Clavicular's Overdose
Why Does The Old Man Believe In New Year's Day, While The Young Man Believes Only In Eternity? Also, Clavicular.
Old Man, Young Man
The young man is livid with the old man. “Old man, you foolishly content yourself with these secular celebrations! Every year, it is ‘3, 2, 1….’”
“Yes!” Cries the old man in an easy, celebratory, simple way. “‘3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!’ I say this, while you still believe in pathological liars!”
The young man does not know what the old man is talking about. “That is a stupid suggestion,” says the young man.
“You believe most in your ambition,” says the old man, “thus, you believe most in ambition in general. You believe the most real dimension in others are their ambition, and the most unreal thing to be the present moment, the basic cycles of the seasons, the momentary celebrations which make up the course of our day. The simple participation is true, while your sense of eternity is false.”
The young man paused and reflected on himself. “I think maybe, I believe in eternity because I am not yet wise, and you exist in the present because you are already wise, maybe. Or maybe you are an idiot.”
The old wise man had one thing to add. “It is both, I am wise and an idiot. I know and I do not. I flow from knowledge and from mere accident. So is the nature of all things.”
The young man agrees, “yes, so is the nature of all things. Now we are speaking of eternity and our idiocy together, knowledge and immediacy, wisdom and the failure of ambition towards something which is not online with the way things are.”
“Happy New Year!” spoke the old man again, galloping away from the young man and into plumes of confetti.
Clavicular’s Hyperstate
“Clavicular’s suspected overdose” is the story of the day. This is much less lighthearted than, “Clavicular mogged.”
The method of Clavicular that astonishes people is that Clavicular claims to Looksmax only to be better than others when he stands next to them, or to “mog.” He is taking two ideas of the moment and removing them from their natural, secondary nature. One looks good as a side effect of being healthy, or one wants to be in a relationship and be mutually attracted, but clavicular aligns with looks as a disembodied object, away from the relationship, away from health. In fact, he spurns relationships and his own health in favor of the look, and in favor of the mog.
Hegel describes individuals which embody world spirit as not a positive phenomenon, but as something which appears as a negativity in the world. Zizek would describe this through modern psychoanalytic terms as a symptom. The symptom of competition to not gain anything, but of death drive itself, to be over others with no second purpose, and to shine aesthetically without representing an internal healthiness or a second thing is more complex a symptom than one initially may give it credit for. An overdose confirms to us what we already know, which should make us suspicious of such an obvious answer to complex questions.
The embodiment of a symptom should make us question our own self-image. When one embodies a symptom like a sort of performance art, it is half self-deluded, half in line with the moral opposition. Through his example, we could reflect on the necessity of self-image to represent something deeper beyond looks. We could also reflect on the fact that there is a sort of empty surface to looks, which does not need the second reference of health. Evolutionary Pscyhology always tries to bring looks back to a mating ritual or some sign of health or death, but Clavicular proves the lack in this theory, that looks can be a sort of in-themselves pursuit.
The complicatedness of an aesthetic performance piece which displays itself as officially negative, and comments on its own official negativity, should merit questions of the world historical implications. In this way, Clavicular is a Lacanian and Hegelian proof against Evolutionary Psychology, while simultaneously encouraging us to consciously engage with some Evo Psych principles through the backdoor of conscious virtues. Evolution is not supposed to be a choice of virtues, it suggests something is biologically developed and inscribed in us. Clavicular shows the fool-heartiness of this pursuit.
Schelling acknowledges one can see the universe in a drop of water, but this goes even more so for art, which may not grasp itself in its performance in its entirety, as it links to the Absolute of World History itself in complex and nuanced ways. So, when a world historical present phenomenon exists, the old man may pause, and not throw away the officially negative in the jouissance of the young revolutionary, who is quick to join the masses in chopping the head off of the performance artist.