Susan Sontag

[stilltrucking]

THE LIMBIC SYSTEM AND THE SOUL
Evolution and the Neuroanatomy of Religious Experience1

In most instances death is a gradual process, with some cells and tissues disintegrating in advance of others, and yet other tissues living for hours or even days before the body completely decays. Presumably, so long as the body (or at least the limbic system) lives, one's sense of a personal soul and identity remains intact (in the form of an out-of-body experience) -an ethereal existence and sense of personal identity which remains tethered to the body (or limbic system) until the body completely dies and decays.
Indeed, the linkage of the personal soul and individual immortality to the body were widespread beliefs and practices among the ancient Egyptians which is why they expended so much effort to preserve the body via mummification. If the body could be preserved, so could one's personal soul and sense of individuality, leading to "immortality". Others, including the Tibetan Buddhists sought just the opposite, to free the soul from the body and so as to escape the "illusion" of individuality and personal existence.

http://www.brain-mind.com/BrainReligion.html

[jimboloco]

It is true that there are no real absolutes. It is a struggle to deal with dissent and conscience. The subtle may overcome the blunt.
Most definately a hopeful process and not an insurmountable barrier, the doors of perception are opened already.

Thanks for your messages. I am charge today. Yesterday I had 6 patients all of them women with a history of breast cancer with progression or recurrent cancers. One I escorted to her sister's car; she went to her son's wedding wearing Huggies and taking immodium.

I will be back to read again on Wednesday.
When will enough folk b able to step outside the box?
At least Sontag made a statement on behalf of Yesh Gvul, an assosiate veterans grupo with the vets for peace and also the canadian vets for peace, where Knipper can sail one day.

as far as my looking forward to being down and out one day, hut the weck. Chop wood carry water. Dissention in the ranks.
besides I was pissed and paranoid wandering about as a young veteran wide eyed in my taxi at nite, wide eyed standing on the freeway at nite, then older and wide eyed .........finally eclipsed into a semi-old hombre enfermero working with malleable folk who need healing, so the strangeness of it suits me just fine, economics be damned.
Thankx for resisting the War Zlat and co.
Will check out Sammy Johnson soon.
Back into the Bardo.

[jimboloco]

ps Howard Zinn will be in New Orleans for their "Inaugeral Wake" Jan 20. Will post this Wed.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Thanks for the reply, Jim.


For anyone who may be interested in Johnson, here's a link to Jack Lynch's pages ( a subdivision in this case) which quickly answers the question, "Who was this Johnson guy?"-- just in case you didn't know that Samuel Johnson is the author of the English Dictionary upon which most modern dictionaries are based:

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Jo ... e/who.html



--Z

[jimboloco]

http://www.jazzfuneralfordemocracy.com/
The Event
The Jazz Funeral for Democracy is a wake and funeral for the principles upon which America once stood. IF YOU THINK THIS IS A FANTASTIC IDEA, PLEASE CONSIDER MAKING a trip to New Orleans on Inaugeration Day.
You can view the mission statement of the Jazz Funeral for Democracy here.
http://www.jazzfuneralfordemocracy.com/mission.asp
here's a fun game play dodgeball with dunya!http://www.jazzfuneralfordemocracy.com/ ... geball.asp
use the arroew keys to aim and hit the spacebar to throw.

What is humanities. What is an aesthete?


so how about a posting from Sam Johnson's column The Rambler from 1750?

[jimboloco]

Sizing Up Sontag
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/sizing_up_sontag.php

Richard Bradley
January 03, 2005


Editor's Note: America lost one of its great intellectuals when Susan Sontag died last week. In her memory, we republish this piece from May 2004 in which media critic Richard Bradley defends Sontag's understanding of the "war on terror" and how it clearly surpasses that of her critics.

Richard Bradley is the former executive editor of George magazine. He is author of American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and is writing a book about Harvard University.

Immediately after 9/11, Andrew Sullivan created for his blog
http://www.andrewsullivan.com a recurring entry called the “Sontag Award.” The mock award came in response to a New Yorker essay Susan Sontag wrote in which she criticized the conformity and manipulation of the Bush administration’s reaction to 9/11. “Where is the acknowledgment,” Sontag wrote, “that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world,’ but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?”

Sullivan deemed Sontag’s writing outrageously unpatriotic, almost treasonous. So, he gives the “Sontag Award” to other writers who question the “war against terrorism” and the war in Iraq in a way that he considers un-American. Others may decide how American it is to question the patriotism of social critics. This is Sullivan's way of rallying the troops, as it were.

Now Sontag has reappeared with a cover story in The New York Times Magazine, an essay about the torture photographs from Abu Graib. Sullivan (full disclosure—he's an old friend) will surely find a way to attack it. But on reading the essay, and reconsidering the events from 9/11 to Abu Graib, one has to wonder if Sontag hasn’t been closer to right (for no one gets it exactly right) all along?

The thrust of Sontag's essay, called “Regarding the Torture of Others,” is to ask whether what happened in Abu Graib is a gross exception, an isolated phenomenon, or whether in some fundamental way it's the surreal but logical result of an inherently corrupt war, a direct consequence of the policies of the Bush administration? Sontag argues that the photographs were taken to record events for future entertainment, and reflect a culture of shamelessness, “a pattern of criminal behavior in open contempt of international humanitarian conventions.” After all, we don’t even call these people “prisoners,” because that term implies a specific legal standing. They are “detainees”—and they can be imprisoned indefinitely, which means forever. They are interrogated not for specific information, but because they are suspicious, and that vague mandate has led to torture.

As Sontag points out, the debate over how many photographs from Abu Graib the world should see goes on. The side that wants to limit their distribution is winning. Already our outrage about the torture is diminishing, and without that outrage, there is no will to release photographs that are not easy to see. I don’t agree with all of Sontag’s essay, but she makes a serious argument that the photographs need to be shown—all of them—and that doing so is the responsibility of a mature democracy.

In the meantime, andrewsullivan.com is running excerpts from a 36-year-old Sontag essay about Vietnam. Sullivan’s conclusion—a far-fetched one, to my reading—is that Sontag is a communist. “Lenin, anyone?” Sullivan quips.

Andrew Sullivan is a very smart guy. He’s written books. He has a Ph.D from Harvard. I suspect he knows how morally reductive and intellectually sloppy it is to label people as un-patriotic just because they criticize the actions of the American government. Such language feels like the kind of polarizing argument that got us into this war. Perhaps Sullivan feels that writing a blog requires him to dumb down his ideas.

But still…let us just posit, for the sake of argument, that Susan Sontag is a communist. So? The country will survive. The question is not what label one can apply to her, but whether her words provide insight and provoke debate. The same goes for other Sontag Award “nominees”: New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, author Jonathan Schell, novelist Alice Walker.

The most un-American acts have never been committed by radicals, but by those anxious critics who have attempted to stigmatize and suppress them. And those people were always sure to call themselves patriots.

gothisfromthevetsforpeace

[jimboloco]

Having read and taught a few of Sontag's essays, one realizes she is the quintessential aesthete, though not a particularly witty one; Sontag was neither philosopher nor great social thinker.

perezoso

and I ask again, what is an aesthete?
what the fuck is a great social thinker?
"you don't have a philosophy"
my dear dead sister says to me
and you my ex-chaplain to the conquistadoors are
just a determined anti-sentiment
an emotional sentimentality
disguised as stringent logic
micturation and excretion
freud got ya stuck
open up

[perezoso]

Nurse Jimbo--

A "great social thinker" doesn't sign up with the maoists because it was the chic thing to do in 1965 (as Sontag did); a "great social thinker" knows something about economics and psychology, which Sontag apparently didn't. Although she claimed to be marxist at one point, she doesn't address Marxist theory or practice, and in her essays she often dismisses thinkers from the greeks to Freud to anyone remotely resembling a rationalist. An essay by Russell--who actually argues for his points of view, but is also capable of eloquence and wit (not found in the sludgy prose of Sontag) --is worth a crate of Sontag. And Russell protested 'Nam (along with Sartre) but based his unemotional protest on research, data, and inferences made from the evidence. Sontag was never so methodical or cool or logical.

She wrote some effective criticism, but criticism is at best anecdotal and usually subjective rhetoric--mere rhetoric. If it floats yr boat, great, but in terms of political or psychological analysis, her writing is shallow stuff. We are not compelled to approve any writer. I happen to think that those writers who do know something about empiricism, logic, econ.--not to say western scientific rationalism--are to be preferred to critics, intuitivists, metaphysicians, mystics, post-modernists, etc.

I'm sure that view upsets some hipsters around here. But e-dog's ideas (and most of the other St. 8-er's ideas) regarding leftist obligation and duty hinge on rather sentimental views of ethics and human nature. I do not approve of Republicans but I don't play the "if GOP evil; if Dem, good" game. I have met plenty of corrupt, injust leftists anyways. Kennedy and LBJ are as much to blame for 'Nam and world destruction as Nixon ( who was a nutcase as well however). Eisenhower was in ways more of a liberal than the dems. Yes, New Deal policies were admirable, and I support higher taxes, oppose BushCo, and approve of some Dem policies, but as people, Dems may be as much scumbags as right wingers .

The beats themselves saw that the communists and leftists could be just as hideous and corrupt as right wingers. There is no "great, big union" man. People are pretty much vile, conniving, sadistic gluttons whereever you go. YR in the asshole of the world, Capn'...

heh heh heh heh

[Doreen Peri]

Nurse Jimbo--
Sontag was never so methodical or cool or logical.

peresozo.... she was a WOMAN. You expect methodical, cool and logical from a woman? MY god! What planet do you live on? LOL

[quoteI'm sure that view upsets some hipsters around here. But e-dog's ideas (and most of the other St. 8-er's ideas) regarding leftist obligation and duty hinge on rather sentimental views of ethics and human nature. [/quote]

*sigh*

Yeah, we're all "hipsters" here, right? And "most" of us have exactly the same ideas as each other.

geeezzz... Mizter Peree, why do you lump people together like that and catagorize them? You tend to do this quite often.

I think those who post on these boards come from varied backgrounds, a variety of age groups which exclude them from being "hipsters," and offer a rather wide variety of opinions on many topics.

----------

Much of the rest of your post, I agree with, though.

[perezoso]

.... she was a WOMAN. You expect methodical, cool and logical from a woman? MY god! What planet do you live on? LOL

Yes, I do. I'm on one of Jupiter's moons, Callisto, in orbit.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Jim:


Here's the famous "Rambler" on the subject of fiction.

Remember that the novel was just that, the newest thing, in 1750. Johnson has "Tom Jones" in mind at times when he moves to specific effects of the novel.

Though a monarchist, anti-democrat and severely circumscribed by Christian doctrine, Johnson is wonderful at his best, and seems almost contemporary-- in the best sense of that expression.

He is always witty and wily.

(link)


http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/to ... ision=div1



Zlatko

[jimboloco]

I happen to think that those writers who do know something about empiricism, logic, econ.--not to say western scientific rationalism--are to be preferred to critics, intuitivists, metaphysicians, mystics, post-modernists, etc.

I remember Maoist chic vaguely. Thanks, by the way, for your esteemed reply. We had working class Maoists hanging with us at the Seacoast (N.H.) Peoples solidarity committee, back when the Strawberry Grenade and Off the Brass were the two underground rags floating about, 1972. I was having migranes waiting for a reply to my C.O. discharge request. The least I could do was get to know the local crazies. The upper classes have their own morality. Certainly a detachment from earthy factual experiential knowledge is apparrant, yet some individuals did, indeed, travel to North Vietnam during thew American bombing to witness.

Is not witnessing a form of empiricism? Or are body counts more relevant? Have to go will peruse this some more.

[jimboloco]

Ya know maybe there are some, like, inbred characteristics us homo sapiens have, is ...

Better to smoke occasionally through a hookah.
oh yeah do some kava kava. a natural herb hypnotic, but of taken in small quantities is a muscle relaxer and mental soothing agent, espacially if taken in combo with valerian root, hops (beer, good beer)....

... an ability to assemble.

as fsr as Sam Jo goeth, his conclusion is that

It is therefore to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness; and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts; that it begins in mistake, and ends in ignominy.

Well, I don't know Tom Jones, so.....have the impression that TJ was too radical for our dictionary maker, a great assembler no doubt.

[jimboloco]

Oh Zeus a great social thinker ain't radical chic, heh....

One entry found for dissemble.


Main Entry: dis·sem·ble
Pronunciation: di-'sem-b&l
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): dis·sem·bled; dis·sem·bling /-b(&-)li[ng]/
Etymology: Middle English dissymblen, alteration of dissimulen, from Middle French dissimuler, from Latin dissimulare -- more at DISSIMULATE
transitive senses
1 : to hide under a false appearance
2 : to put on the appearance of : SIMULATE
intransitive senses : to put on a false appearance : conceal facts, intentions, or feelings under some pretense
- dis·sem·bler /-b(&-)l&r/ noun

dissembling Susan Sontag

In most instances death is a gradual process, with some cells and tissues disintegrating in advance of others, and yet other tissues living for hours or even days before the body completely decays. Presumably, so long as the body (or at least the limbic system) lives, one's sense of a personal soul and identity remains intact (in the form of an out-of-body experience) -an ethereal existence and sense of personal identity which remains tethered to the body (or limbic system) until the body completely dies and decays.
Indeed, the linkage of the personal soul and individual immortality to the body were widespread beliefs and practices among the ancient Egyptians which is why they expended so much effort to preserve the body via mummification. If the body could be preserved, so could one's personal soul and sense of individuality, leading to "immortality". Others, including the Tibetan Buddhists sought just the opposite, to free the soul from the body and so as to escape the "illusion" of individuality and personal existence.



http://www.brain-mind.com/BrainReligion.html

dissembling everything
idiotas tambien
ni Sontag ni Perezozo
saben nada
there's nothing wrong with my brain
¡Hoy es el mejor día para siempre!