Connection 3
Problems and Effects
Situation vs Creation
We are historically situated. We are creatures that think in terms of language. We are born into a social and linguistic heritage and inhabit social formations that carry meanings we did not create.
But to participate in a process of becoming is to radically create, to open the door on the given and step into the now.
Most of us would intuitively appeal to or attract to certain concepts we inherit in society; values that have subsisted over time, words that have meaning for us. But these meanings differ amongst us; and they evolve in us and in society collectively.
Sources
One way we might try to understand these concepts or values is to search within them, and back to their source, what Charles Taylor calls the “moral sources” that have resonance for each of us.
But there is more to concepts and values than their moral source. Concepts and values have also an ontological quality.
The meanings we attribute to concepts and values connect directly with our perspectives on the nature of being itself.
Deleuze offers us a vision of the process that informs being, the creative nature of being, the being that is becoming. And that process informs values in society.
We will continue to debate the sources of concepts and values that have meaning for us, in an attempt to articulate that meaning. This is proof that such concepts and values are not solutions, they are problematic.
And problematics are where life in the open resides, where the new can be created.
Creativity as Process
We must remain open to the constructivist nature of value claims and go beyond the notion of moral sources. We must seek out the new in the concepts we inherit and participate in.
Concepts arrive at our doorstep as an actuality, packaged and encased, separated and defined. But in reality they overflow with the return of difference. Concepts and values are evolutionary.
Concepts and values address problems. Concepts and values resonate in relation to problems. Concepts and values relate to history and to becoming. As the problem evolves, so does the concept or value.
Concepts and values are multiplicities with internal intensities and singularities. And they are interrelated in their becoming, they make connections.
Problems provoke thought, creative thought. To dash to the solution is to move from the virtual to actual, from the dynamic to the static, to package, to encase, to define, to close.
To stay with the problem is to stay open, dynamic, to think of concepts and values themselves in a process of becoming, and to think of our perspectives on concepts and values as participating in a process of becoming.
This is never a question of what is, but instead the who, how, when, where, under what circumstances, of any concept or value.
Rules and laws define and crystallize; principles evolve.
Concepts
Below are some groupings of words, many we have come across in my writings on Deleuze:
Becoming, Experimentation, Creativity, Change, Evolution, Growth
Univocity, Monism, Pluralism
Intensities, Lines of Flight, Virtuality, Singularities
Life, Authenticity, Meaning, Narrative, Theme, Interpretation
Connections, Multiplicities, Rhizomes, Striations, Deterritorialization
Freedom, Equality, Fairness, Justice, Autonomy
Diversity, Tolerance, Acceptance
Encounters, Relationships, Community
For some, these words might take on new meaning, incrementally or dramatically via an understanding of Deleuze’s philosophy. But these meanings will continue to evolve and transform for each of us and collectively.
Concepts and value are created on an immanent and intuitive plane.
Transformations
Below are some transformations:
Static to Dynamic
Closed to Open
Solutions to Problems
Old to New
Universals to Singularities
Abstraction to Concretion
Cliché to Remarkable
Identity to Difference
Conformity to Creativity
Consensus to Deliberation
Compromise to Coherence
Negation to Affirmation
Oppression to Acceptance
Intolerance to Tolerance
Exclusivity to Inclusivity
War to Peace
Violence to Respect
Destruction to Creation
Death to Life
Division to Diversity
Fear to Hope
For some, these transformations may take on new meaning by thinking creatively via the new and open. We may gain new perspectives on what is envisioned in such transformations. And those perspectives will continue to change, to refresh, to become new again.
We can think of transformations in terms of virtuality-based perspectives, concepts that are alive and overflowing and evolving.
Evolution
Closed meanings, closed ideologies, are static, transcendent, life denying. All we can really say with an open mind is that the affirmation of life within the immanent field has value. The detail that follows is down to a process of practical immanent thought.
Personally, our vision of concepts and values, what gives them meaning, evolves with experience and encounters; comes into contact with and coheres in a naturalistic view of life.
We stay open and re-think, re-engage from the perspective of the virtuality within each concept or value.
Socially, we come together to think and confront concepts and values, and apply practical thought to them. But we do this in the context of a society that is life affirming and open:
A society that is necessarily and inherently political, but open to movement, new lines of flight, and a process of deterritorialization.
Concepts and values make new connections, disconnect and form new singularities and multiplicities that coincide with the virtuality of life itself; they remind us that existence itself is problematic, the creation of the new.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
Please join my email list here or email me at tomas@tomasbyrne.com.
Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2023 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
