Genius 2000:
A New Network
by Max Herman
for Freda
"Love! His affections do not that way tend,
Nor what he
spake, though it lacked form a little,
Was not like
madness. There's something in his soul,
O'er which
his melancholy sits on brood,
And I do
doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some
danger."
William
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of
1.
Who are you and what is your name?
I'm Max Herman and this is my
book about my theory of history. I've
worked on it for a while and now I'm summing it all up for regular paper
publication. I think I might put photos
in it too. Anyway, I'm thirty-five,
mostly bald, a celibate demi-vierge, and more or less on antidepressants
constantly since 1996. I was sexually
abused once, when I was five years old.
I have two degrees in English, earn between thirty and thirty-five
thousand dollars per year, and live in
2.
Why should anyone read this book?
That's a good question. I think it's a relevant book and will present
a lot of useful information for you. It
will also show you my point of view on some things, give you some explanation
of some new ideas, and it will also help me set up and expand my Network.
3.
How long will the book be?
Two thousand quanta long,
which is standard book size.
4.
Will you put pictures in it?
I think I will just put url's
in it if and when I wish to point the reader to a picture. This will save me cash on printing and help
polish the fading sheen of the internet.
5.
Is your academic writing good?
It's not too bad, and what's more
important, I enjoyed writing it. Here's
an excerpt from a paper I wrote for my Master's degree entitled "Book
Review: The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783,
by John Brewer": "Brewer
argues that the English state before 1688 was shaped by three major
factors: medieval centralization,
England's avoidance of European wars, and the absence of a strong class of
venal or bribable administrators."
You may read the full paper on the internet at www.geocities.com/genius-2000/SinewsOfPower.html.
6.
Where
are you now?
I'm at the coffee shop. I'll be writing some of these on paper. I'll check the number at home before I go,
and then do that number on paper by hand.
7.
What
are the main ideas of Genius 2000?
The two main ideas are Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate,
which I didn't invent myself but learned from the late Professor Barbara Fowler
in 1990, and the following question called "Contribution One" from
the Genius 2000 Video First Edition:
"What does it take to be a genius?
Do you have it? Does anyone you
know personally have it? What does the
year 2000 mean? Does it mean this to you
or other people? What do the concept of
genius and the year 2000 have in common?"
8.
Aren't
there any more main ideas?
Not really. I'm thirty-five,
and when I was twenty-nine and wanted to make a video about genius, I decided
to make it also about the year 2000 as a good complementary topic for
interviewees. Then I wanted to filter in
my own ideas unobtrusively, so used the Albos-Koros-Hybris-Ate cycle of tragedy
I'd learned in college from Dr. Fowler.
There were some other ideas as well but I would say that the primary
basic constituents are A-K-H-A and Contribution One.
9.
When
did you start Genius 2000?
I made a Genius 2000 pumpkin
and decided on the name for the video in 1998.
Before 1998, I'd never used the term "Genius 2000," but I'd
been in school, I'd had my theories about literature and so forth for a
while. Here's an excerpt from a paper I
did for Dr. Fowler, and then another one from a later paper about Hamlet and
Oedipus, to give an idea. I'd called
"my idea" by various names, such as "the Communicative
Hypothesis" and "the Communicative Paradigm," etc.
"Oedipus commiserates with the suppliants at
the very start of the play, 'I know you are all sick, yet there is not one of
you, sick though you are, that is as sick as myself....My spirit groans for
city and myself and you at once'(ll.59-64).
Ironically but fittingly, Oedipus identifies his own prosperity with the
prosperity of the city, constantly calling himself savior or champion. In a way, he is--he saved the city from the
sphinx."
"The ghost admonishes Hamlet, with a poignancy and tenderness
that riles up our most fervent filial instincts,
“If thou didst
ever thy dear father love--”
“O God!”
“Revenge his
foul and most unnatural murder.”
“Murder?”
“Murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this most foul,
strange, and unnatural” (1.5.24-30).
"The
simple yet striking meter in this passage, moving in seemingly innocuous but ineluctable
iambs and powerfully sounding the chord “Murder--Murder?--Murder,” expresses
remarkably the feeling of tenderness, loss, and passion that must have been
wringing Hamlet Jr. at hearing this news."
You may read these two papers in their entirety on the internet at
www.geocities.com/genius2000/ LearningToAcceptMistakes.html and
www.geocities.com/genius-2000/OedipusAndHamlet.html, respectively.
10.
Is it
true you're alcoholic?
Yes, I'm pretty sure that is
not in question. I would agree that I am
one. Maybe "alcohol addict" I
would agree with more.
11.
What is the purpose of the Genius 2000 Network?
I might be mistaken, but my
goal for it is to heal and fulfill human genius, to help with that very broad
and diversely pursued enterprise. To
help humanity live better, happier, and more fulfilled, is what I hope to
assist with. This is so general as to be
not much, but heck, it's the truth. I
don't care too much for the question--it implies there is, always has been, and
always will be only one purpose of Genius 2000, and that I can't agree
with. There isn't just one permanent
constant purpose. It's a stable
field.
12.
What is a stable field?
On one hand, the Genius 2000
Network is my own network, the network I have legally created and incorporated
as a business, a legally established for-profit corporation. So, its purpose is to make money or earn
profit. It is a stable field in that it
is a constituted platform or entity to carry out whatever needs doing for the
larger motive of profit. The Genius 2000
Network is my own independent music label and art gallery and publishing house
all in one, so like a restaurant, it's a stable field in which various food
dishes are made, sold, and eaten. Or,
where various records are made, sold, and listened to--it's the platform, the
continuing platform for all this.
13.
How
much money do you want to earn?
I'm single, 35, and addicted
to alcohol, so I don't need or want much.
If I could earn fifty thousand per year for the next fifty years,
adjusting for inflation, that would be enough for me. I don't have luxurious tastes. I do think there is a patriotic obligation to
acquire as much wealth as one can, not for one's personal gratification but so
as to "strike a blow for the common good"--to be able to protect the
Good. So, for example, a billion dollars
per year in revenue might ultimately be necessary--even a hundred billion
perhaps. Then again, one million gross
with $100,000 net might be preferable.
14.
Do
you support the U.S.-led War on Terror?
Yes I do. This is the toughest topic for me to
address. I used to be deceitfully
leftist, praising Nader and Chomsky.
This was a demented form of the semi-psychotic death-game called
"chicken." It's hard for me to
explain why I support the War on Terror, or what I sometimes call "the
Second Cold War." One can look at
all the horror, wastage, and misery of the First Cold War and still accept it
was necessary. I feel that way about the
Second Cold War, or CWII. It will take
me maybe my whole life to explain this adequately, in part because it is not
known yet how CWII will play out in all the variations.
15.
What
about all of your revolutionary posing from 1999-2002?
Well, that’s a tough
one. I guess I'd have to say number one,
in part I'm guilty of bad actions and regret that, and apologize, and have to
pay my debt to humanity. On the other
hand, I was never your orthodox Leninist for example, but rather went out of my
way to distance myself and Genius 2000 from doctrinaire Communism, Marxism,
etc. I say this despite my occasional
rhetorical episodes. For example, I
wrote in my "Crying Game" paper about Marx, sounding a bit Marxist,
but it's hardly damning. Also, in a lot
of settings they pressure you to pick a side, and if you don't they'll
excoriate you.
16.
Why
do you praise Chomsky so much in your early work?
I divide 1998-2002 as the
first part of Genius 2000, before I quit drinking and smoking weed and snorting
Ritalin in October 2002. On one hand, I
liked Chomsky; on the other hand, I wanted to call attention to certain
artistic factors and ramifications I felt that Chomsky and especially his fan
base neglect unjustifiably. I wonder
about this sometimes. But no, I can't
say I wasn't a bit confused about the value of Chomsky's work such as it is,
and his leadership. Taken objectively, I
don't see much similarity between Genius 2000 and Chomskyism.
17.
What
about the
You could say in one sense
that I've stolen or copied a lot of the ideas in Genius 2000 from Adorno,
Habermas, and Benjamin. That would be
fair. I would like to meet Habermas one
day. He was my first external way out of
post-structuralist literary theory as I encountered it at Oberlin,
18.
Why
use the question-and-answer means of composition?
Well, I like Collingwood,
whom I read in 1989 at
19.
Were
you a student at
No. My father was a visiting professor in biology
in 1989 and I visited
20.
Won't
it take forever to type these?
No. I type quickly. I type about 50 words per minute. I use typing at work, and learned real typing
at Sanford Junior High in
21.
Are
you ashamed of what you've done so far with Genius 2000?
Yes, very much so. Maybe so far I've had several phases of my
life in Genius 2000. Phase One was about
1998-2000, then my drinking went way out of control 2001-2002 so that was a
second, degenerate, evil phase. I really
feel ashamed about that alcoholic behavior.
It's disgusting to me to recall it.
22.
What
are your main anxieties?
I'm not sure I understand my
anxieties. Sexual I guess is the main
one. Social prestige and value in the
eyes of others, my sexual attractiveness, the health or wisdom of my celibate
life, whether I'm an insane failure or not--these are perhaps the main ones,
along with family and artistic phobias and worry. I worry that my mental health is so poor that
none of my reactions to anything are pure or healthy--I'm on antidepressants
and all. I worry that I'm homosexual or
sexually unsalvageable, unable to be an artist or even a human really without
sexual relationships. So, I guess I
worry about whether my tactics and goals are correct, my values, whether I work
hard enough or at the right tasks.
23.
Where are you now?
I'm at work. I work nine to five. My computer is acting weird. I'll be trying to type a few numbers here and
there during the workday, and at lunch, and then all evening so as to finish at
least five hundred numbers to send to agents in April. It could get me in trouble and fired
however. Work is a good place. The stress isn't overpowering; what is more
inimical to me and my peace of mind is the feeling of being an asexual failure,
or what you might call "an office eunuch," impotent and
inadequate. I never mentioned my penis
size, which is 5.5. This is no good for
all practical purposes, and thus I've felt it would be a manipulative insult to
request that a woman go to bed with me.
At work I get the feeling of not taking enough emotional risk, daring to
love at is were, accepting my fate and destiny, or loving love. Perhaps I could quit my job and write only
for three months--I do have the savings.
Exactly $2000 saved. I could go
for a brief time on that. And by selling
my Karmann Ghia, 1972 model year. Better
keep the job and write when I have time.
Palatino and Prestige elite, 1000 numbers by April 30. For the agents and all.
24.
How is Genius 2000 a theory of history?
Wow, good question. I may have to ask for a long-term answer
voucher for that. Genius 2000 implies
there are two factors that combine to create history: Genius and 2000. 2000 is the time, obviously; i.e., the
setting, conditions, space-time specificity, economic and technological
givens. Genius is the other complement,
and this is human genius, or just genius; human genius plus human 2000 equals
human Genius 2000. So, akin to how E=mc2
is a theory of energy and matter, Genius 2000 is a theory of history--an
equation or setting-forth of terms.
Genius 2000 is an equation.
25.
There is no equals sign, so isn't "Genius 2000" just a term?
Maybe Genius 2000 is a theory
or thesis about history, a hypothesis even.
By comparison, E=mc2 is part of Relativity theory of spacetime. G=mt2000 is an equation which is part of the
Genius 2000 theory of history. So,
Genius 2000 is rather a theory than an equation, but it implies the equation
History=Genius+2000 just as Relativity theory implies the equation Relativity=spacetime.
26.
What
is another theory of history?
Marxism is one, also
religions are theories of history.
Religions set forth how things started, how things or events occur, and
what is upcoming; cause and effect, patterns, conflicts, elements, rules of
events, etc. I might say that Science is
one theory of history, Dialectical Materialism another of the Marxist school;
factually I can't think of any more.
Nationalism and the various racist philosophies are theories of history;
one could say that Art is a theory of history.
Any idea or set of ideas, principles, that aims to define events or how
they happen and under what rules is a theory of history. So, the various economic theories are
theories of history in a sense.
27.
How can you justify the compositional form of this book?
There's no need to, because
how I write is my own business. I don't
have to justify it to you. That would be
slavish on my part. But, one could
justify it by my stable field theory, or by the aphoristic compositional style,
or the dialogue, or by In Medias Res, or any number of other compositions. But if you don't like it, you don't like it,
that's OK. I would prefer not to let
that make me feel sick and suicidal.
28.
Do you feel sick and suicidal today?
Somewhat. I occasionally will go off my antidepressant
and get depressed. I sense that I live
under a blanket so to speak, in a semi-protected infantile state due to my
medications. They protect me from my
nightmarish emotions with which I either cannot or will not cope. For example, off my medication I sense very
directly how intense and beautiful dating, love, sex, etc. could be, and this
makes me doubt my whole value system and worth as a person, making me feel
unsalvageable and in short repulsive.
Bald, thirty-five, and celibate but not in the funny who-cares way but
the horrifying, shameful, guilty, miserable, inexcusable way. The way that is a sin against humanity,
society, and myself. Nonetheless, as my
medication levels creep up over the next couple of days I will feel
monumentally happier, mellower, and safer.
29.
What
if someone doesn't feel like a lot of questions?
Well then they can just sit
and meditate. I am not saying people
should O.D. on questions or on trying to answer. As Collingwood said, it's a cycle. Excess of questions is manic; of answers
depressive.
30.
How
are you enjoying Nietzsche and Strauss?
Well, I'm reading Nietzsche
and Strauss for the first time. You
could say I lost touch, pace, with the real world of intellectual life in 1987,
when I went to
31.
Why
do you want people to know what you've read, and when?
I hate secrecy, and agree
with Benjamin Franklin that "honesty is the best policy." It saves energy spent in lying. So, I can't enjoy reading in secret. I don't like reading but not admitting it,
and I like getting credit for what I've read.
I also like getting credit for getting an idea before reading
something. For example, I critiqued
"Art" and "Plot" in Shakespeare as instrumental and linear
mistakes before reading Habermas, Adorno, Benjamin, and Benedict Anderson. I basically came up with their entire corpi
all on my own at age 24. And that
without reading any Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer--what have
you. So I want credit for what I did
before reading Nietzsche.
32.
Do
you think it's immoral to seek credit like that?
I feel guilty about it so you
could say I reflexively consider it immoral.
In other people, another person, I wouldn't consider it immoral at
all--I'd consider it refreshing. Much
more so than the same old classic rock tunes playing in the laundromat I'm
writing in now.
33.
Why
don't you try, for a change, to stop condemning yourself for actions you
wouldn't condemn in others?
I think I have habits of
condemning myself that have causes separate from whatever I might be doing,
i.e. the specific actions. For example,
I fear becoming vain and excessive in my braggadocio, and thus causing a disaster
for the species, that is, the polis.
34.
You
fear that to allow yourself to write freely and express your abilities might
threaten the polis?
I certainly do. I'm afraid that society could not survive if
I expressed myself freely and completely.
People would have to kill me to protect themselves from the consequences
my self-expression would have for the polis, the political-exosomatic patterns
that protect the future and present continuation of the species. In a sense, for me to express myself cleanly
and openly would, quite literally, kill the entire species so it cannot be
allowed. I suppress myself, therefore,
to save society the work-cost of repressing me and hope thereby to put my
society's heart at ease and gain its mercy if not reward.
35.
Isn't
that fairly neurotic and perhaps paranoid?
That is to say, isn't it merely an unhealthy obsession?
My gracious, it must be,
mustn't it? I can only think it
originates in my childhood deprivations and abuse. I suppress myself in a nightmarish automatic
response, because I've ingrained fear-based behaviors to the level of
reflex. If I'm confused about what to
write, or the role of the writer in 2005, I conclude that I must be evil. Because of course, when I kept myself
quiet--by the use of self-hate--through sad and abusive periods in childhood I
trained myself to think that to express myself would damage my social support
structure i.e. my family. I find this
moderately hopeful an analysis. It
suggests that I can un-learn my fearfulness and eventually get to a point where
I can express myself artistically, socially, and sexually. I.e. get a girlfriend.
36.
Do
you now accept and truly believe it is safe for your society for you to express
yourself in writing?
That would sure be great if
it were true. I'm not used to thinking
that way. I'm more used to thinking,
"I can't express myself because the world is too evil, desperate,
vulnerable, and dangerous. Therefore my
only hope to express myself is to fix the world, fix it to perfection and for
all time." But this is too
difficult. It forestalls my legitimate
hopes of doing a decent share, of doing enough, i.e. my two thousand hours of
socio-economic labor per year. I suppose
I would have to answer that I don't yet accept fully, in all its ramifications
and outcomes, the idea that I can fully and satisfyingly express myself in
writing without hurting or damaging my society of the human polis, but I
believe I can try and if you can try you can improve and theoretically
succeed.
37.
How
many quanta do you have left to write?
1963.
38.
Do
you often feel that the internet version of Genius 2000 was immoral, or do you
feel ashamed of yourself for doing it?
I feel extremely ashamed of
myself for doing it. I think there may
have been a grain of decency to it, but for the main part it was vile and alcoholic
in nature. I hope very much by writing
this book to clear up some of the evil-causing loose ends or sinful aspects of
Genius 2000. Again, this will take
approximately my entire life to live down.
Even one truly high-quality book isn't enough to repair the evil hybris
of claiming you're the Messiah.
39.
Do
you feel ashamed and guilty for having put yourself forward, even in
ultra-ironic postmodern self-mocking jest, as the second coming of Jesus
Christ?
Mainly I feel scared that
someone crazy, or more likely, a mob of very angry ignorant people, will
painfully kill me for having said it. I
feel that I have to or ought to exhibit
feelings of remorse or shame about it in order to save myself from being
murdered by zealous persons for blasphemy or sacrilege. In fact, I don't feel guilty or ashamed at
all for the internet phase of Genius 2000.
I made it partly crappy and partly superior on purpose. I'm scared that I'll be tortured and killed
for admitting that I did it. It's
complicated, now that I write it down.
40.
What
is your plan for Genius 2000 to help society?
To convince people to develop
their own genius and let other people develop theirs too. But given the crowded, confused, and
competitive nature of life in the zeroes, it's not likely to be accomplished in
one swift stroke. Rather, I hope to
enchant the avid reader into a sleepy, comfortably advancing state much as
sitting in class gradually adds knowledge to one's being. Despite the fatigue.
41.
How
are you feeling today?
Not very well. I took a three-day weekend using one day of
vacation time and feel rather traumatized.
I live in nearly total isolation.
I have a lot of doubts whether I can write or be a legitimate source of
wisdom given my isolated lifestyle. The
question whether a monk or a hermit can have any health or goodness
whatsoever. I am not sure of the
answer. It bothers and worries me
greatly that I cannot finish a good book, become a published writer, and do
something good or valuable for humanity under my current state of
isolation. I worry and fear that my
solitude and celibacy are a hideous sin, making me a broken and mentally ill
lunatic/mutant/freak, able only to write disgusting vomit. How to know?
42.
How
are you feeling today?
I feel pretty well. I have been pondering solitude and concluded
that it is a good thing, beneficial, if done correctly. It is not correctly done if one is expecting
a reward. The advantage of solitude is,
like that of G2K, anticlimactic. Nothing
happens. Once I rid myself of the compulsive
need to go see people or make myself girlfriend-worthy, nothing happens. A blessed nothing occurs. In this state is somewhat where I am today. I am resigned to the wisdom of writing daily
without extreme expectations or rules, just to sit and write, low-pressure,
reading and painting watercolor too. I'm
convinced there is no need to worry excessively. Rather than worrying about what to do, how to
fix the world, I can just write the two thousand. Noble two thousand!
43.
What
are your thoughts on Machiavelli?
He said that it is best to be
both feared and loved if one is in authority.
He implied that it is not always necessary to be loved. He also implied that love only, with no fear,
is never enough. I agree that authority
must be feared to some degree, to a sufficient degree, that the unavoidable
feelings of power-craving among those not in authority will not always lead to
an attack on authority, but will be instead filtered through a questioning
layer; and therefore a peaceful solution may be found insofar as one looks and
one is possible. In any measure the mood
of usurpation will be given a chance to pass, protecting against the risk of
all imperfect love to fail at one time or another.
44. What are your feelings on the progress of the
book?
I think it's doing fine. However, I return to worry as to my exoteric
naivete. Also as to the "factum
brutum of religious revelation."
Obfuscation, misdirection, things of this nature. I imagine that these may all suffer radiance
from my fear and uncertainty about becoming successful as a writer, i.e., read
by many. Would it throw a fragile
equilibrium into catastrophic imbalance?
Would the rapprochement of liberal and conservative elements outpace the
irritation of sensitivities or the need for diversity and dynamism? Do I dare to eat a peach? Gravel for my craw? O sages standing in God's holy fire, as in
the gold mosaic of a wall, come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, and be the
singing-masters of my soul. Consume my
heart away; sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what
it is, and gather me into the artifice of eternity.
45.
Are your ideas on the shortcomings of the art-as-object paradigm valid
or putrid?
I use to say "Art is
processes, not objects." I think
this is sound, though it never was my idea only. Think of E.H. Gombrich, Literary Change,
etc. Even the IDS tower is a process and
not an object. No one should doubt this
unduly much. Only out of fear would one
doubt it. The impermanent object vs. the
permanent process, the possibility thereof, the eternal return, the
will-to-power, fields of quanta, these all hold together. Even Shakespeare's "Like as the
Waves." Shakespeare is hardly rough
and raggedy. He's vernacular to impede
idolatry and to ease the shock of contrast.
A very kind and accurate fellow, truly.
46.
What is the relevance of Laughlin's theory of dots in a temporal
field? Rather, fields of dots in
temporal frames?
It's one idea about
neuroscience. Nothing to go insane over,
to start being rude and obnoxious. One
must never ignore the factor of reverberation, unseen corrections or
"opposite reactions" that are too often ignored. Again my thoughts return to danger, the war,
the often fragile peace among peoples and the equally hazardous thrall to
custom. One could call it "highway
hypnosis." People hate the
47.
Why
is solitude the most important habit for developing one's genius?
I find that other, outside,
attractive things tend to draw me to them but ultimately cannot give me the
development I am looking for. Perhaps
far back in time, before humans were able to make or fabricate much of
anything, there was never enough "out there" to become excessive. One had to strive constantly, sure, but also
peacefully endure wanting without getting.
Food searching basically. Now
there is more food than I really need.
Perhaps being alone in the right way, without anger or self-pity, is the
only way I can get loose from other people's habits and problems. If I'm around those other people, they affect
me. If I understand I'm permitted and
capable of solitude, allowed and strong enough, then I can shape my experience
and develop.
48.
How
can Genius 2000 be reconciled with the need for focused authority?
I agree this is an apparent
difficulty. However I would caution
people away from fear to in fact the most simple and clear conscience that
there is no discord. There is no contradiction
at all between Genius 2000 and the need for distributed authority. By distributed, I mean allocated, allotted to
some in greater measure than others. For
whatever reason, perhaps due to my own flaws, Genius 2000 has been interpreted
as intrinsically anti-authority. I would
caution everyone to in fact take view of the truth, which in fact shows that
Genius 2000 is in no way hostile or antagonistic to authority and its
organized, unequal distribution per se.
If the allocation is flawed, Genius 2000 can, however, suggest improvements.
49.
Do
you really think people will want to read your old college papers?
Maybe they will. But they don't have to if they don't want
to. I imagine many readers will enjoy
the academic work and even make use of it by citation in further, newer academic
works. Now that my papers are
published--not in an academic journal, but in my own book--they can be cited in
new academic papers. Academics will like
the papers I imagine, and even lay readers with an undiscovered taste for
academic writing will enjoy them. After
all, reading an account of what someone else has read can be a very enjoyable
experience in itself, akin to a travelogue.
People will be able to see that I have done some study, have been able
to commit to something, and am not totally uneducated.
50.
Do
you avoid activities that are considered healthy and normal, such as movies,
music shows, videogames, friends, TV, sporting events, et cetera?
I have virtually no social
life, as I've said before. I have a
primary belief that if I "do my own art" properly, which could mean
writing as an art form, I won't "need" friends or other amusement
arts such as TV, sports, movies, and music.
If I am to discover how to make my own writing serve my emotional needs
I perforce have to give up those things that ease and assuage my emotions, such
as TV. Friends may also serve to confuse
and clog the development of genius. Do I
"need" friends, or would it just be nice and pleasant to have
some? If I can experience total
fulfillment of my own genius without bothering to compromise with friends,
ought I not take that path? Many great
creators have been solitary.
51.
How
does Marxism relate to Genius 2000?
In a great number and variety
of ways. Suppose we accept that the
excessive concentration of art-value in certain objects is a hindrance to value
maximization. One could say this view is
essentially Marxism, fundamentally and logically Marxist. The terms "artist" and "genius"
have relevance to each other, and I am intentionally hoping to make art out of the
question "what is a genius?" and therefore out of the question
"what is an artist?" I hope to
address the question "what is an artist?" by making art in my
specific way, the specific way in which the Genius 2000 Network is art. Because art is an economic activity,
art-value is a form of value, and artists are value-producers in this system,
art is therefore an economic activity and therefore as susceptible to Marxist
ideas as any economy or economy per se.
52.
Is
Genius 2000 pro-Marxist?
I have specifically designed
or developed the concepts in Genius 2000, its composition, to refute Marxism;
that is, to reflect and express the numerous refutations of Marxism which I
believe can be made and are accurate.
One might say I intend Genius 2000 to be the ultimate fair and decent
refutation of Marxism, both in theory and action. In this sense, I mean that I try to express
the truth as I see it in Genius 2000, and I think it is true that Marxism (i.e.
Marx's ideas and their advocacy) are inaccurate, flawed, incorrect, weak,
untrue. Whether the words themselves
"Genius 2000" alone refute Marxism I can't say. Moreover, I'm not very expert on Marx--I
think I know a few concepts accurately--so what I think I'm refuting might in
fact be Smith and not Marx. Let the
readers judge for themselves.
53.
What
are the main primary errors in Marxist ideas, theory, logic, et cetera?
Marxism errs importantly in
several areas that have happened to catch my eye, though I cannot claim that
these are the most important flaws. They
are the flaws that played the most central role in my personal encounter with
and judgments on Marxism. (Leninism is
another side-theory to Marxism which also has several flaws.) Having been born in 1969, the year of Richard
Nixon's inauguration, I experienced the Cold War. One of my very earliest memories was asking
what the word "Watergate" meant, whether it was like a waterfall over
a fence for example. I can recall having
that image. That is to say, Marxism as
practiced in Communist nations was not apparently very excellent. I also believe that Marx's "farmer in
the morning, miner in the afternoon, literary critic at night" may be
off-mark. Lastly, soviet control
(committee control) of means of production is not worker control.
54.
What
about the problem of racial differences?
This problem should decrease
over time, assuming that the world does not repeat the complete descent into
violence of parts of the twentieth century.
It's scary to think that different races might actually be significantly
different on a genetic basis--scary people trumpet that view. I suppose race questions can be placed under
the larger issues of genetic human differences and economic differences (wealth
differences). If the problems of genetic
difference and economic difference can be resolved, then race problems will be
resolved in large part. However, there
is also the race-related problem of cultural difference and cultural
permanence, which often lead to race-based conflicts. I think Genius 2000 addresses them all well.
55.
Is
P.B. Medawar's idea of exosomatic or exogenetic evolution relevant to Genius
2000?
I recently purchased a used
copy of "The Future of Man" on Nicollet Mall in
56.
What
is the Millennium Hut?
That was a fun project I did
with architect Lance Kempf of
57.
Do
you favor
Yes I do. I just read "Rise of the Vulcans"
by James Mann and recommend it to all open-minded liberals. I was raised liberal and still am somewhat
liberal. But I also see the accuracy of
some conservative and neoconservative views.
The single-superpower strategy is, in my opinion, the plan with the
greatest likelihood of avoiding recurring world wars as seen in the twentieth
century. Avoiding world wars for one
century would be a very good idea in terms of advancing Medawarean exogenetic
evolution. Given time, I think humanity
can improve greatly on cultural relations and economic well-being, thus
reducing the root causes of war. The
single-superpower strategy is the only rational strategy, in fact, in my
opinion. I doubt humanity could survive
another twentieth century type century. Not
that the twentieth century was all bad.
Parts were good.
58.
What
would you say to those who are inclined to work against the single-superpower
strategy, either by seeking to destroy
I would ask them to
reconsider. Try to seek out all the best
evidence and arguments to the contrary.
In my opinion, no one's interests will be served by attacking or even by
neglecting to assist the single-superpower constellation. In all honesty however, I generally am very
insecure about discussing serious things.
I imagine there are millions of Americans my age who want something
other than the single-superpower plan and maybe they are correct. Maybe they'll say "oh gosh there should
be several competing superpowers; competition and fairness are always
best." I couldn't agree less with
that view, and I don't see anything liberal--i.e., pro-environment and
pro-humanism--about it either. It's just
pseudo-intellectual is all it is.
59.
How
do the Eumenides fit into Genius 2000 and the global political situation of
today?
Aeschylus's play "The
Eumenides," part of the Oresteia trilogy, is my most basic and fundamental
theory of art and how it relates to the polis i.e. society. No one who doesn't understand the Eumenidean
Theory can understand Genius 2000 even in the slightest measure. Without the Eumenides, Genius 2000 is totally
incoherent and worthless. Without the
idea of the Muses, i.e. the Eumenides, Genius 2000 has a confused relationship
to the polis and hence to the politics and political situation of today, the
past, global, local, et cetera. Without
the Eumenides you have no polis, you have only the Furies, death upon death,
blood calling out for more blood.
Society is both the end of revenge, and what results from ending
revenge, cause and effect--a dimensional change.
60.
What
are the Eumenides?
The Eumenides are the nine
Muses. They are, therefore, the arts and
sciences, because Art and Science were the same in ancient
61.
If
this book were to have a traditional form and argument, how would it go?
The bildungsroman or
"building novel," about my personal journey toward edification, could
be one. Another could be based on
political theory and its relation to art.
However, I always encounter the difficulty of means versus end; is
Genius 2000 didactic or spontaneous, analytical or creative? I'm thinking that if this book had a
traditional layout of thesis-evidence-conclusion it would not and could not be
this book. After all, what is a book? What is "book"? What is "the book," i.e., what is
the difference between yonder book number 79724 and the idea of the book as
such which transcends everything ever written?
"The book has become a major conduit of ideas and education, an
institution of both manners and science."
62.
What
was your first publication?
The Coup de Tete (sic) of
October 1993. So far it has in fact been
my only publication other than the internet.
I don't know if I can reprint or include the item here. It's mine of course, but the only purpose for
me would be to prove I was published in 1993 in an anarchist college
newspaper. Of course I do not support
anarchism; it's a pseudo-politics for pseudo-intellectuals. My essay was called "There Is No Such
Thing As Plot." The idea is that
plot is an illusion, a contortion of events into a didactic canonizable pattern,
in which the events are not events and the pattern is non-pattern. I later developed the ideas more in my paper
on Oedipus and Hamlet. Artist=authority,
authority=king, plot=usurpation-plan, plot=defiance of
authority=delusion=hybris. Artist=delusion=plot. Author=authority.
63.
What
is The Hermit?
That was a novel I wrote in
1992. Really it was just an embellished
journal without any characters or plot.
Basically it was a large amount of ranting and raving about a lot of
topics, with some emphasis on solitude, being a freak, what art is, and being
an outcast. Unfortunately I'm doing much
the same thing over 12 years later.
Perhaps it's inevitable. A lot of
agents wanted to read The Hermit
after I sent query letters, but none of those who read it wanted to represent
it. I even showed it to Bob Pirsig, who
said if I kept on like that I would need shock treatment, and he was really
quite correct--I did keep on like The
Hermit and did need to go on antidepressants, which I am still on. The premise of The Hermit was that art is solitude but society cannot exist
without art, so solitude is not solitude.
I wouldn't publish The Hermit
now however. It was depressive.
64.
Is
this book similar to Poe's essay on the composition of "The Raven"?
Aspects of it are, but in my
heart of hearts I'm still undecided as to the wisdom of that. For example, what if I were to point out how
much an effect the biblical passage "He spoke as one having
authority" has had on my thinking?
I suppose if I take seriously my feeling that honesty is best policy I
ought to openly admit it. Also the
astonishing effect studying Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and
Keats had on my mind in 1987 as a freshman at
65.
Why
are you afraid of saying things that might have damaging effects?
There must be a vast array,
as vast as the stars in the sky, of reasons why I'm beset so heavily by
fears. I'm afraid to say that I think my
childhood conditioned me to be afraid to speak out, because I'm afraid that to
say so is either incorrect and therefore dishonorable or correct and
potentially painful. I agree with Aiken,
"at whatever pain to others"--that story affected me greatly as it is
so atmospheric, odd, and yet ordinary--but I still fear that by causing pain I
will provoke violence against myself that I can't defend against or spoil
someone's motivation to persist, i.e. their self-worth, and thus become guilty
of violence myself and deserving of punishment, or what's worse,
persecution--being made an example of, tormented beyond all desert for the sake
of the crowd, of spectacle.
66.
What
is different about today for you?
I've not taken meds for two
days, not taken my forty milligrams of Paxil.
I find it humiliating and canary-like to admit this in public on
paper. It implies everyone on SRI's
should cough it up like mucus, no privacy at all. I'm tormented also that maybe keeping it
secret is a sin. Holy
self-confusion. Well, it's different
about today anyway. It makes me feel
headachy, a bit twitchy, a bit more oxygenated and alive, and more susceptible
to sex and romance stimuli. Perhaps
sexually I'm a basket case. I can't seem
to decide for myself whether celibacy is a virtue or a sin. It may be a sin for others and a virtue for
me; or a virtue for others and a sin for me; or a sin for everyone; or a virtue
for everyone. Or, sometimes a sin and
sometimes a virtue. Or, at various times
both sin and virtue in various degrees.
The difference about today is deep uncertainty.
67.
What
kind of a book would you be ashamed to publish?
Subtle question. Perhaps degradation is my primary fear, so a
degrading book would be the sort I'd be ashamed of, perhaps, but everything in
this world is so finite and transient that even the degradation would be merely
a passing whiff--a cautionary mention, one could say. It may be that I would never be ashamed of
publishing any book. However, I think
that if I were to publish something that was a fully artistic manifestation of
the personal mode of being of which I am ashamed in myself when I partake of
it, that would be a book I'd be ashamed of.
But why to dwell on such a possibility is something I can't see. I can't see the value-adding from such a
project; I can't waste the energy worrying over such a speculation. There's a pedantic side, trying to tell other
writers what not to do, to such an articulation. But that type of scenario-running might not
help. Much.
68.
What
is the difference between feeling ashamed of something you shouldn't feel
ashamed of, and, not feeling ashamed of something you should feel ashamed
of?
Over-shame is unhealthy, what
an abuser puts on the victim.
Under-shame is what the abuser puts on himself. So potentially we all may have over- and
under-shame tendencies. Shame
essentially is a negative, however, regardless of the level and
orientation. It has to do with social
condemnation of bad actions. If the
actions are good, you don't need to worry about the shame factor. If I take shame for granted, as a given, I'm
cementing the presence of bad actions, or rather, the presence thereof is
cemented in my thinking or map of events.
I would hope not to have to worry about either, neither about degrading
myself nor degrading someone else. Over-
and under-shame relate to degrading another and being degraded; they differ in
location only.
69.
Would
you be ashamed of sexually abusing a child?
I think I would. I've sexually abused other children when I
was a child, and I do still feel ashamed of it when I think about it.
70.
Do
you feel ashamed of being exoteric about things you should be esoteric about?
Absolutely yes, and even
saying I feel ashamed for not having been esoteric because of suicidal, greedy,
envious feelings, makes me feel afraid that I'm not being esoteric when I
should be. To confess one's sins in
public, for personal gain and self-aggrandizement, is a form of being exoteric
for bad reasons. It may relate to mastery
and compliance behaviors in an abuse victim, which I am. I variously may try to abuse someone else
(which is mastery, i.e. if there's abuse going on, I'm going to do the abusing)
or comply (OK abuse me). These may both
derive from a lack of esoteric values.
71.
Why
do you feel so often that you've got to spill your guts so exaggeratedly?
That may come from mastery
and compliance behaviors. I lose
confidence or even belief that I have a personal space I can live in, personal
boundaries, room to live. I let myself
freak out about abuse. I don't try my
best to heal from abuse, perhaps. When I
panic, I really fall apart completely.
After all, how can a bald thirty-five year old virgin, on paroxetine and
with a 5.5 inch dick, ever be OK? How
could I ever get better, and heal, and not be a disease-bearing mucus
only? If it can happen, it could only
happen by healing, and the healing would happen either by itself or by my own
efforts. I would have to do my
part. So quitting drinking was one side
of doing my part. I guess getting over
the reflex-action of mastery behavior might require I drop Genius 2000 if I
can't make it non-abusive.
72.
Don't
you want to confess about the bad side of what you've done on the internet, and
with Genius 2000 so far?
My goodness I absolutely
crave that. If I could only feel like
I'm a decent person again I'd be ecstatic.
I don't know if confessing openly to how disgusting what I was doing was
would help me get rid of my guilt or not.
I mean, I put forth all my sickness and abusiveness on other people as
much as I possibly could. I guess I had
some grotesque idea that if I could get away with it, then I should, and if
someone had to stop me, then I had to be as disgusting as I could in order to
provoke someone into stopping me. All
this is the same as what a rapist would do primarily. I've noticed that I have a lot of
similarities to both Lenin and Hitler--mediocre, paranoid, sexually screwed up,
very grandiose, and very abusive to others.
73.
When
did you first read Nietzsche?
To the best of my knowledge,
I first read Nietzsche about January 2005.
It may have been as early as 2004; I can't be certain. I borrowed a copy of "The Birth of
Tragedy" and "The Genealogy of Morals", two books in one, from
my parents' house. It's an old blue
paperback with a Chinese print, I believe, on the cover.
74.
How
could you have gotten through college and graduate school in English without
reading any Nietzsche whatsoever?
It was never assigned. I can assure you that I never read it in any
classes I took. I recall definitely that
in 1989 I saw someone with a Nietzsche book and discussed whether he was any
good, though I'd never read any.
Thereafter, I have a pretty good recollection. Maybe I read a few snippets.
75.
Isn't
Genius 2000 just a complete rip-off of Nietzsche?
It could not have been ripped
off from Nietzsche because I'd never read any Nietzsche. Of course I'd heard of Nietzsche, probably
absorbed some of his ideas through other sources, but I got all the main ideas
of Genius 2000 elsewhere. I got
not-being-religious from not being raised in a religious setting; I got an
understanding of artistic ideals of spirituality from British Romantic
Literature in 1987; I got tragedy from Shakespeare and a few Greek plays; I
encountered a little bit of cultural theory at college but not much--more
Milton actually--and no Nietzsche in graduate school either. I arrived at Messianism and history via
Walter Benjamin. Primarily I got all my
thoughts on these matters from PPP.
76.
How
are you feeling without your paroxetine?
Fairly well. I was off of it for almost six months a while
ago, I think. Office work can sometimes
make me feel desperate and panicky, so if I indulge that hopelessness and panic
I get to feeling quite bad. Given my
very poor self-care history and skills, there should be little surprise that I
occasionally bottom out if off meds for long.
What I do wonder is whether I am absolutely incapable of living without
paroxetine. What would it or could it be
that, by doing differently, would allow me to survive and even flourish without
SRI's? Writing assiduously might help,
pursuing an artistic life, accepting celibacy i.e. refraining from
masturbation. Masturbation might be the
worst of both worlds--I lose my vital energies and remain cowardly and alone.
77.
Are
you overweight?
I'm overweight by twenty or
thirty pounds I think. I weigh
approximately two hundred pounds and am five feet eleven inches tall. I should be more like one hundred sixty
perhaps. I can't say for sure. I've been getting healthier, rollerblading
now for two days in a row--wonderful sunny spring rollerblading at
78.
Why
is the One Superpower Option favorable to exogenetic evolution?
Theoretically it will free up
an enormous amount of time and resources for reducing the stress levels of
humans and for advancing and developing cultural practices that develop genius
in lots of people. When there were two
superpowers during the Cold War or CWI, there was a gargantuan wastage of
genius-potential and time. Time is
precious. Each superpower spent a lot on
competing. In my opinion this diverted
resources from other genius-developing activities. With the O.S.O., or One Superpower Option,
this wasteful carnage would not be needed.
In fact, the non-superpower countries or states could spend exponentially
less on weapons. The benefit to cultural
progress could be astronomical, assuming that the one superpower had a sound
basis of exerting influence and did not all of a sudden sink drastically in
power.
79.
Do
the benefits of the O.S.O. outweigh the cost?
In my opinion they do. Let us not forget, also, that the costs are
as of 2005 largely already paid. The
majority of yield from here forward will be (or rather, can be) benefit. Cost is an
elusive concept, as cost and value take many forms and are not static. The cost of things can take the form of time,
material resource, options, human goodwill, etc. The
Eumenides has to be considered again.
When the polis passes judgment and Ate is effected, i.e. the correction
of the distemper by forcible restoration of Dike, then the Eumenides arrive and
the Furies disappear--the latter is actually transformed into the former. As to the fearful possibility that the
Eumenides will be lost, there is forever, eternally, a need to keep up the
polis and thus prevent the re-transformation of the Muses to the Furies. Non-polis does this.
80.
Is it
fair to say that you've never read Plato or Socrates?
Very much so. I've never read much Plato. I've read a little, a long time ago, and
intermittently. I did visit Socrates'
tomb in
81.
In
other words, Genius 2000 resembles Nietzsche simply by the fluke that you never
studied Plato?
Well it's not really a
fluke. You can get Nietzsche from a lot
of sources. Ernest Hemingway, or even
Shakespeare. I used the Socratic method
to an extent in the Video First Edition, and also mentioned the role of
"mere self-assertion", and there are also aspects of the Good and of
forms implied in Genius 2000. Therefore
I can't concur that Genius 2000 resembles Nietzsche, nor can I concur there are
no Platonic or Socratic elements in it.
As I said, I read the early part of my Norton Two, the purple one,
well-nigh devotedly in nineteen eighty-seven, and Shelley's "Defence of
Poetry" had more effect on Genius 2000 than even Fowler or Benjamin--to
poiein and to logizein. I registered a
tremendous affection and regard for Shelley, and would rank him far above
Nietzsche.
82.
Why
don't you write about how you quit drinking in this book?
It's still too recent. The prospect of declaiming on such matters
does not appeal to me. "If you talk
about it," Hemingway said, "you lose it." I read "The Sun Also Rises" over
and over again in 1990, in part because someone told me "you have to pay
for everything in life somehow" in 1987 or 1988. I did find the book "Under the
Influence" at some point in 2001 or so.
But it's really not the purpose here.
I'm more than willing to elaborate on my celibacy and masturbation
struggles but as to not drinking, well that's my private affair.
83.
What
about the eternal return, or eternal recurrence?
I got this from Benjamin via
rescuing criticism and Reflections
per Daily.html. Frankly I originally
thought it meant "eternally returning to antiquity." So.
84.
How
much longer is that Kimoto Pake going to hold out?
Not much longer it would
seem. The tip has already been pushed in
a good bit, so that I need to hold the pen itself close to upright, well say
thirty degrees off. It's about five
years old as well. Yet the pen has
served me well, even if I've misused it for writing rather than for drafting or
drawing fine line drawings.
85.
Is it
possible to fulfill one's genius, and to gain thereby an increase of an order
of magnitude in one's quality of life, if one does not have a face and figure
in the top ten percent of mass-attractiveness?
It would be preposterous to
say no, but remarkably, almost every day I act as if the answer were. Median face and figure or even far less are
still entirely sufficient.
86.
What
was your earliest determination or proposal as the chief cause of human
problems?
When I attended the
University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1990-91, it occurred to me--on Bascom Hill
I believe, frankly--that all those buildings were there to help and assist me
and the other students. They were not
vaults keeping what I needed out of my reach.
Similarly, on Bascom Hill, where I walked daily from home to class, I
recall thinking quite distinctly that humanity inflicts its true misery on
itself. Humans upon other humans, not
fate, is the problem.
87.
All
human problems originate in religious hatred?
My reflections on the
question "unde malum?" first congregated into a succinct answer to
that effect. Whether it is correct or
not is another question, but in 1990, that was my proposition. I had had enough of blame. In my personal life in 1987 I'd arrived at
the idea "Success is the best revenge; success is the only revenge;
success is revenge." I may not have
written it down, but I had the expression most vividly in my recollection. I thought it in my car near the intersection
of
88.
What
is the law of hospitality, and how does it relate to Genius 2000?
The Law of Hospitality is an
ancient Greek principle of social behavior, which stated that no traveler
should be done harm by his host and vice versa.
Violating this principle gave rise to the Curse of the House of Laius,
which led to the Antigone and Oedipus tragedies much like original sin. King Laius had broken the Law of
Hospitality. The meaning of this law was
to permit communication within the Greek world, and thus animate its genius of
place and give it strength and awareness for both development and defense. There were no other communications than by
direct encounter and word of mouth.
Human instincts can only operate within the single setting or polis;
when there are multiple cities a network is needed. E pluribus unum, or, e unum pluribus by
extrapolation. Genius 2000 is such a
network, though I have personally violated the law of hospitality.
89.
What
is the best way to deal with sexual jealousy and anxiety?
There are few problems at
which I have less competency and wisdom than that of sexual jealousy and the anxiety
that can result. I got very hostile,
jealous, and dispirited yesterday when a very buxom and long-haired woman
walked past the room I was meeting in, office-worker style, at a very very fast
walking pace, with a co-worker, and having an extremely bright and gratified
smile on her face. It was
archetypal. No guilt, having a great sex
life and a great professional life, no misery on behalf of the convoluted and
paralyzed laggards like myself. I eat my
liver backward in through my anus, whereas the less self-cannibalizing soars to
great heights. Yet I am unsure whether
paternal and fraternal detachment or determination to "get mine" is
preferable.
90.
Is
Nietzsche's theory of going Beyond Good and Evil affecting you?
It's having somewhat of an
effect. Actually reading again with a
purpose, in general, may be the cause and not the Nietzsche. I like encountering his ideas on esotericism
and moral relativism, but I think he may be wrong. It's better to stop thinking about the top
ten or one percent sexiest bodies and how badly I want to have them or resemble
them. That's junk genius. To give myself permission to go out and get
my share of junk, well that's inferior.
Esotericism implies a question about whether to do a thing necessarily
implies that to do such a thing is good; as the magnetic field forms at right
angles to the axis of direction of current, so the moral field forms at right
angles to the axis of direction of action.
Nietzschean license cannot help me with my celibacy problem, perhaps.
91.
What
do you like best about the Minneapolis Institute of Arts?
The place seems to express
the idea of a society taking care of itself, of those with a finer knowledge
and appreciation making it available to the less fortunate. I got this feeling looking at the Doryphoros,
which was surrounded with lots of fragrant white flowers, some hanging from the
high ceiling, for Easter I believe but it may as well just have been
spring. All this shows that the wealthy
and powerful do in fact have a sense of obligation to the future, and thus to
the present, and serve this obligation at high expense and expenditure of
effort. Perhaps I'm infused by a feeling
of mortality, given the twenty centuries the spear-bearer has beheld. That, and the fragility of humanity's greatest
achievements.
92.
What
are some notable works at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts?
Rembrandt's Lucretia, Van
Gogh's Olive Trees, the Chinese god of literature (16th c.), the
Persian winged genius, the Fighter of the Spirit outside, the Chinese guardian
lions, the Roman head of the Cynic philosopher, the Jade Mountain, the
Temptation painting, the Gauguin with palm tree, the Cezanne with trees, Miro's
Head of a Woman, DuChamp's Box-in-a-Suitcase, DeKooning's sketch about being
ashamed, the grave covers for prince Cheng, the Egyptian Standing Youth, the 12th
c. Bodhisaatva, Chuck Close's self-portrait with beard, Manet's Man with Pipe,
the White Lobster Phone, the yellow Chihouly sun, two Klee's with amorphous
shapes, the Magritte with a turrent and avenue, the youth giving eagle a drink.
93.
What
is esoteric about the development and fulfillment of genius, and what is
exoteric?
These relate to the virtue of
patience, because it is a virtue to do what must be done. If you avoid doing what must be done, you jam
up the whole works so that the entire system or economy loses accomplishment
mass. Esoteric genius tends to be known
toward the fewer, and exoteric genius tends to be known toward the more. Like a tree in a forest, information is not
fully defined until the act of use or knowing occurs. Esoteric genius involves patience, and if one
is to reject the esoteric one must reject patience. And as Holub said, "humanity is a job
for two million years." Patience is
definitely not the only difference between esoteric and exoteric genius
however.
94.
Is
Genius 2000 esoteric or exoteric?
Genius 2000 is not limited to
either esoteric or exoteric principles, but respects and embraces each as
proper and valuable aspects of genius.
The inner thoughts, feelings, and capacities of each individual person
are esoteric, tending toward the fewer (the one). Rarity and uniqueness is, of course, an
inexhaustible source of beauty and strength in genius. The more extensive a degree of development
may be, moreover, the less common or "exoteric" it is. To each aspect or modus of genius the
movements proper to it. Even the genius
of place is esoteric, though one can see how these terms are relative and
therefore directional. Genius need never
be the same in every time or place. It
is not homogeneous.
95.
What
are the worst actions you've taken so far as part of Genius 2000?
It's not to my benefit to
discuss this kind of thing in public.
Those actions by which I have most harmed or degraded human genius are
the worst things I've done, though the question was not specifically asking how
I define "worse" and "better," much less whether my
definition is sound. From the standpoint
of Genius 2000 as a principle, the worst things are those things that kill and
do not make stronger. I've done things
that have injured and poisoned the human genius. It may be, nevertheless, that Genius 2000 in
principle has no desire but is rather the rules and laws by which or through
which our human desire works in the world.
Genius 2000 has no interest per se of its own. My worst acts were my most self-degrading.
96.
What
will you do if no publisher or agent wants to produce this book?
There is always the choice of
including it on my website. The irony of
one's internet site is that billions of people can look at your content if they
want, but there's no rarity or lucre about it.
This book could be printed by a printer, then bound, and covered with a
nice design, and sold by hand to be read any old where sans electrics. But then society would have invested its
approval on it. The number of times I've
been told to make my expression more attractive, polite, appealing, or
"successful" could fill the universe.
"Join Society," runs the advice, but why? To gain access to a printer, or to get money
and not have to work? Working two
thousand hours per year and doing the art on the side, and then using the
internet is the logical better.
97.
Do
you feel that certain very success-choked persons or producers ought to be
competed against, as their position is very weak yet they command a vast
allocation of resources?
It's painfully obvious that
their position is weak. Discretion being
the better part of valor, however, some things take time. The mountain of souls they sit on top of, and
plough and grade with no goal in sight, is still only today's mountain. All the wealth in the world, all the talents,
are merely all the wealth in the world today.
Divided by the wealth of the future, should it go on, it approaches zero
rapidly. So let them have it. And not just part--let them have it all,
every ounce. The alternative is too
unpleasing. What they actually have,
oddly enough, is most literally nothing.
So settle for something.
98.
Why
is water so enjoyable and lovely?
When they turn on the running
fountain, though lords and ladies of the lesser earth go streaming on, the
Cancer Survivor's Park in
99.
What
is the proof that celibacy is necessary?
Maybe there isn't any. However, my current agitation may be an
indicator. It's a very sunny day. Yesterday I exercised a lot. I'm losing some of the sense of guilt of
daring to imply my art and writing is worth a look. (Let us forget that it obviously, painfully
does, in some cases to an order of magnitude over other competing
materiel.) Losing this I wonder
"Why not sex?" and fate places me near a sexy lady. At a luncheon. Does she like me? Ought I approach her? Engage?
Inquire? Offer? Is sex a sin?
Who's to know, and what will I lose if I guess wrong? If sex is OK, what in the name of Christendom
is one iota wrong with Genius 2000 and Max Herman? Paroxetine is easier.
100.
Would
it be unwise for an artist or writer to forswear the money-earning avenues of
production in favor of the purely spiritually financial and commercial land of
the internet?
By doing so the genius might
variously deprive itself of food or gain room to breathe, lose time or gain
space. Time and space, mass, and
movement are of course the ingredients of war.
Think of Go if you're not too much of a clunk. One genius may be unlike another, as they
say. I am also this, and it may not yet
be decided in the proscenial disguise which one has which bent for me, or which
will be taken upon and which will not.
Of one thing you can be sure: you can't get blood from a turnip, and you
can't compress water. I can't decide
yet, because I haven't decided yet.
101.
Is
voluntary celibacy a common practice among modern societies in the twenty-first
century?
Celibacy is not very common. A good portion of modern science will suggest
that sex-urges are built in like the growth of fingernails and it is
astonishingly unwholesome and sociopath-making not to express them by action. Sex is healthy and natural, natural, the
scientific view says in my estimation.
As surely as swimming or dancing is healthy for the heart and lungs, sex
is healthy for the emotions. Sex is
driven by hormones and other innate mechanisms to repopulate society. Failure to act out one's sex preferences
breeds madness, suffocation, hatred, perversion, rape fantasies, and
self-destructive behavior. Like being
intransigent and angry at work.
102.
Is
the 2000 quanta system feasible and proper?
There do not appear to be any
major, decisive harms posed by the 2000 quanta compositional assemblage. When archaeologists dig up a big patch of
dirt with objects suspended in it, they call it an "assemblage," much
like the debris and accoutrements that pile up in a funerary tomb for
example. If a work or assemblage of
words over time results in feelings of revulsion or boredom, a judgment of
poorliness, after a span of time the consequences are very minor. We breathe, we add to the sum total of
pollution, we take up space; yet we also work a little, eight hours or so per
day, and having been the ones that were born are obligated to do things, to
attempt.
103.
Does
socialism deserve a higher moral estimation than capitalism?
No. Socialism, Communism, and National Socialism
promise to provide a conscience of human kindness where there is none. They also argue, "masters of
deceit" that they are, that human kindness and environmental protection
are forever and absolutely alien to capitalism.
They suggest with mighty propaganda that socialism can pass laws on
workplace safety but capitalism cannot.
The idiotic assumption--it would be a worse evil had not the trauma of
industrial transformation damaged everyone's
visual acuity--that social welfare cannot be bought in a market or legislated
by capitalist legislators is the original root of socialist inversion. Expropriation leaves the economy anemic, as
Lenin found. State ownership is morally
meaningless, in theoretical matters, beyond reasonable doubt.
104.
What
does it take to remain off of paroxetine, or to keep it off of one?
To keep paroxetine of off
oneself requires a sober willingness or "untermut ubermut," that is
to say, cunning high spirits, to believe that one day very soon one is really
and truly going to "fly by those nets" once and for all and get out
of the cannibalism cage. Of people
eating one another like a house-sized genetically fabricated cat, legless,
might slowly and with serial timing swallow newborn mice in saline through a
tube lolling in her mouth but tethered by a loose rubber band. The crapulence. Oh, for the bracing fact of "You know, I
have no wish to socialize with you.
Good-bye." The world is a
sow that eats her farrow. Hold me now
and ever in good stead!
105.
Might
the failure to drive home in the public thoroughfare such matters of pre- and
post- appertaining to things leave the world in all too shaky a state?
There is great good in
leaving the more irrefutable image of what one's expression compares to
unsaid. What this good is may be
described of "be careful what you wish for." Whether it is part of love's courage to be
strong (Robinson) not to allow the very poor to be praised and exercise command
is uncertain. Strong winning moves may
anger the minders. What I am speaking of
in this pseudo-cryptic palaver is my dot-paintings versus Hirst's. Mine are better, came first, and came with no
knowledge of him. And I can prove
it. If Hirst is asking for a free slide
because of custom, is he even mediocre?
106.
May
it be considered improper to lie to another, to knowingly persuade them to harm
and degrade themselves, if one's personal genital titillation is the end?
Nietzsche might say it is
good to lie to an emotionally weak woman, perhaps still bewildered by childhood
mistreatment, and by persuading her falsely that your real interest is in her
happiness cause her to act as your sexual victim for a while. After all, she may need to learn the world is
a rough place full of liars. No sexual
relation is nurturing anyway; it's all consumption only. The damaged woman actually is doing just fine
in the bargain, as she gets to have a lot of sex while she is young and nubile
without having to bother with her own genius, or having a future, or being able
to stave off even deeper feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness later.
107.
What
is a pen that you like much more than you ever thought you would?
This one that I'm using--the
Kimoto Pake Super Fine, made in
108.
How
best can humans survive and surpass the monumental, epic suffering of the First
Cold War?
This is best done in
precisely the same way in which one takes the final sit-up one may be
doing. Much that hurts is not good for
one, but some is. To know what is, to
work to know and then make the choice to "pluck its berries harsh and
crude," with reverence and not "diffidence that faltered," this
is the only manner by which our exogenetic evolution can occur. Fearfully, even the most probable benefit is
not certain. For this reason the
greatest humility is needed, and for the experimenter to "enter the
109.
What
is happening at the opening today?
So many things are going on,
which in large part I could not enjoy due to a slight lack of sleep. I felt cranky, cramped, inconvenienced,
pressured, and angry. I saw Meliere's
first movie, but missed "the train" and got there only to see the
French Dragoons. I mean Lumiere. The lady called it "Luminere." I like the Meliere to the moon, and decided
Flash Gordon is based on it. I saw a few
others, having largely the effect on me of good perfume. Spiteful.
Then I made a postcard and my general irritation was high. I feel vastly better here, in this line,
scribbling. All told I feel that I
missed in the aim I wanted--I flirted with zero women. Maybe I'm too testy for that just now.
110.
If
economic systems can remain roughly as they are, i.e. as capitalism, what can
be looked to for making things "much better"?
People can make a muck of
their daily lives and livelihoods out of sheer childishness. People's power to mess themselves up by
drinking is difficult to take away.
Marriage, children, sexuality, education, "diet" so to say are
under individuals' own management. So they
can ruin their lives even in Utopia, even in the perfectly-run state or
polis. Disease and accidents happen
too. So the "much better"
world will not be a place where everyone is lobotomized and glowing. The only "much better" is now
incremental, genius-by-genius, quantum by quantum. What could be better? As you sow, so shall you reap!
111.
Do
people need to scrap, and hustle, and predate, and strategize?
Ah, Sunflower, here's the
fine part. Genius 2000 can do just fine
under twenty-first century capitalism.
There is no conflict so long as we respect the polis and worship the
Eumenides. Then the arts of peace will
heal the sicknesses and exercise us to an athletic joy. Be grateful!
Make enormity of gratitude your daily habit. Don't believe for a second the Furies are
"better," because my god they're the same thing gone good. Don't
toy with absolute wreckage beyond your own genius, which sometimes will warrant
phases akin to autumn or winter and "the passing away of man which is
nature," because if you do then the measures taken by the polis to protect
the Muses will apply fully. Or, be
reckless if you like messing up your own life.
Want strategy? Try developing
your own genius. Generations have died
for merely the dream of one day giving this very decent hobby to you.
112.
Is
revenge esoteric or exoteric?
Revenge is the most exoteric
of all crapulent disasters and plagues.
Revenge loves company and acts as if there is no private world, no
healing. Blood calls out for blood, soaking
into the ground. "If we put Max in
a pot and boil him down to ashes, is that all he is?" Under the Furies everyone is the same and
there is no study of art. It's hard to
see how the Erinyes and the Eumenides can even be the same. Staying home, doing your checkbook, eating
properly, sketching and painting watercolor and all the other arts of peace
that grow organically and explode into bloom after simple days of respiration
and nutrition--these are only for those who take their own steps. The Eumenides are
esoteric, in this regard. Yet the
opposite is just as true, if not more!
Like the soliton it spins.
113.
Because
the Furies and the Muses are in fact totally different and unrelated Greek
deities, isn't Genius 2000's political philosophy utterly absurd and frankly worthless?
Certainly it doesn't
strengthen my hand that I committed an ultra-whiff on the Erinyes/Eumenides
question. I believe the most likely
thing is that in lecture Dr. Fowler said something like "by this vote the
Furies were turned into something domestic, more like the Muses." Perhaps I just invented it out of whole
cloth. Factually "the
Eumenides" means "the Furies" or "the Erinyes" exactly. There's no "conversion" of the
Furies to the Muses. Good lord what a
fractious blunder. Recovery seems now
unattainable. My theory of changing
vengeance to pleasurable artistic exuberance, politically permissible freedom
that develops, is a figment with no precedent.
114.
Is it
possible to make your Erinyes-to-Eumenides sound, gripping, and compelling by
sheer force of will and insistent stupidity?
At the Burning Man festival
of crapulent barf in 1997, I made a three-level ziggurat out of two-by-fours
and determined that any work of art can become the greatest work of art in the
world, in history even, if I decide it is and stick to my guns. Not me per se, but someone. Some people can do this, probably not me
however but why not "make believe" while we may, and when they do
this it is done. Part of making
something "the greatest" is just to treat it like the greatest.
One may, in this self-fulfilling manner, transform the stars or autumn
leaves into the very most perfect work of art ever to exist simply by steady
prayer. So--I challenge even the mighty
Aeschylus. So!
115.
Are
the politically welcomed Furies still vile blood-glutted monsters or the
driving energies of art and success?
The Furies finally figured
out--the damn junkies--that success is revenge.
Now this is "my way."
And maybe it's truer than you think.
Space in three dimensions is made infinitely "larger" by the
addition of time; just as while a floor alone has no volume one additional
element of height creates a room--from zero to a positive quantity in an
increase by a ratio of infinity. Therefore
it is clear that breaking the rules can be evil, but even making a rule--the
rule as such--is breaking the prior rule of the Erinyes and the "rule of
one master." Perhaps, the
ingredient of my insisting the Erinyes did
turn into the Muses is procedurally legitimate and even truer than the other "old story."
116.
Given
the "Eumenides Blunder", is Genius 2000 left unjustifiable?
It certainly does dump the
excuse I used to primp and preen over--no wonder no one ever thought of
it! I made it up myself out of thin
air! Absurd. I used to think, "Heck, isn't the whole
Communist Manifestation based on Furies not being Muses?" All their anti-bourgeois B.S.--as if Max the
Bourgeois didn't wear them all out on the field of art, endlessly. All the commies cared about was revenge,
expropriation, making the wrong right.
As if the Muses couldn't do it--as if, were it to be done, it would only
and could only be done by Terror. Good
luck with that over any length of time.
You'll rule the City empty of men.
Or, you must have no laws, no oracles,
no Zeus, only the One Master. Even if Aeschylus didn't say it.
117.
Is it
possible that the welcomed Furies are not the muses, but merely some horrific
poisoned archaisms kept around to scare the thick-headed, the Caliban?
No it isn't, because if that
were true the whole Oresteia would not be presenting a heightened, artistically rendered world. It would be, in a word, crapulence. Over-full.
All one has to do is read the play, even though by doing that today is
how I found my blunder. The Furies are different. They bless the city and bring it
fruitfulness. They are not just set to
the side, like an older and harsher justice to be brought out at tough
times. They're doing different work. Unfortunately, this will require some
quoting. But I can prove the polis requires channeling revenge into art.
118.
Can't
the revenge and the success come from different driving forces?
It would appear they
could. First you have mad-dog
revenge. Then someone says "oh
let's switch to success instead."
But what do you do with the old forces?
Maybe just shut them away and bribe them until they die of old age. But if there's no change of one thing into another there is no risk, problem,
uncertainty, or compulsion.
Unfortunately I can't make the case.
I blundered. Sorry, Lattimore.
119.
Can
Genius 2000's exuberance and delight in wholesome art convert the Furies' rage
to a benediction and thus save the polis, thus save polis?
I don't think it would be
precisely those qualities, if any, of this kind of thing that would change the
organization of forces from revenge to success.
It would take something else; moreover, this something else would cause
by precedence both those qualities to show as well as revenge-wishes to be
transmuted.
120.
Is
addiction fun?
Addiction starts out fun but
then the fun wears off and you just feel sick and miserable, because weakness is the true misery. Unless you think being sick and weak is fun,
which it isn't unless you're warped and insane and what not.
121.
Did
Genius 2000 already fix everything?
It already fixed everything
that was broken, that is to say the circle.
I mean the keystone. I mean, at
least it didn't wreck the whole damned world.
Or maybe it did. Wow. I guess it's fun to have no idea whether
Genius 2000 has killed and buried art and poisoned the earth forever in toto,
or saved everything.
122.
Are
God and art both monodeities?
It's impossible to know. What is clear is that it's eleven P.M. and I
have no lady, don't dance, and am getting out of here. Thanks for the music, band!
123.
Don't
the writings of Keats and Shelley cover you, cover Genius 2000?
Surely they do. Allow me to list to poiein and to logizein,
the unacknowledged legislator/prophet/Apollonian advocate of the
"Defence." Amazing how few,
eighty-six years later, people have read Keat's "Vale of
Soul-Making." To remedy this I
assign you Norton 2, which, be that as it may, is out of print. Read these things! "Get him, get him, get him, get
him."
124.
How
does art relate to the future viability of democracy?
In order for democracy to
work people have to become better artists and appreciators of art. Alexis de Tocqueville said, "as men
become more equal, they must become more competent." In fact, one of the only advantages of
enforced equality is that it compels individuals to improve just as a tucking
skater spins faster.
125.
Why
does Shelley mention "Of Death" and the Filium Labyrinthi in the
"Defence"?
I imagine that it was to his
purpose. People are so prone to ask
"why," without realizing that without answering the question
themselves they will never even begin to have the question itself much less the
answer. There is also the goal of
equating poetry with other endeavors of the human genius--philosophy, science,
and politics. Shelley and I are great
friends; he's a great friend to me. His
loss was incalculable. A simple boating
mishap! Imagine his final thoughts!
126.
Won't
it be difficult to write 1875 of these before September first?
Not for me. I have energy enough and need something to
do, and want desperately not to be "a hopeless case." I want back into the world! I want more life! Earning my way back into the fold, even by
reading, by looking again at "words twice spoken." Sure it won't be the simplest thing, but no
more taxing than a moderately challenging part-time job--like raising a
child. Rather, less so; it resembles
more building a decent garden in a single spring. Shovel, grade, weed, water, plant, powder,
clean. Amen.
127.
Doesn't
the comparison to Bacon and Cezanne shame Genius 2000 and thus mortify Max
Herman, and force us to the fence that we honor him with eyes nor ears until
the penance paid, which can be never?
This is not so in the
world. Zeus can fix all things with but
the tiniest effort, with "no hard breath," except to bring someone
back from the dead. Nor does this mean
we should be slaves to the fear of death, as if by bawling we could "get
out of it." Come now. No, Max Herman, should all go well with him,
will not be ashamed to meet Lord Bacon at a later time, and to greet Cezanne on
his walks by the Lac D'Annecy. As
128.
What
good are the proper instructions, laid out, if the fool prefers not to follow
them?
For a thing to be is enough
to prove it is possible. Hence the lies
of the fool may halt in mid flight, to his own great benefit, and without
harm.
129.
What
are the three greatest habits for one's genius?
These are avoidance of
addiction (temperance), daily reading (prudence), prayer (justice), and
light-heartedness (fortitude).
130.
Is
sexual arousal a bad thing?
Let's consider that it may
be, and then consider why. Many
societies have prescribed that women be covered, so that the men will not get
aroused except at home in the marriage bed.
Not the worst plan if monogamy is the primary value, that is to say, if
monogamy has more value than polygamy.
Other concerns arise, however, with this covering-up. The harm to me today of arousal is hard to
gauge. It has not been extreme. My god there's a white spider on my
thigh! Now inner! What has brought it thither in the
night? I would say that to see an
arousing woman, copulate with her, and let it go at that, well what's the
harm? Unwanted children? Not with a rubber. Perhaps the very idea one can get what one
"wants" is the culprit, the crime….
131.
Is it
not true, however, that you have re-dedicated yourself to constructive,
historically normal dating?
Very much so. Although my style of approach is to be
idiosyncratic, romantic, and my own, I've determined that my years of
masturbation should now good-naturedly end.
The White Spider told me so.
132.
How
is the current poisoning of the environment, land, and water to be best
addressed?
Conclusively the liberals
miss the steps involved in advocating for their twin priorities,
environmentalism and humanism. The polis
cannot be expropriated to purchase these second-order imperatives. The fiscal-military basis of civilization, of
exogenetically evolving polity, is the horse before the cart of E and H. Would you kill a horse to get it out of the
cart's way? Therefore the amity of all
genius in a healthy not "poisoned" peace (as Camus warned against) is
the task of art; this is to give love courage to be strong. Then, when the dynamic unity of sentience and
space-time is in place--this is the peace--then the victorious, safe, honored,
and secure warrior-guardians will make means of the "more perfect"
world more common. This will be done
when it endangers neither the future nor the guardians of the future. So think carefully and without flatulence ye
would-be chivalrics of E and H. Or is
all your frenzy just for attention, just antics to "get the girl," or
to barge onstage like a drunkard? If
that is the case, you're not really striving to help E&H anyhow so let's
not gild the lily. Paquin, pull down!
133.
Is
truth relative or absolute?
A thoughtful question, per
se. If a given phenomenon, say
"farting" instead of truth for truth's sake, is relative, then it is
absolutely true to say it is relative.
In turn, farting is only absolute relative to the non-absolute or
relative phenomena such as vomiting.
What do we have here? Perhaps a
failure to communicate. Every relative
truth is absolute, and every absolute truth relative: absolutely relative and
relatively absolute, respectively. Nor
does this end our inquiry. Let us recall
the magnetic field at right angles: the two go together. Is human nature (humanity or humanness)
constructed only? If so there is no such
thing as violence, harm, degradation, or slavery--only varying
arrangements. The answer (or release)
lies in time-steps, cells.
134. How can the Eumenides Blunder be fixed?
Very easily by a simple
inclusion of a step, and intermediary step between Aeschylus and me. Dr. Fowler mentioned that the Athenian Furies
were integrated into the polis. She
compared them to the Muses. I then
considered that the forces of nature, of its self-protection and revenge, can
be and must be, per Aeschylus, integrated into the polis. The true muses then are not the children of
Zeus and Poetry. They are the chthonic
forces of nature and hardly secondary at all.
Mere artifice is like twigs in a blaze.
Success is revenge. Genius 2000
therefore revises "art" from instrumental reason to passionate
nature, to factum brutum. The error is
only apparent.
135. Why is it detrimental to the development
of genius to feel obligated to take care of others?
Dysfunction, co-dependency,
and abuse give us a fine case study of how the feeling of obligation to take of
another can hurt your soul, your genius, your genius 2000. If I'm pre-occupied, due to fear, jumping the
gun in hastiness, with the guilt that I deserve not to write because my granpa
is sad then I won't write or at least maybe not well. More precisely, if I yield to that feeling,
obey it cravenly to appease, a posteriori I'm not writing. The feeling is unavoidable but acting on it
is. Turning it into an obligation or
rule, and taking the guilt and self-mutilation of non-compliance on oneself,
that is one form of making the feeling a rule that hurts.
136. Why is it so important to you to recall
Joyce?
Joyce believed in the modern,
i.e., post-medieval, idea of the individual artist. The individual, single-quantum genius was
theretofore a minor element, at most a nuisance or obstruction to the Great
Impersonal One. Joyce thought and wrote
that we "are stuck with it," the individual genius of cognition and
perception. The maps without this ocean
in them do not longer hold or serve. So,
he wrote "vermin bred of the sweat of sloth," as well as on the
archtype of the individual grandiosity of raw genial desire in Icarus
("the sky is black with
them"), as well as "when a soul is born in this country, nets are
thrown at it--family, religion, country.
I shall try to fly by those nets."
137. If global capitalism is an OK state of
affairs, and this historical tradition of art is also OK, why are you bothering
with Genius 2000---and much more importantly, why should anybody else?
Imagine a world in which people
could choose to behave well or ill.
Then, imagine a world where they actually chose well. They would do well under the conditions
available. What would this be like? Different religions' adherents not killing
each other and not destroying the polis in order to get
"supremacy." Imagine a
military core of authority sufficient to deter and dismantle any congregation
of ambitious fighters seeking to upset the apple cart. Imagine a cultural-behavioral field of
occurrences that both refrains from threatening the military core and loyally
protects it by duty. Art would be a part
of this, or what used to be called art.
138. Can art exist without any objects?
This was a question I
considered in 1994, in Literary Change (see
www.geocities.com/genius-2000/LiteraryChange1-6.jpg). The problem of the graven image. You won't believe I thought of Literary
Change before encountering Horkheimer or PPP but I did. (This fact makes me feel, incidentally, that
I must be insane--people say they think I lie because "no one could be
that smart and artistic." Imagine
people saying of a drawing you did, "that's too good for a slob such as
yourself. Who did you steal it from? Who?")
I did think of Literary Change.
It's not so hard to believe if you consider my maths background at
UMTYMP, more aptitude than results to be sure yet still a sign of analytical
problem-solving. Then ponder talk I
overheard in 1988 to the effect that "
139. What is the purpose of leaving up all
those jpegs, the papers, and the original Genius 2000 site, and so forth, if by
your own confession your previous actions were disgusting?
Some of the jpegs are
frighteningly bad, even sickening. Some
are acceptable. People may try to
pigeonhole me based on a good jpeg or a bad one--why would I want to make those
attacks, those reductions, easier for anybody?
If I pretended perfect knowledge of which were rich and poor, decent or
degrading, I might only make the entire thing worse. Go ahead and look at the ones you hate, or
ones you love, or your friend hates or loves.
Frankly I just don't want to take them down, I'm afraid to, and why couldn't I live
down the "bad" ones? Some are
quite decently intended but incompetent; some are lucid but embarrassing. So be it.
140. What if people mis-read archived emails
and then mischief or bad things result?
Oh what's the big deal
anyway, is my view. Go ahead and read
them, or go ahead and don't. Read one
but not the other. Read the funny ones
and skip the alcoholic ones. Point out
the patterns of my good or evil, my pathologies, my nobilities, my irrelevance,
your irrelevance, what felt good but went sour or fizzled. Maybe you'll try to "boil it all
down" as a school project and win a nickel. But as to taking them down, what is really
meant is being ashamed of them, not moving on, denying Zeus and his oracles and
laws, that is, taking down myself, eating my liver, philosophical suicide. And maybe I don't like that.
141. Aren't you sick of the ante-bellum
tensions, of an industrializing North losing its market and raw materials in a
rebellious South and thereby its capacity for Union and escape from Europe's
historical orbit?
Many would even today like
there never to have been a
142. Should one care to touch on the
attraction of television, of snack foods, of getting drunk and high; of video
games, of all the myriad amusements to replace the pen and the inks; should one
care to wonder about "junk for the genius," what would one come to?
Salt was rare in old times,
so it seems savory to the beast in humans, but it has no nutritive value beyond
a very low base level required. Excess
of that which is superficially attractive causes many an illness. Why I myself sometimes lack the foresight and
decency to hold my neck upright when I compose--I cramp and hunch as though
"I have to get it down," some astonishing formula. An emotional and sentimental vomitorium of
inks. Yet there are subtler, healthier,
well-nigh magical tastes whose savor merely gathers slower. Find them.
143. Should life be viewed and discussed (in
rhetoric) as a recurring cyclical process or a purpose?
We don't live as means only,
Kant said. We are not means only. We, the human, are an end in ourselves. Instrumental reason, the logic of means only,
mocks and what is worse forgets the end purpose of all the fighting, killing,
tilling, traveling, gathering, and wetwork.
Is this just to sit and vegetate, to be lifeless and equably rot? To be a rotting egg in an unwept carton? No, it only means that we rest peacefully in
the heart of God. We pray and
meditate. I call God "Genius 2000,"
I=Genius, 2000=Am, God=I Am, God=Genius 2000.
And you think I wish to denigrate religion, to smash it, to ridicule
it. Or perhaps I'm being
self-deceiving--everyone's always known I'm pious but principled.
144. Is it evil to discuss God?
Many religions, the oldest
and earliest in particular, prohibited "discussion" of God. This is mentioned in the Video First Edition
vis-ŕ-vis Yahweh, YHWH, and ineffability.
Certainly in a world of widespread religious animosity (or
"fitna" as it is named in Islamic life) one might do better never to
discuss God. If the bourgeois coyness is
superior to discussion, and what is more, so superior that religion ought never to be discussed, then you have
your answer. Yet remember the law of
diminishing returns and even of pressured reactive response--never discussing
God creates some of the worst things the very prevention of which motivated our
silence. Not to defile God with rank
expressions, sure. But the fountain
overflows. "It is not what goes
into the mouth that defiles a man, but that which comes out--for that comes
from the heart."
145. Is unwholesome repression and quiet
exoteric?
The exoteric results can be
manifold. Does public discussion of
religion rob us of our inner life, of our inner genius? "Genius" is a pagan word, but as
the precursor or origin of both soul and of monodeity--of learning and learned
sentience--it may be in the ultimate sense far less pagan than much of
conventional monotheistic behaviorisms.
Done in a skewed way--skewed in a particular way--discussing art in
public "degrades" it, makes it common, vulgar, plebeian, democratic,
exoteric, entropic. Yet this is far from
the only effect. It may be that telling
you you have some element or pattern of the Good in you, a fragment, and that
everyone does, is the only way to give you a stake in the esoteric; and
moreover, this being factually true, it can calm you. And the dreams that move over calm waters are
what genius develops into itself.
146. What can we, the readers, make of the
fact that you masturbate and have no friends?
How I could know that is
beyond my comprehension. My guesswork
lately is that being off paroxetine makes my genius sharper but more volatile,
good for writing perhaps but likely inimical to my workplace
professionalism. I am already a touchy,
bald, aging son of a gun and therefore "under scrutiny"--my
"psychological time-bomb" is ticking.
I don't wish to be dismissed just yet, the moreso because I'm phobic
that this shan't be published and I will need my sinecure until 2035. So, being antsy and snappish, I choose to
masturbate. I know it's not what you
wanted to hear. At least I avoid
pornography sometimes! I can get off
into a liver as good as the next man.
147. Speaking of Bellow, have you ever read Dangling Man?
Yes, how coincidental you
should mention it. In fact, most of the
ideas in Genius 2000 were stolen or at least adapted from "
148. How did your personal letter from Bob
Pirsig get stolen?
I was moving away from
149. So you advocate hyper-redundant backup
arrays?
Only if you won't ever need
or want to erase it. By analogy, if
humans could never forget we could never sleep and that can be deadly. I do recommend backing up your efforts in
things like recorded work, writing, etc.
Every kid knows that it would be nicer now if we hadn't lost all the
books in
150. Do you have sciatica?
In fact a touch of sciatica
has been irritating me lately. It's not
physically inconsequential to scribble out twenty or so half-pages per day,
either. I get the twinges sometimes, but
also in my left under-wrist which may be from keyboard work at work or from
pinched nerves caused by weightlifting.
151. Isn't your idea not to diet and exercise
for vain "costly gay" sex-seeking but for medical health and energy
for writing only?
There are two factors
here. One is to lower my cholesterol,
lower stress, keep mental stability and mood levels, keep my job, lose weight
to help my sciatica and maintain adequate energy for nightly writing. Reconsidering isolation is a separate task of
emotional wellness. To lose the
self-castigation that rationalizes solitary resentment. At least to consider normal dating or
marriage?
152. Would you tell us about the three
standout qualities of speaking subjects?
This was a way I tried to get
some escape-leverage out of academia.
Little schemes and nonsensical gestures, ways of asserting my own little
piece of sanity and decency over and against the Great Machinery of
institutional thought. Among people
talking and debating, speaking, using rhetoric and language in the social
setting of life under pressure, you have certain effectuations--whether the
person is heard; whether they speak truth or more especially needful truth;
whether the speech is effectuated in action.
Why do people (humans) speak? To
consider, weigh, decide, and act. Hence
the three aspects--did one speak, did one speak right, was it effective.
153. Is monodeity a necessary result or law of
sentience in time-space?
By way of answer, consider
the following: art created
humanity. Art entered into the mixture
of things, "birth and death and thoughts of these," at some point in
primate evolution. Take the bone-using
kill-smasher from "A Space Odyssey" if you need to, but another might
well be better, though said has its advantages also. Art created humanity, created humans. It was here before us, and made us. How many dimwit liberals would even guess close to what that means? Maybe some, maybe none. Thus if art created us we have no say in what
it is. It's a law and we obey it or get
ridden down. And what was one to do
before Mendel? Even now the language of God is the only thing that
makes us human. Like it or not.
154. What does Daily.html mean?
That's just about my favorite
page of all time. Plus "Every Thought
Has A Number" with the Afghan flag.
Oh several. (Note to Self: write
PhD thesis on why phrasemaking comes from advertising idiom, widely, in a
rather touching manner.) The profane,
the avenue of its quietest approach, the restitutio in integrum, the external
downfall destined to find it--few things on this earth surpass that. A man hounded to death by National
Socialists! Ironically, when I was
mis-prescribed a potent anti-psychotic (forget the name--Propunchion?) because
of wanting to do Genius 2000, I lost the ability to sleep for a month, had no
health coverage, got put on seventy-two hour hold, but stole a New Republic
from the doctor's exam room to read inside--the cover story on "The Failed
Messianism of Walter Benjamin"! And
the ethos of responsibility as replacement.
155. Did you ever not want pre-emptive war by
the
Heavens no; any dimwit knew
in 1992 (the year of the Hermit) that the vacuum left by Sovietism would
require an expansion of capitalist democratic force structure. Only a supreme fool lacking any sense of
pragmatism would see such things otherwise.
Of course not just troops, but prosperity--a Marshall Plan and not a
156. What is the importance of Holub in Genius
2000?
At Oberlin in 1987 a lot of
us read Holub for a class there. I
myself enjoyed it, and wrote a good one-act play in the style of Holub and a
moderately good prose essay titled "Holub's View of the Effect of the Will
on the Dualities of the Human Condition."
Again, the Doubters might say such a paper and play are impossible, as I
was just eighteen at the time. Well,
read them and weep Mssrs. It's time to
return the library books and shape up.
Interferon as a theory of theater, that's effectual. Brief Reflections on Butchering a Carp. Or at least, a hint of
157. What is
the deal with Interferon, On Theater, only one death in the village, the
backstage of the world,
The deal is whether I really
read it, as many say is impossible in 1987, and whether it affected me when the
fly laid her eggs on the eye of the dead cavalier. The gulp of schnapps. No one is perfect such things give one an
idea. In particular, imagine you're a
moderate whiz at math, having decided only two months before not to return to
the dry instruments. Then, behold, a
poet with a day job--in science no less.
At the time it must have hit me so abruptly it didn't even register:
here is some relevant poetry for my concerns.
The additional appeal of "modern" poetry, Post-Victorian,
gritty and urban. "Stars of the
main sequence shine on forever."
All this just to say it showed there is more than "theory,"
that the job can be done.
158. What does the kung-an, or koan, have to
do with Genius 2000?
The origin of the talent, the
quantum, the kung-an, is lost even to me in the mists and fogs of time. Perhaps the 1-2-3-4 of math had something to
do with it. The specified variables x
and y. It may have been concern with the
one and the many, the artwork and the canon, which I encountered in 1987 in the
guise of cultural studies and whether
159. Is the Video First Edition worth seeing,
and if so, what does it mean?
There are legal questions
about the releases my interviewees signed so the thing may not be available. If you're on fire, don't watch my documentary
about the meaning of genius and the meaning of history--stop, drop, and
roll. What it means is itself, it's
non-transferable. It's good
however. Very dutifully done.
160. Why don't you want to bare your dirty
secrets?
They're only secret because
it's improper to put them in public.
They're private matters, and properly so. It's not what I want, it's what's proper and
mannerly. Would you want to spill all of
yours? You prefer to have no space or clemency? If so, then you spill. It's like tuning to a neutral third-party
tone, decorous.
161. When did you first read Eliot's
"Tradition and the Individual Talent"?
In 1990, in my Modern Lit.
class as a junior at
162. When did you first start using the terms
"expressive object" and "technological species"?
At this moment the specific
years are escaping me. "Expressive
object" came earlier, as I was trying to find a less dogmatic and
untraceable term for "artwork" or "artifact" or "art
object." When exactly I began to
question the status "artifact" eludes me. Both began in the nineties, possibly 1989 but
I highly doubt it. After 1992, after The Hermit, after I graduated
perhaps. The purpose of these two terms
may be to indicate when I tried to get away from the concept of great genius,
make great art-piece, build up artisticness, add-add-add, which individually
blocked me (asking why it was and why could I add more) and then turned out to
have blocked others, say the idea of accumulating wreckage or adding "an
inch or an ounce."
163. Why do you get so jealous, bitter, and
narrow when you see an attractive sexy-poo and know she doesn't belong to you
and will not ever?
An exciting answer for me to
say, because the needed awareness is not always there for me. I often forget how to "prune by
study." Perhaps I'm irritated that
pretty women, sexually active and attracting ones, insult me with their
preference for another. It would seem
that my artistic effortfulness and pretensions are only self-hypnosis to think
I'll soon get "the pretty ones," party with them, fill their minds
with my seed and get to view it. Perhaps
it is the fear of death I feel because as foci with such strong pull they might
array forces curt enough to crush me.
They do cause motion and trampling.
Yet if I heed the Great One, the Great Law, am I not secure? Can I not weather any storm one day to have
said "I've beaten out my exile"?
Perhaps.
164. Why are you jealous, bitter, and
desolated whenever you encounter happy, glowing, beautiful people having a good
time?
Good gracious I'm not sure
but it must have something to do with them having and enjoying something I want
but don't have; want to be but am not.
Young, sexy, attractive, my whole life in front of me. Fresh and alive.
165. Are you aware that you're missing the
Xenakis piece, a piece of music--you've got a ticket to an all-evening jazz
show--that involves math?
Yes, but this café is nice
too, maybe they could love me here, though it's really only the chairs that are
sexy, and the view. The early-evening
light. A clean well-lighted place! Run, Joe, run! And yet another dots-piece.
166. Are you finally proud of yourself yet?
Well I did get back in time
for the Xenakis so I'm proud of that; but whether that is myself or should be
treated as such in that the Genius 2000 is the real me and I only aim and
shoot, I cannot say.
167. What if the
Everything is a koan,
everything that occurs occurs in time-space like Shakespeare's pebbled
shore. I ought to try to be clear and
decent but it's not always easy for me to be straightforward and concrete. I'm still a "Knight of Cups" in
this respect. Yet here I go: all things
are occurrences, not objects; all occurrences occur in space-time, are finite,
yet "point beyond"; we are merely players. Clap then or leave me trapped in
168. So, everything is dots in temporal
frames, quanta-in-field?
Certainly, like the
Fischinger films here at the show. Dots,
spots, and circles on frames of celluloid.
People are like that too, the individual talent-in-history; time is a
volumetric tube on the slices of which we can run calculus. Even (wow, Fischinger is similar to certain
jpegs, though
169. What do shapes, slicing, microscopial
film-slides, and dada have to do with anything?
Science per se may or may not
be dada, innocent, innocuous and untainted.
There is something "not enough" with that. The "missing thing."
170. Did you just burn out a used-up pen, and
in starting another--rather a special pen bought in extreme hope--how does your
mortality hang on you now, brazen usurper?
Only that my mortality seeps
from me, time passes, I lose one pen stolen from my old temp job and start
another, one I bought with its twin "for a purpose," to go even I
think with a paper for a twin. How
portentous! Though now I use it
thankfully. Thank god I'm alive!
171. Does using or rather allowing oneself to
be used--wafted upon--by one's own time-space matter more and do more in the
end--toward the end--than impregnating the sexy (i.e. cloning oneself where all
wish to clone)?
It would be pleasing to say
only the former matters, is matter, but false.
172. What if your desire to "accomplish
something in your little solitary world" is only a mask for wanting to
take over and run and rape all the other spots, all the other chairs with folk
in them--their shoes, their gorgeous hair, their lips--and in this you are
completely sociopathic, rapist?
If if if, if a fool would
persist in his folly he would become wise; though my effortfulness here in my
own chair my love of another may arise--but even so this is only love and hope
for harmony. Hamlet said, "use them
after your own dignity, for use them as they warrant we are all
whipped." Perhaps I can unhook
myself by quoting "the eager ambition that profits the state." Maybe my only masturbating counts for
something, my celibate mask. Only I
don't know. "Keep thy heart light,
lest it make thee sink"!
173. What if envy is the love of nothing, and
in order to be one must care for something other than craving what one has
not--indeed to grow a loving lasting home of regard for what one has?
Surely a break may be needed
in the swamp of covetousness, a blade to mightily hack the knot. To envy thine merely to neglect mine
own. My desire tells me a woman would be
nice, satisfying, life-giving, but what is more, would change me, alter me, cause me to exist in a fuller, better, realer,
less speculative, less insecure (fleeting) way.
Perhaps this is the hormonal love-surge we require for loving
children. Candles do not determine the
need for more of me. Still the cravings
are of a kin to self-erosion, removal of the ground beneath me. What could be less endogenetically survivable
than the self-contained consciousness, sufficient unto itself? Maybe its absence in an exogenetic
species-making.
174. Is the first step of "not
looking" a betrayal of the West and of your own gonadic impressioning?
Not really. Let them look at me if they want but I don't
"owe it to the cause" to look at them. That's the Lolitation of the Men of Numenor
and well to be scoffed at. Sure not
looking pisses people off. But my god,
if liberal democracy has come to that it's cooked. Not looking, i.e. making it worse, and then
absorbing that state--well that's the
escape.
175. What else is there to Genius 2000 besides
the kung-an thing for those of us who don't need basic dating strategy tips,
i.e. meet our social comrades not in
the desperate swamp of inaction?
There's the rescuing
criticism part too, stolen from Benjamin, that "saves" all past art
from homogeneous oblivion. So chew on
that!
176. What is another of those wonderful
"keystone" experiences you make such claims about for Genius 2000?
The ideas I had "out of
the blue" about the essence of tragedy in
177. As an exogenetic evolutionary
experimenter (E.E.E.), might you not "guarantee" your own replication
or at least staying "around" by treating the beautiful women as
sisters and daughters?
That sounds lovely. Please count me in for that orchestra--front
and center. So.
178. Might thy chaste and filial manners be a
sidelong denigration of the lovelier angels?
Nay, there are far to the
more often shortages in the brotherly column.
So many clowns and villains trying to get into women's pants it
downgrades the whole stream of human endeavor--it's murder on the exogenetic
store of variegation. Holub called it
hominization.
179. Are you truly content with such a
Platonic, non-sexual posture toward the sexy ladies?
Certainly in part I am, that
is to say at times, particularly at times like now when my lonesomeness
stings. It pinches. I'll wait till my life isn't towtruck-ready
and then politely ask "hello."
"I find you charming."
180. Why does the dram of eale all the noble
substance of a doubt, to its own, scandal?
Because one small part of
something with a very strong effect on its surroundings can have a very
significant control-role on a very large amount of surrounding material over
enough time. Whether this is a
"bad" thing, to be feared, et cetera, thou mayest judge.
181. What does Genius 2000 make of all the
high number of peoples and polii who have gotten smashed along the way?
Some were not so good and deserved
it whereas some were wonderful and didn't.
Perhaps justice is more about "who deserved it." But there will be and always is a serious
problem on blame. When we blame others
we are--well, I can't in good conscience say blame is a mistake. An errorful way. Yet when we blame wrongly it is. Blame right or leave blame alone. Yes!
182. And yet, to times in hope, shall this
verse stand?
Many folk feel that a certain
dreaminess and agitation of particles of pabulum will give us the sweet
perfection. Thus a polis where the
toughness is put on most judiciously will be the finest. (Dang it, I wrote this C-D, C-D song way back
in the day in goddamned
183. Why don't you be the real genius and take
steps in the overspace while letting the many growing things go about their
way, and in so doing, gain the freedom in which you can finally move your limbs
without harming, love your fellow-beings who, did they know it, want nothing
more than to exist?
Pfff, if I knew that before,
but now that I do it sounds great. I may
not get to vent my baser reptilian feelings of hate and envy on anyone without
regretting it but heck, I'll take the self-respect if so doing will get me
it. Not to have the "oh gosh I've
broken fifty people's feet today by tooling around in my halftrack." To do something that is a thing, a thing to
be done or to do, perhaps provisionally, that does not provoke or attack other
religions, or belittle them, or insult them, or even ignore them, but on the
contrary gives them space--all of them more--and amity, fresh air and room to breathe
it--that's the real work.
184. If you're at peace with yourself then why
don't you stay out of everyone else's business with your cravings to be
necessary, preserved, and "copied"?
By all natural rights one
might think that to be the best path--to make no expressive object, to
articulate nothing, to be perpetually silent and mute. Unfortunately something will be "out and
about," something is always under expression. The risks must be weighed, the
advantages. Not that I wouldn't enjoy
expressing nothing if that's how the cards were dealt, it seems sometimes. And yes, the torments of "do I dare
disturb the universe" are possibly the cruelest that ever existed. Among all the multifarious testing methods
I've tried, several have recommended I publish though some have recommended I
never do so. Reason and logic don't
solve it, neither does passion, neither does guessing nor experience. And yet, our choices all go "in the record."
185. Will you be supremely disappointed,
crestfallen, if in September no one yet wants this book and so you are forced
to put it on the internet for free?
Sure, I suppose that's
possible--but how many of us get the chance to suffer that kind and level of
neglect? At a highly bald thirty-five to
put one's life's work on the internet for free, well, that's a pinch.
186. What if you fail to gain commercial
representation, place on the internet a book based heavily on masturbation and
mild mental illness, and therefore lose the job you have now held for over two
very salubrious years?
Such setbacks and
devastations are minor set against the horrors of a Van Gogh or Keats'
Tuberculosis. I welcome the severity,
though may change heart too.
187. What is the meaning of Paul Tillich's
statement that "Religion forgets that it owes it own existence to man's
tragic estrangement from his true being; it forgets its own emergency
character"?
Interestingly enough many of
the most devastating questions--devastating to peace of mind and cultural
stability--radiate from that mentioning, a mentioning that is no less
unavoidable for that fact, and which attains the soul-tearing force of
machine-gun fire when the evident truth that art is a religion remains
unprotected by dilettantish vapidity.
Jesus said, "I come not to preach to the righteous; they need me not,"
or words to that effect. The very best
any expressive quantum or array can hope for is to defend the most fragile and
unforceable growth--that of human genius--from annihilation. Whatsoever is accomplished is only
prophylaxis.
188. What is it then, that creates and
fulfills human genius, if not one human making it and then depositing same,
lazar-like, into the vessel?
Genius furls out of a life
like a flower from a bud by mysterious forces of time-space in nature and most
assuredly not by its own effort. It may
sound insane but I think the genius brings itself into being, into fulfilled
being, somewhat like a soliton. Our
crudely conscious efforts are preparatory and preventive, not the tiny subtle
dreaming moments themselves. To them our
only proper relation is awe and contemplation--no estrangement in this. Therefore Tillich's error may lie in his
hypertypically "modern" twentieth-century palaver bred of nicotine
and flatulence. Religion needs no help
from him. I only quoted him in my video
for purposes of self-amplification.
189. So in the end, if you may be interpreted
fairly, all that is left to enjoy and endeavor is the "immense peace in
the brain"?
Ultimately if one cannot
simply breathe, desire nothing, and see the coffee pot with one's own more
glowing eyesight no amount of labor
or fighting will fix it. For all the
fever and fret, the horrors, there is still only the "deep quiet of a
strong heart at peace." But how to
keep the heart strong, and protect the future, and spurn anhedonia--this may
call for us to hazard experimentation.
To be what Nietzsche called "attempters".
190. Is Yes/No worth looking at?
Oh certainly. I made that in April and May of 1999, and
even showed it in
191. How could things possibly turn out well
for you if, in four months' time, you have to dump all of these lonely quanta
on the waters--gratis?
Oh, the good, the good, the
well. Perhaps a cyber-art program
somewhere like
192. Is the SFMOMA82700 artpiece occurrence
obnoxious excrement or fine art?
This question is in great
suspension. Frankly no one has had the
giblets to answer much except me, who doesn't count, and others that don't
count either.
193. Do all of your Genius 2000 photos and
other scraps merit website space?
Definitely! After I finish this book I'll be scanning
some stuff and building out my new permanent cyber-home at
www.Genius2000Network.com. You can go
there and buy stickers, say, and stick them up wherever you want. All the one of a kind paper stuff, negatives,
Hi-8, DV, and other curios would have to go either in storage or to the garbage
disposal--after all those are the only two places in the universe. The boutique-style sale of my college videos,
music, new art, and heck who knows, new videos!
A whole new lease on life for the old impulse toward pure bright
greedless artifice! Simple faith in joy
and praise, quiet production of the more glowing vision to name the light and
thence the darkness too. Other lives could
be much worse. But to live with
shame--that's worse than never having been born at all, according to Faulkner
and me too.
194. Are the Genius 2000 Conferences hideous
and shameful?
That's extremely difficult to
answer--but no they're not. No more than
an alcoholic trying to make significant important art-history to get drinking money
is shameful. The first Conference was a
relevant comment on the reproduction of age, of making faux-patina. Harmless fun.
By the second one in 2000 I had of course begun to feel I have to use up
the oxygen, so it got more suffocating.
My sphinx-complex had set in!
195. You felt you had to play the messiah so
no one else could do so uncontested, and by the phenomenon of interference save
the world that only God can make?
In a nutshell, damn
right. I thought I had to use up the
oxygen. Which led to a lot of sometimes
nasty permutations.
196. Do you think you're innocent and free now
to primp your mediocre education, skills, and achievements in public for money?
That's a bit harsh, but
honestly speaking--no. The stigma of
what I did will always weigh like a gigantic burden on my heart. Seventy more years of Genius 2000
conferences, all done for free, will still never merit I receive a penny of
payment. DayJobBobby's my name. Keep your filthy lucre.
197. Yet what of all the pigs and whoremasters
amassing gigantic fortunes while you type clerical inanities and enjoy no
acclaim, no caring, no affection, and no free time other than the weekend?
Well there's sixteen hours
per day during the week I have free. My
weightlifting eases my anxieties too.
I'll have my fans in 2100, not to mention all-judging Jove.
198. What schools did you ever go to, and in
what order?
United Methodist Church of
Prospect Park for pre-school; Sidney Pratt for elementary school;
Marshall-University High and Sanford Junior High for junior high; the
University of Minnesota for advanced placement math and humanities in junior
high and high school; Oberlin College; Cambridge in England for sitting in on
two lectures for fun and what not; the University of Wisconsin-Madison (BA in
English 1991); Binghamton University MA program in English with Creative
Writing Emphasis (September to December 1993); and finally Syracuse University
(MA in English 1998).
199. Didn't you get kicked out of lecture one
time at
Yes, but I'm not proud of my
sexual dysfunction having caused hostile confrontations that made me feel macho
but ultimately degraded me.
200. Do you like to pray?
I certainly enjoy praying a
brief prayer of thanks before I eat my evening meal--I enjoy the meal
more. I pray prayers for my dog Freda to
be happy and at peace. Before going to
sleep I may pray now and again a prayer of thanks "to the world for
existing" and all my good health.
One could argue that reading poetry or philosophy and sitting quietly,
breathing, is prayer. Yet I do not
attend church and do not adhere to any theistic cosmology. Call me a failed messianic but there it
is. My most likely next object of prayer
is to pray for my masturbatory fantasies to be taken away from me and for my
life to take on a more decent, manly, adult, and matrimonial course and
flavor. Writing may be prayer too. Planning the Conference 2005 is prayer, in as
much as it is art since art is prayer.
201. What is your I.Q., and what relevance
does it have to the Genius 2000 Network, and most importantly the reader, user,
visitor, or consumer thereof?
My actual I.Q. has never been
tested formally except the time I was hospitalized for suicidal depression in
2000. That was caused by the Zyprexa
only and shortly after going off the anti-psychotic my ruminative depression
went away (I didn't keep my heart light, so it made me sink when hope had
kindled hope and lured me to the brink).
My I.Q. is approximately 150 or so, is what I'd guess if I had to. Back in UMTYMP there were sharper steers than
me, but then again I never did the homework.
If I had I think I might have worn out even the best of them, tired
them. About all it means, my 150, is
that I have some experience of life for upper I.Q. people (low genius level)
and Genius 2000 is made by a low-genius rated bald alcoholic virgin.
202. Are you considering some raunchy dating
before you put out this book?
My respect for the celibate
life notwithstanding I predict a return to dating for myself. Return?
Odd phrasing. Nonetheless, dating
seems OK. They're having date night for
oldsters later on. It would bother me if
"the other one" were depressive and "all beat up," in need
of therapy. My "stay celibate till
book and marriage" plan has been feeling proper, but how many non-insane
females stay virginal until matrimony is a serious question.
203. Did your fluishness come back, and if so,
does it make you fear rejection or indifference from literary agents?
Being fluish today has been a
bit tough. Still, the warmth of home
awaits with rest and spaghetti.
Homemade. Rest, and watercolors,
and grocery shopping, garlic and early bed.
204. Wouldn't staying chaste keep you out of
the dispiriting morass of modern sexual feeding habits and also paint a vivid
portrait encouraging others?
Perhaps; I can see hints of
same. Yet do we realistically expect
sexually mature twelve-year-olds to stay asexual until marriage? It's not sensible. My naturally very low sexual appetite and
anhedonic pathologies also distort that idyll.
205. What is the value and timber of The Tempest relative to the Genius 2000
Network?
The Tempest is possibly the single greatest work of human
literature that has ever existed or ever will.
While I personally read Hamlet
every day for half a year at age 21, you ought to try The Tempest instead. People
might believe that I never understood The
Tempest, let alone appreciated it and loved it. But if the only result of Genius 2000 is to
get that play read more, it's enough.
206. Would your ideal life include an office
in the
There's no way to know. My main preference is to follow my genius
development, and if this book is ever published for pay--which should be my decision and not an
"if"--it would become affordable to obtain an office somewhere in an
urban area--perhaps the Foshay. Yet I
have no ties to any social scene, or academic institution, or drug scene, or
party scene. It would really all be the
same to me even if I had infinite monies.
207. Are your academic grades and test scores
impressive, and if so, would you consider law school or a PhD?
I have no need for either of
these. My avocation and my vocation are
to write and create images. For this
thirty thousand per year is enough.
School just muddies the water, as I once wrote in a story about academe
(in 1992). I put my scores and grades on
the internet only for heedless expressive whimsy.
208. Can you commit to matrimonial chastity
now, in old two-oh-eight?
My answer to so many things
is "hard to know" that it may be interfering with my luck. Suppose I did have to decide--now--to go that
route, become financially successful, meet with the goal of marriage, marry,
and stay faithful. Suppose I did. Foshay!
I could be a recipe for misery.
209. What would you lose if you were to stop
belaboring questions of proper behavior and revealing un-retractable
information?
I'd lose my sense of
purposefulness and my sense of commitment.
I'd feel rather lacking in a specific immediate goal to work at, and I'd
lose my sense that I've put all my eggs in the basket for the big leap over the
canyon. I'd have free time to develop
with a clear conscience and no promises to fail to keep. I'd lose my chains.
210. Why are you against the
individual-hierarchical genius "of cold command," and isn't this
dyspepsia merely hypocritical bourgeois guilt and the most false and
manipulative demagoguery?
The Romantics, Shelley in
particular for the purposes of this example-quantum, were not
"against" "command."
Just read part 47 of Adonais:
"Who mourns for Adonais? Oh come forth fond wretch! And know
thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy
panting soul the pendulous Earth; as from a centre, dart thy spirit's light
beyond all worlds, until its spacious might satiate the void circumference:
then shrink even to a point within our day and night; and keep thy heart light
lest it make thee sink when hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the
brink." These are the words of a
conquering general to the greatest army that ever lived. A commander who knows the spirit lives and
rules where statues fall. He's neither a
defeatist nor a coward nor a traitor, despite his failings. So, think what you are saying!
211. What are some key terms for g2k?
Terminology--kung-an,
quantum, A-K-H-A, genius, history, histor, network, SFMOMA82700, Yes/No,
conferences, plot, jpegs, habituation, peace, "saving," hierarchical,
convention, iconoclasm, responsibility, authority, success, greatness,
political, 2000, time-space, long-term, technological species, expressive
object, canon, esoteric, exoteric, myth, taboo, heroism, enlightened
consumerism, exogenetic evolution, Habermas, Shelley, Benjamin, Keats, Blake,
Video First Edition, listservs, talents, lessons, fluxus, Zen and the Brain,
James Austin, Horkheimer, Adorno, Benedict Anderson, instrumental reason, PPP,
Literary Change, Barbara Fowler, UMTYMP, Syracuse, Second Syracuse, Holub
Miroslav, Strauss, querelle, monotheism and messianism, The Hermit, isolation, interconnection, individual and the group,
Possony, de Tocqueville, Federalist Papers, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Shakespeare, Luther, gnosticism, Gnostic Gospels, Adonais, Lycidas,
Frost, Millennium Hut, hybris, Coup de Tete, Communicative Hypothesis,
Communicative Paradigm, Rhizome, Shock of the View, Nettime, Artforum,
Thingist, Fluxlist.
212. Now that you have decided not to be
concerned with where to buy a home, whether to, whether to date or marry, being
a lawyer, taking care of people, or whether prayer is philosophically
permissible, what does it charm and enchant you to muse on?
Primarily Genius 2000,
thereby adding mulch to the garden that is the Network. I will need to scan a lot of heretofore
unscanned paper works, decode my old Oberlin writings still in MacWrite,
trademark "The Genius 2000 Network" and the dark pixel symbol,
explain a few things, and frankly just keep "producing." For many people, and some quite fairly so, my
talk about the convention of genius as "art-object-making individual who
dumps them into our heads and that's all there is" is just incoherent
ressentiment or revanchism. They don't
feel I'm a flaneur or raconteur, historing the novel and advertising
myself. Sure, there may be a corruption
of clergy when the radiance of the ineffable is codified and prescribed. But how I am any better is something I prefer
to make concrete and "to individualize," as Cezanne said. Or, both that and the other.
213. What about all the topics in the VFE?
Honestly they are not
dispensable, so integral are they to a direct impression of how Genius 2000 was
generated. It will need to be read
whether I copyright and sell it or not, and by need, I mean that I don't see
the value or logic in banishing it.
There are necessary errors and
failings in it that need to be
preserved as vindication of its occurrences.
214. What did you learn from your visit to
I learned monarchial regard
for leaders such as Gorm den Gamle and Harald Blatand, and other pleasant
impressions of quasi-socialist suburban life in
215. Would it be detrimental to
Possibly not. Virtually any state of affairs can be turned
to an advantage. Were artists to cover,
hide, and despise themselves in the
216. Why do you feel so sick when you realize
how deadening your asexuality is and how the West or Front Edge of
civilization's blade, the U.S.A., could no longer keep its feet and carry its
designated load of glory and crime did not both wings of ignorance--the liberal
and conservative--think for sure, and work and pray as well, that they are each
both "getting it" their way?