Sunday Morning

Andy Warhol at Serendipity

I want to be a machine. – Andy Warhol

Warhol's interesting ethical reflections in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) show an aversion to affect that parallels that of some Abhidharmic texts. In Buddhism it is the "tendency to react by emotions" that is the source of unnecessary bondages. Warhol bases his preference precisely on the assumption that machines are not tossed about by fluctuating affect as humans are. Again he shows a trend in our society toward something like the not-self doctrine of primitive Buddhism.

According to the Abhidharma, "disturbances by emotionality will be removed by changes in interpretation"; the goal is to rearrange one's relation to language so that the metaphor of selfhood is not constantly presupposed in one's thought processes.