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EXEGESIS
FRAVIA'S REALITY CRACKING LAB ~ TEXT CRACKING SECTION
Updated in February 2008                            
[intro] ~ [text cracking] ~ [argumentation]
[essays] ~ [tools]
[Apply your exegetic power now] ~ [Some texts worth reading]

Ivan Bilibin shows you what's like to understand reality, 46932 bytes   The web is text. All images and sounds and frills notwithstanding, the web is text. It was created in order to exchange and store texts. Email are texts, the whole Usenet is in great part text... Perl is an acronym of "Practical Extraction Report Language" and was created to extract information from text files and prepare reports. Samo samo for python etcetera.
It is evident: because of the web the 'written expression' has re-acquired an importance it did seem to have in part lost during the (now obsolete) aera of radio, telephone and television (also known as "age of the frill-morons" :-)
Yes: the web is text, an ocean of text, a galaxy of messages and information without order, with dubiose autorship, with missing or misplaced references.
How do you now if the paper you are reading on a site called "university of southern Malawi" is a real university paper with scientific value or a complete fake that has been put up by a kid to prank you and thousand others?
No wonder that "urban legends" abound on the web. Trying to fix the "paternity" of a page can be a nightmare per se.
So we need means and tools to understand the real value of the texts we encounter.
Alas, in a society that has been tv-zombified for 50 years and counting we don't have any more at hand such means and tools. Our "passive consumer" society would be doomed if anyone would really be able to evaluate the authority, usefulness, and reliability of the information he finds (or -more commonly- he is "spooned with" by the owners of his information media).
An interesting way out - among other possible solutions - is to go back to the old "text-crackers" of once. One could maybe start with the great rethorical wizards of ancient Greece (Sophists and co), that make great reading (especially uncommented), and continue with the über-masters that came out of the evangelische text-exegesis Schule: the incredible German medieval "Quellenkunde" crackers of the beginning of the XIX century.
We are seekers. Since we can search, we find. The old lore. Since we can reverse we will learn how to crack - in spades - the pathetical 'protection schemes' used by magazines, newspapers, politicians, you name the scum... in fact how to see through the fog that any deceiving writer spreads. We will thus learn how to fight against email spammers, AND against the propagandist of the rotten world-order of today, that our advertisement enemies glorify everyday on all their owned media.
We are reversers, a new race... but also a very old one (Corax, Tisias, Thrasymachus!, Isocrates, Waitz, Holder-Egger). Beware.


Text cracking (rethorical reversing)
History of an almost forgotten lore 


What does 'exegesis' mean? Nothing more, and nothing less, than applying a sound 'reverse engineering' approach on a given written text.

This is a very POWERFUL technique, if applied to the propaganda that surrounds you. You want some examples?

"Text reversing" is an almost forgotten Art, as I said.
The best reversers of this kind where a bunch of German history professors of the late XIX and of the beginning of last (XX) century, like Georg Waitz, Harry Bresslau, Ernst Dümmler, Oswald Holder-Egger and many more... These professors had not only exceptional brains and capacities but also, for a lucky historical coincidence, almost unlimited resources at their disposal.
Since Germany was "young" and wanted to 'prove' its historical 'right' to be one of the great european nations, the exegesis of medieval text-sources, aka "Quellenforschung", reached highs that afterwards noone never obtained again. That's the reason most sources originally collated (or if you prefer 'cracked') between 1820 and 1915 are still being re-published and used nowadays (by the degenerated historians of to-day, who -mostly- don't know neither greek nor latin and tend to read (and publish) sources in their translated (and non-collated) versions... a truly "barbarical" degeneration when you think that most HIGH SCHOOL professors around 1900 -not to mention the university teachers of those times- were able to read latin, greek, and often enough Sanskrit as well!
In fact, text-cracking and text-exegesis, with all other "rethorical" lores, are nowadays sciences in DECADENCE! Maybe the web will now change this... Text is again "king", difficult to find and hard to gather through all the false lures, in order to extract the true small niggets of knowledge.

What was I saying? Ach Ja: Alas! Stupid Germans went militarist twice in half a century and - their reversing cleverness notwithstanding - all the German reversers went conquering their neighbours together with all other zombies!
Since they were - twice - so stupid as to attack east and west at the same time, the catastrophe was twice assured.
Alas! The greatest text-crackers scene of this planet was almost completely destroyed! In fact all those students of the great and older "exegesis wizards" that were able to survive the first World War did die during the Second World War, so that the whole Quellenkundliche scene, the 'text-crackers' scene went down with them (hence - for those interested in history of the medieval history studies - the appearence and predominance in the fifties and sixties of the completely useless and 'frill oriented' french school of the "Bloch and Duby sort" :-)
Yet not all great text-crackers disappeared... there have been some rare exceptions, the most significant of them being represented by Adolf Hofmeister, a student of the great Alexander Cartellieri, himself one of the last great wizards in text-cracking. Hofmeister survived in the small German university of Greifswald, and did even impart his teachings to a couple of younger students, Frithjof Sielaff being the most able one... (a very interesting) story... which has the added advantage of being perfectly true :-)

In the reality cracking section of my site you'll already find some outstanding essays that cover, at least in part, this same argument (for instance Martine Joly's Rhetoric of advertisement, a "Marlboro Classic" Advertisement analyzed, yet they are, like most anti-advertisement essays, mostly 'visual' oriented.

You can apply some interesting exegesis (or rather 'anti-exegesis' techniques to a SONG as well, as I tried to prove for my friend Richard Matthew Stallman with an interesting (at least in my eyes :-) example.

Nuff said, for now: Knowledge of the lost exegesis techniques and of rhetoric will be enough (at least I hope) to reverse any text black and blue, at least compared with to-days almost absolute ignorance of these matters (and yet I believe that our reversing techniques are something that would be really worth teaching in the schools to-day).

The "Argumentation" aspect
  


Here you go... as you can imagine this is all rather "in fieri"...
The fundamental Thirty - Eight Ways to Win an Argument, by Schopenhauer

Another interesting and refreshing approach by David Barry (How to Win Arguments, As It Were - 2001)

(This is also part of the trolls lore)


The Essays
  


Here you go... as you can imagine this all is FAR from being correctly systemathized...

necrophi.htm

Gossip's Sexual tendencies and practices of necrophiliacs...
with an introduction and exegesis by fravia+
14 October 1998

ductusu1.htm

VK's Landlord vs Tenant: a "text-exegesis" crack
with a small exegesis addition by fravia+
21 October 1998

truber_1.htm

Trubert's Linguistic cracking
('Nationality' exegesis)
23 December 1998

NATO aggression adjectives

Fravia's "propaganda cracking"
('NATO-Serbia wars: April/May 1999)
Spring 1999

Analysis of the very LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU worm
so many people are blabbering about in these days

Fravia's "Actuality and Disinformation"
('an example of crass disinformation: May 2000)
May 2000

Tools
  

Well, more a kind of joke than a real tool, and yet, and yet...
This "Web Economy Bullshit Generator", a Javascript tool by Leslie Lee, originally at http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html, can be of course tweaked as needed.


Apply your exegetic power now
 (After having understood the points made above) 

Well, let's see if the following expressions can be easily reversed... some are pretty obvious, while for some you might enjoy the upside down explanations, however, you shouldn't look until you have reversed them first. The examples (taken from George Carlin's show) esemplify how many euphemisms have already so flown into common language that we don't recognize them any more ("senior citiziens" instead of old people, for instance).
  1. "The price is worth it" (1)
  2. "It's easy to imagine an infinite number of situations where the government might legitimately give out false information" (2)
  3. "Hoteling" (3)
  4. "Voluntary" reduction plans for obnoxious emissions (for instance by Keidanren, the Japan Business Federation, go figure)
  5. "Empowerment"(4)
  6. "Freedom fighters"(5)
  7. "In God we trust" "God bless America" "Gott mit uns"
  8. "Structural adjustment"
  9. "lifestyle" glossy mags
  10. "indecent" words
  11. "king size"
Some examples (from a George Carlin's show)


Some texts worth reading
 (A short bibliography of sort) 

There are many useful exegesis-related texts on the web. Here a small choice.

Upside down explanations -- suoı̣ʇɐuɐƮdxǝ uʍop ǝpı̣sdᑎ

1): ˙suoı̣ʇɔuɐs Nᑎ oʇ ǝnp pǝı̣p ǝʌɐɥ oɥʍ uǝɹpƮı̣ɥɔ ı̣bɐɹı̣ uoı̣ƮƮı̣ɯ ɟƮɐɥ pǝʇɐɯı̣ʇsǝ ǝɥʇ uo ʇɥɓı̣ɹqƮɐ ǝuı̣ǝƮǝpɐɯ
2): ˙ʇɹnoƆ ǝɯǝɹdnS ǝɥʇ ǝɹoɟǝq ɓuı̣nɓɹɐ ‘uosƮO ǝɹopoǝɥ⊥ Ʈɐɹǝuǝ⅁-ɹoʇı̣ɔı̣ƮoS ˙S˙ᑎ
3): ˙sı̣sɐq pǝǝu-sɐ uo ǝɔɐdsʞɹoʍ ʇǝɓ ʎƮuo sǝǝʎoƮdɯǝ puɐ pǝuɓı̣ssɐ sı̣ ǝƮɔı̣qnɔ ou :ǝƮʎʇs-ʇɹǝqƮı̣p
4): (noʎ uʍo ʇɐɥʇ ǝsoɥʇ) ˙ǝq ʇɐɥʇ sɹǝʍod ǝɥʇ ʎq pǝɹǝɟɟo ʎƮsnoı̣ɔɐɹɓ ʇsnſ̣ sı̣ ‘uoı̣ʇɔɐ ǝʌı̣ʇɔǝƮƮoɔ ɟo ʇƮnsǝɹ ɐ sɐ pǝpuǝʇuı̣ ɹǝʌǝu sı̣ ʇI
5): ¿ʇɥɓı̣ɟ ,sɹǝʇɥɓı̣ɟ ɯopǝǝɹɟ, op ʇɐɥʍ ‘ǝɹı̣ɟ ʇɥɓı̣ɟ sɹǝʇɥɓı̣ɟǝɹı̣ɟ puɐ ǝɯı̣ɹɔ ʇɥɓı̣ɟ sɹǝʇɥɓı̣ɟǝɯı̣ɹɔ ɟI ˙ɐɹǝʇǝɔʇǝ ‘ɐ⅂ʞ ǝɥʇ ǝʞı̣Ʈ sɹǝsuɐǝƮɔ ɔı̣uɥʇǝ ‘ɹɐʎʇɐɯʞǝH uı̣ppnqƮn⅁ ǝʞı̣Ʈ sƮɐuı̣ɯı̣ɹɔ-ɯnı̣do suı̣ppǝɥɐſ̣nɯ uɐɥɓɟɐ :sɹǝʇɥɓı̣ɟ ɯopǝǝɹɟ ɹǝɥʇo ɓuoɯɐ ˙pɐǝʇsuı̣ ,puı̣ɯɹǝʇsɐɯ ʇsı̣ɹoɹɹǝʇ, ɐ ʍou sı̣ ,ɹǝʇɥɓı̣ɟ ɯopǝǝɹɟ,-xǝ uɐ ‘uǝpɐƮ uı̣q ɐɯɐso ʇɐɥʇ ʎɐs oʇ ǝɔı̣ɟɟnS


Petit image

(c) 1952-2032: [fravia+], all rights reserved, reversed, revised & reviled