Pornography, Villiers, and Levinas

So while reading Villiers de I'Isle-Adam's Tomorrow's Eve (a late 1870s work), I came upon the realization that electronic pornography through the Internet has created Hadaly already and broken down Levinas' concept of the Other. The story is about a Lord Ewald, who has fallen in love with an Alicia Clary, a woman who looks nearly identical to the Venus d'Milo. However, she is a heartless and cruel, empty woman, and so Ewald wants to commit suicide. He struggles with what he projects upon her (what he wants her to be according to the look of her outward appearance and what she really is). He visits Thomas Edison (the famous inventor), who he had donated lots of money to when Edison started his work. He explains his predicament to Edison and his intents to kill himself, but Edison urges him to quit his designs and join with him to solve his problem through the creation of the perfect woman, Hadaly. Villiers' Hadaly is the first idea of the "android," which would lady be spun off in films like Metropolis, or TV Shows with Data in Star Trek or in Battlestar Galactica. She is a woman made of completely artifical materials, but made to reflect humanity (another man made in a man's image).

When Ewald doubts his ability to fall in love with the android, Edison scoffs at his resistance (man seems to have this silly idea about being more virtuous by respecting the "real deal"). He says the following:

"You have declared... that the creature whom you love, and who for you is the sole REALITY, is by no means the one who is momentarily embodied in this transient human figure, but a creature of your desire. That is what does not exist in her, much more, you know it doesn't exist there. For you're not a dupe--neither of the woman nor of yourself. You deliberately close your eyes, those of your understanding, you deliberately stifle the voice of your conscience, in order to be able to find in this mistress of yours only the phantom of your desire. For you at least, her true personality is nothing but the Illusion planted in your entire being by the power of her beauty. This Illusion is the one thing that you struggle against all odds to REVIVE in the presence of your beloved, in spite of the frightful, deadly, withering nullity of the real Alicia.

What you love is this shadow alone; it's for the shadow that you want to die. That and that alone is what you recognize as unconditionally REAL. In short, it's this objectified projection of your own soul that you call on, you perceive, that you CREATE in your living woman, and which is nothing but your own soul reduplicated in her. Yes, this is your love; and, as you see, it is nothing but a continual and ever-fruitless attempt at redemption."

In these lines, we see the reduction of the other to the self. And Edison continues on to explaining how now Ewald can truly project his soul upon an Illusion (Hadaly) and get results: "You will see then how the Alicia of your desires will become tangible, concentrated, animated in this Shade... And then you will judge in your own intimate conscience whether this auxilary Creature-Phantom which leads you back to love of life doesn't really merit the name of HUMAN more than that living specter whose sorry so-called "reality" was able to inspire you with anything but the desire of death."

Later, Edison explains to Ewald the new and "better" relationship he will have with Hadaly: "Well, now, with the future Alicia, the real one, the Alicia of your soul, you will no longer have to endure these sterile and bitter frustrations. The word that comes will always be the expected word; and its beauty will depend entirely on your own suggestive powers! Her 'consciousness' will no longer be the negation of yours, but rather will become whatever spiritual affinity your own melancholy suggests to you. You will be able to evoke in her the radiant presence of your own, your individual passion, without having to worry, this time, that she gives the lie to your dream! Her words will never deceive your delicately nurtured knows how to make them. At the very least, you will never experience here that fear of being misunderstood which haunts you with the living woman; you will simply have to pay attention to the intervals between the words she speaks. In time, it may become superfluous for you to articulate anything! Her words will reply to your thoughts, to your silences."

Now, there's definitely something scary about this reduction of the Other, and the lack of interruption Hadaly can give Ewald. She is simply soul of his soul, mind of his mind. It's even more disturbing that she has rings on her fingers, which Ewald can twist and make her do and think things. One causes her to return to a black coffin and rest, which he can lock with a key.

So I began to think how sick it would be for people to have Hadalies, when I came to the horrific realization that many do in many ways through the Internet and pornography. People look into women's faces, hear their voices, but they actually never really see them, look into their eyes, or hear them speak. These images and videos, and 3-Dimensional virtual realities have no souls. They are only a reflection of the viewers: they see more of themselves in the faces of someone else. The computer buttons give commands, and the mouseclicks move the porn stars to other stances. These shades are shaped out of the image of the viewer's mind: they give them thoughts and feelings. But like with Hadaly, they can shut them up, turn them off, bury them back in the coffin, and cause them to re-emerge whenever they please. But it's hard to see how Ewald or the viewers could not begin to apply their relationships with the shades to real human beings. Levinas felt that the human face brought about ethical demands like not killing and so forth. However, what about online? What about digital media? Where the face no longer has a soul, but the viewer's. Does the 2-D screen, and it's lack of 3-Dimensionality allow us to demoralize ethics in humanity? Does the human face there say "rape me" instead of don't kill me? Does the distorted ethics of virtual reality bounce back on reality and cause us to produce shades of the others, and reduce them to the self? Just some thoughts. There may be many Hadalies. After all, 60% of the 600 million websites are pornographic.

It reminds me of a quote by a pornviewer in the book Pornified: "I don’t see how any male who likes porn can think actual sex is better, at least if it involves all the crap that comes with having a real live female in your life."

Egad!

Ever have those moments where you realize that you're not terribly good at anything and significantly less interesting and amusing than you thought? When everything you are doing seems terribly silly and you're not even doing them well? It's somewhat like Heidegger's anxiety, and I got loads of it!

bleh.

Oddly enough...

Funny thing happened today. I finally realized why certain people in the past have decided that enforced celibacy and/or becoming a eunuch could possibly be considered more than sheer lunacy. Formerly I scoffed at the idea, with no idea how anyone in their right mind could even think about it. Well, I think I get it now.

I was sitting in a student philosophy conference and I found myself distracted by a certain good-looking female in the class. I am really quite annoyed that I am unable to control my mind in that regard and that it distracts me from something I love and find important. Later, as I sit on my computer writing a very interesting and impending paper on the philosophy of food I wander off into thought about some girl. Why? Why is it so impossible to keep away from that topic. Right then I thought: "Gee, I wish I could just get rid of these thoughts altogether so I can focus on Philosophy". Go ahead, follow that line. Where does it lead? I suppose if you felt strongly enough you would find a way to repress the desire. Hence, castration, eunuchs, celibacy, etc...

So these people actually had a good reason. It still seems an incredibly drastic measure to me, but if you really, really wanted to focus maybe it would work?

Relations

Levinas says that each of us encounter others in the world, "others" if you will. These other entities automatically make demands upon us because of their existence in our world. The first demand is "Don't kill me". Are we generally murderous beings that would follow that course of action if not dissauded? Of course not. Perhaps there's more than one way to kill someone. We have our individual sphere of existence that gets intruded upon by others. When this happens, we have the option of understanding those people by their qualities and nothing else. Our friend or acquaintence becomes simply "the girl with brown hair that talks alot" or "my roomate's annoying cousin from Kansas". When we do this, however, we essentially reduce them to non-humans. We are, in a way, killing them. We must see beyond these things and take people as actual people. This is the only way to create real and meaningful relationships. Why don't we? Because treating others as people automatically creates demands upon us. We're unable to retreat into our own little world and focus on ourselves. It's not easy and/or necessarily comfortable. And yet, I think if a lot of people (certainly not all people) really understood, they'd realize that it is in fact what they've been seeking, going about it in entirely the wrong way.

This is why relationships are so important, though. By having someone to make demands upon me we are forced to look beyond ourselves and recognize others as humans. I think this applies to marriage. Does marriage necessarily mean we'll be recognizing our spouse? Nope. We can just classify them away and 'kill' them as easily as not. In addition to this we can (with our spouse) essentially become a single ego and exclude others. We've all met those married people who have nothing else in their universe...not so good. This leads to the importance of children. When we introduce a third, it doesn't just introduce a third person that could conceivably become part of the conglomerate ego we've created, it seems to introduce the idea of other introducing even our partnership. There could be another child, another person at any time. We are opened to the fact that we have to deal with others as people and not simply have a Cartesian life focused on creating our universe and pleasures; we have to deal with the world that surrounds us, a world filled with other things, equipment, enjoyments and most especially, other people.

blah blah blah

Oh my goodness. Today through Saturday the conference of the SMTP (Socity for Mormon Philosophy and Theology) is being held at BYU. I attended several of the lectures today and it was an astounding experience. Each of the speakers addressed rather important issues and did so in a very rational manner. The lectures were free of the half-baked ideas you often get in Mormon "philosophy". The best part was that after the lectures there was a Q&A session with the speakers where very intelligent people (both Mormon and not) were able to carry on brilliant conversations. It's like heaven. I'll attend lecures tomorrow from 9:30 to 5:30 and some on Saturday. Brilliant stuff, really.

On another note, I've been thinking alot about the Heideggerian idea of Authenticity. I'm not going to pretend that my idea is what he meant but it is what I've come to see it as in my life. People are generally inauthentic. In any situation they are likely to only do what "one" does in that situation. This is inauthentic. They are not taking a stand on their being as any decent dasein would. When we are inauthentic we take a generalized approach to a situation. For instance, if we are teaching, we teach our classroom in a general way. If we are to approach it authentically, we will take this particular teaching experience and focus on the needs of the students. In general life, it means doing things because you want to do them and not because it's what "one" does. Authenticity doesn't mean morality, it simply means that you are actually directing your own life. Everyone has the capacity for this type of living at least some of the time but it doesn't seem that many take advantage of the opportunity. I suppose it's scary as it requires facing up to responsibility for the quality of our life and the things we do wrong. However, how can you have a rich life without living authentically as much as possible? Seems so empty. I find that talking to someone when they are in inauthentic mode is dissatisfying. But, it's hard to find authentic people. Bit of a conundrum, really.

Guilt and Goodness

Here's an interesting idea: Martin Heidegger seperated the idea of guilt/conscience from morality. He said that each of us live in inauthentic way in relation to the world. We just do whatever one does and don't live authentically. What happens is this leads us to not make real decisions about our lives. Life involves possibilities and we (hopefully) choose a certain way to live. In so doing, however, we choose NOT to do certain things. This can lead to a certain amount of guilt. Our decisions affect people negatively and when we don't make decisions authentically we feel bad doing so.

When people feel this anxiety and guilt about life they try to escape this. They try to escape this by using certain "moral" actions to assuage their feelings of guilt. "If I'm nicer to people I'll feel better". "If I pay my tithing I'll feel better". While these things may be true, Heidegger thinks that it doesn't address the real problem...if we never take a stand on who we are we'll never escape the tendency to hide from the anxiety. We cannot get away from guilt, it is a part of our being. But, if we face up to theat fact and live realizing that we have to make decisions we can at least live authentically and have a rich existence.

At any rate, it's interesting to think that perhaps what we think is escaping from guilt is actually perpetuating the problem and "solving" it in entirely the wrong way.

Chew on this!

This is Richard Polt's explanation of Heidegger's thought on death:

What makes my life my own is ultimately the sheer fact that it is mine to live, mine to make something of, in the face of my possible non-existence. Every other possibility is something that I may be free not to do, and that someone else may be able to do just as well as I can. But my death is a possibility that necessarily faces me alone: no one can face it for me.

I think it's a very interesting thought.