“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, December 2, 2024

You're Going to Want to Read This

You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding by Timothy Morton

The First Transmission Scream of Timotheodoradorno

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Thursday, November 28, 2024

Andy Wilson's Amazing Review of Hell

 It's a wondrous text in its own right, the kind of thing that you'll want to read whether or not you read my book: 


Retipped Arrows of Desire (Vala Redux) by Andy Wilson

My review of Tim Morton's Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology, from the recently published Vala #5, journal of The Blake Society. You can download Vala #5 here.

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Monday, November 25, 2024

Secondary Gain in Psychotherapy: The World as Trump and Trump-presentation

 I've always had trouble understanding this concept. But now I understand why I have trouble understanding this concept.

It's because I'm so aware of it. 

I'm not only aware of secondary gain, I'm aware of tertiary, quaternary, quinary gain. It is an uncanny Doctor House ability that makes me not fun in certain situations, and very good at reading poems. 

What does it mean? 

Something that seems unpleasant might be pleasant at a deeper level. Think drug addiction. The death drive. 

It's like a set of gears. The higher gears contain the lower ones. The point of psychoanalysis is deconstructing the higher gears into the lower ones and figuring out how the lower ones might be interfering with the higher ones. 

It's on the side of mercy, via the paradoxical pathway of murder. 

Because of being a survivor (read my new book) of really heavy stuff (really heavy) I see not only people's secondary gain but all the way to their quinary gain. It's how I sussed out Trump immediately. 

It's how Trump operates. It's where he lives. He doesn't get the higher levels at all. Everyone is out to get everyone. The world as Trump and Trump representation. Even famous sonofabitch Roy Cohn didn't realize Trump was lower than him. He got caught into his own game and in the movie he weeps as Trump gives him a paltry child's birthday cake with sparklers at the dining room in Mar a Lago as he dies of AIDS. 

Trump inhabits a Schopenhauerian universe in which to eat the other is to eat himself. Everything is Trump, struggling for existence.
Musk not knowing this is like the mildly sadistic guy in the horror movie whistling blithely as he walks around underneath the Alien mother's body.

Musk has no idea what he's let himself in for. He's like a five year old child using a one year old child as his ersatz father because his real father was cruel. He's like the idiot in a horror movie, sadistic in his own way but really advanced compared with Alien.  

So I have had trouble understanding the concept because I see the tertiary gain within the secondary gain. Look at these examples Google found: 

"A patient may receive medical treatment and also gain benefits like paid time off or extra attention from family." 

Okay, I get that one. And yet, I don't: when I first read it, I thought it was saying that the patient enjoys NOT being healed because this also gets them even more time off and attention. 

But then: 

"A person may work hard to achieve financial security, but sacrifice relationships with loved ones to repay debt." 

Tertiary gain: they ENJOY sacrificing those relationships. They love destroying themselves like that. 

And now: 

"A person may continue to smoke cigarettes despite knowing it causes cancer to avoid feeling bad about themselves." 

Tertiary gain: they LOVE feeling bad about themselves. They get off on poisoning themselves with cigarettes. 

And the final one was really hard for me to get: 

"A person with chronic pain may not like spending time with their partner's friends, but their partner doesn't pressure them to go to social events when they're in pain." 

Tertiary gain: the person LOVES hurting their partner like that. 

Quaternary gain: the person LOVES being kept in a prison by the partner. 

Quinary gain: murder-suicide for all! 


Deliver Us from Evil

 

Deliver Us from Evil by Timothy Morton

Notes towards my third theological essay

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Saturday, November 23, 2024

OMFG

White Supremacist Jerks from Space


...Prometheus (the Alien prequel) is a 100% undiluted Christian Ecology film. 

😮😮😮😮😮😮

Naturally the director of the film doesn't know what he's talking about  compared with me lololol

I've trying to figure this film out, compulsively, since 2012. I can't tell you the sense of relief as it finally slotted into place. I had to create Christian ecology to figure it out. There's no way I could've done this 12 years ago. 

I must confess I hated what I saw as the bleak anthropocentric nihilism of the film. Good news. It doesn't really exist.  

I'm going to be writing and lecturing about this for ages. 

As a survivor I see art as weird potentially dangerous beings that I have to figure out. Interpretation is a compulsion not a choice, like for Doctor House. 

Twelve years. It took twelve years. 

Friday, November 15, 2024

Mother Did It Have to Be So Literal

 "And the worms ate into his brain" 


government of the brain worms, by the brain worms, and for the brain worms by Jeff Tiedrich

what could possibly go wrong?

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Wednesday, November 13, 2024

My Lecture at Charles University, Prague (November 1)


It was wonderful to do this lecture,  you will find a lot in in and in the Q&A. 

Thursday, November 7, 2024

Stop. Stop. Stop it. Stop it now.

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Do. Not. Obey. In. Advance.

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Listen up GOOD

The Devil as Pop Star:
My Dad's Favorite Character in His Favorite Film



Listen up good, said the son of a very handsome and compelling psychopath who was in movies and hypnotized his kids: THE DEMOCRATS AND KAMALA did NOTHING wrong.
Listen up. Stop the self attack. Stop it. This is narcissistic self attack based on, the abusive father is harder to attack than oneself. Trust me. My dad was a handsome compelling psychopath and was in movies and in a massive crime syndicate. (The Kray Twins.)
Bernie--shut the eff up. No one screwed up by not talking to class (instead of gender and race) enough. You tried that already. The Communists tried it already in 1933. Guess what happened. It's BECAUSE of this very fact--that you don't see that race and gender are FOUNDATIONAL--that you and others screw up against this stuff.
Listen, like my dad his followers got slightly abused (or a lot) as by a pick up artists and the horrible thing is, because of patriarchy and white supremacy and punching down, they LIKED it. Sadism.
So don't do it. DON'T. Liam, don't. It's masochistic self-loathing which is what got us INTO this jam. What always does.
If my dad had been rich and had a TV show HE would now be the most successful dictator ever. He's the most successful ever, now, isn't he?
Kamala found the RIGHT chemicals. She DID propaganda. It WAS effective. Dancing, joy, humor, smile, Tim Walz's truck.
But by then, WWF media with its ableist fetish (hence Biden is a loser) had messed us up. And America is fascist-ready (Adorno). And the Civil War. And we were already a concentration camp (slavery).
So DO NOT for one frickin SECOND do this attack thing to yourself and other people. Stop it. STOP IT.
It is on occasions like these that I remember why Ripley is my favorite, as she is Kamala's.
My friend whose mom was a terrible and terrifying NPD was crying on my phone on the night saying she must be stupid and naive. This is what this does.
He's a gigantic MADMAN with a tv show and lots and lots of money.
Hey, stop it--I saw you about to chew your own arm off there.

Fun fact: Bernie was the first person to yell "All lives matter!" -- a stupid mistake that was instinctive given his prejudice that class underpins race and gender (hint from theory class: it's the other way around, jerk). This was the slogan the right used to hurt us, shortly after. But it was BERNIE who yelled it first. How freaking dare you, one day after she loses to that monster.


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Somebody, Anybody, Everybody Scream.

 


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Monday, November 4, 2024

MLK Talks Forgiveness

 I forgave my father two years ago. It was a sensation, forgiveness. A totally strange, totally wonderful, totally recognizable sensation, despite my never having felt it before. It's not just a formal act. It has a feel to it. 

I found this in my mail today. 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considers the power of love that Jesus revealed at his death:  

Few words in the New Testament more clearly and solemnly express the magnanimity of Jesus’ spirit than that sublime utterance from the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” [Luke 23:34]. This is love at its best.… 

The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of revenge. [Humanity] has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, [people] continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.  

Jesus eloquently affirmed from the cross a higher law. He knew that the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind. He did not seek to overcome evil with evil. He overcame evil with good. Although crucified by hate, he responded with [forceful] love.  

What a magnificent lesson! Generations will rise and fall; [people] will continue to worship the god of revenge and bow before the altar of retaliation; but ever and again this noble lesson of Calvary will be a nagging reminder that only goodness can drive out evil and only love can conquer hate. 

Sunday, November 3, 2024