Weird Studies/Technic and Magic

03 Nov 2022 07:59 - 03 Nov 2022 07:06
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    • Bill Hicks Marketing bit! One of my faves too.
    • In a world of technic, nothing exists for itself, its part of a system.
    • Book "retains its (academic) guild card", but it's a Trojan horse for non-secular things that you usually would have to go to your local occult bookshop for. True enough (and as they say, WS occupies a similar position).
    • mentions Birhane episode Weird Studies/Mechanical Dollhouse – but digital double is not the same as the person, who thinks they are? "under the domain of absolute language" but nobody thinks that. Is putting bios or particular cultural markings in you twitter bio making you a victim of Technic?
    • OK one point of hard agreement: JFM critiquing the modern form of identity, where people seem to have a desperate need to put labels on themselves (gender, etc). We may be coming from very different intellectual places but we can agree that there's something wrong with the kids today.
    • They express some disdain for Campagna's refusal to offer self-help, or more deeply to choose a side or acknowledge a single given reality. The idea we can just pick Technic or Magic as the foundation of the world is itself a Technic (bad) idea.
    • They point out that Campagna isn't saying anything that new, he's just taking the 300-year old romantic critique (seen in Blake, hippies, etc) of rationalism and putting it in a fancy structure.
    • JFM defined "creationism" in an interesting and non-standard way, which I can't recall but some of the exemplars were Chesterton. Opposed to emanationism, attributed to al-Ghazali, that God is involved in every causal act. Also called "brutalist". The idea that causation is always deep-down creation, the world is NOT simply a law-following mechanism. Malebranche, Messalioux, etc.
    • Technic as a satanic parody of a real metaphysics (but Campagna can't quite go there, despite his obvious disdain for Technic). JFM traces this back to atheism.
    • Magic as a form of alterity and liberation. PF stands shoulder-to-shoulder despite reservations. Erik Davis and Victoria Nelson other fighters in this army – I think they are opening up the very purpose of WS. Cool. WS is ironic because "studies" already puts you in the world of Techne.