1 Bobby Sadwing

Bobby Goodwing, Bobby Badwing, Bobby Sadwing. He used all three

of these names – and still many others. I’ll call him Sadwing here.
He related to Husserl as a person who wasn’t satisfied with mere war-
ranted assertion. Sadwing, like Husserl, wanted to know, if possible,
what the fuck he was talking about in the first place.
Heidegger was also great on this. Restore force to the elementary words.
A force lost and buried under idle talk that does not know that it
does not know. Sadwing talked of a deafness to the hollowness of our
warranted assertions. Our practical noises.
Merleau-Ponty (also) wrote of having always to go back to the funda-
mentals. Sadwing put it as the fundamentality of the intention. This
is a root-seeking intention. Depths. Basis. Foundation. All metaphors,
with metaphor itself a possible foundation.
Wittgenstein too talked of philosophy as clarification of thought, a striv-
ing to possess – get a grip on, control – the meaning of the talk that
spews forth from us.
Sadwing couldn’t help reflecting on the “uselessness” of such philosophy
when it was time to pay the rent. Technology is our god. The science
that plays midwife shines by reflected light.
Philosophy is “just opinion.” Yet this philosophical statement is pre-
sented as a serious truth, despite its immediate self-cancellation.
That’s how bad we are at reasoning. Such a confused rejection of phi-
losophy is proof simultaneously of its use and uselessness. Technology
is god because we are too stupid and lazy (too viscerally minded) for
any other metric.
Nature “grades” our machines. Recently the ocean crushed a sub-
mersible and its wealthy passengers – not far from the wreckage of
the Titanic, an earlier piece of reckless daring.
Is this the sadness in his wing ? Rhetoric is technology, as politicians
know. “Demonic” pragmatism recognizes that war is the true logic.
Whatever works, whatever wins is true enough for me. If this is logically
problematic when taken as an earnest definition of the true(and I think
it is), then take it as an ironic or undecidable speech act. Take it as
rhetoric in defense of rhetoric. The demonic pragmatist doesn’t take
your sentimental fancygirl rational norms seriously. Truthiness radiates
outward from the working weapon.