Two Types of Possession
Please allow 16 working days to process before shipping
6.5oz Garment Dyed - Light Pink Short Sleeve
Made in USA - 100% USA Cotton
Issue 2 correspondence: "Noology: Possession", Edgar Morin, p. 68–73
Edgar Morin: According to Marx, the products of the human mind appear as independent beings, endowed with individual bodies, in communication with humans and among themselves. Taking this one step further, we can say that beliefs and ideas are not only products of the mind, they are also states of mind that have life and power. That is why they can possess us.
[TYPE ONE] Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons, Martin Schongauer, 1474:
"Saint Anthony gazes serenely out at the viewer as frenzied demons grab at his limbs, clothes, and hair and pound him with sticks. Schongauer depicted these imagined creatures in a remarkably convincing way. His realistic description of their scales and fur point to his direct observation of animals, yet he compiled these naturalistic details to produce some of the most fantastic and grotesque fabrications in the history of printmaking. Although this is one of Schongauer's earliest prints, it was probably his most influential: Vasari recounted that even Michelangelo made a color drawing of the work at the age of thirteen."
-We should be aware that a noosphere arose in the very dawn of humanity, a sphere of things of the mind with its parade of myths and gods, and the extraordinary upsurge of these spiritual beings pushed and dragged Homo sapiens into exaltation, adoration, ecstasies, massacres, cruelties and sublimities unknown in the animal kingdom. Ever since that dawning we live in the depths of a forest of myths that enrich our cultures.
-The noosphere, pure creation of our souls and minds, is in us and we are in the noosphere. Myths took shape, consistence, reality from fantasies formed in our dreams and imaginations. Ideas took shape, consistence, reality from symbols and thoughts of our intelligence. Myths and ideas came back to us, invaded us, gave us emotion, love, hate, ecstasy, fury. Possessed humans can die or kill for god, for an idea. Still today, at the dawn of the third millennium, our 'ideal' demons, like the Greek Daemons and sometimes like the demons of the Gospel, submerge our consciousness, make us unconscious while giving us the illusion of being hyper-conscious.
Saint John Devouring the Book, Dürer, 1498:
-Societies domesticate individuals by myths and ideas which in turn domesticate societies and individuals..[TYPE ONE]
"A DOG WALKING HIS MAN", JJ Grandville, 1844 [TYPE ONE]
but individuals could reciprocally domesticate their ideas just as they could control their society which controls them. [TYPE TWO]
Ideas exist by and for man, but man also exists by and ideas. We cannot make good use of ideas unless also know how to be useful to them. Shouldn't we realize that we are possessed, so that we can dialogue with our ideas, control them as much as they control us, and submit them to tests of truth and error?
An idea or a theory should not be purely and simply instrumentalized, nor should it tyrannically impose its verdicts; it should be relativized and domesticated, A theory should assist and orient the cognitive strategies adopted by human subjects.
Gérard de Nerval walking his pet lobster Thibault, through the streets of Paris, using a blue silk ribbon as a lead [TYPE TWO]:
It is hard for us to distinguish the moment of separation and opposition between things that come from the same source: ideality, a mode of existence required for the idea to convey the real, and idealism, the real possessed by the idea; rationality, a system of dialogue between the idea and the real, and rationalization, which blocks such dialogue. Similarly, it is very hard to recognize the myth hidden under the label of science or reason.
And yet it is by ideas that we can perceive the shortcomings and dangers of the idea. Whence the inescapable paradox: We have to lead a crucial battle against ideas, but we cannot do it without the help of ideas.
We should always remember to keep our ideas in their place as mediators and not identify them with reality. The only ideas we should trust are ideas that include the idea that the real resists the idea. This is an indispensable task in the fight against illusion.
–––––
Asger Jorn in 'Notes on the Formation of an Imaginist Bauhaus': “Artistic adaptation takes place trough a series of contradictory phases: Stupefaction — Wonder — Imitation — Rejection — Experience — Possession. None of these phases can be avoided, although they need not all be gone through by one individual”. [TYPE TWO]
C Wright Mills: For you cannot "possess" art merely by buying it; you cannot support art merely by feeding artists although that does help. To possess it you must earn it by participating to some extent in what it takes to design it and to create it. To support it you must catch your consumption of it something of what is involve in the production of it.
Aristotle: ACTUALITY IS A MOVEMENT OF THE SOUL THROUGH THE AGENCY OF THE BODY
Marx Holy Family: History does nothing, it 'possesses no immense wealth', it 'wages no battles'. It is man who does all that, who possesses and fights; 'history' is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims..
Marx: Material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.
Morin: If we can hope for basic progress in the twenty-first century it would be that men and women could stop being the unconscious toys of their ideas and not only their ideas but their own self-deception.