The Enchantment of the Extreme

One thing that I've tried to be clear in discussing M/s with other subgroups within the BDSM community is that I don't consider M/s "higher" or "more developed" than other relationship types, but I do consider it more *extreme". While many are wary (for good reason) of extremes I believe the extreme carries with it its own special fascination.

Nietzsche talks about "us immoralists" as the "outermost", the extreme. As such "we" do not need the lies of other powers. All other powers are force hiding behind the semblance of law, hence lying and dissimulation are necessary to veil true intentions, to display goals that are ostensibly sought after, and so make the subjugated happy.

Within the M/s dynamic, Masters refer to themselves as such, slaves know themselves as slaves. There is no false set of goals promulgated by the Master in order to underhandedly subjugate the slave. There is no expectation of eventual equality or even a specific reward for servitude to be sought after. The power differential is decided on in advance, and maintained and welcomed by both sides. The extremism of the dynamic, far from putting people off, exerts a powerful fascination, seduction and enchantment.

The "magic" of the extreme is the power of the most powerful. Most powerful because it hides behind no false pretenses of humility. Masters do not seek power over slaves "in the slave's interest", nor govern "as servants" (think public servants). We seek power solely and purely for its own sake and enjoyment. Slaves do not submit to their enslavement in order to gain a future advantage. This power transports members of the dynamic to another world with its enchantment and there brings them to themselves in a different way.

Who are, then, "we immoralists"? Are we an unethical gang of bandits on the fringes of society? No, we immoralists are those who stand outside the distinction between the true and the apparent worlds promulgated by metaphysics, and the hierarchy of moral rules and values that sustains it. We stand outside the distinction that sustained metaphysics and all its correlates, instead standing in the seduction of truth. We know that ethics is always concrete, always particular to the situation and are not confused by childish a priori rules.

The Situation and State of Absolute Enslavement

The situation in Absolute Enslavement is that of a limit-situation, but in a sense every situation is a limit-situation, though this is not always transparent to those within the situation. In a transparent limit-situation something of the Absolute comes to the fore. It is my contention that the Absolute is that which partakes of the always excessive-to the-situation, or the Void.

Firstly the Void is not the classical physics notion of “Space”. Unformed matter, as Aristotle pointed out correctly, would be indistinguishable from such a concept of Void. Matter is formed space, as the fundamental particles of matter have no mass, and space has a “fabric” that can be distorted into form.

The Void, then, is punctual (there is a proof of this in the ZF system of set theory but I'll leave that alone for now). This point is, in itself, the point of Being, that is always in excess of any given situation. This is the Void, the unpresentable, the unnatural, the source of terror to any given Situation, that is hidden away by the situation's reduplication in the State.

The Site of the Situation is the proper place for some “thing”. Each situation has a “point of Being” that in a hidden way structures the Situation and makes it appropriate or proper for that particular being, yet always remains excessive to the Situation and therefore the point of that Situations finitude and destructibility.

Site and Situation come from the Latin Sitere, which also means to let, permit. “What is permitted” is what is appropriate to the situation. The State of the situation then is what is expressly permitted, while the Situation is the extent of the real possibilities inherent in it. In the M/s situation what is expressly permitted is up to the Master, and is made explicit in the slave's ongoing training. In this sense the Master is the State. In large part, then, the slave has to follow the Master's directions, however there are always things extant in the situation that are excrescent or singular to the State.

Unlimited Responsibility and the Discourse of Mastery

I have been reading Derrida and others on the dangers of a “Discourse of Mastery”. The (vom Ereignis) in the subtitle of Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, pointing to the author as “enowned”, is of course a subtle indication that it contains a discourse of Mastery, and in fact Mastery comes up quite often within the text. As has been pointed out by Derrida, a discourse of Mastery implies “unlimited responsibility”, and while I do not think this is defensible in a horizontal manner (my responsibility for my cat doesn't imply responsibility for all cats) it seems to me appropriate that it imply an unlimited responsibility to the cat I in fact own (assuming I owned a cat, which I don't).

What does this do for human ownership? It means I have unlimited responsibility for the people who are consensually enslaved to me, through their enowning (enabling to own). Working this out in practice is always a situational, ethical problem, but it's one a Master cannot shirk or shy away from.

Meanderings

Today was a frustrating day dealing with bureaucracy. Fortunately I was kept buoyed up by mitda's current euthymia (general mood of well being) and the road trip we had to take to file some paperwork was much easier with her company.

I have decided to put more effort into the Masters' Workhaus group (see sidebar on left for info) and also on a local group called Explorations, where a group of local M/s practitioners get together with specific exercises in mind. The next planned event is a protocol dinner with post dinner erotic entertainment by the slaves. While emmie plans to dance for the group mitda is looking at an erotic reading.

I was sad to find out that the person who penned Married Man's Fucktoy has deleted her blog without explanation, obviously anything personal could happen that would lead to such an action, but it would have been nice to know the reason, and nicer for it to not have happened.

Xmas and Migraines

I took emmie to a wine cheese and widgets party Saturday afternoon, where the point was to objectify (or de-subjectify as I prefer) one's slave by not addressing them and simply using them as whatever tool one needed at the moment. It was interesting to see her reaction and the reaction of the other slaves at the event, and also to have some conversation with other Masters. More events are planned that will be different than the more common bdsm style get togethers, the first being a protocol dinner with entertainment by the slaves in the group. While mitda wasn't quite recovered enough to attend the event she did make it to the xmas party that followed (at a different ranch) and we had quite a lot of good conversation and good times. I played emmie for only the second time publicly, (the first was a very private sort of publicness at a small party) and she did very well, given that I played her rather hard, if only for a short time. She did well with being publicly nude during the playtime as well.

There are a few more xmas events in our community but this party was the big one as far as I was concerned, with a huge white elephant gift exchange (which our family did rather well at) and various other holiday attributes :).

I am definitely planning on switching jobs in the near future. One company has interviewed me but there is some distance between their offer salary wise and my expectations. Two more opportunities came up today (I am taking the day off due to a migraine and the resulting dozyness from migraine meds).

A Long Day

We spent much of this rather longish day a little high on vicodin and flexeral. After the stress last night and the sorting it out this morning we all needed a mental vacation, at least I did.

The girls remain as they were as far as our relationship goes. There will be no more “topping from the bottom”. They can make requests, yes, but they cannot and will not be upset if the requests aren't granted.

On a happier note they get fitted tomorrow for their hallowe'en constumes. God knows what I'm going as though. Maybe I'll go as the host, who always dresses as a Texas rancher. Of course he has the ranch to back him up, our 12 sq ft or so backyard doesn't really count :).

Crrrriiiitttic !

During a conversation Saturday night a Master friend of mine brought up the “Master's inner critic”, in the sense of the following situation. When living 24/7 in an absolute enslavement relationship it can be easy for the Master to get lazy at times. Suddenly there's a “wait a minute, s/he didn't do ... while s/he was doing ... - ah well, let it go this time, the game's on ...”, and this happens a few times in a day, maybe multiply that by a few days, and you've suddenly let a few dozen “ little things” slide.

Then suddenly you decide you have to correct him/her and set things straight. But the “inner critic” is saying “oh yea, come down on him/her NOW after you were too lazy to do it the other three dozen times”, and it becomes a difficult thing to do. And if it keeps on going the AE dynamic is lost completely, the slave no longer expects correction, and the Master loses the ability to do it and just lets the relationship lapse.

Ironically that very thing happened to me seemingly directly afterwards. Having been faced with two slaves suffering from the muted grays, browns and blacks of the depressive end of the bipolar spectrum, and having been home to take care of some things that I wouldn't normally have time for, I found that all of a sudden E. was making dinner every night (or scrounging McD's or KFC for the family), the bedroom, master bathroom, kitchen and closets all looked like thermonuclear test sites and at 7:30am the only person even close to being awake and prepared to leave the house was myself, so I was taking the kidlet to school while E. got ready for work, and my two slaves snored peacefully in bed.

Time to bring out the heavy guns! Yep, I sent an EMAIL, lol. Detailing what wasn't done and that it had to be done from now on.

Or else!!!!

Or else what?

The inner critic was hounding me on that one but I went ahead anyway. Tonight the kitchen, bedroom, master bathroom and closet have all been cleaned and nitpicked over, we had a wonderful birthday dessertfest with mitda's mother, and while these sorts of things are not a cure for bipolar depression we've discussed emmie's situation in particular and come up with what I think is a workable plan to help her learn some new coping skills, as well as get her medications sorted out in a short amount of time, all without taking her near a hospital.

Critic, be damned.

Busy Weekend

One of the big local BDSM groups held its annual voting munch last night. Although we had a party to go to we dropped by the munch and passed our ballots. Mostly the same people won as last year, which is ok in most ways but a couple of our favourites didn't get the ballot.

Afterwards we went to a very intimate gathering of a BDSM group that, while inclusive, specifically tries to reach out to the black BDSM community, which is fledgling at best apparently. While emmie and I had some sexy S&M playtime Jubal warmed up mitda. I don't play emmie very often but when I do it means a lot to me because she submits for my enjoyment purely. Once she had had more than enough I did a “scene” with mitda that garnered a very unusual comment on its beauty from someone else at the party. We also enjoyed some great conversation. It's unusual for us to be able to spend significant time with other Absolute Enslavement couplse/triads etc. but we talked to a couple at the munch and then another couple that we have a great deal of respect for hosted the party. The slave of that couple mentors emmie and mitda on their enslavement and it seems to help them a lot, particularly emmie.

This morning we dragged ourselves from bed and went to brunch with the same people from the party. Again we had some great conversation and more than a little good food at a pancake house.

All in all an enjoyable M/s oriented weekend.

Vorhanden, Zuhanden, and Dasein, three modes of being

Vorhanden - Abstract Presence

The concept of vorhanden is translated ‘present-at-hand in BT. This is one mode of being in which being lies in the fact that something is, and is as it is in reality, which provides the mode of vorhanden for that entity (BT, 26). Awareness of the vorhanden character of an entity has a temporal structure because awareness is an event, which is necessarily tied to time and cannot be eternal. Thus, the awareness of vorhanden is a making-present of the entity (BT, 48), and thus brings the entity to a state in which it can become the object of some kind of relation to that which is aware of it, Dasein. The process of appearing that results in entities of the mode vorhanden being known is not a showing of themselves, but rather that they are evidenced by something else (BT, 52). These attributes of that which is vorhanden demonstrate that the word ‘what’, rather than ‘who’, is properly associated with the concept of vorhanden (BT, 71). Another characteristic of the vorhanden mode of being is that it is ‘in-the-world’ where ‘in’ means “sharing the same space as” (BT, 79).

The consequence of ‘being-in’ is that all entities that ‘be-in’ have a mode of being that can be reduced to vorhanden, but any such reduction of a view of the entity to merely vorhanden results in a denial of the higher modes of being that properly belong to the entity through the abstraction necessary to regard the entity as vorhanden. In contrast to things that are ‘in-the-world’ hut have a higher mode of being than is expressed in vorhanden, entities that only exist with the vorhanden mode of being are ‘belonging-to-the-world’ and so are a part of the world (BT, 93). The effect of being a part of the world is  that such entities become a part of the context o0f which Dasein is aware and with which Dasein interacts. 

Zuhanden -  Tool-Being

Heidegger identified zuhanden, ready-to-hand, as a mode of being that contrasts with vorhanden. He argues that entities become accessible when we concern ourselves with them in some way, that is, when we care about them (BT, 96). To care for entities is to become interested in them in some way so that the entity is no longer a mere object at a distance from us, as something observed and analysed, as described in the vorhanden mode of being, but rather to come into some interested relation to the entity. The fact of care makes the entity of
the kind described  ‘equipment’, zeug, that which is useful for something, and so to have a mode of being zuhanden (BT, 96).

Heidegger argues that strictly there is no such thing as ‘an equipment’ where ‘equipment’ means ‘something-in-order-to’. The ‘in-order-to’ character of the zuhanden mode implies a reference of something to something (BT, 97). That is, in the mode of being zuhanden the equipment is always linked to something else as an entity that has the purpose of effecting something other than itself for something other than itself. That which is zuhanden is known
in its relational nature as equipment for a purpose, but is not known as what it is in itself because when we use something our awareness is of its purpose rather than of it in and of itself, that is, its mode of being vorhanden (BT, 98). Thus, in order to be zuhanden the  vorhanden character must withdraw to release Dasein to perceive the entity as for a purpose.

This relation of vorhanden and zuhanden follows because when equipment is used the awareness of the user concerning the purpose of the entity rather than awareness of the entity in and of itself (BT, 99). Now, work involves using something for achieving something, whether the purpose is public or private, and thus is dependant on use of equipment (BT,  100).  However, that which is zuhanden must also be reducible to vorhanden, since there can be no
equipment where that equipment does not tangible exist as something that can be apprehended and analysed if one is able to penetrate beyond the perception of that entity as equipment (BT, 101). Consequently, that which is to be useful, has a mode of being of zuhanden and must have a mode of being vorhanden, and the difficulty in perceiving the  vorhanden character arises because it is obscured by the zuhanden character that is most immediately perceived by Dasein.

Should an entity normally perceived according to its zuhanden character be broken then it is perceived in its not useful vorhanden mode of being (BT, 103). In addition, should an item perceived by one as zuhanden be apprehended by another, who due to a lack of appropriate  experience or knowledge, is unable to perceive it as that particular zuhanden the latter may perceive it as a different zuhanden, that is as for a different purpose, or possibly as purposeless, and thus only as vorhanden.  All uses of that which has a mode of being of zuhanden relate somehow to serving one or more purposes of Dasein (BT, 116). Thus the generation of the zuhanden mode of being is dependent on Dasein generating it as an additional mode of being for an entity that is first of all vorhanden. However, having effected this transformation of vorhanden to zuhanden Dasein then primarily perceives the entity as zuhanden, and only with difficulty, if at all, as
vorhanden.  Heidegger also suggests that there may be some entities known as zuhanden that may not be encounterable and thus not knowable as objective entities that could be analysed, and their vorhanden character cannot be separated from their zuhanden character (BT, 122).

Heidegger does not posit examples of zuhanden that cannot be encountered as vorhanden. It may be worth contemplating whether such entities as knowledge or inter-personal relationships may be such unencounterables, and thus only perceivable as zuhanden because we are unable to remove the interpretative overlays of the underlying vorhanden entity in order to be able to encounter and perceive that vorhanden entity in an of itself. If this is so it would provide a foundation for our difficulty in understanding such entities.

Dasein

Heidegger uses Dasein to name and describe the mode of being experienced by humans in their own existence (BT, 32). However, Heidegger does not definitively limit Dasein to humans, and so it is possible, or plausible, that there is some other non-human entity that may also have the Dasein mode of being, but Heidegger does notdiscuss this perspective on the issue either. The distinguishing characteristic of Dasein is that Dasein is aware of Dasein’s
existence, and is aware of the question of existence, and anything that is not Dasein is not so aware (BT, 32,33). Since Dasein is aware of its being and understands the question of being, one of the pursuits of Dasein has been to pursue and explore the nature of Dasein’s being seeking the authentic meaning of being (BT, 62). This pursuit contrasts with the other pursuit that Dasein conducts in parallel, which is shared in various ways by other entities, of seeking
to support its material being. That is, in parallel with pursuit of questions of the nature of being Dasein also pursues the mundane matters of life that enable physical support of the body in a desirable manner. Dasein pursues these mundane matters in a more sophisticated manner than other entities, but the other entities do pursue the mundane in some way, as their primary activity.
Dasein is not of the mode of vorhanden because it is not something that we ‘come across’ as we go about (BT, 69), but rather it is close to us, and is well known because it is inseparable from ourselves, but it is little understood in everyday experience because it is very close to us (BT, 69). In addition, Dasein is not zuhanden because it exists but is not for the purpose of effecting something.

The traditional view of people has been as rational animals,  through
rationalist concepts such as Decartes’ “I think therefore I am”, cogito ergo sum, but this yields Hiedegger with the problem that ____ is of a vorhanden kind and _____ is of an unclear kind of being, resulting in a person, viewed in this way having an indeterminate kind of existence (BT, 74).

At this point Heidegger departs from Ancient Greek and Christian anthropology, which both  define man as essentially an entity (BT, 75). Heidegger introduces the idea of ‘mineness’ as a quality that belongs to Dasein, as being that which is the true nature of Dasein, which results  in the possibility of Dasein living either authentically or inauthentically, depending on the way of life lived by Dasein (BT, 78).
Now Dasein experiences ‘being-in-the-world’ as sharing in the space of the world, but not as being a part of the world (BT, 79). Thus Dasein lives in the world as it is, and interacts with the world, but is of a different kind to the other entities in the world. A result is that it is possible to say Dasein is of vorhanden kind, but this either is a wilful disregarding of the ‘being in’ state of Dasein or an unintentional not seeing of that ‘being-in’ state (BT, 82). The possibility of seeing Dasein as either vorhanden or zuhanden results from the fact that in ‘being-in-the-world’ Dasein is constructed of stuff like the world and could be mistaken.   Such a mistaking of Dasein for one of the other kinds of being would result in inappropriate relations and behaviour because it would reduce people to being either equipment or mere objects. That Dasein can be ‘being-in-the-world’, Heidegger’s defining concept of Dasein, is the consequence of Dasein being able to know and to conduct I-thou relations, which are entities that cannot be known as of vorhanden kind. The view of Dasein as ‘being-in-the-world’ contrasts with the vorhanden which are, ‘in-the-world’ or ‘belonging-to-the-world’ and so parts of the world (BT, 93).
Previous western views of humanity regarded people as either bipartite, body and soul, or tripartite, body, soul and spirit, and lead to the assumption that a person is a synthesis of the parts, but in Heidegger’s view Dasein is existence, not a synthesis of separately existing parts (BT, 153). Thus, Heidegger argues for regarding Dasein as a complete and indivisible being that enters into relations and intrinsically is a complete, unified, entity. There are multiple Dasein, which necessarily have some kind of relation to each other, whether warm and        friendly or hermitic or otherwise, and these relations are characterized by Heidegger as ‘Being-with’.

Zuhanden  - Slave-Being  

In a sense then with slave-being we do take the slave as zuhanden, ready-to-hand, useful, a tool for use.  In consensual slavery the slave agrees, wants, needs to be taken this way.  As dasein he/she is still being-in-the-world but in this case, the world is not his/her world, but her Master's world.  The slave is never merely an object, and in fact all 'objectification' of the slave is in reality de-subjectification, because the slave remains at the same time dasein and equipment, a tool and a being with its own sense of being, but the sense of being a tool in the equipmental totality of the Master's world.

Slave-Being 1 - Tool-Being

Slave-Being 1

Tool- Being

"
(1) entities do not manifest themselves as things (Latin:
[i]res[/i])

(2) the entities with which we deal with manifest
themselves as 'tools' in the wide sense of the Greek "pragmata"

The question now becomes 'what is the Being of this pragmata'?
This is the present task.

The clue for answering this
question lies in our understanding 'tools' as equipment (Zeug),
in our understanding "equipmentality."

Understanding
the structure of equipment:

[list]

(1) there can be no such expression as 'an' equipment -- a piece
of equipment is place within a totality, it is bound to an equipmental totality.

(2) Equipment is essentially
'something in order to...' e.g., a hammer is used in order to hammer
a nail, this, in turn, in order to build a shed -- in order to
provide shelter etc.

This indicates that 3) Equipment is involved in references and
assignments i.e., it is always involved in certain contexts:
e.g., a pen is involved in the context of ink-wells, pads, a desk,
lamp, being near a window etc.[Note that in our dealings with this equipmental totality our
primary relation is one of use [using equipment 'in order
to...']

And this provides the key for understanding the Being
of entities in this context --

They (entities as tools)
manifest themselves as ready-to-hand.

This is the
primary ontological category ascribed to entities dealt
with in the everyday world of our environment: Zuhandenheit
(readiness-to-hand).

****

Heidegger notes that
our peculiar manner in which we deal with these entities is
circumspection  and with this he indicates that
Dasein's active comportment to this categorical structure is one of circumspective concern (more of this later).

****

Heidegger
then proceeds to look further into this way in which we deal with
things ready-to-hand.

The Analysis deals with the notion of
work.

A reflection on the sense of "work" fills out
the notion of environment and the 'in order to...'

(1) The
'towards which' indicates the work to be produced e.g., a shoe, a
shed, etc. This, in turn, points beyond the immediate work
environment to the larger context of materials -- this, in turn,
involves the 'wider' environment of animals (and those who raise
them) and nature etc.

Also,

(2) the 'where of': the
purpose of the work (e.g., the purpose of making a shoe, a traffic
sign etc.)

This, in turn, points beyond the immediate work
environment to the user of the product and its material -- whether it
be one's own Dasein, or other Daseins, or the public world (a road
sign, etc.). Again, these notions tend to expand and make clear the
sense of the environment (Umwelt).

All of this goes to make
up the Unwelt -- and in this is located our relation to entities
which Heidegger has characterized as our dealings with things in
circumspective concern --

And the Being (i.e., the
ontological-categorical structure) of entities so involved is termed
readiness-to-hand..

****

But this has yet to become
explicit: For when we are caught up in our dealings, e.g., in using a
pen in order to write a paper for the purpose of giving a lecture,
one is not aware of the ontological structures underlying this work.

My Complication has a Little Complication

E., emmie's husband, has found a new interest in mastery over the last little while.  He had been making tentative steps towards it for some time now, first recognizing a dominant nature in himself, but wanting to express it by being a "service dom", then moving closer to actually dominating by assisting in mitda's punishments. 

Dominating in a TPE sense is very different than the dominating done in a scene or at a play party.  While I don't hold, as the originator of the term TPE did, that people involved at a play party or in a time restricted scene are not really dominating or submitting but just playing at it, there is a wide variance between dominating someone in that situation and becoming someone's Master 24/7/365, with all the responsibilities that go with it.  Derrida has said that "responsibility is excessive or it is not a responsibility.  A limited, measured, calculable, rationally distributed responsibility is already the becoming right of morality."  I once made the mistake of trying to take a day off, and as E. himself put it, the results were "clinically interesting" and "personally terrifying".

So despite earlier misgivings about his desire to shoulder the responsibility, E. has decided that he would like to master a slave of his own.  Of course this changes the dynamics of our little M/s family just by being a stated desire.  Not that I'm against the dynamics changing, we are here to help each other grow in whatever ways we happen to grow, and I'm looking forward to seeing E. develop his mastery.   But if / when he discovers the girl he wishes to enslave to himself things will become very interesting indeed.

Changing things has already had its effects felt in such an intimate and complex relationship as we have.  E. has altered his relationship dynamic with emmie and they will be working out how the marriage is to progress on a slightly less egalitarian set of terms.  And this will not be necessarily a simple or easy change for either of them, with 7 years of marriage behind them.  mitda went through a sudden panic of feeling "unnecessary" and had to be metaphorically dragged back into the fold.  Of course she is necessary.  And she is as involved in these changes as fundamentally as any of us, if not as immediately as emmie and E.

So altogether an interesting and challenging set of developments.,  I am looking forward, in a sense, to being able to mentor E. with the little I know of mastery.  And of course it is a push to me to learn more, so as to be able to share more.  Not that I wasn't pushed to learn more already.  It will be a push as well, I think, to emmie's submission, and while mitda already behaved towards E. in a submissive manner I expect that to increase and deepen.  Of course the girls are still enslaved to me, they pledged their being to mine and I would not trade either of them for the world.  If and when E. does find his own girl she will be his and his alone, I am a happy, satisfied, and occasionally overworked Master to mine.

Social Contracts and Absolute Enslavement

In discussing a specific topic on The Slave Register a denizen (Michael XY) of the board brought up an interesting set of propositions culled from various places as well as his own mind.

1. an M/s relationship creates a society of two (or three or four I suppose in a poly M/s relationship) (Originally from Tanos and lili),

2. with any society brings a social contract.

3. A Master changing his mind in a way that affects the relationship itself rather than something within-the-relationship breaks the current social contract and would thus force a renewal. 

He also noted some issues that this raises. A slave would need to be freed in order to reenter a new social contract. And in some cases is this even possible? And is the slaves reacceptance of the new contract a sufficient condition of the change in mind on the part of the Master being acceptable and not a "breaking of the Master's word", or would it only be a necessary condition, other conditions requiring meeting as well?

I would like to look at the statement made in (2) to analyze whether this is the case all of the time, some of the time, or not at all, and if some of the time, what differentiates those societies that have a social contract from those where a social contract is irrelevant.

First to look at the definition and history of the term "social contract". The term was popularized in the book of the same name by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wikipedia has this to say as to its definition: "Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), in his influential 1762 treatise The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right, outlined a different version of contract theory, based on the conception of popular sovereignty, defined as indivisible and inalienable - this last trait explaining Rousseau's aversion for representative democracy and his advocacy of direct democracy. Rousseau's theory has many similarities with the individualist Lockean liberal tradition, but also departs from it on many significant points. For example, his theory of popular sovereignty includes a conception of a "general will", which is more than the simple sum of individual wills: it is thus collectivist or holistic, rather than individualist. As an individual, Rousseau argues, the subject can be egoist and decide that his personal interest should override the collective interest. However, as part of a collective body, the individual subject puts aside his egoism to create a "general will", which is popular sovereignty itself. Popular sovereignty thus decides only what is good for society as a whole:

So social contract theory, for its part, rests on the notions of popular sovereignty and the theory of a "general will" which creates popular sovereignty. It also has within its sphere of decidability only what is good for society as a whole.

I would like to propose the following, then. The "society" created in an M/s relationship does not require the notion of popular sovereignty, there is no "general will" requisite to create such a popular sovereignty in any event, the only relevant will within the society being the Master's will. In any Absolute Enslavement relationship there is neither the need nor the basis for a social contract, and thus such a contract can never need to be negotiated or renegotiated, entered into or dissolved.

Some of the niceties ...

Some of the niceties of being dominant in a TPE situation are, well, obvious. If I need anything, I can just ask and it will be procured. If things need to be done around the house, I can assign it to one of my slaves and it will get done at the time I propose. Things like this make my life very much easier than it would be otherwise.

Other things are not so obvious, but after a while one gets used to them. Having slaves wait on one, in a literal sense, waiting for one's instructions, commands, compliments or complaints gives one a great sense of personal existence. Not only do I depend upon myself, others depend upon me. And this is extremely gratifying.

And, of course, it all adds up to a lot of responsibility.

If someone is waiting on one, in that sense, then one has a responsibility to see that they get what they need. Not what they want, necessarily, or even what they think they need, but what they actually need, and one has the responsibility of figuring out what that is, before one can provide it.

But this is the nicest nicety of all, at the end of the day. Figuring out what someone needs and providing it is the most satisfying thing to a dominant. To a slave, being told what the master needs and providing it is the greatest satisfaction, to the master, figuring out what the slave needs without being told is the greatest thing.

New work situation

Today I have to guide someone into upgrading a very complex enterprise class software system. The fortunate thing is that the upgrade is being done in the test environment, not production, given that it's the first time I've done it on this software. The unfortunate thing is that by repute the woman I have to work with at the client is utterly incapable of doing anything except following instructions. A colleague of mine has to work with her this morning to troubleshoot a new development server that she installed, and didn't manage to get working, and his initial response to my question about what he was doing with her was "committing suicide".

Guiding people can be both simple and complex. There is a psychology involved in getting someone to do what you want, exactly, precisely, without any open domination such as I have with mitda and emmie. In this case I still need to dominate, but as an "expert" and not a master. I like the following quote on the difference between an expert and a master, though you'll have to extrapolate its meaning since it specifically is talking about the two in terms of art.

"Expertise and Mastery: an expert, like an Aristotelian phronimos, does the right thing at the right time and in the right way (and will be immediately recognized by his or her community as having done so); but a true master inaugurates a new discursive practice, often transforming the old standards of success in the process and so requiring more time to be recognized."

Obviously installing somebody else's software is not "inaugurating a new discursive practice" in any sense. It's as an expert, then, that I need to make myself known and try to garner respect for my instructions by having my domain knowledge validated in practice.

Mastery has to be validated in practice as well. emmie and mitda have been wonderful enough to give me their trust and respect quite freely, but having it and keeping it involves earning it all the more. In this comes the notion of responsibility, which I am currently studying and investigating as a result. As an expert at work, my responsibilities are limited - to this project, these products, etc. - while as a Master to emmie and mitda there are no limits to my responsibilities. Expressing this leads to a limitation in itself of language, and as Wittgenstein suggested, running up against the limits of language is ethics.

Expectation vs Submission

I came to a realization overnight.  I've been resenting my slaves' expectations of me.  It's easy to conflate want, desire and expectation, so I will try to differentiate them, and explicate why it bothers me and triggers resentment.

Slaves should want.  They should desire.  They can express these things without it being an issue, in fact it's an extremely pleasurable thing to hear one's slaves' wants and desires.  Where it becomes an issue is when wants automatically turn into expectations.  It is appropriate and reasonable for a Master to expect things from a slave.  Putting an expectation on somebody holds them to it because it creates in them a desire not to disappoint.  And this desire not to disappoint is extremely important in the submissive's psyche.  But when the tables are reversed, and the Master becomes expected not to disappoint, the power is suddenly in the hands of the slave, the wrong hands. 

Of course this is an issue to the Master.  Loving his slaves, he doesn't want to disappoint, yet he doesn't want to submit to their expectations either, resulting in a catch 22 situation.,  But it's as problematic for the slave, because she fundamentally wants the Master to want, and inside she knows if he does it under expectation it's not 100% his want and desire.  As a result, the satisfaction of the expectation doesn't actually satisfy, and leads to more expectations.  The final situation created is one of the slave topping from the bottom, and being unhappy because at root she doesn't want that.  At root she needs to submit to the Master, but she can only doing that by wanting, desiring everything, and expecting nothing.  In this way everything she gets is a gift of her Master, and only in receiving gifts from her Master is she really satisfied.   Of course an action is required from her Master as well, and in some ways this may be the a priori, that the Master refrain from the desire not to disappoint, because disappointment is the necessary impetus to change that trains the slave.

Narcissism, entitlement, rights, mastery and slavery

"and the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder came up. These include "has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations"".

This quote is from a well thought out post by Tanos on Entitlement, posted in his weblog and linked from the ownership wiki on The Slave Register.

It got me thinking, first, in terms of the relationship between entitlement and rights.  If the sense of entitlement exists where rights are specifically not claimed, and even when all rights have been expressly given up, on what does it base itself?  And in a situation where rights themselves have been seen as baseless, exactly what is it that a slave has "given up"?  And what is the fundamental difference between Master and slave if we cannot lean on the notion of rights to distinguish them?

In the notion of slavery that comes down to us from Greek society, we distinguish "citizens" from "slaves".  A citizen has rights conferred on him by the city-state, while a slave does not.  The citizen also has duties to the state, while a slave has duties only to his/her owner.  Obviously in dealing with Total Power Exchange and Internal Enslavement this definition will not suffice, because in terms of current society both Master and slave officially have rights conferred by the state, and have duties to the state, since the state does not see a difference between them.  This lack of societal backing leads some to question the possibility of the Master/slave relationship in modern society, but I believe this idea comes from a misunderstanding of the nature of the Master/slave relationship in the ownership subculture.

If entitlement is appropriate to a Master, while not to a slave,  the specific meaning of entitlement cannot come down to a matter of right.   Positing that "human rights" involves a false equation of "human" with "citizen", we are going to do without that particular crutch of thought, useful as it has been in terms of developing better treatment of human beings.  The lack of progress beyond a certain level of potential egalitarianism in society, and our seeming inability to actualize it, perhaps comes from the lack of a basis for human rights in a real ontology of the human.

If as a Master I am entitled, to what am I entitled?  As a Master I fundamentally find my meaning in my concerns, cares and loves.  And it is my will that puts these first, orders them, and determines how best to promote their well being.  My slaves are fundamentally important to this, as they embody my concerns and cares, and receive my love.   Of course my slaves have concerns and cares as well, and certainly love.  Without these they wouldn't be human slaves.  But the fundamental difference is that my slaves have given up a correlation between their developed personalities and these things.  Instead they are concerned with the Master's concerns, care about those things the Master cares for, and love in concert with the Master. 

As Master I feel entitled because my will is in line with my most basic meaning, as slave they do not have a personal sense of entitlement, because their meaning has been merged with mine, any remaining sense of entitlement or right comes from doing my will.  As a result slaves still feel entitlement, they still feel the urge to do what is right and what they are needed and required to do, but this right of the slave is in reality their expression of the Master's entitlement, of doing what is right for their Master, of accomplishing the expression of his concern, his cares, and his love.

Of course the upshot of this is responsibility, which is what a Master takes on in willing his concerns, cares and loves.  For a Master there is no set limit on this responsibility.  For a slave,  responsibility is there to align their will with their Masters, once that is accomplished (and the accomplishing is a constant effort) their responsibilities are simply an expression of the unlimited responsibility of their Master.

Collaring

I thought I would post some thoughts on the subject, since although the girls have been collared for some time, mitda for a fair length of time, last weekend we did a collaring ceremony for them together, and as a result it is closer to top of mind than it has been for a while.

Firstly, I love that they are collared.  Their beauty seems that much more radiant wearing their collars, and now that they can both wear their collars 24/7 they are a constant reminder to me of my luck and joy at mastering them.  They are also a constant reminder of my responsibilities in mastering them, and the standard which I have to try to live to.  I am currently studying the concept of unlimited responsibility, something that I think is particularly apropos and necessary in a TPE relationship.

Not that things are always perfect at House Daedalus.  The fact that the collars are identical reminds me of the occasional rivalry between slaves, the envy or jealousy that can poison any poly household.  And treating two very different people differently, as they require, but still equally, as they desire, is a difficult balancing act at times, and one  I don't always succeed at.

mitda and I, as a former vanilla married couple, had the easiest transition to a TPE lifestyle.  emmie and I have a few more hurdles to climb.  We are in a poly married situation as far as our vanilla sex lives go, but it is new and like any newlyweds we are still learning each other's tastes, wants and predilections.  And we have our pre-existing, comfortable relationships with our legal spouses to fall back on when things become tense for any reason.  That my spouse is also her sister slave makes her feel insecure.   That her spouse is a "top" sexually, and beginning to dominate in a bedroom bdsm sense, is an additional element and tension for me.  Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't trade any aspect of my family for any other in the world, but it's only by being honest about the tensions that they will be resolved, as I always trust that they will.  The love I have for emmie, Jubal and mitda, and the love between all of us, makes all the tensions worth it, all the difficulties a temporary thing, and my overall life satisfying and full of joy.

on perversion re: mitda re: jubal

mitda, commenting on jubal's next-to-inaugural blog post, makes a few comments that make her worldview precariously relativistic.  Here is an adjustment I would make to correct her, since her ideas are my responsibility : ).

"we live in our own worlds- and for the 4 of us, and the kinky people
with whom we associate, those worlds sometimes overlap, creating our
own society with its own norms."

Worlds are shared phenomena, Being-in-the-World is a simple, single structure, not a relation between independent phenomena the way it appears in English.  Even between radically different cultures there is a shared set of meanings that constitute a common world, and allow other structures of human being such as discourse and understanding to occur coterminous.  It's not so much that worlds sometimes overlap.  Rather the result of World+understanding (among other existentials), things that always already have occurred in human being, and are therefore a priori to willed cognition, are unique, and huge contributors to what is variously, and loosely, called character, personality or self consciousness.

To quote Medard  Boss, a Swiss psychiatrist who was very involved with Heidegger's ideas of human being, "We are not individuals locked up inside our bodies; We live rather in a
shared world, and we illuminate each other.  Human existence is
shared
existence."

Total Power Exchange and the Limit Situation - 1

An oddity, but one that often surfaces when pro and con arguments are vetted out, is that they take the same form, and essentially become two moments of one argument. This is the root of the form of thought known as dialectic, particularly the way that Hegel uses the term.

This turns out to be the case in the pro and con TPE argument, so let's take it apart a little. I will provide one of the original formulations of the argument for TPE and talk a little about the argument con, just to set the stage.
"When you "submit" to or "dominate" someone in a situation where safe words are used and when limitations are negotiated, you are not actually submitting or dominating at all - you are playing at it." - Jon Jacobs

The con argument also talks about limits. (In TPE) "The relationship is subject to the physical and the emotional limitations of the participants and therefore cannot genuinely be total or absolute." - From TPE, Wikipedia.

Odd isn't it that the arguments are so similar. What is it about TPE that immediately points towards limits as the crux of its own possibility? Karl Jaspers, in "The Psychology of Worldviews", a book unfortunately difficult to obtain, originated the idea of the "limit-situation", a peculiar existential condition where something unconditioned obtrudes and causes the self to come before itself in a unique way.

"...Jaspers claims that the self-disclosure of the possibilities of human existence depends on the capacity of the individual human life to open itself to the experience of the unconditioned (das Unbedingte). When it experiences the unconditioned, human life’s knows itself drawn by a motive (idea), which extends it beyond the forms, both subjective and objective, in which it customarily exists."

On a personal level, then, the limit situation unique discloses our possibilities, which gives us a better ground for actualizing them. On a philosophical level, if the limit is something unconditioned, and the unconditioned results in transcendence beyond the human's customary existence, being in a limit situation is an especially valuable situation for understanding what that customary existence is grounded upon, as well as experiencing a transcendence from it. And in fact the two things are the same, the subject-object split turns out to be based on an originary transcendence. What does transcendence mean here then? "Beyond" the customary, beyond the subject-object split, is in any case not a very well defined location, as far as we can immediately see. Before we can understand transcendence though, we need a horizon against which to view this new location, which does not admit of either subjectivity or objectivity.

So in order to develop a sense of what this horizon might be I'm going to look closer at the limit situation in general, and the limit situation I believe the TPE relationship to be in particular. In any limit situation Jaspers says that "existence directs itself from its own origin against and beyond its experience of normal subjective and objective reality". Direction then is important, and direction seems promising for understanding something like horizon. But what specifically happens in TPE? In the TPE situation there is an unconditioned demand, that the slave surrender all will, all freedoms, to the Master. Does this surrender equal surrendering all possibilities for the slave? By no means, but the slave's possibilities now all involve those inherent in enslavement, a situation where rather than being an "existence for itself", self consciousness becomes an "existence for another". Of course this act simultaneously creates the Master, who for his part was merely an undeveloped self consciousness as well. This part is well documented by Hegel in his lord/bondsman dialectic, so I will not further pursue it here, though a link might be useful to those not familiar with the argument.

So in the master/slave relationship there involves a complex dialectical process at work, at least according to Hegel. In TPE we attempt to make the enslavement total, or absolute. What does this do to the resolution?

Obviously the easy happy resolution of Hegel's "cooperation" isn't what we have here. We have in lieu of that a permanent tension, a permanent dialectic without resolution, unless you consider the passing of the participants a kind of resolution. It isn't a resolution as far as my thinking goes because the participants are precisely no longer there, but mortality is its own limit situation.

This post has become long and rather than lose the thread I will end for now and bring up the next element in the argument in a further post.

Collaring

After many fits and starts with various collars, severe allergic reactions, and more than a couple of other issues, we decided that a collaring ceremony for both mitda and emmie, with new collars that do not have allergen issues and can be locked and worn 24/7, was the solution.  And something we wanted to do on its own merit, of course.  So, the two collars having arrived, today is to be that day. 

For the occasion I took up the pen (well, the thinkpad) and wrote out what they are, in fact, agreeing to.  It's fairly comprehensive as you may imagine.  I'm not going to post it here as it is also a little private, and somehow it doesn't seem to suit a public forum.  Even one for a very small public such as this one.

In general, then, the vows made by the girls have them commit to spending their lives living, experiencing and deepening their own enslavement.  And in return they will be taken care of in every possible way, directed in every possible way, and loved in every possible way.  No power exchange can be total or absolute due to the limits and constraints imposed by society, personality and simply the human body.  But it can be considered to be in the realm of such, by virtue of existing in and sustaining a limit situation. 

I plan to explore this application of the concept  of the limit situation in a future post.  But it was necessary to introduce it here to counter the most obvious objections to the vows we are each taking, and by extension the journey we have already begun together, that we are reaffirming in a permanent fashion.

The translators of a favourite book of mine coined one of my favourite
terms in order to literally translate the title in German, which
contains the German neologism "ereignis".  In English it is rendered as
enowning, where the "en" prefix denotes an intensification of the root
word.  mitda and emmie are not merely owned the way non-human property
can be merely owned, they are enowned, in a way that is unique and
proper to who they are, each in their own way.