If you get paid to do something, you tend to do it over and over again, if nothing else then out of compulsion.
But if you don't get paid for anything, or you don't get paid for any of your passions, then you're constantly exhausting yourself and moving on to something else. Nothing gets developed like it should.
Unless of course you find something to do out of a compulsion of another kind, a driving need or a pleasure, or out of a need to heal, or a combination of these things.
This is one of the great spiritual crimes that capitalism commits through its operation: this limited saturation of resources for a limited number of individuals' passions, while the rest are relegated to these specialized, repetitious, and shallow tasks, where ultimately these individuals hit developmental plateaus early on and continue bobbing underneath their glass ceilings.
And then these same individuals are beat about the head with various moral condemnations for trying to pursue their passions through other channels, or even merely stimulating the passions through sex, drugs, alcohol, entertainment, food, and other things.
Finally, through some particularly salient irony, those in the most advanced states of immolation, some of those that cannot survive otherwise except doing what they most love, living lives of poverty and desperation, are finally chosen by capital and showered with wealth, and many of these same individuals are expressing gratitude that they've been so fortunate, after their tormentors, having impoverished them, have decided to award them the resources they deserve, and more. And who could blame them?
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Friday, February 19, 2016
Wills
To someone sensitive to the influence of other wills, it becomes a bit of a challenge to actually listen to one's own will, both because of the multitude of competing and intensifying will-interests emanating from the powerful, and the intensifying preponderance of need from the powerless. And then there's everything in between.
This is even setting aside the multitudinous desires and fears within one's own self.
This is even setting aside the multitudinous desires and fears within one's own self.
What You Are
If we really were to empty out the contents of our minds into the public space, it would probably be very confusing and bewildering, like gazing over history without an organizational framework, or observing the cosmos with the naked eye - an analogy that breaks down because even the naked eye, with its neural processing, actively filters and constructs.
You don't just have a will, but wills, all of which collapse down into finer wills, which aggregate and produce movements.
You can observe this within yourself, and then it has been observed in neuroscience. The behavior of the neurons in the brain is interesting enough: they associate. They form connections and break connections. They form tribes, interest groups, which appeal to the global will.
And this understanding still is simply a bootstrapping off of many other concepts that we have constructed, such as democracy, tribe, connect, associate, etc.
What we choose to focus on within ourselves, and what we pay attention to in the world then, really does contribute to the construction of what we are. And in turn, what we choose to encapsulate within that realm of perception and share with others through speech and writing, contributes to the construction of what we are as a collective.
And as I've written in numerous variations before, to focus on something is to make it more so, and bring it in relation to you.
These are all choices, which originate in large part from our reactions to reality as it acts on us. But what is choice? Power gives you at the least an illusion of decision-making ability, and powerlessness forces you to be reactive to power.
And anyway, the basic premise is threatening to blow up my project here and now. A privilege! A privilege to sit here in confusion and bewilderment, as necessity tends to remove doubt. Or does it? Ah too much thinking; sometimes it is better to give it up.
You don't just have a will, but wills, all of which collapse down into finer wills, which aggregate and produce movements.
You can observe this within yourself, and then it has been observed in neuroscience. The behavior of the neurons in the brain is interesting enough: they associate. They form connections and break connections. They form tribes, interest groups, which appeal to the global will.
And this understanding still is simply a bootstrapping off of many other concepts that we have constructed, such as democracy, tribe, connect, associate, etc.
What we choose to focus on within ourselves, and what we pay attention to in the world then, really does contribute to the construction of what we are. And in turn, what we choose to encapsulate within that realm of perception and share with others through speech and writing, contributes to the construction of what we are as a collective.
And as I've written in numerous variations before, to focus on something is to make it more so, and bring it in relation to you.
These are all choices, which originate in large part from our reactions to reality as it acts on us. But what is choice? Power gives you at the least an illusion of decision-making ability, and powerlessness forces you to be reactive to power.
And anyway, the basic premise is threatening to blow up my project here and now. A privilege! A privilege to sit here in confusion and bewilderment, as necessity tends to remove doubt. Or does it? Ah too much thinking; sometimes it is better to give it up.
Food Justice
Food justice makes for a good brief window into our greater predicament. To eat well is better for the individual: in the short term it stabilizes the mood, results in less body inflammation and aches, it clears the mind, and in the long term it means less chronic health problems. This is still a superficial treatment, but illustrative anyway.
Even to put it more crassly, it is better for the economy. It means less environmental damage and health problems which manifest in the long term as sunk costs and expended energy.
In terms of the environment, it means less processing, less industrial effluents, and less toxins passing through the body and through livestock and soil.
There are other things going for it too.
But to eat well is usually expensive. It doesn't have to be expensive, but for it to be convenient and accessible it usually is expensive. It also takes time and energy to shop for fresh ingredients, especially in food deserts and suburbs. It takes time and energy to prepare ingredients. It even takes time and energy to break out of patterns of eating junk food, because the junk food itself can be irresistible, because it is manufactured to be, and it takes energy to resist that impulse.
Besides that, junk food tastes great and it feels great, at least initially. It is colorful and enticing and it surrounds us and impresses upon us. Many of us grew up with it. It has embedded itself into the culture.
So to eat well is a privilege that many simply don't have, on many levels, not all of them readily apparent.
Good food doesn't have to be expensive though. This is a policy choice. We've chosen the corn subsidies and the ag subsidies, and the regulations and preferences that keep large food corporations in power. We allow the large food corporations to grow and stifle competition, and squeeze farmers and laborers. And we've invested the time and energy in various industrial processes that exploit cheap oil to make plentiful food through artificial yield improvements, processing, transport, and other means.
And to say something is inexpensive does not always have to imply an absolute claim. Expense does relate to the availability of natural resources and the complexity and feasibility of existing technologies, but it also relates to the proportion of social energy invested in production. The more something is available, the more specific skills are being exercised and developed regularly to produce it, the more efficient a given process becomes over time, and the more readily configured existing technologies and infrastructure are to assist in production, the more inexpensive something becomes.
This can get much more complicated pretty quickly, but I guess my basic point is that it is a constructed reality that is determining what the availability of food looks like, and this constructed reality produces a least path of resistance of its own.
Which seems counter-intuitive of course. All of that concentrated and organized energy and power: how should it exist at all? But centuries upon centuries of accumulated human activity have made it so, and through its inertia we have a direction of movement to contend with.
Change itself becomes trickier with complexity; if you have more systems acting on each other, they form a tension with each other in which each influences the other back toward an established homoeostasis. Change in one area is more likely to snap back to conform to the character of the larger system, so it takes a far greater expenditure of energy to change everything at once, once and for all.
Yes let's encourage localized, organic foods. But volume and distribution requirements necessitate larger energy inputs, packaging, and perhaps some processing, which necessitate petroleum or coal in turn, which introduces exposure to contracting energy supplies with everything else. Or else these foods must still compete with the industrial foods and large-scale agriculture outfits that still exist. And this availability and the ultimate expenses have to be fed back into the class system, both through wealth mechanisms and geography, among other things. Of course there's also the simple matter of the availability of arable land, which is influenced by various ecosystem pressures such as increasing drought, toxicity, soil erosion, loss in biodiversity and etc.
Even to put it more crassly, it is better for the economy. It means less environmental damage and health problems which manifest in the long term as sunk costs and expended energy.
In terms of the environment, it means less processing, less industrial effluents, and less toxins passing through the body and through livestock and soil.
There are other things going for it too.
But to eat well is usually expensive. It doesn't have to be expensive, but for it to be convenient and accessible it usually is expensive. It also takes time and energy to shop for fresh ingredients, especially in food deserts and suburbs. It takes time and energy to prepare ingredients. It even takes time and energy to break out of patterns of eating junk food, because the junk food itself can be irresistible, because it is manufactured to be, and it takes energy to resist that impulse.
Besides that, junk food tastes great and it feels great, at least initially. It is colorful and enticing and it surrounds us and impresses upon us. Many of us grew up with it. It has embedded itself into the culture.
So to eat well is a privilege that many simply don't have, on many levels, not all of them readily apparent.
Good food doesn't have to be expensive though. This is a policy choice. We've chosen the corn subsidies and the ag subsidies, and the regulations and preferences that keep large food corporations in power. We allow the large food corporations to grow and stifle competition, and squeeze farmers and laborers. And we've invested the time and energy in various industrial processes that exploit cheap oil to make plentiful food through artificial yield improvements, processing, transport, and other means.
And to say something is inexpensive does not always have to imply an absolute claim. Expense does relate to the availability of natural resources and the complexity and feasibility of existing technologies, but it also relates to the proportion of social energy invested in production. The more something is available, the more specific skills are being exercised and developed regularly to produce it, the more efficient a given process becomes over time, and the more readily configured existing technologies and infrastructure are to assist in production, the more inexpensive something becomes.
This can get much more complicated pretty quickly, but I guess my basic point is that it is a constructed reality that is determining what the availability of food looks like, and this constructed reality produces a least path of resistance of its own.
Which seems counter-intuitive of course. All of that concentrated and organized energy and power: how should it exist at all? But centuries upon centuries of accumulated human activity have made it so, and through its inertia we have a direction of movement to contend with.
Change itself becomes trickier with complexity; if you have more systems acting on each other, they form a tension with each other in which each influences the other back toward an established homoeostasis. Change in one area is more likely to snap back to conform to the character of the larger system, so it takes a far greater expenditure of energy to change everything at once, once and for all.
Yes let's encourage localized, organic foods. But volume and distribution requirements necessitate larger energy inputs, packaging, and perhaps some processing, which necessitate petroleum or coal in turn, which introduces exposure to contracting energy supplies with everything else. Or else these foods must still compete with the industrial foods and large-scale agriculture outfits that still exist. And this availability and the ultimate expenses have to be fed back into the class system, both through wealth mechanisms and geography, among other things. Of course there's also the simple matter of the availability of arable land, which is influenced by various ecosystem pressures such as increasing drought, toxicity, soil erosion, loss in biodiversity and etc.
Thursday, February 04, 2016
Qualifying Domination
Since I've been speaking so loosely about domination, perhaps now is the time to qualify it.
Dominance correlates with the confidence that one's way is the way, though of course it can mean many more things, so for the sake of this brief discussion let's just assume this simple conception of it.
One yields to whomever demonstrates the knowledge or the know-how to do something well, because their character inclines them to be adept at a given thing, or they have done the work to become adept. No one can become good at everything at once. I bow to the good cook, or the good carpenter, or the knowledgeable legal activist, or the good artist, or whoever does something better than I - though we have to be careful here, as this perception is socially constructed.
One yields to whomever one respects then.
Problems arise when the dominant grow intoxicated with this domination - as it is a pleasurable feeling socially to be regarded in this way - and extend dominance to greater and greater regions, while refusing to cede or dissolve their dominance when necessary. It especially smarts when one must yield to someone who has no idea what they are doing or is doing something actively wrong, and even the notion of doing something right is socially conceived.
Ideally everyone should have the opportunity to become dominant in something they can contribute with, and yield to and receive from others doing the same.
Dominance tends to become toxic when it is expanded and sustained, or when it generally becomes inflexible, whether for social spoils, resources, or whatever else.
Dominance correlates with the confidence that one's way is the way, though of course it can mean many more things, so for the sake of this brief discussion let's just assume this simple conception of it.
One yields to whomever demonstrates the knowledge or the know-how to do something well, because their character inclines them to be adept at a given thing, or they have done the work to become adept. No one can become good at everything at once. I bow to the good cook, or the good carpenter, or the knowledgeable legal activist, or the good artist, or whoever does something better than I - though we have to be careful here, as this perception is socially constructed.
One yields to whomever one respects then.
Problems arise when the dominant grow intoxicated with this domination - as it is a pleasurable feeling socially to be regarded in this way - and extend dominance to greater and greater regions, while refusing to cede or dissolve their dominance when necessary. It especially smarts when one must yield to someone who has no idea what they are doing or is doing something actively wrong, and even the notion of doing something right is socially conceived.
Ideally everyone should have the opportunity to become dominant in something they can contribute with, and yield to and receive from others doing the same.
Dominance tends to become toxic when it is expanded and sustained, or when it generally becomes inflexible, whether for social spoils, resources, or whatever else.
Mystic Mistake
One of the perennial mystic mistakes - which leads to the imperialism of the mystic - is the mass extension of deprivation and asceticism. Not everyone is hypersensitive, and in requirement of drastic measures to live a decent life.
More Hypocrites
People are terrified and trying to carefully follow the rules, even though many of them see plainly the constant breach of rules of the powerful. The powerful are adept at maintaining intact bodies within a locus of control, usually by maintaining legitimacy through propaganda and force.
What's Laughter
Laughter is a bit difficult to get a bead on. But two interesting types of laughter are as follows: there is a kind of laughter that is intended to pull something closer, and sometimes elevate. And then there is a kind of laughter that is intended to push something away, and sometimes lower.
A Comment on an Old Metaphor
You can have a conception of what is beyond Plato's cave, and you may very well be right about your conception, but until you directly perceive it and experience it, it is unlikely you can act on it, at least with significance, for action tends to be more tightly coupled with the perceptions and instincts.
End the Bad
Apologists for cruelty in the world will say that it is always happening everywhere. But the thing about bad processes is that they must end somewhere, sometime. Where and when to begin the end? Where and when to make the cut-off?
Survival Identity
Just as the Inuit have so many words for snow - which indicates a granular understanding of the landscape - the oppressed tend to have a granular account of identity; it is a matter of survival. There are many reasons for this, but it is just useful to note for now.
One thing to say is that identity is a way of creating space, to indicate that something is there. But each identity must take space. Someone has to take, and then someone has to give.
One thing to say is that identity is a way of creating space, to indicate that something is there. But each identity must take space. Someone has to take, and then someone has to give.
Necessities and Symbols
First it is best to learn from relationships of necessities. Symbols can aid in the mapping and navigation of these necessities, but if one is learning only from coherent clusters of symbols, one should beware: one is both simplifying and drifting.
Guest Etiquette
One thing that is useful to keep in mind as a long term guest - and I assure you that there will be no shortage of long term guests in the coming decade - is that one should minimize distortions in space, such as belongings, personal markers, etc. A public space, or even someone else's space, is most inviting, and allows for more stable relations, when the space is "open" to all participants, or it is not colonized by any one personality. The converse provides a source of perpetual irritation, which has its own cumulative effects.
It's Beyond Me
The greater complexity a technology requires, the wider the spread of the specialization of human labor, which paradoxically means a greater concentration of labor power due to the monopolizing tendencies of capital.
The more specialized, the more the worker must be oblivious of the greater production process, which of course happens of its own accord. Otherwise, the product, or the process of making the product, can appear as an abomination, or a nonsensical affair, devoid of the worker's imprint.
The more specialized, the more the worker must be oblivious of the greater production process, which of course happens of its own accord. Otherwise, the product, or the process of making the product, can appear as an abomination, or a nonsensical affair, devoid of the worker's imprint.
Capital's Nostalgia
I was sitting in the Oakland Airport a couple of months ago, in a Chili's, when something struck me.
This Chili's had a wall of Southwestern-style window shutters along its back flank, which were completely unnecessary. The windows had no function other than to create a certain sense of place. The shutters were once invented for a specific purpose, to move up and down to block light, whereas now they were simply recreated and placed flush up against a solid steel wall, to elicit a certain feeling. Kind of odd, but not unaccounted for.
All around us are these curious recreations of the past, these themed façades erected to evoke a certain feeling, a mining for positive emotions or associations, which becomes all the more necessary as the hyper-modern and the industrial are all but stripped of feeling and warmth.
This Chili's had a wall of Southwestern-style window shutters along its back flank, which were completely unnecessary. The windows had no function other than to create a certain sense of place. The shutters were once invented for a specific purpose, to move up and down to block light, whereas now they were simply recreated and placed flush up against a solid steel wall, to elicit a certain feeling. Kind of odd, but not unaccounted for.
All around us are these curious recreations of the past, these themed façades erected to evoke a certain feeling, a mining for positive emotions or associations, which becomes all the more necessary as the hyper-modern and the industrial are all but stripped of feeling and warmth.
Reciprocation
A community thrives through reciprocation. Someone who is good at one thing helps out with someone who is not so good at that thing, and then that person who is not so good at the thing, but good at another thing helps out that someone who was good at the other thing. This phenomenon can occur outside our normal understanding of trade, or dealings in material goods.
Alliances are made to extend the networks of reciprocation. These associations can break down if the current ceases to flow.
Alliances are made to extend the networks of reciprocation. These associations can break down if the current ceases to flow.
Fight for Culture
Even at the cultural level, on some level we are speaking of a fight for control over energy.
For example, it takes an incredible amount of energy to power a feature-length film, and transmit it across an entire civilization.
You have to fight for the right to preside over that energy. Who's story is going to be told?
It does eventually come down to muscle energy. There are only so many of us, and it takes so much of us to handle complex tasks.
For example, it takes an incredible amount of energy to power a feature-length film, and transmit it across an entire civilization.
You have to fight for the right to preside over that energy. Who's story is going to be told?
It does eventually come down to muscle energy. There are only so many of us, and it takes so much of us to handle complex tasks.
Half Life
Discriminatory language - whether racist, sexist, ableist, etc. - bears indicators of domineering affect, and this language as a vehicle for that affect spreads far and wide, long after the affect fades. It is like a form of radiation, decaying over time but damaging that which is vulnerable to it as it is distributed.
Reducto
It isn't that reductive reasoning is dangerous in itself - so long as the one doing the reducing keeps in mind what is being reduced from - but that the artifacts it generates become these sorts of fetish objects which authoritarians can use to fix rigid frameworks.
So someone says, "well so and so is doing this because of biological drives." Ok so the biological drives have been "sliced" out of the multiplicity of causation to illustrate a certain point, to make comprehensible the infinitely complex and incomprehensible real. Great. It is a story, and we can use this sometimes.
It is when you have someone saying, "But it is biology. We can't mess with it. End of story." And then they point to this mysterious "biology" as if reality can't possibly proceed past its bounds, and that upon following the instructions that biology conjures up with its galaxy of related symbols - which also have to be constructed - then some god of explanation is satisfied.
So someone says, "well so and so is doing this because of biological drives." Ok so the biological drives have been "sliced" out of the multiplicity of causation to illustrate a certain point, to make comprehensible the infinitely complex and incomprehensible real. Great. It is a story, and we can use this sometimes.
It is when you have someone saying, "But it is biology. We can't mess with it. End of story." And then they point to this mysterious "biology" as if reality can't possibly proceed past its bounds, and that upon following the instructions that biology conjures up with its galaxy of related symbols - which also have to be constructed - then some god of explanation is satisfied.
Hidden Costs
One unnoticed cost of power imbalance is that potentially nice things can go unappreciated by large swathes of the population. That white upper-middle class bourgeois have popularized organic whole foods, localized production, yoga, craft beers, kombucha, and a smattering of other nice things is enough to make them incredibly distasteful.
Tuesday, February 02, 2016
Trump'd
The funny thing about Donald Trump is that if he really were to "speak his mind" - as his supporters so graciously praise him for - even his supporters would grow to loathe him. A right wing authoritarian like Trump is only interested in domination. The solidarity he builds with his supporters is mostly tactical - I'd be willing to concede that perhaps he does feel vague connections, but I can't claim to know his mind.
Above all else he is mining, going full bore into the resources he knows he can tap, while alienating the resources he knows he will never reach, which as it happens strengthens the resources he has tapped into. His reactionary base loves the liberal bashing and the hippie punching.
His "honesty" takes place within a carefully constructed narrative and mythos, and is a cunning ploy to consolidate power. The fact that he is a billionaire is reason enough for me to suspect that he secretly laughs at this mythos.
The structure of his movement illustrates a general distinction between far right and far left movements. The right prefer to associate in these tensile structures of tiered domination, with those who are perceived to be strong and charismatic taking higher positions. Domination is maintained through mimetic desire: the head dominator is idealized, his position desired. So long as one tastes domination, one is on the right track, in association with others.
It is not like these structures don't exist with the far left, but the far left is often more occupied with smoothing out the contours of domination, or at least propelling the oppressed to a dominant position as a body. As always, stress and strain, and the ebb and flow of power can modulate these tendencies, but as a general distinction, this seems to hold up.
If his movement were to lose steam, whether through success or defeat, then the real cannibalization would begin. This happened in stages with the Nazis, and its effects radiated outward in all directions from the movement, affecting the body politic. Domination started with marginalized groups that were unpopular with the general public, and then widened to subsume more and more target groups, splitting those groups into finer divisions before turning into the party itself. The Nazi movement was manipulated as a machine by its superiors, switching various departments out from the levers of power, or otherwise pitting them against each other, so that the machine was always accumulating power.
The chief resource then that feeds Trump's movement is resent, a resent upon being dominated, and a desire to respond in kind with domination. Until there is a shortage of this type of resent, he will continue to consolidate power. At the least, others will rise after him.
Above all else he is mining, going full bore into the resources he knows he can tap, while alienating the resources he knows he will never reach, which as it happens strengthens the resources he has tapped into. His reactionary base loves the liberal bashing and the hippie punching.
His "honesty" takes place within a carefully constructed narrative and mythos, and is a cunning ploy to consolidate power. The fact that he is a billionaire is reason enough for me to suspect that he secretly laughs at this mythos.
The structure of his movement illustrates a general distinction between far right and far left movements. The right prefer to associate in these tensile structures of tiered domination, with those who are perceived to be strong and charismatic taking higher positions. Domination is maintained through mimetic desire: the head dominator is idealized, his position desired. So long as one tastes domination, one is on the right track, in association with others.
It is not like these structures don't exist with the far left, but the far left is often more occupied with smoothing out the contours of domination, or at least propelling the oppressed to a dominant position as a body. As always, stress and strain, and the ebb and flow of power can modulate these tendencies, but as a general distinction, this seems to hold up.
If his movement were to lose steam, whether through success or defeat, then the real cannibalization would begin. This happened in stages with the Nazis, and its effects radiated outward in all directions from the movement, affecting the body politic. Domination started with marginalized groups that were unpopular with the general public, and then widened to subsume more and more target groups, splitting those groups into finer divisions before turning into the party itself. The Nazi movement was manipulated as a machine by its superiors, switching various departments out from the levers of power, or otherwise pitting them against each other, so that the machine was always accumulating power.
The chief resource then that feeds Trump's movement is resent, a resent upon being dominated, and a desire to respond in kind with domination. Until there is a shortage of this type of resent, he will continue to consolidate power. At the least, others will rise after him.
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