Limitless Fire

FROMM, Erich, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1973.

“The term “necrophilous” to denote a character trait rather than a perverse act in the traditional sense, was used by the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno in 1936 on the occasion of a speech by nationalist general Millan Astray at the University of Salamanca, where Unamuno was rector at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The general’s favorite motto was Viva la Muerte! (“Long live death!”) and one of his followers shouted it from the back of the hall. When the general had finished his speech, Unamuno rose and said:

“Just now I heard a necrophilous and senseless cry: “Long live death!” And I, who have spent my life shaping paradoxes which have aroused the uncomprehending anger of others, I must tell you, as an expert authority, that this outlandish paradox is repellent to me. General Millan Astray is a cripple. Let it be said without any slighting undertone. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are too many cripples in Spain just now. And soon there will be even more of them if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that General Millan Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of a Cervantes is wont to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him. (M. de Unamuno, 1936.)

At this Millan Astray was unable to restrain himself any longer. “Abajo la inteligencia! (“Down with intelligence!”) he shouted. “Long life death!” There was a clamor of support for this remark from the Falangists. But Unamuno went on: This is the temple of the intellect. And I am the high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain. I have done. (M. de Unamuno, 1936.)

OBSERVATION: Freud’s theory of life and death instincts are rooted in the idea that man’s striving for life and death are two of the most fundamental principles in man. “Necrophilia in the characterological sense can be described as the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive interest in all that is purely mechanical. It is the passion “to tear apart living structures.” (H. von Hentig, 1964.) How is it that human destructiveness persists, after the recognition of the tragedy and horror it brings to human life? How is it that awareness, and the application of ethical and moral behavior have not become the standard by which all human behavior moves forward? Life, or Death?

Conventional vs. Unconventional Superconductors, Michael R. Norman

“To appreciate these issues, we need to first understand what superconductors are all about, and how unconventional ones differ from their more conventional counterparts. Superconductors are not only perfect conductors (their electrical resistance drops precipitously to zero below a transition temperature Tc), but also exhibit the so-called Meissner effect (6), where they expel magnetic fields. As noted by Fritz London (7), this implies that electrons in superconductors behave in a collective manner. Bosons, which have integer values of a fundamental property known as ‘spin’, can behave in this fashion, whereas electrons, which are fermions that have half-integer spins, typically do not. This apparent contradiction was resolved by Leon Cooper in 1956 (2) who demonstrated that the presence of even an arbitrarily small attractive interaction between the electrons in a solid causes the electrons to form pairs. Because these ‘Cooper pairs’ behave as effective bosons, they can form something analogous to a Bose-Einstein condensate. Rather than being real-space molecules, however, Cooper pairs consist of electrons in time- reversed momentum states and consequently have zero center-of-mass momentum. Because a pair of identical fermions is antisymmetric with respect to the exchange of one fermion with another, the spin and spatial components of the Cooper pair wavefunction must have opposite
exchange symmetries. Thus these pair states are either spin singlets with an even parity spatial component, or spin triplets with odd parity. The spin singlet pair state with an isotropic spatial component (s-wave) turns out to be the one realized in conventional superconductors (3). Despite the fact that electrons repel each other because of the Coulomb force, at low energies there can be an effective attraction resulting from the electron-ion interaction. To understand this, note that a metal is formed by mobile electrons detaching themselves from the atoms that
form the crystalline lattice (these atoms then become positive ions). Such a mobile electron attracts the surrounding ions because of their opposite charge. When this electron moves, a positive ionic distortion is left in its wake. This attracts a second electron, leading to a net
attraction between the electrons. This mechanism works because the ion dynamics is slow compared to the electrons, a consequence of the fact that the ions are much heavier than the electrons. However, the interaction at shorter times becomes repulsive because of the Coulomb
interaction between the electrons; this retardation is what is responsible for limiting Tc (8). Up until the discovery of cuprates, the highest known Tc was only 23K.”

OBSERVATION: We must be thankful to all great thinkers who inhabit our planet. Questions arise when pondering ideas about materials that redefine what we know about matter. What are the limits of the physical? We live in an era of great scientific expansion, and the future will allow us to observe the abstract nature of the human imagination in retrospect. The known, the unknown, that which will be known…………………

WIRE

OBSERVATION: ” Images can transport our thought process, requiring perception, observation, contemplation, interpretation, reaction, conclusion. Art can expose the inner self, causing the individual observer to show his or her own fears, beliefs, intellect. Perhaps, art that is worthy of the name forces the participant into this intimate relation between the art and the self, somehow transforming conscious activity into uncharted conceptual spaces, activating new neural pathways.”

http://nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=576766:-david-kastner&catid=468:catalogue-2011&Itemid=769

Humans have extraordinary capacity for abstract reasoning. Through the years they have developed religious awareness, spiritual life, and assorted elements of mythological, and metaphysical belief. Additionally, the ability to appreciate aesthetic, moral, and ethical behavior have become part of the human psyche. Through self-conscious discipline humans have been able to harness the will. While it is easy to recognize the genius involved in all of these capabilities, humans also function without conscience, building horror upon horror in the lives of others, and in the natural world.

In aesthetics, artists delve into the mysteries of the human capacity for imagination, intuition, expression; a world of the yet unknown. This is the place where art bridges the instinctual with the conscious. At the instinctual level, the human mind invokes, reacts, and processes ideas in an immediate (pre-conscious) way. Prior to the mechanism of conscious intervention, the instinctual creative mind brings to the surface ideas, organizing thoughts from the many regions of the mind, the intellect, the emotions. These processes of inspiration, intuition, instinct, and imagination, all contribute to the ability to foresee that which is intangible. In bringing forth ideas from these complex regions of the mind and brain, the artist transforms idea into a fashioned, constructed manifestation (the form). The medium takes on the characteristics of that original thought, allowing material to act as a cohesive device, a kind of matrix holding ideas in place.

Aesthetic encounter takes the art further, when a viewer, or participant interacts with the concept using powers of perception to draw the idea into the self, merging mind with mind. As the perceptual mechanism absorbs data, feeding the information to the higher functions of the brain, a new impression forms in the viewers mind, perhaps, nearly identical with the original moment of creation, perhaps different, but at the very least becoming a tool, an experience for new and uncharted mental ideation. Art is the catalyst, the enzyme triggering a cascade of secondary responses in the viewer’s mind. Perhaps this is the greatest function of art, where the mind of the viewer takes on new characteristics, new capacity to learn, understand, and feel, becoming immersed in the aesthetic experience.

Each viewer enters this action of aesthetic encounter with unique criteria; perceiving, processing, and making new the art put in place by the artist. Here we find the power of communication evident in the language of art; the tangible, the unknown, beauty, horror, complexity.

Keen, Sam, Apology for Wonder, Harper & Row, 1969.

p 24 “The philosophical term “contingency” most accurately describes one characteristic of objects as they are given to us in wonder. As used here, contingency means that in raw experience the object we apprehend in wonder comes to us without bearing its own explanation. Why it is, or perhaps even what it is, is not immediately obvious. In less philosophical but more modern terminology, wonder-events are happenings, revelatory occurrences which appear, as if by chance, bearing some new meaning (value, promise) which cannot immediately be integrated into a past pattern of understanding and explanation.”

OBSERVATION: Moving through life, observing the passage of time and space, interacting with the inner world of the imagination, and outer world of perceived reality, we begin to recognize the profound nature of all that exists. Whether we try to define the absolute, or whether we simply accept things as they are, moving forward, allowing the mind to ponder the wondrous events we experience, it is important to understand and activate wonder. Tabula rasa, before the indoctrination, free to find profound experience in the mundane, this is the wonder and fascination found in the child’s eye of the mind. Wonder is at the source of who we are as human beings, it is central to the function of the imagination, and helps us recognize the true mysteries of the possible.

Frederick S. Lane, The Decency Wars : The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture
M. Katherine B. Darmer and Robert M. Baird, Morality, Justice, and the Law : The Continuing Debate
Michael Ruse and Christopher A. Pynes, Editors, The Stem Cell Controversy : Debating the Issues, 2nd Edition
Steve F. Sapontzis, Food for Thought : The Debate over Eating Meat
Peg Tittle, Should Parents Be Licensed? : Debating the Issues
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Same-Sex Marriage : The Moral and Legal Debate
M. Katherine B. Darmer and Richard D. Fybel. Editors, National Security, Civil Liberties, and the War on Terror
Edited by Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Death Penalty
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Euthanasia : The Moral Issues
Robert Zubrin, Energy Victory : Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil
Michael Ruse and David Castle, Editors, Genetically Modified Foods : Debating Biotechnology
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Caring for the Dying : Critical Issues at the Edge of Life
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, The Ethics of Abortion : Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, Third Edition
Lee Nisbet, Ph.D., The Gun Control Debate : You Decide, Second Edition
Michael Ruse and Aryne Sheppard, Editors, Cloning : Responsible Science or Technomadness?
Robert M. Baird, Reagan Ramsower, and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Cyberethics : Social and Moral Issues in the Computer Age
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Hatred, Bigotry, and Prejudice : Definitions, Causes, & Solutions
Robert M. Baird, William Loges, and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, The Media and Morality
Jeffrey A. Schaler & Magda E. Schaler, Smoking : Who Has the Right?
Robert M. Baird & Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Pornography : Private Right or Public Menace?
Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., Drugs : Should We Legalize, Decriminalize, or Deregulate?
John Donnelly, Suicide : Right or Wrong?
Robert M. Baird and M. Katherine Baird, Editors, Homosexuality : Debating the Issues
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Punishment and the Death Penalty : The Current Debate
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Animal Experimentation : The Moral Issues
Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, Editors, Morality and the Law
Kristina Borjesson, Into the Buzzsaw : Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA, Elusive Peace: How Modern Diplomatic Strategies Could Better Resolve World Conflicts
Al J. Venter, The Road to Nuclear Armament: The Third World Threat
Steven K. O’Hern, The Intelligence Wars: Lessons from Baghdad
Ann Fagan Ginger, Challenging U.S. Human Rights Violations Since 9/11 : Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute
Lewis S. Feuer, Imperialism and the Anti-Imperialist Mind
Eliezer J. Sternberg, Are You a Machine? : The Brain, the Mind, and What It Means to Be Human
Josias Semujanga, Origins of the Rwandan Genocide

OBSERVATION: In order to function as a thinking and productive human being it is necessary to grasp and understand information. Without access to data, we are left in the blind. Without the ability to imagine, interact, and communicate we are also left blind. It is only by actively participating in the life of ideas where we contact, process, and interpret information that we have any opportunity to exist beyond the mundane.