Ontology and Mathematics

It occurred to me lately (not much wonder since my background is in symbolic logic and philosophy) that mathematics is actually the true language of Ontology, the language that specifically speaks about non-objects, things that are not things, that don't take part in being, because it is a topology of Being itself, which is never a being. While many things have followed on from that thought I am still working out the most basic of them – the poietic descriptions of Being have been followed by philosophy from Plato to Heidegger, and are therefore far more developed than conclusions that might be able to be drawn from mathematics, but the mathematical conclusions have a much better chance of being communicated to a population no longer in love with or trusting in poetic license.

A Short Time Away

Tonight mitda and I are spending the night in a cheap hotel, mainly because I couldn't stand another weekend at home with the number of people living in a household. I guess having been a privileged child I grew up with 4 bedrooms and 3 people living in the house, so 6 people in a 3 bedroom is too much for me sometimes. With the stress from work I don't currently need additional stress at home.

I also thought it would be nice for mitda and I to get out as husband and wife. As Master/slave we do so much together but sometimes it can take away from the other side of our relationship. Unfortunately emmie didn't take us going away for the weekend very well. We will see her and E tomorrow at the munch and plan to go to a party for E.'s classmates afterwards, perhaps emmie will want to come back to the hotel with us after that so that she can have a night away from the kids.

After coming down with a serious migraine Thursday (tg I made it home, driving 130 mi. with a migraine is no fun) I woke up today lethargic and serotonin crashed from the migraine meds. I managed to do next to nothing all day and am finally feeling more like myself now that it's nearly bedtime.

Diagramming for Pennies

Today was another day of diagramming and generating code. Oh sure I have to write some code once the generation is done, to make the code actually do something, but much of the work is done for me by the latest tools. Automation is coming to software development, finally.

Not that anyone at work is really picking up on it awfully quickly. In fact today I redid two peoples' work, that they had hand coded, and redid it using the generating toolkits. It probably added up to a couple of days coding, plus testing and debugging time, that was completely unnecessary.

It occurred to me the other day while playing with mind mapping software for brainstorming ( http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download ) that, given that the Autism sites recommend mind mapping software for autistics/aspergers, diagramming and generating things from diagrams is particularly suited to an aspies mind. Like mine. Because that is most of what I do these days. I never was an incredibly good heads down coder, more of a program designer (internal program architecture and design, not GUIs).

So the industry seems to be going my way. Hopefully this job will continue to do so for the immediate future until I can find something closer to home and with a less restrictive atmosphere.

Goodbye to November and All That

I've been torturing emmie by making her listen to live Ministry, who we are going to see when they visit our town in April. Sure it's from a while ago but hell they're a good live band. Poor emmie is more into pop-hip-hop than Ministry, <sigh>, you can't always find good musical taste in a slave :).

It's been a difficult week and a half and I'll be glad when this week is past. E. has been focused on getting ready for exams, mitda is recovering rather well all things considered but not yet up to her usual self, emmie has had a few difficult things to deal with personally, and I've had my issues with personal and professional restrictions at work, not to mention my jaw being half ripped out. I'm hoping that during December we can rally around each other a bit more and not have shit dumped on us from without..

Turkey and Obsession

We had an odd sort of family Thanksgiving yesterday, not that things aren't often a little odd around here. I was unable to really take part in the eating due to having had two wisdom teeth out (one was growing in underneath another). The pain and being unable to function fully for a few days left me extremely depressed and lethargic.

After changing from one neuroleptic to another emmie had a brief but intense psychotic episode. Unfortunately mitda is feeling very vulnerable both physically and emotionally as a result of her hysterectomy and responded in fear. E helped to calm the situation down quite a bit and by the time mitda's mother had been retrieved from her home (she doesn't like driving in heavy rain) emmie had done a wonderful job cleaning up the house and was ready for the company. The meds I had given her during the episode left her feeling tired though and she retired to bed shortly after dinner. I had been tired and pretty much lolling around in bed anyway, so I stayed with her there until mitda's moth was ready to go home. E and mitd and her mother watched a couple of movies and seemed to have a good time overall. Apparently the food was good – as I said earlier I didn't eat much of it – but it seems E did a good job with the Turkey (his first time) and the rest of the stuff at least looked and smelled good.

Tomorrow emmie will try to find a new pdoc as we are not happy with her current doc's medication knowledge. She will also call her current pdoc and relate the incident to see if in fact he does have any ideas. I don't personally believe, having met him, that he is particularly comfortable treating bipolar. Bipolar disorder requires treatment by a good psychopharmacologist, someone who knows the illness and the medications for it (there's literally hundreds) inside and out.

Voidy numbness ...

I have been considering the Void lately. Not that void that science deals with that stands in for not-matter wherever there isn't matter, that void is still in space, in time, in the universe. The Void I am thinking on is neither in space nor time, but exceeds both, nor is it a part of that finite but unbounded thing we call the Universe, it exceeds that also.

This particular void is not graspable, it can't be conceptualized in any conceptual en-grasping. It doesn't take part in mankind's en-framing of the universe into calculable resources, it remains outside, incalculable, unresourceful. It can't be presented to someone or represented to oneself, and yet, terrifyingly at times, it remains experienceable.

One might expect that experiencing this would cause one to cling to one's fellows, much as people gather and hold one another during a storm. But it is not a storm, it is calm as death, and perhaps it would have this effect on another, in fact perhaps half the distractions of society exist in pure response to it, but on me it renders me distant, alone and with the desire to be more so.

I have taken things to become more calm, taken other things that I hope will bring me back towards some form of integration with the World. It could look like depression and perhaps there is some of that lurking around. In the meantime I have to try to balance my responsibilities within-the-world with the undeniable situation that a good part of me is not there.

My vocabulary, its origin, and a kid difficulty

Someone I know, a thoughtful person herself, complained recently about my “reinventing vocabulary” in reference to how I write and speak, and it triggered a number of thoughts about vocabulary in general and mine in particular, which in turn triggered thoughts on issues I have had in my development as a whole.

Not that I do, or do intentionally, reinvent vocabulary (well maybe sometimes I do prefer my own terms for certain things, such as "absolute enslavement" :P ). I have a fair background in both phenomenology and the philosophy of language, particularly with reference to Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida, and so the language that I most naturally use includes terms and structures that are not unusual in these writers but are not so commonly used. But along with this I have some Asperger's traits, and fundamentally for me all language is in the first place a foreign language, English as much as symbolic logic, and am often non-verbal for long periods, so language that is unusual and seems foreign to other people doesn't seem any more foreign to me that what is deemed common parlance. I developed my sense of language despite, rather than because, language in general is a natural or easy thing for me. But I developed enough of a sense of language to serve me decently in what I do because I also had an ability for languages, whether foreign or not :).

My aspies traits have been a concern for me very recently in general. I'm not unhappy about having them – I enjoy the abilities I have as a result and I'm not upset by having had to make a slight extra effort with things like language. I learned language quite well in spite of aspies, and learned other things - such as how to judge people's perceptions of oneself - that are more difficult for aspies people than for the general population. Overall I'm quite content with the combinations of abilities I have developed - I was lucky enough that my aspies traits weren't so severe that I couldn't overcome things that I found necessary to overcome, and I learned many of the things I learned when I was too young to actually notice that it took me more or less effort than other kids.

The reason it has been a concern, then, is not particularly regarding myself, but regarding emmie and her son. Both of emmie's sons are diagnosed autistics, but the younger one really fits the description of someone with aspies more than autism, while the older one fits the description of a medium to medium-high functioning autistic more accurately. I haven't spent a great deal of time with her older son, who lives with his father in another state, but her younger son lives with us and is currently 9, which seems to be an important age for a kid with aspies. According to child development guidelines 9 to 11 is the age when children generally become social personalities. Up to that point children are an odd combination of self absorption and parent-centrism, they don't come across as completely self-interested, simply because their “self” is still integrated with those that raised them, usually their parents in this society.

But between 9 and 11 years this changes, and kids suddenly take an avid interest in one another. Peer pressure first really develops at this age and so does the need to be close to other kids, rather than first looking for parental/teacher acceptance and only later for acceptance by peers. Along with this comes the development of, not self-awareness, but awareness of how one is perceived by others. Aspies and autistic kids are often labelled not self-aware but this is a mislabelling of the fact that they are not aware of how others perceive them. They are aware of their actual “selves” quite strongly as far as I can tell. A striking difference between a fully autistic child and an aspies one, for me, is the difference between not knowing that one is perceived as “ different” or “odd”, vs. knowing it, but not necessarily understanding it or being able to change it.

So her son is having difficulty integrating with other kids at the age that they are all beginning to do so with each other. This could be a very temporary thing, where her son is delayed developmentally and will start to develop that kind of other-kid-awareness a bit later, or it could be a fundamental short-circuit in his wiring – I simply don't know enough about aspies or her son to be able to judge. From being aspies myself, in a less apparently severe way, I know that an aspies kid “can” learn that kind of awareness even if it's not altogether natural or easy. But I don't know if that's true for every aspies kid or just for some. And if it can be learned by any kid that is by definition aspies and not fully autistic (if there is a hard-and-fast line, which seems doubtful) I don't know about the best way to go about helping a kid learn it. The kid has ample reason to learn it – at present he gets picked on and his reactions to things – or more precisely how he allows people to see those reactions – makes it all the more likely he will continue to get picked on. Kids are sensitive and emotional creatures. It's not that “normies” don't get sensitive or have emotional reactions to things, but they learn more quickly than an autistic child what reactions are acceptable to show in front of whom, and what reactions will cause them to be made fun of or treated as “weird”.

This kid has it both good and bad when it comes to the severity of his difficulties. From the limited exposure I've had to his elder brother, he has much more of a chance than the elder sibling of living an apparently “normal” life. Where the elder child will always be treated as disabled in certain functional ways, the younger one may be treated as having been “developmentally” delayed, and may always be “odd” in certain ways, but will likely generally be treated as having “caught up” with everyone else. I use scare quotes on “caught up” because, as with many aspies kids, he has definite abilities as well as disabilities, and overall is very intelligent, so much so that despite an obvious learning disability he is in a regular school at the right grade for his age and is on the school's honor roll. There are many ways where he will always be “ahead” of the average kids in his classes. Not that you have to have aspies to be intelligent or have abilities, he is simply one of the lucky kids that despite whatever problems and issues he might have, he has these abilities to fall back on.

I hope that with further study, partly of aspies syndrome, mostly of emmie's son himself, we'll be able to figure out ways to help him overcome the areas where he does have difficulties. The extra effort it takes him will be worth it in terms of living the life that he will eventually want to choose for himself, and with certain other things being relatively easy for him, he should have spare energy to use on overcoming his issues.

mitda on the road to healing and recovery

All things considered mitda is doing very very well. Many thanks to all the well-wishers who have called, emailed or stopped by to make sure of this. Yes she's still very tired and rather sore, and it will probably take the full six week recovery period to get my mitda back to where she is the full of life, vivacious person that some lucky people have gotten to know, but already I can see some of the glimmer, some of the hope that with the inordinate pain that has been dogging her gone she can continue becoming the person she wants to be, which is the person we all want her to be.

She and emmie and Jubal are the 3 biggest joys in my life. As her Master I expect her to do anything I tell her, as her husband and best friend I expect to do anything she requires. A real M/s relationship is as symbiotic as a real husband/wife relationship but with a little more intensity than most people are used to in their relationships. I hope we can strengthen our bond even further now that a significant distraction is gone and she is on the healing road.

Objectification and the end of the Subject-Object Split

Tonight I was corresponding with another Dominant about an “objectification” social she is planning, and which emmie and I will likely be attending. While objectification of a slave is interesting to me, the de-subjectification that I think is likely will be far more so. Having one's slave see him/her self as no different than the other objects in one's world is a very tangible way of breaking the habitual subject-object split that one makes in one's perceptions, and it is my hope that emmie will begin by viewing herself as though she were an object, but end by ceasing to see objects as such, as separated from herself by a fictional subjectness of her person.

I want to explore this further in thought, particularly in the direction of the personality and its fictions (including its own reality) but I think I will let the thoughts develop a little further on their own and leave it here for tonight.

End of Misery, Hopefully

I haven't been blogging much, what with work, a slave in hospital and much else. But now mitda is home and while she's more than a little sore she's in pretty good spirits, which helps mine significantly. As for that work thing, I'm working from home today, partly to save the cost of travelling to work (we've not managed to cash a cheque yet so things are tight although they shouldn't be, but that's another story) and partly to spend time with mitda.

Although the operation was supposed to be lapiroscopic in nature mitda ended up with a full abdominal courtesy of a nasty cyst and subsequently enlarged ovary – enlarged to about the size of her fist. I do feel really glad that all that stuff is out of there, it was causing her nothing but misery. Now we have to see how her moods do without hormones and find out whether she'll need HRT, altogether a lot to think about for someone her (young) age. But the pain she was in should be gone for good. Thank you the gods of surgery.

The family has been really good with her – emmie was with her much of the time in the hospital – even through the first crying jags when she was still way stoned on the morphine drip and feeling a little empty. It's a deal for emmie to handle strong emotion so it was nice to see her come through it so well. Jubal has been great, reliably there every day to see her, helping with the house to get it read for her, etc.

And me? Well, I made chili con carne for dinner her first day home. First time I cooked (other than the grill) in this house. Turned out ok I guess ;).

15 Hour Days ...

Another 15 hour day. This one went relatively well – I'm able to design the system the way I want to – since it is new I have very few restrictions, which gives me a chance to try a few things I've been wanting to try.

It does make home life more difficult though. I am trying to set things up in a way that I can assign tasks without being here but restrictions at work on use of email etc. make it that much more difficult than it should be. The girls are feeling the lack of attention and it's not a positive experience for them.

Back to it

I haven't had much time to keep up with my blog lately, what with working an 8 hr day and spending 4 hours in the car in total to get there and back. Not that I don't want to keep it up, but it gets grinding and I was definitely looking forward to the weekend.

Keeping up an M/s relationship in these conditions poses its challenges as well. The girls need direction and I'm often not as available as I would like to provide it. I have ideas as to making the task of setting tasks and reviewing them more efficient but that in itself takes energy and time to implement. So we're all getting by.

Preparations for mitda's surgery are not as far along as I would like, as a family we have to realize that the person primarily responsible for meals, shopping and a host of other things will be completely out of commission for some time, and everyone has to pick up the slack no matter what their personal schedules look like.

We went to a dinner party mostly made up of M/s couples, triads etc. tonight and it was a welcome social relief from the draconian world where I work, and the current pressures of home life. It made me remember why we do these things. Not, obviously so that when we go out we have M/s people to go out with, lol, but watching the interaction and feeling so at ease because these people understand how we are and how we choose to live confirms me again in following our hearts and minds and living as we want to.

Dasein, Mineness, Authenticity and Authority – the Origin of Existential Decisionism

“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.”

“Heidegger introduces the idea of ‘mineness’ as a quality that belongs to Dasein, as being that which is the true nature of Dasein”

Mineness, indeed replaces “an entity’ as the mode of Dasein’s authentic encounterability. However Dasein in fact is encounterable in an ‘inauthentic’ but primordial’ manner through the idea of ‘das Man’, or the “they”, the “one”.

Authenticity and inauthenticity = decisionism – the “they” as consensus, liberalism, against authenticity/authority, the “discourse of Mastery” as per Derrida. Authenticity in Heidegger’s early sense only comes with en-ownment of the Master by the en-slaved. The early sense hence not primordial. The ‘Lord’ is master by virtue of en-ownment by the en-slaved bondsman, therefore reducible. The en-slaved as not reducible. ‘Lord’ is Master only in a relative sense, in relation to the specifically en-slaved. En-slavement by en-framing (technology as techne) as ultimate reductio ad absurdum of Lordship to the en-grasping of the con-cept (Be-griff … “griff” grip or handle, old German). Origin of Heidegger’s transgression - the crucial philosophical mistake of favouring the Lord over the bondsman. C.f. the re-estimation of Being as Ereignis in terms of the mastery of the last god in “vom Ereignis.” Dasein is only encounterable as “mineness” by the Lord after a dialectical sublation, “not-mineness” is primordial.

“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.”

Inappropriate relations or appropriative relations? c.f. the “event of appropriation”. Appropriating as the bringing into what is most proper, das eigen., “own”, ownhood, en-owning.

“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’ (BT, 160).”

Dasein is not the knowing Subject of Descartes but the unitary facticity of existence as disclosed. “Disclosedness” also involves “being-with” and allows truth to appear and be known as shared truth. “Eternal truth” depends on eternity, something we are entirely unsure about in a finite universe. “Objective” truth depends on the separation of subject/object, but the implicit intent of these notions – shared truth, or truth outside the individual existing human, is validated by Heidegger in the concept of disclosedness. “Truth” may only be disclosed to Dasein, but it “is” disclosed to, not determined by, the particular Dasein. Without requiring the basis in absolute knowledge of Hegel (only valid for beings within metaphysics) Heidegger offers support for the idea of shared truth about facticity.

My Own Personal Reactance Tale Pt 1

I think I've mentioned wage-slavery before. Perhaps. Of course I've been aware for a good number of years, practically since I started working, that we still live in such a system, however it suddenly became a lot more overt for me, triggering my own reactance and leading to some interesting observations.

My new position carries with it a lot of restrictions, from not being able to smoke on campus to not being able to bid on eBay. But the two restrictions that caused me the most angst were the lack of ability to use email or IM from work. Given that I will probably end up working 8-10 hours a day with a 4 hour combined commute it adds up to a lot of time spent incommunicado, at least as far as computer initiated contact goes. I've known for years that rights are societally granted, that there is no such thing as a bare unsocialized human being that could own “ human” rights, but to be in a situation, within a supposedly “free” society, where I cannot exercise things I have taken for granted for a long time puts me in a very similar position to mitda and emmie, when they run up against restrictions I put on them.

My first reactions, predictably, are to restore my freedoms, either by quitting the job, smoking by leaving the campus during the day or using my skill as a developer to access my own email system from work. Some of these I can do, some not. Other responsibilities weigh in, just as they do for my girls. Next comes the phase of analysis of the situation, and finally self analysis to see the reasons and results of my reactance.

It has been quite an eye opener, not that I thought life was all easy going and roses for the girls, but to experience it firsthand as a dominant personality was certainly disconcerting. Things at work will get better, as I work around one or two issues, and accept the others more easily by being distracted with the work at hand and not bored into focusing on the restrictions due to lack of work (it often takes companies a few days to get systems in place for a new developer and this is no exception).

Azureus Vuze for OpenSolaris

It got to irritating me that Azureus is not available for OpenSolaris. So here is a completely unsupported port of the program for OpenSolaris. Your mileage may vary but it seems to work here. Took all of 15 minutes to convert the Linux version. Of course the OnVuze features don't work, but it does pretty much what Azureus 2.x (which at least came in a Solaris/ultrasparc version) did. Given there's lots of programs to view vids etc. on Solaris Azureus comes in handy to download the torrents.

Azureus Vuze for OpenSolaris

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 :).

Topping from the Bottom

Most of the time the slaves are quite happy doing what they are supposed to do, and quite happy with what Master does. Occasionally, though, Master does or intends to do something unwanted, and despite their vows to the contrary it becomes an occasion where it is tempting to “top from the bottom”.

This doesn't work altogether well for anyone. I don't, and won't indulge it. And it makes me angry and irritable. It makes me second guess doing the things the girls do want me to do, and if I'm not careful it can generate the very resentment I'm trying to avoid with this relationship.

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.

OpenSolaris with Audio and Everything

Well I finally got audio working on OpenSolaris thanks to the good folks at OpenSound System. Now everything on my laptop works under OpenSolaris. Everything worked by default, actually, upon installation except the audio. Wifi is built in. And of course being an X Windows based GUI I can load the GUI from any of my unix servers and run applications as if they were local to the laptop, while they use the CPU and disk space of the server.

Fitness for Master

As the most unhealthy member of the family it behooves me to try to get a little bit healthier. E is quite healthy, running a half marathon or so weekly and working out nightly before bed. And mitda has surprising stamina, after starting to run again she is quickly up to 6.5 miles. That leaves emmie and I, who would both much rather be sitting our asses on the bed than moving them in some useful fashion.

So we have started soccer practice in the mornings. I enjoy kicking the ball around, at one point I was actually a decent player. Neither emmie nor I get the “runner's high” from exercise, but I do get some excitement from the skill of handling a ball with one's feet.

As a result my legs are sore. Particularly my groin, which doesn't get used so much outside soccer as it does within soccer. But it should be worth it to keep it going. We all enjoy it and it's a good way to spend time together as well as getting some fitness happening.

Goodbye Windows Server 2008

Well it's back to OpenSolaris as Windows Server 08 had one problem after another, first the network list service crapped out, then COM+, then FTP no longer worked. Sigh, I guess RC0 is still not ready for prime time.

Trying Windows Server 2008

So I'm trying out Windows Server 2008 RC0 64 bit on my Thinkpad. So far, so-so. It's pretty fast, much faster than the 32 bit version of Vista on the same machine. Not quite as fast as OpenSolaris but probably about the same as Fedora Linux 8. I've had some problems with Com+, probably caused by the wireless driver for the atheros chipset but still unsure about that. I would probably rather go back to OpenSolaris but for the fact that the OpenSound drivers don't work on this particular intel hda soundcard as of yet. They're close, but not there.

Headachy Night

I woke in the middle of the night with a sharp headache. Some Excedrin is taking the edge off but no way can I lay down. I pounded a bottle of water and a coke and am hoping the fluid and caffeine work some magic. It takes me back to the period where I had a migraine that lasted for years. I somewhat got used to it. I somewhat just took a lot of painkillers – codeine, morphine, fentanyl. I don't ever want to go through that again.

Thought at its Limits

Foucault praises linguistics and psychoanalysis as examples of thought at its limits which discovers at the center of knowledge not humanity, but a sort of anti-humanity, a dead end if you will. Both linguistics and psychoanalysis find humanity suspended in a web of language, a language which mediates humanity and allows humanity to constitute an image of itself. But language is not such a stable support network; rather language's promise of solidity is something like quicksand, an infinitely regressing system which cannot comprehend its own foundation since it has no center or originary meaning to rest on. "From within language experienced and transversed as language, in the play of its possibilities extended to their farthest point, what emerges is that man has 'come to an end', and that, by reaching the summit of all possible speech, he arrives not at the very heart of himself but at the brink of that which limits him; in that region where death prowls, where thought is extinguished, where the promise of the origin interminably recedes." If humanity reveals itself only in and by language, humanity must accept a certain condemnation of silence to never be able to speak of its own origins and ends. Humanity is thrust into the foreground only to be distanced from its foundations, its background, a horizon which cannot speak and which, when approached, undoes thinking (as meaning is undone at the roots of language, the self at the roots of psychoanalysis), leaving only a horizon of the dead.

It is, then, in this context that Foucault speaks of humanity as a recent invention. Only with the elaboration of specific systems of thought which could inquire not into humanity's ideal or essence, but the functioning of the foreground and the silhouette of humanity against the enabling background. "We shall say, therefore, that a 'human science' exists, not whenever man is in question, but wherever there is analysis - within the dimension proper to the unconscious - of norms, rules, and signifying totalities which unveil to consciousness the conditions of its forms and contents." The subject of humanity was constituted during a certain moment in history which "dissolved" language, that is, an era which knowingly constructed its understanding of humanity "objectively," in between the spaces of representationality which show how humanity is deployed. According to Foucault, the human sciences address humanity in so far as people live, speak, and produce (biology, philology, and economics), and create its model by isolating and questioning the functioning of humanity when the norms and rules break down, and on that basis rebuild knowledge by showing how a functional representation of humanity can come into being and be deployed (and thus, Foucault will later argue, perfect the techniques of normalization and socialized encoding of rules via totalizing methods of power).

As language is now re-coalescing at its limits, combining thought and unthought, the Other of knowledge must give itself over to the Same. Where the limits of thinking reveal its own basis as its foundational limitations, a new way of thinking is constituted which, as Levi-Strauss says, "dissolves humanity." Foucault writes, "Since man was constituted at a time when language was doomed to dispersion, will he not be dispersed when language regains its unity?" The "death of man" seems a relatively peaceful event, not where humanity explodes with enormous violence, but a moment where humanity withdraws into the background such that a new array of knowledge can be foregrounded. Foucault does not yet have the advantage of a fully elaborated theory of language; however, if such a unity of language is not philosophized, humanity will forever find itself in a dying state, undoing itself by its own logic without our awareness. Foucault seems to ask that humanity die gracefully so that we can direct our energy to elaborating what is not yet thought, and approach a new horizon of articulation.

The Discourse of Mastery and Unlimited Responsibility

A “discourse of Mastery” is by definition ontologically (study of Being) penetrating. By this I mean that it gets at the totality of its subject matter in such a way as to have conquered it. To take an example Euclidean geometry, which carves pure space into dimensions, angles and arcs, is a discourse of Mastery of spatiality. As such it is repressive, in that it subsumes other perceptions of spatiality.

This repression can be very much freeing. Euclidean geometry frees the architect to do what he does knowing the basics will work, knowing the rules of the game. What happens when we bring quantum spatiality into the equation?

Essentially nothing, because while the architect may nod to quantum spatiality it doesn't have ontological penetration for him. It doesn't describe the beings he works with and utilizes on a day to day basis. Another Master's Mastery is as such only of a similarly comprehensive interest to myself or to my slaves. It might well be a discourse of Mastery, but it is not mine.

Mineness is a human trait, a trait of human being itself, that it is in each case mine. Or rather, is in the first place, but with the possibility of being given to another. This “giving”, or “ giving up” is en-owning, a giving of one's Being, an event (ereignis), an appropriation (bringing to the proper, to one's own). This giving up brings en-slavement, the Master's absolute subjugation of the slave. This subjugation brings its kind and tenor of Mastery.

With Mastery comes unlimited responsibility through the “ Mineness” of the slaves new mode of Being. The slave is, in totality, Mine as Master. I am therefore responsible for what my slaves do, say, imply, as much as I am for what I do, say, or imply from that event of enownment onward. From the event onward a slave is a human being with a difference, a modality of toolhood, they are some of the beings that I work with and utilize on a day to day basis. Mastery works itself out through the unlimited responsibility of using those tools daily, without hiatus. Mastery is a working through, a going through, and its workmanship is absolutely restless. It is restless in the way it moves and arranges its equipmental totality, its World, which is also the World of its slaves.

Operating System Fun

I have given Fedora 8 three goes without success. Granted it is still in beta, Test 3 is the current edition. But rather obvious problems have prevented me from dual booting OpenSolaris and Linux on my laptop using it. Such as the wireless not working on Test 3. It worked on Test 1 and Test 2, now it doesn't work. C'mon guys, this is almost as bad as Windows. Actually I expect that the hiccups will be fixed by November's release date and at that point I will try dual booting again.

While, in fact, I have gotten Windows Server working on emmie's laptop. Windows 2008 Server RC0, to be specific. And while it is slow as molasses compared to OpenSolaris it is reasonably stable and reliable. E. is getting along ok with Vista, it should be faster on his dual core than it in fact is, but he has enough hardware power to make it livable.

And I'm back to OpenSolaris. The next upgrade is a hardware upgrade for mitda's laptop which is dying a slow death after quite a good amount of usage. Her new one should arrive any day now, and while I let her make the decision about what OS to run, she surprised me by saying OpenSolaris. She gets along with XP Pro ok but is in slight envy of the speed and stability I get with Solaris. And the fact that StarOffice (Sun's supported version of OpenOffice) and GIMP and Firefox and Pidgin all come installed instead of requiring download and manual installation.

Self-Identity

Self-identification is a mysterious thing to me. People self-identify in all kinds of ways. For me it can be Master in an M/s relationship, bipolar, software architect, English-Canadian living in the US, all kinds of things that have overlapping and contradictory features.

For instance the English-Canadian background I have tends me towards socialist ideas. It can be difficult working out human ownership when one doesn't fundamentally believe in private property. And the bipolar throws a huge curve into everything, especially when both of my slaves are also bipolar. But being a Dominant is obviously not a bipolar tendency, if only proven by the fact that my two slaves ARE also bipolar.

So we tell ourselves our self-identifying stories and try to make the best of our possibilities. I am enjoying things the way they are going and I very much credit my family (current) for that.

Sleepy ...

After going out for coffee with emmie and Jubal I find myself too sleepy to think much on anything – mitda was too tired to even go out for coffee and stayed home.

Which isn't to say I don't have a lot on my mind. It'll just have to wait to make it into the blogosphere.

My Conflagration had a little Conflagration

Last night mitda decided to try her luck grilling some chicken quarters. After all, it can't be that hard to grill something, men do it!

So she caused a bit of a conflagration. By the time she called me out to

help the grill temperature gauge had hit its maximum of 800 degrees and the chicken was literally on fire. The bacon she had wrapped around the chicken didn't help matters, but the fact that all three burners were on high and the lid was closed was the real issue.

After letting the grill cool I went ahead and baked the chicken at about 350 degrees to cook it through, and we had very blackened chicken for dinner. Surprisingly it didn't turn out that bad. It was quite edible.

Counselling and Mastery

I had an interesting experience last night. Jubal is in grad school to get a Master's degree in counselling (yes he plans a kink-aware practice). He interviewed me as part of his schoolwork. The particular thing he was training himself on was how to ask open ended questions. I found it quite neat that, despite knowing he was testing some technique, the technique remained effective.

With slave training I believe the same thing applies. Although the slave is aware of his/her training and the techniques applied the techniques still work just as well. In some ways they work better because the slave is involved and immersed in his/her training and is optimally working as hard at the training or harder than the Master.

I had a few criticisms of Jubal's techniques but overall he did a good job. Talking about personal issues with a family member is never easy, and it worked quite well and helped me personally somewhat in figuring out an issue I have at the moment. Not that it's a big issue like childhood molestation or anything, it's a simple work issue. But it's all the little issues that add up.. And it's the little issues that slaves have that a Master has to take the most time dealing with.

Test of Staroffice / Openoffice Weblog Publisher

This is a test, I repeat, This is a test.

I just installed the weblog extension for Staroffice/Openoffice on my laptop. In my case I'm using Staroffice, which comes with OpenSolaris and has a few extra features over Openoffice. Both my girls run Openoffice on their Windows machines rather than Micro$oft Office and it seems to work for them quite well. Now that Lotus Symphony also supports Opendocument format we actually have a competition in free office suites. So don't pay $$$ for MS, Openoffice reads and writes MS files just fine, and a number of governments and institutions are stopping the glut of asking for .DOC format files and starting to request Opendocument files instead. It works. It's free. And it's not so ugly as Office 2007 with its messed up skins.

Helplessness and the Passing Under

mitda in her current blogpiece talks about an experience we shared on Friday.  She had been rendered helpless in a play session completely, and suddenly "something" came over us.  I put something in scare quotes because it didn't have attributes or anything one could describe, it was just presencing pure and passing over, with a simultaneous (for me) passing under.  I have had this experience before but under very different circumstances.  I felt from it a huge sense of refusal, refusal of worship, refusal of description, refusal of communication.  It seems to be a rare occurrence, and one that one needs to be partially prepared for, but the preparation can never be enough, and it remains the most overwhelming, the definition of overwhelming itself.  The Abyssal.

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.

Situations and Limit Situations

Situations

When we do this we discover immediately that people are always connected to the world in a number of concrete ways. Heidegger (1927) in this context spoke of our 'thrownness'. He said that we are always thrown into a world that is already there to start with and into which we simply get
...amounts to the disclosedness of the fact that Dasein exists as thrown being towards its end. (Heidegger 1927:251)

In other words: death is part of me and to accept my living towards this end gives my life back to me in a new way.

Jaspers (1951, 1971) spoke of limit situations as those situations which define our humanity. Sooner or later we inevitably come up against guilt, death, pain, suffering and failure. The philosophical take on this is that it is more helpful to encourage people to come to terms with some of the inevitable conflicts and problems of living than to help them cover them up. Limit situations are what bring us in confrontation with ourselves in a decisive and fundamentally disturbing way. They evoke anxiety and therefore release us from our tendency to be untrue and evasive about ourselves and our lives.

inserted. It is important to recognize the factual situations that we are confronted with. We are part of a certain culture, a certain environment with a particular climate and history, a certain society and a specific situation. It is only within the givens of that situation that we can exercise our own choices. Sartre (1943) called this our facticity and he recognized that we can never release ourselves from this, even though we can choose our position in relation to it. In terms of psychotherapy it also means that it may be necessary to look at people's problems in a structural way. Instead of seeing everything as the person's psychological, emotional or internal problem, difficulties can be seen as part of an overall situation. Context is crucial and has to be taken into account.

Limit situations

Of all the situations in which we can find ourselves there are certain ones that are irrevocable. These situations have to be accepted and worked with. We cannot avoid them or overcome them: we have to learn to live with them. Heidegger emphasised the importance of death as a marker of our finite nature. Death in this sense is not to be taken as something happening to us at some point later, but as something that is relevant to us right now. The realities of our mortality and of our incompleteness have to be faced for us to become aware of and true to our nature, which is to be finite. Heidegger considered that the reality of our death is that it completes us. The recognition of the inevitability of death gives us a certainty that nothing else can give us. The fear in the face of death allows us to claim back our individuality, our authentic being, as we are inevitably alone in death and find ourselves much sobered and humbled by the knowledge of our mortality. Death, according to Heidegger:

...amounts to the disclosedness of the fact that Dasein exists as thrown being towards its end. (Heidegger 1927:251)

In other words: death is part of me and to accept my living towards this end gives my life back to me in a new way.

Jaspers (1951, 1971) spoke of limit situations as those situations which define our humanity. Sooner or later we inevitably come up against guilt, death, pain, suffering and failure. The philosophical take on this is that it is more helpful to encourage people to come to terms with some of the inevitable conflicts and problems of living than to help them cover them up. Limit situations are what bring us in confrontation with ourselves in a decisive and fundamentally disturbing way. They evoke anxiety and therefore release us from our tendency to be untrue and evasive about ourselves and our lives.

Googlewhack

After mitda discovered the concept of googlewhacks I proceeded to see if I could find one. A googlewhack is a pair of words that, typed into google, produces only 1 result. After a few tried (got 21 hits on one phrase) I came up with a googlewhack. "disempowering peameal". Of course once Google indexes this page it will no longer be a googlewhack, as there will be two entries.

The other entry was found on the http://www.visualthesaurus.com.

On a day when ...

... my back is killing me, I'm working from home and not getting much accomplished ... the girls are out at the doctor/drug store/market ... and wev else, I'm thinking about the issue of Mentally Interesting persons involved in D/s type relationships.

I had someone (a submissive) yesterday telling me why their husband couldn't dominate them them (whisper: he is bipolar). Ahem. So am I. In discussing it with her, though, it came out that he also has BPD. This is a very different matter as BPD's have emotional and not just mood issues. Let me clarify a bit as to what I mean by this.

Mood is defined by a philosopher of note to me as the self-disclosure of the current "how" of one's being. This is as much as to say, that when one asks how one "is", i.e. the question about the how of one's being, one is really asking about mood. Which is, in fact, pretty accurate. Emotions are different than moods from the get-go, because we have emotions in reaction to things, events, people, that are in-the-world.

Someone with emotional issues, then, is reactive to the world (and to him/herself) in a problematic way. This is not good for a Dominant. In terms of dominating someone one first has to be in control of one's reactions, and to a greater degree than most, because one's own actions and those of one's submissives will both tend to push one's buttons, assuming one has buttons to push.

There can be issues with having a bipolar Master, to be sure, such as inconsistency in different moods, and a tendency to be extreme and to expect extremes from one's submissives. But these issues can be dealt with, particularly if the submissives involved know mood extremes themselves and have similar tendencies. BPD is problematic, though, and I would expect that a BPD would have to have explored themselves to a very high degree, and probably in specific form have had very successful dialectical therapy, before one would wish to submit to their overly reactive personalities.

New Munch

We attended a munch for a group we hadn't been to prior to last night. It was a bit of an ego boost for me, as I discovered, partly due to somebody from another group reading it and being offended, that certain people I have great respect for in the community had been reading my wiki ( http://www.absoluteenslavement.com) and enjoying the writing on TPE/IE and absolute enslavement. Sometimes when you write something like a Wiki you're never sure if anyone reads it, certainly not if anyone enjoys it. It turned out that the person who disparaged it in another forum was also not particularly welcome at the munch last night for various reasons. He did however provide me with some fine advertising for the wiki and I have to be appreciative of that. As Oscar Wilde famously said "the only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about."

Psychology of Worldviews

I came across a few things while helping E. out with a paper on Gestalt Therapy. Not that I was much help except in the criticism department, which seems to be my specialty when it comes to E.'s interests :). This however caught my eye from an essay on Jaspers' Psychology of Worldviews:

"the construction of world views is not a merely neutral process, to be judged in non-evaluative manner. Instead, all world views contain an element of pathology; they incorporate strategies of defensiveness, suppression and subterfuge, and they are concentrated around false certainties or spuriously objectivized modes of rationality, into which the human mind withdraws in order to obtain security amongst the frighteningly limitless possibilities of human existence. World views, in consequence, commonly take the form of objectivized cages (Gehäuse), in which existence hardens itself against contents and experiences which threaten to transcend or unbalance the defensive restrictions which it has placed upon its operations. Although some world views possess an unconditioned component, most world views exist as the limits of a formed mental apparatus"

There is a freedom from anxiety about these limitless possibilities that is the gift of absolute subjugation. This freedom is the cause of the drop in reactance that the submissive experiences in the full acceptance of his/her enslavement.

Frustrations and Panics

This has been a week of frustration and panic for me so far. Starting at the play party on Saturday night my mood started to go downhill. emmie was upset at being left alone in the midst of a pack of doms while mitda and I played in public. mitda was upset that as a result emmie got attention while she was in dire need of aftercare. Not that these aren't things I can deal with but they triggered a spiral in a very delicately balanced mood situation, and it took me a few days to get back on track. Thank the gods for abilify, geodon and clonazepam.

So now I'm getting down to work and it is going much better as a result. Not that it doesn't come with its share of frustrations, such as the company whose information server we use removing parameters from the installation that we use, and causing us a good deal of a workaround as a result. But that stuff is par for the course in integration consulting. I've been doing a lot of core programming in the last few years and it's kinda interesting to get back to integration. Each has its own set of hassles and its own set of rewards.

This weekend is a weekend to learn rope. As in how to tie somebody up. emmie is very much looking forward to the whole thing, as while she is not too thrilled by pain, bondage is more of a turn on than she expected. I picked up 900 ft of hemp rope for a ridiculously low price on ebay a few weeks ago, now it's time to cut it into proper lengths and get to knot tying with it ...

Tonight we have the kinky happy hour, which is a nice relaxed way to spend time with people in the community without whips flying and people screaming in pain. That is until they get the bill :).

Discipline and Punishment

In one of my earliest posts to this blog I talked about the conundrum of how to punish a masochist.  As it happens this worked itself out over the period during which I didn't post much to the blog, and I never got around to explicating any of it.

There's a "mode" one has to get into in order to punish, it's a mode
that involves "knowing" that you know better than the person you're
punishing, people find that easier with children, obviously, than with
adults   If you look at Tanos' site, the focus on "Internal
Enslavement" seems to focus on the slave's mindset, which is of course
important.  When mitda or emmie are being punished they are in a
different headspace than when they're being played.  But my
introduction of the term "Absolute" or "Total" Subjugation is important
because it deals with the mindset and headspace of the Master.  (Tanos does include this of course, it's only the term that seems to focus on the slave's doing, not the site or his thoughts on the matter)  In
order for the slave to get into her mindset, the Master has to be in
his, and it's a difficult thing at first to accomplish.  If you look at
my earliest blog entries there was the conundrum of how to punish a
masochist, and it took time to solve, but it has to do with getting
into a certain zone and making that felt to the slave.



First, as I said, you have to "know" that you're right, or that you
know better, than the slave.  This is difficult to do with someone that
you love and respect as an adult on the same level as your own.  You
have to know you know better because, simply, you are the Master in the
situation and it is your world and your set of meanings that are the
crucial ones.  The slave, in her enslavement, has given up the set of
meanings she had, what she accepted previously as her truth, and
accepted your reality as hers.  As a result, although she might be as
intelligent and capable as you are, she doesn't know the terrain as
well as you do, and within the dynamic in any disagreement she is
always in the wrong, because you are the arbiter of what is right and
wrong to begin with.  She needs this grounding by you as much as you
need to ground things in this way.  

Second, you need to get this world, this set of meanings, across to her
and put her in the situation where she knows that no matter what she
believed prior to her enslavement, she is now completely in the wrong
and needs to be punished to set her straight and remind her of where
her ground and truth are.  Partly I talk to emmie and mitda constantly
about the way I view things and the way things are for me, and must be
for them.  But truth lies in manifestation, and having things manifest
to the slave in the way they manifest to you is the key.  Human beings
share a world and share the way things manifest to a greater or lesser
degree depending on how close they are - and this phenomenon is what
people mean when they refer to "relating" to someone.  Physical contact
I've found is a key - standing at a distance and touching the slave
only when you hit them doesn't bring them into your space, you need to
break the slave's personal space by being as close to them as possible,
touching them with your free hand, and letting them feel the punishment
implement prior to and between hits, so that they know it's an
extension of your hand and your will.

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.

The Pierced Slave ...

mitda added to her voluminous collection of piercings today with 3 labirets in her left inner ear lobe.  This picture shows the last piercing needle while still in her ear.  Thanks to emmie for some great pics, can't wait until you get the digital SLR and start having some control over the lighting and filters :).

TPE Dinner

After a local munch yesterday evening we invited another TPE couple out for dinner.  In one of our first public M/s situations we had gone to a conference/party that included a talk on TPE given by this particular couple.  They are an impressive study in such a relationship, both relaxed and studious in protocol, skilled in play and knowledgeable in the psychodynamics of M/s, and sensitive to both the spirituality and the science involved in absolute mastery and total submission.

As a result mitda was nervous, emmie less so although her general shyness kept her very quiet for much of the evening.  E. was very well mannered, as is his wont, and did a lot to smooth the flow of conversation in a situation where he was, although married to emmie, the only person not involved in TPE at the table.  He showed his interest in the subject and his respect for the other gentleman's experience and knowledge of these matters. 

It was a real relief for me to spend time with them.  Even in the bdsm scene TPE is an oddity, and it's not unusual to hear, for instance as emmie and mitda did at a submissive's meeting, that "TPE is a fantasy".  mitda of course countered with a solid argument, but one that was probably understandable to less than half of those present at that meeting, and to a degree if one hasn't experienced the absolute as it manifests one can find it impossible to relate to.  Speaking with this couple, discussing similar experiences and our reactions to them, and discussing experiences they have had throughout an extensive history that are new and unknown to me, but from a perspective I relate to, was both satisfying and refreshing.  I feel that much more confident in my mastery, and find that much more enjoyment in my slaves' submission, in sharing it with people who understand that mastery is not just being a 2 year old and having one's every want and desire met (although that is a nice bonus :) ), and that "exquisite enslavement" is not just a masochistic need to be used, but a path of self development within the encircling comfort of the Master's world and the unlimited responsibility he takes on.

Needles again

We played with needles again last night, here is a pc of Mitda's back after the 1st of 20 needles went in. Hopefully just one isn't too disturbing to sensitive types. emmie took the pictures of the event while mitda blissed out into subspace.

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.

Working in the Middle of the Night

It's an odd feeling working through the night at Domus Daedali. For one I tend to work in the bedroom, really I do a lot of things in the bedroom, besides the obvious ones. But this bedroom is home of Bed Major, a 9 ft wide combination of beds put together that serves to sleep all the adult population of the house. Yes all four of us sleep together in one room, one bed. And we all have laptops on wireless. In fact I have two of them. So back to working.

I often work from home, particularly on my latest contract, where due to the nature of what I'm doing (this part of the project is pretty much solo, it involves doing work at a client site I'm not yet allowed to visit, etc.) I gain no apparent advantage by being in the office. One thing people who never work from home don't realize is that you tend to work harder at home. Sure you take breaks whenever you feel like it and such, but you make yourself always available by phone and at least within a few minutes by IM, and you take on and commit to producing much more work than you would have at the office so that nobody will think you're slacking.

So I wind up with work due at 9am, and it's 3:57. And my eyes are damn tired. In fact I decided to blog simply because I can't go to sleep, but for various nefarious reasons have to do my work work on a laptop with a crappy screen, when I own a Thinkpad with a beautfiful clear bright screen, and can only use it for personal stuff. *sigh*

But there are some wonderful things about so often being up while everyone is asleep (I'm an inveterate insomniac even when there's no work due). I can listen to mitda's sweet little snores. emmie cuddles up against my leg in her sleep. Jubal sends me into stark amazement every night by his ability to be asleep within 90 seconds of hitting the bed, and staying asleep barring trips to the bathroom until it is his appointed time to get up.

Damn I love my family.

Pleasant Evening Out

Tonight emmie, mitda and I went to the local kinky happy hour, which happens every couple of weeks. Unfortunately Jubal couldn't make it as he has night school now, going back to grad school to get his Masters in Counselling.

It was a really pleasant event. Getting to deal with the people we see at play parties in a more vanilla setting helps place them better in one's mind as fully rounded people, not just "bdsm'ers" or some such label.

I'm now unfortunately stuck with a nasty headache having had the nerve to try a local Texas beer on draft. Actually the beer was quite good, but it was a dark, bittersweet brew that was destined to kick my migraines into gear.

Punishment by Proxy

Last night I allowed Jubal to mete out mitda's punishment for disrespect. He did a nice job with the strop, leaving her pretty much in tears, and a pretty nice job of aftercare.

Not that I want to give up either of my slaves to Jubal or anyone else. It's fine with me if mitda subs to him, after all he is her lover, as well as being emmie's husband. But I don't think I'd like her being "his" sub, which is something mitda seems to want. It just seems that there's a contradiction inherent in being "my" slave and "his" sub, something that doesn't show up in a vanilla sexual situation, where sharing is somewhat easier. One can enjoy more than one lover, certainly, but can one serve two Masters? It definitely seems problematic to me. And how I would reconcile sharing with my concept of ultimate responsibility is another complex and uncharted area.

Today's Reactance Test is Brought to You By ...

emmie is bipolar. Not that this bothers me, as mitda and I are also bipolar, but sometimes it can be a little trying. Add some reactance to a mixed state and you have a volatile, angry slave who has no reason to be either. Of course in that state you can come up with an event to focus your anger on, but it simply isn't the real reason.

So we got through it and got out the real way she was feeling. And I punished the way she had expressed it. But now she's asleep in a benzodiazepine haze, benzos being one of the best temporary escapes from a mixed state I've found. And emmie is a wuss at taking meds compared with mitda, who needs double the usual dose on every med :).

Seeing her sleeping here so sweetly reminds me why, during the acting-out she did, when she asked me if I wanted to reevaluate our relationship I said "no, I don't particularly". I love her and what she brings to me in her role as much as I love mitda and the very different things she brings to me. I hope my response, made without hesitation, helps emmie with her insecurities, helps her know that no matter what I will be there.

Needles, Reactance and Punishment

mitda and I had some interesting and (to me) very hot play at a lakeside play party on Saturday. I made a corset/minidress out of needles in her back and ass, it was quite pretty, but a little overmuch for some of the "weekend ass slappers" ((C) Brutal Antipathy) that were at the party. It did have the desired effect of putting mitda in subspace and me in domspace.

emmie went through a period of what I can only see as reactance against the fact that I plan to take her in hand rather more firmly in the near future. She pouted and decided to be upset by something Jubal did at the play party. Jubal seems to be discovering "his inner sadist" as emmie put it, rather enjoying seeing emmie be punished for arguing with me. I reserve a strop for punishment that even the masochistic mitda can't enjoy the pain from.

I have most of my Sun server set up now with Sun's Java Application Server running a Java forum, wiki, blogsite, chat and project management software. In a little while they will become public, offering a US based complement to Tanos' Informed Consent UK centric TPE/IE site. Stay tuned for the unveiling.

Domspace part 2

emmie and I engaged in some SM sex last night after the Subway experience, and it led to the Domspace feeling of control, and also led to some other fantastically wonderful feelings.  I love the state of mind it engenders and even love the drop into exhaustion afterwards, as it's a satisfied, contented exhaustion far different from the depressive exhaustion sometimes suffered under subdrop.

This morning, very early, mitda and I decided to engage in needle play, I pierced her back and ass, which I then fucked, and then scratched lines down her back and across her ass, just deep enough for blood to well up in the scratch.  mitda went directly to subspace, do not pass go, do not collect your wits.  I was in a wonderful space myself that was hard to let go of for the rest of the morning, although the exhausted contentment that followed made it impossible to do anything but work from home.  Which turned out to be ok given it was the Friday of a long weekend and I had just turned in an important project on time.