Aphorisms VII

On Society

The greatest accomplishment of capitalism lies not in its having overcome slavery, but on the contrary, in its having made it so universally acceptable.

We are each of us guilty until proven innocent. From before our birth we are given a name embroiled in a feud, given a nationality guilty of murder, given a religion that condemns non-believers to hell, and a state that controls our education, beliefs and morals, and then we are given the right to fight and die for it all. We are born under the weight of the sins and crimes of ages from which we must, each of us, prove ourselves innocent.

Racism displays nothing if not laziness of mind and insipidity of intellect. There are so many more interesting ways to discriminate people. Racism is so impersonal.

Our own inflated and false sense of national virtue is directly proportional to our inflation and falsification of other nations’ vice.

The weight of the past must be lightened, but any lightness shown in dealing with the past must be weighed.

Rather than priding ourselves on what we’ve coincidentally been born with (nationality, religion, class, property, race, family) we’d do much better priding ourselves on what will be born from us. Having thus forsaken nobility, we can become truly noble.

The most valuable thing for humans (i.e. culture, language, tradition) is that which both precedes our birth and will succeed our death – in other words, that which defines us and yet is oblivious to us.

Not even the most repressive totalitarian regime can suppress freedom of thought. But then who’s ever been afraid of mutes?

Ninety percent of any given population in any given country wouldn’t care less about what system they lived under. They could put up with even the worst tyranny so long as it is consistent, familiar, and predictable.

The Law is the best excuse yet for rapine, pillage and murder, providing for the most efficient exercise of such crimes. It exudes an aura of objective impersonality which gives its upholders the perfect cover for the exercise and satisfaction of their subjective personality.

Military service can indeed serve a useful function by temporarily relieving the intelligent of their burden while gratifying the stupid in their stupidity.

Religion and nationalism can serve a useful purpose in that it can give opportunity for otherwise mediocre people to experience a genuine and lasting sense of superiority and empowerment.

Modern religious movements are radical, if not militant, because they bring forth a faith – the validity of which rests on an unquestioning belief in its fundamental tenets – into a pluralist socio-political system which is founded on an unquestioning belief that everything must at least be allowed to be questioned.

The battles of our times are fought not on fields, but in – and for – the human mind, which has had its capacity for defense weakened, and is now a new battlefield, as open and vulnerable as the fields that once lay outside our cities.

Language doesn’t define a nation. Odor does.

Modernity: The most efficient usage of time, and the most efficient wastage of life.

The upper middle class is a democratized aristocracy. The lower middle class is an aristocratized working class. That’s why the former romanticize the working class while the latter despise them.

Authenticity is to the bourgeoisie what historical relics are to the archeologist: the authentic is something lost, rare, forgotten, in need of constant search and discovery, and, ultimately, something to be reproduced and treasured, but only so far as it is extracted from the conditions and circumstances which gave it birth. The bourgeoisie are thus avid and desperate collectors of estranged authenticity, because that’s what they left behind when they cashed in an authentic life for the padded cushy comfort of security behind wallpaper and a cubicle.

The bourgeoisie have always had a love-hate relationship with the aristocracy. They hated the aristocracy because they were not one of them, but having soundly defeated them now, the bourgeoisie have a desire to be aristocrats themselves. This is why the bourgeoisie compete so ruthlessly for honors and accomplishments among themselves, because they are all trying to prove they are aristocrats, if not by blood and birth, then at least by taste, education, social standing, manners, etiquette and self-importance – in other words, in all the criteria that an aristocrat could once take for granted, but which the bourgeoisie must now compete tooth-and-nail to claim for themselves.

Insincerity is the glue of society, which in turn is like Plato's cave in reverse: Our shadows are reflected out of the cave and into the world with the melancholy fire of our insecurities and complexes burning from behind them, deep in the darkest recesses of our psyches, and projecting mere shadows of ourselves out into the world, when our true selves remain hidden in caves.

If there’s one thing the bourgeoisie and their pets have in common it’s that they all have to wear collars.

On Art

The artist is much more at ease in leaving his/her art uncommented on than is the admirer. For as any artist knows, the significance of art is not to be found in its content or form, but first and foremost in the act of its creation.

Once a work of art is public, it belongs to the public, it is universal property. To possess an artwork and to sell it to mankind in return for money is the grossest kind of tastelessness.

Art is the ontological void’s consciousness of itself through us.

Many believe the artist creates art, but that’s only half of it. Art also creates the artist in the process of its own creation.

The only pursuit worthwhile in life is an artistic pursuit. Art should be both the end and the means of life, but it can’t give it meaning. In fact, if life had a meaning, art would cease to exist. Art would be impossible because it would be ridiculous.

The only truly satisfying pursuit is through art... and the only true recognition comes from people seeing your work, not your face. The vapid, narcissistic insipidities of social conspicuity are trivial compared to the recognition that can be reaped by way of your trans-existence as art, as a thing that can neither be seen nor touched, but only shared in the act - and consummation - of your creation.

Art: Any artifact (i.e. man-made thing) which, through aesthetic and conceptual qualities inherent in the artifact itself, can make the observer think about things other than the artifact itself while at the same time encapsulating the observer, the artifact and the thoughts conjured into one mystic whole in the process of observation. Any artifact that can manage to do that is truly a work of art.