I am grateful to see that you are writing about the metaphysics of infrastructure. You are one of those voices in the interwebs that I have come to respect greatly. As for the subject matter of this post, I have serious doubt that concrete alone has the ability to deprive a kid from wondering.
I imagine that you and I would agree that the power which gives the material object, such as concrete, its ability to determine the conditions of user interaction resides in the objects mind than in its mass. Whether the object is a pyramid, an urban square, or an arterial road the power of the material is provided by the purpose or spirit that is given to it by the system's paradigm that shaped it. It is within this deep leverage point of a system where the power to shape minds and concrete truly resides.
I'll end this, the first comment in your new blog, with the following quote:
"Privation is not the act of depriving, but simply and merely a state of want, which is in itself nothing: it is a mere entity of the reason, a mode of thought framed in comparing one thing with another"
Thank you for your generosity, and for the Spinoza contribution, Eric! Letter XXXIV is not where I would have gone, which is exactly why I'm glad you went there.
You're right that the power behind the concrete resides in the paradigm that shaped it. I don't think the road is innocent, and I don't think the concrete acts on its own. Winner is in the background of much of I write here, and I take seriously the claim that artifacts have politics, that the ideology precedes the object and, in some sense, inhabits it.
Where I modest hold ground is with the Merleau-Pontian claim that the human body receives the instruction before the paradigm is legible. The flinch happens before the interpretation. The shoulders draw in before anyone has named what the road is arguing. That pre-reflexive somatic response is doing something that can't be fully explained by saying the power lives in the system's mind, as the system's mind isn't what the body is reading. It's reading the geometry.
The Spinoza framing is beautiful and I think it works better as a brilliant description of privation at the level of conscious comparison than at the level of embodied habituation. The child who has never been allowed to roam doesn't experience a state of want relative to some other possibility. They become someone with a narrower sense of what's possible, which constitutes a distinct kind of privation, one that doesn't require the comparison to operate. Its only requirement is mundane repetition.
Thank you for engaging with these thoughts and this dialogue with me!
Ha! As a child, I'm happy to wonder across all corners of Spinoza's world. You set a door to your ideas and here I am, happily wondering in.
In a sense, or mode, of thinking, ideology cannot proceed or come after the object. It is inseparable from the object, because the determination that allows for its existence resides within a substance that defies duration.
It is under Spinoza's determination that I can see a viable way to bridge the gap of our understanding. I am positive that Spinoza would accept Merleau-Ponty's claim that the human body receives the instruction before the paradigm is legible, because for Spinoza legibility is a rational, or a durational, process. However, Spinoza differs from Merleau-Ponty's view that there are two ways to build a "body-schema" because Spinoza adds a third way. For Spinoza the human body is the infrastructure (extension) of the human mind (thought) as much as the roadway is the infrastructure of the department of transportation's mind. Each body/mind shares their own durational existence (reality) with the same determinant attributes of eternal and infinite existence of God or Nature. As such, they share in a kind of knowledge that is instantaneous (spooky action at a distance, if you will) in what Spinoza calls intuition. This is, at a fundamental level, the meaning of Spinoza's monism.
Now, regarding the process of habituation, this is also congruent with how all of us (the road is a mode as much as a human body) experience duration: through difference & repetition. Each revolution of time provides the mode with repetitive power of persistent conditions while also allowing differences that force creative adaptations or habits to emerge: to transcend paradigms. There, I think this has allowed us to agree while approaching it from different perspectives. Would you agree?
One last thing - the quote about privation has more to do about Roger Heart's study of children's experience than about the actual experience of the children.
I am grateful to see that you are writing about the metaphysics of infrastructure. You are one of those voices in the interwebs that I have come to respect greatly. As for the subject matter of this post, I have serious doubt that concrete alone has the ability to deprive a kid from wondering.
I imagine that you and I would agree that the power which gives the material object, such as concrete, its ability to determine the conditions of user interaction resides in the objects mind than in its mass. Whether the object is a pyramid, an urban square, or an arterial road the power of the material is provided by the purpose or spirit that is given to it by the system's paradigm that shaped it. It is within this deep leverage point of a system where the power to shape minds and concrete truly resides.
I'll end this, the first comment in your new blog, with the following quote:
"Privation is not the act of depriving, but simply and merely a state of want, which is in itself nothing: it is a mere entity of the reason, a mode of thought framed in comparing one thing with another"
~ Spinoza, Letter XXXIV to Blyenbergh.
I look forward to your next post!
Thank you for your generosity, and for the Spinoza contribution, Eric! Letter XXXIV is not where I would have gone, which is exactly why I'm glad you went there.
You're right that the power behind the concrete resides in the paradigm that shaped it. I don't think the road is innocent, and I don't think the concrete acts on its own. Winner is in the background of much of I write here, and I take seriously the claim that artifacts have politics, that the ideology precedes the object and, in some sense, inhabits it.
Where I modest hold ground is with the Merleau-Pontian claim that the human body receives the instruction before the paradigm is legible. The flinch happens before the interpretation. The shoulders draw in before anyone has named what the road is arguing. That pre-reflexive somatic response is doing something that can't be fully explained by saying the power lives in the system's mind, as the system's mind isn't what the body is reading. It's reading the geometry.
The Spinoza framing is beautiful and I think it works better as a brilliant description of privation at the level of conscious comparison than at the level of embodied habituation. The child who has never been allowed to roam doesn't experience a state of want relative to some other possibility. They become someone with a narrower sense of what's possible, which constitutes a distinct kind of privation, one that doesn't require the comparison to operate. Its only requirement is mundane repetition.
Thank you for engaging with these thoughts and this dialogue with me!
Ha! As a child, I'm happy to wonder across all corners of Spinoza's world. You set a door to your ideas and here I am, happily wondering in.
In a sense, or mode, of thinking, ideology cannot proceed or come after the object. It is inseparable from the object, because the determination that allows for its existence resides within a substance that defies duration.
It is under Spinoza's determination that I can see a viable way to bridge the gap of our understanding. I am positive that Spinoza would accept Merleau-Ponty's claim that the human body receives the instruction before the paradigm is legible, because for Spinoza legibility is a rational, or a durational, process. However, Spinoza differs from Merleau-Ponty's view that there are two ways to build a "body-schema" because Spinoza adds a third way. For Spinoza the human body is the infrastructure (extension) of the human mind (thought) as much as the roadway is the infrastructure of the department of transportation's mind. Each body/mind shares their own durational existence (reality) with the same determinant attributes of eternal and infinite existence of God or Nature. As such, they share in a kind of knowledge that is instantaneous (spooky action at a distance, if you will) in what Spinoza calls intuition. This is, at a fundamental level, the meaning of Spinoza's monism.
Now, regarding the process of habituation, this is also congruent with how all of us (the road is a mode as much as a human body) experience duration: through difference & repetition. Each revolution of time provides the mode with repetitive power of persistent conditions while also allowing differences that force creative adaptations or habits to emerge: to transcend paradigms. There, I think this has allowed us to agree while approaching it from different perspectives. Would you agree?
One last thing - the quote about privation has more to do about Roger Heart's study of children's experience than about the actual experience of the children.
With this I mostly agree; much appreciated!