Essay: Others

Others:

This post relies heavily on my previous blogs, so apologies in advance for the extra reading. As far as terminology, I feel that “the Other” and the “Primal State” are nearly the same thing, and they are opposed by “the Word”. I suspect that the “Other” that I describe is not the entire intended concept of the “Other” that Baudrillard and Guillaume intend to convey. Rather, it is my view based on their ideas in Radical Alterity.
I am not sure that I understand the full meaning of the Other in the true meaning that Baudrillard and Guillaume intended, but I did gather some ideas from their text. Through blogging and in class, I have formulated some ideas about the Other that have been based on ideas found in Radical Alterity.
Strangely enough, one of my favorite and more whacky ideas about the Other was inspired by The Ticket. A short scene in The Ticket describes the ingrained sub-vocal speech that humans are all subjected to. Humans are the undeniable victors of the food chain, and they are the only being to possess the “Word.” Coincidence? The “Word” has its benefits, I think that it gives us our civilization, our laws, our control, and our dominance. But all of this comes at a price. As I discuss in my blog, humans seem overwhelmed by this inner Word and occasionally seek to escape it. I think that radical endeavors such as music, sports, art, porn, etc. are all appealing because they allow us to release from the Word. All of these activities serve to allow us to enter an altered state of mind, where the primal being takes over the “word” being that society and civilization has implemented in humans. If you ask an artist, musician, kayaker, drug addict, or a pornographer what drives them to do what they do, I don’t think they can provide you with a full answer. This is exactly the point, the answer is that there is no answer. These activities are enjoyable to many, but when you ask why you draw a big empty blank. This, to me, is pursuit of the Other.
This is where John Cage’s interview from class comes into play so heavily. To him, he desires sounds for their simple being, not for the stories they may tell. He desires silence, and above all else, inner silence. Inner silence is his escape from the Word.
Cage describes Kant’s theory that two things require no explanation in order to derive pleasure from them: music and laughter. I feel that this statement strongly agrees with what I’m saying here, but I would not limit it only to those two activities.
Another quote from The Ticket, “Well time is getting dressed and undressed eating sleeping not the actions but the words… what we say about what we do. Would there be any time if we didn’t say anything?” This quote inspired ideas I blogged about that I would like to expand upon. I think they apply to humans in childhood. Can you remember anything from when you were a child and couldn’t talk? I certainly can’t. Yet I would like to (and Freud agrees with this desire). Perhaps this means that time or space was altered by our lack of the Word.
I think this is possibly the state that animals are in. In his interview, Cage makes a silly comment to his cat, implying that his cat already knows that pleasure need not have a meaning. I believe that this is correct, the cat knows this because it is in a Primal State. Humans have sacrificed their inner knowledge found in the Primal State in order to achieve dominance of the food chain. Now, greedy as we are, we want both. So, we turn to activities that induce the Primal State for a taste of our former comprehension. But you can’t have your cake, and eat it too. In our society those people who are closest to the primal state are the outcasts. Civilization was made to combat primitiveness, and so civilization will not tolerate those with primitive tendencies. Thus, as Freud describes in Civilization and Its Discontents, humans are doomed to unhappiness because of a conflict between the two.
Baudrillard and Guillame say that the Other is found in anonymity. Civilization has robbed us of our primal anonymity, and we want it back. So again, we turn to activities that give us anonymity, but civilization is based on social interaction, the opposite of anonymity. Again, we are given a dilemma. The cycle perpetuates itself, and Freud’s ideas ring true. So, in my mind, pursuit of the Other is rebellion against civilization.