Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Some Good Advice
From Henry Miller, as quoted in a foreword of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: "...everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself...Reality is here and now, everywhere, gleaming through every reflection that meets the eye...Everybody is a neurotic, down to the last man and woman. The healer, or the analyst, if you like, is only a super-neurotic...To be cured we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another - it is a private affair which is best done collectively."
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Placeholder
I did just manage to gasp that post out on security but really I've been trying to hang back and reflect a bit. I've been pretty busy with work and wrapping up some things before I go on this little trip for two weeks to see friends and family.
A past weekend with friends and psychoactive substances was nice and had its share of observations, but oftentimes such substances of that nature call for a little processing and reflection, and sure I'll just let it run its course.
Plenty of ideas starting to re-emerge and play back and forth in the fever swamps. That's always how it goes. A period of productivity which then exhausts itself - or has its course suddenly changed by a dramatic experience or observation - and then a cloudy chaos within which shapes begin to slowly emerge. Life! Learning how to ride the cycles and experience each phase.
Plenty more to come in the next few weeks. Maybe some pics too.
A past weekend with friends and psychoactive substances was nice and had its share of observations, but oftentimes such substances of that nature call for a little processing and reflection, and sure I'll just let it run its course.
Plenty of ideas starting to re-emerge and play back and forth in the fever swamps. That's always how it goes. A period of productivity which then exhausts itself - or has its course suddenly changed by a dramatic experience or observation - and then a cloudy chaos within which shapes begin to slowly emerge. Life! Learning how to ride the cycles and experience each phase.
Plenty more to come in the next few weeks. Maybe some pics too.
Security
The Heartbleed flaw is shaping up to be one of the most catastrophic security breaches in Internet history. What is even more remarkable is that the NSA knew about the flaw for at least two years and exploited it to retrieve sensitive information. Considering how crucial the Internet has become to just about every facet of modern civilization, this kind of behavior is beyond irresponsible, though that sort of goes without saying.
But of course the NSA knows about many other different kinds of flaws. It even creates some itself to make its data sluicing job easier. It deliberately weakens cyber security and exposes populations around the world to virtual subterfuge in the name of protecting those very populations.
Such absurdities are par for the course in terms of many US defense - or should we say offense - agencies. But then there are plenty of other sectors administering the US empire that engage in what one could call rogue behavior. What used to be rogue is starting to become regular.
All of this bluster obscures a much more important point however, something that is easy to miss because it is something whose logic literally surrounds us on a daily basis. The point has to do with a conception of security that has been with us a very long time, a conception that is basically baked into the American character, and which isn't peculiar to the American character either.
The Heartbleed fiasco serves as a valuable window into a much deeper problem: namely the fact that a breach in information security sends us into a flurry of gasps in the first place. Underneath the veil of a powerful, efficient global system writhes a multitude of pathological agents - both domestic and foreign - probing every nook and cranny in the system's operations for a chance to steal information and identities, or to harm the system itself. Who are all these would-be thieves and saboteurs? Where do they come from? Why does there seem to be so many and why is all of our information so sensitive in the first place? Why so many enemies and why the constant desperation to steal information and use it to gain the wealth of others?
Who are all these people that would rather hack into information systems and steal other people's things, as opposed to making their own living? It seems to me that most people want to make a life for themselves and be loved by their communities. It is built into us. You treat people good and you usually get good in return. Treat people bad, and you get the bad. I'm not so sure anyone is born an ontological thief or ruffian. They have to first be treated badly. Why are all these people being treated badly I wonder? Who is the real victim in this case?
It is all of course much more complicated. There are dangerous people out there that were forged through historical processes far beyond our control. The process of imperial expansion and the sympathetic contraction are producing all sorts of marred characters whose nature outlasts the origin of its genesis. For those whose trust in general humanity is broken, it is very difficult to be restored. Though contrary to a lot of our popular fiction, I'm not so sure a human being can necessarily be lost beyond redemption.
Yeah, the fiction. It always goes back to the fiction. We are fed endlessly with scary characters and intense situations, caricature after caricature of purely distilled good and purely distilled evil fighting it out in role after repeated role. There is evil in the world and you have to destroy it! Scary things must be defeated! And so on. Doubtless, many of these rehearsed myths were generated out of life experiences, though these life experiences themselves always have to be processed through our binary logic systems.
Well anyways, it is a lot of wasted time and energy. Tanks attract bigger and ever more gnarly munitions to punch through their armor; their armor is strengthened and improved, and then bigger and even more gnarly munitions are invented to punch through the tougher armor. Castles inspire ever-more effective battering rams as their walls grow thicker and taller. Cyber security systems grow ever more complex and convoluted to evade ever-more crafty hackers. It is the old arms race.
I remember going into a Walgreens in a poor section of San Francisco and the place literally looked like a fortress. It looked ridiculous. Thick walls and fences on top of the walls and barbed wire on top of the fences and jagged bars over the windows, and thick steel shutters that cover the entrance at night.
Where power must be concentrated, there must be a corresponding deficit in power, where the powerless that exist in relation to the powerful simply have to survive and challenge that power to take some back. And then endless amounts of energy are used in a race that essentially cancels itself out, especially when you start getting to nuclear weapons.
I say it is all silly, but it certainly isn't silly to those with the fear. There is a lot of fear behind Western civilization. All that power and grandiosity and the accompanying terror of losing it all.
However, in a time of powerful nations owning nuclear weapons, it has become apparent that we need a new conception of security, one that is actually very old. Instead of reinforcing and augmenting what is already excessive, so that one is safe, why not give and reinforce the surrounding environment where the deficit is in the first place? Enrich the deserts that sap from the oasis. Give each man and woman the means for existing with dignity. Let life be and it tends to take care of itself, allowing for more life to flourish from it.
Granted, we don't have to open ourselves to everything. There is a reason why we dispose of feces, and thank goodness for penicillin and things of that nature. We do take up space with everything else, and there do exist lifeforms whose methodologies to living may contradict our own.
But we treat some human beings like feces and disease - namely the powerless - and they certainly aren't these things. We are all human beings. We all have similar needs and interests and granted that there aren't too many of us taking up space and jockeying for too little resources, we should be more than able to coexist. There is no reason to make life more difficult than it needs to be by declaring war on each other.
Besides there being too many of us today, we do have the technology to provide for the basic needs of each and every person. Scarcity is literally manufactured. War is senseless and insane. And this is because of the existence of surplus in some quarters, as opposed to scarcity. One can't always fill the hole where one lacks, but one can give what one has too much of.
I do intend to elaborate on this alternate conception of security some other time. It is not entirely clear how to carry out this conception on a mass scale though. It is in the end an act of ideology. It takes believing in and acting on.
But of course the NSA knows about many other different kinds of flaws. It even creates some itself to make its data sluicing job easier. It deliberately weakens cyber security and exposes populations around the world to virtual subterfuge in the name of protecting those very populations.
Such absurdities are par for the course in terms of many US defense - or should we say offense - agencies. But then there are plenty of other sectors administering the US empire that engage in what one could call rogue behavior. What used to be rogue is starting to become regular.
All of this bluster obscures a much more important point however, something that is easy to miss because it is something whose logic literally surrounds us on a daily basis. The point has to do with a conception of security that has been with us a very long time, a conception that is basically baked into the American character, and which isn't peculiar to the American character either.
The Heartbleed fiasco serves as a valuable window into a much deeper problem: namely the fact that a breach in information security sends us into a flurry of gasps in the first place. Underneath the veil of a powerful, efficient global system writhes a multitude of pathological agents - both domestic and foreign - probing every nook and cranny in the system's operations for a chance to steal information and identities, or to harm the system itself. Who are all these would-be thieves and saboteurs? Where do they come from? Why does there seem to be so many and why is all of our information so sensitive in the first place? Why so many enemies and why the constant desperation to steal information and use it to gain the wealth of others?
Who are all these people that would rather hack into information systems and steal other people's things, as opposed to making their own living? It seems to me that most people want to make a life for themselves and be loved by their communities. It is built into us. You treat people good and you usually get good in return. Treat people bad, and you get the bad. I'm not so sure anyone is born an ontological thief or ruffian. They have to first be treated badly. Why are all these people being treated badly I wonder? Who is the real victim in this case?
It is all of course much more complicated. There are dangerous people out there that were forged through historical processes far beyond our control. The process of imperial expansion and the sympathetic contraction are producing all sorts of marred characters whose nature outlasts the origin of its genesis. For those whose trust in general humanity is broken, it is very difficult to be restored. Though contrary to a lot of our popular fiction, I'm not so sure a human being can necessarily be lost beyond redemption.
Yeah, the fiction. It always goes back to the fiction. We are fed endlessly with scary characters and intense situations, caricature after caricature of purely distilled good and purely distilled evil fighting it out in role after repeated role. There is evil in the world and you have to destroy it! Scary things must be defeated! And so on. Doubtless, many of these rehearsed myths were generated out of life experiences, though these life experiences themselves always have to be processed through our binary logic systems.
Well anyways, it is a lot of wasted time and energy. Tanks attract bigger and ever more gnarly munitions to punch through their armor; their armor is strengthened and improved, and then bigger and even more gnarly munitions are invented to punch through the tougher armor. Castles inspire ever-more effective battering rams as their walls grow thicker and taller. Cyber security systems grow ever more complex and convoluted to evade ever-more crafty hackers. It is the old arms race.
I remember going into a Walgreens in a poor section of San Francisco and the place literally looked like a fortress. It looked ridiculous. Thick walls and fences on top of the walls and barbed wire on top of the fences and jagged bars over the windows, and thick steel shutters that cover the entrance at night.
Where power must be concentrated, there must be a corresponding deficit in power, where the powerless that exist in relation to the powerful simply have to survive and challenge that power to take some back. And then endless amounts of energy are used in a race that essentially cancels itself out, especially when you start getting to nuclear weapons.
I say it is all silly, but it certainly isn't silly to those with the fear. There is a lot of fear behind Western civilization. All that power and grandiosity and the accompanying terror of losing it all.
However, in a time of powerful nations owning nuclear weapons, it has become apparent that we need a new conception of security, one that is actually very old. Instead of reinforcing and augmenting what is already excessive, so that one is safe, why not give and reinforce the surrounding environment where the deficit is in the first place? Enrich the deserts that sap from the oasis. Give each man and woman the means for existing with dignity. Let life be and it tends to take care of itself, allowing for more life to flourish from it.
Granted, we don't have to open ourselves to everything. There is a reason why we dispose of feces, and thank goodness for penicillin and things of that nature. We do take up space with everything else, and there do exist lifeforms whose methodologies to living may contradict our own.
But we treat some human beings like feces and disease - namely the powerless - and they certainly aren't these things. We are all human beings. We all have similar needs and interests and granted that there aren't too many of us taking up space and jockeying for too little resources, we should be more than able to coexist. There is no reason to make life more difficult than it needs to be by declaring war on each other.
Besides there being too many of us today, we do have the technology to provide for the basic needs of each and every person. Scarcity is literally manufactured. War is senseless and insane. And this is because of the existence of surplus in some quarters, as opposed to scarcity. One can't always fill the hole where one lacks, but one can give what one has too much of.
I do intend to elaborate on this alternate conception of security some other time. It is not entirely clear how to carry out this conception on a mass scale though. It is in the end an act of ideology. It takes believing in and acting on.
Thursday, April 03, 2014
Wednesday, April 02, 2014
Prime Waves
It seems we worship what we perceive as the prime mover to our existence. Maybe not necessarily contra Aristotle, but con Aristotle - to build yet another layer onto his sediments - we could say there are multiple prime movers, or simply movers acting within this greater space, and perhaps Aristotle understood this.
But we seem to have slowly come to the conclusion over the last couple of centuries that this greater space - which really doesn't hold any character at all but is simply everything - is this sort of circumscribed prime mover which causes everything, and it is something we can clearly perceive, and what arises from that conclusion is the attempt to locate the prime mover in this lesser mover that brings shape to one's existence, which is really only one of the many waves drifting over the cosmic plane, so to speak.
So then you have groups claiming their prime mover is better than yours, and so on, and if really your prime mover is all there is, and that the other guy's prime mover is simply a lie, what is to become of him?
See this is a tough problem to solve. When you sit down and take the time to think everything out, you say "oh right, so it is the cosmos, the one love, the god figure which is really the prime mover and all these selfish bastards have it wrong worshiping wealth and idols," but then all these selfish bastards really believe it in their hearts that these wealth objects and idols and power exercises are the prime movers, because all the prime mover idiots that came before them tried to convince them that their big old patriarchal figure in the sky was the prime mover, and these old patriarchal figure enthusiasts thought this was the case because they were trying so damn hard to understand what the prime mover really was, or what the cosmos really was, and what exactly it was they should be worshiping, because the idiots before them were worshiping wealth and idols, and then so on.
So maybe it was the attempt to try to really understand this prime mover nature, and over time the attempt to attach to one's own limited understanding - as one really just exists in a certain time and place - that was causing these groups to elevate their historical position into the position of the all. Then if you want your followers to live the right life according to what you feel, it helps building up all these rules, myths, and personalities that express that feeling.
It is not that it is a bad thing in itself, but the mistake many of these rulers make in their pride and fear is that they attempt to make this system eternal, without telling their followers that hey, it is just a construction in historical time to make living a little easier, and sooner or later, it will dissolve, and you'll have to build your own. Of course it is the ruler and follower psychology that leads to this mistake in the first place. There is this built in need to control everything, to shepherd everyone into the safe pen, even if it means shearing and killing them.
It takes stepping away from schema, and actually relaxing one's attempt to understand, to get to really appreciate that eternal present, that one's historical time and space has a character of its own, and that one can celebrate it and shape it to live better, but also that there are other movements, waves that will intersect with one's own, and that beyond the good and evil valuations that those collisions generate, it is all simply happening.
All this mystical language is an attempt to bring the cosmos closer to one's self, but one is still doing just that: attempting to bring the cosmos closer to one's self, whereas the cosmos is everything: the good and evil, the positive and negative, and that its true nature is not directly perceivable, but hinted at in the relations between the positive and negative. You glimpse it by looking away; permit me this cliche when I say that staring straight into the sun causes only blindness.
Of course this has all been figured out time and time again; it just seems to take figuring it out in one's own time and in one's own language, to really believe it and act on it. Well and hope we can get better at this.
But we seem to have slowly come to the conclusion over the last couple of centuries that this greater space - which really doesn't hold any character at all but is simply everything - is this sort of circumscribed prime mover which causes everything, and it is something we can clearly perceive, and what arises from that conclusion is the attempt to locate the prime mover in this lesser mover that brings shape to one's existence, which is really only one of the many waves drifting over the cosmic plane, so to speak.
So then you have groups claiming their prime mover is better than yours, and so on, and if really your prime mover is all there is, and that the other guy's prime mover is simply a lie, what is to become of him?
See this is a tough problem to solve. When you sit down and take the time to think everything out, you say "oh right, so it is the cosmos, the one love, the god figure which is really the prime mover and all these selfish bastards have it wrong worshiping wealth and idols," but then all these selfish bastards really believe it in their hearts that these wealth objects and idols and power exercises are the prime movers, because all the prime mover idiots that came before them tried to convince them that their big old patriarchal figure in the sky was the prime mover, and these old patriarchal figure enthusiasts thought this was the case because they were trying so damn hard to understand what the prime mover really was, or what the cosmos really was, and what exactly it was they should be worshiping, because the idiots before them were worshiping wealth and idols, and then so on.
So maybe it was the attempt to try to really understand this prime mover nature, and over time the attempt to attach to one's own limited understanding - as one really just exists in a certain time and place - that was causing these groups to elevate their historical position into the position of the all. Then if you want your followers to live the right life according to what you feel, it helps building up all these rules, myths, and personalities that express that feeling.
It is not that it is a bad thing in itself, but the mistake many of these rulers make in their pride and fear is that they attempt to make this system eternal, without telling their followers that hey, it is just a construction in historical time to make living a little easier, and sooner or later, it will dissolve, and you'll have to build your own. Of course it is the ruler and follower psychology that leads to this mistake in the first place. There is this built in need to control everything, to shepherd everyone into the safe pen, even if it means shearing and killing them.
It takes stepping away from schema, and actually relaxing one's attempt to understand, to get to really appreciate that eternal present, that one's historical time and space has a character of its own, and that one can celebrate it and shape it to live better, but also that there are other movements, waves that will intersect with one's own, and that beyond the good and evil valuations that those collisions generate, it is all simply happening.
All this mystical language is an attempt to bring the cosmos closer to one's self, but one is still doing just that: attempting to bring the cosmos closer to one's self, whereas the cosmos is everything: the good and evil, the positive and negative, and that its true nature is not directly perceivable, but hinted at in the relations between the positive and negative. You glimpse it by looking away; permit me this cliche when I say that staring straight into the sun causes only blindness.
Of course this has all been figured out time and time again; it just seems to take figuring it out in one's own time and in one's own language, to really believe it and act on it. Well and hope we can get better at this.
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