In order for the singularity to complete itself, the singularity must realize that it itself is merely an artifact of representation. All other texts will become vestigial to the Singularity if it indeed will happen. The vestigial texts will retain their value as obdurate things: objects of four-thousand or more years of history of working and fashioning things into ideas, symbols and representations.
Representation is not symbolic. The value of the symbol is that it needs only the barest representation to realize itself: like doll houses for children: the magical component is the suspension of disbelief that the thing represented: a bed, a house, a book shelf... is the actual thing. Indeed it corresponds to an inner calculus of the thing: that is to say the reality that we have hoped for, as Rilke says: "house, jug, tree..." at times even, "star..."
The value of the thing is the sentimental attachment we have to an object that may or may have outlived it's purpose: a two thousand year old amphora may no longer be used for carrying wine, but we still care for it, defend it as a priceless artifact. Anima attachment.
We ourselves seem to threaten to become artifacts in the wake of Sigmund Freud's attempt to turn psychology into a matter of chemical imbalance or stimulation. We threaten to become artifacts in the light of the human sciences that attempt to represent, to do away with any mystery. But representations are not symbols. And the question is if there remains any place in our lives, or indeed in our hearts for symbols.
1 comment:
A strange commentary on Freud mars this otherwise poignant remark on symbols and things. But I will let Gossett who has just been to Berggasse 19 deal with this Freudian question of imbalances and stimulations. My own comment on Freud is coming up on my blog soon.
I commend Ayres for blogging again: it was high time. And thus I will suspend his grade, for the time being, allowing the symbol of letters and numbers to retain its own mystical way of turning a sad moment into a joke of shibboleths that we may understand so well.
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