/lit/ - Literature

Anon who is reading Battling to the End here, only on Chapter 1 but I'll post my thoughts as I read so you can respond - some questions I raise are answered later on in my post, some are answered later on in the text I would assume

The opening chapter on Clausewitz reminded me of this pic, specifically the state of NOWAR as the ideal or "End"

In reading this I realized a way to formulate an idea I've had for a while which is ultimately just restating Deleuze but maybe in a slightly different way than he did, whatever I'll post it - schizophrenia is pathological divergence, it's origin is in a denial of the mimetic process, a refusal to be the same as others (which, of course, is something that others end up doing as well, another form of conformity). Such a worldview ultimately leads to despair as Kierkegaard laid out in Sickness Unto Death. The average, good citizen (or NPC if we're using maymays) is pathologically conformant - RELYING on mimesis for everything from morality, aesthetics, products, personality. Such a worldview leads to a maximization of comfort for the individual. Optimally one would be neither of these - willing to diverge in some ways, willing to conform in others. The most important thing for schizophrenics to recognize is that pathologically diverging is *not superior* to pathologically conforming - one COULD have made either choice freely. The important thing for the conformant is to learn acceptance of those who diverge (though it is perhaps unreasonable to expect them to accept those who diverge on something like "Should I attack someone else?", hence the anxiety), as all creativity, change, and improvement are reliant on those who are divergent.

This line stood out very sharply in my mind
>THE AGGRESOR HAS ALWAYS ALREADY BEEN ATTACKED.
In other words, whoever plays the eternal victim is the actual aggresor. Is there any group of people who it is impossible to criticize because they have victim status no matter what? Hmmmm. War as a duel, aggression is inescapable.

Do sociopaths exist, genuinely? How should they be dealt with? These are the questions swirling in my mind as I read this chapter.

>Violence looks terribly frightening when we have understood its laws and grasped that it is
reciprocal and will thus return. How did small archaic societies deal with it? They found a solution: they invented sacrifice without knowing it, unconsciously, by channeling their violence onto a sacrificial victim, and necessarily unaware of the arbitrariness of their choice.
my thoughts also continually go back to the image I posted from REI's blog of the dialectic between neoreaction and aryanism ultimately leading to a united front against zionism as I read this - was this enemy chosen unconsciously? Or is it conscious? Or is thinking that it is conscious merely rationalization after the fact?

(cont.)