Final Destination - Self Reflexivity
May 22nd 2007 17:18
It seems to me that self-reflexivity is the final destination of just about everything.
Once something reaches self-reflexivity there is nowhere left to go.
Nietzche referred to democracy as the Historical Condition of the Decline of the State. It's not that democracy destroys the state. It is that democracy is what the end looks like.
Take post-modernism, lots of people condemn it for being anti-creative, for it denies the very possibility of true acts of creation, there is only apropriation. But this self-relfexive movement is not responsible for killing art, literature, philosophy or anything. It is not a destroyer, it is merely the end. Aurthur Danto picks out Warhol's Brillo boxes as a key point, if not the precise point, of the end of Art History.
Self-reflexivity is the end of every journey. Each step in the evolution of art represented a radical reshifting of the lines, a new idea of art so far removed from and above the old one. But once it is art to ask the question "is this art", there shall be no new questions left to ask.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for some kind of teleology. Just because everything ends in self-reflexivity doesn't mean everything is working towards it, or that it is mystical in its attraction or anything like that. It's just that if at every stage you can keep moving, exept for one stage, then if there is a you, you will eventually end up in that stage. Because if in infinite time nobody ever did it, then it doesn't really exist.
It is the end, not because it is a dead-end, but because it is all encompassing. It is not just the bigger picture, it is the whole picture. Self-reflexivity is a loop. It connects every single point, in such a way that you are guaranteed to return from any journey. It does not restrict you, it does not make you miss out on anything, it does deny you ignorance, it does deny you the chance to see some patterns that were only there by obfuscation. But it is all encompassing.
But the end is never the end. once a journey ends, a much bigger journey begins. Once you get to the end, you feel you have travelled a thousand miles. But you now have persepective, and you realise there is a much bigger journey, a journey of a thousand miles, in which your previous journey is not even the first step. This is the nature of exponential progression.
I could retell some evolutionary story about how each level was perfected in some kind of self referrence. Lets jump in right at the end. There has come into existence such thing as a mind. Minds prove themselves as useful objects, they develop many skills. Each new skill makes the others pale in comparison. One day a mind comes into existence with a critical mass of loops, this mind is hardwired to be aware that it is a mind. This reflection makes all the other skills worth so much more than they ever were before, but there can be no new skills anymore, because the skill of self-reflexivity encompasses them all.
coming to the end of its journey, the mind continues to grow and get better at the tasks it does, but now it is ready to become a cog in a bigger machine. Culture comes into existence. Ideas are passed around and passed on, roles are taken up, cycles are established. The minds are put to use in a bigger context. A bacterium has no self reflexivity. It is condemned to remain alone. It will never take its place as a cog in a much larger multi-cellular organism. we are now cells in something bigger than ourselves, we know as much about it as heart cells know about pumping blood, absoluely nothing. We've got a few hints, but we can never know what they point to.
Has culture become self-reflexive? I think it has. I think all of our endeavors are over. History will be over soon. Not that things will cease happening. History is actually the repetition of the old. It is not the story of the creation of the new. For soon there shall be only new, there shall be no history to speak of.
Once something reaches self-reflexivity there is nowhere left to go.
Nietzche referred to democracy as the Historical Condition of the Decline of the State. It's not that democracy destroys the state. It is that democracy is what the end looks like.
Take post-modernism, lots of people condemn it for being anti-creative, for it denies the very possibility of true acts of creation, there is only apropriation. But this self-relfexive movement is not responsible for killing art, literature, philosophy or anything. It is not a destroyer, it is merely the end. Aurthur Danto picks out Warhol's Brillo boxes as a key point, if not the precise point, of the end of Art History.
Self-reflexivity is the end of every journey. Each step in the evolution of art represented a radical reshifting of the lines, a new idea of art so far removed from and above the old one. But once it is art to ask the question "is this art", there shall be no new questions left to ask.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for some kind of teleology. Just because everything ends in self-reflexivity doesn't mean everything is working towards it, or that it is mystical in its attraction or anything like that. It's just that if at every stage you can keep moving, exept for one stage, then if there is a you, you will eventually end up in that stage. Because if in infinite time nobody ever did it, then it doesn't really exist.
It is the end, not because it is a dead-end, but because it is all encompassing. It is not just the bigger picture, it is the whole picture. Self-reflexivity is a loop. It connects every single point, in such a way that you are guaranteed to return from any journey. It does not restrict you, it does not make you miss out on anything, it does deny you ignorance, it does deny you the chance to see some patterns that were only there by obfuscation. But it is all encompassing.
But the end is never the end. once a journey ends, a much bigger journey begins. Once you get to the end, you feel you have travelled a thousand miles. But you now have persepective, and you realise there is a much bigger journey, a journey of a thousand miles, in which your previous journey is not even the first step. This is the nature of exponential progression.
I could retell some evolutionary story about how each level was perfected in some kind of self referrence. Lets jump in right at the end. There has come into existence such thing as a mind. Minds prove themselves as useful objects, they develop many skills. Each new skill makes the others pale in comparison. One day a mind comes into existence with a critical mass of loops, this mind is hardwired to be aware that it is a mind. This reflection makes all the other skills worth so much more than they ever were before, but there can be no new skills anymore, because the skill of self-reflexivity encompasses them all.
coming to the end of its journey, the mind continues to grow and get better at the tasks it does, but now it is ready to become a cog in a bigger machine. Culture comes into existence. Ideas are passed around and passed on, roles are taken up, cycles are established. The minds are put to use in a bigger context. A bacterium has no self reflexivity. It is condemned to remain alone. It will never take its place as a cog in a much larger multi-cellular organism. we are now cells in something bigger than ourselves, we know as much about it as heart cells know about pumping blood, absoluely nothing. We've got a few hints, but we can never know what they point to.
Has culture become self-reflexive? I think it has. I think all of our endeavors are over. History will be over soon. Not that things will cease happening. History is actually the repetition of the old. It is not the story of the creation of the new. For soon there shall be only new, there shall be no history to speak of.
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