Silence8
Posts: 833
Joined: 11/2/2009 Status: offline
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Socrates, I don't think you got everything right, yet, but you're already leagues ahead of understanding than the ostensibly 'experienced' simply by trying to understand, by taking that first step. (Ugh... I hope to death I find someone who ISN'T too experienced... honestly, gross.) People are threatened by individuals with the will (and time) to think. Nietzsche has a wonderful quote at the end of the Genealogy of Morals -- which I would highly recommend that you read; for a philosophical text, it deals directly with dominance, submission, natural tendencies, master versus slave morality, etc. etc. etc. -- where he says that individuals would rather will nothingness than will nothing at all. Willing nothingness, unfortunately, is the standard mode of operation on this website, so you have to wade through mountains of garbage before getting to the thoughtful responses. Anything, back to the point: Socrates -- are you familiar with the idea of a simulacrum? Basically, to paraphrase the philosopher Alain Badiou, a simulacrum references a greater universality (and the creation of eventful truth) while still ultimately upholding the principles of a given particularity. I think that D/s tends to work this way; yet I also think, along with Nietzsche, that there's a fundamental will to power that sadism (the joy in inflicting pain) instantiates. So I'm still thinking about it, basically; maybe both are true? In terms of simulacrum -- I think that BDSM relationships create a microcosm of a macrocosm (to use the terms from above, a macrocosm is that 'given particularity'). So, a 'Dominant', ordinarily a object of the macrocosm (this includes bosses and even CEOs) creates a microcosm, his or her D/s relationship, so that he or she can experience the observe of being an object, that is, becoming a subject. Simultaneously, a 'Submissive', also necessarily an object of the macrocosm (the macrocosm has no true 'Subject', notably), becomes an object of the microcosm (that is, the simulacrum). Why, though? Well, I think that the macrocosm is such that its objects are forced to act as if they are subjects; there's a philosopher John Gray who says something to this effect, that in civilization not only are you not free, but you're forced to act as if you're free. For the 'Submissive', then, the appeal of the microcosm is that, for once, appearances match reality; he or she is an object, both in name and reality.
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