#Affectual Insight

[miralless]

Affectus god

#Affectus god how to

#Affectus god code

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Stewarding the Earth, A Biblical View of Economics.

Wallbuilders Summer Leadership Training Program.

#Affectus god code

Coupons: Use promo code WBL17 to receive 10% off your entire order on ALL WallBuilders Store Products!!.WallBuilders | American historical events, founding fathers, historical documents, books, videos, CDs, tapes, David Barton’s speaking schedule.On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton Here is a discussion of affectus’ as a term and how it relates to media.The Significance Of Jubilee – With Stephen McDowell: What is the year of Jubilee? How could it affect us? What could it mean for you? What does it mean for a nation? Why are private property rights important? What is the measuring line for your life? Tune in to hear this insightful interview! Assigning these kinds of values to kinds of affect (or emotion or passion however they are all parsed out) seems completely arbitrary. Furthermore, if affects are good or bad to the extent that they manifest the will of god, it becomes difficult to uphold the joy = creation attitude in Deleuze without god.

#Affectus god how to

DeLanda defines affect as a body’s capacity to affect and be affected but, given the fact that the source of Spinoza’s affect (in terms of the mind) is the power of God this creates a problem of how to adjudicate between affects once god is removed. If affect is some outside force which either hampers or excites the powers of the body yet is also described as various kinds of emotion, it becomes difficult to sort out what is affecting what in Spinoza’s account or Deleuzian accounts of affect. While I have some before I get to part III in which Spinoza discusses the various forms of affect, it seems odd that this confusion is not brought out in the open (as far as I know) in most discussion of affect. Parkinson then goes on to state that confused emotions (or emotions inadequate to an idea) are passions which index a lack of power in those having them (41). This seems to run the opposite of what I’ve always heard about affect particularly in Deleuzeian scholarship. I follow those translators who have rendered affectus as ’emotion’ for there is no reasonable doubt that when Spinoza uses the word affectus he is trying to fit into his system what are commonly regarded as emotions” (41). “Since Spinoza regards desire and its forms as affectus, and since desires are commonly distinguished from emotions, how is one to translate the word affectus? Some translators use the word ‘affect’ but this has the disadvantage that it is a technical term that itself stands in need of explanation. Parkinson writes that there is no real reason to separate emotion from affect in Spinoza’s text. The Oxford edition I have edited by GHR Parkinson (I don’t know if this is the standard translation, respected etc) had a rather starting statement in the introduction. While I’ve read bits and pieces here and there I have never gone through the whole text which I’ve been meaning to do for some time given his discussion of nature and his importance to both German Idealism and Deleuze and Guattari. In preparation for my comps I am marching slowly through the history of western thought and I am currently reading Spinoza’s Ethics.

#Affectus god

[astranemus]

A common way of expressing the goal of the Braj religious traditions is with the word sarvatma-bhava, which I would render as ‘a loving realization of the divine in everything’. The crucial question is: how does one actually come to know the sacred or divine presence in some living entity? I return to the poetic phrase that I began with; the answer is precisely through love. When someone approaches us with aggression, shouting with rage in our face, we tend to pull back protectively and conceal ourselves. On the other hand, when someone approaches us with tender love, we are drawn out and reveal much more of ourselves. Might it be this way with all entities?

Conversations with religious practitioners in Braj suggest that it might indeed. There is a common thread that runs through hundreds of interviews I have had with worshippers of sacred rivers, trees, and mountains in northern India. Many reported that what formerly seemed like an ‘ordinary’ river, tree, or mountain revealed its divine nature or true sacred form (svarupa) after a period of interacting with that entity through loving acts of worship (seva). I met a young man on the bank of the Yamuna after watching him perform a very moving worship of the river. He explained to me how he had come to this: ‘I used to see Yamuna-ji as an ordinary river and treat it badly. But then I met my guru, and he told me to start worshiping Yamuna-ji. At first I was a little resistant, but I did what he said. Soon, I began to see her svarupa (true divine form) and realized how wonderful (adbhut) she really is. So now I worship her everyday with love. The main benefit of worshiping Yamuna-ji is an ever-expanding love. I want to live in her world of love’. This man suggests something very important. Loving attitudes and actions lead to a perspectival awakening; through a reverent approach one comes to know the true nature of some entity in a manner that exceeds mere intellectual knowledge. Once that true nature is revealed and one has an experience of its marvelousness, one enters spontaneously into an appreciative and worshipful attitude, and engages naturally in acts of loving care.

David L. Haberman, "Affectual Insight: Love as a Way of Being and Knowing" in Living Earth Community Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing

#David L Haberman #David Haberman #Affectual Insight #Love as a Way of Being and Knowing #Living Earth Community #love #devotion #bhakti #Braj #Hinduism #Vedic #svartama-bhava

[gravitascivics]

PENDING BALKINIZATION?

An issue this blog will visit at some future point is whether people due to their nature hold a bias for their group.  That could be their race, their nationality or ethnicity, their locality, their age, their religion, even their gender.  And if that sense of belonging exists, to what extent does it exist?  How much does it trump other motivations, such as personal interests?  

Professional team sports count on people having a strong enough sense of loyalty to one’s locality to sell expensive tickets to witness their encounters with the representatives of other localities or to buy paraphernalia they can wear or otherwise exhibit.   All that is fine as long as it is considered a source of harmless fun.  

Yes, at times it has led to fisticuffs or strains within families, but for the most part, it is just a way to pass what would otherwise be boring interludes within one’s life.  This writer, in his past and when he lived in a more urbanized area, partook in such expenditures – he shared season tickets in baseball, basketball, and even football.  Plus, at times, he drove long hours to attend football games at his alma mater.  These days, though, all that has been abandoned and he follows only golf, a non-locality-based fandom.

         Yes, aging takes one through exotic turns.  But through all that, he agrees with the late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.  That historian writes:

Most Americans, it is true, continue to see themselves primarily as individuals and only secondarily and trivially as adherents of a group.  Nor is harm done when ethnic groups display pride in their historic past or in their contributions to the American present. But the division of society into fixed ethnicities nourishes a culture of victimization and a contagion of inflammable sensitivities.  And when a vocal and visible minority pledges primary allegiance to their groups, whether ethnic, sexual, religious, or, rare cases (communist, fascist), political, it presents a threat to the brittle bonds of national  identity that holds this diverse and fractious society together.[1]

One can almost hear the reaction to citing this concern.  The problem does not lie with individuals of one group being able to exert themselves in dominating others but of attempting to protect themselves – in terms of political power and/or economic standing – against those with power.  For example, the “Black Lives Matter” reaction to case police abuse goes beyond mere racial pride or promotion.  

To the extent they are legitimate protests of unjust treatment by government personnel, these need not be acts that undermine an otherwise unified nation.  Instead, they can be viewed as expressions of what minimally this nation needs to sustain to allow such a diverse nation to survive.  Therefore, as with most of reality, this topic is somewhat nuanced.

In that light, what Schlesinger has to say can be useful in finding a workable solution to what this blog is currently addressing; that is polarization.  Not only is this topic subject to nuanced realities, but it also plunges one into ironies that defy simple ideations or policy resolves over related problems. The main irony is that a pathological adherence to group identity undermines the very individual motivation that spurs it into existence and maintenance.

While the motivation emanates from one’s natural proclivities, its manifestation undermines that individuality.  As Schlesinger points out, one loses him/herself, one’s identity, into the identity of a group.  In turn, the ideas, perceived interests, and other aims and goals of the group become inviolable and beyond questioning.  To the extent this is true, it adds to those forces sustaining the nation’s current malady of polarization.  

Again, ironically, how these problematic allegiances develop, even those that reflect racial/ethnic divides, has participants of such dueling to fall in line with one or the other of the grand national groupings – the progressive one or the conservative one.  Unfortunately, the current political landscape has Black Lives Matter “team up” on the progressive side and the white supremist group on the conservative side.  This is a shaky arrangement, but the realities of the current politics fall in line with such a division and they add to the general polarization.

And one is invited to guess over such developments: is the nation the midst of a social collapse?  Has this descending digression taken on a life of its own?  “The contemporary sanctification of the group puts the old idea of a coherent society at stake.  Multicultural zealots reject as hegemonic the notion of a shared commitment to common ideals.”[2]

As that historian points out, what has sustained this nation – a nation without a common ethnic origin – has been an allegiance to ideals.  And those ideals include a commitment to democracy and human rights.  The nation’s constitution – admittedly needing some interpretation – spells out what that means.  It speaks of union and even striving to be perfect in that union. Yet, in an age of natural rights, this basic sense comes into question – go figure.

And that historian points out another historical factor.  To be allegiant to the prevailing culture, by the historical setting in which it exists, does call for one to acknowledge the society’s Anglo-Saxon colorization.  The term “colorization” includes the notion that it has by natural evolutionary developments shifted to incorporate the influences of the various immigrant groups that have affected what Americans are culturally today.

Does the acknowledgment preclude the existence of a Little Italy or a Little Havana?  A China or German town?  Of course not.  These communities exist as transition spaces – both in terms of physical location and time. Their ongoing existence even creates tourist destinations.  Why? Because it’s a cheaper way to get exposed to another culture while still being able to speak English and be under the legal and political structures of the US.  Win-win!  And concerns over these communities underestimate the attraction of the overall American culture.

This writer can personally attest to this latter factor.  He can remember that in the fifties, living in a Latino home and wanting to be American and for all the efforts of multiculturalists, this attraction still exists.  What youngsters under that situation learn is that there is a way of being at home and a way of being beyond home and the neighborhood.  Most of these concerns turn out to be aesthetic in nature.

This gets solidified as the young person attains higher levels of education.  For the few that insist on holding on to the immigrant culture, fine.  The system can accommodate these exceptions, it has broad shoulder as long as the basic sense and administration of rights – individually and those of groups – are respected.

This blogger of late was entertained by watching a film from 1939 – the same year that produced Gone with the Wind.[3]  That other film, produced in a federated influenced society, portrays the values of that other construct.  The film, Let Freedom Ring,[4] is a story about the railroad extending into the West and its agents engaging in exploitive practices.  

While the film is a venue for Nelson Eddy (without Jeanette MacDonald[5]) to exhibit his “pipes,” it does illustrate how moneyed interests rode roughshod over disadvantaged groups including small farmers, immigrant workers (from various nationalities such as Italians and Germans), and modest townspeople.

There is one scene, toward the end in which all of these oppressed groups congregate – a social event – and become convinced that their group interests are aligned; and that commonly, they needed to unite to check the power of the railroads.  This mirrors the basic strategy E. E. Schattschneider in his book, The Semi-Sovereign People,[6] reports.

The main relevant message Schattschneider offers is that the disadvantaged need to unite to challenge and possibly win over the power machinations of the advantaged.  Divisions based on artificial factors – artificial in terms of what is at stake – such as ethnicity, race, religion, and other non-affectual factors interfere with this type of leaguing.  They lead to dysfunctional alliances or dysfunctional affiliations. Of course, at times it is one of these attributes that is at stake, as with the Black Lives Matter movement.

This posting leaves the reader with a prophetic insight Schlesinger shares:

The republic embodies ideals that transcend ethnic, religious, and political lines. … But the experiment can continue to succeed only so long as Americans continue to believe in the goal.  If the republic now turns away from Washington’s old goal of “one people,” what is its future? – disintegration of the national community, apartheid, Balkinization, tribalization?[7]

The current state of polarization seems to verify this historian’s concern and to how it challenges the nation.  And, as such, it is a concern civics teachers should be addressing in their classrooms.

[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992), 112-113.

[2] Ibid., 117.

[3] Victor Fleming (director), Gone with the Wind (Selznick International Pictures, 1939).

[4] Jack Conway (director), Let Freedom Ring (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor, 1939).

[5] For the younger readers, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald were a duo who appeared in many popular films and were noted for their singing prowess.

[6] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York, NY:  Hole, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

[7] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America, 118.

#Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. #E. E. Schattschneider #Let Freedom Ring #multiculturalism #Black Lives Matter #tribalization #civics education #social studies

[josebuencamino]

Blog 3

On September 5, 2019, I attended the 3rd Panel of the First National EPAPC Conference called Sights and Sounds of the Streets. The speakers delved into the themes, the phenomenology, and the tools that can be used to understand popular music, with demographic foci such as the jeepney drivers and their commuters, and thematic foci such as that of protest music. The research they presented seemed rather near-sighted to me, but I acknowledge that perhaps if I had attended some key-note lectures, I would be better able to connect these surveys and case studies to the grander scope of the dynamics of popular music in the streets.

Speaker Andrea Trinidad gave an overview of the music one hears in the jeepney, taking the jeepney as the physical embodiment of popular culture. She was able to suffice a superficial formula on the music, noting that the choruses were unforgettable, and that the verses were in rap. She expounded that the music effused themes of toxic masculinity, hypersexualization, LGBTQ+ representation, and kabarkadahan, with subtexts of longing and fantasy. I was interested in the seemingly binary opposition between the static, inoffensive character of the music and the chaos of commuting life. The speaker did not delve much into this, however.

Speaker Karen Mata gave a phenomenological insight into jeepney music within the context of its physical space though auscultation. Auscultation, she describes, is the experience of listening with the consideration that the body listens as well. I suppose that Auscultation advocates that an act of listening must not only deal with the audial phenomenon of sound, but of the totality of the experience itself that encompasses the other senses and their interpretation. She would play a soundscape of jeepneys and busy streets while giving a monologue on what she feels, hears, senses; thinks. I felt there was a disjunct between the chaos of the street and the eloquent verbalisation of her experience, and the romanticisation of the atmosphere seemed distant from the actual material. Again, this brought me back to thinking about oppositions and disjunctions.

The final speaker, Erron Medina, spoke about struggle and opposition as the driving forces of protest music in themselves. He spoke about the songs as framing devices, weighing the texts based on their diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational merits. This for me was one of the more interesting talks, as he used this model for protest music of different times and for different issues. While the model was able to categorize certain elements of the text based on their perceived purposes, Erron conceded that his application of his model of songs as framing advices did nothing to discern the effectivity of any given song in terms of affectual impact.

What I think were three professors asked questions to the panel, ranging from whether the model Erron used for the protest songs written explicitly could be used on songs that would simply be picked up by the protest movement regardless of the artistic motivations, to how the researchers felt about their area of research as millenials. I was interested in the oppositions between strophic rap music in the bustle of the city, and turbid protest music gripping protesters in vigil. I was also interested in how these spaces may have influenced the music in their conception and creation. I framed my question in such a manner:

1) From the talks, I noticed that there is often described a disjunction between what you see and what you hear. 2) How important do you think is the choice of these styles of songs based on where they will be listened to? 3) For example, how different was listening to the playlists by yourself compared to listening in the jeepney? 4) (To Erron) Similarly, what does it mean to listen to music from an angle that is demographically or temporally removed from yourself as a listener?

In a nutshell, my concern was this: Space. I was rather disappointed that the panelists would simply describe their experiences listening alone as to listening in a jeepney – I mean, obviously, in the jeepney you are more agitated, and at home you would be more still. Andrea did however say that the pulsations in a jeepney were rather comforting in a bustling city, as opposed to the quiet of her room. I really wondered however whether or not the panelists would think there was a collective consciousness regarding the space for which the artists would create music, and what kind of impact a change in this concept of space would reap on the music if such were the case. Erron did share that listening in a quiet room allows him to listen to the National Anthem and other relatively more complicated music in a retentive, appreciative mood, and that singing and listening to protest music among the throngs of rallying people would feel completely different in another space. Still, I was looking out for how music itself could be used to describe the space, because according to their findings, soundscape seemed to be such an important aspect to Jeepney music. It seemed that even just the anticipation of a listener’s space could possibly serve as a social descriptor; but I do acknowledge that this may be beyond their scope of study.

#Musicology ConferenceBlog MuL150

[pavementspecials-blog1]

Imagining the southern city

Through psychogeographic practice, I have come to imagine a city of dark, neon and halogen-lit streets that are guarded yet more vulnerable; quiet yet bold; drunken yet filled with insights of clarity. A city that temporally shifts towards an illicit identity, normalised into the form of formality. A collection of mundane and tacit moments, intermittently punctuated with heightened pulses as familiar relations reveal new aspects of self. 

A space to be lost and in turn find oneself in the quiet of one’s own mind in the smoke-filled, low-light haze of hidden doorways. Where beggar and businessman are drawn together as momentary equals under the dimmed, flickering glow of streetlight. A collection of experiences that dare you to embrace liminality and the firm occupation of the spaces between spaces, yet encouraging you, pushing you to long for a sense of rootedness that exists teasingly beyond a fingertip’s reach.

These evening flâneur sessions offer a form of urbanist practice; one that begins to peel away the surface to reveal the tacit, liminal, juxtaposing and fundamentally egalitarian nature of the city experience. This very matter or essence of cities - its cityness - is formed at the confluence of intersecting identity, hopes, dreams, contestations, anguish and desire that we all experience as people.

To articulate this through a slightly different prose, I believe there is a shared foundation of tactic (in the sense of an almost unconscuoulsy realised “tactic” theorised by de Certeau) that we all employ as urban denizens, produced through a common urban moment. These moments - best described by E. L. Doctorow as a freeze frame that can embrace and accommodate all the disparate intention of passing citizens - forms the elusive urban soul from which we all pull from and contribute towards. I perceive this “soul” as a being in of itself, a Jungian-like collective unconscious, continuously formed and reformed as we pass through space and begin to construct meanings of place through our very presence in relation to others in the city.

This is a process of coproduction that is both deliberate, knowing, and unconscious, affectual in nature. This cityness assumes neither a purely spatial form, nor is it exclusively social, economic, cultural or political in nature. It is simultaneously present in all these spheres. It is the potential becoming of all cities and of all people; a continuously reconstituting fluid, manifold collective identity at the intersection of all our relations.

#urban #urbanism