Be Nice?

Being nice, I am often inclined in a philosophical reflection to encourage nice behavior, nice thought, and various other nice actions and effects. Naturally. One has but a projection of one's own will to work with, as one is all one ever was - at least in rational thought as far as I know. But of course this projection can be modified and influenced by the other.

What I'm trying to say in so many words is that to my disappointment, sometimes being too nice is to be mean in a way, as being nice can encourage dickheads to become bigger dickheads, until the problem becomes so blown up that it could require another dickhead - or perhaps just someone with a violent nature, or an assertive will - to cut down the out of control dickhead.

Or take dealing with various types of animals in a house or even farm. It would be really lovely if we could support all animals and help all of them live pleasant lives forever. But the reality of things is that human beings are a certain type of entity, which is sympathetic to other certain entities, and antagonistic to others.

So mice are very cute, and one sees them and thinks, "oh wouldn't it be nice to feed the little fella?" But then once they make themselves at home and start eating the food and chewing on the wires, and possibly introduce disease with their fleas and feces, then it may come time to remove them in a not-nice way.

So sealing up all of the food, and plugging up all of the holes - they call this exclusion - and possibly putting down peppermint oil and whatnot, so as to make the living space as uninviting as possible for the little things may feel sort of mean, but it is much better for the mice in the long run, as to encourage them and then suddenly turn on them when it gets to be too much is much more mean, and unfair.

This is a little dispiriting, yes. I've had to temper my own pacifism. But it is still possible to maintain a more nuanced pacifist position, which is simply to take into account other modalities of thought and action, so as to encourage and maintain that greater impulse.

What Am I Doing?

The writing process is actually a bit strange (at least for me; not entirely sure what others experience). When one gets to thinking, one seems to be generating visualizations, or these sorts of metaphorical structures of association and parallel causation, which serve as a kind of organizing framework, which often possess a distinct shape which you could call an abstract form. These structures can then be rationally mapped and put into words.

Of course the structures themselves are probably an intermingling of the rational and the visual. One is still generating these limited categorizations which can be compared and contrasted and situated into hierarchies (or broken down from them), but then at the same time, one is associating images with them to organize them, and then part of how one organizes concepts has to do with how one feels about them.

Feeling is particularly important to the causal effects built into a given work. Is something good, and does it feel pleasurable to think about? Emphasize, amplify, preserve, and repeat it. Is something bad and painful to think about? Contradict it and sanction it and see if there is a way around it. Of course this depends on the writer's purpose as well. One may feel inclined to question something that normally feels good, or revisit and re-evaluate something which is painful.

This entire process proceeds through states, with some states invoked by the process itself, and which emerge as a product of what has been set into motion. One word, phrase or image could mushroom into an entire constellation of meaning when one gets going, and then one has to decide how to size this constellation down so that one can share it. 

And again, these experiences could also be very different based on the discipline or the character of the writer. I suppose a more general point I am trying to make is that processes of creation or even communication typically have to pass through multiple regions of the brain which are doing different things, and that pathway differs depending on the activity and the personal history of the subject. But something that only takes a couple of seconds could still be highly refined, and influenced by multiple centers of production, all working to fulfill their own evolved functions, and that any utterance or creation presupposes the complex processes of a living body, which is situated in an environment and a society, all with their own complex processes which are affecting each other, undergoing constant change in historical time. No single artifact, whether audio, visual, or lingual, is just that thing. It implies everything else. 

Boundaries

Life, having the characteristics that it has, seems to have to generate boundaries between itself as it grows. Energy, upon flowing into a given system, concentrates with uneven distribution, with formations growing in disparate regions in time and space.

A living thing then is a concentration of a given flow of energy, and this concentration removes components of matter in various levels of integration, separating them from other energy flows and concentrations, and integrating them into its own body, in order to sustain itself or grow itself.

Life can sustain itself by growing its body, pursuing energy, and coming up against boundaries, can either break them down, or else the old formations curl in on themselves against the boundaries and begin wilting, necessitating the creation of new bodies and boundaries.

There is an art to living then. One should be able to grow to sustain oneself, but to continue to grow is to eclipse the other flows and formations, and ultimately destroy the surrounding energy that contributed to one's growth in the first place. If endless growth and the resultant ecstasy is to be compressed in time, one should expect to meet its mirror image: catastrophic contraction and horror, in due time.

We reach a paradox in which growth and unification of a given entity requires separation, in that the separation of units of energy from other energy flows and formations is required in greater amounts, breaking down and extinguishing those flows. And then at the same time, the respect of boundaries at various life system levels leaves other systems intact, so that multiple interconnected life systems can sustain each other for some time. This is interesting: at what level should one be respecting boundaries, and then at what level should they be broken down? Power becomes important here: a unity which concentrates power above its surroundings should actually break down, whereas lower level unities should be respected and preserved.

Marx has observed that what distinguishes capitalism as a social system is its radical separation of workers from their products, their communities, and their means of production, and at the same time, capitalists are separate from all these things as well, and must coerce their own subsistence out of these processes which are rearranged in various manners of contrivance, just as the workers are forced to sell their own labor to access this subsistence as well, so that a central market must be sustained to procure all these things, which reproduces this state of affairs indefinitely.

A bad dialectical state of affairs: for the body of capital to continue to grow and sustain itself, it must keep everything separate below itself, while incorporating all of these separate elements into itself.

So capital continues to grow, breaking off and separating all of the life flows around it in a radical way, destroying them. What began as an eruption of life is now a growth into death, which as we observe it now, appears to be intent on growing and grinding itself into oblivion.

Understanding this state of affairs is crucial if something is to be done, if this is any longer possible. Marx's work provides a good foundation for this understanding, and a good friend continues this project with his own work.

Still to be understood are the complex historical roots and relationships to this process. Why this endless expansion? How to halt this process, at least apart from the process halting itself by burning itself out? Threads we should continue to pursue.

Capital and Waste

Capital and waste are often so tightly coupled, they should just as well be considered synonymous.

Capital, both through the effects of the extreme pressures it places on the working class, and the extreme competitive and expansionary forces that contribute to its explosive growth (so long as it remains unchecked by energetic and environmental limits), generates incredible material abundance, which, due to the structural peculiarities of this process, must be destroyed or otherwise withdrawn in great proportion.

This is because abundance itself destroys exchange value, the maximization of which is the raison d'etre of capitalist activity. And perhaps more insidiously, abundance destroys worker desperation, which is detrimental to capitalist power, and is to be avoided.

So it is that a grocery store has to dump shelves and shelves of unsold and expired product into the dumpsters, and then guard the dumpsters, the waste, with righteous intensity, at least in areas with active dumpster diving. If everyone could wait around to eat nominally expired food as the grocery store dumped it, who would choose to do so? How would this affect the balance sheets?

For the same reason planned obsolescence has been in effect across virtually every manufacturing industry. We could choose to ignore the material consequences of seizing upon a new iPhone every year, those of us who can afford such things anyways, though of course all of that matter won't simply melt into the air. We should look to certain vulnerable regions in Africa, where containers and containers full of electronic waste are dumped, which are marked "secondhand goods" to pass bureaucratic scrutiny.

Critics are right about the fact that capitalism requires the generation of artificial scarcity to survive, a paradoxical situation considering the common ideological justifications for the social system, one of the most important of which insists that capitalism produces great material abundance and feeds a huge population. But as always we must ask: material abundance for whom, and to what end?

And the nature of artificial scarcity is such that an actual material mass of abundance has to be sized down, and what else would we call this superfluous mass but waste, if it was not going to be used?

Disciplines

This entry was a relatively tough piece to put together, and took some time to think about and assemble various thoughts which may seem to lack continuity or coherence, and which may seem cobbled together. But it was all worth getting down, if anything, to serve as valuable material for later. Bear with me!

Disciplines can correlate with various modes of survival, though their numerous expressions and variations can go far beyond that. Perhaps more generally, disciplines can be seen as expressions of the will, which have a tendency to harmonize surrounding life systems in accordance with the will's nature.

When one is looking to harmonize a life system, one becomes more cognizant of its mechanisms and behaviors through interaction with it. So in a way, discipline allows one to see what was previously hidden to the exerting subject. If one is learning a martial art, one begins to experience sensations all over the body, and grasp the contours of regions one had never thought about. If one is studying music, one becomes more perceptive of musical contours, textures, movements, affects, and other dimensions. If one is studying plants, one begins to see the various types of plants, their appearances, their behaviors, and their uses, depending on what one is trying to do.

And one should beware: there is only so much energy to direct one's attention with, and develop a discipline with. Where one concentrates one's energy and attention, another area may become weak, or in a cosmic sense, hidden.

There are numerous disciplines that can lead to an experience of ecstasy and feelings of unity and satisfaction - commonly referred to as flow if one is to use the modern vocabulary of psychology  - which can lead to spiritual experiences and personal growth. Doubtless this is an old observation.

There is an important concept that is known as "overlearning" in the study of discipline. Overlearning is the point at which the repetition of a given successful process becomes so regular as to become automatic. What becomes overlearned becomes so automatic as to become nearly invisible to the senses, which in a way, is another way for a given region of a life system to become invisible to the subject, which can be dangerous at times. And so, the dangers of failure find their twin affinity in the dangers of success.

Overlearning can happen with lower level, mechanical processes, so as to assist finer, higher level exertions and manipulations. But overlearning can also happen at the higher level, in which a given discipline becomes so successful and regular that the discipline is learned and spread all over, and one begins to forget why one is even doing it.

Being surrounded by and attempting too many disciplines at once, which are all becoming overlearned, and all beckoning with their powers of creation and revelation, one can become blind. One becomes surrounded by too many disciplines, trying to chase each of them superficially to derive their benefits without understanding their roots (as a cargo cult mimics foreign behaviors and practices), but one never reaches that mastery, or perhaps more importantly, one never comes to understand why one is so entranced with a given discipline, and one fails to integrate that discipline in one's life, so as to derive greater contentment on all counts.

To master a given discipline requires a set of interrelated skills and environmental conditions, all of which work together to produce a way of life. This growth and mastery is witnessed by the other, which attracts energy. Others wish to emulate this way of being, or else share in its beneficial effects.

To sustain the joy that comes with mastery and the sharing of that mastery, one must be content, and contentment means harmonizing all of the elements within one's field of awareness. A greater sphere of awareness means a greater amount of elements which must be harmonized or abided by.

For example, if one is to master the guitar, one's surroundings should be conducive to one's craft, which allows a more thorough mastery which can be shared. Of course, one can be miserable and place all of one's energy into a discipline as a means of escape or redemption, but this can cause all sorts of problems down the road. And so disciplines can be seen to be inseparable from the environments and cultures that they arise in.

To master a given discipline, one must be able to grow in the discipline, which sometimes implies growing beyond its apparent bounds. If one is to be a good cook, one should understand also the tools and equipment that goes into this cooking, as well as the gathering or even farming of the ingredients, for example, which all imply various disciplines and exertions of their own.

This growth can be material in nature, with a growing utilization of energy accompanying it, but it doesn't have to be. It can be a growth in understanding, an understanding of how to move about within one's surroundings. So of course this growth depends on context and historical circumstances.

Growth in a discipline implies a trajectory which proceeds from the nature of one's will. One's discipline will take on the shape of what one's nature is. If one is of a violent nature, one's discipline will be violent; if one is of a gentle nature, this discipline will be gentle, and all of those that witness the effects of the discipline will receive a glimpse of one's nature.

Mentors can be useful in the sense that one is being taught what one needs to proceed in a given discipline, and one can proceed with a rapidity and effectiveness that is not present if one simply starts from scratch in an area where one is weak. However, one must proceed in a given discipline to become what one is, not what the master or mentor is.

One can't grow if there is no available space to proceed to expand one's will in the world with one's discipline. Otherwise one is to become a slave to another's will, an automaton, a cog within the machine of another's creation, perhaps slowly wobbling out of orbit, but refused full exercise of the expansion of one's will. The end of growth is stagnation and despair, yet overgrowth of one implies the end of growth of another, a curious predicament.

Where one grows in one area, another area is deprived. Growth then should move, and be in flux, or otherwise be checked at the boundaries of wills of others. The mastery of this meta-discipline itself can bring great joy and satisfaction.

One can build one's own discipline over time, or learn from mentors, or do a little of both.

Disciplines may start from diffuse and chaotic practices, which then coalesce into pure and effective practices and procedures, and then the body of practice may grow diluted, and chaotic over time once again, as it spreads and comes into contact with variations and modifications. But loses power even starting from purity.

Lots of ground covered here of course. Some of it glossed over, some of it elaborated, and then all of it is ripe for more analysis. Worth thinking about anyway.

Modifying Degrees of Control

Thinking about it more, I suppose I should be making some adjustments. Control implies having some degree of power to bring about the manipulations necessary to make one's surroundings more sympathetic. So anger and fear can be conceptualized as provoking various attempts at control in response, so long as the subject has the means.

Fear and anger can be experienced and acted upon by those with less power, or without power as well, which leads to its own behaviors and consequences.

Degrees of Control

Anger, like expressions of fear, can be seen as a blind form of control.

Various forms of control are attempts by a living being to alter its environment (and its connections to other living things) in order to sustain itself. If this is in the mutual interest of other beings connected to the being, or can be sustained by the environment (for the time being) then this control can perpetuate the organization of a given living body. But past a certain point, and control accelerates volatility.

Implied in this arrangement is an outpouring of wills, which either collapse into each other through assent, or bend against each other in dissent.

One microcosmic instance worth mentioning is the attitude of those who look after elderly people with dementia. People with dementia become confused and forgetful easily, and may bumble about, against the wishes of their caregivers, which can be frustrating.

But to lash out in anger, or fear, causes those with dementia to turn away, and their symptoms to worsen, as even those with limited cognitive ability know when their will is being subverted, which is a basic fact recognized by skilled caregivers.

As a side note, it is interesting that David Shapiro, in his study of pathological styles, conceptualized paranoia as an extreme expression of executive control, as an overdriven form of OCD, which he called a police state of the mind.

This is not meant to be a condemnation of anger or fear as such; both are things that happen and have their uses, but then the overindulgence of these things are inadvisable, as is the overindulgence of many things.

Anger and fear seek to compress a given organization into a harmonic body, but which pushed to extremes, and upon attempting the compression of too many conflicting wills, could induce a violent and expansionary reaction in which an organized body rapidly unwinds and disperses.

This process can be seen as dialectic, as it is a growing volatility which produces the anger and fear, which can reverse a volatility, compress it to another point in time, or increase volatility after a certain point of inflection.

Medium

A writer, artist, poet, musician, playwright, or any other creator is often credited with bringing about a certain work of character, or even a style, movement, or social state of affairs - and in a sense this can be true, as a created work has the tendency of reinforcing a certain pattern or reality by giving shape to it and allowing for a reference of it, which produces replicas of it, amplifying it - but these figures are better conceptualized as mediums. The expressions that they send out are realities that need to be expressed, through the transformation of matter with technique, so as to reveal it to the senses of other subjects, which assent to it if they find the reality within themselves.

This transformation of matter, and the sympathetic apprehension of it, spread of it, and suspension of it through repetition of its forms, is the animation of a given reality, which takes on a life of its own that discharges itself to maintain itself. It is revealed to subjects in the medium of creator and audience.

So then life, as it expresses itself, alters its environment, which changes its expressions in turn.

Sacred Geometry

What the study of psychology can show is that the inner and outer pressures which contribute to the formation of an individual are often analogous to the inner and outer pressures of the formation of a society, and that enough individuals connecting together on a similar frequency form a sort of harmonic resonance which amplifies the frequency, which establishes a tension that holds in place a given frequency for some time.

So it is that a civilization contains within it civilizations, which themselves contain civilizations of their own, all passing through cyclic patterns at speeds which are proportional to their size and scope: a civilization takes a thousand years (on average; could be more or less) to pass through its cycles to its terminal state, whereas individuals can take 50-100 years, give or take, depending on a host of factors.

There is a good reason we are so dazzled and entranced by kaleidoscopes and fractal, spiralling geometric patterns. 

On the Outside

In Rome, there were little patio restaurants all along the streets and alleyways, with hosts and hostesses positioned outside to usher people in.

What seemed to be happening was that if a given restaurant was empty, people were less likely to sit down, so that if one person could sit down, the staff would be overjoyed. Sure enough, more people would follow and sit, reassured that there was at least one person sitting at a given restaurant.

In the same way, if one is alone or isolated, one has to work doubly hard to build up connections. For most people, a single signal is not enough to get one's attention. There has to be a current, in an electrical sense. There has to be exchange activity, there has to be a social buzz. Otherwise they won't approach.

Writer's Pleasure

There is a great joy in compacting as much meaning as possible in a given sentence or paragraph, as well as connecting words and phrases together which sound beautiful and which flow beautifully and rhythmically. This is sometimes known as eloquence.

A good example of this can be found in the writings of David Foster Wallace, who being an avid admirer of the fluid, graceful acts of the virtuoso tennis player, demonstrated a similar love of diverse and beautiful sounding words, and flowing rhythms. Perhaps there is an analogue there.

Sometimes this joy turns a little too far inward, and the dance of words begins to obscure clearer meaning itself, but then oftentimes this joy brings out writings that are a pleasure to read.

Industry of Convenience

What we often find in consumer capitalism is this endless expansion of tools, articles, infrastructure, vehicles, and services of convenience that remains virtually unchecked.

Virtually unchecked in that much of productive activity is constantly ballooning up to its limits - limits both economic and material - as it bends towards the twin motivational impulses of capitalist and consumer: of the capitalist desire to constantly expand by strip-mining deeper and deeper the valleys of consumerist desire, and of the consumerist desire to pursue allowed desires in every direction, even as they decay and weaken over time and repeated exercise. 

This expansionary impulse is partially attributable to an inherent lie in market exchanges, which on the surface assume a sort of tit-for-tat moral logic: you give me this, I give you that, and we are square. The lie resides in the exchange itself: the desire for this object of exchange is often artificially created through ad propaganda and exaggerations, a soft form of psychological warfare, and that is besides the fact that the value of the object itself includes a surplus value that is skimmed off of labor, and at the same time, skimmed off of the consumer, as many modern goods rarely offer the functionality or the lifespan that an informal consumerist social contract may entail. 

Besides material and economic limits, this expansion process finds itself subject to two major inflection points of social acceptability, points which of course are not mutually exclusive: the point of absurdity, and the point of redundancy.

These inflection points would pose a bit more than superficial constraints if the resulting desire for greater simplicity and ruggedness was not also eagerly offered satisfaction by capital, but alas.   

The point of absurdity is straightforward enough: convenience objects become so exaggerated and comedic that they become objects of ridicule, and their extreme functions of convenience eclipse individual sovereignty, as opposed to complimenting it, a problem that occasionally shows up in the service industry too.

The point of redundancy marks a point at which nested convenience begins to get in the way of its self and causes more work, by attempting to do the work of the individual taking advantage of it. A great example of this - and this originally inspired this particular diatribe - is the automatic window button on a car. I absolutely can't stand these things. It was one thing to introduce power windows, which also introduced another mechanism that could break down, because it was easy enough to crank the damn windows with your hand. But then they had to introduce an automatic button, which depressed past a certain point, causes the window to completely roll down. Of course it was too difficult to hold your finger on a button for a couple of seconds to roll the window up or down. And the auto button reliably introduces more work, as you can never quite depress it softly enough while driving, and the whole window comes down, which is unintended, so one has to fight the button to get the window to the right height.

But to avoid the risk of sounding like I'm rambling and whining about some privileged first-world problem (perhaps I'm too late), I'll just state that I digress.

Moving on, this relentless pursuit of convenience entails the removal of all sharp points and regions of friction, the erasure of unpleasantries, which though provides for a seamless and unsurprisingly pleasant experience, only results in a dashing away of said experience at the first contact of discomfort, through the extreme contrast of the unpleasant event to a fleeting, illusory state which is supposed to be devoid of all discomfort, which coincidentally or not, results in a desperate dependence on the providers of the comfort state. 

And so a tension forms, with power exercised to maintain this comfort state at all costs, and discomfort is to be violently discarded wherever possible, which more often than not results in the heaping of such displeasures on individuals unable to exercise the power to remove them.

This unsustainable practice is only temporarily sustainable by displacing and concealing the many costs that come with adding complexity and using up more energy, as demonstrated in this superb essay. This implies a linear passage of use-able energy to useless (or even damaging) waste, which, on a finite planet, is apparent enough to the average observer - without engaging in reams of complex math-work - that the ratio of energy to waste will eventually progress to unfavorable proportions.