aimless wandering
Aimless Wandering – Chuang Tzu’s Chaos Linguistics (1996) by hakim bey
via 6 pg kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-aimless-wandering]
notes/quotes:
1
The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it, catch the fish and you forget the bait. The snare is the means to get the rabbit where you want it, catch the rabbit and forget the snare. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it, catch on to the idea and you forget about the words. Where shall I find a man who forgets about words, and have a word with him?
lanier beyond words law et al
-Chuang Tzu
Well, yes and no. Religious Taoism certainly established such a back-reading. But, as J. Needham pointed out, the Maoists of our century were able to evolve a Marxist reading of Taoism, or at least of the Tao Te Ching. No doubt any reading of a “spiritual” text may have some validity (since the spirit is by definition indefinable); the Tao Te Ching has proved especially malleable.
Supernaturalism and materialism both appear equally funny to him. His only cosmogonic principle is “chaos”.
It qualifies as “revelation” not because it unveils hidden knowledge from “outside” the self – as other scriptures claim to do – but because it transmits a sure way to “spiritual realization”, SELF-realization, in this lifetime, in this body, in this daily life. If this way or method can be summed up in one word, one might say spontaneity; and if this term were to be “defined”, one might mention the phrase wei wu wei, “action/non-action”.
fromm spontaneous law et al..
2
Chuang Tzu has no interest in why humans are so inept (no concept of “sin”); his only concern is to reverse the process and “return” to the flow. The “return” is an action; the flow itself is not an action but a state – hence the paradox “action/non-action”.
the assumption that if the rule does nothing (wu wei) the empire will run itself spontaneously. Chuang Tzu however shows almost no interest in advising rulers (except to leave him alone!), ..His “program” could be summed up in the phrase AIMLESS WANDERING.
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. [again].. for (blank)’s sake..
To illustrate this chaos-ontology we could do worse than investigate Chuang Tzu’s take on language.
But first let me define a few terms. I call hermetalinguistics the concept that God revealed language and that there exists such a thing as the conveyance of essence through language. This conveyance can be direct (Hebrew and Arabic are languages “spoken” by God) or emanational, as in Neoplatonic linguistics. It can be “hermetic” (or occult, as in Kabbala), or even meta-linguistic (as in religious glossolalia, the “charism of tongues”) – but in either case it saves language from utter relativity and opacity.
Against this traditional theory of language we moderns have developed a nihilistic linguistics in which words convey nothing of essence and in fact do not really communicate anything except language itself. I trace this current to Nietzsche, to Saussure and his nightmarish experience with the Latin anagrams, and eventually to dada.
A leading exponent of hermetalinguistics today (oddly enough) is Noam Chomsky, who (despite his anarchism) believes that language is somehow wired in, although he substitutes DNA for the Platonic archetypes! ..I find myself wishing (as a “spiritual anarchist”) for some language theory which might “save” language from the charge of mere re-presentationalism and alienation.
lanier beyond words law.. via nonjudgmental expo labeling of self-talk as data
3
“Saying is not blowing breath, saying says something,” Chuang Tzu asserts – but “the only trouble is that what it says is never fixed. Do we really say something? Or have we never said anything?” ..As the translator (A.C. Graham) points out, for Chuang Tzu “all disputation starts from arbitrary acts of naming”. Nevertheless, “saying says something” rather than nothing.
naming the colour et al
A writer of the School of Chuang Tzu discusses what he calls “ward and sector words”, by which he means the sorting and classifying functions of language.
4
Since language is arbitrary, and the sage knows it, he (or she – for many Taoists were women, including Lao Tzu’s legendary teacher) knows that “in saying he says nothing”. And yet paradoxically by knowing this and in fact by “refusing to say”, the sage “says without saying” and “refuses to say without ever failing to say”. How can this be?
That is, “things” themselves are ontologically fluid and protean, unfixed. If you mark a wheel and then spin it, none grasps where to mark the grades, and all becomes a blur. As for this flux-state of sign and signified, call it the Potter’s Wheel of Heaven or “the whetstone of Heaven” on which the sage is advised to “smooth out” or polish his speech. Without this understanding, “who could ever keep going for long?” What decent Taoist could ever speak at all, much less meaningfully? But because language, by this understanding, becomes “new every day”, the sage is finally not stunned or stultified by the arbitrariness and relativity of language, by its failure, but is refreshed and revivified by its freedom.
aka: idiosyncratic jargon ness
The most important clue to understanding this teaching about language is in the image “Spillover”. ..they always pop back up when you try to knock them over. These dolls by the way are shaped like gourds and were probably originally made from gourds. The gourd is a symbol of Chaos,
The vessel could refer to the Sage, who spontaneously “overflows” with illumined words. The words find their meanings (channels) spontaneously, according to the language-state of the listener, the reader. And then spontaneously the Sage pops upright and is filled again, and each day overflows again. A chaotic process – but one from which meaning comes into being. Moreover, one can become practiced at this conjuring act, polished, “smooth”.
The vessel could refer not only to the sage but even more to the words themselves. A word, which in itself is arbitrary and meaningless, spontaneously fills up and overflows with meaning. The meaning is not fixed, but it is not mere “blowing breath”, nor just a semantic raspberry, bllllatttt. The vessel fills up and empties again and again – same vessel, but potentially a new meaning each day. So the word contains more meaning than it appears to nominate or denominate. There is something more, something extra in the word. There are words beneath (or upon) the words, which flow out spontaneously and find their channels, their expression, their use in a given situation. “Taoist Poetics”.
The sage does not become trapped in semantics, does not mistake map for territory, but rather “opens things up to the light of Heaven” by flowing with the words, by playing with the words. Once attuned to this flow, the sage need make no special effort to “illumine”, for language DOES IT by itself, spontaneously. Language spills over.
6
As Nietzsche and Bataille have suggested, the myth of scarcity is merely a means of control through immiseration, whereas the actual nature of the world is one of absolute fullness, indeed over-fullness, spilling over as constant EXCESS. In language, this over-supply of meaning proves too big to be handled by human consciousness; hence the intervention of the spirits, the “muses” and other extra-conscious sources. Taoist writing serves as a monument to the “generosity of being” or the perpetual overflow of the cornucopias Tao. At its most chaotic and ambiguous peak of expression, it “saves” language itself – both from the tyranny of any lord, and from the abyss of aloneness.
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breaking the alphabet et al
wandering ness.. no agenda.. et al
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be you. 