[1] To be an intellectual is to be adverse to culture. One does not merely replicate it, one learns to criticize it.
[2]
To be an intellectual is to be a critical thinker; to be a skilled
thinker is to be a dialectical thinker. These are not the same. The
former self-destructs under its own narrowness and instrumentality, while the latter
comprehends its existence as a quality of development and tries to
consciously replicate it. In dialectics contradiction is not isolated from the
quality of being but remains an essential component of its realization
-- something to be embraced, incorporated, explored. As Hegel said,
"contradiction is the rule of the true."
[3]
To pursue the intellectual life, in one context, this is what it means
to torture oneself. Why? Because to be human is to begin
with an anti-intellectual disposition. The intellectual pursues a path
that renders him the enemy of mankind, a provocateur, a disturber of the peace. Humans want what makes them feel
safe and comfortable, to be an intellectual is to transcend these
psychological desires; to be an intellectual is to offend man at the subconscious level.
[4] Intellectual work is the
work of thought; the work of thought is the work of criticism; the work
of criticism is the work of exploding impulse, is the work of shattering
the idolatry of dead images posited as totality [identity-logic].
Identity is the moral foundation of the inquisition of
anti-intellectualism. Dialectic is the foundation of thought's
emancipation from the impulse of human psychology.
[5]
No one who understood what it meant to be an intellectual, in the
context of society, would ever want to be one. Standing against the
rituals and superstitions of society is a path to alienation, and if
done with polemical power, a path to persecution [annihilation], prison
or death by violence.
[6] An intellectual
who transcends linguistics will provoke the impulse of the animal
against himself, the animal is violent, he smashes anything that makes
him feel psychological pain, and in this sense, nothing has the
potential to cause more psychological pain than [dialectical] thought.
[7]
Oh intellectual, abstraction is your friend, but beware, for it is also
your greatest enemy! Those who get lost in abstraction forfeit
thought's relevance and value, they forsake it for the false authority
of a dead image [identity-logic]. To live in abstraction [idealism] is
to live in the delusion of religion, even if one has transcended the
cruder forms of religion.
[8] Many will
pretend to flow with us into this abstract sphere, but in so doing they
are motivated by vanity, they want to obtain some kind of social
validation from the appearance of thought, this can never be the case
with concrete thinkers, they are after progress in the comprehension of
reality, and in the highest form, a praxis derived from the genius of
theory that leads to the increase of social quality.
[9]
One can simplify the intellectual life: thought aims at the concrete
cultivation of freedom toward the emancipation of the species unto the
proliferation of mankind's creative powers so that life itself is worth
living. All meaning is the product of innovation [technology] and
production, the silent, cold, dark universe is indifferent, man must
learn to do for himself and this is a matter of the cultivation and
application of intelligence, and intelligence cannot reach its climax
without dialectic!
[10] There is no
such thing as an independent or individual thinker, all thinkers are
born into the progression of a historical line, into a culture, they
inherit ideas, they inherit logic, every linguistic and cognitive
technology. The man who posits himself as a solitary unit of value is
either deceived or a liar. Such a self-confident stance is a
manifestation of a primitive logic, that of identity. In contrast, dialectic comprehends its quality as the result of [to have developed through] a
historical, social process.
[11] Just because one is an
academic doesn't mean that one is a Thinker: to be a Thinker one must be
able to transcend the cultural categories of academia; one must be able
to extract value from academia without getting lost in academia. Woe to
those who desire praise from their peers, this desire marks an
unconscious boundary that their thought cannot pass.
[12]
There are almost no Thinkers in the world; there have hardly been any
Thinkers in the world; Thinkers are the most rare kind of being:
suspended beyond matter through matter's ascent to abstraction and yet
they must return to the world to alter it with abstraction. The real
social question is, how can we, as a species, make more Thinkers?
[13]
To be a Thinker is to possess the greatest power in the universe, and
at the same time, be susceptible to negation through the most mindless
power in the universe. Contradict the shallow logic of a violent man or system,
and, through automated impulse, he, or it, may lash out and kill you.
[14]
Thought is still a power untapped by man; dialectic constitutes a
progression in thought. If mankind will ever advance it will never do so
apart from thought. Dialectical thought is the necessary, logical
foundation of an advanced species, anything that progresses beyond
dialectic must first pass through dialectic.
[15]
Man, as species, has not yet reached the stage of dialectical
consciousness. What is pit against dialectic, as its enemy, as a power
to thwart dialectic, is man's psychological impulse; identity thinking
is a form of impulsive thinking (though the practitioner feels it to be a
form of objective rationality). He is deceived by the logic of identity
as it strives to justify and bring itself into existence. Dialectic
explodes identity by demonstrating that it's a logic that proceeds from,
and is ultimately founded on, man's psychological impulse.
[16] Identity-logic amounts to man deceiving himself through the presuppositions of symbols [taking appearance as totality] as his impulse makes unconscious assumptions about the ontological nature of those presuppositions.
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