5 Moment

This Moment may be Ashley's, but go ahead and edit away! (Suffice to say, it's a work in progress.)

Intensity
Ulmer discusses Heidigger discussing Nietzsche discussing Zarathustra. For Heidigger, "the pres ent which is held in authentic temporality and which thus is authentic itself, we call the 'moment'". While the "now" belongs to time, in "the moment" nothing can occur. By writing that the "Moment opens up the dromospheric Now," Ulmer is saying that the moment allows for individuals to stop and take one attitude or stanc e, determining their relationship to the now (91). Dasein enters the world in the moment, and transforms the present into a "site of intensity."

Speaking of presents... Here's a site of intensity!



PLAY QWOP

"This feeling of intensity is precisely the value (life). Concept avatar is the moderator of intensity

.: (91)

Zarathustra
Zarathustra arises when Heidigger attempts to clear Nietzsche's name from the depiction of him wrought by Nazi propoganda. It "thematizes the problem of form, of how to communicate a new thought (how to change the hegemonic system of values)" (91). In Zarathustra, the search for wisdom is made evident, and along this path, ethics takes places, as well as the appropriation of selfhood. With declaration of self comes joy, both Nietzsche and Heidigger claim.

"Such is the will to power: the commitment to human potential, measured on a scale of increasing/decreasing "power" from joy to sadness" (92). Ulmer compares Socrates' role in literacy to Nietzsche's role in electracy. For Nietzsche, life is a place to test his philosophies. In his Moment, he stops in the crossroads of the aphorism of thought and the anecdote of life: this is where the player consults avatar.

Daimon
Ulmer shifts from Dasein to an appropriation of the Moment glimpsing the whole. Nietzsche is referenced once again as an example of the individual turning from himself as the center of meaning to being one dimension of a four-fold meaning that encompasses his surroundings, mortals and gods, world and earth. Daimon here ("genius" in Latin) is the realization and gradual identity formation, claiming one's selfhood and thought for one's own, not an external influence. "Concept avatar is not literally an annunciation scene, but a rhetorical practice (flash reason), designed to create a counselor effect" (97).

Constructing Thresholds
"Flash reason becomes practical as "general electracy" only within the digital apparatus, meaning that it requires a technological prosthesis. Concept avatar inventories the functionality of Moment, to help notice those features that might lend themselves to technological augumentation, and those features that need to be put into the rhetorical skill-set of electrate citizens" (97).

To put that in non-electrate speech, flash reason is dependent upon its technological form. Electracy without technology is lacking, and only a few foresighted individuals like Nietzsche can practice it. While during the transition from orality to literacy, we shifted from a communal to individualistic conception of self, this path is continued in the concept avatar. "The life feeling is your measure, limit, a paradoxically liberating constraint of freedom" (99).

The Gate
"To put the stamp of being on becoming literally involves not only a decision but composition. As a practice for an electrate apparatus, concept avatar teaches image metaphysics" (99). Language may speak us, but our becoming is a process of writing ourselves into being. And when we write (or whatever writing becomes in the electrate apparatus: digital media?) the concept avatar, we do so through metaphysics and art. Concept avatar is what guides individuals from literacy to electracy.(I'd like my concept avatar to help me out here.) And Moment occurs along this process, when we use flash reason, dividing ourselves by the daimon. Ulmer writes that "flash reason supports this recursive loop, a movement of division that permits "eternal return," the repetition of drive that is my character" (101). So our process of creating ourselves is a continuous one. But if that's the case and we fall back time and again into these same feedback loops, how do we move forward? Is our conception of progress and self-growth a falsehood?

"It means that the very core of truth involves a temportal paradox in which the truth only "becomes what is"" (101). Electracy encourages the fundamental gap between the dromospheric now and our human conception of time.

Duende
Entelechy is coined by Aristotle to describe the merging of daimon and the history of being. Ulmer writes that in philosophy this idea of striving, of Life Force, has continued and is updated within the avatar during Moment. Duende exists as a manifestation of daimon, genius, and is found in Eros and mood. It's epheremal, difficult to pin down, and yet appears when "death is a possibility" (106). "Duende is the mood of dwelling in information, and poetry is its logic. This thread emphatically shows that concept avatar is a thought of feeling as a dimension of civilization" (107).

Other sections where moment is discussed
Moment is the non-temporal "when" of the practices of flash reaon, a crucial component of electracy. Ulmer refers to Moment and daimon frequently throughout Avatar Emergency.

Terms
. Chora

Chora is used in this section as providing the space in which the moment occurs.

Flash Reason
Flash Reason is practiced within the Moment, divorced from the Now. Flash Reason allows us to experience/create our concept avatar during our interaction with Zarathustra's gate.