#uroborus

Peter Proksch (1935–2012), “Uroborus”

“The specifically human feature of human groupings can be exploited to turn them into the semblance of nonhuman systems.

We do not now suppose that chemical elements combine together because they love each other. Atoms do not explode out of hatred. It is men who act out of love and hatred, who combine for defense, attack, or pleasure in each other's company.

All those people who seek to control the behavior of large numbers of other people work on the experiences of those other people. Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways. Induce people all to want the same thing, hate the same thing, feel the same threat, then their behavior is already captive - you have acquired your consumers or your cannon-fodder. Induce a common perception of Negroes as subhuman, or of whites as vicious and effete, and behavior can be concerted accordingly.

However much experience and action can be transformed into quantitatively interchangeable units, the schema for the intelligibility of group structures and permanence is of quite a different order from the schema we employ when we are explaining relative constancies in physical systems. In the latter case, we do not, in the same way, retrace the constancy of a pattern back to the reciprocal interiorization of the pattern by whatever one regards as the units comprising it. The inertia of human groups, however, which appears as the very negation of praxis, is in fact the product of praxis and nothing else. This group inertia can only be an instrument of mystification if it is taken to be part of the "natural order of things." The ideological abuse of such an idea is obvious. It so clearly serves the interests of those whose interest it is to have people believe that the status quo is of the "natural order," ordained divinely or by "natural" laws. What is less immediately obvious, but no less confusing, is the application of an epistemological schema, derived from natural systems, to human groups. The theoretical stance here only serves to intensify the dissociation of praxis from structure.

The group becomes a machine - and that it is a man-made machine in which the machine is the very men who make it is forgotten. It is quite unlike a machine made by men, which can have an existence of its own. The group is men themselves arranging themselves in patterns, strata, assuming and assigning different powers, functions, roles, rights, obligations and so on.

The group cannot become an entity separate from men, but men can form circles to encircle other men. The patterns in space and time, their relative permanence and rigidity, do not turn at any time into a natural system or a hyperorganism, although the fantasy can develop, and men can start to live by the fantasy that the relative permanence in space-time of patterns and patterns of patterns is what they must live and die for.

It is as though we all preferred to die to preserve our shadows.

For the group can be nothing else than the multiplicity of the points of view and actions of its members, and this remains true even where, through the interiorization of this multiplicity as synthesized by each, this synthesized multiplicity becomes ubiquitous in space and enduring in time.

It is just as well that man is a social animal, since the sheer complexity and contradiction of the social field in which he has to live is so formidable. This is so even with the fantastic simplifications that are imposed on this complexity, some of which we have examined above.

Our society is a plural one in many senses. Any one person is likely to be a participant in a number of groups, which may have not only different memberships, but quite different forms of unification.

Each group requires more or less radical internal transformation of the persons who comprise it. Consider the metamorphoses that one man may go through in one day as he moves from one mode of sociality to another family man, speck of crowd dust, functionary in the organization, friend. These are not simply different roles: each is a whole past and present and future, offering differing options and constraints, different degrees of change or inertia, different kinds of closeness and distance, different sets of rights and obligations, different pledges and promises.

I know of no theory of the individual that fully recognizes this. There is every temptation to start with a notion of some supposed basic personality, but halo effects are not reducible to one internal system. The tired family man at the office and the tired businessman at home attest to the fact that people carry over, not just one set of internal objects, but various internalized social modes of being, often grossly contradictory, from one context to another.

Nor are there such constant emotions or sentiments as love, hate, anger, trust or mistrust. Whatever generalized definitions can be made of each of these at the highest levels of abstraction, specifically and concretely, each emotion is always found in one or another inflection according to the group mode it occurs in. There are no "basic" emotions, instincts or personality, outside of the relationships a person has within one or another social context.

There is a race against time. It is just possible that a further transformation is possible if men can come to experience themselves as "One of Us." If, even on the basis of the crassest self-interest, we can realize that We and They must be transcended in the totality of the human race, if we in destroying them are not to destroy us all.

Georgian Lover's Eye / Ouroboros brooch, English, c. 1800

The ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail, known as the ouroboros, symbolises wholeness or infinity. In this context, it could stand for eternal love.

My first thought was “something encrusted with jewels that costs a fortune or an equal amount of blood and sweat”, and I think Loki would suggest this as a joke. 

Partly.

Maybe not encrusted with jewels, because that would be heavy and gaudy and he’d get tired of wearing it eventually, but something precious and rare and hard to attain. Like a ring molded from the horn of a unicorn or a tooth from Mánegarm, the giant wolf/warg who chases the moon (bonus for magical properties).

Or maybe he’d prefer a ring that also doubles as a deadly weapon. Loki’s specialty seems to be small weapons that are used in intimate/close quarters, like this nifty little push dagger he uses in Avengers (2012)...

...so I think a defense ring sort of like these below (but more elegant and crafted to fit his personality, and less cheap-looking) would be appropriate:

Maybe the tip could be dipped in a deadly poison or paralyzing venom. I don’t know. But I think Loki would want a ring with dual purposes, a ring that would be beautiful and useful, something that not only symbolizes his love for Thor, but can also wreak havoc against those who wish to harm Thor (and Loki himself).

Ultimately, I see Loki most wanting to wear a ring like this:

BDSartJewelry(Esty.com)

Rachel Entwistle (Trouva.com)

Maybe it would be made out of a rare metal, something from the heart of a dying star, perhaps, or the jewels in the serpent’s eyes could be tiny potion cups, or a special curved needle could be hidden inside the ring itself. 

But the design of the ouroboros has particular significance in that it’s the symbol of Jörmungandr, one of Loki’s children, and it encircles the world (of Midgard), so I think he would find that especially appealing.

And now, because I can’t resist:

Imagine Thor, down on one knee, gazing at Loki tenderly as he slips a golden ouroboros ring on Loki’s finger. He says, “You know why I’m putting this snake ring on you, brother?”

“Because you love snakes, brother,” says Loki flatly.

“No, brother.” Pause. “Well. Yes, but besides that. I’m putting the world snake on you, brother, because...” He cups Loki’s hand and smiles at him, tears gleaming in his eyes. “You’re my whole world, brother.”

To which Loki can only whisper, “Brother.”