sloterdijk, you must change your life — notes
in reading various traditions of ascetic philosophy, i came to certain similar conclusions that religion has always been a worldwide conspiracy towards one same, although differently aestheticized ascetics, and am sad to hear that slaughterdyke managed to snap this idea from me a decade and a half before i could develop it, but also thankful that i get to dunk on whatever things i think he misses throughout, although i'll be more focused on dealing with the substantive issue itself and his use of stylistics than his deconstructive methodology of it more than half the time i reckon - with the gained preknowledge that i did overestimate his normative push in my first few notes as it already was
6 - 1: the stoics feel they both must resist the unsightly and stomach the unwary, as if theres a contradiction between their expected stomaching and their naturalization of the banality of what is to stomach. ascetic expectations are also counterbalanced with new age spiritualistic decay in a gnostic extremism, but i didnt feel much new was said on the topic. patanjali was evoked rightfully so, the jesus quote shows a bit of a reckless side i didnt expect, telling the child to die tomorrow after kissing him is a smart move, but i do think it could go either way, so long as you aren't afraid to say it, then its a problem. the 'exorcism of the spirits of the world' is a nice way to describe asceticism, abandonding villages is just an anime plotline though. reality being a plague, slough of filth, and so on. the page is also over-referenced
6 - 2: very recursive chapter, kind of felt like the plotline of castlevania with everyone gathering around and avengers assembling. the general motive hits quite well, but even three pages feels overdrawn for not much happening. still pleasant to read though as always. i also believe that surveying the world from the edges of it, turning it into a quasi theatre and an offensive departure to those supposedly less virtuous that are left behind, is a non problem, but thats because i think asceticism is already the normative layout, i just hardly see how it necessitates a departure, most of us have already deperated, i just see it as hardly offensive at all. those who return to survey the world, are they really surveying anything anyone cares about? the cynical remnants of the non abandoned (but still abandoned) world will ask how the vacation in the monastery was, given theyre hardly having much more fun having not supposedly abandoned the world anyways, right?
6 - 3: it is quite ironic in retrospect to the previous chapter review, given this one focuses solely precisely on the originality of the eccentric successionism, this time on the spaces they create to escape the world, slaughterdyke gives a broader outline categorization of them but mostly through naming, such as the space station and the car park, places you cannot go uninvited, or at the very least are symbolically closed off in the sense of it isnt warranted to go there unless youre part of the inner infrastructure, then later suggesting you can also retreat outside of yourself, first by laypersons being politically involved in a simulated retreat, later commodified into your diary, meaning here it is apparent that retreats spatially do suggest a hierarchical elitism. however, i think that what is apparent and quite ironic about this is that the concept of missing out is essential to developing the degree to which one does miss out on the retreat, and you dont have to tie this to desire necessarily, but slaughterdyke weaponizes space in a way that also makes the superiority of the successionism hard to ignore. in a sense, the culture produced there cant be a layperson culture just because categorically its eccentric intensivity is of a higher order, which is far more appealing, but the layperson-ness of the eccentric type itself must also be put into question, be it, how much of a political attitude did they hold over their own degree of superior abandonment, when buddha left his house or when the stylites san on the throne of torture? the diary journal is also an optimization tool, if anything you dont always manage to use these things to escape yourself, its been swallowed by regulatory cybernetics quite well as well.
6 - 4: something about this paragraph is annoying. for one, it is unclear even to the dyke killer whether self-acquisition is valuable as a mode of operation distinct from world-relinquishment in the sense of novelty, in that yes, it does pronounce various onto-ethical or i guess anthropotechnic visions of excess, in that the external becomes a burdensome disenchanting investigation, and this does allow you to task your own body as the only sequentional series you're in control of, kind of like a sims gameplay but with your own cells or something, be it you're an ancient yogi, but it does highlight the confusion, beginning from 'at first glance, this must result in a radically asymmetrical ... division, as my power and my significance, compared to that of all other ... powers, are virtually zero.' and immediately after with 'this distinction assigns a significance to me - though not necessarily a power - that is virtually infinite'. this narrowly defined space or influence is not the birth of the subject through the inner world of the human, as suggested, but simply the highlighted function of the ascetic. what is being posited is a control that has an interest-rate, it has the chance to become a form of novel influence, power isnt of the question here. the significance of the own against the non-own of the rest of the world is hardly asymmetrically influential, it is asymmetrically powerless, but the category of influence isnt the category of differential comparativity, it is not categorically necessary to assume that the burden of having to balance suddenly against the power of the rest actually causes any substantial anthropotechnic novelty, all it does is highlight an aesthetic perversion, one that is self-justified almost regardless of the ascetic juxtaposition. ascetics can be a fundamental mode, hardly an inventive successivity, even eccentricity itself could be the laymen's vechile, the problem is quite frankly one of not being able to know or assume the level of dispersal that the ascetic actually suggests.
extra: his theory is nuanced enough to allow for what we can call a direction rather than a structural hypocrisy. to some extent hes playing the role of the incomplete too, even with some latent assumptions built in, theres still that aspect of hesitation involved with approaching the topic where he isnt positing things enough for them to really take the primary role in the text dont you think? which is why when we say hybridity irt. dichotomies, we think of the positing of problems as directions maybe instead of mistakes requiring resolution
6 - 5: shore subjectivity can be perceived as an emulsified phallic-existential contrivation, only enabled by the subtle and inqurious, patiently fair or deliberate tone of its request, the search for world-sense is no different between the fourteen year old who has not been exposed to creative onto-cosmology, and the seventy year old who has parsed every common narrative trope in existence with assured complexity, and the dichotomy drawn here is derivative, the use of the word individual to describe shore subjectivity in the subtitle toxic, but, this time ill argue if self-insulation is necessary to escape the river, or if accepting the river is a precondition for swimming between tropes as a way of felt responsibility in a kantian way towards the suredness of the world, which ties back into the earlier motif in the review of questioning if eccentricity is novel or not. but with the added problem of ascetic complacency. this was definitely not a necessary chapter. edit: on further review, i'm attacking the chapter too hard for positing the shore, even though slaughterdyke himself points how even stoics go back and fourth and the shore isnt insinuated as so heroic, noted that i went overboard with this angle, but i'm not mad at it
6 - 6: continuing the unnerving trend of categorizing individualistic attentivity with ascetic subjectivity, this chapter would've felt wasted if not for conspiracy over buddha's intentions and the model of the role of the role model. the end of the paragraph also features four different sentences all roughly translating to "the role of asceticism is mastery over the self", which, in and of itself isnt that offensive, if not for our slightly higher expectations when entering this text. this point here stands as not to make fun of slaughterdyke, but more of almost everyone else.
6 - 7: an accidentally extremely strong section reminds that slaughterdyke's attempt to paint asceticism as eccentric is most of the time the attempt at stifling the creative passions entirely instead of building up aristocratic orgies in space shuttles, with hardly any attempted motive at a creative re-calibration that transforms the world, seemingly. what the hell is going on here between what can be taken for granted whilst reading the text and then the previous memories held about ascetic practices in general pertaining to there in fact not being an integral worldview supported by radical ascetics? it might be the integral worldview as a structural deliniation that was supposed, but this still leaves out how barren the 'inner temple' seems in comparison to the idea of some radical political break as pertaining to the symbolic shore, in regards to the actual political construction of the "own" subject, what exactly is owned by the ascetic other than imposed minor communal mania, departure and the iconfigure-inspiration that is being hinted at? the private language starvation point is especially strong in support of the idea of a transformative political construction by the ascetics, and it does also remind that hivemind language-forms develop into successive creative depravation, so this is something consistent. edit: i suppose i can give slaughterdyke more liberty here, he isn't raising the enlightened subject as the master, his “interim government” point shows that this is clear. edit: i am slightly hinting at the idea here that the private language can be barren, but also suggesting i do believe it can be creatively rich and endowed even whilst being isolated, but do question its source of inspiration. i do however posit that its a strong point from here regarding that anyways, i just generally question if the ascetic is as inspired as slaughterdyke posits, even if he is simply deconstructing rather than normativizing, take it as a reaction to the direction of the language then..
6 - 8: the view of fatalism expressed here is deeply ironic in its foundational inquiry, as fatalism as a movement of lifestyle pessimism is fundamentally intolerable as anything but what slaughterdyke already identifies as a fundamentally motivated resignation, active masochistic abandonment of acted value interference with the happenings of the world, not even the rest of the world but the world at 'rest' - the world including yourself. but, fatalism can simply be a compulsion towards the forgetful unmatterings of the self, an imposed unmattering, the fatalistic message, fatalistic act and fatalistic condition are best considered when dully seperated, and slaughterdyke never points to this idea, he strictly behaves towards ancient fatalism with the attitude of resignative inquiry rather than a proactive inquiry of resignation. this is why masochism for him in this section feels more like an impotence than a capacity. gosala's philosophy doesnt have to be stuck in the meinlanderian paradox of determinism causes active incapacity whilst promoting reactive capacity (the two cancel eachother out methodologically) because the satisfaction of the idea of impotence neednt translate even to felt active impotence at all, does no fatal ascetic feel this?
6 - 9: wonderful section, it is difficult to consider that the great other must have more imposed weight than the cocky self, for the self-assured cynicism must drop, in correlation with the removal of the passions, actually drying out the inner character, does it not? ascetics can hardly innovate eccentricity if they are fulfilling the role of unevenly splitting the wrong side of themselves - the punishing characterless observer who holds all the character holds a distant character of greater extent than the one sinking from the torture of no-longer-self-imposition. the technique is also intuitional, one feels the need to build statues with eyes, totems of symbolic surveillance when one is alone, but must feel compelled to follow these rules only when you really do schizophrenically cross the division line where you are finally obeying the commands of a greater force than yourself. its difficult to still fully admit the impact of the individual on the paradigm of the modern civilization as pseudoascetic, although the idea on its own is attractive, the source origin of the paradigm mustnt be the individual in order for the ascetic to still struggle on the obeying of the false other to the recognition of the lack of self pipeline, at least seemingly so. the point about the inability for totalistic dualisms when dogmatism was still the cosmological objective point is also quite sure!