it is such a scary thought that at some point organic life started to consume organic life. like, how the hell did that happen?
the fact that internal mechanisms developed to translate one form of energy to another is already astounding. but this process initially has to be from inorganic to organic. inorganic compounds translated into organic ones, and in the process creating enough energy that moves internal structures of the organism around. it is kind of amazing that stuff developed in such a way that protons, electrons, enzymes, and more can be synthesized, moved about, and bound to specific structures that further the process.
and then one day some punk archaea decided, oh, instead of processing the sun, lets try processing another archaea. like wtf.
i am thinking about this because the initial movement of self-consciousness satisfying itself as self-consciousness BEGINS with cannibalism instead of cannibalism being some kind of accident.
The I either sacrifice itself or sacrifice the other, two sides of the same desire to find identity in apparent differences. the motive force in butler’s reading in this process is the idea that freedom is exclusively attached to this i and this i thinks there can be no other that has it. it is about freedom as exclusive property and its authority of this claim to freedom. like, what the fuck. how the hell does exclusivity, property, and confrontation just show up as somehow necessary in the process of hegelian consciousness developing into self-consciousness?
i was really mad about this. i am still very mad about this, like what the fuck. then i realized – if one takes desire and desire satisfaction as the varying principle of phenomenology, there is no room for something like trust that allows the danger and ambiguity letting another self-consciousness live as it like, guessing that it is like this i, and not assuming that freedom is an exclusive property.
jay have said something along the lines of, the truth of self-consciousness is not the experience of self-consciousness. which is to say there can be a lot of different models of self-consciousness encountering each other and how this encounter would unfold. they can do this forever and not having the truth because they’ve been living on trust and faith.
and all it takes to devolve whatever caring coexistence is a conflict. 无事时不知轻重. killing comes so accidentally and lightly as an action before one’s ever encountered it, either as a story or as an experience. in the end killing happens all the time between this i and whatever this i has consumed. the death of that self-consciousness can be a metaphysical revelation for this i and this i then moves forward into the next hegelian circle, or it can mean nothing, and this i is stuck here perhaps forever. nothing is promised in the fight to the death but it does present the possibility of the truth of self-consciousness. and that’s all that matters to hegel. cannibalism is an and possibly the only ontological opportunity to “move” properly in hegel
which is so fucked. only when this i conceptualizes freedom as exclusive property does this i reach the possibility of understanding better what is this i. you are not promised growth for killing but if you don’t kill you will never grow is what butler and jay think what hegel is saying. and i fucking hate that.
it is not denying that trust and faith and whatever other stuff can be experienced, but they are not essential in so far as rationality is trying to understand desire and self-consciousness in complete metaphysical terms that have left no room of significance to trust. ontologically rationality does not want to depend on trust. its truth comes from within, not without. which i guess is kind of ironic that this is the basis of an interdependent model. and irony is a somewhat nice consolation prize.
basically hegel also has a state of nature, but his solution is horizontal instead of vertical like hobbes.
which is not good enough.
is there no other model for the truth of self-consciousness? fuck please let me think of a different model of self-consciousness that does not require exclusivity nor property as constitutive concepts.
why would this i be scandalized or get mad at another self-consciousness for not being what this i thinks it is? if there are other attitudes, can it lead to the articulation of self-consciousness?
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