At its most fundamental level, what is power?

If we move outside of our human world, what occurs in the cosmos? An asteroid, hurtling through space toward another, collides with it. The body with the greater mass and greater speed will be damaged in the impact, but it will exert more of an 'influence' on the other body. The very large and dense bodies, the stars, hold the smaller bodies, planets and their moons, in their gravitational pull. Effectively, looking at the cosmos we can guess at a motive, but ultimately it looks like a whole lot of cause and effect. With the cosmos being inanimate and incapable of perception, we cannot say there are any power relations at all, but just an unfolding of various movements and collisions and such.

Now have I just wasted a hundred words or so of article space, or has this helped to put things into some kind of perspective? Are we any different from naturally occurring bodies, bashing into each other with no real discernible motive? I think so. Yet before we get onto humanity, lets bring it closer to home; the animal kingdom. Some people may turn to the wild world of animals as some kind of indicator of our own power-situation. There is a lot of killing and chasing and worry outside the walls of civilization. Predators use whatever means they have at their disposal (i.e. their bodies and hunting skills) to catch prey, so that they may devour that prey and sustain their own bodies at the slain creatures expense. The prey on the other hand is going to do everything it can to escape. If we may generalize, it is a constant battle for survival, where hunger is an ever-present threat.

So, power in relation to human beings; what is it!

Power in the human sphere is more complex than the clashing of forces, or the 'violent/benevolent' survival cycle of nature. There are two great categories of power we must take into consideration in regards to humanity. These are materials/technology and identity.

Firstly, how powerful a group of humans are depends on how materially rich they are. With a greater potential to move matter, to disrupt matter and to enrich matter, a group of humans can maintain itself to a better degree than another group of humans, and can use its material superiority to destroy any perceived threats to it. Yet perhaps more fundamental to this material power is the notion of identity; namely, group identity. Without the ability to cooperate with, or bully, fellow humans in the same group, power quite simply cannot reach the magnitude it now occupies; group identity is the only way societies can form and function on such a huge scale. The identity people gain from belonging to a group, be it a nation, or a culture, or a religion, or anything, is the means used to win that persons loyalty and ensure they will act according to how the ruler-ship decides. These groups are held together, above all else, by a common language. Language therefore, is the prerequisite to a developed identity, and thus to power.

  

The actual human body

Language and technology determines how we react to biology. For instance, woman's lot has for most of human history been decided for her, either by the raw facts of her being the reproducer of human kind, or male dominance reducing her role in society to that of a second-class citizen. It is only recently, with more (but by no means total) recognition of woman's potential, and the material means to ensure reproduction is not too much of a burden, that women can move toward liberation from patriarchal servitude and be allowed to flourish on the world stage as man's equal. Thus, we cannot attribute group-identity to biology alone, but must look at the whole situation to determine how much power a group-identity is capable of obtaining.

We are not, however, completely free from biology, nor are we completely removed from the bounds of nature. Our bodies for the most part of our time on earth were geared toward a life of scant survival. Now we live in an age of abundance, yet our bodies have not had time to catch up. We have an instinctual, infinite hunger for everything that ever has been or ever will be, and nothing can satiate us. This biological lust for everything lurks within us all.

The individual

Whether I like it or not, I belong to the group 'human'. We could dance around all day searching for a definition of the word, but generally speaking we can recognise a human being from a stone, a camel or a lamp-post (or a lamp-post shaped like a camel). In addition to human, I belong to the group male, olive-skinned, attractive/cute, English-speaking, 'P' political group, 'Q' religious group, 'R' economic class, belonging to 'X' family, and so forth. All of these factors play on my abilities to function in society. We could potentially view all human beings as individuals, with their own source of power and their own unique possibilities, but how often do we see a person and how often do we see the metaphorical masks they wear, or are forced upon them?

     
That is not to say that individual power does not play some role. There are always geniuses emerging who defy all of the rules. For the rest of us individuals, we do have personal power structures and we can be strong or weak, we can make good or bad decisions. Like all highly evolved mammals, we have a sense of self and we can reflect and decide on what to do. Yet ultimately our success or failure is not entirely in our own hands; our power to act is hampered or aided by our belonging to this group or that group. This means that the ultimate choices we can make as individuals to exert our power on the world, require us first to find a similar group and forge an identity within it: A thinking individual within a mutually friendly group.

    
Those of great individual strength wish to make everyone fight on their terms; 'I'm a powerful individual, why can't you be too?'. In reality, the power of the individual is propped up by a collective identity, whether they care to acknowledge it or not. Just as a fish does not see water, the privileged does not see his privilege; he cannot see that much of his power comes from outside of himself.

An opinionated answer

So, what is power in relation to humanity? Power is economic, social, sexual, physical, personal. Power is the ability to project ones interests out of the mind and onto the world, to make people and matter move. But it is not just an unfolding random force, nor a drive for pure survival, it is couched in our sentient ability to use language and build group identities and create machines of abundance and destruction. Our use of power depends on great projects; goals and dreams and plans and visions - everyone who uses power does so for an end they think is worthwhile. The infinite lust for power may be informed by our biological drives, but how we react to and deal with this biology is determined by us.

Looking at the world today, the ultimate form of power manifests itself in dominant forces getting other people outside of their immediate interest group to destroy themselves for the dominators benefit. Nowhere has this been more historically demonstrated than in woman, who for most of history has failed to recognise herself.  Sadly, we have not yet found a way to prevent this almost universally occurring form of self-destructive behaviour. We certainly won't find it through moralizing, or meekness: No individual, or group has ever surrendered its power willingly. It is only through fighting that power can be taken and shared amongst all power groups, such that they may shape the world around them into a mutually agreeable place.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Wheel power - By Sean Ash

Wheel power

The Political Party and the Ferrari are clearly two different things, yet peculiarly both things appear to be indistinguishable. Where there is power, there is a Ferrari and where there is a Ferrari, there is power.

The phenomenal power of the Ferrari has alluring capabilities with its radiant red body and dazzling shine. It seizes the corner of every eye as it first presents itself, and does so much more immediately than any other car as we instantly become struck by such beauty. The Ferrari is unique and arguably no other car could stand out or make such an impression. It is this very pulling power; the attractiveness combined with our very own fantasy that conjures and conceptualises such machinery as being powerful, and we know this as we soon come to realise that we want this particular car like we want no other. Although we may fantasise over such grandeur, it is a useless thought to accommodate if such power cannot be grasped, as power without the hand is like a Ferrari without the driver; disadvantageous, inactive, inexpedient, sterile and unproductive. If such a thing were not to be made productive, it would mean living in a world far from reality with the possibility of being enslaved by the imagination.

The driver, that being the hand, detects such opportunity and strives to take hold of the wheel. He does so essentially in order to fulfil a sense of self-satisfaction and security of the reality. Secondly, he does so in order to present to the subordinate a higher mode of authority by presenting them with the paradigm of both hand and power as one. Finally, he must attempt to hold onto the wheel at all costs. For the driver to succeed, he must first undertake a degree to learn how to drive so that a license can be attained. He must be highly skilled and ready to manoeuvre against many things that could potentially cause great danger for the driver, the Ferrari and the pedestrian. The driver must be concerned with all things and protect all, as if the driver were to lose the fuel (pedestrian) or were to 'write off ' the Ferrari, then he would surely face losing power. He must also be fully aware at all times; ensuring that one's senses are clear, pragmatic and undiluted so that the slightest possibility of danger can be avoided. The driver would need to mirror (White paper), signal (Bill) and manoeuvre (Act); pressing down firmly on the clutch to then find the biting point (cuts). As circumstances have changed, he will need to either speed up or slow down and so the shifting of gears is imperative as also is of the option to reverse. He must know his car inside out, its potential limits and most importantly, how to cut corners. The driver rev's his engine to display just how powerful the Ferrari is and the pedestrian has heard nothing like it.

The pedestrian represents the oil (fuel) to power. Without the oil of the pedestrian, both car and driver are insufficient as if the Ferrari receives no fuel then both car and driver become inoperative. As not all pedestrians can achieve the driving seat of the Ferrari, it is the pedestrian that lives in a world far from reality and it is they who are enslaved by the imagination. They build among them fuelling stations (polling stations) where they supply the necessary fuel every time the Ferrari should pull in. They would then wash the car, polish its body work as someone who washed cars for a living would clean expensive cars while imagining himself owning such a thing one day (should one work hard enough). The pedestrian would then go out and speak to other pedestrians emphasising just how great the Ferrari is, as they would then continue to glorify the machine in an attempt to persuade others to join in on their worship.

They are the energy that presents power with the opportunity to be efficient and they are the cause for it to act or not to act. Never realising that their fuel has an unparalleled power of its own, the pedestrian struggles as they push the car along every time it breaks down. They make excuses for it every time a part of the Ferrari goes wrong; sometimes blaming each other for faults that are not of their own but of the driver who had lost control. The Ferrari starts to pick up scratches that are deep within the body work and impossible to remove. The upholstery starts to pick up stains, burns and holes are all that remains in the seats. The mileage has reached its limits and the engine needs rebuilding. The pedestrian fears losing any purpose it may have had and they cannot see an ounce of security for themselves without the Ferrari. They salvage what they can and leave this as an inheritance to their children. The driver will always feel that he is destined to drive the car but this does not always mean that the driver is what is best for the Ferrari, the pedestrians and the driver himself. Power should not be given to those that seek it, but instead those who can reject such power are the ones that should have power. As those who possess the ability to reject such power are the only ones that can truly take control of it.

By Sean Ash

Beyond the Gods - By Ellese Elliott

Beyond the Gods

Once upon a time, above the vast ocean waves and over the rainforest dew, beyond the heavenly planets and past the light of the moon, there was a magnificent kingdom which harboured amazing power: Pantheios; kingdom of the Gods.

The kingdom of Pantheios was populated with Gods galore. There was the God of the seas Hydrathon, the God of fire Pyroniter and the God of the stars and the sun Aurora, and so on and so on. Each God had its own particular niche, but all gods were indeed the creators of the Universe. Again and again, they recreated the grains of sand and the drops of rain. Triumphant! Powerful! Unbeatable!

However, there is more than just the Universe. Lots more! And despite the fact that the Gods could move the tallest mountains, part the deepest seas or spin the gigantic planets with merely the sleight of their hand they could not answer humanities most simplest question; "Why?" [Soft Break][Soft Break]Why am I here? Why am I am human and not a Lion? Why does the sun appear small and big at the same time? Why does Aristotle think I am beautiful and Plato not?  Why is love deemed good and hate bad? These questions could not be answered by merely pointing to some physical thing in the world. For every answer the Gods gave another question followed, and then another. It was hopeless. These were what the Gods called philosophical questions, questions that could not be answered with the eyes, if at all.

And so, it was often, that the Gods did not create again and again, the stars and the sun, the mountains and seas, but sat thinking, or arguing among each other about such questions of beauty, of morality or of life. And whilst they did, time worked against them. Holes appeared in the universe, planets decayed, and humans cried out as the natural order of things was thrown off balance as some of the Gods created and others stayed thinking.   

In what appeared to be the middle of no where, in utter darkness, one could see a slither of light, tall and narrow escape form a page of black. Disguised in the absence of things, a door led to where the gods meet.

  "Booom!"  the strip of light quivered. "A king is needed to rule over the people Demos!" Pyroniter  

  shouted, slamming his fist on the majestic table. 

  "But why Pyroniter, can the humans not rule themselves? Why do they need someone to tell   

   them what to do?" Demos reasonably argued.

   "Because you made the humans imperfect Demos! You are a fool!" 

    "Now now Pyroniter, if people are imperfect, then so is the king and what use is an imperfect  

    king? I am no fool Pyroniter, you are just short tempered."

   "Short tempered! Short tempered!? We have been here for over one thousand years you long  

   winded fool.  I've had enough of you Demos! I am going to ignite planet earth and watch it  

   burn!"

   "Don't be so rash Pyroniter. Even if the humans are gone the question still remains, forever 

    unless we answer it."

    "They will die soon anyway when the sun, the stars and the water are gone because I,  

    Hydrathon and Aurora stay here with you, and these problems you have created, these people.

    We have argued much, we have listened much and I am tired."

And then a quiet Hydrathon who had been listening for quite some time said this.

  "What if we put it to a vote?"

  "A vote Hydrathon whatever do you mean?" Aurora questioned.

  "It is quite simple Aurora. Either we think the humans need a king or we think the humans do not  

   need a king. If you think the humans need a king then wazzle your inhilomar  if you think the

   humans do not need a king then shnoogle your grokinfider."

  “But how do we decide who is right?" Demos asked.

   "Well Demos we are all Gods and so it  

   simply cannot be that two Gods are wrong and one is right. So whoever out of you, Pyroniter  

   and Aurora is the only one who thinks so then that God must be wrong."

And so they put it to the test and they took a vote. Pyroniter wazzled its inhilomar as did Aurora, but Demos shnoogled its grokinfider.

That's it then, but as Hydrathon was about to champion Aurora and Pyroniter as the winner   Mons God of the Mountains and Dimensio god of extension came.

  "Oh no not you Dimensio." Aurora whined.

One time Dimensio sat thinking about the problem of beauty and what it is for so long the whole Universe shrank into a tiny point and so he and Pyroniter had to make it pop out again in a huge explosion. There was a ringing all around for ages afterward.

And so the gods created the philosopher

By Ellese Elliott

The Party Machine - By Ed Hobson

The Party Machine

Policy is being written according to prejudice.

I started philosophy with the question; what is knowledge, and how do we get at it? Whether we believe there are objective facts, or all knowledge is culturally dependent, we are all (apparently) attempting to grasp at the truth like a cat batting at a light bulb. Truth is commonly perceived as one of the universal goods; truth, justice and the American way, and so on, and much like the words freedom and democracy, and like a slackened drum it’s lost a lot of its potency and meaning through use and abuse, and can now be seen to mean or be interpreted as anything, including where power is applied, in the political arena.

To my ears, not a day goes by where a politician of some sort makes a statement in courageous defiance of the best objective knowledge humanity has, the past, to cling to their own prejudice. Whether they are being “tough on drugs” despite the complete failure of Prohibition in the 20’s; doing “what needs to be done” about the economy in wilful ignorance of everything that happened in the 30’s, or beating the drum for war with Iran forgetting that there is a rather prescient comparative case in our more recent history. Occupying a space in which their importance and position guarantees them credibility enough to shroud their numerous irrationality.

Such is the way statesmen have been separated from the people since the very inception of politics. If you watch the world’s most successful reality TV show, or The News, one can barely imagine that these people are actually anything other than semi-fictional characters, and when they are encouraged to become more relatable, it just seems unbecoming, weird and out of character; almost a different category of human whose concerns are completely divorced from the mainstream. I imagine being a politician must be like living in a bunker, or a very well heeled commune, who somehow have to guess what the people on the outside want them to do. So having little to no idea what that is, the gap is filled by the conventional discourse du jour, one that reads: Austerity is Expansionary; Iran has the bomb and Drugs are bad, mm’kay, no matter the evidence to the contrary, which will never get through to them anyway.

Though we may all have been guilty of this sort of thing before. The argumentative theory of reasoning, if I may go back to the original question of “what is knowledge and how do we get to it?” has it that we can’t really find an answer. This is because, according to the argumentative theory of reasoning, we didn’t start asking questions and looking for answers to gain knowledge and find universal truths, we did so to gain authority and superiority over others. If this holds, then everything that has ever been said about reason and rational thinking by Plato or Descartes was actually an elaborate trolling manoeuvre by evolution. After thousands of years sitting around campfires arguing about various things, our tendency toward great logical fallacies regardless of verisimilitude has worked arm in arm with our other powerful drive, to triumph, thus keeping it firmly ingrained into our minds.

The architects of this theory are two academics of philosophy, called Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier. The arguments they present for this theory are that we are good at arguing, and reason helps us argue; reasoning evolved so we could argue collectively, and we are good at that; and that since reasoning evolved so we could argue with others, we are biased in our search for arguments and have little interest in arguments that advance our opponents views of the world, or those that refute our own. We’re all guilty of advancing our own points of view regardless of any other evidence, and so are our politicians.

This raises many questions. If we all hold a confirmation bias toward our own side, does that explain why democracy is so widespread? Could it be because there are enough people to argue for it regardless of any objective faults it may have? Will socialists or conservatives eventually go extinct by simply being less numerous or less forceful? What else might we have dismissed simply because it conflicted with our own dearly held beliefs? Was somebody, somewhere once in possession of the perfect form of government, only to have the idea trampled on by mass thinking, or by those who simply presented their argument better; a perfect physical form, adorned with a burlap sack?

This confirmation bias makes itself all the more plausible when, for example U.S Senator Marco Rubio and Former Governor Mitt Romney say on the record that Barack Obama is making the economy worse when there are signs of recovery that is if not stellar then at least steady. So, finally resorting to the question I can already telegraph is coming through this page or screen, “What Are We To Do?” Well, If in a democracy all we can do is elect people who will only govern toward their own prejudices then we could simply replace our politicians with a gaggle of bureaucrats who would simply preside over the day to day running of the nation a la Belgium, but that would be boring, so here’s another idea.

Replace the floor of the House of Commons with a giant super computer with access to all the objective knowledge humanity has in its fleeting disposal. Then replace all politicians with professional actors, whose scripts are written by the finest up and coming writers in the land. They would do all the things politicians normally do, such as making public speeches, getting embroiled in scandals, and going on Question Time. The omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent House of Commons super computer would write policy based on the facts, resulting in legislation that genuinely reflects the way the world is, and while it’s plugging away tirelessly on behalf the good people of Britain, elections continue as normal. That way we are able to root for our favourite characters, follow their intermittent rising and falling, cheer their triumphs and obsess over their failures, revel in electoral victory for our side and swear in defeat, with no real accountability and thus, no responsibility. Plus ça change.

By Ed Hobson

Politics and Power - by Mark Dawson

Politics and Power

When Charles Bukowski was asked ‘Why don’t you ever write about politics and world affairs?’ his response was; ‘What for? Like, what’s new? --- everybody knows the bacon is burning’.

When we talk of politics and power, this is not in reference to physical power (energy transference), it is in reference to the power of influence. We have to assume that if we are considering the objects of both power and politics we must initially assume that they are one and the same; showing a figurative, and symbolic likeness. Through this mirror-like naming of things we do away with the real; it is the plague of the logically, visual-biased mind, as outlined by McLuhan, that leaves us with concepts minus percepts.

Post-modern philosophers believed that power developed from a decentralised point. As such, does power really exist or is it a simulacra? In Simulacra, that of the naming of things, assigns it a sign value, but Baudrillard stated that a mirrored sign cannot hold value. The mirroring of the rhetorical sign, through mass-media, has transferred our attention away from the signs of power and politics and therefore these signs have no link towards the ground or its centralisation. Therefore, what are power and politics but the appearance of capital in the form of desire and demand; the end of the obliged sign where there is no monopoly but only duopoly?

It could be argued that power and politics do not just exist in centralised signs such as the House of Commons, The White House, the politician, the bank etc, but in all situations of subjective analyses. Chomsky and Baudrillard would argue that this takes form in private duopolistic media as transference. In subjective analysis both the signifier and the signified lose their connection to the ground when they are reproduced and duplicated. A monopoly can be mirrored but a duopoly is more problematic, and may not be possible.

Who really knows what power is (in the political sense), do we fall back to Heidegger? He stated that power is held in standing-reserve. If so, who or what possesses the greatest standing- reserve of duplicating methodology; that which brings-forth a sign incarnated in apathy. This is, in essence, political power; the reproduction of the mundane, the comfort of the known. And who doesn’t like crispy bacon?

Here, we return to Bukowski. If power and politics are ‘the bacon’, as he refers to it, then how does it burn? Does it burn in clouds of atomic smoke or diatribes that facilitate standing-reserve as force without action. How can the concept of power and politics be tackled if we cannot first locate its source, describe where it came from, or how it exists. We could adopt a more structuralist approach, one that observes power and politics as being facilitated through capital, influence and closed association. As Marx stated ‘Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.’ However, the sign of utility has been duplicated and regressed into the form of fashion, the sign value par excellence, beyond the point of retrieving utility as value.

Merton said that media dialogue leads to nothing but a form of narcotising dysfunction; the replacement of knowledge for action. Knowledge is not action yet we are left with a conundrum in the taking of action; where does power lie? Is it centralised or decentralised? Can it be challenged, and if so how? Should we challenge it and what would be the purpose in doing so? We know that the bacon is burning but as we discuss the how’s and why’s of the situation, nothing changes. Therefore we, as Bukowski did, return to his answer: ‘What for? Like, what new?’

This attitude is a reaction to the counter-productivity of action, the narcotising dysfunction within modern society. Therefore, if our actions have no worth, we may just as well, as Bukowski chose to, adopt an attitude of apathy. As such, who better to conclude this article than Bukowski himself:

“Now if you'll forgive me, dear readers, I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze, while there's time. if these contain death, then, to me, it seems far less offensive to be responsible for your own death than the other kind which is brought to you fringed with phrases of Freedom and Democracy and Humanity and/or any of all that Bullshit. first post, 12:30. first drink, now. and the whores will always be around. Clara, Penny, Alice, Jo- eeny, meeney, miney, mo”

by Mark Dawson

Sophist’s World

It is commonly considered that knowledge is power. The argument goes something like this. The more you know the more you are able to control and predict events. The more you are able to control events the more power you must have. Now I will not disagree completely with this line of thought. It is obvious that knowledge does give you some power. However I am going to argue that there is another skill that can give you even more power than knowledge, and that is the power to persuade.

In the film Training day we find that famous quote, that’s its not “what you know, it’s what you can prove.” The reason why knowledge alone is not enough is because we are social beings. It was argued all the way back in Ancient Greece by Socrates that power is increased in number, that even the strongest man, can not defeat fifty average ones. This view can also been seen in Marx's call for solidarity. Now if we accept that man is stronger in a group than on his own, individual knowledge is not enough. You need the skill in order to persuade and convince others of your knowledge. Let me give you an example, a scientist discovers a way to cure pancreatic cancer. He discovers the cure on his own in the laboratory. The next day he is struck dumb and blind. He has no way to convince anyone else that he discovered that cure. He has the knowledge still, however it is useless. This example should show you that the power comes not from knowledge itself but from being able to show and convince others of this knowledge.

Now ever since Plato the act of persuasion has had a bad reputation. It has been seen as something sinister. However persuasion is basically communication. We often judge things for the way they are able to communicate things to us. Another example may be this. A woman discovers a code that can tell us the origin of the Universe. Now this code is so complex that only she can understand it. She has no previous reputation in the scientific world, and can only be judged by this code. If nobody else can understand it, then it has failed. She will not be taken seriously and thus her power will be diminished.

We need not see rhetoric as something scary. It is not a form of magic. Even the most trained sophist cannot convince you of just anything. Persuasion relies on plausibility. The greatest way to gain this plausibility is through using tools that people can understand. The most used tools are things such as logic and empirical data. If an idea does not have support from these tools then it will lack plausibility and will thus not be able to convince.

So my argument is thus. Real power rests in the ability to convince others of what you know. It’s about what you can prove. Prove up to the level that others are satisfied. This is because with persuasion, you are able to convey knowledge on a practical level. In fact, only knowledge that can be socially proven do we consider knowledge. Thus if we are to consider knowledge to be power, we must have the ability to persuade others of our knowledge. Thus persuasion must give us more power. Thus real power lies in persuading others that you have knowledge, not simply in the knowledge itself.

Lloyd Duddridge

Spinoza on emotions, self-preservation and our being

Emotions: pesky little things aren’t they? Some bring joy; others anguish, with a whole host of different feelings betwixt the two. Think of the first time you fell in love, or got a present you really wanted, or passed an exam or driving test. Now, think of a saddening event. Thence, think of how you felt before and after. A whole host of emotions plague us, day in day out: to be torn in all directions is the natural human condition.

For a certain Mr Baruch de Spinoza, who believed that we are all defined through a non-religious God who ultimately controls all things in the universe, emotions are beautiful, logical things. This is because God is defined by logic: he is self-causing and his essence is this self-causation – he must thus continue to produce things to continue to exist. Logical, no? If we are thus created by a logical God, and so is everything else – every imaginable thing: plants, cars, muscles, thoughts, pens and paper, musings and eyebrow raises – emotions, too, are logical. ‘Emotions can be treated and explained through logic, as if they were geometry’, to paraphrase the good man. 

Power of acting; definition of emotions

How though, do we get to this idea? What, first of all, is an emotion? Spinoza tells us in the following statement to define it as the modes of a body by which the body’s ability to act is increased or decreased, the perceptions of these and the resultant reaction. 

Let us take the following example to understand Spinoza’s idea better: I am punched in the face. I see it coming, I feel it – my face feels it and my mind registers it simultaneously. I now stumble back: I cannot act, or be, as well as I could before the punch. I feel anger – my power of acting, of moving, of doing anything, may be better than before, but still not as good as before I was punched. Emotions cannot be controlled by us, says Spinoza – they are logically defined.

Spinoza gives us two base emotions, upon which all others are constructed: joy and sadness. It is through emotions that we can see how the environment is working for us. Emotions are the link between our inner state and the outer world. We can only find our ‘power of acting’ indirectly through the emotions – it can never be grasped directly.

We constantly desire to maintain a joyous, happy state – as everyone, of course, likes to be happy. We thus attempt to repel things that will have the ability to make our power of acting decrease – be it a sad event in our lives, an argument with somebody or a punch in the face; we always strive for the happier ones, as these give us a bit more ‘oomph’ and confidence.

Conatus

The notion of the ‘power of acting’, Spinoza takes yet a step further. Spinoza notes that we all have a certain drive within us: a desire and striving to stay alive. As we are all ultimately created by God, and he, as noted above, must necessarily create to keep existing, he leaves a little imprint of his power in all things, including humans: the desire to survive, the power of self-preservation at whatever cost. This power, he coins as the term ‘Conatus’.

The Conatus is in all things: it can be as obvious as someone running at us with a knife and us fleeing, or as abstract as an electron figuratively turning away from a proton or neutron. Self-preservation is what makes us, us. We do not want to be destroyed, hence we run – this is at our very being.

As the mind and body are simultaneously aware of each other through perceptions of the outside world (as one hits the body, the mind registers it and vice versa) and as the body cannot come into contact with something that would destroy it, neither then, can the mind. This means that the mind cannot think of anything that would destroy it: it cannot comprehend or even have a vague notion of death. To have a vague notion of death, would equate to its feeling of death through the body and it cannot do this, for if it had felt that, it would, by definition, be dead and thus unthinking. As a result, for Spinoza – the mind can only feel incredible highs and the depths of sadness, but nothing beyond that: death is not an option.

A few questions...

This also means that suicide is not an option – how is this explained? Spinoza would say that we can be killed, but only through an external cause, from an outside object. The mind would have no idea that we would die if someone stabs us: it would only sense threat. Can suicide ever exist in a Spinozian world?

Spinoza goes on to elaborate on every conceivable emotion in over 40 pages, all based upon the base emotions of happiness and sadness. Is it right to say that these are the basic emotions that we all feel?

Spinoza says that our basic desire for self-preservation makes us who we are. Is there not more to us than this?

Joe Sturdy

Disappearing Act - By Tara Silverthorn

Disappearing Act

As a performing art, dance is often talked about as an ephemeral form. It disappears before your very eyes. From the perspective of both audience and performer, it can vanish as quickly as it has been conceived, making it almost impossible to be fully realised in representative terms. This ephemeral quality is present in the performing arts in general, although dance and movement (as I wish to discuss it here) is unique in that it is a silent art form. It does not always have the safety net of spoken language to support or facilitate meaning and, differently to mime, does not by default use descriptive body language. For a dance to happen, only three key elements are required: time, space and body. The inherent involvement of the body on some level means that the potential for densely-layered and highly subjective generation of meanings – or intertexts – in the act is almost infinite.

As a dance performer, I have too often encountered and felt baffled by having gone on stage, done my stuff and come off feeling like I had very little idea what just happened. The piece escaped me, slipped through my fingers like water. As an audience member of contemporary theatre dance, a similar experience can occur: the movement happens and is gone the instant you have seen it. One feels only to have perceived it. Meaning can be hard to grasp and interpretation can transform before it has even had the chance to solidify. This experience can be alienating if one is seeking narrative and does not find it, if one is seeking something solid, unambiguous and clearly coded. In our bombarding society of advertising, commerce and image production, something which has no apparent usage or instantly discernable message can be coldly received and discarded as having no measurable productive value. I propose that it is precisely this ‘non-sense’ that makes the art of dance and its ephemeral nature peculiar, wondrous and ‘useful’. 

Despite the fiction of the theatrical situation, the body is real. It is corpo-real – earthly, worldly, human. In fact, ever in a state of flux and transformation, it is both the most and least consistent thing we have in our lives. It is a place of contradictions; at once the mysterious and concrete site of communication, at once reliable and faulty, at once universal and culturally shaped. It is the interface between us and the world we belong to and create. We all have it. We all are it. The Cartesian notion of body-mind dualism, established in the 17th Century by René Descartes, paints a picture of the body as separate to the mind – the body as base, the mind as rational, creating a clear hierarchy of mind over body. This perspective, which is still prevalent in (actually, seems to be incorporated into) western thinking, undermines the possibility of a much more integrated, whole and globally intelligent being, in relationship with its environment and others in a far more tangible, sensate and yet less ‘intelligible’ way. In this sense, we underestimate ourselves. Acknowledging the innate intelligence of the whole body – ‘body’ including the mind and ‘mind’ being considered as something not only isolated and encapsulated in the brain – just might begin to reconnect us on a deeper level with what makes us human. 

To be engaged in movement – the act of dancing or watching dance – is potentially to be paying attention or giving importance in that very moment to qualities which capitalism does not allow time for, so which are not necessarily valued in our contemporary neo-liberal society. Among these ‘under-productive’ qualities, for example, might be perceptive intuition; sensitivity (becoming sensate); engagement with process, rather than product-based goals; and becoming (moving, changing), as opposed to being (or asserting a fixed identity). Live movement and its disappearance intrinsically embrace the possibility of change. This is not to suggest that dancing is devoid of striving, or without desire - for expertise, for pleasure, for ‘doing it well’. These are all the motivations which move movement, allowing something to be communicated with as much clarity as possible, which subsequently lets people in to what they are seeing.  

Dance artist and choreographer, Deborah Hay, talks about the dancer as a “site for inquiry, i.e. a bodily presence trained in the performance of parallel experiences of perception”. In her mission statement, she expresses the wish to: 

…expand the notion of choreography to include the conditions by which the choreographer transmits a dance to a performer, accounting for the many and often discontinuous threads within a visible and invisible context for beholding now.

                                                                           - Deborah Hay (2011)

Tara Silverthorn

A poem for skeptics - By Ellese Elliott

A poem for skeptics

No word can depict the manifold

In a single living being

No names can imagine Gold

Nor the phenomena of seeing

No sentence could ever grasp

One's inkling of eternity

No language could describe

The meaning of infinity

Our logic renders us static

When we speak of one we love

We may seek refuge within mathematics

But then threatened by philosophy

All our dreams explained away

By the force of the enlightenment

But our science remains a foetus

In the belly of epistemology

A note on the poem:

Epistemology is the section of philosophy dedicated to thinking about knowledge: What it is and how do we obtain it. Episteme was a type of knowledge which was said to be divine or of the Gods and which only the gods could possess, however Protagorus (a pre-socratic philosopher (before Socrates)) pointed out that we can't know what the Gods know because we cannot know anything about the gods. Since then there has been much debate about what we can know for certain. Many philosophers have concluded we can always play the skeptic. To doubt everything including scientific claims as they rest upon a fallacious logic; for example, just because I observe something 'X' amount of times does not therefore mean it is now a golden rule. This form of reason is called induction and was said to have been founded by Aristotle, Plato's student over 2000 years ago. Even now Philosophers debate what we can know for sure and little has changed. The debate continues and will probably continue for some years to come. 

By Ellese Elliott

How to cope with philosophy - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

How to cope with philosophy

Philosophy, perhaps above all other disciplines, requires persistence and determination to cope with. It is easy to put the book down when you get to a word you do not understand; it is easy to give up when it doesn't make sense to you. Some authors probably do wish to confuse their points and make themselves harder to criticise. The pretentious may write in pompous language to make themselves seem more intelligent than they truly are. We just have to live with these bad eggs and search after the philosophers who are writing for the sake of truth.

So, why read it? Why go to the effort of penetrating through the dry skin of a long-dead author when you can absorb the colourful pages of Voom! magazine and pass the time that way? I would not even begin to say that just because something takes more effort to complete it is more worthwhile; trying to cut the grass with a pair of scissors is the long way to go about things and often doesn't go very well. Philosophy, however, is always worth it. Philosophy gets you thinking, whether its thinking about why someone is wrong, or trying to figure out what someone is saying, or scaffolding your own world view by reading someone you agree with - it is worth it. Philosophy is always trying to say something; the author no doubt considers her writing the most relevant and inspiring idea in the world! Take the challenge and meet it head on. 

Philosophy versus Life

The most common way to dismiss philosophy is to try and separate it from the 'real world'. Which real world is this: A world which exists independently of human perception? A world which we can only understand because we have hard-wired into us the means to make order out of chaos? A world which exists only because we perceive it? Make your mind up!

Dismissing philosophy as ivory tower thinking is an easy way to escape engaging with it; an easy way out of it; an easy way to escape challenging oneself! Many times in my personal experience has someone written off philosophy as useless without reasons being given as to why it is so (this is just bad philosophy). Stopping to engage in a dialogue isn't going to prevent you from living the rest of your life - the walls of your house will not fall in and the bailiffs will not tear your high-definition telescreen from the wall because you took ten minutes to ponder whether the mind had an infinite capacity to think or was limited by its experiences!

The last time I checked, being human was very much part of the 'real world'. There may be many explanations offered to you from the sciences, or from the religious perspectives, but no where will you find more clues to what it means to be human than in the humanities. And what is at the apex point of those humanities? 

Ideas be our shield

Finally, ideas are our ultimate shield, more so than any physical armour. It is the triumph of good ideas, alongside our technological advances, that makes the real world liveable. It is easy to be angry at the academic philosopher for being this distant, elite figure, but we must respect these people for the stirling job they do in trying to better humanity, through the incredible medium that is language. Hard graft is not just a question of physicality - working the brain is just as tiring, just as frightening and requires just as much effort.

Philosophy is not the easiest thing to cope with, but it is worth it. We don't like being made to feel stupid, that is why Athens forced Socrates to leave or take his own life. Yet I must insist that we view ourselves with greater modesty than the worst of Athens and challenge ourselves, for the good of ourselves, and treat philosophy with the respect it deserves, and spend more of our lives engaging with it.              

By Selim 'Selim' Talat