The yanks have a fascinating, colloquial expression for denoting the television, they call it the ‘tube’. How insightful and how rightfully degrading of that copious mixture of plastic and metal, infused with electrical charges providing light that is crawling with ‘meaning’, or ’significance’. Very Philosophical of them, one would not expect it at such level of creativity, one looks down upon colloquial expressions with apathy, and with a condenscending look casts them aside as pointless and indicative of studipidity – how hasty and naive one is in such judgments.
The tube. Accidentally (which means purposefully to someone else), it was turned on and what channel it was transimitting, and what show of significance it radiated, one that I could not ignore; in fact it took over me, the topic, the meaning, took over me and for a few minutes I was possesed in the theme. It was a talk-show, an ‘intellectual’ talk-show; a few people sitting in sofas carefully positioned around each other, in a nice oval-like shape that pushes them to face each other as they speak. As with most social events there was an organizer and maintainer of the discussion, who made sure the discussion doesn’t lose itself in passion and go off-track. All this was utterly superfluous to me, what struck me most was the topic of discussion: what they were talking about. It was adultery, or more precisely the term ‘cheating’, which is pretty much the same thing only the latter encapsulates a wider terrain – and alas, it must, our modern world is not black and white no more, it has become multi-pigmented. Where adultery once signified cheating in marriage, now it’s cheating in all relationships, of the Romantic sort, of the Sexual sort; astoundingly, even of the Emotional sort. They did not even call it adultery, the country that represented this talk-show has a language that is not as complex and diverse as Enlgish. Thus, for translation I had to be precise in their meaning and yet still maintain the distinction between the two terms, the wider and narrower. I will translate it as the wider meaning, for that is how they signified it in the said country.
The topic was cheating; the going outside of a relationship for something that the relationship itself provides, and thereby doing damage to that relationship. What an illogical and innocently convicted statement. How can damage occur to a relationship by expanding that relationship, by an addendum to it? How does an addendum cause damage to that which it is added? In other words, what makes cheating bad, wrong and a ’should not’? What makes cheating, cheating? These questions haunted me throughout their discussions. I was sitting there observing this light-tube and wondering if it had any meaning whatsoever. Instead of the discussion being about the theme at hand, rather it was a polemic of values between two types of individuals: the servile and truthful - or what comes to the say: the confused. A polemic of values, nothing more, nothing less. There was no possibility of truth because there was no possibility of the teleological suspension of personal value, of the cessation of self-valuation and self-imposition. Something happens in the pinnacle of discussion, the person disappears or is brought to the fore, the former is as rare as a total eclipse and even akin to a total eclispe, the latter is so frequent that one almost suffocates in their presence and wishes to flee in haste. This discussion siezed to be a discussion about cheating, it siezed to be about adultery, it was about a few people trying to convince each other, that their pain from the world was better, more valuable, than the other’s. It became a matter of assent and seduction, a matter of self-affirmation and war for one’s own self-preservation. So much is at stake in such situations, people’s cognitive miser image comes to the fore, it bubbles up to the surface and infects everything around it, it poisons like the bleach fumes making contact with water. So much is at stake, somebody’s whole past, their whole reason for existence, their selves demands castration in the face of truth – and these bunch had no such desire, they were too heavily invested in themselves, in their lies, in their memories, in their ignorance to allow for such an occurence. They were as some of us would say: “believers, decadents“.
Anyways, it actually makes no sense to go into their arguments for why cheating was bad, and why people shouldn’t cheat and why it damages a relationship etc.etc. Rather it makes sense to just shut that tube right up, to place a dike on that flow of light that supposedly expounds meaning, and start afresh. Adultery is a concept that reveals so much about our social world, and its lack thereof, which makes it a topic worthy of every adult’s rumination, or even experience! Here was the general issue at hand in the discussion, that obviously hindered the ‘adults’ from even attempting at shooting for the truth: none of them knew what a relationship meant, none of them could properly define a relationship, and thereby set the ground for any subsequent understanding of the effects, consequences and arbitrary occurences of relationships. None of them could place value and meaning on the concept at hand, a universal value and meaning. Properly speaking, if I don’t know what a relationship is, what in the name of truth, could I ever say about its occurences over and beyond an assertion of the occurence – and hope for assent? I can say nothing about why cheating occurs, and/or its value thereof unless I know what a relationship is and does. This is precisely the problem with all scientific inquiry, with trial an error, without a firm foundation it does nothing – it becomes blind, it cannot set anything down and it cannot even speak without conflict and the arrival of an undesired polemic that always falls short of truth. Look at Physics, without Maths it becomes redundant and cannot do or prove a thing, without it it is utterly blind. This bunch had fallen under a similar problem: they could not speak of truth, simply because they all had different views of the foundation of the discussion at hand, none of them knew what a relationship was and what it constituted. None of them even wanted to know, they feared such knowledge! Ah, the beauty of this, one has to admire it, no matter how much ones hates it! Further, and even more worryingly, each and every account that was presupposed by the individuals was not their own account, but the manifestation of a concept that was beyond them and had produced them. Their words were not their own, but their culture’s. Their thoughts were not their own but the effects of a more stable and infectious cause, a killer cause. Culture had set bounds on all relationships and these people had no other view but that of every relationship without exception – what a fleeting and antagonistic view. Most of them desired for a relationship to be something more than what it is, they yearned for it to enter such heights that it became wondrous, vigorous and ultimately uncanny – they wanted it to be life-affirming. Yet, none of them had the courage to extend it, to make it more than what culture had trampled down on them. In their ignorance and lack of courage they allowed themselves to enter oblivion; they made of themselves and their lives, a nothing, another number in the manny, another carbon exposition.
Adultery is ugly! Not because of its consequences, but because of its presuppositions – and what presuppositions it holds, what roots it has. Its fruits are nothing compared to it’s roots; the soil in which it grows is venomous, par excellence! It is repulsive, and not because it is wrong, rather it is repulsive because it comes from a wrong, like a fruit comes from a tree. The wrong does not lie in the act, or the acter. The wrong lies in the conception of wronghood. It lies precisely in the fact that for adultery to be possible, even as a word, certain things are necessary – certain repugnant, crawling, virulent and cancerous things must lie in its base. One such thing is the hate of the body, the combating of everything that is life-affirming, the hate of passion and the heart. In favour of what! - of safety, of security, of stability and what comes to the same: death? This is the issue at hand! Adultery shows how far the worm of the downtrodden has extended, how far that heyna of thought that is life-denial has gone. As far as possible! To the roots of love itself! It has made love nothing but a contractual relationship, and thereby allowed the possibility of hate to creep in with it, and accompany it hand-in-hand without fail! A creditor-debtor relationship as the (and in the) soil of love (and made that soil infertile). It has poisoned the womb of love and made everything possible within it a guaranteed still-birth! What is this soil you wonder? Need I point it out my good friends? It is none other than the relationship, the what could otherwise have been known as love! It is the romantic, emotional, sexual relationship that has been made redundant, the possibility for love that has been lost to the fangs and wide stomach of this putrid beast! Adultery cannot be possible unless relationships are made necessary and predictable: made constant. Not unless relationships are, like all else in society, out of fear and servitude, out of a servile inferiority, subject to that wonderful meta-relationship that makes all relationships in society possible, the contractual relationship: the creditor-debtor relationship! It is precisely this servility and inferiority that stands proudly at the core of all relationships, romantic, emotional, sexual etc. What a sad proposition, what a truth for an innocent soul to encouter! A truth worthy of a tear! For it seems we can shed no more, not even our blood, because of this servility!
Adultery then my good friends, is nothing other than a carrier of a value, alas, it is its very fruit! A value negative and detrimental to humanity, to life, to love! It is nothing other than the promise of never getting what it promises, an empty promise. A promise for love, where its prerequisites are nothing but fear, insecurity, hate and obligation. This is the love of the servile, of the weak, and the myths it makes possible. Myths that are paradoxical to all possible conceptualizations of love. Love cannot survive in such waters! It speaks a different language altogether, it does this, or otherwise love has never existed simply because it has always existed!
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