liminal 🦠

In addition to this new or second-degree relativity of interior and exterior, there is a whole history on the level of the membrane or limit. To the extent that elements and compounds incorporate or appropriate materials, the corresponding organisms are forced to turn to other "more foreign and less convenient" Materials that they take from still intact masses or other organisms. The milieu assumes a third figure here: It is no longer an interior or exterior, milieu, Even a relative one, nor an intermediate milieu, but instead, an annexed or associated milieu. Associated millieus imply sources of energy different from ailmentary materials... Obtaining an energy source permits an increase in the number of materials that can be transformed into elements and compounds. The associated milieu is thus defined by the capture of energy sources (respiration in the most general sense), by the discernment of materials, the sensing of their presence or absence (perception), and by the fabrication or non-fabrication of the corresponding compounds (response, reaction). - Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?)

Source: www.upress.umn.edu

Translation, then... It's not simply a phenomenon that applies the possible relation of one language to another, but a phenomenon by which the linguistic stratum organizes other strata... It is irrelevant to Darwin's finches, which genus or species leap along to. The abstract machine of the linguistic stratum overcoats the genetic coding and reorganizes the Finch populations, not only in relation to one another, but also in relation to all other populations of organisms. Note, though that the overcoating here doesn't replace the genetic coding. The genetic coding remains, But it is placed in the service of another coding, namely scientific taxonomic organization. - Brent Adkins, Deleuze And Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus: A Critical Introduction And Guide, 10,000 BC: The Geology of Morals

Source: edinburghuniversitypress.com

For Geoffroy [Saint-Hilaire], there's only one animal (abstract machine), and all animals (assemblages), are continuous deformations in relation to one another... An animal can only maintain a stable state to the degree that it can harness flows of energy, which ultimately come from the sun. We can compare two solutions to this problem. Some herbivores extract energy from plants by eating enormous amounts of plant material... Having multiple stomachs... and regurgitating and re-chewing their food multiple times. The human solution to this problem (the same problem) has been to develop systems of external digestion, the big brain solution. Eating herbivores... We let the cows digest plants on our behalf. We have also externalized our digestion through cooking our food. Heat and fermentation allows us to break down the tough-cell walls of plants prior to consuming them. Helping our energy problem by applying energy (fire) to prior consumption gave us less access to vast amounts of previously inaccessible energy. Most of our energy goes to keeping our brains rolling inside of digestion. Topologically speaking, cows and humans are the same. They are not pre-existing types, but continuous variations of one another. They are assemblages of the same abstract machine, different solutions to the same problem of how to produce bio-usable solar energy. - Brent Adkins, Deleuze And Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus: A Critical Introduction And Guide, 10,000 BC: The Geology of Morals

Source: edinburghuniversitypress.com

lumus: *the poignant humanness beneath the spectacle of society* ...Inevitably, within a few days or weeks at most, you'll find yourself getting swept right back into the big show, even though you know it's all just an act. That's perhaps the most amazing thing about a society: even if none of us fully believes in it, we're all willing to come together and pretend we do, doing our part to hold up the tent. If only so we can shut out the darkness for a little while and offer each other the luxury of thinking that little things matter a great deal.

Source: www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com

‘the nomadic adventure begins when the nomads seek to stay in the same place by escaping the codes’. Nomad thought is here opposed to sedentary thought: the way philosophy (and other disciplines) has traditionally understood the world as essentially an expression of atemporal structures, where variation is seen simply as noise and a lack of determination. Now, pushing this further, I think we need to see the dichotomy you’ve suggested, between thought on the one hand, and action on the other, as emerging from a particular, sedentary, model of thinking that Deleuze and Guattari associate with state thought. Thinking as a nomad (and A Thousand Plateaus itself) is really an effort to think systems without relying on hierarchical unity. They take this new way of thinking itself to be a revolutionary act that brings with it new ways of living unthinkable within a hierarchical, sedentary schema of the world. It’s a way of trying to think form as emergent from a world of process, rather than as something that pre-exists the world of appearance and is merely actualised in it. Q: Why did you foreground ‘nomad thought’ in your subtitle? And how do you see the relation between thought and action in Deleuze and Guattari’s work?

Source: euppublishingblog.com

The growth of knowledge is of such special importance because, while the material resource will always remain scarce and will have to be reserved for limited purposes, the use of new knowledge (where we do not make them artificially scarce by patents of monopoly) are unrestricted. Knowledge, once achieved, becomes gratuitously available for the benefit of all. It is through this free gift of the knowledge acquired by the experiments of some members of society that general progress is made possible, that the achievements of those who have gone before facilitate the advance of those who follow. - F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, "The Common Sense of Progress"

Source: press.uchicago.edu

Above all, however, We must recognize that we may be free and yet miserable. Liberty does not mean all good things or the absence of all evils. It is true that to be free may mean freedom to starve, to make costly mistakes, or to run mortal risks. In the sense in which we use the term, the penniless vagabond who lives precariously by constant improvisation is indeed freer than the constricted soldier with all his security and relative comfort. But if liberty may therefore not always seem preferable to other goods, it is a distinctive good that needs a distinctive name. And though "political liberty" and "inner liberty" are long-established alternative uses of the term which, with a little care, may be employed without cause and confusion, it is questionable whether the use of the word "liberty" in the sense of "power" should be tolerated. In any case, however, the suggestion must be avoided that because we employ the same word, these "liberties" are different species of the same genus... Liberty in the sense of power, political liberty, and inner liberty are not states of the same kind as individual liberty: We, cannot, by sacrificing a little of the one in order to get more of the other, on balance gain some common element of freedom... we want them largely for different reasons, and their presence or absence has different effects. If we have to choose between them, we cannot do so by asking whether liberty will be increased as a whole, but by deciding which of these different. states we value more highly. - F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, "Liberty and Liberties"

Source: press.uchicago.edu

Man prides himself on the increase in his knowledge. But, as a result of what he himself has created, the limitations of his conscious knowledge and therefore the range of ignorance significant for his conscious action have constantly increased. Ever since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have recognized that "the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow with the advance of science". Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by many scientists that the range of our ignorance is steadily diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehensive and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom. While the growth of our knowledge of nature constantly discloses new realms of ignorance, the increasing complexity of the civilization which this knowledge enables us to build presents us new obstacles with the intellectual comprehension of the world around us. The more men know, the smaller the share of all that knowledge becomes that any one mind can absorb. The more civilized we become, the more relatively ignorant must each individual be of the facts on which the working of his civilization depends. The very division of knowledge increases the necessary ignorance of the individual with the most of this knowledge. - F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, "The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization"

Source: press.uchicago.edu

1938, Life magazine called Ferdinand "the greatest juvenile classic since Winnie the Pooh" and suggested that "three out of four grownups buy the book largely for their own pleasure and amusement".[1] The article also noted that Ferdinand was accused of being a political symbol, noting that "too-subtle readers see in Ferdinand everything from a fascist to a pacifist to a burlesque sit-down striker".[1] Others labelled the work "as promoting fascism, anarchism, and communism".[4]

Source: en.wikipedia.org

"What does it feel like to know you’ve opened the wrong drawer? Not the trying again, the snap where you know the map is no longer the kitchen and you now need to remodel your model of your kitchen."

Source: decentnewsroom.com

> Do you understand how egregiously you have to suck (at your job)/(as a developer) to write code in such a way that you accidentally bill a user $200 because they have the wrong string in their commit messages? - Theo, Seriously, Anthropic??

Source: www.youtube.com

If this book displays a clear bias against large, centralized hierarchies, it is only because the last three hundred years have witnessed an excessive accumulation of stratified systems at the expense of meshworks.The degree of homogeneity in the world has greatly increased, while heterogeneity has has come to be seen as almost pathological, or at least as a problem that must be eliminated. Under the circumstances, a call for a more decentralized way of organizing human societies seems to recommend itself. - A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Manual De Landa

Source: press.princeton.edu

...the major transitions in early history (the transitions from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist, and from agriculturalist to city dweller) not as a linear advance up the ladder of progress but as the crossing of nonlinear critical thresholds (bifurcations). More specifically, much as a given chemical compound (water, for example) may exist in several distinct states (solid, liquid, gas) and may switch from stable state to unstablebat critical points in the intensity of temperature (called phase transitions), so a human society may be seen as a "material" capable of undergoing these changes of state as it reaches critical mass in terms of settlement, amount of energy consumed, or even intensity of interaction - A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Manual De Landa

Source: press.princeton.edu

If we see our path clearly and our personalities are completely unified, then there is no distinction between the outer world and the inner one. Nothing is faraway anymore, nothing is not open to us.

Source: www.everand.com

It is clear that, if each citizen, as he becomes individually weaker and therefore more incapable of preserving his liberty by himself alone, did not learn the art of uniting with his fellows to defend his liberty, tyranny [896] would necessarily grow with equality. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America Vol II

Source: wisc.pb.unizin.org

Pythagoras may well have been the deepest in his learning of all men. And still he claimed to recollect details of former lives, being in one a cucumber and one time a sardine. - Heraclitus

Source: michaeldelahoyde.org

"Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical." - The Tao Te Ching, James Legge trans. 1891

Source: terebess.hu

All things come into being by conflict of opposites. - On Nature, Heraclitus

Source: www.goodreads.com

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. - On Nature, Heraclitus

Source: www.goodreads.com

Goat cheese melted in warm wine congeals if not well stirred. - On Nature, Heraclitus

Source: michaeldelahoyde.org

Stupidity is doomed, therefore, to cringe at every syllable of wisdom. - On Nature, Heraclitus

Source: michaeldelahoyde.org

Diogenes Laërtius relays the story that the playwright Euripides gave Socrates a copy of Heraclitus's work and asked for his opinion. Socrates replied: "The part I understand is excellent, and so too is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; but it needs a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it."

Source: en.wikipedia.org

Horace also refers to the death of Empedocles in his work Ars Poetica and admits poets have the right to destroy themselves.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

Diogenes Laërtius records the legend that Empedocles threw himself into Mount Etna so people would believe his body had vanished and he had turned into an immortal god;[e] the volcano, however, threw back one of his bronze sandals, revealing the deceit. Another legend maintains that he jumped into the volcano to prove to his disciples that he was immortal: he believed he would come back as a god after being consumed by the fire.

Source: en.wikipedia.org