The nationalist fervor that characterized the prewar conditions of the early 20th century could be seen as a defensive posture on the part of numerous ethnic groups across the world. What people were realizing is that their civil rights would not be respected unless they had guns pointed at their would-be oppressors, and they wanted control of a state that could be used to both jack into capitalist markets and protect them from those markets at the same time.
Hannah Arendt for example observed that refugees and stateless peoples were treated worse than criminal citizens; they were viewed as subhuman and disposed of as such. It took having a nation to one's name to be coded as a citizen and therefore able to enjoy the protection of basic human rights, guaranteed by none other than a state which considered its resources best placed in its identifiable citizens.
This isn't an argument for nationalism. It is however the sort of logic that unfolds when a national empire - or multiple empires - exists. And having a nation doesn't even guarantee one's protection if the ruling class sees one fit for marginalization in any way.
Monday, November 28, 2016
Organic Culture as Proof of Life
What the assimilationist Hopi gradually realized is that if they were to shed the artifacts of their culture, they would more or less be marked for subhumanity and gradual destruction, which the United States government and businesses typically do with indigenous communities and communities of color.
The assimilationists seized upon their traditions and held them up as talismans to ward off Western exploitation and aggression, or as some sort of life raft. To the imperialist, here was a culture, something of beauty and value, which produces valuable artifacts and interesting aesthetics, and which demands itself to be seen as living, through the force of its own existence. Surely something like this deserves to live on?
The assimilationists were taken somewhat seriously as a result, though this only slowed the process of their marginalization and destruction, especially if they sat on top of some particularly valuable natural resource or piece of land.What could be extracted and torn from the cultural context was seized upon, leaving the living culture itself to languish.
The assimilationists then found themselves in between a rock and a hard place: they were pitied by the traditionals for abandoning their culture and assimilating, and disrespected (and worse) by the Western culture they were trying to assimilate into.
Culture is a sort of resource. It displays one's value and existence to something that otherwise devalues and destroys everything foreign to it. However resources that can be broken off can be extracted, and capital usually finds a way to do this, if it is possible.
The assimilationists seized upon their traditions and held them up as talismans to ward off Western exploitation and aggression, or as some sort of life raft. To the imperialist, here was a culture, something of beauty and value, which produces valuable artifacts and interesting aesthetics, and which demands itself to be seen as living, through the force of its own existence. Surely something like this deserves to live on?
The assimilationists were taken somewhat seriously as a result, though this only slowed the process of their marginalization and destruction, especially if they sat on top of some particularly valuable natural resource or piece of land.What could be extracted and torn from the cultural context was seized upon, leaving the living culture itself to languish.
The assimilationists then found themselves in between a rock and a hard place: they were pitied by the traditionals for abandoning their culture and assimilating, and disrespected (and worse) by the Western culture they were trying to assimilate into.
Culture is a sort of resource. It displays one's value and existence to something that otherwise devalues and destroys everything foreign to it. However resources that can be broken off can be extracted, and capital usually finds a way to do this, if it is possible.
Hush
I should just stop writing. I should shut up - and so should everyone else. And then we can let the silence really sink in and do its work.
But if I did that, there would certainly be someone to seize upon the space and write some real garbage, completely unhindered. I must continue to put the good out - my good - lest the bad - what I think is bad - drive out the good.
There is a similar problem with capital. The nervous workaholic capitalist sits at his mahogany desk, or what have you, anxiously wringing his hands, terrorstruck that the other capitalists are going to innovate, increase efficiency, and eat his lunch. Or if he were to renounce wealth, all of his friends would sail past him laughing, in their yachts.
And so on with violence. We can't place our guns down, because there is always someone to pick up the gun and take everyone else over.
More generally, there is a constant pouring forth, a pouring outward. And this pouring forth takes its surroundings with it, through sympathetic outpourings in response. It produces a current, an all powerful exertion that sweeps us up.
This is expressed mechanically in our interlocking patterns of cultural reproduction, through the mimetic drive. We see some great power, whether creating or destroying life, and our instinct is to mimic it.
Defense is mimicry out of necessity, and offense to someone else is yet more mimicry as instigation and anticipation. So on it goes.
The memory of the outpouring evokes the outpouring. Anticipation of offense evokes offense, and so offense evokes itself in perpetuity, reproducing its germ even as it crashes against natural limits. Is this to be integral to the human condition?
But if I did that, there would certainly be someone to seize upon the space and write some real garbage, completely unhindered. I must continue to put the good out - my good - lest the bad - what I think is bad - drive out the good.
There is a similar problem with capital. The nervous workaholic capitalist sits at his mahogany desk, or what have you, anxiously wringing his hands, terrorstruck that the other capitalists are going to innovate, increase efficiency, and eat his lunch. Or if he were to renounce wealth, all of his friends would sail past him laughing, in their yachts.
And so on with violence. We can't place our guns down, because there is always someone to pick up the gun and take everyone else over.
More generally, there is a constant pouring forth, a pouring outward. And this pouring forth takes its surroundings with it, through sympathetic outpourings in response. It produces a current, an all powerful exertion that sweeps us up.
This is expressed mechanically in our interlocking patterns of cultural reproduction, through the mimetic drive. We see some great power, whether creating or destroying life, and our instinct is to mimic it.
Defense is mimicry out of necessity, and offense to someone else is yet more mimicry as instigation and anticipation. So on it goes.
The memory of the outpouring evokes the outpouring. Anticipation of offense evokes offense, and so offense evokes itself in perpetuity, reproducing its germ even as it crashes against natural limits. Is this to be integral to the human condition?
Organic Growth and Invention
As the human organism ages, it progresses from a spontaneous, organic growth to a conscious and deliberate repetition of invention. The entity begins to discover the patterns that sustain it, and conjoins and repeats them to perpetuate itself. The circle becomes a square.
Tangentially, but perhaps not unconnected, a thing that cools crystallizes as the energy leaves, its molecules orbiting fewer random points.
And the square always desires to become the circle again, and vice versa. In art, or more generally, techne, the object of the artist or craftsperson is to repeat a series of mechanical motions to approach mastery, which appears as warm and smooth.
This is only a portion of the story. Even in art, there are oscillations of these opposing drives, the mimicry of the organic and the mechanical, and everything in between. And these cycles of oscillation occur within greater cycles of oscillation.
Tangentially, but perhaps not unconnected, a thing that cools crystallizes as the energy leaves, its molecules orbiting fewer random points.
And the square always desires to become the circle again, and vice versa. In art, or more generally, techne, the object of the artist or craftsperson is to repeat a series of mechanical motions to approach mastery, which appears as warm and smooth.
This is only a portion of the story. Even in art, there are oscillations of these opposing drives, the mimicry of the organic and the mechanical, and everything in between. And these cycles of oscillation occur within greater cycles of oscillation.
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
Trump'd 2016
The one thing that happens to arouse me from my depressive writing slumber is the political catastrophe of the 2016 election. I feel as some ancient creature, weakly rising up off of its belly, scattering dust, looking faintly into a horizon troubled by a distant storm.
At one time I had gazed over my earlier writings on Trump with a blush on my face, concerned that my manic hyperbole was ultimately misplaced. But now, I do feel that some of my observations were correct, or at least congruous to the strange chaotic reality before us, and that the weather systems I was trying to understand are still going in the general direction I believe them to be.
Not that I need to be validated by these things, nor do I even want to be. It would be far better to write myself off as misguided and watch the world piece itself together in spite of the difficulties ahead of it.
But that's enough about me.
There is still plenty of time before Trump takes office, and the brittle US political system is certainly not going to handle the kind of transfer of power we're accustomed to without some kind of shower of sparks or grinding of gears. The 2000 election was tumultuous enough after all. And the global economy is so tightly integrated, we'll most likely see some pretty dramatic effects in the form of sympathetic reactions, whose effects will feed back into the US political system in short order.
It may be worthwhile to try to wrap one's head around what has actually happened, however much nausea it causes as one reminisces on the campaign trail, and apprehends the fact that Trump as a phenomenon really does exist, and he is poised to wrap his fingers around the levers of the most powerful empire in the world. This is even taking into account the waning power and influence of the US empire, which is arguably a much more dangerous force, with its insecure rebuffs against power-sharing and increasing alienation and humiliation.
The election cycle, which is to peaceably transfer power to the leader of another faction, has run into a snag: there is nothing there to transfer power to! In the conventional sense anyway.
No doubt, Trump is there to receive the power with open arms and a broad smile upon his face. But what is Trump? What does he embody? What does he represent? Trump is not a politician with whom you entrust power to maintain a system; you entrust him to smash it. Or in other words, this is not the beginning of a new political order, but the collapse of an old one.
The catapult of his person to the presidency can only be construed as some vast, national cry of despair. Those that actually believe in the candidate are doing so with bellies poisoned by decades of swallowing contradictory and preposterous business propaganda, and who are otherwise willing participants in the long historical process of dispossession and imperial growth.
Those that voted Trump as a protest, casting their vote with a cynical confidence in him as a weapon, like tossing a brick through an establishment window, or into the face of an establishment politician for that matter, draw from that same well of despair. More constructive things have happened with the tossing of actual bricks through actual windows.
This is a people who have indeed suffered, and continue to suffer, but who have chosen greater suffering as a solution. Not that this sudden, grim outpouring emerged from a vacuum either. No, we have had a long historical procession of foreclosed redemptions and denials of justice, culminating with the DNC's stonewalling of the one sensible candidate in the whole campaign, which makes it all the more tragic.
And we have to look on in horror at the plight of the American public, which has suddenly become alarmed that the weight it has thrown around the globe to enrich itself has become tangled around its own neck, dragging it down. With Trump the answer is to untangle the instruments of domination, and make them point outward once again, as opposed to retiring them completely. Historically, this is a project that makes the predicament much worse of course, to the point of vast destruction and suffering.
Indeed, we find this moment's analogue in Brexit, where to every pollster's surprise, a people chose to accelerate disintegration. A few months in and they continue to squabble over rejoining the connections they've severed, slowly bleeding out in the process.
Whatever process of disintegration we have to watch may very well tear open some new power vacuum, by virtue of clearing out the corrupt and convoluted tangle that the neoliberal empire resembles. Within such a vacuum is possibility, but at the same time there exists the site of a bitter struggle between all of the shearing forces that have been unleashed.
Cold comfort in a dark time, without a doubt. But that promise of possibility begat countless vital movements throughout history, and countless horrors too, let's not forget. The best that can be done is to struggle in the direction of what one believes to be good. Weak tea perhaps, but I can't help but draw from the well of despair myself. It seems to be all they are serving.
At one time I had gazed over my earlier writings on Trump with a blush on my face, concerned that my manic hyperbole was ultimately misplaced. But now, I do feel that some of my observations were correct, or at least congruous to the strange chaotic reality before us, and that the weather systems I was trying to understand are still going in the general direction I believe them to be.
Not that I need to be validated by these things, nor do I even want to be. It would be far better to write myself off as misguided and watch the world piece itself together in spite of the difficulties ahead of it.
But that's enough about me.
There is still plenty of time before Trump takes office, and the brittle US political system is certainly not going to handle the kind of transfer of power we're accustomed to without some kind of shower of sparks or grinding of gears. The 2000 election was tumultuous enough after all. And the global economy is so tightly integrated, we'll most likely see some pretty dramatic effects in the form of sympathetic reactions, whose effects will feed back into the US political system in short order.
It may be worthwhile to try to wrap one's head around what has actually happened, however much nausea it causes as one reminisces on the campaign trail, and apprehends the fact that Trump as a phenomenon really does exist, and he is poised to wrap his fingers around the levers of the most powerful empire in the world. This is even taking into account the waning power and influence of the US empire, which is arguably a much more dangerous force, with its insecure rebuffs against power-sharing and increasing alienation and humiliation.
The election cycle, which is to peaceably transfer power to the leader of another faction, has run into a snag: there is nothing there to transfer power to! In the conventional sense anyway.
No doubt, Trump is there to receive the power with open arms and a broad smile upon his face. But what is Trump? What does he embody? What does he represent? Trump is not a politician with whom you entrust power to maintain a system; you entrust him to smash it. Or in other words, this is not the beginning of a new political order, but the collapse of an old one.
The catapult of his person to the presidency can only be construed as some vast, national cry of despair. Those that actually believe in the candidate are doing so with bellies poisoned by decades of swallowing contradictory and preposterous business propaganda, and who are otherwise willing participants in the long historical process of dispossession and imperial growth.
Those that voted Trump as a protest, casting their vote with a cynical confidence in him as a weapon, like tossing a brick through an establishment window, or into the face of an establishment politician for that matter, draw from that same well of despair. More constructive things have happened with the tossing of actual bricks through actual windows.
This is a people who have indeed suffered, and continue to suffer, but who have chosen greater suffering as a solution. Not that this sudden, grim outpouring emerged from a vacuum either. No, we have had a long historical procession of foreclosed redemptions and denials of justice, culminating with the DNC's stonewalling of the one sensible candidate in the whole campaign, which makes it all the more tragic.
And we have to look on in horror at the plight of the American public, which has suddenly become alarmed that the weight it has thrown around the globe to enrich itself has become tangled around its own neck, dragging it down. With Trump the answer is to untangle the instruments of domination, and make them point outward once again, as opposed to retiring them completely. Historically, this is a project that makes the predicament much worse of course, to the point of vast destruction and suffering.
Indeed, we find this moment's analogue in Brexit, where to every pollster's surprise, a people chose to accelerate disintegration. A few months in and they continue to squabble over rejoining the connections they've severed, slowly bleeding out in the process.
Whatever process of disintegration we have to watch may very well tear open some new power vacuum, by virtue of clearing out the corrupt and convoluted tangle that the neoliberal empire resembles. Within such a vacuum is possibility, but at the same time there exists the site of a bitter struggle between all of the shearing forces that have been unleashed.
Cold comfort in a dark time, without a doubt. But that promise of possibility begat countless vital movements throughout history, and countless horrors too, let's not forget. The best that can be done is to struggle in the direction of what one believes to be good. Weak tea perhaps, but I can't help but draw from the well of despair myself. It seems to be all they are serving.
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