#the doubles

this will end up repeating until there's a giant cavern. It's a big blown up mess when Ex leaves and when he comes back a couple of days later there's just a bunch of rustic houses built into the sides and at the bottom of the cave.

Scott Esposito is in conversation with Micheline Aharonian Marcom at City Lights Bookstore on Sunday, October 1 at 5:00PM. They’ll be discussing Esposito’s book, The Doubles from Civil Coping Mechanisms.

If you’ve been to City Lights before, what’s your memory of the visit?  If you haven’t been here before, what are you expecting?

I'm a local, so I definitely visit City Lights as often as I can. My typical experience is that of finding way too many incredible books that I never knew existed, as well as lots of books I've been meaning to pick up for a long time. Basically, I'm always forced to make hard decisions and pare back so that I don't go bankrupt at this store. The selection of international lit is among the best I've seen anywhere, and the theory section is just mind-boggling. Too much good stuff.

What’s the first book you read and what are you reading right now?

As to the first part of this question, I honestly can't remember. I know that when I was a kid I was pretty voracious and worked right through all the things one tends to read at that age (Madeleine L'Engle, Judy Bloom, etc, etc). Right now I'm reading Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonia Negri, a pretty sizable gap that I finally had to fill. I'm also re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude for a Litquake panel.

Which 3 books would you never part with?

Wow, this is an absolutely impossible question. I think I'd take one of my monographs of Rothko's art, because who could ever tire of looking at those works, even in reproduced form? Maybe my Norton Shakespeare, because everything's in there. And maybe Virginia Woolf's The Waves because—my god!

If your book had a soundtrack, what would it be?

This is such an amazing question! I actually did make a soundtrack for my book. Here it is!

If you opened a bookstore tomorrow, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

I've long had this completely unfeasible idea of opening a bookstore that only stocked the life works of prodigious writers, authors who wrote maybe 50+ books in their lifetime. Balzac, Cesar Aira, Georges Simenon, people like that. So I'd open that store, put it somewhere in my neighborhood in Oakland, and call it "Prodigies."

I've got more to share about the doubles! Mainly what I've started calling "The Elusive Wanderers"

Or more plainly my interpretations of Badtimeswithscar and Truesymmetry. I still need to work on Scar's design and differentiate it a bit more but I'm pretty happy with how this came out.

Anyway onto the plot! this is still a work in progress so things may/will change

Badtimes Scar

He end up coming into existence after scar had a really bad mishap(I have no idea what just yet but something with another hermit) that then lead to his death but Scar was physically fine afterwards since he just respawned back at his bed but when he died Badtimeswithscar kinda just spawned into the world as well

The incident is one of the only memories that Badtimes shares with scar. If he trys hard enough he might get a fuzzy recollection of a memory of Scar's before the uh.. split? But everything else is just not accessible.

Badtimes has alot of inborn paranoia of the hermits due to the incident so he keeps his distance away from the others

He does after a while start watching some of the hermits but from a distance never getting any closer than necessary

Just thought of this now but what I'm going add as a main difference between the two will be the scars, to elaborate Scar already has scars, obviously but Badtimes has scars from the incident wheres Scar doesn't since he died before they could heal

Ok back at the wandering bit so while Badtimes is pretty good at staying out of the way of the hermits but there have of course been times where he does get spotted. Most of the time he just ender pearls away but there was one memorable occasion where he had to just Bluff his way out. It was embarrassing encounter for both involved.

Due to Badtimes never really interacting with anyone his social skills are just about non-existent.

And now presenting

Truce

Her name started out just as True the Trues then kinda mashed into Truce

When making Truce's design I thought "hey false has stripes on her shirt what if i did the opposite of that" so I drew a hand full of circles on her shirt then realized oh hey these could be a music disc so I did that and it end up looking like some 70s/80s (I don't really remember) type pattern

Truce is supposed to be like a bit of an opposite to false not a complete opposite but they've got quite a bit of differences

For instance one thing that I've heard people bring up about false is that she's really good at PVP so that lead me thinking what if Truce wasn't. Like she really bad at it can't even hold a sword correctly

On the other hand Truce is really good at running away and uses this to her advantage

I don't yet have any idea for how Truce came to be but give me time

Here's some more tidbits

Taking the nether hub is a really bad idea for these two since there's not really anywhere to hide if one of the og hermits starts coming their way so if they want to visit HermitVille they'll have to take the long Journey via the Overworld. this is how they find the slowly growing Community of doubles.

According to the work of Michel Foucault, Man, as a being, is dualistic in nature. He is of the Doubles: Empirical/Transcendental, Cogito/Unthought, and Retreat/Return.

While my current followers are already acquainted with these concepts, if you happen to stumble across this post, I will outline a very straight-forward explanation of these properties of Man, by my understanding of them. Hopefully it is not particularly flawed.

First, in regards to the empirical and the transcendental, understand this: Man seeks, and arguably, has found empirical truths over the course of history. These truths are varied in gravitas and complexity, but, they are, at their core, truths as we understand them.

However, by our understanding of them, they are thus ground in the transcendental, the over-arching. What this means is that, for Man, he is both a creature that can determine what he believes to be empirical truths, yet, at the same time, he has a transcendental nature, which he must align his empirical work to match with, less he loses his transcendental nature.

As for Cogito and the Unthought, it is as follows. First, that Man is a thinking self, as proposed by Descartes, and that in his thoughts, he creates representations both of the outside world and of himself. But the reality is comprised of a greater whole than just the Cogito, for, there are also the things that Man does not think of, yet these also define him. This is the Unthought. The Unthought consists of all the things that do not make up the self, for those also define the self in their lack of being a part of the self. If I use "I" to talk about reality as a conscious being, I must think of the things I am not, as they are operating in the world.

In the statement "there is nothing" the "is" is present, so there is something that is not there that is to think of, so the nothing in itself is a something.

As such, the Unthought is the Other of Man. It is the being that is comprised of all the things that we aren't.

As for the retreat/return, it is fairly simple. If we take man, and treat him as a part of history, we reduce him to being solely an object, not a human in his own right, as such, we are retreating from the origin of man by treating him as a past thing.

But, we cannot simply return to the reality of Man, for then we lose sight of his place in existence, we treat him solely as a subject.

Man is both the originator, and the originated. The subject and the object. Man is a paradox.

But, prior to Nietzsche's observation that "God is dead" (Note, this is not, in itself, a repudiation of God when Nietzsche said that. What he was saying that in society, God is no longer the fountain from which morality springs forth), this was not an issue. In the Classical episteme, while the reliance on God was waning, God and nature continued to act as the originators of morality. And in God's case, God provided the answer to the paradox of originator and originated.

For Man, in his nature, is a limited creature. He is limited organically, economically, and linguistically. His control on the world is not unlimited, he is often subject to things far out of his reach.

This was never a problem for God, as God is the infinite. God acts without limitation, which means God does not create a paradox in himself in regards to being both the subject and the object. Note, that this does not, in itself, prove that God exists, but rather, that for those who believe in God, this is why they are more likely to find morality to be a matter of objectivity. For now, one does not have to rely on others, who, in their limitations, are an unreliable source, to provide concepts and representations of moralities for which we can base our lives on.

God embodies the Doubles without the issue of limitation. Whereas Man cannot comprehend fully the idea of that which he thinks and that which he does not think of at the same time, God can, for God has no finitude.

Thus, when Michel Foucault says that there is a chance that we will return to a previous epistemological era, I am inclined to believe that we may see the rebirth of God as a fountain of morality, from which we can obtain truths. God is the answer to our finitudes, for he takes the burden off of us, limited creatures with no means of fully providing for our existence.