Excellent. Israel is the third rail, because it is the clearest example of an identification with righteousness (purity, innocence, victimization) revealing itself to be yet another predator behind the facade. This undercuts everyone's illusions of purity, innocence and victimization as a status of identity. This is why it's so frightening, because there are real victims of predation out there (the Palestinians, for one), and yet this revelation also puts a limit on their own righteousness as an identity. Because the identity of righteousness ties us to cruelty in the same way the Via Negativa ties us to Thought. This is the greatest dis-illusionment or negation of them all. We dare not even accuse this righteousness of such a fascist quality, because this accuses each of us, opens up each of us to the same revelation of self-deception. If anyone on earth was made deservingly righteous it was Indigenous Americans, Black Americans, Jewish people from Europe (etc etc, on and on). If nobody can claim this righteousness as a quality of our own blood or soil, then we have categorically become dis-illusioned by identity all at once. By daring to approach this fact, every form of government, every party, every cause, every self-deception in everyday life, collapses as a refuge for the predator, while this lasts. The problem with the old "via negativa" is that it became a method tied to thought itself. It couldn't exist without a new thought to negate. Righteousness can't exist without a cruelty to define it. But the real negation is categorical, breaking both "sides" at once -- a destruction of the prison walls (inside and outside), a capacity to see through all the charades categorically, and move into a form of learning that is perpetually revelatory. Real negation is what this article does, by exposing the whole witchery from start to finish. And there's no method to this sanity. It means being constantly surprised by our own corruption and not freaking out (denying (as violence), justifying (as righteousness) or feeling guilty (as if victimized by our own depravity). Just changing direction, that's the only real apology we owe the world.
I need to sit with this to let its impact sink in; but I'm excited by the way you've taken the essay on board and found a way to lay out its implications. When I write it's out of looking for the most direct way of approaching a question without an answer "in mind," and in the hope that some clarity will arise out of the inquiry. What you've done can only come from another's view. This is how dialogue moves an inquiry.
Excellent. Israel is the third rail, because it is the clearest example of an identification with righteousness (purity, innocence, victimization) revealing itself to be yet another predator behind the facade. This undercuts everyone's illusions of purity, innocence and victimization as a status of identity. This is why it's so frightening, because there are real victims of predation out there (the Palestinians, for one), and yet this revelation also puts a limit on their own righteousness as an identity. Because the identity of righteousness ties us to cruelty in the same way the Via Negativa ties us to Thought. This is the greatest dis-illusionment or negation of them all. We dare not even accuse this righteousness of such a fascist quality, because this accuses each of us, opens up each of us to the same revelation of self-deception. If anyone on earth was made deservingly righteous it was Indigenous Americans, Black Americans, Jewish people from Europe (etc etc, on and on). If nobody can claim this righteousness as a quality of our own blood or soil, then we have categorically become dis-illusioned by identity all at once. By daring to approach this fact, every form of government, every party, every cause, every self-deception in everyday life, collapses as a refuge for the predator, while this lasts. The problem with the old "via negativa" is that it became a method tied to thought itself. It couldn't exist without a new thought to negate. Righteousness can't exist without a cruelty to define it. But the real negation is categorical, breaking both "sides" at once -- a destruction of the prison walls (inside and outside), a capacity to see through all the charades categorically, and move into a form of learning that is perpetually revelatory. Real negation is what this article does, by exposing the whole witchery from start to finish. And there's no method to this sanity. It means being constantly surprised by our own corruption and not freaking out (denying (as violence), justifying (as righteousness) or feeling guilty (as if victimized by our own depravity). Just changing direction, that's the only real apology we owe the world.
Jeff,
I need to sit with this to let its impact sink in; but I'm excited by the way you've taken the essay on board and found a way to lay out its implications. When I write it's out of looking for the most direct way of approaching a question without an answer "in mind," and in the hope that some clarity will arise out of the inquiry. What you've done can only come from another's view. This is how dialogue moves an inquiry.