Blackness

The struggle for identity is not simply a dislocated search in the dark, but an upward swim against the forces of a society that has already decided one for you.

An Update on the Concept of the Machine

A common objection to neoclassical economic ideology is that the ideology posits people as rational pleasure-seeking machines and that reality is much more complicated than that, and any attempts to mold policy away from real observations in order for it to resemble the favored ideology tend to make things pretty miserable for everyone involved.

I think this objection is partially true. It would be more accurate to qualify one's definition of "machine." If we are talking about the machines humans make, then you can you point out that neoclassical ideology makes use of an old conception of a machine that is built on a simplified understanding of what machines are and how they work, because this is an old ideology that was beginning to be formulated not long after the Industrial Revolution when our technologies were simpler.

So the understanding is simplified because we made simpler machines back then. Human intellect often makes analogies between observable reality and its own invented technologies to better understand things. It provides a framework to organize all that data. Lots of data gets lost when the framework is more simplistic. So ideologies like these can be useful for certain expediencies, but they shouldn't be clung to when they are becoming outdated.

Really all living things are sorts of machines. But they are highly complicated machines that are produced by mechanisms with millions and millions of years of evolution behind them, whereas human machines are very crude and simple in comparison because their life span is roughly equal to when we started to make tools. But then we are learning more about the natural world everyday and our technologies reflect those deeper understandings as we apply what we have learned from nature and even our own technology to better manipulate the world for our own needs.

But yes, it is always a bad idea to attempt to make reality resemble your creations. The former is potentially infinite and the latter is a construct. Reality will very dependably refuse to be crammed into a temporary box.

Valve Rules

Not sure about what is being omitted or not, considering the author is employed by the entity he is writing about, but Yanis Varoufakis is a highly reputable and insightful economist so benefit of the doubt is probably applicable.

Also kudos to Valve for choosing this man (and not some hack like most corporations do) to be their in-house economist. Also, the subject matter this man is discussing (ie alternatives to command-control corporate capitalism) is not something that is usually allowed to be discussed on a blog owned by a for-profit corporation. The comments are very good as well.

Of course, considering the nature of Valve and its organization and its owners' philosophy, all this shouldn't come as a surprise either. The massive success of a company like this given the current environment is very encouraging. These are exciting ideas. 

Also if we didn't already know this, Valve rules.

Good Lord!

It occurred to me that I usually write as if the writing was a sort of heat exhaust: a release valve to exercise inner pains. A time of inspiration to be sure, but this could lead to an asymmetrical representation.

Too dark! A perpetual rollercoaster drop in which one blacks out. The beauty of life is found in the highs juxtaposed with the lows. It is all there, as it should be.

Resolve to write the joys, just as well.

Like Me

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Paolo Soleri

"By the age of thirty-five, Paolo Soleri, who was born in Turin in 1919, had already chosen to dwell in the Arizona desert and experience it as a way of life. As he did so, he began to reflect on urban architecture and the environment. From there, his interest grew exponentially, and he came to sense great synergy between different types of knowledge, thus resisting the tyranny of fragmentation and specialization."

A Conversation to Have With The Boss or (Insert Authority Figure)

"Come in. Sit down."

"So what's up?"

"You're fired."

"Fired huh."

"Yeah fired."

"What for."

"What for? You don't work. We have to ask you again and again to do what you should already know you need to do and we are sick of it. Just sick of it."

"..."

"What aren't you going to say something?"

"Do you know what it means to be human?"

"What?"

Do you...know what it means to be human. Sort of cliche I know. But it is worth asking."

"What does"

"What's your son's name?"

"My son? Why would you"

"Tom...Tom right?"

"Yeah it's Tom."

"He's got some problems huh? Tom?"

"You have no business"

"Just listen. Tom's got his problems. I can tell."

"And how's that?"

"Body language. Choice of words. Eye movements. I can tell."

"Okay. Sure he does."

"But what do you feel for him? What do you want for him?"

"I just want him to take care of himself. And he's"

"He's drinking? What."

"Yeah he drinks too much."

"Yeah I figured."

"I just don't get it. I gave him everything and he just bogged down."

"So kick him out of the house."

"I can't do that. Where would he go?"

"Right so you care about him."

"Of course I do!"

"So why not everybody else?"

"What? Because he's my son."

"Right we all feel that way. We feel that way with family and close friends. But think. Why not everyone else? What makes them less deserving?"

"It's just how"

"Yes?"

"It's how it works."

"Sure it is how it works. But why not ask the question? If you never ask such questions how would you ever know otherwise?"

"What does this have to do with me firing you?"

"Firing someone now is like throwing them out in the street. Do you understand?"

"It is not"

"So let me rephrase things. Why not relate to everybody as if they were your family? Why the fear? Why the contempt? Don't you know that life can be beautiful?"

Phew

Better to write more frequently I suppose. The ol' muscles are getting weak. Sometimes it is hard to write. I sit in the car in the commute and feel nothing. I sit at work and my head is full of ideas with nowhere to go. People behind me talk much about nothing. I sit at home and am only filled with sighs. Hope it is a phase.

A rich inner world fades in and out of view at least. Connected to a whole pulsing nervous system desperate to express itself under the cracked concrete of empire.

I realize hedonism is not necessarily or completely evil, but merely pitter patterings of a people trying to tap what's left of emotions that were long extinguished after being dragged down by dying ideas. Creation is salvation, as it always is.