Republic of Spaces - Foams - The third volume of Peter Sloterdijk Spheres...

 

I've just started reading the third volume of Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres. It promises to be a true intellectual feast...

"Foams offer a theory of the present age from the perspective that 'life' unfolds multifocally, multiperspectivally and heterarchically."

December 25th, 2024, Lodz

Foam is actually existing deception—the non-entity as an entity nonetheless, or a feigner of being, a symbol of the First False, an emblem for the undermining of the solid by the untenable—a ghost light, a superfluity, a mood, a swamp gas, inhabited by a dubious subjectivity.

Foam begets nothing, it has no consequences. With no life expectancy or next generation, all it knows is running ahead into its own bursting.

Hegel’s new logic, a positivization of the negative came into view, and with it a possible rehabilitation of foam: “Out of the ferment of finitude, before its transformation into foam, spirit rises up fragrantly.

Does spirit itself, the medium in which substance develops into the subject, even now owe something to foam? Does this bastard that could not be trusted transpire as the long-sought middle element in which the spiritual and the material join to form that concreteness which we call existence? 

Is it the third factor through which binary idiocy could be overcome? Did Aristotle foresee such amalgams when, in Problemata physica, he classed the illness of brilliant men—melancholy—among the “air-filled ailments,” whose features include an affinity for foamable substances: black gall, which the doctors of antiquity believed to appear as an aerated mixture?

December 26th, 2024, Lodz

"It does not pass on outpourings of immediate truth; if Einstein lived next door, I would not know any more about the universe as a result. If the son of God and I had lived on the same floor for years, I would only learn afterwards—if at all—who my neighbor was. 

Every point in the foam offers glimpses of the bordering ones, but comprehensive views are not available—in the most advanced case, exaggerations are formulated inside one bubble and can be used in many neighboring ones. Messages are selectively transferable, and there are no exits into the whole. For theory that accepts being-in-foam as the primary definition of our situation, final super-visions of the One World are not only unattainable, but impossible—and, correctly understood, also undesirable.

Whoever speaks of foams in this tone has abandoned the central symbol of classical metaphysics, of the all-gathering monosphere, namely the orb-shaped One and its projection into panoptic central constructions."

January 1st, 2025, Dębina

How Trump can drag us into an even bigger war ....

This is a translation (which I made with help of AI to do it fast) of an extremely thoughtful article by Marcin Wyrwał - Polish war correspondent in Ukraine (See Marcin on X). The original  text is here).

A note - I did not get permission from Marcin to do so. I hope I do not make any harm though ...

Donald Trump promises to end the war. In reality, he will drag us into an even bigger one

At the Republican convention, Donald Trump promised to end all wars, including the one in Ukraine. At first glance, his proposal seems brilliantly simple. In reality, it is simplistic and guarantees dragging not only Ukraine but all of Europe into a much bloodier conflict.

During the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee, the presidential candidate, Donald Trump, once again made populist promises. One of them is particularly dangerous—not only for Ukraine but for our entire region. It concerns ending the war in Ukraine.

Trump, in a single sentence, promised to end not only this but "every international crisis caused by the current administration." The promise to end all crises is classic populist fluff, unsupported by reality, and aimed at applause from less informed voters. However, the promise to end the war in Ukraine might actually come true if Trump comes to power. The issue is that, in Trump's proposed formula, it is a ready recipe for bloodshed on a much larger scale and territory than Ukraine alone.

Trump's plan to end the war has been known since at least April. In private conversations described by "The Washington Post",  the Republican presidential candidate suggested that to achieve this, it would be enough to give Russia Crimea and the other territories it currently occupies in Ukraine. In the same conversations, Trump said that such a plan would allow both sides to "save face", and that the residents of the occupied territories "would not mind" joining Russia, which clearly indicates a complete lack of understanding of the situation.

Let's focus on the core part of Trump's plan—peace in exchange for territories handed over to Moscow.

The problem is that Ukraine has already been through this, and each time, the result of such a scenario has been escalation on a much larger scale. Explaining this is a bit more complex than Trump's rally slogans.

How the West Allowed Ukraine to Be Pushed into the Gray Zone

Ukraine liberated itself from Russia on August 24, 1991, with the adoption of the declaration of independence by the Ukrainian parliament. The Ukrainian nation gained freedom, but this development was also extremely beneficial for Poland. Until then, we were the buffer for Europe and the first strike zone for Russia in an attack on Europe (of course, for several decades, we were also in the Eastern Bloc, which would still end in conflict on our territory).

Macrospherology of humans. Globes - volume two of Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres

I have been reading the second volume of Sloterdijk's magnum opus for a couple of months now. I still haven't found the time for a full review, or, as I have done in the past with some books, to post quotes here. However, the book is so significant that I've decided to write this post now and share a few quotes:

"As a process of growing solidarity complexes, the history of homo sapiens in the time of advanced civilization is above all a battle for the integral and integrating hothouse. It is based on the attempt to provide the wider inside, the reconciling own, the more far-reaching common area with an invulnerable form, or at least a livable one that is superior to the attacks from the outside.

That this attempt is clearly still in progress, and that despite immeasurable setbacks-the struggle for ever larger

parts of humanity to move into ever larger communal shelters or endospheres is still being undertaken, testifies as much to its irresistible motives as to the stubborn resistance to the historical pull into the extended realm of inner security. Struggles to preserve and expand spheres form both the dramatic core of our species' history and its principle of continuity."

https://www.amazon.com/Globes-Spheres-Macrospherology-Semiotext-Foreign/dp/1584351608  

However, if you look around, at the world as it is today... we have more setbacks than progress...

Stay tuned ... I will put here quotes and my thoughts on that great book ...

See this: 

"As the monstrous employer in the work of mourning, death is the first sphere stressor and creator of cultures. The mourning communes survive by accepting the task of taming the fury of disappearance through expanded spatial formation. It is the distancing power of the imagination, which embeds the current living space in surrounding spaces of ghosts and the dead, that spawns cultures as self-harboring spatial figments in the first place."

November 12, 2023 ... 

See Peter Sloterdijk's latest great lecture: Future Cities Conference 2023 | Peter Sloterdijk | The Future of Too Big Cities - YouTube

November 25, 2023

Human is "a natal and mortal creature"...

See what is an essential thought from "Vascular Memories" chapter:

"Hence the human being is the animal that, together with its significant others, produces endospheres in almost every situation because it remains shaped by the memory of a different having-been-inside, and by the anticipation of a final being-enclosed. It is the natal and mortal creature that has an interior because it changes its interior. Relocation tensions are in effect in every place where humans exist; that is why their entire history is the history of walls and their metamorphoses."

November 26th, 2023