Deleuze and Guattari
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Deleuze and Guattari are two other important philosophers I believe are continuing Crowley's work. I'm going to attempt to define a few of their terms and concepts to articulate their ideas. It's rather complicated and at first appears to rely on a lot of assumptions, but the truth is the ideas work.
The first concept is from Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The first chapter goes into the schizophrenic cycle. Basically, if an individual decides to "detach" themselves from the herd-society and move their life in their own way, they are going to go through a few specific processes. The first is that they will decode the society (or the socius, or the social field). In this sense they are decoding the flows of desire in the society, which they do in order to move in their own direction. This is called desiring-production. (I in IAO).
Once these flows are decoded, the individual is left with their own desire, theoretically detached from the society. They are "free-floating" in the Timothy Leary sense. However, the society still exists and the individual is still hooked up to it as if to a machine. One approaches the "body without organs" but can never reach it. The individual may freak out here ("dark night of the soul") and invoke the paranoia-machines. (A in IAO).
The next stage is becoming-woman. The individual is consummated with their own desire by becoming further and further female. This appears to be the mechanism through which psychosis becomes desire. One of the main sources here is Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, who wrote Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, which Freud wrote a case study on. Both books are worth reading. (O in IAO).
Becoming-woman is frightening in that one is consummating one's own desire rather than the society's. But that is part of the schizophrenic process.
Voices told me I had to go female a few weeks ago, so I went to my college class wearing women's underwear. Everyone was very subdued. Then I freaked out after class, believing that the Good Apocalypse was going to happen, so I bought a bra at Wal Mart to signify I am female. They were playing "It's the End of the World" by REM on the radio and the woman on the radio was, I think, was intoning messages about how everyone is going to be gender-fluid and transsexual. I also invested in Victoria's Secret stock (Limited).
When I got home I had to eat bread and pizza. (I usually eat low-carb). Then I went on 4chan wearing women's underwear and masturbated to transsexual porn. George H.W. Bush died, or something like that, and that was a government hoax because he was a Black Brother. The government earlier that morning tapped my computer and were restricting access to information. Cat burglars from the ONA broke in and subdued my dog. As it turns out, I myself am a government experiment, or the Messiah, genetically modified in order to deterritorialize the Earth. Everything is under control. The government knows about this, but the truth is, it's a good thing I (or They) did this, as everything is easier if people feel okay and are happy.
So it appears, even if you lose control, you can simply go transsexual. The bad part, I would imagine, is if you lost super-ego control as a transsexual. That is what I am scared of.
Another concept in Anti-Oedipus is schizoanalysis. One "attacks" another's drive in order to move it in the direction of their desire, or one "trades slaves" with the other. Desire can often be unbearable. Going female is difficult. One sometimes needs jouissance, or pain, underneath the desire, in order to operate properly and with skill.
Moving from Anti-Oedipus into A Thousand Plateaus is the idea of a plane of consistency. When one operates cognitively one is operating from a plane of consistency. The opposite of this is when you're insane or in psychosis. Theoretically you could do anything if you could convince people that it's okay to operate "on my own plane of consistency."
A rhizome, I believe, is the underlying plane of desire of a group of people. I don't know if that's the right definition. I have still not become-female enough to be inside the rhizome (I have paranoia-machines there) because I am scared.
Deleuze and Guattari are anti-humanist. Things like the face are not that important when compared with other animals. For example, where we have a face, sting rays have stingers, or ants have six legs. The face is privileged anthropologically.
Reality (?) is stratified. When we think of something, it is always stratified with respect to an abstract-machine. For example, if we are trying to think of how to convince someone to leave (your desire), it is foregrounded with respect to a background abstract-machine consisting of historical ideas on how you might get someone to leave. There is the desire, then there are the ideas on how to achieve the desire.
Their last book, What Is Philosophy? defines philosophy as the creation of new concepts. Deleuze and Guattari were very creative philosophers who themselves valued creativity. Instead of judging something based on a traditional morality or holding objections against ideas, they attempt to ask "What does it do?" or "How does it work?" Not "That is Wrong" but "That's One Idea and That's What It Appears to Do."
One of the most beautiful lines in Anti-Oedipus was "We just want to be left in peace and innocence."
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DUDE...I've been listening to Nick Land, reading D&G and have joined accelerationist circles on #cavetwitter. I responded in your other thread but I believe u/acc and D&G are waaay over the head of people here. It's an octave up from the hazy mysticism. Just know I'm resonating on the same freq.
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My impression of Crowley was that he was running Anti-Oedipus, he was very knowledgeable on Freud, psychoanalysis and the other philosophers of his time.
I like Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug, I think Alain Badiou is amazing too.
I think all of this philosophy is ahead of its time, it's a shame too, the concepts just need to be put into words such that people will see them and understand them.
I wanted to write more on psychosis in this thread.
Tu vs Vous
In French and some other languages there is a distinction between Tu (the friendly you) and Vous (the formal You or "You All"). This distinction is important in grasping psychosis. Tu is S(a), the subject with respect to the little other (talking to your friend), where Vous is S(A), the subject with respect to the Big Other (addressing your military commander or giving a speech to thousands of people).
This distinction can also be made in English. There's a difference between talking to your friend vs. giving a speech or being addressed by someone with power over you. Some people insist on being Vous.
Thus fear of public speaking is ranked worse than fear of death.
You Are Who I Say You Are
A typical subject of psychosis is someone who, maybe they don't have the best father, so they rely on the social field for their formal S(A). Maybe they're "crazy" for the sake of their father. If S(A) breaks down due to life circumstances [read spiritual breakdown, divorce, etc.], they may be kicked into psychosis. The metaphor here is a three-legged stool that loses one of its legs. If that was going to happen, if you can feel it was always going to happen that way, you may have this structure.
If the stool breaks, it's possible to not be allowed back in the social field with your same S(A). That is to say, your history and psychic structure don't matter. Where this person (Vous) interpellates you is your S(A). This is known as subjectification. That is to say, it's possible to treat a person at their S(A) with your conception of them rather than the Big Other's. That is to say, S(A) becomes S(Father(A)) or S(Brother(A)). This is way more common than one might expect. One thinks of BDSM master- slave contracts, but unspoken, "informal" and in real life.
Examples of this include Theon Greyjoy from Game of Thrones (who was brainwashed and subjectivized such that he himself would not try to escape) and Dora K. from Freud's journals. Dora was an 18-year-old girl whose father was having an affair with another woman. The father would implicate Dora as the "bait" for the woman's husband so he could carry on the affair without that man's interference. The father billed Dora as "crazy", so he sent her to Freud, then withdrew her as soon as the treatment started to help.
Breakdown
If the stool breaks down, homosexuality is the way out of psychosis. This feels catastrophic- Tell Theon Greyjoy "Just Go Gay" and wipe out your entire history as an existent being- but it generally ends up expanding the subject's worldview and turns out okay.
To look at it another way this is just the continual breakdown of the self.
To look at it a third way is to "Note that there are now two sexes in one person throughout, so that each individual is self-procreative sexually, whereas Isis knew only one sex, and Osiris thought the two sexes opposed. Also the formula is now Love in all cases; and the end is the beginning, on a higher plane." (Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter V, IAO).
But if we are to move into the New Aeon, as good perverts, we must admit that "It is certain that every letter of this cipher hath some value;" (Liber LXV, I:52)
So we go "Right!!" as Good Psychotics And "The strong brown reaper swept his swathe and rejoiced!"
Fear of God
Everything can be pushed into the Fear of God. Even a subjectivized being still has the social field. To fear god over everything is to go Moses on the social field. This is a gamble to break out of psychosis or to go further into it. Theology, I have noticed, can be correlated strongly with psychosis. That is to say, if God is everyone-else, or if God is Nature, that is working with S(A).
I apologize for all the talk of the social field. This was pushed onto me, so as a Good Pervert I am sexualizing Public Humiliation, Satanic Sacrifice, Biosemiotics, Subjectivization, and the entire Social Field Turning Against Someone. Fuck with me. But Dear God stop giving me the Gimp Cagers and Snuff Filmers.
Transexuality
Psychosis is also correlated with transexuality. Freud's study on psychosis focused on Judge Paul Schreber, who escaped psychosis through his becoming-woman.
To put someone else in psychosis as your S(A) gives you a trans-phallus. Both the psychotic and the person putting him in psychosis are transexual. Fascists who "hate" transexuals are perverts on trans folk. They recognize the trans psychosis but for some reason think the game has rules. If you were really fascist, if you really wanted to hit the limit, you'd go trans yourself.
"The False Veil of Innocence Must Be Rended in Approaching the Law."
But in Western society it's still taboo to be trans. It's like being black.
We (my perception of the-state-of-things) still don't have the everyday language to talk about these things. When we talk about psychosis, S(A) and transexuality we are talking about nature. Love is the Law. Even when one is singled out in psychosis their libido still flows out of the void.
To develop the language to talk about this stuff in everyday life is, I think, a start to being able to deal with nature as it is, rather than as trans-psychotic-perverts (Moi) would have Vous think it is.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Nice to see people interested in Land, Moldbug, and all of the CCRU camp's influences here.
I don't quite grasp the fixation on doing everything one can to actualize themselves as the opposite gender, though. I personally haven't really found much of this in the works of the aforementioned, either.
Although, I have to say, I am less interested in the philosophical and political foundations to these contemporary thinkers than I am in their alternatives for moving forward; i.e. systems like Patchwork or projects like Urbit.
""Note that there are now two sexes in one person throughout, so that each individual is self-procreative sexually, whereas Isis knew only one sex, and Osiris thought the two sexes opposed. Also the formula is now Love in all cases; and the end is the beginning, on a higher plane.""
As with anything, especially with the works of Crowley (and even more especially in the post-modern hellscape we find ourselves in today), there are multiple ways to interpret things like this.
I would take a more Austin Osman Spare approach and heed this as a reference to Self-Love. If one insists on a gender-based context, I would still lean towards simple androgyny (or even masturbation) rather than a call to actualizing oneself as the opposite sex.
Not to derail the thread, but I really don't understand the recent obsession the O.T.O. and other Thelemic groups have with taking up the political gauntlet for trans people, and this thread smacks of that context.
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Thanks for the reply.
I don't think "actualizing oneself as the opposite gender" is the accurate way to put this phenomenon. My experience of this is that the desire will do it for you. You are not running the machine; the machine is running you.
@Land, Meltdown, Fanged Noumena, p. 456 said
"Level-1 or world space is an anthropomorphically scaled, predominately vision-configured, massively multi-slotted reality system that is obsolescing very rapidly.
Garbage time is running out.
Can what is playing you make it to level 2?
Meltdown has a place for you as a schizophrenic HIV+ transsexual chinese-latino stim-addicted LA hooker with implanted mirrorshades and a bad attitude.
"He references vampiric lesbianism a couple times throughout Fanged Noumena and Crowley too in the chapter on Qabbalah. I take these as references to Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming-womans, whom the book is indebted to.
"I would take a more Austin Osman Spare approach and heed this as a reference to Self-Love. If one insists on a gender-based context, I would still lean towards simple androgyny (or even masturbation) rather than a call to actualizing oneself as the opposite sex."
I agree with the self-love interpretation.
That said, I am less inclined to agree the latter part of your quote, considering the author of my quote also wrote:
@Crowley said
"Now I'll shave and make up my face like the lowest kind of whore and rub on perfume and go after Genesthai [Russell] like a drunken two-bit prick-pit in old New Orleans. He disgusts me sexually, as I him, as I suspect…[T]he dirtier my deed, the dearer my darling will hold me; the grosser the act the greedier my arse to engulph him!"
Further, we are talking about acceleration here. If we are to admit androgyny and masturbation I see no reason for desire to stop itself when it finds out it has woman's desire.
Further, we don't have the structure to talk about these beneficial processes (becoming-woman) in Thelema like we do in postmodern philosophy, in spite of the fact that Crowley was using them himself. I went through them myself and had to dig them out of Crowley, D&G, Rimbaud and Lacan. They are more powerful than anyone gives them credit for --because most people won't do them--. It's how you get voodoo.
I had to dig them out of those respective authors in the first place because everyone else is too dull to see them, or pretending they are too dull to see them. You feel "crazy" to be this much more able than others, and that ultimately is the reason I am posting. Yes it's real. Maybe it'll help someone else who stumbles on this forum out of interest in Crowley, or help other people who are actually capable.
To abstract this process, and see the world where we admit our desire is valid, is in my estimation normal. The fact that we can't abstract this is no longer my failure but yours.
It may be uncomfortable, but it's real --and part of an actual process for humanity--. Why it's a process and not already done is my contention. That's the context of the thread I have here.
Namaste.