This is not a recipe blog. There are far more knowledgeable cooks maintaining interesting blogs like this one here.
Why, then, does this blog write about cooking? To be sure, I do love cooking for reasons other than the psychodairy this blog serves at times. The smell of fresh rhabarber, a good garlicky hummus, a Lao noodle soup, fried tofu, Korean kimchi, palak paneer... Being busy in a crowded kitchen cooking with friends, telling political jokes while cutting shalottes and dancing to the roaring sound of a blender - I like it a lot.
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts.
Money should have a flavor
September 6. Berlin attracts me again.
Night I spend on the highway Szeged - Budapest - Bratislava - Brno - Prague - Dresden - Leipzig. The car smells of bell peppers, four big sacks of Serbian bell peppers share the back seat with me. I am happy. This is the father and his son. They take me kindly to Leipzig, and very quick. Why, so I wonder, do I feel so much alive even now as an experienced free rider? Is it that I am consuming the spirit of Kerouac? Why is being on the road in itself source of excitement, even if all you see is asphalt and a needle pointing steadily at 170 km/h? The feeling of breaking away, leaving that world behind in which the person you spoke to yesterday is operating and has woven his thickly net of power. You are the fat fly escaping, assuming a different kind of power. All the webs are below you, glistening in the sunlight that is enough for them. You see the whole panorama below you, you see the vanity, the weakness of the silk. A different kind of power. A different kind of power.
In Leipzig central station Silvia comes to see me, which excites us both. We have a lot to tell each other. Our lives have both changed in and out and we understand each other well. Traveling life blends with reality. We have become busy people and our hearty goodbye was quick. That night, I arrive in Berlin by a comfortable private train and get an incredibly kind welcome from my friends. They are making the unlikely real, that I feel happy and complete in this very city where I buried some ugly stones of a past.
In Leipzig central station Silvia comes to see me, which excites us both. We have a lot to tell each other. Our lives have both changed in and out and we understand each other well. Traveling life blends with reality. We have become busy people and our hearty goodbye was quick. That night, I arrive in Berlin by a comfortable private train and get an incredibly kind welcome from my friends. They are making the unlikely real, that I feel happy and complete in this very city where I buried some ugly stones of a past.
May 25. Weak thoughts about Power.
Open shutter =[ Floating around in the fresh water of the Laguna Apoyo, a volcanic laguna created some 20.000 years ago when a volcano completely and violently exploded, watching over the surrounding hills that seperate the laguna from Lago Nicaragua, indulging in the peaceful quiteness of the place ]= close shutter. We have captured a very nice feeling.
As usual, I have some thoughts, too. And as usual, they circle like sad grey vultures around the subject of power, that insurmountable summit of the philosophical theory I'll never write. This time I ask the following question: How is power related to language? Is there a power conceivable without language, like the power of a lion with its rhetorically inept roars? The power of a shark that fin-flashes through the water in pursuit of a happy meal, unaware of its entirely absent rhetorical capacities? The power of a cheetah with its fabulous tempo of chase, yet lacking any verbal brilliance to convince its prey of his ferocious intentions? Why should they? The prey takes care of that itself. It will run anyway because mother nature makes it run away. At about the same speed as the cheetah runs himself - it's a description in terms of equilibrium, not one in terms of power, that suits the situation best. The cheetah is not exercising his power, he is only doing what he is supposed to do.
So we want to distuingish between equilibrium-driven and power-driven events. From a hermeneutical point of view, we have to ask which description suits a given situation best. The best we can get is a post-metaphysical philosophy of power, but for my pragmatical purposes it might do the job. The hypothesis is that interhuman relations based on linguistic interaction are significantly better described in terms of powe
r than in terms of an equilibrium. Of course, a certain equilibrium is kept between the master and his slave, between the King and the People, between the Pope and the Abbots, but describing their relation merely in these terms fails to recognize the fact that we're talking about individuals with their own agenda, their own intentions. The concept of power is much better suited here, because of its directionality. We consider the perspective of the agents involved, and not the misleading stability of the result. We lend the first-person-perspective for our objective description, as it were, to make it more precise and less exact at the same time.So we analyse human linguistic encounters in terms of power. We hear "hi how are you?" and look at the alternatives for this greeting, at the way it is spoken, at the posture of the speaker, at the relation between speaker and receiver. We ask them about their deepest subconscious "intentions" and eventually we assign a power-number to it. The number indicates the power transported in the utterance. It says something about the amount of influence the speaker has over the receiver, but it is a better indicator than the resulting actions of the agents. Something like that. I think we can assess utterances in this way and in theory reconstruct the hierarchy of power among all human beings. The striking point here is that we are not concerned about the resulting actions. The reason for that is explained above: the resulting actions are better described in terms of equilibrium, and they don't affect the assignment of power quanta.
My idea is to develop a language without power. Of course, that's impossible. But HERE is the place to attempt the impossible. HERE is the place to deceive ourselves in a better way than life deceives us anyway. HERE is the place to erect the greatest illusion we are capable of. A language without power, sentences that don't hit our opponent, that de-identify him as our opponent, sentences that are well thought trough and corrected before they are spoken in order to sooth the consequences of the original sentence. Words that are well chosen to dismantle the power that is inevitably transported by them. Syllables that sound less aggressive. That is the whole idea. Anybody can contribute to it; anybody can suggest idiom, grammar structures, sounds, perhaps a whole language that has been in this business for ages, like Hindi?
I hiked up to a viewpoint and looked over the Laguna from above. Had some excellent fruit on the way back.
April 20. Lazy day.
Lazy day, I skip the excursion to Cafetal where the nine-step process of coffee production is explained. Washing the beans, sorting them, peeling them, sorting the big ones out for richer coffees, fermenting, drying, roasting, grinding. It's an interesting science. So, if you're in the area, put Cafetal on your list.I meet Alberto the writer who writes short stories, plays, and mainly novels. He also sells plants, like the hipi-hapa that is used for the thatched roofs here, and even vanila. He is about seventy years old and his face reminds me a bit of Klaus Kinski. A writer, a man! Including everything: a big nose, lips, a deep voice, large hands, a sweaty hairy breast underneath an open shirt, impeccably combed grey hair, slow movements. What would it feel like to be that man, that writer, I wonder.
A few weeks ago, I wrote something about a theory of power. Today, we will continue with that. Whether you want it or not, ha! We have established that power is something relational. The dialogue was not really fruitful though. Let's try to approach the phenomenon of power from a different angle. We can't measure power like voltage or weight. In physics, power is not an elementary quantity. We use the term metaphorically for energy. The reason why power can't be a scientific unit is that it presupposes individuality as the center from where the power is exerted. In science, we look at events, movements that we can measure. Imagine a cheetah hunting a gazelle. We could measure the almost equal speed of both animals, we could measure the flow of chemicals in their blood, the path they take, yet we won't be able to conclude from it that the cheetah has more power without presupposing some intention of the animals. And that's where we already started to think anthropomorfically. The cheetah is following the gazelle, and the actions of the gazelle are merely reactions to those of the cheetah (not the other way round!). We interpreted the scene and supposed a causal relation between the actions of the cheetah and those of the gazelle. We have understood them as individuals. So power is just a matter of interpretation. Some freak might deem the gazelle more powerful than the cheetah. But wait. That freak won't be able to understand his own quantum of power. What I'm saying is that understanding power involves some kind of natural comparison with the power we exert ourselves. If a people acts upon the decree of a king, all that we observe is a number of organisms moving in a particular way. We might even find out that the decision of the king has been influenced by one of his subjects. Again, we can't tell who is more powerful. Naturally, we assume the individuality of the king and his people, and arrive at the conclusion that the king is exerting his power. In order to do that, we must be able to see ourselves in the position of the king, or compare ourselves with him. We can say the king has power because we have the same kind of power ourselves. The power of the king depends on the interpretation of his subjects, and that interpretation is nourished by the fact that his subjects possess the same kind of power as the king does. A slave that doesn't have the sensation of power himself can't be owned. And there we have an empirically testable conjecture. To be continued...
April 7. Power.
Power. That is my subject. A theory of power. To start off, let's reflect on authority a little. I wrote an accepted PhD, yet you will not be accepting my authority here, as you will in the case of Heidegger, or Jesus. Why not? We leave that question open. Everybody knows what power is, and in stating this knowledge he is exerting his power. There is no perspective from beyond power. It seems that something is lost. I long for a philosophical discussion that doesn't have its outcome fixed beforehand. Because my experience of those discussions is that people don't intend to learn from it (most delicately: learn something about the concept of power itself) but just need to throw the gems and the mud of their knowledge at each other. I will never participate in those discussions again. I'm sick of it. But rather than becoming misanthropically silenced I want to imagine how such a philosophical exchange would function. Perhaps Plato did have the same desire?They gather at a beautiful spot with a magnificent view over the city. The fig trees throw a cool shadow and they all sat underneath the trees, smiling and glooming with curiosity about the philosophical inquiry that they were about to pursue. The sun stood low and they gaze at the reflections of the sunrays on the subtly moving fig leaves. They share a bottle of red wine. After telling each other some jokes and laughing loudly, after the echo of their laugh had died away slowly, Sara says
"I think power is something relational."
-"Relatinonal? A relation between what?" Trasymachus says.
"Between forces. Between a weak force and a strong force. Power can only exist as actual power. This is the most elemental level of description. What I am saying is that we can analyse the world of physics or social structures in terms of forces that relate to each other. To some extent, these forces are powers themselves, but at a certin point, they are relations between potential forces that are not a power in their own right."
-"So to distinguish between a power and a force we have to look at our interpretation of the world" Trasymachus says.
"I think so. But from our subjective impossibility of interpreting the world in a certain way we can argue that the world is in a certain way."
-"Yes we can" Trasymachus says, and he is aware of the origin of this quotation because he starts laughing in a smooth, rhythmical way.
"That said, we can investigate the nature of power. I want to give an example. We can interprete a slave and his owner. The slave has the force of his muscles that is also a power. A power that prevents him from being killed. But a power that yields to the power of his owner. So, on the highest level of interpretation, the slave-owner has all the power. This power is the actual result of a complex structure of micro-powers."
-"Everybody knows that" Leucippus murmurs.
"Yes, but we are not after the common interpretation of slavery. We want to know something about the nature of power as such."
-"Continue" Trasymachus says while rolling the wine in his glass.
"So the micro-powers are interpretable as powers until a certain level. The muscular power of the slave is itself a complex structure of power. But if take that into account we go too far."
-"Why?"
"Because those powers are not structured around a compatible center. This is the limit of interpretation."
-"So the forces of any of the antagonist muscles of the slave are not powers with respect to the slave-owner?"
"Right. Because they cannot relate to him directly."
-"Tomorrow, we are going to think of a way to express that more clearly" Trasymachus says.
"Thank you."
They leave the scene and Leucippus starts talking about the stars he sees in the sky. His voice is calm.
I walked around through the center of Asuncion, took pictures of the important buildings. The governmental palace that was a "belleza" according to our rather conservative old señora. The two main squares of the city were well-kept. The beautiful riverbed with the slums alongside. I wanted to enter the slums. A policeman told me it was not allowed and I turned around. Tourists are not welcome in the slums. But I wanted to go in. So I walked alongside the slums and spoke to a man. He introduced himself as Rodolpho and said he could show me the slums. We went in. I saw what I had expected to see: dirt, pigs walking around, kids, hen, dogs, tires, housing made of old concrete, rusty metal, crates, red earth, mud, bad teeth. A crazy woman kept yelling I was not supposed to be here and she'd llamar la policia. Rodolpho and I ignored her. I took some photos of the slum and was introduced to Rodolpho's friends. He told me they were saving money for a football. They had been saving money for quite a while now. I said "come on, let's go buy that football". He put on a shirt and we went into town. We found a football for 70.000 Guarani, about 12 dollar. We went back and played foot-volley. I was really bad at it. After a while, the younger kids took over and I watched the five year old Camilo smiling as he bounced the big football. A straight intravenous shot of happiness.
At night, I went out with the guys to a bar called Britannica. It was the only real bar in the center of Asuncion, run by a big German guy who stood there and watched his accomplishment. They hit on girls. They did not come home until early in the morning. Vidro had to climb in through the narrow window above the door of our room since they had taken the keys. Later, Sandro would give us a far too vivid description of his nocturnal escapades.
March 27.
Power and thinking. Again, I am going to tell you something from my authority as a writer of an accepted phd. To many ears it will sound like bullshit. To some ears it will be obvious. To your ears it will be like music. I am not going to tell you about the power of thinking. Run to your nearest bookstore and get hold of a copy of any life-help book if that's what you're looking for. I want to express something about the intrinsic relation between power and thinking. This reflection does not start with a rational argument, but with a feeling. I feel thinking is a way of exerting power. Now rationality has to justify this claim. I have to formulate a theory that sounds plausible to persuade my readers to believe me. Not you, you are already believing me.
So, let's do a bit of theory then. The first step is to formulate the claim in a "claire et distincte" way. The act of thinking is always also an act of exerting power. Exerting power is suppressing something. We think something, a certain proposition. But thinking it is more than reading it in your head. Thinking for example "there are universal values" is more than reading this sentence. To the question of what exactly it is more, I offer the hypothetical answer: the suppression of the opposite. A suppression not by arguments but by the very fact that you are thinking that particular proposition. Thinking is thus formulating rationally supportable claims in your head and exerting power by suppressing beyond rationality the opposite. So I do not believe in pure rationality. I believe if the claims we think can be proved the way mathematical theorems can be proved, we are not thinking them anymore. We would be essentially doing the same thing as big computers that are capable of proving those theorems. I call the surplus of human thinking exerting power because I don't have a better name for it. So, rather then proving our claims, we are approving of them. Compare "I think 5+7=12" to "I think Freud was right." The first case can hardly be called thinking, whereas in the second case, we are unable to provide all the arguments. Nevertheless, we are expressing the claim. Hence, we must be exerting some form of power. What exactly this power is that we exert, remains the question.
Let's demonstrate this right away. I thought for example that our being has become plural since we use phones. I are sitting in my chair waiting for a call and talking to you. I are receiving that call while I try to signal you by nodding my head that I will talk on the phone for no more than ten minutes. I are sorry for that. Now here's something I thought. You probably say "he, this is weird" and you think of an argument against it. It is one person after all, doing several things simultaneously. But my claim is exactly that the person is in the process of being decomposed by the pluripotence of his digital surrounding. You answer to that with some bonmot, and we might have a beautiful discussion about it. In that discussion we are exerting power. We are eventually alone as ambassadors of our own concept of what a person is. We are ambassadors: we don't wage war, but we do exert power.
The movie "dazzle" by the acclaimed Dutch avant garde director Cyrus Frisch was not bad. He had gone through a process of trial and error as he called it, to arrive at a wonderful blend of imagery - and a lot of black screens. The movie is about the relation between Argentina and Holland and was made because of princess Maxima of course, and her father who served in the Videla regime. The concept of guilt was elaborated in an interesting way. I can recommend this movie.
The problems of Argentina. I like to illustrate them by means of yet another short anecdote. I walked about the Abato shopping mall, where the movie theatre is, and entered an electronic store. I asked an employee if they had macho a macho USB plugs. A cable you can plug in your computer and into another computer with an USB-slot to exchange date. But she said they were not available and she didn't know if they exist. There are a lot of USB cables that connect to all different kind of plugs and slots. But not macho a macho. That's the problem with Argentina. There are no macho a macho plugs.
There are big insects here.
Today, I feel a little bit lonely and I decide to put up an ad for myself here.
We went out and watched some tango. There was a band with a violin player that played pretty well. After the concert I walked into the violin player and asked him hey can I play I miss the feel of a violin's neck sure he said he said you can play wow as I started improvising away to the tango rhythm that was playing in the background good and o how I liked it the feel of an instrument
That night I did not dream about an old lady who was observing me and as soon as I looked back she pointed at me with her stick and yells I am guilty. Of what I stammer of what am I guilty? She keeps pointing and looking at me with this big hazy eyes she points the tip of the grey metal stick towards my chest I feel my heart beating she won't stop staring at me she is staring at me from my conscious. I start thinking that I am guilty of being pointed at and I start apologizing, yammering and creeping on the floor. She has a lot of power, that old lady.
So, let's do a bit of theory then. The first step is to formulate the claim in a "claire et distincte" way. The act of thinking is always also an act of exerting power. Exerting power is suppressing something. We think something, a certain proposition. But thinking it is more than reading it in your head. Thinking for example "there are universal values" is more than reading this sentence. To the question of what exactly it is more, I offer the hypothetical answer: the suppression of the opposite. A suppression not by arguments but by the very fact that you are thinking that particular proposition. Thinking is thus formulating rationally supportable claims in your head and exerting power by suppressing beyond rationality the opposite. So I do not believe in pure rationality. I believe if the claims we think can be proved the way mathematical theorems can be proved, we are not thinking them anymore. We would be essentially doing the same thing as big computers that are capable of proving those theorems. I call the surplus of human thinking exerting power because I don't have a better name for it. So, rather then proving our claims, we are approving of them. Compare "I think 5+7=12" to "I think Freud was right." The first case can hardly be called thinking, whereas in the second case, we are unable to provide all the arguments. Nevertheless, we are expressing the claim. Hence, we must be exerting some form of power. What exactly this power is that we exert, remains the question.
Let's demonstrate this right away. I thought for example that our being has become plural since we use phones. I are sitting in my chair waiting for a call and talking to you. I are receiving that call while I try to signal you by nodding my head that I will talk on the phone for no more than ten minutes. I are sorry for that. Now here's something I thought. You probably say "he, this is weird" and you think of an argument against it. It is one person after all, doing several things simultaneously. But my claim is exactly that the person is in the process of being decomposed by the pluripotence of his digital surrounding. You answer to that with some bonmot, and we might have a beautiful discussion about it. In that discussion we are exerting power. We are eventually alone as ambassadors of our own concept of what a person is. We are ambassadors: we don't wage war, but we do exert power.
The movie "dazzle" by the acclaimed Dutch avant garde director Cyrus Frisch was not bad. He had gone through a process of trial and error as he called it, to arrive at a wonderful blend of imagery - and a lot of black screens. The movie is about the relation between Argentina and Holland and was made because of princess Maxima of course, and her father who served in the Videla regime. The concept of guilt was elaborated in an interesting way. I can recommend this movie.
The problems of Argentina. I like to illustrate them by means of yet another short anecdote. I walked about the Abato shopping mall, where the movie theatre is, and entered an electronic store. I asked an employee if they had macho a macho USB plugs. A cable you can plug in your computer and into another computer with an USB-slot to exchange date. But she said they were not available and she didn't know if they exist. There are a lot of USB cables that connect to all different kind of plugs and slots. But not macho a macho. That's the problem with Argentina. There are no macho a macho plugs.
There are big insects here.
Today, I feel a little bit lonely and I decide to put up an ad for myself here.
"young unsuccessful writer, 30 is looking fora devilishly smart open-minded crazy young woman
to travel together and to live an adventurous life with me I can take care of all the expenses and I am perfectly healthy I had my blood values tested last year and I am vaccinated against hepatitis a and b, typhus, cholera, tetanus, smallpox, measles and people that take life too seriously as for my fecundity, I never tested it but I have no reason to have doubts about it please write to: kamielverwer@hotmail.com and put the secret word "mitafora" in the title of your mail as well as its romantic Latin anagram."
We went out and watched some tango. There was a band with a violin player that played pretty well. After the concert I walked into the violin player and asked him hey can I play I miss the feel of a violin's neck sure he said he said you can play wow as I started improvising away to the tango rhythm that was playing in the background good and o how I liked it the feel of an instrument
That night I did not dream about an old lady who was observing me and as soon as I looked back she pointed at me with her stick and yells I am guilty. Of what I stammer of what am I guilty? She keeps pointing and looking at me with this big hazy eyes she points the tip of the grey metal stick towards my chest I feel my heart beating she won't stop staring at me she is staring at me from my conscious. I start thinking that I am guilty of being pointed at and I start apologizing, yammering and creeping on the floor. She has a lot of power, that old lady.
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