Pessimism and human History

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e_dog
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Pessimism and human History

Post by e_dog » March 20th, 2006, 1:21 am

Th. Adorno (paraphrase):

'There is no universal history going from savagery to humanitarianism; but there is one going from the slingshot to the megaton bomb.'

against Kant's idea of universal history as an optimistic account of the teleology of human destiny, justifying human nature by its future attainment of a state of cosmopolitan peace, prosperity.

Bush gives the gift of nukes to India. Pakistan watches in jealousy. diplomacy is a warm gun.

the bomb is holy. -- Corso (or was it Ginsberg?)

We're all gonna die.

Who will speak at the funeral of the Last Man? what poetic elegies will be piped from what computerized sound machine?

our waste, our artifacts will be the legacy of mankind. space capsules floating in a devoided void.

Nirvana is a death fantasy. Heaven a childish daydream. Only hell is real; hell is the Real, in a social-psychoanalytic sense. All sense is nonsense. Nonsense is a better type of sense. [Originally: a better typo sense.]

We are all going to die.

What will you do, in the mean time/s?
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

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Post by stilltrucking » March 22nd, 2006, 12:56 pm

Well

I could live in hope and die in despair

Or I might live in despair and die in hope

All the suffering going on in the world

Meanwhile I am very comfortable.

I have a roof over my head

Food in the fridge

Books to read

The sky is blue

The grass is green

The trees are budding leaves

Spring is here

Life is sweet for me

F*ck you kid, I got mine

words to live by

These days

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Post by stilltrucking » April 5th, 2006, 3:41 pm

Literature has played an important part in the mourning of
catastrophic events. . . ., in the negotiation between the historical givens
and theunderlying and unconscious consequences of trauma.
Linda Belau
Topologies of Trauma (NY: Other Press, 2002), xxv.

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/2005/proc/vanouse.pdf

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Post by e_dog » April 5th, 2006, 11:52 pm

What's that quote mean? is she saying that everyone is traumatized by historical events or that traumatic experiences color our perception of events in history, or both of these things at once?

The Interpretation of Trauma. Traum is the German word for Dream, is it not?
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

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Post by stilltrucking » April 7th, 2006, 9:23 pm

Good questions e-dog.

Truth be told the quote has nothing to do with pessimism in human history. I see that now I was googling "Mourning and Melanchlolia" and stumbled onto it. I just liked it. I was googling Plath and her reference to Freud in her journals.



I suppose it might relate in some way in that Hemingway was mourning for Spain.
Hemingway is “mourning” the loss of an environment of idealism in the Republic, the crushing of the efforts to resist Fascism, and even a kind of loss of Spain itself. One Loyalist in the novel observes, for example, “If the Republic lost it would be impossible for those who
believed in it to live in Spain” (143). Freud’s discussion of mourning devotes more space 3 to issues in mourning the death of an individual object than to loss of an abstraction or ideal. Freud notes, however, that both kinds of loss impose a long process of emotional healing:
Withdrawal of libido is not a process that can be accomplished in a
moment but must certainly be, like grief, one in which progress is slow and gradual” (“Mourning,”137).
I been thinking about Vonnegut lately and his pessimism. I wonder how much of it is age related?

These are our years of tears.

What rough beast is slouching towards Washington DC after Bush is gone. President Rice?

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