Freedom

We have this conception of the solitary individual as free. She has no obligations to meet. She can move where she pleases, free of the fear of offending another or alienating or denying another. But move where? And how far?

To do anything worthwhile as a human being takes knowledge and skill, and we have only so much time and capacity to learn and execute successfully.

The greater the complexity of the task, the more people you need working together on it.

So there is another freedom: a freedom to associate with others and coordinate one's efforts with others to accomplish greater things.

Capital has tried to convince us that solitude is freedom, and perhaps it is if one is living in the woods on nuts, berries, and meat, all procured by oneself with crude tools, and that is all one wants. Freedom then is the ability to pursue one's desires and satisfy one's expectations.

But in a complex society, solitude is constraint. One can do virtually nothing by oneself, so one must associate. But associate under whom? Under which direction? Here capital is ready to welcome the solitary and the ostensibly free with open arms.

Community Networks

Community networks tend to be graduated, in which a closely packed nucleus of individuals of a certain intensity, and of similar interests and characters form a cohesion which attracts other similar individuals. Slightly different but complementary communities may associate with each other, especially at the points at which their differing characters are contained within single individuals, who then connect with each other across communities, forming bridges.

Closer

The more closer you are to something, the more vivid it is to the senses and the sensibility, the more you sense its contours, and the more you can understand it intuitively. But the more distant you are to something, the more you have to construct abstract categories to attempt to understand it within reasonable parameters of expectation. 

Rural Observations

Living in a rural area forces one to come to terms with various realities which are only grasped vaguely and separately by the various sectors of society which account for our bare survival.

This is due in part to the lower density and isolation of a given rural community. There is less of a dense material of mutual support, a mutual support which is generated by specialized labor operating under a central market. This lack of social density places a greater emphasis on procuring all of one's basic needs for the rural individual.

So you begin to see what it takes to build a house, or produce food, or produce waste, or consume electricity. The global industrial society begins to appear quite incredible - and quite horrible - in this regard.

This realization places the modern stick-built house into stark relief for its wasteful nature. Its design depends on a constant flow of linear waste, as one has to cut various standardized materials to make a certain fit, and then cast the rest away into the dump, and its design is wholly dependent on active methods of heating and cooling, as well as maintenance, all of which require a constant and sustained input of disposable energy. I'm aware this has been observed for some time, just not talked about as much.

The stick-built design then is a product of great social volume, cheap energy, and abundant resources, and the historical conditions of its emergence will make this clear. This design allows for a quick build-out, fed from standardized, factory-produced materials, and then maintained and regulated with a constant flow of cheap energy.

Another consequence of rural living - which is another old observation I'm aware of - is that labor tends to synchronize more tightly with natural cycles, that is if one is not exploiting oneself and one's land to enter the market.

Labor cycles conform to the necessity of work: what does one need, and what is to be done, and how long will it take? These cycles also conform to weather, available light (day and night cycles) and the body's physical capacity.

This results in more haphazard cycles in which a burst of labor in a 12 hour day may shorten to 4 hours the next day due to fatigue, or be cut short by bad weather. These patterns may slowly crystallize with regularity, repetition, and success, but not nearly in the systematic fashion of the industrial machine.

Once again, it is social mass that seems to generate this incredible driving industrial force, a force which takes its direction from the nature of the mass, but which obliterates anything which does not conform to the aggregate-character of the mass.

And so the 8 hour workday is systematized to conform both with human capacity, assisted energy inputs, and constraints introduced by the labor struggle, among others. This is a model born of volume and the expression of an aggregate, but it readily steamrolls over anyone who is unable or unwilling to work such days.

As Marx observed, the discrepancy between this city-based and industrial lifestyle, and the rural lifestyle separated from the market - let's keep in mind the rural lifestyle alone does not decouple one from the market, as capital was born in the countryside -  is due in part to the difference in the social aims of labor: one aim is to sustain oneself and procure one's needs. Another aim is to constantly increase value in competition with other value increasers, which is an aim that owes its shape and its drive to historical and social circumstances.

Catching Up

This is another of those many placeholder posts that I sheepishly put up when my writing habits have gone off the rails for whatever internal or external (or both) reason.

In brief, Oakland and other cities in the bay that are in close proximity to San Francisco or San Jose - and the tech bubble those regions imply - are in a state of simmering turmoil, in which displaced wealth, which can't even compete with the extreme concentrations of wealth in urban areas, is flooding in, and lower income communities are finding themselves severely strained in their own neighborhoods, or otherwise priced out and displaced.

Needless to say, gentrification as a phenomenon has been happening for as long as capitalism has existed, and probably even further back in some form or another. But as a phenomenon it reveals the soft violence of wealth stratification and what it can do to communities.

Forming graduated tiers, wealth and power enjoys a freedom of movement in which it flows to the geographic and social objects of desire and overtakes them, displacing those of limited means in a lower tier. It is the process in which a stratified society settles onto itself as it changes, doing violence to itself.

Much more can be written on this subject, but I only meant to mention it as it is affecting us in the form of higher rents and prices, and a generally strained sense of living which inflames dysfunctional relationships and households. Everywhere we hear of friends and acquaintances in feuds with their landlords, or who are in danger of being evicted or even being evicted, and these are the effects experienced by those who aren't even the least privileged.

These movements of wealth put significant strain on the various strata of society, setting them against each other and provoking them, much like minor earthquakes sending waves of motion which jostle the various materials that set upon each other, making them grind. I suppose it is part of this process which places significant strains on my own self, invoking stress and confusing my mind and disrupting my writing habits. Though of course there are other reasons.

Now we find ourselves outside of Oakland, on a property that is partially off-grid, building, learning, thinking, scheming, among other things. Much to write about given recent events, whether it has to do with gentrification, relationships, further self mastery, shaping one's environment, or whatever else. Hopefully I'll be able to get to the important topics in good time.