The Situationist List

RE: Orange Alert!: Imperatornators.

From: "Jet Black" <jet_black-AT-ntlworld.com>
Date: 03 Dec 2004 14:02:27 UTC   (04:02:27 PM in author's locale)
To: "Situationist" <situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org>

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My old lady said she'd never speak to me again if I got a tattoo with a snake in it. The rationale (falun gong rationale) is that by portraying evil you bring, or maintain, evil in the world. There's a lot of truth in that, (although I think my eagle and snake or devil and angel or george and the dragon tattoo idea would be a drop in the ocean). The more you maintain the circulation of an Idea, the more the Idea thrives — escapes from its initial constraints and runs amok with our spiritual futures. By her reasoning, if the image and its other representations and handles and invokations are eliminated from a culture, then so are the evil avenues of possibility which it signified.

I wonder what cinema will be like in the next dharma-time. Not much scope for many plots if the things we struggle against are no longer there to be struggled against. Quick — struggle with evil now before we run out.

Anyway, it seems to me that Christophers take on this whole Allah-sucks thing is negative. People WANT a spiritual aspiration. For many, self-evidently, Allah provides a framework for that desire. What Christopher seems to be doing is to take it away from them, rather than provide a new direction. Historical ideas are like runaway wagon-horses or trucks skidding on ice. There is Christopher, standing in front of all that horse power like King Canute trying to turn the tide.

A better place to be is on top of the engine with a hand grasping for some of the reins. The MEANING of Allah should be changed, the MEANING of Islam should be re-understood, the definitions of everything that is worthy and noble in the world should supplant, by such detournements, their often-corrupted predecessors. But nothing new comes into the world, (no miracles happen, if we let miracle mean what we are told it does) and we can only build the future from what we have here in its past. All I have been asking for from this forum is PRACTICALITY. It seems to me that most of us are far too happy to dispense with reality and use this place for sheer, futile self-indulgence, venting spleen without a thought for what is actually POSSIBLE, trying to break the things which we need, blaming the tools for a bad job. And while this goes on, real opportunity, which is to say the power to effect the future, passes us by like buses in the rain.

That immaturity should be transcended.

PS. Shes basically right about the tattoo thing, but impractical in the same way as Christopher. She refuses to touch dirt and disease and by doing so hopes to have some healing effect. By contrast, my policy has been, in recent years, to wrestle with it, to gradually subdue, divert and transform it.

Once upon a time in one of the worst ghettoes of south London I was sitting around with the "Firm" upon whom my safety in the area substantially depended. It was a boring Sunday afternoon and we were all skint. A resolve emerged to go smash down the door of a black couple known to be dealing weed. The program involved gang rape. My options were on the face of it pretty BLACK and WHITE. I could go along with it — get some drugs, money, sex and full confirmed membership of an up-and-coming tribe, or I could leg it — and have to abandon the whole area AND do nothing to prevent what was about to occur. (Trust me — the police would have been no help either, and too late not doing it). I came up with the proposal that I knew a much better target for break-in and burglary, big hi-fi stuff and al that to be had, less risk and effort etc… I persuaded them in a different direction. The haul was less than they had wanted and there was a little resentment, but not enough to cause me a problem. No one got hurt, no one got raped, the blatant racism of the plan (despite the fact that one of us was black but thats another story) was at least publicly concealed and no wars were started. What would you have done Christopher? A rapist by deed or a rapist by omission?

And Cordley, how about you? Would you have felt constrained to choose between black and white options, or would you have tried to TRANSCEND it, as I did, and find a new imperfect way that left one mounted on that runaway stallion, splattered with mud, blood and karma as it was, but still with a chance of leading it toward a better destination, by struggle after struggle after struggle…..

KEEP YOUR PANTS IN THE SADDLE DUDES

—jetblack

——-Original Message——-
From: situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org [mailto:situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org]On Behalf Of Cordley Coit
Sent: 03 December 2004
To: Situationist
Subject: RE: Orange Alert!: Imperatornators.

Is it Islam or transcendence? Cordley

Jet Black <jet_black-AT-ntlworld.com> wrote:

Thats it blame it on God instead of free will.

k

——-Original Message——-
From: situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org [mailto:situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org]On Behalf Of Christopher
Sent: 02 December 2004
To: Situationist
Cc: rasputin-AT-teleport.com
Subject: Re: Orange Alert!: Imperatornators.

Nothing like limited choices and time to make voting suck.
Yet - if breathing ammonia or methane were your choices
is breathing innately wretched? Hardly. We choose mutually
confirming boredom in "black or white" choices with pseudo-
opposition that merely suggests "black and white"; we need
colorful smell, tasty touch, utopias to order… imagination is
a ghost of a dead present. It's time to create Islamic heaven
on Earth NOW. Screw messy suicide, tedious sacrifice, and
relentless entanglements with co-frigid views. Allah condemns
the future just as the present. An Islamic ghost told me so.
That great afterlife? Not there. It was just a hoax to get so
many to give up now so that the few may embrace themselves
and others. Allah is a miser, a thief, and has hooves….

christopher