19970821.00
Using the directions in the "signature" of this letter, I
had no difficulty in unsubscribing from this list. It was only a
test: I immediately resubscribed. (Sorry about that.) If others
continue to have difficulty unsubscribing, that might be the case
because the mailing programs furnished them by their service
providers lack some facet which the kierkegaard-
request@stolaf.edu requires to process their communication or, as
in the instance below, provide indisputably misleading
information. In any event, the issue, it seems to me, is much
exaggerated: I myself get much unsolicited mail, both electronic
and "third class". I find it very simple to dispose of anything I
do not wish to read.
In this context, it seems to me unrealistic to conclude that
the violent and sometimes obscene complaints about inability to
sign-off the list represent just that: intemperate expressions of
impatience with an imperfect electronic network; and it is
correspondingly unwise, I think, to take such communications at
face value. Better to read carefully and to try to understand
what is being said, and why.
One contributor complains
> PIG this you Swines I want off the PIG SHIT LIST NOW.
> I NEVER SUBSCRIBED to it and I am unable to unsubscribe.
> My e-mail address is cdmaster@cd-masters.com
> but when I send the unsubscribe commmand to this server
> it thinks I am cdmaster@sundial.net
>
That message as received by me includes the the unambiguous
directive:
From: CD Master
Reply-To: cdmaster@sundial.net
Apparently the mailserver at _my_ service provider
(netcom.com), like the mail-server at kierkegaard-
request@stolaf.edu, was misled by the electronic message as to
the return address. The problem, I suspect, is not in the mail
server that _receives_ these messages, but in the computer
program that send the messages, in the instant case, the program
that integrates cdmaster@cd-masters.com into sundial.net and
sends out e-mail messages with the stamp:
From: CD Master
Reply-To: cdmaster@sundial.net
At least in this case, the reason why unsubscription failed
seems obvious, and complaints, if any, should be directed not to
kierkegaard-request@stolaf.edu, but to sundial.net. But
unsubscription failures, obviously, are the least of the problem.
The "signature" of the letter from cdmaster@cd-masters.com
is as follows:
>
> --
>
> CD Master ("mailto:cdmaster@cd-masters.com")
> CD Master's World ("http://www.cd-masters.com")
> --------------------------------------------------------
> "Life's a Stage... Dance NAKED I'm Watching"
> \|//
> (o o)
> ____oOO__(_)__OOo____
>
When one accepts the invitation to "visit" CD Master's World
at "http://www.cd-masters.com" one is received by a copyrighted
message (which I shall therefore not reproduce), containing
information regarding "who we are".
Who We Are
We (whoever _we_ are) "are the world leader in licenseable
CD-ROM XXX Hardcore Images!" An otherwise unidentified "I" tells
that he "brought to the world the Infamous World Renown Adult CD-
ROM titles Ecstasy Hot Pics, the Infamous Busty Babes I, Southern
Beauties, Bodacious Beauties, California Beauties, and Southern
Beauties II, the top selling Adult still image CD-ROM's
worldwide."
These productions promise depictions of
"Anal Sex - Big Boobs - Boy/Girl -
Cum Shots - Fetish - Foreplay
Group Sex - Interracial - Lesbian -
Models - Oral Sex - Sex Toys"
CD Master brings home to us what is on the minds and in the
imaginations of at least some of our fellow human beings, the
number of which, I daresay, is considerably larger than the
number of those of us who worry about Kierkegaard and
Schleiermacher.
It is significant, and to me worrisome, that obvious
differences in emotional and intellectual perspectives should so
readily lead to violent speech: for violent speech as one finds
out if one lives long enough, is often precursor to violent
action.
The violence of the animosity the CD-Master expresses toward
the Kierkegaard maillist reminded me of the vilification of
German Jews by the National Socialists in almost identical terms,
which preceded the Holocaust by less than ten years and in effect
dulled the moral sensitivity of the German public to the point
where it docilely accepted as justifiable the murder of millions
of human beings.
In the case of CD-Master, however, I suspect the hostility
is directed at so broad a spectrum of groups in our society, that
the aggression is likely to be self-limited if only by the
antagonisms which it provokes.
The natural response to aggression is to counterattack: but
before we do so, it will help to review the situtation of the
potential combatants and to ask ourselves whether it is in fact
CD-Master who was originally the aggressor, We must in fact
entertain the possibility that it was we who provoked him, if
only by proxy.
It is surely unrealistic to overlook the circumstance that
the pornographic enterprises to which CD-Master has committed
himself are looked at askance by those of us who fancy ourselves
in the moral majority. and this to such a degree that it seems
barely permissible to discuss the matter even under the guise of
impassionate and disinterested sociologic or psychologic
analysis.
Yet before we endorse and certify such blanket condemnation,
we do well to remind ourselves of a parallel situation in the New
Testament, specifically in John 8, in the account of Jesus'
commentary on the woman taken in adultery:
3. Men de skriftkloge og Farisaeerne f/ore en Kvinde til ham,
greben i Hor, og stille hende frem i Midten.
4. Og de sige til ham: "Mester! denne Kvinde er greben i Hor
poa fersk Gerning.
5. Men Moses b/od os i Loven, at soadanne skulle stenes;
hvad siger nu du?"
6. Men dette sagde de for at friste ham, for at de kunde have
noget at anklage ham for. Men Jesus b/ojede sig ned og skrev
med Fingeren poa Jorden.
7. Men da de bleve ved at sp/orge ham, rettede han sig op og
sagde til dem: "Den iblandt eder, som er uden Synd,
kaste f/orst Stenen poa hende!"
8. Og han b/ojede sig atter ned og skrev poa Jorden.
9. Men da de h/orte det, gik de bort, den ene efter den anden,
fra de aeldste til de yngste, og Jesus blev alene tilbage med
Kvinden, som stod der i Midten.
10. Men da Jesus rettede sig op og ingen soa uden Kvinden,
sagde han til hende: "Kvinde! hvor ere de henne? Var der ingen,
som ford/omte dig?,"
11. Men hun sagde: "Herre! ingen." Da sagde Jesus: "Heller ikke
jeg ford/ommer dig; goa bort, og synd ikke mere!"
(John 8:3-11)
For better or for worse, phantasies of and reflections on
crude and primitive sexuality have been consistently displaced to
the peripheries of our literary tradition; and I am not at all
versed in them. Goethe attempted to do justice to that shadowy
region of human experience in his account in Faust I, of
Walpurgisnacht on the slopes of the Brocken. Kierkegaard, to the
best of my knowledge, did not even try to approach it. Relevant
in this respect is his reinterpretation in Either-Or, Part 1, of
seduction as an end in itself; while in Mozart's opera to which
he refers, seduction was but the means to the end of carnal
knowledge.
It is an important question, which brings us once more to
the focus of Kierkegaardian concerns, to ask whether the taboos
on nudity and on objective sexual behavior, and its depiction in
"pornography", taboos which govern our intuitions and our
judgments, to what extent these taboos are transcendentally
ordained implementartions of divine command, and to what extent
they are human conventions, societally (and politically) agreed
upon.
It is conventional to interpret the aesthetic and moral
imperfections (read vulgarity and brutality) of CD-Master's
graphic offerings as violative of divine law and the human
ordinances that purport to be modeled on it.
CD-Master's opus, however, might also be interpreted as a
reaction, surely in poor taste, reprehensible perhaps, but
nonetheless understandable, to the denial or at any event
concealment of sexual desires, needs, impulses, in short to that
denial of the sensual reality of our natures. However much we
admire and adorte Kierkegaard's writing, one cannot deny that it
fails to do justice to the sensual, the physical, the bodily
basis of our lives. There can be little question of the extent
to which such denial enters into Kierkegaard's writing; indeed,
it would not be implausible to interpret much of that writing as
sublimation of unfulfilled desire.
I hope that at least some of my readers will grant that I am
not carrying dialectic argument overly far in suggesting that as
antithesis to our commentaries upon on this list CD-Master's
memorable contribution is not quite so inappropriate as it might
seem at first reading.
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