Mayhem, which resounds the very rejection these men
of the hills are
here acknowledged for:
In the lies
whereupon you lay
In
the century where man dies
We; the hunters of the hollow hills
Must put ourselves above pity
Above self-deception as law
We must be again as once were
We; the soul of the earth
As reaping time descends
The sour grain of mercy withers
Into the night we must go, into the darkest abyss
To a level of consciousness unknown to Christendom
We want life: we crush the dream of heaven
As we bring the blade down, one swift move
We are the chosen ones, chosen by will to life
You life lairs crawl on you[R]19 bended knees
As you finally die, you will eventually have lost more
By not living by the sword than what you lose in death
Not by mercy, by strength we end your pity lives
Not by spirit, by flesh we awaken the beast within
Knee-deep in your repulsive blood we march
Victorious by the power of our minds and bodies
Watch the twilight of your god
As [the]20 system cracks and all your life is dead priest
Take a look into our minds
Feel the pulse of omnipotent strength
Take a look into our souls
Feel your life drained of everything that was
Hear my words, feel my wrath
Your death is sweet
All your life is dead priestDEAD
We; the hunters of the hollow hills
Must put ourselves above pity
Above self-deception as law
We must be again as once were
We; the soul of the earth
As reaping time descends
The sour grain of mercy withers
Into the night we must go, into the darkest abyss
To a level of consciousness unknown to Christendom
We want life: we crush the dream of heaven
As we bring the blade down, one swift move
We are the chosen ones, chosen by will to life
You life lairs crawl on you[R]19 bended knees
As you finally die, you will eventually have lost more
By not living by the sword than what you lose in death
Not by mercy, by strength we end your pity lives
Not by spirit, by flesh we awaken the beast within
Knee-deep in your repulsive blood we march
Victorious by the power of our minds and bodies
Watch the twilight of your god
As [the]20 system cracks and all your life is dead priest
Take a look into our minds
Feel the pulse of omnipotent strength
Take a look into our souls
Feel your life drained of everything that was
Hear my words, feel my wrath
Your death is sweet
All your life is dead priestDEAD
This
lyric is of course aggressive beyond comparison with the poem by R.
S. Thomas but what is interesting is that in this lyric the addresser
is someone who identifies with a group of people that resemble the
men
of the hills
addressed in R. S. Thomas’s poem. Furthermore, R. S. Thomas was a
priest and for a priest to write a poem wherein he questions the
truth of his own clergy and, moreover, a poem that resonates in
harmony with a Black Metal song, is surprising. In A
Priest to His People
R. S. Thomas clearly confronts his doubts and his own atavistic
streak of consciousness as he hazards to suggest that perhaps his men
of the hills
have detected his
true heart
wandering
in a wood of lies
(lines 10 – 12). R. S. Thomas’ self-contemplation could even be
seen to interact as if entering a debate with the perspective
Maniac21,
the lyricist of Mayhem, establishes through his lyric. In fact, R. S.
Thomas is doing what a priest should do according to the Mayhem
lyric: “take a look into our minds, feel the pulse of omnipotent
strength, take a look into our souls, feel your life drained of
everything there was” (lines 23 – 26).
These
texts could easily be read as a dialogue where the participants have
agreed on some descriptive features of the observed phenomena: R. S.
Thomas is, as a priest, a perpetuator of a structure that does not
quite meet the needs of his parishioners and Maniac’s `I´
represents a man
of the hills
that is infuriated with having had to submit to the influence of a
meaning-structure that has not corresponded to his experience. In
this light the fury of In
the lies whereupon you lay could
be seen as that of a host animal detecting a parasite. Here the whole
of the Christian belief system is seen as harmful because it does not
help the survival of the species riddled with it22.
One
swift move
is the proper way to remove a parasite. And this is also R. S.
Thomas’s suspicion when he asks “Did you detect like an ewe or an
ailing wether, Driven into the undergrowth by the nagging flies, My
true heart wandering in a wood of lies?” Of course, by suggesting
that his true
heart is
lost in
a wood of lies
R. S. Thomas also suspects that the men
of the hills
have detected his likeness to them, and thus shun him because of what
he stands for, and not who he is; that he represents a parasitic
organism.
In
the context of Black Metal the proper disposition toward Christianity
is related in terms of total war. The album from which the lyric is
taken is accordingly titled Grand
Declaration of War.
So, to describe Black Metal as musical genre derived from binary
opposition to Christianity, and even inverted spirituality, could
well summarize the fundamental elements of the genre.
Camus
describes such opposition as the disposition of the “Romantic
rebel” who “[i]n order to combat evil, renounces good […] and
once again gives birth to evil. To use Camus’ terms, Black Metal,
as a genre, resounds the “demoniac imperialism” of the Romantics,
imperialism “whose aim is to annex everything” (Camus, 1969: 44).
What Camus wrote describes Black Metal very accurately:
Satan
rises against his creator because the latter employed force to
subjugate him. 'Whom reason hath equal'd,' says Milton's Satan,
'force hath made above his equals.' Divine violence is thus
explicitly condemned. The rebel flees from this aggressive and
unworthy God, 'Farthest from him
is
best', and reigns over all the forces hostile to the divine order.
The Prince of Darkness has
only
chosen this path because good is a notion defined and utilized by God
for unjust purposes. Even innocence irritates the Rebel in so far as
it implies being duped. This 'dark
spirit
of evil who is enraged by innocence' creates a human injustice
parallel to divine injustice. Since violence is at the root of all
creation, deliberate violence shall be its answer (Camus, 1969:
44-45).
At this
point, according to Camus, Romantic rebellion, and Black Metal as a
continuation of it, arrives at a point where it “gives a definition
to nihilism and authorizes murder23”
(Camus, 1969: 45). So, to find a Black Metal lyric as inciting to
violence, as the Mayhem lyric here discussed, should not be a
surprise. Maniac’s “hunters of the hollow hills” go as far as
to “march” in the priest’s “repulsive blood” and this image
of regimented hatred inevitably brings to mind the marching
SS-juggernauts24
of National Socialism. But if one does not take the incitement
literally, and in fact many Black Metal bands state that their art
should not be connected to any “racial or political preference”25,
the total rejection of Christian meaning structures as implied by
Mayhem’s lyric becomes, as a work of art, a very powerful
counter-structure of meaning that should not be rejected solely for
its seemingly fascistic qualities, which could be seen as a result of
formation that mimics an inverted version of the structures of
Christian dogma26.
A further
point concerning this incitement to violence that probably should be
taken into consideration here is the one Jean Paul Sartre, in the
preface to Franz Fanon’s The
Wretched of the Earth
(and Fanon himself, in the work itself) make. Sartre recognizes the
colonized African peoples as justly enraged and warns the European
peoples of the violence that might reach them in their homes. Fanon
acknowledges the right to stand up and fight for one’s freedom and
take arms against oppressors just as willingly as Sartre does. So, if
the uncouth people in the poems in question are seen to be colonized
by Christian doctrines, then the fury has at least a few points of
resonance among the acknowledged thinkers of Western Philosophy
(Fanon,
2004: Sartre: Preface xliii).
Another
interesting point of comparison between the two poems discussed here
is in how they both bring up the concept of blood. In R. S. Thomas’
poem it is clear that “world’s blood” does not refer to some
actual substance; it is a metaphor for something that has to do with
how the world is really formed in contrast with how the “web of
lies” perhaps depicts it. If `blood´ in this contest should be
understood to mean something like the genome, as in the saying `it’s
in the blood´, a blueprint for the world, then the `blood´ in which
Mayhem’s “hunters” march could be understood as the torn
blueprints of the priest’s meaning structures.
Other lyrics
from the same Mayhem album point towards this interpretation more
explicitly. The line “my blood is the way of your future” in A
Time to Die
or “The blood of others is of a colder substance and taste/
Therefore I must spill and serve/ the blood in me runs vibrant/ In
the frost of the dying min/ds of western society I recreate” in A
View From Nihil
is are examples of this; but the most interesting section in terms of
how literally these lyrics should be read is perhaps here (again from
A
View From Nihil):
Upon the shores of our desolate coast within the waves
I can see the wreckage floating ashore, of the dying culture
And so i greet those who still have eyes to observe and see
And who still have courage to break through into the
dying light
Furthermore,
there can be found at least two intertextual references in the Grand
Declaration of War
album lyric that are worth noticing in this context: first the above
wreckage
floating ashore
might refer to T. S. Eliot’s The
Waste Land (“These
fragments I have shored against my ruins”),
which
Timothy S. Murphy links with Eliot’s concepts of mythical
method
as opposed to narrative
method
in analysing modern literature. According to Murphy the imperative of
modernism is “to provide a replacement for the lost orders of the
past” (Murphy: 16–17). The second, in a
View from Nihil (pt
II of II)27,
which is taken verbatim from the bible: “I came not to send peace
but a sword” (Gospel of Matthew 10:34), conjures, like the
troublesome original, merely ambivalence and indeterminacy because
Jesus, the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount, cannot be understood
to mean what he says literally, at least not in the original. Of
course, one could argue that Maniac does, indeed, mean what he writes
literally, but even this interpretation implies a masterful cunning
behind the composition, a cunning, that while declaring war, declares
that not even the son of God can assume a position without
opposition.
The second
part of
A View From Nihil
ends with the section quoted above which also ends the first part of
the album. The second part of the album has a more revelatory quality
than the first with lines like ”You have now entered from the womb/
in my reconstruction from deconstruction/ where instruments of
genetic distortion is me” and “For I am the way/your painful
exclusion/from past morals/your future’s contractual designer” or
“you once had blood in your veins/ the blood so black it hurts/
remembrance is torn away/ I offer cosmos in my design/ kromosome
needles in your arms” that further emphasize the similarity of
genetic information to `the blood´ of dogmatic structures. The whole
album could thus be seen as an immunological reaction through which a
Complex Adaptive System battles against very insistent viral
organisms or selfish structures of meaning in its own blueprint.
Although, as
one of the defining features of Complex Adaptive Systems is the
ability to `read´ the environment and formulate methods to predict
the phenomena of the environment, the above interpretation should be
defined as an internal clash of ideologies that can be situated on a
historical timeline depicting the continuum of similar ideological
clashes that could be depicted as revolutions. Thus, to call the
above reaction `immunological´ would suggest that the
meaning-structure in question originated outside the human organism,
whereas to call the reaction `criticism´ would better depict what is
there. However, if the origin of the organism in question is traced
back far enough, even viral organisms can be seen to have descended
from the same innovation of eukaryotic cells. Thus the barrier
between internal politics and interactional politics becomes
increasingly blurred and even immunological reactions can be seen as
criticism on an internal level, self-contemplation, and the only
determining factor is the perspective from which the phenomenon is
observed. The observer is
indeed
within the observed and the only difference between
meaning-structures and organisms — parasitic or otherwise — is
that the former are physical structures in that they are composed of
matter, and latter metaphysical as they are abstract; they are all
ultimately individuations of the same organisational structure that
originated on earth as what we call life in general, life on earth.
Thus even
identity, individual or national, could well be seen as building
blocks that are used to construct abstract infrastructures perhaps
originating as useful frameworks, but which have generated
manifestations that tax the adaptability of the organism they have
served; just as structures of a larger more comprehensive scale, such
as religions, annex smaller structures under their totalitarian
umbrella. William S. Burroughs’s scattered opinions and statements
can be seen to “concur” with this interpretation — more than
appropriate that they do, since this essay is partly inspired by
Burroughs—; in Nova
Express
Burroughs implies towards this on several occasions: “The entire
planet is being developed into terminal identity and complete
surrender.”28
for example, requires an understanding of the identity as a product
of a process that can be guided, in addition to the person whose
identity is in question, also by other parties; of the identity as a
meaning structure that limits the number of possible futures the
being in question can expect and can be expected to have; and,
finally, of the entire planet as a conglomerate organism that could
take action as subject capable of altering its own future scenarios.
In the same
novel Burroughs suggests also the idea of parasitic identities or
identities that are clearly disadvantageous, as is inferred in this
excerpt from a cut-up: “Broken pipes refuse “oxygen” —Form A
parasitic wind identity fading out' “Word falling—Photo
falling””29
This cut-up conveys the image of a parasitic intangible identity
being cut out of air supply, which results in the fall of word and
image. Word and image falling is thus taken to refer to the word and
image of the meaning-structures affixed to the identity or
perspective
that is crumbling. Similarly, later on in the novel, an
autobiographical image emerges from a cut-up suggesting that
Burroughs could perceive even his own identity as something
hazardous: “Everybody's watching—But I continue the diary-"Mr.
Bradly Mr. -Martin?"—You are his eyes—I see suddenly Mr.
Beiles Mr. Corso Mr. Burroughs presence on earth is all a joke—And
I think: "Funny-melted into air"-Lost Flakes fall that were
his shadow: This book—No good junky identity fading out—”30.
Burroughs
did not flinch from examining critically both himself and the roles
of the people he was associated with and this critical stance is
extended even to his own creations. Burroughs was creating his own
mythology, one that challenged many of the prevailing structures
head-on, but he was constantly rethinking his constructions and
questioning his own judgement. What Burroughs was ultimately striving
for was (as far fetched as it may seem, given that Burroughs’ prose
is, at times, extremely cryptic) honesty; he pursued what he
perceived as `spirituality´ empirically and willingly dismissed
structures that he saw as hazardous or outdated. Of course his
opposition to rationality and scientific materialism rendered him
liable to quirks of judgement that do not seem as empirically
determined as some of his more robust ideas, but nonetheless, he
hazarded to attempt a mythology of his own, which is ultimately far
more that can be said of the nothingness Mayhem’s declaration
concludes with. However, the conclusion on Mayhem’s album does echo
a nihilistic sense of humanism which is quite fresh, as opposed to
the murky dungeons more generally identified with Black Metal:
One
star left in the rotting ocean
You scream in birth all of you
A river left: a river of blood
Of life☼☼☼a new
You scream in birth all of you
A river left: a river of blood
Of life☼☼☼a new
[…]
I feel the light breeze
The sun takes control
And nothing here remains
But you but me31
Burroughs
cast some of his thought into verse in his later works. This
following excerpt is from his Last
Words
and can thus be read as the culmination of some of his principles:
I
like a weapon close to me
Because
I am so cowardly
I
have seen Fear
and
Fear has made me free
Who
lives will see
To
look Death in the eye
With
no Kamikaze lie
Wrap
no flag around me
Who
lives will see.
Man
can be alone with Death
Will receive
a second breath.32
Here
Burroughs’ penetrating vision of the self is at the same time
critical and extremely adaptive, as he embraces his own fears and
derives from them the courage to deny the patriotic default settings
that could have demanded him to die for his country; this he
establishes through his will to survive, which can be seen here to
manifest itself in the form of fear. Burroughs will thus “Wrap no
flag around” himself to be able to “live to see” and “look
Death in the eye”. One of Burroughs’ main themes that echoes
throughout his works is visible here: he is de-conditioning himself
from imposed constraints of an instrumentalized and politicized
identity that tied him to a given set of features that are supposedly
derived from his nationality, and other predetermined collectives
that annexed him as human being within the timeframe he lived in, in
order to be “alone with Death”. And this, if anything, demands
great bravery.
Burroughs
continues this “poem” later on in the diary:
The
song of the quick
that
is heard by the ears of the dead
the
widows of Langley are loud in their wail
and
the idols are broken in the temples of Yale
for
the might of the Board
unsmote
by the sword
has
melted like snow
in the glance of the bored
Hohum—
to
look death in the eye,
with
no posturing lie,
just
one on one . .
.
who
lives will see.
Is Death an
organism?33
Here
his focus clearly turns from the structures and institutions he
opposed in his life to face his personal death, and the remaining
question he has is directed to death itself: is
death an organism
living on the mortality of biological organisms? —As an abstract
metaphysical meaning-structure it could be read as one. It all
depends on how we define an organism.
Burroughs
has suggested that the human species is in a state of neoteny34,
and what is discussed above might suggest that a part of this neoteny
is due to the structural constraints imposed on the species by
authoritarian meaning-structures and institutions that persist in
perpetuating their constraints at the expense of the given species
and the diversity of the conglomerate-organism that has sprouted the
species. This point could be developed further by using, for example,
the concepts of self-organisation as explained by Stanley M. Salthe.
He postulates that thermodynamically open systems, such as the human
individual, show “a pattern of informational entropy increase
because they are growing”35.
Mature
systems have had increased organization pulling them away from
randomness, and they achieve greatest distance from it. They are both
strong and highly organized. Senescent systems become so highly
ordered that they experience an informational crisis, such that they
become over- and underconnected, and, of course, as a result of
having become so individually determinable, very inflexible. As a
result, their actual behaviour — their effective organization —
begins to approach equilibrium, and they are soon recycled. (Salthe,
1993: 14)
In
this light, if constrictive meaning-structures are understood to
hinder adaptability by making the `system´ in question inflexible
through organizing the system according to their `blueprints´, they
may be interpreted to lead to early senescence, which means that the
system loses its strength in terms of being able to resist
perturbations and thus becomes recycled before maturity reaches full
fruition.
A
further point concerning the harmfulness of constrictive structures
such as religion, identity and nationality could be made by looking
at the way in which these structures instrumentalize Otherness.
Burroughs realised that by challenging the structures that formed the
traditional sense of identity, he was approaching a collective
identity where the self is only a perspective within an organism, a
temporal individuation; when he challenges meaning traditionally
derived from differentiation, he loses the self in a massive Pan of
being. But here he refused to go further, he did not want to be that
closely acquainted with what he had hated and struggled with — and
this, as can be seen, includes the female sex:
Opera
of the Angler Fish that absorbs the male till nothing is left
of
him but his testicles, balls, nuts, sticking out of her body.
All
of me
why
not take
all
of me
so
we become
one
big WE
how
great to be
one
great fat me
Excuse
me:
include
me out.
(Burroughs 2000: 17)
Although
Burroughs appears here to be hindered from the full realization of
the implications of what his ontogeny had led him to face, he
nevertheless achieved a remarkable level of abstraction —
abstraction in the mathematical sense — or should it be said,
reduction of perspective through self-contemplation. Edmund Husserl
apparently called this reduction of perspective “radicalism” or
“radicalization”, which is a part of the subjective method of his
phenomenology and in the context of phenomenology this reduction is
known as phenomenological
reduction36.
Honesty, which is also emphasized by many leading scientists as the
most important methodological device with which scientists can pursue
the truth is the key here37.
Lee Smolin, for one, claims that if we presume that an observer is
truthful when relating his observations then, in theory at least,
this means that when there is enough material to work on solving a
problem, any given set of observers would eventually end up with the
same result38.
This could have profound implications in current prevailing era
characterised so well by post-modernity, if it were to be taken
literally in cultural studies as well as in any other branch of
creative construction of meaning.
Camus’
understanding of rebellion is an example of the fundamentality of
honesty in relation to the self. He postulates that rebellion is
always a plea for greater unity and brotherhood in the ranks of
humanity, and thus rebellion is required to produce principles with
unifying qualities. One of these principles is, of course, equality,
which Camus formulated qualitatively but clearly enough for a
quantitative formula to be derived from it. His idea is that for
rebellion to remain loyal to its initial aims, which is the
undeniably justifiable negation of oppression, rebellion has to
affirm absolute equality.
Camus’
formula for affirmative rebellion: if the oppressed (D) has a human
value less than that of the oppressor (R) then rebellion is something
through which he/she endeavours to achieve equality. But if the rebel
then in turn denies the human value of the former oppressor as of
equal human value, the roles become reversed and the rebellion
becomes destructive:
Affirmative
rebellion functions if the human value of D > or = as the human
value of R.
And
this, of course, requires honesty and self-cirticism to be
maintained. The rebel has to know what he is doing and, moreover,
why.
This formula
is thus far the most functional — most functional, as in least
constrictive because it allows everything else but oppression —
example of a formula with which a Complex Adaptive System (or an
individuation, if the emphasis is on the organistic39
sense of belonging which could be understood to implicate equality
because, as we discussed earlier diversity is another way to ensure
survival in unpredictable conditions) can process qualitative
content, thus both the need for a consensus that reduces suffering is
fulfilled without constricting diversity of cultures40.
On a chemical and physical level this formula is, of course,
irrelevant since the dissipative structures, like a liquid gyre or a
maelstrom, are unconscious of injustice, but when we leap into the
biochemical level of mammals, Complex Adaptive Systems, no matter how
reductionistic their worldviews may be, can no longer dismiss the
suffering of other such systems.
The
implications of this interpretation of the `equality formula´ are
far reaching, if it were to be taken seriously, which is the ultimate
intention; but here the data processing observer is faced with the
dogmatic boundaries of meaning structures that insist on their
equality, if not supremacy, as modes of explanation. These structures
(often mythic or mystified in origin, like hebraistic religions; or
anti-mythic, like Marxism, or materialist rationality in the
positivist spirit à la Comte, which all have become dogmatic in
their supposed orthodoxy) seek to rule out all competition in order
to fortify their position. This brings to mind the idea of
bureaucracy as a primarily self-perpetuating organism, which
Burroughs diagnoses as cancerous41;
and this, of course, brings the topic back to parasitic meaning
structures.
As Richard
Holloway tries to maintain, Christianity (or more broadly, religion)
can still produce ethical values and mythic metaphors that help
data-processing observers cope with the often devastating phenomena
they face, by offering explanations and morally binding suggestions,
if not codes of conduct; but Holloway subordinates religion under the
category of art42.
Thus he may be said to demand that all meaning-structures, mythic or
not (since he also criticises dogmatic and secular rationality) are
made equal43,
and then perhaps judged according to their ability to reduce
injustice and harm.
This much is
granted, but what is really interesting, is that Holloway binds
together the `self´ and the sense of individual soul with advent of
the personified Deus Ex Machina or God. This God is then the absolute
entity from which all that is absolute, including the soul, is
derived from44.
This Christian doctrine is a continuation of the Hebraist tradition
of the `One God´, `the God of righteousness´, which, as an idea in
it self, claims the throne under which all is to be annexed45
and thus demands absolute homogeny in all the ranks that qualify. And
only the ones in possession of an orthodox human `me´ do; no
animals, no heretics, no dissenters. Here the human self becomes
political, and more constrictive than ever, as it is a structure to
be committed to exclusively.
Holloway
questions this exclusion but fails to understand how dangerous it is
to pick and choose from a meaning-structure that claims to be
categorically the one and only; it is really a question of all or
nothing, even if religion were to be understood as art. The danger
lies in perpetuating the potentially harmful parts of the structure,
which have to be dragged along, since religion, it seems, cannot be
edited: i. e. it cannot adapt.
This much
said a summary conclusion might be in order. What I have tried to
achieve here is a way to process qualitative data in a way that
avoids dogmatic formulations but attempts to solve problems and
create meaning as well. In the present climate this is becoming
increasingly difficult, but I insist that this is possible and of
vital importance. I admit that the little achieved here is
inconclusive, but I intend to carry on.
Be
there a man
with
soul
so
dead
never to himself
has
said
"My
God 1 acted
like
an absolute
shit
!"
and
then
then
and then-fold
bitter
etcetera to bed
"His
life review will be heavy."
"Do
not corrupt Allah's WILL, dreading thy actions done."
Or
worse:
denying thy
actions done.
None
so hopelessly blind as he who will not look.
(Burroughs, 2000: 60)
Earthly
refuse assaults
heaven, as we are contaminated by
notions of eternity. It is as if
a love letter — or everything I
have written — were to be
torn up and the pieces
scattered, in
order to reach the beloved.
refuse assaults
heaven, as we are contaminated by
notions of eternity. It is as if
a love letter — or everything I
have written — were to be
torn up and the pieces
scattered, in
order to reach the beloved.
(Waldrop,
2009)
- Anderson, Benedict. 2006: Imaginary Communities. London: Verso
- Burroughs, William S. 2000: Last words: the final journals of William Burroughs. London: Flamingo
- Burroughs, William S. 1985: The Adding Machine: Collected essays. London: Calder
- Gell-Mann, Murray. 1995: Quark and the Jaquar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex. New York: Henry Holt and Company
- Vlad, Marcel Ovidiu; Cavalli-Sforza, L. Luca & Ross, John. 2004: Enhanced (hydrodynamic) transport induced by population growth in reaction–diffusion systems with application to population genetics. PNAS vol. 101 no. 28: http://www.pnas.org/content/101/28/10249.full.pdf
- Holloway, Richard. 2008: Between the Monster and the Saint: Reflections on the Human Condition. Edinburgh: Canongate.
- Wells, H. G. 2004: A Short History of the World. USA: Kessinger
- Camus, Albert 1969: The Rebel (L’Homme révolté). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
- Fanon, Franz 2004: The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.
- Smolin, Lee 2001: Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. New York: Basic Books
- Salthe, Stanley, M. 1993: “Development and Evolution as Aspects of Self-Organization” pp.5–18 Theory of Evolution — In Need of a New Synthesis. Matti Sintonen & Seija Sirén (eds). Tampere: University of Tampere
- Tikkanen, Henrik. 1976: Kulosaarentie 8, Kulosaari. Puh. 35. Porvoo: WSOY
1
The descriptive term Complex Adaptive System can be, and is, applied
to living organisms, computer programs, ideas and ideologies as it
is descriptive: a metaphor for phenomena (Gell-Mann, 2004: 16 –
22)
2
See Development and Evolution as aspects of self-organization by
Stanley M. Salthe (Sintonen & co, 1993: Theory of Evolution —
in Need of a New Synthesis?)
3
The Quark and the Jaguar, 1994
4
The Rebel (le Revoltee), 1969
5
Gell-Mann emphasizes complexity but insists that complexity is not
the purpose of evolution but rather a product of it (Gell-Mann,
1994: 11 – 22).
6
In future such an enterprise should be taken in order to really
challenge this perspective.
7
Quasi-classical area is the `reality´ of classical physics that was
called into question by theories such as Quantum physics but that
still corresponds with most of the everyday phenomena that is spread
before our senses (Gell-Mann, 1994: 135–166)
8
partly paraphrased from Henrik Tikkanen’s autobiographical novel
Kulosaarentie 8 (Tikkanen
1976: 90).
9
Rebellion is Camus’ way of describing the refusal to accept
injustice and suffering while simultaneously demanding for absolute
equality. (Camus, 1969)
10
Vlad,
Cavalli-Sforza and Ross,
2004 : http://www.pnas.org/content/101/28/10249.full.pdf
(this
article is a quantitative or mathematical description of the
processes of diffusion.)
11
Gell-Mann, 1994: 75-106 see also Smolin, 2001: 33 – 48
12
Gell-Mann, 1994: 215-234 , Vlad,
Cavalli-Sforza and Ross,
2004 : http://www.pnas.org/content/101/28/10249.full.pdf
13
Murphy,
1997: 38-40
14
Gell-Mann, 1994: 107–122
15
Gell-Mann, 1994: 167–176
16
Anderson, 2006: 12
17
Camus, 1969: 253–255
18
Gell-Mann, 2004: 16 – 22
19
a letter missing from the album sheet lyric but audible on the
recording
20
on the album sheet the word here is `you´ but on the recording it
is clearly `the´
21
The pen name of Sven Erik Kristiansen
22
There are several writers who could be referred to here; Friedrich
Nieztszche’s use of the word decadence as in other worldliness
could be one but also Richard Holloway makes similar observations in
his book Between the Monster and the
Saint that emphasize the problematic
relationship of environmentalism and religion
23
See e.g. Swedish Black Metal-band Dark Funeral’s song Hail
Murder on the album Diabolis Interium
24
the SS- skull insignia can be found in the cover of Mayhem’s
Wolf’s lair abyss album.
25
From the album booklet of Zyklon-B’s Blood
Must Be Shed.
26
Indeed, Black Metal has sprouted artistic offshoots like
Dödheimsgård, Virus, Ulver and others that have separated from the
original `existence in opposition to something´ concept.
27
See appendix
28
Burroughs :?
29
Burroughs :80
30
Burroughs :176
31
From the first part of the final `chapter´ To
Daimonion (I/III)
32
Burroughs, 2000: 9.
33
Burroughs, 2000: 16–17
34
Burroughs, 1985: 125
35
Salthe, 1993: 13
36
Farber, 1967
37
In fact, Burroughs, as a man of numerous fictional alter-egos, did
criticize many of the features he had probably recognized in himself
through his writing. This can be seen for example in Western
Lands where Burroughs refutes some of
the ideas expressed in Place of Dead
Roads. In this context, however, the
most interesting argument made is, the one where he acclaims
“petulant queerness” as the reason why Brion Gysin did not like
Denton Welch’s writing. Could it be this “petulant queerness”
that stopped Burroughs from embracing the collective identity in
question? (Burroughs, 2000: 16)
38
Smolin, 2001: 26–32
39
With this term the intention is to coin a simple word to correspond
with the idea of life being an organism in itself, just a very
diversified, polymorphic organism.
40
Cultures here in the most comprehensive sense of the word
41
Naked Lunch
42
Holloway, 2008
43
Burroughs concurs to this in Cities of
Red Night
44
Holloway, 2008 (pages 73–75 in the 2009 Finnish Translation)
45
Welles, 2004: 58–61
