When you fashion a tool, there is the expectation that it can be used for anything. This is a difficult way to think. But there is a case where its exercise is simple. Right wingers want the most blunt, vicious, powerful tools to beat their perceived enemies into submission. However over time such tools will exist to be used against whomever happens into their path. Pacifism, diplomacy, and the rule of law are better tools...they provide stability of the emotional undercurrents and are applied equally. Violence and brute force on the other hand are completely one-sided: they produce vast asymmetries that won't go away until the power is redistributed. So! Civil forfeiture today...nice tool to beat those lousy drug dealers into submission with at the time, which even then was a flawed notion, and now police use it to steal from innocent people! What irony!
What civil forfeiture is is a legal tool that was introduced by fearful politicians to allow law enforcement agencies to simply take the possessions of drug dealers, such as meth lab equipment, so as to neutralize them, without the constraints of red tape such as legal procedures and warrants and whatnot. Now of course even then that was a silly idea. The War on Drugs is slowly winding down (though it still continues) and it has been found on all counts to be a disaster. Maybe instead of attacking the victims, it would have been better to ask how drug addictions form and why.
As an added bonus, the civil forfeiture laws introduced by trigger-happy politicians stayed on the books. There have been reports of certain police departments in states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia that are using old civil forfeiture laws to actually steal from people when they pull them over, like highway robbers! Out-of-state people are targeted especially, and it is difficult to sue for the return of petty items (and expensive) so they usually get away with it. Be careful driving in east Texas especially. Lordy.
Surveillance tools are beloved by power-mad megalomaniacs who wish to know and control everything, but then their instantiation allows them to be wielded by whatever manages to gain control of them in turn. Plus spying on people destroys trust, cripples abilities of communication, and drives the actual threats further underground. Good job guys!
Ditto for military tools such as the atom bomb. Now this is an especially interesting subject. Creating just one of these things necessarily leads to the possibly of MAD, because it increases the likelihood of antagonizing entities to gain control of them as well. Absolute power is impossible. But they always try.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Laws
Symbolic regulatory systems like the rule of law do maintain a stability when it comes to the movements of the vast undercurrents of emotive energies. However they bend and contract with power. The symbols are reconfigured to legitimize the necessity of power. When the power of the powerful is diminished in a closed system (due to external influence or internal reconfigurations), the powerful necessarily regain their loss by contracting around the powerless. At a time when we see banks, governments, police, and much more forging symbolic narratives to legitimize their exercising of naked power to continue accumulating power, or at least exercising naked power to assist the powerful in accumulating power, or to retrieve what was lost, or to maintain what is had, we shake our collective heads in despair. However, witnessing a great contraction like this bears a certain grim gift: through a contracton of a social order we see how it actually works. As the platform that we stood on to view our affairs morphs and bends, our attention shifts to the platform itself, and we see clearly its many working parts as it rips open.
What deep principles account for the miraculous functionality of law? As I drive on the freeway late at night, the few cars out could easily swerve whichever way they wished, though each one including myself glided forward in clean straight lines. Law is established under the fear of force at its base: you are threatened with a fine (which can be viewed as economic violence) or worse if you step out of line. If you refuse to pay fines or even go to jail, you are beat about on the head. So everyone starts to act in accordance with law for fear of retribution, the rules become internalized, and everyone goes on acting that way in all conditions. But there is even more to it than that. Brute force is incredibly inefficient if it is conducted in a behavioral climate of radical competition. Violence begets violence, and soon the arena becomes a competition of whatever brute power can amass itself to overpower whatever is antagonizing it.
There is an ancient, and perhaps eternal tendency of living things (and even physical phenomena) to display the impulse to act in concordance. What I mean by this is that at a primitive emotional base, people or animals cannot stand for their peers to acquire a good, or grow in power, without themselves receiving the good or power as well. The same can be imagined for its converse: that nagging guilt when we see others suffering but not ourselves may very well stem from a deeper chain of evolution than mere human social evolution. Heat dispersing into the environment comes to mind, or the molecules tearing from their bonds with greater ease as more of them in a cluster are pulled apart, such as a piece of fabric ripping. We developed internal regulative systems to mitigate the possible instabilities of multiple entities in competition over limited resources (morality) and then systems of law to achieve such aims on a larger scale. This ingenious generation of structural integrity can be compared to engineering inventions: if the stress is distributed more evenly across a structure, the structure is far more likely to last.
With a social rule of law that assumes that all individuals are equal, each individual participating in the code can expect to be treated equally, with equal rewards following the adherence to the code and equal punishments for breaks from the code. Theoretically this should regulate the distribution of powers and emotional energies quite nicely.
However over time asymmetries develop with power pooling in certain areas, and the powerful almost always gain the ability to write the actual code for the regulation of the greater system. The law increasingly mirrors the actual imbalance of power, while maintaining the semantic quality of an equal opportunity system of rewards and punishments, so that it continues to serve as a stabilizing agent, but develops strains as the population becomes aware of its dysfunction. What is required to maintain it is constant media engineering and propaganda.
What deep principles account for the miraculous functionality of law? As I drive on the freeway late at night, the few cars out could easily swerve whichever way they wished, though each one including myself glided forward in clean straight lines. Law is established under the fear of force at its base: you are threatened with a fine (which can be viewed as economic violence) or worse if you step out of line. If you refuse to pay fines or even go to jail, you are beat about on the head. So everyone starts to act in accordance with law for fear of retribution, the rules become internalized, and everyone goes on acting that way in all conditions. But there is even more to it than that. Brute force is incredibly inefficient if it is conducted in a behavioral climate of radical competition. Violence begets violence, and soon the arena becomes a competition of whatever brute power can amass itself to overpower whatever is antagonizing it.
There is an ancient, and perhaps eternal tendency of living things (and even physical phenomena) to display the impulse to act in concordance. What I mean by this is that at a primitive emotional base, people or animals cannot stand for their peers to acquire a good, or grow in power, without themselves receiving the good or power as well. The same can be imagined for its converse: that nagging guilt when we see others suffering but not ourselves may very well stem from a deeper chain of evolution than mere human social evolution. Heat dispersing into the environment comes to mind, or the molecules tearing from their bonds with greater ease as more of them in a cluster are pulled apart, such as a piece of fabric ripping. We developed internal regulative systems to mitigate the possible instabilities of multiple entities in competition over limited resources (morality) and then systems of law to achieve such aims on a larger scale. This ingenious generation of structural integrity can be compared to engineering inventions: if the stress is distributed more evenly across a structure, the structure is far more likely to last.
With a social rule of law that assumes that all individuals are equal, each individual participating in the code can expect to be treated equally, with equal rewards following the adherence to the code and equal punishments for breaks from the code. Theoretically this should regulate the distribution of powers and emotional energies quite nicely.
However over time asymmetries develop with power pooling in certain areas, and the powerful almost always gain the ability to write the actual code for the regulation of the greater system. The law increasingly mirrors the actual imbalance of power, while maintaining the semantic quality of an equal opportunity system of rewards and punishments, so that it continues to serve as a stabilizing agent, but develops strains as the population becomes aware of its dysfunction. What is required to maintain it is constant media engineering and propaganda.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
FYI
General strike on September 30th. I think that's the universal date. I heard rumors of it circulating around, but I'm not sure when it actually is. That posting suggests at the end of the month. Try to do it if you can. If you can't, that's OK. It will be interesting to see what happens.
This might turn out to be a really big deal. A lot of fast food workers are demonstrating their willingness to push back, which is pretty remarkable. Most workers in the US are firmly embattled and in precarious positions.
A lot of fast food workers (and other service and minimum wage workers) survive on their meager wages by relying on food stamps. House Republicans voted to slash that program finally. I've given up on both parties. They're both corrupt and it is well-known excluding some hangers-on that the political system is completely compromised. But the Republican party at this point attracts some of the most heartless, hypocritical, and sociopathic people in the country. Right and the whole food insecurity thing is a major ingredient to revolution and revolt. Look at Greece. Actual bonafide political fascism is rising in Greece. With shock troops in the street and everything. Though I'm not sure about the food situation. Pretty disastrous though. Garbage piling up. Massive unemployment. Medical shortages. All so the banks can be paid in full.
Anyways. The Strike. I'll be doing it. But then I'm a freelance writer and no one will give a shit. But it'll feel a little nice maybe. I don't know at this point. No one knows what to do but thrash around a bit or find the light in things. And there's something vaguely communitarian about acting in concert with a bunch of strangers, however symbolically and abstractly.
This might turn out to be a really big deal. A lot of fast food workers are demonstrating their willingness to push back, which is pretty remarkable. Most workers in the US are firmly embattled and in precarious positions.
A lot of fast food workers (and other service and minimum wage workers) survive on their meager wages by relying on food stamps. House Republicans voted to slash that program finally. I've given up on both parties. They're both corrupt and it is well-known excluding some hangers-on that the political system is completely compromised. But the Republican party at this point attracts some of the most heartless, hypocritical, and sociopathic people in the country. Right and the whole food insecurity thing is a major ingredient to revolution and revolt. Look at Greece. Actual bonafide political fascism is rising in Greece. With shock troops in the street and everything. Though I'm not sure about the food situation. Pretty disastrous though. Garbage piling up. Massive unemployment. Medical shortages. All so the banks can be paid in full.
Anyways. The Strike. I'll be doing it. But then I'm a freelance writer and no one will give a shit. But it'll feel a little nice maybe. I don't know at this point. No one knows what to do but thrash around a bit or find the light in things. And there's something vaguely communitarian about acting in concert with a bunch of strangers, however symbolically and abstractly.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Power Sharing
When one experiences that ultimate surge of pleasure and excitement and cosmic feeling that comes from tapping into one of life's many vital wells, however one does it, one can't forget the experience. One seeks the repetition of such an experience the rest of one's life. One experiences it through wielding power, or engaging in pleasurable acts or contemplations; in the end it is a property of the body (every body should be wired for it) that is activated in some way through an external source or a mode of behavior or ritual.
The archetypal Saint and Martyr seeks to share the experience or ferry as much people as possible to a point at which they can experience it themselves. The archetypal Monster seeks to keep such an experience all to him or herself. One arrives at a binary choice and makes one's choice in accordance with one's character and propensities.
The archetypal symbol takes its meaning from social relations. Saints share power and the experience of the Good, and so others benefit and even those observing the spectacle remark that such a vessel is Good. A Monster on the other hand is the sole benefactor of said power and experience of the good, so all who witness such an event have no choice but to declare the Monster "Bad," or "Evil," as such a vessel is observed to take the Good from others to benefit him or herself. The actual Monster sees him or herself as the Good and source of all that is just, but that experience is severely limited to him or herself and maybe a smattering of authoritarian followers which get to share in some of that good, but ultimately fear and loathe the Monster.
Judgment by observers can be split either way, according to ideology and emotional disposition. However if someone is personally wronged (or benefited) they usually have no choice but to assign the Bad (or Good) accordingly.
So what will it be then? Eternal struggle for the experience of this Good and the consequent eternal divisions and antagonisms? Or a communal sharing of the Good and its subsequent harmonizing effects?
The archetypal Saint and Martyr seeks to share the experience or ferry as much people as possible to a point at which they can experience it themselves. The archetypal Monster seeks to keep such an experience all to him or herself. One arrives at a binary choice and makes one's choice in accordance with one's character and propensities.
The archetypal symbol takes its meaning from social relations. Saints share power and the experience of the Good, and so others benefit and even those observing the spectacle remark that such a vessel is Good. A Monster on the other hand is the sole benefactor of said power and experience of the good, so all who witness such an event have no choice but to declare the Monster "Bad," or "Evil," as such a vessel is observed to take the Good from others to benefit him or herself. The actual Monster sees him or herself as the Good and source of all that is just, but that experience is severely limited to him or herself and maybe a smattering of authoritarian followers which get to share in some of that good, but ultimately fear and loathe the Monster.
Judgment by observers can be split either way, according to ideology and emotional disposition. However if someone is personally wronged (or benefited) they usually have no choice but to assign the Bad (or Good) accordingly.
So what will it be then? Eternal struggle for the experience of this Good and the consequent eternal divisions and antagonisms? Or a communal sharing of the Good and its subsequent harmonizing effects?
Premium Bathing
An email in my junk folder promised me a great give-away of a walk-in bath tub. A walk-in bath tub? Wouldn't there be water all over the floor all the time?
Architecture and Music and Other Things
One listens to a great musical piece or surveys a great architectural work and the mind boggles: how does one begin to think about where to start? How was a masterpiece such as this created?
But it often starts with rhythm and logic. Such fundamentals can be compared to a skeleton or scaffolding. Great things are built off of a dependable, repetitive rhythmic/logical base. Its hardness is derived from a dependability of the positioning of matter. Its form stays, while the notes make themselves heard at dependable positions.
From such a base great ornamentations arise, ornamentations that can curve and tower in wild directions, but in the end the ornamentations are anchored to the shape of a great form that has been repeated into existence. Such patterns not only arise in the arts and crafts, but in nature, in the cosmos. What is life but the extension of eternal principles whose instantiations owe their existence to the dependability of a great rock, held together by gravity, whose perpetual existence allows the flourishing of things both ugly and beautiful?
There is a tendency in progressive metaphysics to emphasize perpetual change, as in Deleuze and Guittaris metaphysics of immanence. Such a philosophy serves as a powerful counterattack to conservative ideology which posits capitalism as a natural and just system, and its related social rigidities such as the delineation and enforcing of gender roles and sexual mores as natural standards. If nature is in a constant flux and its only true animating principle is to engage in every possible variation, then what is posited by conservatives as a natural formation is actually artificial blockage. This is only a caricature of D and G's total work; I'm just using it as a launching point for now until I read more of it.
Conservatives see liberals as disintegrating agents that destroy the fabric of society with their deviating tendencies to violate established social mores, while liberals see conservatives as a sort of calcification that is itself artificial, a limited conception of humanity that seeks to sustain itself by constraining the lives of others. What is natural in both cases has to do with the true emotional nature of each group. True nature itself demonstrates both tendencies.
I myself sympathize more with a conception of nature that is in constant flux, and that all biological variations of human beings, whether they violate seemingly arbitrary gender and sexual mores or not, deserve life and the exercise of their own autonomy. But the fact of the matter is that there will always be a proportion of the population that assents to the conservative impulse, and that we are necessarily all bound together in the end. The conservative impulse does lead to a regularity and dependability in life's processes which we all depend on to live, but then to try to extinguish whatever deviates from that regularity necessarily rends the fabric that holds everything together.
The objective should not be coming up with a way to permanently discredit one of the other camp, but to conceive of a way to harmonize completely contradictory impulses: love and fear.
But it often starts with rhythm and logic. Such fundamentals can be compared to a skeleton or scaffolding. Great things are built off of a dependable, repetitive rhythmic/logical base. Its hardness is derived from a dependability of the positioning of matter. Its form stays, while the notes make themselves heard at dependable positions.
From such a base great ornamentations arise, ornamentations that can curve and tower in wild directions, but in the end the ornamentations are anchored to the shape of a great form that has been repeated into existence. Such patterns not only arise in the arts and crafts, but in nature, in the cosmos. What is life but the extension of eternal principles whose instantiations owe their existence to the dependability of a great rock, held together by gravity, whose perpetual existence allows the flourishing of things both ugly and beautiful?
There is a tendency in progressive metaphysics to emphasize perpetual change, as in Deleuze and Guittaris metaphysics of immanence. Such a philosophy serves as a powerful counterattack to conservative ideology which posits capitalism as a natural and just system, and its related social rigidities such as the delineation and enforcing of gender roles and sexual mores as natural standards. If nature is in a constant flux and its only true animating principle is to engage in every possible variation, then what is posited by conservatives as a natural formation is actually artificial blockage. This is only a caricature of D and G's total work; I'm just using it as a launching point for now until I read more of it.
Conservatives see liberals as disintegrating agents that destroy the fabric of society with their deviating tendencies to violate established social mores, while liberals see conservatives as a sort of calcification that is itself artificial, a limited conception of humanity that seeks to sustain itself by constraining the lives of others. What is natural in both cases has to do with the true emotional nature of each group. True nature itself demonstrates both tendencies.
I myself sympathize more with a conception of nature that is in constant flux, and that all biological variations of human beings, whether they violate seemingly arbitrary gender and sexual mores or not, deserve life and the exercise of their own autonomy. But the fact of the matter is that there will always be a proportion of the population that assents to the conservative impulse, and that we are necessarily all bound together in the end. The conservative impulse does lead to a regularity and dependability in life's processes which we all depend on to live, but then to try to extinguish whatever deviates from that regularity necessarily rends the fabric that holds everything together.
The objective should not be coming up with a way to permanently discredit one of the other camp, but to conceive of a way to harmonize completely contradictory impulses: love and fear.
Flicker
The power is back on after a month of languishing. I never know when it is going to come back on. It comes and I go out on the bike and write and make music and enjoy the light as best as I can, secretly dreading the point at which the lights go out again, a dread that is mercifully diminished because I feel intoxicated. Out of shape and quickly winded, but buzzing.
Its curious being out on the path. You can see the weirdos popping up as the widespread social isolation and fragmentation makes its effects felt. Those fringe figures breaking off, growing into strange plants in their isolated environments...everyone out exercising and doing their best to commune together, orbiting together but not quite touching, each person displaying striking variations in visual complexion, bodily movements, and personalities. As HST said, "When the going gets weird, the weird go pro."
A man walks his way down the path swinging his fists, another roller blades and conducts odd martial arts patterns low to the ground. A homeless man sits out on the path every afternoon in the sun with his bags stacked up high to shield himself. A smiling woman with a weathered face and a hodgepodge of clothing styles, topped with a cowboy hat. Feminine-looking men, masculine-looking women, the great drift into idiosyncrasy from the past monoculture birthed from mythology and practice continues.
Though I'm quite blind to my own projection in social space, I imagine I am one of them. We all cobble together visual cues, ideological commitments, and archetypal sensibilities from movements and individuals temporally and geographically distant in the hopes of crafting something not just new, but worthy of life.
There is a widening gap between those that fear and loathe difference, those that wish to isolate and destroy the difference to purge some mythical core and restore it back to its past glory, which is entirely illusory, and those that learn to love the difference, to reach out to that difference and reconfigure it into a new whole.
Those that wish to disintegrate difference will only disintegrate themselves in turn as they further isolate themselves in their homogeneity, for such an impulse is birthed from fear, which itself is the ultimate divider. Those that learn to love radical difference will experience something that approaches pretty closely the concept of one. This is a pretty abstract metaphysical/religious claim, but I think it can pretty dependably predict outcomes across historical time and space.
Its curious being out on the path. You can see the weirdos popping up as the widespread social isolation and fragmentation makes its effects felt. Those fringe figures breaking off, growing into strange plants in their isolated environments...everyone out exercising and doing their best to commune together, orbiting together but not quite touching, each person displaying striking variations in visual complexion, bodily movements, and personalities. As HST said, "When the going gets weird, the weird go pro."
A man walks his way down the path swinging his fists, another roller blades and conducts odd martial arts patterns low to the ground. A homeless man sits out on the path every afternoon in the sun with his bags stacked up high to shield himself. A smiling woman with a weathered face and a hodgepodge of clothing styles, topped with a cowboy hat. Feminine-looking men, masculine-looking women, the great drift into idiosyncrasy from the past monoculture birthed from mythology and practice continues.
Though I'm quite blind to my own projection in social space, I imagine I am one of them. We all cobble together visual cues, ideological commitments, and archetypal sensibilities from movements and individuals temporally and geographically distant in the hopes of crafting something not just new, but worthy of life.
There is a widening gap between those that fear and loathe difference, those that wish to isolate and destroy the difference to purge some mythical core and restore it back to its past glory, which is entirely illusory, and those that learn to love the difference, to reach out to that difference and reconfigure it into a new whole.
Those that wish to disintegrate difference will only disintegrate themselves in turn as they further isolate themselves in their homogeneity, for such an impulse is birthed from fear, which itself is the ultimate divider. Those that learn to love radical difference will experience something that approaches pretty closely the concept of one. This is a pretty abstract metaphysical/religious claim, but I think it can pretty dependably predict outcomes across historical time and space.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Back
Back from a trip to Montana to visit family. Lots of cloud and storm watching. There's fires everywhere, and frequent storms, some of them quite violent. Besides their disturbing context, they're quite beautiful and exciting to watch and hear if you are in a safe place.
I then fell ill right upon returning and I still feel pretty shitty. From then to now my mind has been pretty thoroughly gone. There because of copious drinking and here because of some sort of illness.
I've realized that I've developed quite an aversion to social contact and overstimulation in a short period of time, being out in the mountains by myself and then overlooking a rural valley town in Montana. This of course could have been avoided if I had stayed away from media and just meditated and observed the surrounding environment the entire time, but I can't seem to pry myself away from this perpetual slow-motion train wreck that is contemporary world affairs. Rural surroundings can actually intensify stress in this regard: the dearth of artificial stimuli and human presence tends to emphasize the sights and sounds that do exist, especially if you are in a heightened state of alert. Some rural people are slow and laid back, but then others (oftentimes the ones that have settled from the city, or are at least still plugged into the national media) are high-strung and paranoid, most likely for this reason among others. Besides, unless you farm or live in a tightly-knit community or commune, you are still part of the tightening economic fabric with its associated inhumanity and stress.
It shouldn't take long to deprogram. I need to get exercising again and meditating regularly. Perhaps I need to eat better too, and drink less. We'll see how that goes.
I've been reading Hannah Arendt's The Origin of Totalitarianism. Started it some time ago but left off on it for a while. Picked it up again and boy is it a remarkable work. She's quite a thinker. The most striking thing about the book so far is its account of society in the run-up to the two world wars, especially the emergence of antisemitism and its political instrumentalization by reactionary parties to gain power. Antisemitism grew as an irrational generalization out of phenomena that were actually observable and frustrations that were justifiable: there were many Jewish businessmen and bankers, and many of them were insulated from the general population due to the nature of the formation of the nation state and the Jewish people as a stateless race, and so due to historical and social reasons suffered antagonism in greater society. The higher classes of course delighted in adopting the language of antisemitism to guide the angry mob that they had created through greed, exclusion, and cruelty. The monsters that would soon rise had a desperate and confused populace to propel them to power, almost like the heat engine phenomena of a hurricane, a positive feedback loop that derives its fuel from the latent energy in the environment. Its eerily similar to today's state of affairs in which an embattled populace that is growing increasingly strained latches onto confused explanations and declares ethnic scapegoats such as immigrants and arabs, phenomena which powerful reactionary political and economic elites are all too eager to take advantage of so that they can manipulate the masses to further achieve their ends.
Why is it that portions of the populations of rich, powerful empires become so bloodthirsty and depraved? Wealth polarization is part of the explanation, as well as internal patterns in which an empire treats more and more of its population as it has treated external populations. And then, to modify a Nietzschean aphorism, those who fight monsters that they create run the risk of becoming monsters themselves.
On a lighter note, there is talk that a new religious sensibility is emerging. Well, this has been talked about for quite some time, but it seems as though something truly substantial is beginning to take shape around the world. Hopefully it can be done right this time. As if anything can be done right on such a large scale anyways. More on that later.
I've been trying to scold myself into resuming progress on a fairly large philosophical work that's on the backburner. I tend to only produce when I am wired and manic and riding a wave of pleasure and excitement, so to speak, but one has to eventually settle down and begin to edit and systematize the deluge if one wants to be heard. It has been hard to get back to; cycles of deep depression and then apathy and aimlessness and occasional minor hedonism are not exactly conducive to such aims. It is a process, as I keep trying to tell myself. Keeping at it.
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