Coda VII (Part I)

Part VIII: Map-Drive (as Featured in The Map Is Indestructible by O.G. Rose)

Photo by Marvin van Beek

The True Isn’t the Rational is a trilogy that often converses with Belonging Again, another series by O.G. Rose, where the topic of Global Pluralism and “a new address” are stressed. Global Pluralism is a circumstance in which the average person increasingly finds themselves in “conflict of mind”-situations which risk apophenia, of seeing what isn’t there (like a conspiracy), and yet this “Pynchon Risk” is necessary for philosophy to start. And as O.G. Rose argues, philosophy must be started if we are to handle Global Pluralism and not regress into self-effacement. “Philosophy begins in wonder,” or so the classic notion goes, but if this is so, it is at risk. “Philosophy begins in wonder at the risk of madness.” Alright, but by what strategy might we recognize “Pynchon Risks” (basically “risks of apophenia” and “seeing what isn’t there”)? Well, The True Isn’t the Rational hopes to outline that strategy. Our world is like a novel which combines Pynchon and Kafka, and we are characters in its fiction. Are we then fictions? Yes, but fictions aren’t all false. Regardless, they are arranged.

Ideology consists of a system of signifiers over the world but not of it through which the world is seen. If one variable of the system is changed without ruining the system’s internal consistency — if all begin using the word “dog” to refer to the thing that is a cat, for example — and if everyone begins operating by that change, it will be as if that variable was always changed: the system will work. Madness? Yes, but also lovely: errors can be caught. Grace.

Pi, directed by Darren Aronofsky, follows the story of Maximillian Cohen, a man dedicated to discovering not things but the pattern behind all things. He believes there is a mathematical sequence that can explain everything in the universe (like the long-sought “theory of everything” that captures the imaginations of modern physicists). During the movie, Cohen begins to branch out from math and science to find “the truth” and begins to explore Judaism. When Cohen’s teacher, Sol Robeson, hears this, he warns Cohen that if he ‘discard[s] scientific rigor,’ he will risk madness and become ‘a numerologist’ instead of ‘a mathematician.’¹ Sol warns Cohen throughout the movie that even if there was an ultimate pattern behind reality, humans shouldn’t try to know it beyond scientific methods, for this risk The Crying of Lot 49-esq madness. The viewer is left to wonder if Sol is a quitter or wise, and the conclusion of the movie invites us to ponder that question afresh.

Perhaps there is an “ultimate pattern” behind everything in the world, but what if it is the case that to know it, we have to abandon science? If this so (which we possibly couldn’t know for sure staying within scientific epistemology), then there is no way to find “the truth” without possibly becoming like Maximillian Cohen. And isn’t it epistemically immoral not to try to know the truth, to not risk ending up like Cohen? And isn’t it the case that in order to know if “the pattern” can be known entirely within science, one would have to step out of that methodology (for a time at least)? Or perhaps we’re justified to not venture beyond scientific methods, aware that the risk is paranoia and insanity like that suffered by Cohen (in the same way we’re justified not to perform certain experiments on people, considering the great suffering it will cause them)? It is hard to say, especially considering that scientific methods can’t be used exclusively in all areas of life. Perhaps to live is to risk becoming Cohen; perhaps life is “The Pynchon Risk.” Oh, and what if within “the scientific methodology” we end up in an “identification” that Korzybski has made very clear will lead to madness and the loss of sanity? Then we will have to leave. To save our minds, we will have to risk them. Who in their right minds would do such? No one, which is perhaps why it could have been no other way than for “the problem of identification” (a forcing function) to bring us to this point in history (described in Belonging Again), this point of potential self-effacement and/or Childhood that spreads.

I

People have known for centuries that Christianity consisted of problems, intellectual gymnastics, and apparent contradictions, but I’m not sure if until Pluralism and “the loss of givens” that people have felt those problems (the histories of societies shift when do their feelings). Alluding to “Compelling” by O.G. Rose, it’s as if each ideology is a large sphere lacking any indentions, and the only way to hold onto one is thanks to a stickiness covering the surface. Once the sphere loses stickiness though, even if our hand is touching the sphere, we can’t hold it, and even though nothing has changed regarding the validity of the ideology itself, in our grasp of the ideology changing, it feels like everything has changed, causing existential anxiety and a feeling of insecurity. And so then we might be forced to crack the sphere open (with a hammer of rationality) to find a handle inside. And what might we find? A vacuum. A suction. “Internal consistency.” Pynchon’s Risk. Where “givens” are lost, rationality is unbound, and it cracks open beliefs one by one through history — only those which are “internally consistent” survive. But they can survive not necessarily because “they are found actual,” but because they are found “internally consistent,” which means they can stand simply because we get sucked into them and unable to deconstruct them (like vacuum-tramps, like Made in Abyss, like some inescapable Pynchonian scheme). “The indestructibility of maps” can become “the inescapability of internal consistency.”

In a way, “givens” protected us through and with “thoughtlessness” from being at risk of falling into these traps, but now we are defenseless. To put this another way, we could say that “being thoughtless about Christianity” saved us from having to think about Christianity, but now we do find ourselves thinking about it, which could pull us into a map-maze that we might infinitely consider and never fully undermine (because of Gödel). Furthermore, making our problem worse, “maps” seem to pluralize say in conspiracies where “givens” are lost, for there are no “givens” to bind the ever-creation of “internally consistent systems”: there is no Big Other by which we can say which maps can’t be true, for we’d need a Big Other to establish “correspondence” with reality, and where that is lacking, all we have is “coherence” for determining “likelihood of correspondence,” and coherence seems unbound currently, precisely because only correspondence can bind it. And what is “correspondence” after Gödel? A situation. True/fake.

A world of “scripts” and Theoretical-Awareness like ours is a world where everything feels true/fake, which is to say everything is blurred (a “scripted world” is a “blurred world”). In a “blurred environment,” the hunger and desire for “maps” to escape that ambiguity — “the situation” — grows and spreads, especially for “maps” which can never be undermined or disproved. Thus, the market for conspiracies and “internally consistent systems” of similar power arises, especially if it can prove “a masterpiece of Desire.” After all, we require “maps” to function — why not seek the “map” that feels most real?

Where there are “blurs,” we are more likely to “judge” than “assess” in hopes of keeping out and avoiding the ambiguity, but this is an act which risks causing pathologies, trouble, and self-enclosure. “Blurs” and “scripts” are hard to critique and assess, and to conceal us from that difficulty, we will be tempted to judge, transforming our discernment into a hard “is-ness” (“identification”) versus a tentative assessment that cannot readily make hard claims about the immediate situation. “Judgment” can better conceal us from the ambiguity, while “assessment” leaves us far more vulnerable — and yet judgment is dangerous. But once we judge our “map” as “made in the image and likeness of is-ness,” we can then use “apocalyptic thinking” and “the blood of martyrs” to make it basically immoral to think beyond our “map” (which would be silly to think beyond anyway, seeing that it “is” the case). In our “moral space,” we can then define and describe the world in a way that reinforces that ethics, become “truly ignorant” about what is beyond our “map” to thus make us innocent of not venturing outward, employ “game theory dynamics” in conversation to maintain our “true ignorance” and protect our “map,” and then spend all our time problem-solving within our “map” to keep us busy and feeling good about ourselves. And in this state, we can serve Desire and so always be motivated to act to strengthen and protect our “map” — happy, having regained meaning and belonging. (Until we deal with “the problem of maps,” we cannot assume the return of meaning and belonging won’t be a crisis.)

“Intrinsic motivation” is not inherently good: if drive is misdirected in map-drive or a Pynchon Risk for say Deception, boredom could be a salvation. However, as discussed in Belonging Again, without “intrinsic motivation,” we are also at grave risk personally, economically, socially, politically, and globally. We must play with fire. It’s time. How “givens” and “maps” deal with drive is different: “givens” have us be motivated toward something we don’t think about, while “maps” have us be motivated toward that which we can think about all we like, for essential “(in)completeness” assures they will never be deconstructed (possibly left, sure, but not deconstructed). In a “thought-tormented age” like ours (alluding to Joyce), maps will play an ever-greater role than “givens,” but the “practical consequences” will be similar: thought will be contained, “captured,” and even channeled as the zeitgeist would have of us (say according to Capital). And this is us.

II

The internet has multiplied and spread “maps” to an extraordinary degree (see “In Infinite Information Over Enough Time…” by O.G. Rose in The Conflict of Mind), and though “maps” have always been with us, I think there might be many more of them today than ever before. This is not all bad: it means more people are choosing to live different lifestyles, expressing themselves uniquely, and overall diversity is increasing. A growth of “maps” seems to follow from the collapse of “givens” (described in Belonging Again), for if we can no longer gain “existential stability” from “givens,” we naturally turn to “internally consistent systems” to “hold us in place” somehow. We were once held together and “grounded” thanks to (“vertical”) “givens,” but without them we require a “horizontal structure” that seems to give us the same effect—thus the appeal of “indestructible maps” and “internally consistent systems” that we don’t have to worry about being uprooted and deconstructed like “givens.” Alas, “givens” worked like and as “maps” themselves, and so we cannot “address” the loss of “givens” with “maps”—that is to address the problem with a different form of the problem, which is to say it is an indirect “return to givenness” (which is a nostalgic temptation we must resist at all costs)—and that “self-effacing return” (versus say “(re)turn”) is a road Belonging Again rejects.

Christianity was a “given” in the West that also generated a “map,” and the “conspiracy” has rushed in to fill the loss of “givens” like Christianity by structuring itself as “Desire’s Masterpiece,” which means it has the effect of “givenness” even though we know it isn’t Transcendent like God. The conspiracy with its “Big Other of Deception” is “practically Transcendent” even though not actually such, which means it “practically functions” as “a return to givens” without being so directly. This is why “the map,” especially in the form of a conspiracy, is so tempting: it seems to be the best way for us to “return to givenness,” as seems like our only option today unless we somehow negate/sublate “the loss of givens” into “the gaining of gifts”—but now we are in Belonging Again (Part II).

A “map” can be a “Schrödinger’s Conceivability Structure” and exist in the realm of “blurs” between truth and falsity, where the “map” can only be critiqued through a “Pynchon Risk” which might suck us into madness. This book has argued that theory, “script,” judgment, etc. are all structurally similar (as “maps”), and so critiquing any of these bring with them the same risks—risks which incentive us not to bother with them, which by extension risks us falling into passivity, complacency, and ultimately the “thoughtlessness” which characterizes “the banality of evil.” This mistake is notably tempting given how an “internally consistent system” can protect us from outside critique, while at the same time giving us something to Desire.

Alright, but can’t rationality save us from this problem? If Desire is trapping us, might we overcome this trap if we were to simply become more rational? Isn’t rationality the answer? That seems like a valid approach, but we have a problem: rationality, especially as “autonomous rationality,” is a prime reason we suffer “the problem of internally consistent systems” to begin with. Furthermore, “autonomous rationality” can ultimately lead us only to a Nash Equilibrium, which is to say “the most rational and suboptimal of all possible worlds.” Another way is needed, but how is that “other way” known and traveled? By “faithful presence.” Beauty. Childhood. Without these, it seems inevitable that some “Pynchon Risk” gets us, some “novel story” like that of John Titor, as so compellingly explored by Mike Sauve. As of 2011, when the Civil War was to break out in America, perhaps it’s easy to see that Titor, the time-traveler, was a folk legend. But as of 2010? And perhaps there was no Civil War because Titor brought it to our attention, changing the timeline? Or because he succeeded in his mission? ‘If John Titor was not a time traveller, then he had access to a broad range of rarified information spanning several fields of study, knew a great deal about contemporary physics and CERN, and possessed a writer’s ability to craft a compelling narrative.’² ‘John also foresaw many technological changes that would have been difficult to predict in 2001 […]’³

“The John Titor Legend” is a favorite of mine for considering “the problem of internally consistent systems,” and my claim is that what we see in this legend “vividly” is what we are all constantly doing more obliquely. It smells of Satoshi Kon and Masamune Shirow. It feels playful and deadly serious, like the best of games. And everything is games, as suggested by Gadamer and James Carse. Could most of ‘Jon’s interlocutors [have been] plants?’⁴ Every game seems to end with the same wish: ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for was worth the effort.’⁵ Silence. A suggestion of a good of Heidegger’s nihilation and Derrida’s “deconstruction.” The blessings of being able to say, “I don’t know” and “maybe.” Is any other defense adequate against “The Pynchon Risk” but Socrates? What about in a world where a stance must be taken? Can it all be Alas, Babylon, or does that just mean fiction reflects life; life, fiction? Sauve finishes his book unable to totally dismiss ‘Scenario 4.’⁶ And surely if a conspiracy or story is too good, it must be discovered instead of created, yes? ‘That was when I saw the Pendulum’…⁷ ‘The Templars became too powerful too fast.’⁸

III

Humans have always been conspiratorial, seemingly because conspiracies align with how the brain naturally thinks: if anything, we have more “conspiracy-maps” today, which is to say “internally consistent systems,” but not necessarily “conspiracy-notions” (I highlight “conspiracies” in this book because they so vividly showcase the problem of maps, of ‘[]our brain’).⁹ Rob Brotherton in his book, Suspicious Minds, makes it clear that conspiracies are not new, though I would argue that the internet affords new ways they can arise, spread, flexibly save/recreate themselves, and mobilize people (though I could be wrong). Also, ‘conspiracy theories are [not] a fringe affair […] huge numbers of people are conspiracy theorists when it comes to one issue or another.’¹⁰ ‘Ambivalence threatens our sense of order,’ and in a world of ambivalence, we should expect the majority to be conspiratorial (especially when it’s not clear what constitutes ‘tidying the desk’ for us, though I would associate this with Childhood, those who play-order).¹¹ ‘We have innately suspicious minds,’ and a world without “givens” is one that begs rational deconstruction in all things and hence suspicion.¹²

Amazon

‘Despite popular hoopla,’ it is not the case that there has been an ‘exponential increase over the years’ in conspiratorial thinking.¹³ It has always been with us; however, I would argue we have gotten better at it. We now have the material, thanks to the internet, of making our conspiracies more indestructible and internally consistent: even if there is the same relative number of conspiracies today compared to all prior ages, I’d wager there are more conspiracy-maps than conspiracy-notions. Many conspiracies are not “internally inconsistent” today; many are internally indestructible. There has been an evolution, we might say, and this is partly thanks to the loss of “givens,” which means conspiratorial thinking is no longer restricted from any resources it might need to make/realize itself indestructible and “internally consistent.” Everything is “at hand,” free from say taboo, and then at the same time the very loss of “givens” creates uncertainty and anxiety which incentives and motivates that very conspiratorial thinking at the same time. Hence, conspiracy now has greater access to resources, and it has greater motivation to formulate itself. Conspiracy has always been with us, yes, but today it might be stronger, creative, and plays a sociological role of compensating for the loss of “givens” (in “maps”). Furthermore, as Hunter describes, conspiracy gives us a Deception like God after God’s death whom we can enjoy and ever-enjoy anew.

Map-proliferation doesn’t equate with “conspiracy proliferation,” even if the two overlap: map-proliferation better aligns with “conspiracy-map proliferation,” which we can also associate with “the nova effect” of religious options described by Charles Taylor. Brotherton gives a strong case for why “conspiracies aren’t new,” but I do think they now play a unique sociological and even religious role: they are giving people a better sense of belonging; they are giving people a better reason to find one another. This is “wonderful” in a world that feels alone, but this “wonder” brings with it a price of atomization, extremism, and self-enclosure. Is there any harm in it, though? Brotherton lays out that case too, describing Nazism and other examples to show a strong link between conspiracy and ‘violence and destruction,’ suggesting the danger latent in the enterprise.¹⁴ Unfortunately, this problem is not adequately addressed in us just calling conspiracies “crazy” — ‘[p]lenty of journalists […] are happy to write off conspiracy theories as self-evidently delusional’ — perhaps because taking them seriously would lead one to confronting “the problem of internally consistent systems,” and also because it’s more fun to laugh at fools.¹⁵ But this leads us to overconfidence. This leads us into a trap, an obliviousness to the possibilities prowling alongside ‘official stories’ that we only need to consider for a moment to be pulled aside into…¹⁶ (‘[C]onspirators are staggeringly competent […]’)¹⁷

Chapter 8 of Brotherton’s book is fascinating in examples and graphics used to explain how humans can “see things not there,” how ‘[w]e’re all suckers for a good coincidence,’ and how we are masters at ‘misinterpreting something that is there’ (consider the ‘Müller-Lyer illusion’).¹⁸ ¹⁹ Brotherton also explores the sociological and collective appeals of conspiracies in helping us feel like we know what the people around us are thinking (‘projection is a cornerstone of theory of mind’).²⁰ And in the end, Brotherton cannot tell us that conspiracies are always bad or always good; he leaves us with hopes:

‘By shining a light on how our biases can shape our beliefs, my hope isn’t to debunk any particular theory, much less to castigate conspiracy-thinking across the board. My hope is that we might scrutinize our intuition, ask ourselves why we think what we think. Are we being prudently paranoid? Or are our biases getting the best of us?’²¹

I appreciate Brotherton’s approach and encourage everyone to read the book. Žižek can also provide insight into why conspiracies are so appealing, especially conspiracy-maps which can function as a Deception and infinite source of enjoyment. Maps channel jouissance, which aligns with “givens” in that “givens” could keep thinking from infringing upon enjoyment through thinking, anxiety, and unclear direction. Where “givens” are deconstructed (Belonging Again), our enjoyment is threatened, as evident by the growth and spread of nihilism and confusion, and in conspiracy, like all “maps,” we find a way to feel ordered again, and better yet we feel ordered “toward” and with enjoyment. ‘We are thereby raising the old Freudian question: why do we enjoy oppression itself?’²² We are speaking of “oppression” in the spirit of thinkers like Foucault in that the moment we speak of “order” we speak of a restriction on ourselves that limits possibilities, and certainly the world today is aware of “norms” and all the trouble they bring. And yet “trouble” is a word that doesn’t capture the whole of the issue: we want this “trouble.” We struggle to enjoy without it, unless we come to be like a Child who “places a law on ourselves” (Nietzsche), but even this is arguably an “oppression.” We are not happy when we are totally free. Freedom is ultimately nothing. Nothing is completely free.

‘[E]very pleasure caught in [a] symbolic cobweb is branded by [a] perverted twist,’ as Žižek says, which suggests that we don’t enjoy that which is too directly enjoyable: this becomes boring to us.²³ If we know something is fun, the very certainty can restrict the fun (we’ll likely need to add alcohol) (unless we’re already “thoughtless,” say under “givens”). Enjoyment needs mystery, and if we can’t get that we might sabotage the fun to add to it a sense of fragility that restores the thrill and sense of possibility — and it is a “sense of possibility” that exists with “internal consistency” (the perfect structure) which is possible in a conspiracy-map, as it is also present in a religion, strong ideology, and the like (“an open circle,” we might say; a building with a sunroof, “(in)complete”). And this works because we do not see ourselves seeking fetishes and delusions: we are ‘utilitarian rationalist[s] who know[] very well that money is just a piece of paper.’²⁴ We are not fools. ‘The truth is out there’ (X-Files).

We know the world is constructed, and we experience ourselves with that knowledge as thus not constructed ourselves — but the key insight of sociology is that “social fictions” work on us regardless what we think of them. It doesn’t matter if they are “fake” and we know it. They work. So it goes with conspiracies: they work on us, giving us belonging, mission, and community, even if they are absurd. And in a world where truth cannot be confirmed (“correspondence” isn’t “coherence”), who can be judged as a fool for risking being absurd? Who knows absurdity from “is-ness”? A prideful individual, no? The conspiracist is humble. He or she risks being judged a fool. And for that courage, the conspiracist earns his or her belonging, mission, and community. Who dares cast the first stone? Cast, and see if the stone kills. “The map is indestructible.”

‘[S]ubject emerges THROUGH alienation,’ as Žižek stresses, and in a world that demands of us to enjoy (Capital), a world where religions have all the answers versus offer us a cross, and a world where everyone is to have perfect mental health thanks to pills, the conspiracy can offer us an alienation in our social order for which we long so that we might be subjects at all.²⁵ We need alienation, but we do not want it, at least not at first. What we need must be earned, a sentiment Capital can direct exclusively toward a job we don’t want to work, which makes it seem like we are not under “the reign of enjoyment,” but this is only a tactic to provide plausible deniability to the system of Capital in how it works through an “injunction to enjoy.” We work to enjoy. Work is for enjoyment. Work is not for “subjective destitution.” Work is not for alienation. Work is for escape, the finding of a path back into Eden. We suffer, but we suffer as a means to an end. Under Capital, we do not suffer as an end in itself (never). We do not trust suffering. We pass suffering by. (We do not stop for those on the side of the roads, seeing “disgust” as a means not as an end and good in itself with Illich.)

Where there is a monopoly on means of alienation, the subject will be linearly formed and formed algebraically, which is to say simplistically (versus “simply,” via Complexity Theory): we are indeed alienated under Capital, but this “monopoly on alienation” means we are only formed as subjects of Capital; we are not formed as subjects of humanity (for example, bringing to mind Carl Hayden Smith). So to be clear: it is not that under Capital there is no alienation; the problem is that there is not enough of it, which is to say the diversity of alienation is too limited. Yes, there are countless jobs at which we can be alienated, but all of this alienation is similar in kind: we are alienated by Capital. We are doing a job in which we do not find ourselves, unless perhaps we own the work. We are alienated by labor, which is a very real alienation, but the subject is more than just this alienation. We are humans. We are fuller. And conspiracies offer to give us more means of alienation and subjectivity. We are hungry for alienation-diversity. We want to be fuller. And the conspiracy-map is a source of that fullness while providing ever-reliable enjoyment under Deception. Praise be.

Capital alienates us, and if this alienation is sublated into a greater diversity of alienations, it could be a good; un-sublated and limited, Capital can lead to flatness that we come to enjoy in its simplicity (as described toward the end of II.1). But this enjoyment is an enjoyment of understanding that eventually leads to nihilism once we understand too much (as Maurice Blondel taught). We will then need a change, a change found in “open systems” like conspiracies in which we never fully exhaust them and yet also don’t find ourselves with nothing to do (“unknown” versus “unknowable”). There will always be enjoyment in what the human does, for we must enjoy (as thinkers like St. Augustine understood), but this is different from saying that the system tells us to enjoy and how. We must find pleasure in something, but if it is not ourselves in our alienation, then we will settle for lower-dimensionalities like “flatness in Capital” and “(cheap) knowing.” Enjoyment can lead us toward Joy and Love in Dante, or it can lead us into a world that is thinner than paper, or a world reduced to ash before Lovecraft. That choice is ours, but the choice can only be made well in the midst of “a diversity of alienations.” This is possible only in suffering. But suffering is good.

Consider ‘Hegel’s insight into how the Absolute always involves self-splitting and is in this sense non-All’: this must be replicated in our lives, and if won’t do it for ourselves, Capital will do it for us (and why shouldn’t it if we won’t do the work)?²⁶ “Otherness” must always be present, which is deeper than just “something we don’t have”: “otherness” is ultimately ontological and deep or it is only a matter of sequence that will eventually be manifest in some possible universe along some eventual timeline (at least theoretically). “Otherness” must be other in all possible worlds, which means it must be that which is “other” from me at all points and all configurations. I can never realize it fully, even if I can realize it in part. This constitutes an alienation in relation not outside relation, which means “relation” itself is ever-constituted by “otherness.” Is this horrible? It can be, but it also means “relation” can always be a source of alienation, and hence constitutive of the subject, which is to say a source of “alienation diversity.” This is wonder-full, but “wonder” is both a word of beauty and confusion. We must accept “the both-ness.” We must spin and curve.

‘[T]he fact that god appears is an event which deeply affects god’s identity,’ which is to say in Christianity God comes to be constituted by “a split” (the cross is eternal, in Christ).²⁷ So a conspiracy is a “split God” in the sense that it manifests in its mystery and incompleteness, and yet that split is not a flaw but an essential constitution that makes “space” for us to enter and always find a home. Why would we ever leave? Perhaps because we identify this “home” as something we need to “kill” if we are to fully grow and develop — the conspiracy does indeed offer us “alienation diversity,” but it does so by entrapping us in an “internally consistent system” in which Otherness is ultimately lost. We become possibly alien to the social order, but we ourselves come to lose Otherness to which we can relate. We have comrades and others who think like us, but the Other is gone. We are like God, but we are not like Christ. We are not “subjectively destituted” in ourselves even if we are rejected by the social order. We know. We have the truth, gnostic (in the cheap sense). We find ourselves thinking with Eckhart a ‘choice between God and Christ,’ where God is not good.²⁸ Christ is life in blood and death. Death is life or we are enjoying ourselves into a flatness from which we cannot find a way up. For there will be no “up.” That will be a joke. We must be ‘[s]ustained and produced by love, [for] psychanalytical practice is unthinkable without it.’²⁹

.

.

.

Notes

¹Allusion to Pi, directed by Darren Aronofsky.

²Sauve, Mike. Who Authored the John Titor Legend? 2016: 15.

³Sauve, Mike. Who Authored the John Titor Legend? 2016: 17.

⁴Sauve, Mike. Who Authored the John Titor Legend? 2016: 63.

⁵Sauve, Mike. Who Authored the John Titor Legend? 2016: 65.

⁶Sauve, Mike. Who Authored the John Titor Legend? 2016: 139.

⁷Eco, Umberto. Foucault’s Pendulum. Translated by William Weaver. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1989: 3.

⁸Eco, Umberto. Foucault’s Pendulum. Translated by William Weaver. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1989: 81.

⁹Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 9.

¹⁰Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 10.

¹¹Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 13.

¹²Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 17.

¹³Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 21.

¹⁴Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 45.

¹⁵Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 63.

¹⁶Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 67.

¹⁷Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 71.

¹⁸Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 169.

¹⁹Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 162.

²⁰Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 195.

²¹Brotherton, Rob. Suspicious Minds. London: Bloomsbury, Sigma, 2016: 243.

²²Žižek, Slavoj. Surplus Enjoyment. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023: 5.

²³Žižek, Slavoj. Surplus Enjoyment. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023: 7.

²⁴Žižek, Slavoj. Surplus Enjoyment. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023: 34.

²⁵Žižek, Slavoj. Surplus Enjoyment. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023: 39.

²⁶Žižek, Slavoj. Surplus Enjoyment. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023: 51.

²⁷Žižek, Slavoj. Surplus Enjoyment. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023: 251.

²⁸Žižek, Slavoj. Surplus Enjoyment. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023: 254.

²⁹Kristeva, Julia. The Kristeva Reader. “Introduction” by Toril Moi. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1986: 19.

.

.

.

For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram and Facebook.