Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Aperture
Through various cycles of birth and death, there seems to be the focusing in and pulling back of the frame of awareness, almost like an aperture, which is demonstrated at least in the behaviors of beings of a higher intelligence.
Out of chaos, there is a struggle to assemble similar and complimentary elements into a coherent structure that is of use, for example an institution arises with its own bureaucracy to guide a process that is found to be useful regularly and with repetition, so that it achieves a dependable result. A corporation is conceived to carry out economic functions, or a justice system is conceived to keep peace, or a representational democracy is conceived to facilitate mass social coordination, and so on.
The curious thing is that when structures like these arise out of the chaos, our awareness is constricted to cultivate the structures themselves, and their chaotic origins slide subtly into the peripheral, and then eventually out of sight. To some, the structures appear as something to further refine. To others, the structures appear as something to climb and gain power and pleasure from.
Finally, awareness is further constricted to the mere individuals themselves, as demonstrated by the iron law of institutions, and the ensuing power games ensure the collapse of whatever structures were built up, necessitating a return to chaos.
There is a memory within the chaos. Yes, there is fragmentation, but the fragments themselves do not necessarily break down into their original primitive shape. They retain their history. We keep much of our knowledge and technology and rebuild from there. And as structures disintegrate, this aperture of awareness is blown back out to a cosmic awareness, an awareness of the chaos from which the structures arose, as well as the constituent parts of the structures themselves.
Out of chaos, there is a struggle to assemble similar and complimentary elements into a coherent structure that is of use, for example an institution arises with its own bureaucracy to guide a process that is found to be useful regularly and with repetition, so that it achieves a dependable result. A corporation is conceived to carry out economic functions, or a justice system is conceived to keep peace, or a representational democracy is conceived to facilitate mass social coordination, and so on.
The curious thing is that when structures like these arise out of the chaos, our awareness is constricted to cultivate the structures themselves, and their chaotic origins slide subtly into the peripheral, and then eventually out of sight. To some, the structures appear as something to further refine. To others, the structures appear as something to climb and gain power and pleasure from.
Finally, awareness is further constricted to the mere individuals themselves, as demonstrated by the iron law of institutions, and the ensuing power games ensure the collapse of whatever structures were built up, necessitating a return to chaos.
There is a memory within the chaos. Yes, there is fragmentation, but the fragments themselves do not necessarily break down into their original primitive shape. They retain their history. We keep much of our knowledge and technology and rebuild from there. And as structures disintegrate, this aperture of awareness is blown back out to a cosmic awareness, an awareness of the chaos from which the structures arose, as well as the constituent parts of the structures themselves.
Get Off Yr Pendulum
When one becomes injured in some way by an extreme manifestation of some ideology, one tends to swing in the opposite direction, clinging to the inverted values in opposition to the offending ideology, imagining that somehow doing the exact opposite of the fools that did the harm is the path to absolute truth and justice, without understanding that it is the very act of clinging unconditionally to any single idea that is responsible for the bulk of human folly.
Such are the perils of swinging about too heavily one's own rigid ideology.
Such are the perils of swinging about too heavily one's own rigid ideology.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Play On
It is at this point that I have to admit that a vast and heavy exhaustion has settled over me. I seem to have managed to bungle my way through countless manic/depressive cycles in the past: one tries to make use of the tools available within each phase of the cycle to continue on. In phases of expansion I would delight in the myriad flashes of logical connections, putting together a sort of architecture made up of the logical extractions from sudden vivid metaphorical visions. Then contraction would set in and I would fall, a blackness setting in, deaf and blind to all of life's pleasures and comforts. I would catch glimpses of something ancient and timeless within, and then begin to attempt to express the meaning of those things (both through music and spiritual pursuit and contemplation) leading to a joy and excitement that amplified itself into another expansion, the language itself modulating to express the moods and fixations present within each stage of the cycle.
And that's life isn't it? Cycles within cycles within cycles. Sometimes I seen an entire revolution of changing seasons internally, as the seasons change gradually in nature, and the season of a great slab of human history grinds its way into a winter phase.
Now there is so much learned and so much to write, but it has proven so difficult physiologically. I try to set another spark by going out on the bike. The color floods back in momentarily, the words come, and by the time I'm back the black and the fog settle back in. I see others out possibly doing something similar in their own way: running, doing sit ups and push ups out on the grass, their faces grave, everyone out trying to jumpstart their waning energies. Trying literally to push past the descending veil. A vision of spring in one's head, trying to manifest itself when outside the frosts of an early winter are just descending. Like a laboring heart, the exertions pump life into something bleeding out and losing its color. But for how long?
Part of living through any cycle is the expectation that a new phase is just around the bend. If one grows tired of the present circumstances one can try something different if one can just hang in there a bit longer. My own cycle is settling in deep and heavy after nervous energies mounted into an electric mass of near-madness. I continue to work when I can; I try to seize those moments in which something coherent is coming together once again. I also try to manually mold my cycle with physical exercise, decent nutrition, meditation and the necessary input of ideas and the pursuit of good emotion, though sometimes much of it is reversed and I eat good-tasting but bad-for-you shit and drink and fiddle around and whatnot. But then one has to live too and I wonder how detrimental these indulgences really are. At the moment I am too tired and confused to sort through it all. A minor survival trip now, as HST put it. I'm doing what works in an ad hoc manner and sticking desperately to the expectation that I'll come out of it alright. I've stored away my ideals in a temporary compartment and seek to retrieve them in due time.
And that's life isn't it? Cycles within cycles within cycles. Sometimes I seen an entire revolution of changing seasons internally, as the seasons change gradually in nature, and the season of a great slab of human history grinds its way into a winter phase.
Now there is so much learned and so much to write, but it has proven so difficult physiologically. I try to set another spark by going out on the bike. The color floods back in momentarily, the words come, and by the time I'm back the black and the fog settle back in. I see others out possibly doing something similar in their own way: running, doing sit ups and push ups out on the grass, their faces grave, everyone out trying to jumpstart their waning energies. Trying literally to push past the descending veil. A vision of spring in one's head, trying to manifest itself when outside the frosts of an early winter are just descending. Like a laboring heart, the exertions pump life into something bleeding out and losing its color. But for how long?
Part of living through any cycle is the expectation that a new phase is just around the bend. If one grows tired of the present circumstances one can try something different if one can just hang in there a bit longer. My own cycle is settling in deep and heavy after nervous energies mounted into an electric mass of near-madness. I continue to work when I can; I try to seize those moments in which something coherent is coming together once again. I also try to manually mold my cycle with physical exercise, decent nutrition, meditation and the necessary input of ideas and the pursuit of good emotion, though sometimes much of it is reversed and I eat good-tasting but bad-for-you shit and drink and fiddle around and whatnot. But then one has to live too and I wonder how detrimental these indulgences really are. At the moment I am too tired and confused to sort through it all. A minor survival trip now, as HST put it. I'm doing what works in an ad hoc manner and sticking desperately to the expectation that I'll come out of it alright. I've stored away my ideals in a temporary compartment and seek to retrieve them in due time.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
FREE ACCESS TO LOCAL SLUTS
That's what one of the titles of an email read in my junk folder.
Access? Like swiping a card through a reader or something? What in the world are people doing around here?
Access? Like swiping a card through a reader or something? What in the world are people doing around here?
Monday, July 22, 2013
Edit
Just scrapped a post on laughter. It was far too limited a treatment of a complex human phenomenon, so I figure I'll go back to the drawing board on that one sometime.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Touched
What begins as a certain pained reaction to a perceived stressor sets off a cascade of panicked thoughts and impressions, all fueled within a self-sustaining positive feedback loop by the repeated injection of epinephrine, until what appears as a normal setting takes on the air of some strange, horrifying forest of menace.
The only way to prevent a repeated event like this from eating away at one's mind and body is to direct it, to guide it into productive avenues of action, so that with a greater cascade of intensity comes a greater mountain of productive, creative power, as opposed to cutting away a deeper, corroded hole of madness and despair.
The only way to prevent a repeated event like this from eating away at one's mind and body is to direct it, to guide it into productive avenues of action, so that with a greater cascade of intensity comes a greater mountain of productive, creative power, as opposed to cutting away a deeper, corroded hole of madness and despair.
LIfespans
It is hard to conceptualize this notion of a civilization. It seems like a civilization's lifespan resides in the application of an actual organizational system, as opposed to some delineated nation state. Or at least that seems to be how things are panning out now.
A lot of political scientists are now describing our global state of affairs as a "world system". Many disparate cultures across the world - whether they have chosen to or not - have adapted a Western system of organization, typified today as a neoliberal capitalist system. It is as if in concurrence with the zenith of British and then US power, the very socio-economic environment that every industrialized nation has to subsist in has taken on a certain quality, and in response, various nations arising from various histories have adapted this Western capitalist mode of organization, so as to harmonize with the greater and more powerful body of human activity that expands in power and across geographical space as empire spreads and sustains itself.
However, such a body of human activity occurs on a greater ecological backdrop, which itself is suffering from an increasingly dissonant relationship with the surrounding environment. And then such strains amplify tensions among competing organizational philosophies that have always been embedded within the hegemonic culture. You see increasing strains under the initial jubilant images of the rising powers of China, India, and Brazil. Just a year ago, everyone was talking about how these nations were blasting ahead, with China in particular expected to overtake the US in good time. And now each of these nations is experiencing its share of increasing social dissent and economic difficulty.
We are all sharing a dwindling pool of resources, and conducting our affairs in an increasingly toxic and unstable environment. Within a collective culture increasingly defined by anxiety and fear, each of our individual bodies and minds is burned up by the strains of stress. It is the organizational system itself and its related share of characteristics that is quickly becoming a detrimental habit.
This organizational style has exhausted itself, whatever exhaustion means on a mechanical level. The solution in the end will be something beyond the appearance of anything we know today of the mainstream. We can observe plenty of potential seeds of a new system taking root in the social body, these seeds identifiable both by the vitality of their essential justness and the resulting dissonance they display when interacting with the dominant social system.
The solution won't be more jobs, or more government regulation, or the weeding out of corruption, or the reigning in of special interests, or the election of a better president, or what have you. It will consist of the repeated exertion of what we find to be the good in our everyday experiences. It will come from the bottom, not the top.
This organizational style has exhausted itself, whatever exhaustion means on a mechanical level. The solution in the end will be something beyond the appearance of anything we know today of the mainstream. We can observe plenty of potential seeds of a new system taking root in the social body, these seeds identifiable both by the vitality of their essential justness and the resulting dissonance they display when interacting with the dominant social system.
The solution won't be more jobs, or more government regulation, or the weeding out of corruption, or the reigning in of special interests, or the election of a better president, or what have you. It will consist of the repeated exertion of what we find to be the good in our everyday experiences. It will come from the bottom, not the top.
Engines
So there is this temptation to view each of our selves as these engines, which all function slightly differently, depending on the inputs of the environment and how we react to the inputs.
For example, one person might be floored by going out and being social, and so their energy is piqued and their entire experience of life is heightened. Others prefer quieter or at least more intimate environments with a different set of inputs. Or both of these situations can have different effects on different individuals based on moods at that moment.
It becomes advantageous to learn how one's own engine functions based on a very complex interrelation of inputs, outputs, and internal states, and to learn when to pursue a certain course based on one's own mood or disposition.
And then one should also take care into not falling into the trap of putting too much weight on a metaphor for understanding reality that is itself a mere instantiation such as understanding something as complex as an individual as a mechanical engine.
For example, one person might be floored by going out and being social, and so their energy is piqued and their entire experience of life is heightened. Others prefer quieter or at least more intimate environments with a different set of inputs. Or both of these situations can have different effects on different individuals based on moods at that moment.
It becomes advantageous to learn how one's own engine functions based on a very complex interrelation of inputs, outputs, and internal states, and to learn when to pursue a certain course based on one's own mood or disposition.
And then one should also take care into not falling into the trap of putting too much weight on a metaphor for understanding reality that is itself a mere instantiation such as understanding something as complex as an individual as a mechanical engine.
Thoughts on Language
Language seems to be charged with its emotional quality when it is actually articulated by the speaker. The words themselves express certain semantics that can be contemplated and analyzed somewhat objectively, depending on their emotional neutrality, and each word has a different charge of a different intensity, which varies when both utilized by the speaker and apprehended by the listener.
Things get really interesting when you have dialogue, and even more interesting when you have group conversation. You see subjects progress along with each speaker contributing in turn, which subtly alters the direction of the group's emotional current. The language of the conversation itself flows forth out of a collective mood that arises based on all sorts of social cues, body movements, voice intonations, evaluations of power and etc. Each speaker responds to the general direction of the current, the group crackling in a certain direction like a cluster of fire crackers. Then the conversation can take off in tangents when one or more of the speakers seizes on a word or subject and imbues it with the right amount of enthusiasm, pulling the rest of the group with them.
The logic of the conversation progresses like a fire: it must be fueled. Within the many feedback loops is a vitality that is nurtured with every enthusiastic reaction to a shared idea or thought.
It is always very difficult communicating everything one feels and thinks, as the instantiation of language to share those things necessarily amputates a vast amount of information and emotion, due to the fact that language itself can only store so much information, whilst all the rest is sloshing around in these brains of ours, waiting to be scooped out by these lingual vehicles to be shared. Additionally, one is necessarily constrained by the movement of the conversation itself, as well as one's own emotional constitution.
Understanding is possible. It just takes time and patience. What it requires is an encouragement among all the participants in the conversation as well as a willingness to give each participant the benefit of a doubt that he or she is earnestly trying to express him or herself. You get all sorts of subtle adjustments prefixed by "well what I meant to say" or "no not necessarily" or "yes, but" or so on. Collective understanding and agreement is revised on the spot, and each participant can more finely delineate their positions, and you eventually arrive toward this greater lingual extrapolation of what is all collectively in our heads.
Even at this moment, I feel that this has been a sorely unsatisfactory account in writing of whatever it is that just popped into my head. My mind is somewhat muddy from the previous night's intoxication, and though there was a detailed visual-based concept that came into focus, the actual task of converting it into a language that progressed logically was hampered by the weak firing of that portion of my brain. So then maybe there will be another time when I am in a better position to articulate the same concept, just in more clear language.
If we allow for this in everyone - and this is actually much more difficult to do than to talk about, since arguments can quickly erupt into heated emotion and at that point our adversarial circuits take over - we can have something approximating understanding. I've found that a lot of people have a fairly accurate intuitive grasp on daily reality, and that if you work towards an understanding based on that allowance, you can reach a decent agreement with a lot of different people. The trick is being patient enough not to let your emotions flare and declare the other your enemy. At that point, language is instrumentalized into a weapon or a point of leverage to best the other.
Things get really interesting when you have dialogue, and even more interesting when you have group conversation. You see subjects progress along with each speaker contributing in turn, which subtly alters the direction of the group's emotional current. The language of the conversation itself flows forth out of a collective mood that arises based on all sorts of social cues, body movements, voice intonations, evaluations of power and etc. Each speaker responds to the general direction of the current, the group crackling in a certain direction like a cluster of fire crackers. Then the conversation can take off in tangents when one or more of the speakers seizes on a word or subject and imbues it with the right amount of enthusiasm, pulling the rest of the group with them.
The logic of the conversation progresses like a fire: it must be fueled. Within the many feedback loops is a vitality that is nurtured with every enthusiastic reaction to a shared idea or thought.
It is always very difficult communicating everything one feels and thinks, as the instantiation of language to share those things necessarily amputates a vast amount of information and emotion, due to the fact that language itself can only store so much information, whilst all the rest is sloshing around in these brains of ours, waiting to be scooped out by these lingual vehicles to be shared. Additionally, one is necessarily constrained by the movement of the conversation itself, as well as one's own emotional constitution.
Understanding is possible. It just takes time and patience. What it requires is an encouragement among all the participants in the conversation as well as a willingness to give each participant the benefit of a doubt that he or she is earnestly trying to express him or herself. You get all sorts of subtle adjustments prefixed by "well what I meant to say" or "no not necessarily" or "yes, but" or so on. Collective understanding and agreement is revised on the spot, and each participant can more finely delineate their positions, and you eventually arrive toward this greater lingual extrapolation of what is all collectively in our heads.
Even at this moment, I feel that this has been a sorely unsatisfactory account in writing of whatever it is that just popped into my head. My mind is somewhat muddy from the previous night's intoxication, and though there was a detailed visual-based concept that came into focus, the actual task of converting it into a language that progressed logically was hampered by the weak firing of that portion of my brain. So then maybe there will be another time when I am in a better position to articulate the same concept, just in more clear language.
If we allow for this in everyone - and this is actually much more difficult to do than to talk about, since arguments can quickly erupt into heated emotion and at that point our adversarial circuits take over - we can have something approximating understanding. I've found that a lot of people have a fairly accurate intuitive grasp on daily reality, and that if you work towards an understanding based on that allowance, you can reach a decent agreement with a lot of different people. The trick is being patient enough not to let your emotions flare and declare the other your enemy. At that point, language is instrumentalized into a weapon or a point of leverage to best the other.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Take it Easy
Solving a complex social problem with a single idea from a single person's head is impossible.
That's because ideas are 4 dimensional. They appear differently to each person that apprehends them, because each person has their own personal formative history of intellectual function, and each will comprehend an idea in their own way, and then act on that idea in their own way as well.
And this comprehension and action changes over time. The means of comprehending, and the means of acting changes as previous actions and comprehensions change the social and intellectual landscape.
This is why politics is so difficult. I mean, everyone hates on politicians. But it is really, really difficult implementing mass action. Its why politicians have to wear so many faces at once.
It hurts my head just thinking about it. Goddamn. I think of Captain Beefheart saying wryly in one of his songs, "Someone has had too much to think." One of my favorite lines of his.
Now, there are people that will screw you over. But it is problems like these when you really have to open up to people and trust them. You have to relinquish control. You have to say, this is what I think we should do, but it is only a fraction of reality, so please handle the rest.
Trying to make everything conform to the ideas in your own head is impossible. To attempt to do so is the essence of totalitarianism.
That's because ideas are 4 dimensional. They appear differently to each person that apprehends them, because each person has their own personal formative history of intellectual function, and each will comprehend an idea in their own way, and then act on that idea in their own way as well.
And this comprehension and action changes over time. The means of comprehending, and the means of acting changes as previous actions and comprehensions change the social and intellectual landscape.
This is why politics is so difficult. I mean, everyone hates on politicians. But it is really, really difficult implementing mass action. Its why politicians have to wear so many faces at once.
It hurts my head just thinking about it. Goddamn. I think of Captain Beefheart saying wryly in one of his songs, "Someone has had too much to think." One of my favorite lines of his.
Now, there are people that will screw you over. But it is problems like these when you really have to open up to people and trust them. You have to relinquish control. You have to say, this is what I think we should do, but it is only a fraction of reality, so please handle the rest.
Trying to make everything conform to the ideas in your own head is impossible. To attempt to do so is the essence of totalitarianism.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Gotta Catch Em All
It's strange. You come across a lot of people on a daily basis, whether on TV, on the Internet, or just in person, who believe that businesses are simply supposed to make a profit and that's how they function and really that's all they owe to society. When a business pursues its own self-interest everyone is showered with goodies and lives happily ever after. That's how the world works and that's how it has always been.
Well no, not really. That's been the general attitude for the last 30 years, and curiously things have generally been going to shit for that period of time, but it isn't how things have always been. Even economic actors themselves expressed other values than a naked lust for profit. One did it for the strength of one's nation. Or one thought one should take care of one's community or society. One thought that we should be doing it for the chillins. Even Adam Smith recognized that pure self-interest was not enough to order a society. He just saw it as a useful ordering principle to be combined with others.
Of course the business ethos has emphasized profit for centuries upon centuries, but profit didn't have to eclipse everything else and it doesn't have to now. Human beings are complex creatures guided by a complex set of motives.
You don't see a whole lot of people strutting around today proclaiming that might makes right. Its not okay for stronger people to crack weaker people over the head and take their stuff, at least in principle. But that is exactly what a pure principle of profit amounts to in material practice in the real world, stripped of the added complexities of economic concepts.
Within the bounds of a market, it is money, the exchange medium, that can be used to acquire any good or facilitate any service up for sale. The more money someone has in such a context, the more power is essentially available. Naturally, the more money someone accumulates, the more power, the more means that person has to traverse and manipulate that landscape, and the more means that person has of making more money, via investment, the purchasing and exercising of capital, the purchasing of rights to rent collection such as through land, intellectual properties, insurance agencies and etc.
A positive feedback loop. So via profit alone, an economic entity will grow and grow until it reaches constraints such as laws, social pressures, physical and ecological limits, and especially important, the boundaries of the market itself. Even then, if an economic entity becomes powerful enough, it can push back a lot of those constraints.
Laws can be modified via corruption. Social pressures can be assuaged via public relations. Some physical and ecological pressures can be overcome via technological innovation and/or simple externalization of negative ecological consequence, such as the dumping of pollution on someone else.
Most importantly, the boundaries of the market can be expanded, and they have been expanding for some time. I'm not just talking about privatization of public resources, though that happens too, but the opening of markets in foreign countries, which is usually done by force; contrary to what much of the American population believe, the market is not necessarily a natural formation. People tend to enjoy sharing with each other in a communal setting. It generally takes guns to come in and claim a resource that should really be available to everyone and charge money for it, for example.
And where the market can be expanded in political space, it can also be expanded within our minds. When almost everything can be bought, that leads to a habituation into thinking that everything is for sale. This tends to begin in the poor populations first. Those with little resources to trade for their well being are forced to put up for sale increasingly personal and/or sacred resources to compensate, such as their labor, or their own bodies.
The powerful find ways to get around the old constraints, constraints that were basically generated to protect the less powerful from complete disintegration. And with greater accumulative powers, the powerful become more powerful, and the powerless are left with less and less means to self-autonomy and actualization, and eventually even subsistence. After all, power is shared in the end. It has limits.
What I am getting at is that notions of community and even nation can at least counterbalance the destructive power of pure self-interest. One finds a delineated social entity to prize and preserve, and direct one's resources towards maintaining. But when concepts such as those melt away and alienation and fragmentation set in, then all the world becomes a playground for the power games of the powerful.
Might makes right, pure selfish pursuit of profit, it's all the same. Might makes right was an actual doctrine when monarchies were the primary form of political organization. It was an attitude that precipitated mass social unrest and cascading revolutions. Today it is the attitude that business is business. A man has a right to go out and make a profit. And so on. Let's go ahead and continue believing that is just fine.
Well no, not really. That's been the general attitude for the last 30 years, and curiously things have generally been going to shit for that period of time, but it isn't how things have always been. Even economic actors themselves expressed other values than a naked lust for profit. One did it for the strength of one's nation. Or one thought one should take care of one's community or society. One thought that we should be doing it for the chillins. Even Adam Smith recognized that pure self-interest was not enough to order a society. He just saw it as a useful ordering principle to be combined with others.
Of course the business ethos has emphasized profit for centuries upon centuries, but profit didn't have to eclipse everything else and it doesn't have to now. Human beings are complex creatures guided by a complex set of motives.
You don't see a whole lot of people strutting around today proclaiming that might makes right. Its not okay for stronger people to crack weaker people over the head and take their stuff, at least in principle. But that is exactly what a pure principle of profit amounts to in material practice in the real world, stripped of the added complexities of economic concepts.
Within the bounds of a market, it is money, the exchange medium, that can be used to acquire any good or facilitate any service up for sale. The more money someone has in such a context, the more power is essentially available. Naturally, the more money someone accumulates, the more power, the more means that person has to traverse and manipulate that landscape, and the more means that person has of making more money, via investment, the purchasing and exercising of capital, the purchasing of rights to rent collection such as through land, intellectual properties, insurance agencies and etc.
A positive feedback loop. So via profit alone, an economic entity will grow and grow until it reaches constraints such as laws, social pressures, physical and ecological limits, and especially important, the boundaries of the market itself. Even then, if an economic entity becomes powerful enough, it can push back a lot of those constraints.
Laws can be modified via corruption. Social pressures can be assuaged via public relations. Some physical and ecological pressures can be overcome via technological innovation and/or simple externalization of negative ecological consequence, such as the dumping of pollution on someone else.
Most importantly, the boundaries of the market can be expanded, and they have been expanding for some time. I'm not just talking about privatization of public resources, though that happens too, but the opening of markets in foreign countries, which is usually done by force; contrary to what much of the American population believe, the market is not necessarily a natural formation. People tend to enjoy sharing with each other in a communal setting. It generally takes guns to come in and claim a resource that should really be available to everyone and charge money for it, for example.
And where the market can be expanded in political space, it can also be expanded within our minds. When almost everything can be bought, that leads to a habituation into thinking that everything is for sale. This tends to begin in the poor populations first. Those with little resources to trade for their well being are forced to put up for sale increasingly personal and/or sacred resources to compensate, such as their labor, or their own bodies.
The powerful find ways to get around the old constraints, constraints that were basically generated to protect the less powerful from complete disintegration. And with greater accumulative powers, the powerful become more powerful, and the powerless are left with less and less means to self-autonomy and actualization, and eventually even subsistence. After all, power is shared in the end. It has limits.
What I am getting at is that notions of community and even nation can at least counterbalance the destructive power of pure self-interest. One finds a delineated social entity to prize and preserve, and direct one's resources towards maintaining. But when concepts such as those melt away and alienation and fragmentation set in, then all the world becomes a playground for the power games of the powerful.
Might makes right, pure selfish pursuit of profit, it's all the same. Might makes right was an actual doctrine when monarchies were the primary form of political organization. It was an attitude that precipitated mass social unrest and cascading revolutions. Today it is the attitude that business is business. A man has a right to go out and make a profit. And so on. Let's go ahead and continue believing that is just fine.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Something Else to Consider
Sometimes when someone is trying to explain something, and it is almost impossible to figure out what the hell the person is talking about, it might not be because the person is particularly deep and wise, but because the person is currently sucking at explaining things.
Explanation is itself an art. There is an aesthetic value to it. It should be challenging but in the end digestible and somewhat pleasurable.
Selves
We think we know selves. We think someone is a certain way.
But they are a different way when they are happy, and a different way when they are in pain, and such ways elicit responses in those they come into contact with, affecting the way the other is as well.
Granted there are core personalities and behaviors that characterize an individual, but many of these behaviors only manifest when they are elicited by social/environmental inputs.
Changes in the way an individual is perceived can happen fast and exponentially. One change in one person due to some chance occurrence can be transferred to everyone else that person comes into contact with. This might be sort of what the concept of karma was getting at. Good energy and bad energy pass through in waves. And since everything is so densely connected, these energy waves must necessarily wash back onto the originating agent, if the concept of an originating agent is even possible. It is conceptually anyways.
Possible behaviors elicited in an individual exist in an array that is programmed through repeated immersion in a society, the programs themselves established through repetition until the array of behaviors forms a system which is faithfully administrated through repeated mechanical action. Such systems delineate the array of possible behaviors, outside of which become transgressionary behaviors. But then when a system breaks down, the array of possible behaviors widens.
One takeaway from this metaphysical speculation is that causes don't necessarily originate in individuals. We will ultimately find that we are all bound together within a system, a system that constricts the array of possible individual actions, which therefore dictates how individuals can act in any given situation. As a system deteriorates, each individual bound to the system deteriorates in turn, and the same goes with the converse: augmentation in power.
To simplify this further, when things go bad we should all do our best to be nice to each other. Not always possible, or even desirable. Sometimes a kick in the teeth is just the thing to move everything along. Sometimes its not. But it is best to remember that that one guy who is a raging asshole is just really the weakest link in a long chain of deterioration, and that we are in this together and we need each other to get out of this.
But they are a different way when they are happy, and a different way when they are in pain, and such ways elicit responses in those they come into contact with, affecting the way the other is as well.
Granted there are core personalities and behaviors that characterize an individual, but many of these behaviors only manifest when they are elicited by social/environmental inputs.
Changes in the way an individual is perceived can happen fast and exponentially. One change in one person due to some chance occurrence can be transferred to everyone else that person comes into contact with. This might be sort of what the concept of karma was getting at. Good energy and bad energy pass through in waves. And since everything is so densely connected, these energy waves must necessarily wash back onto the originating agent, if the concept of an originating agent is even possible. It is conceptually anyways.
Possible behaviors elicited in an individual exist in an array that is programmed through repeated immersion in a society, the programs themselves established through repetition until the array of behaviors forms a system which is faithfully administrated through repeated mechanical action. Such systems delineate the array of possible behaviors, outside of which become transgressionary behaviors. But then when a system breaks down, the array of possible behaviors widens.
One takeaway from this metaphysical speculation is that causes don't necessarily originate in individuals. We will ultimately find that we are all bound together within a system, a system that constricts the array of possible individual actions, which therefore dictates how individuals can act in any given situation. As a system deteriorates, each individual bound to the system deteriorates in turn, and the same goes with the converse: augmentation in power.
To simplify this further, when things go bad we should all do our best to be nice to each other. Not always possible, or even desirable. Sometimes a kick in the teeth is just the thing to move everything along. Sometimes its not. But it is best to remember that that one guy who is a raging asshole is just really the weakest link in a long chain of deterioration, and that we are in this together and we need each other to get out of this.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Hotel California?
There's a mass hunger strike gaining steam in California's prisons over certain particularly barbaric practices such as solitary confinement.
The prison hunger strike is a curious phenomenon. Here you have this prison population, which is supposed to be despised by the majority of society because such and such made their choice and they deserve it and that is justice and so on. But then the state completely loses legitimacy if it isn't treating its prisoners with a minimum of humanity, which ticks up in quality over time.
This is how hunger strikes are successful. Our prison institution is a blight on the concept of what society is supposed to be. But at least we can't just let large swathes of a group die off. Of course there are deaths and rapes within the prison system all of the time. This should be outrageous, but the outrage is blunted over time with relentless cultural restylings in the form of rape humor and "shank" humor. Nevertheless, it bears repeating that we still can't let large proportions of the prison population die off from hunger.
Ideals do matter.
I don't wish to come off as particularly sanguine here. They "solved" the hunger strike at Guantanamo with forced feeding. Then we can rattle off a series of great injustices such as the large proportions of African American and Hispanic prisoners in there with very minor charges like drug possession (or perhaps bogus charges; it has been found that cops lie quite a lot), daily rape, beatings, murders, prison privatization and the drive to lobby for heavier criminal charges, a two-tiered justice system bifurcated with money, the very skewing of law towards the powerful, guard brutality, overcrowding, and etc. etc.
There is pushback. Again, ideals do matter. It is worth relentlessly repeating and advancing notions of minimal human rights that should be observed by every institution under any condition.
The prison hunger strike is a curious phenomenon. Here you have this prison population, which is supposed to be despised by the majority of society because such and such made their choice and they deserve it and that is justice and so on. But then the state completely loses legitimacy if it isn't treating its prisoners with a minimum of humanity, which ticks up in quality over time.
This is how hunger strikes are successful. Our prison institution is a blight on the concept of what society is supposed to be. But at least we can't just let large swathes of a group die off. Of course there are deaths and rapes within the prison system all of the time. This should be outrageous, but the outrage is blunted over time with relentless cultural restylings in the form of rape humor and "shank" humor. Nevertheless, it bears repeating that we still can't let large proportions of the prison population die off from hunger.
Ideals do matter.
I don't wish to come off as particularly sanguine here. They "solved" the hunger strike at Guantanamo with forced feeding. Then we can rattle off a series of great injustices such as the large proportions of African American and Hispanic prisoners in there with very minor charges like drug possession (or perhaps bogus charges; it has been found that cops lie quite a lot), daily rape, beatings, murders, prison privatization and the drive to lobby for heavier criminal charges, a two-tiered justice system bifurcated with money, the very skewing of law towards the powerful, guard brutality, overcrowding, and etc. etc.
There is pushback. Again, ideals do matter. It is worth relentlessly repeating and advancing notions of minimal human rights that should be observed by every institution under any condition.
PR
PR and advertising - the slow ascent to power with a deliberate climbing on the backs of others via image.
Waves
From the bottom, the wave appears ever so dreadful. It casts a long shadow; it towers at such a height. And what strange, dark shapes swirl underneath its shimmering curvature! There is hardly anything but fear, but not without this faintly smoldering ambition to climb it.
When one finds oneself perched atop its crest, which can happen every so often given the right conditions, one sees almost everything at once, and well, then there is nothing else to do but to ride the wave. One cannot do otherwise: there is only one direction to go.
Mastery comes with learning to climb atop the wave between shorter and shorter intervals. This is one of the highest experiences available to the intellect as far as I know, besides enlightenment. Such are the topographies of the energy that runs through us.
I'm not necessarily talking about power, but experience.
When one finds oneself perched atop its crest, which can happen every so often given the right conditions, one sees almost everything at once, and well, then there is nothing else to do but to ride the wave. One cannot do otherwise: there is only one direction to go.
Mastery comes with learning to climb atop the wave between shorter and shorter intervals. This is one of the highest experiences available to the intellect as far as I know, besides enlightenment. Such are the topographies of the energy that runs through us.
I'm not necessarily talking about power, but experience.
Monday, July 08, 2013
Fires
Max Stirner saw egos everywhere he looked. Even within traditionalism and collectivism.
And maybe it is true to an extent. But what if he came to this conclusion upon being surrounded by egos breaking away every which way when his own traditional society was in the process of breaking apart?
The curious thing we can learn about egos thanks to the current state of things is that they will diminish themselves if they perceive that they can regain power in becoming connected to everything, as opposed to breaking away from something that is stifling them.
Now this is very interesting. This pattern repeats cyclically in the behavior of large cultures. You have power crystallize in these traditional structures, which might be somewhat benign, or at least adhere to an ideology of benevolent paternalism. You always hear about the old order complaining that there was a time in which there was honor and good will and concern for one's society.
But what old power doesn't realize is that holding onto power out of fear and concern for the masses necessarily sets the conditions for destruction. Each ego needs to be enriched and exercise power at some point, and then there is a tendency to desire more and more power, and to hold onto what power was gained.
So you have the circulation of power freezing within these old structures, and new egos left out of these structures are coming up against limits to their own power. Unable to exercise their own power, these egos begin to develop an ideology of radical individualism and nihilism, and so pressure builds against the traditional walls of power until the oppressed egos can no longer be contained, and so they burst forth, absorbing what power each of them can.
Then new structures of power are formed, and the ideology of the oppressed grows ever more nihilistic and individualistic until the process bottoms out and we are left with petrified structures of completely sociopathic and solipsistic individuals, and so the oppressed egos, in seeking power, seek not to break away, as there is nowhere left to go, but to reconstitute all of the broken connections that have been so completely frayed, and we return full circle to an ideology of beneficence and concern for fellow human, which will eventually harden into new traditional structures.
Perhaps this is a glimpse into the nature of evolution: against the backdrop of a changing environment, a body of connected life units progresses from a state of organization to a different state of organization to maintain stability (and keep in mind there are even changing topographies internal to the body itself), until it becomes something different altogether.
It brings to mind a chord progression, changing shapes of interrelated notes that fit into each other like puzzle pieces. There is this phenomenon in which a highly dissonant chord, a chord with all sorts of notes crashing into each other (which sounds unpleasant or at least harsh), transitions into a harmonious chord and the entire progression becomes something highly pleasurable to the sensibility. Pleasure often takes on this characteristic: it is heightened by the fact that it follows pain.
So human history, or even the history of life appears as a never-ending chain of intelligence struggling to fight fires breaking out upon the breaking down of vessels constructed for the purpose of perpetuation.
And that is alright.
Wednesday, July 03, 2013
Stateless
Of course to talk about a stateless society in practice is kind of silly. Any society necessarily forms a state to administer itself. This of course relies on a weak definition of "state." Any organizational form that coheres with regularity to run a social body can be considered a state.
The problem now is the nation-state, with its tendency to narrow the conception of humanity for its participants, to declare a "team" in other words. The modern state, with its alienating institutions - this so-called "representative democracy" which is merely a theatrical illusion conjured up for the purposes of laundering the true machinery, the endless rat race towards money and power - is the problem.
The political process of pursuing a stateless society will itself produce a new state, but it will be a state that will be better designed to facilitate our needs, because it arises organically: it arises in sync with what we are and how we actually wish to behave. It arises from the ground, from the need of political actors to properly express themselves; it is generated from an imperative that is recognized when someone says, "I could not do otherwise."
The problem now is the nation-state, with its tendency to narrow the conception of humanity for its participants, to declare a "team" in other words. The modern state, with its alienating institutions - this so-called "representative democracy" which is merely a theatrical illusion conjured up for the purposes of laundering the true machinery, the endless rat race towards money and power - is the problem.
The political process of pursuing a stateless society will itself produce a new state, but it will be a state that will be better designed to facilitate our needs, because it arises organically: it arises in sync with what we are and how we actually wish to behave. It arises from the ground, from the need of political actors to properly express themselves; it is generated from an imperative that is recognized when someone says, "I could not do otherwise."
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
Reciprocity
When a relationship is going good, what each individual asks of the other is usually fulfilled, often with enthusiasm, if realistic.
When a relationship goes bad, each request or claim becomes a jarring insult.
Why do relationships go bad? Well more than likely one or both participants perceive (whether accurately or not) an imbalance in shared power. One has slighted the other in some way which is not being repaid. There are plenty of other reasons really. Something else to investigate.
When a relationship goes bad, each request or claim becomes a jarring insult.
Why do relationships go bad? Well more than likely one or both participants perceive (whether accurately or not) an imbalance in shared power. One has slighted the other in some way which is not being repaid. There are plenty of other reasons really. Something else to investigate.
Inner Emancipation, as Well as Outer Pt. 3
What is to be emancipated from? Strange culture of ours, awash with claims of wondrous freedom and individuality, but when it comes to actually expressing these things, one finds there is really sort of a limited range of activities and expressions to select from, lest one is to become impoverished or in trouble with the law.
There are plenty of reasons to desire emancipation from an unraveling financial/industrial system such as the one described in previous posts. Environmental concern, moral outrage at the relentless imperial violence inflicted on the peripheral countries, moral outrage at the treatment of lower classes and minority groups within the core countries, a failure in imagination and problem solving capacity, daily drudgery, increasing material constraints, etc.
An important thing to recognize is that we are within a contractionary phase of a very large historical cycle, and any attempts to stave off our fate within the old logic (the logic that proceeds from capitalist ideas) is doomed to futility. During expansion and even some time past its zenith, such pragmatism proved useful. However our task now this late in the cycle is to identify with the negation of the old positive order that is currently in contraction, and attempt to bring that negation into material fruition so that it may become itself a positive order and the process can begin anew. If anything, gaining power within an expanding alternative could alleviate some of the pain of living within this contracting system, a system that contracts on the basis of declining energy returns, environmental degradation, social entropy and the decay in vitality of a driving idea. But how to do so?
It could be that this damned empire of ours lasts another 100 years. There's no telling how much its got left. It takes a lot for a population to revolt, though we have some of these ingredients already: a frustrated youth population with free time (more and more students are burdened with debt and having difficulty finding good jobs), a perception of total institutional corruption, an insulated and out of touch ruling class...though one thing we are missing is a difficulty obtaining staple food products. However food prices have been steadily ticking up and there are set to be cuts in food assistance programs. Then there are increasing occurrences of drought, putting strains on the food supply, and rising oil prices affects just about everything in the industrial system. Shale gas, tar sands, deep sea drilling, arctic drilling...an energy revolution? Hah! Signs of industry desperation if anything.
But revolutionary violence should no longer be an option. I'm not speaking for populations that are already under assault, but populations that are at least nominally democratic and not already in an uproar. The problem with violence is that it necessitates the logic of domination. If you are turning a gun on another, you aren't going to be able to reason with that person, much less incorporate them into your new society. One of the ironies of the violent variety of anarchists is that the very acts of violence that they advocate necessarily contain the seeds of a new state. Much of what a state is can be seen as a collective monopoly on violence, compartmentalized to be used in accordance with a set of agreed-upon laws to stabilize those elemental forces unleashed by chaotic violence.
The next model society we need (as the anarchists see it anyways, which I currently agree with) is a stateless society that need not be backed by the threat of violence. Hard to say at this point whether that is possible, but it is an ideal that should be attempted.
Religious awakening is a necessary response to material fragmentation, but as an institution it is also not the best solution. Such a solution might have been necessary a thousand years ago, but now that also seems to be a mistake at this time. Cloistering away in a monastery to study spiritual truths sounds nice really, and if only such an ideology can be spread to pacify, but then such an ideology itself becomes insular; its impossible to convert all of the population and holing up and denying material reality doesn't do much for the rest of the suffering. The dogmatic rejection of material reality also tends to produce pretty shitty results later on down the road.
No, what most people respond to is a relatively rewarding life without material fear, and to be accepted into a greater community and loved, which probably needs to be achieved with a combination of religious/revolutionary pragmatism. As I scribble away there are people around the world establishing communities such as this. Intentional communities are springing up everywhere in which people pool their resources, mind ecologies, engage in collective decision making and allow creative activities to flourish. In effect there is a quiet, gradual revolution happening that dispenses of dogma and violence, and hopefully spreads and becomes effective enough to produce a robust alternative life system in time.
Such an exodus has the dual benefit of draining energy from the old capitalist system, further destabilizing it and encouraging many more participants to leave. Such is the road to material emancipation, outer emancipation, but there is another dimension to consider: inner emancipation.
Part of the immense difficulty in constructing a new system consists of not just the material inertia of the old idea, but a psychological inertia. Growing up and living within a culture, one eventually internalizes much of the everyday behavioral traits and social relations that permeates the culture. Normative ideals are communicated and subconsciously assented to and desired, and we absorb the market morality that is so ubiquitous because its lessons are repeated again and again in the workplace, the marketplace and then in the home.
An entire system of thought is inherited: the way we think about causation, class, justice, human nature and much more. Becoming politically, anthropologically and cosmically conscious (among forms of wider consciousness) is enough to override much of the conscious thought, but there are still subconscious and emotional principles that hang tight.
Cultivating a new culture both socially and economically takes not only material power, but a psychological power; one has to actively oppose both physical and psychological constraints. It requires doing extra work to identify more basic behaviors that we engage in that might not be conducive to revolutionary activity and seek to override it. This is much easier said than done.
Consider for example our culture's tendency to isolate in our attention great figures that we in turn worship. This emotional identification gives a rise to a logic that prizes individual action and sees history as a progression of great individuals, which establishes a very clear avenue for universal love and power, which of course is going to be pursued by anyone who cares to have such things.
Now it is true that there are individuals that do happen to have special traits, minds and talents and it should be that these things are respected. Anyone who has these features is probably quite ambitious, which acts as a potent motor for action, and such individuals shouldn't be suppressed by any means. A complete collapse into collectivist ideology is just as bad as a collapse into individualist ideology, an altogether undesirable state of affairs. The ideal society should respect the collective and the individual equally.
No, the real problem is hero worship. This produces weak points in our social fabric: for subsequent generations the highest values and traits to be desired become artificially contracted which necessarily alienates whole swathes of the population that don't share those skills. There are special individuals, but then these individuals are in turn actualized by the many personalities surrounding them. To ignore the rest of the population is to carve out shapes for future ruts cut into the earth by those seeking power and admiration.
Ultimately I'm not sure how possible it is to escape from or at least mold such behavior. But habits of thought like this are very easily carried over from generation to generation and we should be investigating this thought and its long term effects.
One also has to consider comforts and discomforts associated with group sharing, loss of personal space, loss of daily comforts, change in quality of life and etc, all comforts and discomforts that take shape through our subconscious and our emotions as a carryover from living in a capitalist society.
Inner emancipation means changing the way we think, the way we relate to each other, the way we work and live on a psychological level. Such an endeavor is indispensable alongside the physical process of becoming self-sufficient. Lots to do, no doubt.
There are plenty of reasons to desire emancipation from an unraveling financial/industrial system such as the one described in previous posts. Environmental concern, moral outrage at the relentless imperial violence inflicted on the peripheral countries, moral outrage at the treatment of lower classes and minority groups within the core countries, a failure in imagination and problem solving capacity, daily drudgery, increasing material constraints, etc.
An important thing to recognize is that we are within a contractionary phase of a very large historical cycle, and any attempts to stave off our fate within the old logic (the logic that proceeds from capitalist ideas) is doomed to futility. During expansion and even some time past its zenith, such pragmatism proved useful. However our task now this late in the cycle is to identify with the negation of the old positive order that is currently in contraction, and attempt to bring that negation into material fruition so that it may become itself a positive order and the process can begin anew. If anything, gaining power within an expanding alternative could alleviate some of the pain of living within this contracting system, a system that contracts on the basis of declining energy returns, environmental degradation, social entropy and the decay in vitality of a driving idea. But how to do so?
It could be that this damned empire of ours lasts another 100 years. There's no telling how much its got left. It takes a lot for a population to revolt, though we have some of these ingredients already: a frustrated youth population with free time (more and more students are burdened with debt and having difficulty finding good jobs), a perception of total institutional corruption, an insulated and out of touch ruling class...though one thing we are missing is a difficulty obtaining staple food products. However food prices have been steadily ticking up and there are set to be cuts in food assistance programs. Then there are increasing occurrences of drought, putting strains on the food supply, and rising oil prices affects just about everything in the industrial system. Shale gas, tar sands, deep sea drilling, arctic drilling...an energy revolution? Hah! Signs of industry desperation if anything.
But revolutionary violence should no longer be an option. I'm not speaking for populations that are already under assault, but populations that are at least nominally democratic and not already in an uproar. The problem with violence is that it necessitates the logic of domination. If you are turning a gun on another, you aren't going to be able to reason with that person, much less incorporate them into your new society. One of the ironies of the violent variety of anarchists is that the very acts of violence that they advocate necessarily contain the seeds of a new state. Much of what a state is can be seen as a collective monopoly on violence, compartmentalized to be used in accordance with a set of agreed-upon laws to stabilize those elemental forces unleashed by chaotic violence.
The next model society we need (as the anarchists see it anyways, which I currently agree with) is a stateless society that need not be backed by the threat of violence. Hard to say at this point whether that is possible, but it is an ideal that should be attempted.
Religious awakening is a necessary response to material fragmentation, but as an institution it is also not the best solution. Such a solution might have been necessary a thousand years ago, but now that also seems to be a mistake at this time. Cloistering away in a monastery to study spiritual truths sounds nice really, and if only such an ideology can be spread to pacify, but then such an ideology itself becomes insular; its impossible to convert all of the population and holing up and denying material reality doesn't do much for the rest of the suffering. The dogmatic rejection of material reality also tends to produce pretty shitty results later on down the road.
No, what most people respond to is a relatively rewarding life without material fear, and to be accepted into a greater community and loved, which probably needs to be achieved with a combination of religious/revolutionary pragmatism. As I scribble away there are people around the world establishing communities such as this. Intentional communities are springing up everywhere in which people pool their resources, mind ecologies, engage in collective decision making and allow creative activities to flourish. In effect there is a quiet, gradual revolution happening that dispenses of dogma and violence, and hopefully spreads and becomes effective enough to produce a robust alternative life system in time.
Such an exodus has the dual benefit of draining energy from the old capitalist system, further destabilizing it and encouraging many more participants to leave. Such is the road to material emancipation, outer emancipation, but there is another dimension to consider: inner emancipation.
Part of the immense difficulty in constructing a new system consists of not just the material inertia of the old idea, but a psychological inertia. Growing up and living within a culture, one eventually internalizes much of the everyday behavioral traits and social relations that permeates the culture. Normative ideals are communicated and subconsciously assented to and desired, and we absorb the market morality that is so ubiquitous because its lessons are repeated again and again in the workplace, the marketplace and then in the home.
An entire system of thought is inherited: the way we think about causation, class, justice, human nature and much more. Becoming politically, anthropologically and cosmically conscious (among forms of wider consciousness) is enough to override much of the conscious thought, but there are still subconscious and emotional principles that hang tight.
Cultivating a new culture both socially and economically takes not only material power, but a psychological power; one has to actively oppose both physical and psychological constraints. It requires doing extra work to identify more basic behaviors that we engage in that might not be conducive to revolutionary activity and seek to override it. This is much easier said than done.
Consider for example our culture's tendency to isolate in our attention great figures that we in turn worship. This emotional identification gives a rise to a logic that prizes individual action and sees history as a progression of great individuals, which establishes a very clear avenue for universal love and power, which of course is going to be pursued by anyone who cares to have such things.
Now it is true that there are individuals that do happen to have special traits, minds and talents and it should be that these things are respected. Anyone who has these features is probably quite ambitious, which acts as a potent motor for action, and such individuals shouldn't be suppressed by any means. A complete collapse into collectivist ideology is just as bad as a collapse into individualist ideology, an altogether undesirable state of affairs. The ideal society should respect the collective and the individual equally.
No, the real problem is hero worship. This produces weak points in our social fabric: for subsequent generations the highest values and traits to be desired become artificially contracted which necessarily alienates whole swathes of the population that don't share those skills. There are special individuals, but then these individuals are in turn actualized by the many personalities surrounding them. To ignore the rest of the population is to carve out shapes for future ruts cut into the earth by those seeking power and admiration.
Ultimately I'm not sure how possible it is to escape from or at least mold such behavior. But habits of thought like this are very easily carried over from generation to generation and we should be investigating this thought and its long term effects.
One also has to consider comforts and discomforts associated with group sharing, loss of personal space, loss of daily comforts, change in quality of life and etc, all comforts and discomforts that take shape through our subconscious and our emotions as a carryover from living in a capitalist society.
Inner emancipation means changing the way we think, the way we relate to each other, the way we work and live on a psychological level. Such an endeavor is indispensable alongside the physical process of becoming self-sufficient. Lots to do, no doubt.
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