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"The world is forever spawning Damned Things - things that are neither tree nor shrub, fish nor fowl, black nor white - and the categorical thinker can only regard the spiky and buzzing world of sensory fact as a profound insult to his card-index system of classifications. Worst of all are the facts which violate "common sense", that dreary bog of sullen prejudice and muddy inertia. The whole history of science is the odyssey of a pixilated card-indexer perpetually sailing between such Damned Things and desperately juggling his classifications to fit them in, just as the history of politics is the futile epic of a long series of attempts to line up the Damned Things and cajole them to march in regiment.

Every ideology is a mental murder, a reduction of dynamic living processes to static classifications, and every classification is a Damnation, just as every inclusion is an exclusion. In a busy, buzzing universe where no two snow flakes are identical, and no two trees are identical, and no two people are identical - and, indeed, the smallest sub-atomic particle, we are assured, is not even identical with itself from one microsecond to the next - every card-index system is a delusion. "Or, to put it more charitably," as Nietzsche says, "we are all better artists than we realize." It is easy to see that label "Jew" was a Damnation in Nazi Germany, but actually the label "Jew" is a Damnation anywhere, even where anti-Semitism does not exist. "He is a Jew," "He is a doctor," and "He is a poet" mean, to the card indexing centre of the cortex, that my experience with him will be like my experience with other Jews, other doctors, and other poets. Thus, individuality is ignored when identity is asserted.

At a party or any place where strangers meet, watch this mechanism in action. Behind the friendly overtures there is wariness as each person fishes for the label that will identify and Damn the other. Finally, it is revealed: "Oh, he's an advertising copywriter," "Oh, he's an engine-lathe operator." Both parties relax, for now they know how to behave, what roles to play in the game. Ninety-nine percent of each has been Damned; the other is reacting to the one percent that has been labeled by the card-index machine."

-- Hagbard Celine, Never Whistle While You're Pissing.


Which should, hopefully, explain why I don't like introducing myself.

One minor detail: I used to go by episkopos. Just in case you need or want to know.



L'INTERNET C'EST LES AFFAIRS SERIEUSE bit:

The jolly old Internet does like to chuck the word 'friend' around, doesn't it?

If you're on my list, I find your Internet-talky-words interesting, and if you're not on my list any more, I no longer find your Internet-talky-words interesting, at least at the moment. It's probably me, not you. No obligation to return the dubious favour of adding/removing is present. If you add me I may not add you back. Depends on those Internet-talky-words of yours and how interesting I find them.

I dislike Internet Drama. Please don't bring it in here. It stains the carpet like you wouldn't believe.

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