26 September 2004
those who believe that they speak or keep silence or act in any way from the free decision of their mind, do but dream with their eyes open
A day reading Spinoza - not merely idle consumptive frittering away time like a pale debutante (cf. the rest of my life), but actually preparing lessons for some youth, of which I increasingly feel myself to be less and less a part of....I really hope they don't beat me up. And why are they so big? What did their ma and/or pa and/or significant caring other give them to eat? Polar bears?
Even went to Wapping last night, which probably tells you something about my burgeoning maturity. Was weird. Not like Hackney at all. Was quiet, and posh, and full of old buildings where people used to work, and die, no doubt (the dangerous machinery now left hanging as 'authentic' exterior decor) - all turned into luxury apartments. We watched a naked man watching Tv in his apartment with the curtains wide open. It was like 'Crash', but gloomier.
Great piece here on courtly love by Mark 'everyday is like Christmas' K-Punk, which includes the immortal line "only in the minds of Teenage Ontologists and Guardian Women's Page readers are there 'real persons'". Heh heh. I like that. Real Persons. Heh heh. Everything human is unnatural of course. Profoundly artificial. Those who resort to the language of nature do so only to defend their 'right' not to do any cleaning, or to give a rubbish excuse as to why they're dicking about all over the place.
How does this fit with Spinoza's determinism (as in the title)? Well, because those who believe in the discourse of nature also believe in its opposite - therefore there are e.g. 'unnatural women' (they probably behave like monkeys) and 'natural women' (they probably have earnest sex). Whereas if everything is always already made of plastic (conceptually, so to speak), then there is no nature/anything else divide. And certainly no question of a free will/determinism 'problem'. Unnatural, cold, wasteland determinism is all - what Spinoza really meant was 'Deus sive Unnatura'.
Gotta re-write my research proposal (do you think I'm up to it after that great piece of reasoning?). If only Regis Debray hadn't already used the title Critique of Political Reason, that would have been great. Goddamn history! It's always full of things that you've only just thought about. And usually translated into 35 languages.
