I started writing this book in October 2017. I finished writing it in 2023, but made some minor corrections this year. This is the most recent, and hopefully final, version.
PREFACE
This book is a collection of thoughts. It is structured in numbered sections. The thoughts cover a wide range of topics and are both personal and general. I hope you enjoy reading the book.
KALEIDO
1. This book contains a collection of thoughts.
2. Reducing convoluted ideas to clear ideas, by showing they are tautological, is the proper way to refute them.
3. It is touching to see vegetarians prioritize the planet’s health over their own.
4. The inability to put a thing to use is often confused with the thing’s uselessness.
5. The way to relaxation is through pressure.
6. Being too social can be annoying because it interrupts us from our work.
7. There are masculine women and there are feminine men. That’s how words and reality work.
8. Just as the person on my TV screen is not really a person but mere pixels, the person talking to me right now is not really a person but “mere” flux.
9. A boxing master once told me the more you hit the other the friendlier he gets.
10. Over-politeness can offend, if interpreted as a denial of friendship.
11. There is no such thing as a universal good taste. To each his own—and bad people have bad taste.
12. Overestimating your peers is the most powerful way of building your self-esteem.
13. Remorse and guilt are self-harm.
14. Whenever your brain registers some weird phenomenon that does not match with your interpretation of the world, you will soon transform the weird phenomenon into familiar signs, and these will span anything from superstition to science.
15. Science is born out of certain fundamental falsifications of reality: lines, planes, numbers, unities, equivalences, causes, and so on, are created by our brain and projected onto our surroundings. We do this almost imperceptibly, which is why on our dealings with reality we can so easily forget that strictly speaking there are no “things”, no “equivalences”, and how “causes” are mere designatory signs that we apply on processes of which no ultimate cause can be “found”. On Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral Sense will give every thinking person a very good idea of what the foundations of science look like.
16. The capacity to give meaning to things—that is to say, the interpretative power—reaches in the hands of the genius an almost godlike level. For the vast majority are unable to either create or destroy these powerful interpretations—hence they are ruled by them.
17. Even the vast majority can create and project meaning to whatever it perceives in its locally limited lifespan. But this meaning and interpretation is so momentary and inconsequential that it amounts to nothing. Moreover, the vast majority will already be gravitating around the protracted and effective interpretations already existent in its surroundings.
18. Baudrillard betrayed what he felt himself to be when he wrote “the world is not what we think, it is what thinks us in return”. He identified himself with the momentary and inconsequential vast majority (the one that necessarily gravitates around the protracted and effective geniuses), and that’s the meaning of his passage.
19. The universe isn’t truly random because there are several theories that effectively describe and predict phenomena. But the universe isn’t completely deterministic either because theory does not give us certainty, it only gives us probability.
20. It would have been a waste if Lichtenberg’s Waste Books had never been published.
21. Artificial intelligence is now figuring out from your behaviour what you like or desire and is serving it on a plate to you in the form of ads. The AI-powered algorithms are attempting an imitation of our actions and desires (and representing them in the form of ads in this case), but this happens in the biological world too. I walk down the street and see people doing it. It’s called “monkey learning” and it is only bound to get better with the advances of machine learning.
22. Coolness has a lot to do with omission.
23. Our perception of the world is necessarily falsified. It is merely a rough sketch, and you make sense of this rough sketch by giving it an interpretation. It is possible to confuse the rough sketch with the real deal, and the interpretation with the rough sketch, and then when the rough sketch for whatever reason reaches a paradoxical interpretative dead-end, it is possible to become confused. See the double-slit experiment. One electron traversing two coplanar slits and showcasing wave-like behaviour. This seems inexplicable, and Richard Feynman was staggered by this observation, going as far as naming it a “mystery”. It is indeed staggering to see a “thing” display a behaviour pattern typically seen on waves—if you believe there are “things” at all. But aren’t oranges things? Sure, they are. And how are we going to make sense of one orange passing simultaneously through two separate coplanar holes? We can’t make sense of that… because it’s nonsense. So, the scientists observe this “wave-particle duality” and proceed to describe it with mathematics as best as possible, although, at bottom, none of them really understand why so-called particles behave as if they were not particles. They naturally become troubled by observations that make no sense. But why aren’t these observations making sense? It is because we are using language to make sense of them, and these observations are clashing with the presuppositions of language. It is the inadequacy of language to properly and completely represent reality that is causing us to feel staggered by perfectly natural observations, and this ought to make us realize that we are reaching the limits of what can be described by language in logically consistent terms. Strictly speaking, there are no “things”, no “particles”. There is only flux. Our belief in “things”, even though it is extremely useful to us, is ultimately false. With language we cut the flux of reality into “things”, and that’s how we end up making sense of the world. But language is a creation of our brains, and consequently there are no “things” outside of our brains. There is flux (=the real deal), then our brain, with the aid of the senses, impresses these perceptions onto our consciousness (=rough sketch), and then we make sense of this rough sketch with language and logic (=interpretation). But language is not reality! And logic, which is a refinement of language, is not reality either! Therefore, the wave-particle behaviour seems “mysterious” to people who forget this. They forget that language is merely a tool. Heraclitus, too, seems to have denied Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction. He would have accepted the wave-particle behaviour with ease. It is ultimately fatal, then, to see reason only in language, as opposed to looking for it in reality. But I am not saying anything new.
Nietzsche: “In its origin language belongs to the age of the most rudimentary psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language—in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere reason sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things—only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a capacity. Today we know that it is only a word.
Very much later, in a world which was in a thousand ways more enlightened, philosophers, to their great surprise, became aware of the sureness, the subjective certainty, in our handling of the categories of reason: they concluded that these categories could not be derived from anything empirical—for everything empirical plainly contradicted them. Whence, then, were they derived?
And in India, as in Greece, the same mistake was made: “We must once have been at home in a higher world (instead of a very much lower one, which would have been the truth); we must have been divine, because we have reason!” Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “Reason” in language—oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.”
This idea solves practically everything. Suddenly everything makes sense—even nonsense makes sense.
24. You would be forgiven for laughing if I told you that one orange could simultaneously slip through two coplanar holes. But then you’d see with your own eyes that fruit juice exists, and you’d see that the joke’s on you.
25. From meta (=beyond) + physics (=physical world), “metaphysics” refers to that which is “beyond” the physical world. The idea and concept of metaphysics historically made sense, as a way to describe the unchangeable things thought to be the cause of all the changeable (=physical) world. But we have since learned there’s only one world and all of it is physical (=changeable): everything changes, and the concept is now erased from our vocabulary.
26. Just because a force has remained constant in the locally limited timeframe in which we’ve observed it, it does not mean that it will remain constant for eternity. Just because the sun has been rising in the East and setting in the West for as long as we can remember, it does not mean that tomorrow it will do so. Just because we have observed apples falling from their trees for millennia and have recently managed to model these observations with numbers and other assorted symbols so thoroughly and consistently that they suffice to help us predict where and how and when future apples will fall, it does not mean that these predictions will actually take place: it is certainly possible that the next apple you pick from its branch may start flying upwards instead of falling down. And with your next blink of an eye you might observe your feet are six-fingered.
27. Some things have been explained long before they’ve been observed.
28. “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.”, wrote Wittgenstein. So the existence of the world is the only mystery, not that minuscule and nearly fictitious particles, when examined closer and tested consistently, do not behave like the huge particles we usually interact with while going through our daily routines half-asleep and almost completely oblivious to our surroundings. The former mystery exists because it is impossible to explain it, whereas the latter “mystery” exists because scientists are incapable of realizing their interpretations of the world are not the world. And why are scientists incapable of realizing that? Isn’t that a mystery? But that would be equivalent to asking: Why do scientists behave like scientists?… And why stop with this question when there is an infinity of such questions to be asked?—Why is the proposition 1+1=2 true? Why is the sky blue? Why do we sit on chairs and not on clouds? Perhaps an entire afternoon spent asking these questions might suffice to get us to the big question: why is the world as it is? Which, as Wittgenstein was trying to say, is necessarily an unsolvable mystery. And since our definition of the world is “everything”, it follows that everything is ultimately a mystery. Accept it.
29. It’s not necessary to be right to win a debate, as Schopenhauer’s The Art of Controversy elucidates.
30. Heraclitus’ book was so powerful that two and half thousand years later we still remember his name, even though only fragments of his book survived.
31. La Rochefoucauld remarks: “There are few sensible people, we find, except those who share our opinions”. This is witty but obvious. If I thought my opinion was bad, I wouldn’t exactly hold it, would I?
32. The racism problem dissipates after a certain as-of-yet unknown threshold of DNA similarity is crossed. The chimp’s genome is less than 2% different from that of the general human and he’s locked up in a zoo.
33. Romantic comedies are supposed to be funny and make you laugh, not inspire you to recreate them in your daily life. The word “comedy” is there for a reason, after all. It is part of the joke of these movies that the final decision (which is usually represented with the kiss, as the physical and proper manifestation of romantic interest) is left throughout the entirety of the movie to the poor, indecisive women. But since it is in their nature to submit to men, and not to take the initiative, an ongoing and endless submitting on the part of both the man and the woman unfolds throughout the comedy. It’s as though both individuals cancel themselves out in their desire to please one another. Until, at last, the happy ending comes: the man finishes the job—and the laughter ends.
34. A man who cannot tell polite lies and says exactly what’s on his mind is generally regarded as lacking intelligence.
35. Philosophers must first be recognized before they can influence others. This is where Schopenhauer’s explanation of the attainment of lasting fame comes in.
36. What higher meaning could one imbue humanity with than its fundamental role in the creation of the world?
37. If things move ever faster, there’s still a relative slowness to truth.
38. The good student makes good mistakes. (This is nonsense but sounds cool.)
39. Traditions have value in so far as they provide persistence and stability.
40. He timidly says “I think 1+1=2” and this makes you feel warm and fuzzy, but isn’t someone who merely “thinks” 1+1=2, as opposed to being absolutely certain about it, an idiot? So take care when someone’s self-assurance sounds comical to you, lest it be due to your incapacity to parse the trivial things that are self-assuredly communicated to you.
41. Isn’t the really comical thing to go out of your way to explain common sense through several paragraphs? Does 1+1=2 need several paragraphs worth of arguments, examples and analogies? Perhaps to the mentally challenged it does. So why do we know “truth” at all? Why do we know 1+1=2? But that is the wrong question. The correct question would be: why don’t you?
42. It seems to me the trial of Socrates was justified. He was likely corrupting the youth. But we have to understand why. So far barely any philosopher has lived on the street as frequently and as socially as him. Diogenes, from roughly the same period, literally lived on the street, but he was less social, less amiable, and doubtlessly possessed a less seductive and convincing tongue—as well as the desire to convince and seduce with it!—hence he did not corrupt. From this point on, philosophers have remained for centuries content with spinning in their cavern-like isolation their interpretations, to have any extensive effect on their contemporary peers. But Socrates was every day, most of his day, out on the street interacting with the youth. The youth is already by definition more easily influenced—they are weaker and less able to resist stimuli—so when faced with such an extreme personality as the philosopher’s necessarily is they don’t really stand a chance. This seems to me to be the reason why Alcibiades was the only young individual who could properly appropriate Socrates’ extreme personality and make use of it! The hidden moral from this being that only other extreme individuals can really benefit from the philosophers. We ought to wonder what Socrates’ contemporary accusers were all witnessing in his surroundings. Even I, to a small extent, can see all sorts of weird mimicry in real time around me, which is why the idea of sentencing Socrates to death not only appears credible to me—it appears outright sensible.
43. It took scientists many centuries to realize what philosophers have known since the time of Heraclitus: that observing without affecting is impossible.
44. Our culture is working more or less like a snowball down a hill. It gets ever bigger, appropriates ever more of its surroundings, moves ever faster, and it already got to the point where it can hardly be stopped. Whoever tries to stop it will break itself to pieces and will contribute nonetheless to increasing the size of the snowball.
45. How the decadence necessarily generated by our progress is still nonetheless utilized to further progress. See how studying the causes of obesity advances medicine and boosts our knowledge of healthy diets, allowing us to refine them.
46. A couple of supportive words and a pitying glance. What cruelty in benevolence!
47. If you extrapolate every lifeform’s basic instinct is survival you are naively projecting your own cowardly motivations to all of existence.
48. Do you require “proof” for the impossibility of positively proving any assertion to the totality of beings in the world? But you already have it, as a gigantic and comprehensive explanation, in the form of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Wittgenstein: “Proof in logic is merely a mechanical expedient to facilitate the recognition of tautologies in complicated cases.”
And the way you get that first tautological proposition is through your very own senses, which subjectively falsify the object, which is why there are no proofs in real life, outside of logic, since logic falsely assumes the object is equally perceptible by every subject. QED.
49. The meaning of transcendence in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. When a thing is said to be “transcendental” it means that that thing is outside the order or system of logic, namely in real life, where nothing is logical in the way logicians and other objectifying subjects understand by logical.
50. To excessively read and proofread our own books and written texts is akin to excessively staring at our mirrors.
51. The heartfelt friendship of a criminal can scare a gentleman.
52. The ideals of Equality and of Individuality stand in fierce opposition to each other.
53. If you believe in the Eternal Recurrence, nostalgia becomes a new kind of happiness, no longer tinged with the sadness of having lost something permanently.
54. His contempt for your thought is his way of expressing his belief that his instincts are superior to yours.
55. The greatest mode of thought transforms itself into the greatest mode of action, only with the help of instincts, habit, and repetition.
56. A philosophy that culminates with the apotheosis of the “I”—this apotheosis is not merely a piece of vanity. It is also a result of taking subjectivism and active behaviour to their extremes.
57. Thought is to rationalization as action is to reaction.
58. Culture is to civilization as the spirit is to the body.
59. In this course, we will learn how to decipher text. We will begin with the Epic of Gilgamesh’s original in the Akkadian cuneiform language, and we’ll conclude five years later with Baudrillard’s Simulations and Simulacra.
60. Was Baudrillard just confused and unable to express himself more clearly? We can attempt to interpret his books as the writings of a madman too, and perhaps in this manner uncover some utility for his bogus concept of hyperreality. Maybe with this concept he was communicating to us his pathological inability to differentiate between degrees of reality… and in that case my treatment would be simple. Surely, the point at which you can’t tell the difference between a bunch of pixels and a human being must be the point at which you turn your TV set off and go for a walk outside into the open street.
61. Following and obeying some gaits is effortless.
62. There’s something that Westerns and their Old West cowboy protagonists underline: the belief that garrulousness, the desire to communicate, and general sociability and expressiveness are unmanly. This apotheosis of silence surges in the capitalistic age in which talkative hermaphrodites who can’t keep their mouths shut for two secs reign supreme, of course. Then comes Claude in Grand Theft Auto III as the ultimate conclusion to this line of reasoning. It really says something that the game’s creators consciously designed him to be a mute to make him the toughest and most badass character possible.
63. A student presents a top master thesis on management engineering and concludes by showcasing his 250 bibliographical references. Meanwhile, a top master thesis on aerospace engineering, in which a student helped send a satellite into outer space as part of his project, contains merely 64 bibliographical references. This is the problem of the more speculative sciences, as management engineering clearly is: many people write many things, and whereas in an exact science 1+1=4 is easily refuted, in a speculative science that produces super complex propositions involving sociology and psychology it is very hard to discern stupidity from intelligence (or what’s useful and what isn’t), and so we arrive at a master thesis with 250 bibliographical references without anyone even suspecting they might be there just to fill empty space.
64. It’s funny when socially anxious scientists feel the need to emphasize that the models of reality they mostly construct while in their parents’ basements are built on “empirical observations”. But Lichtenberg already mocked them: “What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don’t deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don’t we just as often draw the wrong ones?”
65. There are some who think that the concept of “social calibration” refers to the act of adjusting one’s behaviour in order to seem “normal” to one’s peers. But a healthier conception of social calibration could be our ability to discern who is what, and to then change our comportment towards the various groups of people with whom we interact with in order to more effectively lead and influence them—the highest human beings with reasoned argument and gentle manners—all the way down to the most vulgar and brutish people, where lack of reasons (and even outright unreasonableness) and rudeness would perhaps be required if one was to be able to lead or influence them. Then come animals and rocks. We don’t invite animals to dine with us at our table: we domesticate them. We don’t talk with rocks either: we break them to pieces and build things with them. So this social calibration would be the calibration of our behaviour according to how we’d have gauged the level of the individuals composing our society and according to what we’d want to do with them. Every teacher or leader ever will understand this conception.
66. The politest man, who is aware of how to not offend, of how to pay respect, who is skillful in employing agreeable judgements without flattery, who can be willingly wrong out of politeness, who is slow to contradict, who even when contradicting can please, and so on, is precisely for these reasons the man who can offend the most.
67. Many of Nietzsche’s subjective intuitions have come to be objectively verified by scientists in diverse fields: neuroscience, evolutionary biology and physics being the most striking fields in which we observe this. António Damásio’s Descartes’ Error is at bottom a scientific proof of a couple of Nietzsche’s aphorisms, and Nietzsche did not require laborious experiments nor any technological apparatus to determine, like Damásio, that “Descartes was superficial” (BGE, 191). This happens because an individual like Nietzsche is extremely sensitive. He observes, in his most introspective and creative moments, his feelings and impulses clashing and competing against each other, and he can consciously infer the brain creates reasons on the fly to better cater to each of the aforementioned feelings and impulses. He observes himself as well as his rollercoaster of feelings and impulses, at bottom, while the scientists observe those of others from afar. In short, Nietzsche’s most general and important intuitions are now being scientifically proven because besides his smarts he had an inordinately sensitive brain and could feel in his own skin many of the things scientists can only infer via their scientific method.
68. Hegel disliked some facets of Camões’ masterpiece Os Lusíadas, claiming there was an incongruence as regards its nationalistic theme and the poet’s usage of formal classical and Italian models of verse. He moreover disliked the presence of the poet’s personal voice amidst the epic. Meanwhile, my reply is that Hegel failed to understand that this mixing of opposites was part of the work’s meaning and charm. For it’s part of the Portuguese identity to appropriate the best of what is foreign, and my book is written in English for a very good reason. The fact that the poet successfully mixed his own personal voice with the epic’s plot shows also how modern his book was, for that is precisely the meaning that has come to the fore in the 21st century: the century in which all opposites are coming into unity, and in which the flowing of the concepts of subjectivism and objectivism into each other becomes ever more obvious. So, Hegel and those like him who seem to crave clear-cut distinctions in their everyday life: do you see how I’m also adding my personal voice into what is in the end one more step towards a factual description of a nation’s identity…? Or will it take you a couple of centuries more to get it?
69. The vast majority of the time, any mixing of styles will indeed end up looking incongruent and ugly. Let’s however not confuse genius, world-encompassing styles that manage to circumscribe and mix an enormous range of feelings with the vast majority of incongruent ugliness that passes for style.
70. Let’s reinforce the Lusitanian roots of the Portuguese style by connecting the achievements of Gaius Appuleius Diocles in sports with those of Cristiano Ronaldo today.
71. Is it any wonder that Portugal would bear an argonaut of the ideal?
72. Antero de Quental confused the causes of the Portuguese decadence in the seventeenth century for their consequences. For only a decadent court would so easily prostrate itself towards the Catholic Church. Likewise, only a degenerating court with no tact for the act of ruling would think that the mindless and unhindered extraction of valuable resources from its colonies would last an eternity and that spending its riches on luxury and other potent stimuli would be wiser than building an actual economy. Moreover, only a suicidal court would completely disregard the needs of its subordinated people like the Portuguese court did. So we see that all these “causes” were in fact consequences of the morbidity of the court, who did not, because it could not, take the appropriate measures to guarantee a prosperous future. What, then, can be appointed the real causes of this morbidity? I’d point an army of academics to swarm the country’s archives in search of the general nutrition and day-to-day lifestyle of those courts, to determine how healthy these were. To what extent might have consanguinity also played a role here? But perhaps the real reason goes even deeper, and the Portuguese simply didn’t care that much about ruling the globe, as they kind of accidentally did for a few years. Perhaps Galba was on to something when he famously wrote to the Roman Emperor how the Lusitanians were a very strange people who neither governed themselves nor allowed themselves to be governed.
73. Is there a better refutation of Baudrillard than Onésimo’s hilarious O sentido crítico em férias no deserto—ou Jean Baudrillard perdido nas auto-estradas americanas? But the Frenchman’s convoluted writing style, full of clever wordplay and other enigmatic artifices, is part of his philosophy’s message. For had he written his thoughts in a clear language instead, he’d never have acquired his tremendous social status. He’d have been sent instead to the madhouse. The constant drifts he executes in the way he wrong-way drives his words and sentences into beautiful linguistic offenses is the manner by which both him and society can endure each other.
74. Let’s try to interpret this paragraph from Baudrillard’s The Conspiracy of Art:
Baudrillard: “The illusion of desire has been lost in the ambient pornography and contemporary art has lost the desire of illusion. After the orgies and the liberation of all desires, we have moved into the transsexual, the transparency of sex, with signs and images erasing all its secrets and ambiguity. Transsexual in the sense that it now has nothing to do with the illusion of desire, only with the hyperreality of the image.”
Translating the first sentence into clear English, by replacing contextually unclear words with more appropriate ones and by omitting or adding words where sensible, we go from:
Baudrillard: “The illusion of desire has been lost in the ambient pornography and contemporary art has lost the desire of illusion.”
To:
English: “Prolonged desire has decreased after the appearance of easily accessible “pornography” (=highly immersive art representing our objects of desire is everywhere and it is effectively quenching some of our desire) and Baudrillard’s contemporary so-called art does not attempt to create any illusion whatsoever (=”modern art”, like that of the Picassos and the Basquiats, is barely art and doesn’t even attempt to be art).”
Baudrillard’s sentence is a play on words and phrasing, and it uses hyperbole. The desire obviously still exists, it has not been “lost”, nor is it “illusory”. The points are 1) Art has become so immersive that it is now significantly quenching our desires and 2) “modern art” is bad art. Moving on to the second and third sentences:
Baudrillard: “After the orgies and the liberation of all desires, we have moved into the transsexual, the transparency of sex, with signs and images erasing all its secrets and ambiguity. Transsexual in the sense that it now has nothing to do with the illusion of desire, only with the hyperreality of the image.”
Baudrillard now moves from art to sexuality, employing his previous use of the word “pornography”: After the sexual revolution of the 1960s, we have entered an era where sexuality has lost to a great degree some of its mystery. This era he designates as “transsexual”. Sex appears everywhere. We went from a sexually repressed culture to a sexually obsessed culture, in other words. Baudrillard adds more wordplay, as always, with “hyperreality of the image” being particularly striking. Sexuality still has something to do with desire, of course (if a man doesn’t desire sex, he won’t have it after all…) But desiring stopped being such a big part of it, is what he’s saying. The objects of desire are more easily available, and this availability, he says, has quenched some of the burning desire to obtain it, with human sexuality having shifted from desiring sex, to having sex. So, summing up: 3) After the sexual revolution of the 1960s, sex has lost some of its previous mystery, and 4) Sex is everywhere and people spend less time desiring it and more time getting it.
Baudrillard plays a lot with opposite concepts in his writing. It’s not uncommon for me to take two hours to read a single page from him. Hopefully, I’ve helped some “analytic” philosophers gain an interest in philosophical interpretation with this small example of mine.
75. Nietzsche says the combination of gregarious types and solitary types is not desirable. But in today’s society, in which everything is mixed, how can a proper leader emerge, if he has not in himself the instincts of both types? He will live in society with the herd—of Equality—and will consequently foster gregarious habits. Simultaneously, as a leader, he will feel compelled to isolate himself in his work—and his Individuality—and will consequently foster solitary habits. Whatever Nietzsche may have said about the undesirability of combining both types, I’m afraid there’s no option for the leaders of today: we have to understand both types.
76. The immortal spirit immortalizes many innocent things.
77. I began seeing my behaviour reflected to varying degrees on a great number of people on my surroundings, albeit always in a comically exaggerated form. I suppose mimicry is a way of making friendship, too.
78. There is perhaps no stronger incentive to start setting a good example than witnessing our bad examples reflected around us.
79. Is it not a sign of a good friendship that your friend is able to hurt you?
80. Most of the time we fail to realize the extent and intensity of our effect on other people… and when we do, we ourselves become extensively and intensively affected.
81. We can so easily laugh at others—refute them—because we have already laughed so much at ourselves—refuted ourselves so much.
82. If supreme geniuses like Nietzsche can already almost perfectly analyze and delineate your psychology by simply reading the text you write, imagine how much more accurate their judgement would be if they’d be able to see your gesticulations, your posture and your facial expressions. One would guess that nothing escapes the eye of the genius…
83. The USA slowly and steadily propagated its cultural-ID through the entire planet and begot heirs in many other countries.
84. The word “conquer” does not perfectly convey the reality of what the USA did to the planet. The word “converted” is more appropriate. Thus, just as I carefully use words to convert people into coolness, the USA used its greatness at everything to convert all developed nations into USA look-alikes.
85. People who think celebrities don’t deserve their celebrity status and all their money should perhaps ponder how millions of individuals mimic every little inconsequential act the celebrities make and how insanely crushing the pressure to set the example must feel to them.
86. As regards the way a man evaluates a woman, it is either as treasure or play.
87. The contempt some of the civilians feel towards the military would certainly vanish if we could bring to their awareness how the military could turn the planet into an intolerant Fourth Reich within the blink of an eye.
88. The problem of being too clean is that all valuable action requires one to get dirty. Even the cleanest action there is—thought—requires, if it is to succeed, a thinker willing to get his hands dirty…
89. It is funny to realize how a big chunk of the civilians are so keen on demonizing big corporations, when the reality is that big corporations are practically what guarantee their existence, i.e. their non-military status, and prevent an intolerant, military-like lifestyle from becoming the rule.
90. If one day we get to make the perfect, brain-jacking and indistinguishable-from-reality simulation, I’m sure the various armed forces will take notice. And that’s why, perhaps, the US military should buy the entire videogame industry.
91. Are we really alone in the universe? It doesn’t matter: we have to believe we aren’t.
92. We need some written apotheosis of the Other.
93. The Intelligence of Evil could bring about something very troublesome for us. Zombies, real dragons, half-real terrorists… or something even scarier.
94. “War is the father of all things”, wrote Heraclitus. Why is it taking over two millennia for someone to reply that peace is the mother of all things? My guess is that nobody who’s busy and happy in his peaceable and sociable life would ever think such an obvious reply would have to be written down.
95. I do not think it is a coincidence a Heraclitus appears in Ephesus and not in Sparta. As if there’d be time for obscure and weeping philosophies there…
96. The military culture leans more towards the intolerant values, which thrive in war, while the civilian culture leans more towards the tolerant values, which thrive in peace. Brainless war will lead to self-extinction, but a self-satisfied city-life culture will crumble if faced with an attack from some alien civilization or some inner rebellious process. The Roman empire had a rich civilian culture, but leaned more towards the military, intolerant one. Now, our global capitalist democracy has a strong military culture, but leans more towards the civilian, tolerant one. As for the philosopher… he is powerless without the eyes of both the soldier and the civilian reading his words. The human sweet spot is thus delineated by a triangle whose vertices are the soldier, the civilian and the philosopher.
97. The humble empiricist only cares about the contempt and the respect of all the other humble empiricists and closes his eyes to the empirical fact that there are other types of human beings who despise many of the traits that define his very existence.
98. There have been powerful philosophers all the way back to the times of Thales, and in between this period of time a lot of retrogressive religious fanatics have kept emerging.
99. I dislike reading a famous man’s correspondence because I feel as though I’m invading his privacy. Who among these men ever suspected his letters would be scrutinized for centuries?
100. Women are clever in society while men are clever in warfare. Men have the ingredients of courage, self-confidence and stubbornness permeating their intelligence, which is why to them women appear to be pretty stupid: they go through so much trouble to circle an obstacle, while men would rather just go ahead and crush the obstacle and keep moving—forward. Thus, for the exact same reasons, women likewise conclude men are stupid.
101. Up to a certain point, you can feign some gesticulation, body posture, some glance or other, to get what you want, and even to appear superior to your peers, but this only works so far, like ultimately all acting. Meanwhile, truly cool and self-confident people move their bodies however they like and then, after a given amount of time, almost as if by magic, get to see everyone around them mimic their movement… even when their gesticulations, body posture and glances are accidental and ugly stupidities. This goes to show that there’s more to coolness than just body movement, but good luck explaining this to your average copycat.
102. To understand how subjectivity and objectivity work together, realize how Newton’s laws of physics were at some point regarded as his weird and mere subjective opinions and then years later were being taught at school as commonplace laws of nature.
103. The study of philosophy gave me the privilege of reading Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Lichtenberg (who I consider quite simply the coolest thinker I’ve stumbled upon, the true master of sprezzatura), Montaigne, Voltaire, La Rochefoucauld, Plato, Baudrillard, Emerson, Diogenes, Heraclitus… It was fun. And emotional.
104. The pope used the Christian God, the life of Jesus, the Bible, the entire machinery of the church, and the people’s credulity to successfully rule the planet. Now, the master philosopher uses all of the above, plus scientific thought, reasoned and logical argument, and the work of the greatest geniuses to attempt the same. He’s refining the pope’s scam to ever greater, loftier standards. Will it work? Only to the extent that he and his followers act in accordance with Zarathustra’s admonition to “stay true to the earth”: if they end up too busy lunatically perfecting their scam up there in their moon and forget to remain true to the earthly world of the so-called appearances… it won’t happen.
105. At the extremes of active behaviour you get: dictator, zen monk, warrior… At the extremes of reactive behaviour you get: pop-politician, jester, actor… At the sweet spot of all behaviour you get… coolness.
106. With Ravel’s Boléro, after all the signs had been pointing to its impossibility, we finally heard classicism made into music.
107. Infected Mushroom’s Classical Mushroom might as well have been named Romantic Classicism.
108. Pop music is converging to the psychological-emotional truth of this era: it is combining the rigid EDM style with the flowing “classical” (in Nietzsche’s terminology: romantic) one.
109. To derive any pleasure from EDM you must make an effort to entrance yourself in it. If you actively do it, you’ll be rewarded with a kind of… hypnosis…
110. Száhala made me conscious of the problem of EDM, and ultimately of all music. He gave me the key to solving this first-rank philosophical problem. As for why it is a first rank problem? Because analyzing music is ultimately analyzing feelings…
111. Afternoon Owl is the quintessential Száhala-style piece of music. Its high tempo notwithstanding, this is a style of music that develops slowly. The climax takes long to appear and builds itself piece by piece, surely and in a very logical manner. These persistent feelings and this pursuit of delayed gratification (the gratification we feel when a melody finally advances to a different stage, or a new note appears, or some gimmick messes around with the tempo, etc.) can be found pretty much in all his tracks. Száhala’s disdain for little sprinkled nuances and his commanding compositions are two things that help define his style. His sound design is also very weird. Some of the timbres displayed in his tracks are very characteristic and often sound to me like they come from some alien civilization, and that’s of course one of the things that draw me to his music.—Does Afternoon Owl sound repetitive and boring to you? Then I tell you that this repetition is a highly effective means towards immersion. I know this assertion somewhat clashes with the idea that repetition is anti-immersive, but how else can we explain world-class athletes who execute a limited set of motions five hours per day, five days per week? Remember that art is a glorified representation of life, and that therefore if an object from life (it’s all the same if this object is composed of a task and its associated set of feelings) is pleasurable, art will strive to glorify it. In the case of music, through the simulation (and stimulation) of feelings via sound waves. Or how else can we explain the massive popularity of the EDM scene, which is in the end a milder, less extreme version of this Száhala-style? Human beings all over seem to love and crave some degree of repetition and endurance, in so far as this repetition and this endurance presuppose some degree of challenge, or progress and lead to a newer stage. In sports, the pleasurable creation and refinement of instincts through repetition and the tearing of one’s muscles. In EDM, the sure and quasi-hypnotic progression towards a melodic climax. So, I of course agree that repetition for repetition’s sake is anti-artistic. Fortunately, for all the patient and disciplined among us, there’s no such thing here.
In this Száhala-style stuff that could distract you from the composition’s sole goal, its melodic climax, is very sparingly added. Nothing but this repetitive motion building on itself, acquiring force bit by bit, and surely advancing onto its final explosive melody. I believe this is, generally speaking, the appeal of all EDM, which as a spectrum follows a structure similar to the one displayed in this track, all the different styles notwithstanding. There’s the intro, the buildup, the breakdown, the rise, the explosion, the ending. There are of course many variations, with artists adding two or three breakdowns, or adding no breakdown at all, but the general structure remains in all that is essential very similar. House music has fewer BPM with less euphoric climaxes, trance music has more BPM with slightly more euphoric climaxes, and amidst all the existing EDM mutations, Száhala brings us extremely euphoric climaxes (see Nabassu or Starfall) in the feasibly fastest tempo so far–without sounding ridiculous, that is, which is what the vast majority of the music made by Száhala’s imitators and predecessors sounds like. It’s as though the faster the tempo, the harder it is to make it all sound good, and the narrower the sweet spot for the delivery of these climactic feelings becomes. This is why I must consider this man a musical genius. I just don’t see anyone else making 170 BPM four-to-the-floor EDM nowhere near his level.
112. My lack of formal music training is a pity, but it still is no impediment for me to draw some interesting conclusions about music. The ability to write music down and to imagine all the theoretical concepts so far created (octaves, chords, time-signatures, and so on) would indeed help me more accurately describe what’s going on with whatever track I decide to pay attention to, and would no doubt also help me more accurately analyze and compare different compositions, but would not change in the slightest the value judgement that is my goal to express here, for this value judgement was arrived at after countless hours of listening to countless music. I don’t need to read Afternoon Owl‘s composition on paper and compare it with any of Mozart’s symphonies to see their style is completely different: it’s possible for me to understand just fine the different styles represented, and better yet, to even explain the psychological meaning of these styles, because 1) I have obsessively studied philosophy for years, and 2) I have already felt an immense range of emotions thanks to my life experiences. My value judgement is arrived at after I compare the feelings simulated by music to the feelings I have felt through my life experience, and then philosophy helps me analyze this correspondence with confidence. That’s how I, or anyone else, can understand music even without knowing two things about chords, tones, or notation.
113. Száhala’s Afternoon Owl is written in an almost diametrically opposed style to all so-called classical music (Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner). Meanwhile, Nietzsche was dumbfounded to notice how every artform had attained a grand style, except music. In addition to this, he goes as far as equating all of music to romanticism, which is a movement that is diametrically opposed in taste and therefore style to the proper classical taste and therefore proper classical style (i.e. to the taste of the men of Greco-Roman Antiquity, and therefore to the style of Greco-Roman Antiquity). He also corresponds the grand style with the classical taste (i.e. the taste of the men of Greco-Roman Antiquity). He moreover considers the classical taste the manliest taste ever. As I understand it, masculine feelings are persistent, focused and streamlined, for the more mature and masculine I’ve gotten the more my feelings came to display these qualities—and most EDM simulates in feelings precisely these qualities. In conclusion, I see that Afternoon Owl, and most of EDM really, represent precisely the grand style Nietzsche doubted could ever possibly be attained in music. The question now is… do you also see it?—No? Perhaps Nietzsche can after all explain it better:
Nietzsche: ““Music”—and the grand style.—The greatness of an artist cannot be measured by the “beautiful feelings” he arouses: leave that idea to females. But according to the degree to which he approaches the grand style, to which he is capable of the grand style. This style has this in common with great passion, that it disdains to please; that it forgets to persuade; that it commands; that it wills—To become master of the chaos one is; to compel one’s chaos to become form: to become logical, simple, unambiguous, mathematics, law—that is the grand ambition here.—It repels; such men of force are no longer loved—a desert spreads around them, a silence, a fear as in the presence of some great sacrilege—All the arts know such aspirants to the grand style: why are they lacking in music? No musician has yet built as that architect did who created the Palazzo Pitti—Here lies a problem. Does music perhaps belong to that culture in which the domain of men of force of all kinds has ceased? Does the concept grand style ultimately stand in contradiction to the soul of music—to the “woman” in our music?—I here touch upon a cardinal question: where does our entire music belong? The ages of classical taste knew nothing to compare with it: it began to blossom when the Renaissance world had attained its evening, when “freedom” had departed from morals and even from men:—is it part of its character to be counter-Renaissance? Is it the sister of the Baroque style, since it is in any case its contemporary? Is music, modern music, not already decadence?—Once before I pointed to this question: whether our music is not a piece of counter-Renaissance in art? whether it is not next-of-kin to the Baroque style? whether it has not grown up in contradiction to all classical taste, so that all ambitions to become classical are forbidden to it by its nature? The answer to this first-rank question of values would not remain in doubt if the proper inferences had been drawn from the fact that music achieved its greatest ripeness and fullness as romanticism—once again as a movement of reaction against classicism. Mozart—a delicate and amorous soul, but entirely eighteenth century, even when he is serious.—Beethoven the first great romantic, in the sense of the French conception of romanticism, as Wagner is the last great romantic—both instinctive opponents of classical taste, of severe style—to say nothing of “grand” style.”
But, surely, such a rigid, logical, predictable and unambiguous composition like Afternoon Owl cannot possibly be considered classical, let alone “grand”… or can it? Doesn’t it sound too simple? Let’s see what the master of the concepts “romantic” and “classical” has to say about their opposition in one of his notes:
Nietzsche: “Future things.— Against the romanticism of great “passion.“— To grasp that a quantum of coldness, lucidity, hardness is part of all “classical” taste: logic above all, happiness in spirituality, “three unities,” concentration, hatred for feeling, heart, esprit, hatred for the manifold, uncertain, rambling, for intimations, as well as for the brief, pointed, pretty, good-natured. One should not play with artistic formulas: one should remodel life so that afterward it has to formulate itself.
It is an amusing comedy at which we have only now learned to laugh, which we only now see: that the contemporaries of Herder, Winckelmann, Goethe, and Hegel claimed to have rediscovered the classical—and at the same time Shakespeare! And the same generation had meanly repudiated the French classical school! as if the essential things could not have been learned here as well as there!— But one desired “nature,” “naturalness”: oh stupidity! One believed that classicism was a kind of naturalness!
To think through, without prejudice or indulgence, in what soil a classical taste can grow. Hardening, simplification, strengthening, making man more evil: these belong together.
Logical-psychological simplification. Contempt for detail, complexity, the uncertain.
The romantics in Germany do not protest against classicism, but against reason, enlightenment, taste, the eighteenth century.
The sensibility of romantic-Wagnerian music: antithesis of classical sensibility.
The will to unity (because unity tyrannizes—namely over the listener, spectator); but inability to tyrannize over oneself concerning the main thing—namely in regard to the work itself (omitting, shortening, clarifying, simplifying).”
So we see that a “contempt for detail, complexity, the uncertain”, a “logical-psychological simplification” and a “will to unity”, to “omitting, shortening, clarifying, simplifying”, are necessary prerequisites for a classical taste to grow and thrive. And that’s exactly what Afternoon Owl brings to the table of music: it is the result and the culmination of decades of streamlining rave music and EDM—of pruning the excess and of adding only as much as permissible—, and all you have to do to feel it is to give it a few listens, to get familiar with it, and to then make the effort to entrance yourself in it. That’s when you will get why I say this powerful piece is, albeit—or perhaps because of?—its extreme nature, a great showcase of classicism in the grand style, and few other tracks in EDM have come close to its architectural perfection. Try it, and don’t be afraid to let its logical-psychological simplicity… hypnotize you.
114. Is Száhala’s Enuma Elish music? The problem that Enuma Elish poses (and more generally the entire group of so-called repetitive music) is philosophically relevant. For music simulates feelings, and therefore an order of rank of music will correspond to an order of rank of feelings… which is what philosophy ultimately strives for. The merits of music, as it happens with the merits of all artforms, hinge to a great degree on complexity. As we know, complexity is one of the principal means of art towards immersion, and immersion is the ultimate goal of all art.
If we are to assume this “repetitive music” is extremely simple, almost downright stupid, composition-wise, why has it come to dominate mankind’s taste to such an extent? We still all cherish Boléro–even though it was harshly criticized by many composers and critics back when it was first played, and for quite some time after that—and EDM has never been so big, with DJs like David Guetta touring today the entire planet and ratcheting up their net worth to several million US dollars. Surely, it must be attaining the immersive effect art strives for even with extremely simple compositions. We could of course redefine what “complexity” means composition- and structure-wise, or maybe even add to the former the dimensions of sound design and production, which are certainly complex and demand a lot of effort from the artists (and are only possible with cutting-edge technological marvels, such as DAWs and synthesizers). Crafting powerful or remotely remarkable sounds is tough, and this is why the guys from Infected Mushroom (IM), for example, are regarded as master craftsmen. Moreover, there’s no denying that a track like IM’s Flamingo is complex, since it is the result of about 320 different channels, i.e. 320 different timbres (—not quite true this statement, but let’s assume it is for the purposes of this line of thought), combined and played together on a time-span of less than 9 minutes. Timbres themselves can of course be ranked according to their expressiveness, which is just another word to denote their relative complexity, and this is why an instrument like a violin is ranked higher than for example a flute (that it is harder for the musician to master it and play it should not affect our final judgement on it, since as critics and receptors of music we only care about the timbre, i.e. the sound, coming out of the instrument). So another appeal of EDM is definitely how it pushes technological advances to their limit and how it consistently delivers unique, strange, novel sounds. Perhaps when our brain is bombarded by such weird stimuli, the complexity of the structure of music stops being so important, and the monotony of structural repetition can be thus compensated for with the strange and bizarre, and ultimately more expressive sounds that technological progress offers our artists. But it can’t just be that.
Complex structure or not, this “repetitive music” is indeed immersive—and I don’t need to look outside my window to see its effect on other people–I can sense its effect just fine on my brain, and it’s ultimately on this effect alone that I can base everything I say.
Besides, even though music is an artform, and therefore all the more abstract criteria like complexity, immersion, stage progression and so on, must necessarily also apply on our evaluation of it, it is also certainly true that it cannot be judged on the narrower criteria used for more specific artforms. Visual arts, for example, always simulate tangible things. A picture will simulate a cup of coffee, an action movie will simulate a street fight, and all else being equal the more pixels on the picture the better it will look, just as an action movie from the ‘60s is significantly less entertaining than, say, 2002’s The Bourne Identity. Literary arts require their own narrower set of criteria, too, but they use words and these are symbols that refer more or less unilaterally and unambiguously to concrete things. With music, however, things get a bit weirder. The sounds of a bagpipe or of any of Bach’s fugues do not simulate anything tangible: they simulate feelings. Music uncannily objectifies feelings through sound, and these then proceed to stimulate our feelings, after being captured by our ear and interpreted by our brain. So admitting music=feelings, by evaluating music I’d pretty much be evaluating feelings! The criteria used to evaluate music would then have to match at some point and to some degree the criteria used to evaluate feelings—and it’s precisely at this point that music criticism becomes philosophical, and all the criteria that worked in general for all the other artforms must be carefully revised. In short, “complexity” was a very useful concept that practically sufficed to guide us through our judgement of any artform, but with music it might get a bit more complex than that. What are “complex feelings”, anyway?
Of course, every person has his own inclinations and own instincts, and is subject to his own environment, and therefore generally feels a certain set of feelings—and is conditioned to more often feel a certain way—and to prefer to feel a certain way. What will the warrior prefer to feel? And what about the bean-counting shopkeeper? And the hysterical person? So to each of them we could attempt to correspond some set of feelings, some set of music.
115. Simplifying my thesis of today’s music. Here are the main ideas and conclusions about music that this book elucidates: 1) Nietzsche said that so-called classical music achieved its greatest ripeness and fullness with Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. 2) He corresponded all of music to romanticism, and wondered whether music with a proper classical style could ever possibly be made. Proper classical style here defined as the style of classical antiquity, i.e. the style that corresponded to the taste of the men of antiquity. 3) He never lived to experience Ravel’s Boléro, which I say is written in a diametrically opposed style to the music of Mozart, Beethoven or Wagner, and is a precursor to the best EDM of today. 4) I say the EDM style achieved its greatest ripeness and fullness with Alek Száhala’s Afternoon Owl. (It is a piece of music that due to its extreme nature ends up underscoring what EDM, and ultimately the proper classical style in music, is: a simulation of persistent, direct, and streamlined emotion.)
116. Explaining Japan’s weird art. There’s an aphorism from Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols that I believe can help explain some of the strikingly weird art created in Japan:
Nietzsche:“The right to stupidity.— The weary laborer who breathes slowly, looks genial, and lets things go as they may—this typical figure, encountered today, in the age of labor (and of the “Reich”!), in all classes of society, claims art, no less, as his proper sphere, including books and, above all, magazines—and even more the beauties of nature, Italy. The man of the evening, with his “savage drives gone to sleep” (as Faust says), needs a summer resort, the seashore, glaciers, Bayreuths. In such ages art has a right to pure foolishness—as a kind of vacation for spirit, wit, and feeling. Wagner understood that. Pure foolishness restores.”
So we now see how the overworked Japanese get to enjoy first-hand such craziness in their media and art. But you don’t see this Japanese weirdness? Well, then step into one of Tokyo’s arcades and insert your 100-yen coin into a Espgaluda II or Gokujou Parodius cabinet and enjoy.
117. Archilochus is said to have composed almost entirely on the theme of his own emotions and experiences. But isn’t that what Eminem is also doing? He also shares with us his personal feelings and experiences. Archilochus would likewise lyrically roast disrespectful people: he is said to have mocked Lycambes so fiercely that for centuries his name became synonymous with a broken word of honor. Legend says he mocked him and his daughters so fiercely indeed that they ended up committing suicide! I’m not sure if any of Eminem’s lyrical victims have taken such drastic measures, but I’m pretty sure they all got roasted. And just as Archilochus rhymed about premature ejaculation, Eminem successfully rhymes cum on your lips with some on your tits.
118. We do a lot of things to be seen doing them. It’s an indirect manner of shaping the world. To move your body to be seen… almost as crazy as writing to be read.
119. Alex Kierkegaard’s On The Genealogy of “Art” Games was the book that influenced me the most. Reading it was an experience both terrifying and enlightening. The book possesses an electrifying vigor and clarity in the delivery of its message. Surprising statements are so meticulously explained they end up sounding like mere common sense by the time you get back at them again; the weirdest insinuations are made to hook the reader to the text, through a kind of uncanny seductive power; the italics and the capitalized words fill the highly abstract theorizing with passion and emotion; the philosophical prowess of connecting seemingly disconnected scientific fields is used to explain complex artistic phenomena; the analogies are combined with comedy to quickly take the reader to the heart of the matter; the finest literary works are quoted in a fitting manner to reinforce arguments. Then, there’s the terrifyingly accurate choice of nouns and adjectives and their systematic use; the effective mixing of highbrow and vulgar feelings; the unabashed and objective seriousness when analyzing the highly superficial and subjective realm of art; the will to obliterate any and all possible counter-arguments and the use of psychology to achieve this; the dithyrambic oscillation between tragedy and comedy in vibe; the barely concealed joy of an author who knows he succeeds in messing with your psyche via mere words; the arrogance and violence of the author’s tone and style… The book is a full-blown experience of life, and a practical guide for anyone who wishes to learn how to think for himself, and for all these reasons, and many more, it would have been treated in practically every other age as a devilish and forbidden book. No wonder the vast majority of those who get near it back away in silence…
120. It doesn’t matter if an author is lying or not when you want to understand him and his values.
121. Our unique taste is a consequence of our idiosyncrasies, which are rooted in our physis. If this physis is powerful enough it will eventually force its taste down everyone else’s physis, and from here erupts the so-called good taste.
122. Psychological explanations presuppose the experience of similar feelings on the part of the subject doing the explaining. We can only be sure about our own feelings and it’s out of these feelings that we can then empathize with other individuals.
123. Einstein’s theory of general relativity was no doubt a breakthrough in physics, but the idea that the universe’s movement could be due to the shape of space was not new. In 1885 Nietzsche was already considering the shape of space as the cause of motion:
Nietzsche: “That a state of equilibrium is never reached proves that it is not possible. But in an indefinite space it would have to have been reached. Likewise in a spherical space. The shape of space must be the cause of eternal movement, and ultimately of all “imperfection.””
It is possible that Einstein read this in the original, published in 1901, for it seems he knew who Nietzsche was.
124. Just as humanity became a significant force in its home planet, it will eventually become a significant force in the cosmos. A force that could perhaps become powerful enough to dismantle galaxies apart or push them farther away… and perhaps some distant civilizations would observe this force from afar and, due to their inability to fully understand it, would add it to their cosmological models as yet one more immutable law of nature, naming it at first, tentatively, in order to more effectively convey its mysterious nature, as “dark energy” or “dark matter”.
125. Our models of the universe have dramatically changed multiple times already and there’s no guarantee they won’t dramatically change yet again. The things that these future models will necessarily feature, though, are quantifiable unities, the ideas of equality and number and, in short, the fundamental presuppositions of logic, mathematics and language, which is to say, of our mental faculties and consciousness. Thus, the laws of so-called “metaphysics”, which are in reality the laws of human thought and are therefore not “meta” to anything, will progressively come to encompass all of physics.
126. Freeman Dyson’s Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society shows that even among scientists there are individuals with the ability to lucidly think through a wide range of problems while fully conscious of science’s shaky foundations.
127. Is that proof of her masculinity? Or of your femininity?
128. About your persona Schopenhauer says:
Schopenhauer: “The use of the word person in every European language to signify a human individual is unintentionally appropriate; persona really means a player’s mask, and it is quite certain that no one shows himself as he is, but that each wears a mask and plays a rôle. In general, the whole of social life is a continual comedy, which the worthy find insipid, whilst the stupid delight in it greatly.”
But the mask you end up wearing the most often will eventually become you too, a very real part of what you are, and at the very least the role you chose to take in the comedy of social life. You will be affecting your everyday society with it and be known and remembered for it, too, so there’s no doubt the choice of one’s mask is also a philosophical problem. The choice of this mask will of course be dependent on our goals and on the amount of energy at our disposal. Still, how wise, really, is it to deny oneself the pleasures of the social comedy?
129. In so far as the preconceptions of others are a big part of reality, the molding of our behaviours according to them is inevitable, much in the same way that a surfer must adjust his positioning if he wants to ride an incoming wave. Or will you be lunatic enough to deny the preconceptions of others compose a big chunk of the wave of reality?
130. If there was no Other, there’d be no contradiction. Each individual functions according to his own logic. All dialectic is ultimately stupid because of this. It is a different kind of chatter, and chatting is really just an excuse to be stupid together.
131. Could you reach a point where you could hypnotize with a mere look?
132. My sense of smell sometimes wakes up and shows me there’s another realm of forces at play.
133. Some intellectuals forbid themselves some thoughts only to preserve their reputation.
134. Son Goku is an awesome image of the master of today. Akira Toriyama created something precious with this character. Goku only superficially appears dumb because he must. Being the undisputed strongest being on his planet, while still wanting to befriend others and have them enjoy the liberties of peace and the pleasure of being their own personality, his way out of this conundrum is to display a kind of humble goofiness and affected thoughtlessness. This, coupled with his unstoppable will to power, makes him the best representation of the democratic master. That he appears as a cartoon has its advantages, too, as everything cartoonish simplifies an attribute or other of a represented object while exaggerating another two or three, and this helps us perceive the essence of what’s represented more easily. The Japanese had to learn the hard way what being a democratic master meant, so it’s no surprise that, being the proven greatest students of history, they managed to glorify this master and his ideals, feelings and mindsets better than anyone else, in the form of Goku and his Dragon Ball world. Finally, a one-line summary of the character by North Kaio may be fitting: he loves solitude and fighting yet keeps gaining more and more friends.
135. The reason we must strive for planetary peace is because military technology has advanced to a point where planetary annihilation has become a real possibility. If a scenario similar to what triggered the first world war occurs again and escalates to yet another war of the same scale it will likely culminate in the total destruction of civilization. It may very well happen, by the way, that the rate at which the deadliness of military technology advances will always be a couple of steps above the rate at which galactic colonization manifests itself, so that now we are exclusively inhabiting planet earth and are already able to nuke it off orbit, and a few years into the future we may be in the process of riddling our solar system with orbital space settlements while being fully capable of prematurely turning our sun into a red giant and accidentally frying everything up. So it may very well happen that we’ll have to become masters of self-control.
136. …And if you despise society, society also despises you.
137. The day-to-day reality goes by much smoother than paranoid prophets of doom would have you think.
138. A spiritual tyrant would agree today that chatting has its uses.
139. Coolness is in the sweet spot.
140. How interesting it is that we’ve moved the goal of thought from moral behaviour to coolness. One more argument in favour of ethics and aesthetics being fundamentally one.
141. Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the good impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of evilness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of evilness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the good impulses, like the feeling of fear, of agitation, of malevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the evil. Hence the eternal dramatics of the common people. Hence the elation and lightness—akin to a bliss—of the great thinkers.
142. Overly logical people miss something from life. Being right all the time is boring.
143. Some modern missionaries are spreading cults of personality.
144. Camille Paglia may be right when she writes that women have always been aware of the illusoriness of objectivity and have always accepted limited knowledge as their natural condition, but men have known this since the nineteenth century and they have still done most of the objective scientific work without which there’d be no internet for me to email her this snarky remark (to which I won’t attach an illusory picture of my genitals so she can revel in her ability to withstand limited knowledge).
145. Emily Ratajkowski is an interesting example of a modern woman. Not only is she dependent mostly on herself and her work for her sustenance, but she is also able to use her charms and beauty to climb the social ladder. With her decision to enter the business world with her fashion brand she reinforced her modernity and, if I may say so, her overall coolness. But her fatal step into this book was taken the moment she had her essay published on Harper’s Bazaar. Clearly written and thoughtful, with no pseudo-intellectual tendency in sight, she gave a lesson to many an academic. There we have an honest description and account of an individual’s feelings. We see how for a modern woman being labeled “hyper feminine” can feel like an offense, and we see how today a woman, who no doubt feels completely safe and protected in modern civilized society, can think that flaunting her sensual powers via her personal choice of clothes and coquetries is an act with barely any harmful consequences besides preconceptions-fueled social-shaming. And she’s kind of right: in a perfect civilized environment such a pattern of behaviour is a mere stylistic attribute of no importance. But not everyone in civilized society is totally civilized and completely castrated from his primal drives. And for the same reason there is hygiene etiquette in society, and work uniforms in the workplace, or dress codes wherever, there is, too, an optimal degree and sweet spot of clothing fashion and coquetry an imperfect civilized environment can withstand. For why should the common man on his way to work care that you feel empowered when you sit next to him on the subway wearing a tank top with no bra under, pointy nipples showing through? But what’s the worst that can happen? Dunno… maybe your sight gives him an erection and leaves him walking the streets in a horny frenzy. And now he goes to work with your empowering tank top ingrained in his mind and his productivity decreases. His boss will rip his work conduct apart from every possible angle, giving him immediate feedback and criticism in front of all of his colleagues. He will be left doubting and questioning everything about his identity. All due to your personal choice to sit next to him without a bra on the subway. On the other hand, his wife will certainly be oblivious to how he’ll be thinking of your beautiful tank top later that evening. So maybe you now see that in special cases overly sexy behaviour can have harmful consequences to society, and that society will sometimes make use of preconceptions to try to deal with it, just as on the opposite side of the spectrum overly masculine behaviour will sometimes—lead to prison.
146. To switch from adapting to and influencing the coming centuries, to adapting to and influencing the most current present.
147. Lichtenberg was already on to the end of philosophy. “I have long thought that philosophy will yet eat up itself.—Metaphysics has eaten up part of itself already.” (Notebook J, 118).
148. Contemplation that does not lead to action is hedonistic.
149. “There is not in human nature a more odious disposition than a proneness to contempt”, wrote Fielding. That’s an Englishman explaining in a sentence why philosophers who despise everyone self-marginalize themselves into the madhouse.
150. Let’s consider two things about the concept of the Eternal Recurrence. Firstly, its physical manifestation, which physicists call the Big Bang-Big Crunch cycle, and secondly, the concept as a goal of humanity, as something that we want to happen and therefore strive to make it happen. Admitting the universe is a closed system (because, as Alex Kierkegaard explained, the universe is everything, and it makes no sense to talk about what exists “outside” everything), there are two apparent hypotheses for its ultimate future: either the stuff of the universe “freezes” and everything stops flowing, or it never stops and there’s eternal flux. But in a world where “laws are absolutely lacking, and every power draws its ultimate consequences at every moment” (Nietzsche), humanity, as a force, has a say on what happens, too. That’s when the Eternal Recurrence emerges as a goal. And if we consider how we have been for some time effectively manipulating nature for our purposes, and how we toy with the wind, solar energy, nuclear reactions—is it not reasonable to expect that millennia into the future we could be very well toying with, say, supernovae or black holes? And taking a few more steps into the future, couldn’t we reach such an outstandingly advanced point of technological progress that, with a mere push of a figurative button, we’d have the power to initiate the Big Crunch and consequently the Big Bang and consequently the Big Crunch and so on and so forth in a circular fashion for eternity? That’s what viewing the Eternal Recurrence as a goal signifies.
151. This book is merely my idiosyncratic thought being communicated via text, a spiritual fingertip of mine, and just one more facet of my style that may or may not impress your mind.
152. The main thing now is technological progress and its adoption, the rest being a question of taste and aesthetics. Of course, this won’t be a paradigm-shifting event since the fight over taste and aesthetics will keep requiring cutting-edge technology. Let’s all agree, then, that with their stubborn refusal to worship technological progress and its adoption, the style of the Amish became very démodé.
153. A fixed dominant sex does not exist, my dear Camille Paglia. Both men and women play their game at every moment, from the most infinitesimal timespan to the most distant millennia, via interpretation, with no clear winner at any given time. At least up until a certain point of technological progress of a society, at which point the asexual clone-robots enter the game and further confuse the rules.
154. Culture wars are in fact aesthetic wars. As far as what remains essentially human, which is relentless technological progress, achieved by using existing tools to create newer tools with which to shape one’s surroundings according to one’s own taste, no other culture will be able to end it. It is therefore a conflict of taste, and a battle of aesthetics, that make the world go round.
155. Anything other than technological progress is secondary, and humanity has no choice other than to keep up with it. For this reason, the vast majority of what passes for cultural warfare is now mostly a war of aesthetics, a higher kind of fashion.
156. Besides relentless technological progress, everything has become secondary. “But surely other things separate the civilized man from the barbaric one?” you wonder. Well, a couple of centuries ago the Chinese certainly thought so when they refused to engage in trade with the barbaric Europeans and their bad manners, and the letter Emperor Qianlong sent to George III will forever remain a testament to that. They were certainly far nobler than the Europeans in many respects, and in the coming years we may uncover and deeply study many of their loftier agonistic activities. Something as silly as calmly serving tea might have been for such noble individuals one of the ultimate contests. Even something as simple as the act of breathing could also have been for them a measure of the relative nobility and civilizational level of an individual or society, just as for instance we now regard someone who chews their food with their mouth wide open as brutish, and I’ve indeed observed today how many philosophies inspired by eastern thought focus much of their attention on the act of breathing. But however nobly you may breathe, if you are still stuck using swords when the vulgar barbarians hold cannons, you’ll end up having to slavishly bow down to them anyway, as the Chinese eventually did when the barbaric British sailed up their territory on their galleons. So we see that it’s OK for you to breathe nobly, but only as an ornamental piece of your style, as long as you make sure you keep on top of the wave of technological progress. For if you measure your civilizational level and your nobility by any other yardstick, while insisting those should be your defining points of identity, and therefore the top priority of your conduct, you’ll eventually end up looking like an Oblomov to the rest of the cheerfully vulgar pioneers and enterprising people who make the world go round.
157. Is following your passion to its limit naïve?
158. A thousand years may have so far meant little in biological evolution, but they’re more than enough for a taste, a style, and a culture to engrain themselves in your psyche. Of course, if that culture starts playing around with DNA it will eventually affect biological evolution, and at that point evolutionary biology will have to start inserting psychological elements in its models and interpretations. (We have been affecting evolution for millennia through selective breeding, though, so psychology was already involved long before we started manipulating DNA.)
159. The world of the intellect is incredibly vast and many a thinker has completely lost himself there.
160. A man’s philosophy is a trace of his inner battle with his environment.
161. Playing with words, that play with your brain chemistry, that plays with your body, that plays with external objects that are linked to all of reality…
162. How powerful must one be not to care about anything other than this very moment? But that’s how you feel when playing.
163. Could this moment be the temporal sweet spot of all past and future?
164. About Portugal the best Portuguese thinkers conclude the same: it is no good. Antero de Quental, Eça de Queirós, et al. included. Fernando Pessoa hallucinated Portugal would bear a fifth empire, but the Portuguese can’t even govern themselves, let alone the rest of the world.
165. The most beautiful gem still looks more beautiful after a Portuguese cut.
166. Pessoa was all over the place, intellectually. He took his major ideas from others. Like me, he read Nietzsche. But his mind was disorderly, hence the need to create so many heteronyms. There was no ultimate unity in his body of work. Moreover, he only ever published poetry. The analytical texts we have from him are in the form of notes, half-finished. And let’s not forget that he was very superstitious.
167. While the Christian Portuguese were besieging Moorish Lisbon, Martim Moniz sacrificed his life by blocking the door of the entrance to the city with his own body. Due to his heroic act, the Christian Portuguese were able to enter the city and conquer it. Today, Martim Moniz square, in Lisbon, is home to a Moorish community. Fate loves irony indeed.
168. How might have God programmed the universe? The dining philosophers problem might shed some light on what it takes to synchronize this truly flying spaghetti monster of a task.
169. Can you imagine a man writing such a mysterious book and writing such mysterious letters, that all the planet’s intelligence agencies would turn against him? Simply because they couldn’t stop thinking about him.
170. Hallucinations feel so real you can’t help but wonder if so-called reality is an illusion.
171. The USA showcased such cultural supremacy in the last century that it might as well be the fifth empire Pessoa dreamed of.
172. The proposition that everything is fated to happen exactly as it happens sounds far-fetched because of the colossal complexity of the universe. The truth is that we can imagine infinite possibilities, but in the end there’s only one outcome.
173. It seems the answer to life the universe and everything is still 42. More specifically: Section 42 of Nietzsche’s Antichrist.
174. Globalization is the way forward. But that doesn’t mean a nation can’t retain its identity. Street Fighter II managed to glorify this process.
175. A final religion would have as goal to become Team God. It would try, for example, to create the voice Abraham heard, as well as his hallucinations.
176. To map everything in ever greater detail and scope, and to reach the point at which the map becomes the territory. If nearly all of reality is mapped, then nearly all of reality can be affected.
177. Jung’s collective unconscious suggests there’s already some infrastructure linking mankind’s brains.
178. Charlie Munger: “I hate the bitcoin success and I don’t welcome a currency that’s helpful to kidnappers and extortionists”. The thing with this line of reasoning is that it is equivalent to saying, “I hate the success of knifes and I don’t welcome a tool that’s helpful to criminals”. But what if I told you that you can cut food, skin animals, and help build an entire civilization with knifes?
179. God does indeed play dice because otherwise the universe would be deterministic, which it isn’t.
180. Nassim Taleb wrote an entire book about randomness and tried to create a theory on how to utilize randomness to our benefit. But at the end of the day this entire theoretical endeavor is pointless because the purpose of theory is to predict the future, while randomness is defined precisely as that which cannot be predicted. Randomness fools by definition.
181. Remember VHS and Betamax? Betamax was better technology according to the “computer guy”, but VHS still won the videotape format war. It wasn’t until we took another massive technological leap into the DVD format that things changed. Or consider the console wars. Xbox had better hardware than the PS2, but it was the PS2 that utterly dominated the console market in that generation. I’m sure there are more examples, but these two should suffice. The point is: better technology doesn’t necessarily win if the improvement isn’t big enough. And that’s why Bitcoin will continue to dominate.
182. Real-life randomness happens because real life has no rules. Programmed randomness is strictly speaking impossible, because there would be rules dictating the “randomness”, i.e., there would be no randomness.
183. “Random ranking” is a contradictio in adjecto. If there’s ranking, there’s criteria. But criteria are a bunch of rules! Therefore, the ranking can’t be random. So, the pursuit of ranking the relevancy of data clashes with the pursuit of randomizing data. Both goals are diametrically opposed.
184. There is hardly any other videogame that has affected my childhood as much as the original Devil May Cry. It was one of the first games I cleared several times. There simply wasn’t anything else available for me at the time that was half as good as Devil May Cry. To be sure, the original Streets of Rage was another videogame that I played and cleared several times, so we can see I had a weakness for beat ‘em ups. Still, the amount of joy Devil May Cry gave me far surpassed that of the original Streets of Rage, for obvious reasons. The number one reason being, of course, that it was a 3D PS2 game, not a 2D 16-bit game. I came to love the DMC series even though my favourite remained the original. I played all the others up to Devil May Cry 4 and had fun chatting online with other DMC players, discussing strategies with them, and watching their play footage. The DMC series was, in other words, a videogame series that stayed with me throughout many of my developing years, as a child growing up into adulthood. I conclude this process by writing an essay on Devil May Cry and its protagonist Dante. That is how I show some gratitude to the colossal amounts of fun I was given by the DMC series.
185. Some of the pre-release Devil May Cry 5 (DMC5) videos got me thinking. Capcom has managed to systematically mischaracterize the original Dante with each sequel. The special appeal of Dante in the original game is hard to recapture, but I’m afraid what was achieved then, if no one bothers to make a case for the glorification of his original version, might be altogether forgotten or even confused with this silly new character we’ve been getting in every sequel. One thing that must be noted right away is that the original game was created and directed by Hideki Kamiya, while all the other games were instead the responsibility of Hideaki Itsuno, and this certainly explains their striking difference.
The moment I watched DMC5 Dante mimic Bruce Lee’s squeals while swinging a glacier blue triple nunchuck, followed by him eccentrically using a demonic fedora hat as a weapon, was the moment I realized I’d never see reproduced again the embodiment of coolness that the original Dante represented. Coolness is something difficult to achieve, and the coolest character will be found where the highest excitability and flamboyance are constantly overcome: five steps from goofiness, close to the threshold of the laughter of clownery.
It will be easier to understand what the original Devil May Cry and its Dante did right if we compare them with the subsequent games and their corresponding characters. For the sake of brevity, I’ll be abbreviating the games’ title to DMC, adding the number 1 for the original game and the appropriate digit for each sequel (DMC1, DMC2, DMC3, DMC4, and DMC5).
Understanding how we got here
If you did not play DMC1 around the time of its release, you’ll hardly have an idea of what the concept “Devil May Cry”, as far as aesthetics go, means. DMC2 is generally regarded as having been a failed attempt to recreate the spirit of the original, and rightly so. But DMC3 is hailed as an amazing return to the series’ roots and even ranked by many as the de facto DMC experience. I disagree with this sentiment. Unlike what DMC3 would have you believe, DMC was not about stringing silly over-the-top combos like some jester. It was about controlling an extremely cool man in beautiful and detailed environments that were filled with dangerous and terrifying demonic enemies. The representation of DMC3 Dante’s personality differed significantly from that of DMC1 Dante’s not only in the manner by which the game’s mechanics delivered the action on-screen, but also on the non-interactive cutscenes that were displayed. In DMC3 we see an obnoxious teenager constantly screaming woo-hoo and going out of his way to display wild maneuvers for no reason like, say, jumping on top of a bazooka missile mid-air and then surfing it around. Meanwhile, in DMC1, the character woo-hoo’s once, at the exact ending of the game, after surviving a near-death experience. It will remain a mystery how Itsuno and his team infer from this that Dante must woo-hoo practically every single hour of his life: when riding a motorcycle, when swinging nunchucks, when stabbing a boring demon for the millionth time, and so on and so forth. It would not surprise me to discover that, somewhere in their studio, they sketched Dante stylishly tying his shoes only for him to, after the task was completed, blurt another woo-hoo. Itsuno failed in DMC2 with his overly serious and boring characterization of the hero. He got criticism for that, and then carelessly went in DMC3 for the opposite direction, serving us an absolute clown in the form of DMC3 Dante. It’s clear Itsuno either had no idea what coolness means or didn’t want Dante to be cool anymore. Unfortunately, this little truth escaped the eyes of many because the game was decent and very much playable, and since it kinda looked like the original, which everyone was at the time still drooling over, the market unwittingly rewarded Itsuno’s silly interpretation of Dante. People wanted to play a new DMC. Both the die-hard fans of the original game and the average casual gamer, however, could tell that something had been permanently lost as they played their games and kind of moved on. DMC3 was nonetheless lavished by the press with praise back in 2005, and it attracted a significant group of players that were mesmerized by its complex combat system. Since on the one hand everyone was at the time still praising DMC1, without however realizing what exactly made that game so good (DMC1 appeared almost out of the blue, to be fair, so everyone’s inability to discern its merits was excusable, since there were barely any terms of comparison), and on the other, many gamers were so enthusiastic in their praise of DMC3 and its combat system, an entire culture of DMC praise arose without anyone realizing what DMC actually was. The DMC1 fans would ambiguously demand better “atmosphere” and better enemy design, while the DMC3 fans were content with exploring the possibilities of the new combat system, and kept churning out ever more complex combos, recording them, and uploading them to online streaming services or file-sharing websites for other players to watch. The difficulty of completing DMC3 with a perfect rank in its highest difficulty mode also proved to be a popular facet of the game for these fans, who discussed and shared their strategies online. DMC1 had also been praised for being challenging, so this must have been for them a sign that DMC3 was on the right track. Unfortunately, for reasons that are not my goal to explore in this essay, getting perfect ranks in DMC3’s hardest mode was challenging mostly due to bad game design. The experience of doing it fluctuated between boredom and frustration. I believe the expression crede experto applies here. In any case, the fate of DMC was set: DMC3 would now become the example future DMCs would follow, as all the born-yesterday youngsters eventually started parroting the praise of the DMC3 fans and gradually helped perpetuate a culture of DMC praise for the, in my view, wrong reasons.
Sequels versus the original
Let’s now have a quick glance at each DMC sequel and at how they relate to the original. DMC2 was insipid, and nobody seems to contest this. Moving then to the next: DMC3 is ultimately more of a Punchbag May Cry than a DMC. Other than presenting us with its elaborate combat system, the game offers us environments that are bland, enemies that 1) exhibit, with the odd exception, simplistic attack patterns and 2) look ugly, and a Dante that is sometimes annoying, sometimes silly, and very rarely cool. It’s also easy to notice that the original attention towards the little details was lacking: the walking animations, the tree leaves blowing with the wind, the studied camera angles, the number and quality of text-based interactions (in DMC1 you could check various objects with the press of a button, receiving in response the protagonist’s thoughts on them, à la Resident Evil). Then came DMC4, which was a clear attempt to harmonize DMC1 and DMC3, and it more or less succeeded. Not surprisingly, DMC4 Dante leaned more towards the one seen in the third installment, as he was powered by an even more complex combat system. DMC4 had much better enemies than DMC3 (some of them displaying several attack patterns and grouping tactically, as well as possessing idiosyncratic weaknesses for us to exploit), but once again its environments were bland and too spacious, almost arena-like. In contrast, so many rooms and areas in DMC1 looked as though a painting from some gothic-tending Waterhouse-like artist had come to life. All the possible artifices that were available for the original team were used: camera angles, lighting, color: everything used to their maximum effect for a stunning delivery of beauty. (The remastered HD version does not compare in beauty to the original when displayed on a CRT TV, by the way.) One needs only to remember the Gaudí-inspired cathedral to realize this, while I’m here trying hard to remember any area in DMC4 that looked remotely as good as that one, despite the game’s graphics having been modelled by much more powerful hardware. DMC4 failed, like DMC3, to recreate the uncanny sense of wonder DMC1 possessed. And, of course, it once again featured a silly Dante. The relative coolness of a character can not only be seen in the action displayed in cutscenes but also in its mid-play animations, and indeed DMC1 Dante looks cool when walking, running, shooting, rolling, jumping, slashing his sword, punching and so on. The attention to detail that Team Little Devils showcased is impressive, and it’s clear they wanted to make the devil hunter look as cool as possible. Even when just standing still doing nothing he looks cool. As for DMC4 Dante, even though he was powered by better technology, he nonetheless lacked the guidance of the strong aesthetic sense the original DMC team had and therefore ended up moving around in a sillier fashion in a sillier world. You’ll be reading below how his over-the-top combos, juggles and weapons negatively affect the original DMC style. Finally, the cutscenes with Berial and Agnus are a striking example of the goofy behaviour a white-haired character wearing a red leather coat should not display if he wants to look cool, and prove once and for all the point I’m trying to make. Incidentally, it’s interesting to note also how the cooler Dante also sounds cooler, and that was in large part thanks to Drew Coombs’ excellent voice acting.
No character development needed
Some people will no doubt reply to some of the points above that Dante is different in each game because of a thing called “character development”. I understand this objection, but I think that it is missing the point. If I want to experience good character development, I will not play DMC. I will read a novel. When people go to the movies to watch 007, do they want to see James Bond develop into old age, or do they want to see the same badass Bond tackle new challenges? Similarly, when I bought DMC2 I wanted to see the amazing personification of coolness that DMC1 Dante was tackle new challenges. When I bought DMC3 I expected the same. When I bought DMC4 I no longer knew what to expect, but was still hopeful I’d get what I wanted. Now DMC5 is coming and the demonic fedora hats, the Bruce Lee yelling, and the omnipresent woo-hoo (as if riding a motorcycle would feel exciting for a guy who’s been through such blood-pumping experiences as fighting the very King of Hell…) shown already in some of its pre-release videos tell me what to expect. And what I expect to see is the same thing I’ve seen Itsuno deliver ever since he stepped onto this series’ direction: a try-hard buffoon parading in a silly world. Of course, throughout the decades the 007 films have made it to the cinema, Bond’s actors changed and numerous directors took some liberties with their characterization of the secret agent, but I feel these were not enough to destroy Ian Fleming’s Bond. Goikeda also took some liberties in his characterization of Dante in the DMC novel, and the end result was great. Itsuno, on the other hand, did not take “some” liberties with his characterization of Dante. He bungled the character to an enormous degree, making him almost unrecognizable from the original one—aside, of course, his white hair and his red coat, which apparently are the only things people noticed about the original demon slayer—and so we get to the whole point of me writing this analysis: to say that white hair and red coat alone do not a Dante make.
Videogames are complex things
Videogames are very complex things. If your videogame does one thing right (bringing innovation to the table in the form of an intricate combat system) it might yet still do a billion things wrong. Anyone who therefore replies to this analysis with some objection to the effect that DMC’s sequels had better story, or better combat, will have to however hear from me that those things do not suffice to elevate them above the original. For, once again, I do not play DMC in order to learn about a new good story, since I can find inordinately better and deeper stories elsewhere. And as for the intricate combat system: I’ll be analyzing it more deeply in a few moments, but keep in mind for now that “combat” is a concept that presupposes that there is an opponent. A professional boxing champion sparring with a gym’s newcomer isn’t combat, it’s barely even play. Therefore, what is the use of a so-called combat system that does not manifest itself on any real opponent, and is used instead to juggle around demonic punching bags? With the exception of Vergil and some other bosses, there are practically no actual opponents in DMC3 forcing us to use our elaborate combat system, and the same more or less applies to DMC4, as far as Dante is concerned. It’s all flash.
Not necessarily anime
Now, I’m aware DMC simulates to some extent crazy anime action, and that people are therefore willing to accept all the extra flash because of this. I understand that. But I also understand that anime is basically an animated 2D cartoon cardboard. DMC1, on the other hand, is a 3D videogame featuring a 3D character that moves around in a 3D world. Any objection to the proposition that overly elaborate and cartoonish combos look ugly in DMC vanishes if we consider that. For cartoon characters are by definition caricatures of real human beings. An animated 3D model motion-capped by real human actors will move and behave in a more realistic, less cartoonish, way. Moreover, the team behind DMC1 had all the time in the world to refine the behaviour of their 3D character into what they believed was the coolest behaviour possible (they themselves said in some interview that the main concept behind DMC was “coolness”). And I’m saying they succeeded, as opposed to the teams behind the sequels. I’m talking about pathognomy here. The pathognomy of coolness. DMC3 and DMC4 Dantes look far less cool than the original, as I’ve been contending throughout this text. But let’s now try to make one more connection: to what extent could the combat system be the culprit here?
When the mechanics clash with the aesthetics
The innovative combat system Itsuno developed might have actually been one of the reasons the series went aesthetically-speaking downfall. Putting such complex mechanics in a 3D action game in an aesthetically pleasing way is tough. Dante started to look like a clown right when he Jump Canceled a swinging glacier blue nunchuck into a deep purple electric guitar (all the while screaming woo-hoo as we all know by now). But this kind of clownery was practically a necessary byproduct of the game’s complex combat system and its correspondent mechanics. Now, I have nothing against complex combat systems. But I’d rather learn to play the piano than learn to keep a boring demonic Sloth up in the air with meticulous just-frame inputs that prompt some flashy avatar on my TV screen to move around like a jester. Is it not more fun to strategically find a specific enemy’s weakness and to then finish the business off with 3 or 4 purposeful moves? Doesn’t it look cooler than flashy hacking and slashing? Shinobi for the PS2 would certainly help one make a case for that. Meanwhile, in 2D action games (especially in 2D fighters) complex combat systems and their correspondent mechanics are there in order to better draw us in to their game world. A cartoon character swinging glacier blue nunchucks and then just-frame-jump-canceling it into a deep purple electric guitar looks and feels cool. This bombastic visual cocktail is required because that’s how cartoons function: they simplify some thing or other from a represented object, while exaggerating another two or three. This is how cartoons draw us in. Moreover, all the mechanical challenge of making that over-the-top cartoonish stuff happen also adds up to the experience and helps us more easily immerse ourselves in the game. All of this, however, goes out of the window with 3D action games featuring 3D characters motion-capped by human actors. Watching Tom Cruise swinging glacier blue nunchucks and then just-frame-jump-canceling it into a deep purple electric guitar looks stupid. And if you spend your afternoon watching him do that, you also look stupid. My point here is that it is really difficult to make over-the-top action look cool with 3D characters. Of course it’s possible: but the sweet spot is narrow. Do you want Dante to act and play as a Marvel superhero? He had superpowers in DMC1 and a flashy jacket alright, but he still looked cooler than all your Marvel superheroes. The way he carried himself is decisive here. It is ultimately a very difficult point to grasp because, again, I’m talking about the pathognomy of coolness. You have to see it with your own eyes, I’m afraid, and no amount of words can make you understand it if you don’t already somewhat feel it.
Let’s rock!
This is a highly subjective matter, of course. Discerning cool from uncool is not the same as calculating 2+2. As for why I’m going out of my way to write such an in-depth subjective analysis of a fictional character? First, because I do a deep analysis on whatever the hell I want to do. Secondly, because I feel DMC1’s sense of coolness deserves to be seriously analyzed. With the original Devil May Cry Capcom managed to make a pimp-looking white-haired dude with effeminate red clothes and jewelry look cool as hell—through his cool as hell actions. That alone should tell you that the game was special. There is no denying Devil May Cry’s influence in the videogame industry, and with Devil May Cry 5 just around the corner, appearing almost two decades after the original, I couldn’t feel more excited about it, because despite some of the predictable silliness displayed, the game is indeed looking awesome. The only thing left for me to write while I wait for its release, then, can now only meaningfully be: Let’s rock!
186. PS2’s Shinobi is a terrific game. A stylish ninja with a red scarf slashing away at hordes of enemies, chaining each kill to increase his sword’s power, and ending the action with a cool cinematic in which every single enemy is dismembered simultaneously. So cool. Non-stop action sprinkled with cool cutscenes.
187. Tekken Tag Tournament‘s arcade intro is amazing. It fills me with enthusiasm in just under thirty seconds. There’s everything in it to hype a person up: cool EDM, action and danger, a glimpse of the big city life, stylish and out-of-the-ordinary people, the promise of beautiful women, a handgun, a convertible sports car, and a boss-like figure wearing an expensive suit. Back when Tekken was classy.
188. The first track I ever listened to by Alek Száhala was Tigris. It sounded strange at first and it did not immediately appeal to my taste. The second track of his that I listened to was Iron Squid and I was then instantly mesmerized. From that point on, I had to know who Alek Száhala was, and had to immerse myself in his work as much as possible. I quickly found out he was a complete artist, with a complete artistic persona. During this time of discovery, I got hold of his Forgotten Tracks set, at which point I was forever hooked to his sound. This trance set had a marvelous intro followed by wonders such as Nabassu, Mermaid and Starfall, tracks that felt completely magical and very different from what was commonly played. Complex and potent, that’s how I would describe Száhala’s and Paocala’s music. Paocala, by the way, is Sahala’s trance alias. Aleksi Sahala’s music accompanied me throughout many years, and his sound design and compositions almost always made me jubilate. Ilunibi was another track that reinforced my adoration of Sahala’s music. I had found my musician. It is hardly surprising to see, then, that I would end up writing a review to one of his tracks. Why Enuma Elish of all tracks, though? This track is hardcore, very potent, and it is close to the harder genres of EDM. I felt that seriously reviewing such a track would be fitting, and even playful. The review would be a subtle play on the fateful internet meme All Your Base Are Belong To Us, whose track was also hardcore and Gabber-like. Treating with utmost seriousness such a simple yet properly produced track felt fitting and even playful to me. But thinking it over, could have I found a better way of insinuating, and of hinting, that all your base really are belong to us, the intellectuals?
189. Száhala’s Enuma Elish is an extremely repetitive piece of music. It is intentionally repetitive, for you can see Száhala streamlined it (i.e. simplified it, at least in structure) with each available version. Check the HBC podcast from December 2011 and see how the track differs there. First thing that comes to mind is that I enjoyed the muddled sound of the kick and bass showcased in that version. The final version sounds much cleaner, as all cutting-edge EDM tends to sound with its laborious mixing and mastering procedures. But that kick muddled on that bass sounded great. A bit of dirt and lack of transparency is appreciated once in a while. I shall return to this in a bit, so keep this muddled kick and bass on your mind.
Besides that, I thought his streamlining was good. At the 38:22 mark on that set, you see that a newer stage emerged on that part, intensifying the feeling of panic to compulsive levels. Száhala opted in the end to scrap it, and I am ambivalent about this decision because even though the final version ended up being full 9:46 minutes of length, there’s no way to know how tasteful such an explosion of feeling at that point would have been. IM’s recent Spitfire also outstandingly simulates panic in its second half, and they stopped their climactic rise right at a tasteful point and refrained from delivering an outright explosion of feeling. That’s to me what being in control in panic-inducing situations feels like. Száhala scrapped the addition of this panic stage altogether in the final version, then, and opted for persistence and endurance of feeling instead. The HBC-set version also featured some interesting nuance: a little twisted timbre going up and down your ears, left and right your skull, that appears at 37:35 on that set. This shows once more that Száhala pruned and trimmed his final version quite possibly to perfectionist levels, and only he knows what other cool tricks he ended up scrapping from his final released version. I am OK with its removal, though maintaining it in the final version would have certainly not been offensive. It’d make it more nuanced, for sure, but I suppose “nuance” is not quite the goal here!
Moving to the final TYFTH version for good now, after the mood-setting intro, we move to a new stage at the 3:35 mark. This leads at 3:58 to what we eventually find is the goal of the track. This goal, this high-point and maximum of energy is your typical Száhala melody, persisting as usual to the point of stubbornness. Its timbre is amazing… Am I a snake? Am I being snake-charmed? It’s not a euphoric high point, as he does with Iron Squid’s climax: it is rather a point of relentless mental focus that is reached, a kind of hypnosis finally achieved, and it resembles more Afternoon Owl in that regard than any other of his tracks do, even if it is much more aggressive (Mageslayer is another that I could mention, perhaps more fittingly). At this point I have to ask: isn’t hypnosis ultimately the appeal of EDM? Isn’t the hypnotic, relentlessly focused mental state what we’re after when we put Man Eaten playing? Why does IM’s Psycho, for example, sound so powerful? And if loud beats sound too vulgar to you, there’s always the genius precursor to EDM that Boléro is. Many have stated Boléro is not music, and they might even be right, but good luck stopping it and all good repetitive “non-music” like it from fascinating mankind. As for Enuma Elish, it does as it pleases, it commands you to feel its melody and it doesn’t give a damn if you can’t take it… because it will repeat it until you can. The melody is over when it wants to be over, and you better get used to it because it’s not going to stop. Either allow it to guide you on the marvels of focused feeling or turn it off for good and call it all monotony. I’m sorry to all the thinkers who equated “repetitive music” with the death drive, but this is what the most energetic and productive activity sounds like. It’s what being in flow feels like for the workaholic who for a minute forgets what time and environment are, and uninterruptedly works for five hours straight, the outside world be damned. It’s what the boxer feels when throwing the thousandth consecutive punch on the heavy bag while training for his upcoming fight. It’s the sound of unhesitating and unfrightened instinct in the making—and the sound of it actually being made. The welfare-reliant alcoholic looks down on the workaholic’s behaviour as “monotonous and boring”, and the fat slob looks down on the boxing champion’s training as “monotonous and boring” too. But what do these objections mean to us? The boxing analogy is especially on target here because boxing athletes train for three or more minutes straight distributed between one-minute intervals of rest time, and Enuma Elish at 06:07 also happens to possess an interval whereby it slows down to a full stop. As if it knew that successful instinct creation requires some rest time in between action. (At this point I feel snake-charmed yet again, by the way…) It’s unconscious genius perhaps, but it’s nonetheless truth that is being aurally expressed by Száhala. Finally, after the rise, the goal is completed—the task is over: the instinct is created, and the melody erupts for a final round with its full power.
Then, the gradual decrease in intensity of feeling, the cool down. The stage starting at 8:50 is particularly good due to that stunning twisted timbre. Száhala shows here, as he did with Iron Squid, the aural architect that he is.
My praise, however, is not universal and there are indeed things I’d like to see changed:
1) The final loop of the melody, starting at 07:17, should have some added layers on it to increase its power just a tiny bit more. This would reinforce the instinct-creation meaning I laid above in a subtle, but effective manner. As it is now, it sides too much on the side of boring repetition. I’m not saying Száhala should go overboard and deliver an Iron Squid-like climax, and thus change the melody. I’m saying keep the melody but add a little bit more power and expressiveness to it. See what IM does at 06:53 in Heavyweight? They add another layer to the climax, and it works phenomenally. Again, I just want a tiny bit more power, something that showcases some progress after that full stop.
2) The subtle robotic sound, or note, at 08:56 must be edited out. It’s ridiculous and rudely destroys the immersion.
3) I feel the muddled kick and bass I mentioned above should be put back, but only on the first loop of the track. That would make it sound that the music gets cleaner as it progresses and advances. That’d work as another metaphor to the instinct-creation meaning I mentioned, too, and ultimately to all will, since the clearer and more transparent and more organized a thing or process becomes the stronger its will generally is.
And—finally—the question must be asked, for it’s time someone asked it loud enough. Why is this virile music coming from Finland of all places? It might have something to do with the weather.
190. Kanzuki’s family motto: “All you need is victory”.
The Stillest 